If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
"... By illuminating CIA programs and systems of surveillance, control, and assassination utilized against the civilian population of South Vietnam, we are presented with parallels with operations and practices at work today in America's seemingly perpetual war against terror. ..."
"... Through the policies of covert infiltration and manipulations, illegal alliances, and "brute force" interventions that wreak havoc on designated enemy states, destroy progress and infrastructure under the claim of liberation, degrade the standards of living for people in the perceived hostile nations, "...America's ruling elite empowers itself while claiming it has ensured the safety and prestige of the American people. Sometimes it is even able to convince the public that its criminal actions are 'humanitarian' and designed to liberate the people in nations it destroys." ..."
"... Want to know why the DEA is losing the war on drugs, how torture has become policy? Want to know why the government no longer represents your interests? Look no further. ..."
Of the extraordinarily valuable and informative works for which Mr. Valentine is responsible, his latest, CIA As Organized
Crime, may prove to be the best choice as an introduction to the dark realm of America's hidden corruptions and their consequences
at home and around the world. This new volume begins with the unlikely but irrevocable framework by which Mr. Valentine's path
led to unprecedented access to key Agency personnel whose witting participation is summarized by the chapter title: "How William
Colby Gave Me the Keys to the CIA Kingdom."
By illuminating CIA programs and systems of surveillance, control, and assassination utilized against the civilian population
of South Vietnam, we are presented with parallels with operations and practices at work today in America's seemingly perpetual
war against terror.
Through the policies of covert infiltration and manipulations, illegal alliances, and "brute force" interventions that
wreak havoc on designated enemy states, destroy progress and infrastructure under the claim of liberation, degrade the standards
of living for people in the perceived hostile nations, "...America's ruling elite empowers itself while claiming it has ensured
the safety and prestige of the American people. Sometimes it is even able to convince the public that its criminal actions are
'humanitarian' and designed to liberate the people in nations it destroys."
Mr. Valentine has presented us with a major body of work which includes: The Strength of the Wolf; The Strength of the Pack;
The Pheonix Program, to which we may now add The CIA as Organized Crime, and for which we are profoundly indebted.
If you want the inside scoop on the CIA and it's criminal past; this is the book. Additionally, why the Phoenix Program is
pertinent for our own times. This book connects the dots.
If you have been wondering why Homeland Security has fusion centers; why the USA Anti-Patriot Act, NDAA and Rex 84 have been
passed by Congress; you will get your answer here.
A book every intelligent American needs to read and place in a prominent place in their library. Oh, and don't forget after
you read it; spread the word !!! (this book is based upon actual face to face interviews and documents)
Run, don't walk, and get yourself a copy of this book. The author has been warning us for decades about the clear and present
danger that is the CIA I was unaware of Valentine's work for most of those years, perhaps because our media outlets (even the
"anti-establishment" ones like Democracy Now and The Intercept) have been compromised. Valentine's work has been suppressed since
his ground-breaking book on the Phoenix Program.
Not that I didn't know anything about the sordid history. I knew about MK-Ultra, some of the agency's drug running and empire-building
exploits. This work goes much deeper and paints a much bigger picture. The extent of the agency's influence is much greater than
I had imagined.
This is not another history book about dirty tricks. It is not just about our insane foreign policy and empire building. The
cancer of corruption, of outright crime, has metastasized into every agency of the government right here in the US itself. Those
dirty tricks and crimes have become domestic policy- in fusion centers and Homeland Security, in the militarization of local police
and in Congress, from Wall Street to Main Street. Border Patrol, the DEA, Justice and State have all been compromised.
Want to know why the DEA is losing the war on drugs, how torture has become policy? Want to know why the government no
longer represents your interests? Look no further.
The problem is now. We are the new targets.
Read it and weep, but for God's sake, please read it.
A highly informative and comprehensive book, and a scathing, fearless indictment of government corruption.
I cannot overstate it's importance.
I just picked up this book and have not read it yet--but I am writing this to CORRECT THE RECORD regarding very basic information.
There are 446 PAGES (not 286, as listed above). 160 Pages is a big difference--obviously, QUALITY is more important than quantity--but
I do feel the listing needs be corrected.
The "Inside Look" feature is also cutting off the last 9 chapters of the book, which are as follows:
Chapter 16: Major General Bruce Lawlor: From CIA Officer in Vietnam to Homeland Security Honcho
Chapter 17: Homeland Security: The Phoenix Comes Home to Roost
PART IV: MANUFACTURING COMPLICITY: SHAPING THE AMERICAN WORLDVIEW
Chapter 18: Fragging Bob Kerrey: The CIA and the Need for a War Crimes Tribunal
Chapter 19: Top Secret America Shadow Reward System
Chapter 20: How Government Tries to Mess with Your Mind
Chapter 21: Disguising Obama's Dirty War
Chapter 22: Parallels of Conquest, Past and Present
Chapter 23: Propaganda as Terrorism
Chapter 24: The War on Terror as the Greatest Covert Op Ever
This is a devastating and must-read study of the social and political calamity created by the CIA over the last sixty years.
The portrait shows the criminal character of the agency and finally of the government it is said to serve. The portrait is a double
shock because it shows not just a sordid corruption but a malevolent 'dark side' mafia-style corruption of american civilization
and government. That the CIA controls the drug trade is not the least of the stunning revelations of this history.
This was written almost a year ago. Not author demonstrated tremendous insight which was confirmed by subsequent events.
Notable quotes:
"... The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries. ..."
"... The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate 'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take the bite' on the 'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero' and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'! ..."
"... Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former 'British official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d'état. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump's policies) on the United States could be profound " ..."
The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive elections, unimpeded
by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has occurred during the recent elections, as
in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W. Bush victory over 'Al' Gore in 2000. But despite the dubious
electoral outcomes in these cases, the 'defeated' candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful
protests to register their opposition.
These norms are no longer operative. During the election process, and in the run-up to the inauguration of US President-Elect
Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were challenged and coercive institutions were activated to disqualify the elected
president and desperate overt public pronouncements threatened the entire electoral order.
We will proceed by outlining the process that is used to undermine the constitutional order, including the electoral process and
the transition to the inauguration of the elected president.
Regime Change in America
In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often intervened against independent
foreign governments, which challenged Washington 's quest for global domination. This was especially true during the eight years
of President Barack Obama's administration where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups
were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of 'regime change'.
The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US political,
administrative and security structures are involved in this process. The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction
between operating within constitutional norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.
Today the distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been obliterated by the state and quasi-official mass media. The
US security apparatus is now active in manipulating the domestic democratic process of electing leaders and transitioning administrations.
The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected
and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional
ideological boundaries.
Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the political parties seek to delegitimize
the election process and undermine the President-elect. The mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal
gossip, decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents.
Alongside the media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come together to question the legitimacy of the November 2016
election results. Even after a recount confirmed Trump's victory, a massive propaganda campaign was launched to impeach the president-elect
even before he takes office – by claiming Trump was an 'enemy agent'.
The Democratic Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump militants sought to blackmail members of the Electoral
College to change their vote in violation of their own mandate as state electors. This was unsuccessful, but unprecedented.
Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the elected
president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and US celebrity icon) as a 'tool of Moscow .' The mass media and powerful
elements within the CIA, Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump's overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations
with Russia were acts of treason.
The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate 'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald
Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony
documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the
major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take the bite' on the
'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero' and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered
to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'!
Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former 'British
official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect.
Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership
was involved in a domestic coup d'état.
CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect.
For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened
the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump's
policies) on the United States could be profound "
Clearly CIA Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a sinister, unaccountable power dictating policy to an elected US
president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia Capo, he threatens the physical security of the incoming leader.
From a Scratch to Gangrene
The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the corporate
mass media and the 'progressive' websites and pundits providing ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated 'regime change'.
Whatever the limitations of our electoral norms- and there are many – they are now being degraded and discarded in a march toward
an elite coup, involving elements of the militarist empire and 'in`telligence' hierarchy.
Mass propaganda, a 'red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason ('Trump, the Stooge of Moscow') resemble the
atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany . A broad 'coalition' has joined hands with a most violent and murderous
organization (the CIA) and imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits their
drive for world power and a US dominated global political order.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.
http://petras.lahaine.org/
"... "I think it's the obligation of some executive branch officials to refuse to carry that out," former CIA director John Brennan said of the possibility of Donald Trump firing special counsel Robert Mueller. "I would just hope that this is not going to be a partisan issue. That Republicans, Democrats are going to see that the future of this government is at stake and something needs to be done for the good of the future. ..."
"... The American people, after all, elected Trump. Rod Rosenstein elected Mueller. ..."
"... A self-flattering interpretation by the puppeteers imagines Trump voters as Pap Finns resentful of the mere existence of the edumacated elites. Cultural tics surely explain part of this divide. But more so do frustrations with votes repeatedly resulting in policies unwanted by voters. Brennan encouraging employees of the executive branch to subvert the executive comes off as too analogous to the unelected continually sabotaging the will of the electorate that directly caused Trump's election. Trump's supporters certainly see it this way. This fight is an extension of the overall fight that colored the presidential election. ..."
Last year, the marionettes rebelled. Naturally, the Great Puppeteer Counter-revolt of
2017 followed.
"I think it's the obligation of some executive branch officials to refuse to carry that
out," former CIA director John Brennan said of the possibility of Donald Trump firing special
counsel Robert Mueller. "I would just hope that this is not going to be a partisan issue. That
Republicans, Democrats are going to see that the future of this government is at stake and
something needs to be done for the good of the future. "
Leaving aside the imprudence of the president firing the man investigating his campaign's
alleged ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump certainly possesses the right
to dismiss Mueller. Unelected people who work for the man elected president do not possess the
right to thwart the legal directives of their boss.
The American people, after all, elected Trump. Rod Rosenstein elected Mueller.
A fine line exists between anonymous, unelected, unaccountable government officials
undermining the president's legal directives and such people working to overturn the results of
last year's election. One might argue the two as one in the same differing only in degree.
Did the Russians meddle in our electoral process in 2016 or do entrenched bureaucrats do so
on a constant basis? How one answers that question dictates one's response to this current
controversy.
November's results, one might think, would have sparked epiphanies. Americans voted for a
populist outsider to, in his words, "drain the swamp." Brennan's words indicate that the swamp
thrives six months after inauguration. The election neither hastened the drain nor chastened
the creatures from the swamp. As the late, great Stan Evans oft reflected, people go to
Washington imagining it a swamp only to soon regard it as a hot tub. Who wants to vacate a hot
tub?
A self-flattering interpretation by the puppeteers imagines Trump voters as Pap Finns
resentful of the mere existence of the edumacated elites. Cultural tics surely explain part of
this divide. But more so do frustrations with votes repeatedly resulting in policies unwanted
by voters. Brennan encouraging employees of the executive branch to subvert the executive comes
off as too analogous to the unelected continually sabotaging the will of the electorate that
directly caused Trump's election. Trump's supporters certainly see it this way. This fight is
an extension of the overall fight that colored the presidential election.
Consider any massive change in America over the last half century or so. The demographic sea
change in the United States occurred in large part in spite, not because, of U.S. immigration
laws. Courts, not the people, determined the legal status of abortion, gay marriage, school
prayer, and much else. On important questions regarding the environment, the internet, and
health care unelected bureaucrats make the rules under which we live. Such policy
change exposes the metachange of process change that allows unelected people to
impose their will on massive numbers of people. Tolerating the hijacking of policy soon leads
to empowered hijackers thinking they can hijack the presidency.
The Constitution decrees, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
Republican Form of Government." Do the deep-state puppeteers imagine that this principle does
not apply to Washington?
Donald Trump attempts to bring down the curtain on the long-running Puppet Show on the
Potomac. Naturally, Charlie McCarthy finds this more liberating than Edgar Bergen
If you're a liberal, you might think this is great. Instead of the Neoconservatives who have been in power for the last 8 years,
we'll now have neoliberals. You may assume that "neoliberals" are new, smarter liberals -- with liberal social policies, but with
a stronger, more realistic outlook.
Nope.
In reality, neoliberalism is as dissimilar to true progressive liberal politics as neo-conservatism is to true conservative politics
(if you don't know it, most leading neoconservatives
are former followers of Trotsky
communism -- not very conservative, huh?)
For example, did you know that Ronald Reagan was a
leading neoliberal ? In the U.S., of course, he is described as the quintessential conservative. But internationally, people
understand that he really pushed neoliberal economic policies.
As former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi
writes :
Neoconservatives and neoliberals are really quite similar, so it doesn't matter who gets elected in 2008. The American public,
weary of preemptive attacks, democracy-promotion, and nation-building, will still get war either way.
And leading neo-conservative strategist Robert Kagan recently
said :
Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to
tame them and make them safe for liberalism."
So neoconservatives are not really conservative and neoliberals are not really liberal. But neocons and neoliberals are very similar
to each other . Neocons are a lot more similar to neoliberals than to true conservatives; neoliberass are more similar to neocons
than to real liberals.
Do you get it? Both the Republican and Democratic party are now run by people with identical agendas: make the big corporations
richer and expand the American empire.
There is only one party, which simply puts on different faces depending on which "branch" of the party is in power. If its the
Democratic branch, there is a slightly liberal social veneer to the mask: a little more funding for social programs, a little more
nice guy talk, a little more of a laissez faire attitude towards gays and minorities, and a little more patient push towards military
conquest and empire.
If its the Republican branch, there's a little more tough guy talk, quicker moves towards military empire, a little more mention
of religion, and a tad more centralization of power in the president.
But there is only a single face behind both masks: the face of raw corporatism, greed and yearning for power and empire.
Until Americans stop getting distracted by the Republican versus Democratic melodrama, America will move steadily forward towards
war, empire and -- inevitably as with any country which extends too far -- collapse.
Neoliberalism is neither "new" or liberal. Neoconservativism is neither new or conservative. They are just new labels for a very
old agenda: serving the powers-that-be, consolidating power, controlling resources. Whether the iron fist has a velvet glove on it
or not, it is still an iron fist.
A true opposition party is needed to counter the never-changing American agenda for military and corporate empire.
This article does much to confuse and disinform. NeoCons are essential modern day Fascists. If you don't recall your politics,
Fascists are to the right of Conservatives on the political spectrum. They have nothing to do with Communists who are far to the
left. During the 1930s Nazis were the NeoCons. They were Fascists, and they also had the overwhelming support of Muslims, who
are also Fascists. Today's NeoLiberals are basically Right Wing and hardly middle of the fence. There is virtually no politics
to the left of centre and this is the catalyst for massive economic stagnation, economic collapse, rapidly growing global instability,
indemic poverty, and an ongoing threat of pandemic disease and general global conflict. Until we have some form of political balance,
we're on the brink of catastrophe, and will probably end up with an enormous mess to clean up.
Fascism is statism and nothing represents the ultimate power of the state then the liberal. No liberal supports our constitution
or a smaller government . But it's innately typical of a liberal to project their agenda onto others.
Communism and Fascism are one degree apart. In Fascism, instead of the elite being part of the government, they are part of
the private sector. That is the only difference. They are both mainly concerned with consolidation of power and shaping the culture
though control of information. Internationally they operate the same as well, expanding their influence through wars of occupation.
Thank you for this article! As an author you always seem to be one step ahead of me in articles I've been planning to write!
I too have been asserting [in comments mostly at OpedNews] that the economic right political 'values' found in NeoLibs, [short
for both NeoLibertarians and Neoliberals] NeoCons, and TheoCons are predominantly the same for months now ever since these corporate
bailouts started. This author has a firm grasp on political ideologies as evidenced in his other articles correctly identifying
the now $2 trillion in US corporate bailouts as the economic policy of Fascism.
The TheoCons-NeoCons-NeoLibs have taken the country so far to the economic right and up in to an authoritarian level since
2000 that most all in the democratic party, excluding a few like Kucinich and Sanders, have moved from a 'centrist' political
ideology to an authoritarian right and moderate conservative political ideology.
Like Anna here more fully displays, the overwhelming majority of Americans just do not have a realistic grasp on global political
ideologies, much less their own personal political values. Political party indoctrination and mud slinging has the population
wrongly convinced democratic politicians are for the most part 'liberals' when they're economic right NeoLiberals and moderate
conservatives while republicans calling themselves 'conservative' are instead radically authoritarian and economic right TheoCons
and NeoCons.
When Americans don't understand their own political values, much less those of the candidate they vote for, they will continue
to make the wrong choices. This would seem to be exactly what the '1' party corporatist system wants so Americans will only continue
making the wrong choices from choosing between 'moderate conservative' Democrats like Obama-Biden, and NeoCon/TheoCon republicans
like McCain-Palin. Who better to assert this 1 party economic right NeoLiberal reality than one of the most renown liberal authors
and intellectuals than Chomsky in his recent article the Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed.
Chomsky cites America as a "one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats" while putting
the blame on this economic crisis where it belongs on the very people who created it, America's NeoLiberals. Anna, if you need
more proof I suggest you take a trip to the non partisan web site created by a group of doctorate degreed political ideology professors,
political experts and sociologists called Political Compass. I guarantee you these experts are far more learned than you are about
political ideologies and political values not just in the US, but around the globe. It will surely shock you to learn based on
speeches, public statements and most crucially voting records that Obama is firmly in the authoritarian right quadrant as a moderate
conservative.
There you'll see their reasons for this based on his voting record and speeches briefly cited in "While Cynthia McKinney and
Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the
wider political landscape of Europe.
Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of
a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream
conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate
also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc
in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President
Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad."A way to realistically determine
if the candidate you vote for actually represents your own political values is to take the political values test found at political
compass here and afterward learn about the inadequacies inherent in the limited age-old traditional left-right economic view of
political ideologies.
Then you Anna, along with a host of others, may actually start voting in support of candidates that factually represent your
own political values. Or you may find you really aren't this liberal you think you are after all. Regardless, only by learning
more about ones' own political values and those of the candidates Americans support will they get the political leaders, type
of leadership, and government they actually want....
Its debatable. Corporations won't be near as interested in a small government that is less willing to do favors for them. What
do you suggest as a solution to stop the advancement of corporatism? If your answer is to tax the rich more and grow the government
you would just get tyranny. Currently with big government we have both tyranny and fascism.
This is just ignorance -- the Republicans and Democrats are the same, but Sunni and Shia Islam are not just arbitrary branches
of some terrorist collective called Islam. I suggest you read more about Islam, it's extraordinarily misunderstood AND--I might
add--misinforming people about Islam is an integral part of the agenda of the corporate GOP-DEM elite. I'm not a Muslim, for the
record.
You are confusing the issue. The work neoliberal applies to an economic philosophy which is also sometimes called the Chicago
School or the Washington Consensus. It is related to what we often call globalization, and it has to to with "liberalization"
of economies, in other words privatization of publicly held industries etc. Liberal in the American political sense it totally
unrelated to neoliberal. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that espouses vanguardism and militant foreign policy. They
are related in that their goals dove tail, kind of like apples and oranges are similar in that they are both edible.
Now we can view Brennan testimony throw the prism of Steele dossier scandal and Strzok-gate
(with whom he who probably has direct contacts)
Please note that the interview was given directly after the appointment of the Special
Prosecutor Mueller and at this time many though that Trump was "fully cooked" and that neocon and
neoliberal swamp in Washington managed to consume him.
Former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that Russia
"brazenly interfered in the 2016 election process," despite U.S. efforts to warn it off.
Brennan testified in an open session of the committee, one of a handful of congressional
committees now investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Brennan said he told his Russian counterpart, the head of Russia's FSB, last August that if
Russia pursued its efforts to interfere, "it would destroy any near-term prospect for
improvement in relations" between the two countries. He said Russia denied any attempts to
interfere.
In his opening statement, Brennan also recounted how he had briefed congressional leaders in
August of last year, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees about the "full details" of what he knew of Russia's interference in the 2016
election. Brennan said he became convinced last summer that Russia was trying to interfere in
the campaign, saying "they were very aggressive."
Brennan said he is "aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and
interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign."
Brennan said that concerned him, "because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,"
and that it raised questions about whether or not the Russians "were able to gain the
cooperation of those individuals." Brennan added he didn't know if "collusion existed" between
the Russians and those he identified as involved in the Trump campaign.
While Brennan would not specifically identify any individuals associated with the Trump
campaign who had contacts with Russian officials and would not opine as to whether there was
any collusion or collaboration, he did tell lawmakers why he was concerned about the contacts
occurring against the general background of Russian efforts to meddle in the election. Brennan
said he's studied Russian intelligence activities over the years, and how Russian intelligence
services have been able to get people to betray their country. "Frequently, individuals on a
treasonous path do not even realize they're on that path until it gets to be too late," he
said.
Brennan said Russia was motivated to back Donald Trump in the presidential election because
of a "traditional animus" between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Russian President
Vladimir Putin. He told committee members there had not been a good relationship between Putin
and the Clintons over the years. What's more, Brennan said Putin blamed Hillary Clinton's
actions as secretary of state during the Obama administration for domestic disturbances inside
Russia. He said Putin was concerned Clinton would be more "rigid" on issues such as human
rights if elected president.
But Brennan told the committee he believed that Russia anticipated that Clinton would be the
likely winner of the presidential race, and that Russia tried to "damage and bloody" her before
Election Day. Had she won, Brennan said, Russia would have continued to attempt to "denigrate
her and hurt her" during her presidency. If Russia had collected more information about Clinton
that they did not use against her during the campaign, Brennan said they were likely
"husbanding it for another day."
On another question, Brennan criticized President Trump's reported sharing of classified
intelligence with Russia officials. Brennan said if reports were accurate, Trump violated
"protocols" by sharing the information with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the
U.S.
Brennan also said he was "very concerned" by the release of what he said appears to be
classified information from the Trump administration. He said there appear to be "very, very
damaging leaks, and I find them appalling and they need to be tracked down."
Reacting to Brennan's testimony, a White House spokesman said "This morning's hearings back
up what we've been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no
evidence of any Russia-Trump campaign collusion, that the President never jeopardized
intelligence sources or sharing, and that even Obama's CIA Director believes the leaks of
classified information are 'appalling' and the culprits must be 'tracked down.'"
Under questioning from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Brennan said the Russians have been
trying to disrupt Western elections since the 1960s, and that they've quickly adapted to the
times. Brennan pointed to the ease with which Russia was able to hack Democratic operatives'
emails, which were then published on WikiLeaks.
"The cyber-environment now really provides so much more opportunity for troublemaking and
the Russians take advantage of it," he said. Brennan said the use of spear phishing, and
"whatever else so that they can then gain access to people's emails, computer systems
networks," is something that the Russians are adept at.
He said Russia used WikiLeaks as a "cut-out," or go-between, and that protests by WikiLeaks
that it is not working with Russia and Russia's claims it is not working with WikiLeaks are
"disingenuous."
The rule for retired intelligence officials is to keep their mouth shut and disappear from
the public view. This not the case with Brennan. Probably worried about his survival chances in
case of failure, Brennan tries to justified the "putsch" of a faction of intelligence officials
against Trump. Nice... Now we have indirect proof that he conspired with Michael Morell to depose
legitimately elected president.
Now the question arise whether he worked with MI6 to create Steele dossier. In other words
did CIA supplied some information that went to the dossier.
Moreover, since JFK assassination, the CIA is prohibited from spying on American citizens,
especially tracking the activities of associates of a presidential candidate, which is clearly
political activity.
This alone should have sent warning bells off for Congress critters, yet Brennan clearly
persisted in following this dangerous for him and CIA trail. Very strange.
Notable quotes:
"... Speaking to a Russian becomes treasonous ..."
"... The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed 'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides . ..."
"... The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." ..."
"... At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it. ..."
"... It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and acting Director of the CIA, should know better. ..."
"... In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly lacking in any actual evidence. ..."
"... Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its front page with a piece entitled Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials. ..."
"... It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even if it almost never has that result. ..."
"... "The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ." ..."
"... US is now like USSR? https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/05/29/forget-russian-collusion-we-are-russia/ ..."
"... The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. ..."
"... Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to them is high treason. ..."
"... Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch. Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess., while the answer was so close, on the surface. ..."
"... "If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned." ..."
"... This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist. ..."
"... What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships. ..."
"... "Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference, it would be illegal". ..."
The Washington Post and a number
of other mainstream media outlets are sensing blood in the water in the wake of former CIA
Director John Brennan's public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The Post
headlined a front page featured article with
Brennan's explosive testimony just made it harder for the GOP to protect Trump . The
article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed
'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump
campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled
Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides .
The precise money quote by Brennan that the two
articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that
revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the
Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such
individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the
co-operation of those individuals."
Now first of all, the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens and tracking the
activities of known associates of a presidential candidate should have sent warning bells off,
yet Brennan clearly persisted in following the trail. What Brennan did not describe, because it
was "classified," was how he came upon the information in the first place. We know from the New
York Times and other sources that it came from foreign intelligence services, including the
British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at
least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan
unofficially in the first place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear
that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian
operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and
elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began.
But where the information ultimately came from as well as its reliability is just
speculation as the source documents have not been made public. What is not speculative is what
Brennan actually said in his testimony. He said that Americans associated with Trump and his
campaign had met with Russians. He was "concerned" because of known Russian efforts to "suborn
such individuals." Note that Brennan, presumably deliberately, did not say "suborn those
individuals." Sure, Russian intelligence (and CIA, MI-6, and Mossad as well as a host of
others) seek to recruit people with access to politically useful information. That is what they
do for a living, but Brennan is not saying that he has or saw any evidence that that was the
case with the Trump associates. He is speaking generically of "such individuals" because he
knows that spies, inter alia , recruit politicians and the Russians presumably, like the
Americans and British, do so aggressively.
At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in
my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved
in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting
fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents
voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it.
It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented
meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the
purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do
things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and
acting Director of the CIA, should know better. That they don't explains a lot of things
about today's CIA
Brennan confirms his lack of any hard evidence when he also poses the question "whether or
not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." He doesn't know whether the
Americans were approached and asked to cooperate by Russian intelligence officers and, even if
they were, he does not know whether they agreed to do so. That means that the Americans in
question were guilty only of meeting and talking to Russians, which was presumably enough to
open an FBI investigation. One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia
was not and is not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal
offense.
In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly
everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the
outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia
was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has
been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly
everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly
lacking in any actual evidence.
Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that hacked the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) server, which now is accepted as Gospel, but that is just
one side to the story being promoted. Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its
front page with a piece entitled Top
Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on
anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American
spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and
political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his
advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly
focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had
established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials.
The article goes on to concede that "It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials
actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn ," and that's about all there
is to the tale, though the Times wanders on for another three pages, recapping Brennan
and the Flynn saga lest anyone has forgotten. So what do we have? Russians were talking on the
phone about the possibility of influencing an American's presidential candidate's advisers, an
observation alluded to by Brennan and also revealed in somewhat more detail by anonymous
sources. Pretty thin gruel, isn't it? Isn't that what diplomats and intelligence officers
do?
It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United
States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places
including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria,
Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point
of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem
when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even
if it almost never has that result.
How one regards all of the dreck coming out of the Fourth Estate and poseurs like John
Brennan pretty much depends on the extent one is willing to trust that what the government, its
highly-politicized bureaucrats and the media tell the public is true. For me, that would be not
a lot. The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable, but buying into
government and media lies will only lead to more lies that have real consequences, up to and
including the impending wars against North Korea and Iran. It is imperative that every American
should question everything he or she reads in a newspaper, sees on television "news" or hears
coming out of the mouths of former and current government employees.
Thanks for the reassurance, Phil. It's lonely standing against the tide, and many are
trying to fabricate excuses for the lack of evidence.
Take Melvin Goodman, author of Whistleblower at the CIA, for instance. (I realize CIA is a
big place, but did you know him?) I've met Mr. Goodman, and he struck me as thoughtful,
rational and capable of objective discussion. However, in his talk at the Gaithersburg Book
Festival, he seemed a rather different person. At the end of Q&A, he said that he was
trying to figure out how the Russians had laundered the "hacked" DNC emails to make it look
like they were leaked by an insider. He's sure the Russians did it. With such creative
speculation, who needs facts?
The book, though, is probably pretty good. Which makes it that much stranger that he's
taking the political line on the DNC emails!
Ah, another day, another disgraceful display by the media. Incidentally: "The
"discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ."
"Presumably" here is quite generous: I'd be tempted to presume a whole string of lies
.
It's like climate change: The MSM tells us that 17 intelligence agencies agree that the
Russians hacked the election and thereby influenced it, but when you dig a little you find
that NSA, for example, did not express a high degree of confidence that this might have
actually been the case. Nevertheless, the case is settled. Pravda and Izvestia should have
been so convinced in their day.
The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to
consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and
treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival.
It all seems quite simple to me. After WWI the USA people decided that their sons should
not die ever more for imperialism. Isolation, neutrality laws. In 1932 Roosevelt was brought
into politics to make the USA great, great as the country controlling the world. Trump and
his rich friends understand that this policy is not just ruining the USA, but is ruining them
personally. If I'm right in this, it is the greatest change in USA foreign policy since
1932.
Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control
of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As
Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to
them is high treason.
@exiled off mainstreet The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war,
since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both
fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our
survival.
Is he an Anglo-Zionist? I kind of missed a reference to the true puppet-masters in the
article
Is someone going to look in to how the Izzys influence our politicians and elections? No.
Why? Because Russia is the "enemy" and Israel is our "ally." Can someone explain in simple
terms why Russia is the enemy? Yes. Because Jews don't like them very much. Can someone
explain in simple terms why Israel is our ally? Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN,
Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual
citizenship, etc. And because every president just can't wait to wear the beanie and
genuflect at some wall. Any other questions?
" One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia was not and is
not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal
offense".
Although in point of fact the USA has committed, and continues to commit, acts of war
against Russia.
"Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major
newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual citizenship, etc. "
Let's not forget 911 and it's ongoing coverup, the State Dept's Bureau of Near Eastern
Affairs exemplifying our bestest ally's parallel command and control apparatus in every
federal agency such as the FBI, etc
The only problem I have with the article is understanding the vehemence with which Brennan
and Morell are denounced for, as I read it, blathering about unwitting agents who might have
co-operated without knowing it. I construed the objection to be based on a foreign
intelligence service necessarily seeking to "direct" its agents. It would indeed follow that
the agents could not help knowing what they were doing. However .
Is there not a category of people who Brennan and Morell might be referring to who could
be aptly described as useful idiots. You meet them at a writer's festival, invite them to
accept your country's generous and admiring hospitality and soon have them spouting the memes
you have made sure they are fed as well inadvertently feeding you useful titbits of
information, especially about people.
I think something fascinating is going on, Tom. Our leaders made a choice to defraud us
into the Iraq war. Russia didn't. This is a very serious crime for which there has been zero
accountability. It seems that all the various people who should be in federal prison for
having done this, are the one's "braying the loudest" about the Russian threat.
The real crisis in our country is the absence of accountability for the heinous crimes
THEY committed, not anything the Russians did. If we allow acts of "war fraud" to go
unprosecuted, then War Fraud becomes acceptable behavior. I do not know of one American,
anywhere, who feels this is okay.
Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that
hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server
It doesn't matter. Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar
question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch.
Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess.,
while the answer was so close, on the surface.
"If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to
interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who
typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a
typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."
I know some others actually know you cannot believe spies. Some on the other hand so
not.
Mar 22, 2017 How the CIA Plants News Stories in the Media. It is no longer disputed that
the CIA has maintained an extensive and ongoing relationship with news organizations and
journalists, and multiple, specific acts of media manipulation have now been documented.
August 30, 2015 THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: 50 FACTS THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW By Prof. James F.
Tracy
Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in
US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears
and reads on a regular basis.
@alexander Alexander, I definitely don't think it's OK, but I am not American – I
am British (Scottish, to be exact). Although we have exactly the same problem over here
– in miniature – with our local pocket Hitlers strutting around in their
jackboots just salivating for the blood of foreigners.
I think the people who are braying about Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. are doing so
largely to distract attention from their own crimes. The following celebrated dialogue
explains very clearly how it works.
-------------------------------------–
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did
not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and
destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob
on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come
back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia
nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after
all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the
matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can
declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Conversation with Hermann Goering in prison, reported by Gustave Gilbert
@Tom Welsh I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is
true, he sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking
himself care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over
the Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at
least since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack
Poland. The trap worked.
@Agent76 That even Senator Moynihan, of the CIA Oversight Committee, was lied to by the
CIA director, about laying mines in Havana harbour, says enough. The CIA is not a secret
service, it is a secret army. This secret army began drugs production in Afghanistan, mainly
for the USA market, when funds for the CIA's war in Afghanistan were insufficient.
@alexander It is.
After an investigation of some seven years the lies of Tony Blair were exposed, in a report
of considerable size. What happened ? Nothing. Instead of being in jail, the man flies aroud
in a private jet, with an enormous income, paid by whom for what, I do not have a clue.
Dec 12, 2016 Georgia Official Says Homeland Security Tried To Hack Their State's Voter
Database
While most of the country frets over Russia's role in the 2016 election, the state of
Georgia has come forward saying that they've traced an IP from a hack of their voter database
right back to the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently we need to focus
on protecting our vote from our own government.
The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider
even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and
treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. Brennan is just a regular
profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel that the civil war in Ukraine
(initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started
immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make the visit secret but
this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known:
https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/
"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was
confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media
on Sunday.
Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in
eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday
to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a
violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence,"
Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.
"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and
Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne
Madsen, an American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."
This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in
creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies
and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this
miserable opportunist.
Unfortunately for you and myself there are literally millions of people in America who do
not think or challenge what they read or view as we do apparently. Thanks, *government
schooling* .
Mar 6, 2017 Drug Boss Escobar Worked for the CIA
The notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar worked closely with the CIA, according to his
son. In this episode of The Geopolitical Report, we look at the long history of CIA
involvement in the international narcotics trade, beginning with its collaboration with the
French Mafia to using drug money to illegally fund the Contras and overthrow the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua.
I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is true, he
sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking himself
care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over the
Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at least
since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack Poland.
The trap worked.
What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the
form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key
sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what
the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist
scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it
works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships.
As for your point about Britain having deliberately fomented the war, I don't think that
holds water. Britain was grossly – almost grotesquely – underarmed in 1939, and
came very close indeed to being conquered in 1940. In my view, it was FDR and his friends who
assiduously wound up the Nazis and the Poles to fight one another, and then persuaded the
British and French to give Poland guarantees. Everyone believed that, if war came, the USA
would immediately join Britain and France in fighting Germany. Alas, they were very much
mistaken.
"Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very
much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery
to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference,
it would be illegal".
@Tom Welsh Well, another ruler also stated this, "Education is a weapon whose effects
depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." Joseph Stalin
Brennan is just a regular profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel
that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed
by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make
the visit secret but this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known:
https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/
"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was confirmed
by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media on
Sunday.
Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in
eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday
to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a
violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence,"
Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.
"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela,
has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne Madsen, an
American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."
This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in
creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies
and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this
miserable opportunist.
the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed
by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014
I wouldn't so much call it a civil war, as a ZUSA imposed putsch, installing a
Zio-bankster-quisling.
PG:
the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken
in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations.
getting to the crux of the matter
when Russia released the phone conversation where ZUS State Dept. – Kagan klan /
Zio-bitch Nuland was overheard deciding who was going to be the next president of Ukraine
(some democracy), it was this breach of global oligarch protocol that has riled the deepstate
Zio-war-scum ever since. Hence all the screeching and hysterics about "Russian hacking".
The thug Brennan, (as you correctly call him [imagine this mug coming into the room as
you're about to be 'enhanced interrogated'])
has his fingerprints not just all over the war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, but Syria
and elsewhere too.
All these war criminals are all scrambling to undermine Trump in the fear that he'll
eventually hold some of them accountable for their serial crimes, treasons, and treachery.
Which brings us to this curious comment..
The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable,
what the hell does Mr. G think will replace him?!
So far the "buffoonish Donald Trump" has not declared a no-fly zone in Syria, as we know
the war sow would have by now. He's not materially harmed the Assad regime, but only made
symbolic attempts to presumably mollify the war pigs like McBloodstain and co in the
zio-media/AIPAC/etc..
His rhetoric notwithstanding, he seems to be making nice with the Russians, to the
apoplectic hysteria of people like Brennan and the Stain.
In fact the more people like Brennan and Bloodstain and the zio-media and others seem on
the brink of madness, the better Trump seems to me every day.
And if it puts a smelly sock in the mouths of the neocons and war pigs to saber rattle at
Iran, with no possibility to actually do them any harm, because of the treaty and Europe's
need to respect it, then what's the harm of Trump sounding a little buffoonish if it gets
them off his back so that he can circle himself with a Pretorian guard of loyalists and get
to the bottom of all of this. I suspect that is what terrifies people like Brennan more than
anything else.
@Art
Deco The way I see it "an ocean of blood" in Iraq was unleashed following US invasion,
and it included plenty of American blood. Young healthy American men lost their lifes in
Iraq, lost their their bodyparts (arms, legs, their nuts), lost their sanity, and as an
American I can't imagine that you were pleased about that. Certainly, most of your
countrymen didn't feel this way, they didn't feel this war was worth it for the US.
We had no treaty commitments with either Serbia or Iraq
The treaty commitment in question was with almost the entire rest of the world, namely
when your country entirely voluntarily signed up to a commitment to "refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity
or political independence of any state". If your country had retained the slightest trace
of integrity and self-respect it would at least have had the decency to withdraw from
membership of the the UN when it chose to breach those treaty commitments.
And if anything Americans make their own shamelessness worse when they fabricate
imaginary pretexts for weaselling out of their country's commitment, such as a wholly
imaginary entitlement for them to decide for themselves when there is a "humanitarian"
justification for doing so, or make up wholesale fantasy allegations about "weapons of mass
destruction" that even if true wouldn't justify war.
An entire nation state behaving like a lying '60s hippy or a shamelessly dishonest
aggressor.
I'm sure you're proud.
and both places had it coming.
A straightforward confession of lawless rogue state behaviour, basically.
Do you actually think somehow you are improving your country's position with such
arguments? Better for a real American patriot to just stop digging and keep sheepishly
quiet about the past three decades of foreign policy.
@reiner
Tor The fact is neither did Crimeans really want to join Russia (polls didn't show
that), and yet our re-unification has been a huge success! I honestly can't think of good
reason, why we can't go futher.
@Felix
Keverich"an ocean of blood" in Iraq was unleashed following US invasion,
By various and sundry Sunni insurgents, who continue to distort and disfigure life in
the provinces where they have a critical mass of the population. The Kurdish and Shia
provinces are quiet.
Another possibility is that the change since 2014 is rather the result of more
anti-American reporting in Russia's state-owned media.
There seems no evident reason to look for another explanation for the drops in
pro-American sentiment. They seem eminently justified by the US's behaviour over the period
1990-date and perfectly unsurprising.
What needs to be explained is not the sustained low opinion after 2014 but rather the
remarkable recoveries after 1999, 2003 and 2008.
In the west, opinion of the US was managed upwards with the Obama presidency because he
fitted so well with US sphere establishment antiracist and leftist dogmas that he had
almost universally positive (even hagiographic) mainstream media coverage throughout the US
sphere, but with Trump opinions of the US are mostly back down where Bush II left them. It
seems unlikely the Russian media would have been as sycophantically pro-Obama merely for
his blackness and Democrat-ness, though, and of course he wasn't around anyway in 2000 and
in 2004.
It's understandable that following a particular instance of particularly bad US
behaviour (such as Kosovo or Iraq) opinion of the US in US sphere states would dip
dramatically (as it did, mostly) and then recover slowly to roughly its long term mean,
because those crimes were not directed against the interests of US sphere states or elites.
But they very much were targeted at Russia or its interests and disadvantageous to Russia
and its global status. Russians had few excuses for failing to see that the US was an
implacable and dangerous enemy from at least Kosovo onward, and yet they repeatedly chose
to pretend to themselves that it wasn't.
This would mean, as I suspect, that the pendulum will swing back once the Kremlin
loosens its tight grip of the media.
Why are you assuming that the pendulum would swing back?
The Kremlin is still playing nice with Western "partners".
The alternative does not have to be more pro-American.
@Art
Deco As I recall the Sunnies and Shias killed and disfigured American servicemen
together, which caused Americans to elect Obama and run away from the country. And now
these Shia communities vote for pro-Iran politicians, who gradually turn Iraq into Iranian
puppet -- is this why American soldiers died?
C'mon, Iraq invasion was a disaster for the US whichever way you look at it. That's what
happens when you start a war for the wrong reasons.
@reiner
Tor Correction. It's the elites that don't want to join Russia. And the reason they
don't is because the West gives them goodies for being anti-Russian. This kind of strategy
worked pretty well so far (for the West) in Eastern Europe and it will continue to work for
some time yet. But not forever, not in Ukraine and Belorussia.
That's because the population of these places is Russian (no matter what they were
taught to call themselves by the Commies.) Their culture is Russian. The rulers of Ukraine
and, to a much lesser degree, Belorussia are trying to erect cultural barriers between
themselves and Russia. Good luck with that, in the 21st century. It's more likely the
culture will further homogenize, as is the trend anywhere in the world. Eventually it will
tell.
Now, the question is if Russians will even want Ukraine back. This is not so clear.
@Art
Deco That's just dumb. The reasons officially given for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 --
Saddam's regime hiding weapons of mass destruction and being an intolerable threat to the
outside world -- were a transparently false pretext for war, and that was clearly
discernible at the time. Saddam's regime was extremely brutal and increasingly Islamic or
even Islamist in character, but by 2003 it wasn't a serious threat to anyone outside Iraq
anymore the worst thing it did was send money to the families of Palestinian suicide
bombers (bad, but hardly an existential threat). Admittedly there was the question how to
deal with his regime in coming years, whether to eventually relax sanctions or to keep them
in place for the foreseeable future. But there was no urgent need to invade Iraq that was
purely a war of choice which the US started in a demented attempt at reshaping the region
according to its own preferences. If you don't understand why many people find that rather
questionable, it's you who needs to get out more.
What needs to be explained is not the sustained low opinion after 2014 but rather the
remarkable recoveries after 1999, 2003 and 2008.
Yugoslavia and Iraq were not that close to Russia and Russian elite was still pushing
for Integration into West at that time. After 2008, "Reset" and Obama happened.
It seems unlikely the Russian media would have been as sycophantically pro-Obama
merely for his blackness and Democrat-ness, though, and of course he wasn't around anyway
in 2000 and in 2004.
Keep in mind that Obama's opponent in 2008 was McCain, that McCain.
Just like Trump, Obama seemed like the lesser evil and not to blame for previous
conflicts.
@Art
Deco Hungary joined NATO a few days (weeks? can't remember) before the start of the
Kosovo-related bombardment of Serbia. I attended university in a city in the south of
Hungary, close to the Serbian border. I could see the NATO planes flying by above us every
night when going home from a bar or club (both of which I frequented a lot).
I was a staunch Atlanticist at the time, and I believed all the propaganda about the
supposed genocide which later turned out not to have gone through the formality of actually
taking place. But it was never properly reported as the scandal it was -- it was claimed
that the Serbs were murdering tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians, but
it never happened. They might have killed a few hundred, at worst a few thousand civilians,
but that's different from what the propaganda claimed at the time. I only found out that
there was no genocide of Albanians in Kosovo when I searched the internet for it some time
after the Iraq invasion. By that time I was no longer an Atlanticist. Most people are
totally unaware that there was any lying going on while selling us the war.
Yes. It was the thing which opened my eyes and made me question some previous policies,
especially the bombardment of Serbia. I wasn't any longer comfortable of being in NATO,
especially since it started to get obvious that Hungarian elites (at least the leftists
among them) used our membership to dismantle our military and use the savings on handouts
for their electorate, or -- worse -- outright steal it. While it increasingly looked like
NATO wasn't really protecting our interests, since our enemies were mostly our neighbors
(some of them). This kind of false safety didn't feel alright.
@reiner
Tor "Yes. It was the thing which opened my eyes"
Same for me. I was 15 during the Kosovo war and believed NATO's narrative, couldn't
understand how anybody could be against the war, given previous Serb atrocities during the
Bosnian war it seemed to make sense. And after 9/11 I was very pro-US, e.g. I argued
vehemently with a stupid leftie teacher who was against the Afghanistan war (and I still
believe that war was justified, so I don't think I'm just some mindless anti-American
fool). But Iraq was just too much, too much obvious lying and those lies were so stupid it
was hard not to feel that there was something deeply wrong with a large part of the
American public if they were gullible enough to believe such nonsense. At least for me it
was a real turning point in the evolution of my political views.
Russians know more about these things than you do. The vast majority of us do not
regard Belarus and Ukraine as part of
"заграница" -- foreign countries.
Ukrainians and in particular Belorussians are simply variants of us, just like regional
differences exist between the Russians in Siberia and Kuban'.
The last two sentences contradict the first.
Russians tend to be rather ignorant of Ukrainians, and you are no different.
Afghanistan war (and I still believe that war was justified
Destroying the Taliban government, yes. Building "democracy" is just stupid, though.
They should've quickly left after the initial victory and let the Afghans to just eat each
other with Stroganoff sauce if they so wished. It's not our business.
That's because the population of these places is Russian (no matter what they were
taught to call themselves by the Commies.) Their culture is Russian.
This is for them to decide, not for you.
It's more likely the culture will further homogenize, as is the trend anywhere in the
world.
Yeah, the culture homogenizes around the world, into global Hollywood corporate culture.
In the long there, "traditional Russian culture" is as doomed as "traditional Ukrainian
culture" and "traditional American culture" if there is anything left of it.
Polling by the Razumkov Centre in 2008 found that 63.8% of Crimeans (76% of Russians,
55% of Ukrainians, and 14% of Crimean Tatars, respectively) would like Crimea to secede
from Ukraine and join Russia and 53.8% would like to preserve its current status, but
with expanded powers and rights . A poll by the International Republican Institute in May
2013 found that 53% wanted "Autonomy in Ukraine (as today)", 12% were for "Crimean Tatar
autonomy within Ukraine", 2% for "Common oblast of Ukraine" and 23% voted for "Crimea
should be separated and given to Russia".
The takeaway is that Crimeans were satisfied being part of Ukraine as long as Ukraine
had an ethnic Russian, generally pro-Russian president like Yanukovich in charge (2013
poll), but preferred being part of Russia to being part of a Ukrainian state run by
Ukrainians (2008 poll, post-Maidan).
That's because the population of these places is Russian (no matter what they were
taught to call themselves by the Commies.) Their culture is Russian.
Believer of Russian nationalist fairytales tells Russian nationalist fairytales. You
managed to fit 3 of them into 2 sentences, good job.
@DFH
Oh, Western Europe does not mind Slav/Muslim immigrants.
In fact, they love them.
They would not have agreed for other reasons without admitting them in public.
As I recall the Sunnies and Shias killed and disfigured American servicemen
together,
The amusing thing is that American apologists for their country's military
interventionism like Art Deco more usually spend their time heaping all the blame on Iran
and the Shia. As well as internet opinionators, that incudes some of the most senior US
military figures like obsessively anti-Iranian SecDef James Mattis:
That's something that ought to seriously concern anyone with a rational view of world
affairs.
which caused Americans to elect Obama and run away from the country.
In fact the Americans had already admitted defeat and agreed to pull out before Obama
took office. Bush II signed the withdrawal agreement on 14th December 2008. After that, US
forces in Iraq were arguably no longer occupiers and were de jure as well as de facto
present on the sufferance of the Iraqi government. The US regime had clearly hoped to have
an Iraqi collaboration government for the long term, as a base from which to attack Iran,
but the long Iraqi sunni and shia resistances scuppered that idea. The sunnis had fought
hard, but were mostly defeated and many of them ended up collaborating with the US
occupiers, as indeed had much of the shia, for entirely understandable reasons in both
cases.
Military occupations are morally complicated like that.
@AP I
was referring specifically to Russian attitudes about Ukrainians. I know that among
Ukrainians themselves, there is quite the confusion on this subject.
@Felix
KeverichAs I recall the Sunnies and Shias killed and disfigured American servicemen
together, which caused Americans to elect Obama and run away from the country. And now
these Shia communities vote for pro-Iran politicians, who gradually turn Iraq into Iranian
puppet -- is this why American soldiers died?
Your memory is bad. The three Kurdish provinces never suffered much. Political violence
in the Shia provinces was finally suppressed over a series of months in late 2007 and early
2008. It was also contained to a degree in the six provinces with Sunnis. And that is how
matters remained for six years. ISIS was active in those provinces which have had public
order problems consistently since 2003.
Iran has influence in Iraq. It is an 'Iranian' puppet only when unzdwellers require
rhetorical flourishes.
@Mitleser
Fair points, though you seem to concede to the Russian elites a significant degree of
competence at managing public opinion, in 2000 and in 2004.
I was under the impression that Putin personally was still quite naïve about the US
even after Kosovo, which partly accounts for his rather desperately helpful approach after
9/11, though not so much after Iraq.
But I have been told by Russians who ought to have some knowledge of these things that
Putin and the wider regime were not so naïve even back in the late 1990s, so the case
can be made both ways.
reclaiming Belarus and Ukraine is absolutely essential to have a country, we could all
proudly call 'home' -- an actual Russian nation-state.
In which 25 million or so Ukrainians actively resist you, and another 5 million or so
Ukrainians plus a few million Belarusians nonviolently resent your rule. You will reduce
the cities or parts of them to something like Aleppo, and rebuild them (perhaps with
coerced local labor) while under a sanctions regime. Obviously there will have to be a
militarized occupation regime and prison camps and a network of informants. A proud
home.
Again, what really matters here is not the size of the country, it's that all the land
that's historically Russian should be fully within the borders of this country.
Baltics were Russian longer than Ukraine. Central Poland became Russian at the same time
as did half of Ukraine. According to the 1897 census, there were about as many Great
Russian speakers in Kiev governate as in Warsaw. Take the Baltics and Warsaw back too?
No, it's just an argument you're not used to having to answer.
The reasons officially given for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- Saddam's regime
hiding weapons of mass destruction and being an intolerable threat to the outside world --
were a transparently false pretext for war, and that was clearly discernible at the
time.
It was nothing of the kind. That was on the list of concerns Bush had. Bush's trilemmas
don't go away just because Eurotrash strike poses and have impoverished imaginations.
@AP
These polls vary greatly from time to time and depending on the group conducting them.
These polls are meaningless : most ordinary people go about their daily lives never
thinking about that kind of issues, when suddenly prompted by a pollster they give a
meaningless answer.
I'm sure, support for reunification will go up in Belarus, if the Kremlin shows some
leadership on this issue. We will find enough people willing to work with us, the rest will
just have to accept the new reality and go about their daily lifes as usual.
The situation in Ukraine is different, it differs wildly by region and will require us
to modify our approach.
@German_readerUS started in a demented attempt at reshaping the region according to its own
preferences.
It did nothing of the kind. It ejected two governments for reasons of state. One we'd
been a state of belligerency with for 12 years, the other was responsible for a gruesome
casus belli. Now, having done that, we needed to put in place a new government. There was
no better alternative means of so doing than electoral contests.
@inertialYes, of course. Just don't assume they will decide the way you think.
They've had ample opportunity over a period of 26 years to make the decision you favor.
It hasn't happened, and there's no reason to fancy they'll be more amenable a decade from
now.
How do you see this happening? Why would the Kremlin give up its control of the media?
These people are smart enough to understand that whoever controls the media controls
public opinion.
They are indeed, but my assumption is that Russia's present elite is, for the most part,
corruptible. Putin will be gone before 2024, and his successor will be under immense
pressure -- carrot and stick -- to deregulate Russia's media landscape, which will make
foreign money pour into Russian media outlets, which will in turn lead to more positive
coverage and more positive views of the West. Only a few days ago, we learnt that
Washington ruled out signing a non-interference agreement with Moscow since it would
preclude Washington from meddling in Russia's internal affairs. What does this tell you
about the Western elite's plan for Russia?
Were we defeated, Iraq would be ruled by the Ba'ath Party or networks of Sunni
tribesman. It is not. This isn't that difficult Randal.
Well this is an old chestnut that is really just an attempt to abuse definitions of
victory and defeat on your part.
The US invasion of Iraq itself was initially a military success. It ended in complete
military victory over the Iraqi regime and nation, the complete surrender of the Iraqi
military and the occupation of the country.
However, the US regime's wider war aims were not achieved because they were unable to
impose a collaboration government and use the country as a base for further projection of
US power in the ME (primarily against Iran, on behalf of Israel), and the overall result of
the war and the subsequent occupation was catastrophic for any honest assessment of
American national interests (as opposed to the interests of the lobbies manipulating US
regime policy). The costs were significant, the reputational damage was also significant,
and the overall result was to replace a contained and essentially broken opponent with
vigorous sunni jihadist forces together with a resurgent Iran unwilling to kowtow to the US
as most ME states are.
So the best honest assessment is that the US was defeated in Iraq, despite an initial
military victory.
The amusing thing is that American apologists for their country's military
interventionism like Art Deco more usually spend their time heaping all the blame on Iran
and the Shia. As well as internet opinionators, that incudes some of the most senior
US military figures like obsessively anti-Iranian SecDef James Mattis
I suspect the reason this happens is because ambitious American officers know that
hating Iran (hating enemies of Israel in general) is what gets you promoted. It wasn't an
accident that James Mattis was appointed Secretary of Defense -- he is Bill Kristol's
favourite.
Another possibility is that the change since 2014 is rather the result of more
anti-American reporting in Russia's state-owned media. This would mean, as I suspect,
that the pendulum will swing back once the Kremlin loosens its tight grip of the
media.
Definitely no
American propaganda (itself without the help of Putin) were able to convince the Russians
that America is the enemy. Propaganda of Putin to this could add almost nothing.
@Art
Deco US military is still butthurt over the Iran's support for Shia militias, targeting
US troops during Iraq occupation. Clearly, the Shias hurt them a lot, and it was very
unexpected for the US, because Americans actually brought Shias into power.
Fair points, though you seem to concede to the Russian elites a significant degree of
competence at managing public opinion, in 2000 and in 2004.
I am just taking into account that the early 00s were right after the 1990s when
pro-Americanism was at its peak in Russia. Yugoslavia and Iraq were too distant too
alienate the majority permanently.
I was under the impression that Putin personally was still quite naïve about the
US even after Kosovo, which partly accounts for his rather desperately helpful approach
after 9/11, though not so much after Iraq.
Why do you think did he suggest joining NATO as an option?
Not because NATO are "good guys", but because it would ensure that Russia has a voice that
cannot be ignored. After all, the Kosovo War showed the limits of the UNSC and by extension
of Russia's voice in the unipolar world.
@Art
Deco Official justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist in 2003. Your statement that this was merely
one item "on the list of the concerns" Bush had, amounts to an admission that this was
merely a pretext and that the real object of the war was a political reordering of the
region according to US preferences (which of course backfired given that the Iraq war
increased Iran's power and status).
Calling me "Eurotrash" oh well, I get it, US nationalists like you think you're the
responsible adults dealing with a dangerous world, while ungrateful European pussies favor
appeasement, are free riders on US benevolent hegemony etc. I've heard and read all that a
thousand times before, it's all very unoriginal by now.
Destroying the Taliban government, yes. Building "democracy" is just stupid, though.
They should've quickly left after the initial victory and let the Afghans to just eat
each other with Stroganoff sauce if they so wished. It's not our business.
In fact destroying the Taliban government was both illegal and foolish (but the latter
was by far the more important). It seems clear now the Taliban were quite willing to hand
bin Laden over for trial in a third party country, and pretty clearly either had had no
clue what he had been planning or were crapping themselves at what he had achieved. Bush
declined that offer because he had an urgent political need to be seen to be kicking some
foreign ass in order to appease American shame.
The illegality is not a particularly big deal in the case of Afghanistan because it's
clear that in the post-9/11 context the US could easily have gotten UNSC authorisation for
the attack and made it legal. Bush II deliberately declined to do so precisely in order to
make the point that the US (in Americans' view) is above petty details of international law
and its own treaty commitments. A rogue state, in other words.
But an attack on Afghanistan was unnecessary and foolish (for genuine American national
interests, that is, not for the self-interested lobbies driving policy obviously), as the
astronomical ongoing costs have demonstrated. A trial of bin Laden would have been highly
informative (and some would argue that was why the US regime was not interested in such a
thing), and would if nothing else have brought him out into the open. Yes, he would have
had the opportunity to grandstand, but if the US were really such an innocent victim of
unprovoked aggression why would the US have anything to fear from that? The whole world,
pretty much, was on the US's side after 9/11.
The US could have treated terrorism as what it is, after 9/11 -- a criminal matter. It
chose instead to make it a military matter, because that suited the various lobbies seeking
to benefit from a more militarised and aggressive US foreign policy. The result of a US
attack on the government of (most of) Afghanistan would always have been either a chaotic
jihadi-riddled anarchy in Afghanistan worse than the Taliban-controlled regime that existed
in 2001, or a US-backed regime trying to hold the lid down on the jihadists, that the US
would have to prop up forever. And so indeed it came to pass.
Putin will be gone before 2024, and his successor will be under immense pressure --
carrot and stick -- to deregulate Russia's media landscape, which will make foreign money
pour into Russian media outlets, which will in turn lead to more positive coverage and
more positive views of the West.
There is no reason to assume that West will offer the Russian elite enough carrot to
deregulate the Russian media order and the stick is just more reason not to do it and to
retain control.
What does this tell you about the Western elite's plan for Russia?
And you think that people in Russian elite are not aware of it?
In which 25 million or so Ukrainians actively resist you, and another 5 million or so
Ukrainians plus a few million Belarusians nonviolently resent your rule. You will reduce
the cities or parts of them to something like Aleppo, and rebuild them (perhaps with
coerced local labor) while under a sanctions regime.
This is a fantasy. Look, the effective size of Ukrainian army right now is around 70.000
-- does this look like a strong, united nation willing and able to defend itself?
On the left side of the Dnieper truly crazy svidomy types is a small minority -- they
stand out from the crowd, can be easily identified and neutralised just like in Donbass. A
typical Ukrainian nationalist east of Dnieper is a business owner, university educated
white collar professional, a student, a journalist, "human rights activist" -- these are
not the kind of individuals, who will engage in guerilla warfare, they will just flee (like
they already fled from Donbass).
In the west, opinion of the US was managed upwards with the Obama presidency because
he fitted so well with US sphere establishment antiracist and leftist dogmas that he had
almost universally positive (even hagiographic) mainstream media coverage throughout the
US sphere, but with Trump opinions of the US are mostly back down where Bush II left
them.
I agree with most of this, but you leave out precisely why public opinion shifts.
My, rather cynical, view is that media is by far the main driver in shifting public views,
and so whoever gives the media marching orders is the Pied Piper here.
An example close to home was the consternation among some of my conservative friends
over the events Charlottesville. They knew nothing about the American alt-right, and still
less about the context of what happened that day, yet they still spoke of what a disgrace
it was for Trump not to distance himself from these deplorables. This was, of course, fully
the making of Swedish media. The 1996 Presidential Election campaign suggests that the
Russian public is no less suggestible, and so does Russian (and Ukrainian) opinions on the
crisis in the Donbass.
@Swedish
Familyruled out signing a non-interference agreement with Moscow since it would
preclude Washington from meddling in Russia's internal affairs. What does this tell you
about the Western elite's plan for Russia?
It tells me the reporters are confused or you are. There is no 'agreement' that will
prevent 'Russia' from 'meddling' in American political life or the converse. The utility of
agreements is that they make understandings between nations more precise and incorporate
triggers which provide signals to one party or the other as to when the deal is off.
@inertial
Soviets and Soviet Union were always in awe of America. You could see it in
"between-the-lines" of the texts of the so-called anti-imperialist, anti-American Soviet
propaganda. It was about catching up with American in steel production and TV sets
ownership and so on. American was the ultimate goal and people did not think of American as
an enemy.
Then there is the fact that Bolsheviks and Soviet Union owed a lot to America though
this knowledge was not commonly known. Perhaps one should take look at these hidden
connections to see what was the real mechanism bending the plug being pulled off the USSR.
There might be even an analogy to South Africa but that is another story.
@German_readerOfficial justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons of mass destruction
No, that's what you noticed in an amongst everything else being discussed by officials
and in the papers at the time.
which didn't exist in 2003.
It's a reasonable inference the stockpiles were largely destroyed. To what extent they
were able to ship stockpiles to co-operating third parties is not altogether certain. You
know the stockpiles were largely destroyed because . we were occupying the country
.
Two powerful countries beside one another are natural enemies, they can never be friends
until one has been relegated by defeat. Britain and France were enemies until France became
too weak to present a threat, then Britain's enemy was Germany (it still is, Brexit is
another Dunkirk with the UK realising it cannot compete with Germany on the continent).
Russia cannot be a friend of China against the US until Russia has been relegated in the
way France has been. France has irrecoverably given up control of its currency, they are
relegated to Germany's sidekick.
China is like Bitcoin. The smart money (Google) is going there. Received wisdom in the
US keeps expecting China's economic growth to slow down but it isn't going to happen. When
it becomes clear that the US is going to be overtaken, America will try and slow down
China's economic growth, that will be Russia's opportunity.
Official justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist in 2003.
It was one of many reasons. You don't set a guy on Death Row free just because one of
the charges didn't stick. The biggest reason was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, which should
have resulted in his removal from power. We settled on a truce because George HW Bush did
not want to pay the price, and the (mostly-Sunni) Arab coalition members did not want (1) a
democracy in Iraq and (2) a Shiite-dominated Iraq. Bush's son ended up footing the
political bill for that piece of unfinished business. The lesson is that you can delay
paying the piper, but the bill always comes due.
American propaganda (itself without the help of Putin) were able to convince the
Russians that America is the enemy. Propaganda of Putin to this could add almost
nothing.
Being Russian, you would be in a better position than I am to comment on this, but the
obvious counter to that line is who channeled this American propaganda to the Russian
public and for what purpose? This article might hold the answer:
oh well, I get it, US nationalists like you think you're the responsible adults
dealing with a dangerous world, while ungrateful European pussies favor appeasement, are
free riders on US benevolent hegemony etc. I've heard and read all that a thousand times
before, it's all very unoriginal by now.
No, I'm a fat middle aged man who thinks most of what people say on political topics is
some species of self-congratulation. And a great deal of it is perverse. The two phenomena
are symbiotic. And, of course, I'm unimpressed with kvetching foreigners. Kvetching
Europeans might ask where is the evidence that they with their own skills and resources can
improve some situation using methods which differ from those we have applied and
kvetching Latin Americans can quit sticking the bill for their unhappy histories with Uncle
Sam, and kvetching Arabs can at least take responsibility for something rather than
projecting it on some wire-pulling other (Jews, Americans, conspiracy x).
Do they have one more soldier at their command and one more piece of equipment because
we had troops in Iraq?
Well, according to the likes of Mattis they certainly do. Have you never heard of the
Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU), a large faction of which reportedly swear
allegiance directly to Khamenei.
Is that "victory" for you?
An of course they now have a direct land route to Hezbollah, to make it easier for them
to assist that national defence militia to deter further Israeli attacks. That's something
they never could have had when Saddam was in charge of Iraq.
Is that "victory" for you?
And they don't have to worry about their western neighbour invading them with US backing
again.
These polls vary greatly from time to time and depending on the group conducting them.
These polls are meaningless: most ordinary people go about their daily lives never
thinking about that kind of issues, when suddenly prompted by a pollster they give a
meaningless answer.
So according to you when hundreds or thousands of people are asked a question they are
not prepared for, their collective answer is meaningless and does not indicate their
preference?
So it's a total coincidence that when Ukraine was ruled by Ukrainians most Crimeans
preferred to join Russia, when Ukraine was ruled by a Russian, Crimeans were satisfied
within Ukraine but when Ukrainian nationalists came to power Crimeans again preferred being
part of Russia?
Are all political polls also meaningless according to you, or just ones that contradict
your idealistic views?
This is a fantasy. Look, the effective size of Ukrainian army right now is around
70.000 -- does this look like a strong, united nation willing and able to defend
itself?
In fairness, the young Ukrainians I have spoken to avoid the "draft" mainly out of fear
that they will be underequipped and used as cannon fodder. (I'm not sure "draft" is the
word I'm looking for. My understanding is that they are temporarily exempt from military
service if they study at university or have good jobs.)
@RandalWell, according to the likes of Mattis they certainly do. Have you never heard of the
Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU), a large faction of which reportedly swear
allegiance directly to Khamenei.
You can get away with more by using the prefix 'there has even been speculation'/
An of course they now have a direct land route to Hezbollah, to make it easier for
them to assist that national defence militia to deter further Israeli attacks. That's
something they never could have had when Saddam was in charge of Iraq.
They've been supplying Hezbollah for 35 years.
And they don't have to worry about their western neighbour invading them with US
backing again.
Their western neighbor never invaded them 'with U.S. backing'. During the latter half of
the Iraq war, Iraq restored diplomatic relations with the United States and received some
agricultural credits and other odds and ends.
Iran will be under threat from their western neighbor should they have something that
neighbor wishes to forcibly seize.
Bush's son ended up footing the political bill for that piece of unfinished
business.
No, Bush II chose to invade Iraq entirely voluntarily. There was no good reason to do
so, and the very good reasons why his father had sensibly chosen not to invade still
largely applied (even more so in some cases, given Iraq's even weaker state).
The lesson is that you can delay paying the piper, but the bill always comes due.
This is of course self-serving fantasy. The Russians told you there was no need to
invade Iraq. The Germans told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The French told you
there was no need to invade Iraq. The Turks told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The
sensible British told you there was no need to invade Iraq, but for some reason you
preferred to listen to the words of the staring-eyed sycophant who happened to be Prime
Minister at the time, instead.
More fool the Yanks. Most everyone else honest on the topic was giving you sensible
advice. Bush II (whose incompetence is now generally accepted) chose to ignore that advice,
and committed what is generally now regarded as the most egregious example of a foreign
policy blunder since Vietnam at least, and probably since Suez, and will likely be taught
as such around the world (including in the US, once the partisan apologists have given up
trying to rationalise it) for generations to come.
@SeanReceived wisdom in the US keeps expecting China's economic growth to slow down but it
isn't going to happen. When it becomes clear that the US is going to be overtaken, America
will try and slow down China's economic growth, that will be Russia's opportunity.
but the obvious counter to that line is who channeled this American propaganda to the
Russian public and for what purpose?
It is known -- the minions of Putin translated into Russian language American (and
European) propaganda, and putting it on the website http://inosmi.ru/ .
The Americans also try: there is a special "Radio Liberty" that 24-hour broadcasts (in
Russian) hate speech against the Russian.
But it only speeds up the process (which will happen anyway) .
For the last four years, Iran was shipping weapons and ammunition to the Syrian Arab
Army (SAA) and Hezbollah through an air route. This method allowed Israel to identify,
track and target Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah easily, as only few cargo airplanes
land in Syrian airports every day.
However, now Israel will be incapable of identifying any Iranian shipment on the new
ground route, as it will be used by thousands of Iraq and Syrian companies on daily basis
in the upcoming months. Experts believe that this will give Hezbollah and the SAA a huge
advantage over Israel and will allow Iran to increase its supplies to its allies.
@Art
Deco US elites and media are constantly freaking out about some Iranian "empire"
supposedly being created and threatening US allies in the mideast since you seem to put
great trust in their credibility, shouldn't that concern you? Personally I think those
fears are exaggerated, but how can it be denied that Iran's influence has increased a lot
in recent years and that the removal of Saddam's regime facilitated that development?
Iranian revolutionary guards and Iranian-backed Shia militias operate in Iraq, the Iraqi
government maintains close ties to Iran, and Iran is also an active participant in the
Syrian civil war would that have been conceivable like this before 2003?
Why do you think did he suggest joining NATO as an option?
Not because NATO are "good guys", but because it would ensure that Russia has a voice
that cannot be ignored. After all, the Kosovo War showed the limits of the UNSC and by
extension of Russia's voice in the unipolar world.
Well you have to wonder if he was just trolling the Americans, or if he was really
naïve enough to expect a serious response.
This is a fantasy. Look, the effective size of Ukrainian army right now is around
70.000 -- does this look like a strong, united nation willing and able to defend
itself?
It was about 50,000 in 2014, about 200,000-250,000 now.
Polish military has 105,000 personnel. Poland also not united or willing to defend
itself?
On the left side of the Dnieper truly crazy svidomy types is a small minority -- they
stand out from the crowd, can be easily identified and neutralised just like in
Donbass
Avakov, Poroshenko's interior minister and sponsor of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, in
2010 got 48% of the vote in Kharkiv's mayoral race in 2010 when he ran as the "Orange"
candidate. In 2012 election about 30% of Kharkiv oblast voters chose nationalist
candidates, vs. about 10% in Donetsk oblast. Vkontakte, a good source for judging youth
attitudes, was split 50/50 between pro-Maidan and anti-Maidan in Kharkiv (IIRC it was 80/20
anti-Maidan winning in Donetsk). Kharkiv is just like Donbas, right?
A typical Ukrainian nationalist east of Dnieper is a business owner, university
educated white collar professional, a student, a journalist, "human rights activist"
Football hooligans in these places are also Ukrainian nationalists. Azov battalion and
Right Sector are both based in Eastern Ukraine.
Here is how Azov started:
The Azov Battalion has its roots in a group of Ultras of FC Metalist Kharkiv named "Sect
82″ (1982 is the year of the founding of the group).[18] "Sect 82″ was (at
least until September 2013) allied with FC Spartak Moscow Ultras.[18] Late February 2014,
during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine when a separatist movement was active in
Kharkiv, "Sect 82″ occupied the Kharkiv Oblast regional administration building in
Kharkiv and served as a local "self-defense"-force.[18] Soon, on the basis of "Sect
82″ there was formed a volunteer militia called "Eastern Corps".[18]
Here is Azov battalion commander-turned-Kiev oblast police chief, Kharkiv native Vadim
Troyan:
Does he look like an intellectual to you? Before Maidan he was a cop.
these are not the kind of individuals, who will engage in guerilla warfare,
On the contrary, they will probably dig in while seeking cover in urban areas that they
know well, where they have some significant support (as Donbas rebels did in Donetsk),
forcing the Russian invaders to fight house to house and causing massive damage while
fighting native boys such as Azov. About 1/3 of Kharkiv overall and 1/2 of its youth are
nationalists. I wouldn't expect mass resistance by the Kharkiv population itself, but
passive support for the rebels by many. Russia will then end up rebuilding a large city
full of a resentful population that will remember its dead (same problem Kiev will face if
it gets Donbas back). This scenario can be repeated for Odessa. Dnipropetrovsk, the home
base of Right Sector, is actually much more nationalistic than either Odessa or Kharkiv.
And Kiev is a different world again. Bitter urban warfare in a city of 3 million
(officially, most likely about 4 million) followed by massive reconstruction and
maintenance of a repression regime while under international sanctions.
Russia's government has adequate intelligence services who know better what Ukraine is
actually like, than you do. There is a reason why they limited their support to Crimea and
Donbas.
Your wishful thinking about Ukraine would be charming and harmless if not for the fact
that such wishful thinking often leads to tragic actions that harm both the invader and the
invaded. Remember the Iraqis were supposed to welcome the American liberators with flowers
after their cakewalk.
@Sean
The share of value-added in industry as a share of global product has been declining for
over 50 years. In the EU, industry accounts for 24.5% of value added. In Britain, the
figure is 20.2%. Not seeing why that animates you.
In fairness, the young Ukrainians I have spoken to avoid the "draft" mainly out of
fear that they will be underequipped and used as cannon fodder.
Correct. The thinking often was -- "the corrupt officers will screw up and get us
killed, or sell out our positions to the Russians for money, if the Russians came to our
city I'd fight them but I don't wanna go to Donbas.." This is very different from avoiding
the draft because one wouldn't mind if Russia annexed Ukraine. Indeed, Dnipropetrovsk in
the East has contributed a lot to Ukraine's war effort, primarily because it borders Donbas
-- ones hears from people there that if they don't fight in Donbas and keep the rebels
contained there, they'd have to fight at home.
US elites and media are constantly freaking out about some Iranian "empire" supposedly
being created and threatening US allies in the mideast
No, they aren't. The political class has been anxious about Iran because it's sinking a
lot of resources into building weapons of mass destruction, because key actors therein
adhere to apocalyptic conceptions, and because it's a weirdly (and gratuitously) hostile
country.
since you seem to put great trust in their credibility, shouldn't that concern you?
Personally I think those fears are exaggerated, but how can it be denied that Iran's
influence has increased a lot in recent years and that the removal of Saddam's regime
facilitated that development? Iranian revolutionary guards and Iranian-backed Shia militias
operate in Iraq, the Iraqi government maintains close ties to Iran, and Iran is also an
active participant in the Syrian civil war would that have been conceivable like this
before 2003?
You keep alluding to things that cannot be quantified or even readily verified. Iran's
taken advantage of disordered situations in the past (in Lebanon), so it's not surprising
they do so in Syria. The disordered situation there is a function of the breakdown of
government in Syria, not of the Iraq war. Whether any influence Iran has in Iraq turns out
to be abiding remains to be seen. The anxiety about Iraq has concerned it's inclination to
subvert friendly governments and drop atomic weaponry on Israel. Not sure how their subrosa
dealings with the Iraqi government further the latter (or even the former).
@AP
LMAO, Ukrainians are nothing like Arabs. They are soft Eastern-European types. And in
Eastern regions like Kharkov most of them will be on our side.
The best thing about Ukrainian neo-Nazis such as Azov battalion is that there is very
few of them -- no more than 10.000 in the entire country. I assume Russian security
services know all of them by name.
To deal with Ukronazi problem, I would first take out their leaders, then target their
HQs, arms depots and training camps. I would kill or intimidate their sponsors. Ukronazis
would be left decapitated, without resources, undermanned and demoralised, trying to fight
an insurgency amongst the population that hates and despises them. It will be a short lived
insurgency.
The supposed threat of an Iranian empire is a common theme in interventionist US media
and in certain think tanks/pressure groups, even five minutes of googling produced
this:
Obviously I don't want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, though imo US policy in this
regard has been rather counter-productive recently.
Regarding the Iraq war, it's probably pointless to continue the discussion, if you want to
continue regarding it as a great idea, I won't argue with you.
I remember my dad telling me that the Carter administration was the highlight of
America-love in Pakistan. Slowly went downhill from there and crashed at Dubya.
LMAO, Ukrainians are nothing like Arabs. They are soft Eastern-European types.
And Russians and Poles were also soft when someone invaded their country? Ukrainians are
not modern western Euros.
And in Eastern regions like Kharkov most of them will be on our side.
Most pensioners. It will be about 50/50 among young fighting-age people.
The best thing about Ukrainian neo-Nazis such as Azov battalion is that there is very
few of them -- no more than 10.000 in the entire country
Maybe. Ukrainian government claims 46,000 in volunteer self-defense battalions
(including Azov) but this is probably an exaggeration.
OTOH there are a couple 100,000 demobilized young people with combat experience who
would be willing to fight if their homeland were attacked, who are not neo-Nazis in Azov.
Plus a military of 200,000-250,000 people, many of whom would imitate the Donbas rebels and
probably redeploy in places like Kharkiv where they have cover. Good look fighting it out
block by block.
trying to fight an insurgency amongst the population that hates and despises them
In 2010, 48% of Kharkiv voters chose a nationalist for their mayor. In 2012 about 30%
voted for nationalist parties. Judging by pro vs, anti-Maidan, the youth are evenly split
although in 2014 the Ukrainian nationalist youths ended up controlling the streets, not the
Russian nationalist ones as in Donbas. This is in the most pro-Russian part of Ukraine.
Suuure, the population of Kharkiv will despise their kids, grandkids, nephews,
classmates etc,. but will welcome the invaders from Russia who will be bombing their city.
Such idealism and optimism in Russia!
@German_readerThe supposed threat of an Iranian empire is a common theme in interventionist US
media
"Imperial" or "Imperialist" is a term of art among IR specialists referring to active
revisionist powers in a given state system.
The people you are linking to are a mixed bunch. One's a lapsed reporter. Two are
opinion journalists with background (one in the military and one in the intelligence
services, or so he says), one has been out of office for 40 years (and, IMO, is engaging in
the academic's exercise of attention-seeking through counter-factual utterance; there's
little downside to that), and one actually is someone who has been a policy-maker in the
last generation (and he's offering a critique of the Iran deal, which was not a Bush
administration initiative).
This is of course self-serving fantasy. The Russians told you there was no need to
invade Iraq. The Germans told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The French told you
there was no need to invade Iraq. The Turks told you there was no need to invade Iraq.
The sensible British told you there was no need to invade Iraq, but for some reason you
preferred to listen to the words of the staring-eyed sycophant who happened to be Prime
Minister at the time, instead.
Who gives a damn what they think? These are the same countries that plunged the world
into two World Wars that killed 100m people between them. Their blinkered and self-serving
stupidity is a model for what not to do.
@TalhaI remember my dad telling me that the Carter administration was the highlight of
America-love in Pakistan. Slowly went downhill from there and crashed at Dubya.
I remember Gen. Zia on the front page of The New York Times ridiculing Mr. Carter
in plain terms (the $400 million aid offer was 'peanuts').
@RandalThe Russians told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The Germans told you there was
no need to invade Iraq. The French told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The Turks
told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The sensible British told you there was no need
to invade Iraq,
The sensible British were a co-operating force in invading Iraq. As for the rest, they
all have their shticks and interests (and no, I don't stipulate that you've characterized
their opinion correctly either).
And after 9/11 I was very pro-US, e.g. I argued vehemently with a stupid leftie
teacher who was against the Afghanistan war (and I still believe that war was justified,
so I don't think I'm just some mindless anti-American fool). But Iraq was just too much,
too much obvious lying and those lies were so stupid it was hard not to feel that there
was something deeply wrong with a large part of the American public if they were gullible
enough to believe such nonsense. At least for me it was a real turning point in the
evolution of my political views.
The common factor amongst you, reiner and myself here is that none of us come from a
dogmatically anti-American background or personal world-view, nor from a dogmatically
pacifist one.
As I've probably noted here previously, I grew up very pro-American and very pro-NATO in
the late Cold War, and as a strong supporter of Thatcher and Reagan. I saw the fall of the
Soviet Union as a glorious triumph and a vindication of all the endless arguments against
anti-American lefties and CND numpties. I also strongly supported the Falklands War (the
last genuinely justified and intelligent war fought by my country, imo) and also the war
against Iraq in 1990/1, though I'm a little less certain on that one nowadays. I'm
significantly older than you both, it seems, however, and it was watching US foreign policy
in the 1990s, culminating in the Kosovo war, that convinced me that the US is now the
problem and not the solution.
When the facts changed, I changed my opinion.
So I was a war or two ahead of you, chronologically, because I'm older, but we've
travelled pretty much the same road. Our views on America have been created by US foreign
policy choices.
@AP
Again, supporting Maidan doesn't mean you're ready to take up Kalashnikov and go fight.
Ukrainian youth is dodging draft en masse. It's a fact.
This is what typical Maidanist Ukrainian youths look like; these people certainly don't
look like they have a lot of fight in them:
They remind me of Navalny supporters in Russia. These kind of people can throw a
tantrum, but they are fundamentally weak people, who are easily crushed.
@Felix
Keverich Similarly, it doesn't seem likely that the US government will give up its
control and influence over the "independent media" that many Americans still think we have.
Well history has proven them to have been correct and the US regime wrong on Iraq, so
that pretty much tells you how far your arrogance will get you outside your own echo
chamber.
US foreign policy is pretty much a byword for incompetence even amongst its own allies,
at least when they are talking off the record.
@Art
Deco Folks in Belarus shouldn't make up their minds about applying to the EU until they
speak with regular German, French, English, and Swedish people about the effects of the
Islamic / Third World immivasion that the EU has imposed on them. My wife and I speak &
correspond with Germans living in Germany frequently, and the real state of affairs for
non-elite Germans is getting worse fast, with no good end in sight.
Anyone who does not desire to die or at best live subjugated under sharia -- and sharia
run largely by cruel dimwits from Africa and Arabia -- ought to stay out (or GET out of)
the EU.
The sensible British were a co-operating force in invading Iraq.
That was the staring-eyed sycophant's work.
The man who opened the floodgates to immigration because he thought multiculturalism is
a great idea.
As for the rest, they all have their shticks and interests
Of course. Unlike the exceptional United States of course, the only country in the world
whose government never has any axe to grind in the nobility of purpose and intent it
displays in all the wars it has ever fought.
You seem to be degenerating into a caricature of the ignorant, arrogant American.
Well history has proven them to have been correct and the US regime wrong on Iraq, so
that pretty much tells you how far your arrogance will get you outside your own echo
chamber.
"History" has proven no such thing. What went wrong in Iraq was principally Bush's
underestimate of the number of American casualties and the cost to the US treasury*, for
which he and the GOP paid a serious political price. However, it's also clear that the
Shiites and Kurds, an 80% majority, have no regrets that Saddam is gone. While both
communities seem to think that we should continue to bear a bigger chunk of the price of
pacifying Iraq's bellicose Sunni Arabs, it's also obvious that they are not electing
Tikritis or even Sunni Arabs to office, as they would if they were nostalgic for Saddam's
rule. The big picture, really, is that the scale of the fighting has probably convinced
both Shiites and Kurds that they could not have toppled Saddam without the assistance of
Uncle Sam. They could certainly not have kept Iraq's revived Sunni Arabs (in the form of
ISIS) at bay without American assistance.
* These costs were larger than projected, but small compared to the Korean and Vietnam
Wars. Whether or not Iraq can be secured as an American ally in the decades ahead, both the
gamble and the relatively nugatory price paid will, in retrospect, be seen as a reasonable
one, given Iraq's strategic location.
@Art
Deco Sure, but the ordinary folks liked him -- he seemed like a humble man with faith
from humble beginnings. Pakistanis could relate to someone like that.
I was just a wee lad at the time, so I'm only conveying what my dad told me.
@Art
Deco Well, there is some reason to think that membership in the EU will become a
steadily less attractive prospect.
The substantial demographic changes sweeping northern and western Europe now will become
far larger as (1) new "migration" occurs from Africa and the Middle East and Pakistan into
Europe; (2) "family reunification" chain migration goes on endlessly from the same places
into Europe; and (3) Muslims continue to dramatically outbreed non-Muslims in Europe.
(Even if Muslims in Europe drop their total fertility rate to replacement, around 2.1 I
think, the non-Muslim Europeans have TFRs like 1.4 and 1.5 and 1.6, the very definition of
dying peoples.)
And that doesn't even account for the flight of non-Muslims out of Europe as it becomes
ever more violent, frightening, chaotic, and impoverished. That flight could become a
massive phenomenon. (We have acquaintances in Germany and Austria already mulling over the
idea, with great sadness and anger in their hearts.)
On current trends, what reason is there to think that "Germany" and "France" and
"England" and "Sweden" won't in fact be heavily Islamic / African (and in the case of
Germany, Turkish) hellholes in the lifetime of many of us here?
Granted, Russia has too many Muslims itself, and I don't know enough to predict whether
they will be willing and able to remove the excessive number of Central Asian Muslims
(guestworkers or otherwise) from their territory. But Russia is not giving itself away to
Muslims at a breakneck pace like the terminally naïve Germans, French, English, and
Swedes are doing with their own countries.
The point is, Belarus and Ukraine won't be faced with a choice between Russia and the
"Europe" that we still envision from the recent past.
Belarus and Ukraine will likely face a choice between a tenuous independence that they
lack the force to maintain, union or close formal affiliation with Russia, or a "Europe"
where white Europeans are outnumbered, terrified, massively taxed to pay for their younger
and more confident Islamic / African overlords, and ultimately subjugated and killed /
inter-bred into nonexistence.
The Europe that you are positing as an alternative to Russia, already doesn't quite
exist anymore. Soon it won't exist at all in any recognizable or desirable form. Russia
merely needs to be a better alternative than THAT.
@RadicalCenter
Fine. The EU is poorly constructed and a threat to self-government.
Mr. Felix fancies White Russia is Russia's property. There's a constituency in White
Russia for re-incorporation into Russia, but it amounts to about 1/4 of the population and
is half the proportion it was 20 years ago. Kinda think it really shouldn't be Mr. Felix's
call, but he doesn't see it that way.
@German_reader
Agree with much of what you say. With a big exception": most Europeans ARE pussies who try
to appease the Islamic and African aggressors and freeloaders they are importing into their
lands at a furious pace. Besonders die Deutschen.
At least SOME decent portion of Americans are trying to resist the Mexican and Third
World takeover of our country. Albeit probably without success.
Summary: we're probably screwed, you're almost certainly screwed worse and faster.
Keep patting yourself on the back. But grow that beard now and bend over -- and beat the
rush.
@RadicalCenterBelarus and Ukraine will likely face a choice between a tenuous independence that they
lack the force to maintain,
Just to point out that occasions where a state has had its sovereignty extinguished
since 1945 are as follows: East Germany (1990, voluntary), South Yemen (1990, voluntary,
but triggering an insurrection), Kuwait (1990, temporary), South VietNam (1975/76,
conquered). Not real common. N.B. the Axis rampage in Europe and Asia during the War: the
only thing that stuck was Soviet Russia's seizure of the Baltic states.
At least SOME decent portion of Americans are trying to resist the Mexican and Third
World takeover of our country.
30 years too late, though I'll readily admit that I was somewhat impressed how normal US
citizens managed to kill off amnesty proposals during Bush's 2nd administration by lobbying
their congressmen etc. Quite the contrast with what's going on in my own country where
people just meekly submit to everything.
And I've never denied that many Europeans are quite decadent they should certainly spend
more for their own defense, maybe even bring back conscription.
What went wrong in Iraq was principally Bush's underestimate of the number of American
casualties and the cost to the US treasury
No, what went wrong in Iraq from the pov of any kind of honest assessment of an American
national interest was that an unnecessary war was fought justified by lies that have
seriously discredited the nation that told them, and that the results of the war were
hugely counter to said American national interests: the conversion of a contained and
broken former enemy state into a jihadist free fire training and recruitment zone combined
with a strong ally of a supposed enemy state, Iran.
Whether the direct material cost of the war is acceptable or not is rather beside the
point. It's a matter between Bush II and the parents, relatives and friends of those
Americans who lost their lives or their health, and between Bush II and American taxpayers.
If it had been achieved cost-free it still wouldn't have been worth it, because it was a
defeat.
But it's no accident that the costs of the war were "underestimated". As usual, if the
Bush II regime had been honest about the likely costs of their proposed war, there would
have been a political outcry against it and they'd have been forced to back down as Obama
was over Syria.
However, it's also clear that the Shiites and Kurds, an 80% majority, have no regrets
that Saddam is gone
Amusing to see you are currently pretending that what Iraqi Kurds and Shiites feel
matters. It's always entertaining to see just how shameless Americans can be at their game
of alternately pretending to care for foreigners' views (when they need to justify a war)
and regarding foreigners with utter contempt and disregard (when said foreigners are saying
something Americans don't like to hear).
They could certainly not have kept Iraq's revived Sunni Arabs (in the form of ISIS) at
bay without American assistance.
Well that partly depends upon how much support the US regime allowed its Gulf sunni Arab
proxies to funnel to said jihadists, I suppose. But most likely they'd have crushed them in
due course with Iranian backing.
In Iraq, IS were fine as long as they stayed out of the strongly Shiite areas in the
south. They'd have quickly been whipped if they'd ventured there. Just as IS were fine in
Syria as long as they were taking relatively remote land over from a government and army in
desperate straits as a result of a disastrous externally funded civil war, but were soon
beaten when the Russians stepped in and started actually fighting them rather than
pretending to do so only as long as it didn't interfere too much with their real goal of
overthrowing the Syria government, American-style.
@German_reader
I see that Art Deco got more active than usual. Seems that the destruction of Iraq is close
to his heart. Several days ago Ron Unz had this to say about him:
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/time-to-stop-importing-an-immigrant-overclass/#comment-2116171
Exactly! It's pretty obvious that this "Art Deco" fellow is just a Jewish-activist type,
and given his very extensive posting history, perhaps even an organized "troll." But he's
certainly one of the most sophisticated ones, with the vast majority of his comments
being level-headed, moderate, and very well-informed, generally focusing on all sorts of
other topics, perhaps with the deliberate intent of building up his personal credibility
for the periodic Jewish matters that actually so agitate him.
To which I added:
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/time-to-stop-importing-an-immigrant-overclass/#comment-2116402
The quality and wide range of his comments are really impressive. As if it was coming
form a super intelligent AI Hal that has access to all kinds of databases at his finger
tips. And then there is always the same gradient of his angle: the reality is as it is;
reality is as you have been told so far; do not try to keep coming with weird theories
and speculations because they are all false; there is nothing interesting to see. His
quality and scope are not congruent with his angle. All his knowledge and all his data
and he hasn't found anything interesting that would not conform to what we all read in
newspapers. Amazing. If America had its High Office of Doctrine and Faith he could have
been its supreme director.
His overactivity here is somewhat out of character and after reading his comments here I
doubt that Ron Unz would call him "one of the most sophisticated ones." I also would take
back the "really impressive" part too. Perhaps some other individuum was assigned to
Art Deco handle this Monday.
Speaking of US foreign policy stupidity and arrogance, the response to the latest evidence
that Trump will continue the inglorious Clinton/Bush II/Obama tradition of destructive
corrupt/incompetent buffoonery:
And here's the profoundly noxious Nikki Haley "lying for her country" (except,
bizarrely, it isn't even really for her own country). Her appointment by Trump certainly
was one of the first signs that he was going to seriously let America down:
The resolution was denounced in furious language by the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki
Haley, who described it as "an insult" that would not be forgotten. "The United States
will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy," she said.
"It's scandalous to say we are putting back peace efforts," she added. "The fact that
this veto is being done in defence of American sovereignty and in defence of America's
role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should
be an embarrassment to the remainder of the security council."
The real nature of the UN resolution the execrable Haley was so faux-offended by:
The UK and France had indicated in advance that they would would back the text, which
demanded that all countries comply with pre-existing UNSC resolutions on Jerusalem,
dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city's final status be decided in
direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
But requiring Israel and its US poodles to act in good faith is surely anti-Semitic,
after all. The real beneficiary (he thinks, at least) of Trump's and Haley's buffoonery was
suitably condescending in his patting of his poodles' heads:
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted: "Thank you, Ambassador Haley.
On Hanukkah, you spoke like a Maccabi. You lit a candle of truth. You dispel the
darkness. One defeated the many. Truth defeated lies. Thank you, President Trump."
@utu
Art Deco isn't Jewish iirc, but an (Irish?) Catholic from the northeastern US. And I
suppose his views aren't even that extreme, but pretty much standard among many US
right-wingers (a serious problem imo), so it makes little sense to attack him personally.
@German_readerOfficial justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons
The fact that Iraq had no WMD was actually critical to making the claims that it had
them. If Iraq had them it would officially relinquish them which would take away the
ostensive cause for the invasion.
I am really amazed that now 14 years after the invasion there are some who still argue
about the WMD. Iraq was to be destroyed because this was the plan. The plan to reorganize
the ME that consisted of destruction of secular and semi-secure states like Iraq and Syria.
The WDM was just an excuse that nobody really argued for or against in good faith including
Brits or Germans or Turks. Everybody knew the writing on the wall.
@German_readerit makes little sense to attack him personally
Yes, personal attacks are counterproductive but I can't resit, I just can't help it, so
I must to say what I said already several times in the past: you are a cuck. You are a
hopeless case.
The plan to reorganize the ME that consisted of destruction of secular and
semi-secure states like Iraq and Syria.
Has to be admitted though that Iraq became increasingly less secular during the 1990s,
with Saddam's regime pushing Islamization as a new source of legitimacy. It's probably no
accident that former Baath people and officers of Saddam's army were prominent among the
leadership of IS.
Still hardly sufficient reason for the Iraq war though.
@utu
With all due respect to you and Ron Unz, but the idea that someone like "Art Deco" is an
"organized troll" who creates an elaborate fake persona (which he then maintains over
multiple years on several different websites -- I first encountered him years ago on the
American conservative's site) to spread pro-Jewish views seems somewhat paranoid to me.
I have no reason to doubt he's genuine (as far as that's possible on the internet), his
views aren't unusual.
@German_reader
Agree with everything you just wrote. And please understand, I love the Germans and I'm
angry at them in the way that you'd be angry at a brother who refuses to stop destroying
himself with drugs or whatever.
@Felix
Keverich Northern Kazakhstan is/was ethnically Russian, since the 1700s. This should
have been folded into Russia; the North Caucasus should have been cut loose. My opinion.
@Felix
Keverich Typical Russian mistakes regarding Ukraine: weak student-types in Russia are
the main supporters of Ukraine in Russia, thus the same type must be the main pro-Maidan
people in Ukraine. Because Ukraine = Russia. This silly dream of Ukraine being just like
Russia leads to ridiculous ideas and hopes.
As I already said, the Azov battalion grew out of brawling football ultras in Kharkiv.
Maidan itself was a cross-section -- of students, yes, but also plenty of Afghan war vets,
workers, far right brawlers, professionals, etc. It's wasn't simply "weak" students, nor
was it simply far-right fascists (another claim by Russia) but a mass effort of the western
half of the country.
Here are Afghan war vets at Maidan:
Look at those weak Maidan people running away from the enemy:
Azov people in their native Kharkiv:
Kharkiv kids:
Ukrainian youth is dodging draft en masse. It's a fact.
Dodging the draft in order to avoid fighting in Donbas, where you are not wanted by the
locals, is very different from dodging the draft to avoid fighting when your own town is
being invaded.
@AP
Summer camp was in Kiev, but there is another outside Kharkiv.
To be clear, most Ukrainians fighting against Russia are not these unsavory types,
though they make for dramatic video. Point is that pro-Maidan types in Ukraine are far from
being exclusively liberal student-types.
@German_readerStill hardly sufficient reason for the Iraq war though.
What do you mean by that? Are you so out of touch? You really do not understand what was
the reason behind Iraq 2003 war and then fucking it up when Gen. Garner was recalled and
replaced with Paul Bremer who drove Iraq to the ground? Repeat after me: Iraq was destroyed
because this was the only objective of 2003 Iraq war. The mission was accomplished
100%.
A few points:
- The Russians ALWAYS were Americanophiles -- ever since the Revolution. Russia has been an
American ally most often explicit but occasionally tacit -- in EVERY major American
conflict, including the War on Terror and excluding Korea and Vietnam (both not major
compared to the Civil War or WW2). The only comparable Great Power US ally is France.
Russia and the US are natural allies.
- Russians are Americanophiles -- they like Hollywood movies, American music, American
idealism, American video games, American fashion, American inventions, American support in
WW2, American can-do-aittude, American badassery and Americana in general.
- There are two Ukraines. One is essentially a part of Russia, and a chunk of it was
repatriated in 2014. The other was historically Polish and Habsburg. It is a strange entity
that is not Russian.
- The Maidan was a foreign-backed putsch against a democratically elected government.
Yanukovich was certainly a corrupt scoundrel. But he was a democratically elected corrupt
scoundrel. To claim Russian intervention in his election is a joke in light of the
CIA-backed 2004 and 2014 coups. Moreover, post-democratic post-Yanukovich Ukraine is
clearly inferior to its predecessor. For one thing, under Yanukovich, Sevastopol was still
Ukrainian
@Felix
Keverich I think this poll is the most relevant for assessing the question, since it
covered different regions and used the same methodology.
Takeaway:
1. Support for uniting into a single state with Russia at 41% in Crimea at a time when
it was becoming quite clear the Yanukovych regime was doomed.
2. Now translates into ~90% support (according to both Russian and international polls)
in Crimea. I.e., a more than a standard deviation shift in "Russophile" sentiment on this
matter.
3. Assuming a similar shift in other regions, Novorossiya would be quite fine being with
Russia post facto . Though there would be significant discontent in Kharkov,
Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson (e.g., probably on the scale of Donbass unhappiness
with the Ukraine before 2014).
4. Central and West Ukraine would not be, which is why their reintegration would be far
more difficult -- and probably best left for sometime in the future.
5. What we have instead seen is a one standard deviation shift in "Ukrainophile"
sentiment within all those regions that remained in the Ukraine. If this change is "deep,"
then AP is quite correct that their assimilation into Russia has been made impossible by
Putin's vacillations in 2014.
@German_readerthey [Germans] should certainly spend more for their own defense, maybe even bring back
conscription .
With all due respect, and making allowance for your relative youth, that is simply
rubbish. Defense against whom? Russia? Iran? As your posts make it eminently clear, the
real enemy of Germany is within, not without.
The Maidan was a foreign-backed putsch against a democratically elected government
Typical Russian nationalist half-truth about Ukraine.
To be clear -- Yanukovich was democratically elected in 2010, into a position where his
powers were limited and where he was faced with a hostile parliament. His post-election
accumulation of powers (overthrowing the Opposition parliament, granting himself additional
powers, stacking the court with local judges from his hometown) was not democratic. None of
these actions enjoyed popular support, none were made through democratic processes such as
referendums or popular elections. Had that been the case, he would not have been overthrown
in what was a popular mass revolt by half the country.
There are two Ukraines. One is essentially a part of Russia, and a chunk of it was
repatriated in 2014. The other was historically Polish and Habsburg. It is a strange
entity that is not Russian.
A bit closer to the truth, but much too simplistic in a way that favors Russian
idealism. Crimea (60% Russian) was simply not Ukraine, so lumping it in together with a
place such as Kharkiv (oblast 70% Ukrainian) and saying that Russia took one part of this
uniformly "Russian Ukraine" is not accurate.
You are correct that the western half of the country are a non-Russian Polish-but-not
Habsburg central Ukraine/Volynia, and Polish-and-Habsburg Galicia.
But the other half consisted of two parts: ethnic Russian Crimea (60% Russian) and
largely ethniuc-Russian urban Donbas (about 45% Russian, 50% Ukrainian), and a heavily
Russified but ethnic Ukrainian Kharkiv oblast (70% Ukrainian, 26% Russian), Dnipropetrovsk
(80% Ukrainian, 20% Russian), Kherson (82% Ukrainian, 14% Russian), and Odessa oblast (63%
Ukrainian, 21% Russian).
The former group (Crimea definitely, and urban Donbas less strongly) like being part of
Russia. The latter group, on the other hand, preferred that Ukraine and Russia have
friendly ties, preferred Russian as a legal language, preferred economic union with Russia,
but did not favor loss of independence. Think of them as pro-NAFTA American-phile Canadians
who would nevertheless be opposed to annexation by the USA and would be angered if the USA
grabbed a chunk of Canada. In grabbing a chunk of Ukraine and supporting a rebellion in
which Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk kids are being shot by Russian-trained fighters using
Russian-supplied bullets, Putin has turned these people off the Russian state.
3. Assuming a similar shift in other regions, Novorossiya would be quite fine being
with Russia post facto. Though there would be significant discontent in Kharkov,
Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson (e.g., probably on the scale of Donbass
unhappiness with the Ukraine before 2014).
'Asumptions' like this are what provide Swiss cheese the airy substance that makes it
less caloric! Looks like only the retired sovok population in the countryside is up to
supporting your mythical 'NovoRosija' while the more populated city dwellers would be
opposed, even by your own admission (and even this is questionable). I'm surprised that the
dutifully loyal and most astute opposition (AP) has let this blooper pass without any
comment?
@Anatoly
Karlin I think when answering this question, most people simple give what they consider
to be the socially acceptable answer, especially in comtemporary Ukraine, where you will go
to prison for displaying Russian flag -- who wants to be seen as a "separatist"?
In Crimea it has become more socially acceptable to identify with Russia following the
reunification, which is why the number of people who answer this way shot up . The
same effect will seen in Belarus and Ukraine -- I'm fairly certain of it.
Though there would be significant discontent in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye,
and Kherson
Discontent will be limited to educated, affluent, upwardly mobile circles of society.
Demographic profile of Ukrainian nationalist East of Dnieper resembles demographic profile
of Navalny supporters in Russia. These people are not fighters. Most of them will react to
Russian takeover by self-deporting -- they have the money and resources to do it.
Demographic profile of Ukrainian nationalist East of Dnieper resembles demographic
profile of Navalny supporters in Russia. These people are not fighters.
Repeating your claim over and over again doesn't make it true.
The Azov Battalion has its roots in a group of Ultras of FC Metalist Kharkiv named "Sect
82″ (1982 is the year of the founding of the group).[18] "Sect 82″ was (at
least until September 2013) allied with FC Spartak Moscow Ultras.[18] Late February 2014,
during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine when a separatist movement was active in
Kharkiv, "Sect 82″ occupied the Kharkiv Oblast regional administration building in
Kharkiv and served as a local "self-defense"-force.[18] Soon, on the basis of "Sect
82″ there was formed a volunteer militia called "Eastern Corps".[18]
The brawling East Ukrainian nationalists who took the streets of Kharkiv and Odessa were
not mostly rich, fey hipsters.
Discontent will be limited to educated, affluent, upwardly mobile circles of
society.
So, even by tour own admission, the only folks that would be for unifying with Russia
are the uneducated, poor and those with no hopes of ever amounting to much in society. I
don't agree with you, but I do see your logic. These are just the type of people that are
the most easily manipulated by Russian propoganda -- a lot of this went on in the Donbas,
and we can see the results of that fiasco to this day.
a)Post-WWII American power elites are both incompetent and arrogant (which is a first
derivative of incompetence) to understand that -- this is largely the problem with most
"Western" elites.
b) Currently the United States doesn't have enough (if any) geopolitical currency and
clout to "buy" Russia. In fact, Russia can take what she needs (and she doesn't have
"global" appetites) with or without the US. Plus, China is way more interested in Russia's
services that the US, which will continue to increasingly find out more about its own
severe military-political limitations.
c) The United States foreign policy is not designed and is not being conducted to serve
real US national interests. In fact, US can not even define those interests beyond the
tiresome platitudes about "global interests" and being "exceptional".
@AP I
like how I got you talking about the Ukronazis, it's kinda funny actually, so let me pose
as Ukraine's "defender" here:
This neo-Nazi scum is not in any way representative of the population of Eastern
Ukraine. These are delinquents, criminals, low-lifes. They are despised, looked down
upon by the normal people, pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian alike. A typical Ukrainian
nationalist East of Dnieper is a business owner, a journalist, an office worker, a student
who dodges draft. It's just the way it is.
One substantial correction: generation which now is in power and defines most of
Russia's dynamics, age group of 40s-50s, was largely influenced by British music, not
American one, despite its definite presence in cultural menu in 1960 through 1980s. British
music was on the order of magnitude more popular and influential in USSR. The love for
American music was rather conditional and very selective. Of course, jazz was and is huge
among educated and cultured, but in terms of pop/rock if one discounts immensely popular
Eagles (for obvious reason), Donna Summer or something on the order of magnitude of
Chicago, British pop-music was a different universe altogether. Beatles, Pink Floyd, Deep
Purple or even British Glam were immense in 1970s, not to mention NWBHM in 1980s. One would
have more luck hearing Iron Maiden blasting from windows somewhere in Russia than music of
Michael Jackson.
@AP
The way to think about Azov battalion is to treat them like a simple group of delinquents,
for whom Ukrainian nationalism has become a path to obtain money, resources, bigger guns
and perhaps even political power. Azov is simply a gang. And Russian security
services have plenty of experience dealing with gangs, so I don't expect Ukronazis to pose
a major challenge.
@Anon
Yes, a highly intelligent, hardworking, conservative, Christian Asian woman who loves and
appreciates America, is the same as a Muslim African, Arab or Paki whose religion tells him
to subjugate or kill us. No drastic difference in genetics or the impact on our culture,
language, economy, and security there.
Moreover, allowing our native-born white citizens to choose spouses from elsewhere is
the same as admitting tens of millions of people with little to no screening whatsoever
(the latter being admitted in the interest of those who actively seek the most dimwitted,
violent, intimidating, slothful, hateful, and incompatible people psosible in order to
endanger, impoverish, and dumb down out people and set the stage for us to "need" a police
state to manage the chaos and crime they bring).
Your logic is impeccable, I'll admit.
How long have you been married, by the way? And how many children are you raising? I
just ask because I am sure we can compare notes and I can benefit from your manly
experience and expertise.
Get a consistent handle to use on this site. Then tell us personal details as many of us
have done. Then we can have a further friendly chat, big anonymous man who comments on
other men's wives.
@Felix
Keverich I'm not sure about Ukrainian football hooligans, but football hooligans in
Hungary are not necessarily "low -lifes, criminals, delinquents", in fact, the majority of
them aren't. Most groups consist mostly of working class (including a lot of security
guards and similar) members, but there are some middle class (I know of a school
headmaster, though I think he's no longer very active in the group) and working class
entrepreneur types (e.g. the car mechanic who ended up owning a car dealership) and
similar. I think outright criminal types are a small minority. Since it costs money to
attend the matches, outright failures (the permanently unemployed and similar
ne'er-do-wells) are rarely found in such groups.
One would have more luck hearing Iron Maiden blasting from windows somewhere in Russia
than music of Michael Jackson.
What about Metallica or Slayer? The famous
1991 Monsters of Rock in Moscow featured I think Metallica in its prime and Pantera
right before they became really big (and heavy).
@LondonBobArt Deco is a Zionist, just checkout his reaction when you point out Israel assassinated
JFK.
My reaction is that you need to take your risperidal, bathe, and quit pestering people
for bits of cash. And make your clinic appointments. They're sick of seeing you at the
ED.
@reiner
Tor LOL I classify all football hooligans as low-lifes simply due to the nature of
their pastime. Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias have been involved in actual crimes including
murder, kidnapping and racketeering. Their criminal activities go unpunished by the regime,
because they are considered "heroes" or something.
This neo-Nazi scum is not in any way representative of the population of Eastern
Ukraine.
If by "representative" you mean majority, sure. Neither are artsy students, or Afghan
war veterans, or schoolteachers, any other group a majority.
Also not all of the street fighters turned militias neo-Nazis, as are Azov. Right Sector
are not neo-Nazis, they are more fascists.
These are delinquents, criminals, low-lifes.
As reiner tor correctly pointed out, this movement which grew out of the football ultra
community is rather working class but is not lumpens. You fail again.
A typical Ukrainian nationalist East of Dnieper is a business owner, a journalist, an
office worker, a student who dodges draft
Are there more business owners, students (many of whom do not dodge the draft), office
workers combined than there are ultras/far-right brawlers? Probably. 30% of Kharkiv voted
for nationalist parties (mostly Tymoshenko's and Klitschko's moderates) in the 2012
parliamentary elections, under Yanukovich. That represents about 900,000 people in that
oblast. There aren't 900,000 brawling far-rightists in Kharkiv. So?
The exteme nationalist Banderist Svoboda party got about 4% of the vote in Kharkiv
oblast in 2012. This would make Bandera twice as popular in Kharkiv as the democratic
opposition is in Russia.
I classify all football hooligans as low-lifes simply due to the nature of their
pastime.
They are well integrated into the rest of society, so you can call them low-lifes, but
they will still be quite different from ordinary criminals.
Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias have been involved in actual crimes including murder,
kidnapping and racketeering.
But that's quite different from being professional criminals. Members of the Waffen-SS
also committed unspeakable crimes, but they rarely had professional criminal backgrounds,
and were, in fact, quite well integrated into German society.
@Talhahe seemed like a humble man with faith from humble beginnings. Pakistanis could relate
to someone like that.
Carter was an agribusinessman whose personal net worth (not counting his mother's
holdings and siblings' holdings) was in seven digits in 1976. (His dipso brother managed
the family business -- passably well -- from 1963 until 198?). John Osborne interviewed
1st, 2d, and 3d degree relations of Carter during the campaign and discovered the family
was in satisfactory condition financially even during the Depression. Carter also spent the
2d World War -- the whole thing -- at the Naval Academy.
There's much to be said for Carter, but there's no doubt one of his shortcomings is
vanity. Harry Truman is the closest thing to a humble man in the White House in the years
since Pakistan was constituted. If you're looking for 'humble beginnings', the best
examples are Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
@Art
Deco Not relevant re humble beginnings but re Pakistan: you've probably heard the
famous anecdote about Kennedy and Bhutto:
K: "You know, you're a bright man. If you were an American I'd have you in my
cabinet."
B: "No, Mr. President; if I were an American you would be in my cabinet."
The way to think about Azov battalion is to treat them like a simple group of
delinquents, for whom Ukrainian nationalism has become a path to obtain money, resources,
bigger guns and perhaps even political power
Yes, there are elements of this, but not only. If they were ethnic Russians, as in
Donbas, they would have taken a different path, as did the pro-Russian militants in Donbas
who are similar to the ethnic Ukrainian Azovites. Young guys who like to brawl and are
ethnic Russians or identify s such joined organizations like Oplot and moved to Donbas to
fight against Ukraine, similar types who identified as Ukrainians became Azovites or joined
similar pro-Ukrainian militias. Also not all of these were delinquents, many were working
class, security guards, etc.
Good that you admit that in Eastern Ukraine nationalism is not limited to student
activists and businessmen.
And Russian security services have plenty of experience dealing with gangs,
They chose to stay away from Kharkiv and limit Russia's action to Donbas, knowing that
there would be too much opposition, and not enough support, to Russian rule in Kharkiv to
make the effort worthwhile.
@Anon
Out of all hypotheses on the JFK assassination the one that Israel was behind it is the
strongest. There is no question about it. From the day one when conspiracy theories were
floated everything was done to hide how Israel benefited form the assassination.
@reiner
Tor I feel that comparing Azov to SS gives it too much credit.
My point is that this way of life is not something that many people in Ukraine are
willing to actively participate in. Most people are not willing to condone it either. AP
says that Azov and the like can act like underground insurgency in Eastern cities. But I
don't see how this could work -- there will a thousand people around them willing to rat
them out.
There is no pro-Ukrainian insurgency in Crimea or inside the republics in Donbass, and
it's not due to the lack of local football hooligans.
That represents about 900,000 people in that oblast. There aren't 900,000 brawling
far-rightists in Kharkiv. So?
This means these people won't pose a big problem. These folks will take care of
themselves either through self-deportation or gradually coming to terms with the new
reality in Kharkov, just like their compatriots in Crimea did.
Even among Svoboda voters, I suspect only a small minority of them are the militant
types. We should be to contain them through the use of local proxies. The armies of Donbass
republics currently number some 40-60 thousand men according to Cassad blog, which compares
with the size of the entire Ukrainian army. We should be able to recruit more local
Ukrainian proxies once we're in Kharkov.
@utuOut of all hypotheses on the JFK assassination the one that Israel was behind it is the
strongest. There is no question about it. From the day one when conspiracy theories were
floated everything was done to hide how Israel benefited form the assassination.
Actually, it's completely random and bizarre, but random and bizarre appeals to a
certain sort of head case. Oliver Stone's thesis (that the military-industrial complex took
down the President by subcontracting the job to a bunch of French Quarter homosexuals) is
comparatively lucid.
AP says that Azov and the like can act like underground insurgency in Eastern cities.
But I don't see how this could work -- there will a thousand people around them willing
to rat them out.
About 1/3 of the population in Eastern Ukrainian regions voted for Ukrainian
nationalists in 2012, compared to only 10% in Donbas. Three times as many. Likely after
2014 many of the hardcore pro-Russians left Kharkiv, just as hardcore pro-Ukrainians left
Donetsk. Furthermore anti-Russian attitudes have hardened, due to the war, Crimea, etc. So
there would be plenty of local support for native insurgents.
Russians say, correctly, that after Kiev has shelled Donetsk how can the people of
Donetsk reconcile themselves with Kiev?
The time when Russia could have bloodlessly marched into Kharkiv is over. Ukrainian
forces have dug in. How will Kharkiv people feel towards uninvited Russian invaders
shelling their city in order to to take it under their control?
There is no pro-Ukrainian insurgency in Crimea or inside the republics in Donbass, and
it's not due to the lack of local football hooligans.
Crimea was 60% Russian, Donbas Republics territory about 45% Russian; Kharkiv oblast is
only 25% Russian.
With Donbas -- there are actually local pro-Ukrainian militants from Donbas, in the
Donbas and Aidar battalions.
@AP It
was a decision that Putin personally made. He wasn't going to move in Crimea either, until
Maidanists overthrew his friend
It goes without saying that Putin doesn't share my nationalist approach to Ukraine
problem: he does not see the destruction of Ukrainian project as necessary or even
desirable. And I'm sure the restraint Putin has shown on Ukraine doesn't come from him
being intimidated by Azov militia.
These folks will take care of themselves either through self-deportation or gradually
coming to terms with the new reality in Kharkov, just like their compatriots in Crimea
did
The problem with this comparison is that Crimeans were far more in favor of joining
Russia that are Kharkivites.
The armies of Donbass republics currently number some 40-60 thousand men according to
Cassad blog, which compares with the size of the entire Ukrainian army.
Ukrainian military has 200,000 -- 250,000 active members and about 100,000 reserves.
Where did you get your information? The end of 2014?
We should be able to recruit more local Ukrainian proxies once we're in Kharkov.
You would be able to recruit some local proxies in Kharkiv. Kiev even did so in Donbas.
But given the fact that Ukrainian nationalism was 3 times more popular on Kharkiv than in
Donetsk, and that Kharkiv youth were split 50/50 in terms of or versus anti Maidan support
(versus 80/20 IIIRC anti-Maidan in Donbas), it would not be so easy. Moreover, by now many
of the hardcore anti-Kiev people have already left Kharkiv, while Kharkiv has had some
settlement by pro-Ukrainian dissidents from Donbas. So the situation even in 2014 was hard
enough that Russia chose to stay away, now it is even worse for the pro-Russians.
And I'm sure the restraint Putin has shown on Ukraine doesn't come from him being
intimidated by Azov militia.
This is rather a symptom of a much wider phenomenon: the population simply doesn't see
itself as Russian and doesn't want to be part of Russia. So its hooligan-types go for
Ukrainian, not Russian, nationalism as is the case in Russia.
The time when Russia could have bloodlessly marched into Kharkiv is over. Ukrainian
forces have dug in. How will Kharkiv people feel towards uninvited Russian invaders
shelling their city in order to to take it under their control?
The locals will move to disarm Ukrainian forces, who have taken their city hostage, then
welcome Russian liberators with open arms, what else they are going to do? lol
It's just a joke though. In reality there is virtually no Ukrainian forces in city of
Kharkov. They don't have the manpower. Ukrainian regime managed to fortify Perekop and the
perimeter of the people's republics, but the rest of Ukraine-Russia border remains
completely undefended. It's wide open!
It goes without saying that Putin doesn't share my nationalist approach to Ukraine
problem: he does not see the destruction of Ukrainian project as necessary or even
desirable.
Well there you have it. Putin is a much smarter guy than you are Felix (BTW, are you
Jewish, all of the Felix's that I've known were Jewish?). Good to see that you're nothing
more than a blackshirted illusionist.*
@for-the-record
German and European reliance on US security guarantees is a problem, since it's become
pretty clear that the US political system is dysfunctional and US "elites" are dangerous
extremists. We need our own security structures to be independent from the US so they can't
drag us into their stupid projects or blackmail us anymore why do you think Merkel didn't
react much to the revelations about American spying on Germany? Because we're totally
dependent on the Americans in security matters.
And while I don't believe Russia or Iran are really serious threats to Europe, it would be
foolish to have no credible deterrence.
"How will Kharkiv people feel towards uninvited Russian invaders shelling their city
in order to to take it under their control?"
They will move to disarm ther Ukrainian forces, who have taken their city hostage,
then welcome their Russian liberators with open arms, what else they are going to do?
lol
While about 1/3 of Kharkiv voted for Ukrainian nationalists, only perhaps 10%-20% of the
city would actually like to be part of Russia (and I am being generous to you). So your
idea is equivalent to American fantasies of Iraqis greeting their troops with flowers.
It's just a joke though. In reality there is virtually no Ukrainian forces in city of
Kharkov. They don't have the manpower. Ukrainian regime managed to fortify Perekop and
the perimeter of the people's republics, but the rest of Ukraine-Russia border remains
completely undefended.
Are you living in 2014? Russian nationalists always like to think of Ukraine as if it is
2014-2015. It is comforting for them.
Ukraine currently has 200,000-250,000 active troops. About 60,000 of them are around
Donbas.
Here is a map of various positions in 2017:
Kharkiv does appear to be lightly defended, though not undefended (it has a motorized
infantry brigade and a lot of air defenses). The map does not include national guard units
such as Azov, however, which would add a few thousand troops to Kharkiv's defense.
It looks like rather than stationing their military in forward positions vs. a possible
Russian attack, Ukraine, has put lot of troops in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Kiev and
Odessa.
Ukrainian military has 200,000 -- 250,000 active members and about 100,000 reserves.
Where did you get your information? The end of 2014?
I read Kassad blog, and he says Ukrainian formations assembled in Donbass number some
50-70 thousands men. The entire Ukrainian army is around 200.000 men, including the navy
(LOL), the airforce, but most of it isn't combat ready. Ukraine doesn't just suffer from a
lack of manpower, they don't have the resources to feed and clothe their soldiers, which
limits their ability field an army.
By contrast the armies of people's republics have 40-60 thousand men -- that's
impressive level of mobilisation, and they achieved this without implementing draft.
@APSo your idea is equivalent to American fantasies of Iraqis greeting their troops with
flowers.
The local populations in Iraq were congenial to begin with, at least outside some Sunni
centers. It was never an object of American policy to stay in Iraq indefinitely.
Kharkiv does appear to be lightly defended, though not undefended (it has a motorized
infantry brigade and a lot of air defenses).
How many people does this "motorized infantry brigade" have? And more importantly what
is its level of combat readiness? Couldn't we just smash this brigade with a termobaric
bomb while they are sleeping?
Ukraine is full of shit. They had 20.000 troops in Crimea, "a lot of air defenses" and
it didn't make a iota of difference. Somehow you expect me to believe Ukraine has a
completely different army now. Why should I? They don't have the resources to afford a
better army, so it is logical to assume that Ukrainian army is still crap.
@German_reader
And while I don't believe Russia or Iran are really serious threats to Europe, it would
be foolish to have no credible deterrence.
What "credible deterrence" are you proposing for Germany? As has been clearly
demonstrated, the only credible deterrence against a determined foe (of which Germany has
none, at least externally) is nuclear. Is this what you are suggesting?
Germany has willingly supported the US (presumably in continuing gratitude for US
support during the Cold War), it hasn't been "blackmailed" into this. Austria, on the other
hand, has survived for more than 60 years without the US "umbrella" to protect it (and with
a military strength rated below that of Angola and Chile), so why couldn't Germany? There
is no need whatsoever for Germany to build up its military strength; rather, what Germany
(sorely) lacks is the desire (and guts) to act independently of the US.
Russian nationalists always like to think of Ukraine as if it is 2014-2015. It is
comforting for them.
Betwixt and between all the trash talking, they've forgotten that the last occasion on
which one country attempted to conquer an absorb another country with a population anywhere
near 30% of its own was during the 2d World War. Didn't work out so well for Germany and
Japan.
What about Metallica or Slayer? The famous 1991 Monsters of Rock in Moscow featured I
think Metallica in its prime and Pantera right before they became really big (and
heavy).
Metallica primarily and AC/DC. Pantera were more of a bonus. Nowhere near massive
popularity of AC/DC and Metallica, who were main attraction. Earlier, in 1988, so called
Moscow Peace Festival also saw a collection of heavy and glam metal luminaries such as
Motley Crue, Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, of course, etc. But, of course, Ozzy was met
with a thunder by Luzhniki stadium. The only rock royalty who was allowed to give a first
ever concert on Red Square was Sir Paul, with Putin being personally present. Speaks
volumes. British rock was always dominant in USSR. In the end, every Soviet boy who was
starting to play guitar had to know three chords of the House of the Rising Sun. Russians
are also very progressive rock oriented and in 1970s Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant etc. were
huge. Soviet underground national anthem was Uriah Heep's masterpiece of July Morning. I
believe Bulgaria still has July Morning gatherings every year. All of it was British
influence. My generation also grew up with British Glam which for us was a pop-music of the
day -- from Sweet to Slade, to T.Rex. And then there was: QUEEN.
@for-the-recordAustria, on the other hand, has survived for more than 60 years without the US
"umbrella" to protect it (and with a military strength rated below that of Angola and
Chile), so why couldn't Germany?
Austria hasn't been absorbed by Germany or Italy therefore Germany doesn't have a use
for security guarantees or an armed force. Do I render your argument correctly?
Not completely true, Germany didn't participate in the Iraq war and in the bombing of
Libya.
I'm hardly an expert on military matters, but it would seem just common sense to me that a
state needs sufficient armed forces to protect its own territory if you don't have that,
you risk becoming a passive object whose fate is decided by other powers. Doesn't mean
Germany should have a monstrously bloated military budget like the US, just sufficient
forces to protect its own territory and that of neighbouring allies (which is what the
German army should be for instead of participating in futile counter-insurgency projects in
places like Afghanistan). Potential for conflict in Europe is obviously greatest regarding
Russia it's still quite low imo, and I want good relations with Russia and disagree
vehemently with such insanely provocative ideas as NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia,
but it would be stupid not to have credible deterrence (whose point it is to prevent
hostilities after all). I don't think that's an anti-Russian position, it's just
realistic.
Apart from that Germany doesn't probably need much in the way of military capabilities
maybe some naval forces for participation in international anti-piracy missions.
Regarding nuclear weapons, that's obviously something Germany can't or shouldn't do on its
own (probably wouldn't be tolerated anyway given 20th century history), so it would have to
be in some form of common European project. Hard to tell now if something like this could
eventually become possible or necessary.
@Felix
Keverich Sorry to prickle your little fantasy world once again tovarishch, but
according to current CIA statistics Ukraine has 182,000 active personnel, and 1,000,000
reservists! For a complete rundown of Ukraine's military strength, read this and weep:
@Art
Deco A lot of what used to be manufacturing, such as engineering design, is now put
under the category of services. Manufacturing companies want to be listed as engaged in
services because manufacturing is perceived as not profitable. Britain is alone among
comparable countries in having lost significant amounts of productive capacity.
K: "You know, you're a bright man. If you were an American I'd have you in my
cabinet."
B: "No, Mr. President; if I were an American you would be in my cabinet."
The thing about many of these corrupt, worthless and incompetent Third World leaders is
they're not lacking in self-esteem. Just ask Karzai. Or Maliki.
@Art
Deco The potential power of China is an order of magnitude greater than Japan. After
WW2 Japan, and to a lesser extent Germany, were too small to be a threat. Don't you believe
all that Robert Kagan 'the US solved the problems that caused WW1 and 2′ stuff. China
is a real hegemon in the making and they will take a run at it, unless they are contained
by military pressure on their borders.
Modern Japan is more like Singapore than China. China has economies of scale, they have
a single integrated factory complex making laptops with has more workers than the British
army. China will have a huge home market, like America. So by the time it dawns on America
that China's growing power must be checked, economic measures will be ineffective.
@Art
DecoAustria hasn't been absorbed by Germany or Italy therefore Germany doesn't have
a use for security guarantees or an armed force. Do I render your argument correctly?
That's about right, yes. Except I didn't say that Germany should have no military
capability, only that there is no sense in increasing current military expenditure. A
military capability can be useful for dealing with emergencies, such as tornadoes and
hurricanes.
@Art
DecoThey've had ample opportunity over a period of 26 years to make the decision
you favor. It hasn't happened, and there's no reason to fancy they'll be more amenable a
decade from now.
Yes, these people had been sold a vision. If only they leave behind the backward,
Asiatic, mongoloid Russia, they will instantly Join Europe. They will have all of the good
stuff: European level of prosperity, rule of law, international approval, and so on; and
none of the bad stuff that they associated with Russia, like poverty, corruption, and civil
strife.
Official Ukrainian propaganda worked overtime, and still works today, to hammer this
into people's heads. And it's an attractive vision. An office dweller in Kiev wants to live
in a shiny European capital, not in a bleak provincial city of a corrupt Asian empire. The
problem is, it's ain't working. For a while Ukraine managed to get Russia to subsidize
Ukrainian European dream. Now this is over. The vision is starting to fail even harder.
The experience of Communism shows that it may take decades but eventually people notice
that the state ideology is a lie. Once they do, they change their mind about things rather
quickly.
@SeanModern Japan is more like Singapore than China.
There are 120 million people living in Japan, settlements of every size, and
agricultural land sufficient for Japan to supply demand for rice from domestic production.
So, no.
It goes without saying that Putin doesn't share my nationalist approach to Ukraine
problem: he does not see the destruction of Ukrainian project as necessary or even
desirable.
Agreed, and he happens to be in the right here. Russia actually has a good hand in
Ukraine, if only she keeps her cool . More military adventurism is foolish for at
least three reasons:
(1) All the civilian deaths in the Donbass, somewhat perversely, play to Russia's
advantage in that they take some of the sting out of the "Ukraine is the victim" narrative.
Common people know full well that the Ukrainian troops are hated in the Donbass (I once
watched a Ukrainian soldier shock the audience by saying this on Shuster Live), and they
know also that Kiev has a blame in all those dead women and children. These are promising
conditions for future reconciliation, and they would be squandered overnight if Russian
troops moved further westward.
(2) The geopolitical repercussions would be enormous. As I and others have already
written, the present situation is just about what people in elite Western circles
can stomach. Any Russian escalation would seriously jeopardize European trade with Russia,
among other things.
(3) There is a good chance that Crimea will eventually be internationally recognized as
part of the RF (a British parliamentary report on this matter in 2015, I think it was, made
this quite clear). The same might also be true of the Donbass. These "acquisitions," too,
would be jeopardized by more military action.
@inertial
1. You fancy they're bamboozled and you're not. Cute.
2. You also fancy your interlocutors are economic illiterates and that they'll buy into
the notion that the solution to the Ukraine's economic problems is to be forcibly
incorporated into Russia. Such a change in political boundaries addresses no
economic problems.
@Swedish
Family(1) All the civilian deaths in the Donbass, somewhat perversely, play to
Russia's advantage in that they take some of the sting out of the "Ukraine is the victim"
narrative.
You mean Putin mercs kill more Ukrainian civilians and we 'take some of the sting out of
the 'Ukraine is a victim narrative'? Sounds like a plan.
There is a good chance that Crimea will eventually be internationally recognized as
part of the RF (a British parliamentary report on this matter in 2015, I think it was, made
this quite clear). The same might also be true of the Donbass. T
Did you cc the folks in Ramallah and Jerusalem about that?
I've been all over the comment boards calling for my country (the USA) to take a less
belligerent, more honest, friendlier approach to Russia, and I've largely taken the side of
Russia in the Ukraine and Syria controversies.
I also don't think Russia has any current designs on the territory of its western
neighbors, or the desire for the dire consequences that would likely follow as the US and
others react to such a move.
But that doesn't mean that it's prudent for Germany (or any other smaller, less populous
country near Russia) to simply trust that Russia will never use military force against them
in the future.
Nor should Germany assume that China will not ultimately find it worthwhile to take
their territory or resources for its own massive, overcrowded, ambitious population.
Germany's military forces are grossly inadequate. Same for France. Same for the UK. None
of them should purport to predict well into the future that Russia, China, and others
(Turkey) will never be both willing and able to invade them. Nor should Germany et al.
assume that the USA will always be in a position to jump in to defend Europeans in the
absence of serious European militaries.
In fact, the western Europeans' glaring military weakness (and their obvious loss of the
will to defend their people, their land, and their way of life) could serve to encourage
physical aggression by, e.g., Turkey or Russia. Betting that you need a military merely
"for dealing with emergencies, such as tornadoes and hurricanes" is a potentially fatal
bet, with irreversible consequences.
@Johann
Ricke So the costs of the US invasion/occupation/"reconstruction" of Iraq were
(allegedly) less than the costs of the equally unnecessary and non-defensive US wars in
Korea and Vietnam? Heck of an argument.
How about this: we should have refrained from all three wars.
We should be using our resources to secure our own borders, to police the international
waters and vital shipping lanes / chokepoints (fighting pirates and terrorists as necessary
to those ends), and to actually defend our land and our people and deter aggression. That's
it.
Germany's military forces are grossly inadequate. Same for France. Same for the
UK.
Grossly inadequate for what purpose?
What matters about military strength is its relation to neighbours' and potential
enemies' strengths. Germany's military spending currently ranks number nine in the world
(using the SIPRI
figures per Wikipedia for simplicity ), which when you consider they are located in the
middle of one of the safest continents (militarily speaking) in the world, surrounded by
allies with whom military conflict is currently pretty much inconceivable, is quite
impressive. Above them are only its European allies UK and France, the grossly bloated US
and Saudi Arabian budgets, Russia and China, and Japan and India. Apart from South Korea
who come next, Germany spends half as much again as the next on the list (Italy).
Germany's military shortcomings can in no plausible degree be attributed to not spending
enough, unless you think Germany should be remilitarising for a potential war with Russia.
Basically, Germany's military is toothless mostly because nobody in Germany really thinks
it matters, nobody expects to be involved in a war, and such spending as it has is mostly
purposed to suit a Germany integrated into NATO and the EU rather than an independent
state. If there's a problem it's not down to insufficient spending but to how the money is
currently spent.
Like you I'm a general believer in having a strong military, and in "si vis pacem, para
bellum". But it's hard to see how Germany could really benefit from increased military
spending. If they were to feel genuinely threatened, nuclear weapons would make much more
sense (along with a radical reorganisation of the current spending and conventional
military establishment).
There's a lot of American nonsense talked about European states underspending on their
military, but the reality is that the US grossly overspends to serve its own global
interventionist purposes. There's no reason why European states should spend to serve those
purposes, which is what in reality increased European spending in the current context would
be used for.
What we might see in some potential circumstances is increased German (and European in
general) military spending in order to give them the confidence to break away from NATO and
US control, and build the long trailed "European Defence Force". That looks a lot more
likely after Brexit and in the context of the Trump presidency than it did a few years ago,
but it's still something of a distant possibility. In that case, though, the increases
would be mainly for morale building and transitional spending purposes, given that the
combined EU military budget is already second in the world, behind only the ludicrous
US.
You mean Putin mercs kill more Ukrainian civilians and we 'take some of the sting out
of the 'Ukraine is a victim narrative'? Sounds like a plan.
No, I wrote that those civilians are already gone and that both sides had a hand in
their deaths, which will help the peace process since no side can claim sole
victimhood.
And your assumption that the separatists are mercenaries is groundless speculation.
Estimations are that well over half of the separatists are born and bred in Ukraine, and
there is no evidence to suggest that they are fighting for the love of money.
Did you cc the folks in Ramallah and Jerusalem about that?
Risible comparison. Theirs is a conflict involving three major religions and the
survival of the Israeli state at stake. On the Crimean question, we have already heard
influential Westerners voice the possibility that it might one day be accepted as Russian,
and if you read between the lines, many Ukrainians are of a similiar mind.
But the EU isn't merely a threat to self-government anymore. It is now actively and
intentionally importing people who kill, rape, mug, beat, grope, harass, stalk, and
generally disrespect and intimidate "their own" European people. The EU is an active threat
to the lives and physical safety of European people. No people with the barest common sense
and will to live will stay in the EU as these recent horrific events continue to
unfold.
@RadicalCenterNor should Germany assume that China will not ultimately find it worthwhile to take
their territory or resources for its own massive, overcrowded, ambitious population.
This is really a case of misplaced priorities.
Germany is in the process of losing its national identity built up over 2,000 years or
so, and it has nothing to do with the Chinese (or the Russians either, for that matter).
And China certainly doesn't need its military to successfully export its "massive,
overcrowded, ambitious population" overseas (cf. Western Canada, Australia).
Focusing on the (non-existent, in my opinion) need for Germany to increase its current
(already high) level of military expenditures will do nothing to preserve Germany as a
European nation.
@for-the-record
Take a look at my other comments. You'll see that I wholeheartedly agree with you about the
moral sickness, cowardice, misplaced guilty, and terminal naivete of the Germans leading
them to surrender their land, their property, their way of life, and their very lives to
the Muslim and African savages they are importing.
As a recent book by a German politician put it, "Deutschland schafft sich ab", or
"Germany does away with itself."
But what has that to do with Germany also refusing to maintain a serious military
defense force to deter potential threats from state actors such as Russia, Turkey, and
China? Any nation worth its salt must both secure / guard its orders AND keep a military
ready to fight external forces. Germany can and should do both, and right now it's doing
neither.
@for-the-record
As for China in particular: of course China is glad to export millions of its people to
settle and become citizens in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the former
"West."
They are thereby en route to acquiring real social influence, and ultimately some direct
political power, in those places (especially Australia and the provinces of "British"
Columbia and Alberta, owing to the very small white populations of those places compared to
the immigration onslaught).
I lived part-time in Richmond and Vancouver, BC, and know just how quickly that region
is becoming an alien culture -- Chinese more than anything, but also Muslim, Hindu, and
Sikh. (Look up the career of crooked "Canadian" former pol and now radio-host Kash Heed,
among many other examples.) I would expect that Mandarin will eventually become a co-equal
official language of government (and public schools) in BC, with no effective opposition by
those ever-"tolerant" Canadians ("We're not like those racist Americans, you know!").
But the people who have emigrated from China thus far are a drop in the bucket. China is
still terribly overcrowded and lacks both land and natural resources needed to sustain its
population. Actually outright TAKING swathes of Europe or, say, Africa, would help them a
lot more than immigration. When the time is right -- say, after the US dollar loses its
world reserve status and/or the US is beset by widespread racial conflict and riots --
China may well make its move in that regard. I hope not, and I don't think it will be very
soon, but a wise country needs a strong military in the face of China and other
threats.
@Felix
Keverich Unfortunately, the Ukraine has been spending 5%* of its GDP on the military
since c.2015 (versus close to 1% before 2014).
Doesn't really matter if tons of money continues to be stolen, or even the recession --
with that kind of raw increase, a major enhancement in capabilities is inevitable.
Like it or not, but outright war with Maidanist Ukraine has been ruled out from the
beginning, as the more perceptive analysts like Rostislav Ischenko have long recognized.
If there was a time and a place for it, it was either in April 2014, or August 2014 at
the very latest. Since then, the Ukrainian Army has gotten much stronger. It has been
purged of its "Russophile" elements, and even though it has lost a substantial percentage
of its remnant Soviet-era military capital in the war of attrition with the LDNR, it has
more than made up for it with wartime XP gain and the banal fact of a quintupling in
military spending as a percentage of GDP from 1% to 5%. This translates to an effective
quadrupling in absolute military spending, even when accounting for Ukraine's post-Maidan
economic collapse. Russia can still crush Ukraine in a full-scale conventional conflict,
and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future, but it will no longer be the
happy cruise to the Dnepr that it would have been two years earlier.
The entire Ukrainian army is around 200.000 men, including the navy (LOL), the
airforce, but most of it isn't combat ready.
250,000. Combat readiness is very different from 2014.
Ukraine doesn't just suffer from a lack of manpower, they don't have the resources to
feed and clothe their soldiers, which limits their ability field an army.
Again, it isn't 2014 anymore. Military budget has increased significantly, from 3.2
billion in 2015 to 5.17 billion in 2017. In spite of theft, much more is getting
through.
By contrast the armies of people's republics have 40-60 thousand men -- that's
impressive level of mobilisation, and they achieved this without implementing draft
It's one of the only ways to make any money in the Republics, so draft is
unnecessaary.
Estimations are that well over half of the separatists are born and bred in Ukraine,
and there is no evidence to suggest that they are fighting for the love of money.
80% are natives. Perhaps as much as 90%. However, often it a way to make a meager salary
in those territories, so there is a mercenary aspect to it. Lots of unemployed workers go
into the Republic military.
Estimations are that well over half of the separatists are born and bred in Ukraine,
and there is no evidence to suggest that they are fighting for the love of money.
80% in 2014-15, to be precise; another 10% from the Kuban; 10% from Russia, the Russian
world, and the world at large.
NAF salaries are good by post-2014 Donbass standards, but a massive cut for Russians --
no Russian went there to get rich.
That said, I strongly doubt there will ever be international recognition of Crimea, let
alone Donbass. Israel has by far the world's most influential ethnic lobby. Even NATO
member Turkey hasn't gotten Northern Cyprus internationally recognized, so what exactly are
the chances of the international community (read: The West) recognizing the claims of
Russia, which is fast becoming established in Western minds as the arch-enemy of
civilization?
@Anatoly
Karlin Fascinating link. The numbers for the military budget are a lot lower than
reported elsewhere.
Mobilization percentages by region:
"Among the leaders of the fourth and fifth wave of partial mobilisation were the
Khmelnitsky,
Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad and Zaporizhia regions, as well as the city
of Kyiv, whose mobilisation plan was fulfilled 80-100% (the record was Vinnytsia
oblast,
which achieved 100% mobilisation). At the opposite extreme are the Kharkiv, Chernivtsi,
Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lugansk, Sumy, Ternopil and Transcarpathian regions, where
the results of the mobilisation varied from 25 to 60%."
Summary:
2014:
The true face of the Ukrainian armed forces was revealed by the Russian annexation of
Crimea and the first weeks of the war in the Donbas -- they were nothing more than a
fossilised structure, unfit for any effective function upon even a minimum engagement
with the enemy, during which a significant part of the troops only realised whom they
were representing in the course of the conflict and more than once, from the perspective
of service in one of the post-Soviet military districts, they chose to serve in the
Russian army
2017:
The war in the Donbas shaped the Ukrainian army. It gave awareness and motivation to
the soldiers, and forced the leadership of the Defence Ministry and the government of the
state to adapt the army's structure -- for the first time since its creation -- to real
operational needs, and also to bear the costs of halting the collapses in the fields of
training and equipment, at least to such an extent which would allow the army to fight a
close battle with the pro-Russian separatists. Despite all these problems, the Ukrainian
armed forces of the year 2017 now number 200,000, most of whom have come under fire, and
are seasoned in battle. They have a trained reserve ready for mobilisation in the event
of a larger conflict*; their weapons are not the latest or the most modern, but the vast
majority of them now work properly; and they are ready for the defence of the vital
interests of the state (even if some of the personnel still care primarily about their
own vested interests). They have no chance of winning a potential military clash with
Russia, but they have a reason to fight. The Ukrainian armed forces of the year 2014, in
a situation where their home territory was occupied by foreign troops, were incapable of
mounting an adequate response. The changes since the Donbas war started mean that Ukraine
now has the best army it has ever had in its history.
* The Ukrainian armed forces have an operational reserve of 130,000 men, relatively
well trained and with real combat experience, who since 2016 have been moulded out of
veterans of the Donbas (as well as from formations subordinate to the Interior Ministry).
It must be stressed, however, that those counted in the reserve represent only half of
the veterans of the anti-terrorist operation (by October 2016, 280,000 Ukrainians had
served in the Donbas in all formations subordinate to the government in Kyiv, with
266,000 reservists gaining combat status; at the beginning of February 2017, 193,400
reservists were in the armed forces). Thanks to that, at least in terms of the human
factor, it should be possible in a relatively short period of time to increase the
Ukrainian army's degree of combat readiness, as well as to fight a relatively close
battle with a comparable opponent, something the Ukrainian armed forces were not capable
of doing at the beginning of 2014.
@Art
Deco I respectfully disagree with you about the Iraq war (one of the few areas on which
I disagree with you).
I suppose had the West made a massive investment in Iraq, secured its Christian
population, loaded it with US troops, and did to it what was done to Japan, over several
decades, transforming it into a prosperous democratic US ally, removing Saddam (who
deserves no sympathy) might have been a nice thing. It would have been a massive financial
drain but having a "Japan", other than Israel, in the heart of the Middle East might have
been worth it (I am not a Middle East expert but it seems the Shah's Persia was sort of
being groomed for such a role).
Instead, it ended up being a disaster -- 100,000s dead in sectarian massacres, Christian
population nearly destroyed, and other than Kurdish areas, an ally either of Iran or of
militant anti-American Sunnis. At the cost, to the USA, of dead Americans, lots of money,
and loss of soft power. I also suspect that America being stuck and preoccupied in Middle
East conflicts gave room for Russia to act. I guess its a tribute to how strong America is,
that it is still doing pretty well in spite of the debacle. A lesser power such as the USSR
would have been sunk.
NAF salaries are good by post-2014 Donbass standards, but a massive cut for Russians
-- no Russian went there to get rich.
Which further points to the critical role played by Russians. Many of the local
volunteers are participating because doing so offers a salary, which is very important in a
wrecked, sanctioned Donbas. The Russian 10%-20% are motivated, often Chechen combat vets.
They are more important than their % indicates.
@melanf
What is almost incomprehensible for me in these endless Russia vs Ukraine arguments is how
they (yes both sides) always ignore the real issues and instead keep on raising relatively
petty points while thinking that mass non white immigration and things like the EU
commissioner of immigration stating openly that Europe needs endless immigration, are not
important. It's like white South Africans who still debate the Boer war or the Irish debate
the northern Ireland question, and are completely oblivious to the fact that these things
don't matter anymore if you have an entirely new people ruling your land (ok in South
Africa they were not new, but you know what I mean).
That's rght, and it happens to the whole world too including those countries destroyed by
US and under its sanction. The bombastic propaganda MSM fake news and Hollywood have
brainwashed all to harbour delusion that US is a perfect heaven paved with gold, honey and
milk, people of high morality and freedom. Wait till they live there to find out reality of
DemoNcracy made in USA.
@melanf
I think it's mostly Gerard2. Mr. Hack is fairly hostile but coldly civil. Don't think this
compares to Runet xoxlosraches at all (of course I try to cut any such developments in the
bud).
I have read a article mentioned something like Putin said, to annexed whole Ukraine means
to share the enormous resource wealth of vast Russia land with them, which make no economic
sense. If Russia is worst than Ukraine, then there won't be million of Ukrainian migrating
over after the Maidan coup.
So are all those Baltic states. Russia don't want these countries as it burden, it is
probably only interested in selected strategic areas like the Eastern Ukraine industrial
belt and military important Crimea warm water deep seaport, and skilled migrants. Ukraine
has one of lowest per capital income now, with extreme corrupted politicians controlled by
USNato waging foolish civil war killing own people resulting in collapsing economic and
exudes of skilled people.
What it got to lose to unify with Russia to have peace, prosperity and been a nation of
a great country instead of poor war torn? Plus a bonus of free Russia market access,
unlimited cheap natural gas and pipeline toll to tax instead of buying LNG from US at
double price.
Sorry this s just my opinion based on mostly fake news we are fed, only the Ukrainian
know the best and able to decde themselves.
Agreed, and he happens to be in the right here. Russia actually has a good hand in
Ukraine, if only she keeps her cool. More military adventurism is foolish for at least
three reasons:
Yes, this is my view also. I think Russia was never in a position to do much more than
it has, and those who talk about more vigorous military interference are just naïve,
or engaging in wishful thinking, about the consequences. I think Putin played a very bad
hand as well as could reasonably be expected in Ukraine and Crimea. No doubt mistakes were
made, and perhaps more support at the key moment for the separatists (assassinations of
some of the key oligarchs who chose the Ukrainian side and employed thugs to suppress the
separatists in eastern cities, perhaps) could have resulted in a better situation now with
much more of the eastern part of Ukraine separated, but if Russians want someone to blame
for the situation in Ukraine apart from their enemies, they should look at Yanukovich, not
Putin.
In the long run, it seems likely the appeal of NATO and the EU (assuming both still even
exist in their current forms in a few years time) is probably peaking, but strategic
patience and only limited covert and economic interference is advisable.
The return of Crimea to Russia alone has been a dramatic improvement in the inherent
stability of the region. A proper division of the territory currently forming the Ukraine
into a genuine Ukrainian nation in the west and an eastern half returned to Russia would be
the ideal long term outcome, but Russia can surely live with a neutralised Ukraine.
@Anatoly
Karlin If presenting a Ukrainophile point of view at this website is considered to be
'pretty hostile' then so be it. I cannot countenance the slimy way that Gerard2 reponds to
AP's comments. He was getting way out of line with his name calling and needed to be put in
his place.
@RadicalCenterBut the people who have emigrated from China thus far are a drop in the bucket. China is
still terribly overcrowded and lacks both land and natural resources needed to sustain its
population.
As we speak, about 8.5% of the value-added in China's economy is attributable to
agriculture and about 27% of the workforce is employed in agriculture. Industry and
services are not land-intensive activities.
About 1/2 of China's land area consists of arid or alpine climates suitable for only
light settlement. As for the rest, China's entire non-agricultural population could be
settled at American suburban densities on about 23% of the whole.
You don't need 'natural resources' on site to 'sustain your population'. Imports of oil
and minerals will do. As for foodstuffs, China's been a net importer since 2004. However,
its food-trade deficit is currently about $35 bn, a single-digit fraction of China's total
food consumption.
You realise that Ukraine's GDP declined in dollar terms by a factor of 2-3 times, right?
A bigger share of a smaller economy translates into the same paltry sum. It is still under
$5 billion.
Futhermore an army that's actively deployed and engaged in fighting spends more money
than during peacetime. A lot of this money goes to fuel, repairs, providing for soldiers
and their wages rather than qualitatively impoving capabilities of the army.
The bottomline is Ukraine spent the last 3,5 years preparing to fight a war against the
People's Republic of Donetsk. I'll admit Ukrainian army can hold its own against the
People's Republic of Donetsk. Yet it remains hopelessly outmatched in a potential clash
with Russia. A short, but brutal bombing campaign can whipe out Ukrainian command and
control, will make it impossible to mount any kind of effective defence. Ukrainian
conscripts have no experience in urban warfare, and their national loyalties are
unclear.
AP predicts that the cities of Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk will be reduced to something
akin to Aleppo. But it has taken 3 years of constant shelling to cause the damage in
Aleppo. A more likely outcome is that Ukrainian soldiers will promptly ditch their
uniforms, once they realise the Russian are coming and their command is gone.
@Felix
Keverich Nominal GDP collapsed, but real GDP only fell by around 20%. This matters
more, since the vast majority of Ukrainian military spending occurs in grivnas.
By various calculations, Ukrainian military spending went up from 1% of GDP, to 2.5%-5%.
Minus 20%, that translates to a doubling to quadrupling.
What it does mean is that they are even less capable of paying for advanced weapons from
the West than before, but those were never going to make a cardinal difference anyway.
AP is certainly exaggerating wrt Kharkov looking like Aleppo and I certainly didn't
agree with him on that. In reality Russia will still be able to smash the Ukraine, assuming
no large-scale American intervention, but it will no longer be the trivial task it would
have been in 2014, and will likely involve thousands as opposed to hundreds (or even
dozens) of Russian military deaths in the event of an offensive up to the Dnieper.
@Gerard2
We'd all benefit if you'd sober up and add brevity and humor to your emotional outbursts
and trash talk. No need for much verbiage in the absence of substantive information.
@AP
The American occupation of Japan lasted 7 years, not 'several decades'. Japan was quite
capable of rapid and autonomous economic development without the assistance of the United
States or any other power. Neither was the United States government the author of Japanese
parliamentary institutions, which antedate the war. There were certain social reforms
enacted during the MacArthur regency (I think having to do with the agricultural sector).
The emperor's power was further reduced in the 1946 constitution. A portion of the
flag-rank military were put in front of firing squads. That's about it.
Again, much of Iraq is quiet and has been for a decade. What's not would be the
provinces where Sunnis form a critical mass. Their political vanguards are fouling their
own nest and imposing costs on others in the vicinity, such as the country's Christian
population and the Kurds living in mixed provinces like Kirkuk. You've seen severe internal
disorders in the Arab world over 60 years in Algeria, Libya, the Sudan, the Yemen, the
Dhofar region of Oman, Lebanon, Syria, and central Iraq. If you want to understand this,
you have to look to how Arab societies themselves are ordered (in contrast to interwar or
post-war German society).
It's one of the only ways to make any money in the Republics, so draft is
unnecessaary.
It's not like the regime-controlled parts of the country are doing much better! LOL
My point is that this bodes well for our ability to recruit proxies in Ukraine, don't
you think? We could easily assemble another 50.000-strong local army, once we're in
Kharkov. That's the approach I would use in Ukraine: strip away parts of it piece by piece,
create local proxies, use them to maintain control and absorb casualties in the fighting on
the ground.
In reality Russia will still be able to smash the Ukraine, assuming no large-scale
American intervention, but it will no longer be the trivial task it would have been in
2014, and will likely involve thousands as opposed to hundreds (or even dozens) of
Russian military deaths in the event of an offensive up to the Dnieper.
Fortunately, we'll not be seeing a replay of the sacking and destruction of Novgorod as
was done in the 15th century by Ivan III, and all of its ugly repercussions in Ukraine.
Besides, since the 15th century, we've seen the emergence of three separate nationalities
out of the loose amalgamation of principalities known a Rus. Trying to recreate something
(one Rus nation) out of something that never in effect existed, now in the 21st century is
a ridiculous concept at best.
"It's one of the only ways to make any money in the Republics, so draft is
unnecessaary."
It's not like the regime-controlled parts of the country are doing much better!
LOL
Well, they are, at least in the center and west. Kievans don't volunteer to fight
because they have no other way of making money. But you probably believe the fairytale that
Ukraine is in total collapse, back to the 90s.
We could easily assemble another 50.000-strong local army, once we're in Kharkov.
If in the process of taking Kharkiv the local economy goes into ruin due to wrecked
factories and sanctions so that picking up a gun is the only way to feed one's family for
some people, sure. But again, keep in mind that Kharkiv is much less pro-Russian than
Donbas so this could be more complicated.
@Anatoly
KarlinHow so? Poland and France (together around equal to Germany's population)
worked out perfectly for Nazi Germany.
You're forgetting a few things. In the United States, about 1/3 of the country's
productive capacity was devoted to the war effort during the period running from 1940 to
1946. I'll wager you it was higher than that in Britain and continental Europe. That's what
Germany was drawing on to attempt to sustain its holdings for just the 4-5 year period in
which they occupied France and Poland. (Russia currently devotes 4% of its productive
capacity to the military). Germany had to be exceedingly coercive as well. They were facing
escalating partisan resistance that whole time (especially in the Balkans).
Someone whose decisions matter is going to ask the question of whether it's really worth
the candle.
@Art
Deco Thanks for the correction. This suggests that transforming Iraq into a solidly
pro-Western stable democracy would have been much harder than doing so for Japan. This I
think would have been the only legitimate reason to invade in Iraq in 2003 (WMDs weren't
there, and in 2003 the regime was not genocidal as it had been decades earlier when IMO an
invasion would have been justified)
Again, much of Iraq is quiet and has been for a decade. What's not would be the
provinces where Sunnis form a critical mass. Their political vanguards are fouling their
own nest and imposing costs on others in the vicinity, such as the country's Christian
population and the Kurds living in mixed provinces like Kirkuk.
Correct, but most of this have been the case had the Baathists remained in power?
You've seen severe internal disorders in the Arab world over 60 years in Algeria,
Libya, the Sudan, the Yemen, the Dhofar region of Oman, Lebanon, Syria, and central
Iraq.
Which is why one ought to either not invade a country and remove a regime that maintains
stability and peace, or if one does so -- take on the responsibility of investing massive
effort and treasure in order to prevent the inevitable chaos and violence that would erupt
as a result of one's invasion.
@Anatoly
Karlin To be honest, I don't think it'll be necessary to sacrifice so many lives of
Russian military personnel. Use LDNR army: transport them to Belgorod and with Russians
they could move to take Kharkov, while facing minimal opposition. Then move futher to the
West and South until the entire Ukrainian army in Donbass becomes encircled at which point
they will likely surrender.
After supressing Ukrainian air-defence, our airforce should be able to destroy command
and control, artillery, armoured formations, airfields, bridges over Dnieper, other
infrustructure. Use the proxies to absord casualties in the fighting on the ground.
but it will no longer be the happy cruise to the Dnepr that it would have been two
years earlier.
Anatoly, please, don't write on things you have no qualification on writing. You can not
even grasp the generational (that is qualitative) abyss which separates two armed forces.
The question will not be in this:
but it will no longer be the happy cruise to the Dnepr that it would have been two
years earlier.
By the time the "cruising" would commence there will be no Ukrainian Army as an
organized formation or even units left -- anything larger than platoon will be hunted down
and annihilated. It is really painful to read this, honestly. The question is not in
Russian "ambition" or rah-rah but in the fact that Ukraine's armed forces do not posses ANY
C4ISR capability which is crucial for a dynamics of a modern war. None. Mopping up in the
East would still be much easier than it would be in Central, let alone, Western Ukraine but
Russia has no business there anyway. More complex issues were under consideration than
merely probable losses of Russian Army when it was decided (rightly so) not to invade. I
will open some "secret" -- nations DO bear collective responsibility and always were
subjected to collective punishment -- latest example being Germany in both WWs -- the
bacillus of Ukrainian "nationalism" is more effectively addressed by letting those
moyahataskainikam experience all "privileges" of it. In the end, Russia's resources were
used way better than paying for mentally ill country. 2019 is approaching fast.
P.S. In all of your military "analysis" on Ukraine one thing is missing leaving a gaping
hole -- Russian Armed Forces themselves which since 2014 were increasing combat potential
exponentially. Ukies? Not so much -- some patches here and there. Russian Armed Forces of
2018 are not those of 2013. Just for shits and giggles check how many Ratnik sets have been
delivered to Russian Army since 2011. That may explain to you why timing in war and
politics is everything.
I think you mean Western Europe. If Germany's human capital drains to Poland et al in a
reversal of the Cold War direction, those countries have a quite bright future. I wonder if
any economic predictions have taken this into account yet.
AP is certainly exaggerating wrt Kharkov looking like Aleppo and I certainly didn't
agree with him on that.
I wrote that parts of the city would look like that. I don't think there would be enough
massive resistance that the entire city would be destroyed. But rooting out a couple
thousand armed, experienced militiamen or soldiers in the urban area would cause a lot of
expensive damage and, as is the case when civilians died in Kiev's efforts to secure
Donbas, would probably not endear the invaders to the locals who after all do not want
Russia to invade them.
And Kharkiv would be the easiest to take. Dnipropetrovsk would be much more Aleppo-like,
and Kiev Felix was proposing for Russia to take all these areas.
To be honest, I don't think it'll be necessary to sacrifice so many lives of Russian
military personnel.
The question is not in losses, per se. Russians CAN accept losses if the deal becomes
hot in Ukraine -- it is obvious. The question is in geopolitical dynamics and the way said
Russian Armed Forces were being honed since 2013, when Shoigu came on-board and the General
Staff got its mojo returned to it. All Command and Control circuit of Ukie army will be
destroyed with minimal losses if need be, and only then cavalry will be let in. How many
Russian or LDNR lives? I don't know, I am sure GOU has estimates by now. Once you control
escalation (Russia DOES control escalation today since can respond to any contingency) you
get way more flexibility (geo)politcally. Today, namely December 2017, situation is such
that Russia controls escalation completely. If Ukies want to attack, as they are inevitably
forced to do so, we all know what will happen. Ukraine has about a year left to do
something. Meanwhile considering EU intentions to sanction Poland, well, we are witnessing
the start of a major shitstorm.
Trying to recreate something (one Rus nation) out of something that never in effect
existed, now in the 21st century is a ridiculous concept at best.
A stupid comment for an adult. Ukraine, in effect never existed before
Russia/Stalin/Lenin created it. Kiev is a historical Russian city, and 5 of the 7 most
populated areas in Ukraine are Russian/Soviet created cities, Russian language is favourite
spoken by most Ukrainians ( see even Saakashvili in court, speaking only in Russian even
though he speaks fluent Ukrainian now and all the judges and lawyers speaking in Russian
too), the millions of Ukrainians living happily in Russia and of course, the topic of what
exactly is a Ukrainian is obselete because pretty much every Ukrainian has a close Russian
relative the level of intermarriage was at the level of one culturally identical
people.
AK: Improvement! The first paragraph was acceptable, hence not hidden.
@APThis suggests that transforming Iraq into a solidly pro-Western stable democracy would
have been much harder than doing so for Japan.
That was never the object. The object was (1) to remove a hostile government and (2)
replace it with a normal range government. Normal range governments aren't revanchist,
aren't territorially grabby, are chary about subverting neighboring governments, and aren't
in their international conduct notably driven by pride or political theo-ideology. The
House of Saud, the Hashemites, Lebanon's parliamentary bosses, the Turkish military, the
(post-Nasser) Egyptian military, etc. etc are all purveyors of normal-range government. NPR
likely has transcripts of interview programs in early 2003 in which Wm. Kristol was a
participant. Kristol was not a public official at the time, but he was the opinion-monger
who most assiduously promoted the conquest of Iraq. Kristol never expected Iraq to be like
Switzerland; he expected an Iraq that was 'tense' (his words), pluralistic, and willing to
live in its international environment rather than against that environment.
Correct, but most of this have been the case had the Baathists remained in
power?
I suspect the Shia and Kurd populations are pleased to be rid of the Baathists.
@Mr.
Hack economics, hope that the west and their puppets in Kiev would act like sane and
decent people, threat of sanctions and so on.
As is obvious, if the west had remained neutral ( an absurd hypothetical because the
west were the ringmasters of the farce in this failed state) ..and not supported the coup
and then the evil war brought on the Donbass people, then a whole different situation works
out in Ukraine ( for the better)
@Art
Deco I was speaking of 2003. Of course, for much of its history Saddam's regime was not
that. Too bad it wasn't stopped then, if it was going to be stopped.
@S3
Nietzsche famously foresaw the rise and fall of communism and the destruction of Germany in
the two world wars. He also liked to think of himself as a Polish nobleman. Maybe this is
what he meant.
@Art
Deco When calculated with constant pricing share of manufacturing in GDP in Germany,
Italy and France is not very much, It has actually risen in Switzerland and the US, and
risen greatly in Sweden, they are buying, people who think like you are selling out.
[...]All of those supposedly knowledge-intensive services sell mostly to manufacturing
firms, so their success depends on manufacturing success. It is not because the Americans
invented superior financial techniques that the world's financial centre moved from
London to New York in the mid-20th century. It is because the US became the leading
industrial nation.
The weakness of manufacturing is at the heart of the UK's economic problems. Reversing
three and a half decades of neglect will not be easy but, unless the country provides its
industrial sector with more capital, stronger public support for R&D and
better-trained workers, it will not be able to build the balanced and sustainable economy
that it so desperately needs.
@SeanWhen calculated with constant pricing share of manufacturing in GDP in Germany, Italy
and France is not very much, It has actually risen in Switzerland and the US, and risen
greatly in Sweden, they are buying, people who think like you are selling out.
"Not very much" according to whom? Manufacturing accounts for about 15% of Europe's
domestic product, about 12% of that for North America, and about 8% for that of the
Antipodes. It's higher in the Far East (about 24%), but Japan is in no danger of overtaking
the United States in per capita product, it's larger manufacturing sector notwithstanding.
There is no region of the globe bar the Far East where that sector much exceeds 15% of
total value added. Comparatively large manufacturing sectors are characteristic of the more
affluent middle income countries. As countries grow more productive and affluent, their
consumption patterns and productive capacity shift to services.
I've no clue why you and this fellow at The Guardian have bought into the notion
that there is something magical about manufacturing (it was a popular meme a generation
ago, promoted by Felix Rohaytn). By way of example, Germany and Japan have lost ground
economically to the UK and the US in the last 25 years, even though they devote ~21% of
their productive capacity to manufacturing in contrast to the ~11%.of the Anglosphere.
(Germany remains more affluent than Britain to the tune of about 11%, but about 15% less
affluent than the United States).
@Art
Deco Sorry, mistake. I meant when you do the comparison with constant prices,
manufacturing has not declined very much in the US ect . Britain is different it has lost a
lot of manufacturing. Britain cannot build its own nuclear power station. Germany and
France have taken the industry and would have come for the City next. Britain was to be the
milch cow of the EU, so it got out.
Switzerland is a rich mans country and so is Sweden. Business runs certain countries and
those countries are actually adding to their productive capacity, so they are not acting
like it is not profitable. That Guardian fellow is a professor of Economics at Oxford, and
I already quoted you Lord Weinstock who ran just about Britain's most profitable company:
it wasn't doing services. Once Weinstock retired his successor listened to the City
financial geniuses, sold the manufacturing core of the business, and when times got bad the
had nothing to fall back on and collapsed.
Germany does not have a single currency and Schengen Agreement free movement with the
US. German goods are expensive in the US, the single currency and Schengen Agreement are an
export promotion program for Germany industry. The Germans are going to deindustrialise the
rest of the EU. Britain realised it had to get out now or be borged.
@Sean
Britain hasn't lost any manufacturing output. It indubitably has fewer workers employed in
manufacturing, but manufacturing output has not declined. What's happened is that growth in
production since 1990 has been concentrated in the service sector.
The decline in the salience of manufacturing in the British economy has been more rapid
than it has elsewhere, but the same basic story has played out. The share of value added
attributable to manufacturing hit bottom in Britain in 2006, btw.
As I am sure you know service sector employment is mainly masses on low wages, so low they
are subsidized by the state in many cases, and increasingly on zero hours contracts. Hence
low demand. Running Britain on a London and the SE boom on the rationale that the country
is economically stronger relative to Germany and Japan is unstable because the strength of
the country in not increasing in any meaningful sense. The recent votes in Britain should
have made it clear that the country is not more stable for all the economic "success". The
people feel Britain is getting weaker compared to Germany.
No one doubts that Britain has a manufacturing problem and the inefficiency is at
the root of the loss of manufacturing but other counties are basically not the same, and
that is why Britain left the EU. Germany is playing the manufacturing game on its own terms
inside the EU with a single currency.
There is. Manufacturing productivity can easily be increased. Agriculture is more
difficult, and by the time its fully motorized, it's already a very small portion of the
total output. While services productivity is very low and cannot be easily increased. So an
economy with no manufacturing cannot raise its productivity much. It's also more difficult
to export services, so countries with low manufacturing will often experience huge current
account deficits.
High value added services can be risky, especially finance, which makes the country
vulnerable to credit cycles. The UK could export most financial services while credit was
easy. During the credit crunch it suddenly exported way less. So it's very pro-cyclical,
more so than manufacturing, because such countries still need to service their oversized
(due to the size of the financial sector) debts and obligations. It makes them too
leveraged.
@SeanAs I am sure you know service sector employment is mainly masses on low wages, so low
they are subsidized by the state in many cases, and increasingly on zero hours
contracts.
No, I don't know that. The compensation scales in various industrial sectors (as a % of
the mean across all private sectors) are as follows:
Utilites: 206%
Management of companies and enterprises: 201%
Mining: 178%
Information: 176%
Finance: 173%
Professional, scientific and technical services: 156%
Wholesale Trade: 127%
Manufacturing: 119%
Construction: 103%
Real estate: 99%
Transportation and Warehousing: 99%
Health Care and Social Assistance: 92%
Educational services [private]: 82%
Arts, entertainment, and recreation: 81%
Administrative and waste management services: 70%
Miscellaneous svs: 69%
Accommodation: 63%
Agriculture, Fishing, Forestry: 63%
Retail trade: 60%
Wages in manufacturing are above the mean. More sophisticated technology means you're
left with fewer employees (but with the skill sets to operate the machinery). (About 11% of
the private sector workforce is in manufacturing).
@SeanAs I am sure you know service sector employment is mainly masses on low wages, so low
they are subsidized by the state in many cases, and increasingly on zero hours contracts.
Hence low demand.
They're not running a current account deficit of 4.4% of gdp because they're suffering
from 'low demand'
@AP
Turning Iraq into a stable democracy would have been a legitimate reason to wage war? Must
respectfully and strenuously disagree. We would be constantly at war if that were the
standard. And, in fact, we HAVE been constantly at war. It has to stop.
@S3
Great point, S3, and I will correct my comment to exclude Eastern Europe from the
prediction of likely substantial non-Muslim flight ("Eastern Europe" meaning, for this
purpose, Poland, Hungary, Belarus if it is not so foolish as to join the EU, and whatever
is left of Ukraine that is not re-claimed by Russia).
But I'd also predict likely substantial "flight of non-Muslims out of Western and
perhaps CENTRAL Europe", unfortunately.
Because I am not at all convinced, yet, that Austria will not continue to be colonized
by Muslims. Austria may be colonized at a slower pace than Germany if the new Austrian
government seriously secures its borders, deports some existing invaders who have not been
granted citizenship yet, and refuses to take any new Muslim and/or African/Arab
"refugees."
But even if that occurs, as I fervently hope, Muslims apparently will continue to
constitute an ever-larger share of Austria's population -- based simply on the huge
difference in fertility rates among non-Muslims compared to Muslims there. Even without any
new immigration to Austria, an improbably happy state of affairs, Austrians simply don't
have enough children to replace themselves. Not even close.
With Austrian TFR so persistently low, all Muslims in Austria need to do is maintain a
TFR at replacement (say, 2.1), and they will take over the country.
That new government had better get to work if they don't want to see Austrians fleeing
east (or to the USA) along with the droves of Germans who will certainly be underway.
Turning Iraq into a stable democracy would have been a legitimate reason to wage
war
Yes. That doesn't necessarily mean we should have done it, even if that were the reason.
As you said, we can't keep doing this everywhere all the time. Nor am I claiming it is
possible (it was done in Japan but Japan is not Iraq). But if we did invade, and then did
whatever had to be done to transform the place from a Baathist dictatorship with radical
Islam simmering underneath, into a stable, decent, secular, Christian-tolerant and allied
country, that would have been legitimate.
@RadicalCenter
Does Austria have anything like the US's RICO Act? Creating something like it and
generously applying it to immigrant crime would be one of my suggestions, a
California-style three-strikes law would be another.
The in-your-face pro-natality propaganda does not seem to be working. So maybe something
subtler is required, like asking television and film studios to produce more traditional
role-models for women. More scenes of doting mothers and adorable babies. And yes, Kurz's
wife should definitely be given a role.
Its very amusing reading all the comments so far. But reality is that Russia should take
back all the lands conquered by the Tsars, and that includes Finland.
Look at America. Currently the US has troops stationed in other countries all over the
world. And most of those "independent" countries can't take virtually no decision without
America's approval. This is definitely the case with Germany and Japan, where their
"presidents" have to take an oath of loyalty to the US on assuming office. Now America has
even moved into Eastern Europe, and has troops and radars and nuclear capable missile
batteries stationed there. So America is just expanding and expanding its grasp while
Russia must contract its territories even further and further. Yippee.
So Russia must take back all the territories conquered by the Tsars so as to not lose
this game of monopoly. Those in those territories not too happy about such matters can move
to America or deal with the Red Army. This is not a matter of cost benefits analysis but a
matter of Russia's national security, as in the case of Chechnya.
The territories to Russia's East are especially necessary for Russia's security; when
the chips are down, when all the satellites have been blown out of space, all the aircraft
blown out of the air, all the ground hardware blown to smithereens; when the battle is
reduced to eye to eye rat like warfare, then those assorted Mongol mongrels from Russia's
East come into their element. Genghis Khan was the biggest mass murderer in history, he
made Hitler look like a school boy, his genes live on in those to Russia's East. So if
America were to get involved in Ukraine Russia would have no issues losing a million troops
in a matter of days while the US has never even lost a million troops in its civil war and
WW2 combined.
Lets face it, those Mongol mongrels make much better fighters than the effete Sunni
Arabs any day, so Russia should get them on her side. In Syria those ISIS idiots would
never have got as far as they did were it not for those few Chechens in their midst's.
But alas, Russia has to eat humble pie at the moment, internationally and at the
Olympics. But humble pie tastes good when its washed down with bottles of vodka, and its
only momentarily after all.
@gTLook at America. Currently the US has troops stationed in other countries all over the
world.
Since 1945, between 70% and 87% of American military manpower has been stationed in the
United States and its possession. The vast bulk of the remainder is generally to be found
in about a half-dozen countries. (In recent years, that would be Germany, Japan, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Kuwait). Andrew Bacevich once went on a whinge about the stupidity of
having a 'Southern Command' without bothering to tell his readers that the Southern Command
had 2,000 billets at that time, that nearly half were stationed at Guantanamo Bay (an
American possession since 1902), that no country had more than 200 American soldiers
resident, and that the primary activity of the Southern Command was drug interdiction. On
the entire African continent, there were 5,000 billets at that time.
And most of those "independent" countries can't take virtually no decision without
America's approval. This is definitely the case with Germany and Japan, where their
"presidents" have to take an oath of loyalty to the US on assuming office.
I especially like the bit about "Though most of the German officers were not originally
inclined against America, a lot of them being educated in the United States, they are now
experiencing disappointment and even disgust with Washington's policies." Seems its not
only the Russians who are getting increasingly pissed off with the US when at first they
actually liked the US. No wonder the Germans are just letting their submarines and tanks
rot away.
@Art
Deco Switzerland has the second highest per capital value added manufacturing,
Singapore is first. Successful profitable services do not seem stand alone in any actual
economy.
Successful profitable services do not seem stand alone in any actual economy.
Well, you're not looking for them.
Switzerland has the second highest per capital value added manufacturing, Singapore
is first.
About 19% of the value-added in their economies is attributable to manufacturing. You
find the same ratio in Serbia, which no one will mistake for an affluent and economically
dynamic country.
2. Neither the Japanese Emperor nor the President of Germany take an oath of allegiance
to the United States or any American official.
3. Neither the Chancellor of Germany nor the Prime Minister of Japan are incapable of
making a decision without consulting the U.S. Embassy. (Manned by Caroline Kennedy at one
point in Japan).
About 19% of the value-added in their economies is attributable to manufacturing.
The amusing thing is that the stock-in-trade of both Switzerland and Singapore is some
combo of private banking, tax-avoidance and money laundering. That's why the per capita
income is so high. It's bloated by the portfolio income of wealthy people like Marc Rich,
Robert Mugabe and Zuckerberg's Brazilian business partner.
@Art
Deco The way I see it "an ocean of blood" in Iraq was unleashed following US invasion,
and it included plenty of American blood. Young healthy American men lost their lifes in
Iraq, lost their their bodyparts (arms, legs, their nuts), lost their sanity, and as an
American I can't imagine that you were pleased about that. Certainly, most of your countrymen
didn't feel this way, they didn't feel this war was worth it for the US.
@Art
Deco That's just dumb. The reasons officially given for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 --
Saddam's regime hiding weapons of mass destruction and being an intolerable threat to the
outside world -- were a transparently false pretext for war, and that was clearly discernible
at the time. Saddam's regime was extremely brutal and increasingly Islamic or even Islamist
in character, but by 2003 it wasn't a serious threat to anyone outside Iraq anymore the worst
thing it did was send money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers (bad, but hardly
an existential threat). Admittedly there was the question how to deal with his regime in
coming years, whether to eventually relax sanctions or to keep them in place for the
foreseeable future. But there was no urgent need to invade Iraq that was purely a war of
choice which the US started in a demented attempt at reshaping the region according to its
own preferences. If you don't understand why many people find that rather questionable, it's
you who needs to get out more.
@Art
Deco Hungary joined NATO a few days (weeks? can't remember) before the start of the
Kosovo-related bombardment of Serbia. I attended university in a city in the south of
Hungary, close to the Serbian border. I could see the NATO planes flying by above us every
night when going home from a bar or club (both of which I frequented a lot).
I was a staunch Atlanticist at the time, and I believed all the propaganda about the
supposed genocide which later turned out not to have gone through the formality of actually
taking place. But it was never properly reported as the scandal it was -- it was claimed that
the Serbs were murdering tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians, but it
never happened. They might have killed a few hundred, at worst a few thousand civilians, but
that's different from what the propaganda claimed at the time. I only found out that there
was no genocide of Albanians in Kosovo when I searched the internet for it some time after
the Iraq invasion. By that time I was no longer an Atlanticist. Most people are totally
unaware that there was any lying going on while selling us the war.
Yes. It was the thing which opened my eyes and made me question some previous policies,
especially the bombardment of Serbia. I wasn't any longer comfortable of being in NATO,
especially since it started to get obvious that Hungarian elites (at least the leftists among
them) used our membership to dismantle our military and use the savings on handouts for their
electorate, or -- worse -- outright steal it. While it increasingly looked like NATO wasn't
really protecting our interests, since our enemies were mostly our neighbors (some of them).
This kind of false safety didn't feel alright.
@reiner
Tor "Yes. It was the thing which opened my eyes"
Same for me. I was 15 during the Kosovo war and believed NATO's narrative, couldn't
understand how anybody could be against the war, given previous Serb atrocities during the
Bosnian war it seemed to make sense. And after 9/11 I was very pro-US, e.g. I argued
vehemently with a stupid leftie teacher who was against the Afghanistan war (and I still
believe that war was justified, so I don't think I'm just some mindless anti-American fool).
But Iraq was just too much, too much obvious lying and those lies were so stupid it was hard
not to feel that there was something deeply wrong with a large part of the American public if
they were gullible enough to believe such nonsense. At least for me it was a real turning
point in the evolution of my political views.
As I recall the Sunnies and Shias killed and disfigured American servicemen
together,
The amusing thing is that American apologists for their country's military interventionism
like Art Deco more usually spend their time heaping all the blame on Iran and the Shia. As
well as internet opinionators, that incudes some of the most senior US military figures like
obsessively anti-Iranian SecDef James Mattis:
That's something that ought to seriously concern anyone with a rational view of world
affairs.
which caused Americans to elect Obama and run away from the country.
In fact the Americans had already admitted defeat and agreed to pull out before Obama took
office. Bush II signed the withdrawal agreement on 14th December 2008. After that, US forces
in Iraq were arguably no longer occupiers and were de jure as well as de facto present on the
sufferance of the Iraqi government. The US regime had clearly hoped to have an Iraqi
collaboration government for the long term, as a base from which to attack Iran, but the long
Iraqi sunni and shia resistances scuppered that idea. The sunnis had fought hard, but were
mostly defeated and many of them ended up collaborating with the US occupiers, as indeed had
much of the shia, for entirely understandable reasons in both cases.
Military occupations are morally complicated like that.
Were we defeated, Iraq would be ruled by the Ba'ath Party or networks of Sunni
tribesman. It is not. This isn't that difficult Randal.
Well this is an old chestnut that is really just an attempt to abuse definitions of
victory and defeat on your part.
The US invasion of Iraq itself was initially a military success. It ended in complete
military victory over the Iraqi regime and nation, the complete surrender of the Iraqi
military and the occupation of the country.
However, the US regime's wider war aims were not achieved because they were unable to
impose a collaboration government and use the country as a base for further projection of US
power in the ME (primarily against Iran, on behalf of Israel), and the overall result of the
war and the subsequent occupation was catastrophic for any honest assessment of American
national interests (as opposed to the interests of the lobbies manipulating US regime
policy). The costs were significant, the reputational damage was also significant, and the
overall result was to replace a contained and essentially broken opponent with vigorous sunni
jihadist forces together with a resurgent Iran unwilling to kowtow to the US as most ME
states are.
So the best honest assessment is that the US was defeated in Iraq, despite an initial
military victory.
The amusing thing is that American apologists for their country's military
interventionism like Art Deco more usually spend their time heaping all the blame on Iran
and the Shia. As well as internet opinionators, that incudes some of the most senior US
military figures like obsessively anti-Iranian SecDef James Mattis
I suspect the reason this happens is because ambitious American officers know that hating
Iran (hating enemies of Israel in general) is what gets you promoted. It wasn't an accident
that James Mattis was appointed Secretary of Defense -- he is Bill Kristol's favourite.
@Art
Deco US military is still butthurt over the Iran's support for Shia militias, targeting
US troops during Iraq occupation. Clearly, the Shias hurt them a lot, and it was very
unexpected for the US, because Americans actually brought Shias into power.
@Art
Deco Official justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist in 2003. Your statement that this was merely
one item "on the list of the concerns" Bush had, amounts to an admission that this was merely
a pretext and that the real object of the war was a political reordering of the region
according to US preferences (which of course backfired given that the Iraq war increased
Iran's power and status).
Calling me "Eurotrash" oh well, I get it, US nationalists like you think you're the
responsible adults dealing with a dangerous world, while ungrateful European pussies favor
appeasement, are free riders on US benevolent hegemony etc. I've heard and read all that a
thousand times before, it's all very unoriginal by now.
Official justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist in 2003.
It was one of many reasons. You don't set a guy on Death Row free just because one of the
charges didn't stick. The biggest reason was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, which should have
resulted in his removal from power. We settled on a truce because George HW Bush did not want
to pay the price, and the (mostly-Sunni) Arab coalition members did not want (1) a democracy
in Iraq and (2) a Shiite-dominated Iraq. Bush's son ended up footing the political bill for
that piece of unfinished business. The lesson is that you can delay paying the piper, but the
bill always comes due.
Bush's son ended up footing the political bill for that piece of unfinished
business.
No, Bush II chose to invade Iraq entirely voluntarily. There was no good reason to do so,
and the very good reasons why his father had sensibly chosen not to invade still largely
applied (even more so in some cases, given Iraq's even weaker state).
The lesson is that you can delay paying the piper, but the bill always comes due.
This is of course self-serving fantasy. The Russians told you there was no need to invade
Iraq. The Germans told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The French told you there was no
need to invade Iraq. The Turks told you there was no need to invade Iraq. The sensible
British told you there was no need to invade Iraq, but for some reason you preferred to
listen to the words of the staring-eyed sycophant who happened to be Prime Minister at the
time, instead.
More fool the Yanks. Most everyone else honest on the topic was giving you sensible
advice. Bush II (whose incompetence is now generally accepted) chose to ignore that advice,
and committed what is generally now regarded as the most egregious example of a foreign
policy blunder since Vietnam at least, and probably since Suez, and will likely be taught as
such around the world (including in the US, once the partisan apologists have given up trying
to rationalise it) for generations to come.
For the last four years, Iran was shipping weapons and ammunition to the Syrian Arab
Army (SAA) and Hezbollah through an air route. This method allowed Israel to identify,
track and target Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah easily, as only few cargo airplanes
land in Syrian airports every day.
However, now Israel will be incapable of identifying any Iranian shipment on the new
ground route, as it will be used by thousands of Iraq and Syrian companies on daily basis
in the upcoming months. Experts believe that this will give Hezbollah and the SAA a huge
advantage over Israel and will allow Iran to increase its supplies to its allies.
The sensible British were a co-operating force in invading Iraq.
That was the staring-eyed sycophant's work.
The man who opened the floodgates to immigration because he thought multiculturalism is a
great idea.
As for the rest, they all have their shticks and interests
Of course. Unlike the exceptional United States of course, the only country in the world
whose government never has any axe to grind in the nobility of purpose and intent it displays
in all the wars it has ever fought.
You seem to be degenerating into a caricature of the ignorant, arrogant American.
@Felix
Keverich Similarly, it doesn't seem likely that the US government will give up its
control and influence over the "independent media" that many Americans still think we have.
@Art
Deco Folks in Belarus shouldn't make up their minds about applying to the EU until they
speak with regular German, French, English, and Swedish people about the effects of the
Islamic / Third World immivasion that the EU has imposed on them. My wife and I speak &
correspond with Germans living in Germany frequently, and the real state of affairs for
non-elite Germans is getting worse fast, with no good end in sight.
Anyone who does not desire to die or at best live subjugated under sharia -- and sharia
run largely by cruel dimwits from Africa and Arabia -- ought to stay out (or GET out of) the
EU.
Well history has proven them to have been correct and the US regime wrong on Iraq, so
that pretty much tells you how far your arrogance will get you outside your own echo
chamber.
"History" has proven no such thing. What went wrong in Iraq was principally Bush's
underestimate of the number of American casualties and the cost to the US treasury*, for
which he and the GOP paid a serious political price. However, it's also clear that the
Shiites and Kurds, an 80% majority, have no regrets that Saddam is gone. While both
communities seem to think that we should continue to bear a bigger chunk of the price of
pacifying Iraq's bellicose Sunni Arabs, it's also obvious that they are not electing Tikritis
or even Sunni Arabs to office, as they would if they were nostalgic for Saddam's rule. The
big picture, really, is that the scale of the fighting has probably convinced both Shiites
and Kurds that they could not have toppled Saddam without the assistance of Uncle Sam. They
could certainly not have kept Iraq's revived Sunni Arabs (in the form of ISIS) at bay without
American assistance.
* These costs were larger than projected, but small compared to the Korean and Vietnam
Wars. Whether or not Iraq can be secured as an American ally in the decades ahead, both the
gamble and the relatively nugatory price paid will, in retrospect, be seen as a reasonable
one, given Iraq's strategic location.
What went wrong in Iraq was principally Bush's underestimate of the number of American
casualties and the cost to the US treasury
No, what went wrong in Iraq from the pov of any kind of honest assessment of an American
national interest was that an unnecessary war was fought justified by lies that have
seriously discredited the nation that told them, and that the results of the war were hugely
counter to said American national interests: the conversion of a contained and broken former
enemy state into a jihadist free fire training and recruitment zone combined with a strong
ally of a supposed enemy state, Iran.
Whether the direct material cost of the war is acceptable or not is rather beside the
point. It's a matter between Bush II and the parents, relatives and friends of those
Americans who lost their lives or their health, and between Bush II and American taxpayers.
If it had been achieved cost-free it still wouldn't have been worth it, because it was a
defeat.
But it's no accident that the costs of the war were "underestimated". As usual, if the
Bush II regime had been honest about the likely costs of their proposed war, there would have
been a political outcry against it and they'd have been forced to back down as Obama was over
Syria.
However, it's also clear that the Shiites and Kurds, an 80% majority, have no regrets
that Saddam is gone
Amusing to see you are currently pretending that what Iraqi Kurds and Shiites feel
matters. It's always entertaining to see just how shameless Americans can be at their game of
alternately pretending to care for foreigners' views (when they need to justify a war) and
regarding foreigners with utter contempt and disregard (when said foreigners are saying
something Americans don't like to hear).
They could certainly not have kept Iraq's revived Sunni Arabs (in the form of ISIS) at
bay without American assistance.
Well that partly depends upon how much support the US regime allowed its Gulf sunni Arab
proxies to funnel to said jihadists, I suppose. But most likely they'd have crushed them in
due course with Iranian backing.
In Iraq, IS were fine as long as they stayed out of the strongly Shiite areas in the
south. They'd have quickly been whipped if they'd ventured there. Just as IS were fine in
Syria as long as they were taking relatively remote land over from a government and army in
desperate straits as a result of a disastrous externally funded civil war, but were soon
beaten when the Russians stepped in and started actually fighting them rather than pretending
to do so only as long as it didn't interfere too much with their real goal of overthrowing
the Syria government, American-style.
@German_reader
I see that Art Deco got more active than usual. Seems that the destruction of Iraq is close
to his heart. Several days ago Ron Unz had this to say about him:
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/time-to-stop-importing-an-immigrant-overclass/#comment-2116171
Exactly! It's pretty obvious that this "Art Deco" fellow is just a Jewish-activist type,
and given his very extensive posting history, perhaps even an organized "troll." But he's
certainly one of the most sophisticated ones, with the vast majority of his comments being
level-headed, moderate, and very well-informed, generally focusing on all sorts of other
topics, perhaps with the deliberate intent of building up his personal credibility for the
periodic Jewish matters that actually so agitate him.
To which I added:
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/time-to-stop-importing-an-immigrant-overclass/#comment-2116402
The quality and wide range of his comments are really impressive. As if it was coming form
a super intelligent AI Hal that has access to all kinds of databases at his finger tips.
And then there is always the same gradient of his angle: the reality is as it is; reality
is as you have been told so far; do not try to keep coming with weird theories and
speculations because they are all false; there is nothing interesting to see. His quality
and scope are not congruent with his angle. All his knowledge and all his data and he
hasn't found anything interesting that would not conform to what we all read in newspapers.
Amazing. If America had its High Office of Doctrine and Faith he could have been its
supreme director.
His overactivity here is somewhat out of character and after reading his comments here I
doubt that Ron Unz would call him "one of the most sophisticated ones." I also would take
back the "really impressive" part too. Perhaps some other individuum was assigned to
Art Deco handle this Monday.
Speaking of US foreign policy stupidity and arrogance, the response to the latest evidence
that Trump will continue the inglorious Clinton/Bush II/Obama tradition of destructive
corrupt/incompetent buffoonery:
And here's the profoundly noxious Nikki Haley "lying for her country" (except, bizarrely,
it isn't even really for her own country). Her appointment by Trump certainly was one of the
first signs that he was going to seriously let America down:
The resolution was denounced in furious language by the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki
Haley, who described it as "an insult" that would not be forgotten. "The United States will
not be told by any country where we can put our embassy," she said.
"It's scandalous to say we are putting back peace efforts," she added. "The fact that
this veto is being done in defence of American sovereignty and in defence of America's role
in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should be an
embarrassment to the remainder of the security council."
The real nature of the UN resolution the execrable Haley was so faux-offended by:
The UK and France had indicated in advance that they would would back the text, which
demanded that all countries comply with pre-existing UNSC resolutions on Jerusalem, dating
back to 1967, including requirements that the city's final status be decided in direct
negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
But requiring Israel and its US poodles to act in good faith is surely anti-Semitic, after
all. The real beneficiary (he thinks, at least) of Trump's and Haley's buffoonery was
suitably condescending in his patting of his poodles' heads:
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted: "Thank you, Ambassador Haley.
On Hanukkah, you spoke like a Maccabi. You lit a candle of truth. You dispel the darkness.
One defeated the many. Truth defeated lies. Thank you, President Trump."
@utu Art
Deco isn't Jewish iirc, but an (Irish?) Catholic from the northeastern US. And I suppose his
views aren't even that extreme, but pretty much standard among many US right-wingers (a
serious problem imo), so it makes little sense to attack him personally.
@German_readerOfficial justification for the Iraq war was concern about Iraq's supposedly hidden
weapons
The fact that Iraq had no WMD was actually critical to making the claims that it had them.
If Iraq had them it would officially relinquish them which would take away the ostensive
cause for the invasion.
I am really amazed that now 14 years after the invasion there are some who still argue
about the WMD. Iraq was to be destroyed because this was the plan. The plan to reorganize the
ME that consisted of destruction of secular and semi-secure states like Iraq and Syria. The
WDM was just an excuse that nobody really argued for or against in good faith including Brits
or Germans or Turks. Everybody knew the writing on the wall.
@German_readerit makes little sense to attack him personally
Yes, personal attacks are counterproductive but I can't resit, I just can't help it, so I
must to say what I said already several times in the past: you are a cuck. You are a hopeless
case.
The plan to reorganize the ME that consisted of destruction of secular and
semi-secure states like Iraq and Syria.
Has to be admitted though that Iraq became increasingly less secular during the 1990s,
with Saddam's regime pushing Islamization as a new source of legitimacy. It's probably no
accident that former Baath people and officers of Saddam's army were prominent among the
leadership of IS.
Still hardly sufficient reason for the Iraq war though.
@utu
With all due respect to you and Ron Unz, but the idea that someone like "Art Deco" is an
"organized troll" who creates an elaborate fake persona (which he then maintains over
multiple years on several different websites -- I first encountered him years ago on the
American conservative's site) to spread pro-Jewish views seems somewhat paranoid to me.
I have no reason to doubt he's genuine (as far as that's possible on the internet), his views
aren't unusual.
@German_reader
Agree with everything you just wrote. And please understand, I love the Germans and I'm angry
at them in the way that you'd be angry at a brother who refuses to stop destroying himself
with drugs or whatever.
@German_readerStill hardly sufficient reason for the Iraq war though.
What do you mean by that? Are you so out of touch? You really do not understand what was
the reason behind Iraq 2003 war and then fucking it up when Gen. Garner was recalled and
replaced with Paul Bremer who drove Iraq to the ground? Repeat after me: Iraq was destroyed
because this was the only objective of 2003 Iraq war. The mission was accomplished 100%.
@Art
Deco I respectfully disagree with you about the Iraq war (one of the few areas on which I
disagree with you).
I suppose had the West made a massive investment in Iraq, secured its Christian
population, loaded it with US troops, and did to it what was done to Japan, over several
decades, transforming it into a prosperous democratic US ally, removing Saddam (who deserves
no sympathy) might have been a nice thing. It would have been a massive financial drain but
having a "Japan", other than Israel, in the heart of the Middle East might have been worth it
(I am not a Middle East expert but it seems the Shah's Persia was sort of being groomed for
such a role).
Instead, it ended up being a disaster -- 100,000s dead in sectarian massacres, Christian
population nearly destroyed, and other than Kurdish areas, an ally either of Iran or of
militant anti-American Sunnis. At the cost, to the USA, of dead Americans, lots of money, and
loss of soft power. I also suspect that America being stuck and preoccupied in Middle East
conflicts gave room for Russia to act. I guess its a tribute to how strong America is, that
it is still doing pretty well in spite of the debacle. A lesser power such as the USSR would
have been sunk.
That's rght, and it happens to the whole world too including those countries destroyed by US
and under its sanction. The bombastic propaganda MSM fake news and Hollywood have brainwashed
all to harbour delusion that US is a perfect heaven paved with gold, honey and milk, people
of high morality and freedom. Wait till they live there to find out reality of DemoNcracy
made in USA.
"... Freedom Watch lawyer Larry Klayman has a whistle-blower who has stated on the record, publicly, he has 47 hard drives with over 600,000,00 pages of secret CIA documents that detail all the domestic spying operations, and likely much much more. ..."
"... The rabbit hole goes very deep here. Attorney Klayman has stated he has been trying to out this for 2 years, and was stonewalled by swamp creatures, so he threatened to go public this week. Several very interesting videos, and a public letter, are out there, detailing all this. Nunes very likely saw his own conversations transcripted from surveillance taken at Trump Tower (he was part of the transition team), and realized the jig was up. Melania has moved out of Trump Tower to stay elsewhere, I am sure after finding out that many people in Washington where watching them at home in their private residence, whichi is also why Pres Trump sent out those famous angry tweets 2 weeks ago. Democrats on the Committee (and many others) are liars, and very possibly traitors, which is probably why Nunes neglected to inform them. Nunes did follow proper procedures, notifying Ryan first etc, you can ignore the MSM bluster there ..observe Nunes body language in the 2 videos of his dual press briefings he gave today, he appears shocked, angry, disturbed etc. ..."
"... This all stems from Obama's Jan 16 signing of the order broadening "co-operation" between the NSA and everybody else in Washington, so that mid-level analysts at almost any agency could now look at raw NSA intercepts, that is where all the "leaks" and "unmasking" are coming from. ..."
"... AG Lynch, Obama, and countless others knew, or should have known, all about this, but I am sure they will play the usual "I was too stupid too know what was going on in my own organization" card. ..."
So I see where Nunes in a ZeroHedge posting says that there might have been "incidental surveillance" of "Trump" (?Trump associates?
?Trump tower? ?Trump campaign?)
Now to the average NC reader, it kinda goes without saying. But I don't think Trump understands the scope of US government "surveillance"
and I don't think the average citizen, certainly not the average Trump supporter, does either – the nuances and subtleties of
it – the supposed "safeguards".
I can understand the rationale for it .but this goes to show that when you give people an opportunity to use secret information
for their own purposes .they will use secret information for their own purposes.
And at some point, the fact of the matter that the law regarding the "incidental" leaking appears to have been broken, and
that this leaking IMHO was purposefully broken for political purposes .is going to come to the fore. Like bringing up "fake news"
– some of these people on the anti Trump side seem not just incapable of playing 11th dimensional chess, they seem incapable of
winning tic tac toe .
Was Obama behind it? I doubt it and I don't think it would be provable. But it seems like the intelligence agencies are spending
more time monitoring repubs than Al queda. Now maybe repubs are worse than Al queda – I think its time we have a real debate instead
of the pseudo debates and start asking how useful the CIA is REALLY. (and we can ask how useful repubs and dems are too)
If Obama taped the information, stuffed the tape in one of Michelle's shoeboxes, then hid the shoebox in the Whitehouse basement,
he could be in trouble. Ivanka is sure to search any shoeboxes she finds.
Oh the Trump supporters are all over this, don't worry. There are many more levels to what is going on than what is reported
in the fakenews MSM.
Adm Roger of NSA made his November visit to Trump Tower, after a SCIF was installed there, to .be interviewed for a job uh-huh
yeah.
Freedom Watch lawyer Larry Klayman has a whistle-blower who has stated on the record, publicly, he has 47 hard drives with
over 600,000,00 pages of secret CIA documents that detail all the domestic spying operations, and likely much much more.
The rabbit hole goes very deep here. Attorney Klayman has stated he has been trying to out this for 2 years, and was stonewalled
by swamp creatures, so he threatened to go public this week. Several very interesting videos, and a public letter, are out there,
detailing all this. Nunes very likely saw his own conversations transcripted from surveillance taken at Trump Tower (he was part
of the transition team), and realized the jig was up. Melania has moved out of Trump Tower to stay elsewhere, I am sure after
finding out that many people in Washington where watching them at home in their private residence, whichi is also why Pres Trump
sent out those famous angry tweets 2 weeks ago. Democrats on the Committee (and many others) are liars, and very possibly traitors,
which is probably why Nunes neglected to inform them. Nunes did follow proper procedures, notifying Ryan first etc, you can ignore
the MSM bluster there ..observe Nunes body language in the 2 videos of his dual press briefings he gave today, he appears shocked,
angry, disturbed etc.
You all should be happy, because although Pres Trump has been vindicated here on all counts, the more important story for you
is that the old line Democratic Party looks about to sink under the wieght of thier own lies and illegalities. This all stems
from Obama's Jan 16 signing of the order broadening "co-operation" between the NSA and everybody else in Washington, so that mid-level
analysts at almost any agency could now look at raw NSA intercepts, that is where all the "leaks" and "unmasking" are coming from.
AG Lynch, Obama, and countless others knew, or should have known, all about this, but I am sure they will play the usual
"I was too stupid too know what was going on in my own organization" card.
Nineteenth-century empires were often led on from one war to another as a result
of developments which imperial governments did not plan and domestic populations did
not desire. In part this was the result of plotting by individual 'prancing
proconsuls', convinced they could gain a reputation at small risk, given the
superiority of their armies to any conceivable opposition; but it was also the result
of factors inherent in the imperial process.
The difference today is that overwhelming military advantage is possessed not by a
set of competing Western states, but by one state alone. Other countries may
possess elements of the technology, and many states are more warlike than America;
but none possesses anything like the ability of the US to integrate these elements
(including Intelligence) into an effective whole, and to combine them with weight
of firepower, capacity to transport forces over long distances and national
bellicosity. The most important question now facing the world is the use the Bush
Administration will make of its military dominance, especially in the Middle East.
The next question is when and in what form resistance to US domination over the
Middle East will arise. That there will be resistance is certain. It would be
contrary to every historical precedent to believe that such a quasi-imperial
hegemony will not stir up resentment, which sooner or later is bound to find an
effective means of expression.
US domination over the Middle East will, for the
most part, be exercised indirectly, and will provoke less grievance than direct
administration would, but one likely cause of trouble is the 'proletarian
colonisation' of Israel – the Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.
Given past experience and the indications now coming from Israel, there is little
reason to hope for any fundamental change in Israeli policies. Sharon may
eventually withdraw a few settlements – allowing the US Administration and the
Israeli lobby to present this as a major concession and sacrifice – but
unless
there is a tremendous upheaval in both Israeli and US domestic politics, he and
his successors are unlikely to offer the Palestinians anything more than tightly
controlled bantustans.
Palestinian terrorism, Israeli repression and wider Arab and Muslim
resentment seem likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
How long it will be before serious resistance grows is hard to tell. In some
19th-century cases, notably Afghanistan, imperial rule never consolidated itself
and was overthrown almost immediately by new revolts. In others, it lasted for
decades without involving too much direct repression, and ended only after
tremendous social, economic, political and cultural changes had taken place not
only in the colonies and dependencies but in the Western imperial countries
themselves. Any attempt to predict the future of the Middle East must recognise
that
the new era which began on 11 September 2001 has not only brought into
the open certain latent pathologies in American and British society, culture and
politics; it has also fully revealed the complete absence of democratic
modernisation, or indeed any modernisation, in all too much of the Muslim world.
The fascination and the horror of the present time is that so many different
and potentially disastrous possibilities suggest themselves. The immediate issue
is whether the US will attack any other state. Or, to put the question another
way: will the US move from hegemony to empire in the Middle East? And if it does,
will it continue to march from victory to victory, or will it suffer defeats which
will sour American public support for the entire enterprise?
For Britain, the most important question is whether Tony Blair, in his capacity
as a senior adviser to President Bush, can help to stop US moves in this direction
and, if he fails, whether
Britain is prepared to play the only role it is
likely to be offered in a US empire: that fulfilled by Nepal in the British Empire
– a loyal provider of brave soldiers with special military skills.
Will the
British accept a situation in which their chief international function is to
provide auxiliary cohorts to accompany the Roman legions of the US, with the added
disadvantage that British cities, so far from being protected in return by the
empire, will be exposed to destruction by 'barbarian' counter-attacks?
As is clear from their public comments, let alone their private
conversations, the Neo-Conservatives in America and their allies in Israel would
indeed like to see a long-term imperial war against any part of the Muslim world
which defies the US and Israel, with ideological justification provided by the
American
mission civilisatrice
– 'democratisation'.
In the words of
the Israeli Major-General Ya'akov Amidror, writing in April under the auspices of
the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, 'Iraq is not the ultimate goal. The
ultimate goal is the Middle East, the Arab world and the Muslim world. Iraq will
be the first step in this direction; winning the war against terrorism means
structurally changing the entire area.'
The Neo-Con model is the struggle
against 'Communism', which they are convinced was won by the Reaganite conflation
of military toughness and ideological crusading. The ultimate goal here would be
world hegemony by means of absolute military superiority.
The Neo-Cons may be deluding themselves, however. It may well be that, as many
US officials say in private, Bush's new national security strategy is 'a doctrine
for one case only' – namely Iraq. Those who take this position can point to the
unwillingness of most Americans to see themselves in imperial terms, coupled with
their powerful aversion to foreign entanglements, commitments and sacrifices. The
Bush Administration may have made menacing statements about Syria, but it has also
assured the American people that the US military occupation of Iraq will last 18
months at the very most. Furthermore, if the economy continues to falter, it is
still possible that Bush will be ejected from office in next year's elections.
Should this happen, some of the US's imperial tendencies will no doubt remain in
place – scholars as different as Andrew Bacevich and Walter Russell Mead have
stressed the continuity in this regard from Bush through Clinton to Bush, and
indeed throughout US history. However, without the specific configuration of
hardline elements empowered by the Bush Administration, American ambitions would
probably take on a less megalomaniac and frightening aspect.
In this analysis, both the grotesque public optimism of the Neo-Con
rhetoric about democratisation and its exaggeration of threats to the US stem from
the fact that it takes a lot to stir ordinary Americans out of their customary
apathy with regard to international affairs. While it is true that an element of
democratic messianism is built into what Samuel Huntington and others have called
'the American Creed', it is also the case that many Americans have a deep
scepticism – healthy or chauvinist according to taste – about the ability of other
countries to develop their own forms of democracy.
In the case of Iraq, this scepticism has been increased by the scenes of
looting and disorder. In addition, there have been well-publicised harbingers both
of incipient ethnic conflict and of strong mass opposition to a long-term US
military presence and a US-chosen Iraqi Government. Even the
Washington Post
,
which was one of the cheerleaders for this war in the 'serious' American press,
and which has not been too anxious to publicise Iraqi civilian casualties, has
reported frankly on the opposition to US plans for Iraq among the country's Shia
population in particular.
Even if most Americans and a majority of the Administration want to move to
indirect control over Iraq, the US may well find that it has no choice but to
exercise direct rule. Indeed, even those who hated the war may find themselves
morally trapped into supporting direct rule if the alternative appears to be a
collapse into anarchy, immiseration and ethnic conflict. There is a tremendous
difference in this regard between Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the mass
of the population has been accustomed to fend for itself with very little help
from the state, very little modern infrastructure and for that matter very little
formal employment. In these circumstances, it was possible for the US to install a
ramshackle pretence of a coalition government in Kabul, with a tenuous truce
between its elements held in place by an international peacekeeping force backed
by US firepower. The rest of the country could be left in the hands of warlords,
clans and ethnic militias, as long as they made their territories open hunting
ranges for US troops in their search for al-Qaida. The US forces launch these
raids from airbases and heavily fortified, isolated camps in which most soldiers
are kept rigidly separated from Afghans.
Doubtless many US planners would be delighted to dominate Iraq in the same
semi-detached way, but Iraq is a far more modern society than Afghanistan, and
much more heavily urbanised: without elements of modern infrastructure and
services and a state to guarantee them, living standards there will not recover.
Iraq needs a state; but for a whole set of reasons, it will find the creation of a
workable democratic state extremely difficult. The destruction of the Baath regime
has involved the destruction of the Sunni Arab military dominance on which the
Iraqi state has depended since its creation by the British. Neither the US nor
anyone else has any clear idea of what to put in its place (if one ignores the
fatuous plan of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to install Ahmad Chalabi as an American
puppet and Iraqi strongman). Equally important, the US will not allow the creation
of a truly independent state. Ultimately, it may well see itself as having no
choice but to create the state itself and remain deeply involved not just in
supporting it but in running it, as the British did in Egypt for some sixty years.
Very often – perhaps most of the time – the old imperial powers preferred to
exercise control indirectly, through client states. This was far cheaper, far
easier to justify domestically and ran far less chance of provoking native revolt.
The problem was that the very act of turning a country into a client tended to
cripple the domestic prestige of the client regime, and to place such economic,
political and moral pressures on it that it was liable to collapse. The imperial
power then had the choice of either pulling out (and allowing the area to fall
into the hands of enemies) or stepping in and imposing direct control. This
phenomenon can be seen from Awadh and Punjab in the 1840s to the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan in 1989.
Of course, the threat to imperial client states did not come only from
within their own borders. In a world where ethnic, clan, religious and personal
loyalties spilled across national boundaries, a power that seized one territory
was likely to find itself inexorably drawn to conquering its neighbours. There
were always military, commercial or missionary interests to agitate for this
expansion, often backed by exiled opposition groups ready to stress that the mass
of the population would rejoice in an imperial invasion to bring them to power.
Whatever the Neo-Cons and the Israeli Government may wish, there is I believe
no fixed intention on the part of the US Administration to attack either Syria or
Iran, let alone Saudi Arabia. What it had in mind was that an easy and crushing US
victory over Iraq would so terrify other Muslim states that they would give up any
support for terrorist groups, collaborate fully in cracking down on terrorists and
Islamist radicals, and abandon their own plans to develop weapons of mass
destruction, thereby making it unnecessary for the US to attack them. This applied
not only to perceived enemies such as Syria, Iran and Libya, but to Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, Yemen and other states seen as unreliable allies in the 'war against
terrorism'. If the US restricts itself to this strategy and this goal, it may
enjoy success – for a while at least. Several states in the region are clearly
running very scared. Moreover, every single state in the region – including Iran –
feels under threat from the forces of Sunni Islamist revolution as represented by
al-Qaida and its ideological allies; so there is a genuine common interest in
combating them.
But for this strategy to work across such a wide range of states and societies
as those of the Muslim world, US policymakers would have to display considerable
sensitivity and discrimination. These are virtues not usually associated with the
Bush Administration, least of all in its present triumphalist mood. The policy is
in any case not without its dangers. What happens if the various pressures put on
the client regimes cause them to collapse? And what happens if an enemy calls
America's bluff, and challenges it to invade? It is all too easy to see how a new
US offensive could result. Another major terrorist attack on the US could upset
all equations and incite another wave of mass hysteria that would make anything
possible. If, for example, it were once again perceived to have been financed and
staffed by Saudis, the pressure for an attack on Saudi Arabia could become
overwhelming. The Iranian case is even trickier. According to informed European
sources, the Iranians may be within two years of developing a nuclear deterrent
(it's even possible that successful pressure on Russia to cut off nuclear trade
would not make any crucial difference). Israel in particular is determined to
forestall Iranian nuclear capability, and Israeli commentators have made it clear
that Israel will take unilateral military action if necessary. If the US and
Israeli Governments are indeed determined to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,
they may not have much time.
The second factor is the behaviour of the Shias of Iraq, and especially of
Iranian-backed factions. Leading Shia groups have boycotted the initial
discussions on forming a government. If they maintain this position, and if the US
fails to create even the appearance of a viable Iraqi government, with disorder
spreading in consequence, Iran will be blamed, rightly or not, by powerful
elements in Washington. They will use it as an additional reason to strike against
Iranian nuclear sites. In response, Tehran might well promote not only a further
destabilisation of Iraq but a terrorist campaign against the US, which would in
turn provoke more US retaliations until a full-scale war became a real
possibility.
Although the idea of an American invasion of Iran is viewed with horror by
most military analysts (and, as far as I can gather, by the uniformed military),
the latest polls suggest that around 50 per cent of Americans are already prepared
to support a war to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the
voices of moderation among the military tend to be the same ones which warned – as
I did – of the possibility of stiff Iraqi resistance to a US invasion and the
dangers of urban warfare in Baghdad, opposed Rumsfeld's plans to invade with
limited numbers of relatively lightly armed troops and felt vindicated in their
concern by the initial setbacks around Nasiriya and elsewhere. The aftermath has
shown Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld to have been correct in their purely military
calculations about Iraq, and this will undoubtedly strengthen them in future
clashes with the uniformed military. Rumsfeld's whole strategy of relying on
lighter, more easily transportable forces is, of course, precisely designed to
make such imperial expeditions easier.
As for the majority of Americans, well, they have already been duped once, by a
propaganda programme which for systematic mendacity has few parallels in peacetime
democracies: by the end of it, between 42 and 56 per cent of Americans (the polls
vary) were convinced that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the attacks of
11 September. This gave the run-up to the war a peculiarly nightmarish quality in
the US. It was as if the full truth about Tonkin Gulf, instead of emerging in
dribs and drabs over a decade, had been fully available and in the open the whole
time – and the US intervention in Vietnam had happened anyway.
While the special place of Saddam Hussein in American demonology means that
this wouldn't be an easy trick to repeat, the American public's ignorance of
international affairs in general and the Muslim world in particular make it by no
means impossible. It isn't just Fox TV: numerous even more rabid media outlets,
the Christian Coalition and parts of the Israeli lobby are all dedicated to
whipping up hatred of Arabs and Muslims. More important is the fact that most
Americans accept Bush's equation of terrorism and 'evil', which makes it extremely
difficult to conduct any serious public discussion of threats from the Muslim
world in terms which would be acceptable or even comprehensible to a mass American
audience. Add to this the severe constraints on the discussion of the role of
Israel, and you have a state of public debate close to that described by Marcuse.
If America suffered another massive terrorist attack in the coming years, the
dangers would be incomparably greater.
If the plans of the Neo-Cons depended on mass support for imperialism
within the US, they would be doomed to failure. The attacks of 11 September,
however, have given American imperialists the added force of wounded nationalism –
a much deeper, more popular and more dangerous phenomenon, strengthened by the
Israeli nationalism of much of the American Jewish community. Another attack on
the American mainland would further inflame that nationalism, and strengthen
support for even more aggressive and ambitious 'retaliations'.
The terrorists
may hope that they will exhaust Americans' will to fight, as the Vietcong did; if
so, they may have underestimated both the tenacity and the ferocity of Americans
when they feel themselves to have been directly attacked. The capacity for
ruthlessness of the nationalist or Jacksonian element in the American democratic
tradition – as in the firebombing of Japan and North Korea, neither of which had
targeted American civilians – has been noted by Walter Russell Mead, and was
recently expressed by MacGregor Knox, an American ex-soldier, now a professor at
the LSE: Europeans 'may believe that the natural order of things as they perceive
it – the restraint of American power through European wisdom – will sooner or
later triumph. But such expectations are delusional. Those who find militant Islam
terrifying have clearly never seen a militant democracy.'
America could certainly be worn out by a protracted guerrilla struggle on
the scale of Vietnam. It seems unlikely, however, that a similar struggle could be
mounted in the Middle East – unless the US were to invade Iran, at which point all
bets and predictions would be off. Another terrorist attack on the US mainland,
using some form of weapons of mass destruction, far from demoralising the US
population would probably whip it into chauvinist fury.
To understand why successful guerrilla warfare against the US is unlikely
(quite apart from the fact that there are no jungles in the Middle East), it is
necessary to remember that the imperial domination made possible by 19th-century
Western military superiority was eventually destroyed by three factors: first, the
development of military technology (notably such weapons as the automatic rifle,
the grenade and modern explosives) which considerably narrowed the odds between
Western armies and 'native' insurgents. Second, the development of modern
ideologies of resistance – Communist, nationalist or a combination of the two –
which in turn produced the cadres and structures to organise resistance. Third,
weariness on the part of 'metropolitan' populations and elites, stemming partly
from social and cultural change, and partly from a growing awareness that direct
empire did not pay economically.
Guerrilla warfare against the US is now a good deal more difficult because
of two undramatic but immensely important innovations: superbly effective and
light bullet-proof vests and helmets which make the US and British soldier almost
as well protected as the medieval knight; and night-vision equipment which denies
the guerrilla the aid of his oldest friend and ally, darkness. Both of these
advantages can be countered, but it will be a long time before the odds are
narrowed again. Of course, local allies of the US can be targeted, but their
deaths are hardly noticed by US public opinion. More and more, therefore,
'asymmetric warfare' will encourage a move to terrorism.
The absence or failure of revolutionary parties led by cadres working for mass
mobilisation confirms this. The Islamists may alter this situation, despite the
disillusioning fate of the Iranian Revolution. But as far as the nationalists are
concerned, it has been tried in the past, and while it succeeded in expelling the
colonialists and their local clients, it failed miserably to produce modernised
states. Algeria is a clear example: a hideously savage but also heroic rebellion
against a particularly revolting form of colonialism – which eventually led to
such an utterly rotten and unsuccessful independent state that much of the
population eventually turned to Islamic revolution.
And now this, too, is discredited, above all in the one major country where it
succeeded, Iran. Arab states have failed to develop economically, politically and
socially, and they have also failed properly to unite. When they have united for
the purposes of war, they have been defeated. Rebellion against the US may take
place in Iraq. Elsewhere, the mass response to the latest Arab defeat seems more
likely to be a further wave of despair, disillusionment and retreat into private
life – an 'internal emigration'. In some fortunate cases, this may lead to a new
Islamist politics focused on genuine reform and democratic development – along the
lines of the changes in Turkey. But a cynicism which only feeds corruption and
oppression is just as likely a result.
Even if despair and apathy turn out to be the responses of the Arab majority,
there will also be a minority which is too proud, too radical, too fanatical or
too embittered – take your pick – for such a course. They are the natural recruits
for terrorism, and it seems likely that their numbers will only have been
increased by the latest American victory. We must fear both the strengthening of
Islamist terrorism and the reappearance of secular nationalist terrorism, not only
among Palestinians but among Arabs in general. The danger is not so much that the
Bush Administration will consciously adopt the whole Neo-Con imperialist programme
as that the Neo-Cons and their allies will contribute to tendencies stemming
inexorably from the US occupation of Iraq and that the result will be a vicious
circle of terrorism and war. If this proves to be the case, then the damage
inflicted over time by the US on the Muslim world and by Muslims on the US and its
allies is likely to be horrendous. We have already shown that we can destroy
Muslim states. Even the most ferocious terrorist attacks will not do that to
Western states; but if continued over decades, they stand a good chance of
destroying democracy in America and any state associated with it.
"... Here you had Obama's people using the NSA to spy on his adversaries, and apparently include the CIA, the FBI, and members of the Department of Justice in that loop, in a manner that was not approved of by any court, that was not approved by even a FISA court – the special court that monitors certain kinds of surveillance," he said. ..."
"... "Just because a conversation involves a foreign official doesn't allow you to illegally tape it, illegally monitor it, or illegally record it when a U.S. citizen is on there, particularly when it's your political adversary," Barnes explained. ..."
"Yes, there is," Barnes replied. "In fact, it's one of the directions that a future
investigation can take. A future investigation doesn't have to focus on whatever it is the
Democrats or liberals want. It can focus on the illegal leaks that took place."
"As I mentioned the other day to a liberal lawyer friend of mine, the worst thing ever
accused concerning Nixon was about using private resources to try to illegally spy on people.
Here you had Obama's people using the NSA to spy on his adversaries, and apparently include
the CIA, the FBI, and members of the Department of Justice in that loop, in a manner that was
not approved of by any court, that was not approved by even a FISA court – the special
court that monitors certain kinds of surveillance," he said.
"Just because a conversation involves a foreign official doesn't allow you to illegally
tape it, illegally monitor it, or illegally record it when a U.S. citizen is on there,
particularly when it's your political adversary," Barnes explained.
"I'm sure the liberals would go nuts if Trump tomorrow started listening in on every
conversation Obama had with anybody that's foreign, or that Bill Clinton had with anybody
that's foreign, or that Hillary Clinton had with anybody that's foreign. So it's a dangerous,
precarious path that Obama has opened up, and hopefully there is a full investigation into that
activity," he said.
"You clearly also have lots of illegal leaks going on, particularly as it related to the
recent Yemen issue involving the widow of the Navy SEAL who passed way, that became a big issue
at the State of the Union. There you had people reporting that no intelligence was gathered.
Well, that's an illegal leak. It turns out that they're wrong, they were lying about
what intelligence developed or the fact that intelligence did develop, but they
shouldn't have been out there saying anything like that," he noted.
"There are people willing to leak the most sensitive national security secrets about any
particular matter, solely to have a one-day political hit story on Trump. These are people who
are violating their oath, and violating the law. Hopefully there is ultimately criminal
punishment," Barnes urged.
"This is far worse than the Plame matter that got all that attention, that got a special
prosecutor in W's reign. This is far, far worse than any of that. This is putting national
security at risk. This is an effective de facto coup attempt by elements of the deep state. So
hopefully there's a meaningful investigation and a meaningful prosecution of these people who
have engaged in reckless criminal acts for their personal political partisan purposes," he
said.
"... Scared and panicking Evelyn Farkas spilled the beans. By saying "I became very worried..." she's obviously trying to justify her behavior in case a legal bomb is dropped on her. This is a side effect of Nunes' dramatized little trip to the White House intelligence secure facilities: as long as they don't know Nunes and Trump's hands, panic will bring more people to come forward and look for some kind of justification and/or protection. ..."
Obama and Clinton thought they had the election in the bag. They broke surveillance laws thinking that Clinton would be in
the Whitehouse to cover it anyway. Imagine their shock on election day when they realized how many felonies would be exposed when
Trump took over.........cover-up.
Look at her face at 2:06 ... Scared and panicking
Evelyn Farkas spilled the beans. By saying "I became very worried..." she's obviously trying to justify her behavior in case a
legal bomb is dropped on her. This is a side effect of Nunes' dramatized little trip to the White House intelligence secure facilities:
as long as they don't know Nunes and Trump's hands, panic will bring more people to come forward and look for some kind of justification
and/or protection.
"... Morell is "priming" the public, cushioning the landing as it were, for the eventual revelation that the Russian collusion narrative has been entirely fabricated. ..."
"... He's not doing it out of the goodness of his heart, but in an attempt to minimize the intelligence community's inevitable, and i might add deserved, loss of credibility over the fiasco. ..."
"... That guy wanted to "kill Russians" and "kill Iranians". He's not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination. ..."
Former CIA Director Michael Morell said in an interview that he thought if there was
evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller
would have found it already and that the evidence would've been leaked by now. RT America's
Anya Parampil has more.
Morell is "priming" the public, cushioning the landing as it were, for the eventual
revelation that the Russian collusion narrative has been entirely fabricated.
He's not doing it out of the goodness of his heart, but in an attempt to minimize the
intelligence community's inevitable, and i might add deserved, loss of credibility over the
fiasco.
What boggles the mind is there are 3 or 4 solid ways to go after Trump that don't involve
Russia, but the media doesn't seem to be interested in those.
That is because a) it doesn't exonerate the DNC over it's shitty performance in 2016, and
b) it doesn't push the new cold war (which in turn boosts arms sales, and gives the elite a
way to terrify and therefore control the populace). They thought it was going to work, but
it's becoming increasingly apparent that the Nothingburger is about to be exposed for what it
is.
American politics is a clown show and it's actually embarrassing to watch, the world is
laughing at America because it's like a badly written soap opera live on TV.
Michael Morell is a psychopath and the kind of guy who'd usually be pushing the Russia
narrative. If he is saying this - well that's a mind blowing death blow to the big lie.
Amazing. For once in his pathetic life he actually makes a correct analysis. Fuck
me.
CIA INFILTRATED TOP LEVEL OFFICIALS OF THE FBI. CIA MUST BE BLOWN TO PIECES LIKE PRESIDENT
KENNEDY SAID. IF THE CIA WOULD STICK TO THEIR JOB DESCRIPTION, THE UNITED STATES WOULD NOT BE
IN THE MESS IT IS IN NOW.
Morell didn't think through the implications of his actions! If that's the case it would
be the first move in his life he hadn't thought through. These people think we are cabbages
and believe anything, whether its Comey schoolboy act or Morell lack of foresight, we are
expected to suck it up, its just plain insulting they don't even try and mask their deceit
anymore
Former Acting Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, gives a surprisingly honest interview in
which he admits that leaking and bashing by the intelligence community against an incoming
president might not have been the best idea.
People need to go to jail for this. Too much power is in the hands of the shadow
government. The democratic party along with the republican establishment need to be exposed
for the snakes that they really are, thank you HA !!
If "our plan" exist, then Michael Morell should be persecuted.
Notable quotes:
"... Politico's interview with a somewhat repentant Trump hater Mike Morell now saying 'maybe our plan wasn't that well thought out' , and now these MSM Russia Gate screwups coupled with a discovery of FBI Trump haters, is a result of Trump's recognizing Jerusalem as it being Israel's capital? Just say'n. ..."
"... Amazing how energetically the "democrats" are uniting with the CIA! Exhibit No 1 is Mr. Michael Morell (the former director of the CIA)) who has just confessed his treason in support of H. Clinton: http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_76241.shtml ..."
Philip Giraldi writes about a shift occurring over at the CIA in Trump's favor, Politico's interview with a somewhat repentant
Trump hater Mike Morell now saying 'maybe our plan wasn't that well thought out' , and now these MSM Russia Gate screwups coupled
with a discovery of FBI Trump haters, is a result of Trump's recognizing Jerusalem as it being Israel's capital? Just say'n.
Anna , December 14, 2017 at 1:11 am
"You all keep hating on Democracy."
-- Amazing how energetically the "democrats" are uniting with the CIA! Exhibit No 1 is Mr. Michael Morell (the former director
of the CIA)) who has just confessed his treason in support of H. Clinton:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_76241.shtml
Your "democracy" was nowhere when Mr. Clinton had been molesting underage girls on Lolita express. Your "democracy on the march,"
Clinton-Kagan style, has destroyed Libya and Ukraine. Millions of innocent civilians of all ages (including an enormous number
of children) died thanks to your Israel-first & oil-first Clinton & Obama policies.
Very democratic ("We came, we saw, he died ha, ha, ha" – and the gem of Northern Africa has become a hell for Libyan citizens).
One does not need to be Trump apologist to sense the stench of your rotten Clinton-Obama-CIA-FBI "democracy."
"... William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus urged Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany. ..."
"... A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts at 2:07 .) ..."
"... So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside bombs." ..."
"... The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark. ..."
"... The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his piece in the first place. ..."
"... The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency." ..."
"... ancien régime, ..."
"... With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway. ..."
"... Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive, 400,000 Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad. ..."
"... So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore up the status quo turns out to be undermining it. ..."
"... It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee defended or at least apologized for. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them. ..."
"... The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5 years. ..."
"... Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington don't want peace at any price because its bad for business. ..."
"... It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the people! ..."
"... The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S. politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC. ..."
"... This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will end. ..."
"... Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive toys are falling out of the sky in droves. ..."
"... On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives. ..."
"... The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in Syria. ..."
"... Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and Saudis coordinate their activities. ..."
"... An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq, which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena." ..."
"... The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." ..."
"... To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime." ..."
"... The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply lines. ..."
"... The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started working overtime. ..."
"... The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians. ..."
"... In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision." ..."
"... Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making ..."
"... General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the covert program in Syria. ..."
"... The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection. ..."
"... That it conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course, there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions". ..."
"... The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces. ..."
"... I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the Salafist Islamic state with alarm ..."
"... Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. ..."
"... Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take much to see why he was targeted. ..."
"... The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on 9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" – covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic. ..."
"... Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US, who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union. ..."
"... All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in destroying life on Earth. ..."
"... There is a volume of evidence that the war criminals in our midst were arming and training "jihadists." See link below. http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html ..."
"... Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg. ..."
"... The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well. Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth. ..."
"... The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large collection of links for compiled evidence: http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292 ..."
"... This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without question, in the face of many unanswered questions ..."
"... Bin Laden (CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a "conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated ..."
"... So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war. It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not posting any comments here, either. ..."
"... From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy for the Realm". ..."
"... For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack all who disagree. ..."
"... I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No! US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private profit. ..."
"... Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking. The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic consequences. ..."
"... I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan, with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r? ..."
"... Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived for the zionists. Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had to be opposed. The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists for Mideast wars. ..."
"... Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total destruction. Easy. ..."
"... Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and 'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total disgrace? ..."
When a Department of Defense intelligence
report about the Syrian rebel movement became public in May 2015, lots of people didn't
know what to make of it. After all, what the report said was unthinkable – not only that
Al Qaeda had dominated the so-called democratic revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
for years, but that the West continued to support the jihadis regardless, even to the point of
backing their goal of creating a Sunni Salafist principality in the eastern deserts.
Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative in
August 2014.
The United States lining up behind Sunni terrorism – how could this be? How could a
nice liberal like Barack Obama team up with the same people who had brought down the World
Trade Center?
It was impossible, which perhaps explains why the report remained a non-story long after it
was released courtesy of a Judicial Watch freedom-of-information
lawsuit . The New York Times didn't mention it until
six months later while the Washington Post waited more than a year before
dismissing it as "loopy" and "relatively unimportant." With ISIS rampaging across much of
Syria and Iraq, no one wanted to admit that U.S. attitudes were ever anything other than
hostile.
But three years earlier, when the Defense Intelligence Agency was compiling the report,
attitudes were different. Jihadis were heroes rather than terrorists, and all the experts
agreed that they were a low-risk, high-yield way of removing Assad from office.
After spending five days with a Syrian rebel unit, for instance, New York Times reporter
C.J. Chivers
wrote that the group "mixes paramilitary discipline, civilian policing, Islamic law, and
the harsh demands of necessity with battlefield coldness and outright cunning."
Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut,
assured the Washington Post that "al Qaeda is a fringe element" among the rebels, while,
not to be outdone, the gossip site Buzzfeed published a
pin-up of a "ridiculously photogenic" jihadi toting an RPG.
"Hey girl," said the subhead. "Nothing sexier than fighting the oppression of tyranny."
And then there was Foreign Policy, the magazine founded by neocon guru Samuel P. Huntington,
which was most enthusiastic of all. Gary Gambill's " Two Cheers for Syrian
Islamists ," which ran on the FP web site just a couple of weeks after the DIA report was
completed, didn't distort the facts or make stuff up in any obvious way. Nonetheless, it is a
classic of U.S. propaganda. Its subhead glibly observed: "So the rebels aren't secular
Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn't much matter."
Assessing the Damage
Five years later, it's worth a second look to see how Washington uses self-serving logic to
reduce an entire nation to rubble.
First a bit of background. After displacing France and Britain as the region's prime
imperial overlord during the 1956 Suez Crisis and then breaking with Egyptian President Gamal
Abdel Nasser a few years later, the United States committed itself to the goal of defeating
Arab nationalism and Soviet Communism, two sides of the same coin as far as Washington was
concerned. Over the next half-century, this would mean steering Egypt to the right with
assistance from the Saudis, isolating Libyan strong man Muammar Gaddafi, and doing what it
could to undermine the Syrian Baathist regime as well.
William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus
urged
Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of
Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to
playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany.
A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department
memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries
in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts
at 2:07 .)
Since the United States didn't like what such governments were doing, the solution was to
install more pliable ones in their place. Hence Washington's joy when the Arab Spring struck
Syria in March 2011 and it appeared that protesters would soon topple the Baathists on their
own.
Even when lofty democratic rhetoric gave way to ominous sectarian
chants of "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the coffin," U.S. enthusiasm remained strong.
With Sunnis accounting for perhaps 60 percent of the population, strategists figured that there
was no way Assad could hold out against religious outrage welling up from below.
Enter Gambill and the FP. The big news, his article began, is that secularists are no longer
in command of the burgeoning Syrian rebel movement and that Sunni Islamists are taking the lead
instead. As unfortunate as this might seem, he argued that such a development was both
unavoidable and far from entirely negative.
"Islamist political ascendancy is inevitable in a majority Sunni Muslim country brutalized
for more than four decades by a secular minoritarian dictatorship," he wrote in reference to
the Baathists. "Moreover, enormous financial resources are pouring in from the Arab-Islamic
world to promote explicitly Islamist resistance to Assad's Alawite-dominated, Iranian-backed
regime."
So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist
surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver
linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than
their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside
bombs."
The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic
defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the
seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark.
"So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies," the article
concluded, "we should quietly root for them – while keeping our distance from a conflict
that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame
the beast after Iran's regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames."
Deals with the Devil
The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The
good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not
have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the
viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his
piece in the first place.The Islamists were something America could employ to their advantage and then throw away
like a squeezed lemon. A few Syrians would suffer, but America would win, and that's all that
counts.
The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the
opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim
Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency."
Where Gambill predicted that "Assad and his minions will likely retreat to northwestern
Syria," the DIA speculated that the jihadis might establish "a declared or undeclared Salafist
principality" at the other end of the country near cities like Hasaka and Der Zor (also known
as Deir ez-Zor).
Where the FP said that the ultimate aim was to roll back Iranian influence and undermine
Shi'ite rule, the DIA said that a Salafist principality "is exactly what the supporting powers
to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic
depth of Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."
Bottle up the Shi'ites in northwestern Syria, in other words, while encouraging Sunni
extremists to establish a base in the east so as to put pressure on Shi'ite-influenced Iraq and
Shi'ite-ruled Iran.
As Gambill put it: "Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people,
any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for
three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran
unthinkable, it won't have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy
adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from
Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington."
With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway.
Disastrous Thinking
Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is
hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive,
400,000
Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million
displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad.
U.S.-backed Syrian "moderate" rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy
(left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot
from the YouTube video] War-time destruction totals around $250
billion , according to U.N. estimates, a staggering sum for a country of 18.8 million
people where per-capita income prior to the outbreak of violence was under $3,000. From Syria,
the specter of sectarian violence has spread across Asia and Africa and into Europe and North
America as well. Political leaders throughout the advanced industrial world are still
struggling to contain the populist fury that the Middle East refugee crisis, the result of
U.S.-instituted regime change, helped set off.
So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East
is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian
influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now
seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is
lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore
up the status quo turns out to be undermining it.
It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy
establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has
moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder
and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee
defended or at least apologized for.
The forum is particularly well known for its Campus Watch program, which targets academic
critics of Israel, Islamists, and – despite Gambill's kind words about "suicide bombings
and roadside bombs" – anyone it considers the least bit apologetic about Islamic
terrorism.
Double your standard, double the fun. Terrorism, it seems, is only terrorism when others do
it to the U.S., not when the U.S. does it to others.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Babyl-on , December 8, 2017 at 5:26 pm
I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming
the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that
peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of
central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US
and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will
slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them.
The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day
now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has
already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5
years. When that happens the world will return to the gold standard + Bitcoin possibly and US
dollar hegemony will end. After that the trillion dollar a year military and the 20 trillion
debt take on a different meaning. Before that slaughter non-stop will continue.
john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:31 am
Really, Baby-lon, your first short paragraph sums this piece by Lazare perfectly and makes
the rest of his blog seem rather pointless. Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't
think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and
stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington
don't want peace at any price because its bad for business.
Babyl-on and John Wilson: you have nailed it. The last thing the US (gov't.) wants is
peace. War is big business; casualties are of no concern (3 million Koreans died in the
Korean War; 3 million Vietnamese in that war; 100's of thousands in Iraq [including Clinton's
sanctions] and Afghanistan). The US has used jihadi proxies since the mujahedeen in 1980's
Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua. To the US (gov't.), a Salafist dictatorship (such as
Saudi Arabia) is highly preferable to a secular, nationalist ruler (such as Egypt's Nasser,
Libya's Gaddafi, Syria's Assad).
So the cover story of the jjihadi's has changed – first they are freedom fighters, then
terrorists. What does not change is that in either case they are pawns of the US (gov't.)
goal of hegemony.
(Incidentally, Drew Hunkins must be responding to a different article.)
Exactly Baby right on, Either USA strategists are extremely ignorant or they are attempting
to create chaos, probably both.
Perhaps not continuously but surely frequently the USA has promoted war prior to the last 73
years. Native Genocide , Mexican Wars, Spanish War, WWI ( USA banker repayment war)
Richard , December 9, 2017 at 5:24 pm
Exactly Babylon! Looks like consortiumnews is turning into another propaganda rag. Assad
was allied with Russia and Iran – that's why the U.S. wanted him removed. Israel said
that they would preferred ISIS in power over Assad. The U.S. would have happily wiped out 90%
of the population using its terrorist proxies if it thought it could have got what it
wanted.
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:50 am
CN tends to make moderate statements so as to communicate with those most in need of
them.
One must start with the understandings of the audience and show them that the evidence leads
further.
Richard , December 10, 2017 at 10:27 am
Sam F, no, it's a DELIBERATE lie in support of U.S. foreign policy. The guy wrote: "the
NAIVE belief that jihadist proxies could be used to TRANSFORM THE REGION FOR THE BETTER." It
could have been written as: "the stated justification by the president that he wanted to
transform the region for the better, even though there are often ulterior motives."
It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always
presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war
INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what
state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let
alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first
Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his
military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion
in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to
rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the
U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the
people!
Either Robert Parry or the author wrote that introduction. I suspect Mr Parry – he
always portrays the president as having a heart of gold, but, always, sadly, misinformed;
being a professional journalist, he knows full well that people often only read the start and
end of an article.
Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 5:31 pm
What we have occurring right now in the United States is a rare divergence of interests
within our ruling class. The elites are currently made up of Zionist-militarists. What we're
now witnessing is a rare conflict between the two factions. This particular internecine
battle has reared its head in the past, the Dubai armaments deal comes to mind off the top of
my head.
Trump started the Jerusalem imbroglio because he's concerned about Mueller's witch
hunt.
The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures
towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain
to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S.
politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they
easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber
rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the
careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making
peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC.
Since Trump's concerned about 1.) Mueller's witch hunt (he definitely should be deeply
concerned, this is an out of control prosecutor on mission creep), and 2.) the almost total
negative coverage the press has given him over the last two years, he's made a deal with the
Zionist Power Configuration; Trump, effectively saying to them: "I'll give you Jerusalem, you
use your immense influence in the American mass media to tamp down the relentlessly hostile
coverage toward me, and perhaps smear Mueller's witch hunt a bit ".
This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being
reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will
end.
How this all eventually plays out is anyone's guess indeed. Let's just make sure it
doesn't end with mushroom clouds over Tehran, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Chicago, London, NYC,
Washington and Berlin.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm
Trump's purported deviation from foreign policy orthodoxy regarding both Russia and Israel
was a propaganda scam engineered by the pro-Israel Lobby from the very beginning. As Russia-gate fiction is progressively deconstructed, the Israel-gate reality becomes
ever more despicably obvious.
The shamelessly Israel-pandering Trump received the "Liberty Award" for his contributions
to US-Israel relations at a 3 February 2015 gala hosted by The Algemeiner Journal, a New
York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news.
After the event, Trump did not renew his television contract for The Apprentice, which
raised speculation about a Trump bid for the presidency. Trump announced his candidacy in
June 2015.
Trump's purported break with GOP orthodoxy, questioning of Israel's commitment to peace,
calls for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusal to call for
Jerusalem to be Israel's undivided capital, were all stage-managed for the campaign.
Cheap theatrics notwithstanding, the Netanyahu regime in Israel has "1000 percent" support
from the Trump regime.
Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 8:10 pm
If Trump were totally and completely subservient to Netanyahu he would have bombed
Damascus to remove Assad and would have bombed Tehran to obliterate Iran. Of course thus far
he has done neither. Don't get me wrong, Trump is essentially part and parcel of the Zionist
cabal, but I don't quite think he's 1,000% under their thumb (not yet?).
I don't think the Zionist Power Configuration concocted Trump's policy of relative peace
with the Kremlin. Yes, the ZPC is extremely powerful in America, but Trump's position of
detente with Moscow seemed to be genuine. He caught way too much heat from the mass media for
it to be a stunt, it's almost torpedoed his presidency, and may eventually do just that. It
was actually one of the very few things Trump got right; peace with Russia, cordial relations
with the Kremlin are a no-brainer. A no-brainer to everyone but the
military-industrial-complex.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 10:59 pm
Russian. Missiles. Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to
fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive
toys are falling out of the sky in droves.
Whether it was "bird strike" or something more technological that recently grounded the
"mighty" Israeli F-35I, it's clear that America isn't eager to have those "Inherent Resolve"
jets, so busily not bombing ISIS, painted with Russian SAM radar.
Russia made it clear that Trump's Tomahawk Tweet in April 2017 was not only under totally
false pretenses. It had posed a threat to Russian troops and Moscow took extra measures to
protect them.
Russian deployment of the advanced S-400 system on the Syrian coast in Latakia also
impacts Israel's regional air superiority. The S-400 can track and shoot down targets some
400 kilometers (250 miles) away. That range encompasses half of Israel's airspace, including
Ben Gurion International Airport. In addition to surface-to-air missiles installations, Russian aircraft in Syria are
equipped with air-to-air missiles. Those weapons are part of an calculus of Israeli aggression in the region.
Of course, there's much more to say about this subject.
Surely, Drew, even the brain washed sheep otherwise known as the American public can't
seriously believe that their government armed head choppers in a bid to bring peace to the
region, can they?
Drew Hunkins , December 9, 2017 at 1:34 pm
Yup Mr. Wilson. It's too much cognitive dissonance for them to process. After all, we're
the exceptional nation, the beacon on the hill, the country that ONLY intervenes abroad when
there is a 'right to protect!' or it's a 'humanitarian intervention.' As Ken Burns would say:
Washington only acts "with good intentions. They're just sometimes misplaced." That's all.
The biggest global empire the world has ever seen is completely out of the picture.
mike k , December 8, 2017 at 5:34 pm
When evil people with evil intentions set out to do something in the world, the result is
evil. Like Libya, or Iraq, or Syria. Why do I call these people who killed millions for their
own selfish greed for power evil? If you have to ask that, then you just don't understand
what evil is – and you have a lot of company, because many people believe that evil
does not even exist! Such sheeple become the perfect victims of the evil ones, who are
destroying our world.
john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:36 am
Correction, Mike. The public do believe that evil exists but they sincerely think that
Putin and Russia are the evil ones'
mike k , December 9, 2017 at 5:41 pm
One of the ways to avoid recognizing evil is to ascribe it to inappropriate, incorrect
sources usually as a result of believing misleading propaganda. Another common maneuver is to
deny evil's presence in oneself, and believe it is always "out there". Or one can feel that
"evil" is an outmoded religious concept that is only used to hit at those one does not
like.
Mild - ly Facetious , December 8, 2017 at 6:22 pm
Oh Jerusalem: Requiem for the two-state solution (Gas masks required)
On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked
intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria
were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which
has now claimed half a million lives.
Marked "Top Secret" the NSA memo focuses on events that unfolded outside Damascus in March
of 2013.
The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct
role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and
civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in
Syria.
Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and
Saudis coordinate their activities.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 6:27 pm
An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya
to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist
groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the
insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq,
which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence
would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world
entering into Iraqi Arena."
The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a
declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this
is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian
regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."
To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought
the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and
Iran support the regime."
The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and
Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality"
(State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and
specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply
channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged
through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of
Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply
lines.
The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against
Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started
working overtime.
The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical
incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First
Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians.
Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:26 pm
In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA
report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as
Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision."
Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head
program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the
rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the
result of conscious decision making:
Hasan: "You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups
were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn't
listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan: "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it
was a willful decision."
Hasan: "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the
Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "It was a willful decision to do what they're doing."
Holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan read aloud
key passages such as, "there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared
Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the
opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime."
Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did
the State Department soon after its release, Flynn did the opposite: he confirmed that while
acting DIA chief he "paid very close attention" to this report in particular and later added
that "the intelligence was very clear."
Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence
official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria
knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on
the Syrian regime:
Hasan: "In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups
[Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you're
worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?"
Flynn: "I hate to say it's not my job but that my job was to was to to ensure that the
accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be."
Flynn unambiguously confirmed that the 2012 DIA document served as source material in his
own discussions over Syria policy with the White House. Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda.
Flynn's admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked
groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature. The Pentagon's former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama
bin Laden confessed that the United States directly aided the Al Qaeda terrorist legions of
Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.
Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defense
Intelligence Agency
"Flynn would later tell the New York Times that this 2012 intelligence report in
particular was seen at the White House where it was 'disregarded' because it 'didn't meet the
narrative' on the war in Syria. He would further confirm to investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh that Defense Department (DoD) officials and DIA intelligence in particular, were loudly
warning the administration that jihadists were leading the opposition in Syria -- warnings
which were met with 'enormous pushback.' Instead of walking back his Al Jazeera comments,
General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were
producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative
report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the
covert program in Syria.
"In a personal exchange on his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis, legendary DoD intelligence
officer and former presidential briefer Pat Lang explained [ ] that the DIA memo was used as
a 'warning shot across the [administration's] bow.' Lang has elsewhere stated that DIA
Director Flynn had 'tried to persuade people in the Obama Administration not to provide
assistance to the Nusra group.' It must be remembered that in 2012 what would eventually
emerge as distinct 'ISIS' and 'Nusra' (AQ in Syria) groups was at that time a singular entity
desiring a unified 'Islamic State.' The nascent ISIS organization (referenced in the memo as
'ISI' or Islamic State in Iraq) was still one among many insurgent groups fighting to topple
Assad.
"In fact, only one year after the DIA memo was produced (dated August 12, 2012) a
coalition of rebels fighting under the US-backed Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo
were busy celebrating their most strategic victory to date, which served to open an
opposition corridor in Northern Syria. The seizure of the Syrian government's Menagh Airbase
in August 2013 was only accomplished with the military prowess of fighters identifying
themselves in front of cameras and to reporters on the ground as the Islamic State of Iraq
and al-Sham.
"Public embarrassment came for Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford who reluctantly confirmed
that in fact, yes, the US-funded and supplied FSA commander on the ground had personally led
ISIS and Nusra fighters in the attack (Ford himself was previously filmed alongside the
commander). This after the New York Times publicized unambiguous video proof of the fact.
Even the future high commander of Islamic State's military operations, Omar al-Shishani,
himself played a leading role in the US sponsored FSA operation."
"one first needs to understand what has happened in Syria and other Middle Eastern
countries in recent years. The original plan of the US and Saudi Arabia (behind whom stood an
invisible Israel) was the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his replacement with Islamic
fundamentalists or takfiris (Daesh, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra).
"The plan involved the following steps:
sweep away a strong secular Arab state with a political culture, armed forces and
security services;
generate total chaos and horror in Syria that would justify the creation of Israel's
'security zone', not only in Golan Heights, but also further north;
start a civil war in Lebanon and incite takfiri violence against Hezbollah, leading
to them both bleeding to death and then create a "security zone", this time in Lebanon;
prevent the creation of a "Shiite axis" of Iran/Iraq/Syria/Lebanon;
continue the division of Syria along ethnic and religious lines, establish an
independent Kurdistan and then to use them against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
give Israel the opportunity to become the unquestioned major player in the region and
force Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and everyone else to apply for permission from Israel
in order to implement any oil and gas projects;
gradually isolate, threaten, undermine and ultimately attack Iran with a wide
regional coalition, removing all Shiite centers of power in the middle East.
"It was an ambitious plan, and the Israelis were completely convinced that the United
States would provide all the necessary resources to see it through. But the Syrian government
has survived thanks to military intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Daesh is almost
defeated and Iran and Hezbollah are so firmly entrenched in Syria that it has driven the
Israelis into a state of fear bordering on panic. Lebanon remains stable, and even the recent
attempt by the Saudis to abduct Prime Minister Saad Hariri failed.
"As a result, Saudi Arabia and Israel have developed a new plan: force the US to attack
Iran. To this end, the 'axis of good"' (USA-Israel-Saudi Arabia) was created, although this
is nothing new. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States in the Persian Gulf have in the past
spoken in favor of intervention in Syria. It is well known that the Saudis invaded Bahrain,
are occupying it de facto, and are now at war in Yemen.
"The Israelis will participate in any plan that will finally split the Sunnis and Shiites,
turning the region into rubble. It was not by chance that, having failed in Lebanon, they are
now trying to do the same in Yemen after the murder of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
"For the Saudis and Israelis, the problem lies in the fact that they have rather weak
armed forces; expensive and high-tech, but when it comes to full-scale hostilities,
especially against a really strong opponent such as the Iranians or Hezbollah, the
'Israel/Wahhabis' have no chance and they know it, even if they do not admit it. So, one
simply needs to think up some kind of plan to force the Shiites to pay a high price.
"So they developed a new plan. Firstly, the goal is now not the defeat of Hezbollah or
Iran. For all their rhetoric, the Israelis know that neither they nor especially the Saudis
are able to seriously threaten Iran or even Hezbollah. Their plan is much more basic:
initiate a serious conflict and then force the US to intervene. Only today, the armed forces
of the United States have no way of winning a war with Iran, and this may be a problem. The
US military knows this and they are doing everything to tell the neo-cons 'sorry, we just
can't.' This is the only reason why a US attack on Iran has not already taken place. From the
Israeli point of view this is totally unacceptable and the solution is simple: just force the
US to participate in a war they do not really need. As for the Iranians, the Israeli goal of
provoking an attack on Iran by the US is not to defeat Iran, but just to bring about
destruction – a lot of destruction [ ]
"You would need to be crazy to attack Iran. The problem, however, is that the Saudis and
the Israelis are close to this state. And they have proved it many times. So it just remains
to hope that Israel and the KSA are 'crazy', but 'not that crazy'."
The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to
Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the
suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no
one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection.
That it
conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no
dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's
comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course,
there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to
dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions".
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:24 pm
There WAS dissension within the Pentagon, not only about being in a coalition with the
Gulf States and Turkey in support of terrorist forces, but about allowing ISIS to invade
Ramadi, which CENTCOM exposed by making public that US forces watched it happen and did
nothing. In addition, CENTCOM and SOCOM publicly opposed switching sides in Yemen.
A senior commander at Central Command (CENTCOM), speaking on condition of anonymity,
scoffed at that argument. "The reason the Saudis didn't inform us of their plans," he said,
"is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think -- that it was a bad
idea.
Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led
intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia Houthi movement -- which has
taken over much of Yemen and which Riyadh accuses of being a proxy for Tehran -- has been
an effective counter to Al-Qaeda.
The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That
is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the
CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to
AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has
been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces.
Thanks, I never read anything about it in the MSM (perhaps Aljazeera was an exception?).
However, this doesn't explain Gen. Flynn's tight relationship with Turkey's Erdogan who
clearly backed the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels to the point of shooting down a Russian jet
over Syria.
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:57 am
The fighter shoot-down incident was before Erdogan's reversals in Syria policy.
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:28 pm
I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the
Salafist Islamic state with alarm.
B. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE
INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.
C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND
IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.
C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR
UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY
WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME,
WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).
D. THE DETERIORATION OF THE SITUATION HAS DIRE CONSEQUENCES ON THE IRAQI SITUATION AND
ARE AS FOLLOWS:
–1. THIS CREATES THE IDEAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AQI TO RETURN TO ITS OLD POCKETS IN
MOSUL AND RAMADI, AND WILL PROVIDE A RENEWED MOMENTUM UNDER THE PRESUMPTION OF UNIFYING THE
JIHAD AMONG SUNNI IRAQ AND SYRIA ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION
WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN
REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed
that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian
leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in
control of the opposition. Turkey wasn't doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign
fighters and weapons across the border. 'If the American public saw the intelligence we
were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,' Flynn told me.
'We understood Isis's long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the
fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State
inside Syria.' The DIA's reporting, he said, 'got enormous pushback' from the Obama
administration. 'I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.'
j. D. D. , December 9, 2017 at 8:33 am
Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take
much to see why he was targeted. Ironically, the MSM is now going bananas over his support
for nuclear power in the region, which he had tied to desalination of sea water, toward
alleviating that crucial source of conflict in the area.
Abbybwood , December 9, 2017 at 11:24 pm
I believe Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman that he was handed the classified memo regarding
the U.S. overthrowing seven countries in five years starting with Iraq and ending with Iran,
in 2001, not 2006. He said it was right after 9/11 when he visited the Pentagon and Joint
Chief of Staff's office and was handed the memo.
jaycee , December 8, 2017 at 7:19 pm
The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back
to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on
9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of
Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" –
covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is
highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic.
One disturbing common feature across the years have been US sponsored airlifts of Islamist
fighters facing defeat, as seen in Afghanistan in late 2001 and just recently in eastern
Syria. In 2001, some of those fighters were relocated to North Africa, specifically Mali
– the roots of the Islamist insurgency which has destabilized that country over the
past few years. Where exactly the ISIS rebels assisted some weeks ago were relocated is yet
unknown.
turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:03 pm
Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the
marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create
internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US,
who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist
including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union.
Hence the birth of the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden, the rest is history.
j. D. D. , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm
The article does not support the sub-headline. There is no evidence provided, nor is there
any evidence to be found, that Washington's policy in the region was motivated by anything
other than geopolitical objectives.
David G , December 9, 2017 at 7:25 am
I think that phrasing may point to the hand of editor Robert Parry. The incredible value
of CN notwithstanding, Parry in his own pieces (erroneously in my eyes) maintains a belief
that Obama somehow meant well. Hence the imputation of some "naïve" but ultimately
benevolent motive on the part of the U.S. genocidaires, as the whole Syria catastrophe got
going on Obama's watch.
Anon , December 9, 2017 at 9:14 am
The imputation of naivete works to avoid accusation of a specific strategy without
sufficient evidence.
Skip Scott , December 9, 2017 at 9:45 am
Although I am no fan of Obama, and most especially the continuation of the warmongering
for his 8 years, he did balk at the "Red line" when he found out he was being set up, and it
wasn't Assad who used chemical weapons. I don't think he "meant well" so much as he knew the
exact length of his leash. His bragging about going against "The Washington playbook" was of
course laughable; just as his whole hopey/changey thing was laughable with Citigroup picking
his cabinet.
All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no
business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of
humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in
destroying life on Earth.
"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the
naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better,
explains Daniel Lazare." What a load of old rubbish, naïve belief indeed. it is difficult to believe that
anyone could write this stuff with a straight face.
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:37 pm
Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that
trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the
industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg.
Zachary Smith , December 8, 2017 at 11:37 pm
That Gary Gambill character "outed" himself as a Zionist on September 4 of this year. He
appears to have mastered the propaganda associated with the breed. At the link see if
you can find any mention of the murders, thefts, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid of his
adopted nation. Blaming the victim may be this fellow's specialty. Sample:
The well-intentioned flocked in droves to the belief that Israeli- Palestinian peace was
achievable provided Israel made the requisite concessions, and that this would liberate the
Arab-Islamic world from a host of other problems allegedly arising from it: bloated
military budgets, intolerance of dissent, Islamic extremism, you name it.
Why tackle each of these problems head on when they can be alleviated all at once when
Israel is brought to heel? Twenty years later, the Middle East is suffering the
consequences of this conspiracy of silence.
The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars
and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate
people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have
been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well.
Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to
think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long
enough and it becomes the truth.
It takes courage to go against the flow of course and one can only hope that the Americans
are what they think they are: courageous and strong enough to hear their cherished truths
smashed, allow the scales before their eyes to fall and practise free speech and free
thought.
Theo , December 9, 2017 at 6:35 am
Thanks for this article and many others on this site.In Europe and in Germany you hardly
hear,read or see any of these facts and their connections.It seems to be only of marginal
interest.
The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major
incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large
collection of links for compiled evidence:
http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292
triekc , December 9, 2017 at 8:27 am
This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda
news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy
of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global
hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without
question, in the face of many unanswered questions.
Beginning in the 1990's, neocons who
would become W's cabinet, wrote detailed plans of military regime change in Middle East, but
stating they needed a "strong external shock to the United States -- a latter-day 'Pearl
Harbor", to get US sheeple to support increased militarism and global war. Few months after W
took office, and had appointed those war mongering neocons to positions of power, Bin Laden
(CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We
accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who
attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire
would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a
"conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated
Joe Tedesky , December 9, 2017 at 11:27 am
You commented on what I was thinking, and that was, 'remember when al Queda was our enemy
on 911'? So now that bin Laden is dead, and his al Queda now fights on our side, shouldn't
the war be over? And, just for the record who did attack us on 911?
So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of
money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war.
It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In
fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not
posting any comments here, either.
Knowing the Pentagon mentality they probably have an 'al Queda combat medal' to pin on the
terrorists chest. Sarcasm I know, but seriously is anything not within the realm of
believable when it comes to this MIC establishment?
Christene Bartels , December 9, 2017 at 8:53 am
Great article and spot on as far as the author takes it. But the world is hurtling towards
Armageddon so I'd like to back things up about one hundred years and get down to brass
tacks.
The fact of the matter is, the M.E. has never been at total peace but it has been nothing
but one colossal FUBAR since the Ottoman Empire was defeated after WWI and the Allied Forces
got their grubby, greedy mitts on its M.E. territories and all of that luscious black gold.
First up was the British Empire and France and then it really went nuclear (literally) in
1946 when Truman and the U.S. joined in the fun and decided to figure out how we could carve
out that ancient prime piece of real estate and resurrect Israel. By 1948 ..violà
..there she was.
So now here we sit as the hundred year delusion that we knew what the hell we were doing
comes crashing down around us. Seriously, whoever the people have been who thought that a
country with the historical perspective of a toddler was going to be able to successfully
manage and manipulate a region filled with people who are still tribal in perspective and are
still holding grudges and settling scores from five thousand years ago were complete and
total arrogant morons. Every single one of them. Up to the present moment.
Which gets me down to those brass tacks I alluded to at the beginning of my comment.
Delusional crusades lead by arrogant morons always, always, always end up as ash heaps. So, I
would suggest we all prepare for that rapidly approaching conclusion accordingly. For me,
that means hitting my knees.
Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm
Middle Eastern people are no more "tribal" or prone to holding grudges than any other
people. Middle Eastern people have exhibited and practiced peaceful and tolerant living
arrangements within several different contexts over the centuries. Iraq had a fairly thriving
middle class and the Syrians are a cultured and educated people.
Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 10:07 pm
Syrian society is constructed very much within the construct of close family ties and a
sense of a Syrian homeland. It is solely the business of the Syrian people to decide whether
the socialist Ba'ath government functions according to their own sense of realities and
standards. Some of those realities may include aspects of a necessitated national security
state (necessitated by CIA and Israeli subterfuge) that prompts shills to immediately
characterize the Assad government as "an authoritarian regime" and of course that's all you
need to know. Part of what pisses the West off about the Syrians is that they are so
competent, and that includes their intelligence and security services. One of the other parts
is the socialist example of government functioning in interests of the general population,
not selling out to vultures.
It bothers me that Mr. Lazare wrote: "Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in
this affair." Really? Well the Syrian government can hardly be blamed for the vile strategy
of using terrorist mercenaries to take or destroy a people's homeland–killing horrific
numbers of fathers, mothers, and children on the way to establish some kind of Wild West
control over Damascus that can then be manipulated for the typical elite deviances. What was
purposely planned and visited upon the Syrian people has had human consequences that were
known and disregarded by the planners. It has been and continues to be a grave crime against
our common humanity that should be raised to the roof of objection! People like Gambill
should be excoriated for their crass appraisal of human costs .and for their contrived and
twisted rationalizations and deceits. President Assad recently gave an interview to teleSUR
that is worth a listen. He talks about human costs with understanding for what he is talking
about. Gambill doesn't give a damn.
BASLE , December 9, 2017 at 10:46 am
From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in
the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy
for the Realm".
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:08 am
Yes, Israel is the cut-out or fence for US politicians stealing campaign money from the
federal budget.
US policy is that of the bribery sources and nothing else. And it believes that to be
professional competence.
For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack
all who disagree.
"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the
naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better,
explains Daniel Lazare."
Lazare makes the case very well about our amoral foreign policy but I think he errs in
saying our aim was to "transform the region for the better." Recent history, going back to
Afghanistan shows a very different goal, to defeat our enemies and the enemies of our allies
with little concern for the aftermath. Just observing what has happened to the people where
we supported extremists is evidence enough.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men. We hope the conscience of our nation is bothered by
our behavior but we know that is not true, and we sleep very well, thank you.
Marilyn Vogt-Downey , December 9, 2017 at 11:18 am
I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US
imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy
entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand
that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the
next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No!
US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate
the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private
profit.
There is ample evidence–see the Brookings Institute study among many
others–that the Gulf monarchies–flunkies of US imperialism–who "host"
dozens of US military bases in the region, some of them central to US war
strategy–initiated and nourished and armed and financed the "jihadi armies" in Syria
AND Libya AND elsewhere; they did not do this on their own. The US government–the
executive committee of the US ruling class–does not naively support the Gulf monarchies
because it doesn't know any better! Washington (following British imperialism) organized,
established and backed these flunky regimes. They are autocratic, antediluvian regimes,
allowing virtually civil rights, with no local proletariat to speak of, no popular base. They
are no more than sheriffs for imperialism in that region of the world, along with the Zionist
state of Israel, helping imperialism do the really dirty work.
Look at the evidence. Stop the totally foolish assessment that the US government spends
all this money on a war machine just to "naively" blunder into wars that level entire
nations–and is not taking on destruction of the entire continent of Africa to eliminate
any obstacles to its domination.
No! That is foolish and destructive. Unless we look in the face what is going on–the
US government since its "secret" intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, has
recruited, trained, armed, funded and relied on jihadi armies to unseat regimes and
destabilize and destroy populations and regimes the US government wants to overthrow, and
destroy, any that could potentially develop into an alternative model of nationalist,
bourgeois industrial development on any level.
Wake up!!! The evidence is there. There is no reason to bumble and bungle along as if we
are in the dark.
Randal Marlin , December 9, 2017 at 11:26 am
Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government
to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's
enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy
states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria
and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking.
The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic
consequences.
Behind all this is the thinking that the survival of Israel outweighs anything else in any
global ethical calculus.
Those who don't accept this moral premise but who believe in supporting the survival of
Israel have their work cut out for them.
This work would be made easier if the U.S. population saw clearly what was going on, instead
of being preoccupied with salacious sexual misconduct stories or other distractions.
Zachary Smith , December 9, 2017 at 2:43 pm
A Russian interceptor has been scrambled to stop a rogue US fighter jet from actively
interfering with an anti-terrorist operation, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It also
accused the US of provoking close encounters with the Russian jets in Syria.
A US F-22 fighter was preventing two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an
Islamic State (IS, former ISIS) base to the west of the Euphrates November 23, according to
the ministry. The ministry's spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov described the
episode as yet another example of US aircraft attempts to prevent Russian forces from
carrying out strikes against Islamic State.
"The F-22 launched decoy flares and used airbrakes while constantly maneuvering [near
the Russian strike jets], imitating an air fight," Konashenkov said. He added that the US
jet ceased its dangerous maneuvers only after a Russian Su-35S fighter jet joined the two
strike planes.
If this story is true, then it illustrates a number of things. First, the US is still
providing ISIS air cover. Second, either the F-22 pilot or his commander is dumber than dirt.
The F-22 may be a fine airplane, but getting into a contest with an equally fine non-stealth
airplane at eyeball distances means throwing away every advantage of the super-expensive
stealth.
Israel obtained operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production
of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. In addition to the Israeli
nuclear arsenal, Israel has offensive chemical and biological warfare stockpiles.
Israel, the Middle East's sole nuclear power, is not a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 2015, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that
Israel had 115 nuclear warheads. Outside estimates of Israel's nuclear arsenal range up to
400 nuclear weapons.
Israeli nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms include Jericho 3 missiles, with a range of
4,800 km to 6,500 km (though a 2004 source estimated its range at up to 11,500 km), as well
as regional coverage from road mobile Jericho 2 IRBMs.
Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear capability using
submarine-launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles, which can be launched from the Israeli
Navy's Dolphin-class submarines.
The Israeli Air Force has F-15I and F-16I Sufa fighter aircraft are capable of delivering
tactical and strategic nuclear weapons at long distances using conformal fuel tanks and
supported by their aerial refueling fleet of modified Boeing 707's.
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, fled to the United Kingdom and
revealed to the media some evidence of Israel's nuclear program and explained the purposes of
each building, also revealing a top-secret underground facility directly below the
installation.
The Mossad, Israel's secret service, sent a female agent who lured Vanunu to Italy, where
he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel aboard a freighter. An Israeli court
then tried him in secret on charges of treason and espionage, and sentenced him to eighteen
years imprisonment.
At the time of Vanunu's kidnapping, The Times reported that Israel had material for
approximately 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs by 1986. In the spring of 2004, Vanunu
was released from prison, and placed under several strict restrictions, such as the denial of
a passport, freedom of movement limitations and restrictions on communications with the
press. Since his release, he has been rearrested and charged multiple times for violations of
the terms of his release.
Safety concerns about this 40-year-old reactor have been reported. In 2004, as a
preventive measure, Israeli authorities distributed potassium iodide anti-radiation tablets
to thousands of residents living nearby. Local residents have raised concerns regarding
serious threats to health from living near the reactor.
According to a lawsuit filed in Be'er Sheva Labor Tribunal, workers at the center were
subjected to human experimentation in 1998. According to Julius Malick, the worker who
submitted the lawsuit, they were given drinks containing uranium without medical supervision
and without obtaining written consent or warning them about risks of side effects.
In April 2016 the U.S. National Security Archive declassified dozens of documents from
1960 to 1970, which detail what American intelligence viewed as Israel's attempts to
obfuscate the purpose and details of its nuclear program. The Americans involved in
discussions with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other Israelis believed the country was
providing "untruthful cover" about intentions to build nuclear weapons.
mike k , December 9, 2017 at 6:38 pm
The machinations of those seeking to gain advantages for themselves by hurting others, are
truly appalling. If we fail to name evil for what it is, then we fail as human beings.Those
who look the other way as their country engages in an organized reign of terror, are
complicit in that enormous crime.
Den Lille Abe , December 9, 2017 at 8:54 pm
The path the US has chosen since the end of WWII has been over dead bodies. In the name of
"security", bringing "Freedom" and "Democracy" and complete unconstrained greed it has
trampled countless nations into piles of rubble.
To say it is despised or loathed is an overwhelming understatement. It is almost universally
hated in the third world. Rightly.
Bringing this monstrosity to a halt is a difficult task, and probably cannot be done
militarily without a nuclear war, economically could in the end have the same outcome, then
how?
Easy! Ruin its population. This process has started, long ago.
The decline in the US of health, general wealth, nutrition, production, education, equality,
ethics and morals is already showing as cracks in the fabrics of the US.
A population of incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns, in a
country with a crumbling infrastructure, full of environmental disasters is 21 st century for
most Americans.
In all the areas I mentioned the US is going backwards compared to most other countries.
So the monster will come down.
turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:20 pm
I think you are being a little hard on the incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies,
armed to teeth with guns
I am not sure who is more loathsome the evangelicals who were supporting the Bush / Cheney
cabal murderous wars until the bitter end or the liberal intelligentsia careerist
cheerleaders for Obama and Hilary's Wars in Iraq and Syria, who also dont give a damn about
another Arab country being destroyed and sold into slavery as long as Hillary gets elected.
At least with the former group, you can chalk it up to a lack of education.
Linda Wood , December 10, 2017 at 1:52 am
This is possibly the most intelligent and hopeful discussion I have read since 9/11. It
says that at least some Americans do see that we have a fascist cell in our government. That
is the first step in finding a way to unplug it. Best wishes to all of you who have written
here. We will find a way to put war out of business.
Barbara van der Wal-Kylstra , December 10, 2017 at 2:46 am
I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan,
with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to
attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame
the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r?
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:18 am
Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived
for the zionists.
Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had
to be opposed.
The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists
for Mideast wars.
Luutzen , December 10, 2017 at 9:15 am
Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian
pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total
destruction. Easy.
mike k , December 10, 2017 at 11:05 am
The US Military is part of the largest terrorist organization on Earth. For the super rich
and powerful rulers of that US Mafia, the ignorant religious fanatics and other tools of
Empire are just pawns in their game of world domination and universal slavery for all but
themselves. These monsters of evil delight in profiting from the destruction of others; but
their insatiable greed for more power will never be satisfied, and will become the cause of
the annihilation of every living thing – including themselves. But like other sold out
human addicts, at this point they don't really care, and will blindly pursue their nightmare
quest to the very end – and perhaps they secretly hope that that final end of
everything will at last quench their burning appetite for blood and gold.
Joe Tedesky , December 10, 2017 at 11:12 am
I'm leaving a link to a very long David Swanson article, where Mr Swanson goes into quite
a lot of detail to how the U.S. wages war.
What's interesting of course is how not just Washington, but much of the 'left' also
cheered on the jihadists.
Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and
'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant
Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has
been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just
like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total
disgrace?
When a particular MSN outlet call Intelligence assessment the work of "intelligence
community" and not a handful of analysis picked by Brannan and Clapper from just three agencies
(NSA, CIA and FBI) it ia fair to say it spreads propaganda in best Josef Gebbels tradition:
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle
is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and
over."
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on
which the government can play." ―
Joseph Goebbels
"That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails
to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda's task to be intelligent, its task is to lead
to success."
―
Joseph Goebbels
Notable quotes:
"... CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met -- at the urging of President Donald Trump -- with one of the principal deniers of Russian interference in the US election, according to multiple intelligence sources. ..."
"... The CIA responded to CNN's inquiry about the meeting by saying that Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election ..."
This is utterly untrue. In British court documents Mr. Steele has acknowledged he briefed
U.S. reporters about the dossier in September 2016. Those briefed included journalists from
the New York Times , the Washington Post, Yahoo News and others. Mr. Steele, by his own
admission (in an interview with Mother Jones), also gave his dossier in July 2016 to the FBI.
... ... ...
To that point, it is fair to ask if the entire Trump-Russia narrative -- which has played
a central role in our political discourse for a year, and is now resulting in a special
counsel issuing unrelated indictments -- is based on nothing more than a political smear
document. Is there any reason to believe the FBI was probing a Trump-Russia angle before the
dossier? Is there any collusion allegation that doesn't come in some form from the
dossier?
The idea that the federal government and a special counsel were mobilized -- that American
citizens were monitored and continue to be investigated -- based on a campaign-funded hit
document is extraordinary. Especially given that to this day no one has publicly produced a
single piece of evidence to support any of the dossier's substantive allegations about Trump
team members.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met -- at the urging of President Donald Trump -- with
one of the principal deniers of Russian interference in the US election, according to
multiple intelligence sources. Trump apparently made the highly unusual request that Pompeo
meet with the former National Security Agency employee and look into a theory that the leak
of Democratic Party emails last year was an inside job rather than a cyberattack by Russian
hackers.
William Binney, the former NSA employee-turned-whistleblower who circulated the
conspiracy theory, confirmed to CNN that he met with Pompeo for about an hour on October 24
-- despite the fact the intelligence community concluded early this year that Russia
interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The meeting was first
reported by The Intercept.
The CIA responded to CNN's inquiry about the meeting by
saying that Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community
assessment" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
US President Donald Trump said he had "good discussions" with Russian leader Vladimir Putin
when they met briefly at an Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam.
On Twitter, he blasted "haters and fools", who, he said, do not encourage good relations between
the countries.
Earlier he said Mr Putin told him he was insulted by allegations of Russian interference in the
2016 US election.
The US intelligence community has previously concluded that Russia tried to sway the poll in Mr
Trump's favour.
"He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election," the US president said.
However, after intense criticism, Mr Trump clarified hat he supported US intelligence agencies in
their conclusion. "As to whether or not I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies. I believe in
our... intelligence agencies," he said.
"What he believes, he believes," he added, of Mr Putin's belief that Russia did not meddle.
The two leaders had no formal bilateral talks during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec)
event, but meet in passing on three occasions. They spoke about the Syria crisis and the election
allegations, according to Mr Trump.
One useful criteria to distinguish propaganda from honest analyst is to check if the
Intelligence assessment is called the product of "intelligence community" or group of handpicked
by Brennan and Clipper analysts from just three agencies (NSA, CIA, and FBI). This is very
similar to the test if some Western news out let call Magnitsky "a lawyer" or "an
accountant".
T he question why intelligence agencies used Steele dossier remain unanswered. and the answer
to this question if the key.
The forces against rapprochement with Russia are way too strong and include "foright policy
establishment", large part of Pentagon, defense contractors, intelligence agencies and their
contractors. Like any bureaucracies they want to expand much like cancel cells -- uncontrollably.
In this sense the intelligence agencies were dangerous for the US democracy from the moment of
their creation and remain so. The question that arise is " Is democracy compatible with the
existence of hypertrophied, almost out of control by "civic" government intelligence agency,
protected by secrecy of their operations? .
The main reason for their creation and existence in hypertrophied state was the existence of
the USSR. But in less twenty years from its creation CIA became dangerous for the US democracy
(in 1963 to be exact). And it probably remains dangerous now -- agency protected by secrecy and
having huge among of money in their disposal.
It is clear that the bet of intelligence agencies (at least NSA, CIA and FBI) in the last
lection was Hillary. Although it looks like FBI waved a bit. What they did to "help" her now
needs to be investigated using something like Church commission.
Notable quotes:
"... On Saturday, in his Air Force One remarks, Trump suggested that what he called the "artificial Democratic hit job" of investigations of possible collusion between his campaign and Russia were somehow preventing U.S.-Russia cooperation on a range of issues, including North Korea. "It's a shame," he said, "because people will die because of it." ..."
"... Putin, in his own news conference after speaking with Trump, said he knew "absolutely nothing" about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials, and called reports that a campaign official met with his niece "bollocks," according to an interpreter. "They can do what they want, looking for some sensation," Putin said of the investigations. "But there are no sensations." ..."
"... On Saturday, Trump described the former top U.S. intelligence officials who concluded in January that the tampering took place -- including former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former CIA director John Brennan -- as "political hacks." He called former FBI director James B. Comey, who testified to Congress that Trump asked him to drop an investigation of his campaign's connections to Russian officials, a "liar" and a "leaker." ..."
"... Pompeo said last month that intelligence agencies had determined that Russian interference had not altered the electoral outcome ..."
President Trump said that President Vladimir Putin had assured him again Saturday that
Russia did not interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and indicated that he believed
Putin's sincerity, drawing immediate criticism from lawmakers and former intelligence officials
who assessed that the meddling took place.
"I asked him again," Trump said after what he described as several brief, informal chats
with Putin in Danang, Vietnam, where they were attending a regional conference. "You can only
ask so many times . . . He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He
did not do what they are saying he did.
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it . . . I think he's
very insulted, if you want to know the truth," Trump told reporters traveling with him aboard
Air Force One from Danang to Hanoi, on the ninth day of a long Asia tour. Trump voiced similar
conclusions after his only previous meeting with Putin, last July in Germany.
Trump's response to questions about his conversations with Putin was a jarring return
to the more insular preoccupations of Washington after more than a week of what has been a trip
filled with pageantry and pledges of mutual admiration, but few substantive outcomes, between
Trump and Asian leaders.
Later, in a news conference Sunday in Hanoi with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Trump
appeared to be trying to parse his earlier remarks, saying, "What I said is that I believe
[Putin] believes that.
"As to whether I believe it or not," he said, "I'm with our [intelligence] agencies,
especially as currently constituted.
"I want to be able . . . to get along with Russia," Trump said. "I'm not
looking to stand and argue with somebody when there are reporters standing all around."
Reporters were not permitted inside the hall where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
conference was held in Danang.
... ... ...
On Saturday, in his Air Force One remarks, Trump suggested that what he called the
"artificial Democratic hit job" of investigations of possible collusion between his campaign
and Russia were somehow preventing U.S.-Russia cooperation on a range of issues, including
North Korea. "It's a shame," he said, "because people will die because of it."
Putin, in his own news conference after speaking with Trump, said he knew "absolutely
nothing" about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials, and called reports that a
campaign official met with his niece "bollocks," according to an interpreter. "They can do what
they want, looking for some sensation," Putin said of the investigations. "But there are no
sensations."
On Saturday, Trump described the former top U.S. intelligence officials who concluded in
January that the tampering took place -- including former director of national intelligence
James R. Clapper Jr. and former CIA director John Brennan -- as "political hacks." He called
former FBI director James B. Comey, who testified to Congress that Trump asked him to drop an
investigation of his campaign's connections to Russian officials, a "liar" and a
"leaker."
Clapper said in a statement that "the president was given clear and indisputable evidence
that Russia interfered in the election. His own DNI and CIA director have confirmed the finding
in the intelligence community assessment. The fact that he would take Putin at his word over
the intelligence community is unconscionable."
Brennan declined to comment.
In a statement, the CIA said that Director Mike Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by
the January 2017 Intelligence Community assessment . . . with regard to Russian
election meddling." That position, it said, "has not changed." The assessment also concluded
that Russia had acted to promote Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Although
Pompeo said last month that intelligence agencies had determined that Russian interference
had not altered the electoral outcome , the assessment did not address that question.
Does this means that Trump now believes that this was Brenna's false flag operation? And why intelligence
agencies exploited Steele dossier against him?
Notable quotes:
"... "I mean, give me a break," Trump said. "So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker." ..."
The president disparaged officials who worked for Barack Obama, saying former CIA chief John Brennan,
ex-director of national intelligence James Clapper and James Comey,
the FBI director he fired in May , were "political hacks".
"I mean, give me a break," Trump said. "So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have
Clapper and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker."
He suggested he put more faith in Putin's word.
"Every time he sees me he says 'I didn't do that' and I really believe that when he tells me that,"
Trump said. "He really seems to be insulted by it and he says he didn't do it. He is very, very strong
in the fact that he didn't do it. You have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he has
nothing to do with that."
Possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans
and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats. If
for a moment one could remove the often justified hatred many people feel toward Trump, it would be
impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been devised by the DNC and the Clinton
camp in league with Obama's intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims. In other
words this is a sophisticated false flag operation.
Even more alarmingly (what really smells like a part on intelligence agencies coup d'état against
Trump ) is the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence "assessment" by those "hand-picked" analysts
from three U.S. intelligence agencies - the CIA, the FBI and the NSA - not all 17 agencies that Hillary
Clinton continues to insist were involved. (Obama's intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA Director
John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part and The New York Times printed a
correction saving so.)
Notable quotes:
"... Well its three . And one is Brennan . And one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks . So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey . Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker. So you look at that. ..."
"... Trump gets it. He knows the weak points of the propaganda claims of "Russian hacking": Podesta and the fake Steele dossier, the DNC server, the lack of any FBI investigation of the alleged hack, the NYT's long false insistence on the '17 agencies' assessment, the "political hacks" who fitted their claims to the Obama/Clinton narrative. ..."
"... But neither the Washington Post nor the NY Times or others mention the crucial points Trump spelled out in their write-ups of the gaggle. There is no word on the DNC servers in them. Instead they create a claim of "Putin says and Trump just believes him". The do not name the facts and questions Trump listed to support his position. Taking up the valid questions Trump asked would of course require the news outlets to finally delve into them. We can't have that. ..."
"... Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies. But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by lunatic political hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with Russia, China, Iran and probably everyone else. ..."
"... I guess it could be that the DNC really was hacked, but maybe they faked the hack story, fed the story to Crowdstrike, then paid Crowdstrike a lot of money to fabricate a fairytale about Russian hacking... ..."
"... This Russian fairytale would be the bedrock of Hillary's campaign, and it gave her a reason to badmouth trump who intended to get along with Putin, which deeply offended the neocon Bolsheviks who've been running things since 9/11 ..."
"... If the hacking really happened, it's maybe more likely to have been the US NSA that did the hacking... that might explain why the DNC and Hillary were not alarmed by the hacking --if it happened-- and did nothing about it, and continued to write incriminating emails... ..."
"... Russia gate is Really Hillary Gate... And that's just the beginning as we consider the DNC lid coming off via Donna Brazile and the Uranium scandal. Mueller has been gatekeeper for the Deep State for OKC bombing, 911,...other False Flag...and now today's Intrigues. ..."
"... Back when Trump looked like he was in the running in the US presidential election, I wondered how one man, even if he was genuine, could without the backing of US intelligence, take down the deepstate/borg/whatever. Putin pulled Russia out of the nineties with key backing from patriotic intelligence and military leadership, but Trump even if genuine would be on his own. Just ordered 'Art of the deal' to try and understand Trump a bit more. Looks like he has just destroyed a big chunk of deep state financing so will be interesting to see how long he can stay alive. ..."
"... well, Mueller declined to find 9/11 evidence against bin laden... or maybe we should say, "he declined to manufacture evidence"... for some unkown reason... ..."
"... Can we just face the facts here that there is a coordinated effort by these elite to get Trump dethroned? What reason for this? Simple...he's a threat. ..."
"... Mike Whitney posted a great piece this week suggesting Brennan, Obama's political 'hack', is behind this mess - "Brennan spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign from the get-go. As early as August 2016, Brennan was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress expressing his conviction that Moscow was helping Trump to win the election. The former Director offered no proof to back up his claims nor has he since then. It was also Brennan who gradually persuaded Clapper, Comey and Morrell to join his anti-Russia jihad, although all were reluctant participants at first. Were they won over by compelling secret evidence that has been been withheld from the public?" - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48172.htm ..."
"... These are but a few sources digging and reporting on these bogus charges against Putin. I'd like to believe the majority of the U.S. electorate isn't being fooled by the nonsense. I can't speak for those who choose to remain inside the brainwashing corporate media bubble, but for those of us who divorced ourselves from their propaganda long ago ain't buying nor ever did buy into the muh Russia crap. ..."
"... Meanwhile, USG declares RT and Sputnik to be foreign agents and must register as such -- and Trump had nothing to do with that?!? ..."
"... The media is now now in permanent psy op mode, colonizing the public's mind and jamming people's ability to reason, think critically and even tell fact from fiction. It is only a matter of time before overt repression becomes widespread (to protect our freedoms of course) and the last remnants of democracy give way to an Orwellian/Huxleyite dystopia. ..."
"... CNN covers the Binney/Pompeo meeting, and describes Binney in the headline as a "conspiracy theorist": http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/mike-pompeo-william-binney-meeting/index.html ..."
Trump Points To Falsehoods In "Russian Hacking" Claims - Media Still Ignore Them
During the flight of his recent Asia tour U.S. President Donal Trump held a press gaggle on board
of the plane. Part of it were questions and answers about the alleged "Russian hacking" of the U.S.
election.
There is no public transcript available yet but the Washington Post's Mark Berman
provided a screenshot
of some relevant parts:
Mark Berman @markberman - 6:20 AM - 11 Nov 2017
Full comment from @realDonaldTrump again questioning the US intel community conclusion that
Russia meddled last year
In the attached transcript Trump talks about his very short encounter with the Russian President
Putin in Hanoi:
Q: When did you bring up the issue of election meddling? Did you ask him a question?
A: Every time he sees me he says he didn't do that and I really believe that when he tells
me that, he means it. But he says, I didn't do that. I think he is very insulted by it, ...
...
He says that very strongly and he really seems to be insulted by it he says he didn't do it.
Q: Even if he didn't bring it up one-on-one, do you believe him?
A: I think that he is very, very strong on the fact that didn't do it. And then you look and
you look what's going on with Podesta , and you look at what's going on with the server from the
DNC and why didn't the FBI take it ? Why did they leave it? Why did a third party look at the
server and not the FBI ? You look at all of this stuff, and you say, what's going on here? And
you hear it's 17 agencies. Well its three . And one is Brennan . And one is whatever. I mean,
give me a break. They're political hacks . So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have
Clapper and you have Comey . Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker. So
you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently say he has nothing
to do with that. Now, you are not going to get into an argument, you are going to start talking
about Syria and the Ukraine.
Trump gets it. He knows the weak points of the propaganda claims of "Russian hacking": Podesta
and the fake Steele dossier, the DNC server, the lack of any FBI investigation of the alleged hack,
the NYT's long false insistence on the '17 agencies' assessment, the "political hacks" who fitted
their claims to the Obama/Clinton narrative.
But
neither the Washington Post
nor the NY Times or
others mention the crucial points Trump spelled out in their write-ups of the gaggle. There is
no word on the DNC servers in them. Instead they create a claim of "Putin says and Trump just believes
him". The do not name the facts and questions Trump listed to support his position. Taking up the
valid questions Trump asked would of course require the news outlets to finally delve into them.
We can't have that.
Instead we get more "Russian influence" claptrap. Like this from the once honorable Wired
which headlines:
Russian interference in Brexit through targeted social media propaganda can be revealed for the
first time. A cache of posts from 2016, seen by WIRED, shows how a coordinated network of Russian-based
Twitter accounts spread racial hatred in an attempt to disrupt politics in the UK and Europe.
Interesting, enthralling, complicate and sensational ...
... until you get down to paragraph 14(!):
Surprisingly, all the posts around Brexit in this small snapshot were posted after the June vote
"Russian agents" influenced the U.S. election by buying mostly
irrelevant Facebook ads - 25% of which were never seen by anyone and 56% of which were posted
AFTER the election
"Russian-based Twitter accounts" influenced the Brexit vote in the UK by tweeting affirmative
AFTER the vote happened
Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies.
But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by
lunatic political hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with
Russia, China, Iran and probably everyone else.
"Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies.
But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by lunatic political
hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with Russia, China, Iran
and probably everyone else."
I couldn't agree more B. The distraction to cover up the DNC crimes and the 'pay to play' antics
during HRC's tenure at SECState are part of this nonsense as well.
the term "hacked" implies that someone came in on the internet, right?
I guess it could be that the DNC really was hacked, but maybe they faked the hack story,
fed the story to Crowdstrike, then paid Crowdstrike a lot of money to fabricate a fairytale about
Russian hacking...
This Russian fairytale would be the bedrock of Hillary's campaign, and it gave her a reason
to badmouth trump who intended to get along with Putin, which deeply offended the neocon Bolsheviks
who've been running things since 9/11
If the hacking really happened, it's maybe more likely to have been the US NSA that did
the hacking... that might explain why the DNC and Hillary were not alarmed by the hacking --if
it happened-- and did nothing about it, and continued to write incriminating emails...
...they assumed the hackers were on their side
OK, then, if the hacking was a fairytale, made up by Debbie and Hillary, and reinforced by
Crowdstrike, then what? Maybe it doesn't make any difference in the long run, if the DNC was hacked
or not
Whatever happened, the emails got out, Assange strongly hints that Seth Rich was the leak,
Seth Rich was murdered, and his murder was intended to be a warning to people like Donna Brazile,
who, after Seth was murdered, started drawing her office blinds because she didn't want to be
sniped... presumably by the people who murdered Seth Rich
Russia gate is Really Hillary Gate... And that's just the beginning as we consider the DNC
lid coming off via Donna Brazile and the Uranium scandal. Mueller has been gatekeeper for
the Deep State for OKC bombing, 911,...other False Flag...and now today's Intrigues.
Will
Podesta and Hillary escape?...or get Prison? John McCain with ISIS and photo opp,.. Evil in your
face 24. If certain people are not in Prison....Mueller could wear the label Satan's guardian.
..and it wouldn't be exaggeration
Back when Trump looked like he was in the running in the US presidential election, I wondered
how one man, even if he was genuine, could without the backing of US intelligence, take down the
deepstate/borg/whatever. Putin pulled Russia out of the nineties with key backing from patriotic
intelligence and military leadership, but Trump even if genuine would be on his own. Just ordered
'Art of the deal' to try and understand Trump a bit more. Looks like he has just destroyed a big
chunk of deep state financing so will be interesting to see how long he can stay alive.
well, Mueller declined to find 9/11 evidence against bin laden... or maybe we should say,
"he declined to manufacture evidence"... for some unkown reason...
whatever, if seth rich's murder was an attempt to terrorize politicians and the media into
parroting the party line --like the anthrax letters did after 9/11-- it worked
b, it is so funny that everytime you allude to Trump being in the right against the teeming hordes
or globalist, anti-Russia elites, you always offer the caveat: "but...he's a bastard and I hate
him."
Can we just face the facts here that there is a coordinated effort by these elite to get
Trump dethroned? What reason for this? Simple...he's a threat.
Enemy of my enemy anyone?
P.s. I view him as an opportunist. a chameleon. At the very least, perhaps he realizes the
absolute absurdity of trying to keep the house of cards aloft in the ME. So far, no wars, and
a de-escalation in Syria. Pundits are talking about 3+% growth in US for first time in decade.
I dont't know...perhaps Donald can cut and run in time to salvage some of the US prosperity.
I'm almost inclined to think Trump is letting this Russian hack thing play out on purpose despite
his Tweets to the contrary. Preventing the feds from 'investigating' it wouldn't make it go away,
it would just cement the notion of guilt and a cover-up into the anti-Trump, anti-Russian segment
of the public. More importantly, the similarly-inclined political/government leaders (pro-Hillary,
DNC, politicized FBI and intel, neocons, deep state, whatever...) and MSM slowly expose themselves
for what they are. They get too confident in the big lie actually working and go into a feeding
frenzy. Trump trolls them on Twitter and they go insane.
When you want to catch sharks, you don't chase them around the ocean to hunt them. You
chum the waters and wait
for them to come to you. Trump isn't the one chumming the waters here - he's letting the sharks
do that themselves.
I scratched my head like everyone else trying to figure out Trump's earlier incomprehensible
hiring/firing volley his first few months. Maybe that was just a bit of theatre. Trump might not
understand the 'little people' too much, but he does understand his opponent psychopaths (corporate,
banking or government/intel) and how to use their basic flaws against them. 'Draining the swamp'
sells well, but letting his opponents stick their necks out far enough before Trump's own Night
of the Long Knives would (to me) be a far more effective strategy towards his ends. And probably
much safer for him than Kennedy's approach.
Kind of worrying that one has to rely on outsider psychopaths to cull other psychopath's well-entrenched
herds within the US government. Does that ever turn out well?
Only the most strident partisans hold tightly to the Russian interference nonsense.
Those who simply want to deal in facts bother ourselves to self inform using multiple sources
who have been trying to make sense of the dastardly twists and turns in this muh Russia whodunit
scandal. The DNC emails, dossier, collusion the whole escapade, from the beginning, could be seen
as being built on nothing more than quicksand.
Mike Whitney posted a great piece this week suggesting Brennan, Obama's political 'hack',
is behind this mess - "Brennan spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign from the get-go. As early
as August 2016, Brennan was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress expressing
his conviction that Moscow was helping Trump to win the election. The former Director offered
no proof to back up his claims nor has he since then. It was also Brennan who gradually persuaded
Clapper, Comey and Morrell to join his anti-Russia jihad, although all were reluctant participants
at first. Were they won over by compelling secret evidence that has been been withheld from the
public?" - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48172.htm
And then you have the Intercept's piece on Binney's meeting with CIA's Pompeo with Ray McGovern
providing a lot more detail and an interview with his favorite news outlet RT -
http://raymcgovern.com/
Oh, and about Binney's meeting with Pompeo? Trump requested Pompeo meet with him. He did. But
Pompeo, as of today, remains steadfast in supporting the ICA crap report Obama's political intel
hacks put out.
These are but a few sources digging and reporting on these bogus charges against Putin.
I'd like to believe the majority of the U.S. electorate isn't being fooled by the nonsense. I
can't speak for those who choose to remain inside the brainwashing corporate media bubble, but
for those of us who divorced ourselves from their propaganda long ago ain't buying nor ever did
buy into the muh Russia crap.
we got to wonder why donna brazile made such a fuss about Seth Rich. She's being way too cagey
for comfort but even if we leave seth rich out of it, none of it make any sense
Also from a Youtube video I saw earlier there are claims this is what is happening.
1. Obama regime was chronically corrupt including sell of Uranium to Russia for bribes. Elements
of the US military and intelligence were disgusted by this and approached Trump BEFORE the elections
as a figure who could help them.
2. Trump decided to work with them and during his election campaign he deliberately made constant
exaggerated claims of his supposed friendship with Putin, this was bait for the Democrats to smear
him as a Putin-lover, Putin puppet.
3. Once elected, the whole "Trump is a Putin puppet" was allowed to run so that a huge demand
for some sort of investigation in to Trump and his Russia links could be built. Only this investigation
would in fact be used to target the Democrats and Clinton including for their corruption over
the Uranium sales with the Russians.
4. This was apparently (according to these claims) the game plan from the beginning and Mueller
is apparently going to work to convict Hillary Clinton and other senior Democrats.
I don't know how true this is, but it does answer a lot of questions and anomalies and also
ties in with B's thesis that we are essentially seeing a quasi-military government in D.C. under
Trump.
@ PavewayIV who ended his comment with: "Kind of worrying that one has to rely on outsider psychopaths
to cull other psychopath's well-entrenched herds within the US government. Does that ever turn
out well? "
Yep! And we add our textual white noise to the rearranging of the deck chairs on
the top deck of the good ship Humanity as it careens over the falls/into the shoals/pick-your-metaphor
psychohistorian@14 - Captain to crew: "I will not have this ship go down looking
like a garbage scow. Deck chairs will be arranged in a neat and orderly manner at all times!"
The same media you're decrying here is also ignoring this week's paradise papers revelations
about Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary and business links with Russian Israeli mobsters
and oligarchs like Mogilevich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMhzkvWuXEM
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true. The other is to refuse
to believe what is true. Can't fix stupid sociopathy. I pity deplorable goyims, They deserve their
plight...
Please someone end this idiot circus! Russia hacked THE ELECTION ...hacked THE ELECTION ??? For
the love of gawd..the ELECTION, meaning the voting was hacked.....it was NOT. Nothing has focused
on Russian 'hacking' of VOTES. Russia 'if' they hacked, at best hacked some emails and info used
to expose Hillary. And posted negative info on the net. So, so what? How many leakers weren't
doing that?
I have had it with the Dems, they have IQs somewhere below that of cabbages. But
I guess there are a certain number of citizens that will believe anything if it is repeated enough
by their herd leaders.
All this pathetic, lousy street theater resembling staging can only serve one important reason:
Distraction. What is it that people need to be distracted from? That the US has turned openly
into a military dictatorship? That the extermination proceedings are speeding up?
Hitler used
gas chambers, as did the US after the war. While the first was a psychopathic dictator, the latter
is a psychopathic society. It has spend trillions in research and design of lethal weapons and
systems to exterminate any 'enemy'.
With all the technological progress, people do no longer need to be dragged to a gas chamber.
The gas chamber will come to them. Sprayed into the atmosphere and making its way into earth's
life systems.
Trump, Dump, Busch, Koch, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon - plutocratic hand puppets. It is not the
people who decide where and when the ship sinks. It will be sunken for them - with all the useless
eaters on board.
Trump is too stupid to realize that the very reason the election was rigged in his favour was
- the derailment of ANY ZIO/US/Russia relations !! Their top priority ( as always) has been to
keep Russia and Germany apart ! Russia's 'resources' and German 'innovation' is a match made in
heaven - would spell the end of the US economy !
Not only did the Propaganda System refuse to correctly report as b details, but nowhere has it
mentioned the defeat of Daesh, as Pepe Escobar discloses: "This is History in the making.
"And right on cue, VIRTUALLY NOTHING about this REAL ON THE GROUND VICTORY OF
A REAL WAR ON TERROR is being covered by Western corporate media.
"No wonder. Because this was the work of Damascus, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran advisers, Baghdad
and the PMUs – actually the "4+1" - and not the US-led "coalition" that includes Wahhabi mongrels
House of Saud and UAE - that totally smashes to bits the monochord Washington narrative.
The war on Syria and the Russian "hacking" debacle has corrupted the entire western media. Not
that it was ever squeaky clean - far from it - but it was at least somewhat independent from the
dominant establishment. There were pauses between the outrageous lies and blatant fact twisting
and it did not overtly shill for neoliberal political parties and work overtime pushing massive
amounts of propaganda on the public 24/7/365 and relentlessly demonize, in the most crude fashion
imaginable, the leaders of some of the the world's most powerful countries and any sovereign nation
that values its independence and freedom from Western exploitation.
The media is now now in permanent psy op mode, colonizing the public's mind and jamming
people's ability to reason, think critically and even tell fact from fiction. It is only a matter
of time before overt repression becomes widespread (to protect our freedoms of course) and the
last remnants of democracy give way to an Orwellian/Huxleyite dystopia.
If by chance Trump or anyone is genuine about taking down the deep state, they cannot do it
by running around in a pathetic attempt trying to fix small issues. They would have to leave the
machine to carry on as normal and go for its foundations. I thought about this months ago, and
now looking at the latest events, this could be what is happening.
Meanwhile a revolution threatening the federation of Australia is taking place in Canberra utilizing
a formless and compliant press corps and a fake issue of dual citizenship. Chaos is a disease
agent which has jumped out of the Middle Eastern laboratory into all western nations.
"Whether the US "won" in Iraq in that sense depends on what you view as the motivation for
the attack on Iraq, but for certain the Iraqi state was defeated comprehensively. "
Everybody knows the motivation was to eliminate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Iraq
no longer possesses WMD's so the US won! Small caveat. There were never WMD's so the war was
unnecessary. The military industrial complex did make a killing though (no pun intended).
Just a coincidence I suppose
Iraq war was the war for oil... Bush was just a puppet.
Notable quotes:
"... Erik Edstrom is a graduate of the West Point class of 2007. He was an infantry officer, Army Ranger, and Bronze Star Medal recipient who deployed to direct combat in Afghanistan. ..."
In George W. Bush's home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital
murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are
a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression,
which killed 7,000
U.S. servicemen and at least
210,000 civilians
, displaced more than
10 million people
from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned
people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently
is to be given the Thayer Award at West Point.
On October 19th, George W. Bush traveled to the United States Military Academy, my alma mater
, to receive the
Sylvanus Thayer
Award at a ceremony hosted by that school's current superintendent and presented on behalf of
the West Point Association of Graduates. The honor is "given to a citizen whose outstanding character,
accomplishments, and stature in the civilian community draw wholesome comparison to the qualities
for which West Point strives."
... ... ...
Erik Edstrom is a graduate of the West Point class of 2007. He was an infantry officer, Army
Ranger, and Bronze Star Medal recipient who deployed to direct combat in Afghanistan.
Bush is a war criminal and should not be rewarded for upholding moral standards,
he should be in prison or on the end of a piano wire.
But, the seed does not fall far from the tree (from which both should hang).
Lt Col Pete Kilner styles himself an ethicist and teaches/counsels ethics and morality to West
Pointers and helps military personnel deal with post-engagement moral issues. Kilner published
this essay a few days ago:
MORAL MISCONCEPTIONS: FIVE FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS CONFUSE MORAL JUDGMENTS ON WAR
imo nearly every argument Kilner makes to refute the "5 misconceptions" are childishly simplistic;
some rely on distortions or omissions of key facts.
For example, Kilner writes:
Misconception 4
Motives must be pure:The 1990–91 First Gulf War was a paradigm case of a just war.
Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, and the U.S. and other countries assisted Kuwaiti forces
in liberating their country and re-establishing their government. Critics of the war claim
that the United States' involvement was motivated by a desire to keep oil prices low. Even
if they are right, would it matter?
No, the Gulf War was NOT a "paradigm case of a just war." Just war theory / Jus Ad Bellum
Convention holds that the just war must:
have just cause, be a last resort, be declared by a proper authority, possess right intention,
have a reasonable chance of success, and the end must be proportional to the means used. .
. http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/#H2
First of all, if you have to lie to gain assent to wage war, then any moral claim to having
a just cause is null.
Incubator babies??
In almost every other way the Persian Gulf war waged by George H W Bush violated jus ad bellum
principles but especially:
War should always be a last resort. This connects intimately with presenting a just cause
– all other forms of solution must have been attempted prior to the declaration of war.
As Vernon Loeb
recorded -- and the
George
H W Bush archives as examined by historian Jeff Engel affirm, King Hussein of Jordan, in concert
with other Arab leaders, had achieved a resolution to which Saddam would have agreed, and repeatedly
asked Bush to let the Arabs take care of their own conflict. Likewise, Mikhael Gorbachev persisted
to the point of annoyance in calling Bush and urging him NOT to go to war to resolve the conflict.
Bush shouted at him and ignored his advice.
All other options had NOT been exhausted.
The Berlin wall had fallen, USSR and Gorbachev no longer had power to counterbalance US power;
George H W Bush was King of the Mountain and he wielded his power recklessly. The world is still
reeling -- and hundreds of thousands are dead, because of his reckless disregard of thousand-year
old principles of Justice in War.
It's astonishing that an ethicist who teaches West Pointers did not make this basic analysis.
In summary, if Lt. Col. Pete Kilner is representative of the "moral foundation" provided West
Point cadets, the institution -- and the United States that, according to a Gallup poll, trusts
the military more than any other institution in USA -- are in deeper trouble than Erik Erdstrom
comprehends.
Previously had the impression that Dubya was a dumb but decent person, manipulated by others.
I didn't know for example his eager participation in the speechmaking/lecture circus. This mental
picture has changed somewhat in recent years, but I remained greatly ignorant of a lot of details.
Now these two articles about him shed some light how he really is a piece of shit, just like the
others. Maybe not so extremely dumb, though.
This article is (sadly) on the money. However, it is just another illustration revealing the mockery
that most such prestigious awards have made of themselves in recent years. Awarding Barack Obama
the Nobel Prize was one recent instance of this – a president that at one point had us engaged
in seven wars at once. But at least in that case, it can be claimed that the award was aspirational,
as the totality of his "accomplishment" did not become a matter of record until after the award
was made. In the case described above, the honor is being awarded with full knowledge of the recipient's
history.
Trump's brutal comment to the dead soldier in Florida was on the money: That's what you signed
up for. It would be gratifying to think that Trump knew exactly what he was saying; Scott Adams
thinks Trump is a master communicator. Conversely, tragic to hear the Florida Rep gripe that she
was so upset at Trump's callousness because she "had mentored the young man and helped him get
in the military." That's just like helping you get a job with Goldman Sachs, right? No risk, no
moral quandaries. re Lt Col Kilner -- he's Chhristiian: here's a piece he wrote for Christianity
Today:
Thank you for that link. A VERY GOOD article. A gem really. Some parts I found particularly
good:
This insight is that combat deployments affect our souls so deeply because they allow us
to taste something of heaven and hell, in ways that civilian life rarely does. The profound
purpose, unity, and love that soldiers in a small unit experience is almost impossible to replicate
outside of war; it is a foretaste of heaven. At the same time, the dehumanizing suffering and
apparent absence of God that characterize a war zone instruct veterans on how awful human existence
can be; there's a reason we say "war is hell."
Soldiers are pawns in a conflict started by others.
And for the first time in most soldiers' lives, we encounter undisguised evil.
Hidden beneath the ugly destructiveness of war, however, is a sublime beauty that is known
only to the veterans who have experienced it.
The greater the dangers and adversity that soldiers face and overcome, the greater those
bonds. Some soldiers become closer to each other than to their own families.
, it explains why soldiers want to be deployed. We're not warmongers; we're longing for
another taste of heaven alongside other warriors. Second, it explains why life outside of war
can seem so mundane and even meaningless. Having gone through heaven and hell, our everyday
lives can feel like limbo.
We've seen what humans are capable of, for better and for worse. Reflecting on our experiences
of war, we are alternately inspired and appalled. We have glimpsed what was previously unimaginable:
the happiness of heaven, the desolation of hell.
I'm not sure why that's supposed to be surprising. Leadership across swathes of institutions has
abdicated their responsibility to lead or govern and instead adopted baby-sitting and appeasement.
Solonto: You've posted more than 2,600 comments on this website? "You" are likely a group of
Russians working full time to sow discord. But let's charitably assume that you're a real person.
Your knowledge of the history of the 1990-91 Gulf War is terrible. I assume that you were too
young to remember the events leading up to it. Watch President George H. W. Bush's speech to the
world and learn:
That may be the best explanation in terms of Just War you'll ever hear a politician give. He
checks every block of jus ad bellum.
Also, about your snide comment, "Lt Col Pete Kilner styles himself an ethicist." I have a masters
degree in philosophical ethics from an excellent program, and I've researched, written on, and
taught ethics for 20 years. I may "style" myself a comedian or good dancer, but I'm pretty well-credentialed
as an ethicist.
Obama turned war itself into a prolonged assassination campaign via remote drone and he awarded
himself every conceivable medal. Previous administrations successfully circumvented genocide as
a crime against humanity by raining annihilation from the skies. Which part of the government
of our country do you fail to understand?
"This past Summer, after months of private discussions about POW treatment at Gitmo, the
Red Cross openly declared the US Government in violation of the Geneva Conventions based upon
first hand reports from Cuba "
Why doesn't the Red Cross do something useful, like making the same claim about Puerto Rico?
Then we'd be forced to grant them independence. It's way overdue.
I was around 1990/91 and I followed what was happening. I do not agree with SolontoCroesus
take on Bush and Gulf War. I already once had exchanged comments with him about it, I think, but
my points did not make a dent.
Bush never looked thrilled to go to this war. I had impression that his arms had to be twisted.
He seemed like he would not mind letting Saddam Hussein slide. It was his meeting with Margaret
Thatcher in Aspen that changed everything. Bush built broad coalition including many Arab and
Muslim nations and went to war. He head to give $500 millions to Israel to keep them away and
not retaliating against Iraq in order to not upset Arab allies in the coalition.
The war was won. Bush did not go to Bagdad but only liberated Kuwait. It was reported in papers
that his popularity hit 90% which was 20% more than what Hitler got after the Anschluss of Austria
in 1938, as I remember thinking this at that time.
In summer 1991 Bush decided to use his political capital and tried to say no Israel illegal
settlements by holding money slated for Israel. Yitzhak Shamir got furious and the Lobby attacked.
Everybody was against hime. Most people did not know what was happening. Bush backed off and instead
of turning to American people and leveling with them on what was going on he only complained that
he was all alone in WH.
It was decided (I do not know how, when and where and by whom but it was decided nevertheless)
that Bush could not be trusted with the 2nd term. He did not take advantage of the golden opportunity
to occupy Iraq and then he had audacity to challenge Israel which last time happened in early
summer 1993 by JFK when said no to the development of nuclear weapons by Israel. So everything
was done what had to be done for him to lose. And he knew that it would be so. He did not fight.
He got impatient with the campaign and looked at his watch during the debate to show his disdain.
He had no chance to win. Ross Perot played the same role as Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 election to
deprive Taft the 2nd term. Unlike Roosevelt Ross Perot probably did not know what role he was
cast to play.
Why Bush did what he did? Why he did not occupy Iraq? Why he challenged Israel? My take is
that he really did not want this war. That he really believed that after the wall coming down
and Soviet Union falling apart America can change the course and start reducing military spending.
He seemed to really believe in the peace dividends. The end of the Cold War was his greatest achievement
and it was ruined by Saddam Hussein invasion of Kuwait. So the most important question is to find
out who TF whispered to Saddam Hussein's ear to convince him that he will get away with his attack
on Kuwait? The same people who wanted Iraq destroyed who eventually had it destroyed 12 years
later and all those who did not want peace dividends and who feared the cuts in military spending?
I think Bush knew who was really behind Hussain? Who screwed up his vision of post Cold War peace,
who deprived him of his legacy. So he said no to Israel when he had the highest approval rating
in recent history but then he chickened out. He was intimidated by something. In retrospect he
was not a bad guy but he wasted possibly the last opportunity to have America extricated from
the iron grip of the Lobby.
Just read the chapter on the Vietnam war by Howard Zinn A Peoples History of the USA. Or read
an Eisenhower letter, written after WWII, 'we should have killed much more Germans'. James Bacque,
´Der geplante Tod, Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in amerikanischen und französischen Lagern 1945 –
1946, Frankfurt/M, 1989, 1994 (Other losses, Toronto, 1989)
The United States Military Academy is, or at least should be, a steward of American military
values
But they are upholding American values, like lying, cheating, murdering, stealing, which is
what many American presidents, but definitely since President Clinton, have engaged in around
the world.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the liars with Operation Inherent Resolve, the gangster outfit
that is overseeing the 'Wars for Wall Street and Israel' in SW Asia and the ME, bomb to
smithereens civilians on a daily basis, then get in front of the cameras and LIE that they didn't
do it, it was those Rooskies. Then, when they're outed with evidence, they LIE again, promising
to investigate and that's the last you'll hear of the latest American-made mass murder. Aren't all those command types at Operation Butcher Muslims, sorry, Inherent Resolve West Point
or Annapolis graduates, that lie, cheat, steal and murder on a daily basis, yet they get their
chests festooned with medals from a grateful nation for being basically, unhinged psycho-killers,
so you see, West Point is upholding American values.
I have read elsewhere that Mr. Bush had the largest contingent of rabbis in his administration,
as advisors behind the scenes, to provide him with moral guidance. What is a person to make of
that? Was he that obtuse?
Thank you Mr. Edstrom!
Most of them annoy the bleep outta me because they seem like more of the sappy (unctuous even),over
romanticized, self aggrandizing, claptrap that we've come to expect from functionaries of the
state.
This, type of nonsense, in particular, galls me.:
Hidden beneath the ugly destructiveness of war, however, is a sublime beauty that is known
only to the veterans who have experienced it.
What a disgustingly hollow load of bulshit that is! Oh, but the rest of us, who haven't experienced
the "sublime beauty" of war, aren't counted amongst the anointed elite who know things the rest
of us mere mortals don't.
"Sublime beauty?"
Who do you think yer kidding? I was a grunt (volunteer, not drafted) in Vietnam, and I never
saw any beauty in war, sublime, mundane, or otherwise.
Here's how a man with integrity views the military.:
"Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness,
that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties,
also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher ranks than themselves."
― Leo Tolstoy Resurrection Or, The Awakening, 1899
In 1851 Tolstoy and his older brother went to the Caucasus where he joined the Russian army
as an artillery officer.
In 1854, during the Crimean War Tolstoy transferred to Wallachia to fight against the French,
British and Ottoman Empire and defend Sevastopol.
Here's what military establishments are really about; I wonder if they deal with this at West
Point, or in "ethics" classes.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions
to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of
tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt
was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending,
have enslaved the people.
James Madison, Speech, Constitutional Convention (1787-06-29), from Max Farrand's Records
of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. I [1] (1911), p. 465
Standing armies are un-American, and no amount of cloyingly romantic slight of hand with the
truth will change it. Here's all one needs to know about the "ethics" of state sponsored terrorism.:
Wherever an army is established, it introduces a revolution in manners, corrupts the morals,
propagates every species of vice, and degrades the human character."
Mercy Otis Warren, Revolution-era historian,
History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution vol. 1, Ch3, 1805
But they are upholding American values, like lying, cheating, murdering, stealing, which
is what many American presidents, but definitely since President Clinton, have engaged in around
the world.
True, but one could argue that Lincoln was the first of the worst. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson,
and FDR took hypocrisy and mockery of "American values" to new depths and it's been downhill since
then.
We have to face the fact that none of us is fit to wield the levers of so much power. To think
otherwise is positively deranged.
Also, about your snide comment, "Lt Col Pete Kilner styles himself an ethicist." I have
a masters degree in philosophical ethics from an excellent program, and I've researched, written
on, and taught ethics for 20 years.
I must tell you that the comment, whether snide or not, is spot on.
Your other credentials are worth about as much as Bush's award or O-bomb-a's "peace" prize,
and any adult should know that.
Still, as criminal as Bush and Obama's actions were, between Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy/Johnson,
there are way more Americans dead for nothing than these pikers killed.
Bush jr. and Bush sr. are both war criminals and were front men for the Zionists who really control
this country and both were complicit with Israel and the deep state in 911.
They are evil incarnate with satan and also their henchman Cheney, straight from hell.
Whatever one thinks of Trump, one must appreciate the public service that he did in utterly humiliating
Jeb! Bush and pretty much putting a stake in the heart of the Bush political dynasty. One takes
ones guilty pleasures where one finds them.
All of your comment is true and I'd like to add that the fetid scent of Zionist sympathies
can be detected at least as far back as Wilson and FDR as well, and probably even goes further
back.
This quote is interesting though I do not mean to conflate Judaism with Zionism.:
We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present
time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the
Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level
In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from
Judaism.
The Jew has already emancipated himself in a Jewish way.
"The Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole
Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German state,
decides the fate of Europe. While corporations and guilds refuse to admit Jews, or have
not yet adopted a favorable attitude towards them, the audacity of industry mocks at the obstinacy
of the material institutions." (Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, p. 114)
This is no isolated fact. The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only
because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from
him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical
spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians
have become Jews.
A someone very fond of the Bush family, I have to admit, as someone who opposed both conflict
(one outright) the other as to scale and purpose) this article is a very heavy indictment, less
of the executive but of members of congress, the foreign policy establishment and the military
advocates for invasion (men and women alike).
I have always thought that Pres Bush ignored his bet instincts on the matter and was ill advised.
I don't know what recompense the country will garner for our actions, but I don't think it has
yet come. We need to pull up and consider the dark space into which are knee-jerking our way into.
-- –
However, I don't think this is about Pres. Bush or even a stamp of approval on needless and
careless interventions as much as it an attempt to wedge the military against Pres Trump or tangentially
express discomfit by some in the higher echelons with the Pres.
Deeply appreciated this a article. No argument against those invasion penetrated the cloud
of revenge the country was bent on exacting. And it is deeply troubling – when the case against
invasion was so blatantly clear.
At West Point, it's still possible to believe that we are fighting in the interests of the
Afghan people
If that's true then they are mentally deficient. Mercenaries and the mentally defective working
under the leadership of the morally corrupt, the perfect dance partners.
I apologize to those who may find my comments excessive, but some of the attitudes expressed here
need to be confronted. I regret that I can't do it in person.
To those who postulate such insubstantial, quasi-profound, faux-poetic pornography, if not
swinishly orgasmic, fanciful hooey as:
combat deployments affect our souls so deeply because they allow us to taste something
of heaven and hell, in ways that civilian life rarely does. The profound purpose, unity,
and love that soldiers in a small unit experience is almost impossible to replicate outside
of war; it is a foretaste of heaven.
we're longing for another taste of heaven alongside other warriors . Second, it explains
why life outside of war can seem so mundane and even meaningless. Having gone through heaven
and hell , our everyday lives can feel like limbo.
Having gone through heaven and hell, our everyday lives can feel like limbo.
I say that Aristophanes, to name just one, saw through the self adulating humbug, millennia
ago.
SAUSAGE-SELLER
you wish the war to conceal your rogueries as in a mist , that Demos may see
nothing of them, and harassed by cares, may only depend on yourself for his bread. But if ever
peace is restored to him, if ever he returns to his lands to comfort himself once more with
good cakes, to greet his cherished olives, he will know the blessings you have kept him out
of, even though paying him a salary; and, filled with hatred and rage, he will rise, burning
with desire to vote against you. You know this only too well; it is for this you rock him
to sleep with your lies.
Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama all fit in the category of war criminal, and were there such
a thing as authentic and impartial international justice, they could all be in the dock of a new
Nuremberg Tribunal – albeit one without the kangaroo court and vae victis characteristics of the
eponymous one.
George Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam and his dad served as a naval
aviator during WWII. Quite a difference. At one time, the people who started wars fought in them. The last English king to serve in
combat was the much-maligned Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. James IV of
Scotland was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. George II was commander at the Battle
of Dettingen in 1743.
Prince Harry saw service in Afghanistan and Andrew in the Falklands. So, the denigrated Royals
have a better track record than the elites in a democracy. In Robert Heinlein's Starship Trooper novel, only people who served their society in a dangerous
position had the right to vote. That would weed out almost of the "cloud people" who dominate
the West.
Bush II could be called a war criminal by reason of stupidity. The real culprit is the bastard
standing next to him in the picture. He controlled George W. Bush and was the real President.
To this day, he continues to push for war against Iran.
Blaming Bush for starting wars is sort of like blaming bin Laden for 9/11 or Putin for Hilary's
defeat. There were a lot more people involved in recent and ongoing US wars, including many people
from the "opposing" party, Joe Biden and Al Gore come to mind.
Previously had the impression that Dubya was a dumb but
He's obviously no intellectual and it's unlikely he's ever read any book on his own. He appears
to lack curiosity whatever his mental level may be. His speeches, like everyone else, are written
by others and just simply read as an actor reads their lines. However, his job was to deliver
and that he did in spades. He ratcheted up the security state to a historic level and diverted
trillions from the US treasury for the biggest gravy train ever. It's an income transfer scheme,
from the masses to the upper classes, all while scaring everyone with nonexistent hobgoblins.
He did nothing about unchecked illegal immigration, giving his constituency, the haves and the
have-mores, their cheap labor. Historians will argue as to who the worst president of all time
was and Bush's name will figure prominently. He'll be seen as one of the downward turning points
in American history, a person who ruined what was left of American credibility and pride. He had
a lot of enablers though, and did not act alone, standing astride a mountain of bones. So, smart
or not, the evil nature of this man will continue to cast it's shadow for years to come.
2013 Madeleine Korbel Albright • speech • biography • video
2012 Isaac Newton "Ike" Skelton • speech • biography
2011 Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates • speech • biography
2010 Honorable James A. Baker, III • speech • biography • photos
2009 H. Ross Perot • speech • biography • photos
2008 William J. Perry • article • biography
2007 General (Retired) Frederick Kroesen • speech • article • biography
2006 Tom Brokaw • speech • article •biography
I stopped with Tom Brokaw because that seems odd to most. Watch this funny and insightful Jimmy
Dore clip about how Brokaw was a no newsman, but a Pentagon bootlicker, hence the award.
I think what we can all be thankful is the fact that we are no longer dependant on the NY time/Washington
Post etc to see the World through their prizes l
President Bush may have been dumb or naive or he may have been smart. It's difficult to know what
a person really thinks. The Iraq war was a mistake but Bush the Younger also pushed for implementation
of other policies which look to be highly dubious. Does anyone remember "No Child left Behind"
or "The Housing Gap"? These two policies were hairbrained to say the least. Only a foolish person
could ever believe in such nonsense. He truly believed that we were all created equal, he was
they ultimate champion of the "Blank Slate" theory. A delusional fool who I actually voted for
in 2000.
Yes I think he was "A True Believer" in Social Justice causes.
I daresay that (((Howard Zinn))) approved of that.
Rather not. Zinn on one of his last missions as a member of USAF bomber crew was sent to bomb
with napalm large groupings of German soldiers who were just awaiting to surrender somewhere in
northern France. The front line past them and was much further West. He did not like it at all.
He thought that the only purpose of the mission was to test how the new napalm worked.
West Point? Isn't that some place where the Jooies indoctrinate their latest crop of servile Goy
Gurkhas? Change those posters to: Uncle Samuel Wants You with a pic of Samuel in his beanie pointing
a bony finger out at you, the suckers.
In Robert Heinlein's Starship Trooper novel, only people who served their society in a dangerous
position had the right to vote. That would weed out almost of the "cloud people" who dominate
the West.
Now, there is one country which adheres to that rule a bit:Israel.
Interesting, isn't it?
Easy, especially on sites like this, to heap abuse on, say, Netanyahu.
Just from Wikipedia, though:
Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, and became
a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit . Netanyahu took part in many
missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972),
during which he was shot in the shoulder . Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the
War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along
the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.[3][4] Netanyahu
achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
You have to give them: they got that right. Now, we'll see, say, 20 replies with 20 links each about .. .them .
Will keep the article busy though.
Interested in topic could just skip them.
Thanks for the article about how the elite soldiers are morally conditioned in these days.
Did they teach anything about General Smedley Butler? Some of his second thoughts he had?
What's the matter with these academics who run everthing now, are they senile?
Or, much worse, (maybe not though,) there is a policy on high, to effect the intentional dilution,
and then destruction of standards. Prominently, auspicious prizes given to idiots and worse scoundrels!
what's that do to the mental and moral health of the youths, will they wise up and see through
it and not show up?
No, just replaced with a lower order, who will be more monstrous .
All this decay of stuff is everywhere, who benefits Cui Bono? They don't need smart soldiers
what with robots and AI etc. and the real work is in dumbing down the peeps, for the eventual
enclosures .
Most of it's already been said above, but we've been a war nation for more than a generation.
Mr. Bush's predecessor bombed Iraq for years. Bush himself (or Cheney or whoever) turned it into
an official and seemingly permanent war, using what are now known to be bold-faced lies. Torture
as a matter of routine also started during Cheney's reign. Nobel Peace Prize Obama ramped us up
to 6 or 7 wars, normalized drone murder, and in his usual unctuous way told us to stop harping
on Abu Graib ("It's important we don't get too sanctimonious"). Now Mr. Trump is starting/threatening
even more war, complete with nukes, and bragging about the torture.
My point is that someone we don't even see is calling the shots, for all of them. These guys
on TV just work for them, and are paid handsomely. The awards they get mean even less than their
elections. I don't see us (the proletariat, wage slaves, trying to raise a family) ever even figuring
out what's going on, much less doing anything about it.
"The former president deserves a cold metal bench in a stockade awaiting trial, not an award and
a warm round of applause from the academy. No coffee table books featuring his paintings -- a
perverse form of macabre exhibitionism -- will atone for his actions. If West Point and its Association
of Graduates want to maintain any credible pretense of adhering to the values they claim to espouse,
they should revoke the most recent Thayer Award immediately."
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Excellent essay. What has happened to West Point to act this way?? No one with any sense could think of Bush
as anything other than a moron at best, a traitorous moron at worst. There must be an explanation–FOLLOW THE MONEY.
"... The president, he claims, had angered the military-industrial establishment with his procurement policies and his determination to withdraw from Vietnam, and had threatened to break the CIA into "a thousand pieces" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. ..."
"... His death was in effect a coup d'etat that placed in the White House a very different man with a very different approach -- one much more acceptable to what Prouty consistently calls "the power elite." ..."
"... Mr. Prouty points to what he calls "the power elite" as the movers of geopolitics and war. JFK had other ideas as to what makes the world turn. It's the age old battle, as Lincoln put it, "between the divine rights of kings and the common rights of man"... ..."
"... Mr Prouty is no "conspiracy theorist". He worked in the Pentagon and arranged the support for the CIA operations until he retired in 1964. He knew everyone from Allen Dulles to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ..."
"... He was in a particularly excellent position, due to his official responsibilities, to know intimately of the OSS and later CIA operations, as well as the White House positions under various presidents, for he saw and worked with their communications. ..."
"... His book is full of specifics, many to most of which few people know or knew. He served under three presidents. He was liaison between the Joint Chiefs and the CIA In 1954 he was ordered to establish the Office of Special Operations, and in 1964 retired as chief of Special Operations. In 1963 he wrote the formal directive on covert ops used by Joint Chiefs of Staff for all military services.. What this man, Prouty, said cannot be tossed aside. He knew the subject, and he knew what was done. ..."
"... His book really has two entwined themes, the role of CIA operations including the real power which drives those operations and the assassination of JFK. ..."
"... As for the assassination, he takes apart the Warren Commission in detail, point by point. He knew what was at stake between interested parties, and provides quotes from key JFK White House documents. He goes into the source and evolution of the Indochina / Vietnam war, beginning in 1943, as he was present at those allied high level meetings. He provides eye-opening historical material about which I expect few of our citizens are cognizant. ..."
"... The premise of this book is that Pres. Kennedy wanted to pull out of Vietnam, and the military-industrial complex didn't want that to happen. Today there is contention whether this is indeed true or not. I think JFK was uncertain himself ..."
"... After Pres. Kennedy was assasinated it is undeniable we went head first into Vietnam. He had made numerous enemies. The banking industry, the military, the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover, etc. He was a maverick going against conventional thinking and he had to be removed. As the author states those gunshots on Elm street(which by the way, isn't it interesting that the Hollywood "cabal" chose to use as a title to a famous movie series) were a message to all future Presidents that the "secret team" is running the show now. ..."
"... According to prouty kennedy was a victim of a military-industrial complex plot triggered by his plan to withdraw from vietnam, the most important was a top secret National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 263) drafted only six weeks before the assassination once NSAM 263 was signed, kennedy was, for all intents, a dead man. ..."
"... It's not hard to understand why Obama hasn't pulled out of Iraq or Afghanistan. He can't. The military industrial complex and their bankers won't let him. ..."
"... ***Note: Anyone interested in the Kennedy Assassination should realize that there is a "misinformation plant" in the Library Journal review department. Every honest book on the subject has been unconvincingly discredited by them, while they praise and try to steer you towards known flake CIA-financed writers such as Gerald Posner. ..."
"... It's rather common to hear of wrongdoing by the CIA I saw a graph recently that showed American citizen's belief in their government plummeting after the Kennedy Assassination. Almost no one accepted the Warren Commission Report and such a cover up has casted doubt on our government ever since. ..."
"... However, for all its problems as a book, the info contained herein meshes with several other books I've read recently that all point to the fact that Kennedy was moving from a Cold Warrior to a peacenik, (elsewhere attributed to his taking LSD with his mistress Mary Meyer. Who knows?) ..."
"... Oh yes, another of Prouty's big ideas is that the weapons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a huge error on the part of the Cabal/Elite, since it made normal war impossible, hence a turn to guerrilla warfare by proxy. Again, the belief that everything is part of a master plan. The outcome is valid, but the idea of an invisible hand behind the scenes stage-managing all this is not reasonable to me. ..."
"... Is it credible that the CIA could have been involved in Kennedy's assassination? On this point, I think the answer is yes. The old objection that people wouldn't be able to keep quiet if there were a conspiracy is pretty much moot if we're talking about the CIA, since by definition, these are guys who could do unimaginable things, have a cigarette, and then never speak of it again. ..."
"... I think there is pretty decent evidence that Oswald was connected to the CIA (The defection and then un-defection in and of itself is pretty incredible, and his statement that he was the patsy is more likely if he was in fact a patsy, than if he were a either a nut job or a Castro sympathizer. Both of those types want credit!) ..."
"... And this book also confirms the feeling that I often get that in fact the US has many of the characteristics of a fascist state, minus the concentration camps for Jews. It is true that we have wrought havoc in many other people's countries, that we maintain a near-constant state of war, and that *if* a president tried to go in a different direction, there are forces within the military-industrial-intelligence complex that might both want and be capable of taking them out. ..."
From Publishers Weekly Prouty, who was a Washington insider for
nearly 20 years--in the last few of them as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of
Staff under President Kennedy--has a highly unusual perspective to offer on the assassination
and the events that led up to it. Familiar to moviegoers as the original of the anonymous
Washington figure, played by Donald Sutherland in the Oliver Stone's movie JFK , who asks hero
Jim Garrison to ponder why Kennedy was killed, Prouty leaves no doubt where he stands.
The president, he claims, had angered the military-industrial establishment with his
procurement policies and his determination to withdraw from Vietnam, and had threatened to
break the CIA into "a thousand pieces" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
His death was in effect a coup d'etat that placed in the White House a very different
man with a very different approach -- one much more acceptable to what Prouty consistently
calls "the power elite." Although he declares that such an elite has operated,
supranationally, throughout history, and is all-powerful, he never satisfactorily explains who
its members are and how it functions--or how it has allowed the current East-West rapprochement
to take place.
Still, this behind-the-scenes look at how the CIA has shaped postwar U.S. foreign policy is
fascinating, as are Prouty's telling questions about the security arrangements in Dallas, his
knowledge of the extraordinary government movements at that time (every member of the Cabinet
was out of the country when Kennedy was shot) and his perception that most of the press has
joined in the cover-up ever since. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Prouty, the mysterious "X" in
Oliver Stone's JFK , promises to explain why Kennedy was assassinated. Instead, he delivers a
muddled collection of undocumented, bizarre theories, most significantly that a super-powerful,
avaricious power elite engineered the Cold War and all its pivotal events -- Korea, Vietnam,
the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, and the Kennedy assassination.
Although they are never identified, these shadowy technocrats, working through the CIA,
allegedly had Kennedy murdered because he was on the brink of ending America's commitment to
Vietnam, along with its billions of dollars of military contracts.
Prouty avoids some very important issues. Would Kennedy, a Cold War warrior's warrior, have
indeed ended American support for Diem? And why couldn't the omnipotent power elite ensure the
election of Richard Nixon, its preferred candidate, in 1960--especially since Kennedy won by
only .02 percent? A much better choice is John M. Newman's JFK and Vietnam: Deception,
Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power ( LJ 3/15/92). See also James DiEugenio's Destiny
Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case , reviewed in this issue, p. 123.--Ed.
We are living through that kind of paradigm except they now wear suits and carry
briefcases and never get theirs hands dirty. Mr
Mr. Prouty points to what he calls "the power elite" as the movers of geopolitics and
war. JFK had other ideas as to what makes the world turn. It's the age old battle, as Lincoln
put it, "between the divine rights of kings and the common rights of man"... .
We are living through that kind of paradigm except they now wear suits and carry
briefcases and never get theirs hands dirty.
Mr Prouty is no "conspiracy theorist". He worked in the Pentagon and arranged the
support for the CIA operations until he retired in 1964. He knew everyone from Allen Dulles
to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This is a very important book. It is difficult to read, because Prouty's writing is
disorganized, perhaps not so to him, but to a reader. The fact is he had first hand knowledge
of a great deal of what went on and into the period covering the latter part of WWII, all of
Indochina / Vietnam, and into the Cold War. He was in a particularly excellent position,
due to his official responsibilities, to know intimately of the OSS and later CIA operations,
as well as the White House positions under various presidents, for he saw and worked with
their communications.
His book is full of specifics, many to most of which few people know or knew. He
served under three presidents. He was liaison between the Joint Chiefs and the CIA In 1954
he was ordered to establish the Office of Special Operations, and in 1964 retired as chief of
Special Operations. In 1963 he wrote the formal directive on covert ops used by Joint Chiefs
of Staff for all military services.. What this man, Prouty, said cannot be tossed aside. He
knew the subject, and he knew what was done.
His book really has two entwined themes, the role of CIA operations including the real
power which drives those operations and the assassination of JFK. The lessons are real.
It would have helped had his writing been more organized, rather than jumping around with
much repetition, but he does provide abundant specifics in support of his positions. In many
cases he uses first person, as he was present. He knew what he was talking about. He has
specifics.
As for the assassination, he takes apart the Warren Commission in detail, point by
point. He knew what was at stake between interested parties, and provides quotes from key JFK
White House documents. He goes into the source and evolution of the Indochina / Vietnam war,
beginning in 1943, as he was present at those allied high level meetings. He provides
eye-opening historical material about which I expect few of our citizens are
cognizant.
His material, cleaned up, should be taught in schools, but such history is never taught in
classes. It is only learned `in the field' so to speak. And no nation wants it advertised
exactly what drives covert operations and to whose benefit.
I agree with the author's premise of a conspiracy to murder JFK. There is information in
this book that I have not read in any other historical reference. For example, the author
states that the CIA transported the northern based people of Vietnam called the Tonkin and
moved them to the south. He claims that this created a turmoil in the land as people began to
fight for resources(food)to live. He states that it was this turmoil that was made to look
like a communist infiltration of the country. All of this being a CIA manipulated event.
Another interesting aspect is that we had been aiding the French occupation of Vietnam. This
continued up until 1954; a few months before Diem being installed as President. We had been
helping the enemy of the South Vietnamese people just prior to Diem's installation.
The premise of this book is that Pres. Kennedy wanted to pull out of Vietnam, and the
military-industrial complex didn't want that to happen. Today there is contention whether
this is indeed true or not. I think JFK was uncertain himself and that is why you can
find facts supporting both schools of thought. For example, Pres. Kennedy stated he wanted to
be the first to put a man on the moon. A direct challenge to the cold war enemy Russia. Yet
the book states later that Kennedy signed a memorandum desiring cooperation with Russia in
the exploration of space. This is obviously an affront to the "cabal" that wanted the cold
war to continue. There was alot of money to be made. I was disappointed the author didn't
write about Pres.Kennedy issuing silver certificates in defiance of the Federal Reserve.
After Pres. Kennedy was assasinated it is undeniable we went head first into Vietnam.
He had made numerous enemies. The banking industry, the military, the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover,
etc. He was a maverick going against conventional thinking and he had to be removed. As the
author states those gunshots on Elm street(which by the way, isn't it interesting that the
Hollywood "cabal" chose to use as a title to a famous movie series) were a message to all
future Presidents that the "secret team" is running the show now.
This book is not an easy read. One negative about this book is that the author's points
are repeated. It also left me feeling dismayed and bewildered. If you take the author's
premise at face value, almost everything we see and read now has the possibility of being a
planned event. The fascinating aspect about the JFK assassination is to see how this "secret
team" that works behind the scenes is in control of almost all positions of authority that we
have in this country. A chief justice resides on the Warren Commission and signs off on the
absurd Warren report, police in Dallas allowing reporters direct access to Oswald; at the
time the suspect for the murder. Police allowing Jack Ruby to just waltz up to Oswald and
shoot him. LBJ and Hoover having a conversation about not wanting a congressional
investigation of the assassination and just wanting to use the Hoover/Warren reports. This is
way too many coincidences not to have been a conspiracy. Fletcher Prouty may not be 100%
accurate, but I'll believe his version over our official history any day.
"This is one of the greatest books written on the assassination of John F. Kennedy,the
author Col L. Fletcher Prouty contribution from his work in the pentagon and his common sense
view that someone needed to level the playing field-to let the public know that military
spending and goals are completely unrealistic. We have to learn from the past and Col. Prouty
is one of the few who explain the uncomfortable truth. This uncomfortable feeling goes on
today. How do we know when we've won in Iraq or Afghanistan? Will this repeat in Iran and
North Korea? What is the next military action that will be another unwinnable war designed to
keep the Defense Department in business despite the astronomical costs as it bankrupts the
nation? It's time that everyone examine what Col. Fletcher Prouty wrote as a warning of what
was really going on as opposed to what was reported regarding the Vietnam war and the removal
of John F. Kennedy.
Col. Prouty blows the lid right off our official history and reveal what is probably the
closest to the truth that we will ever get regarding the assassination of JFK, this is a true
example of what is done in the dark will come to the light..anyone who wants to continue to
hide from the truth, then this book is not for you because you cannot handle the truth,it's
too much for you.
This is a very important book unique in this big mess that continues to surround Kennedy's
murder it is a story that has been buried for decades. It is an account the government didnot
want you to hear, and actually fabricated evidence in order to keep you from hearing the
truth. There are no crackpot theories here, these are facts this great cabal ( the power
elite) has control high enough in government or at least in the councils of government, to be
able to influence the travel plans of the president, vice-president and a presidential
candidate (Nixon) and all members of the kennedy cabinet. They were powerful enough to have
orders issued to the army, and were able to mount a massive campaign to control the media
during and after the assassination. Now if that is not power in the wrong hands, i donot know
what is..there is something about Col. Prouty manner that speaks of authority, knowledge and
above all, old fashioned honesty."
According to prouty kennedy was a victim of a military-industrial complex plot
triggered by his plan to withdraw from vietnam, the most important was a top secret National
Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 263) drafted only six weeks before the assassination once
NSAM 263 was signed, kennedy was, for all intents, a dead man.
Vietnam for the powers that be... represented the potential of tens of billions of
dollars. This is what caused him to be murdered, it was a military-style ambush from start to
finish, "a coup d'etat."
One of the most memorable lines in the book and the movie JFK: "Sometimes i think the
organizing principle of any society is for war, the authority of the state over its people
resides in its war powers war readiness accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of
the world's economy. This power elite together they stand above the law, can any president
ever be strong enough really to rule?
And what about the outright theft of the president's brain from the national archives? And
the total and complete failure of the secret service to protect JFK in dallas? It boggles the
mind, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor plotted his assassination, and orchested the
subsequent cover-up. This is an unspeakable refers to an evil whose depth and deceit seemed
to go beyond the capacity of words to describe.
If you are not afraid to face the truth then this book is were you would want to start. So
many things make sense when you start to put the piece's of the puzzle together and facts and
common sense go a long way. That is why most people want to remain ignorant,they cannot face
the truth so they try to discredit people like Col. Prouty, Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison, Jesse
Ventura to make them sound like lone nuts, sound like de'ja vu huh?
Col. Prouty was a Washington insider for nearly 20 years as chief of staff under president
Kennedy this man lived this part of our history, who can better tell us the real deal than
someone who was there and lived though it and who does not have anything to gain by keeping
the biggest lie told to the american people on-going. Just sticking to the facts of this case
and what just take basic common sense is to ask yourself "Why? that's the real question isn't
it--why? the how is just scenery,Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, Mafia it keeps people guessing like a
parlor game, but it prevents them from asking the most important question--why?
Why was kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who had the power to cover it up? This book is a
must read for anyone out there who still believes in truth and justice for all. Don't believe
me or anyone else..do your own thinking for yourself and you might surprise yourself in the
process of searching for that truth. I would like to end this by saying thank-you to Col.
Prouty, Mr. jim garrison, Oliver Stone, and Jesse Ventura for being courageous enough to step
forward to shine a light on the truth.
And for the non-believer's out there i feel sorry for you that you are satisfied with
never really knowing the truth and how much it still effects your life today. I was not even
born yet when president kennedy was assassinate but i was born one year later..and the
deferences between me and you is i will always search for the truth and question it until i
do find it.
I leave you with this quote: Those who can't remember the past, are condemned to repeat
it. Everyone should own a copy of this part of history go out now and purchase this book
before it disappear,just like the truth about JFK assassination.
I read this book a second time, about 1 year after I read it the first time. Mr Prouty had
a very long and interesting career in the Air Air Corps which became the USAF. He has first
hand knowledge of much of what he writes about in this book. His book is really the history
of the USA since WW II with respect to the warnings of IKE "Beware of the military industrial
complex".
If you did not like President Kennedy but wonder why the US has constantly been "at war"
somewhere in the world since WW II then I think you will get a lot out of this book. When I
was in the USAF back in the 1970's the higher ranking pilots that I flew with told me that
Viet Nam was not a great war but it was the only war they had. Well, wars were good for
career building if you were in the war, if you were the military industrial complex war was
very good and necessary for profits.
I'm reading a stunning book written by the late L. Fletcher Prouty who served as the chief
of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy presidency. A retired
colonel of the U.S. Air Force, Prouty was in charge of the global system designed to provide
military support for the CIA's secret activities. He knew where the bodies were buried and
the file cabinet containing the paperwork used to cover it up.
Prouty was a source for Oliver Stone's movie "JFK" and was portrayed as "Mr. X" by Donald
Sutherland, the man in black who advised New Orleans DA Jim Garrison (portrayed by Kevin
Costner) that he was on the trail to the truth.
If you have ANY interest whatsoever in learning the truth of the events that led to what
happened to our country on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and changed the course of its direction, read
it.
A brief excerpt from the 375+ page book that is the most detailed account of the inception
of the CIA and the events that culminated in the coup d'etat on Elm Street in Dallas on a
sunny day in November.
Excerpt:
From Chapter 16 - Government by Coup d'Etat
The year was 1964. Pres. John F. Kennedy had been shot dead months before by bursts of
"automatic gunfire" in Dallas by "mechanics," that is, skilled gunmen, hired by a power
cabal determined to exert control over the United States government. Lyndon B. Johnson,
JFK's successor, had been only a few feet under the bullets fired at Kennedy as he rode two
cars back in that fatal procession.
By 1964 Johnson was becoming mired in the swamp of the Indochina conflict. Kennedy, who
had vowed to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces," was dead. LBJ, who had heard those
fatal bullets zing past his ears, had learned the ultimate lesson; and for good measure,
Richard Nixon was in Dallas on that fatal day, so that he, too, had the fact of this
ever-present danger imprinted on his memory for future use by his masters.
From Chapter 18 - Setting the Stage for the Death of JFK
"The significance of all this was that I had introduced President Kennedy's Vietnam
policy statement NSAM #263, into these discussions. It is my belief that the policy
announced so forcefully by Kennedy in his earlier NSAM #55 and in NSAM #263 had been the
major factor in causing the decision by certain elements of the power elite to do away with
Kennedy before his reelection and to take control of the U.S. government in the
process.
Kennedy's NSAM #263 policy would have assured that Americans by the hundreds of
thousands would not have been sent to the war in Vietnam. This policy was anathema to
elements of the military-industrial complex, their bankers, and their allies in the
government. This policy and the almost certain fact that Kennedy would have been reelected
President in 1964 set the stage for the plot to assassinate him."
I can't put this book down. It is without doubt, the most thorough explanation of the
rogue CIA, it's influence and impact on America's involvement in paramilitary operations
around the world and subsequent growing conflicts. It is, as Prouty describes:
"...For the world as a whole, the CIA has now become the bogey that communism had been
for America. Wherever there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us are
now quick to suspect the CIA had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is, no doubt, as
fantastically excessive as America's phobia about world communism; but in this case, too,
there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine...
"This is what the destruction of sovereignty and disregard for the rule of law means,
and it will not stop there. With it will go property rights -- as we have witnessed in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union -- and the rights of man."
It's not hard to understand why Obama hasn't pulled out of Iraq or Afghanistan. He
can't. The military industrial complex and their bankers won't let him.
This is a fascinating look into the world of the power elite: the supremely powerful
international bankers who keep the books and balances for each side.
"They make these transactions possible by offering the loans, issuing letters of credit,
and collecting the interest on the entire package. In many LDCs (third world "less developed
countries") the total amount of interest paid to the banks and their international financing
structure amounts to more than half of the total value of dollars earned by their exports.
For this reason, annual payments are seldom more than the interest involved and none of the
principal. This is one reason why the principal never comes back to the United States." (p.
243 - Ch. Sixteen - Government by Coup d'Etat)
Though the title focuses on the CIA, Vietnam and the plot to kill JFK, this 355 page (not
including six pages of notes) book goes much further. It lays out and explains the real power
-- the international power elite -- that designs the strategy and moves the pieces on the
global chess board of politics, finance, and wars, domestic and international.
Prouty's very detailed book is based on a 19-part magazine series first developed by
Prouty, with and published by Freedom Magazine. Prouty served as the chief of special
operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy presidency. A retired U.S. Air
Force colonel, Prouty was in charge of the global system that provided military support for
the CIA's secret activities. He was witness to activities, machinations and policy-making in
the Pentagon and the White House that few others can claim. Prouty died in 2001.
"The year was 1964. Pres. John F. Kennedy had been shot dead months before by bursts of
"automatic gunfire" in Dallas by "mechanics," that is, skilled gunmen hired by a power cabal
determined to exert control over the United States government. Lyndon B. Johnson, JFK's
successor, had been only a few feet under the bullets fired at Kennedy as he rode two cars
back in that fatal procession.
"By 1964 Johnson was becoming mired in the swamp of the Indochina conflict. Kennedy, who
had vowed to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces," was dead. LBJ, who heard those fatal
bullets zing past his ears, had learned the ultimate lesson; and for good measure, Richard
Nixon was in Dallas on that fateful day, so that he, too, had the fact of this ever-present
danger imprinted on his memory for future use by his masters. (Ch. Sixteen, Government by
Coup d'Etat - p 232)
~~*~~
When World War II ended with the nuclear bomb, the military industrial complex had a
dilemma -- it understood that the next world war would be the final one, Yet it needed a way
to keep the lucrative business of war making alive and profitable. How? By fighting a war
waged for dollars, without a true military objective, under the control of civilian leaders,
a war never intended to achieve victory. Enter Vietnam. Sound familiar?
Chapter Eighteen - "Setting the Stage for the Death of JFK"
[p 267]
Kennedy's NSAM #265 policy would have assured that Americans by the hundreds of thousands
would not have been sent to the war in Vietnam. This policy was anathema to elements of the
military-industrial complex, their bankers, and their allies in the government. This policy
and the almost certain fact that Kennedy would be reelected President in 1964 set the stage
for the plot to assassinate him.
[snip]
First of all, NSAM #263, October 11, 1963, was a crucial White House document. Much of it,
guided by White House policy, was actually written by my boss in the Pentagon, General
Krulak, myself, and others of his staff. I am familiar with it and with events which led to
its creation.
[snip]
Our history books and the basic sources of history which lie buried in the archives of
government documents that have been concealed from the public, and worse still, government
documents that have been tampered with and forged. As I have just demonstrated above, this
most important policy statement, NSAM #263, that so many historians and journalists say does
not exist, has been divided into two sections in the Pentagon Papers source history.
~~*~~
Chapter Nineteen - Visions of a Kennedy Dynasty
[pp 289-290]
"With Kennedy's announcement that he was getting Americans out of Vietnam, he confirmed
that he was moving away from the pattern of Cold War confrontation in favor of
détente. He asked Congress to cut the defense budget. Major programs were being phased
out. As a result, pressure from several fronts began to build against the young President.
The pressure came from those most affected by cuts in the military budget, in the NASA space
program, and in the enormous potential cost -- and profit -- of the Vietnam War.
Kennedy's plans would mean an end to the warfare in Indochina, which the United States had
been supporting for nearly two decades. This would mean the end to some very big business
plans, as the following anecdote will illustrate.
It was reported in an earlier chapter that the First National Bank of Boston had sent
William F. Thompson, a vice president, to my office in the Pentagon in 1959, presumably after
discussions with CIA officials, to explore "the future of the utilization of the helicopter
in [clandestine] military operations" that had been taking place in Indochina up to 1959.
A client of that bank was Textron, Inc. The bank had suggested to Textron officials that
the acquisition of the near-bankrupt Bell Aircraft Company, and particularly its helicopter
division, might be a good move. What the bank and Textron needed to determine was the extent
of use of helicopters by the military and by the CIA then and the potential for their future
in Indochina.
Both parties were satisfied with the information they acquired from the Pentagon and from
other sources in Washington. In due time the acquisition took place, and on October 13, 1963,
news media in South Vietnam reported that an elite paramilitary force had made its first
helicopter strike against the Vietcong from "Huey" Bell-Textron helicopters. It was also
reported in an earlier chapter that more than five thousand helicopters were ultimately
destroyed in Indochina and that billions of dollars were spent on helicopter purchases for
those lost and their replacements.
Continuing the warfare in Vietnam, in other words, was of vital importance to these
particular powerful financial and manufacturing groups. And helicopters, of course, were but
one part of the $220 billion cost of U.S. participation in that conflict. Most of the $220
billion, in fact, was spent after 1963; only $2 - $3 billion had been spent on direct U.S.
military activities in Vietnam in all of the years since World War II up to and including
1963. Had Kennedy lived, it would not have gone much higher than that.
It is often difficult to retrace episodes in history and to locate an incident that became
crucial to subsequent events. Here, however, we have a rare opportunity.
The success of the deal between the First National Bank of Boston, Textron, and Bell
hinged on the escalation of the war in Indochina. A key man in this plan was Walter
Dornberger, chief of the German Rocket Center at Peenemunde, Germany, during World War II and
later an official with the Bell Aircraft Company. Dornberger's associate and later
protegé from Peenumunde, Wehrner von Braun, who had been instrumental in the
development of the army's Pershing and Jupiter rocket systems, became a central figure in
NASA's plans for the race to the moon. Such connections among skilled technicians can be of
great importance within the military-industrial complex, as they generally lead to bigger
budgets for all related programs.
Kennedy had announced a reduced military budget, the end of American participation in
Indochina, and a major change in the race to the moon. It takes no special wisdom or inside
knowledge to understand that certain vested interests considered the Kennedy proposal to
defuse Vietnam and these other major budget items to be extremely dangerous to their own
plans.
The pressure brought to bear on Kennedy was intense, but some sort of major event was
needed that would stir emotions and trigger action. It is very likely that the death of
President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on November 1, 1963, in
Saigon was one of those events. There were at least eight or nine more that, in retrospect,
indicate that a plot against Kennedy had begun to unfold."
~~*~~
Is it any wonder that despite his campaign rhetoric to the contrary, Obama is still in
Iraq and Afghanistan???
If you apply what Prouty reveals, it follows that Obama does not do anything unless it is
decreed by the international power elite -- from pulling out of Iraq/Afghanistan to
protecting our Gulf Coast oil-stained states.
JFK didn't dance to the tune of his masters. He did it his way. It cost him his life.
Obama is the creation of his masters. He serves at their pleasure. He won't make JFK's
mistake. You can count on it.
Mr. Prouty served in the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations during a significant
portion of his professional military career. In this role, he observed first-hand how the CIA
arranged/staged coups d'etat in the Phillipines and other nations around the globe. In the
Office of Special Operations, Mr. Prouty was responsible for providing U.S. military support
for CIA operations. This experience serves as the basis for Mr. Prouty's strong inference
that the assassination of President Kennedy was a CIA-style coup d'etat. The "why" of the
coup d'etat is strongly established by Mr. Prouty. JFK intended to withdraw 1,000 military
personnel from Vietnam by the close of 1963 and hoped to complete the full withdrawal of U.S.
military personnel from Vietnam by the close of 1965. To do this, JFK needed to get
re-elected. His decision to withdraw from Vietnam was based upon the McNamara-Taylor report
of early October, 1963 and codified in National Security Action Memorandum#263 of October 11,
1963. [For a thorough, scholarly analysis of the evolution of JFK's Vietnam policy, see "JFK
and Vietnam" by John M. Newman (New York: Warner Books, 1992). Mr. Newman is a professional
historian and a faculty member at the University of Maryland]. Powerful interests in the CIA,
Pentagon and the corporate world were "gung ho" in favor of large-scale military intervention
in Vietnam. The prospective war promised billions of dollars in military contracts for the
defense industry. JFK's intention to withdraw from Vietnam would deny these elements in the
CIA, Pentagon and corporate communities their pot of gold. Immediately after the
assassination of JFK, LBJ issued NSAM#273 on November 26, 1963 which was a complete reversal
of JFK's policy. NSAM#273 authorized U.S. military raids into North Vietnam. These raids
precipitated the Gulf of Tonkin incidents of July-August 1963, led to Congress' Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution and massive U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. LBJ gave the CIA,
Pentagon and defense contractors what JFK would have denied them: billions of dollars in
defense contracts in support of the full-scale war in Vietnam. For Mr. Prouty, the ultimate
inference is irresistible: to effectuate the complete turn-around of Vietnam policy proposed
by JFK, a CIA-style coup d'etat was carried out in Dallas on November 22, 1963. LBJ's
NSAM#273 reversing JFK's Vietnam policy [from withdrawal to establishing the foundation for
massive U.S. intervention] was issued on November 26, 1963. The goals of the coup were
obtained immediately following the assassination. Prouty gives us the "why" of the coup.
Further research remains to be done in order to give us "who" and the "how". Prouty's work is
a valuable starting point for further inquiry and deserves our appreciation for its
autobiographical honesty and heartfelt analysis.
Very disappointing. I was looking forward to reading this book primarily because the
author was so close to the action. But as other reviewers have pointed out, the focus of the
book is a far reaching review of US history since 1944-45. Unfortunately, in this regard, the
book is a failure.
Prouty isn't a historian and I'm sure that he doesn't claim to be one. But to attempt to
cover the ground that he does, he's lacking a lot of background knowledge. This shows up
quickly in the book - let me give you a couple of examples;
- He states that President Roosevelt died suddenly, unexpectedly is the word he uses, and
this simply isn't true. Roosevelt was bed-ridden for about 6 months before his death and the
US government was effectively run by his advisors during this period.
- He claims that the USA and Russia were allies at the close of WWII (true), but also that
an atmosphere of trust existed between the two countries (false). He continues to make the
claim that but for the actions of the CIA, the Cold War would not have happened. That's
simply not the case - Roosevelt and his advisors weren't happy with Stalin and vice versa.
The CIA didn't even formally exist until Truman created them in 1947 and they didn't act
without full political approval of the US governments of the time.
Look, I'm no fan of the CIA, and I completely agree with him that they plotted and
achieved the death of JFK. But that doesn't mean that they and the KGB were responsible for
creating the Cold War! Does Prouty think that the KGB could have acted in anyway without the
full and knowing approval of Stalin himself? And that the Dulles brothers somehow manipulated
the USA into the Cold War without the support and approval of Roosevelt and Truman?
Apparently, he does!
Much of his thesis is based on the concept that there is a "power elite" that has actually
been in control of world of US and Russian actions since 1944. Perhaps he is correct that a
cabal currently sits behind our governments and influences events, but I disagree with his
notion that they have controlled political events in the detailed way that he suggests
throughout the world since 1944.
This really isn't a book about JFK and his assassination as it is a somewhat innacurate
attempt to describe world history since WWII.
This book presents a very strange and sinister theory.
People who are into conspiracy theories talk about groups like the Bilderberg Group who
collude in secret to make decisions that are good for them but disastrous for everyone else.
Those types of groups, so the theory goes, are not associated with any one particular
government or country. Author Fletcher Prouty describes something like that although he says
it is not the Bilderberg Group.
I've always believed in the JFK conspiracy but I never thought this conspiracy extended
beyond the United States government and Lyndon Johnson. But yet I have to ask myself, if
Fletcher is wrong what is the alternative ? Could he be right ?
Fletcher Prouty was deeply saddened by what he observed first hand in Vietnam. People who
had lived in peace for many thousands of years in northern Vietnam were uprooted from their
ancestral lands and moved to the south with nothing but the clothes on their backs. This was
done to create hopelessness and a boiling cauldron of despair which was the perfect
environment for igniting the inferno of warfare.
This was all accomplished by that most sinister of organizations called the CIA This
agency is expert at creating confusion, human misery, and death on a massive scale with no
regard for human life whatsoever.
Fletcher spends a few chapters analyzing the official story about the Kennedy
assassination as far as Oswald's involvement (he was not involved), the number of shooters,
and the many unexplained lapses of following official and long held procedures for protecting
the president.
He was able to easily see through the smoke screen of lies created by the government about
the JFK assassination and many other things because he saw all this from the inside. He was
part of the very machine that caused the escalation in Vietnam and the JFK assassination. The
Warren Commission's story does not hold up for many, many reasons. For one thing there were
too many bullets fired. What a strange coincidence that on the day JFK was killed Fletcher
happened to be in Antarctica serving as a military escort for a bunch of diplomats on some
sight seeing excursion.
But yet it seems the nefarious group that ordered this assassination didn't really care if
people thought there was a conspiracy because they knew nobody can do anything anyway. That's
what's so scary about all this.
Fletcher feels this High Cabal, as Winston Churchill called it, has existed for 2,000
years or more in some form. Perhaps this is that great, lying beast and multi headed hydra
described in the bible in the Book Of Revelation.
Some of the groups Fletcher feels are part of this cabal are the CIA and the other
American intelligence agencies, the American military, international bankers, industrialists,
and the Dallas police department. But beyond that even Fletcher doesn't know who is really at
the very top of this super elite power structure.
For Fletcher this cabal is much more powerful than the president of the United States and
they will disregard what the president says if they want to. That's exactly what happened
when the CIA sent Gary Powers on a U2 spy plane mission over Russia and made sure the plane
malfunctioned. As a result a planned peace summit between president Eisenhower and Nikita
Khrushchev was cancelled. Ike had given orders to stop all covert activity until this summit
was over.
They also cancelled a mission to shoot up Fidel Castro's three aircraft before the Bay Of
Pigs fiasco. That was a direct failure to follow president Kennedy's orders to make sure
these planes were destroyed before the invasion. They did this to embarrass president
Kennedy. That's because peace is the High Cabal's greatest fear and enemy.
The election of president Kennedy was a disaster for the High Cabal. JFK was interfering
with their plans to spend, not billions, but trillions of dollars in Vietnam and on their
other Cold War projects. JFK was interfering with their ability to control the American
government. So they killed him and regained that power, partially through their murderous
accomplice Lyin' Lyndon Johnson.
After World War II the High Cabal created the perception in the public's mind of an epic
struggle between Communism and the West. They used this false premise to create limited,
protracted warfare all over the world. But they had to ensure the fighting did not become too
intense because of the ever present menace of nuclear weapons.
Could it really be that the High Cabal doesn't care about the ideological struggle between
Communism and the West or any other ideology for that matter ? Could the CIA, the KGB, and
other similar groups really be providing weapons to the combatants on all sides just to
prolong warfare forever ? That's what Fletcher Prouty says in this book.
Another point is the Vietnam conflict did not have any well defined military objective so
it was doomed to become a protracted and ultimately unsuccessful bloodbath with the body
count being the only measure of success.
Here's an exchange between Lyin' Lyndon Johnson and military legend General Creighton
Abrams and his aide:
Lyndon:
"Abe, you are going over there to win. You will have an army of 550,000 men, one of the
most powerful air forces ever assembled, and the invincible Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy
offshore. Now go over there and do it."
Aide:
"Mr. President, you have told us to go over there and do 'it'. Would you care to define
what 'it' is ?"
Johnson remained silent as he ushered General Abrams and his men out of the Oval
Office.
Fletcher appears in an episode of the documentary 'The Men Who Killed Kennedy'. The
hypocrites have taken legal action to have some of those episodes pulled off the market and
the DVDs are no longer available for those 'Final Chapter' episodes. However 'The Men Who
Killed Kennedy' can still be watched on the internet which I highly recommend.
Fletcher served as an advisor for Oliver Stone when Stone created his JFK movie. Stone's
movie created a lot of controversy with the public and as a result people called for more
hearings about the assassination. But those later investigations ran into the same brick wall
of secrecy and deception that continues to this very day.
Fletcher drops another bomb shell in the notes section at the end of the book. He says on
the day of the assassination JFK was shot with a poisonous flechette that was launched from
an umbrella. A flechette is a very small, rocket propelled dart which travels at a very high
velocity and which is very difficult to detect during an autopsy. Why they poisoned JFK even
though they were planning on shooting him anyway I don't know. This may have been insurance
in case JFK was not shot or not shot fatally.
The people who did this were professional killers. They leave very little to chance and
account for many different scenarios.
For all intents and pruposes, Prouty was serving behind the scenes of US Intelligence
services in one capacity or another since before WWII (as special duty at both the Cairo and
Tehran Conferences), until the day he retired. So how do you know he isn't just like all the
other shills and "company men" from the inside who tell the public only what the elite want
them to know? There is no better illustration of Prouty's willingness to tell his whole story
-- with the vast information at his disposal -- than Page 260, which in this edition, is in
Chapter 17 JFK's Plan to End the Vietnam Warfare:
"Why did the US government in 1945, before the end of World War II, choose to arm and
equip Ho Chi Minh? Why did the United States, a few short years later, shift its allegiance
from Ho Chi Minh to the French in their losing struggle that ended ignominiously with the
battle of Dien Bien Phu? Why, after creating the Diem government in 1954 and after supporting
that government for ten years, did the United States shift again and encourage those
Vietnamese who planned to overthrow it? And finally, why, after creating an enormous military
force in Indochina, did the US government fail to go ahead and defeat this same Ho Chi Minh
when, by all traditional standards of warfare, it possessed the means to do so?"
And this makes-up the majority of this work by Prouty. He wisely stays with the evidence
that HE has at his disposal. In other words, what Prouty effectively laid out for the reader,
is the "Why" in the Kennedy assassination. He does so without assuming very much, as when
reading the book, you see very well that there was quite a large swath of the Military
Industrial Complex that stood to loose billions if Kennedy had lived. And thankfully, Prouty
effectively explains in great detail that any myth about Kennedy escalating the Vietnam war
is just that -- a myth. And Prouty's evidence of this? Documents from his time in the
Pentagon and White House, not to mention press members and administration members who backed
Kennedy's own words that US forces would be pulled out of the region after he was
reelected.
For those who wish to research this subject further than the events in Dealey Plaza,
Prouty's book is for you. If you want an idea as to "why" Kennedy was killed, I couldn't
recommend this book highly enough.
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
Events in the real world and society are mostly planned, they do not just happen. This
book presents selected events from 1943 to 1990. The major events of this time were craftily
and systematically planned by the power elite. This book will attempt to explain the Cold
War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the effects of the development of the hydrogen bomb, and
why the "military-industrial complex" removed JFK from the Presidency. L. Fletcher Prouty
spent 1955-64 as chief of special operations. Page xxxiii tells of one incident he witnessed
of the "power elite". Page 4 explains how an agent for the East India Company created an
ideological justification for eliminating unwanted people. Page 8 says that neither H-bombs
or "Star Wars" can prevent warfare by terrorists.
Pages 15-16 tells of the driving force of acquisitiveness. Mineral wealth is controlled by
corporate interests directly, or by the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. Genocide
is regularly practices to limit the "excess population", particularly those who object to
this exploitation. He repeats Elliot Roosevelt's story about Stalin's claim that FDR was
poisoned (he had spies everywhere?). "Many of the skilled saboteurs and terrorists of today
are the CIA students of yesterday" (p.37). "The first aerial hijackings were publicly
solicited by the US in return for big cash awards, plus sanctuary". Page 56 tells why so many
of our leaders are lawyers: they are trained to work under the direction of their clients.
Their "lawyer-client confidence" ensures secrecy, even in court; they work for international
law firms in government, banks, and major industries.
Chapter Six, "Genocide by Transfer", tells how over a million Tonkinese were moved to
Cochin China; it caused a rice shortage in a previously rice-exporting country! The
destruction of self-sufficient villages created consumers of imported food (like post-1962
Burma), and enriched merchants and shippers. It also created a source of cheap labor? Chapter
Seven tells of the destruction of the village economy, and the resulting banditry. The
depopulation of rural counties and the "urban renewal" in the big cities caused internal
migration and a rise in the crime rate here in America too. After Textron Corporation bought
Bell helicopters, there was now a need for these helicopters in Vietnam. Page 108 tells how
43% of lives lost were "not from action by hostile forces" - just accidents! The high cost of
machines and their need for maintenance (supplies, personnel) helped to lose the war.
L. Fletcher Prouty says the massive slaughter in Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq war, "Desert
Storm", and the Middle East hostilities are an example of Malthusian social engineering
(p.187). Chapter 16 explains the economic reasons for coups d' etat, whether Marcos in the
Phillipines, Batista, Somoza, or Trujillo (pp. 236-7). Once a puppet ruler in s country tries
to counteract its exploitation, its goodbye. Page 238 tells how "foreign aid" is used to
support American companies moving their factories and machinery to foreign countries. Page
240 explains why Vietnam (like Korea) was a limited "unwinnable" war.
On November 22, 1963 JFK was removed from office by a powerful group that wanted to
escalate the war in Vietnam, and increase government spending (p.257). Pages 261-4 answers
those who mistakenly claim JFK did not want to withdraw military forces from Vietnam. Prouty
presents information from the public record and his personal experience. NSAM#263 shows that
JFK did plan to withdraw military personnel from Vietnam in 1963. The death of JFK changed
the war in Indochina from low-intensity to a major operation. Page 291 lists the many things
done as standard security procedure which were NOT done on 11-22-1963. If the Warren Report
is wrong on any key point, then it is false. Governor Connally contradicted the key point of
the Warren Report to his dying day. The assassination of JFK demonstrated that most major
events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of
enormously powerful people (p.334). You can read Jim Marrs' "Rule by Secrecy". The August 31,
1983 downing of Korean Air flight 007 resulted in the largest Defense Department budget ever
passed in peacetime.
A must read if you're wanting answers. I was and I've read a lot of books about this era
because I lived through it and wanted answers to questions I had. Now it all makes sense. I
would also suggest reading "Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover" by
Anthony Summers. I had a hard time putting that book down too.
JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty
The Long Journey to Dallas Texas
Spoiler alert: This is neither the shortest version, nor the shortest route to
understanding the JFK assassination. But it is as close to the complete canonical text and
understanding of the assassination as there is ever likely to be. It is told by an insider,
the high priest of understanding about the JFK assassination if you ask me (or Oliver Stone),
one who has been around long enough, and has resided deep enough inside the bowels of the US
government to know where all the skeletons are buried.
Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was also a member of "The Secret Team," which he wrote a very
revealing book about, of the same name. It has proven to be a critical part of the unfolding
of the 50-year old drama of the JFK assassination. (Read my Amazon review of it.)
Here Col Prouty takes us by the hand and guides us on a journey, moving slowly but
steadily and deliberately along a long winding path, through the historical underbrush
beginning at the end of WW-II. He then leads us out into a clearing called "the Cold War,"
where events are craftily orchestrated around the threat of a nuclear holocaust. But it is
orchestrated in such a way that the right to continue endless conventional wars is preserved
and the world is made forever safe "for wars of profit" by other more novel means. Korea,
would be the first but not the last of the "make money wars." The mother of all such
un-winnable "money wars," however was Vietnam. It would represent a signature turn in the
road that would "vector" directly to the JFK assassination. However, along the way the reader
will also be introduced to Saudi Arabia, Iran and the oil angle, and then on to Cuba and the
threat of nuclear war, finally ending up at high noon on 11/22/63 with the assassination of
our 35th president.
As enlightening as the journey is it is not an easy trip for a "democratically trained
mind." For along the way, we must unlearn the old rules of democracy in favor of learning a
new set, with a new unwritten covenant, as well as a new vocabulary of reactionary and
self-destructive power politics. And with them, we must also adopt and adapt to wearing a new
kind of emotional straitjacket, armor better to make us comfortable granting involuntary
consent to these altered understandings of how our more twisted and diminished democracy is
supposed to work.
To wit: We the people, and they, our new anonymous ruling power elite, consent to govern
us from above but forever behind the screen, promising nothing but to be unreliable invisible
puppet-masters. And in return "we the people" are expected to close our "lying eyes" and
pretend that when "we" see JFK's head snap violently back and to the left, it did not really
happen? Now, and henceforth, our only reality tests are those prepared for us by our "lying
media," the lemmings bought and paid for by our new invisible rulers. In short, the new
contract mandates that we go along quietly, without whimpering, and accept the fact that "we
the people" have been robbed of all previous contractual understandings of what a democratic
government is supposed to mean.
What government "by," "for" and "of" the people used to mean, has been permanently
altered. In this new "hyper real context" of being governed by an anonymous power elite, who
are constantly pulling the strings from behind the curtains, government "by," "for" and "of"
the people now means whatever our anonymous puppet-masters' media outlets tell us it
means.
Those steeped in the conspiracy paranoia of the likes of the Bilderburghers, the
Trilateralists, and the Council of Foreign Relations, must understand that what Colonel
Prouty is telling us here is not the same. They will find no comfort here on this journey for
cheap conspiracy nonsense. Instead, they will find here just the clean facts, with all of the
dots connected, convincingly written by one of the last of America's authentic patriots. When
readers complete this book, they will then understand why the Bilderburghers, the
Trilateralists, and the Council of Foreign Relations, are all superfluous and unnecessary.
All of the questions one can imagine about the JFK assassination are answered here.
A "Rough" Summary of Colonel Prouty's Story
After World War II, and owing primarily to the creation of the CIA, the U.S entered a new
"hyper covert reality" in which, just as General Eisenhower had warned in his farewell
address, the machinery of government was effectively commandeered by reactionary warmongers
and war profiteers. The post-war power elite ruled by calling for continuous wars, with the
CIA and the military acting as their vanguard and shock troops. There was nothing subtle
about this take over, nor is reference to it just knee-jerk conspiracy nonsense. Colonel
Prouty provides us a framework and a clear discrete paper trail that reveals every step of
the "take over process," steps that he argues convincingly led inexorably to the JFK
assassination.
Step one was carefully embedded within policy memorandum NSC-5412, which among other
things, gave all covert operations over to the CIA, and specifically prohibited the active
military from engaging in them. However, after the spectacular debacle of the John Foster
Dulles led Bay of Pigs operation, JFK issued (and was in the process of implementing at the
time of his very timely assassination), a reversal of this policy with NSC-55, which would
have given the responsibility for covert operations back to the active military through the
JCS. Not only was this reversing directive never implemented, but with JFK's death, all of
the generals running the Vietnam War, were actually CIA officers operating under military
cover and rank. According to Colonel Prouty, this was nail #1 in the JFK coffin.
Nail number two involved an excruciatingly carefully worked out policy directive, NSAM-65
by the JFK national security team. It was the policy directive initiating the complete
withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam by 1965. NSAM-65 was drawn up after an
unprecedented 23 high-level meetings by JFK's and his national security team. Not only was
NSAM-65 not implemented, but it was reversed in a week after the assassination by LBJ
initiated policy directives NSC-273 and NSC-288.
The final nail in the coffin, according to Colonel Prouty, the one that actually signaled
that assassination plans were already afoot, is the tell-tale fact that in the Pentagon
papers that had been released within the government before JFK was assassinated (and later
exposed publicly by Daniel Ellsberg), one-page cover sheets were entered in the text at the
point where the substance of JFK's two policy directives should have been? Twenty-five
stars
Today America has become the nightmare (Arnold Toynbee)
Prouty's autobiography is very revealing indeed. Of course, it contains controversial
items (Would JFK have stopped the Vietnam War?). But, it is the general picture that counts,
and here, the author is prophetic.
Prouty presents his world view as follows: `The world is ruled by a power elite. The basic
motivations are always the same. Money lays at the root ... the enormous amount spent on
military matériel.'
This elite wields its power partly and most importantly through invisible intelligence
agencies. `The power of any agency allowed to operate in secrecy is boundless'.
Nationally, JFK would probably be reelected in 1964, also via carefully directed
investments, which should have influenced favorably the voting in heavily contested states.
This reelection for another 4 years was very hard to swallow for a part of the power elite.
JFK had promised to cut the defense budget and destroy one of its power bases (`split an
intelligence agency into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.')
JFK's masterfully planned assassination was a coup d'état, not less than a total
takeover of the US government. The cover-up of the assassination, which is still going on,
shows the immense power of the culprits. They controlled the Warner Commission and could
(can) force, until today, the media and Congress to pay lip service to them. Congress was
never capable to launch an adequate investigation into the murder.
Internationally, `the world's power elite benefited splendidly from the staggering sums
involved in the Vietnam War.' The author's moving evocation of the fate of a pastoral
Vietnamese village shows that `people's lives are valueless when they get in the way of
elitist interests.' (Mark Curtis)
The powerful show absolutely no respect for national sovereignty (e.g., Vietnam, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Panama, Iraq, the Philippines, even Grenada), which is the principle
on which `the family of nations exists, with its property rights and the rights of man.'
At the end, Prouty is even prophetic: `the power elite utilizes all manner of plots to
achieve their ambitious goal. That gamesmanship is called `Terrorism'.
This book is a must read for all those wanting to understand the world we live in.
In his perceptive book JFK: THE CIA, VIETNAM, AND THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE JOHN F. KENNEDY
(2011), Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (Retired, U.S. Air Force) admirably demonstrates that he
understands the dynamics involved in the Vietnam War. Time and again, Col. Prouty draws on
his own personal experience to elucidate various matters he discusses.
Concerning the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson used trumped-up charges to
escalate the conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam into a major tragedy - and a
defeat for the United States. Col. Prouty sees the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as
having orchestrated the conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Allen Dulles was
the director of the CIA - until President John F. Kennedy fired him as a result of the CIA
adventure to invade Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs debacle. During the Eisenhower
administration, Allen Dulles' brother, John Foster Dulles, served as the Secretary of State.
The Dulles brothers were fervently anti-communist. Moreover, they regarded nation-states not
aligned with the U.S. as aligned with the communists - the enemy in the Cold War.
Concerning the Dulles brothers, see Stephen Kinzer's book THE BROTHERS: JOHN FOSTER
DULLES, ALLEN DULLES, AND THEIR SECRET WORLD WAR (2013). In my estimate, Kinzer does fine job
of tracing the American anti-communist spirit back to the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia in 1917. But Col. Prouty does not advert to this earlier history of the American
anti-communist spirit. Instead, he picks up the story in the waning times of World War II
(WWII). As he points out, Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was one of our allies in WWII against
Adolf Hitler's Nazis in Germany. As Col. Prouty also points out, Chiang Kai-shek's China was
one of our allies in WWII against Japan. (Subsequently, Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by Moa
Tse-tung's communist forces.)
Col. Prouty explains how 1.1 million peasants had earlier been transported about a
thousand miles from their traditional culture in what then became known as the nation-state
of North Vietnam and had been relocated in what then became known as the nation-state of
South Vietnam, where they were landless and poor. Their relocation was orchestrated by the
CIA
As a result of their dire needs for food, many of them became bandits. As Col. Prouty
repeatedly explains, those bandits had been relocated in the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta
is so far to the south of North Vietnam as to preclude their having infiltrated from North
Vietnam. Unfortunately, those bandits were considered to be communist "infiltrators" from
North Vietnam - the enemy. Those bandits came to be referred to as the Vietcong.
With admirable clear-sightedness, Col. Prouty also explains the complicated logistics of
helicopter warfare in the Vietnam War.
Because President Harry Truman had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to get
Japan to surrender, most powerful Americans had subsequently figured out that another all-out
war like WWII would result in the nuclear destruction of human life on the planet. As a
result, Col. Prouty claims, President Johnson would not authorize the American military to
fight for victory over North Vietnam because such a fight would of necessity run the risk of
expanding the conflict to bring in China and perhaps the Soviet Union - and thereby risk the
dreaded nuclear holocaust. Thus American forces were consigned to waging the Vietnam War
without risking victory - and the dreaded nuclear holocaust.
Even though Col. Prouty's overall discussion of the Vietnam War is astute, his major
thesis in the book is that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963,
by experienced assassins hired to do the job. In CIA parlance, such hired assassins were
referred to as "mechanics."
President Kennedy had ordered that all American advisers would be out of Vietnam by the
end of 1965. Moreover, he was likely to win re-election in 1964, which would mean that he
could make his order stick.
However, for years, the CIA had been cultivating Vietnam for a war there. A war there
would serve the purposes of enriching what President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell
address had referred to as the military-industrial complex - in plain English, war
profiteers. No doubt the war profiteers did profit enormously from the Vietnam War. (Of
course the war profiteers employed many Americans in their civilian work force.)
Despite the fact that Col. Prouty suggests that the CIA was probably involved in President
Kennedy's assassination, he stops well short of naming specific CIA and other government
officials who were involved in the carefully orchestrated plot to assassinate President
Kennedy. In this respect, we could say that Col. Prouty paints the big picture - but he ably
paints the big picture.
In conclusion, Col. Prouty's book JFK: THE CIA, VIETNAM, AND THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE JOHN
F. KENNEDY (2011) is well written and ably researched.
This is a shocking book. L. Fletcher Prouty is a world class whistleblower. After reading
this masterpiece take another look at the official 9/11 report. The secret cabal running our
planet has been exposed by many writers and few politicians; this is an insider's report on
that cabal. False flag attacks are now used by the cabal, not only in USA but in any country
where the locals are not towing the line as demanded by the banksters.
"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. --
Voltaire"
Amazing, the cabal has kept the lid on the murder of JFK for over 50 years. How long will
we be kept in the dark about 9/11?
So somebody finally pulls it all together--the conspiracy is not a theory, it's all facts.
Circumstantial, but no lies
Best editorial trick revealed: Leslie H. Gelb, who was to the Watergate papers what Phil
Zelikow was to the 9/11 Commission novel, used the neat writer's trick (Gelb was a New York
Times editor, you may recall) to hide something in black ink on a white page. Gelb uses the
title President to avoid mentioning that JFK's presidency was ended with bullets. The
President (JFK) had NSAM #263 written & promulgated, 1 Oct 63. The memo noted that the
troops could be pulled out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. Ending the CIA-guided Indochina war
they'd begun in September of 1945. So Gelb has "The President" as author of #263, have a
mind-change with his cabinet, all of who had decided to go to Honolulu for the 22nd. On the
23rd, when an official speaks with The President, and a new NSAM is issued--#273, which
called for an escalation of Conflict. The President of #263 has changed his mind and issued
#273. The title stays the same, but the brain of the President who commissioned #263 was
blown away by, what, Hornady hollow-point, boat-tail bullets (the kind the Abteilung der
Heimats Versicherheit (dept of "home" "security"). And "The President" of the second instance
just happened to be a different president, LBJ.
That's some clever and wondrously deliberate writing. The words are there in front of your
nose, in plain sight. And yet they hide the circumstances, that, in the brief period between
Nov. 21 and Nov. 23, the title President had not changed--just the life and body for which it
represented. (In the newspaper biz, novices are instructed to "write around" facts that are
missing. In this case, a few years after the Assassination of JFK, i think most people had
gotten the news that JFK was dead and gone. Gelb and his boss were in that news loop, so I
doubt Gelb would testify that he didn't know that JFK had been murdered (by a head shot fired
from the Grassy Knoll, of course, but who's quibbling). No reason to fail to mention that The
President (JFK) had been replaced by The President (LBJ), except if you want to avoid the
"chance" that people will notice that Presidential Policy on Nov 21, 1963 (NSAM 263 (JFK)
hand changed 180 degrees to Presidential Policy (NSAM 273) on Nov. 23 (LBJ).
So in the murder investigation, you'd want to bring Gelb in to get his story. You might
want to set a water-board in the witness box right next to him--perhaps the special,
autographed KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammad) model, guaranteed to last at least 168 uses (whether
by one "detainee" (POW) or a succession of them. And you'd want to get all this moving while
at least a few of the players are still alive. I'd like to hear what David R. and the rest of
the Wall Street Banksters and lawyers have to say about JFK, RFK, Tonkin, USS Liberty, 9/11,
etc. And also what Cheney and Shrub I and Shrub II and Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz and Pearle,
etc., have to say about all the above.
At any rate, Prouty is a must-read. As is William Pepper's "An Act of State: The
assassination of MLKjr." which puts the quietus to the phrase "conspiracy theory". Not a
theory any longer, but a conspiracy fact. But who will prosecute members of the High Cabal?
They run the government, with their private army, the CIA, and have since Nov. 22, 1963. Not
that anybody cares, of course.
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
Events in the real world and society are mostly planned, they do not just happen. This
book presents selected events from 1943 to 1990. The major events of this time were craftily
and systematically planned by the power elite. This book will attempt to explain the Cold
War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the effects of the development of the hydrogen bomb, and
why the "military-industrial complex" removed JFK from the Presidency. L. Fletcher Prouty
spent 1955-64 as chief of special operations. Page xxxiii tells of one incident he witnessed
of the "power elite". Page 4 explains how an agent for the East India Company created an
ideological justification for eliminating unwanted people. Page 8 says that neither H-bombs
or "Star Wars" can prevent warfare by terrorists.
Pages 15-16 tells of the driving force of acquisitiveness. Mineral wealth is controlled by
corporate interests directly, or by the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. Genocide
is regularly practices to limit the "excess population", particularly those who object to
this exploitation. He repeats Elliot Roosevelt's story about Stalin's claim that FDR was
poisoned (he had spies everywhere?). "Many of the skilled saboteurs and terrorists of today
are the CIA students of yesterday" (p.37). "The first aerial hijackings were publicly
solicited by the US in return for big cash awards, plus sanctuary". Page 56 tells why so many
of our leaders are lawyers: they are trained to work under the direction of their clients.
Their "lawyer-client confidence" ensures secrecy, even in court; they work for international
law firms in government, banks, and major industries.
Chapter Six, "Genocide by Transfer", tells how over a million Tonkinese were moved to
Cochin China; it caused a rice shortage in a previously rice-exporting country! The
destruction of self-sufficient villages created consumers of imported food (like post-1962
Burma), and enriched merchants and shippers. It also created a source of cheap labor? Chapter
Seven tells of the destruction of the village economy, and the resulting banditry. The
depopulation of rural counties and the "urban renewal" in the big cities caused internal
migration and a rise in the crime rate here in America too. After Textron Corporation bought
Bell helicopters, there was now a need for these helicopters in Vietnam. Page 108 tells how
43% of lives lost were "not from action by hostile forces" - just accidents! The high cost of
machines and their need for maintenance (supplies, personnel) helped to lose the war.
L. Fletcher Prouty says the massive slaughter in Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq war, "Desert
Storm", and the Middle East hostilities are an example of Malthusian social engineering
(p.187). Chapter 16 explains the economic reasons for coups d' etat, whether Marcos in the
Phillipines, Batista, Somoza, or Trujillo (pp. 236-7). Once a puppet ruler in s country tries
to counteract its exploitation, its goodbye. Page 238 tells how "foreign aid" is used to
support American companies moving their factories and machinery to foreign countries. Page
240 explains why Vietnam (like Korea) was a limited "unwinnable" war.
On November 22, 1963 JFK was removed from office by a powerful group that wanted to
escalate the war in Vietnam, and increase government spending (p.257). Pages 261-4 answers
those who mistakenly claim JFK did not want to withdraw military forces from Vietnam. Prouty
presents information from the public record and his personal experience. NSAM#263 shows that
JFK did plan to withdraw military personnel from Vietnam in 1963. The death of JFK changed
the war in Indochina from low-intensity to a major operation. Page 291 lists the many things
done as standard security procedure which were NOT done on 11-22-1963. If the Warren Report
is wrong on any key point, then it is false. Governor Connally contradicted the key point of
the Warren Report to his dying day. The assassination of JFK demonstrated that most major
events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of
enormously powerful people (p.334). You can read Jim Marrs' "Rule by Secrecy". The August 31,
1983 downing of Korean Air flight 007 resulted in the largest Defense Department budget ever
passed in peacetime.
In this volume, Colonel Fletcher Prouty captures both the secret history of the United
States from 1945 to 1975 and the reasons behind the plot to kill President Kennedy. Herein,
the courageous Colonel illustrates quite clearly that the clandestine history and the
assassination plot were intrinsically linked.
From the important information in this book, we learn that the war in Vietnam actually
began on September 2, 1945, when Ho Chi Minh was established as the new leader of Vietnam by
our OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, and the US Army. The United States was thoughtful enough
to provide all the weapons, ammunition, and supplies necessary for Ho and Giap to pursue
their war against the French, which culminated in the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
Following that defeat, the CIA arranged for the transfer of 1.1 million "refugees" from the
North of Vietnam to the South. These folks caused such disruption in the fragile agricultural
economy of the South that their arrival ultimately drove the orginal residents to banditry in
order that they might survive. These displaced bandits became what was later known as the
Viet Cong. Hence, the CIA created the conditions necessary for a full scale war in
Vietnam.
On coming to office, Kennedy, a brilliant and studious man, came soon to understand the
perfidy of the CIA One of first his acts on realizing this was to fire CIA director Allen
Dulles. Soon thereafter, he issued one the most important, and unknown, documents of US
history, NSAM 263. Issued in October of 1963, this document called for 1,000 US military
personnel to come home from Vietnam by that Christmas. The remainder were to be out of
Vietnam by the end of 1965. Had John Kennedy lived, what Americans know as the war in Vietnam
would never have happened.
Prouty demonstrates herein that the powers that be ultimately made the decision that they
could not allow Kennedy to live. He makes it clear that assassination researches who make a
career of examining the details of the government's false cover story truly miss the point.
What matters is not how the President was killed, but why. And the answer to that question is
that the assassination was a coup d'etat, transferring control of the government of the
United States to a power elite, which has been in control ever since. Hence, we have the
strange silence of every succeeding President on the issue of the cover up of the Kennedy
assassination.
The book is well written and extraordinarily important. He would understand our nation and
how it came to be in the condition that now obtains would be well advised to read carefully
this terribly important book. God bless.
This book is written by someone who was sitting in the middle of Eisenhower's feared
military-industrial complex, instead of an outside researcher. Col Prouty lived what he tells
us for several years. He saw the Korean & the Vietnam War buildup from the inside; he
watched as the Bay of Pigs went down and No, it was not JFK's fault.
I was most impressed that Col Prouty is the actual person depicted as "Mr. X" and
portrayed by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone's JFK.
If only half of what he tells us is the truth, then we need to demand another look at
JFK's murder.
Fascinating read, from a man inside the Military Complex
Overall, this was a fascinatiing read, and an awesome addition to my already humongous JFK
Assassination collection. My only points of contention: 1)The name of it (and I realize the
name needs to attract the reader) should have been The Military Complex / The Power Elite:
How it works and it's connection to the JFK Assassination. The first three quarters of this
book was all about the High Cabal and the Military complex. Incredibly detailed and
compelling reading, but I just could not wait for it to end so we could get to the JFK part.
But when it did...BAM! I could not put the book down. 2) This may be minor, but parts were
extremely repetitve. I stopped counting how many times he referred to the one million
Vietnemese who migrated to South Vietnam. I know he was trying to bang the point home, but it
got to a point where it was not needed. 3) Once he got to the assassination itself I truly
thought he would get into names...who made up this High Cabal or Power Elite that is more
powerful than the President and US Government. I understand this could be dangerous...but a
little hint would have been nice. 4) I thought he would get into more detail how the
Assassination was pulled off. He drops a lot of hints and possibilities, but never really
gives details to his personal thoughts. I cannot believe Mr. Prouty, after all his years
serving in the military in the sensitive positions he held, could not come up with some kind
of idea. Be that as it my, I truly believe this is as close the truth that we could ever get.
I think this give the Why and Who would benefit. But would love even more detail. Maybe
that's asking too much... Whether or not you are a JFK Assassination buff...this is truly an
amazing read.
An Admirble Attempt at Truth-telling by a Good Man
If you have come to this book looking for another lean, persuasive investigation of the
various conspiracies that could have led to the killing of JFK, you have come to the wrong
place. prouty's book reaches far wider than that narrow scope, exploring every square inch of
his vast, first-hand knowledge of the workings and consequences of the so-called Cold War
(though I don't see how the bloody loss of millions of lives during that time constitute a
war that was anything but blazing hot).
Prouty, a former Air Force colonel and CIA insider, manages to observe his life's work
from an objective standpoint that raises countless probing and often hair-raising questions
and warnings. Reaching back to the origins of the cold war and its effects on the policy and
history that would soon be made, Prouty paints an expansive, thorough and detailed account
not only of the JFK assassination, but of the entire political and industrial framework
festering in the 20 years leading up to that moment that allowed such a tragedy to take
place.
Contrary to most other books that deal --either obliquely or directly -- with JFK's
murder, prouty's endures with a relevance that has as much to say about our own time as it
does about Kennedy's. He foresees all the problems of a tyrannically powerful CIA that
functions as the President's puppet master. "Many of the skilled saboteurs and terrorists of
today are CIA students of yesterday," Prouty asserts in what amounts to an astonishing
revelation when one considers that, among others, Osama Bin Laden is one of those "CIA
students of yesterday." But it isn't only terrorists: it is the people we put in place as
American puppets around the world. Take Hamad Karzai, for example, former CIA agent and
millionaire now serving as President of Afghanistan.
The intimate and omnipotent mingling of money, military, covert intelligence operations
and politics is precisely the network of power Prouty implicates not only in the crime that
was the JFK murder, but the crime of so many brutal wars and coups performed by the CIA
throughout the world to this very day. We are under the tyranny of an intelligence elite, an
elite that happens to have the most powerful military and political machines on the planet at
its service.
As prouty shows, Truman regretted his approval of the formation of the CIA toward the end
of his presidency. Eisenhower tried to curb its powers but failed miserably, and when Kennedy
fired Allen Dulles -- CIA chief at the time -- and not only threatened but actually worked to
break the CIA "into a thousand pieces," he was killed. If that strieks you as an irrational
logical leap, you need to read Prouty's book.
It is admirable that he undertook the writing of the book himself, rather than resorting
to the services of some professional writer as so many politicians and military officials do
for their memoirs and other books. Consequently, Prouty's book suffers a bit from a lack of
the kind of polish it might have had. He struggles to organize his vast knowledge into the
kind of coherant narrative he envisions and promises to no avail throughout. The reader has
to work a little harder here to put the many pieces together that prouty lays out.
Nonetheless, Prouty's book reads like a desperate, angry and even frantic attempt at
telling the truth by a man whose writing voice belies a remarkable warmth and sincerity. He
knows so much and is so appalled at the hypocrisy he witnessed throughout his career --
hypocrisy that turned to horror -- that his book reads like the result of a minor god angrily
shaking his fists and roaring in a locked room. His background, littered with merits and
accolades, backs up every claim he makes here.
Prouty's book is entirely based on first-hand knowledge and expertise he gleaned over the
course of a distinguished career: the precarious security arrangements in Dallas that day,
Kennedy's advocacy of a US note that would compete with the federal note, his vow to remove
all troops from Vietnam by 1965 and how this threatened the money-making machine that was the
Vietnam "conflict," the utter astonishment in Washington at Kennedy's victory over Nixon, a
man for whom various war and intelligence initiatives had already been drawn up for him to
sign off on at the start of his presidency -- before he was even elected!
From its first hour, Kennedy's thousand-day presidency threatened so many established
powers, so many benefactors of the military industrial complex, that there was no way it
could have ended up otherwise. Even Robert McNamara, a great admirer of the president and
godfather to one of Bobby Kennedy's kids, understood that a helicopter-augmented war like
Vietnam would "churn out big dollars," that the war itself was capable of creating the $500
billion in military-industrial profits it eventually raised. Any former Ford executive
understands the profits inherent in the collusion between military and industry.
As Prouty reports, quoting the controversial novel "Report From iron Mountain," "The war
system is indispensable to the stable political structure . . . war provides the sense of
external necessity without which no government can long remain in power." This is precisely
the bleak "necessity" that Kennedy eventually grew to rebuke, and it was that rebuke that put
the nails in his coffin long before his trip to Dallas.
By A customer on June 15, 1996
Very, very good.
I am a fan of Col Prouty, ever since I read The Secret Team.
Oliver Stone is in excellent company, because both of these men aren't afraid to tell the
truth.
It is exactly the lack of truth that is killing the
United States.
Those who attack this book, and Stone, with the usual ignorant hysterics, are part of the
cancer that is destroying the very innards of the last, great democracy on earth.
JFK's assasination was just a symptom of disease that is ravageing us today. This book
supports this point.
By the way, if you believe the results of the Warren Commmission, (the House Select Comm.
on Assasinations didn't, in 1976-78),then you are part of the problem.
This book gives an excellent pre-text to the take-over plans of the war-industy
complex,starting after World War II. Prouty clearly states how the US Navy took part in the
destabilization of Viet Nam by assisting in exporting tribes to the south. The resulting mess
fell into Kennedy's hands.
You can understand why the fascists would have to dispatch a man like Kennedy, because he
tried to do what was right. He was too charismatic, and he was correct. He could move too get
emotionally involved, and then to act. This was viewed to be a dangerous thing.
Kennedy's Presidential Memorandum #263 was the spark the could ignite a conflagration,
pulling the armed forces out of Viet Nam. This correct moral action would lead to other
positive events, such as the deconstruction of the war machine at home. If this course was
allowed to be taken. It didn't , of course.
The Military Right Wing and Ultra Hawks of the US had to liquidate Kennedy. Then, later,
Bobby, Malcom X, King... and I am sure that it was They were all done in by the same smoking
gun. They couldn't stand in the light of truth, like a vampire can stand the light of the
sun.
The prolem is still rampant today, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Read this book before revisionist history forces it from the shelves. Keep it alive, talk
about it. You'll find that you will defend it when you see the context that is carefully
presented by Prouty.
Also, think about how (now) Sen. Arlen Specter told us how the "magic" bullet is proof of
the single assasin theory. Then think about how he told us that this same bullet dediced to
wait in the air 1.6 seconds before striking Gov. Connally, and then move on to kill President
Kennedy, and still later was recovered with absolutely no loss of mass. Think, then reject
the fantasy tale outright.Specter was a liar, then as he is today, and the Warren
Commisssion's finding are pathetically false.
You should then read this book. It's not fantasy.
The cancer grows as you read this, but it is not too late... I think. If enough people get
informed, and then act according to their conscience, they can then eradicate the cancer.
There are not enough liar/fascists to stop a revolution of the truth. Today, they are
afraid, and for good reason.
Thank you.
MBF
By A customer on December 24, 1998
"The Truth Shall Set You Free" - Plaque at CIA's entrance
These words of St. John are displayed at CIA's Head Quarters in Langley, VA. The DCI,
(Director of Central Intelligence), Allen Dulles, was not known for his ability to write good
"original" material... At one time, he commissioned one E. Howard Hunt to ghost write for
him. That might be likened to a liar who hires a thief to tell the truth! Colonel Leroy
Fletcher Prouty was not cast from the same "mold" that produced the likes of Colson,
MacGruder, Hunt, Sturgis, McCord, Liddy, Mitchell, Hoover, LeMay, Lansdale, and all the
rest... No, he was cast from a very different mold... a mold of integrity and dedication to
his country, the United States of America.
Imagine a patriotic young man, who enlists into the military, sees combat as a subordinate
on the front lines, is commissioned by his superiors (as they recognized the leadership
capabilities that he possessed), and is eventually placed in a newly created position: Chief
of Special Operations, as an adjunct to his previous title of "Focal Point Officer/Military
Liaison" in support of all CIA Clandestine Operations, as per National Security Council
Directive #5412. It is from this very perspective that the good Colonel speaks... and he
does, in fact, speak the truth.
I would do a disservice to those who seek an accurate account of the CIA, Vietnam, and the
Plot to Assassinate JFK, if I failed to mention the following:
Those who criticize or attack the content of this most important "work" of Fletcher, have
failed to understand that: "In the interest of a LEGITIMATE National Security Agenda" many
covert activities were necessary to insure the continued security of the United States. In
such instances any and all of the brave men and women, be they CIA, military, or civilian
personnel, who have engaged in such activity, including Fletcher Prouty, are to be commended
for their heroism and dedication to the freedom of us all, as unpalatable as many of these
activities may seem to those of us who have only known "peace" in our home land. Without the
work of the many "human assets" whose dedication to preserving our security at times
included, what is euphemistically called "Black Ops"-- we would not be free today to speak of
these issues. In this context, "Black Ops" can be seen as a necessary, albeit "unfortunate
choice" - However, choosing the lesser of two or more evils MUST be made at times.
At what point does one say "enough is enough?" I believe Colonel Prouty's insight is
extremely acute because of the honesty of the man AND the unique "position" he held at the
fulcrum of the meeting point between the military, industrial and intelligence complex, of
the United States. If one who is in such a position:
1. "Knows the signature of black ops" from years of experience;
2. Witnesses the "breakdown" of the Law mandated by Congress as a "Control Mechanism" --
i.e., the NSC's ability to DIRECT the activities of the intelligence community;
3. Ultimately recognizes that the removal of the main member of the NSC, President John F.
Kennedy, was saturated with the "fingerprints" of a very carefully orchestrated "coup
d'etat";
Then, (if such an individual is a true patriot), he is under an obligation to "right the
wrongs" to the best of his ability... even if it may mean speaking of things that, despite
their truth, will tend to strain the credibility of the messenger.
I applaud Colonel Prouty's courage, dedication, wisdom, excellent reportage, attention to
detail, and finally, his relentless committment... He is an excellent messenger.
In the words of Jim Garrison: "Do not forget your dying king..."
Events in the real world and society are mostly planned, they do not just happen. This
book presents selected events from 1943 to 1990. The major events of this time were craftily
and systematically planned by the power elite. This book will attempt to explain the Cold
War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the effects of the development of the hydrogen bomb, and
why the "military-industrial complex" removed JFK from the Presidency.
L. Fletcher Prouty spent 1955-64 as chief of special operations. Page xxxiii tells of one
incident he witnessed of the "power elite". Page 4 explains how an agent for the East India
Company created an ideological justification for eliminating unwanted people. Page 8 says
that neither H-bombs or "Star Wars" can prevent warfare by terrorists.
Pages 15-16 tells of the driving force of acquisitiveness. Mineral wealth is controlled by
corporate interests directly, or by the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. Genocide
is regularly practices to limit the "excess population", particularly those who object to
this exploitation. He repeats Elliot Roosevelt's story about Stalin's claim that FDR was
poisoned (he had spies everywhere?).
"Many of the skilled saboteurs and terrorists of today are the CIA students of yesterday"
(p.37). "The first aerial hijackings were publicly solicited by the US in return for big cash
awards, plus sanctuary". Page 56 tells why so many of our leaders are lawyers: they are
trained to work under the direction of their clients. Their "lawyer-client confidence"
ensures secrecy, even in court; they work for international law firms in government, banks,
and major industries.
Chapter Six, "Genocide by Transfer", tells how over a million Tonkinese were moved to
Cochin China; it caused a rice shortage in a previously rice-exporting country! The
destruction of self-sufficient villages created consumers of imported food (like post-1962
Burma), and enriched merchants and shippers. It also created a source of cheap labor?
Chapter Seven tells of the destruction of the village economy, and the resulting banditry.
The depopulation of rural counties and the "urban renewal" in the big cities caused internal
migration and a rise in the crime rate here in America too. After Textron Corporation bought
Bell helicopters, there was now a need for these helicopters in Vietnam. Page 108 tells how
43% of lives lost were "not from action by hostile forces" - just accidents! The high cost of
machines and their need for maintenance (supplies, personnel) helped to lose the war.
L. Fletcher Prouty says the massive slaughter in Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq war, "Desert
Storm", and the Middle East hostilities are an example of Malthusian social engineering
(p.187).
Chapter 16 explains the economic reasons for coups d' etat, whether Marcos in the
Phillipines, Batista, Somoza, or Trujillo (pp. 236-7). Once a puppet ruler in s country tries
to counteract its exploitation, its goodbye. Page 238 tells how "foreign aid" is used to
support American companies moving their factories and machinery to foreign countries. Page
240 explains why Vietnam (like Korea) was a limited "unwinnable" war.
On November 22, 1963 JFK was removed from office by a powerful group that wanted to
escalate the war in Vietnam, and increase government spending (p.257). Pages 261-4 answers
those who mistakenly claim JFK did not want to withdraw military forces from Vietnam. Prouty
presents information from the public record and his personal experience. NSAM#263 shows that
JFK did plan to withdraw military personnel from Vietnam in 1963. The death of JFK changed
the war in Indochina from low-intensity to a major operation. Page 291 lists the many things
done as standard security procedure which were NOT done on 11-22-1963. If the Warren Report
is wrong on any key point, then it is false. Governor Connally contradicted the key point of
the Warren Report to his dying day.
The assassination of JFK demonstrated that most major events of world significance are
masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of enormously powerful people
(p.334). You can read Jim Marrs' "Rule by Secrecy". The August 31, 1983 downing of Korean Air
flight 007 resulted in the largest Defense Department budget ever passed in peacetime.
By A customer on December 24, 1998
"The Truth Shall Set You Free" - Plaque at CIA's entrance
These words of St. John are displayed at CIA's Head Quarters in Langley, VA. The DCI,
(Director of Central Intelligence), Allen Dulles, was not known for his ability to write good
"original" material... At one time, he commissioned one E. Howard Hunt to ghost write for
him. That might be likened to a liar who hires a thief to tell the truth! Colonel Leroy
Fletcher Prouty was not cast from the same "mold" that produced the likes of Colson,
MacGruder, Hunt, Sturgis, McCord, Liddy, Mitchell, Hoover, LeMay, Lansdale, and all the
rest... No, he was cast from a very different mold... a mold of integrity and dedication to
his country, the United States of America.
Imagine a patriotic young man, who enlists into the military, sees combat as a subordinate
on the front lines, is commissioned by his superiors (as they recognized the leadership
capabilities that he possessed), and is eventually placed in a newly created position: Chief
of Special Operations, as an adjunct to his previous title of "Focal Point Officer/Military
Liaison" in support of all CIA Clandestine Operations, as per National Security Council
Directive #5412. It is from this very perspective that the good Colonel speaks... and he
does, in fact, speak the truth.
I would do a disservice to those who seek an accurate account of the CIA, Vietnam, and the
Plot to Assassinate JFK, if I failed to mention the following:
Those who criticize or attack the content of this most important "work" of Fletcher, have
failed to understand that: "In the interest of a LEGITIMATE National Security Agenda" many
covert activities were necessary to insure the continued security of the United States. In
such instances any and all of the brave men and women, be they CIA, military, or civilian
personnel, who have engaged in such activity, including Fletcher Prouty, are to be commended
for their heroism and dedication to the freedom of us all, as unpalatable as many of these
activities may seem to those of us who have only known "peace" in our home land. Without the
work of the many "human assets" whose dedication to preserving our security at times
included, what is euphemistically called "Black Ops"-- we would not be free today to speak of
these issues. In this context, "Black Ops" can be seen as a necessary, albeit "unfortunate
choice" - However, choosing the lesser of two or more evils MUST be made at times.
At what point does one say "enough is enough?" I believe Colonel Prouty's insight is
extremely acute because of the honesty of the man AND the unique "position" he held at the
fulcrum of the meeting point between the military, industrial and intelligence complex, of
the United States. If one who is in such a position:
1. "Knows the signature of black ops" from years of experience;
2. Witnesses the "breakdown" of the Law mandated by Congress as a "Control Mechanism" --
i.e., the NSC's ability to DIRECT the activities of the intelligence community;
3. Ultimately recognizes that the removal of the main member of the NSC, President John F.
Kennedy, was saturated with the "fingerprints" of a very carefully orchestrated "coup
d'etat";
Then, (if such an individual is a true patriot), he is under an obligation to "right the
wrongs" to the best of his ability... even if it may mean speaking of things that, despite
their truth, will tend to strain the credibility of the messenger.
I applaud Colonel Prouty's courage, dedication, wisdom, excellent reportage, attention to
detail, and finally, his relentless committment... He is an excellent messenger.
In the words of Jim Garrison: "Do not forget your dying king..."
Constitutional Implications of the JFK Assassination
A recent poll taken by CNBC and a "news-eum" shows that the assassination of John F.
Kennedy was the 6th most important event of the twentieth century. How or why those polled
justify this choice is not clear. But anyone familiar with American history, American
culture, and the myths and assumptions most Americans carry as a foundation of their beliefs
-- can deduce the relevance of November 22, 1963 and its implications.
Every school kid is taught that we live in a country where there is no need for coup
d'etat. We don't assassinate our leaders; we retire them at the voting booth. In this,
derives the faith we have in all our other institutions, and especially, the Constitution and
the Bill of Rights. From the dawn of our individual consciousness, we are made to believe and
assume that we are "safe," that we can think and say and do as we please, so long as we don't
tread on the rights of others. And every school kid learns by rote the Preamble to the
Constitution -- "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense . . secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . . ."
So for thirty-five years, most of us have been living in some form of illusion and denial.
We were told and made to accept the story that the President of the United States was killed
by a single, crazed person -- a relative nobody, an insect. The Warren Commission Report
assured a majority of people over some part of those 35 years that our institutions are safe.
It attempted to assure us, among other things, that our public officials continue to be
honest; that our judges continue to value and protect Justice and Truth above everything
else; that our policemen and local officials can be relied upon to protect us; and that the
government, when it tells us to send the flower of our youth to war, does so for good reason.
In a way, the Report was a means of continuing the myths that we all believe, especially,
that "We the People" are the ultimate source of authority and power in our government.
Unfortunately for the authors of the 26-volume Report -- but fortunately for the rest of
us -- it has lost its credibility. That credibility began to erode almost as soon as the
Report was published, as Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans parish, resurrected
his investigation into the activities and actors of the building at Lafayette and Camp
streets. Almost from the beginning, the work of Garrison and his staff was hampered by the
seemingly unexplainable efforts of the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency. Since that
time, we have been slowly awakened to the possible involvement of as many as three elected
presidents in the Warren Commission coverup, and there are echoes of something worse,
something more sinister.
We owe this awakening in part to the efforts of Garrison, and to the contribution of the
man who anonymously assisted him in that investigation of the late 60's. Col. L. Fletcher
Prouty, the "Mr. X" of Oliver Stone's "JFK," retired from the CIA not more than a year after
the assassination. New facts in the assassination have slowly accumulated, partly due to the
efforts of Prouty, Garrison, an emerging army of quiet and persistent historical researchers,
investigative journalists, and -- yes -- even elected officials.
Now there are several variations on the conspiracy theme, which polls show is now accepted
or suspected by as much as 78 percent of the American population. Some believed that Castro
was the source of the plot to kill JFK. Others accepted the most reasonable theory that
organized crime, namely Carlos Marcello, was the dark force behind the assassination. How
comforting. We can now change the TV channel to "The Brady Bunch" -- we are still safe as
long as the identity of the bogeyman that robbed us of a President and half a century's
history doesn't challenge our basic beliefs in the institutions of government. And of course,
the institutions of the powerful are also safe from a skeptical and inquiring public.
Other theories are more troubling, and as Prouty tells us apologetically, advocates of
these theories perennially suffer the labels of "conspiracy nut" and "paranoid." But Prouty
was the post-war pilot who shuttled dignitaries to the major conferences of World War II and
facilitated the "rescue" of Nazi intelligence officers from their potential Soviet captors.
He was on Okinawa when the thousands of tons of war materiel suddenly deemed unnecessary for
an invasion of Japan were unexplainably shipped to Haiphong Harbor for the VietMinh. He was
privy to the CIA's covert operations from that point forward which slowly enmired America in
a war without strategic objectives -- the war in Vietnam. He was in the midst of CIA staff
who planned the covert initiatives against Castro, notably Operation Mongoose and the Bay of
Pigs. He presents detailed, plausible explanations of the reasons why these efforts failed.
This provides a basis for a most incredible argument that a "High Cabal" of individuals and
agencies -- above politics, even above government itself -- set in motion the decisions,
events, and coordination that enabled the murder of a President.
Prouty was Oliver Stone's closest consultant in forging the epic movie "JFK." The
underlying theory of the movie has been labeled "Conspiracy-a-Go-Go," the essence of a plot
masterminded by a "High Cabal." The features of such a plot are merely hinted by the movie.
Viewers may take away from the film an awakened sense of suspicion mixed with disbelief, and
this does not detract from the film as good cinematic art. But Prouty's book offers some
solid history and autobiography. It doesn't digest as impassioned rhetoric or the rantings of
an extremist paranoid. It comes off as the ruminations and reflections of a witness who has
both feet on solid ground.
The author consistently reminds us that an explanation of Kennedy's murder must be
grounded in economic reasoning. "Who stood to benefit?" "Why?" He tells us that he doesn't
want to concern himself with the identities of the contract assassins themselves, and indeed
he informs us that it is in the nature of this underworld thick with professional "mechanics"
that their identities may never be entirely known. Instead, he provides us a review of
history and foreign policy during the initial and most frightening stages of the Cold War,
and he reminds us that individuals are at the core of power where decisions of enormous scope
are made frequently without either the participation or the knowledge of the public. So
rather than point the finger explicitly at conspirators -- whose identities may be suggested
or mentioned as part of the book's historical message -- he leaves it to the reader's
judgment.
I cannot fault the book for its failure to present solutions. Ted Kazynski, in his
"Manifesto," levels accusations against the same dark, if not anonymous forces, and most
people will overlook the scribblings of someone diagnosed as criminally insane. But we cannot
ignore any longer the existence of a "power elite" and the imperatives of large-scale global
organization which support its existence. If we wish to live in society and partake of the
benefits of a civilization thousands of years in the making, we have to accept these
distortions to the democratic myths that saturate our consciousness and perceptions. Offering
a practical prescription for controlling those forces was never Prouty's objective in writing
this book. More aptly, "JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy"
is a profound wake-up call.
Prescriptions do not come easily. Those interested in what should prove to be a long and
protracted debate should read Gerry Spence's "Give Me Liberty." But one cannot address the
problem unless he or she is aware of it. To this end, Prouty's book provides sharp historical
focus.
Col. Prouty's most informative book exposes the vicious, greedy, and super-anonymous hand
of the "High Cabal" as none other has dared attempt. It clearly demonstrates the bizarre and
disgusting chain of events (created by the OSS and CIA) that began before the end of WWII;
events that led to President Eisenhower's unprecedented farewell address (and warning) to the
nation. These events also led to the creation of President John F. Kennedy's National
Security Action Memorandum #263, which called for de-escalation of the Vietnam War and
withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam; the memorandum that ultimately led to his death.
This work exposes the planned genocide of millions of innocent, non-combatant Southeast
Asian civilians, under the guise of such noble sounding terms as "pacification." Readers
learn that none of these attacks on the peace-loving Southeast Asians were undertaken to
protect any nation or preserve any ideology. Rather, they were thrust upon the Southeast
Asians to further feed the exceedingly bulging pockets of greedy international bankers and
the insidious military-industrial complex. These events also served to further perpetuate the
High Cabal's iron-fisted, though ultra-secret, control over American government, among
others, and the world economy. Vietnam is but one homeland that the High Cabal has decimated
to serve its own purposes. There have indeed been many others throughout history. The
question is: who's next? Perhaps us? Every American should read this vitally important book.
And, think about it...
Hats off to Col. L. Fletcher Prouty. A truly great American! I proudly salute you,
Sir.
I want those readers who have not read this book to read my opinions below.
First, this is a great book simply because Prouty has provided more inside ammunition for
researchers to mine the depths of our secret government. This is the government of men who
controlled the secret programs of assassination, the secret slush funds of
counterintelligence, the operatives who dilligently carried out their secret orders,their
programs of stealth, quasi-law breaking, and other publically inaccessible information.
Prouty's book quite correctly points the finger at Dulles, Lansdale, and others in CIA, who
were paranoid about communism and Castro. They viewed Kennedy as a traitor and he stood in
the way of the war machine they were operating, both overtly, but especially covertly. The
termination of raids to Cuba, the failure of follow-up air support at the Bay of Pigs, the
promise not to invade Cuba after the Cuban missile crisis, were all blamed on Kennedy. The
firing of Dulles, Cabell, and Bissell contributed to the intelligence community wanting JFK
removed from command. It is astonishing that so few have commented on the contrast between
now and then: in 1963 we were fed lies depicting Oswald as a crazed nut, a loner, and
defector. These days we have mountains of evidence he was much more than these pictures of
him. He associated with Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, anti-castro cubans, and others. He returned
to the US without a hitch, but in those days a defector would have been hounded and closely
watched. If this were true,then why wasn't the FBI catching all his associations and illegal
activities? Prouty has produced the superstructure of the conspiracy by showing the history,
and context of the cold war and the CIA
If one can view a supposed loser like Oswald pulling off this assassination as being
totally ridiculous, then one can entertain other possibilities. Why was Lyndon Johnson
reversing NSAMs so quickly concerning Vietnam? Why did Johnson appoint Warren, Dulles, Ford,
et al? Why wasn't the Dulles appointment perceived as a conflict of interest? Here is the
fired subordinate investigating the dead boss! Dulles definitely kept information from the
panel, especially about the assassination plots being orchestrated by the CIA, with the Mafia
as the gunmen. In this connection, another book of importance should be read and that is by
Peter Dale Scott: Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. It is a difficult book because he
describes a quasi government,over-and-above government institutions, which controlled the
plot and the outcome. This corresponds to some observations about Prouty's book, which fails
to name names. But that isn't quite correct. Prouty does name many persons who were in
command positions and had the power to orchestrate the assassination.Two prominent persons
were Dulles and Lansdale. Any clever and alert reader who watched Stone's movie JFK will see
a very short (about 2 second)sequence in the movie where General X is making the call to the
network to carry out the plot and kill JFK. On his desk is a nameplate which clearly says
"Lansdale".
The Prouty book establishes that Kennedy "was getting Americans out of Vietnam, he
confirmed that he was moving away from the pattern of Cold War confrontation in favor of
detente.He asked congress to cut the defense budget.Major programs were being phased out. As
a result, pressure from several fronts began to to build against the young President.The
pressure came from those most affected by cuts in the military budget, in the NASA space
program, and in the enormous potential cost-and profit-of the Vietnam War."
It is very ironic that his enemies in government brought about detente with the Soviet
Union. The notion that Oswald was a lone killer is preposterous and if it were true, why
would the full truth be kept from us so long after the collapse of communism? This was the
facile justification for locking up the evidence until 2025: that our outrage against a
communist conspiracy would demand a war against the communists. The real truth was to control
the information to the American public, so as to cover their tracks, and establish a legend
to the JFK killing.
Everyone should read this book. I heartily recommend this book to anyone seeking insight
into the question about insiders being involved in the killing.
Prouty gives us the point of view of both an ace historian and an insider taking us from
the origins of the cold war up through the assassination of President Kennedy, and then on up
through tomorrow night's evening news. It's haunting how the power elite's patterns of
military strategies and propaganda tactics of that era correlate with many of today's current
events. Just the other day somebody on TV was screaming, "Why wasn't there an objective in
Desert Fox?!" while at the same time I'm reading the answer in Prouty's book, yet the book
was written 6 or 7 years ago.
This isn't a book only on the Kennedy assassination, but Kennedy's bold decisions which
led to his death and the forces behind it all. He explains clearly the post-H-bomb military
strategy of aiding both sides of the fence in Vietnam to win the REAL war - big business. We
get an inside look at the Dulles brothers and their direct line to the "High Cabal" which
overrules even the White House.
I once heard Col. Prouty say in an interview that he's never read a page of the Warren
Commission's 26 volumes of hearings on the assassination. He said he didn't have to because
he knew who did it. I thought that was a bit odd, but after reading this book I understand
what he means. Prouty had worked with these guys! These are the same forces that overthrew
the Philipines, Greece, Iran, Bulgaria and Guatemala (to name just a few).
Out of all the books written about the Kennedy assassination this is easily one of the
best. Check out his website!
By A customer on October 22, 1999
A disturbing and enlightening insight into the Cold War
This book uncovers the many reasons for the Korean & Vietnam conflicts. It clearly
implicates the OSS/CIA during the end of World War II in their involvement in providing
supplies for the Koreans and then later for the Vietminh. Colonel Prouty indicates how the
CIA are quite often able to live in a secret world while manipulating other federal agencies
to their desired ends. When Kennedy took office in 1960 he inherited $6.5 billion in surplus
from the previous administration. When he planned not to include a major defense manufacturer
to build the TFX and gave that bid to General Dynamics the CIA and their constituents were
vey upset. Prouty points out that Kennedy never had any intention in building great offensive
systems for war. Kennedy wanted to create a united peace in the world through his reelection
by implementing domestic policies that would focus on the problems "at home." He also desired
better foreign relations with the Soviet Union. Kennedy planned to bring 1000 troops home
from Viet Nam by Christmas of 1963. McNamara's report on the Indonesian situation indicated
that all military units in Vietnam could be home by Kennedy's due date of 1965. But major
corporations having an investment in the manufacturing of war machines do not thrive during
peacetime. This was a critical area for Kennedy because of his change in the national policy.
Prouty shows that the President's shift prompted many businessmen to seriously think about
Kennedy's position as president. This book answers the whys of the cold war period as well as
the assassination motives. Prouty's book points out the wasted time in focusing on a "patsy"
as the lone assasin of JFK. In all probability Oswald was a soldier carrying out commands
from his superior officers not fully knowing the extent of the damage. L. Fletcher Prouty
wrote this history from his personal experiences with covert operations and his involvement
with government agencies. After reading this book the author leaves one feeling disturbed,
yet enlightened by the rich insight he has provided. I am grateful to Colonel Prouty for his
willingness to share his knowledge so that many may have an alternative view and perhaps a
better understanding regarding the Cold War era.
Prouty was well postioned to tell his story as seen from inside the intelligence
community. Unknown to most people Kennedy challenged the hegemony of the privately owned and
controlled Federal Reserve. In the summer of 1963 Kennedy signed an executive order to create
4 billion dollars in United States Notes, in direct competion to Federal Reserve Notes. Why?
The United States Notes were based on the government silver stores and their creation did not
create interest payements to the world bankers and owners of the Fed. Bills in denominations
of $2, $5, $10, and $20's were authorized and the $2's and $5's were printed and in
circulation. The $10's and $20 were being printed when Kenndy was killed. In Johnsons first
month in office the US Notes were recalled from circulation. Go to any good coin shop and ask
to buy a 1963 US Note. See it for yourself! The one gem in Prouty's book that ties Kennedy to
this issue is a few sentences where he discusses Kennedy sending Robert McNamara to meet with
the Governors of the Federal Reserve to let them know that there are going to be big changes
in the nations money system. There is very little information out there about Kennedy and
money and Prouty clearly knew there was a connection. Why is the topic of Kennedy and the
money he created so obscure and unknown? The only other president in the history of the
country to create US Notes directly from the authority of the US Government was Lincoln with
his greenbacks during the civil war. The only two presidents to buck the money powers were
both assasinated in office. I think Prouty shows a possible origin of one of the smoking
guns.
By A customer on January 4, 1998
The key to the mystery of the crime of the century.
As a United States Marine in the Vietnam war, I never challenged my country's intentions
to stem the tide against communist aggression throughout the world. After my extended tour of
duty in that war zone, I came home to ponder how we became involved in such a protracted war
that divided the country (USA) so. It all points back to the tradgic event on 22 November
1963. With the death of our beloved President Kennedy, the powers to be had free reign to
curtail the planned withdrawl of the small amount of troops in that zone. Only 16,000 at that
time. This book is an excellent reference to how real events were managed to create so much
grief for the people of South Vietnam and the United States. As a former Marine who left
enough of his friends to pay the ultimate sacrifice, I highly recommend Colonel Prouty's fine
book. "Those of us who made it have an obligation to find the goodness in man and make this
world a better place in which to live." Long live the memory of JFK.
America has Waited a Long Time to Hear the Truth...
Finally, those involved are getting old enough not to place concern about their own
welfare above truth anymore.
This book provides so many connections, such a depth of behind the scenes knowledge and
inner workings of the specific programs operating at the time, you can't help but be bowled
over.
***Note: Anyone interested in the Kennedy Assassination should realize that there is a
"misinformation plant" in the Library Journal review department. Every honest book on the
subject has been unconvincingly discredited by them, while they praise and try to steer you
towards known flake CIA-financed writers such as Gerald Posner.
It's rather common to hear of wrongdoing by the CIA I saw a graph recently that
showed American citizen's belief in their government plummeting after the Kennedy
Assassination. Almost no one accepted the Warren Commission Report and such a cover up has
casted doubt on our government ever since.
This "High Cabal" as Churchill called them obviously doesn't start with the CIA, or the
Federal Reserve. It predates Christianity, but it's quite simple. There are bums who seek
handouts and never try to rise, and there are bums who gain a position over others but still
yearn for that same handout, taking it by force, by skimming, whatever is necessary to defeat
justice, honor and civility. These are not great men and they will not be remembered like an
Edison or a Ford. They are the most creative parasites on the planet, and the most deeply
engrained.
Currency control has changed EIGHT times since America's inception. The most vocal fighter
against irrational banking was Andrew Jackson; not Kennedy or Lincoln (google "Jackson Bank
Veto"). He fought and defeated in his time what has morphed into the Federal Reserve Bank.
Before the Civil War, such bankers were buying politicians, planting press stories, steering
elections, stealing freedoms, killing people--anything to assure a fascist cushion between
themselves and existence.
Do we ever hear anything bad about the Federal Reserve? In Jackson's time, they were
entrenched 16 years deep and it was difficult to rout them out then. They did try to kill
him. Now they are ninety years deep. They have owned many Presidents, they control the
Justice and State Departments, and the CIA secretly furthers their agenda.
Nothing happens at the Assassination Level without their approval. In today's world,
America is struggling in recession (bankruptcy) mostly due to the $360 Billion we now pay to
the Fed for their generous "Debt-Money" System, and that is an exponentially increasing
burden. EVERY dollar in our country has interest being paid on it as if it were borrowed! Due
to this, bankruptcy for America is a mathematical certainty. (Imagine if you had to pay
interest not just on every dollar you owed, but on every dollar you made! America IS!)
With changes in the laws, soon none of us will be permitted to walk away from our debts
and start over--as if our hard economic times is our own personal fault.
We are all about to become debt slaves, as they intend. If you want to have a chance at
recovery, if you want your kids to have a chance at a decent future, join me and I'll give
you the Moral Armor neccessary to beat down these parasites and restore America to what it
was meant to be. They CAN be defeated, but not without YOUR empowerment. If you can't stand
up or are afraid to, I'll show you how. Invest in yourself right now and let's save this
ship!
Hard to believe for various reasons. First, other reviewers have commented on the "logic"
of the author's arguments. There are, however, numerous fallacies in the book. Lots of, "X
happened, and then Y happened, THEREFORE..." but the conclusions are never proven and don't
follow logically from the premises. Second, the author doesn't seem to notice some of the
absurdities in his thesis when applied to November of 1963. For example, we're told that an
international elite working above the leaders elected to the highest offices of government
have created and controlled world wide war efforts, power transfers, government overthrows,
and economic and monetary conditions among other things, since the end of WWII.
They must be pretty well organized, financed and intelligent to do so. Yet, they were
unable to ensure the election of Nixon in the closest election in history up to that
point?
Seems odd to be able to start wars but not rig an election that was lost by .02 percent.
And, if that isn't a good enough example, let's try another one.
The author gives us several photos in the book of the Dallas "Police" who transported a
band of vagabonds on the day JFK was killed and points out the facts that their uniforms
aren't standard DPD issue, their uniforms don't match, and their caps and weapons are not
standard.
The obvious allusion is that they weren't real policemen and were somehow a part of or
hired by this power elite who operated to kill on that day. Yet, wouldn't a "High Cabal"
capable of all I mentioned above, have made sure to procure authentic police uniforms, caps,
badges and weapons for such an important day, leaving nothing to chance, and preparing for
every contingency? It seems like a very sloppy oversight by a group with such limitless
powers and ability.
These are just two examples of many where common sense seems to trump the passionate
arguments of the author. That being said, there is some interesting information in the book
on the inner workings of the CIA and government especially during the Vietnam War. If you are
going to read it, just be on the lookout for the faulty logic and use common, critical
thinking skills to help sort possibility from probability.
In "JFK", Fletcher Prouty shares numerous fascinating observations garnered from his
position as a mid-grade officer in what I call the "Conglomerate of Covert Cold Warriors"
(OSS/CIA/Military Intelligence/Special Operations/etc) from the 1940s until the early 1960s.
Some of the conclusions he draws, however, are completely unsubstantiated and require a real
stretch of the imagination.
Chief among these is the existence of some sort of secret "high cabal" of bankers and
industrialists (but not the Illuminati, Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations,
Freemasons, Trilateral Commision, Pentaverate,or any other previously speculated secret
organization) which has been manipulating the governments of the world into conflicts large
and small for at least the last hundred years for the purpose of generating profits on the
sale and/or financing of war materials.
Prouty further supposes that the CIA and KGB were the two principal levers with which this
supposed cabal have exerted their influence on the world in the post-WWII era.
Prouty also suggests that the Korean and Vietnam Wars were prearranged prior to the close
of World War II, and that everything that happened in Vietnam from '45 on was part of a
master plan by the OSS/CIA to set the table for a protracted large-scale US engagement in a
later decade. Kennedy's intent to deviate from this carefully and painstaking constructed
plan for Vietnam supposedly was the instigation for the high cabal to orchestrate his
murder.
While Prouty brings to light many interesting connections between the "Conglomerate" and
world events, the need to attribute credit/blame for everything to some "invisible elite"
group of power brokers who pull the strings of the CIA is difficult to accept. It seems to me
that the fact that the CIA was a very insular group, created and led by a small cadre of
extremely ambitious ideologues who operated with a nearly unlimited budget and almost no
accountability means they were likely responsible on their own for most things that Prouty
blames on "the cabal."
At times Prouty contradicts himself, suggesting on one hand that various apparent CIA
miscalculations that drag us farther into the Vietnam war were actually intentional, while
later claiming that the CIA were surprised when the same actions did not yield any strategic
gains.
One last criticism I have is that Prouty often repeats himself. Certain themes are
addressed over and over, with little or no additional detail brought to the table. Some
passages were so similar to ones in previous chapters I wondered if my kindle was
malfunctioning and moving me back to pages I'd already read. I blame this more on the editors
than Prouty; they should have restructured his ideas more logically and could have cut 50-100
pages from this book without removing any value.
If you can look past the cabal angle and sloppy organization, there are some interesting
ideas presented. Prouty makes a strong case that JFK intended to take the country in a
direction in Vietnam that was counter to the aims of the "Conglomerate" and that certain
individuals were conspicuously well prepared to reverse that policy in the immediate
aftermath of the assassination. He also fairly criticizes the failure of the "Pentagon
Papers" to put the the dramatic shift in Vietnam policy that occurred in late November, 1963,
in the context of of a violent change in the presidency. His theory that the CIA-sponsored
relocation of ~1,000,0000 Tonkinese Vietnamese from the North to the Mekong Delta in the
South spawned the Viet Cong is compelling, whether or not you buy his supposition that it was
a calculated result.
The fact that Prouty is the mysterious "Mr X" from Garrisons book "On the Trail of the
Assassins" and Stone's movie "JFK" is reason enough for any assassination buff to read this
book despite the shortcomings. That there are other interesting and salient nuggets burried
in the muck of the "high cabal" theme is a bonus.
A customer on September 5, 1999
Prouty long on entrigue - short on facts.
I once had the opportunity to ask Col. Prouty (via e-mail) if he had retained any of the
orders he states he received, or could produce another officer who shared his perspective on
events surrounding the assassination of JFK. Instead of answers, what I got in return was a
geriatric tirade and a sermon on respect for the men who have served this great nation. His
thesis on the Bay of Pigs, given documentation now available (_Bay of Pigs Declassified_,
1998 National Security Archive, [...]) demonstrates that, where facts are concerned, Prouty
is victim to his own perspective. Prouty reports that JFK was advised through CIA channels
that Castro's air force had to be disabled prior to the April 17, Bay of Pigs attack, by
Cuban exiles/CIA forces. Prouty states that JFK gave the green light for the initial April 15
attack, which decommissioned all but three of Castro's T-33 aircraft, and conveys that when
JFK was advised on April 16 that three planes remained, he authorized their destruction with
a second wave attack. Col. Prouty contends that McGeorge Bundy made a secure call to General
Charles Cabell (brother of the Dallas mayor when JFK was assassinated, Earle Cabell) giving
the president's approval, but that Cabell delayed deployment of the exile air force at
Nicaragua. The Colonel contends that Cabell's delay in passing the order was the reason
Kennedy later had him relieved of duty, and that the Mayor of Dallas retaliated for his
brother's dismissal by participating in JFK's assassination.
Prouty makes the case that Cabell foiled any chances of success for the maritime operation
by delaying the order for the B-26 aircraft to return to Cuba and destroy three remaining
T-33s. But, Prouty is way off the mark on this one. Recently released documentation proves
JFK wanted deniabilty and did not authorize the second wave of air attacks. While a question
may remain as to whether the CIA adequately briefed Kennedy on the importance of the second
wave attacks by the Cuban exiles, there is little doubt that whomever or whatever caused
Prouty to print his version of the events will not contribute to Prouty's reputation for
accuracy when confidently stating things as fact.
In a realm where hard evidence is a must, Prouty tells interesting tales. If his accounts
of the events are to be believed, Col Prouty should furnish us military sources who agree
with the Colonel, or concede that historically he simply cannot prove his assertions.
What a sad mess of a book. It is really unfortunate that the people who were active adults
in 1963 are now approaching their dotage, 50 years later, and in addition, that few serious
publishers will touch the more controversial points of view with a 10-foot pole. As a result,
we get books like this, from someone who might actually know something, but who can't write
or edit a book into shape so that we can tell whether it makes any sense.
Prouty has several bugs in his bonnet:
There is a secret Cabal of elites who run the entire world and have for centuries.
Presidents and generals are puppets, mostly clueless as to what is really going on. (barely
credible.)
The fact that the earth is round, plus Malthus and Darwin, are the keys to the past 500
years of history, and the source of private property, colonialism, and pretty much all
evil. (not credible to me.)
Before WW2 had even ended, the US had already decided that its ally, the USSR, was
going to be its next enemy and that Germany would be its ally, and started acting on this
in the closing days of the war. The reason for this decision is that we, like all
countries, need perpetual war to maintain sovereignty. (semi-credible--I doubt that any of
this was conscious, if it happened at all.)
A decision was made in 1945 that after WW2, we would next fight in Korea and Vietnam,
and we sent weapons there for that purpose. (not credible to me. Yes, we may have sent
weapons there, but I really doubt that there was a master plan in place.)
By now you're probably wondering what any or all of this has to do with the assassination
of JFK. Well, that's the problem--this book is so all over the place that he spends
essentially the whole book on deep background stuff, and the actual explanation of what this
has to do with Kennedy is scattered throughout the book. He keeps bringing the story up to
1963 in every chapter, and then backtracking again and again. And again!
However, for all its problems as a book, the info contained herein meshes with several
other books I've read recently that all point to the fact that Kennedy was moving from a Cold
Warrior to a peacenik, (elsewhere attributed to his taking LSD with his mistress Mary Meyer.
Who knows?) He *did* found a thing called the Peace Corps. He did give a speech at an
American university that is called his Peace speech. Supposedly, he and Khrushchev were sort
of pen pals, and they had both stared into the nuclear abyss and decided to make love not
war.
Oh yes, another of Prouty's big ideas is that the weapons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were a huge error on the part of the Cabal/Elite, since it made normal war impossible, hence
a turn to guerrilla warfare by proxy. Again, the belief that everything is part of a master
plan. The outcome is valid, but the idea of an invisible hand behind the scenes
stage-managing all this is not reasonable to me.
Is it credible that the CIA could have been involved in Kennedy's assassination? On
this point, I think the answer is yes. The old objection that people wouldn't be able to keep
quiet if there were a conspiracy is pretty much moot if we're talking about the CIA, since by
definition, these are guys who could do unimaginable things, have a cigarette, and then never
speak of it again.
I think there is pretty decent evidence that Oswald was connected to the CIA (The
defection and then un-defection in and of itself is pretty incredible, and his statement that
he was the patsy is more likely if he was in fact a patsy, than if he were a either a nut job
or a Castro sympathizer. Both of those types want credit!)
And this book also confirms the feeling that I often get that in fact the US has many
of the characteristics of a fascist state, minus the concentration camps for Jews. It is true
that we have wrought havoc in many other people's countries, that we maintain a near-constant
state of war, and that *if* a president tried to go in a different direction, there are
forces within the military-industrial-intelligence complex that might both want and be
capable of taking them out.
I am fairly knowledgeable about the assassination scenarios, but I found this book rough
going, because it goes into a lot of political detail about the internal politics of Vietnam
as well as very detailed descriptions of Washington politics. Perhaps if you are a bit older
than me (I was 11 in 1963), or more knowledgeable about all the names and politics of that
time, it would all come together. But a good editor would have helped tremendously to make it
accessible to the general public.
In Oliver Stone's film "JFK" in the Mall Scene meeting between D.A. Jim Garrison (played
by Kevin Costner) and "Man X" (played by Donald Sutherland), a flashback scene presented a
nameplate from the desk of an Air Force military general speaking on the phone, and partialy
showing his name as Maj/Gen. E.G. (unknown)?
Who was Stone attempting to make reference to and cast aspersions upon Maj. General E.G.
Lansdale?
Does anybody know?? Will check back from time-to-time is see "IF" any comments are posted
to my inquiry. Thanks!
Contrary to popular belief today, Kennedy was a cold warrior. There is no evidence at all
that he was (in his second term, if he even got one) going to end the cold war, or pull out
of Vietnam. Michael Lind in his book 'Vietnam: The Necessary War' addresses this issue, and
points out that the record clearly shows otherwise.
Several of the people who claim that Kennedy told them he was going to pull out of Vietnam
revealed this information in the late 60's after the war had become traumatic for the
country. Robert McNamara (one of the original architects of the Vietnam War), who has
speculated for years that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam, admits that Kennedy
never told him he was going to pull out.
In an interview with Walter Cronkite a few months before he was assassinated Kennedy said
(about Vietnam): "I think it would be a mistake to withdraw." Oliver Stone (cleverly), only
shows bits and pieces of the interview at the beginning of JFK. Editing the interview to make
it look like Kennedy was going to withdraw. In fact, the day he was assassinated Kennedy gave
a speech endorsing our involvement in Vietnam. The claim that Kennedy was going to pull out
of Vietnam is speculation at best. Go to : [...]
This post details many of the myths surrounding JFK's policy stances, and shows that (by
today's standards) Kennedy (most likely) would have been a moderate Republican. There was no
motive (as Prouty claims) to kill Kennedy.
Also go to: [...]
For some more of Prouty's crackpot opinions.
Kennedy was a cold warrior: he was conspicuously absent (as a representative from
Massachusetts) when the House of Representatives voted to censure Joseph McCarthy (he even
praised McCarthy on several occasions). He ran against Nixon in 1960 on the missile gap (i.e.
we were behind the Soviets in the number of ICBM's). He said in his inaugural address:
"......Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price,
bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the
survival and the success of liberty." Doesn't sound to me like he was going to "bug out" of
Vietnam.
Also, check out: [...]
This further debunks the idea that JFK was going to withdraw from Vietnam.
Maybe US foreign policy as well as the popular sentiments expressed in the thread are well
explained by the fact that the US does not have to worry about any bridges connecting it with
the nations it attacks and devastates.
With two shining seas on either side, and no apparent military concern about the borders
north and south, maybe all wars to be pursued for profit and "interest" are by definition
elective, hence aggression, hence unconstitutional and illegal.
Hamdani was a soldier and Hussein although a competent soldier was first and foremost a
politician.(Qusay was a spoilt child).
Soldiers can win battles and even 'wars' but do not have the end-game in mind.
The only thing that USA could gain was some oil, some gold and a few more years of
Bretton-Woods hegemony. Hussein attacked USA where it hurt. Refusing to go along with the
Dollar exchange and insisting on Euro. Gaddafi did the same with a Gold based Dinar, and see
where it got him. Iran has the same idea with the Tehran oil exchange, which is why they
were/are so hated.
China and Russia and Hussein knew that it is only the first step to win a battle. If you
take ground, you must then occupy that ground. Russia moved millions of Russians to all the
occupied territories, and therefore could rightly claim that Crimea (and Kiev) were Russian
territory inhabited by Russian speaking people. China in Tibet, Israel in Jerusalem. To win
the battle is only a minor step, you need to occupy the land with your people to keep it.
There was/is no way that Americans are going to resettle in Afghanistan or Iraq and
therefore they can never win the war. USA has 'occupied' Europe for as long as their troops
have the 'Russians are coming' was believed and that the US army could enforce the
Bretton-woods diktat. Both are now discredited and the USA will lose everywhere. It is trying
to gain Africa, but there are already a million Chinese who have settled and USA has no
chance. Of course the fact that the Chinese and Russians have gone to Africa with money and
trade whilst the US has only drones and guns to offer will not make them popular either.
USA is dying and the final death throes are painful to watch, but it comes to all
eventually. You had a good run but now is the time to say goodbye.
The British recognised it after the Second World War and handed over the colonies to the
natives. Which then ran them into the ground with Australia, Canada and India being prime
examples of why people need a strong hand to control them, but USA cannot or will not let
go.
Unfortunately it is sad rather than amusing to watch the demise.
Despite all that is said, the USA has not "failed" in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq, as well as
the invasion of Afghanistan and the destabilization of Libya and Syria, are all steps in the
plan to control natural resources and dismember any threat to the zionist entity of israel
whose lackeys actually control the U.S.
In addition, every country that was attacked was placed directly under the control of the
bankers who finance the zionists. Every threat to the hegenomy of these bankers has been
snuffed out and everywhere gold reserves were stolen, and oil, gas and mineral deposits are
now under their control.
Whether you believe it ot like it or not, this is what is happening.
Bastard neoliberalism by Trump (and Bannon) are inconsistent. You can't be half pregnant -- to be
a neoliberal (promote deregulation, regressive taxes) and be anti-immigration and anti-globalist. In
this sense words Trump is doomed: neoliberal are determined to get rid of him.
Reagan was a former governor of California before becoming the President. hardly a complete outsider.
Trump was an outsider more similar to Barak Obama in a sense that he has no political record and can
ride on backlash against neoliberal globalization, especially outsourcing and offshoring and unlimited
immigration, as well as ride anti-globalism sentiments and popular protest against foreign wars. Only
quickly betraying those promised afterward. Much like king of "bait and switch" Obama .
Notable quotes:
"... Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy designed to prosper Americans first. ..."
"... Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot. ..."
"... He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally, but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a country any more. ..."
"... Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like Ike, both built up the military. ..."
"... Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. ..."
"... Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time. ..."
"... As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the 1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and "America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s. ..."
"... Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war with GOP leaders on the Hill. ..."
"... And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly. Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics." ..."
"... It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class. ..."
"... Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political establishment. ..."
"... There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance was often as much a pretext as a real motive. ..."
"... Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live differently. ..."
"... As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves. ..."
"... Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete fuckup. ..."
"... Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence. ..."
"... you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people (like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process. ..."
Both men were outsiders, and neither a career politician. Raised Democratic, Reagan had been a
Hollywood actor, union leader and voice of GE, before running for governor of California.
Trump is out of Queens, a builder-businessman in a Democratic city whose Republican credentials
were suspect at best when he rode down that elevator at Trump Tower. Both took on the Republican
establishment of their day, and humiliated it.
Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy
designed to prosper Americans first.
Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because
of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though
a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot.
He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally,
but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a
country any more.
Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like
Ike, both built up the military.
Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget
through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's
day, Russia and China in Trump's time.
And both were regarded in this capital city with a cosmopolitan condescension bordering on contempt.
"An amiable dunce" said a Great Society Democrat of Reagan.
The awesome victories Reagan rolled up, a 44-state landslide in 1980 and a 49-state landslide
in 1984, induced some second thoughts among Beltway elites about whether they truly spoke for America.
Trump's sweep of the primaries and startling triumph in the Electoral College caused the same consternation.
However, as the Great Depression, New Deal and World War II represented a continental divide in
history between what came before and what came after, so, too, did the end of the Cold War and the
Reagan era.
As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the
1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and
"America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s.
Which bring us to the present, with our billionaire president, indeed, at the barricades.
The differences between Trump in his first year and Reagan in 1981 are stark. Reagan had won a
landslide. The attempt on his life in April and the grace with which he conducted himself had earned
him a place in the hearts of his countrymen. He not only showed spine in giving the air traffic controllers
48 hours to get back to work, and then discharging them when they defied him, he enacted the largest
tax cut in U.S. history with the aid of boll weevil Democrats in the House.
Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united
Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative
accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen
senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war
with GOP leaders on the Hill.
And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes
on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job
of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly.
Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics."
It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number
of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class.
The only parts of the economy it helps are the builders of luxury mansions, antique and pricey
art dealers, and the makers of luxury autos and private jets.
when the US Government is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral
process
Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree
to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political
establishment.
Two pieces here at Unz you ought to read, and fully take on board the implications of, if you
want to even begin the process of grasping reality, rather than living in the manufactured fantasy
you appear to inhabit at the moment:
Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in
Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time.
There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear
ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the
grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to
the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance
was often as much a pretext as a real motive.
Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the
US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its
manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live
differently.
As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical
this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and
as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive
to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies
that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests
of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves.
Here's the German government being unusually blunt yesterday about the stupidity of the Trump
regime's seeming plans in this regard:
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday said that any move by US President Donald
Trump's administration to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal would drive a wedge between Europe
and the US.
"It's imperative that Europe sticks together on this issue," Gabriel told Germany's RND
newspaper group. "We also have to tell the Americans that their behavior on the Iran issue
will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the USA."
It's difficult to know whether the likes of Gabriel actually believe all the boilerplate nonsense
they talk about a supposed Iranian nuclear program – the real reason the European nations want
the deal to continue is that it stopped them having to pretend to believe all the outright lies
the US told about Iran, and having to kowtow t0 costly and counterproductive sanctions against
Iran that did immense general harm for the benefit only of Israel and Saudi Arabia and their US
stooges.
The US pulling out of the deal would at least bring that issue of US dishonesty on Iran and
past European appeasement of it to a head, I suppose.
Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective
leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he
did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete
fuckup.
Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence.
Assuming they won't kill Pence with the same bomb.
I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety.
Often I feel like it'd be better if Hillary did the same insane policies. It's always worse
when our guy does something wrong, and better when the hated enemy does it.
Hillary was a danger that she would start WW3 in Syria, but I don't think we can be certain
she'd have started it. Given how risk-averse women are in general, I think the only issue was
whether the Russians could've made it clear that shooting at Russian soldiers would mean war with
Russia. And I think even Hillary's advisers would've blinked.
On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran.
As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane domestic
policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This would ultimately
be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only used to evil ends in
the world.
Unfortunately I can see Orbán and the Poles torpedoing a common EU stance. I'm sure that will
be the price for Netanyahu's meeting with the V4 leaders a few months ago.
I think one good thing would be if US conservatives stopped their Reagan worship. He was certainly
not a bad person, but he allowed the amnesty to happen, couldn't stop the sanctions on Apartheid
South Africa, didn't (or couldn't?) do anything against the MLK cult becoming a state religion,
and started the free trade and tax cuts cults, he's also responsible for promoting the neocons
to positions of power. So overall he was a mixed bag from a nationalist conservative viewpoint.
Private citizens are forbidden to ask for help from a foreign country, when the US Government
is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral process.
You forgot the Clintons, Bush, McCain, Romney, and Obama. China and Israel worked on behalf
of all five of them, even though three of them lost
Yes, that's quite possible, but a common EU stance is not really all that important. What really
matters is how far the Germans, and to a lesser extent the less relevant but still big European
nations such as France and Italy and the more subservient US tool, the UK, are prepared to continue
to kowtow to US and Israeli dishonesty on Iran.
All the signs seem to be that repudiating the deal and trying to return to the days of the
aggressive and counter-productive US-imposed sanctions will be a step too far for many of those
players.
As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane
domestic policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This
would ultimately be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only
used to evil ends in the world.
Actually I suspect that repudiating the JCPOA, whether openly or by de facto breach, will go
immensely farther, and much faster, towards destroying practical US influence and therefore power
globally than any of those domestic policies, at least in the short run.
You can see that Trump is at least dimly aware of that likelihood from the way he keeps bottling
and postponing the decision, despite his clearly evident and desperate desire to please his pro-Israeli
and anti-Iranian advisers and instincts.
On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran.
An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national
suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.
1) There's a chance foreign policy insanity starts a nuclear war, in which case all domestic
policy issues will pale before such horror.
2) The US already has de facto open borders. Why does it matter if it becomes majority nonwhite
in 30 or just 20 years?
3) For non-American whites, it's better the earlier the US sphere disintegrates. I bet you
it's better for American whites as well. As long as this political/cultural center holds, the
rot cannot be stopped.
I watched the movie Independence Day last night: Can we have that guy for President after
Trump, or do we have to have an obligatory Democrat (Chelsea Clinton?) President for the next
8 years?
An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national
suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.
That's understandable, but obviously the calculation must be somewhat different from a non-US
perspective. Given how strongly many white Americans are in favor of pro-war policies and mindless
Israel worship (how many US blacks or Hispanics care about Israel or confronting Iran?), I'm not
even sure nationalists in Europe should really lament the Hispanicization of the US. It might
at least have a positive effect in restricting US interventionism and eroding US power. The sooner
the US is unable to continue with its self-appointed role as a global redeemer nation, the better.
History repeats first as tragedy (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly white air traffic controllers),
then as farce (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly afro NFL jocks). Reagan was at least an American
Firster. Trumpenstein is an obvious traitorous Izzie Firster, with little concern for the so-called
deplorables except to convert them into deployables at the service of his jooie sponsors. Maybe
Paddy should have titled his screed "Heir to Begin, not Reagan"?
Pat Buchanan points out that " it is far more likely that a major war would do for the Trump presidency
and his place in history what it did for Presidents Wilson, Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush."
As for President Trump; Let us hope that war DOES NOT BECOME "The Last Refuge Of This Scoundrel"!
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority non-White
jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
If only non-White votes were counted, Hillary Clinton would have been elected unanimously by
the electoral college, and Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.
The few reliable voices for foreign policy sanity in congress, such as Senator Rand Paul and
Congressmen Walter Jones, John Duncan, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash, represent overwhelmingly
White, Protestant, old-stock American districts.
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority
non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
Maybe, but is there any data indicating many blacks in Washington DC actually voted in the
Republican primaries? Why would they when most of them are a solid Democrat voting block? I'd
guess Rubio got his votes from white elites in DC.
As for Puerto Rico, I didn't know they actually have primaries, seems odd given they don't vote
in US presidential elections.
Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.
Hillary was horrible all around, and I agree she might well have been disastrous as president
given her dangerous proposals for no-fly zones in Syria, and the potential of conflict with Russia
this entailed. But I'm no longer sure Trump is really better regarding foreign policy. His behaviour
on the North Korea issue is irresponsible imo, and his willingness to wreck the nuclear deal with
Iran at the behest of neoconservatives and Zionist donors like Sheldon Adelson is a big fat minus
in my view. Sorry, but I think you guys who hoped for something different have all been (neo-)conned.
Reagan said: My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation
that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
Trump said: We will totally destroy North Korea if the United States is forced to defend
itself or its allies.
The only similarities I see between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump is that both live (lived) in
a sort of la-la land, totally out of touch with reality. The only difference between them is that
Reagan had sensible people around him (like Pat Buchannan) who wrote good speeches and make good
decisions which he took full credit for. Trump, on the other hand delivers abbreviated, one-sentence
speeches via Twitter while surrounded by mental midgets with military minds.
There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear
ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in
the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism
Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced just
in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets necessary
to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority
non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
but you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from
it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people
(like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel
Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process.
Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced
just in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets
necessary to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.
Well, yes and no. In both cases. It really is more complicated than that.
Reagan didn't undo Arab Israel Camp David Peace Treaty He didn't keep the Israeli side and undo
the Egyptian side of the American obligation . He kept both.
Trump is dangerous malevolent anti-American and anti- anything that hurts his ego or pocket
. He has malcontent displaced sycophants as inner circle supporters who want a piece in the pie
denied to them by the establishment .
Here is a quote from antiwar -"In other words, it's all about the war that Trump and his still-loyal
lieutenant Steve Bannon, assisted by UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have declared on the "deep state."
Also, Trump and Bannon aren't really interested in draining the foreign policy swamp in DC.
They simply want to install their own cronies who will ensure that war and globalization benefit
them rather than Kissinger and his ilk. It's a shell game designed to fool Trump's base, but the
rest of the world has kept its eye on the ball."
http://original.antiwar.com/feffer/2017/10/13/trump-signaling-unprecedented-right-turn-foreign-policy/
This war between elites have been predicted by a CT professor in an article in 2016 , to get
more serious and dangerous by 2020 . The fights among elites are not new but another pathway an
empire takes additionally to the final fate of the destruction from within
"A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often well-educated and highly capable,
has been denied access to elite positions."
Another visible sign of increasing intra-elite competition and political polarization is the
fragmentation of political parties
cliodynamic research on past societies demonstrates that elite overproduction is by far the
most important of the three main historical drivers of social instability and political violence
(see Secular Cycles for this analysis).
But the other two factors in the model, popular immiseration (the stagnation and decline of
living standards) and declining fiscal health of the state (resulting from falling state revenues
and rising expenses) are also important contributors.
Ideally Europe would be strong together, without US and more sane policies on morals and immigration.
Yes v4 is connected to CC, Neocon, Zios.
While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem is
depending on US too much, and being stuck between Russia and Germany which would isolate it from
Europe in some ways. Obviously Poles are not uniform, views on US, Russia, Germany, Ukraine are
all over the place. I wish Poland was just European (in politics) but the US-EU connection is
still strong.
Commenting on US presidents. Presidents are puppets. All of them. Modern leaders in Western world
are unlikable. Reagan at least had some balance, had some Catholic and Paleocon involvement. It
wasnt all Neocons and Zios. Im quite sure Reagan (and his dad), people like Buchanan had connections
to groups like Knights Malta or Knights Colombus. Cant prove it though. Kennedy was KC.
Today
Neocon/Zionist influence is even stronger. Trump policies on NK and Iran are nuts. At best a war
is avoided.
On the other side you have Clintons, Obamas. They would destroy the US, and have similar policies
because again they are puppets. Clinton would likely be involved in Syria, just like Obama was.
While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem
is depending on US too much
Yes, that's a problem, and I think Polish national conservatives are somewhat in denial about
what the modern US stands for the "values" pushed by the US establishment today are incompatible
with the Polish right's vision for Poland (e.g. conservative values in sexual morality – no homo-lobbyism
and transgender nonsense -, strong public role of Catholicism, restrictive and selective immigration
policies that keep out Muslims).
I can understand to some degree why the Polish right is so pro-US, given history and apprehensions
about Germany and Russia, but they should at least be aware that alliance with the US could have
a rather pernicious influence on Poland itself.
"... Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. ..."
"... No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that. ..."
"... a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without ..."
"... Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'. ..."
"... A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. ..."
"... "Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories. ..."
Well all right, let's review what happened, or at least the official version of what
happened. Not Hillary Clinton's version of what happened, which Jeffrey St. Clair so
incisively skewered , but the Corporatocracy's version of what happened, which overlaps
with but is even more ridiculous than Clinton's ridiculous version. To do that, we need to
harken back to the peaceful Summer of 2016, (a/k/a the
"Summer of Fear" ), when the United States of America was still a shiny city upon a hill
whose beacon light guided freedom-loving people, the Nazis were still just a bunch of ass
clowns meeting in each other's mother's garages, and Russia was, well Russia was Russia.
Back then, as I'm sure you'll recall, Western democracy, was still primarily being menaced
by the lone
wolf terrorists, for absolutely no conceivable reason, apart from the terrorists' fanatical
desire to brutally murder all non-believers. The global Russo-Nazi Axis had not yet reared its
ugly head. President Obama, who, during his tenure, had single-handedly restored America to the
peaceful, prosperous, progressive paradise it had been before George W. Bush screwed it up, was
on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon slow
jamming home the TPP . The Wall Street banks had risen from the ashes of the 2008 financial
crisis, and were buying back all the foreclosed homes of the people they had fleeced with
subprime mortgages. American workers were enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the new gig
economy. Electioneering in the United States was underway, but it was early days. It was
already clear that Donald Trump was literally
the Second Coming of Hitler , but no one was terribly worried about him yet. The Republican
Party was in a shambles. Neither Trump nor any of the other contenders had any chance of
winning in November. Nor did Sanders, who had been defeated, fair and square, in the Democratic
primaries, mostly because of
his racist statements and crazy, quasi-Communist ideas. Basically, everything was hunky
dory. Yes, it was going to be terribly sad to have to bid farewell to Obama, who had bailed out
all those bankrupt Americans the Wall Street banks had taken to the cleaners, ended all of Bush
and Cheney's wars, closed down Guantanamo, and just generally served as a multicultural messiah
figure to affluent consumers throughout the free world, but Hope-and-Change was going to
continue. The talking heads were all in agreement Hillary Clinton was going to be President,
and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Little did we know at the time that an epidemic of Russo-Nazism had been festering just
beneath the surface of freedom-loving Western societies like some neo-fascist sebaceous cyst.
Apparently, millions of theretofore more or less normal citizens throughout the West had been
infected with a virulent strain of Russo-Nazi-engineered virus, because they simultaneously
began exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of what we now know as White Supremacist Behavioral
Disorder, or Fascist Oppositional Disorder (the folks who update the DSM are still arguing over
the official name). It started with the Brexit referendum, spread to America with the election
of Trump, and there have been a rash of outbreaks in Europe, like
the one we're currently experiencing in Germany . These fascistic symptoms have mostly
manifest as people refusing to vote as instructed, and expressing oppressive views on the
Internet, but there have also been more serious crimes, including several assaults and murders
perpetrated by white supremacists (which, of course, never happened when Obama was President,
because the Nazis hadn't been "emboldened" yet).
Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or
the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced
with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a
simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is
its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural
values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch
together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook.
No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the
mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following
the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring
the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national
sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world
where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns
completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this
outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical
development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that.
This hypothetical leftist analysis might want to focus on how Capitalism is fundamentally
opposed to Despotism, and is essentially a value-decoding machine which renders everything and
everyone it touches essentially valueless interchangeable commodities whose worth is determined
by market forces, rather than by societies and cultures, or religions, or other despotic
systems (wherein values are established and enforced arbitrarily, by the despot, the church, or
the ruling party, or by a group of people who share an affinity and decide they want to live a
certain way). This is where it would get sort of tricky, because it (i.e., this hypothetical
analysis) would have to delve into the history of Capitalism, and how it evolved out of
medieval Despotism, and how it has been decoding despotic values for something like five
hundred years. This historical delving (which would probably be too long for people to read on
their phones) would demonstrate how Capitalism has been an essentially progressive force in
terms of getting us out of Despotism (which, for most folks, wasn't very much fun) by fomenting
bourgeois revolutions and imposing some semblance of democracy on societies. It would follow
Capitalism's inexorable advance all the way up to the Twentieth Century, in which its final
external ideological adversary, fake Communism, suddenly imploded, delivering us to the world
we now live in a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without
, and where any opposition to that global ideology can only be internal, or insurgent, in
nature (e.g, terrorism, extremism, and so on). Being a hypothetical leftist analysis,
it would, at this point, need to stress that, despite the fact that Capitalism helped deliver
us from Despotism, and improved the state of society generally (compared to most societies that
preceded it), we nonetheless would like to transcend it, or evolve out of it toward some type
of society where people, and everything else, including the biosphere we live in, are not
interchangeable, valueless commodities exchanged by members of a global corporatocracy who have
no essential values, or beliefs, or principles, other than the worship of money. After having
covered all that, we might want to offer more a nuanced view of the current neo-nationalist
reaction to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the rest of the
planet. Not that we would support this reaction, or in any way refrain from calling
neo-nationalism what it is (i.e., reactionary, despotic, and doomed), but this nuanced view
we'd hypothetically offer, by analyzing the larger sociopolitical and historical forces at
play, might help us to see the way forward more clearly, and who knows, maybe eventually
propose some kind of credible leftist alternative to the "global neoliberalism vs.
neo-nationalism" double bind we appear to be hopelessly stuck in at the moment.
Luckily, we don't have to do that (i.e., articulate such a leftist analysis of any such
larger historical forces). Because there is no corporatocracy not really. That's just a fake
word the Russians made up and are spreading around on the Internet to distract us while the
Nazis take over. No, the logical explanation for Trump, Brexit, and anything else that
threatens the expansion of global Capitalism, and the freedom, democracy, and prosperity it
offers, is that millions of people across the world, all at once, for no apparent reason, woke
up one day full-blown fascists and started looking around for repulsive demagogues to swear
fanatical allegiance to. Yes, that makes a lot more sense than all that complicated stuff about
history and hegemonic ideological systems, which is probably just Russian propaganda anyway, in
which case there is absolutely no reason to read any boring year-old pieces, like this one in TheEuropeanFinancialReview , or this report by
Corporate Watch , from way back in the year 2000, about the rise of global corporate
power.
So, apologies for wasting your time with all that pseudo-Marxian gobbledygook. Let's just
pretend this never happened, and get back to more important matters, like statistically proving
that Donald Trump got elected President because of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia,
or some other type of behavioral disorder, and pulling down Confederate statues, or kneeling
during the National Anthem, or whatever happens to be trending this week. Oh, yeah, and
debating punching Nazis, or people wearing MAGA hats. We definitely need to sort all that out
before we can move ahead with helping the Corporatocracy remove Trump from office, or at least
ensure he remains surrounded by their loyal generals, CEOs, and Goldman Sachs guys until the
next election. Whatever we do, let's not get distracted by that stuff I just distracted you
with. I know, it's tempting, but, given what's at stake, we need to maintain our laser focus on
issues related to identity politics, or else well, you know, the Nazis win.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Yesterday evening on RT a USA lady, as usual forgot the name, spoke about the USA. In a
matter of fact tone she said things like 'they (Deep State) have got him (Trump) in the
box'.
They, Deep State again, are now wondering if they will continue to try to control the
world, or if they should stop the attempt, and retreat into the USA.
Also as matter of fact she said 'the CIA has always been the instrument of Deep State, from
Kenndy to Nine Eleven'.
Another statement was 'no president ever was in control'.
How USA citizens continue to believe they live in a democracy, I cannot understand.
Yesterday the intentions of the new Dutch government were made public, alas most Dutch
also dot not see that the Netherlands since 2005 no longer is a democracy, just a province of
Brussels.
Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting
stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'.
No doubt many do want their country back, but what concerns me is that all of a sudden we
have the concept of "independence" plastered all over the place. Such concepts don't get
promoted unless the ruling elites see ways to turn those sentiments to their favor.
A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted
and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and
independence movements. (And everything else.)
"Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s),
that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the
US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run
brainwashing factories.
"Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything,
or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and
replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which
is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because
exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their
eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer
brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on
Facebook."
Very impressed with this article, never really paid attention to CJ's articles but that is
now changing!
"... The Kurdish leadership is being very short-sighted – no one is going to back them if they get attacked by those three parties. Is the US going to tango with a NATO member? But it could just be that their army gets trounced in the field after putting up a solid resistance and they are able to use that to get reassurances from those various states that Kurds will have a better seat at their respective national assemblies. I certainly don't know the future, but it just seems like the current trajectory is bad. ..."
Here's an articulate source. Until the web gets outright censored, beyond the select
eliminating and demonetizing that's happening now. See also Ryan Dawson's interview of Phil
at comment #28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybIee-u7qnY
War for Oil? (((Whose oil?))) Wow – thanks RobinG! I actually had no clue
about that angle!!!
This article backs that up – 77% – that is massive!
No wonder Israel is making ties to Kurdistan and bucking the central government of Iraq.
If the central govt was to assert control, those numbers would change fairly quickly.
What's going to happen when "the Iranians" attack the Kurds?
Not sure if that'll happen – there's still time to prevent that from taking place.
But if it does, it'll likely come from three sides; Turks, Persians and Arabs – since a
new Kurdish territory is going to affect the territorial integrity of each one of those
existing states.
Uncle Sam to the rescue?
The guy who spilled the milk comes back to spill some more – no thanks. Certainly
Israel isn't going to lift a finger – maybe they'll give the Kurdish leadership exile
status in Haifa or something for being good pets.
The Kurdish leadership is being very short-sighted – no one is going to back
them if they get attacked by those three parties. Is the US going to tango with a NATO
member? But it could just be that their army gets trounced in the field after putting up a
solid resistance and they are able to use that to get reassurances from those various states
that Kurds will have a better seat at their respective national assemblies. I certainly don't
know the future, but it just seems like the current trajectory is bad.
I've had some good exchanges with iffen – though rarely on the subject of Israel. We
agree to disagree. But others might gain benefit in a serious reply that brings together some
things they haven't thought about.
I think what the Kurdish leadership is doing is deplorable and will not lead to anything
good – but unfortunately it seems much of their desire for a Kurdistan is being backed
by a lot of their population. That being said; I do not want any more Muslim blood (or
anybody else's) being shed by other Muslims in that region.
This fratricide has to end: "The believers are but a single brotherhood: So make peace and
reconciliation between your brethren; and fear God, that you may receive Mercy." (49:10)
"... While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the "greatest contribution" of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States "to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire." With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara's War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality. ..."
"... Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn't the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don't we give a [ expletive deleted ..."
"... The true costs of Washington's wars go untabulated. ..."
"... On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. ..."
"... Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. ..."
"... Blather crowds out substance. ..."
"... Besides, we're too busy. ..."
"... Anyway, the next president will save us. ..."
"... Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism. ..."
"... Well, yes, the US has recently killed 100.000′s of Arab civilians because they were Terrorists (?) or to Bring them Democracy (?) or whatever, or something – or who cares anyway. There's more coverage of the transgender toilet access question. ..."
Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more
or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but
at least seven . Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less.
Nor can it be said that we don't care because we don't know. True, government authorities
withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find
convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily
available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone
interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent
week:
September 19 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 20 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 25 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 26 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases
have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military's
various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly
testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field,
journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details -- on civilian casualties,
for example -- that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper
op-ed pages and "experts" booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of
retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that
put things in a broader perspective.
But here's the truth of it. None of it matters.
Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans
may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not
that big a deal.
While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara
once mused that the "greatest contribution" of the Vietnam War might have been to make it
possible for the United States "to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire."
With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara's War, his claim proved
grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality.
Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at
least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn't the disparity between
effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of
dismay? Why, in short, don't we give a [ expletive deleted ]?
Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable,
like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on
television.
Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at
explaining why we don't give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing
explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the
more speculative.
Americans don't attend all that much to ongoing American wars because:
1. U.S. casualtyrates are low . By using proxies and contractors, and
relying heavily on airpower, America's war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the
number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 American soldiers have been
lost in Afghanistan -- about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a
typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in
hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being
killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000 .) But those
casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long
as they don't impede U.S. military operations, they literally don't count (and generally aren't
counted).
2. The true costs of Washington's wars go untabulated. In a famous
speech , dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that "Every gun
that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dollars spent
on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and
power plants that would go unbuilt. "This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense," he
continued. "[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." More than six decades later,
Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it
as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As
such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars
expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions . Imagine the benefits of
investing such sums in upgrading the nation's aging infrastructure . Yet don't count on
Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that
connection.
On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the
point so frequently that it's the equivalent of hearing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" at
Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation
to "support the troops" in the
narrowest imaginable
terms , ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their
part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to
insulate themselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected
representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in
chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense.
Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and
boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don't do
is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability.
4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international
terrorism isn't a trivial problem (and wasn't for decades before 9/11), it comes
nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats,
notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of
Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic
constitutes an infinitely greater danger than "Islamic radicalism." Yet having been sold a bill
of goods about a "war on terror" that is essential for "keeping America safe," mere citizens
are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping
bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To
question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses
two stone tablets after all.
5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public
discourse is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly
repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political
rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of
Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this
country's role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker
insists that it is incumbent upon the World's Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy.
Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings
about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous
references to Munich . Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too
deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the
likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading
displaces serious thought.
6. Besides, we're too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the
present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert
La Follette or J. William Fulbright ,
who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a
capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not,
it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic
multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our
attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that
happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 -- hugely
significant and instantly forgotten -- those matters will, within another few minutes or hours,
be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a
dwindling number of Americans -- those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter
accounts -- have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan
War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn't the finest fighting force in history actually win?
Can't package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then,
slowpoke, don't expect anyone to attend to what you have to say.
7. Anyway, the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge
in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well.
Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle
to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or
another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of
promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human
beings, Americans -- members of the media above all -- pretend to take all this seriously.
Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might
think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted
expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp,
getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the
overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the
framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly
criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending
them almost entirely escapes notice.
8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism.
As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde
side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill
Clinton's administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly
denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have
moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an
image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and
sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in
the armed forces, tweeting
that the military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that
transgender in the military would entail," senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and
pushed
back . Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda,
the military's embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called
to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an
earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a
successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from
Ranger School or command
Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning.
A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don't
expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any
sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them -- and us -- to care.
You have enumerated ten general reasons why Americans "don't attend" to ongoing
wars.
Let me add a further specific one: the draft or lack of same. If there were a draft
in place either the powers-that-be would not even dare to contemplate any of our present
martial misadventures, or failing that the outraged citizenry would burn down the
Congress!
BTW I had never thought about reason #8: the military's embrace of diversity helps to
insulate it from criticism. This explains General Casey's inane statement that diversity
shouldn't be a casualty of the Fort Hood massacre by a "diverse" officer!
One reason Trump won is that he promised to pull back the empire, while suggesting the
Pentagon already has plenty of money. After the election, he demanded a 10% increase, and
threatens North Korea to justify it! This increase alone is bigger than the entire annual
military budget of Russia! The public is informed that this is because of cuts during the
Obama years, but there were no cuts, only limits to increases.
How did the Democrats react? Most voted for a bigger military budget than the mindless
increase proposed by Trump! That news was not reported by our corporate media, as Jimmy Dore
explained:
A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America.
Well, yes, the US has recently killed 100.000′s of Arab civilians because they
were Terrorists (?) or to Bring them Democracy (?) or whatever, or something – or who
cares anyway. There's more coverage of the transgender toilet access question.
Structurally, you have arms production, military bases, hospitals, and related service
industries across nearly all the congressional districts in the country.
So it is an enormous set of vested interests with both voting power and corporate money
for campaign treasuries.
Quoting Ike was good, and he mentions the opportunity cost in schools, roads, etc. –
but also the organizing political and economic power of the military industrial complex.
The government schools are with some exceptions worthless. No subject, let alone war, is
taken on seriously.
The legacy media has been co-opted by the MIC/Financial interests. The state is spying on
everyone and everyone knows so. Free speech, free association, free assembly, right to bear
arms, confront your accuser, trial by jury, habeas corpus – all gone now.
So the sheep behave. They walk by the dead whistling, and look straight ahead.
While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the
"greatest contribution" of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the
United States "to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire." With regard
to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara's War, his claim proved grotesquely
premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality.
He was dead wrong about this in the 60′s as it soon became obvious to everyone else.
But we learned how "to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire." Cut out
the military draft and embed the press into the ranks so they dare not report the actions
they witness.
The quote attributed to Mark Twain and Yogi Berra "It's Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future"
still holds. This assessment by Pete Escobar about forthcoming bankruptcy of KAS need to be verified
in three years from now. It is unclear whether the key future events (such as prediction that the
current Crown Prince might be
deposed with the CIA help) will take place.
It is, nevertheless, clear that KAS economics is under considerable stress due to low oil prices
and that eventually can bankrupt the kingdom as foreign currency reserves shrink rapidly. What
such economic crisis might entail for KAS we can only guess by reshuffling at the top is quite
probably in this case. So in a way the future of KAS hangs on how soon oil prices will be
pushed back into $100 range.
Notable quotes:
"... MBS is surrounded by inexperienced thirty-something princes, and alienating just about everyone else. ..."
"... "the CIA is outraged that the compromise worked out in April, 2014 has been abrogated wherein the greatest anti-terrorist factor in the Middle East, Mohammed bin Nayef, was arrested." That may prompt "vigorous action taken against MBS possibly in early October." And it might even coincide with the Salman-Trump get together. ..."
"... Asia Times' Gulf business source stresses how "the Saudi economy is under extreme strain based on their oil price war against Russia, and they are behind their bills in paying just about all their contractors. That could lead to the bankruptcy of some of the major enterprises in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia of MBS features the Crown Prince buying a US$600 million yacht and his father spending US$100 million on his summer vacation, highlighted on the front pages of the New York Times while the Kingdom strangles under their leadership." ..."
"... MBS's pet project, the spun-to-death Vision 2030, in theory aims to diversify from mere oil profits and dependency on the US to a more modern economy (and a more independent foreign policy). That's completely misguided, according to the source, because "the problem in Saudi Arabia is that their companies cannot function with their local population and [are] reliant on expatriates for about 70% or more of their staff. Aramco cannot run without expatriates. Therefore, selling 5% of Aramco to diversify does not solve the problem. If he wants a more productive society, and less handouts and meaningless government jobs, he has to first train and employ his own people." ..."
"... The similarly lauded Aramco IPO, arguably the largest share sale in history and originally scheduled for next year, has once again been postponed – "possibly" to the second half of 2019, according to officials in Riyadh. And still no one knows where shares will be sold; the NYSE is far from a done deal. ..."
"... I n parallel, MBS's war on Yemen, and the Saudi drive for regime change in Syria and to reshape the Greater Middle East, have turned out to be spectacular disasters. ..."
"... The Islamic State project was conceived as the ideal tool to force Iraq to implode. It's now public domain that the organization's funding came mostly from Saudi Arabia. Even the former imam of Mecca has publicly admitted ISIS' leadership "draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles." ..."
"... Salafi-jihadism is more than alive inside the Kingdom even as MBS tries to spin a (fake) liberal trend (the "baby you can drive my car" stunt). The problem is Riyadh congenitally cannot deliver on any liberal promise; the only legitimacy for the House of Saud lies in those religious "books" and "principles." ..."
"... In Syria, besides the fact that an absolute majority of the country's population does not wish to live in a Takfiristan , Saudi Arabia supported ISIS while Qatar supported al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra). That ended up in a crossfire bloodbath, with all those non-existent US-supported "moderate rebels" reduced to road kill. ..."
"... In Enemy of the State, the latest Mitch Rapp thriller written by Kyle Mills, President Alexander, sitting at the White House, blurts, "the Middle East is imploding because those Saudi sons of bitches have been pumping up religious fundamentalism to hide the fact that they're robbing their people blind." That's a fair assessment. ..."
"... In terms of what Washington wants, the CIA is not fond of MBS, to say the least. They want "their" man Nayef back. As for the Trump administration, rumors swirl it is " desperate for Saudi money , especially infrastructure investments in the Rust Belt." ..."
"... This piece first appeared in Asia Times . ..."
No wonder, considering that the ousted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef – highly regarded in the
Beltway, especially Langley – is under house arrest. His massive web of agents at the Interior Ministry
has largely been "relieved of their authority". The
new Interior Minister
is Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Nayef, 34, the eldest son of the governor of the country's largely Shi'ite
Eastern Province, where all the oil is. Curiously, the father is now reporting to his son. MBS
is surrounded by inexperienced thirty-something princes, and alienating just about everyone else.
Former King Abdulaziz set up his Saudi succession based on the seniority of his sons; in theory,
if each one lived to the same age all would have a shot at the throne, thus avoiding the bloodletting
historically common in Arabian clans over lines of succession.
Now, says the source, "a bloodbath is predicted to be imminent." Especially because "the CIA
is outraged that the compromise worked out in April, 2014 has been abrogated wherein the greatest
anti-terrorist factor in the Middle East, Mohammed bin Nayef, was arrested." That may prompt "vigorous
action taken against MBS possibly in early October." And it might even coincide with the Salman-Trump
get together.
ISIS playing by the (Saudi) book
Asia Times' Gulf business source stresses how "the Saudi economy is under extreme strain based
on their oil price war against Russia, and they are behind their bills in paying just about all their
contractors. That could lead to the bankruptcy of some of the major enterprises in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Arabia of MBS features the Crown Prince buying a US$600 million yacht and his father spending
US$100 million on his summer vacation, highlighted on the front pages of the New York Times while
the Kingdom strangles under their leadership."
MBS's pet project, the spun-to-death Vision 2030, in theory aims to diversify from mere oil
profits and dependency on the US to a more modern economy (and a more independent foreign policy).
That's completely misguided, according to the source, because "the problem in Saudi Arabia is that
their companies cannot function with their local population and [are] reliant on expatriates for
about 70% or more of their staff. Aramco cannot run without expatriates. Therefore, selling 5% of
Aramco to diversify does not solve the problem. If he wants a more productive society, and less handouts
and meaningless government jobs, he has to first train and employ his own people."
The similarly lauded Aramco IPO, arguably the largest share sale in history and originally
scheduled for next year, has once again been postponed – "possibly" to the second half of 2019, according
to officials in Riyadh. And still no one knows where shares will be sold; the NYSE is far from a
done deal.
I n parallel, MBS's war on Yemen, and the Saudi drive for regime change in Syria and to reshape
the Greater Middle East, have turned out to be spectacular disasters. Egypt and Pakistan have
refused to send troops to Yemen, where relentless Saudi air bombing – with US and UK weapons – has
accelerated malnutrition, famine and cholera, and configured a massive humanitarian crisis.
The Islamic State project was conceived as the ideal tool to force Iraq to implode. It's now
public domain that the organization's funding came mostly from Saudi Arabia. Even the former imam
of Mecca has publicly admitted ISIS' leadership "draw their ideas from what is written in our own
books, our own principles."
Which brings us to the ultimate Saudi contradiction. Salafi-jihadism is more than alive inside
the Kingdom even as MBS tries to spin a (fake) liberal trend (the "baby you can drive my car" stunt).
The problem is Riyadh congenitally cannot deliver on any liberal promise; the only legitimacy for
the House of Saud lies in those religious "books" and "principles."
In Syria, besides the fact that an absolute majority of the country's population does not
wish to live in a
Takfiristan , Saudi Arabia supported ISIS while Qatar supported al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra). That
ended up in a crossfire bloodbath, with all those non-existent US-supported "moderate rebels" reduced
to road kill.
And then there's the economic blockade against Qatar – another brilliant MBS plot. That has only
served to improve Doha's relations with both Ankara and Tehran. Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
was not regime-changed, whether or not Trump really dissuaded Riyadh and Abu Dhabi from taking "military
action." There was no economic strangulation: Total, for instance, is about to invest US$2 billion
to expand production of Qatari natural gas. And Qatar, via its sovereign fund, counterpunched with
the ultimate soft power move – it bought global footballing brand
Neymar for PSG , and the "blockade" sank without a trace.
"Robbing their people blind"
In Enemy of the State, the latest Mitch Rapp thriller written by Kyle Mills, President Alexander,
sitting at the White House, blurts, "the Middle East is imploding because those Saudi sons of bitches
have been pumping up religious fundamentalism to hide the fact that they're robbing their people
blind." That's a fair assessment.
No dissent whatsoever is allowed in Saudi Arabia. Even the economic analyst Isam Az-Zamil, very
close to the top, has been arrested during the current repression campaign. So opposition to MBS
does not come only from the royal family or some top clerics – although the official spin rules that
only those supporting Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, Iran and Qatari "terrorism" are being targeted.
In terms of what Washington wants, the CIA is not fond of MBS, to say the least. They want
"their" man Nayef back. As for the Trump administration, rumors swirl it is "
desperate for
Saudi money , especially infrastructure investments in the Rust Belt."
It will be immensely enlightening to compare what Trump gets from Salman with what Putin gets
from Salman: the ailing King will
visit Moscow in late October. Rosneft is interested in buying shares of Aramco when the IPO takes
place. Riyadh and Moscow are considering an OPEC deal extension as well as an OPEC-non-OPEC cooperation
platform incorporating the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).
Riyadh has read the writing on the new wall: Moscow's rising political / strategic capital all
across the board, from Iran, Syria and Qatar to Turkey and Yemen. That does not sit well with the
US deep state. Even if Trump gets some Rust Belt deals, the burning question is whether the CIA and
its friends can live with MBS on the House of Saud throne.
"... It began with Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion, who devised a strategy of "allying with the periphery" – building military ties to non-Arab states like Turkey, Ethiopia, India and Iran, then ruled by the shahs. The goal was to help Israel to break out of its regional isolation and contain an Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. ..."
"... Israeli general Ariel Sharon expanded this security doctrine in the early 1980s, calling for Israel to become an imperial power in the Middle East. Israel would ensure that it alone in the region possessed nuclear weapons, making it indispensible to the US. ..."
"... Sharon was not explicit about how Israel's empire could be realised, but an indication was provided at around the same time in the Yinon Plan, written for the World Zionist Organisation by a former Israeli foreign ministry official. ..."
"... Oded Yinon proposed the implosion of the Middle East, breaking apart the region's key states – and Israel's main opponents – by fuelling sectarian and ethnic discord. The aim was to fracture these states, weakening them so that Israel could secure its place as sole regional power. ..."
"... The strategy of "Balkanising" the Middle East found favour in the US among a group of hawkish policymakers, known as neoconservatives, who came to prominence during George W Bush's presidency. ..."
"... Heavily influenced by Israel, they promoted the idea of "rolling back" key states, especially Iraq, Iran and Syria, which were opposed to Israeli-US dominance in the region. They prioritised ousting Saddam Hussein, who had fired missiles on Israel during the 1991 Gulf war. ..."
"... Last month at the Herzliya conference, an annual jamboree for Israel's security establishment, justice minister Ayelet Shaked called for a Kurdish state. She has stated that it would be integral to Israeli efforts to "reshape" the Middle East. ..."
"... The unravelling of Britain and France's map of the region would likely lead to chaos of the kind that a strong, nuclear-armed Israel, with backing from Washington, could richly exploit. Not least, yet more bedlam would push the Palestinian cause even further down the international community's list of priorities. ..."
Palestinians and Israelis watched last week's referendum of Iraq's Kurds with special
interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were delighted – for very
different reasons – to see an overwhelming vote to split away from Iraq.
Given the backlash from Baghdad and anger from Iran and Turkey, which have restive Kurdish
minorities, the creation of a Kurdistan in northern Iraq may not happen soon.
Palestinian support for the Kurds is not difficult to understand. Palestinians, too, were
overlooked when Britain and France carved up the Middle East into states a century ago. Like
the Kurds, Palestinians have found themselves trapped in different territories, oppressed by
their overlords.
Israel's complex interests in Kurdish independence are harder to unravel.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the sole world leader to back Kurdish independence,
and other politicians spoke of the Kurds' "moral right" to a state. None saw how uneasily that
sat with their approach to the Palestinian case.
On a superficial level, Israel would gain because the Kurds sit on plentiful oil. Unlike the
Arab states and Iran, they are keen to sell to Israel.
But the reasons for Israeli support run deeper. There has been co-operation, much of it
secret, between Israel and the Kurds for decades. Israeli media lapped up tributes from
now-retired generals who trained the Kurds from the 1960s. Those connections have not been
forgotten or ended. Independence rallies featured Israeli flags, and Kurds spoke of their
ambition to become a "second Israel".
Israel views the Kurds as a key ally in an Arab-dominated region. Now, with Islamic State's
influence receding, an independent Kurdistan could help prevent Iran filling the void. Israel
wants a bulwark against Iran transferring its weapons, intelligence and know-how to Shiite
allies in Syria and Lebanon.
Israel's current interests, however, hint at a larger vision it has long harboured for the
region – and one I set out at length in my book Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations.
It began with Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion, who devised a strategy of
"allying with the periphery" – building military ties to non-Arab states like Turkey,
Ethiopia, India and Iran, then ruled by the shahs. The goal was to help Israel to break out of
its regional isolation and contain an Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
Israeli general Ariel Sharon expanded this security doctrine in the early 1980s, calling
for Israel to become an imperial power in the Middle East. Israel would ensure that it alone in
the region possessed nuclear weapons, making it indispensible to the US.
Sharon was not explicit about how Israel's empire could be realised, but an indication
was provided at around the same time in the Yinon Plan, written for the World Zionist
Organisation by a former Israeli foreign ministry official.
Oded Yinon proposed the implosion of the Middle East, breaking apart the region's key
states – and Israel's main opponents – by fuelling sectarian and ethnic discord.
The aim was to fracture these states, weakening them so that Israel could secure its place as
sole regional power.
The inspiration for this idea lay in the occupied territories, where Israel had contained
Palestinians in a series of separate enclaves. Later, Israel would terminally divide the
Palestinian national movement, nurturing an Islamist extremism that coalesced into Hamas and
Islamic Jihad.
In this period, Israel also tested its ideas in neighbouring southern Lebanon, which it
occupied for two decades. There, its presence further stoked sectarian tensions between
Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
The strategy of "Balkanising" the Middle East found favour in the US among a group of
hawkish policymakers, known as neoconservatives, who came to prominence during George W Bush's
presidency.
Heavily influenced by Israel, they promoted the idea of "rolling back" key states,
especially Iraq, Iran and Syria, which were opposed to Israeli-US dominance in the region. They
prioritised ousting Saddam Hussein, who had fired missiles on Israel during the 1991 Gulf
war.
Although often assumed to be an unfortunate side effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
Washington's oversight of the country's bloody disintegration into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish
fiefdoms looked suspiciously intentional. Now, Iraqi Kurds are close to making that break-up
permanent.
Syria has gone a similar way, mired in convulsive fighting that has left its ruler impotent.
And Tehran is, again, the target of efforts by Israel and its allies in the US to tear up the
2015 nuclear accord, backing Iran into a corner. Arab, Baluchi, Kurdish and Azeri minorities
there may be ripe for stirring up.
Last month at the Herzliya conference, an annual jamboree for Israel's security
establishment, justice minister Ayelet Shaked called for a Kurdish state. She has stated that
it would be integral to Israeli efforts to "reshape" the Middle East.
The unravelling of Britain and France's map of the region would likely lead to chaos of
the kind that a strong, nuclear-armed Israel, with backing from Washington, could richly
exploit. Not least, yet more bedlam would push the Palestinian cause even further down the
international community's list of priorities.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Independence of small nations always depends on great powers. They are essentially pawns in a
bigger game, national aspirations and all that as a tool in often pretty dirty game.
Notable quotes:
"... The Iraqi government has banned international flights to the Kurdish capital Irbil from 6pm this Friday, isolating the Kurds in Iraq to a degree they have not experienced since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The isolation is political as well as geographical as traditional Kurdish allies, like the US, UK, France and Germany, have opposed the referendum on Kurdish independence while near neighbours in Turkey, Iran and Baghdad are moving to squeeze the Kurds into submission. ..."
"... The four countries with Kurdish minorities fear that secessionism might spread, but a further problem is that they do not believe that an Iraqi Kurdish state would be truly independent, but would shift into the orbit of another power. The Iranians are paranoid about the possibility that such a state would be an American base threatening Iran. Politicians in Baghdad say that, if the Kurds are serious about self-determination, they would cling onto the oil fields of Kirkuk and be dependent on Turkey through which to export their crude. ..."
The Iraqi government has banned international flights to the Kurdish capital Irbil
from 6pm this Friday, isolating the Kurds in Iraq to a degree they have not experienced since
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The isolation is political as well as geographical as
traditional Kurdish allies, like the US, UK, France and Germany, have opposed the referendum on Kurdish
independence while near neighbours in Turkey, Iran and Baghdad are moving to squeeze the
Kurds into submission.
The referendum succeeded in showing that the Kurds, not just in Iraq but in Turkey, Iran and
Syria, still yearn for their own state. Paradoxically, the outcome of the poll has demonstrated
both the strength of their demand for self-determination and the weakness of their ability to
obtain it. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is revealed as a minnow whose freedom of
action – and even its survival – depends on playing off one foreign state against
the other and keeping tolerable relations with all of them, even when they detested each other.
In the past an American envoy would go out one door just as the head of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards came in the other.
The referendum has ended, perhaps only temporarily, these delicate balancing acts at which
the Kurdish leadership was very skilled. In the last few weeks, the US has denounced the
referendum in forthright terms, emboldening Iraq, Turkey and Iran to punish the Kurds for their
undiplomatic enthusiasm to be an independent nation.
The poll was always a dangerous gamble but it is too early to say that it has entirely
failed: minority communities and small nations must occasionally kick their big power allies in
the teeth. Otherwise, they will become permanent proxies whose agreement with what their big
power ally wants can be taken for granted. The skill for the smaller player is not to pay too
high a price for going their own way. Iraq, Turkey and Iran have all made threatening
statements over the last few days, some of them bombast, but they can hit the Kurds very hard
if they want to.
The Kurds are in a fix and normally they would look to Washington to help them out, but
under President Trump US foreign policy has become notoriously unpredictable. Worse from the
Kurdish point of view, the US no longer needs the Iraqi Kurds as it did before the capture of
Mosul from Isis in July. In any case, it was the Iraqi armed forces that won a great victory
there, so for the first time in 14 years there is a powerful Iraqi army in the north of the
country. We may not be on the verge of an Arab-Kurdish war, but the military balance of power
is changing and Baghdad, not Irbil, is the gainer.
Anxious diplomats and excited journalists describe Iraq as "being on a collision course",
but the different parties will not necessarily collide. Muddling through is not only a British
trait. But there is no doubt that the situation has become more dangerous, particularly in the
disputed territories stretching across northern Iraq from Syria to Iran.
The referendum always had a risky ambivalence about it which helped ignite the present
crisis. It all depended on what audience Kurdish President Masoud Barzani was addressing: when
he spoke to Kurdish voters, it was a poll of historic significance when the Kurds would take a
decisive step towards an independent state.
But addressing an international and regional audience, Barzani said he was proposing
something much tamer, more like an opinion poll, in which the Iraqi Kurds were politely
indicating a general preference for independence at some date in the future. Like many leaders
who play the nationalist card, Barzani is finding that his rhetoric is being taken more
seriously than his caveats. "Bye, Bye Iraq!" chanted crowds in Irbil on the night of the
referendum.
Much of this was born of Barzani's bid to outmanoeuvre his political rivals in Kurdistan by
re-emerging as the standard bearer of Kurdish nationalism. He will benefit from his decision to
defy the world and press ahead with the vote when it comes to the presidential and
parliamentary elections in KRG on 1 November.
But the price of this could be high. It is not only Barzani who is facing an election in
which national self-assertion is an issue in the coming months. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi has a parliamentary election in 2018 and does not want to be accused of being
insufficiently tough on the Kurds. Banning of international flights to Irbil is far less than
many Iraqi MPs say they want.
By holding a referendum in the disputed territories, Barzani promoted this issue to the top
of the Iraqi political agenda. It might have been in the interests of the Kurds to let it lie
since the contending claims for land are deeply felt and irreconcilable. Optimists believe that
Irbil and Baghdad could never go to war because they are both too dependent militarily on
foreign powers. It is true that the Iraqi armed forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga alike could
not have held off and defeated Isis without close air support from the US-led coalition. But by
putting the future status of the KRG and the territories in play, Barzani has presented the
Iraqi government, Turkey and Iran with a threat and an opportunity.
The four countries with Kurdish minorities fear that secessionism might spread, but a
further problem is that they do not believe that an Iraqi Kurdish state would be truly
independent, but would shift into the orbit of another power. The Iranians are paranoid about
the possibility that such a state would be an American base threatening Iran. Politicians in
Baghdad say that, if the Kurds are serious about self-determination, they would cling onto the
oil fields of Kirkuk and be dependent on Turkey through which to export their crude.
Once the KRG dreamed of becoming a new Dubai with gleaming malls and hotels, but since 2014
it has looked more like Pompeii. The skyline is punctured by dozens of half completed tower
blocks beside rusting cranes and abandoned machinery. The boom town atmosphere disappeared in
2014 when the price of oil went down, money stopped coming from Baghdad and Isis seized Mosul
two hours' drive away. The state is impoverished and salaries paid late, if at all. This will
now all get a lot worse with airports and border crossings closed and 35,000 federal employees
no longer being paid.
At all events, the political landscape in Iraq and Syria is changing: we are at the
beginning of a new political phase in which the battle to defeat Isis is being replaced by a
power struggle between Arabs and Kurds.
"... Why did Dr Schäuble aim at maintaining the eurozones fragility? Why was he, in this context, ever so keen to maintain the threat of Grexit? The simple answer is: Because a state of permanent fragility was instrumental to his strategy for using the threat of expulsion from the euro (or even of Germanys withdrawal from it) to discipline the deficit countries – chiefly France. ..."
"... Deep in Dr Schäuble thinking there was the belief that, as a federation is infeasible, the euro is a glorified fixed exchange rate regime. ..."
"... It really seems that the outcomes of both versions of economic conservatism produce similar neoliberal outcomes in aggregate: reduced wages, precarious working conditions, increasing economic inequality, reduced services, tax money being funnelled to businesses, and vanishing/crumbling infrastructure ..."
"... Then again, Obsourne* was all about the rhetoric of balanced budgets – that is, balanced budget for the poor, unbalanced budget stimulus for the rich. So, there can also be a Tory similarity with the German type of economic conservative strand. ..."
"... For the average working punter the situation, in toto, just keeps getting worse. ..."
"... I think ordoliberal is the appropriate term of art for schauble, a lawyer not an economist, and one with a rather dredd like approach to jurisprudence (bribes being acceptable business expenses in Germany until recently). ..."
"... I think ordoliberal is the appropriate term of art for schauble ..."
"... with a rather dredd like approach to jurisprudence ..."
"... I agree that he is on board with ordoliberallism which is basically a nutcase extremist version of neoliberalism that is mainstream in Germany but I didn't want to over-egg the pudding. Let us not forget that the non-ordoliberal IMF has fronted for the Troikas tender ministrations to debtor countries during pretty much all of Schaubles tenure, save its pushback in the latest round of financing for Greece over the refusal of EU state lenders to Greece to write off some of the debt owed. And the IMF still capitulated. ..."
"... So if the IMF stood shoulder to shoulder with Schauble, does the fact that he was an ordoliberal as opposed to neoliberal make any difference in practice? ..."
"... On the other hand, while Neoliberals are True Believers on the benefits of free movement and trade, Ordoliberals are far more pragmatic, and are at heart mercantilists and corporatists (and this includes being quite happy to keep Trade Unions and other social sectors on board rather than seeing them as enemies). This is clearly reflected in the constitutional make-up of the EU. ..."
"... Its also worth pointing out that while in the Anglosphere liberals have a unified approach and dominate the main parties, in many European countries, in particular Germany, there are, and always have been, distinct parties representing the different shades of liberal views, with Christian Democrats being Ordos, while smaller parties such as the Free Democrats representing a purer form of liberalism. As Yanis points out, a strengthened FDP is a disaster for Europe, we can only hope that the Greens somehow manage to wrestle away some of the economic portfolio from them. ..."
"... Philip Mirowski, who seems to have tried as much as anyone to clarify what is and isn't neoliberalism, considers ordoliberalism one of at least three or four variants: ordo, Austrian, Chicago School and, probably, James Buchanans public choice. He identifies Carl Schmitt as a key influence on Hayek, particularly Schmitts notions that the economy was too important to be left to the whims of democracy (only a strong state can preserve and enhance a free-market economy) and the exception, which is to say that the state should stay out of the economy at all times (i.e. no bailouts for you) except when preserving the market requires state intervention. Think Obama and big banks. ..."
"... I agree that Im surprised so many German workers have blithely accepted this constriction on their incomes. ..."
Yves here. It was painful to read the encomiums for Wolfgang Schäuble yesterday as he is about
to leave his post as German finance minister and become speaker of the Bundestag.
The New York Times and Financial Times, among others, praised for his role as austerity enforcer
and depicted him as the truest defender of European unity. In fact, the neoliberal policies that
Schauble backed increased the centrifugal forces in the Eurozone, weakened an already anemic recovery,
and provided powerful evidence that Europeans are anti-democratic, which in turn helped fuel Brexit
and the rise of nationalist parties, particularly in France and Germany.
These accounts also either failed to mention or greatly underplayed the fact that Schäuble
took bribes from an arms merchant, which put an end to his aspirations to become Chancellor.
Yanis Varoufakis
Wolfgang Schäuble may heave left the finance ministry but his policy for turning the eurozone
into an iron cage of austerity, that is the very antithesis of a democratic federation, lives
on.
What is remarkable about Dr Schäubles tenure was how he invested heavily in maintaining the
fragility of the monetary union, rather than eradicating it in order to render the eurozone macro-economically
sustainable and resilient. Why did Dr Schäuble aim at maintaining the eurozones fragility?
Why was he, in this context, ever so keen to maintain the threat of Grexit? The simple answer
is: Because a state of permanent fragility was instrumental to his strategy for using the threat
of expulsion from the euro (or even of Germanys withdrawal from it) to discipline the deficit
countries – chiefly France.
Deep in Dr Schäuble thinking there was the belief that, as a federation is infeasible,
the euro is a glorified fixed exchange rate regime. And the only way of maintaining discipline
within such a regime was to keep alive the threat of expulsion or exit. But to keep that threat
alive, the eurozone could not be allowed to develop the instruments and institutions that would
stop it from being fragile. Thus, the eurozones permanent fragility was, from Dr Schäubles perspective
an end-in-itself, rather than a failure.
The Free Democratic Partys ascension will see to it that Wolfgang Schäubles departure will
not alter the policy of doing whatever it takes to prevent the eurozone s evolution into a sustainable
macroeconomy. The FDPs sole promise to its voters was to prevent any of Emmanuel Macrons plans,
for some federation-lite, from being agreed to, and for pursuing Grexit. Even worse, whereas Wolfgang
Schäuble understood that austerity plus new loans were catastrophic for countries like Greece
(but insisted on them as part of his campaign to discipline France and Italy), his FDP successors
at the finance ministry will probably be less enlightened believing that the tough medicine is
fit for purpose.
And so the never ending crisis of Europes social economy, that feeds the xenophobic political
monsters, continues.
Just a slight – perhaps pedantic – point. Im not sure its correct except in its loosest sense
to say that Schauble is a neoliberal. I think it can be deceptive sometimes to label everything
we leftists dont like as neoliberal. He comes from quite a distinct line of German thought which
explicitly rejects Keynesianism (even though the German economy has in reality many carefully
built in counter-cyclical stabilisers) but mixes some Hayek with old fashioned mercantilism. The
obsession with trade surpluses is one obvious differential between them and what we would consider
neoliberalism. There is a
good discussion
of the distinctiveness of German conservative economic thought here .
As for the praise Schauble gets, it continually astonishes me, even in the victim countries,
that Merkel and Schauble get such a free pass for the enormous damage they have done to Europe
in the past 10 years, and that includes from many on the notional left. I think it shows just
how hard it is to shift the notion of balanced budgets and living within our needs as a form of
virtue . The (in many ways justified) worldwide admiration for the German economic model is such
that people find it very hard not to feel somehow that they are always right. Even in Germany
of course the potential for long term ruin has been set by the almost complete absence of investment
in infrastructure over the last 2 decades.
While I agree that German economic thought is archaic and that Merkel/Schauble were quite narrow-minded
during the euro crisis, one criticism that I think is unfair is the one where they supposedly
imposed austerity. Schauble in particular was always quite clear: if you want to stay in the Eurozone,
you have to respect the fiscal rules that were agreed beforehand otherwise no worries, we will
help you leave. Ill repeat that, Schauble was aware that Grexit might be the better option and
was prepared to help but he left the choice to Greek leaders (side note, its actually the French
that ruled out an exit from the Eurozone). The rules might have been dumb but the time to complain
was before signing them, not after (newsflash: Germans are stickler for rules). Of course, peripheral
countries knew that exiting the eurozone was actually not a panacea and Varoufakis in particular
hoped to blackmail Germany into accepting his plans, that went well
So yeah, to say that they saved the Eurozone is far-fetched and they were certainly not visionnary
in any sense of the world but they did bend the rules and they did spend a lot of domestic political
capital on that (on the other hand, a bailout for the periphery was not that unpopular in France
but French leaders pretty much capitulated on the issue). If you want a comparison, Merkel allowed
the AfD to take flight in order to help the periphery while Tories in the UK did bail out of the
EU in order to woo back UKIP voters. And of course, I am still waiting for the US governement
to send any money to the Euro periphery since it is so simple.
There were few good guys during the euro crisis: Trichet was a disaster, Sarkozy signed on
the Deauville accord a bit too enthusiastically, the Greeks did fake their deficit numbers (something
that people forget too quickly, it was a major breach of trust) and Varoufakis played the blackmail
game, Spanish politicians gunned for new records of corruption, Ireland set up one of the biggest
corporate tax heavens of all time, Berlusconi was morally the worst of the bunch, even Draghi
was perhaps a bit too slow to push spreads back to down (though he probably did the best he could)
Among all of that mess, I think you can argue that Merkel was relatively the best of all, not
that much of a compliment though.
Yes, these are all very good points, excellent points in fact. And one should be able understand
and delineate the differences between German conservatism and its UK variety of tory conservatism
for instance. Id just interpret/input your points in a slightly different perspective.
It really seems that the outcomes of both versions of economic conservatism produce similar
neoliberal outcomes in aggregate: reduced wages, precarious working conditions, increasing economic
inequality, reduced services, tax money being funnelled to businesses, and vanishing/crumbling
infrastructure.
It really seems to be a matter of degree rather absolutes.
UK infrastructure seems to be in decent shape and with PPP even the Tories can buy into a degree
of Keynesian stimulus via public works, whilst it seems the Germans have largely dropped the ball.
Then again, Obsourne* was all about the rhetoric of balanced budgets – that is, balanced budget
for the poor, unbalanced budget stimulus for the rich. So, there can also be a Tory similarity
with the German type of economic conservative strand.
So, I suppose, like everything else, the complexity is revealing in itself; and knowing how
the different strands of economic conservatism evolved might help us understand how to counteract
the pernicious effects.
For the average working punter the situation, in toto, just keeps getting worse.
[*To all NCers, Osbourne was finance minister under Cameron in the UK. If you should ever meet
him, dont ask him what the product of 8 x 7 is. He thinks that kind of question isnt cricket and
is basically a subversive type of activity.]
To be fair, he was the only person to publicly shed tears over Margaret Thatcher's quite natural
death. I'm sure he mopped his eyes afterward with an old hang mandela t shirt (de rigeur for his
generation) before popping out to walk the dog with his old pal
natalie rowe
I think ordoliberal is the appropriate term of art for schauble, a lawyer not an economist,
and one with a rather dredd like approach to jurisprudence (bribes being acceptable business expenses
in Germany until recently).
That gross chancellor kohls bagmans career was eclipsed by agent Angela must have been a terrible
stone in his shoe.
I still remember him gelatinising Michael Portillo in one of his many TV license funded flounces
around Europe. He pummelled poor Michael with his hausfrau hogwash as mercilessly as he vivisected
Greece.
It was noticeable that Michael assumed that Germanys strength was due to Schaubles character
rather than seeing a rather rank case of institutional inheritance.
I think ordoliberal is the appropriate term of art for schauble
It is. And the first responder to the OP, Plutonium Kun, up top, in fact provides a link to
an analysis of ordoliberalism, and how it played out during and since the GFC.
with a rather dredd like approach to jurisprudence
I agree that he is on board with ordoliberallism which is basically a nutcase extremist
version of neoliberalism that is mainstream in Germany but I didn't want to over-egg the pudding.
Let us not forget that the non-ordoliberal IMF has fronted for the Troikas tender ministrations
to debtor countries during pretty much all of Schaubles tenure, save its pushback in the latest
round of financing for Greece over the refusal of EU state lenders to Greece to write off some
of the debt owed. And the IMF still capitulated.
So if the IMF stood shoulder to shoulder with Schauble, does the fact that he was an ordoliberal
as opposed to neoliberal make any difference in practice?
Second try here (I wrote a reply to you which disappeared into cyberspace, it may pop up again).
I agree that the distinction between ordoliberalism, liberalism and neoliberalism is a bit
irrelevant when the outcome is the same. And they do agree with each other on most subjects. I
just think its worth paying attention to the distinct differences between the mainstream German
version of liberalism and Anglo liberalism.
To take the issue of austerity, it always seems to me that the Germans are True Believers.
They have a moral belief that excess spending, government deficits, and trade deficits are wrong
in every circumstances. Neoliberals pay lip service to this but (correctly) ignore this in practice.
Tories and Republicans are always quite happy to bust budgets when it suits them and in reality
dont seem to care about trade deficits.
On the other hand, while Neoliberals are True Believers on the benefits of free movement
and trade, Ordoliberals are far more pragmatic, and are at heart mercantilists and corporatists
(and this includes being quite happy to keep Trade Unions and other social sectors on board rather
than seeing them as enemies). This is clearly reflected in the constitutional make-up of the EU.
I think that one of the crucial failures in the Eurozone is that for a whole series of reasons
the structural design of the Eurozone was hijacked by liberal True Believers, and much of the
fault for this was the intellectual failure of the broader left to understand the importance of
controlling monetary policy.
Its also worth pointing out that while in the Anglosphere liberals have a unified approach
and dominate the main parties, in many European countries, in particular Germany, there are, and
always have been, distinct parties representing the different shades of liberal views, with Christian
Democrats being Ordos, while smaller parties such as the Free Democrats representing a purer form
of liberalism. As Yanis points out, a strengthened FDP is a disaster for Europe, we can only hope
that the Greens somehow manage to wrestle away some of the economic portfolio from them.
Philip Mirowski, who seems to have tried as much as anyone to clarify what is and isn't
neoliberalism, considers ordoliberalism one of at least three or four variants: ordo, Austrian,
Chicago School and, probably, James Buchanans public choice. He identifies Carl Schmitt as a key
influence on Hayek, particularly Schmitts notions that the economy was too important to be left
to the whims of democracy (only a strong state can preserve and enhance a free-market economy)
and the exception, which is to say that the state should stay out of the economy at all times
(i.e. no bailouts for you) except when preserving the market requires state intervention. Think
Obama and big banks.
For those who arent familiar with Mirowski, here is a good piece on Defining Neoliberalism
(in which, parenthetically, he provides an excellent takedown of Wikipedia as a forum for learning
about anything controversial). To some, he takes a bit of getting used to but he is a terrific
writer and you are bound to learn some new words. Have dictionary at the ready!
Defining Neoliberalism
The basic problem with EU is that what left there is present in it, is of the student/champagne
left that is more about glitz and humanitarian causes than they are workers rights and similar
that used to define the left both before and after WW2.
I keep bumping into students and young professionals that praise the EU because first of all
they got to study abroad under some EU scheme, and now can take their credit card and smartphone
and set up camp anywhere their hearts desire within the euro zone.
They are effectively blind to the problems this freeflow cause for long fought for rights and
protections of the working man and woman. This while parroting the idea that EU is what has not
caused a major European war in a generation or two
Being a European leftist myself, I seldom bump into my compatriots who are drinking champagne
as if its fizzy water, flashing credit cards and so on. Many are working middle class people struggling
to get by; many others are working poor; and some are getting along just fine. In other words,
there is an entire gamut of socio-economic backgrounds represented in the left in Europe.
Many of my compatriots are educated. When did leftists have to eschew higher and further education?
One of the primary acts of socialist leaning peoples in the late nineteenth century was to lobby
for and provide additional channels of education to sections of the community who previously didnt
have the resources to study, or simply didnt have time during the day and were denied physical
facilities when they did have the time.
Yes, there are many people who seem to be doing fairly well and might espouse leftist viewpoints
without bothering to understand better why they espouse such views. I would suggest this is the
case with many of our compatriots, whatever their political leanings. And its not so easy either
to categorise and identify the working class. I know of several manual labourers who would go
ballistic if you suggested they were anything less than middle class citizens.
Also, its rather easy to conflate liberals with leftists? I would argue they are not the same
political beast.
Some students in my biology course (an admixture of biochem & agrics) just started an anarchist
society. The first in the universitys history. I hope these young and well educated people, who
come from many different backgrounds and from several European countries, can explore what leftism
means and how it impacts on everyone for good or ill. Equally, I hope they are successful in better
understanding the human condition as they down pints of wallop in some pub around town.
Thank you. Just an anecdotal observation that supports this based on 15+ years of Spanish holidays.
I always had an apartment so I had options to go eat out with friends I made in the complex or
cook for myself.
Spanish restauranteurs, if you got them to give their private views, hated German tourists
compared to Brits: the latter would far more often go sod it, were eating out thus benefiting
the local hospitality industry (and deal with the resulting credit card debt later!) . I and others
noted how less often Germans did this. They clearly had a food budget which dictated finding the
nearest LIDL/ALDI and cooking dinner for themselves in their apartments. In the shops (in areas
that definitely werent dominated by German holidaymakers) youd see a disproportionate number of
Germans buying pasta/bread/sauces – obviously intending to cook most nights.
Ive read on NC the increasing pressure on German domestic budgets following the schroeder reforms
etc and anecdotally I saw plenty of living strictly within ones means on display on holidays And
Spanish restauranteurs saw it too.
Ask any tourist town hustler and theyll tell you the way to sell to Brits is to say its on
discount! while the way to sell to Germans is to say its the best quality!.
Mind you, its also a cultural thing. I had a French acquaintance say that the big complaint
in her small village is that the Dutch insist on bringing their horrible tasteless tomatoes with
them on holiday. The Brits will always eat out of course, there is no point to being on holiday
otherwise and quite right too.
But on a purely anecdotal basis Id agree with you that Germans seem much less inclined to splash
out on holiday (Ive noticed that about supermarkets in Spain/France too). German incomes certainly
have been squeezed unnecessarily for 2 decades now (its still amazes me that the German workers
blandly accept this in most sectors). Germans used to be known as big spenders when they holidayed
in Ireland, but they dont have that reputation anymore.
I agree that Im surprised so many German workers have blithely accepted this constriction on
their incomes.
Again, there must be cultural factors at play that mean they have accepted that this is all
part of how Germany apparently works so well as a country /society.
I am curious how long this mindset will continue as neoliberalism – even with the better German
constraints on its effects – inevitably creeps further up the income distribution. Things like
the balanced budget law (if fully adopted and adhered to) will cause increasing problems The AfD
electoral success may be the canary in the coalmine.
while I havent been in Germany in the last few years,last time I was in berlin,amid the cranes(the
parliament island seemed to be a noble attempt at architectural landfill) and the infrastructure
that was clearly behind demand, I was astonished at how many familiblogged characters were there,
on the trams,busses, streets.
Went into a local bar, (much to my better 50% advice), we were the only ones that were not chronically
disabled,no beer on tap but they all could hardly been nicer to us.
The german miracle is being worn to a thread was my conclusion.
Wander into a german village town and you will see how unhappily this is playing out. Visiting
the charmingly understated max ernst museum outside koln, I remember a well pensioned hausfrau
rolling her eyes in our direction at a couple of young lads (dark skinned of course),her face
would have turned milk.
They were just young lads talking loudly.
Because we are both tall and blue eyed she did not seem to have a problem with us at all.
I agree that Im surprised so many German workers have blithely accepted this constriction
on their incomes.
The German manufacturing economy is very strong but German workers in the exposed sector are
no less subject to job relocation blackmail than workers anywhere else. The macro-economic data
might prove that German workers are underpaid, but German wages are based off the export economy
and the relocation threat is real. German manufacturing workers are already probably the highest
paid in the world (depending on choice of measure). Widening the cost differential with Eastern
and Southern Europe, not to mention other places with even lower wages, I think is rightly perceived
as risky.
I think you have a point here and it has to do with mercantilism. Probably, those workers employed
in large factories exporting all around the world know that such mercantilism helps them keep
their positions and relatively well paid positions compared with their peers in other countries.
This must be the way CDU attracts labor to their side.
Nevertheless, if german tourists spent more in Spain, we would have more money to spend in
their factories, somebody should educate them, HA,HA, HA!!!
Apparently it has been sold as a way to keep Germany as an export powerhouse, thus allowing
the nation to run a trade surplus.
Never mind that especially since the intro of the Euro, this has lead Germany to effectively
operating a beggar-thy-neighbor policy.
Keep in mind that before the Euro, many neighboring nations would operate with a exchange rate
hitched to the D-Mark. So if ever (West) Germany tried to push ahead, the others would devalue,
and appear to drag Germany back down.
But since the Euro, Germany have been (not necessarily intentionally) using their domestically
suppressed wages to muscle the products and services into neighboring markets.
Notice btw that much of the loans causing troubles in the PIIGS came from German banks (French
banks were also involved, but to a lesser extent as France do not have the suppressed local wages).
So if they fold, effectively Germany banking folds.
one obvious differential between them and what we would consider neoliberalism is Germanys
enormous economic and political success over the last decade or more. Of course, the recent election
indicates that a lot of Germans disagree with that judgement, so evidently the bag is mixed in
ways not so obvious from here.
That huge accumulation of power is the reason for the sometimes grudging respect granted to
Schaueble and Merkel. Its also a great danger to Germany, because in a continent with long historical
memories (compared to Americans), it looks more and more like a Fourth Reich. Even though his
domestic policies are so extremely neoliberal, Macrons speech looks like the beginning of a rebellion,
from the country qualified to lead it. Well see how that goes.
What is remarkable about Dr Schäubles tenure was how he invested heavily in maintaining the
fragility of the monetary union, rather than eradicating it in order to render the eurozone macro-economically
sustainable and resilient
Well, yes, but the fact is that the eurozone cannot possibly be redered maco-economically sustainable
and resilient. That is just well-entrenched wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Varoufakis
Thats not quite right. Varoufakis and Jamie Galbraith published a series of finesses, the biggest
of which would have been creating an infrastructure bank that would invest, particularly in deficit
countries.
A big flaw of government accounting is that it does everything on a cash-flow basis, when private
sector accounting separates balance sheet and income statement items. Germany could have supported
this work around, using the accounting justification or other pretexts. It didnt want to. By contrast,
theyve been extremely creative in figuring out ways to create much more complicated facilities
and financial structures to shore up the banks.
Thank you for this suggestion. I appreciate the values, intelligence, energy and experience
of Yanis Varoufakis, and especially his insightful thoughts here on both the nature of the eurozone,
Schaubles desire to preserve its fragility, and his wish to strengthen it.
Jamie Galbraith is no slouch, either. I would like to see their suggestions regarding policy
initiatives both within and outside existing EU and other supranational structures that they believe
could enable Greece to negate further abuse of its citizens, minimize the effects of Teutonic
ordoliberal austerity, reverse privatization of the nations public assets, and strengthen the
Greek economy. Hard to do when you dont have a sovereign currency and must seek to build alliances.
Might have applications elsewhere in the world.
Well, despite it flaws, the EU is worth saving if it is to the better. There are quite good
initiatives coming from the EU and it provides a political framework above traditional nationalism
that by itself is very positive. I like that from Varoufakis, his priorities are well positioned.
You hit the nail on the head with Ireland set up one of the biggest tax heavens of all time..
With the help of corporate lobbyists at the European Commission in Brussels without that it would
have been shut down quickly. My take on Germany is that they have still not recovered from the
Weimar era hyperinflation and economic collapse. Germany tends to cling tightly to strategies
whether they be winners or losers. The currency printing presses were cranked up to insane levels.
Money was something to be turned into goods or services within minutes.
Then overnight the gold backed Reichsmark was introduced and became an object of adoration
that should under no circumstances be spent except for absolute necessities.
The Reichsmark precipitated economic collapse. The inflation phobia of todays Germany stems
from the 1920s. Frau Merkel was not and is not a political leader. She is above all a successful
politician who tests the direction of the political winds daily and makes micro adjustments accordingly.
As for Germans being sticklers for rules, I have a 9 year old grandson who is a stickler for rules
even a good portion of Irishness did not save him. I found that he was amenable to changing the
rules so I encouraged that and now he is almost Irish.
With respect to German spending on infrastructure over the past twenty years. German infrastructure
is in excellent shape compared to the rest of the developed world. Their public transit system
is amongst the best in the world. Only in Canada (where I live normally) will you find better
infrastructure than in Germany and that is due to large population increases resulting in newer
infrastructure. Infrastructure lobbyists are preaching gloom and doom all over the developed world,
a grain of salt is advised.
Its complete hyperbole to describe Ireland as one of the biggest tax havens of all time. It
is dwarfed within Europe by Luxembourg (which is a true tax haven in the literal sense) and the
various UK off-shore havens. Vastly more money is moved through Switzerland and London for crooked
or tax purposes and the Netherlands is an equal in using questionable rules to encourage investment.
Irelands dodgy tax policies, largely designed by
T.K. Whitaker , actually
predate membership of the EU (1958 to be precise) and were implicitly accepted upon its membership.
Sort of like Greeces dodgy balance sheets (if thats the right term), intentionally overlooked
when it applied for Eurozone membership?
Of course, if youre right about the others, the EU had compelling reason to overlook a few
foibles. I gather Ireland rather paid for it after the GFC, though, and Greece is still paying
for it.
Not really – Ireland was a pioneer in using favourable taxes to bring in jobs to poorer areas.
So much
so that even China essentially copied the Irish model (so the Tiger economies were actually
copying the Celtic tiger, not vice versa to some extent). Essentially, the Irish model was to
allow transfer pricing in exchange for screwdriver plants – in addition to special secret deals
for promising new companies, like Apple (its often forgotten just how small Apple was when it
first moved into Ireland – it was something of a triumph of the Irish development agencies to
have identified it). This was all open and obvious when Ireland joined the EU. Essentially, it
was considered legitimate at the time for smaller countries to use tactics like this – it was
completely in line with academic theory on the time in development economics, especially clustering
theories (the idea that if you get enough factories in one area together, they will organically
develop into more integrated industries). There was nothing hidden from the EU. If anything, the
EU approved as it was seen as important to have star pupils among the smaller members.
Ireland is not a tax haven in the sense that its not a large repository for dodgy money. There
are some elements of tax haven laws in the Irish banking system, but its not considered a tax
haven in international terms. The main issue is that manufacturing companies based in Ireland
are allowed to use loopholes in Irish laws to hide profits. Thats something of a different matter
– all countries do this to some extent, Ireland is just a more egregious offender.
And its not really appropriate to compare it to Greece. Greece has been ruined by its poor
model and its betrayal by the Eurozone. Ireland has gone from developing country status in the
1950s to one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. The losses from the crash of the Celtic
Tiger have been more or less made up. Much as I hate to say it, the Irish economic development
model has by any measures been a stunning success. This is why neoliberals love Ireland so much.
You are right, and perhaps what is making the workforce willing to accept wage suppression.
This because the cause of the hyperinflation was exchange rates and trade deficits. Germany
were forced to pay reparations denominated in foreign currency, but had little to no export industry
to earn said currency with (the Ruhr were under French administration for one). Thus they had
to print ever more notes to buy the currency to make the payments, and each round would lead to
worse inflation.
The crazy thing is that Keynes warned about this, but was ignored.
So based on this, it may well be that German leadership is hell bent on maintaining a trade
surplus, even if it means beggaring neighbors and in the long run create a massive buildup of
ill will against Germany.
Incidentally, Der Spiegel published today an article about a photographer who documented the
plight of prostitutes in Greece. There one can see the real world consequences of Schäubles policies.
The women (and men) work for 15 Euro or less per customer. A lot of people see this as their last
resort to feed their family. The article mentions that Greece increased the VAT from 13% to 24%,
making condoms prohibitively expensive for the prostitutes which resulted in a marked increase
in HIV infections. How Schäuble can live with himself, I dont know.
WARNING: The
article
is in German and some of the pictures are not fit for work.
There was once an article that was I believe posted here which outlined the fact that the legalised
& supposedly efficient German prostitution industry was not all it was cracked up to be – it appeared
around the same time that a German woman had her benefits sanctioned due to refusing to work in
the industry.
I would just like to say that there is at least one Englishmen who finds cooking a pleasurable
experience when on holiday, which when I can manage it due to the lady in my lifes preference
would be Italy. Beautiful bread, real mozzarella, white creamy butter, divine proscuitto, & large
perfect for Caprese salad tomatoes bought from small grocers – Just some of the treats on offer
the make the break very special.
Even worse, whereas Wolfgang Schäuble understood that austerity plus new loans were catastrophic
for countries like Greece (but insisted on them as part of his campaign to discipline France
and Italy), his FDP successors at the finance ministry will probably be less enlightened believing
that the tough medicine is fit for purpose.
And now perhaps one understands the 30 years war, the Franco-Prussian war, WW I and WW II.
The Im certain Im correct in the face of a other reasonableness.
Keynes was perceptive, and I can believe his warnings were understood, if not at the time,
later. His portrait of Woodrow Wilson out of his depth completely when seated with politicians
of France who were adept at bypassing and then destroying the Points the Germans had signed the
Armistice because of.
America was not successful at out witting the French. Moral leadership? Wilson just turned
into a sidelined ignored & defeated character. It is no wonder Germany went to war again.
The question now is whose warnings are we to hear now?
Michael Hudson would say that capitalism is destroying itself. I have yet to see him on Rachel
Maddow who often has David Cay Johnston on, though the questions are about Trump, not the Tax
Code. Mr. Johnston could give us a good Tax Code.
Mr. Hudson? Who in Government is listening to him?
Well, maybe they arent now. Lots of folks at the DoD and State read him in 1972, right after
he left off working for David Rockefeller and wrote SUPER IMPERIALISM: THE ECONOMIC STRATEGY OF
AMERICAN EMPIRE as a diagnosis of how the dollar as global reserve currency was going to work
once Nixon and Kissinger had taken the U.S. off the gold standard. They used Hudsons book as a
how-to manual and did their best to buy up all the copies.
You arent going to see Hudson on the Rachel Maddow show, in short.
"... A unilateral declaration of independence wont be accepted by any of the surrounding states, and very few other governments would recognize the new state because of the manner of its separation. ..."
"... Turkey, Iran, and the Iraqi government were already ratcheting up economic pressure on the region because of the vote, but a declaration of independence would likely trigger immediate military responses from one or more of them. ..."
"... The situation has quickly escalated to a point where none of the governments involved is willing to back down or compromise, and that makes it much harder to avoid the worst-case scenario of a major armed conflict breaking out. Both Turkey and Iran fear the creation of a Kurdish state because of the possible implications for the aspirations of their own Kurdish minorities. ..."
... continue
to rise following the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan:
Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly voted in favor of independence in a referendum on Monday, which
Mr. Ali said obliges Mr. Barzani to negotiate independence from the rest of Iraq. Baghdad has
refused to enter such negotiations, and Mr. Ali said that if it maintained that attitude,
Kurdistan would be forced to unilaterally declare independence.
A unilateral declaration of independence wont be accepted by any of the surrounding states,
and very few other governments would recognize the new state because of the manner of its
separation.
Turkey, Iran, and the Iraqi government were already ratcheting up economic pressure
on the region because of the vote, but a declaration of independence would likely trigger
immediate military responses from one or more of them.
The situation has quickly escalated to a
point where none of the governments involved is willing to back down or compromise, and that
makes it much harder to avoid the worst-case scenario of a major armed conflict breaking out.
Both Turkey and Iran fear the creation of a Kurdish state because of the possible implications
for the aspirations of their own Kurdish minorities.
Ariane Tabatabai
explained the Iranian governments view earlier this week:
Rather than seeing it as a single, contained event, Tehran views it as opening the door to
a more comprehensive effort at cleaving the Kurdish territories off Iran, Syria, and Turkey
to create a new country in the region.
Because Baghdad opposed the referendum and opposes the creation of a Kurdish state, Turkey
and Iran can both dress up their respective responses as helping the Iraqi government to
preserve its territorial integrity.
If Barzani were reckless enough to follow through on the threat his spokesman made, he would
be setting up his new state for a fall.
The U.S. should do what it can to dissuade Barzani from doing this, and it should appeal to
all of the parties to dial down their rhetoric and refrain from taking any more provocative
actions. If tensions continue to escalate as they have over the last week, the
disaster that many observers feared will follow.
Famed whistleblower John Kiriakou, the former chief of counter-terrorism
operations in Pakistan, returns to the show to discuss his latest book on
Abu Zubaydah "The
Convenient Terrorist" which he co-authored with Guantanamo whistleblower
Joseph Hickman. Kiriakou retells his history at the CIA and explains why the
crux of the Abu Zubaydah saga were Zubaydah's lies about supposed ties
between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which helped the U.S. spin the lies
that led to the Iraq War. Kiriakou explains the American fetish with torture
and his role in blowing the whistle on the torture network within the CIA
and explains how the United States made the decision to invade Iraq long
before the invasion. Finally Kiriakou discusses how the drone program is the
greatest recruitment tool for Islamic terrorists.
"... The Middle East was now a U.S. military priority, and the pursuit of direct American domination of the region came from none other than the supposed peacenik, Jimmy Carter. ..."
"... The result was the Carter Doctrine. Delivered to the American people during the 1980 State of Union Address, Carter started Americas War for the Greater Middle East. ..."
"... he declared Americas right to cheap energy. Let our position be absolutely clear, he said. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. ..."
"... Analyzing the Carter Doctrine, Bacevich writes that it represented a broad, open-ended commitment, one that expanded further with time -- one that implied the conversion of the Persian Gulf into an informal American protectorate. Defending the region meant policing it. And police it America has done, wrapping its naked self-interest in the seemingly noble cloth of democratization and human rights. ..."
"... They didnt see that the U.S.-armed Afghan mujahideen also believed they were the victors and that they had every intention of resisting Americas version of modernity as much as they had resisted the Soviet Unions. (Americas self-destructive trend of arming its eventual enemies -- either directly or indirectly from Saddam Hussein to ISIS, respectively -- is a recurring theme of Bacevichs narrative.) ..."
"... History cannot be controlled, and it had its revenge on a U.S. military and political elite who somehow believed they could see the future and manage historical forces toward a predestined end that naturally benefitted America. As Reinhold Niebuhr warned, and Bacevich quotes approvingly, The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning. ..."
"... Another piece of connective tissue, according to Bacevich, is the belief that war is not the failure of diplomacy but a necessary ingredient to its success. The U.S. military establishment learned this lesson in Bosnia when U.S.-led NATO bombing brought Serbia to the negotiating table at the Dayton Peace Accords. The proper role of armed force, writes Bacevich, was not to supplant diplomacy but to make it work. Gen. Wesley Clark was more succinct when he called war coercive diplomacy during the Kosovo conflict. U.S. military force was no longer a last resort, particularly when technology was making it easier to unleash violence without endangering U.S. service members lives. ..."
"... The people on the ground, as the D.C. elites just learned in November, have a way of not going along with the best-laid plans made for them in the epicenters of power. ..."
"... Without any unifying aim or idea, according to Bacevich, the Obama administrations principal contribution to Americas War for the Greater Middle East was to expand its fronts. ..."
"... As Bacevich clearly shows over and over again in his narrative, the men and women who make up the defense establishment have a fanatical, almost theological, belief in the transformational power of American violence. ..."
"... Expect Uncle Sams fangs to grow longer, his talons sharper, his violence huge. ..."
"... Bacevich, himself, is not hopeful. In a note to readers that greets them before the prologue, Bacevich is refreshingly terse with his assessment of Americas war for the Greater Middle East: We have not won it. We are not winning it. Simply trying harder is unlikely to produce a different outcome. ..."
Americas War for the Greater Middle East. Over time, other considerations intruded and
complicated the wars conduct, but oil as a prerequisite of freedom was from day one an abiding consideration.
By 1969, oil imports already made up 20 percent of the daily oil consumption in the United States.
Four years later, Arab oil exporters suspended oil shipments to the United States to punish America
for supporting Israel in the October War. The American economy screeched to a halt, seemingly held
hostage by foreigners -- a big no-no for a country accustomed to getting what it wants. Predictably
the U.S. response was regional domination to keep the oil flowing to America, especially to the Pentagon
and its vast, permanent war machine.
The Middle East was now a U.S. military priority, and the pursuit of direct American domination
of the region came from none other than the supposed peacenik, Jimmy Carter. Before him, Richard
Nixon was content to have the Middle East managed by proxies after the bloodletting America experienced
in Vietnam. His arch-proxy was the despised shah of Iran, whom the United States had installed into
power and then armed to the teeth. When his regime collapsed in 1979, felled by Islamic revolutionaries
who would eventually capture the American embassy and initiate the Iranian hostage crisis, so too
did the Nixon Doctrine. That same year, the Soviet Union rolled into Afghanistan. The world was a
mess, and Carter was under extreme pressure to do something about it, lest he lose his bid for a
second term. (He suffered a crushing defeat anyway.)
Furies beyond reckoning
The result was the Carter Doctrine. Delivered to the American people during the 1980 State
of Union Address, Carter started Americas War for the Greater Middle East. Months earlier, in
his infamous malaise speech, Carter asked Americans to simplify their lives and moderate their energy
use. Now he declared Americas right to cheap energy. Let our position be absolutely clear, he
said. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be
repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
Analyzing the Carter Doctrine, Bacevich writes that it represented a broad, open-ended commitment,
one that expanded further with time -- one that implied the conversion of the Persian Gulf into an
informal American protectorate. Defending the region meant policing it. And police it America has
done, wrapping its naked self-interest in the seemingly noble cloth of democratization and human
rights.
It is illustrative, and alarming, to list Bacevichs selected campaigns and operations in the region
since 1980 up to the present, unleashed by Carter and subsequent presidents. Lets go in alphabetical
order by country followed by the campaigns and operations:
While Bacevich deftly takes the reader through the history of all those wars, the most important
aspect of his book is his critique of the United Statess permanent military establishment and the
power it wields in Washington. According to Bacevich, U.S. military leaders have a tendency to engage
in fantastical thinking rife with hubris. Too many believe the United States is a global force for
good that has the messianic duty to usher in secular modernity, a force that no one should ever interfere
with, either militarily or ideologically.
As Bacevich makes plain again and again, history does not back up that mindset. For instance,
after the Soviet Unions crippling defeat in Afghanistan, the Washington elite saw it as an American
victory, the inauguration of the end of history and the inevitable march of democratic capitalism.
They didnt see that the U.S.-armed Afghan mujahideen also believed they were the victors and
that they had every intention of resisting Americas version of modernity as much as they had resisted
the Soviet Unions. (Americas self-destructive trend of arming its eventual enemies -- either directly
or indirectly from Saddam Hussein to ISIS, respectively -- is a recurring theme of Bacevichs narrative.)
Over and over again after 9/11, America would be taught this lesson, as Islamic extremists, both
Sunni and Shia, bloodied the U.S. military across the Greater Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan
and Iraq. History cannot be controlled, and it had its revenge on a U.S. military and political
elite who somehow believed they could see the future and manage historical forces toward a predestined
end that naturally benefitted America. As Reinhold Niebuhr warned, and Bacevich quotes approvingly,
The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
Yet across Americas War for the Greater Middle East, presidents would speak theologically of Americas
role in the world, never admitting the United States is not an instrument of the Almighty. George
H.W. Bush would speak of a new world order. Bill Clintons Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would
declare that America is the indispensable nation. George W. Bushs faith in this delusion led him
to declare a global war on terrorism, where American military might would extinguish evil wherever
it resided and initiate Condoleeza Rices 'paradigm of progress -- democracy, limited government,
market economics, and respect for human (and especially womens) rights across the region. As with
all zealots, there was no acknowledgment by the Bush administration, flamboyantly Christian, that
evil resided inside them too. Barack Obama seemed to pull back from this arrogance in his 2009 Cairo
speech, declaring, No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.
Yet he continued to articulate his faith that all people desire liberal democracy, even though that
simply isnt true.
All in all, American presidents and their military advisors believed they could impose a democratic
capitalist peace on the world, undeterred that each intervention created more instability and unleashed
new violent forces the United States would eventually engage militarily, such as Saddam Hussein,
al-Qaeda, and ISIS. Bacevich explains that this conviction, deeply embedded in the American collective
psyche, provides one of the connecting threads making the ongoing War for the Greater Middle East
something more than a collection of disparate and geographically scattered skirmishes.
War and diplomacy
Another piece of connective tissue, according to Bacevich, is the belief that war is not the
failure of diplomacy but a necessary ingredient to its success. The U.S. military establishment learned
this lesson in Bosnia when U.S.-led NATO bombing brought Serbia to the negotiating table at the Dayton
Peace Accords. The proper role of armed force, writes Bacevich, was not to supplant diplomacy but
to make it work. Gen. Wesley Clark was more succinct when he called war coercive diplomacy during
the Kosovo conflict. U.S. military force was no longer a last resort, particularly when technology
was making it easier to unleash violence without endangering U.S. service members lives.
This logic would run aground in Iraq after 9/11 during what Bacevich calls the Third Gulf War.
In an act of preventive war, the Bush administration shocked and awed Baghdad, believing U.S. military
supremacy and its almost divine violence would bring other state sponsors of terrorism to heel after
America quickly won the war. Vanquishing Saddam Hussein and destroying his army promised to invest
American diplomacy with the power to coerce. Although the Bush administration believed the war ended
after three weeks, Bacevich notes, the Third Gulf War was destined to continue for another 450.
The people on the ground, as the D.C. elites just learned in November, have a way of not going
along with the best-laid plans made for them in the epicenters of power.
There was hope that Barack Obama, a constitutional professor, would correct the Bush administrations
failures and start to wind down Americas War for the Greater Middle East. Instead, he expanded it
into Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and West Africa through drone warfare and special-operations
missions. Without any unifying aim or idea, according to Bacevich, the Obama administrations principal
contribution to Americas War for the Greater Middle East was to expand its fronts.
Now this war is in the hands of Donald J. Trump. If there is any upside to a Trump presidency
-- and I find it hard to find many -- its the possibility that the intensity of American imperialism
in the Middle East will wane. But I find that likelihood remote. Trump has promised to wipe out ISIS,
which means continued military action in at least Iraq, Syria, and Libya. He has also called for
more military spending, and I find it hard to believe that he or the national-security establishment
will increase investment in the military and then show restraint in the use of force overseas.
As Bacevich clearly shows over and over again in his narrative, the men and women who make up
the defense establishment have a fanatical, almost theological, belief in the transformational power
of American violence. They persist in this belief despite all evidence to the contrary. These are
the men and women who will be whispering their advice into the new presidents ear. Expect Uncle Sams
fangs to grow longer, his talons sharper, his violence huge.
Bacevich, himself, is not hopeful. In a note to readers that greets them before the prologue,
Bacevich is refreshingly terse with his assessment of Americas war for the Greater Middle East: We
have not won it. We are not winning it. Simply trying harder is unlikely to produce a different outcome.
And to this its not hard to hear Trump retort, Loser! And so the needless violence will continue
on and on with no end in sight unless the American population develops a Middle East syndrome to
replace the Vietnam syndrome that once made Washington wary of war.
That lack of confidence in the masters of war cant come soon enough.
This article was originally published in the July 2017 edition of
Future of Freedom .
Obama did spied on his political opponents... He really was a well connected to intelligence
agencies wolf in sheep's clothing.
Notable quotes:
"... For some of President Trump's staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president's widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. ..."
"... Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for investigators to "reverse target" a U.S. person by spying on a person with whom they know their true target to be in communication. ..."
For some of President Trump's staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul
Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president's
widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
... ... ...
Longtime advisor Roger Stone has gleefully circulated a segment from Tucker Carlson's show
on Fox News in which the host says "all those patronizing assurances that nobody is spying on
political campaigns were false" and "it looks like Trump's tweet may have been right."
... ... ...
A spokesperson for Manafort, Jason Maloni, has characterized the court orders as an abuse of
power by the Obama administration, which he says wanted to spy on a political
opponent.
"It's unclear if Paul Manafort was the objective," Maloni told The Journal.
"Perhaps the real objective was Donald Trump."
Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for
investigators to "reverse target" a U.S. person by spying on a person with whom they know their
true target to be in communication.
If the president were in fact the oblique target of government surveillance - either as a
candidate or as the president-elect - both Eddington and Shedd say, it would have been so
explosive that it would have almost certainly been leaked to the press.
... ... ...
The disclosure of the warrants targeting Manafort have drawn legitimate
scrutiny as a violation of Manafort's civil liberties and a possible criminal leak - the mere
existence of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant is classified.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who first raised alarm about
the practice of "unmasking" the names of Americans caught up in government surveillance, is
currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly exposing classified
information when he disclosed his findings to reporters.
The result is bad for the top-candidates Merkel (CDU) and Schulz (SPD). The CDU lost 9
percentage points compared to the 2013 election, the SPD lost 5.
Voter migration analysis will show that the CDU loss was caused by Merkel's centrist
policies and especially her gigantic immigration ("refugees") mistake. It caused the right-wing
CDU voters to go over to the new right-wing party AFD.
Her party will punish Merkel for this catastrophic result. I doubt that she has two years or
more years left in her position. Her party will shun her and move away from the center and back
into its traditional moderate-right corner.
The voters lost by the formerly moderate-left, now also centrist SPD went over to the
liberal-leftish FDP. The FDP is back in the game after having been kicked out of parliament is
the 2013 elections.
The Greens and the Left Party results are mostly unchanged.
Over the last 20 years both of the traditionally big parties, CDU and SPD, had moved from
their moderate-right, respectively moderate-left positions towards centrist neo-liberalism. In
consequence The Left split off the SPD and now the AFD from the CDU.
The AFD is by no means a "Nazi" party though a few Nazis may try to hide under its mantle.
The voters are mostly traditionalist, staunch conservatives and anti-globalization. They were
earlier part of the CDU.
The SPD will not want to enter another government coalition with Merkel, It played Merkel's
junior partner over the last eight years and that led to ever increasing voter losses. It
nearly killed the party. The mistake of selecting the colorless Schulz as top-candidate will
lead to some (necessary) blood loss in the party's leadership. SPD head Gabriel will, like
Schulz, have to step back from leadership positions.
Merkel will have difficulties forming a coalition. She will avoid the AFD as her campaign
had discriminated that party as "Nazi" (in itself a huge strategic mistake). She will try to
build a coalition with the Green and the FDP. It will be enough to rule for a while but is a
somewhat unstable configuration.
We will likely have new elections within the next two years.
Just like the American election with Clinton, western media doing everything to uncritically
support Merkel and demonize, especially AFD, the oppostional parties. Propaganda all over.
having just been exposed to the AFD party and somewhat taken aback by their huge gains, I used
the google to find out a bit about them. one of the first hits is from the Intercept where they
talk about a very wealthy woman who just happens to be a Trump supporter as well funneling
money and fake news to support this "scary" new party. B wrote about how right wing parties
gained support because the traditional left has abandoned them. this is probably the case in
Germany as well with the SPD being quite disappointing to many. The FDP seems to have gained a
bit due to time passing and people not remembering how badly they got screwed by Westerwelle
and his crew some years back.
A suitable retaliation might include supplying weapons to Russia's enemies, such as Ukraine,
in order to stymie an emboldened Kremlin and respond to an unprecedented attack on American
democracy, Morell told FORBES today. "I think it's very important we push back, that we
retaliate, that we take actions that deter Putin from doing anything like this again, not only
Putin, but other countries watching this - China, Iran, North Korea," he said. "It should be
significant: possibly broad and deep sanctions in general, or providing offensive weapons to
the Ukraine."
Morell's comments came just days after president-elect Trump suggested intelligence from the
CIA and the FBI that Russia carried out an attack on the U.S. election had little basis in
fact. On Twitter yesterday, Trump said attribution was particularly difficult in the cyber
realm.
A new bombshell report written by Jerome Corsi suggests that President Barack H. Obama's
passport records were likely 'sanitized' by the acting Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency John Brennan, leading up to the 2008 presidential election after Brennan achieved the
status of Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the Bush Administration.
... ... ...
But what is even more shocking about all of this is the fact that the late Michael Hastings,
a renown investigative journalist who covered hardcore national security issues, was actually
working on a major exposé before his death at the age of 33 that would have ultimately
exposed the Obama-Brennan CIA connection as well as Obama's rise to power.
Additionally, Corsi points out that Hastings autopsy results, taken months after his death,
yielded only mild traces of marijuana and amphetamine, not enough to make him lose control of
his vehicle.
... ... ...
Corsi wrote:
Hastings died when his Mercedes, traveling at a high rate of speed, crossed into the
median on a deserted Highland Avenue at 4:20 a.m. and struck a tree. The automobile burst
into flames, charring Hastings' body so badly that it took several days to make a positive
identification.
Los Angeles newspapers have suggested Hastings had become obsessed with Edward Snowden's
revelations about the National Security Agency's massive domestic surveillance capabilities
and with disclosures the Department of Justice had obtained of the phone records of
Associated Press reporters.
His neighbor and close friend, Jordanna Thigpen, told the LA Weekly that
just before his death, Hastings' behavior had become erratic because of his increasing
concerned that helicopters commonly seen in the Hollywood Hills were spying on him and that
his Mercedes had been tampered with.
"He was scared, and he wanted to leave town," Thigpen told the newspaper.
Could Hastings have been killed by factions of the Obama Administration or the CIA?
"President Obama, as somebody who I worked obviously most closely with, he would, you know,
stay up into the early hours of the morning reading papers and absorbing it, and so any meeting
he would go to, he had a lot of background already on it. But what I always found interesting,
as well as I admired, he would always ask, 'What do you think?' He tried to draw out from
people other views and perspectives."
Lopez noted that the war on terrorism has always been about stopping the spread of Shariah
Islamic law, until Obama started to make major changes which clearly supported the Muslim
Brotherhood's jihadist interests.
She said the global war on terror had been an effort to "stay free of Shariah," or
repressive Islamic law, until the Obama administration began siding with such jihadist groups
as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates.
The transition was easy for Obama, who already hates American values and principles as an
ideologically radical
Why the switch?
Lopez explained, when the so-called Arab Spring appeared in late 2010, "It was time to
bring down the secular Muslim rulers who did not enforce Islamic law. And America
helped."
And why would Obama want to do that?
As she told WND earlier this month, Lopez believed the Muslim Brotherhood has thoroughly
infiltrated the Obama administration and other branches of the federal government.
According to Dr. Manning, Obama (born in 1961) enrolled at the very pricey Occidental
College in Los Angeles, California in 1979 where the CIA recruited him in 1980. Since its
inception, the CIA regularly recruits college students. He was, by his own admission, a
"C" student, a dope smoker and a member of the Marxist Club at Occidental, a
co-educational liberal arts college. In 1981, Obama allegedly transferred from Occidental
to Columbia University to major in Political Science with a specialization in
international relations. It is atypical for a student to begin their education in one
four-year school and then transfer to another school. Columbia University requires that
incoming students pass certain academic requirements which Obama obviously lacked.
However, Columbia had a foreign student program and the CIA has major connections and
influence with Columbia and some of the nation's other educational facilities.
Interestingly, Zbigniew Brzezinski, known to have ties to the CIA as early as 1959, was
on the Columbia University faculty (1960-1989) and was in charge of the Institute on
Communist Affairs. He was also Obama's mentor. Brzezinski was President Carter's National
Security Advisor (1977-1981) and recently admitted that his objective was to entice the
Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in December 1979.
The CIA needed Muslims or others who could easily blend into the Muslim environment in
the Middle East. The CIA persuaded Columbia University to extend their foreign student
program to Obama, now a Columbia student, so that he might travel to Pakistan and enroll
in the universities around Karachi in addition to the Patrice Lumumba School in Moscow.
[1] The
school, one of Russia's most prestigious universities was founded on February 5, 1960 as
The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (PFUR). It was renamed the Patrice Lumumba
School on February 22, 1961. On February 5, 1992 the university re-adopted its former
name. According to their web site, "The main aim was to give young people from Asia,
Africa and Latin America, especially from poor families, an opportunity to get University
education and to become highly qualified specialists. The students were admitted through
non-governmental organizations, governmental establishments, and the USSR embassies and
consulates." [2]
Obama, perhaps as an undercover agent, may have been the lead agent in the arms and
money supply for the CIA-trained Taliban Army against the Soviet Army war machine. His
actions were integral to the Taliban's success in their opposition to the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan. Officials have publicly acknowledged that Obama went to Pakistan in 1981.
There is no way of knowing how often Obama traveled between Pakistan and Russia.
According to Dr. Manning, Obama was an interpreter for the CIA during the war in
Afghanistan. When Obama completed his CIA operations in the mid-1980s he returned to the
United States. Apparently, the State Department then maneuvered his entrance into Harvard
Law School. The CIA has always functioned as the president's personal agency for black
operations throughout the world. It also has connections to federal and state
politicians. It managed to arrange Obama's entrance to yet another elite school in
1988.
Percy Ellis Sutton, a civil-rights activist and lawyer, was the Manhattan Borough
President (1966-1977). He was an intelligence officer with the Tuskegee Airmen, the name
of a group of African American pilots who were part of the 332 nd Fighter
Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Sutton entered Harlem politics and
became a leader of the Harlem Clubhouse, known as the "Gang of Four" which has controlled
Democratic politics in Harlem for at least fifty years. His Clubhouse allies were New
York City Mayor David Dinkins, Representative Charles Rangel, and New York Secretary of
State Basil Paterson, father of David Paterson who replaced Spitzer as New York Governor
in 2008. Percy Sutton wrote a letter to Harvard officials requesting that they admit
Obama as a student after a hiatus of five years (from 1983 when he allegedly left
Columbia to 1988).
Despite a five-year absence from the rigors of college activity Harvard accepted Obama
where he allegedly excelled. On February 5, 1990, students elected Obama as president of
the venerable celebrated Harvard Law Review , the highest student position at
Harvard Law School, a term that lasts for one year. [3] After graduation he could
have worked in any leading law firm except that he lacked the proper citizenship
qualifications which would have come to light during the interview and normal background
checks pursued by major law firms. Moreover, his academic deficiencies at Occidental
College would have disqualified him from the top law firms. Furthermore, he was a CIA
operative in the Middle East during the time that he was supposed to be attending
Columbia University. Therefore, despite his supposed Harvard achievements, Obama became a
Saul Alinsky-style community organizer in South Chicago which alleviated the necessity of
providing a legitimate background check. [4]
In 1990, Obama accepted a job with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm
which represented civil rights cases but also represented Rezmar Corporation, owned by
Chicago slumlord, Tony Rezko. The law firm helped Rezmar get more than $43 million in
government funding. As early as 1995, Rezko started contributing to Obama who had high
political aspirations. In 2003, Rezko was a fundraiser for Obama's Senatorial campaign as
part of a group that raised over $14 million. In 2006, the authorities found Rezko guilty
of sixteen out of twenty-four charges filed against him.
Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, the same law firm that Harvard graduate Michelle
Robinson worked hired Barack Obama for a short summer stint then as an associate from
1988 to 1991. Robinson became his trainer and supervisor and, as such, may have handled
any background information. Robinson, through the efforts of Valerie Jarrett, then-deputy
chief of staff for Mayor Richard Daley, became an assistant to the mayor. Robinson later
became an economic development coordinator. Obama married the politically connected
Robinson in October 1992 in the Trinity United Church of Christ, giving him green-card
style citizenship and needed credibility. [5] In 1993, according to the
Records at the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of
Illinois, attorney Michelle Obama became "voluntarily inactive and not authorized to
practice law" per her request. After she relinquished her hard-won law license, Michelle
Obama worked for the University of Chicago Medical Center where she received a very
generous annual salary of $317,000. [6]
Michelle Obama helped to improvise a scheme to shift low-income charity cases to other
area hospitals in order to make room for insurance-carrying patients to enhance the
hospital's profitability. She did this under the guise of improving the health care of
the Southside residents. In 2006, in conjunction with this scheme, Obama persuaded the
hospital to hire lawyer and extremely skillful public relations mastermind, David
Axelrod, to conjure up a publicity campaign to market this fallacious program to the poor
black community, and make it not only palatable but highly desirable. [7] Axelrod became Barack
Obama's Senior Advisor and undoubtedly masterminded the publicity behind the current
healthcare scam the Obamas have hoisted on the rest of the country after its test run in
Chicago, a city tarnished by its long-term corrupt political shenanigans.
Far from being the mere 'son of a goat herder' (as he deceptively paraded during and even
before his candidacy), strong evidence has emerged that President Barack Obama is the product
of the intelligence community. Investigative reporter and former NSA employee Wayne Madsen has
put together an extensive three-part (and growing) series with conclusive proof and
documentation that Barack Obama Sr., Stanley Ann Dunham, Lolo Soetoro and President Barack
Obama himself all hold deep ties to the CIA and larger intelligence community. And that's just
the beginning.
After his election, President Obama quickly moved to seal off his
records via an executive order. Now, after two years of hints and clues, there is
substantial information to demonstrate that what Obama has omitted is that his rare rise to
power can only be explained by his intelligence roots. However, this is more than the story of
one man or his family. There is a long-term strategic plan to recruit promising candidates into
intelligence and steer these individuals and their families into positions of influence and
power. Consider that it is now declassified former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was
recruited into MI5 before becoming a labour leader, or that George H. W. Bush not only became CIA director
in 1976 but had a deeper past in the organization. While
we may never know many pertinent details about these matters, one thing that is certain is that
the American people have never been told the truth about who holds the real power, nor who this
president– and likely many others– really is. Thus, we urge everyone to
read Wayne Madsen's deep report and seek the truth for yourself.
... ... ...
President Obama's own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that
conducted seminars with the world's most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents
abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in
1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the
East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama's stepfather, at
the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior
army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President
Sukarno.
Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of
Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the
United States to attend various colleges ! merely "aided" by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy
Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a
CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was
becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence
among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.
"... The Iraqi regime was completely transparent to U.S. intelligence. They had an asset right at the top of the government, at the cabinet level, for example, somebody who would have known whether Iraq had WMD or not. And they surely had informers throughout the Iraqi government, it was totally infiltrated. If U.S. Intelligence knew what was going on in Iraq, you can be pretty damned sure that Mossad knew whatever they did. ..."
@Wizard of Oz Thanks for that link to the Telegraph story. It incidentally offers an
explanation for Cheney's urging the CIA to come up with an Iraq connection as shown in the
PBS doco "The Secret History of ISIS". After all if Mossad had been ahead of the CIA on the
main plot they might well be right about Iraq. It will be a long time before we will know
whether Mossad believed there was an Iraqi connection.
It will be a long time before we will know whether Mossad believed there was an Iraqi
connection.
Oh, well, this is all just total bullshit. But hey, what can one expect from some pathetic
old Aussie shit eater who thinks that the proof of the official story is that it's the
official story?
The Iraqi regime was completely transparent to U.S. intelligence. They had an asset right
at the top of the government, at the cabinet level, for example, somebody who would have
known whether Iraq had WMD or not. And they surely had informers throughout the Iraqi
government, it was totally infiltrated. If U.S. Intelligence knew what was going on in Iraq,
you can be pretty damned sure that Mossad knew whatever they did.
The whole idea that Mossad or CIA sincerely believed that Saddam Hussein had something to
do with 9/11, this is complete nonsense, of course. Everybody who knows anything knows that
at this point. Of course, you don't know anything, which is why you don't know that.
This is another characteristic of a shit eater. They just manage, year after year, to
remain ignorant of the most basic facts that are available.
Hundreds of people? Really? You mean, hundreds of people saw one or more planes fly into a
building with their own two eyes, i.e. NOT on the TV like the rest of us?
Millions of people live in New York.
Look, you know what's easier than faking 40-odd videos with CGI and paying/planting lots
of witnesses and praying that no one squeals and hoping no one finds your planes and hoping
that no one videotaped the non-plane crash, and dropping a bunch of airplane debris
from...somewhere? It's just crashing a plane into a building. That is so easy compared to
your ludicrous scenario. The reason that you find whatever 9/11 CGI video you've seen
convincing is because you just don't understand much about the evidence you're watching. And
you show this behavior with the other evidence too, focusing in on car rentals. I don't know
why that's in his Wiki page, but no one says it's important or vital.
I mean, I fully intended to just keep mocking you because your persona is so grating,
but...I'm just out of juice here. I mean, honestly, you're probably a nice guy. I don't know.
I think you're confused on some things, but we're all confused about some things, and I
understand you don't trust the government. I don't either--it just seems like there's this
disconnect, that you let your distrust carry you away. I don't know, it just feels sad piling
onto you at this point. And not in a sense that you're pathetic, but just in the sense that
there's no common language here at all. We see logic and evidence in very different ways, at
least when it comes to these topics.
And you are not alone, lots of people believe these things. From my point of view, that's
terrifying not because of 9/11 but because if people give in to their own biases when
evaluating the world, then that has massive implications. That's one of the reasons I seek
out places like Unz: to always challenge my own thinking. That's why I'm sitting here,
slowing down and thinking about things you've written.
If you said Bush and Cheney knew exactly what the hijackers were going to do, I might, at
times, share that suspicion. But that's an unproveable conjecture with only a bit of evidence
hinting at the possibility. I'm okay with never knowing. It sucks, but here we are.
Anyway, I hereby retract all the nasty things I've said to you and wish you the best. Sure
I could be lying, but I hope you'll consider that it's sincere. Unless you ARE an actual
Nazi, in which case I meant every word. :) Israeli did warn about potential attack by
terrorist on US soil. But Israel packaged the entire information mixing with Saddam Hussen
and likely terrorism from Iraqi administration. against US .That made sure that the entire
information would be treated as disinformation ,because no one in intelligence ever
believed
that Saddam would attack US on its soil or anywhere .
"The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military
intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the
existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation.
"ISRAELI intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United
States last month that large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the
American mainland were imminent.
""They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to
Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi
involvement," said a senior Israeli security official."
"... Bush and his people were simply lying. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a president had lied in order to garner support for a war. Lyndon Johnson's lies regarding a supposed North Vietnamese attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam come to mind. Two, Bush didn't secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, most likely because he knew that congressional hearings on the issue would expose his WMD scare for the lie it was. And three, only the UN, not the US government, was entitled to enforce its resolutions regarding Iraq's WMDs. ..."
"... Moreover, the circumstantial evidence establishes that Bush was lying and that the WMD scare was entirely bogus. Many people forget that throughout the 1990s the US government was hell-bent on regime change in Iraq. That's what the brutal sanctions were all about, which contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. When US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was asked on Sixty Minutes whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the sanctions were "worth it," she responded that such deaths were "worth it." By "it," she was referring to regime change. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation . ..."
A good example of how the national-security state has adversely affected the thinking of US
soldiers was reflected in an op-ed entitled "What We're Fighting For" that appeared in the
February 10, 2017, issue of the New York Times. Authored by an Iraq War veteran named Phil
Klay, the article demonstrates perfectly what the national-security state has done to soldiers
and others and why it is so imperative for the American people to restore a constitutional
republic to our land.
Klay begins his op-ed by extolling the exploits of another US Marine, First Lt. Brian
Chontosh, who, displaying great bravery, succeeded in killing approximately two dozen Iraqis in
a fierce firefight during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Klay writes:
When I was a new Marine, just entering the Corps, this story from the Iraq invasion defined
heroism for me. It's a perfect image of war for inspiring new officer candidates, right in
line with youthful notions of what war is and what kind of courage it takes ! physical
courage, full stop.
Klay then proceeds to tell a story about an event he witnessed when he was
deployed to Iraq in 2007. After doctors failed to save the life of a Marine who had been shot
by an Iraqi sniper, those same doctors proceeded to treat and save the life of the sniper, who
himself had been shot by US troops. Klay used the story to point out the virtuous manner in
which US forces carried out their military mission in Iraq.
Well, except perhaps, Klay observes, for Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison in which Saddam
Hussein's government had tortured and abused countless Iraqis and which the US military turned
into its own torture and abuse center for Iraqis captured during the 2003 US invasion of the
country. Klay tells the story of a defense contractor named Eric Fair, who tortured an Iraqi
prisoner into divulging information about a car-bomb factory. Encouraged by that successful use
of torture, Fair proceeded to employ it against many other Iraqis, none of whom had any
incriminating evidence to provide.
Klay points out that both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were major turning points in the
Iraq War because prisoner abuse at both camps became a driving force for Iraqis to join the
insurgency in Iraq. Thus, while Fair may have saved lives through his successful use of
torture, he and other US personnel who tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay may well have cost the lives of many more US soldiers in the long term.
Klay, however, suggests that none of that was really Fair's fault. While he might have
crossed some moral lines, everything he did, Klay suggests, was in accordance with legal rules
and regulations. Klay writes:
And Eric did what our nation asked of him, used techniques that were vetted and approved and
passed down to intelligence operatives and contractors like himself. Lawyers at the highest
levels of government had been consulted, asked to bring us to the furthest edge of what the
law might allow. To do what it takes, regardless of whether such actions will secure the
"attachment of all good men," or live up to that oath we swear to support and defend the
Constitution.
Klay refers to the oath that US soldiers take to support and defend the
Constitution. Clearly patting himself and other members of the US military on the back, he says
US soldiers fight with honor to defend a "set of principles" that are reflected in the
Constitution and that define America.
It would be difficult to find a better example of a life of the lie than that of Phil Klay.
He provides an absolutely perfect demonstration of what a national-security state does to
soldiers' minds and why the Founding Fathers were so opposed to that type of governmental
structure.
The rights of invaders
Notice one big omission from Klay's self-aggrandizing article: Iraq never attacked the
United States or even threatened to do so. Instead, it was the U.S government, operating
through its troops, that was the aggressor nation in the Iraq War. Wars of aggression ! i.e.,
attacking, invading, and occupying other countries ! were among the crimes of which the
defendants at Nuremburg were convicted.
It is absolutely fascinating that that critically important point seems to escape Klay so
completely. It's as if it just doesn't exist or just doesn't count. His mindset simply begins
with the fact that US troops are engaged in war and then it proceeds from there to focus on the
courage and humanity of the troops, how their bravery in battle inspired him, and how they
treated the enemy humanely. It never occurs to him to ask the vital question: Did US troops
have any legal or moral right to be in Iraq and to kill anyone there, including Iraqi soldiers,
insurgents, civilians, and civil servants working for the Iraqi government?
Many years ago, I posed a question about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq to a
libertarian friend of mine who was a Catholic priest. I asked him, If a US soldier is placed in
Iraq in a kill-or-be-killed situation, does he have a right to fire back at an Iraqi who is
shooting at him?
My friend's answer was unequivocal: Absolutely not, he responded. Since he has no legitimate
right to be in Iraq, given that he is part of the aggressor force that initiated the war, under
God's laws he cannot kill anyone, not even by convincing himself that he is only acting in
"self-defense."
I responded, "Are you saying that his only choice is to run away or permit himself to be
killed"? He responded, "That is precisely what I am saying. Under the laws of God, he cannot
kill anyone in Iraq because he has no right to be there."
Suppose a burglar enters a person's home in the dead of night. The homeowner wakes up,
discovers the intruder, and begins firing at him. The burglar fires back and kills the
homeowner.
The burglar appears in court and explains that he never had any intention of killing the
homeowner and that he was simply firing back in self-defense. He might even explain to the
judge how bravely he reacted under fire and detail the clever manner in which he outmaneuvered
and shot the homeowner.
The judge, however, would reject any claim of self-defense on the part of the burglar. Why?
Because the burglar had no right to be in the homeowner's house. Like the US soldier in Iraq,
when the homeowner began firing the burglar had only two legal and moral options: run away or
be killed.
That's what my Catholic priest friend was pointing out about US soldiers in Iraq. They had
no right to be there. They invaded a poor, Third World country whose government had never
attacked the United States and they were killing, torturing, and abusing people whom they had
no right to kill, torture, or abuse.
That's what Klay as well as most other members of the US military and, for that matter, many
Americans still don't get: that the Iraqi people were the ones who wielded the right of
self-defense against an illegal invasion by a foreign power and that US forces, as the
aggressor power in the war, had no legal or moral right to kill any Iraqi, not even in
"self-defense."
Klay waxes eloquent about the US Constitution and the oath that soldiers take to support and
defend it, but it's really just another perfect demonstration of the life of the lie that he
and so many other US soldiers live. The reality is that when US soldiers vow to support and
defend the Constitution, as a practical matter they are vowing to loyally obey the orders and
commands of the president, who is their military commander in chief.
There is no better example of this phenomenon than what happened in Iraq. The US.
Constitution is clear: The president is prohibited from waging war without a declaration of war
from Congress. No declaration, no war. Every US soldier ordered to invade Iraq knew that or
should have known that.
Everyone, including the troops, also knew that Congress had not declared war on Iraq. Yet,
not a single soldier supported or defended the Constitution by refusing George Bush's order to
attack and invade Iraq. Every one of them loyally obeyed his order to attack and invade,
knowing full well that it would mean killing people in Iraq ! killing people who had never
attacked the United States. And they all convinced themselves that by following the president's
orders to invade Iraq and kill Iraqis, they were supporting and defending the Constitution.
How do US soldiers reconcile that? They convince themselves that they are supporting and
defending the Constitution by obeying the orders of the president, who has been democratically
elected by the citizenry. It's not their job, they tell themselves, to determine what is
constitutional and what isn't. Their job, they believe, is simply to do what the president,
operating through his subordinates, orders them to do. In their minds, they are supporting and
defending the Constitution whenever they loyally and obediently carry out the orders of the
president.
That means, then, that the standing army is nothing more than the president's private army.
As a practical matter, soldiers are going to do whatever they are ordered to do. If they don't,
they are quickly shot or simply replaced, which provides a good incentive for others to do as
they are told. That's why soldiers invaded Iraq, which had never attacked the United States,
and killed people who were defending their country against an unlawful invasion. That's also
why soldiers and defense contractors tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay,
and elsewhere. They all believed they were carrying out the orders of their superiors, from the
president on down, and that they were supporting and defending the Constitution in the
process.
As people throughout history have learned, that is also why a standing army constitutes such
a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry. It is the means by which a
tyrant imposes and enforces his will on the citizenry. Just ask the people of Chile, where the
troops of a military regime installed into power by the US national-security establishment
rounded up tens of thousands of innocent people and incarcerated, tortured, raped, abused, or
executed them, all without due process of law and with the support of the US government.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, I read that some Catholic soldiers were deeply troubled by
the prospect of killing people in a war that the US government was initiating. I was stunned to
read that a US military chaplain told them that they had the right under God's laws to obey the
president's order to invade Iraq and kill Iraqis. God would not hold it against them, he said,
if they killed people in the process of following orders.
Really? Are God's laws really nullified by the orders of a government's military commander?
If that were the case, don't you think God's commandment would have read: "Thou shalt not kill,
unless your ruler orders you to do so in a war of aggression against another nation"?
To this day, there are those who claim that George W. Bush simply made an honest mistake in
claiming that Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, was maintaining weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) and that US soldiers were justified in trusting him by loyally obeying his orders to
invade and occupy Iraq to "disarm Saddam."
They ignore three important points: it was a distinct possibility that Bush and his
people were simply lying. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a president had lied in
order to garner support for a war. Lyndon Johnson's lies regarding a supposed North Vietnamese
attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam come to mind. Two, Bush didn't secure
the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, most likely because he knew
that congressional hearings on the issue would expose his WMD scare for the lie it was. And
three, only the UN, not the US government, was entitled to enforce its resolutions regarding
Iraq's WMDs.
Moreover, the circumstantial evidence establishes that Bush was lying and that the WMD
scare was entirely bogus. Many people forget that throughout the 1990s the US government was
hell-bent on regime change in Iraq. That's what the brutal sanctions were all about, which
contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. When US Ambassador to the United
Nations Madeleine Albright was asked on Sixty Minutes whether the deaths of half a million
Iraqi children from the sanctions were "worth it," she responded that such deaths were "worth
it." By "it," she was referring to regime change.
That desire for regime change in Iraq grew with each passing year in the 1990s, both among
liberals and conservatives. Demands were ever growing to get rid of Saddam. Therefore, when
Bush started coming up with his WMD scare after the 9/11 attacks, everyone should have been
wary because it had all the earmarks of an excuse to invade Iraq after more than 10 years of
sanctions had failed to achieve the job.
The best circumstantial evidence that Bush lied about the WMD scare appeared after it was
determined that there were no WMDs in Iraq. At that point, if Bush had been telling the truth,
he could have said, "I'm very sorry. I have made a grave mistake and my army has killed
multitudes of people as a consequence of my mistake. I am hereby ordering all US troops home
and I hereby announce my resignation as president."
Bush didn't do that. In fact, he expressed not one iota of remorse or regret over the loss
of life for what supposedly had been the result of a mistake. He knew that he had achieved what
the US national-security state had been trying to achieve for more than a decade with its
brutal sanctions ! regime change in Iraq ! and he had used the bogus WMD scare to garner
support for his invasion. And significantly, the troops were kept occupying Iraq for several
more years, during which they killed more tens of thousands of Iraqis.
One thing is for sure: By the time Phil Klay arrived in Iraq in 2007, he knew full well that
there had been no WMDs in Iraq. He also knew that Iraq had never attacked the United States. By
that time, he knew full well that the US government had invaded a country under false or, at
the very least, mistaken pretenses. He knew there had been no congressional declaration of war.
He knew that there was no legal or moral foundation for a military occupation that was
continuing to kill people in an impoverished Third World country whose worst "crime" was simply
trying to rid their country of an illegal occupier.
Yet, reinforced by people who were thanking them for "their service in Iraq," Klay, like
other US troops, convinced himself that their "service" in Iraq was a grand and glorious
sacrifice for his nation, that they were defending Americans' rights and freedoms, and that
they were keeping us safe. It was a classic life of the lie because our nation, our rights and
freedoms, and our safety were never threatened by anyone in Iraq, including the millions of
Iraqis who were killed, maimed, injured, tortured, abused, or exiled, or whose homes,
businesses, or infrastructure were destroyed by bombs, missiles, bullets, and tanks.
In fact, the entity that actually threatened the rights and freedoms of the American people
was the US government, given the totalitarian-like powers that it assumed as part of its effort
to keep us safe from the enemies its interventionist policies were producing. Coming to mind
are the totalitarian-like power to assassinate Americans, secret mass surveillance, and the
incarceration and torture of American citizens as suspected terrorists ! all without due
process of law and without trial by jury.
This is what a national-security state does to people ! it warps, damages, or destroys their
conscience, principles, and values; induces them to subscribe to false bromides; and nurtures
all sorts of mental contortions to enable people to avoid confronting reality.
Many years after Brian Chontosh's exploits in Iraq, Phil Klay was surprised to learn that
Chontosh was experiencing some ambivalence about what he had done. "It's ugly, it's violent,
it's disgusting. I wish it wasn't part of what we had to do," Chontosh later wrote.
Perhaps that's because conscience was beginning to stir within him. That's a good sign.
Maybe it will begin to stir in Phil Klay too. And other members of the military as well.
"... In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ' the Generals' have been able to impose their definition of international realities. ..."
"... We will discuss the military's ascendancy over Trump's civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition. ..."
"... The massive US-led bombing and destruction of Libya, the overthrow of the Gadhafi government and the failure of the Obama-Clinton administration to impose a puppet regime, underlined the limitations of US air power and the ineffectiveness of US political-military intervention. The Presidency blundered in its foreign policy in North Africa and demonstrated its military ineptness. ..."
"... The invasion of Syria by US-funded mercenaries and terrorists committed the US to an unreliable ally in a losing war. This led to a reduction in the military budget and encouraged the Generals to view their direct control of overseas wars and foreign policy as the only guarantee of their positions. ..."
"... The Obama-Clinton engineered coup and power grab in the Ukraine brought a corrupt incompetent military junta to power in Kiev and provoked the secession of the Crimea (to Russia) and Eastern Ukraine (allied with Russia). The Generals were sidelined and found that they had tied themselves to Ukrainian kleptocrats while dangerously increasing political tensions with Russia. The Obama regime dictated economic sanctions against Moscow, designed to compensate for their ignominious military-political failures. ..."
"... The Obama-Clinton legacy facing Trump was built around a three-legged stool: an international order based on military aggression and confrontation with Russia; a ' pivot to Asia' defined as the military encirclement and economic isolation of China – via bellicose threats and economic sanctions against North Korea; and the use of the military as the praetorian guards of free trade agreements in Asia excluding China. ..."
"... After only 8 months in office President Trump helplessly gave into the firings, resignations and humiliation of each and every one of his civilian appointees, especially those who were committed to reverse Obama's 'international order'. ..."
"... Trump was elected to replace wars, sanctions and interventions with economic deals beneficial to the American working and middle class. This would include withdrawing the military from its long-term commitments to budget-busting 'nation-building' (occupation) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other Obama-designated endless war zones. ..."
"... The Generals provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Trump regime (especially for the warmongering Obama Democrats and the mass media). However, handing presidential powers over to ' Mad Dog' Mattis and his cohort will come with a heavy price. ..."
"... While the military junta may protect Trump's foreign policy flank, it does not lessen the attacks on his domestic agenda. Moreover, Trump's proposed budget compromise with the Democrats has enraged his own Party's leaders. ..."
"... The military junta is pressuring China against North Korea with the goal of isolating the ruling regime in Pyongyang and increasing the US military encirclement of Beijing. Mad Dog has partially succeeded in turning China against North Korea while securing its advanced THADD anti-missile installations in South Korea, which will be directed against Beijing. ..."
"... Mad Dog's military build-up, especially in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, will not intimidate Iran nor add to any military successes. They entail high costs and low returns, as Obama realized after the better part of a decade of his defeats, fiascos and multi-billion dollar losses. ..."
"... The militarization of US foreign policy provides some important lessons: ..."
"... the escalation from threats to war does not succeed in disarming adversaries who possess the capacity to retaliate. ..."
"... Low intensity multi-lateral war maneuvers reinforce US-led alliances, but they also convince opponents to increase their military preparedness. Mid-level intense wars against non-nuclear adversaries can seize capital cities, as in Iraq, but the occupier faces long-term costly wars of attrition that can undermine military morale, provoke domestic unrest and heighten budget deficits. And they create millions of refugees. ..."
"... Threats and intimidation succeed only against conciliatory adversaries. Undiplomatic verbal thuggery can arouse the spirit of the bully and some of its allies, but it has little chance of convincing its adversaries to capitulate. The US policy of worldwide militarization over-extends the US armed forces and has not led to any permanent military gains. ..."
"... Are there any voices among clear-thinking US military leaders, those not bedazzled by their stars and idiotic admirers in the US media, who could push for more global accommodation and mutual respect among nations? The US Congress and the corrupt media are demonstrably incapable of evaluating past disasters, let alone forging an effective response to new global realities. ..."
"... American actions in Europe, Asia and the middle east appear increasingly irrational to many international observers. Their policy thrusts are excused as containment of evildoers or punishment of peoples who think and act differently. ..."
"... They will drive into a new detente such incompatible parties as Russia and Iran, or China and many countries. America risks losing its way in the world and free peoples see a flickering beacon that once shone brighter. ..."
"... How about this comic book tough guy quote: "I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all" notice the first person used repetitively as he talks down to hapless unarmed tribesman in some distant land. A real egomaniacal narcissistic coward. Any of you with military experience would immediately recognize the type ... ..."
"... It seems that the inevitable has happened. Feckless civilians have used military adventures to advance their careers , ensure re- elections, capturr lucrative position as speaker, have a place as member of think tank or lobbying firm or consultant . Now being as stupidly greedy and impatient as these guys are, they have failed to see that neither the policies nor the militaries can succeed against enemies that are generated from the action and the policy itself ..."
Clearly the US has escalated the pivotal role of the military in the making of foreign and, by
extension, domestic policy. The rise of ' the Generals' to strategic positions in the Trump
regime is evident, deepening its role as a highly autonomous force determining US strategic policy
agendas.
In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda
and the reasons why ' the Generals' have been able to impose their definition of international
realities.
We will discuss the military's ascendancy over Trump's civilian regime as a result of the relentless
degradation of his presidency by his political opposition.
The Prelude to Militarization: Obama's Multi-War Strategy and Its Aftermath
The central role of the military in deciding US foreign policy has its roots in the strategic
decisions taken during the Obama-Clinton Presidency. Several policies were decisive in the rise of
unprecedented military-political power.
The massive increase of US troops in Afghanistan and their subsequent failures and retreat weakened
the Obama-Clinton regime and increased animosity between the military and the Obama's Administration.
As a result of his failures, Obama downgraded the military and weakened Presidential authority.
The massive US-led bombing and destruction of Libya, the overthrow of the Gadhafi government
and the failure of the Obama-Clinton administration to impose a puppet regime, underlined the limitations
of US air power and the ineffectiveness of US political-military intervention. The Presidency blundered
in its foreign policy in North Africa and demonstrated its military ineptness.The invasion
of Syria by US-funded mercenaries and terrorists committed the US to an unreliable ally in a losing
war. This led to a reduction in the military budget and encouraged the Generals to view their direct
control of overseas wars and foreign policy as the only guarantee of their positions. The US
military intervention in Iraq was only a secondary contributing factor in the defeat of ISIS; the
major actors and beneficiaries were Iran and the allied Iraqi Shia militias. The Obama-Clinton
engineered coup and power grab in the Ukraine brought a corrupt incompetent military junta to power
in Kiev and provoked the secession of the Crimea (to Russia) and Eastern Ukraine (allied with Russia).
The Generals were sidelined and found that they had tied themselves to Ukrainian kleptocrats while
dangerously increasing political tensions with Russia. The Obama regime dictated economic sanctions
against Moscow, designed to compensate for their ignominious military-political failures.
The Obama-Clinton legacy facing Trump was built around a three-legged stool: an international
order based on military aggression and confrontation with Russia; a ' pivot to Asia' defined
as the military encirclement and economic isolation of China – via bellicose threats and economic
sanctions against North Korea; and the use of the military as the praetorian guards of free trade
agreements in Asia excluding China.
The Obama 'legacy' consists of an international order of globalized capital and multiple wars.
The continuity of Obama's 'glorious legacy' initially depended on the election of Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump's presidential campaign, for its part, promised to dismantle or drastically revise
the Obama Doctrine of an international order based on multiple wars , neo-colonial 'nation' building
and free trade. A furious Obama 'informed' (threatened) the newly-elected President Trump that he
would face the combined hostility of the entire State apparatus, Wall Street and the mass media if
he proceeded to fulfill his election promises of economic nationalism and thus undermine the US-centered
global order.
Trump's bid to shift from Obama's sanctions and military confrontation to economic reconciliation
with Russia was countered by a hornet's nest of accusations about a Trump-Russian electoral conspiracy,
darkly hinting at treason and show trials against his close allies and even family members.
The concoction of a Trump-Russia plot was only the first step toward a total war on the new president,
but it succeeded in undermining Trump's economic nationalist agenda and his efforts to change Obama's
global order.
Trump Under Obama's International Order
After only 8 months in office President Trump helplessly gave into the firings, resignations
and humiliation of each and every one of his civilian appointees, especially those who were committed
to reverse Obama's 'international order'.
Trump was elected to replace wars, sanctions and interventions with economic deals beneficial
to the American working and middle class. This would include withdrawing the military from its long-term
commitments to budget-busting 'nation-building' (occupation) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and
other Obama-designated endless war zones.
Trump's military priorities were supposed to focus on strengthening domestic frontiers and overseas
markets. He started by demanding that NATO partners pay for their own military defense responsibilities.
Obama's globalists in both political parties were aghast that the US might lose it overwhelming control
of NATO; they united and moved immediately to strip Trump of his economic nationalist allies and
their programs.
Trump quickly capitulated and fell into line with Obama's international order, except for one
proviso – he would select the Cabinet to implement the old/new international order.
A hamstrung Trump chose a military cohort of Generals, led by General James Mattis (famously nicknamed
' Mad Dog' ) as Defense Secretary.
The Generals effectively took over the Presidency. Trump abdicated his responsibilities
as President.
General Mattis: The Militarization of America
General Mattis took up the Obama legacy of global militarization and added his own nuances, including
the 'psychological-warfare' embedded in Trump's emotional ejaculations on 'Twitter'.
The ' Mattis Doctrine' combined high-risk threats with aggressive provocations, bringing
the US (and the world) to the brink of nuclear war.
General Mattis has adopted the targets and fields of operations, defined by the previous Obama
administration as it has sought to re-enforce the existing imperialist international order.
The junta's policies relied on provocations and threats against Russia, with expanded economic
sanctions. Mattis threw more fuel on the US mass media's already hysterical anti-Russian bonfire.
The General promoted a strategy of low intensity diplomatic thuggery, including the unprecedented
seizure and invasion of Russian diplomatic offices and the short-notice expulsion of diplomats and
consular staff.
These military threats and acts of diplomatic intimidation signified that the Generals' Administration
under the Puppet President Trump was ready to sunder diplomatic relations with a major world nuclear
power and indeed push the world to direct nuclear confrontation.
What Mattis seeks in these mad fits of aggression is nothing less than capitulation on the part
of the Russian government regarding long held US military objectives – namely the partition of Syria
(which started under Obama), harsh starvation sanctions on North Korea (which began under Clinton)
and the disarmament of Iran (Tel Aviv's main goal) in preparation for its dismemberment.
The Mattis junta occupying the Trump White House heightened its threats against a North Korea,
which (in Vladimir Putin's words) ' would rather eat grass than disarm' . The US mass media-military
megaphones portrayed the North Korean victims of US sanctions and provocations as an 'existential'
threat to the US mainland.
Sanctions have intensified. The stationing of nuclear weapons on South Korea is being pushed.
Massive joint military exercises are planned and ongoing in the air, sea and land around North Korea.
Mattis twisted Chinese arms (mainly business comprador-linked bureaucrats) and secured their UN Security
Council vote on increased sanctions. Russia joined the Mattis-led anti-Pyongyang chorus, even as
Putin warned of sanctions ineffectiveness! (As if General ' Mad Dog' Mattis would ever take
Putin's advice seriously, especially after Russia voted for the sanctions!)
Mattis further militarized the Persian Gulf, following Obama's policy of partial sanctions and
bellicose provocation against Iran.
When he worked for Obama, Mattis increased US arms shipments to the US's Syrian terrorists and
Ukrainian puppets, ensuring the US would be able to scuttle any ' negotiated settlements'
.
Militarization: An Evaluation
Trump's resort to ' his Generals' is supposed to counter any attacks from members of his
own party and Congressional Democrats about his foreign policy. Trump's appointment of ' Mad Dog'
Mattis, a notorious Russophobe and warmonger, has somewhat pacified the opposition in Congress and
undercut any 'finding' of an election conspiracy between Trump and Moscow dug up by the Special Investigator
Robert Mueller. Trump's maintains a role as nominal President by adapting to what Obama warned him
was ' their international order' – now directed by an unelected military junta composed of
Obama holdovers!
The Generals provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Trump regime (especially for the warmongering
Obama Democrats and the mass media). However, handing presidential powers over to ' Mad Dog'
Mattis and his cohort will come with a heavy price.
While the military junta may protect Trump's foreign policy flank, it does not lessen the
attacks on his domestic agenda. Moreover, Trump's proposed budget compromise with the Democrats has
enraged his own Party's leaders.
In sum, under a weakened President Trump, the militarization of the White House benefits the military
junta and enlarges their power. The ' Mad Dog' Mattis program has had mixed results, at least
in its initial phase: The junta's threats to launch a pre-emptive (possibly nuclear) war against
North Korea have strengthened Pyongyang's commitment to develop and refine its long and medium range
ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons. Brinksmanship failed to intimidate North Korea.
Mattis cannot impose the Clinton-Bush-Obama doctrine of disarming countries (like Libya and Iraq)
of their advanced defensive weapons systems as a prelude to a US 'regime change' invasion.
Any US attack against North Korea will lead to massive retaliatory strikes costing tens of thousands
of US military lives and will kill and maim millions of civilians in South Korea and Japan.
At most, ' Mad Dog' managed to intimidate Chinese and Russian officials (and their export
business billionaire buddies) to agree to more economic sanctions against North Korea. Mattis and
his allies in the UN and White House, the loony Nikki Hailey and a miniaturized President Trump,
may bellow war – yet they cannot apply the so-called 'military option' without threatening the US
military forces stationed throughout the Asia Pacific region.
The Mad Dog Mattis assault on the Russian embassy did not materially weaken Russia, but
it has revealed the uselessness of Moscow's conciliatory diplomacy toward their so-called 'partners'
in the Trump regime.
The end-result might lead to a formal break in diplomatic ties, which would increase the danger
of a military confrontation and a global nuclear holocaust.
The military junta is pressuring China against North Korea with the goal of isolating the
ruling regime in Pyongyang and increasing the US military encirclement of Beijing. Mad Dog has partially
succeeded in turning China against North Korea while securing its advanced THADD anti-missile installations
in South Korea, which will be directed against Beijing. These are Mattis' short-term gains over
the excessively pliant Chinese bureaucrats. However, if Mad Dog intensifies direct military threats
against China, Beijing can retaliate by dumping tens of billions of US Treasury notes, cutting trade
ties, sowing chaos in the US economy and setting Wall Street against the Pentagon.
Mad Dog's military build-up, especially in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, will not intimidate
Iran nor add to any military successes. They entail high costs and low returns, as Obama realized
after the better part of a decade of his defeats, fiascos and multi-billion dollar losses.
Conclusion
The militarization of US foreign policy, the establishment of a military junta within the Trump
Administration, and the resort to nuclear brinksmanship has not changed the global balance of power.
Domestically Trump's nominal Presidency relies on militarists, like General Mattis. Mattis has
tightened the US control over NATO allies, and even rounded up stray European outliers, like Sweden,
to join in a military crusade against Russia. Mattis has played on the media's passion for bellicose
headlines and its adulation of Four Star Generals.
But for all that – North Korea remains undaunted because it can retaliate. Russia has thousands
of nuclear weapons and remains a counterweight to a US-dominated globe. China owns the US Treasury
and its unimpressed, despite the presence of an increasingly collision-prone US Navy swarming throughout
the South China Sea.
Mad Dog laps up the media attention, with well dressed, scrupulously manicured journalists
hanging on his every bloodthirsty pronouncement. War contractors flock to him, like flies to carrion.
The Four Star General 'Mad Dog' Mattis has attained Presidential status without winning any
election victory (fake or otherwise). No doubt when he steps down, Mattis will be the most eagerly
courted board member or senior consultant for giant military contractors in US history, receiving
lucrative fees for half hour 'pep-talks' and ensuring the fat perks of nepotism for his family's
next three generations. Mad Dog may even run for office, as Senator or even President for
whatever Party.
The militarization of US foreign policy provides some important lessons:
First of all, the escalation from threats to war does not succeed in disarming adversaries
who possess the capacity to retaliate. Intimidation via sanctions can succeed in imposing significant
economic pain on oil export-dependent regimes, but not on hardened, self-sufficient or highly diversified
economies.
Low intensity multi-lateral war maneuvers reinforce US-led alliances, but they also convince
opponents to increase their military preparedness. Mid-level intense wars against non-nuclear adversaries
can seize capital cities, as in Iraq, but the occupier faces long-term costly wars of attrition that
can undermine military morale, provoke domestic unrest and heighten budget deficits. And they create
millions of refugees.
High intensity military brinksmanship carries major risk of massive losses in lives, allies, territory
and piles of radiated ashes – a pyrrhic victory!
In sum:
Threats and intimidation succeed only against conciliatory adversaries. Undiplomatic verbal
thuggery can arouse the spirit of the bully and some of its allies, but it has little chance of convincing
its adversaries to capitulate. The US policy of worldwide militarization over-extends the US armed
forces and has not led to any permanent military gains.
Are there any voices among clear-thinking US military leaders, those not bedazzled by their
stars and idiotic admirers in the US media, who could push for more global accommodation and mutual
respect among nations? The US Congress and the corrupt media are demonstrably incapable of evaluating
past disasters, let alone forging an effective response to new global realities.
American actions in Europe, Asia and the middle east appear increasingly irrational to
many international observers. Their policy thrusts are excused as containment of evildoers or
punishment of peoples who think and act differently. Those policy thrusts will accomplish
the opposite of the stated intention.
They will drive into a new detente such incompatible parties as Russia and Iran, or China
and many countries. America risks losing its way in the world and free peoples see a flickering
beacon that once shone brighter.
Anyone with military experience recognizes the likes of Mad Poodle Mattis arrogant, belligerent,
exceptionally dull, and mainly an inveterate suck-up (mil motto: kiss up and kick down).
Every VFW lounge is filled with these boozy ridiculous blowhards and they are insufferable.
The media and public, raised on ZioVision and JooieWood pablum, worship these cartoonish bloodletters
even though they haven't won a war in 72 years .not one.
How about this comic book tough guy quote: "I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes:
if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all" notice the first person used repetitively as he talks
down to hapless unarmed tribesman in some distant land. A real egomaniacal narcissistic coward.
Any of you with military experience would immediately recognize the type ...
It seems that the inevitable has happened. Feckless civilians have used military adventures
to advance their careers , ensure re- elections, capturr lucrative position as speaker, have a
place as member of think tank or lobbying firm or consultant . Now being as stupidly greedy and
impatient as these guys are, they have failed to see that neither the policies nor the militaries
can succeed against enemies that are generated from the action and the policy itself .
Now military has decided to reverse the roles . At least the military leaders don't have to
campaign for re employment . But very soon the forces that corrupt and abuse the civilian power
structure will do same to military .
Never met him at any of the parties I attended in the '70s and '80s, so I don't know much about
Mad Dog, but I can say that only in America can the former commander of a recruiting station grow
up to pull the strings of the President.
"... add Bush. Glenn Greenwald on John Brennan . It is interesting that the empire sues the little people. ..."
"... "It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus." ..."
"... one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the CIA station chief." The Saudis bought the CIA From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA ..."
"... Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change purposes (as in Libya and Syria): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012) ..."
"... The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis (c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines, air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program: ..."
"... Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe, Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS). ..."
"... Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have their own separate charge sheet. ..."
"... But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see: 'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives ..."
"... I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic law as well ..."
"... What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks? Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit. Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread the joy. ..."
"... Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing plan. ..."
"... As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would be brought to light. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/ ..."
"... While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around. ..."
"... That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable. ..."
"... Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing. Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's doofus back). ..."
"... I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. ..."
"... Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal. ..."
"... His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo ..."
"... John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads. ..."
"... WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would," McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition in Syria. ..."
"... The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government. ..."
"... Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. ..."
"... b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never... Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice, for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners. ..."
"... NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation) that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird. It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives. ..."
"... Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks. ..."
Rasheed Al Jijakli,[the CEO of a check-cashing business who lives in Walnut,] along with three
co-conspirators, allegedly transported day and night vision rifle scopes, laser boresighters used
to adjust sights on firearms for accuracy when firing, flashlights, radios, a bulletproof vest,
and other tactical equipment to Syrian fighters.
...
If Jijakli is found guilty, he could face 50 years in prison . Jijakli's case is being prosecuted
by counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys. An FBI investigation,
in coordination with other agencies, is ongoing.
CIA director, Mike Pompeo, recommended to President Trump that he shut down a four-year-old
effort to arm and train Syrian rebels
...
Critics in Congress had complained for years about the costs [...] and reports that some of the
CIA-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda
...
In the summer of 2012, David H. Petraeus , who was then CIA director, first proposed a covert
program of arming and training rebels
...
[ Mr. Obama signed] a presidential finding authorizing the CIA to covertly arm and train small
groups of rebels
-...
John O. Brennan , Mr. Obama's last CIA director, remained a vigorous defender of the program
...
When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Where are the counterintelligence
and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys prosecuting them? Those three men engaged in the
exactly same trade as Mr. Jijakil did, but on a much larger scale. They should be punished on an
equally larger scale.
*Note:
The NYT story is largely a whitewash. It claims that the CIA paid "moderate" FSA rebels stormed
Idleb governate in 2015. In fact al-Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham were leading the assault. It says
that costs of the CIA program was "more than $1 billion over the life of the program" when CIA
documents show that it was over $1 billion
per year and likely much more than $5 billion in total. The story says that the program started
in 2013 while the CIA has been providing arms to the Wahhabi rebels since at least fall 2011.
Posted by b on August 3, 2017 at 05:15 AM |
Permalink
India and Pakistan spends insane amounts of money because Pakistan arms "rebels" both countries
could use that money for many other things. Especially Pakistan which has a tenth the economy
of India. BUT Pakistan is controlled by the military or MIC so arming terrorists is more important
than such things as schools and power supplies etc. Their excuse is India is spending so much
on arms. Which India says is because in large part due to Pakistan. US says well move those 2
million troops to attack China instead. Everyone is happy except the population in those 3 countries
which lack most things except iphones. Which makes US extremely happy.
It would interesting to get to the truth about Brennan. Is he an islamist himself? Did he actually
convert to islam in Saudi Arabia? Lots of stories out there.
Has he been acting as a covert agent against his own country for years?Selling out the entire
west and every christian on the planet. Time to find this out, methinks.
Is treason in the USA
a death penalty issue?. Its certainly what he deserves.
"a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels."
A four year effort to arm the f**kers? Doubtful it was an effort to arm them, but training
them to act in the hegemon's interests... like upholders of democracy and humanitarian... headchopping
is just too much of an attraction
"7,000 Syrian refugees and fighters return home from Lebanon"
The 'al-Qaeda linked' fighters are mostly foreigners, paid mercenaries. They have been dumped
in Idlib along with the other terrorists. In the standard reconciliation process, real Syrians
are given the option of returning home if they renounce violence and agree to a political solution.
Fake Syrians are dumped in with the foreigners. The real Syrian fighters who reconcile have to
join the SAA units to fight against ISIS etc.
ISIS fighters were encouraged to bring their families with them (for use as human shields and
to provide settlers for the captured territory). ISIS documents recovered from Mosul indicate
that unmarried foreign mercenaries fighting with them were provided with a wife (how does that
work? do the women volunteer or are they 'volunteered'?), a car and other benefits. These families
and hangers-on would probably be the 'Syrian refugees'.
On a side note, the Kurds have released a video showing the training of special forces belonging
to their allies, the 'Syrian Defense Force' (composed largely of foreigners again). The SDF fighters
fly the FSA flag, ie they are the carefully vetted moderate head chopping rebels beloved of the
likes of McCain.
"It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable
as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's
choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change
one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what
were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan
consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness
to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the
perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus."
My own addition to the Brennan record:
Brennan was station chief for the CIA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the planning period for
9/11. The Saudi rulers do not use the US embassy as their first point of contact with Washington,
they use the CIA Brennan moved back to the US some time in (late?) 1999. The first 9/11 Saudi
hijackers arrived on US shores in January 2000. Brennan was made CIA chief of staff to Director
Tenet in 1999 and Deputy Executive Director of the CIA in March 2001.
The support for the Syrian rebels is only the latest chapter in the decades long relationship
between the spy services of Saudi Arabia and the United States, an alliance that has endured
through the Iran-contra scandal, support for the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan
and proxy fights in Africa. Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries have worked in concert.
In others, Saudi Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities.
... Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the
extent of their partnership with the CIA's covert action campaign and their direct financial
support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen
current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.
From the moment the CIA operation was started, Saudi money supported it.
...
The roots of the relationship run deep. In the late 1970s, the Saudis organized what was
known as the "Safari Club" -- a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France -- that
ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the CIA's wings
over years of abuses.
...
Prince Bandar pledged $1 million per month to help fund the contras, in recognition of the
administration's past support to the Saudis. The contributions continued after Congress cut
off funding to the contras. By the end, the Saudis had contributed $32 million, paid through
a Cayman Islands bank account.
When the Iran-contra scandal broke, and questions arose about the Saudi role, the kingdom
kept its secrets. Prince Bandar refused to cooperate with the investigation led by Lawrence
E. Walsh, the independent counsel.
In a letter, the prince declined to testify, explaining that his country's "confidences
and commitments, like our friendship, are given not just for the moment but the long run."
one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh
is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats
recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the CIA station chief." The
Saudis bought the CIA From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy
Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA
Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were
either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change
purposes (as in Libya and Syria):
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012)
In particular:
A fourth trend is that the Arab Spring has become a springboard for playing great-power geopolitics.
Syria, at the center of the region's sectarian fault lines, has emerged as the principal
battleground for such Cold War-style geopolitics. Whereas Russia is intent on keeping its only
military base outside the old Soviet Union in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus, the U.S.
seems equally determined to install a pro-Western regime in Damascus.
This goal prompted Washington to set up a London-based television station that began broadcasting
to Syria a year before major protests began there. The U.S. campaign, which includes
assembling a coalition of the willing, has been boosted by major Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and
UAE help, including cross-border flow of arms into Syria and the establishment of two new petrodollar-financed,
jihad-extolling television channels directed at Syria's majority Sunni Arabs.
The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis
(c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines,
air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon
Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program:
Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton
also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe,
Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone
damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS).
Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq,
claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have
their own separate charge sheet.
Send the lot to Scheveningen
Prison - for the most notorious war criminals. Pretty luxurious as prisons go, by all accounts.
But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy
to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks
so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see:
'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives
Within the Outlaw US Empire alone, there're several thousand people deserving of those 5,000 year
sentences, not just the three b singled out. But b does provide a great service for those of us
who refuse to support terrorists and terrorism by not paying federal taxes by providing proof
of that occurring. I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially
the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic
law as well. Thanks b!
it's the usa!!!! no one in gov't is held accountable.. obama wants to move on, lol... look forward,
not backward... creating a heaping pile of murder, mayhem and more in other parts of the world,
but never examine any of it, or hold anyone accountable.. it is the amerikkkan way...
What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks?
Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK
since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired
mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit.
Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread
the joy.
Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes
that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing
plan.
As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis
that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal
activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would
be brought to light.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/
While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes
for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's
probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around.
That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head
into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable.
At least with Trump, we can clearly witness his idiocy and grasp the level of at least some
of his damage.
Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly
or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth
suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing.
Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to
see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's
doofus back).
Agree with b. NYT is worthless. Limited hangout for sure.
I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. He'll
bring it down without going true believer on us, a la Clinton and ilk who were busy scheduling
the apocalypse.
Trump has not been tested yet with a rapidly deteriorating economy which as we all know is
coming. Something is in the air and Trump will have to face it sooner or later. The weight of
the anger of millions will be behind it...will it be too late? Will Trump finally go MAGA in what
he promised: Glas-Steagall, making trade fair for US interests, dialing back NATO...etc. etc.
I fear he can not articulate the issues at hand, like Roosevelt or Hitler. He is too bumbling.
I guess really we can only hope for an avoidance of WW. Will the world even weep for a third world
USA?
Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria
has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies
would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal.
John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington
for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would,"
McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition
in Syria.
"We certainly did that in Afghanistan. After the Russians invaded Afghanistan, we provided
them with surface-to-air capability. It'd be nice to give people that we train and equip and send
them to fight the ability to defend themselves. That's one of the fundamental principles of warfare
as I understand it," McCain said.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201510201028835944-us-stingers-missiles-syrian-rebels-mccain/
They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron and Holland
to the list of criminals hiding under their position.
The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador
to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief
architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of
the Syrian government.
Ford assured us that those taking up arms to overthrow the Syrian government were simply moderates
and democrats seeking to change Syria's autocratic system. Anyone pointing out the obviously Islamist
extremist nature of the rebellion and the foreign funding and backing for the jihadists was written
off as an Assad apologist or worse.
Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting
moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington
was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates
he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. Witness this incredible Twitter exchange
with then-ex Ambassador Ford:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/you-wont-believe-what-former-us-ambassador-robert-s-ford-said-about-al-qaedas-syrian-allies/5504906
Specially Petraeus. A US Army General, and director of the CIA You don't get more 'pillar'
of the State than that! And off he goes doing illegal arms trades, in the billions, see for ex.
Meyssan, as an ex.:
In other countries / times, he'd be shot at dawn as a traitor. But all it shows really is that
the USA does not really have a Gvmt. in the sense of a 'political structure of strong regulatory
importance with 'democratic' participation..' to keep it vague.. It has an elaborate public charade,
a kind of clumsy theatre play, that relies very heavily on the scripted MSM, on ritual, and various
distractions. Plus natch' very vicious control mechanisms at home.. another story.
Meanwhile, off stage, the actors participate and fight and ally in a whole other scene where
'disaster capitalism', 'rapine', 'mafia moves' and the worst impulses in human nature not only
bloom but are institutionalised and deployed world-wide! Covering all this up is getting increasingly
difficult -Trump presidency - one would hope US citizens no not for now.
The other two of course as well, I just find Petraeus emblematic, probably because of all the
BS about his mistress + he once mis-treated classified info or something like that, total irrelevance
spun by the media, which works.
"They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron
and Holland to the list of criminals hiding under their position."
I humbly disagree, and they sincerely believe they are helping the Syrians (plus other states)
- freedom and democracy against the brutality of Dr. Assad. I believe all these murderers are
sincere doing god works and will all go to heaven. That is one of the reasons why I refuse to
go to heaven even if gods beg me. Fuck it!
My apologies if I offend you or anyone. It's about time we look carefully beside politic and
wealth, what religion does to a human?
b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never...
Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice,
for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners.
You can include ALL the POTUS's
and their minions, since the turn of the century. " It's just business, get over it."
6 Look for signs of instigating violent behavior. As children some sociopaths torture defenseless
people and animals. This violence is always instigating, and not defensive violence. They will
create drama out of thin air, or twist what others say. They will often overreact strongly
to minor offenses. If they are challenged or confronted about it, they will point the finger
the other way, counting on the empathic person's empathy and consideration of people to protect
them, as long as they can remain undetected. Their attempt to point the finger the other way,
is both a smokescreen to being detected, and an attempt to confuse the situation.
The link is a pretty good summary. It is easy to find more respectable psychological sources
for the disorder on the internet.
NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation)
that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird.
It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and
manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives.
/s
" Here, evolution had hit on the sweetest of solutions. Such perceptions were guaranteed
to produce a faith-dependent species that believed itself to be thoroughly separate from the rest
of the animal kingdom, ...."
Interesting article, but stop reading years ago when struggled to raise a family, make a living
to survive. Debatable Is "sociopath" (Antisocial Personality Disorder) or the genes make humanly
so brutally? Very often hard to fathom the depth of human suffering be it USA, Syria or elsewhere.
Thanks sharing you thought.
What most of the msm and the echo chamber seem to be deliberately missing is all intentional.
The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their regime
change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the Russians
hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion of all anglo
antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come out with an ever
turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading and hacking the
free world ,debunked.
Hence I expect that the western oligarchs along with their pressitute
and compromised politicians will be bying up alot of bleach. They will be whitewashing for the
next three months all semblance of anything related to their fraudulent existence.
Nurenberg 2, the Hague would be to soft for these vile criminals of humanity. Look how they
had to back track on the Milosevic conviction mind u post death.
Just another day in the office for these criminals of humanity. Gee can't wait until this petro-dollar
ponzi scheme crashes hopefully we can get back o being human again. The emperor has no clothes.
43 The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their
regime change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the
Russians hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion
of all anglo antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come
out with an ever turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading
and hacking the free world,debunked.
Optimistic. Has Trump been instrumental in these? Perhaps. This would be a good reason for
Zionists to hate him. But how is it that Trump is such a bumbling idiot? Now the Senate has ratfcked
him with recess appointments. And he signed that stupid Russia Sanctions bill.
Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived
and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks.
Ms. Smale and Glenn Thrush, a White House correspondent for The Times, took a look at Ms. Merkel
and Mr. Trump, two powerful leaders "estranged by widely diverging temperaments, worldviews, leadership
styles and visions of Europe." Ms. Merkel -- who, in more than 11 years in power, has "proved uncommonly
adept at solving the puzzle-box challenges posed by the world's most unpredictable leaders" -- may
realize
there isn't a method with Mr. Trump, they wrote.
The best she has come up with so far is to cultivate a backdoor channel through the president's
daughter Ivanka, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade her father to remain in the Paris accord.
But Ms. Merkel is up for re-election in the fall, and challenging Mr. Trump has become essential
in German politics. So Ms. Merkel, the courteous daughter of a Protestant cleric, is doing something
she finds awkward: calling out Mr. Trump in public and questioning his commitment to the American
leadership that Europeans had taken for granted since World War II.
To understand Ms. Merkel's relationship with Mr. Putin, don't miss this in-depth piece on their
rivalry of history, distrust and power (Mar. 12) by Ms. Smale and Andrew Higgins, a Moscow correspondent:
Their relationship, and rivalry, is a microcosm of the sharply divergent visions clashing in
Europe and beyond, a divide made more consequential by the uncertainty over President Trump's
policy toward Russia and whether he will redefine the traditional alliances of American foreign
policy.
The Merkel-Putin relationship is defined by wariness, mutual suspicion, if also mutual respect.
Yet along the way, there have been missed opportunities and misjudgments, which are culminating
now in a moment of reckoning, as Ms. Merkel tries for another term -- and Mr. Putin's Russia is
accused of working to thwart her.
That piece also includes a nugget about talks between the two leaders in 2007: Mr. Putin let his
large black Labrador into their meeting room, even though the Kremlin had been told that Ms. Merkel
was uneasy around dogs.
"... the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC ..."
"... The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world. ..."
"... The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich. ..."
"... So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events. ..."
"... This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens. ..."
"... The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President . ..."
"... Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft ..."
"... I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate. ..."
"... They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level. ..."
"... First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors. ..."
The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately
understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together,
into a broader narrative -- the actual history of our time . History
makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don't. Propagandistic motivations
cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so
that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts
about those international events.
The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.
First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented
(via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment -- the
current news: America's aristocracy
controls both the U.S.
federal government and
press , but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance
from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly
called "America's allied nations"); and this growing international resistance
presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which
is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The
MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely
drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get
overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today's
international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires
behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC.
The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the
American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around
the world.
The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes
a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from
the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those
privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it
protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the
U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's
super-rich.
Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly
as their "policeman to the world," but also indirectly (by that means)
as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies
in line, under their control -- and that threatens those foreign aristocrats
with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy
resists the master-aristocracy's will. (International law is never enforced
against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is
the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's
billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based
international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government
actually represents .
The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand
current events.
For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control
of the world by America's billionaire-class -- into the direction of ultimately
replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances
between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy
over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America's aristocracy
is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining
the one global imperial power -- or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often
referred to the U.S. government,
"The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has
been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come."
To America's aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are "dispensable."
All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for
the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can't function otherwise.
Vassals must pay (extract from their nation's public, and then transfer) protection-money,
to the master, in order to be safe -- to retain their existing power, to exploit
their given nation's public.
The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called
"Weaponization of finance" ) by the United States and its vassals, has been
central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being
increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking
up over America's mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed
and cemented to replace the imperial system -- replace it by a system without
any clear center of global power, in the world that we're moving into.
Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire's chief weapon to impose its will
against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief
locus of the old order's fractures .
This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the
MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, ), the more that economic
sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are
increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we're entering the
backlash-phase of it.
This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately,
a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread
like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from
Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part
of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.)
Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum,
then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them
protection as Russian citizens.
On 6 March 2014, U.S. President Obama issued
"Executive Order -- Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the
Situation in Ukraine" , and ignored the internationally recognized-in-law
right of self-determination of peoples (though he recognized that right in Catalonia
and in Scotland), and he instead simply declared that Ukraine's "sovereignty"
over Crimea was sacrosanct (even though it had been imposed upon Crimeans
by the Soviet dictator -- America's enemy -- in 1954, during the Soviet
era, when America opposed, instead of favored and imposed, dictatorship around
the world, except in Iran and Guatemala, where America imposed dictatorships
even that early). Obama's Executive Order was against unnamed "persons who have
asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization
of the Government of Ukraine." He insisted that the people who had just grabbed
control of Ukraine and massacred Crimeans (his own Administration's paid far-right
Ukrainian thugs, who were
racist anti-Russians ), must be allowed to rule Crimea, regardless of what
Crimeans (traditionally a part of Russia) might -- and did -- want. America's
vassal aristocracies then
imposed their own sanctions against Russia when on 16 March 2014 Crimeans voted
overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russian Federation . Thus started the successive
rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, by the U.S. government
and its vassal-nations . (As is shown by that link, they knew that this
had been a coup and no authentic 'democratic revolution' such as the Western
press was portraying it to have been, and yet they kept quiet about it -- a
secret their public would not be allowed to know.)
It's basic knowledge about the U.S. government, and they know it, though
the public don't.) The great independent columnist Paul Craig Roberts headlined
on August 1st,
"Trump's Choices" and argued that President Donald Trump should veto the
bill despite its overwhelming support in Washington, but instead Trump signed
it into law on August 2nd and thus joined participation in the overt stage --
the Obama stage -- of the U.S. government's continuation of the Cold War that
U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had
secretly instituted against Russia on 24 February 1990 , and that, under
Obama, finally escalated into a hot war against Russia. The first phase of this
hot war against Russia is via the
"Weaponization of finance" (those sanctions). However, as usual, it's also
backed up by
major increases in physical weaponry , and by
the cooperation of America's vassals in order to surround Russia with nuclear
weapons near and on Russia's borders , in preparation for a possible
blitz first-strike nuclear attack upon Russia -- preparations that the Russian
people know about and greatly fear, but which are largely hidden by the Western
press, and therefore only very few Westerners are aware that their own governments
have become lying aggressors.
Some excellent news-commentaries have been published about this matter, online,
by a few 'alternative news' sites (and that 'alt-news' group includes all of
the reliably honest news-sites, but also includes unfortunately many sites that
are as dishonest as the mainstream ones are -- and that latter type aren't being
referred to here), such as (and only the best sites and articles will be linked-to
on this):
All three of those articles discuss how these new sanctions are driving other
nations to separate themselves, more and more, away from the economic grip of
the U.S. aristocracy, and to form instead their own alliances with one-another,
so as to defend themselves, collectively, from U.S. economic (if not also military)
aggression. Major recent news-developments on this, have included (all here
from rt dot com):
"'US, EU meddle in other countries & kill people under guise of human rights
concerns' – Duterte", and presented Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte explaining
why he rejects the U.S. aristocracy's hypocritical pronouncements and condemnations
regarding its vassals among the world's poorer and struggling nations, such
as his. Of course, none of this information is publishable in the West -- in
the Western 'democracies'. It's 'fake news', as far as The Empire is concerned.
So, if you're in The (now declining) Empire, you're not supposed to be reading
this. That's why the mainstream 'news'media (to all of which this article is
being submitted for publication, without fee, for any of them that want to break
their existing corrupt mold) don't publish
this sort of news -- 'fake news' (that's of the solidly documented type,
such as this). You'll see such news reported only in the few honest newsmedia.
The rule for the aristocracy's 'news'media is: report what happened, only on
the basis of the government's lies as to why it happened -- never
expose such lies (the official lies). What's official is
'true' . That, too, is an essential part of the imperial system.
The front cover of the American aristocracy's TIME magazine's Asian
edition, dated September 25, 2016, had been headlined
"Night Falls on the Philippines: The tragic cost of President Duterte's war
on drugs" . The 'news'-story, which was featured inside not just the Asian
but all editions, was
"Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War On Drugs" , and it portrayed
Duterte as a far-right demagogue who was giving his nation's police free reign
to murder anyone they wished to, especially the poor. On 17 July 2017, China's
Xinhua News Agency bannered
"Philippines' Duterte enjoys high approval rating at 82 percent: poll" ,
and reported: "A survey by Pulse Asia Inc. conducted from June 24 to June 29
showed that 82 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed nationwide approved the
way Duterte runs the country. Out of all the respondents, the poll said 13 percent
were undecided about Duterte's performance, while 5 percent disapproved Duterte's
performance. Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June last year, ends his
single, six-year term in 2022." Obviously, it's not likely that the TIME
cover story had actually been honest. But, of course, America's billionaires
are even more eager to overthrow Russia's President, Putin.
Western polling firms can freely poll Russians, and
do poll them on lots but not on approval or disapproval of President Putin
, because he always scores above 80%, and America's aristocrats also don't like
finding that confirmed, and certainly don't want to report it. Polling is routinely
done in Russia, by Russian pollsters, on voters' ratings of approval/disapproval
of Putin's performance. Because America's aristocrats don't like the findings,
they say that Russians are in such fear of Putin they don't tell the truth about
this, or else that Russia's newsmedia constantly lie about him to cover up the
ugly reality about him.
However, the Western academic journal Post-Soviet Affairs (which is
a mainstream Western publication) included in their January/February 2017 issue
a study,
"Is Putin's Popularity Real?" and the investigators reported the results
of their own poll of Russians, which was designed to tap into whether such fear
exists and serves as a distorting factor in those Russian polls, but concluded
that the findings in Russia's polls could not be explained by any such factor;
and that, yes, Putin's popularity among Russians is real. The article's closing
words were: "Our results suggest that the main obstacle at present to the emergence
of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid
to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular."
The U.S. aristocracy's efforts to get resistant heads-of-state overthrown
by 'democratic revolutions' (which usually is done by the U.S. government to
overthrow democratically elected Presidents -- such as Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende,
Zelaya, Yanukovych, and attempted against Assad, and wished against Putin, and
against Duterte -- not overthrowing dictators such as the U.S. government always
claims) have almost consistently failed, and therefore coups and invasions have
been used instead, but those techniques demand that certain realities be suppressed
by their 'news'media in order to get the U.S. public to support what the government
has done -- the U.S. government's international crime, which is never prosecuted.
Lying 'news' media in order to 'earn' the American public's support, does not
produce enthusiastic support, but, at best, over the long term, it produces
only tepid support (support that's usually below the level of that of the governments
the U.S. overthrows). U.S. Presidents never score above 80% except when they
order an invasion in response to a violent attack by foreigners, such as happened
when George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11, but those
80%+ approval ratings fade quickly; and,
after the 1960s, U.S. Presidential job-approvals have generally been below 60%
.
President Trump's ratings are currently around 40%. Although Trump is not
as conservative -- not as far-right -- as the U.S. aristocracy wants him to
be, he is fascist ; just
not enough to satisfy them (and their oppostion isn't because he's unpopular
among the public; it's more the case that he's unpopular largely because their
'news'media concentrate on his bads, and distort his goods to appear bad --
e.g., suggesting that he's not sufficiently aggressive against Russia). His
fascism on domestic affairs is honestly reported in the aristocracy's 'news'media,
which appear to be doing all they can to get him replaced by his Vice President,
Mike Pence. What's not reported by their media is the fascism of the U.S. aristocracy
itself, and of their international agenda (global conquest). That's their secret,
of which their public must be (and is) constantly kept ignorant. America's aristocracy
has almost as much trouble contolling its domestic public as it has controlling
its foreign vassals. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most
recently, of
They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of
CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS:
The Event that Created Christianity .
Fascism is defined as a system that combines private monopolies and despotic
government power. It is sometimes racist but not necessarily so. By the
correct definition, every President since at least Herbert Hoover has been
fascist to some degree.
One bit of silver lining in the deep-state propaganda effort to destabilise
the Trump regime is the damage to the legitimacy of the yankee imperium
it confers, making it easier for vassal states to begin to jump ship. The
claims of extraterritorial power used for economic warfare might confer
a similar benefit, since the erstwhile allies will want to escape the dominance
of the yankee dollar to be able to escape the economic extortion practised
by the yankee regime to achieve its control abroad.
" America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble controlling its domestic
public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. "
These foreign vassals had a cozy existence as long as the USA made it
clear it wanted to control the world. Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs
Ben Bot made this quite clear whan the Netherlands did not have a USA ambassador
for three months or so, Ben Bot complained to the USA that there should
be a USA ambassador.
He was not used to take decisions all by himself.
Right now Europe's queen Merkel has the same problem, unlike Obama Trump
does not hold her hand.
Yes, of course. I don't know about before Herbert Hoover, but certainly
during the 50s, business -- monopolistic or oligopolistic (like the old
Detroit auto industry) -- and government (including the MIC) were closely
integrated. Such was, indeed, as aspect of progressivism. It was considered
by most to be a good thing, or at least to be the natural and normal state
of affairs. Certainly, the system back then included what amounted to price-fixing
as a normal business practice.
On the other hand, the "despotic" thing is less clear. Some assert that
since FDR was effectively a dictator during World War II, that therefore
the Democratic Party represented despotism ever since FDR (or maybe ever
since Wilson).
Having lived through that period of time, I have to say that I am not
so sure about that: if it was despotism, it was a heavily democratic and
beneficent despotism. However, it is evident that there was a fascist skein
running through the entirety of USA's political history throughout the 20th
Century.
Fascism originates from Mussolini's Italy. It was anti socialist and
anti communist, it of course was pro Italian, Italy's great deeds in antiquity,
the Roman empire, were celebrated.
One can see this as racist, but as Italy consisted of mostly Italians,
it was not racist in the present meaning of the word at all. Italy was very
hesitant in persecuting jews, for example. Hitler depised Mussolini, Mussolini
was an ally that weakened Germany. Hitler and Mussolini agreed in their
hatred of communism.
Calling Hitler a fascist just creates confusion. All discussions of what
nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.
'Aristocracy' and 'fascist' are all weasel words. (I'm the only true
fascist btw, and it's National Humanism, National Left, or Left-Right.)
US is an ethnogarchy, and that really matters. The Power rules, but the
nature of the Power is shaped by the biases of the ruling ethnic group.
It is essentially ruled by Jewish Supremacists.
Now, if not for Jews, another group might have supreme power, and it
might be problematic in its own way. BUT, the agenda would be different.
Suppose Chinese-Americans controlled much of media, finance, academia,
deep state, and etc. They might be just as corrupt or more so than Jews,
BUT their agenda would be different. They would not be hateful to Iran,
Russia, Syria, or to Palestinians. And they won't care about Israel.
They would have their own biases and agendas, but they would still be
different from Jewish obsessions.
Or suppose the top elites of the US were Poles. Now, US policy may be
very anti-Russian BUT for reasons different from those of Jews.
So, we won't learn much by just throwing words like 'fascist' or 'aristocrat'
around.
We have to be more specific. Hitler was 'fascist' and so was Rohm. But
Hitler had Rohm wiped out.
Surely, a Zionist 'fascist' had different goals than an Iranian 'fascist'.
One might say the Old South African regime was 'fascist'. Well, today's
piggish ANC is also 'fascist', if by 'fascist' we mean power-hungry tyrants.
But black 'fascists' want something different from what white 'fascists'
wanted.
It's like all football players are in football. But to understand what
is going on, we have to know WHICH team they play for.
Jewish Elites don't just play for power. They play for Jewish power.
Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling
goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek
ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never
been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft.
I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites
is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate
sting, but perhaps it's more accurate.
Or maybe we should get into the habit of calling them the "ruling mafiosi."
I'm open to suggestions.
and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments
against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the
master-aristocracy's will.
They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon
media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads
skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe,
as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has
been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial
chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's
economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level.
No doubt about it. That's how thugs rule; there are plenty of quivering
sell outs to do the rulers' bidding. Look at the sickening standing ovations
given to Netanyahoo by supposed "US" congresscreeps.
@Fidelios Automata Abraham Lincoln's economic policy was to combine
private monopolies with the Federal Government under a President like him:
one who ordered the arrests of newspaper editors/publishers who opposed
his policies and more 'despotic' goodies.
While the article favorably informs, and was written so as to engage
the reader, it lacks reasonable solutions to its problems presented. One
solution which I never read or hear about, is mandated MRI's, advanced technology,
and evidence supported psychological testing of sitting and potential political
candidates. The goal would be to publicly reveal traits of psychopathy,
narcissism, insanity, etc. Of course, the most vocal opposition would come
from those who intend to hide these traits. The greatest evidence for the
likelyhood of this process working, is the immense effort those who would
be revealed have historically put into hiding what they are.
Eric Zuesse is a nasty, hardcore leftist in the senses that matter most.
Often, he reveals his Leftism to be based on his hatred of Christianity
and his utter contempt for white Christians. But there is that dead clock
being correct twice per day matter. In this article, Zuesse gets a good
deal right.
First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by
Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst
kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because
if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be
trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the
little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors.
It is the Devil's game nearly perfected by the grand alliance of
WASPs and Jews, with their Saudi hangers-on.
Second, it is fair to label America's Deep State fascist , Elite
Fascist. And we should never forget that while Jews are no more than 3%
of the American population, they now are at least 30% (my guess would be
closer to 59%) of the most powerful Deep Staters. That means that per capita
Jews easily are the fascist-inclined people in America.
The most guilty often bray the loudest at others in hope of getting them
blamed and escaping punishment. And this most guilty group – Deep State
Elites evolved from the original WASP-Jewish alliance against Catholics
– is dead-set on making the majority of whites in the world serfs.
Third, the US 'weaponization of finance' seems to have been used against
the Vatican to force Benedict XVI to resign so that Liberal Jesuit (sorry
for the redundancy) Jorge Bergolgio could be made Pope. The Jesuits are
far and away the most Leftist and gay part of the Catholic Church, and the
American Deep State wanted a gay-loving, strongly pro-Jewish, strongly pro-Moslem
'immigrant' as Pope.
Fourth, that America's Leftists of every stripe, America's Neocons, and
America's 'compassionate conservatives' all hate Putin is all you should
need to know that Putin is far, far better for Russia's working class, Russia's
non-Elites, than our Elites are for us.
Charlottesville, Occupy Wall St And The Neoliberal Police State. Charlottesville
was a Neoliberal ambush designed to crush the Alt Right once and for all.
This story must be told.
No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling
"aristocracy." Lots of Jews.
Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy."
Another common misconception is to associate the mafia with Italians
mostly. The Italian mafiosi are pikers compared to the American ones of
Eastern European descent. The real bosses are not the Italians.
Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, Meyer
Lansky and many many others.
Even the Jewish Virtual Library admits to some of it.
"... Twenty-seven years. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, at least. Trillions of dollars squandered? Hardly. This was not an accident. ..."
"... Every bullet fired, every bomb dropped, every missile launched, every gallon of fuel burned, every HumVee destroyed by an IED, every helicopter shot down, every boot on the ground, every private military contractor's paycheck, every MRE, every Kevlar vest, every pill, every helmet, every uniform, every body bag, every coffin and every American flag draped over it throughout all those many long years of war represents money taken from you and given to a small group of people you'll never meet. They hide much of that money offshore so it won't be taxed, and use the rest to buy politicians who tell you the country is broke, we're about austerity now, so no more school lunches for your kids and no more Medicaid for your mother. ..."
We have been at war in Iraq, in one form or another, for 27 years. The best estimates of the cost
for all this systematic butchery, combined with the expense of simultaneous war in Afghanistan, reach
into the trillions of dollars.
... ... ...
For the historical record: There was the initial build-up of Desert Shield, followed by Desert
Storm and its lethal cloud of depleted uranium. There were the sanctions/bombing Clinton years when
we blew up sewage treatment plants and denied children vaccines in an ongoing act of biological warfare.
Then, there was the second Bush invasion based on unprosecuted criminal lies, the long massacre of
occupation and torture, the Obama occupation and drone war, the drawdown, the draw-back-up because
of ISIS. Now, there is the current trembling mayhem of air strikes, car bombs, militias, factions,
confusion and an overwhelming ocean of refugees.
No one in politics or the media seems capable of recognizing this series of events for what it
truly is: One large event with a tangible beginning, a middle and no end in sight. There is no dicing
it up. It is all of a piece, one long war, the longest by miles in our nation's history. The most
recent invasion and occupation saw nearly 5,000 US service members killed and close to 40,000 wounded.
That casualty count does not include the many thousands of veterans who have returned home after
multiple deployments suffering from a variety of maladies caused by prolonged exposure to chemicals,
combat and carnage.
... ... ...
Twenty-seven years. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, at least. Trillions of dollars squandered? Hardly.
This was not an accident. It was, and continues to be, a spectacular payday.
Every bullet fired, every bomb dropped, every missile launched, every gallon of fuel burned, every
HumVee destroyed by an IED, every helicopter shot down, every boot on the ground, every private military
contractor's paycheck, every MRE, every Kevlar vest, every pill, every helmet, every uniform, every
body bag, every coffin and every American flag draped over it throughout all those many long years
of war represents money taken from you and given to a small group of people you'll never meet. They
hide much of that money offshore so it won't be taxed, and use the rest to buy politicians who tell
you the country is broke, we're about austerity now, so no more school lunches for your kids and
no more Medicaid for your mother.
William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout.
He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What
Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections
on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why
It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon.
He lives and works in New Hampshire.
Ray McGovern raise important fact: DNC hide evidence from FBI outsourcing everything to CrowdStrike. This is the most unexplainable
fact in the whole story. One hypotheses that Ray advanced here that there was so many hacks into DNC that they wanted to hide.
Another important point is CIA role in elections, and specifically
John O. Brennan behaviour. Brennan's 25 years with the CIA
included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst and as station chief in Saudi Arabia.
McGovern thing that Brennon actually controlled Obama. And in his opinion Brennan was the main leaker of Trump surveillance information.
Notable quotes:
"... Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment. Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong. ..."
I really like Ray... I watch and listen , he seems to use logic, reason and facts in his assessments.. I'm surprised CIA and the
deep state allow him to operate ... stay safe Ray...
McGovern, you idiot. To try to put Trump on Hillary's level is complete stupidity. The war with Russia or nothing was avoided
with a Trump victory. Remember the NATO build up on the Russian border preparing for a Hillary win? Plus, if Hillary won, justice
and law in the USA would be over with forever. The Germans dont know sht about the USA to say their little cute phrase. Trump
is a very calm mannered man and his hands on the nuke button is an issue only to those who watch the fake MSM. And no the NSA
has not released anything either. Wrong on that point too.
The German expression of USA having a choice between cholera and plague is ignorant. McGovern is wrong ....everyone knew HRC
was a criminal. McGovern is wrong... Jill Stein in not trustworthy. A vote for Jill Stein was a vote away from Trump. If Jill
Stein or HRC were elected their would be no environment left to save. Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment.
Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern
is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong.
Another month or so and the DHS may offer a color-coding system to help the sheeple understand various levels of confidence.
Green - Moderate Confidence Blue - High Confidence Yellow - Very High Confidence Orange - Extremely High Confidence Red - Based
on Actual Fact
The last category may be one of the signs of the apocalypse.
In short, some sort of battle in the Krasnogorovka sector, which the Ukrainian forces
lost:
"Here is a chronicle of events:
On the night from Thursday to Friday, from 13 to 14 July, the APU opened a mortar shell at
Staromikhaylovka. I emphasize, not our positions, namely residential buildings. Two houses
were damaged. One civilian was wounded. In the morning there was a report of the
correspondent of VGTRK Alexander Sladkov.
– On the night from Friday to Saturday from 14 to 15 July, the shelling was repeated,
but already more powerful, artillery worked.
– On Saturday evening, July 15, again, there was artillery shelling.
– On Sunday evening, July 16, again shelling and again destroyed houses in
Staromikhaylovki.
– In the morning there was a report about the press service of the NM DNR.
– In the night from Monday to Tuesday 17 on 18 July, a civilian died in
Staromikhaylovka, one more civilian was killed and another two were injured, another civilian
was injured in Kuibyshev district.
– On Tuesday, July 18th, that part of the front was quiet.
– But on Wednesday July 19, Thursday July 20 and until Friday July 21, every evening
and night Petrovsky district, Staromikhailovka Kirov district and the Kuibyshev district was
subjected to strong mortar and artillery strikes. Every day there were wounded civilians, as
well as destroyed houses and infrastructure.
Most likely, from 19 to 20 July, an order was given to suppress the mortar and artillery
batteries of the APU with available means, which have been killing civilians and military
republics for a week already. The next day, Ukrainian media filled the news with the fact
that Novorussians attacked their positions and even beaten something there. Reported about
the many dead servicemen of the Armed Forces and so on. Although according to the information
provided by the Ukrainian media, 9 soldiers were quoted, and only 4 were killed in the
Krasnogorovka district.
Notice in the Svetlodarsk arc area in December 2016, they had killed 80 soldiers and
injured more than 200, but there was a silence in the Ukrainian media. The same situation
occurred with the exacerbation of the YaBP in January 2017, there were also many deaths of
about 60 servicemen and about 120 were wounded and were also quiet.
And here 9 was lost on all 450 km to the front and such attention."
As always, not the least indication that the Ukrainian forces have upped their game since
February 2015...
"... The Trump administration lost the initiative when Trump failed to strike at the security state's Achilles heel: international
repudiation of CIA impunity. He could still do a few things to turn the flank of CIA's attacks: ..."
"... Submit a good-faith ratification package for the Rome Statute ..."
"... The Rome Statute is first and foremost a commitment to prosecute or extradite officials suspected of serious crimes. Systematic
and widespread CIA torture is the open-and-shut case, but the US command structure is also provably guilty of the crime of aggression.
..."
The Trump administration lost the initiative when Trump failed to strike at the security state's Achilles heel: international
repudiation of CIA impunity. He could still do a few things to turn the flank of CIA's attacks:
* Pardon Sirhan Sirhan
* Order immediate release of NARA records in accordance with law
* Submit a good-faith ratification package for the Rome Statute
* Give tacit approval to international exposure of nuclear and biological weapons proliferation by CIA
This will provoke a crisis where the soft coup is constrained by concerted pressure from civil society and the international
community.
The Rome Statute is first and foremost a commitment to prosecute or extradite officials suspected of serious crimes. Systematic
and widespread CIA torture is the open-and-shut case, but the US command structure is also provably guilty of the crime of aggression.
US victims including Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen have ratified the Convention on the non-applicability of statutory limitations
to war crimes and crimes against humanity, so the US cannot run the clock out, as it has tried to do by failing to criminalize
torture and decriminalizing its favorite war crimes, outrages against human dignity and denial of the rights of trial. CIA proliferation
is a boiling issue in the treaty bodies but it's completely suppressed from US public awareness.
If Trump can't take the bull by the horns, CIA* is going to destroy him.
* This is CIA in Fletcher Prouty's sense, including deep-cover CIA agents inserted throughout the three branches of government.
The DCI has the get-out-of-jail card, so this is all CIA's show. All the other agency 'factions' work for CIA
"... In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often intervened against independent foreign governments, which challenged Washington 's quest for global domination. This was especially true during the eight years of President Barack Obama's administration where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of 'regime change'. ..."
"... The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US political, administrative and security structures are involved in this process. The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction between operating within constitutional norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad. ..."
"... The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries. ..."
"... Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the political parties seek to delegitimize the election process and undermine the President-elect. The mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip, decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents. ..."
"... Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the elected president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and US celebrity icon) as a 'tool of Moscow .' The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA, Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump's overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia were acts of treason. ..."
"... The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate 'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take the bite' on the 'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero' and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'! ..."
"... Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former 'British official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d'état. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump's policies) on the United States could be profound " ..."
"... Mass propaganda, a 'red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason ('Trump, the Stooge of Moscow') resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany . A broad 'coalition' has joined hands with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA) and imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits their drive for world power and a US dominated global political order. ..."
The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive
elections, unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation
has occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and
the George W. Bush victory over 'Al' Gore in 2000. But despite the dubious electoral outcomes in
these cases, the 'defeated' candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying
and peaceful protests to register their opposition.
These norms are no longer operative. During the election process, and in the run-up to the inauguration
of US President-Elect Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were challenged and coercive
institutions were activated to disqualify the elected president and desperate overt public pronouncements
threatened the entire electoral order.
We will proceed by outlining the process that is used to undermine the constitutional order, including
the electoral process and the transition to the inauguration of the elected president.
Regime Change in America
In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often
intervened against independent foreign governments, which challenged Washington 's quest for global
domination. This was especially true during the eight years of President Barack Obama's administration
where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups were routine
– under an unofficial doctrine of 'regime change'.
The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined
in US policy. All US political, administrative and security structures are involved in this process.
The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction between operating within constitutional
norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.
Today the distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been obliterated by the state and
quasi-official mass media. The US security apparatus is now active in manipulating the domestic democratic
process of electing leaders and transitioning administrations.
The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated
and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity
of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries.
Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the
political parties seek to delegitimize the election process and undermine the President-elect. The
mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip, decades-old sex
scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents.
Alongside the media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come together to question the
legitimacy of the November 2016 election results. Even after a recount confirmed Trump's victory,
a massive propaganda campaign was launched to impeach the president-elect even before he takes office
– by claiming Trump was an 'enemy agent'.
The Democratic Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump militants sought to blackmail
members of the Electoral College to change their vote in violation of their own mandate as state
electors. This was unsuccessful, but unprecedented.
Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia
campaign designed to paint the elected president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and
US celebrity icon) as a 'tool of Moscow .' The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA, Congress
and Obama Administration insisted that Trump's overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with
Russia were acts of treason.
The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate
'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump
was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony documents (arriving via a former British
intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the major corporate
media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take
the bite' on the 'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero'
and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the
CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'!
Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication
by way of a former 'British official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited,
the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures
hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership
was involved in a domestic coup d'état.
CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his
skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly
charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief
Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts
(of Trump's policies) on the United States could be profound "
Clearly CIA Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a sinister, unaccountable power
dictating policy to an elected US president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia Capo, he threatens
the physical security of the incoming leader.
From a Scratch to Gangrene
The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and
rightist politicos, the corporate mass media and the 'progressive' websites and pundits providing
ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated 'regime change'.
Whatever the limitations of our electoral norms- and there are many – they are now being degraded
and discarded in a march toward an elite coup, involving elements of the militarist empire and 'in`telligence'
hierarchy.
Mass propaganda, a 'red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason ('Trump,
the Stooge of Moscow') resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany .
A broad 'coalition' has joined hands with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA) and
imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits
their drive for world power and a US dominated global political order.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New
York. http://petras.lahaine.org/
And used this possibility again to advertize his hypothesis that Russians hacked the elections... Should not be a rule for former
CIA directors to keep mouth shut ?
Notable quotes:
"... And Brennan is not exactly a tabula rasa. As he observed in his comment, his ire derives from the claims over Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election, a narrative that Brennan himself has helped to create, to include his shady and possibly illegal contacting of foreign intelligence services to dig up dirt on the GOP presidential candidate and his associates. The dirt was dutifully provided by several European intelligence services which produced a report claiming, inter alia, that Donald Trump had urinated on a Russian prostitute in a bed previously slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama. ..."
I was particularly bemused by the
comment
by former CIA Chief John Brennan who denounced Trump's performance during the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg over the lack of
a hard line against Putin and his failure to support the "word of the U.S. intelligence community" about Russian interference in
the recent election. In an interview Brennan complained "He said it's an honor to meet President Putin. An honor to meet the individual
who carried out the assault against our election? To me, it was a dishonorable thing to say."
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter
has demonstrated how the "word" of U.S. intel is not exactly what it might seem to be. And Brennan is not exactly a tabula
rasa. As he observed in his comment, his ire derives from the claims over Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election, a narrative
that Brennan himself has helped to create, to include his shady and possibly illegal contacting of foreign intelligence services
to dig up dirt on the GOP presidential candidate and his associates. The dirt was dutifully provided by several European intelligence
services which produced a report claiming, inter alia, that Donald Trump had urinated on a Russian prostitute in a bed previously
slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.
And along the way I have been assiduously trying to figure out the meaning of last week's reports regarding the contacts of Trump
Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with two alleged Russian agents while reportedly seeking the dirt on Hillary.
As it turns out, there
may not have been any discussion of Hillary, though possibly something having to do with irregularities in DNC fundraising surfaced,
and there may have been a bit more about the Magnitsky Act and adopting Russian babies.
Barring any new revelations backed up by actual facts revealing that something substantive like a quid pro quo actually took place,
the whole affair appears to be yet another example of a politically inspired fishing expedition. This observation is not necessarily
naivete on my part nor a denial that it all might have been an intelligence operation, but it is an acceptance of the fact that probing
and maneuvering is all part and parcel of what intelligence agencies do when they are dealing with adversaries and very often even
with friends. It does not necessarily imply that Moscow was seeking to overthrow American democracy even if it was trying to advance
its own interests.
"... But with nothing to show for the delay so far, Russian officials have been issuing repeated statements that their patience is wearing thin. ..."
"... On Tuesday, frustrated by the failure of a meeting the day before in Washington to make any headway on the matter, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a blunt statement . In it, the ministry warned that "if Washington does not address this and other concerns, including persistent efforts to hinder the operation of Russia's diplomatic missions, Russia has the right to take retaliatory measures in accordance with the principle of reciprocity." ..."
"... Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister, said any American preconditions for the return of the diplomatic property were unacceptable. Mr. Lavrov was asked at a news conference on Monday in Minsk, Belarus, about statements emanating from Washington that the compounds should not be handed back without getting something in return. Mr. Lavrov called the seizure "robbery in broad daylight" and said Russian control over the property was enshrined in a bilateral treaty. He blamed the continuing standoff, as Russian officials often do, on "Russophobia" in Washington that he hoped would eventually wane. ..."
"... Mr. Lavrov said he was sure there must be "sensible people" in the Trump administration who would realize that the seizure of the compounds and the expulsion of the diplomats were a last-ditch attempt by the Obama administration to destroy relations in a manner that the Trump administration would find difficult to fix. ..."
A 45-acre Russian diplomatic compound near Centreville, Md., that was seized in December 2016.
After President Trump's victory in November, Michael T. Flynn, who went on to become the national
security adviser
for 24 days
, prevailed upon President Vladimir V. Putin to
refrain from retaliating
, with the promise that United States policy toward Russia would be
far more accommodating under a Trump administration.
Mr. Trump, at the time president-elect, praised Mr. Putin's restraint,
posting
on Twitter
, "Great move on delay" and "I always knew he was very smart!"
But with nothing to show for the delay so far, Russian officials have been issuing repeated
statements that their patience is wearing thin.
Russia began focusing attention on the two seized compounds in the lead up to the
first meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump
at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany,
on July 7.
Both the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry mentioned them frequently, hinting that the diplomatic
retreats were perhaps something Mr. Trump could easily deliver as a friendly gesture for the first
meeting. Mr. Putin did raise the issue with the American president, according to Dmitri S. Peskov,
the Kremlin spokesman.
But with Trump associates under investigation for ties with the Russians, the president is hesitant
to send any signals of weakness. So it did not happen then, either. Since that meeting, the official
tone has turned more belligerent, with Russia threatening to expel American diplomats to match the
35 Russian diplomatic staff members kicked
out
of the United States at the same time that the two compounds were seized.
On Tuesday, frustrated by the failure of a meeting the day before in Washington to make any
headway on the matter, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a
blunt statement
. In it, the ministry warned that "if Washington does not address this and other
concerns, including persistent efforts to hinder the operation of Russia's diplomatic missions, Russia
has the right to take retaliatory measures in accordance with the principle of reciprocity."
The deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told the news agency Interfax on Tuesday, "The fact
that this issue hasn't been settled actually poisons the atmosphere and makes a lot of things extremely
complicated."
Mr. Ryabkov and the United States under secretary of state, Thomas A. Shannon, discussed the property
in talks in Washington on Monday.
Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister, said any American preconditions for the return of
the diplomatic property were unacceptable. Mr. Lavrov was asked at a news conference on Monday in
Minsk, Belarus, about statements emanating from Washington that the compounds should not be handed
back without getting something in return. Mr. Lavrov called the seizure "robbery in broad daylight"
and said Russian control over the property was enshrined in a bilateral treaty. He blamed the continuing
standoff, as Russian officials often do, on "Russophobia" in Washington that he hoped would eventually
wane.
Mr. Lavrov said he was sure there must be "sensible people" in the Trump administration who
would realize that the seizure of the compounds and the expulsion of the diplomats were a last-ditch
attempt by the Obama administration to destroy relations in a manner that the Trump administration
would find difficult to fix.
And on Tuesday, Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in a conference call with journalists
that "our patience is still running out."
Jason Ditz Posted on
July 13, 2017 Categories
News Tags Iraq The Iraqi Defense
Ministry has
promised an investigation today after videos emerged of Facebook showing Iraqi soldiers in
Mosul killing detainees, saying they were aware of the reports and such incidents wouldn't be
tolerated.
A second video from the same Facebook page, touting the "heroes" of Iraq's Army 16th division,shows
Iraqi soldiers, again in uniform, killing an unarmed man kneeling in front of a car. Two other
videos are on the page, but those only show savage beatings and no apparent deaths.
Revenge killing has been a consistent fact of Iraqi military offensives "liberating" Sunni
cities from ISIS, though the videos show an increase in brazenness, if nothing else, as the troops
clearly know they're being recorded committing war crimes, and are confident that at the end of
the day the Iraqi government will look the other way, as they have so often in the past.
"... "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" ..."
"... Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: " Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'. ..."
"... Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints. ..."
"... Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more! ..."
"... Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen! ..."
"... Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party. ..."
"... This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary. ..."
"... Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.) ..."
"... Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches. ..."
"... They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. ..."
"... Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act ..."
Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory
from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning
in the 1990's progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation
of the US's corporate for-profit medical system into a national 'Medicare For All' public
program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation
and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who
pursued the exact opposite agenda.
Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the
Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the
far right.
To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are
and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent
decades.
We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply
involved.
We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from
retreat to surrender.
We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives' large-scale, long-term embrace
of far-right ideology and practice.
Progressives by Name and Posture
Progressives purport to embrace 'progress', the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society
and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption
and good governance, based on democratic procedures.
Progressives prided themselves as appealing to 'reason, diplomacy and conciliation', not brute
force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.
Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward
the 'good society', free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust
wars.
Progressives in Historical Perspective
In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing
extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation
while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.
They denounced militarism 'in general' but supported a series of 'wars to end all wars'
. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged
under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates
and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.
Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and
defended the Bill of Rights.
Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.
Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the 'left
wing' of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil
liberties.
Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and
electoral means to advance African American rights.
Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary
of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.
Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee.
They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous
Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.
In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by
the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.
The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970's
when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers
especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.
The Retreat of the Progressives
By the late 1970's the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war,
civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).
The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment
from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their 'numbers' were up, their caliber had declined,
as they sought to 'fit in' with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President's party.
Without the pressure of the 'populist street' the 'Progressives-turned-Democrats' adapted
to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate
elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos
about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took
office. Yet the ability to influence the 'electoral rhetoric' was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient
justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.
Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party,
(their self-proclaimed 'boring from within' strategy), they would capture the party membership,
neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform
the party into a 'vehicle for progressive changes'.
Upon their successful 'deep penetration' the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized
mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists
and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable 'centrist' Democrats.
These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse
with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.
The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade
Progressives adapted the 'crab strategy': Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.
Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated
by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of
President 'Bill' Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression
in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured
Israel's victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction
of Lebanon!
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent
over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening
the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector.
When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs
without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon
their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support
and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.
Progressives followed Clinton's deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing
jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve's free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.
Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats'
'hard right' policies.
The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive's to temporarily
trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested
Bush's savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media
reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions
of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from
Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations' infrastructure.
Progressives embraced Israel's bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously
in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State.
They supported Israel's bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.
Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of
peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state
decrees by the Republican Administration.
Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender
While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly 'leveraged'
hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic
Party campaign for Barack Obama, 'Wall Street's First Black President'.
Progressives had given up their quest to 'realign' the Democratic Party 'from within':
they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers
for the election and re-election of the warmongering 'Peace Candidate' Obama. After the election,
Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined
hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives' historical legacy.
Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American's
'First Black' President's bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet
and empty.
When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers,
while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized
the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama's Presidential decision to protect and reward
the mega-swindlers.
Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate.
The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the
assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when
Obama's 'kill orders' extended to the 'mistaken' murder of his target's children and other family
member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the
'first black American President' when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers
were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.
Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers
of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors
while supporting the policies of their 'first black President'.
Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were
now the price they would pay to remain part of the "Democratic coalition' (sic).
The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the
Obama's free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation
and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under
Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation
into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the 'deplorables'.
With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid
caveat: the Democratic Party 'Socialist' Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate
Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.
Sander's Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate.
The 'Bernie' eventually 'sheep-dogged' his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral.
Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding
voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders' round up of the motley progressive
herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives
not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton's nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda,
they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump's demagogic, nationalist, working
class rhetoric which was designed to agitate 'the deplorables'. They even turned on the working
class voters, dismissing them as 'irredeemable' racists and illiterates or 'white trash' when
they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the 'fly-over' states of the central US.
Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat
and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate
its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats' promotion
of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected
officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared
from their bastardized 'identity-centered' ideology.
Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover's
FBI tactics: "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian
banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" For progressives, 'Russia-gate'
defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.
Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: "Russia intervened and decided
the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted
against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference
was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected
Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly
elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate
of 'Deploralandia'.
Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI,
and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger
or footprints.
The Progressives' far right - turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long
as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed
to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of 'psychologically
unfit to lead' – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American
Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential
coup d'état on behalf of the Far Right!
Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!
In return, President Trump began to 'out-militarize' the Progressives by escalating US involvement
in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike
against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary
terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles 'Presidential'.
Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over
2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million
more!
Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained
when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives
out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They
chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's
embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions
of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological
weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!
Conclusion
Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching
peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented
immigrants to their expulsion under their 'First Black' President; from thoughtful mass media critics
to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state;
from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his 'dirty tricks' to camp followers for the 'intelligence
community' in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.
Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating
to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.
Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties
with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging
up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance
to mindless collaboration.
But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued
the exact opposite agenda.
Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph.
There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave
us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with
progressives to bolt the party.
This piece accurately traces the path from Progressive to Maoist. It's a pity the Republican
Party is also a piece of shit. I think it was Sara Palin who said "We have two parties. Pick one."
This should be our collective epitaph.
This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist
fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary.
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as
appeasement and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
The great Jimmy Dore is a big thorn for the Democrats. From my blog:
Apr 29, 2017 – Obama is Scum!
Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during
eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported
by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read
about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which
can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless
presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money
up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and
speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.)
Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering
the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign
for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation
this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then
he travels to Europe for more paid speeches.
Obama gets over $200,000 a year in retirement, just got a $65 million deal, so doesn't need
more money. Why would a multi-millionaire ex-president fly around the globe collecting huge speaking
fees from world corporations just after his political party was devastated in elections because
Americans think the Democratic party represents Wall Street? The great Jimmy Dore expressed his
outrage at Obama and the corrupt Democratic party in this great video.
Left in the good old days meant socialist, socialist meant that governments had the duty of
redistributing income from rich to poor. Alas in Europe, after 'socialists' became pro EU and
pro globalisation, they in fact became neoliberal. Both in France and the Netherlands 'socialist'
parties virtually disappeared.
So what nowadays is left, does anyone know ?
Then the word 'progressive'. The word suggests improvement, but what is improvement, improvement
for whom ? There are those who see the possibility for euthanasia as an improvement, there are
thos who see euthanasia as a great sin.
Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.
They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious
chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering
in full flower throughout his second term. But, hey, the brother now has five mansions, collects
half a mill per speech to the Chosen People on Wall Street, and parties for months at a time at
exclusive resorts for billionaires only.
Obviously, he's got the world by the tail and you don't. Hope he comes to the same end as Gaddaffi
and Ceaușescu. Maybe the survivors of nuclear Armageddon can hold a double necktie party with
Killary as the second honored guest that day.
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas.
You left out the other Roosevelt.
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party
bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act
Hilarious!
Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump
for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!
so it's not just conservative conspiracy theory stuff as some might argue.
Still, the overall point of this essay isn't affected all that much. Open borders is still
a "right wing" (in the sense this author uses the term) policy–pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Business.
So Obama was still doing the bidding of the donor class in their quest for cheap labor.
I've seen pro-immigration types try to use the Obama-deportation thing to argue that we don't
need more hardcore policies. After all, even the progressive Democrat Obama was on the ball when
it came to policing our borders, right?! Who needed Trump?
@Carlton Meyer If Jimmy keeps up these attacks on Wall Street, the Banksters, and rent-seekers
he is going to get run out of the Progressive movement for dog-whistling virulent Anti-Semitism.
Look at how the media screams at Trump every time he mentions Wall Street and the banks.
Mr. Petra has penned an excellent and very astute piece. Allow me a little satire on our progressive
friends, entitled "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".
The early socialist/progressive travellers were well-intentioned but naïve in their understanding
of human nature and fanatical about their agenda. To move the human herd forward, they had no
compulsions about resorting to harsher and harsher prodding and whipping. They felt entitled to
employ these means because, so they were convinced, man has to be pushed to move forward and they,
the "progressives", were the best qualified to lead the herd. Scoundrels, psychopaths, moral defectives,
and sundry other rascals then joined in the whipping game, some out of the sheer joy of wielding
the whip, others to better line their pockets.
So the "progressive" journey degenerates into a forced march. The march becomes the progress,
becoming both the means and the end at the same time. Look at the so-called "progressive" today
and you will see the fanatic and the whip-wielder, steadfast about the correctness of his beliefs.
Tell him/her/it that you are a man or a woman and he retorts "No, you are free to choose, you
are genderless". What if you decline such freedom? "Well, then you are a bigot, we will thrash
you out of your bigotry", replies the progressive. "May I, dear Sir/Madam/Whatever, keep my hard-earned
money in my pocket for my and my family's use" you ask. "No, you first have to pay for our peace-making
wars, then pay for the upkeep of refugees, besides which you owe a lot of back taxes that are
necessary to run this wonderful Big Government of ours that is leading you towards greener and
greener pastures", shouts back the progressive.
Fed up, disgusted, and a little scared, you desperately seek a way out of this progress. "No
way", scream the march leaders. "We will be forever in your ears, sometimes whispering, sometimes
screaming; we will take over your brain to improve your mind; we will saturate you with images
on the box 24/7 and employ all sorts of imagery to make you progress. And if it all fails, we
will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election
time."
Knowing who is "progressive" and know who is "far-right" is like knowing who is "fascist" and
who is not. For obvious historical reasons, the Russian like to throw the "fascist" slogan against
anyone who is a non-Russian nationalist. However, I accept the eminent historian Carroll Quigley's
definition of fascism as the incorporation of society and the state onto single entity on a permanent
war footing. The state controls everything in a radically authoritarian social structure. As Quigley
states, the Soviet Union was the most complete embodiment of fascism in WWII. In WWII Germany,
on the other hand, industry retained its independence and in WWII Italy fascism was no more than
an empty slogan.
Same for "progressives". Everyone wants to be "progressive", right? Who wants to be "anti-progressive"?
However, at the end of the day, "progressive" through verbal slights of hand has been nothing
more than a euphemism for "socialist" or, in the extreme, "communist" the verbal slight-of-hand
because we don't tend to use the latter terms in American political discourse.
"Progressives" morphing into a new "far-right" in America is no more mysterious than the Soviet
Union morphing from Leninism to Stalinism or, the Jewish (Trotskyite) globalists fleeing Stalinist
nationalism and then morphing into, first, "Scoop" Jackson Democrats and then into Bushite Republicans.
As you might notice, the real issue is the authoritarian vs. the non-authoritarian state. In
this context, an authoritarian government and social order (as in communism and neoconservatism)
are practical pre-requisites necessity to force humanity to transition to their New World Order.
Again, the defining characteristic of fascism is the unitary state enforced via an authoritarian
political and social structure. Ideological rigor is enforced via the police powers of the state
along with judicial activism and political correctness. Ring a bell?
In the ongoing contest between Trump and the remnants of the American "progressive" movement,
who are the populists and who the authoritarians? Who are the democrats and who are the fascists?
I would say that who lands where in this dichotomy is obvious.
@Alfa158 Is Jimmy Dore really a "Progressive?" (and what does that mean, anyway?) Isn't Jimmy's
show hosted by the Young Turks Network, which is unabashedly Libertarian?
Anyway, what's so great about "the Progressive movement?" Seems to me, they're just pathetic
sheepdogs for the war-crazed Dems. Jimmy should be supporting the #UNRIG movement ("Beyond Trump
& Sanders") for ALL Americans:
On 1 May 2017 Cynthia McKinney, Ellen Brown, and Robert Steele launched
Petras, for some reason, low balls the number of people ejected from assets when the mafia
came to seize real estate in the name of the ruling class and their expensive wars, morality,
the Constitution or whatever shit they could make up to fuck huge numbers of people over. Undoubtedly
just like 9/11, the whole thing was planned in advance. Political whores are clearly useless when
the system is at such extremes.
Banks like Capital One specialize in getting a signature and "giving" a car loan to someone
they know won't be able to pay, but is simply being used, shaken down and repossessed for corporate
gain. " No one held a gun to their head! " Get ready, the police state will in fact put a gun
to your head.
Depending on the time period in question, which might be the case here, more than 20 million
people were put out of homes and/or bankrupted with more to come. Clearly a bipartisan effort
featuring widespread criminal conduct across the country – an attack on the population to sustain
militarism.
If I may add:
"and you also have to dearly pay for you being white male heterosexual for oppressing all colored,
all the women and all the sexually different through the history".
"And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables
and forget about you at election time. If we see that you still don't get with the program we
will reeducate you. Should you resist that in any way we'll incarcerate you. And, no, normal legal
procedure does not work with racists/bigots/haters/whatever we don't like".
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee
which itself was a progressive invention. There was no "right wing" anywhere in sight when
it was estsblished in 1938.
Exclusive: In 2016, when a British parliamentary report demolished the excuse for the U.S.
and its allies invading Libya in 2011, it should have been big news, but the U.S. mainstream
media looked the other way, reports Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria (Corrects to show that a Times story was published.)
In George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith's job was to
delve into The Times of London archive and rewrite stories that could cause trouble for the
totalitarian government ruling Britain. For instance, if the government made a prediction of
wheat or automobile production in their five-year plan and that prediction did not come true,
Winston would go into the archives and "correct" the numbers in the article on
record.
In writing a response the other day to a critic of my recently published book on
Hillary Clinton's electoral defeat, I was researching how the U.S. corporate media covered a
2016 British parliamentary report on Libya that showed how then Secretary of State Clinton
and other Western leaders lied about an impending genocide in Libya to justify their 2011
attack on that country .
Hillary Clinton, who according to leaked emails was the architect of the attack on
Libya, said four days earlier: "When the Libyan people sought to realize their democratic
aspirations, they were met by extreme violence from their own government."
Sen. John Kerry, at the time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chimed
in: "Time is running out for the Libyan people. The world needs to respond
immediately."
####
Plenty more at the link and all the more reason that the Pork Pie News Networks need to be
flushed away to make way for those who actually want to do their jobs and will not be fobbed,
bought or intimidated off. Or co-opted.
So say we; so say we all. And that's the tried-and-true formula which has allowed
Washington so many tilts at the regime-change windmill – mention extreme violence
exercised by a brutal dictator who has no regard for human rights (which have passed into
the realm of sanctity that none dares challenge), and stress the urgency which does not
allow time for discussion. Act now, talk later. If a disaster ensues, it was worth the risk
– it might have worked out. Time for the phase I have mentioned so many times before:
say it with me, will you? "This is no time for finger-pointing. Nobody could have foreseen
that this would happen. We all have to work together to solve the problem."
I'm sure it's not a coincidence that John Kerry, known liar, claims to have personally
seen ironclad evidence that Russia shot down MH17 – he saw the missile shot, and saw
MH17's trace drop off the scope. He
knows
.
Show of hands – who believes him? Following on from that, why can he not be held
to account for such a monstrous lie?
Reply
"... "Libyans enjoyed the highest quality of life in all of Africa. Libyan citizens enjoyed free universal health care from prenatal to geriatric, free education from elementary school to post-graduate studies and free or subsidized housing. We were told that Gaddafi ripped off the nation's oil wealth for himself when in reality Libya's oil wealth was used to improve the quality of life for all Libyans. ..."
"... We were told that Libya had to be rebuilt from scratch because Gaddafi had not allowed the development of national institutions. If we knew that infant mortality had been seriously reduced, life expectancy increased and health care and education made available to everyone, we might have asked, "How could all that be accomplished without the existence of national institutions?" ..."
"Libyans enjoyed the highest quality of life in all of Africa. Libyan citizens enjoyed free
universal health care from prenatal to geriatric, free education from elementary school to post-graduate
studies and free or subsidized housing. We were told that Gaddafi ripped off the nation's oil
wealth for himself when in reality Libya's oil wealth was used to improve the quality of life
for all Libyans.
We were told that Libya had to be rebuilt from scratch because Gaddafi had not allowed the
development of national institutions. If we knew that infant mortality had been seriously reduced,
life expectancy increased and health care and education made available to everyone, we might have
asked, "How could all that be accomplished without the existence of national institutions?"
Knowledge is the antidote to propaganda and brainwashing which is exactly why it is being increasingly
controlled and restricted."
"... Based on little but gut instinct, I think Trudeau is the worst. ..."
"... Trudeau is a Canadian Obama. Canada is always a few years behind the U.S. ..."
"... Macron like so many other neoliberals likely buys the idea that deregulation and cutting taxes on the wealthy will make France more competitive and attractive to international business. Don't out faith in patriotism. ..."
"... After spending the last year or so worshipping the dandruff on Macron's collar, the French media has now suddenly started pointing out – quite fairly – that he's as likely to be as much of a puppet of Berlin and Frankfurt as were his predecessors. ..."
"... He and his backers want to dismantle the few remaining economic and social protections in France, and the best way to do this is to blame it on somebody else. His enthusiasm for Europe and the Franco-German axis is partly instinctive (a generational issue) but also partly because he can say, hand on heart, "they made me do it." And anyone who criticizes decisions made in Europe is obviously playing the game of the National Front . ..."
Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau: when brutal neoliberalism tries to re-brand itself
through fresh faces failed evolution
I'm trying to work out which one is the worst, especially as my own Prime Minister is apparently
a huge fan of both and is modelling himself on them
(even down to his socks ).
I have no doubt that Macron is also bought and paid for by bankers, but I do hold out hope
that at least he is aware of the stupidity of German style ortho austerity and the need for fiscal
expansion across Europe, and at least he seems willing to put words into action on climate change
(easier for a French government of course, as they always preferred nuclear power to fossil fuels).
I suspect though that his fiscal expansion preference will be via increasing private debt to compensate
for public sector retrenchments.
The thing about French leaders is that they tend to put French nationalism above economic ideology,
so if he follows the pattern, his main focus will be on strenghtening France relative to Germany,
which is no bad thing for Europe as a whole.
Trudeau is a Canadian Obama. Canada is always a few years behind the U.S.
Macron like so many other neoliberals likely buys the idea that deregulation and cutting
taxes on the wealthy will make France more competitive and attractive to international business.
Don't out faith in patriotism.
After spending the last year or so worshipping the dandruff on Macron's collar, the French
media has now suddenly started pointing out – quite fairly – that he's as likely to be as much
of a puppet of Berlin and Frankfurt as were his predecessors.
The various dismissive remarks made in both capitals about his plans for reforming Europe have
been extensively covered. But I don't think it matters to Macron. He and his backers want to dismantle
the few remaining economic and social protections in France, and the best way to do this is to
blame it on somebody else. His enthusiasm for Europe and the Franco-German axis is partly instinctive
(a generational issue) but also partly because he can say, hand on heart, "they made me do it."
And anyone who criticizes decisions made in Europe is obviously playing the game of the National
Front .
This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons
into Russia's infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely
to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to "
cause them pain and discomfort ."
The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened "retaliatory" cyberattacks against Russia, and promised
to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans
to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.
Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama's last term in office this
was all still in the "planning" phases. It's not totally clear where this effort has gone from there,
but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama's permission, did not need further
approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he'd have actually had to issue a countermanding
order, something they say he hasn't.
The details are actually pretty scant on how far along the effort is, but the goal is said to
be for the US to have the ability to retaliate at a moment's notice the next time they have a cyberattack
they intend to blame on Russia.
Unspoken in this lengthy report, which quotes unnamed former Obama Administration officials substantially,
advocating the effort, is that in having reported that such a program exists, they've tipped off
Russia about the threat.
This is, however, reflective of the priority of the former administration, which is to continuing
hyping allegations that Russia got President Trump elected, a priority that's high enough to sacrifice
what was supposed to be a highly secretive cyberattack operation.
Bacevich is a treasure...he's been inside the belly of the beast, and understands from first hand
knowledge how it produces immense quantities of BS for public consumption and for preserving its
own perks, privileges, and budgets.
He wrote a foreword to reprint of The Irony of American History (Paperback) by Reinhold Niebuhr
which you can read on Amazon for free.
Niebuhr thought deeply about the dilemmas confronting the United States as a consequence
of its emergence after World War I and, even more, after World War II, as a global superpower.
The truths he spoke are uncomfortable ones for us to hear-uncomfortable not only because they
demand a great deal of us as citizens, but also because they outline so starkly some of our
recent failures. Four such truths are especially underlined in The Irony of American History:
the persistent sin of American Exceptionalism; the indecipherability of history; the false
allure of simple solutions; and, finally, the imperative of appreciating the limits of power.
The Anglo-American colonists who settled these shores, writes Niebuhr, saw their purpose
as "to make a new beginning in a corrupt world." They believed "that we had been called out
by God to create a new humanity." They believed further that this covenant with God marked
America as a new Israel.
As a Chosen People with what Niebuhr refers to as a "Messianic consciousness," Americans
came to see them selves as set apart, their motives irreproachable, their actions not to be
judged by standards applied to others.
... ... ...
Niebuhr has little patience for those who portray the United States as acting on God's behalf.
"All men are naturally inclined to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political
cause by investing it with religious sanctity," he once observed. "This is why religion is
more frequently a source of confusion than of light in the political realm."
In the United States, he continued, "The tendency to equate our political with our Christian
convictions causes politics to generate idolatry."9
Evangelical conservatism and its growing influence on American politics, which Niebuhr did
not live to see, have only reinforced this tendency.
Niebuhr anticipated that the American veneration of liberty could itself degenerate into
a form of idolatry. In the midst of World War II, he went so far as to describe the worship
of democracy as "a less vicious version of the Nazi creed." He cautioned that "no society,
not even a democratic one, is great enough or good enough to make itself the final end of human
existence."
Although he rarely uses the term "American [neoliberal] empire", and I think never terms "Washington
consensus", "debt slavery", or neoliberalism.
Here in Canada I got into an argument with a Trudeau/Obama admirer when I categorically stated
that Obama did nothing. My argument being that if Obama (& co.) had accomplished something worthwhile,
Trump would not be in power. A little too radical?
"... I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind, "humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population. People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?). ..."
"... Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent. ..."
I believe that Hillary Clinton IS being, and broadcasting her authentic self. I support her
100% in this . I am not being snide. The curtains are being pulled aside on The Incompetent, Wizards
of Oz (The Corrupt Over-class). Hillary C will be remembered as the Foolish Wizard who could not
keep her curtain drawn! We got a glimpse into the innards of the Heath Robinson, Control Booth,
Political Contraption. (George Soros playing with himself!)
I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind,
"humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population.
People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful
family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?).
Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed
her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner
life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up
and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent.
Clarky90 said, " We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent."
Exactly!
And the only solace I have from the Trump show is that the curtains will be pulled back completely
to expose the puppeteers of this charade they call a democracy.
Which should make it much easier to generate authentic opposition, doncha think? Trump was
The Great Reveal, next up is The Great Reveal for Dems: that they too love War and Billionaire
Corporo-Fascism
"Everybody Needs to Stop Telling Hillary Clinton to Shut Up"
Throughout the campaign, culminating in the mindbogglingly stupid "deplorables" remark, Clinton's
contempt for anyone who questioned her was clear. Her post election tour brings more of the same.
So yeah, people are sick of hearing it, and have every right to say so.
Diplomatically the support of KAS was alrea albatros around the Us neck. It poratiens the USA as
hyprocritical and brutal opportunist, devoid of any pronciple other then desire to establish and preseve
the world hegemony.
The Iran-Syria alliance has endured the test of war and time. In the early 1980s, Iraq and Iran were
engrossed in a brutal conflict that Baghdad portrayed as a war against Iranian expansionism. Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and the United States formed a coalition to isolate Tehran from the Hafez
al-Assad regime and invite a swift victory for Baghdad. The Syria-Iran alliance never broke, even
as Syria became entrenched in its own conflict in Lebanon. In his
book chronicling the alliance , Jubin Goodarzi
even asserted that Hafez al-Assad turned down $2 billion offered to him by the Saudis if he reopened
the trans-Syrian pipeline to Iraq. Despite intense economic and military pressure, this strategy
only solidified the nascent alliance between Tehran and Damascus. This alliance has remained durable
and transcended significant strategic disagreements between the two countries over the last three
decades.
Iran chooses its alliances and conflicts pragmatically, rather than ideologically. For example,
the Islamic Republic historically ignored the plights of Shia minorities in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
in favor of maintaining semi-cordial relations with Riyadh and Islamabad. Western analysts often
portray Iran's most important alliance with Syria as that of a client and patron state. In reality,
it is much closer to a genuine partnership rooted in common strategic goals, despite widely diverging
ideologies. Both countries see themselves as unique partners in the "resistance" against Israel.
Both also portray themselves as tolerant of religious minorities and sects in a region enveloped
by Salafi extremism. Most importantly, Damascus and Tehran have always viewed a strong Arab bloc
and Arab detente with Israel as an existential threat. This was true when Egypt and Syria cut diplomatic
relations after the Camp David Accord, and when Arab states formed an alliance against the new Islamic
Republic in Iran. Thus Tehran and Damascus see themselves as partners in a fight against an Arab
bloc that is increasingly dictated by a U.S.-Saudi alliance. No amount of pressure on Iran will make
the cost of Tehran's intervention in Syria too high to bear.
Iran's experience of relative isolation during the war imposed on it by Saddam Hussein's Iraq
inspired a frenzied race to develop domestic defensive and ballistic-missile capabilities. In a
2016 interview , Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif asked, "What do you expect, Iran to lie
dead? You've covered the Iran–Iraq war, you remember missiles pouring on Iranian cities with chemical
weapons. You remember that we didn't have any to defend ourselves." The harsh realities of the Iran-Iraq
War quelled revolutionary Iran's ambitions to export its revolution and ideology. Ever since the
end of the war, Tehran has instead placed an emphasis on developing strategic alliances outside of
the Middle East and developing a domestic military-industrial complex. President Trump's calls to
isolate Iran during his recent
speech
in Riyadh will only provoke a surge in Iranian military development.
Three contemporary developments also demonstrate why an "Arab NATO" will fail at its mission:
Arab Shia communities view Saudi and Wahhabi hegemony as an existential threat, the Saudi-coalition
is already fractured, and China and Russia have every reason to tilt towards Tehran.
The main threat that the Saudi-led coalition seeks to combat is the rise of Arab Shia movements
and militias that it believes are loyal to Iran, especially in Iraq and Syria. As I have
written before , Shia movements are not nearly as loyal to Iranian interests as often believed,
but the existence of an "Arab NATO" will likely result in driving vulnerable Shia communities closer
to Tehran. Powerful cleric and warlord Muqtada al-Sadr has
called on Assad to resign as president, and expelled fighters found to have fought in Syria in
direct opposition to Iranian policy. Several
high-ranking Shia clerics in Iraq have issued fatwas forbidding their followers to participate
in Syrian operations. The most senior of these clerics, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who himself is
of Iranian extraction, has long been the darling of Western analysts due to his rejection of theocracy.
In 2005, Thomas Friedman
called
for Sistani to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his quietist inclinations and role in legitimizing
the new Iraqi government in the eyes of Shia. However, the rise of U.S.-backed Sunni coalitions will
likely push Iraqi Shia toward institutionalized militancy if they feel their communities are under
attack by Saudi-funded Sunni extremists.
Qatari emir
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani allegedly stated that "there is no wisdom in harboring hostility
toward Iran," but Qatar quickly
claimed unconvincingly that the story was fabricated. This led Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Egypt, Yemen's Western-backed government and Libya to
cut off relations
with Qatar and put in place an aggressive blockade on its population. Doha's open support for
the Muslim Brotherhood and
Riyadh's allegation that Qatar provides support for ISIS-and, more importantly, Shia protesters
in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province-were used as the official excuse for severing ties. But this is
clearly intended by Saudi Arabia to escalate tensions with Iran and send the message that lukewarm
partners in the proxy war will not be accepted.
... ... ...
An "Arab NATO" will provide little deterrence, and instead result in an arms race and a deepening
of sectarian conflict in the region. It also risks dragging U.S. forces into a sectarian conflict.
As former
secretary of defense Robert Gates pointed out, the Saudis always want to "fight the Iranians
to the last American."
Adam Weinstein is a policy associate at the National Iranian American Council. He is a veteran
of the Marine Corps where he served in Afghanistan. He has contributed to Foreign Policy, The Diplomat,
CNN, and other outlets .
John Doe • 10 hours ago
SA is trying tp preserve waning hegemony by picking fights with anyone in sight but failing
to defeat Yemen , now it's Qatar's turn with the hopes of it developing into an Iran - USA war.It
won't help. The Saudis are TERRIFIED of a diplomatic rapprochement between Washington & Tehran
and would start any war to prevent it.
SweatnSteel • 4 hours ago
As if this whole kerfuffle was strictly Riyadh's idea... Hmm.. Who else has been screaming
"Iran, Iran, Iran"??
Who else is mortified by the expansion and reinforcement of the Shia crescent now stretching from
Pakistan to the Mediterranean?
Who else indeed.. Riiiiight...
youyeg • 39 minutes ago
I think the best solution for Arab state is to provide more cooperation and not relying on
the US and money. Nothing could come out of tension, but rise of opportunists who seek profit
out of chaos.
I was just wondering how Obama gets the reception he gets wherever he goes. He's treated as a
rock star.
Does nobody read MoA and understand how if he's not the antichrist he's the closest thing since
Hitler? I mean, he actually used drones to kill people.
Instead we have a lot of hateful people trying to call down Trump who is actually the best person
we have ever seen in that office. He loves Russia and has decided to forego the climate deal that
was set up expressly to screw the US. He understands that the Saudis are truly their best friends.
Some sense is finally coming into the diplomatic scene.
Thank fuck Obama is gone. Thank fuck we have a US president that is willing to undo any legislation
he was able to enact. Obama was truly evil. We can only see that now after having a real man like
Trump take the reins.
The world is in much better shape now. I used to think Trump was bad news. I was wrong. He's great,
just look at the progress he's made. The world is much better off. I'm tired of winning and we've
only just started.
In the rush to war in Iraq, the neocons and the liberal interventionists won hands down in 2002-2003
but ended up causing a bloodbath for the people of Iraq, with estimates of those killed ranging from
hundreds of thousands to more than a million. But the U.S. invaders did more than that. They destabilized
the entire Middle East by disturbing the fragile fault lines between Sunni and Shiite.
With Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein ousted and hanged, Iraq's vengeful Shiite politicians established
their own authoritarian state under the military wing of the U.S. and British armies. Neocon hubris
made matters worse when many former Sunni officials and officers were cashiered and marginalized,
creating fertile ground for al-Qaeda to put down roots among Iraqi Sunnis, planting a particularly
brutal strain nourished by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda in Iraq attracted thousands of foreign Sunni jihadists eager to fight both
the Westerners and the Shiites. Others went to Yemen to join Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Trained
in the brutal methods of these Iraqi and Yemeni insurgencies, hardened jihadists returned to their
homes in Libya, Syria, Europe and elsewhere.
Though the disaster in Iraq should have been a powerful cautionary tale, the neocons and the liberal
interventionists proved to be much more adept at playing the political-propaganda games of Washington
than in prevailing in the complex societies of the Middle East.
Instead of being purge en masse, the Iraq War instigators faced minimal career accountability.
They managed to spin the Iraq "surge" as "victory at last" and maintained their influence over Washington
even under President Obama, who may have been a "closet realist" but who kept neocons in key posts
and surrounded himself with liberal interventionists. [See Consortiumnews.com's "
The
Surge Myth's Deadly Result
."]
Thus, Obama grudgingly was enlisted into the next neocon-liberal-interventionist crusades in 2011:
the military intervention to overthrow Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and the covert operation to remove
Syria's Bashar al-Assad. In both cases, the propaganda was ramped up again, presenting the opposition
groups as "pro-democracy moderates" who were peacefully facing down brutal dictators.
In reality, the oppositions were more a mixed bag of some actual moderates and Islamist extremists.
When Gaddafi and Assad emphasizing the presence of terrorists struck back brutally, the "R2P" crowd
demanded U.S. military intervention, either directly in Libya or indirectly in Syria. With the U.S.
mainstream media onboard, nearly every occurrence was put through the propaganda filter that made
the regimes all dark and the oppositions bathed in a rosy glow.
After the U.S.-led air war destroyed Gaddafi's military and opened the way for an opposition victory,
Gaddafi was captured and brutally murdered. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who might be called
a "neocon-lite," joked: "We came, we saw, he died."
But the chaos that followed Gaddafi's death was not so funny, contributing to the killing of U.S.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomatic personnel in Benghazi on Sept.
11, 2012, and to the spreading of terrorism and violence across northern Africa. By July 2014, the
U.S. and other Western nations had abandoned their embassies in Tripoli as all political order broke
down.
ID269211 Ima Right
,
29 Apr 2017 12:19 According to NYT on Obama $400K speech, Obamas already have $12 million plus
receiving $80 million for their biography/books.
"... Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist "assets" in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal "review". ..."
"... The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi (image on the right), was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years. ..."
"... The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest weapons customer. ..."
"... This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest. ..."
"... The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa's largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a "humanitarian intervention" and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to "protect civilians". ..."
"... In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the "shit show", urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton , and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning "genocide" against his own people. ..."
"... Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a "political target" in Britain? ..."
"... In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a "war on terror that has failed". As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that? ..."
The unsayable in Britain's general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity,
in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the
secrets of British foreign policy.
Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist "assets" in
Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered,
deflected by the promise of an internal "review".
The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi (image on the right), was part of an extremist group,
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5
for more than 20 years.
The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a "hardline Islamic
state" in Libya and "is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida".
The "smoking gun" is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to
travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in "battle": first to remove Mu'ammar Gadaffi
in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.
Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a "terrorist watch list" and warned MI5 that his
group was looking for a "political target" in Britain. Why wasn't he apprehended and the network
around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?
These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the "lone wolf" spin in the wake
of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London
and Donald Trump 's apology.
The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance
with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian
and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest weapons customer.
This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a
modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources.
The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed;
the goal now is division and conquest.
In 2011, according to Middle East Eye , the LIFG in Manchester were known as the "Manchester
boys". Implacably opposed to Mu'ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under
Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya,
a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.
Suddenly the control orders were lifted.
"I was allowed to go, no questions asked," said one LIFG member.
MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let
them board their flights.
The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa's largest oil reserves, had been long been
planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination
attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain
and the US seized the opportunity of a "humanitarian intervention" and attacked Libya. They were
joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to "protect civilians".
Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then
Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of "erroneous
assumptions" and that the attack "had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa". The Commons
committee quoted what it called Barack Obama's "pithy" description of Cameron's role in Libya as
a "shit show".
In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the "shit show", urged on by his warmongering Secretary
of State, Hillary Clinton , and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning "genocide" against his own people.
"We knew that if we waited one more day," said Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte,
could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience
of the world."
The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces.
They told Reuters there would be
"a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". The Commons committee reported, "The
proposition that Mu'ammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was
not supported by the available evidence".
Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According
to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties", of which more than a third hit civilian
targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata
and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children's organisation, reported a high proportion
of the children killed "were under the age of ten".
More than "giving rise" to Islamic State - ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following
the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 - these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as
a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.
Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a "liberator", or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him
included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such
as the "Manchester boys".
To the Americans and British, Gadaffi's true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan
to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite
a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union
among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion
was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military
"partnerships".
The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the
rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as "a rebel".
Having plundered Libya's $30 billion arsenal, the "rebels" advanced south, terrorising towns and
villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country's fragile stability. The ever-eager
French sent planes and troops to their former colony "to fight al-Qaida", or the menace they had
helped create.
On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda
to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo
and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent
was under way, largely unreported.
In London, one of the world's biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz
in the stands was the "demonstration effect in Libya". The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
held a preview entitled "Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies". The host
was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against
civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank's arms party lauded the "unprecedented opportunities
for UK defence and security companies."
Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth
of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British
military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There
are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says
Unicef.
The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway
places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to
us.
This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground
was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as
the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude.
"Iraq!" he said. "We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it."
At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered "Iraq" and "Blair"
as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.
Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that
"the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq
The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly".
Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush 's blood-soaked "shit
show", so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific
aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.
The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more.
The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have
not.
Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days
before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him
as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a "political target" in Britain?
In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference
to a "war on terror that has failed". As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest
and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there
is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?
John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary film maker based in the United Kingdom
since 1962. http://www.johnpilger.com/
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Back in 2011 VDARE posted a
commentary of mine on the legitimacy of the "Cultural Marxist" concept. (I reluctantly accepted
the term only because I couldn't think of a better one.)
As I pointed out, this ideology was very far from orthodox Marxism and was viewed by
serious
Marxists as a kind of bastard child. Yet many of those designated as "Cultural Marxists" still
viewed themselves as classical Marxists and some still do.
Like orthodox Marxists, they viewed the bourgeoisie as a counterrevolutionary class. Like orthodox
Marxists, they viewed the world, arguably simplistically, in terms of interest groups and power
relationships. Like orthodox Marxists-whose break from Victorian classical liberalism in this
respect was shocking in a way that is easily overlooked after the totalitarian experience of the
twentieth century-they explicitly eschewed debate in favor of reviling and if possible repressing
their opponents. (This is fundamental to the Marxist method: although
it claims to be "scientific"
, it is in fact an a priori value system that
rejects debate and its concomitant, "bourgeois science".
Hence Political Correctness-the
most prominent
product of "cultural Marxism" .) Like orthodox Marxist, they supported, at least in principle,
a socialist i.e. government-controlled economy. Like orthodox Marxists, they inclined, in varying
degrees, toward the Communist side during the Cold War. (
Marcuse , who
cheered the
Soviet suppression
of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, was an outright Stalinist-as I can confirm from personal
knowledge as his onetime student.)
These disciples of the Frankfurt School, like Marx, were eager to replace what they defined as
bourgeois society by a new social order. In this envisaged new order, humankind would experience
true equality for the first time. This would be possible because, in a politically and socially reconstructed
society, we would no longer be alienated from our real selves, which had been warped by the inequalities
that existed until now.
But unlike authentic Marxists, Cultural Marxists have been principally opposed to the culture
of bourgeois societies -- and only secondarily to their material arrangements.
Homophobia ,
nationalism , Christianity,
masculinity
, and anti-Semitism have been the prime villains in the Cultural Marxist script.
This is especially true as one moves from the philosophy of the interwar German founders of the
Frankfurt school, like Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, to the second generation.
This second generation is represented by
Jürgen
Habermas and most of the multicultural theorists ensconced in Western universities.
For these more advanced Cultural Marxists, the
crusade against
capitalism has been increasingly subordinated to the war against "prejudice" and "discrimination."
They justify the need for a centralized bureaucratic state commanding material resources not because
it will bring the working class to power, but to fight "racism," "fascism," and the other residues
of the Western past.
If they can't accomplish such radical change, Cultural Marxists are happy to work toward revolutionizing
our consciousness with the help of Leftist moneybags–
hedge fund managers, Mark
Zuckerberg
etc. Ironically, nationalizing productive forces and the creation of a workers' state, i.e. the
leftovers from classical Marxism, turn out to be the most expendable part of their revolutionary
program, perhaps because of the collapse of the embarrassing collapse of
command economies
in the Soviet bloc
. Instead, what is essential to Cultural Marxism is the rooting-out of bourgeois national structures,
the
obliteration of
gender roles and the utter devastation of "the
patriarchal
family."
Not only does Cultural Marxism exist, but it now appears to be taking over Conservatism Inc. Thus
even
with Paris burning , National Review was still
attacking the Right . In the second round of the French election, Tom Rogan urged a vote for
Emmanuel Macron on the grounds Marine Le Pen is insufficiently hostile to Vladimir Putin and is a
"socialist" because she "supports protectionism." Macron's actual onetime membership in the Socialist
Party, and his view that there was
no such thing as French culture, apparently was not a problem [
French election: American Conservatives Should Support Macron , April 24, 2017].
Conservatism Inc. goes along because these goals are partially achieved through corporate capitalists,
who actively push Leftist social agendas and punish entire communities if they're insufficiently
enthusiastic about gay marriage, gay scout leaders, transgendered rest rooms, sanctuary cities etc..
Wedded as it is to a clichéd defense of the "free market," the Beltway Right not only won't oppose
this plutocratic agenda, but instead offers tax cuts to the wealthiest and most malevolent actors.
It is because Cultural Marxism can co-exist with our current economic and political structure
that our so-called "conservatives" are far more likely to align with the New Left than the Old Right.
The behavior of our own captains of industry shows the rot is deep and that multiculturalism is very
much part of American "liberal democratic" thinking, even informing our bogus conservatism. "Conservatism"
is now defined as waging endless wars in the name of
universalist
values that any other generation would have
called radically leftist. And Cultural Marxists themselves now define what we call "Western values"-for
example, accepting homosexuality
The takeover is so complete, we might even say "Cultural Marxism" has outlived its usefulness
as a label or as a description of a hostile foreign ideology. Instead, we're dealing with "conservatives,"
who are, in many ways, more extreme and more destructive than the Frankfurt School itself.
Many conservatives seem to believe Cultural Marxism is just a foreign eccentricity somehow smuggled
into our country. Allan Bloom's "
conservative " bestseller The Closing of the American Mind [
PDF ]
contended that multiculturalism was just another example of "The German Connection." This is
ludicrous.
Case in point: unlike Horkheimer, or my onetime teacher Herbert Marcuse, leading writers within
Conservatism Inc. are sympathetic to something like
gay marriage . These include:
Indeed, homosexual liberation is so central to modern conservatism that the Beltway Right's pundits
urge American soldiers to impose it at bayonet point around the world. Kirchick complains we haven't
pressed the Russian "thug" Vladimir Putin hard enough to accept such "conservative" features of public
life as gay pride parades. [
Why Putin's Defense of "Traditional Values" Is Really A War on Freedom , by
James Kirchick, Foreign Policy, January 3, 2014]
Another frequent
contributor
to National Review , Jillian Kay Melchior, expressed concern that American withdrawal
from Ukraine might expose that region to greater Russian control and thereby diminish rights for
the transgendered. [
Ukrainians are still alone in their heroic fight for freedom , New York Post,
October 8, 2015]
If that's how our Respectable Right reacts to social issues, then it may be ridiculous to continue
denouncing the original Cultural Marxists. Our revolutionary thinking has whizzed past those iconoclastic
German Jews who created the Frankfurt Institute in the 1920s and then moved their enterprise to the
US in the 1930s. Blaming these long-dead intellectuals for our present aberrations may be like blaming
Nazi atrocities on Latin fascists in 1920. We're better served by examining those who selectively
adopted the original model to find out what really happened.
At this point we should ask not whether the Frankfurt School continues to cast a shadow over us
but instead ask why are "conservatives" acquiescing to or even championing reforms more radical than
anything one encounters in Adorno and Horkheimer?
Admittedly, Conservatism Inc. has drifted so far to the Left that one no longer blinks in surprise
when a
respected conservative journalist extolls Leon Trotsky and the Communist Abraham Lincoln Brigade
in the Spanish Civil War. Yet it's still startling to see just how far left the Beltway
"Right" has moved on social issues. Even more noteworthy is how unwilling the movement is to see
any contradiction between this process and the claim they are "conservatives."
And let's not pretend that Conservatism Inc. is simply running a "Big Tent." Those who
direct the top-down
Beltway Right are eager to reach out to the Left, providing those they recruit share their belligerent
interventionist foreign policy views and do nothing to offend neoconservative benefactors,
while purging everything on their right .
This post-Christian, post-bourgeois consensus is now centered in the US and in affiliate Western
countries and transmitted through our culture industry, educational system, Deep-State bureaucracy,
and Establishment political parties.
The Beltway Right operates like front parties under the old Soviet system. Like those parties,
our Establishment Right tries to "fit in" by dutifully undermining those to its the Right and slowly
absorbing the social positions and
heroes of the
Left .
Occasionally it catches hell for not moving fast enough to the Left. But this only bolsters the
image of Conservatism, Inc. as defenders of traditional America against the Left-an image that it
won't lose even as it veers farther in the direction of its supposed adversary.
In short, Conservatism Inc. is not just a scam-but it's become a Cultural Marxist puppet. And
the
Dissident Right consists of those who can see through it.
"... John O. Brennan, the former director of the CIA, said publicly for the first time Tuesday that he was concerned about possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign ..."
"... Mr. Brennan became so concerned last summer about signs of Russian election meddling that he held urgent, classified briefings for eight senior members of Congress, speaking with some of them over secure phone lines while they were away on recess. In those conversations, he told lawmakers there was evidence that Russia was specifically working to elect Mr. Trump as president. ..."
"... Mr. Brennan was also one of a handful of officials who briefed both President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump in January on a broad intelligence community report revealing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered an "influence campaign" targeting the presidential election. ..."
John O. Brennan, the former director of the CIA, said publicly for the first time Tuesday that he was concerned about possible
ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
President Trump asked two top intelligence officials to deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between his campaign and
Russia, former officials said. Both of the intelligence officials are testifying before lawmakers on Tuesday.
Mr. Brennan, the former CIA director, said Tuesday that he became concerned last year that the Russian government was trying to
influence members of the Trump campaign to act - wittingly or unwittingly - on Moscow's behalf.
"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials
and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,"
Mr. Brennan told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.
It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals," he said, adding that
he did not know whether the Russian efforts were successful. He added, "I don't know whether such collusion existed." It was the first time he publicly acknowledged that he was concerned about possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
He said he left office in January with many unanswered questions about the Russian influence operation. Intelligence officials
have said that Russia tried to tip the election toward Mr. Trump.
Mr. Brennan became so concerned
last summer about signs of Russian election meddling that he held urgent, classified briefings for eight senior members of Congress,
speaking with some of them over secure phone lines while they were away on recess. In those conversations, he told lawmakers there
was evidence that Russia was specifically working to elect Mr. Trump as president.
Mr. Brennan was also one of a handful of officials who briefed both President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump in January on a broad
intelligence community report revealing
that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered an "influence campaign" targeting the presidential election.
0x7be
•
6 days ago
US has already did what it wanted - destroyed Iraq and Lybia and
prompted the spawning of ISIS. Do we really need one more try?
see more
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+
R. Arandas
•
6 days ago
Assad is not a saint by any means, but the West has been consistently
supporting the Syrian rebels against his regime, and the civil war has
only worsened and intensified in the years since. We need to stay out
of the Middle East.
see more
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wootendw
R. Arandas
"Assad is not a saint..."
No, he is not a saint but he is a far
more decent person than most members of Congress or any of the
previous four presidents. Assad is not a dictator. He has been
elected at least twice, most recently in 2014. Last April (2015)
elections were held to Syria's parliament and Assad's party won a
comfortable majority.
Assad is an Alawite and an ophthalmologist but his highly
educated British wife is a Sunni in a country where Sunnis are in
the majority. Most Sunnis in Syria support their leaders as do
Christians and Assad's fellow Alawite. Both husband and wife speak
multiple foreign languages and could live comfortably in many
countries. They committed themselves to reforming Syria and, if
they were to go into exile as the US government wants, abandoning
their people, tens of thousands more Syrians would be slaughtered
but the US government would blame Assad.
The West opposes Assad not because he is bad but because he is
good. It truly hurts 'our' foreign policy establishment for a
backward country like Syria to have a president more intelligent
and more decent than our own leaders. That's why they want to
destroy him.
chris chuba
•
4 days ago
I'm glad the posters here aren't buying it. The State Dept. state had
the usual weasel words 'probably' and couldn't deny that it might just
be a heating system. Snow melt proves it's a crematorium? Since we
have fancy infrared satellites, how about showing pictures of it
operating during summertime, that would be suspicious, not snowmelt.
Ah .. but crematorium conjures up images of the Holocaust which is
etched into our psyche for the information war against the Assad govt.
see more
Comments continue after advertisement
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Dennis Boylon
•
5 days ago
Anti Assad proganda from US war mongers. We heard all this BS before.
Nobody is buying it. I hope Assad stays in power and protects his
country from the destruction seen in Iraq and Libya.
see more
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Paul Zx
•
6 days ago
Syrian war is like any other war, from atrocities against civilians to
third parties involvement. Nothing new here.
see more
"... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
"... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
"... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
"... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
"... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that
we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.
And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism
on the horizon.
But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the
role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored
? I think not.
With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste
can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of
the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical
changes.
When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties,
it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust
of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as
an "occupying force".
That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call
it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and
common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual".
Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some
even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate
who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination.
The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar,
ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become
so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.
... ... ...
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over
the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated
purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many
elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise
in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag
is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
... ... ...
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively
after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting
decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied
by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and
corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings
accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer
, was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests
in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial
transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating,
and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises,
and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of
the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and
fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid
of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before
the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk
about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday
Night Massacre."
That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even
minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.
... ... ...
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly
problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself.
But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the
Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian
knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.
I think the problem with this article is that the author can't distinguish were Neoliberalism starts
and ends and were Anglo Zionism (which we will understand simply as Neocon ideology starts and ends.
both are variants of Trotskyism -- "Trotskyism for the rich" to be exact. Also it is economic interest
that trump all others, so that alliance of the USA and Israel is pragmatic and is about USA access to
ME oil
They definitely highly intersect, but they are still distinct political ideas ("The USA global empire
uber alles in case of neocons; translational elites uber alles in case of neoliberals) and somewhat
distinct ideologies. I am not convinced that Cheney cabals (which included Paul Wolfiwitz and several
other neocons) was only or mostly pro-Israel political faction. And if tail really wags the dog -- the
idea that Israel determine foreign policy of the USA -- is true of not. It can be be that empire has
its own dynamics and Israel is just a convenient and valuable ally for now, much like Saudies
Notable quotes:
"... To sum it all up, I need to warn both racists and rabid anti-anti-Zionists that I will disappoint them both: the object of my discussion and criticism below will be limited to categories which a person chooses to belong to or endorse (religion, political ideas, etc.) and not categories which one is born with (race, ethnicity). ..."
"... Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader ..."
"... as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise ..."
"... My own preference still goes for "Zionist" because it combines the ideological racism of secular Jews with the religious racism of Judaics (if you don't like my choice, just replace "Zionist" with any of the categories I listed above). Zionism used to be secular, but it has turned religious during the late 20th century now and so for our purposes this term can encompass both secular and religious Jewish supremacists. Add to this some more or less conservative opinions and minsets and you have "Ziocons" as an alternative expression. ..."
"... doubleplusgoodthinking ..."
"... The reason why I decided to tackle this issue today is that the forces who broke Trump in less than a month are also the very same forces who have forced him into a political 180: the Neocons and the US deep state. However, I think that these two concepts can be fused into on I would call the "Ziocons": basically Zionists plus some rabid Anglo imperialists à la ..."
"... There is some pretty good evidence that the person in charge of this quiet coup is Jared Kushner, a rabid Zionist . Maybe . Maybe not. This does not really matter, what matters now is to understand what this all means for the rest of us in the "basket of deplorables", the "99%ers" – basically the rest of the planet. ..."
"... Syria . I think that we can all agree that having the black flag of Daesh fly over Damascus would be a disaster for Israel. Right? Wrong! You are thinking like a mentally sane person. This is not how the Israelis think at all. For them, Daesh is much preferable to Assad not only because Assad is the cornerstone of a unitary Syria, but because Daesh in power gives the Israelis the perfect pretext to establish a "security zone" to "protect" northern Israel. ..."
"... Daesh is basically a tool to carve up an even bigger Zionist entity. ..."
"... The bottom line is this: modern Neocons are little more than former Trotskyists who have found a new host to use. Their hatred for everything Russian is still so visceral that they rather support bona fide ..."
"... Bottom line – Ziocons feel an overwhelming and always present hatred for Russia and Russians and that factor is one of the key components of their motivations. Unless you take that hatred into account you will never be able to make sense of the Ziocons and their demented policies. ..."
"... Yes, Trump is a poorly educated ignoramus who is much better suited to the shows in Las Vegas than to be President of a nuclear superpower, but I don't see any signs of him being hateful of anybody. ..."
"... The poor man apparently had absolutely no idea of the power and maniacal drive of the Neocons who met him once he entered the White House. ..."
"... we now have the Ziocons in total control of BOTH parties in Congress (or, more accurately, both wings of the Ziocon party in Congress ..."
"... I get the feeling that there are only two types of officers left in the top ranks of the US military: retired ones and " ass-kissing little chickenshit s " à la ..."
"... ZOG. Or "Zionist Occupation Government". That used to be the favorite expression of various Jew-haters out there and it's use was considered the surefire sign of a rabid anti-Semite. And yet, that is precisely what we are now all living with: a Zionist occupation government which has clearly forced Trump to make a 180 on all his campaign promises and which now risks turning the USA into a radioactive desert resulting from a completely artificial and needless confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Facts are facts, you cannot deny them or refuse to correctly qualify them that because of the possible "overtones" of the term chosen or because of some invented need to be especially "sensitive" when dealing with some special group. Remember – Jews are not owed any special favor and there is no need to constantly engage in various forms of complex linguistic or mental yoga contortions when discussing them and their role in the modern world. Still, I am using ZOG here just to show that it can be done, but this is not my favorite expression. ..."
"... at the same time ..."
"... ZOG is not an American problem. It is a planetary problem, if only because right now ZOG controls the US nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... I don't believe that Trump is dumb enough to actually strike at North Korea. I think that his dumbass plan is probably to shoot down a DPRK missile to show that he has made "America great again" or something equally asinine. ..."
"... To be totally honest, I don't think that the "very powerful armada" will do anything other than waste the US taxpayer's money. I am getting a strong sense that Trump is all about appearance over substance, what the Russians call "показуха" – a kind of fake show of force, full with special effects and "cool" photo ops, but lacking any real substance. Still, being on the receiving end of Trump's показуха (po-kah-zoo-kha) must be unnerving, especially if you already have natural paranoid tendencies. I am not at all sure the Kim Jong-un will find the presence of the US carrier strike group as pathetic and useless as I do. ..."
"... They are the ONLY ONES who really want to maintain the AngloZionst Empire at any cost. Trump made it clear over and over again that his priority was the USA and the American people, not the Empire. ..."
"... I can imagine the gasp of horror and disgust some of you will have at seeing me use the ZOG expression. I assure you, it is quite deliberate on my part. I want to 1) wake you up and 2) show you that you cannot allow the discomfort created by conditioning to guide your analyses ..."
"... Things are coming to a head. Trump presented himself as a real alternative to the ultimate warmongering shabbos-shiksa Hillary. It is now pretty darn obvious that what we got ourselves is just another puppet, but that the puppet-masters have not changed. ..."
"... From Ann Coulter to Pat Buchanan , many paleo-Conservatives clearly "got it". As did the real progressives . What we are left with is what I call the "extreme center", basically zombies who get their news from the Ziomedia and who have so many mental blocks that it takes weeks of focused efforts to basically bring them back to reality. ..."
"... The modern western [neoliberal] society has been built on a categorical rejection of [Christian] ethics and morality. Slogans like "God is dead" or "Beyond good and evil" resulted in the most abject and viciously evil century in human history: the 20th century. Furthermore, most people by now can tell that Hollywood, and its bigger brother, the US porn industry, have played a central role in basically removing categories such as "good" or "truth" or "honor" from the mind of those infected by the US mass media, especially the Idiot-box (aka "telescreen" in Orwell's 1984). Instead unbridled greed and consumption became the highest and most sacred expression of "our way of life" as Americans like to say ..."
"... Hollywood movies proclaimed that " greed is good ". In fact, at the very core of the capitalist [neoliberal] ideology is the belief that the sum total of everybody's greed yields the happiest and most successful society possible. Crazy and sick stuff, but I don't have the place to discuss this here. ..."
"... Sidebar: by the way, and contrary to popular belief, Russia is not an especially religious country at all. While only a minority of Russians is truly religious, a majority of Russians seem to support religious values as civilizational ones. ..."
"... for the time being we have this apparently paradoxical situation of a generally secular society standing for traditional and religious values ..."
"... You might wonder how pacifism, international law, human and civil rights, democracy, pluralism, anti-racism, ethics and morality can help avert a nuclear war in Korea. In truth – they cannot directly do this. But in the long term, I firmly believe that these values can corrode the AngloZionist Empire from within. ..."
"... Public protests does not work in a regime where the Ziomedia gets to decide which demonstration gets coverage and which one does not. ..."
"... ZIG is a more accurate acronym as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc. ..."
"... Excellent, thought provoking and depressingly accurate. Even the cavil about the Golan Heights is based, if I'm not mistaken, on the fact Israel declared it annexed in 1981. ..."
"... I'll have to disagree. It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it. ..."
"... That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them. ..."
"... Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. ..."
"... US are not the ones being controlled, they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material. Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. ..."
"... If Trump's foreign policies are being dictated by someone else I want him to give us names, addresses and photographs of the real decision makers. Until that happens I hold him responsible. I have begun to regard Trump as Dubya with Jared as his Cheney. ..."
"... Zionists are very powerful, but they are part of Globalism, a cabal of all elites of world: Chinese, EU, American, Jewish, Latin America, Hindus, Saudis, etc. It is the GLOB that rules. ..."
"... In general, the US leadership has not proven itself bright, cunning or principled enough to resist the Zio agenda. For exhibit "A" just read up on Truman. Then consider LBJ's response to the attack on the USS Liberty. ..."
"... One could also examine who the influential members of the admins of Wilson and FDR as well. ..."
"... But ZOG goes beyond mere government. The Zions now permeate countless NGO's, media institutions including news and entertainment, high finance, folkways involving culture-wide taboos, and or course, higher and lower education. Even Christian doctrine has been altered to accommodate this highly-aggressive movement. The Zionist agenda is a burgeoning phenomena. And its zombie acolytes are similarly ubiquitous. The Zions have captured our government–and more. ..."
"... So, we see a bunch of loyal dual American-Israeli citizens sitting at the top of the Israeli government, it's businesses, and its media? Oh – right – all those dual citizens are sitting atop US government, businesses and media. And we see Israel fighting wars for US' benefit? Oh – right – it's US doing the dirty work for Jewish expansionism. ..."
"... You do not get it Saker. It does not work that way. In absolute numbers losses are very low. It is all up to media to create a perception. America can afford to have many 1000′s more dead w/o any dent in its well being. Just control the media. Vilify the enemies. ..."
"... With the exception of Vietnam War America as and Empire hasn't lost a single war. Vietnam War was misguided from the point of view of the Empire which at the end of 1960′s and beginning of 1970′s was to be redirected to Middle East. ..."
"... There will be everlasting chaos of sectarian fighting as as long as TPTB will be supplying weapons to one of the sides. Always the weaker one at given moment. The same goes for Libya and soon for Syria. No more stable, semi-secular states with strong central power in the Middle East. ..."
"... Do not judge war success in terms of what is good or bad for Americans. It's all about the Empire, not about Americans. ..."
"... My bet is that it is not Trump himself but Ivanka. The elites found a soft spot and are using this weakness to control him. Who would have the means to do this? None other than his son in law Jared. ..."
"... Roland Bernard High Finance Shocking Revelations (Dutch with Subtitles) This video, more than any I have seen, exposes the dark heart of the matter. It's a must-watch from beginning to end. Highly credible, in my opinion. ..."
"... The Zionist attempt to control language. The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY ..."
"... But the Elephant driver is the British Empire System!!! ..."
"... It is the British behind the coup against Trump. The British want to prevent the end of "Geopolitics" as we know it which is what would happen should America Russia and China come together per the New Silk Road and One Belt initiatives. This is why the British are setting off ..."
"... Look at a swarm of the US Congresspeople blubbering praises for Israel during AIPAC' annual meetings. The US Congress is indeed the Zionist Occupied Territory, a picture of a host captured by a parasitoid. ..."
"... How many referenda the Syrians have held to bring the Golan Heights to the embrace of Israel? We cannot wait to hear your story of Syrian people voting to join Israel. ..."
"... Surely in the dreams of the US ziocons and in the criminal Oded Yinon's plan for Eretz Israel, which preaches for creating a civil disorder in the neighboring states so that Israel could snatch as much territory as possible from the neighbors. The ongoing Libyan and Syrian tragedies belong to that plan. ..."
"... Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation " ..."
"... when I read that I thought you might have meant Charlie Reese. he used to write for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, until ((they)) ran him out ..."
"... Doesn't matter. It was a political defeat, and war is an extension of politics. ..."
First, a painful, but needed, clarification:
Basement crazies
.
Neocons .
Zionists .
Israel
Lobbyists . Judaics .
Jews
. Somewhere along this list we bump into the proverbial "elephant in the room". For some this
bumping will happen earlier in the list, for others a little later down the list, but the list will
be more or less the same for everybody. Proper etiquette, as least in the West, would want to make
us run away from that topic. I won't. Why? Well, for one thing I am constantly accused of not discussing
this elephant. Furthermore, I am afraid that the role this elephant is playing is particularly toxic
right now. So let me try to deal with this beast, but first I have to begin with some caveats.
First, terminology. For those who have not seen it, please read my article "
Why I use the term AngloZionist and why it is important ". Second, please read my friend Gilad
Atzmon's article "
Jews, Judaism & Jewishness " (or, even better, please read his seminal book
The Wondering
Who ). Please note that Gilad specifically excludes Judaics (religious Jews,) from his discussion.
He writes "I do not deal with Jews as a race or an ethnicity . I also generally
avoid dealing with Judaism (the religion)". I very much include them in my discussion. However, I
also fully agree with Gilad when he writes that "
Jews Are Not a Race But Jewish Identity is Racist " (those having any doubts about Jews not being
a race or ethnicity should read Shlomo Sand's excellent book "
The Invention of the Jewish People "). Lastly, please carefully review my definition of racism
as spelled out in my " moderation
policies ":
Racism is, in my opinion, not so much the belief that various human groups are different from
each other, say like dog breeds can be different, but the belief that the differences between human
groups are larger than within the group. Second, racism is also a belief that the biological characteristics
of your group somehow pre-determine your actions/choices/values in life. Third, racism often, but
not always, assumes a hierarchy amongst human groups (Germanic Aryans over Slavs or Jews, Jews over
Gentiles, etc.). I believe that God created all humans with the same purpose and that we are all
"brothers in Adam", that we all equally share the image (eternal and inherent potential for perfection)
of God (as opposed to our likeness to Him, which is our temporary and changing individual condition).
To sum it all up, I need to warn both racists and rabid anti-anti-Zionists that I will disappoint
them both: the object of my discussion and criticism below will be limited to categories which a
person chooses to belong to or endorse (religion, political ideas, etc.) and not categories which
one is born with (race, ethnicity).
Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires
defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities
linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically
having a recognized leader ). A tribe is a group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or
leave (Gilad Atzmon).
Third, it is precisely and because Jews are a tribe that we, non-Jews, owe them exactly nothing:
no special status, neither bad nor good, no special privilege of any kind, no special respect or
"sensitivity" – nothing at all. We ought to treat Jews exactly as we treat any other of our fellow
human beings: as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (Luke 6:31).
So if being Jewish is a choice and if any choice is a legitimate object of discussion and criticism,
then (choosing to) being Jewish is a legitimate object of discussion and criticism. Conversely, those
who would deny us the right to criticize Jews are, of course, the real racists since they do believe
that Jews somehow deserve a special status. In fact, that notion is at the core of the entire Jewish
identity and ideology.
Now let's come back to our opening list: Basement crazies. Neocons. Zionists. Israel Lobbyists.
Judaics. Jews. I submit that these are all legitimate categories as long as it is clear that "Jews
by birth only", what Alain Soral in France calls "the everyday Jews", are not included in this list.
Thus, for our purposes and in this context, these terms are all interchangeable. My own preference
still goes for "Zionist" because it combines the
ideological racism of secular Jews with the
religious racism
of Judaics (if you don't like my choice, just replace "Zionist" with any of the categories I
listed above). Zionism used to be secular, but it has turned religious during the late 20th century
now and so for our purposes this term can encompass both secular and religious Jewish supremacists.
Add to this some more or less conservative opinions and minsets and you have "Ziocons" as an alternative
expression.
[Sidebar: it tells you something about the power of the Zionist propaganda machine, I call it
the Ziomedia, that I would have to preface this article with a 700+ explanatory words note to try
to overcome conditioned mental reflexes in the reader (that I might be an evil anti-Semite). By the
way, I am under no illusions either: some Jews or doubleplusgoodthinking shabbos-goyim will
still accuse me of racism. This just comes with the territory. But the good news is when I will challenge
them to prove their accusation they will walk away empty-handed].
The reason why I decided to tackle this issue today is that the forces who
broke Trump in less than a month are also the very same forces who have forced him into a political
180: the Neocons and the US deep state. However, I think that these two concepts can be fused into
on I would call the "Ziocons": basically Zionists plus some rabid Anglo imperialists à la
Cheney or McCain. These are the folks who control the US corporate media, Hollywood, Congress,
most of academia, etc . These are the folks who organized a ferocious assault on the "nationalist"
or "patriotic" wing of Trump supporters and ousted Flynn and Bannon and these are the folks who basically
staged a color revolution against Trump . There is some pretty good evidence that the person
in charge of this quiet coup is
Jared Kushner, a rabid
Zionist .
Maybe . Maybe not. This does not really matter, what matters now is to understand what this all
means for the rest of us in the "basket of deplorables", the "99%ers" – basically the rest of the
planet.
Making sense of the crazies
Making sense of the motives and goals (one cannot speak of "logic" in this case) of self-deluded
racists can be a difficult exercise. But when the "basement crazies" (reminder: the term from from
here ) are
basically in control of the policies of the US Empire, this exercise becomes crucial, vital for the
survival of the mentally sane. I will now try to outline the reasons behind the "new" Trump policies
using two examples: Syria and Russia.
Syria . I think that we can all agree that having the black flag of Daesh fly over Damascus
would be a disaster for Israel. Right? Wrong! You are thinking like a mentally sane person. This
is not how the Israelis think at all. For them, Daesh is much preferable to Assad not only because
Assad is the cornerstone of a unitary Syria, but because Daesh in power gives the Israelis the perfect
pretext to establish a "security zone" to "protect" northern Israel. And that, in plain English,
means fully occupying and annexing the Golan (an old Israeli dream). Even better, the Israelis know
Daesh really well (they helped create it with the USA and Saudi Arabia) and they know that Daesh
is a mortal threat to Hezbollah. By putting Daesh into power in Syria, the Israelis hope for a long,
bloody and never ending war in Lebanon and Syria. While their northern neighbors would be plugged
into maelstrom of atrocities and horrors, the Israelis would get to watch it all from across their
border while sending a few aircraft from time to time to bomb Hezbollah positions or even innocent
civilians under whatever pretext. Remember how the
Israelis watched in total delight how their forces bombed the population of Gaza in 2014? With
Daesh in power in Damascus, they would get an even better show to take their kids to. Finally, and
last but most definitely not least, the Syrian Christians would be basically completely wiped out.
For those who know the hatred Judaics and Jews have always felt for Christianity (even
today ) it will be clear why the Israelis would want Daesh in power in Syria: Daesh is basically
a tool to carve up an even bigger Zionist entity.
Russia . Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian. Particularly the ex-Trotskyists
turned Neocons. I have
explained the origins of this hatred elsewhere and I won't repeat it all here. You just need
to study the genocidal policies against anything Russian of the first Bolshevik government (which
was 80%-85% Jews; don't believe me? Then listen
to Putin himself ). I have already discussed "
The ancient
spiritual roots of russophobia " in a past article and I have also explain what
rabbinical Phariseism (what is mistakenly called "Judaism" nowadays) is little more than an "anti-Christianity
"(please read those articles if this complex and fascinating history is of interest to you).
The bottom line is this: modern Neocons are little more than former Trotskyists who have found
a new host to use. Their hatred for everything Russian is still so visceral that they rather support
bona fide Nazis (isn't this ironic?) in the Ukraine than Russia, which is even more paradoxical
if you recall that before the 1917 Bolshevik coup anti-Jewish feelings were much stronger in what
is today the Ukraine than in what is the Russian Federation today.
In fact, relations between Russians and Jews have, I would argue, been significantly improving
since the Nazi coup in Kiev, much to the chagrin of the relatively few Russians left who truly hate
Jews. While you will hear a lot of criticism of organized political Jewry in Russia, especially compared
to the West, there is very little true anti-Jewish racism in Russia today, and even less publicly
expressed in the media (in fact, 'hate speech' is illegal in Russia). One thing to keep in mind is
that there are many substantial differences between Russian Jews and US Jews, especially amongst
those Russian Jews who deliberately chose not to emigrate to Israel, or some other western country
(those interested in this topic can find a more detailed discussion
here ). Jews in Russia today deliberately chose to stay and that, right there, show a very different
attitude than the attitude of those (Jews and non-Jews) who took the first opportunity to get out
of Russia as soon as possible. Bottom line – Ziocons feel an overwhelming and always present
hatred for Russia and Russians and that factor is one of the key components of their motivations.
Unless you take that hatred into account you will never be able to make sense of the Ziocons and
their demented policies.
Making sense of Trump
I think that Trump can be criticized for a lot of things, but there is exactly zero evidence of
him ever harboring anti-Russian feelings. There is plenty of evidence that he has always been pro-Israeli,
but no more than any politician or businessman in the USA. I doubt that Trump even knows where the
Golan Heights even are. He probably also does not know that Hezbollah and Daesh are mortal enemies.
Yes, Trump is a poorly educated ignoramus who is much better suited to the shows in Las Vegas
than to be President of a nuclear superpower, but I don't see any signs of him being hateful of anybody.
More generally, the guy is really not ideological. The best evidence is his goofy idea of building
a wall to solve the problem of illegal immigration: he (correctly) identified a problem, but then
he came up with a Kindergarten level (pseudo) solution.
The same goes for his views on Russia. He probably figured out something along these lines: "Putin
is a strong guy, Russia is a strong country, they hate Daesh and want to destroy it – let's join
forces". The poor man apparently had absolutely no idea of the power and maniacal drive of the
Neocons who met him once he entered the White House. Even worse is the fact that he apparently
does not realize that they are now using him to try out some pretty demented policies for which they
will later try to impeach him as the sole culprit should things go wrong (and they most definitely
will). Frankly, I get the feeling that Trump was basically sincere in his desire to "drain the swamp"
but that he is simply not too clever (just the way he betrayed Flynn and Bannon to try to appease
the Ziocons is so self-defeating and, frankly, stupid). But even if I am wrong and Trump was "their"
plant all along (I still don't believe that at all), the end result is the same: we now have
the Ziocons in total control of BOTH parties in Congress (or, more accurately, both wings of the
Ziocon party in Congress ), in total control of the White House, the mass media and Hollywood.
I am not so sure that they truly are in control of the Pentagon, but when I see the kind of pliable
and spineless figures military Trump has recently appointed, I get the feeling that there are
only two types of officers left in the top ranks of the US military: retired ones and "
ass-kissing little chickenshit s " à la Petraeus. Not good. Not good at all. As for
the ridiculously bloated (and therefore mostly incompetent) "three letter agencies soup", it appears
that it has been turned from an intelligence community to a highly politicized propaganda community
whose main purpose is to justify whatever counter-factual insanity their political bosses can dream
up. Again. Not good. Not good at all.
Living with ZOG
ZOG. Or "Zionist Occupation Government". That used to be the favorite expression of various
Jew-haters out there and it's use was considered the surefire sign of a rabid anti-Semite. And yet,
that is precisely what we are now all living with: a Zionist occupation government which has clearly
forced Trump to make a 180 on all his campaign promises and which now risks turning the USA into
a radioactive desert resulting from a completely artificial and needless confrontation with Russia.
To those horrified that I would dare use an expression like ZOG I will reply this: believe me,
I am even more upset about having to admit that ZOG is real than you are: I really don't care for
racists of any kind, and most of these ZOG folks looks like real racists to me. But, alas, they are
also right! Facts are facts, you cannot deny them or refuse to correctly qualify them that because
of the possible "overtones" of the term chosen or because of some invented need to be especially
"sensitive" when dealing with some special group. Remember – Jews are not owed any special favor
and there is no need to constantly engage in various forms of complex linguistic or mental yoga contortions
when discussing them and their role in the modern world. Still, I am using ZOG here just to show
that it can be done, but this is not my favorite expression. I just feel that committing the
crimethink here will encourage others to come out of their shell and speak freely. At the
very least, asking the question of whether we do or do not have a Zionist Occupation Government is
an extremely important exercise all by itself. Hence, today I ZOG-away
Some might argue with the "occupation" part of the label. Okay – what would you call a regime
which is clearly acting in direct opposition to the will of an overwhelming majority of the people
and which acts in the interests of a foreign power (with which the USA does not even have a formal
treaty)? Because, please make no mistake here, this is not a Trump-specific phenomenon. I think that
it all began with Reagan and that the Ziocons fully seized power with Bill Clinton. Others think
that it all began with Kennedy. Whatever may be the case, what is clear is that election after election
Americans consistently vote for less war and each time around they get more wars . It is true that
most Americans are mentally unable to conceptually analyze the bizarre phenomena of a country with
no enemies and formidable natural barriers needs to spend more on wars of aggression then the rest
of the planet spends of defense. Nor are they equipped to wonder why the US needs 16/17 intelligences
agencies when the vast majority of countries out there do fine with 2-5. Lastly, most Americans do
believe that they have some kind of duty to police the planet. True. But at the same time
, they are also sick and tired of wars, if only because so many of their relatives, friends
and neighbors return from these wars either dead or crippled. That, and the fact that Americans absolutely
hate losing. Losing is all the USA has been doing since God knows how long: losing wars against all
but the weakest and most defenseless countries out there. Most Americans also would prefer that the
money spent aboard on "defending democracy" (i.e. imperialism) be spent at home to help the millions
of Americans in need in the USA. As the southern rock band Lynyrd Snynyrd (which hails from Jacksonville,
Florida) once put it in their songs " Things
goin' on ":
Too many lives they've spent across the ocean
Too much money been spent upon the moon
Well, until they make it right
I hope they never sleep at night
They better make some changes
And do it soon
Soon? That song was written in 1978! And since then, nothing has changed. If anything, things
got worse, much worse.
Houston, we got a problem
ZOG is not an American problem. It is a planetary problem, if only because right now ZOG controls
the US nuclear arsenal. And Trump, who clearly and unequivocally campaigned on a peace platform,
is now sending a "
very powerful armada " to the coast of the DPRK. Powerful as this armada might be, it can do
absolutely nothing to prevent the DPRK artillery from smashing Seoul into smithereens. You think
that I am exaggerating? Business Insider estimated in 2010 that
it would take the DPRK 2 hours to completely obliterate Seoul . Why? Because
the
DPRK has enough artillery pieces to fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of
a conflict , that's why. Here we are talking about old fashioned, conventional, artillery pieces.
Wikipedia
says that the DPRK has 8,600 artillery pieces and 4,800 multiple rocket launcher systems. Two
days a go a Russian expert said that the real figure was just under 20'000 artillery pieces. Whatever
thee exact figure, suffice to say that it is "a lot".
The
DPRK also has some more modern but equally dangerous capabilities . Of special importance here
are the roughly 200'000 North Korean special forces. Oh sure, these 200'000 are not US Green Beret
or Russian Spetsnaz, but they are adequate for their task: to operate deep behind enemy lies and
create chaos and destroy key objectives. You tell me – what can the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike
group deploy against these well hidden and dispersed 10'000+ artillery pieces and 200'000 special
forces? Exactly, nothing at all.
And did I mention that the DPRK has nukes?
No, I did not. First, I am not at all sure that the kind of nukes the DPRK has can be fitted for
delivery on a missile. Having a few nukes and having missiles is one thing, having missiles capable
of adequately delivering these nukes is quite another. I suppose that DPRK special forces could simply
drive a nuke down near Seoul on a simple army truck and blow it up. Or bring it in a container ship
somewhere in the general vicinity of a US or Korean base and blow it up there. One neat trick would
be to load a nuke on a civilian ship, say a fishing vessel, and bring it somewhere near the USS Carl
Vinson and then blow it up. Even if the USN ships survive this unscathed, the panic aboard these
ships would be total. To be honest, this mostly Tom Clancy stuff, in real warfare I don't think that
the North Korean nukes would be very useful against a US attack. But you never know, necessity is
the mother of invention , as the British like to say.
I don't believe that Trump is dumb enough to actually strike at North Korea. I think that
his dumbass plan is probably to shoot down a DPRK missile to show that he has made "America great
again" or something equally asinine. The problem here is that I am not sure at all how Kim Jong-un
and his Party minions might react to that kind of loss of face. What if they decided that they needed
to fire some more missiles, some in the general direction of US forces in the region (there are fixed
US targets all over the place). Then what? How will Trump prove that he is the biggest dog on the
block? Could he decide to "punish" the offending missile launch site like he did with the al-Sharyat
airbase in Syria? And if Trump does that – what will Kim Jong-un's reaction be?
To be totally honest, I don't think that the "very powerful armada" will do anything other
than waste the US taxpayer's money. I am getting a strong sense that Trump is all about appearance
over substance, what the Russians call "показуха" – a kind of fake show of force, full with special
effects and "cool" photo ops, but lacking any real substance. Still, being on the receiving end of
Trump's показуха (po-kah-zoo-kha) must be unnerving, especially if you already have natural paranoid
tendencies. I am not at all sure the Kim Jong-un will find the presence of the US carrier strike
group as pathetic and useless as I do.
Both Russia and Syria have shown an amazing about of restraint when provoked by Turkey or the
US. This is mostly due to the fact that Russian and Syrian leaders are well-educated people who are
less concerned with loss of face than with achieving their end result. In direct contrast, both Kim
Jong-un and Trump are weak, insecure, leaders with an urgent need to prove to their people (and to
themselves!) that they are tough guys. Exactly the most dangerous kind of mindset you want in any
nuclear-capable power, be it huge like the USA or tiny like the DPRK.
So what does that have to do with the ZOG and the Ziocons? Everything.
They are the ONLY ONES who really want to maintain the AngloZionst Empire at any cost. Trump
made it clear over and over again that his priority was the USA and the American people, not the
Empire. And yet now is is playing a crazy game of "nuclear chicken" with the DPRK. Does that
sound like the "real Trump" to you? Maybe – but not to me. All this crazy stuff around the DPRK and
the (few) nukes it apparently has, is all just a pretext to "play empire", to show that, as Obama
liked to say, the USA is the "
indispensable
nation ". God forbid the local countries would deal with that problem alone, without USN carrier
strike groups involved in the "solving" of this problem!
[Sidebar: by the way, this is also the exact same situation in Syria: the Russians have single-handedly
organized a viable peace-process on the ground and then followed it up with a multi-party conference
in Astana, Kazakhstan. Looks great except for one problem: the indispensable nation was not even
invited. Even worse, the prospects of peace breaking out became terribly real. The said indispensable
nation therefore "invited itself" by illegally (and ineffectually) bombing a Syrian air base and,
having now proven its capacity to wreck any peace process, the USA is now right back in center-stage
of the negotiations about the future of Syria. In a perverse way, this almost makes sense.]
So yes, we have a problem and that problem is that ZOG is in total control of the Empire and will
never accept to let it go, even if that means destroying the USA in the process.
I can imagine the gasp of horror and disgust some of you will have at seeing me use the ZOG
expression. I assure you, it is quite deliberate on my part. I want to 1) wake you up and 2) show
you that you cannot allow the discomfort created by conditioning to guide your analyses . As
with all the other forms of crimethink , I recommend that you engage in a lot of it, preferably
in public, and you will get used to it. First it will be hard, but with time it will get easier (it
is also great fun). Furthermore, somebody needs to be the first one to scream "
the emperor has no clothes ". Then, once one person does it, the others realize that it is safe
and more follow. The key thing here is not to allow ideological "sacred cows" to roam around your
intellectual mindspace and limit you in your thinking. Dogmas should be limited to Divine revelations,
not human ideological constructs.
Where do we go from here?
Things are coming to a head. Trump presented himself as a real alternative to the ultimate
warmongering shabbos-shiksa Hillary. It is now pretty darn obvious that what we got ourselves is
just another puppet, but that the puppet-masters have not changed. The good news is that those
who were sincere in their opposition to war are now openly speaking about Trump great betrayal.
From Ann Coulter to
Pat Buchanan , many
paleo-Conservatives clearly "got it". As did the
real progressives . What we are left with is what I call the "extreme center", basically zombies
who get their news from the Ziomedia and who have so many mental blocks that it takes weeks of focused
efforts to basically bring them back to reality.
The key issue here is how do we bring together those who are still capable of thought? I think
that a minimalist agenda we can all agree upon could be composed of the following points:
Peace/pacifism International law Human and civil rights Democracy Pluralism Anti-racism Ethics and
morality
Sounds harmless? It ain't, I assure you. ZOG can only survive by violence, terror and war. Furthermore,
the AngloZionist Empire cannot abide by any principles of international law. As for human and civil
right, once quick look at the Patriot Act (which was already ready by the time the 9/11 false flag
operation was executed) will tell you how ZOG feels about these issues. More proof? How about the
entire "fake news" canard? How about the new levels of censorship in YouTube, Facebook or Google?
Don't you see that this is simply a frontal attack on free speech and the First Amendment?! What
about Black Lives Matter – is that not a perfect pretext to justify more police powers and a further
militarization of police forces? To think that the Zionists care about human or civil rights is a
joke! Just read what the Uber-Zionist and [putative] human right lawyer, the great Alan Dershowitz
writes about torture, Israel or free speech (for Norman Finkelstein). Heck, just read what ultra-liberal
super-mega human righter (well, after he returned to civilian life) and ex-President
Jimmy Carter writes about Israel -- Or look at the policies of the Bolshevik regime in Russia.
It it pretty clear that these guys not only don't give a damn about human or civil right, but that
they are deeply offended and outraged when they are told that they cannot violate these rights.
What about democracy? How can that be a intellectual weapon? Simple – you show that every time
the people (in the USA or Europe) voted for X they got Y. Or they were told to re-vote and re-vote
and re-vote again and again until, finally, the Y won. That is a clear lack of democracy. So if you
say that you want to restore democracy, you are basically advocating regime-change, but nicely wrapped
into a "good" ideological wrapper. Western democracies are profoundly anti-democratic. Show it!
Pluralism? Same deal. All this takes is to prove that the western society has become a "mono-ideological"
society were real dissent is simply not tolerated and were real pluralism is completely ascent from
the public discourse. Demand that the enemies of the system be given equal time on air and always
make sure that you give the supporters of the system equal time on media outlets you (we) control.
Then ask them to compare. This is exactly what Russia is doing nowadays (see
here if you are
interested). Western democracies are profoundly anti-pluralistic. Again, show it!
Anti-racism. Should be obvious to the reader by now. Denounce, reject and attack any idea which
gives any group any special status. Force your opponents to fess up to the fact that what they
really want when they claim to struggle for "equality" is a special status for their single-issue
minority. Reject any and all special interest groups and, especially, reject the notion that democracy
is about defending the minority against the majority. In reality, minorities are always much more
driven and motivated by a single issue which is why a coalition of minorities inevitably comes to
power. What the world needs is the exact opposite: a democracy which would protect the majority against
the minorities. Oh, sure, they will fight you on this one, but since you are right this is an intellectual
argument you ought to be capable of winning pretty easily (just remember, don't let accusations of
crimethink freeze you in terror).
Last, my favorite one: ethics and morality.
The modern western [neoliberal] society has been built on a categorical rejection of [Christian]
ethics and morality. Slogans like "God is dead" or "Beyond good and evil" resulted in the most abject
and viciously evil century in human history: the 20th century. Furthermore, most people by now can
tell that Hollywood, and its bigger brother, the US porn industry, have played a central role in
basically removing categories such as "good" or "truth" or "honor" from the mind of those infected
by the US mass media, especially the Idiot-box (aka "telescreen" in Orwell's 1984). Instead unbridled
greed and consumption became the highest and most sacred expression of "our way of life" as Americans
like to say .
Hollywood movies proclaimed that "
greed is good ". In fact, at the very core of the capitalist [neoliberal] ideology is the belief
that the sum total of everybody's greed yields the happiest and most successful society possible.
Crazy and sick stuff, but I don't have the place to discuss this here. All I will say that that
rehabilitating notions such as right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, healthy and natural
versus unnatural and pathological is a great legal way (at least so far) to fight the Empire. Ditto
for sexual morality and family. There is a reason why all Hollywood movies inevitably present only
divorced or sexually promiscuous heroes: they are trying to destroy the natural family unit because
they *correctly* identify the traditional family unit as a threat to the AngloZionist order. Likewise,
there is also a reason why all the western elites are constantly plagued by accusations of pedophilia
and other sexual scandals. One Russian commentator, Vitalii Tretiakov, recently hilariously paraphrased
the old communist slogan and declared "naturals of all countries – come to Russia" [in modern Russian
"naturals" is the antonym of "homosexual"). He was joking, of course, but he was also making a serious
point: Russia has become the only country which dares to openly uphold the core values of Christianity
and Islam (that, of course, only adds to the Ziocon's hatred of Russia).
[ Sidebar: by the way, and contrary to popular belief, Russia is not an especially religious
country at all. While only a minority of Russians is truly religious, a majority of Russians seem
to support religious values as civilizational ones. I don't think that this is sustainable for
too long, Russia will either become more religious or more secularized, but for the time being
we have this apparently paradoxical situation of a generally secular society standing for traditional
and religious values ]
You might wonder how pacifism, international law, human and civil rights, democracy, pluralism,
anti-racism, ethics and morality can help avert a nuclear war in Korea. In truth – they cannot directly
do this. But in the long term, I firmly believe that these values can corrode the AngloZionist Empire
from within. And look at the alternatives:
Organizing political parties does not work in a system where money determine the outcome. "Direct
action" does not work in a system which treats libertarians and ecologists as potential terrorists.
Public protests does not work in a regime where the Ziomedia gets to decide which demonstration
gets coverage and which one does not. Civil disobedience does not work in a regime which has
no problem having the highest per capita incarceration rate on the planet. Running for office does
not work in a regime which selects for spinelessness, immorality and, above all, subservience. Even
running away abroad does not work when dealing with an Empire which has 700-1000 (depends on how
you count) military bases worldwide and which will bomb the crap out of any government which strives
at even a modicum of true sovereignty.
The only other option is "internal exile", when you build yourself you own inner world of spiritual
and intellectual freedom and you basically "live there" with no external signs of you having "fled"
the Empire's ugly reality. But if nuclear-tipped ICBMs start flying no amount of "internal exile"
will protect you, not even if you combine that internal exile with with a life far away in the boonies.
Orthodox Christian eschatology teaches that the End Times are inevitable. However, the Fathers
also teach that we can push the End Times back by our collective actions, be it in the form of prayers
or in the form of an open resistance to Evil in our world. I have three children, 1 girl and 2 boys,
and I feel like I owe it to them to fight to make the world they will have to live even marginally
better.
... ... ..
nsa, April 17, 2017 at 1:26 am GMT
ZIG is a more accurate acronym as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice,
mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc.
exiled off mainstreet, April 17, 2017 at 2:10 am GMT • 100 Words
Excellent, thought provoking and depressingly accurate. Even the cavil about the Golan
Heights is based, if I'm not mistaken, on the fact Israel declared it annexed in 1981. I'm
not sure it is internationally recognized, though the US, as an Israeli acolyte as indicated by
the article in spades, may have done so at some point.
Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree. It's
not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the
propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.
That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70
years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA.
US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they
might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used
to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.
Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration
camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda."
They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such
barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps,
the US decided to change their tune.
Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans.
Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews
were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the
victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being
used today, but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of
the world just too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow
on their image as eternal victims.
People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck
novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with
great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled,
they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material.
Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic
relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea.
WorkingClass, April 17, 2017 at 4:20 am GMT /p>
If Trump's foreign policies are being dictated by someone else I want him to give us names,
addresses and photographs of the real decision makers. Until that happens I hold him responsible.
I have begun to regard Trump as Dubya with Jared as his Cheney.
Well done Saker. Please keep up the good work.
Anon, April 17, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT
Zionists are very powerful, but they are part of Globalism, a cabal of all elites of world:
Chinese, EU, American, Jewish, Latin America, Hindus, Saudis, etc. It is the GLOB that rules.
But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea.
Nice try, but what have you to say about the originators of the Zionist project?
P.S.: In general, the US leadership has not proven itself bright, cunning or principled
enough to resist the Zio agenda. For exhibit "A" just read up on Truman. Then consider LBJ's response
to the attack on the USS Liberty.
One could also examine who the influential members of the admins of Wilson and FDR as well.
Mark Green, April 17, 2017 at 4:50 pm GMT
This is a very thoughtful article. The Saker covers a lot of ground. Basically, he has provided
his readers with not only a highly perceptive overview, but a blueprint from which they can begin
resisting ZOG (or ZIG) tyranny. And let's make no mistake about it: ZOG exists and its impact
is immense.
But ZOG goes beyond mere government. The Zions now permeate countless NGO's, media institutions
including news and entertainment, high finance, folkways involving culture-wide taboos, and or
course, higher and lower education. Even Christian doctrine has been altered to accommodate this
highly-aggressive movement. The Zionist agenda is a burgeoning phenomena. And its zombie acolytes
are similarly ubiquitous. The Zions have captured our government–and more.
The Saker also correctly notes that the distorting influence of Zionism has become too apparent
to deny–even though it is, at the same time, nearly invisible; as it operates in plain sight under
various pseudonyms, disguises and false pretenses.
Indeed, its influence remains mostly unrecognized and it is therefore unresisted. For now.
Indeed, even Trump–after only months in office–has fallen under its clever spell. We must therefore
strive to examine, discuss, critique and resist this extra-national force of malevolence. Step
one: Identify the source.
The intellectual and culture-wide power of ZOG emanates in great part via our mainstream media.
The mind-numbing and destructive impact of ZOG in Western media must be understood and unmasked.
Fran Macadam, April 18, 2017 at 2:13 am GMT
When you're right you're right. Logic like this is what leads the paranoiacs to think Russkis
are taking over! When you make good sense, it can't help but "control" minds.
One of the saddest developments, to a former implacable Cold Warrior and anticommunist, is
that when by a miracle (yes, I count it that) the Russians ended communism by their own choice,
without shots being fired, our side did not respond honorably (at least the ones at the commanding
heights of our society.)
Like your description of what Trump thought, "Hey Russia's fighting ISIS, let's have them take
care of it and save us the trouble" I'm a simple guy too who'd rather see the destructive waste
of war money instead be spent on infrastructure for our folks.
I think of "House of the Dead" where the picture of the prisoners waiting for release through
the coming of Christ, is a picture of us poor prisoners, but still of faith, waiting in this world
too. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
CalDre, April 18, 2017 at 2:56 am GMT
@Cyrano
Wow, where to start when someone claims white is black .
It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around.
So, we see a bunch of loyal dual American-Israeli citizens sitting at the top of the Israeli
government, it's businesses, and its media? Oh – right – all those dual citizens are sitting atop
US government, businesses and media. And we see Israel fighting wars for US' benefit? Oh – right
– it's US doing the dirty work for Jewish expansionism.
US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that
they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it.
That's not the case. The Jews were turned away because the Jewish Establishment/Zionists ordered
the US to turn them back. Why? Because they wanted them to go to Israel to rob the Palestinians
of their land instead. So it was not the Nazis the US was afraid of (then or now), but the Jewish
oligarchs.
Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration
camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda."
They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such
barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps,
the US decided to change their tune.
There is not to this day any "overwhelming" or even "underwhelming" evidence of the Holohoax.
Soviets made a bunch of propaganda out of the (labor) camps in large part to get back at Germany
for the terrible losses the Soviets suffered, as well as the huge embarrassment when the Nazis
revealed the Soviet crimes in Katlyn Forest. However when in the early 1990s Gorbachev released
the notorious Auschwitz "death books", it turns out hardly any Jews were killed, and none by gassings,
rather the vast majority of the dead succumbed to typhus (typhus being carried by lice, and Zyklon-B,
the chemical Germany is (falsely) accused of using to murder Jews by the millions, was actually
used to kill lice and thereby save Jews in the camps).
utu, April 18, 2017 at 5:37 am GMT
But even if I am wrong and Trump was "their" plant all along
It's possible that Trump did not even know that he was their plant but at some point after
psychological profiling of him and assessing all leverages available to them to pry and prod him
it was decided he will be just fine for the job. That's why he was allowed to win the election.
The anti-Trump color revolution conducted by the so-called liberal left was a crucial part from
the arsenal of the leverages. In the end it worked out beautifully for them. Gen. Flynn was not
too bright to realize what hit him but Bannon is perhaps the only guy, in the good guys camp,
who knows what is really going on. I am just wondering why he is still there. Perhaps they are
forcing him to stay for the sake of the deluded iron electorate of Trump to prolong their delusion.
they are also sick and tired of wars, if only because so many of their relatives, friends
and neighbors return from these wars either dead or crippled. That, and the fact that Americans
absolutely hate losing. Losing is all the USA has been doing since God knows how long: losing
wars against all but the weakest and most defenseless countries out there
You do not get it Saker. It does not work that way. In absolute numbers losses are very
low. It is all up to media to create a perception. America can afford to have many 1000′s more
dead w/o any dent in its well being. Just control the media. Vilify the enemies.
With the exception of Vietnam War America as and Empire hasn't lost a single war. Vietnam
War was misguided from the point of view of the Empire which at the end of 1960′s and beginning
of 1970′s was to be redirected to Middle East.
This was a new task for the Empire. So everything goes according to the plan, e.g. Iraq war
goals were 100% accomplished. There is no more state of Iraq. Iraq will no pose a thread to anybody
and Israel in particular. There will be everlasting chaos of sectarian fighting as as long
as TPTB will be supplying weapons to one of the sides. Always the weaker one at given moment.
The same goes for Libya and soon for Syria. No more stable, semi-secular states with strong central
power in the Middle East.
Do not judge war success in terms of what is good or bad for Americans. It's all about
the Empire, not about Americans.
The best Saker's essay so far, the most inspired and the most identifiable. Just two quick
notes from me.
First, the ZOG/ZIG is so ubiquitous and powerful that the past election with Trump against
Hillary was really a duel between pro-Trump young Zionists and the pro-Hillary old Zionists, in
other words it was a generational change among the Masters (it was also a change in who will profit
from political power). Since Trump turned to the Dark Side, I have realised that Jared was always
there, even during the election, as an éminence grise and he pulled Trump's strings a forced a
switch from election rhetoric to post-election reality. I have no doubt that Jared is the man
behind the man, except that he also must have a fairly powerful Zionist base behind him.
Second, Saker just like Mr Giraldi has become a magnet for all and sundry Hasbara trolls, obviously
because both are the most prominent exposers of the ZOG/ZIG. It is important to remember that
all Western Governments are ZOG/ZIG, without exception. Only BRICS countries appear free at the
moment, despite 1000 military basis of the global ZOG/ZIG.
My bet is that it is not Trump himself but Ivanka. The elites found a soft spot and
are using this weakness to control him. Who would have the means to do this? None other than
his son in law Jared.
He could have coerced her into doing something stupid on camera like group sex or being
blacked and little Jared would not think twice to use this to control a weak man like Trump.
Translation from "alt-rightish" into English:
"Ive been a dupe and a stupid sucker for the last 2 1/2 years, and I need to believe that somehow
the Jooz corrupted and bent this fine American hero to their own will in two months, instead of
acknowledging the obvious truth that he was a weak, pathetic asset, and a literal as well as figurative,
cocksucker, all along."
I don't know if you wrote this as a response to my comment some time back arguing you were
ignoring the elephant in the room, but this article reflects my thoughts more or less on Zion.
I would add the historical record of Zion from Pharoah, the catacombs under Rome, to Spain,
to Edwardian England, Tsarist Russia and so on is a record much like a locust. You have to wonder
where all the 'persecution' comes from. Where the causuality?
Its seeks economic surplus.
And yes, they are missing the part of the brain associated with white high empathy and 'fair
play' as Jayman has mentioned. They studied that weakness in Tavistock to find these pavlonian
words like 'rac-ism' and when designing the themes in their movies and the fiction work they publish.
The way to defeat Zion is to say the Necromancers name. Say it. If you say whats going on,
the power of the Illusion and the fraud subsists entirely. No violence is needed. Repeat no violence
is needed. Just say it. Bring it up in a discussion about politics politely and with evidence.
The higher IQ people you meet will cotton on when you anchor the pattern recognition.
They are the real 1%, they cannot govern with enlightened chattel. This is why philosophy,
psychology, economics, history, anthropology, biology, and so on have been debased into slogans
in the academy.
In time, they will come after your daughters and mothers and sisters and turn them into whores.
They will send your sons to war. They will fleece your pension funds.
The truth, is that the most persecuted race of man in history – with a notable minority of
followers of truth like the editor of this webzine -Mr Unz, Mr Sanders, Mr Marx and so on – is
that there is a number who are essentially a very high IQ version of the mafia.
• 100 Words My own reading leads me to identify the following as the Elders of Zion:
Steve Schwarzmann
Paul Singer
Robert Rubin
David Rubenstein
Summer Rothstein
Evelyn Rothschild
Stephen Friedman
Elliot Abrams
There are some more. Put them on a map and draw the links between them and their agents. Khordovsky
gave his money to Rothschild to mind after the 1990s pillaging of Russia when Putin imprisoned
him.
Ohhh they hate Putin because he stopped them in the 90s more than anything. Khordovsky was
trying to buy a media outlet.
Also the Protocols may be based on a satire but as Lord Syndenham mentioned in the Times 100
years ago, it was a spooky blueprint for the Bolshevik revolution .and the EU.
Lena Dunham social policy for jewish social freedom
Milton Autism on economics to stop redistribution to the goyim
Kristol on foreign policy for Israel's world domination.
e.g Tony Blair, Macron, Cameroon, Merkel, Juncker, Bush, Clinton etc etc.
There is no difference. They are all the same party.
@Cyrano Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree.
It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized
the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.
That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years
now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US
even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might
offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be
back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.
Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration
camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda."
They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such
barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps,
the US decided to change their tune.
Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who
were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were
the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims
can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being used today,
but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of the world just
too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow on their image
as eternal victims.
People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck
novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with
great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled, they
are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material.
Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic
relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. With no disrespect Cyrano,
you may need to read the 1996 report 'A Clean Break'
- and you'll quickly discover its the zionist entity that is the tail that wags the American dog.
The zionist entity is not limited to the geographical borders of the state of Israel, either.
Before blaming "The Jews" for the ills of the world it would behoove everyone to take a good
long hard look in the mirror. If you think you get an affirmative answer to "Who is the most beautiful
of all?" you are living in a fairy tale.
Deeply
Concerned ,
April 19, 2017 at 1:09 pm GMT
• 100 Words May I add that calling for a worldwide demonstration on a preannouced day (similar
to the one against W's Iraq war) is critically needed. The slogan of this demonstration should
be "ANY US CITIZEN WHO PUTS THE INTEREST OF ISRAEL ABOVE THE NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE US IS –
A TRAITOR . ANYONE WHO SUPPORT, PROMOTE, DEFEND A TRAITOR IS A TRAITOR". Traitor is the key word
in my opinion and it should be the rallying word.
Vires
,
April 19, 2017 at 5:50 pm GMT
• 300 Words
@Cyrano Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree.
It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized
the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.
That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years
now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US
even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might
offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be
back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.
Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration
camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda."
They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such
barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps,
the US decided to change their tune.
Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who
were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were
the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims
can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being used today,
but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of the world just
too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow on their image
as eternal victims.
People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck
novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with
great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled, they
are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material.
Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic
relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. Why are you trying to
conflate Jews and Zionists? Are you unable to see the difference between the two concepts?
It's pretty clear the issue is the stranglehold the Zionist Lobby AKA Israel lobby has
on the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of the US Federal Government and the Federal
Reserve, and its influence on the propaganda machine and academia.
Therefore the issue is not about "Jews" using the USG, but rather the Zionist Lobby, AKA Israel
Lobby in the US or Jewish Lobby in Israel, having and using the stranglehold on the USG, academia
and propaganda machine (mass media and Hollywood) to further their goals.
It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around
When you refer to "Jews", do you mean the Zionist lobby AKA Israel lobby , or the average
"Jew sixpack" living in the US i.e. the rest?
If what you mean is the so called Israel lobby when you refer to "Jews", two professors, one
of Political Sciences and one of International Affairs, both from top US Universities, disagree
with your remarkable theory, and have written extensively and with plenty of references supporting
their claims:
John Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Sciences
Chicago University
Stephen Walt
Belfer Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Three links, first two for an article, second with all references. Third for the even more
detailed book, refuting your claims.
Are you familiar with their work? Are you rejecting their claims?
If yes, on what are you basing your rebuttal and what is your background?
Or are you trying to frame the blogger and everyone concerned with the subject as old Jew-haters
and anti-semites?
Now, if after reading the Saker's post, the only thing you understood was:
The Saker: "The Jews" are to blame for the ills of the world folks
Then I would recommend you should seriously improve your English, at least reading comprehension
skills – perhaps some online courses – before commenting and making a fool of yourself again publicly.
• 200 Words
@Vires Why are you trying to conflate Jews and Zionists? Are you unable to see the difference
between the two concepts?
It's pretty clear the issue is the stranglehold the Zionist Lobby AKA Israel lobby has
on the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of the US Federal Government and the Federal
Reserve, and its influence on the propaganda machine and academia.
Therefore the issue is not about "Jews" using the USG, but rather the Zionist Lobby, AKA Israel
Lobby in the US or Jewish Lobby in Israel, having and using the stranglehold on the USG, academia
and propaganda machine (mass media and Hollywood) to further their goals.
It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around
When you refer to "Jews", do you mean the Zionist lobby AKA Israel lobby , or the average
"Jew sixpack" living in the US i.e. the rest?
If what you mean is the so called Israel lobby when you refer to "Jews", two professors, one
of Political Sciences and one of International Affairs, both from top US Universities, disagree
with your remarkable theory, and have written extensively and with plenty of references supporting
their claims:
John Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Sciences
Chicago University
Stephen Walt
Belfer Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Three links, first two for an article, second with all references. Third for the even more
detailed book, refuting your claims.
What is your background, and on what are you basing your claims?
Have you published an official rebuttal?
Or is your theory just a "hunch"? I am just a writer, I don't have any agenda and I call the
things as I see them. I don't buy the theory of the all-powerful Zionist lobby steering the American
foreign policy either. Why? Because it makes no sense. Sure there is such a lobby, but US allows
it to exist because it suits their interests. They (US establishment) are the ones responsible,
not the Israel lobby.
If all anyone had to do in order to influence US government – was to form a lobby – then during
the cold war there would have been a communist lobby in Washington, financed by the USSR. They
would have poured billions of dollars, and not only the cold war could have ended quickly, but
maybe today America would have been communist. Do you see where I am going with this? US government
allows lobbies to exist only after they comply with their interests. They are the initiators of
policies, not lobbies. Have a nice day.
Cyrano, April 20, 2017 at 3:56 am GMT
• 100 Word\
@Vires
You know man, you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. Because you
make it easy on them. Them being the government. Yeah, poor US government at the mercy of evil
Zionist lobby. If it wasn't for it, it would be the most benevolent government in the world,
bringing peace and prosperity wherever they go. One day you'll wake up and you'll look into
the abyss and you'll realize that the abyss is your complete ignorance. But don't listen to
me, keep on voting every 4 years, that's going to change everything. And keep bitching about
the Jewish lobby, you are so much smarter than the average American, you have it all figured
out.
Russia. Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian.
Don't flatter yourself. Most Jews don't give a shit about Russia. Jews *DO* hate Iranians,
Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Arab Christians but we really don't care about Russia. We
like to mock Russian nationalists like yourself and Western Russophiles but we don't hate you.
Okay, maybe we do hate Western Russophiles, I know I sure do, but we don't hate Russia or Russians.
And the reason we don't hate you is because you just aren't important enough to be worth hating.
I agree with your reasons for why Israel wants an ISIS victory (although it is ridiculous to
suggest that Israel's current cucked out leadership wants to expand Israel's borders). It is probably
the only thing you have gotten right in years. Good job! You are improving!
Roland Bernard High Finance Shocking Revelations (Dutch with Subtitles) This video, more
than any I have seen, exposes the dark heart of the matter. It's a must-watch from beginning to
end. Highly credible, in my opinion. Wally
,
April 20, 2017 at 7:58 am GMT
Russia. Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian.
Don't flatter yourself. Most Jews don't give a shit about Russia. Jews *DO* hate Iranians, Palestinians,
Syrians, Lebanese and Arab Christians but we really don't care about Russia. We like to mock Russian
nationalists like yourself and Western Russophiles but we don't hate you. Okay, maybe we do hate
Western Russophiles, I know I sure do, but we don't hate Russia or Russians.
And the reason we don't hate you is because you just aren't important enough to be worth hating.
I agree with your reasons for why Israel wants an ISIS victory (although it is ridiculous to
suggest that Israel's current cucked out leadership wants to expand Israel's borders). It is probably
the only thing you have gotten right in years. Good job! You are improving! The True Cost of Israel
Forced U.S. taxpayers money goes far beyond the official numbers.
Israel's occupation of the West Bank is an internationally-recognized human rights crime-but
those being impacted are harshly punished for not only acts of resistance, but even mere advocacy
for their rights.
When Trump basically fellated AIPAC during his campaign it worried me. But I thought maybe
just maybe, Trump was playing the Jews ..this article in all it's glory suggests I am very wrong.
That any potential president has to genuflect to Israel and Jews is the saddest thing in American
History. You can almost wish it would all implode. A hard reset minus Jewish whining and control
would be a true utopia.
@Cyrano You know man, you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. Because
you make it easy on them. Them being the government. Yeah, poor US government at the mercy of
evil Zionist lobby. If it wasn't for it, it would be the most benevolent government in the world,
bringing peace and prosperity wherever they go. One day you'll wake up and you'll look into the
abyss and you'll realize that the abyss is your complete ignorance. But don't listen to me, keep
on voting every 4 years, that's going to change everything. And keep bitching about the Jewish
lobby, you are so much smarter than the average American, you have it all figured out. Jew finance
capitalists [ the master money manipulators] and their cohort in MEDIA are most certainly jewish..
Who the hell do you think promotes all this homo rights crap? It's not so much the jew Svengali
-but you- the rube in the mirror, who will have to be dealt with first when the lights go out..
Bruce
Marshall ,
April 20, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT
But the Elephant driver is the British Empire System!!!
It is the British behind the coup against Trump. The British want to prevent the end of
"Geopolitics" as we know it which is what would happen should America Russia and China come together
per the New Silk Road and One Belt initiatives. This is why the British are setting off
World War III.
" you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. "
Don't you imply that "so much propaganda in US" is anti-Zionist? If yes, then you have no idea
about MSM in the US. Just to give you a hint, try to google this name: Helen Thomas, specifically
a story of her private conversation with a Jewish man (who happened to be a born informer).
Look at a swarm of the US Congresspeople blubbering praises for Israel during AIPAC' annual
meetings. The US Congress is indeed the Zionist Occupied Territory, a picture of a host captured
by a parasitoid.
@Quartermaster And so was Russia's annexation of Crimea. You don't think Saker would want
to call attention to such things do you?
How many referenda the Syrians have held to bring the Golan Heights to the embrace of Israel?
We cannot wait to hear your story of Syrian people voting to join Israel. Tell us, when did
the Golan Heights belong to Israel?
Surely in the dreams of the US ziocons and in the criminal Oded Yinon's plan for Eretz
Israel, which preaches for creating a civil disorder in the neighboring states so that Israel
could snatch as much territory as possible from the neighbors. The ongoing Libyan and Syrian tragedies
belong to that plan.
The ziocons' cooperation with Ukrainian neo-Nazis is another story. "Never again," indeed.
In the Middle Ages, antisemitism defined Jews as a religious group and focused on their
religious separateness.
In the more secular era of Dreyfus and the Nazis and Nasser, antisemitism defined Jews as
an ethnic group and focused on their ethnic separateness.
Now that we are in an era which celebrates group identity and views it as a virtue, antisemitism
focuses on denying Jews their ethnic or religious identity.
" antisemitism focuses on denying Jews their ethnic or religious identity.states "
The article is about ziocons and it emphasizes, specifically, that conflating Jews and Zionists
is dishonest. You need to read the article before making your generalizations.
Considering the number of synagogues in the US and the prominence of ziocons among policy-makers
in the US, please tell us, who exactly "denies Jews their ethnic or religious identity." Have
you heard about Wolfowitz, Feith, and Kagans? How about Nuland-Kagan fraternizing with neo-Nazis?
Still OK?
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/
ZIG is a more accurate acronym......as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks,
lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc.
Zionist Infested Government! Brilliant! I'm going to start using this term.
Anyone who's spent any time inside the beltway quickly realizes that AngloZionists – the Saker's
term is really useful if one wants to accurately and concisely summarize these people, their ideology,
and their ultimate loyalties – infest from top to bottom the three branches of the federal government,
all the supporting bureaucracies, and all the parasitic lobbying groups, consultants, foundations,
think tanks, etc., that wield less official powers. Their proportional presence in Washington
is many orders of magnitude greater than their proportion in the general population and their
power is magnified by their informally shared ideologies and goals.
Not many of these people are actually aware of the harm they are causing. Most are fundamentally
decent people. Some I count as close friends. Yet the combined power these people wield and the
varying levels of allegiance they bear to foreign powers whose interests are inimical to those
of the USA and its citizens make them, considered en masse, an existential threat to this country,
to world peace, and to international law and order.
Few US citizens nowadays seem to know any foreign language, pity, for the following book explains
Russian anti semitism:
Alexander Solschenizyn, ´Die russisch- jüdische Geschichte 1795- 1916, >> Zweihundert Jahre zusammen
<<´, Moskau 2001, München 2002
Who is interested in the why of German anti semitism after 1870 has more luck:
Ismar Schorsch, 'Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 – 1914', New York 1972
Fritz Stern, 'Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire', New
York, 1977.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA
Also interesting is:
Horace Meyer Kallen, 'Zionism and World Politics; A Study in History and Social Psychology', New
York, 1921
Pre WWII 'neocons':
Bruce Allen Murphy, 'The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, The Secret Political Activities of Two
Supreme Court Justices', New York, 1983
jacques sheete ,
April 20, 2017 at 6:23 pm GMT
@Wally
Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security"
The so called non-profit scene also appears to me little more than a cesspool of corruption
and I wonder who or what dominates those rackets.
ZOG is an excellent term that describes the situation in America perfectly. The fact of ZOG
is undeniable to everyone politically involved in the US government.
The question is will people use the term "ZOG" to attack Jews? It has one great advantage –
the word "Jew" is not used.
The thing that Jews themselves fear the most, is the word "Jew" used by Gentiles. The American
population is conditioned not to use the word. Subliminal fear is attached to using the word "Jew."
The goal of the American population must be to eliminate ZOG – but not Jews.
The question is – can this be done without using the word "Jew" and all that goes with it?
@blaggard I applaud your honesty and logic. What a fight...
Although it is made to appear so, the battle between the 'conservatives' and 'liberals'
is not a battle of ideas or even of political organizations. It's is a battle of force, terror
and power. The Jews and their accomplices and dupes are not running our country and its people
because of the excellence of their ideas or the merit of their work or because they have the
genuine backing of the majority. The Zionists are in power in spite of the lack of these things,
and only because they have driven their way into power by daring minority tactics. They can
stay in power only because people are afraid to oppose them, afraid they will be socially ostracized,
afraid they will be smeared in the press, afraid they will lose their jobs, afraid they will
not be able to run their businesses, afraid they will lose their political offices. It is fear
and fear alone which keeps these filthy left-wing sneaks in power.
@naro No one is more critical of Jews and Israel than other Jews. Jews are and have been a
NATION in exile. Their genetic identity has been proven several times using Mitochondrial DNA
in prestigious medical journals such as Nature and Science...so it is not in doubt. There is continuous
historical record of Jews for at least 2000 years. Christian guilt is well deserved for their
historical hounding, persecutions, exiled and pogroms against innocent Jews under their jurisdictions.
The writer of this article is a hate monger. There are Jews of all political spectrum. They
are not homogeneous in their political position.
Jews succeed because they study hard, work hard, and take risks in business and politics. They
think outside the box, and are inventive and scientifically curious. Instead of envying their
success try to learn and emulate it losers.
They also engage in pretty intense ethnic networking and favoritism, things they typically castigate
others for doing.
Re. diversity of Jewish political opinion, I don't see it. Most Jews are partisan Democrats
in the US and there is very broad agreement on major issues, like immigration and Israeli-centric
foreign policy, details notwithstanding. And very few Jews will acknowledge that historically,
collective Jewish behavior has played a role in the negative opinions so many peoples hold against
them, indeed they strenuously deny it. (Smoke but no fire? Unlikely.)
Last, my favorite one: ethics and morality. The modern western society has been built on
a categorical rejection of ethics and morality.
Bravo – that paragraph was golden in my book. If this is gone – kiss your society good bye
– you're just living on borrowed time – all the gold and all the nuclear spears in the world will
not save you.
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
– Henry David Thoreau
Ivanka's mommy is of the tribe too: "Ivana is also Jewish. Geni.com lists her father's name
as both Knavs and Zelnícek. I'll give you a hint: drop the second "e". You get Zelnick. It is
Yiddish for haberdasher. Clothier. It's Jewish, too. See Robert Zelnick, Strauss Zelnick, Bob
Zelnick, etc. Robert was a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. Strauss was President of
20th Century Fox. Bob was ABC News producer. Also Friedrich Zelnik, silent film producer. Also
David O. Selznick, whose name was originally Zeleznick, or, alternately, Zelnick. He and his father
were major Hollywood produ - See more at: http://www.rense.com/general96/trumpjewish.htm#sthash.4xaQKh2i.dpuf
It's all in the family (La famiglia, Kosher Nostra). The ones who voted for him are the suckers.
Kosher Nostra!!!
The problem with fiat money is that if one has enough of it, one can buy just about anything
under the sun that they please, including even large parts of a country's political system and
government.
Take for example, Jared (a.k.a. billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby) Kushner
Peace. It is not my invention. All From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Jewish-American organized crime":
'Jewish-American organized crime emerged within the American Jewish community during the late
19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture
as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mafia, Kosher Nostra, or Undzer Shtik (Yiddish: אונדזער
שטיק). The last two of these terms refer to the Italian Cosa Nostra (Italian pronunciation: [kɔza
nɔstra]); the former is a play on the word kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the
latter is a direct translation of the phrase (Italian for "our thing") into Yiddish, which was
at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States
In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli
and Jewish-Russian mafia criminal groups, and Orthodox kidnapping gangs .
Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through
donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters
used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation "
Anonymous , April 21, 2017 at 3:31 am GMT
@wayfarer
Even the staff at his own Jewish day school were surprised he was accepted at Harvard.
He was described as a lacklustre student his father bought his entry, and they were disappointed
that more qualified students from his school didn't make the cut.
Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires
defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities
linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically
having a recognized leader). A tribe is a group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or
leave (Gilad Atzmon).
It's true that US Jews are mixed race (about 55% European and 45% Semitic) although they choose
to Obama-ize the fact (the European part disappears).
Also, after a lifetime of contact, I would say that the best guys leave the Tribe (often the
most Semitic and through disgust ) and the worst girls join (Gentiles attracted by money and power).
FGS. Please give it up! Trying to solve Jewish question eventually leads to insanity. Saker
(et al on this site) are not interested in "solving Jewish question." – We are interested in the
survival of humanity, specifically in stopping a WWIII that could happen thanks to ziocons' policies.
" fomenting sectarian strife in order to forestal the development of a unified Arab nation which
could threaten it and creating the circumstances in which land could be acquired was at the root
of Israel's relationship with its northern neighbor."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-islamist-militias-a-strange-and-recurring-alliance/5586075
" the "liberal" American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even
if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to
call "the constructive criticism." (In fact those among them who claim also to be "Anti- Stalinist"
are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed).
In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always "good intentions"
and only "makes mistakes," and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion–exactly
as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
My German is not of the best, but I have been interested in 200 Years Together for a while,
so maybe I can give it a try. I will try to check out these other titles you have provided, too.
Sol Bloom, 'The Autobiography of Sol Bloom', New York 1948
also is interesting, though just for one sentence, something like 'the great accomplishment
of Roosevelt was that he slowy prepared the USA people for war'.
This is in one sentence the book
Charles A. Beard, 'American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932 – 1940, A study in responsibilities',
New Haven, 1946
Alas few people seem to read books any more, especially old books. The interesting thing about
a book, great contrast with a web article, is, once printed, it cannot be changed any more.
Sol Bloom was a jewish friend of Roosevelt. You might also want to read
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New Yirk, 1918
Heath W. Lowry, 'The story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', Istanbul 1990
and
Charles Callan Tansill, 'Amerika geht in den Krieg', Stuttgart 1939 (America goes to War, 1938)
How the USA, and especially Morgenthau, wanted to fight Germany, in WWI.
Both Bloom and Morgenthau were of German descent, I suppose they hated Germany because of its
antisemitism.
@Ilyana_Rozumova @ Saker!!!!
FGS. Please give it up! Trying to solve Jewish question eventually leads to insanity. Are maybe
present events solving the jewish question ?
There seems to be little doubt that Trump is in conflict with Deep State, neocons in the lead,
mainly jews.
See also:
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy', New York
2007
It is possible that Marine le Pen of FN wins the French elections.
FN is accused of being antisemitic:
Pierre-André Taguieff, Michèle Tribalat, 'Face au Front national, Arguments pour une contre-offensive',
Paris, 1998 is an anti FN book written by two jews.
Hungary is closing Soros's university.
Putin already closed his institutions in Russia.
Joe Levantine , April 21, 2017 at 3:24 pm GMT
@Cyrano
Americans using Jews or vice versa? Just check the roles that Bernard Baruck and Rabbi Steven
Wise have played from the administration of crooked Woodrow Wilson to the more crooked Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. Two names among thousands of Jews who have shaped U.S. policies while hiding
behind the facade of their puppet presidents should give anyone food for thought.
If Cyrano can bring back into circulation the forbidden book of ' The Controversy of Zion' by
the late Douglas Reed who turned from bestseller author to a nonexistent nothing the moment he
published his 400+ book, I am positive that the commentator would apologise for this comment.
@naro Mr. Petras you are a vile old man. Nazis were quite capable at merciless killing of
defenseless Jewish (and others) men, women and children by the millions, as they were unprepared
for the utter vile brutality that Nazism represented. Now the Jews are well defended and strong,
and will defend themselves to the utmost. So come to to the fight old boy, we can take on Nazis
. We know them better now. "Now the Jews are well defended and strong we can take on Nazis."
A member of the powerful Kagans' clan of warmongers, Mrs. Nuland-Kagan has been an eager collaborator
with Ukrainian neo-Nazis (do you know about Baby Yar and such? – Mrs. Nuland-Kagan is obviously
OK with the history of Ukrainian Jews during WWII). Neither ADL nor AIPAC made any noises about
bringing Ukrainian neo-Nazis to power in Kiev in 2014. Why?
And what about Israel' collaboration with ISIS against sovereign Syria? "The documents show
that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals. This
and a few past reports have described transfer of unspecified supplies from Israel to the Syrian
rebels, and sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with the Syrian opposition east of the green zone,
as well as incidents when Israeli soldiers opened up the fence to allow Syrians through who did
not appear to be injured.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/New-UN-report-reveals-collaboration-between-Israel-and-Syrian-rebels-383926
A Canadian darling of the US State Dept, Chrystia Freeland, happened to be a progeny of a Nazi
collaborator from Ukraine (Mr. Chomiak), though Mrs. Freeland proclaimed loudly that her grandpa
was "persecuted by the Soviets:"
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/
" it appears Freeland's grandfather – rather than being a helpless victim – was given a prestigious
job to spread Nazi propaganda, praising Hitler from a publishing house stolen from Jews and given
to Ukrainians who shared the values of Nazism. Chomiak's editorials also described a Poland "infected
by Jews." Mrs. Freeland is still in office, spreading Russophobia that is so dear to ziocon hearts.
In case you did not notice, Zionists (ziocons) are modern-day Nazis.
" the "liberal" American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even
if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to
call "the constructive criticism." In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed
that Israel has always "good intentions" and only "makes mistakes," and therefore such a plan
would not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not
mentioned."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20th
We are guilty by proxy of murder, land theft, destruction of property and all the other
human misery that Israel has caused in the region.
So, if you're one of those rah-rah Israel First supporters, don't complain when the terrorists
come looking for you. You've allowed your politicians to enlist you in somebody else's war,
and in war there are always casualties on both sides.
America has become a nation of pathological irresponsibility. Nobody wants to take responsibility
for his or her own actions, which is the basic cause of the litigation flood. Least of all
do American politicians wish to do so. They would rather heap on the manure that the terrorism
directed at us has nothing whatsoever to do with the policies they have followed for the past
30 years or more. In truth, it has everything to do with those policies.
So, if you or your loved ones get bloodied by terrorists, then blame your Christian Zionists,
your Israel First crowd and your corrupt politicians who have their tongues in the ears and
their hands in the pockets of the Israeli lobby.
@turtle Sooner or later, the U.S. will go down to defeat, at which point "da Joos" will have
to find a new host.
I expect they will have a bit of a tough row to hoe in this, the New Chinese Century.
No matter how hard you try, I doubt you can pass off this woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Chung
or any of her countrywomen, as "Semitic,"
thus disproving that "Jewish" = "Semitic" or vice versa.
Shlomo Wong? I think not. I read Jewish community publications all the time I have concluded they
are planning their next jump to China after they destroy America
There are endless articles about how much Jews and Chinese have in common (lie, cheat and steal).
They discovered that in medieval and early modern times there was a community of Persian Jews
in China and blather on about that.
And there is approval of marriage of Jewish men to Chinese women.
But the Chinese are not love thy neighbor Christians. Nor do they have millions of wanna be
Jews Old Testament obsessed Protestants. Chinese officials are well known for accepting bribes
and then doing exactly what they want.
On the other hand, Israel and American DOD employees sell lots of stolen American military
secrets to China.
Jewish attempted takeover of China will be a battle of the Titans.
• 100 Words
@Wally Indeed, "non-profit", but Jews Only and huge salaries
Recall the corrupt & hate mongering ADL, or SPLC.
Look at the 'holocau$t' scam.
Build yet another laughable 'holocaust' Theme Park, Potemkin Village, put up a picture of MLK,
falsely claim that it's all about 'tolerance', 'diversity and civil rights while down playing
it's obvious Jewish supremacism, and voila! Massive taxpayers subsidies.
"One should not ask, how this mass murder was made possible. It was technically possible, because
it happened. This has to be the obligatory starting-point for any historical research regarding
this topic. We would just like to remind you: There is no debate regarding the existence of
the gas chambers, and there can never be one."
- endorsed by 34 "reputable historians" and published in the French daily Le Monde on February
21, 1979
====================================
"These Holocaust deniers are very slick people. They justify everything they say with facts
and figures."
- Steven Some, Chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, Newark Star-Ledger,
23 Oct. 1996, p 15.
Here's the top non-profits. None are identifiably Jewish:
1 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation United States Seattle, Washington $42.3 billion 1994 [1]
2 Stichting INGKA Foundation Netherlands Leiden $34.6 billion €33.0 billion (EUR) 1982 [2]
3 Wellcome Trust United Kingdom London $26.0 billion £20.9 billion (GBP) 1936 [3]
4 Howard Hughes Medical Institute United States Chevy Chase, Maryland $18.2 billion 1953 [4]
5 Ford Foundation United States New York City, New York $11.2 billion 1936 [5]
6 Kamehameha Schools United States Honolulu, Hawaii $11.1 billion 1887 [6]
7 J. Paul Getty Trust United States Los Angeles, California $10.5 billion 1982 [5]
8 Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation United Arab Emirates Dubai $10.0 billion 37 billion
د.إ (AED) 2007 [7]
9 Azim Premji Foundation India Bangalore $9.8 billion 2001 [8]
10 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation United States Princeton, New Jersey $9.53 billion 1972 [5]
@Alden I just read the latest ADL diktat. As of today any mention of Jared Kushner is deemed
anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe. I just read the latest ADL diktat. As of today any
mention of Jared Kushner is deemed anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe.
They have good reason to hide him – he and his family have some shady business dealings – his
father is a x-convict. How did he come into billions of dollars?
They say that Jared inherited his money – how did that happen when his father is still living
– did they get special tax treatment?
Hmm?
Peace - Art
p.s. Jared Kushner is 100% Zionist – how can this work out good for America?
Well he's wrong to exclude them unless you're just excluding Zionist. It doesn't matter whether
they are religious or secular. They're all made of the same stuff. Surely you've heard of all
the organ smuggling, drug dealing and other goings on in the religious community and they're supposed
to be the good guys?
There's one idea that describes the Jews perfectly. It describes their parasitism, their, lying,
their chameleon like behavior, their sense of superiority and belief that they are different from
everyone else. There's a simple explanation for why the Jews are hated so much that also explains
their behavior and success. The Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. No all, maybe not even the majority,
but a large number. All of the Jews ancient writings are nothing more than a manual for psychopaths
to live by. The Talmud is nothing but one psychopathic thought after another. The Talmud "great
enlightenment" basically says that everyone not Jewish is there to serve Jews. All their property
is really the Jews. No one is really human unless they're Jews and their lives don't matter. A
psychopathic religion for a psychopathic people.
They've been thrown out of every single country that they've been to in any numbers. Psychopaths
having no empathy themselves can only go by the feedback they get from the people they are exploiting.
So they push and push to see what they can get away with. The normal people build up resentment
towards them. Thinking "surely they will reform or repent" like a normal person who does wrong.
Of course the Jews do not. They don't have the mental process for reform. Then in a huge mass
outpouring of hate for the Jews, fed up with the refusal to reform their behavior, they attack
and/or deport them. In this stage of the cycle the Big/Rich Jews escape and the little Jews are
attacked.
Start over.
Even if it's wrong if you assume the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths you will never be surprised
and Jew's behavior will make sense.
In order to predict Jews behavior read the great book on Psychopaths by Hervey Cleckley, "The
Mask of Sanity". Here's a chapter you should read. It's about the psychopath Stanley. Who does
all kinds of manic bullshit and spends all his time feeding people the most outrageous lies. Look
at the astounding array of things he's able to get away with. Maybe it will remind you of a certain
tribe. New meme. "They're pulling a Stanley". The whole book is on the web and worth reading.
I use the simplest of logic to determine this. Form follows function, Occam's Razor. Their
behavior is exactly like psychopaths. Their religious beliefs are exactly like the internal dialog
of psychopaths. I don't know but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a
duck. It's a duck and the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. The MOST IMPORTANT PART is that the
behavior of the Jews as a group over time can not be reliably separated from the behavior of psychopaths.
Even if I'm wrong their behavior is the same so they should be treated as psychopaths. A very
dangerous, powerful group with no empathy towards anyone but other Jews.
I don't know why Zionist get such a bad rap I want them all to go to Israel so I'm a Zionist
too.
@wayfarer The problem with fiat money is that if one has enough of it, one can buy just about
anything under the sun that they please, including even large parts of a country's political system
and government.
Take for example, Jared (a.k.a. billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby) Kushner
Thanks, very interesting. Funny thing, most of the Jews I know are such fervent liberals they
think Kushner is a traitor to the cause of liberalism.
Seraphim
,
April 22, 2017 at 2:09 am GMT
@Art You are a nazi. Your generalization are the vile ranting of a hate filled animal.
Oh my - straight to the "N" word - what happened to "anti-Semite" - has it lost its sting?
Ah' to bad.
What are you going to call us next?
Peace --- Art
p.s. By the way Nazism and Zionism are brothers - both are fascists.
p.s. What about you Jew animals in Israel - you have the most immoral army in the world.
p.s. You Jews and your hateful bluster - you are fooling no one.
p.s. ZOG is going to lose. It is an irrefragable law:
"Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage which asserts that
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches
-that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner
or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.
Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred
specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion,
such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and
other rhetoric where 'reductio ad Hitlerum'* occurs.
*Reductio ad Hitlerum (pseudo-Latin for "reduction to Hitler"; sometimes argumentum ad Hitlerum,
"argument to Hitler", ad Nazium, "to Nazism"), or playing the Nazi card, is an attempt to invalidate
someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party,
for example: "Hitler was a vegetarian, X is a vegetarian, therefore X is a Nazi". A variation
of this fallacy, reductio ad Stalinum, also known as "red-baiting", has also been used in political
discourse.
Coined by Leo Strauss in 1951, reductio ad Hitlerum borrows its name from the term used in
logic, reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd). According to Strauss, reductio ad Hitlerum
is a form of ad hominem, ad misericordiam, or a fallacy of irrelevance. The suggested rationale
is one of guilt by association. It is a tactic often used to derail arguments, because such comparisons
tend to distract and anger the opponent, as Hitler and Nazism have been condemned in the modern
world.
@Sam J. "... Please note that Gilad specifically excludes Judaics (religious Jews,)..."
Well he's wrong to exclude them unless you're just excluding Zionist. It doesn't matter whether
they are religious or secular. They're all made of the same stuff. Surely you've heard of all
the organ smuggling, drug dealing and other goings on in the religious community and they're supposed
to be the good guys?
There's one idea that describes the Jews perfectly. It describes their parasitism, their, lying,
their chameleon like behavior, their sense of superiority and belief that they are different from
everyone else. There's a simple explanation for why the Jews are hated so much that also explains
their behavior and success. The Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. No all, maybe not even the majority,
but a large number. All of the Jews ancient writings are nothing more than a manual for psychopaths
to live by. The Talmud is nothing but one psychopathic thought after another. The Talmud "great
enlightenment" basically says that everyone not Jewish is there to serve Jews. All their property
is really the Jews. No one is really human unless they're Jews and their lives don't matter. A
psychopathic religion for a psychopathic people.
They've been thrown out of every single country that they've been to in any numbers. Psychopaths
having no empathy themselves can only go by the feedback they get from the people they are exploiting.
So they push and push to see what they can get away with. The normal people build up resentment
towards them. Thinking "surely they will reform or repent" like a normal person who does wrong.
Of course the Jews do not. They don't have the mental process for reform. Then in a huge mass
outpouring of hate for the Jews, fed up with the refusal to reform their behavior, they attack
and/or deport them. In this stage of the cycle the Big/Rich Jews escape and the little Jews are
attacked.
Start over.
Even if it's wrong if you assume the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths you will never be surprised
and Jew's behavior will make sense.
In order to predict Jews behavior read the great book on Psychopaths by Hervey Cleckley, "The
Mask of Sanity". Here's a chapter you should read. It's about the psychopath Stanley. Who does
all kinds of manic bullshit and spends all his time feeding people the most outrageous lies. Look
at the astounding array of things he's able to get away with. Maybe it will remind you of a certain
tribe. New meme. "They're pulling a Stanley". The whole book is on the web and worth reading.
I use the simplest of logic to determine this. Form follows function, Occam's Razor. Their
behavior is exactly like psychopaths. Their religious beliefs are exactly like the internal dialog
of psychopaths. I don't know but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a
duck. It's a duck and the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. The MOST IMPORTANT PART is that the
behavior of the Jews as a group over time can not be reliably separated from the behavior of psychopaths.
Even if I'm wrong their behavior is the same so they should be treated as psychopaths. A very
dangerous, powerful group with no empathy towards anyone but other Jews.
I don't know why Zionist get such a bad rap I want them all to go to Israel so I'm a Zionist
too. I don't know if this guy is real or if it's true or not but there's a vast amount of information
and cases which readily conform to the idea that everything he says is true. According to the
witnesses in the dutroux-affair all the participants had to break the law to be in business with
them on an intimate level. Mostly this was done through sexual abuse of children. Twenty years
ago you might could laugh this off as some foolish rantings of conspiracy freaks but there's been
too many verifiable cases with lots of physical evidence.
Pizzagate Pedogate Dutch Whistleblower Real Big Money Revelations by an Insider
I'm also not saying it's just Jews but I am saying they are the root of it all. They're the
glue that keeps the whole thing together due to their insider grouping tribalism.
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
– Henry David Thoreau
@Naro Again To Summarize JEWS ARE THE BRAINIEST AND MOST ACCOMPLISHED HUMANS ALIVE TRYING
TO SURVIVE IN A WORLD OF MORONS AND IMPRESSIONABLE IDIOTS! Examples of the psychopathology and
idiocy of the Nazis is obvious on this thread-ironically in a web site owned by a Jew.
The envious losers, and political manipulators have always looked for scapegoats for their failures,
and Jews were easy targets. Not any more. Jews are quite able to defend themselves ..thank you.
You don't believe me? just try. " Jews are quite able to defend themselves .."
At least now you have prudently omitted references to Nazis, since you became educated from
other posts that American Jews – see Kagans' clan of warmongers – are in bed with Ukrainian neo-Nazis
and, moreover, that an Israeli citizen is known as a financier of the bloody neo-Nazi battalion
that had burnt a score of civilians to death in Odessa.
American (and UK) Israel-firsters have betrayed western civilization for the benefit of mythological
Eretz Israel. Your tribe was pushing for the slaughter in Iraq (see treasonous Wolfowitz and Feith
and the despicable Kristol) and in Libya (the former pearl of North Africa, where citizens used
to enjoy free education, free health care, and a sizable gold reserve – the latter stolen by the
US "deciders"). Currently, it is an ongoing bloodbath in Syria, which Israel wants to prolong
as much as possible in order to steal the Golan Heights. For the same reason your "most accomplished"
Israeli generals proclaimed loudly their preference for ISIS. What have you claimed, that your
tribe is the "brainiest?" – Relax. With such "activists" like the openly racist Avigdor Lieberman
(ex-convict) and your half-wit hater Ayelet Shaked you are safely among mediocrities. As for the
truly brainiest and ethical like Baruch Spinoza and Hanna Arend, they were rejected by your supremacist
tribe. Check the location of Spinoza' grave.
@Anonymous shut up naziscum. where is your thousand year reich? in the garbage An Israeli
demonstrates her regular poor manners Aren't you trying to imply that Israelis are striving for
their thousand-year reich? Good luck. Don't forget to take the neo-Nazi-loving Kagans' clan with
you.
Johnny F. Ive,
April 23, 2017 at 6:48 am GMT
What if the US Empire was financially bankrupted? How would it behave afterwards? I think
it will end with military overstretch and bankruptcy or nuclear war. One or the other. Its sad
that all this suffering is a tribal war. On man's way to civilization he forgot to leave that
behind. Would the US behave after bankruptcy like the Soviets did after losing in Afghanistan
or is the US going to be even more like a huge North Korea? Besides Israel there is the manipulations
of other countries like the Europeans.
I agree Trump is very concerned about appearance and that makes him weak. He like the rest
of the American Establishment is like Narcissus and in their pond the Empire is reflected back
at them. They won't let go of it.
I disagree that the American people vote against war. The American people have had plenty of
chances. They've had chances to turn the world's fortunes around plenty of times with Pat Buchanan,
Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader. That pretty much covers the whole ideological spectrum
except the neocons. The American people have consistently voted for war at least since 1992. They
had these men who ran for president in order to save us all and the were consistently rejected
by the electorate. Its not just the government. Its the 4th estate. The corporations. I'm now
a pessimist. War will come and it will fail. The question is who will the Empire wage war against
and who will survive the war?
Is Pauline Christianity legitimate? The problem with it has always been that it was built on
a tribal story. A lot of good came from it. It was used to justify some bad things too. Its origins
are not the classical world. That is probably why the alt-right has a fascination with modern
pseudo-pagan religions. I think the real story is that the Ancient Greeks particularly the Epicureans
have won the argument: https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/Stoic-Epic-comp.html
– these ideas are older than Christianity.
The AngloZionist tribe is now considered what the Catholics considered the pagans were. The
word paganus means hick. Pagan now means new age and Christian in the West means hick. The AngloZionist
don't even like them but require their obedience and support. Perhaps its only a matter of time
before the Judeo-Christian fairy tail loses its political power and just becomes good literature.
It has no hope especially with the transhumanist wonders about to bequeathed to the world. It
can't compete. They avoided the truth for about 2000 years and couldn't develop a convincing response
against Epicureanism. Genesis is the best they could muster against natural selection after thousands
of years of knowing about it? Epikoros (Hebrew for heretic) in the end won! But the US Empire
has an unhealthy appetite of playing chicken with nuclear powers and western Judeo-Christianity
will not go peacefully into the night. Read More
Agree:
Beefcake the Mighty
@Yevardian Um, the Golan Heights was officially annexed by Israel in 1981.
I enjoy your articles, but you can't be taken seriously whilst you keep making amateurish mistakes
like this.
Ditto on Russia being the only country truly upholding Islamic values. If Israel officially
annexed the Golan heights in 1981, why is Netanyahu making noise about it now? Seems insecure.
Also consider that "true" Islamic or Christian values would be those proposed by the actual adherents.
Would Russians have any reason to discount or misrepresent their stated values if they were altruistic
and high minded? I suggest you try and critique the Sakers comments on their intended merits if
you wish to be taken seriously.
@nsa ZIG is a more accurate acronym......as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks,
lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc. ZOP is accurate too, and ZOP is the specific
cause of ZOG.
ZOP is Zionist Occupied People, and ZOP is a description of the US and Israeli voter obsession
with and participation in a neurotic victim cult.
ZOP is the elephant in the room that nobody in broadcast media will discuss.
US and Israeli victim cult lobbyist are obsessed with cult dominance of national elections
and society.
The US and Israel have a dominant victim cult that displays a neurotic persecution complex
and frequently demands government remedies.
A US and Israeli victim cultist is conditioned to demand government reparations and entitlements
in exchange for their votes.
A typical US and Israeli victim cultist is obsessed with Nazi and white supremacy, claiming
that white-straight-Christian-males are deplorable Nazi or Nazi sympathizers.
The US and Israeli victim cult is aggressive toward foreign nations that are a perceived threat
to the cult.
As an example, here are some of the government entitlements enjoyed by victim cultists in Israel:
Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country's establishment in 1948,
making an unusual distinction between "citizenship" and "nationality." Although all Israelis
qualify as "citizens of Israel," the state is defined as belonging to the "Jewish nation,"
meaning not only the 5.6 million Israeli Jews but also more than seven million Jews in the
diaspora.
Critics say the special status of Jewish nationality has been a way to undermine the citizenship
rights of non-Jews in Israel, especially the fifth of the population who are Arab. Some
30 laws in Israel specifically privilege Jews, including in the areas of immigration rights,
naturalization, access to land and employment.
Arab leaders have also long complained that indications of "Arab" nationality on ID cards make
it easy for police and government officials to target Arab citizens for harsher treatment.
The interior ministry has adopted more than 130 possible nationalities for Israeli citizens,
most of them defined in religious or ethnic terms, with "Jewish" and "Arab" being the main
categories.
@wayne Read about King David in the Bible. He was a genocidal psychopath. It states in the
Bible how he vicioulsy murdered civilian prisoners of war. And on at least one occasion he gave
his men all the pre-puberty girls to "do with as they pleased", which was after they had murdered
their parents and all family members. I am sure this was a great sadistical delight to him and
his troops. Men of God? No God damned way. Undoubtely men of Satan. Different time, different
standards. You are judging him with the modern "for show" standards, by which the "civilized"
nations, which have instituted them, do not abide. The US govt has killed 10s of millions of mostly
civilians (men, women, children) since the end of WWII, around the world, and now their clients
in the Middle East and Ukraine continue mass rapes and murder. David's crimes pale by comparison.
Those in Washington D.C. will never face justice for what they are doing, at least in this world,
nor do they repent at all. You can read about King David's repentance in the same Bible.
Anon ,
April 23, 2017 at 9:47 pm GMT
300 Words
@Incitatus I deeply apologize, Anon/Keith. I overestimated you. Mea colpa.
The fable was intended to illustrate the difference between embarrassing irrational instinct
(canine leg-humpers) and intelligent criticism. You excelled, once again, at the former, and proudly
so. Knock yourself out. Polish those table legs.
"I know I confuse you."
The only one confused is you, Anon, the evader of any record who still fancies the distinction
'Keith.' Are you afraid that a record of your remarks will easily indict you for your narrow agenda
and regurgitative screeds?
No matter.
You might look up Julius Streicher, your patron saint. A man so vile cardinal Nazis at Nüremberg
avoided him as if he would leave excrement on them in any prolonged contact. They knew best. Keith
,
"Are you afraid that a record of your remarks will easily endict you".
Indict me for wanting to bring down the elephant in the room? Did the Jewnited states already
pass hate speech laws, forbidding all criticism of Israel and for exposing Jewish power in America?
Did the Jewmerica pass laws criminalizing Holocaust Revisionism? Did I wake up in a country without
first amendment rights. Or is all of this wishful thinking on your part?
Should I be indicted for a hate crime for asking for an autopsy proving several million Jews
were gassed at the Auschwitz labor camps? Should I be hung because there is no autopsy evidence?
Maybe this is the purpose of the Unz Review. My Unz Review remarks will be use to retro actively
endict me for laws that weren't on the books when I made my forbidden remarks, just like the Germans
were endicted, convicted and hung at Nuremberg?
It is you and the other Hasbara trolls who have a defensive agenda and regurgitate
the same old name calling " Its a trick, the Jews always use it"
When the Jewish Bolshevik NeoCons take over America, I am convinced I will be one of the first
to be put in a NKVD Gulag. I also know my cell mates will be other patriotic Unz Review Americans
along with millions of others who want to bring down the elephant in the room.
I apologize for mentioning the forbidden news about Rabbis and Herpes and the Jewish Egypt
slave myth. I know this upset you. Both of these stories were news published in the Israeli Haaretz
News. I guess these stories were for Jews eyes only.
"... Oh Please -- Without a teleprompter, the great(est) orator (whose time ?) couldn't orate his way out of a recyclable plastic bag unless the noun 'folks' was interspersed every other sentence !!! ..."
"... His style was actually fairly drone like. He went up and then down in every sentence. He spoke platitudes with great force. If that is the definition of an "orator' than, yes , he was an orator. But an "orator" can also be a "film flam man" an Elmer Gantry. But if you define an orator as someone who conveyed great ideas, he was a nothingburger. ..."
"... Obama is not a great orator and his insincere use "folks" vocally dripped of his disdain. (He should have used "lessers" if he wanted some real authenticity and human feeling to be projected. ..."
"... Stoller had an article saying Obama is just a Hamiltonian. Here in 08′, standing next to Sen Casey, in front of a war memorial, Obama's entire speech used the Founder Hamilton as a narrative device, expounding Hamiltoin's greatness and sort of promising a return to Hamilton's vision. I thought then, having just read a book on Jefferson and his hatred for Hamilton and the bankers, is this a dog whistle signal to the bankers? ..."
Oh Please -- Without a teleprompter, the great(est) orator (whose time ?) couldn't orate his
way out of a recyclable plastic bag unless the noun 'folks' was interspersed every other sentence
!!!
Thanks Polecat, I agree whole heartedly. His style was actually fairly drone like. He went
up and then down in every sentence. He spoke platitudes with great force. If that is the definition
of an "orator' than, yes , he was an orator. But an "orator" can also be a "film flam man" an
Elmer Gantry. But if you define an orator as someone who conveyed great ideas, he was a nothingburger.
I agree. Obama is not a great orator and his insincere use "folks" vocally dripped of his disdain. (He should have used "lessers" if he wanted some real authenticity and human feeling to be projected.
Stoller had an article saying Obama is just a Hamiltonian. Here in 08′, standing next to Sen Casey,
in front of a war memorial, Obama's entire speech used the Founder Hamilton as a narrative device,
expounding Hamiltoin's greatness and sort of promising a return to Hamilton's vision. I thought
then, having just read a book on Jefferson and his hatred for Hamilton and the bankers, is this
a dog whistle signal to the bankers?
In defense of Obama making $400K while Clinton only made $225K
he was actually able to *GET ELECTED*.. She took all her bribes up front then lost to Trump
with a 2-1 money advantage and the press completely in her pocket. Truly pathetic. He should get
WAY more than 2x what she does. HE ACTUALLY DELIVERED SOMETHING TO HIS BENEFACTORS. If she had
any shame - which she obviously doesn't - she'd disappear forever. And we'd all be the better
for it.
Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea are three of the most embarrassing Americans to have ever lived.
If you think I'm being too harsh, ask yourself why the (D) party they built for 30 years prefers
fascism to democratic socialism.
Whether fair or not, it's not difficult to look at Wall Street paying $400,000 to Obama
as a reward for [not prosecuting anyone on Wall Street for the crash].
Well, something that seems fairer , if not inarguable, is that if President Obama
had prosecuted people on Wall Street, demanded Pecora investigation-style hearings, or,
y'know, acted generally in the public interest, Wall Street would not be shelling out
$400,000 to hear his views on anything.
To view Obama during his presidency as not being constrained under those circumstances
seems, to me, to be a kind of willful obliviousness.
Oh Please -- Without a teleprompter, the great(est) orator (whose time ?) couldn't orate
his way out of a recyclable plastic bag unless the noun 'folks' was interspersed every other
sentence !!!
Thanks Polecat, I agree whole heartedly. His style was actually fairly drone like. He went
up and then down in every sentence. He spoke platitudes with great force. If that is the definition
of an "orator' than, yes , he was an orator. But an "orator" can also be a "film flam man"
an Elmer Gantry. But if you define an orator as someone who conveyed great ideas, he was a
nothingburger.
I agree. Obama is not a great orator and his insincere use "folks" vocally dripped of his
disdain. (He should have used "lessers" if he wanted some real authenticity and human feeling
to be projected.
Stoller had an article saying Obama is just a Hamiltonian. Here in 08′, standing next to Sen
Casey, in front of a war memorial, Obama's entire speech used the Founder Hamilton as a narrative
device, expounding Hamiltoin's greatness and sort of promising a return to Hamilton's vision.
I thought then,having just read a book on Jefferson and his hatred for Hamilton and the bankers,
is this a dog whistle signal to the bankers?
"... To begin with, the Libertarians are not a united front. It's not a consolidated party or philosophy. It's based on the non-aggression principle, but after that, opinions vary widely. ..."
"... The corporation itself is based on an anti-free market principle--limited liability--so the whole legal definition of a corporation is called into question by some forms of Libertarianism. ..."
"... One of the main arguments of Libertarians is there wouldn't be anywhere near as many impoverished people. In theory, a free market and free enterprise undermines monopoly and the power to oppress and distributes wealth more even. It's corruption through government force that enables corporations to monopolize and move wealth to the top. ..."
"... Bush destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. Two countries. ..."
"... Obama destroyed Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine. Four countries. ..."
"... The US's military industrial complex works around any president, sadly, When President Barack Obama was announced as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize I was shocked. ..."
"... The Democrats have shifted to the right as well. Today's mainstream Democrats are pretty much what used to be called 'moderate Republicans ..."
"... When the illiberal policies began to be instituted -- deregulation and so on -- then you start getting a series of financial crises and every time the public bails them out. ..."
Excellent interview. Personally I've been listening to so-called alternative media for a very
long time now, more or less since about I finished school (I was reading books by Erich Fromm,
Hans A. Pestalozzi and others at that time) and I read occasionally alternative newspapers and
magazines.
But this has rather dramatically changed now. In fact I more or less completely abandoned the
so-called mainstream media, because at least in my opinion a big part of the mass media here in
Germany has begun to turn into agencies for very radical and destructive policies designed in
part by Brussels and in part by the German government. It doesn't matter which political issue
you look at: The so-called refugee crisis, economical topics, the rise of right wing extremism
in Germany and so on: A big part of the mainstream media systematically shifts attention away
from the really interesting issues.
Take for example the stream of refugees coming to Germany and other European countries. It
could have been a starting point for the German media to discuss what the real reasons for this
so-called crisis are: For example the German, British, French and other weapons exports and what
they are used for. Or the ecomical policies of the European Union, which severely damages the
economies of countries like Senegal or Burkina Faso. But this just doesn't happen. When you turn
on the publicly financed radio stations you hear them discussing technical terms of Germans policies
shutting down the European borders to stop the flow of refugees, but almost no word about what
this means for the desperate people who end up there. It's a very shocking experience to basically
see that even publicly financed media (which we are supposed to be proud of) stay diligently within
the limits of discussion, which according to Noam's and Edward Herman's work you would expect
for commercial media.
Of course you can find journalism here which does not follow these restrictions, but in case
of the publicly financed radio and news programmes you mostly have to wait until late in the evening
(when most of the working population doesn't watch TV or listen to radio anymore) or turn to newspapers
which are sold at only very few places. The media is in a terrible condition here nowadays, at
least in my opinion.
coldflame 1 day ago
philosophers theory says that human cultures demonstrate severe & increasingly polarizing
cycles where the rich get richer & the poor get poorer until the poor are so extremely desperate
that a revolution is inevitable....Then there is a massive redistribution of wealth & things
even out for awhile & then the cycle begins again.
It seems to me that this theory is massively sped up by technology & industry & finance
abuses.
My guess about it is that the power-wacko-wealthy will abuse science & technology to destroy
many billions of people, leaving various levels of slaves to serve them & theirs. Ultimately
it won't work for them but the ego of humanity is so short-sighted & narcissistic that it's
very hard to imagine otherwise. God I hope I'm wrong. We do have a chance at solving major
problems of energy, extinction, food, education, so let's hope for the best.
Siddharth Sharma 3 days ago
Chomsky hits the nail on Bernie's campaign. The energy behind the campaign is great, but it's
very likely to die after the election. Which Bernie also understands as his major hurdle. He has
stated many times, about creating a political revolution, and said that Obama's biggest mistake
was, that he let the mass movement that elected him die.
Bernie wants people to be actively involved in politics, and take rational decisions. When
asked how he intends to tackle Republicans while pushing for his progressive reforms, he replied(on
the lines of), if his campaign was successful there won't be many Republicans to deal with. While
I hope that to happen, it's rather optimistic of Bernie to think so.
Many people are completely missing the point of his campaign, rather worshiping him as an idol,
without understanding the ideals that he stands for. Sanders supporters need to be more mature
and serious, as electing him President will not be a panacea; much will remain to be done.
Callme Ishmael 5 hours ago
Chomsky is always off the mark on American Libertarianism. To begin with, the Libertarians
are not a united front. It's not a consolidated party or philosophy. It's based on the non-aggression
principle, but after that, opinions vary widely. His argument about environmental destruction
are countered by arguments by Libertarians about private property and prosecution of fraud and
the behavior of informed consumers in a free market. The corporation itself is based on an
anti-free market principle--limited liability--so the whole legal definition of a corporation
is called into question by some forms of Libertarianism.
The master-servant relationship is not advocated by most Libertarians. That's absurd. And why
does he think there wouldn't be any private bus systems? And no empathy or private forms of welfare?
One of the main arguments of Libertarians is there wouldn't be anywhere near as many impoverished
people. In theory, a free market and free enterprise undermines monopoly and the power to oppress
and distributes wealth more even. It's corruption through government force that enables corporations
to monopolize and move wealth to the top.
Rodrigo Rodrigues 3 days ago
Bush destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. Two countries.
Obama destroyed Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine. Four countries.
The US's military industrial complex works around any president, sadly, When President
Barack Obama was announced as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize I was shocked.
He admitted he didn't deserve the prize at the presentation. He went on to praise militarism,
and gave tepid support for preventive wars, a war crime. I would like to know Chomsky's opinion
on Donald Trump being a candidate .
EnnoiaBlog 2 days ago (edited)
"The Democrats have shifted to the right as well. Today's mainstream Democrats are pretty
much what used to be called 'moderate Republicans.' -- Noam Chomsky, in interview with Abby
Martin, Oct. 24ish 2015.
MY HERO!!!!!!!
Chris Neglia 1 day ago (edited)
10:00 -- "If a major financial institution gets in trouble, the government will bail it out,
which happens repeatedly--only during the illiberal periods [not free / rights lacking] incidentally.
There were no major failures during the 50s and 60s. When the illiberal policies began to
be instituted -- deregulation and so on -- then you start getting a series of financial crises
and every time the public bails them out.
>>> Well that has consequeces. For one thing that means the credit agencies understand these
corporations are high value beyond the level of what they actually do because they're gonna be
bailed out. So they get good credit ratings, means they can get cheap credit, means they can get
cheap loans from the government, they can undertake risky transactions which are profitable because
if something goes wrong the tax payer will take care of it.
>>>> Net result is: that amounts to practically all their profits. Is that Capitalism?"
"... Currently of course we're witnessing the entire foreign policy of the United States sliding
down to the floor. If we survive the experience, a useful education may occur. ..."
"... This immense vital message tells us how USA has played China, Russia and Iran very close to
each others. These three have now common interests. It's quite the same when Hitler pushed Churchill,
FDR and Stalin to co-operate. ..."
"... Will Russia and China (once again) fall for the West's trick of using sanctions. We shall see,
but the track record isn't very good for them. A "rule of thumb" that Russia and China should think
of is, "if a UN resolution favors the West in any way. ..."
"... Just how many times have Western powers (especially the US) used sanctions against the interests
of Russia and China. The list is almost endless. And for a country herself under idiotic Western sanctions
(she would be under UN sanctions ,but for Russia and China having a UNSC veto power),Russia voting for
sanctions on another country is worse than foolish. ..."
"... China actively supports neoliberal globalisation and cannot be trusted. It has deep interconnected
trade and investment relations with USA. It is highly unlikely that China will ever move against Multinational
corporations or against USA. ..."
"... I don't know how likely it is for China to move against the US, but Xi Jinping certainly knows
that the US is moving against China. ..."
To be fair, but there is no friendship between nations, and those that believe it needs to stop
watching cartoons and live in the real world. Each country is a psychopath that only looks after
its own national interests, no countries has friends.
The only responsibility a state has is to its own people, not to other states, if one state
finds it beneficial to its people to make agreements with another states they will do so, but
if a better agreement comes up from another state, they will throw the previous state under the
buss. There is no friendship between states, the state loyalty is to its own people. At least,
a functional state, EU will often talk about "friendship" with USA, and then act as the USA state
wants against the interests of the EU peoples, but this is not the behavior of a functional state,
this is the behavior of a corrupt state, a functional state will dump any other state if a agreement
that would more benefit its people would show up.
And this is what Putin would do, he is not friends with China. And China is not friends with
him. They have a several mutual beneficial agreements and they are both under a common threat
so they work together.
For example Russia has thrown Iran under the buss several times, when Russia allowed USA sanctions
to put on Iran, when denying to sell Iran S-300 missiles after USA made them a better deal, despite
Iran and Russia already having signed the agreement, Russia just threw Iran under the buss as
if it was nothing, in this case, it was quite literal as well, as Iran desperately needed those
missiles to ward off an attack from NATO that could have killed millions of Iranians, but Russia
saw a better deal and left Iran in the dust.. Another example is that Russia constantly allows
IAF to bomb Assad, when they could step in a anytime and put an end to it. But Russia and IAF
has made a deal behind Assad's back. In this scenario, Russia is like a friend that has agree
that it is ok for certain people to beat up her friends when they want.. As I said, states has
no friends only interests.
It is also worth to note that while China talks of "friendship" they barely do anything, Russia
is fighting NATO in Syria, in Ukraine, in Donbas, in Crimea, and China is barely able to say a
support word as Russia fights for her survival.
Wrong .you seem to think of a state as a person. Like somehow a state makes decisions. No it is
people in power who have a vested interest who make decisions under cover of a state. The State
is their cover, excuse, and savior when they screw up, and the mechanism they will use to get
the citizenry to pay for their mistakes. It's no different than how corporations are used and
how a corporation has somehow morphed into a person. Where a corporation can be charged with a
crime but the people who made the corporations decisions are innocent. Don't be fooled into thinking
that those in power under cover of a state actually care about the citizenry they do not..at all
care. Not one bit. Human nature is such that sociopaths and psychopaths are those that rise to
power there is not a leader in all of history that did not fall under one or both. There has never
been a leader who killed for his people .only for the leaders own self interest and the interests
of those who keep him/her in power ..Period ..it's just the way we as humans are wired.
Wrong! It's just this belief that this is "the way we, humans, are wired," that makes these things
possible, and makes it possible for these things to regress further. A state really is like a
person. The prevaling mores of each individual person and all the persons of the state make up
the prevailing mores of the state. It works both ways. But a nation of fierce individualists and
egoists will never get a government of angels who "care" for the people. A nation of insouciant,
self-centred people gets a government that will manipulate these people unconscionably, while
making sure they remain insouciant and self-centred. Etc. Ultimately it's just like this popular
adage goes: "everything depends on you." It's hackneyed but true
Generalized principles do not apply to statecraft, the 'left' constantly make such assertions
about state policy as if it is uniform in every case. Much depends on the particulars of a state,
there are obvious similarities & tendencies as there would be with any institution, but institutions
of the same category – such as the family – differ in accordance with all the variables effecting
them. So what motivates the government of Iran can not be said to be the same for the US, & then
there are the internal divisions & factions. The Russia-China strategic partnership/alliance is
a lot more than mere convenience or opportunism along the lines of my enemy's enemy is my friend
type of logic. It is clear that Russia & China share a vision of the world, they share a commitment
to establishing a multipolar world order based on principles of adherence to international law.
From that perspective, it can be said that theirs is a truly principled relationship, irrespective
of all the cynical machiniations that both state's governments are regularly hostage to. The Russian
& Chinese leadership are obviously doing what they believe to be in the best interest of their
respective societies, but it is clear that their mutual interest also happens to be harmonious
& complimentary with the interests of the entire world at this point. That is how I would characterize
it, it is not about holding hands & singling & dancing in a circle, but it can not be dismissed
either as just momentary self-interest on the part of Russia & China to partner up at this time,
because of the intensive pressure they are under from the West. Lavrov mentioned a post West world
recently, well that world is not far off in the making & when it arrives we will see how the Russia-China
strategic relationship evolves, that will be the test, when the external pressures are removed,
will they continue on the same course? I believe they will, for the reason of shared long-term
vision, China in particular has not short-term point of view, their perspective is always long-term.
"Wrong .you seem to think of a state as a person. "
-I think you should read the comment again, that is exactly what she is NOT doing, she is criticizing
the usage of the term "friendship" as friendship is a term used to describe the relationship between
two or more persons, not states.
It is worth pointing out that the article is speaking of the two leaders and the friendship that
exists between them personally. read the first paragraph again.
You are right here about China
Unfortunately they will do only the minimum
necessary support for Russia to be friends with them
That could change though if China will be targeted by the US more aggressively
Than the Chinese may get really together with the Russians to fight of the Cabal
A fairly basic realist (from a Security perspective) interpretation of a state and the manner
in which they conduct their relationships. The same realist point of view that has held US foreign
policy in its trend for the last 50 odd years.
There are other methods that can be used to both inform and interpret the actions of a state
in its inter-state actions.
Regarding one of the other responses, corporations didn't 'somehow' manage to 'morph' into
a person, rather the assets of a corporation had to be 'reachable' in the event some kind of restitution
or damages was required for actions that went against the interests of the community or individuals
with whom they came into contact with. An individual manager has little of value when compared
to the damages that may be sought. It's simply that one was followed by two then three that we
ended up where we are now. We want individuals to be held criminally responsible for an action
but when it comes to damages we want to be able to access a corporations assets. Can't seem to
have them both easily and it behooves some to dance the narrow line between the two.
When a discussion takes place that speaks of states as 'friends' it is a simplified use of
language to explain that they share common interests and seek to work together towards a shared
goal. As to how a 'state' can make a decision, it is by simply adhering to internal laws, regulations
and norms that have been put in place by the apparatus of government and bureaucrats (civilian
or military does not matter) the world over follow. Administrative Tribunals exist in many countries
to ensure that these processes are followed as they are written. It is people making decisions,
but doing so within very strict confines permitted by the state as it has been created in law.
Aye, each country is dominated by its plutocrats who may or may not see a mutual advantage to
working with the plutocrats that dominate another country. Behind these oligarchs sits an even
greater power holding entity of an international order that can advance one set of oligarchs and
hold back another. This entity is of course an international cabal of the very few bankers who
have commandeered the central banks of almost all nations of this world and own the omnipotent
power to create money and credit as debt all owed to themselves. These bankers certainly own the
central banks of All the major political powers as represented by their national oligarchy. While
these bankers must tread lightly in some jurisdictions should their looting machine apparatus
become so annoying that the local oligarchs nationalize this looting system for their own survival
in other jurisdictions these bankers hold full power over the political and economy so that they
have become unassailable except through a popular revolution.
"Regardless of the circumstances, we will not change our policy of deepening and developing our
strategic partnership and cooperation"
What could those "circumstances" be? War!
My interpretation of the statement: if any of the two countries goes to war, or is forced into
a war, the other country will continue to support it economically and possibly militarily. It
may very likely even increase its support in substitution of the international markets lost due
to the war.
The Chinese know which way the winds are blowing. The idea that China, with all its aspirations
which inevitably collide with American imperial resistance, would abandon Putin in this critical
moment in history is fanciful to say the least.
Eurasia is a geopolitical certainty the question for us all is how we will get there.
I think this column is basically nonsense. Xi wouldn't have had to send this weak message of solidarity
to Putin if there weren't a real problem between them. China's geopolitical turn around since
meeting with Trump has been astounding. Xi's attitude towards Obama seemed to be very challenging.
His attitude around Trump and since meeting with Trump has appeared to be that of a vassal eager
to please. I would say that Xi's behavior has been even more embarrassing, far more embarrassing,
really, than Medvedev's puppy-like behavior when he met with Obama.
Need I even mention that Xi seemed to have sat there with a happy smile on his face while Trump
informed Xi over desert that Trump was just then in the process of bombing Xi's ally and his ally's
(Russia's) ally, Syria? Not only did Xi show every sign of loving this demeaning treatment, but
seemingly in response to it, he rushed home to do Trump's bidding in terms of really sticking
it to North Korea.
Xi was a bit of a mystery before his high profile meeting with Trump, just as Medvedev was
before he met with Obama. No longer. The man has shown his character and it appears to be truly
despicable. Say what you want about Putin, he does seem to have some guts. I would guess that
no amount of 'special' messages sent from Xi to Putin will wipe away the stink of eager vassalage
that Xi reeks of now. I'm sure Putin is nauseated by Xi at this point, but Putin remains, as ever,
a deal-maker. If he can pretend to be best pals with Erdogan and Netanyahu, I'm sure he can do
the same with Xi.
And just as Medvedev showed Obama how eager to please Obama he was by going along with the
assault on Libya, Xi seems to want to show Trump how eager to please Xi is by going along with
some sort of assault on North Korea.
Oh come on, China wont even raise its voice as Trump fires missiles at Russian troops in Syria,
you think China is going to engage in a war and lose hundreds of millions of its citizens for
Russia? Not a chance. The best thing Russia could hope for would be some covert support. Indeed,
China might even relish the prospect of Russia and China exterminating each other in a thermonuclear
war, that would leave China as the worlds new power.
Did you mean the USA there? Thermonuclear radiation and fallout has a nasty habit of not staying
within geographical borders, messing up the weather, reducing populations that buy stuff and generally
interfering with business.
Trump is an American. He was elected president in America. As an American I understand the difficulty
that imposes on him to ever stand apart from the American world view. This view sees all countries
as rivals and if any nation is not beholden it is treated as enemy. It's the American way of life.
This view is ingrained in us all from childhood and reiterated daily with media slanting and obfuscation.
Our national mind set and resultant negative actions will lead to A. atomic exchange or B. drift
to second world status.
If you are referring to the United States of Amnesia ,i'm sure you are right on that account.
It appears that pax-americana is looking more like the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. It only works
for their domestic audience, and their vassal states. Any other country is no longer paying any
attention. Old Slavic saying threats are more signs of weakness than strength.
Here's a Yandex translation of the Chinese article linked above:
Local time in 2017, 4 on 26 May, Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Kremlin to meet with
the CPC Central Committee and the Politburo, the Central Secretariat Secretary, Central Office
Director Li gauntlet.
Mr. Putin invited Mr. Li to convey his on President XI Jinping's sincere greetings and good
wishes, and said that the current Russia-China high-level exchanges closely, each of the areas
of mechanisms of exchange steadily, economic, cultural, local and other cooperation, the increasingly
in-depth.
The two sides in major international regional Affairs, communication and coordination fruitful.
The Russian side on bilateral relations development and the two sides mutual trust and cooperation
to achieve the highest level of satisfaction. The Russian side actively respond to the Chinese"one
belt and one road"initiative.
I look forward to 5 months of China to attend the"one belt and one road"international cooperation
summit Forum and with President XI Jinping to meet.
Mr. Li conveyed President XI Jinping to President Putin's cordial greetings and good wishes,
and stressed that China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in the history
of the best period, is to win-win cooperation as the core of the new national relationship model.
Sino-Russian relations is Mature, stable, maintain a high level of development. Regardless
of the international situation changes, both sides adhere to consolidate and deepen the comprehensive
strategic cooperative partnership approach will not change, committed to achieve common development,
revitalization of the target does not change, work together to defend International Fair justice
and world peace and stability determination will not change.
President XI Jinping look forward to Mr. President 5 months in China to attend the"one belt
and one road"international cooperation summit Forum.
Mr. Li pointed out that the CPC Central Committee and the President of Russia Executive Office
of the cooperation mechanisms in the two countries respective foreign exchanges are unique, reflecting
the relations between China and Russia high level and specificity.
We would like to join the Russian side together, and jointly promote the two the Office of
the exchanges and cooperation carried out in-depth, the better the service the two heads of state
diplomacy and the Sino-Russian relations development the overall situation. Parties to be involved
in each other's core interests and major concerns continue to support each other, on the existing
basis of further deepening the areas of cooperation, the implementation of the strategic large
projects, promote bilateral pragmatic cooperation to a comprehensive, wide-ranging, high-level
and constantly move forward.
On the same day, Li gauntlet with the Russian President, the Office of the Director of the
watts Eno talks, and met with Russian President environmental, ecological and traffic Affairs,
the Special Representative of Ivanov, will strengthen their exchanges and cooperation in-depth
communication, and of common concern international and regional issues exchange of views.
It's a bit stilted as machine translations are, but the content is very comprehensible.
Translated version:
Dear Mr Trump. We know that without the US dollars as the world's reserve currency your empire
crumbles. We know in Eurasia that we can do business without it. We are not going to subsidize
your military so it can conquer us. Have a nice day.
They made some speech about Russia's isolation at the UN – stating that not even China will
support them.
The White House announced this as an achievement of TrumpHillary 100 days.
Well after this statement from Xi, the USA has achieved even greater cooperation between Russia
and China.
"Chinese President Xi Jinping sends personal message of friendship to Russian President Putin
on China's behalf, scotching attempt by US to make trouble between them."
-That is certainly a interpretation, but if you want to talk of messages, the fact that China
didn't even condemn USA illegal strike against Syria would be a much greater message.
The message being "We support you Trump, we are submissive, you can to others as you please,
we wont even raise our voice"
Here is this news again, but as reported Moscow in English on the TASS English service:
"President Trump has stood up to countries that have threatened our national security after
years of failed diplomacy. During his first 100 days, the President has sent a message to the
world with his swift and decisive order to strike the Syrian air base that launched a horrific
chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians",the White House press service said in a statement.
According to the statement, Trump "further isolated Syria and Russia at the United Nations
through successful diplomacy with President Xi Jinping of China".
In addition, Trump "imposed sanctions on Syria" and "worked to isolate North Korea".
See: White House boasts it 'isolated Russia' at UN
April 28, 6:07 UTC+3
U.S. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson has said during an interview with radio station NPR that
during his visit to Russia in April, 2017, Moscow and Washington had failed to resolve any issues
and no further meeting had been arranged.
According to Tillerson, Russia needs to decide if she wants to become a "positive part of the
global world order, not its undermining".
The meeting achieved nothing as the USA are basically saying Russia has to do what they want.
And Russia said no at the highest level
Russia needs to do a lot better at presenting a credible case.
The Sarin gas attack is a good example. The most obvious culprit is the Syrian Gov, they were
bombing the area, the opposition was killed and the Gov clearly has the ability to produce the
gas. It is therefore on the Russian /Syrian side to produce some evidence to the contrary. There
was a scenario put forward that a warehouse storing gas was hit and this warehouse was being used
to
transit the gas between Syria and Iraq. Great so they know all about it. Wheres the evidence?
No evidence whatsoever was given and so how can China possibly back that scenario?
Really Trump did the right thing by bombing Syria. The school of hard knocks. Maybe next time
Russia/Syria will get their story straight.
"The Sarin gas attack is a good example. The most obvious culprit is the Syrian Gov, they were
bombing the area"
The Syrian government are far from the most obvious culprits. First off they have no motive,
the consequences would have been entirely predictable and obviously contrary to their interests.
Secondly it has not been demonstrated they currently even possess chemical weapons. Thirdly, there
has been at least one similar attempt to frame them. Fourth, there is expert evidence that demonstrates
that the incident did not happen as advertised. Lastly the US government says the Syrian government
did it, and based on the events of the last few decades, the chances that they are telling the
truth are vanishingly small. True there are probably a few insignificant lies that they somehow
omitted to tell but nobody is infallible.
The other side clearly had means (it is known they possess and even regularly use chemical
weapons) motive (they were losing and wanted to get the US involved) and opportunity (they control
the area)
I can accept all that, but what really happened?
Putin tells us that the Syrians hit a rebel warehouse filled with Sarin. Assad debunks this theory
and says it was all faked, never happened and no one was gassed.
The Western public is not going to easily believe that the rebels gassed themselves.
This event has huge media attention. Everything is at stake here. If the Russians have any intel
or evidence this is the time to bring it. No use hiding behind not wanting to revel how they collect
their information.
Really? The right thing to violate international law and create destruction in a sovereign nation,
based on absolutely no evidence? Syria is guilty because they didn't scream loud enough that they
are not? None of the western leaders would listen anyway.
The true entities violating the law are the US and Israel. Any argument presented by them can
automatically be considered obfuscation and mis-direction. None of their actions are noble, and
none of their concerns are sincere.
I'm waiting for them to mention a Norwegian Blue parrot in one of their news releases. It's getting
harder to differentiate Trump's spin doctors from Monty Python sketch writers. They both make
jokes but only one is not cursed at the end. And it's this one.
"Our friendship is unbreakable of course on our terms, which are to do with free access to
last unspoilt landmass and it´s pristine nature and resources.
We´ll build whatever infrastructure you like, and by doing that, we will spread our sphere to
all Russia.
That is our big price. While we do this, we gladly call you our "big brother" and "greatest friend
of all"." China is boa constrictor
The chabad lubavitz cult of kushner/ivanka that got trump to bomb Syria, which even bibi was unable
to do despite sarin/missile false flags actually believes their turkic-slav khazar rebbe schneerson
was the MOLIECH (ie the Messiah, instead of Jesus Christ) and that he will be coming back during
these end times. Sephardi Rabbid Ovadia dismissed shneerson as an old jew not a messiah but we
have a deluded messianics all over Israel. Putin has removed their first strike delusions by simply
making it clear their tribesmen in israel,NY,SF and Golders Green,London (approx 70%) will be
FIRST to be targeted if their chucktodds,mahers,blitzers,madcows,etc in the owned MSM ever starts
ramping up a first strike against Russia.
You may be right. Rabbi Shlomo Dovber Pinchas Lazar, the Chabad chief in Russia is a 'personal
friend' of Putin and an 'Italian Jewish Orthodox' might have whispered something to the ears of
the Lubavitcher in charge with the Offal Orifice.
I first went to Zhongguo, aka China, in autumn 2002 to Shandong, Wei Fang, Shouguang. A small
city but important in flower and vegetable production. So important that there is an annual flower
and vegetable expo every year. I was then the first native English teacher ever at the prestigious
Shouguang Yi Zhong (Yi = No. 1, Zhong = middle) Yi Zhong is the No. 1 Middle School. When I arrived
it was the 1st day of the 42nd anniversary of the school and I was given a royal reception because
I was the chosen companion, during the whole week of the anniversary celebration, of the Secretary
of Shandong. The Supreme leader of the province
that had, and still has, the 2nd highest GDP of the whole of China. That school had produced many
party higher officials over many years in Beijing.
That city like many cities I visited as guest of numerous officials, in the years of 2002/2003,
had many Russians there too. The Russians were very conspicuous but their numbers dwindled throughout
the reign of Hu Jintao. Even when Xi ascended the throne of Emperor very few Russians were around.
Even in recent times in my travels up until l left in September 2017 Russians were not so common.
I lived and traveled in China continuously from September 2002 to September 2017. However the
Russian people most famously known during the rule of Emperor Hu were criminals that took over
Sanya on Hai Nan Island. Yet it was Emperor Hu that enforced Mao's doctrines on the whole of the
'party' and Russians , other than the gangs were very inconspicuous, being quite quiet tho' still
there. Emperor Hu gave the people the right to borrow from banks thereby ending the repute of
the greatest savers on the planet.
We know that the Remin Ying Hang, the Peoples' Bank, was previously run by Rothschilds of the
ilk if the current Central Bankers but somehow they got deposed and replaced by Rothschilds breakaways
as was the case in Russia. In fact it seems that the Rothschilds progressives in Moscow took the
Peoples' Bank with them.
I suggest that is the underlying situation between the two emerperors, Putin & Xi. I could be
very wrong but having lived there and mixed it up with many chinese business people and officials
over a decade and more thru the reign of 3 emperors that's my conclusion.
I wish to ad something I've not seen shared in any news media about China. What outside China
people mostly don't know is that if a start up company employs people and contributes to the local
economy for a few years they receive a Zero tax bill. They must submit their monthly report to
the local tax office but no tax payment is required. Not only that but their local government
will promote and pay for that business to attend national expos. My friend in shenzhen who makes
computer software and hardware, employs 10 people, has been sent to a huge expo in Shanghai, all
expenses paid by the Shenzhen government for the 2nd year in a row. He's there now. But the government
sends him, all expenses paid, to all the major expos in China as they do for all businesses including
the biggest such as Huawei and Tencent. In fact the big names don't pay tax either nor do they
need to pay for real estate, and more. Just thought you'd be interested to know.
Emperor Xi needs Putin's audacity for OBOR plus the gold and all, just as Mao needed them, full
circle. The last year or so the Russians were becoming conspicuous again as China's folly with
the west began to wane. I taught in a big scam university there last year and there were more
Russian teachers coming each year. Scam university is where students who fail the annual university
entrance exam can pay a large sum to get past their failure. The university is a subsidiary of
a famous university run as a business by the famous university's faculty. Such campuses are the
new big biz in China internal education. Yet to be a foreign teacher in China no such chicanery
is allowed, well Beijing and Shanghai are exceptions. Basically China has to have people from
many countries that can actually do what they trained for because the locals who studied in China
can't.
I agree!
1. I prefer the exceptional america way: Hiring cheap labor from oversea, and hiding tax off shore.
Hell to the local population. America has wall street to produce finical products, and has art
of making people hate each other overseas so its sell killing machines are hot items for export.
Chinese should do same.
2. I also prefer American colleges charging arm and leg (some over $60,000 a year), or local
community colleges who has a no drop policy to any one who passed GED (a test that eastern Europeans
and east Asians can pass in their sleep), But I agree Chinese should not provide the youth who
fell to pass official entrance examine a college education for a fee.
3. I agree only exceptional American can hire talent overseas to do things the can not do,
but Chinese should not resort to the same practice
Trumpet has the vocabulary and delivery of a third-rate actor with ADD – nowhere more evident
than on the subject of foreign policy.
( He has ' great chemistry' with just about every foreign leader – except NK' s bad- boy and Assad.
But maybe that will change )
He is at his most coherent when discussing ' deals' which result in ' savings' in the domestic
sphere. A subject he is.most comfortable with and which is arguably his only ' expertise'. How
that translates into overall welfare is far from clear )
He uses this area of familiarity to self- promote.
He is obsessed with ' bad PR' : again, much more articulate on the MSM' s hostility. ( And
losing no.opportunity to question the failure of investigative agencies to pursue lines of enquiry
on the DNC/ Clinton.)
One glimmer of shrewdness beneath the bombast: the noting of the FBI – supposedly operating
in ' national interest' using the services of a private firm ( Crowd strike), run by a ' rich
Ukrainian'. So indicating that when it comes to attacks on his own credibility, he is not quite
so ' inattentive.'
Overall, I get the impression that foreign policy is something of ' nuisance' , to be dealt
with only because of its interference with his domestic agenda.
Let's hope he becomes disabused of that notion soon, or the neocons/ pay- for- players will
continue to use state- apparatus for their own murderous ends.
This is all good observation. I agree with your thought that Trump is a domestic president with
little patience or taste for the international sphere. But it is said that a thing always happens
to presidents and other national leaders, namely that the allure of the international is so strong,
and it's so easy to grandstand and make popular points in this sphere, that they all become seduced
away from their domestic focus.
I continue to think that Trump's style is to surround himself with people who have ideas and
schemes, and throw them all at the refrigerator, as one can with pasta to see if it's cooked.
Whatever sticks to the fridge is a winner, whatever slides down to the floor is not.
Currently of course we're witnessing the entire foreign policy of the United States sliding
down to the floor. If we survive the experience, a useful education may occur. But I'm dismayed
to find Trump apply this method to global security. His naivety seems as outsized as everything
else about him.
We Quakers often say, "Speak truth to power." That used to have some effect. But things have changed
for the worse. I cannot speak on behalf of Quakers, but it seems to me that power is not listening,
so speaking truth to it is no more effective than speaking truth to a brick wall.
"Trump pursues "no own policies" but only executes the decisions made by the "intelligence
agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms manufacturers, oil companies, and financial institutions,"
the Syrian leader said in an exclusive interview with TeleSUR.
"As we have seen in the past few weeks, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself
to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime," Assad added.
He referred to the fact that Trump came to power on a political platform promising a departure
from the interventionist policy of the previous US president, Barack Obama, but soon forgot his
promises and ordered a missile strike against the Syrian air base following a chemical weapons
incident in Syria's Idlib province.
The Syrian president also said that it is "a complete waste of time to make an assessment of
the American president's foreign policy" as "he might say something" but what he really does depends
on "what these [US military and business] institutions dictate to him."
He also added that it "is not new" and "has been ongoing American policy for decades."
"This is what characterizes American politicians: they lie on a daily basis That's why we shouldn't
believe what the Pentagon or any other American institution says because they say things which
serve their policies, not things which reflect reality and the facts on the ground," Assad told
TeleSUR.
He went on to say that the US continues to pursue its age-long policy aimed at establishing
and maintaining a global hegemony by turning all countries that oppose it into war zones.
"The United States always seeks to control all the states of the world without exception. It
does not accept allies, regardless of whether they are developed states as those in the Western
bloc or other states of the world," the Syrian leader explained.
He also added that "what is happening to Syria, to Korea, to Iran, to Russia, and maybe to
Venezuela now, aims at re-imposing American hegemony on the world because they believe that this
hegemony is under threat now, which consequently threatens the interests of American economic
and political elites."
Assad expressed similar views in an interview with Russia's Sputnik news agency about a week
ago. "The regime in the United States hasn't changed," he said, adding, "since the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the United States has been attacking different countries in different ways without
taking into consideration the Security Council or the United Nations."
He also said that for the US, "the end justifies the means, no values, no morals at all, anything
could happen."
This immense vital message tells us how USA has played China, Russia and Iran very close to
each others. These three have now common interests. It's quite the same when Hitler pushed Churchill,
FDR and Stalin to co-operate.
Do you really believe that Marshal Mannerheim of Finland was great admirer of Hitler? Heck
no. He actually was looking forward to have military alliance with USSR before Finno-Russo Winter
War. What's even more amazing Mannerheim told to General Talvela in 1941: "Remember that Germany
is our greatest threat".
So there are always short-term alliances. What never dies out is geopolitics. On the other
hand China is so immense super power and Confucianism way of focusing world that i won't see it
as "new America". They understand the idea of multilateralism and multipolar global future. Last
5 000 years of history are backing my idea. For me China is stabilizing power world really needs.
Without China's political and monetary support, Russia would not be able to confront the US/EU
at the same time. Just because you don't hear or see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. China's
basically FINANCING Russia's front in Syria and Ukraine. Don't underestimate this.
It "could" be bad news coming out of the UN. They are "debating" further sanctions, on probably
the most sanctioned country on earth, North Korea. As I read in a comment on anther article, "unless
they are sanctioning water and air, what is left for them to sanction in North Korea".
Will Russia and China (once again) fall for the West's trick of using sanctions. We shall
see, but the track record isn't very good for them. A "rule of thumb" that Russia and China should
think of is, "if a UN resolution favors the West in any way. Its a bad one for you to support".
Just how many times have Western powers (especially the US) used sanctions against the
interests of Russia and China. The list is almost endless. And for a country herself under idiotic
Western sanctions (she would be under UN sanctions ,but for Russia and China having a UNSC veto
power),Russia voting for sanctions on another country is worse than foolish.
An abstention by Russia and China isn't enough in this case. If a vote is called on more sanctions
they should veto that vote. Do the UN countries "really" expect sanctions to convince North Korea
to give up their only protection against US aggression. Is the level of ignorance that great in
the UNSC. Russia and China if they want to vote for a UN Resolution,they need to purpose one themselves
that calls for negotiations between the two sides to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear weapons
question.
Did Russia and China not learn anything from the UN sanctions against Yugoslavia,against Libya,against
Iraq,against Syria,against Iran,and those already against North Korea. I hope they have. But we
shall see,I'm not very confident about that.
China actively supports neoliberal globalisation and cannot be trusted. It has deep interconnected
trade and investment relations with USA. It is highly unlikely that China will ever move against
Multinational corporations or against USA.
The Chinese economic "miracle" happened because of the Multinational Corporations which invested
in China. MNCs reduced their manufacturing costs and increased their profits by selling these
products in western markets. As China offers low cost labour and has a repressed workforce, many
MNCs took advantage of it.
I don't know how likely it is for China to move against the US, but Xi Jinping certainly knows
that the US is moving against China. Here are a few examples.
1. The US is deploying the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea.
2. The US has sold arms to Taiwan for decades.
3. There was a toned down version of a colour revolution in a part of China, in Hong Kong, to
be specific. Actually, I'm not sure it is over.
Whatever you think of Xi and the other Chinese leaders, they aren't so dumb that they can't
see these things.
I thought this statement by Xi Jinping was in response to the fact that Mr. Trump shot missiles
at a Syrian air base manned by Russians while Xi Jinping was visiting him at Mar-el-Lego. That
was provocative, no?
"... It should not be a surprise. This unseemly and unnecessary cash-in fits a pattern of bad behavior involving the financial sector, one that spans Obama's entire presidency. ..."
"... Obama's Wall Street payday will confirm for many what they have long suspected: that the Democratic Party is managed by out-of-touch elites who do not understand or care about the concerns of ordinary Americans. It's hard to fault those who come to this conclusion.. ..."
"... I began this essay by saying that Obama's $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend ..."
"... Before he was even elected, an executive from Citigroup (the corporate owner of Citibank) gave Obama a list of acceptable choices for who may serve on his cabinet. The list ended up matching Obama's actual cabinet picks once elected almost to a 't' ..."
"The rumors are true: Former President Barack Obama will receive $400,000 to speak at a health
care conference organized by the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
It should not be a surprise. This unseemly and unnecessary cash-in fits a pattern of bad
behavior involving the financial sector, one that spans Obama's entire presidency.
That governing failure convinced millions of his onetime supporters that the president and
his party were not, in fact, playing for their team, and helped pave the way for President Donald
Trump. Obama's Wall Street payday will confirm for many what they have long suspected: that
the Democratic Party is managed by out-of-touch elites who do not understand or care about the
concerns of ordinary Americans. It's hard to fault those who come to this conclusion..."
If Progressives Don't Wake Up To How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail
...............
" I began this essay by saying that Obama's $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend
.
I did that because, in what was easily the single most important and egregious WikiLeaks email
of 2016, we learned that Wall Street was calling the shots in the Obama administration before
the Obama administration even existed.
Matthew Yglesias's piece sharply criticizing Obama for taking a $400,000 speaker fee to talk
at a conference organized by Cantor Fitzgerald is getting a lot of pushback. I find this a little
startling – while I disagree with MY's defense of centrism, the underlying argument – that there
is something sleazy about former officials going on the speaker's circuit for astronomical fees
– seems so obviously right as to scarcely merit further discussion, let alone vigorous disagreement.
I've seen three counter-arguments being made. First – that Yglesias and others making this
case are being implicitly racist by holding Obama to a higher standard than other politicians.
Personally, I'll happily stipulate to holding Obama to a higher standard than other politicians,
but it isn't because he is black. Instead, it's because Obama seemed to plausibly be better than
most other politicians on personal ethics. That's not to say that I agreed with his foreign policy,
or attitude to the financial sector, or many other things he did, but I wouldn't have expected
him to look to cash in, especially as he doesn't seem to be hurting for money. Obviously, I was
wrong.
Second – that there isn't any real difference between Obama's giving speeches for a lot of
money, and Obama getting a fat book contract, since both are responses to the market. This, again,
is not convincing. Tony Blair is catering to a market too – a rather smaller market of murderous
kleptocrats who want their reputations burnished through association with a prominent Western
politician. The key question is not whether it is a market transaction, but what is being sold,
and whom it is being sold to. In my eyes, there is a sharp difference between selling the flattery
of your company to the rich and powerful, and selling a book manuscript that is plausibly of real
interest to a lot of ordinary people. The former requires you to shape your public persona in
very different ways than the latter.
Third – that everyone does it so why shouldn't the Obamas. Yglesias deals with this pretty
well out of the box:
Indeed, to not take the money might be a problem for someone in Obama's position. It would
set a precedent.
Obama would be suggesting that for an economically comfortable high-ranking former government
official to be out there doing paid speaking gigs would be corrupt, sleazy, or both. He'd be looking
down his nose at the other corrupt, sleazy former high-ranking government officials and making
enemies.
Which is exactly why he should have turned down the gig.
Just so. The claim that 'everyone does it' is not an excuse or defense. It's a statement of
the problem.
I do think that MY's piece can be criticized (more precisely, with a very slight change in
rhetorical emphasis, it points in the opposite direction than the one Yglesias wants it to point
in). MY states the objections that progressive centrism (or, as we've talked about it here in
the past, left neo-liberalism) is subject to:
The political right is supposed to be pro-business as a matter of ideological commitment. The
progressive center is supposed to be empirically minded, challenging business interests where
appropriate but granting them free rein at other times.
This approach has a lot of political and substantive merits. But it is invariably subject to
the objection: really?
Did you really avoid breaking up the big banks because you thought it would undermine financial
stability, or were you on the take? Did you really think a fracking ban would be bad for the environment,
or were you on the take? One man's sophisticated and pragmatic approach to public policy can be
the other man's grab bag of corrupt opportunism.
He then goes on to say why this means that Obama needs to adopt a higher standard of behavior:
Leaders who sincerely care about the fate of the progressive center as a nationally and globally
viable political movement need to push back against this perception by behaving with a higher
degree of personal integrity than their rivals - not by accepting the logic that what's good for
the goose is good for the gander.
and
Obama should take seriously the message it sends to those young people if he decides to make
a career out of buckraking. He knows that Hillary Clinton isn't popular with the youth cohort
the way he is. And he knows that populists on both the left and the right want to make a sweeping
ideological critique of all center-left politics, not just a narrow personal one of Clinton. Does
Obama want them to win that battle and carry the day with the message that mainstream politics
is just a moneymaking hustle?
Of course, it's just one speech. Nothing is irrevocable about one speech. But money doesn't get
any easier to turn down with time, any more than rebuking friends and colleagues gets easier.
To make his post-presidency a success, Obama should give this money to some good cause and then
swear off these gigs entirely.
But what does Obama's willingness to take the money in the first place say about progressive
centrism, if we stipulate (as I think MY would likely agree) that Obama is probably as good as
progressive centrists are likely to get? The left neoliberal hit against standard liberal-to-left
politics in the 1980s was that it fostered sleazy interest groups and tacit or not-so-tacit mutual
backscratching between these interest groups and politicians. If the very best alternative that
left neoliberalism has to offer is another, and arguably worse version of this (Wall Street firms,
unlike unions, don't even have the need to pretend to have the interests of ordinary people at
heart), then its raison d'etre is pretty well exploded.
More succinctly – MY wants Obama to behave better, because otherwise political centrism will
start to look like a hustle. But if someone like Obama is not behaving better, doesn't that imply
that the hustle theory has legs?
Peter
L. Winkler
BumbleDumble ,
20h ago Barack and Michelle Obama just signed a dual book deal giving them
$65 million dollars. And now he grabs at $400,000 for an hour long speech funded
by Wall Street. It's a shocking display of sheer avarice.
The ruling class is seriously rattled over its loss of control over the national political narrative-a
consequence of capitalism's terminal decay and U.S. imperialism's slipping grip on global hegemony.
When the Lords of Capital get rattled, their servants in the political class are tasked with rearranging
the picture and reframing the national conversation. In other words, Papa Imperialism needs a new
set of lies, or renewed respect for the old ones. Former president Barack Obama, the cool operator
who put the U.S. back on the multiple wars track after a forced lull in the wake of George Bush's
defeat in Iraq, has eagerly accepted his new assignment as Esteemed Guardian of Official Lies.
At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official
Lies, since they are central to his own "legacy." With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive-a rush job to put the New
American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim
of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama's offensive was the
naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It
is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible-unspeakable!-the truth of which would
shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.
Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul
David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein
would have called "The Mother of All Lies": that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida
and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.
Advertisement Square, Site wide He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose
loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly
in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S.
and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al-Qaida and the U.S. were comrades
in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the
U.S. created ISIS .) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly
that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields "to the horizon,"
bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no
retort. Russian jets
destroyed 1,000 of the tankers , forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But,
the moment soon passed into the corporate media's amnesia hole-another fact that must be shed in
order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump's flirtation with the idea of ending U.S. "regime change"
policy in Syria-and, thereby, scuttling the alliance with Islamic jihadists-struck panic in the ruling
class and in the imperial political structures that are called the Deep State, which includes the
corporate media. When Trump won the general election, the imperial political class went into meltdown,
blaming "The Russians"-first, for warlord Hillary Clinton's loss, and soon later for everything under
the sun. The latest lie is that Moscow is sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country
where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions of dollars to create the international jihadist
network. Which shows that imperialists have no sense of irony, or shame. (See BAR: "
The U.S., Not
Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide .")
After the election, lame duck President Obama was so consumed by the need to expunge all narratives
that ran counter to "The Russians Did It," he twice yammered about "
fake news " at a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama was upset,
he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well
and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything
seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect."
Although now an ex-president, it is still Obama's job to protect the ruling class, and the Empire,
and his role in maintaining the Empire: his legacy. To do that, one must control the narrative-the
subject uppermost in his mind when he used Chicago area students as props, this week, for
his first public speech since leaving the
White House.
"It used to be that everybody kind of had the same information," said Obama, at the University
of Chicago affair. "We had different opinions about it, but there was a common base line of facts.
The internet has in some ways accelerated this sense of people having entirely separate conversations,
and this generation is getting its information through its phones. That you really don't have to
confront people who have different opinions or have a different experience or a different outlook."
Obama continued:
"If you're liberal, you're on MSNBC, or conservative, you're on Fox News. You're reading The Wall
Street Journal or you're reading The New York Times, or whatever your choices are. Or, maybe you're
just looking at cat videos [laughter].
"So, one question I have for all of you is, How do you guys get your information about the news
and what's happening out there, and are there ways in which you think we could do a better job of
creating a common conversation now that you've got 600 cable stations and you've got all these different
news opinions-and, if there are two sets of opinions, then they're just yelling at each other, so
you don't get a sense that there's an actual conversation going on. And the internet is worse. It's
become more polarized."
Obama's core concern is that there should be a "common base line of facts," which he claims used
to exist "20 or 30 years ago." The internet, unregulated and cheaply accessed, is the villain, and
the main source of "fake news" (from publications like BAR and the 12 other leftwing sites smeared
by the Washington Post, back in November, not long after Obama complained to Merkel about "fake news").
However, Obama tries to dress up his anti-internet "fake news" whine with a phony pitch for diversity
of opinions. Is he suggesting that MSNBC viewers also watch Fox News, and that New York Times readers
also peruse the Wall Street Journal? Is he saying that most people read a variety of daily newspapers
"back in the day"? It is true that, generations ago, there were far more newspapers available to
read, reflecting a somewhat wider ideological range of views. But most people read the ones that
were closest to their own politics, just as now. Obama is playing his usual game of diversion. Non-corporate
news is his target: "...the internet is worse. It's become more and more polarized."
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and Fox News all share the "common base line of
facts" that Obama cherishes. By this, he means a common narrative, with American "exceptionalism"
and intrinsic goodness at the center, capitalism and democracy as synonymous, and unity in opposition
to the "common" enemy: Soviet Russians; then terrorists; now non-Soviet Russians, again.
Ayanna Watkins, a senior at Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School, clearly understood Obama's
emphasis, and eagerly agreed with his thrust. "When it comes to getting information about what's
going on in the world, it's way faster on social media than it is on newscasts," she said.
"But, on the other hand, it can be a downfall because, what if you're passing the wrong information,
or the information isn't presented the way it should be? So, that causes a clash in our generation,
and I think it should go back to the old school. I mean, phones, social media should be eliminated,"
Ms. Watkins blurted out, provoking laughter from the audience and causing the 18-year-old to "rephrase
myself."
What she really meant, she said, was that politicians should "go out to the community" so that
"the community will feel more welcome."
If she was trying to agree with Obama, Ms. Watkins had it right the first time: political counter-narratives
on the internet have to go, so that Americans can share a "common base line" of information. All
of it lies.
Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
Obama was a bought president now he bought and paid president. Master
of "bait and switch" now got his silver coins.
Notable quotes:
"... Obama's real legacy also includes zero bankers jailed for fraud despite the rampant criminal behavior of Wall Street in the run-up to the 2008 economic devastation. As he told a group of Wall Street CEOs in 2009 , "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." He was right, and proved an effective shield. ..."
"... For all of those efforts, those that succeeded (passing ACA, protecting Wall Street CEOs) and those that failed (cuts to SS and Medicare, TPP, Keystone), he fully expected to be granted a "Bill Clinton future" - the big money, the big foundation, the international love and acclaim. ..."
"... Fresh from his vacation on privately-owned Necker Island with billionaire Richard Branson, Obama has just inked his first lucrative speaking deal. The fee: $400,000. The venue: Wall Street. ..."
"... When he was president he called them "fat cats," but now he's likely thanking them for a huge payday. ..."
"... Former President Barack Obama, less than 100 days out of office, has agreed to speak at a Wall Street conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald LP, senior people at the firm confirm to FOX Business. His speaking fee will be $400,000, which is nearly twice as much as Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, and the 2016 Democratic Party candidate, charged private businesses for such events. ..."
"... And typical of Obama, the issue is words versus deeds . That "record of attacks" was entirely verbal. Obama's deeds were the opposite of attacks; they were entirely supportive. Which is entirely to be expected given the level of funding Wall Street poured into making and keeping him president in the first place: ..."
"... One-third of the Obama re-election campaign's record-breaking second-quarter fundraising came from sources associated with the financial sector, the Washington Post reports. ..."
"... Bottom line - Wall Street invested millions in Barack Obama's career in 2008 and 2012. That investment paid off over the eight years of his presidency to the tune of billions upon billions in profit and millions upon millions per year in executive compensation and bonuses. ..."
By
Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on
the West Coast of the United States and frequent
contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and
Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius
,
Tumblr
and
Facebook
. GP article archive
here
. Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
My words fly up, my deeds remain below.
Words without deeds never to heaven go.
-Barack, Prince of Denmark,
Act III
,
Scene 3
This is a story I didn't want to produce, but
fully expected to. For years I've been writing about
Barack Obama and his legacy, the one he wants to
have and the one he actually has. In
2013
I listed the four economic items Obama
wanted to achieve to complete what he considered his
legacy list before his presidency ended:
Privatized "Medicare expansion" (the ACA).
Benefits cuts for SS and Medicare. Keystone
[pipeline built]. TPP [passed]. If Obama gets
these four, he's a happy man, and in his mind he
goes out in glory.
He succeeded on the first; tried and tried and
tried on the second; bailed on the third only when
forced to by popular opposition; and pulled out all
the stops, every last one of them, to pass the
fourth in the last months of his last year, even as
his chosen Democratic successor, Hillary Clinton,
under pressure in the primary, finally came out as
opposed. (Obama's chosen DNC chair, Tom Perez, was
never opposed, nor was anyone else close to his
administration, though Perez doesn't talk about that
much these days.)
If it weren't for Tea Party and Freedom Caucus
Republicans, he'd have been three for four - Social
Security "reform" and TPP would have passed. Obama
didn't lose for lack of trying.
Obama's real legacy also includes zero
bankers jailed for fraud despite the rampant
criminal behavior of Wall Street in the run-up to
the 2008 economic devastation. As he told a group of
Wall Street CEOs
in 2009
, "My administration is the only thing
between you and the pitchforks." He was right, and
proved an effective shield.
For all of those efforts, those that
succeeded (passing ACA, protecting Wall Street CEOs)
and those that failed (cuts to SS and Medicare, TPP,
Keystone), he fully expected to be granted a "Bill
Clinton future" - the big money, the big foundation,
the international love and acclaim.
You can read about
his fundraising for the foundation here
. It's
quite a story in its own right. You can hear the
international acclaim grow stronger by the day,
thanks to the serendipitous contrast with his
successor, Donald Trump. And now the money is
starting to flow.
"Bill Clinton Money"
Fresh from his vacation on privately-owned
Necker Island with billionaire Richard Branson,
Obama has just inked his first lucrative speaking
deal. The fee: $400,000. The venue: Wall Street.
Former President Obama has agreed to speak at
a Wall Street conference for $400,000, according
to a new report.
Obama will appear at Cantor Fitzgerald LP's
healthcare conference in September, Fox Business
Network first reported
Monday
.
Fox Business said it confirmed Obama's
appearance with senior members at Cantor, a
financial services firm.
Obama will serve as the keynote speaker for
one day at the company's event, sources there
told Fox Business.
The following is from the underlying Fox Business
report
by Charlie Gasparino and Brian Schwartz,
who broke the story. Note the criticism that looks
to us like praise (my emphasis):
When he was president he called them "fat
cats," but now he's likely thanking them for a
huge payday.
Former President Barack Obama, less than
100 days out of office, has agreed to speak at a
Wall Street conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald
LP, senior people at the firm confirm to FOX
Business. His speaking fee will be $400,000,
which is nearly twice as much as Hillary
Clinton, his secretary of state, and the 2016
Democratic Party candidate, charged private
businesses for such events.
[ ]
News of Obama's speaking deal with Cantor,
which had yet to be reported, comes as the
former president made on Monday his first public
comments since leaving office after an extended
vacation. In those comments to college students
at the University of Chicago, the president
spoke broadly about the need for public service
and studiously avoided any mention of the
current president, Republican Donald Trump, or
how he intends to make a living now that he's a
private citizen.
It's also likely to be a source of criticism
against the former president given Obama's
record of attacks against Wall Street bankers
for making huge salaries while average Americans
were suffering from the ravages of the 2008
financial crisis.
Obama, a progressive
Democrat, spoke frequently about Wall Street
greed
during his eight years as
president, and now he's accepting a speaking fee
from the industry he singled out as the main
culprit of the banking collapse.
I'll return to the Fox piece in a moment. First,
about the timing, compare Obama's first
post-presidential days to Bill Clinton's immediate
post-presidential trajectory
(my emphasis):
On
December 21, 2000
,
President Bill Clinton signed a bill called the
Commodities Futures Modernization Act. This law
ensured that derivatives could not be regulated,
setting the stage for the financial crisis.
Just two months later, on
February 5,
2001
, Clinton
received
$125,000 from Morgan Stanley, in
the form of a payment for a speech Clinton gave
for the company in New York City. A few weeks
later, Credit Suisse also hired Clinton for a
speech, at a $125,000 speaking fee, also in New
York. It turns out, Bill Clinton could make a
lot of money, for not very much work.
Notice that just like Clinton was fresh off his
late December win for Wall Street deregulation,
Obama is fresh off his highly focused effort to pass
TPP in the final days of his own presidency. Unlike
Clinton, who won, Obama ultimately failed, but
Obama's win would have been much more monumental
than Clinton's. Commodities futures deregulation
enriched just one industry, though it did help wreck
the whole economy. TPP was truly "NAFTA on
steroids," a multi-industry monopoly protection
scheme, and nearly everyone in America with real
money would have benefited, not just the bankers.
By the way, if you compare Obama's speaking fee
with Clinton's early fees, you may notice the price
has gone up. (Clinton's later fees grew in line with
those prices. His 2015 fee was
$500,000 per speech
.) A good example of asset
inflation - and that's not sarcasm. Everything the
rich are buying these days is rocketing up in price.
See "
Art
and real estate are the new gold, says Blackrock CEO
."
Word and Deeds
I quoted Gasparino and Schwartz's piece for a
reason. In it you can see the double benefit Obama
gets - Wall Street reward money, plus undeserved
credit for opposing Wall Street while in office.
Fox, in hitting him for hypocrisy - "given
Obama's record of attacks against Wall Street
bankers for making huge salaries while average
Americans were suffering from the ravages of the
2008 financial crisis" - actually praises him as an
kind of "anti-Wall Street warrior" during his
presidency, something (a) he certainly was not, but
(b) something he desperately wants to be thought to
have been.
After all, you can't retire as a "champion of the
people" if you don't at least appear to champion the
people. And you can't be internationally loved in
your "retirement" years if the world sees you as a
quid-pro-quo greed head. Managing how the world sees
him will be crucial to Obama's success going
forward.
And typical of Obama, the issue is
words versus deeds
. That "record of attacks" was
entirely verbal. Obama's deeds were the opposite of
attacks; they were entirely supportive. Which is
entirely to be expected given the level of funding
Wall Street poured into
making and keeping him president
in the first
place:
Wall Street Responsible For One-Third
Of Obama's Campaign Funds
One-third of the Obama re-election
campaign's record-breaking second-quarter
fundraising came from sources associated with
the financial sector,
the Washington Post
reports.
That percentage is up from the 20% of
donations that came from Wall Street donors in
2008, and contradicts reports that a growing
Wall Street animosity towards the Obama
administration may jeopardize his re-election
bid.
And please don't forget that Obama's real legacy,
the one involving actual deeds, includes what
David Dayen called
"the greatest disintegration
of black wealth in recent memory." Of that I
wrote this
:
Occasionally, when there's justice in the
world, one is not just branded by the manicured
and curated image one tries to project. One is
branded instead by what one actually does in the
sight of others.
Will Obama see more justice than the millions
whose homelessness he caused? I guess that part
of the story is still being written.
One can hope. It will be interesting to watch
this unfold.
You Get What You Pay For
Bottom line - Wall Street invested millions in
Barack Obama's career in 2008 and 2012. That
investment paid off over the eight years of his
presidency to the tune of billions upon billions in
profit and millions upon millions per year in
executive compensation and bonuses.
It would not be at all surprising if Wall Street
bankers were now saying "thank you" by giving him
money he can keep. In fact, it would be entirely
surprising if they weren't.
UPDATE:
I discussed this issue
and post on "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen," WNHN-FM,
progressive radio on New Hampshire. You can
listen here
; start at 30:00 (or earlier to
listen to Garth Brooks sing "It Pays Big Money").
Madeleine
,
April 28, 2017 at 1:20 am
Honest question: what do banks get out of paying
a former president to lecture them?
Isn't it likely that Obama underregulated because
he agrees with the neoliberals, without the need for
quid pro quo/influence peddling? I'm sure he always
planned to cash in, but I read him as true believer
in markets anyway.
They are demonstrating to the next Obama that
good deeds go rewarded. Its the same reason why
so many ex politicians get insanely large book
deals for books nobody ever reads from media
companies. The point is not to give money to an
ex politician, its to remind the next generation
of politicians the rewards they can reap if they
are good boys and girls.
Exactly. They are telling the next President
so inclined to be of aid to them that there are
massive piles of cash waiting for them for
things like being "the only thing between [them]
and the pitchforks."
To make the conference attendees feel like
VIPs so they keep on believing in the importance
of networking with the .1%. Then, if they
believe in the game and in their special powers,
they will buy the financially engineered
products.
It's all about feeling as if you are part of
the winning group.
It would look very bad and send the wrong message
if those who have served you well didn't get
rewarded. Compared to the service they received it's
a real bargain.
He rented a house in DC that have rental market
price equivalent to his presidential pension.
Negotiations for the 60 million book remuneration
was probably already finished.
I always thought one of the goals of passing BS
healthcare reform was to use it as a bargaining chip
to get Democrats to accept Social Security and
Medicare cuts and privatization. It would have
worked but for that pesky Tea Party that couldn't
take yes for an answer from the Kenyan Muslim
atheist socialist. Despite his every effort to bend
over backward and kiss their asses
The French it seems are missing a trick by
relying on a candidate with all of the charisma of a
dead fish. I imagine it would not be too difficult
to find a popular game show host type who can sing a
little of the repertoire of a Gallic version of Al
Green, follow an autocue with a touch of pizazz &
generally charm all & sundry.
Judging from what I have read on my FB feed, the
man can do no wrong, especially it appears among the
female contingent, one of whom suggested it was
racist to criticise the cool cat for licking up the
presented cream. I have also noticed a similar
reaction from the females to one of the latest
additions to the Neoliberal crew, " Pretty Boy "
Trudeau.
Yes! and though the forgiveness is not
surprising, I am stunned by the furious reaction
at any attempt to criticize O for promptly
cashing in. It includes statements like, Oh
c'mon, you want the guy to work for free to be
morally pure?? Or, it's just like big name
artists who finally make it and then people
resent that they make good money. The litany of
excuses nearly always comes from people who find
Trump appallingly greedy, crude, vulgar,
corrupt, etc.
I probably should add that this is not
just a female phenomenon as from my
experience, many males have also been taken
in by the above tailor's dummies.
I am somehow reminded of the situation
that developed when that infamous smoothie,
Ted Bundy appeared in court.
You highlight something which I have been
thinking about recently and welcome suggestions
from the "Nakeds", if only so I can ask the
bookies for a quote at Newmarket next week-end.
After Obama, Trudeau and Macron, who are the
next pretty boys and girls the neo-liberals can
use to advance their interests? Are there any
empty suits with a USP out there? I was thinking
of Corporate Hooker, but we have just had Obama.
One of the twins from Texas or the pretty boys
from San Francisco? I can't think of any in the
UK apart from Chuka Umunna and Sadiq Khan.
Yes, but you do need the opposite for the
contrast & the hisses & boos from the
groundlings. For instance, that Neoliberal
hellhole Romania in a future election might
consist of a battle between some decorative
one time Eurovision song contest winner &
the equivalent of Vlad the Impaler.
I must admit though, that if Juliet
Binoche stood for the far right, the devil
would be whispering in my ear.
I saw one of Jeb's! kids give a speech
several years ago. Pretty boy, biracial,
smooth talker and a Bush. He's not that old
yet so if the clan can reinvigorate
themselves after the damage Trump did to the
Bush pedigree, watch out for that one.
I had forgotten about the little
brown one as George HW Bush called his
grandson George P Bush. One can get a
bet for George P Bush and Chelsea
Clinton to square up in 2024.
The difference between France and Canada is
that millions of French households are feeling
the negative impacts of neoliberalism and bad EU
policies while most Canadian households are
still clueless, basking in their home equity or
should I say home debt.
If you have a copy of Gordon Wood's "The
Radicalism of the American Revolution" pull it off
the shelf and reread Chapter 14: "Interests." He
adroitly describes the shift from
disinterest
to
self-interest
in that period.
I'd enjoin Obama to read that chapter, too, if I
could. He could learn something from non hip-hop
Hamilton.
Hamilton knew that many public officials were
using their connections to get rich, but he did
not want to be one of them. In 1795, at a time
when he was very much in need of money and out
of public office, his close friend Robert Troup
pleaded with him to get involved in business,
especially speculative land schemes. Everyone
else was doing it, said Troup. "Why should you
object to making a little money in a way that
cannot be reproachful? Is it not time for you to
think of putting yourself in a state of
independence?" Troup even joked to Hamilton that
such moneymaking schemes might be "instrumental
in making a man of fortune–I may say–a gentleman
of you.For such is the present insolence of the
World that hardly a man is treated like a
gentleman unless his fortune enables him to live
at his ease."
But Hamilton refused. "Saints," he said,
might get away with such profit-making, but he
knew that he would be denounced by his
Republican opponents as just another one of
those "speculators" and "peculators." He had to
refuse "because" as he sardonically put it,
"there must be some public fools who who
sacrifice private to public interest at the
certainty of ingratitude and obloquy–because my
vanity whispers I ought to be one of those fools
and ought to keep myself in a situation the best
calculated to render service." Hamilton clung as
long and as hard to the classical conception of
leadership as anyone in post-revolutionary
America. Unfortunately for the Federalists,
however, Hamilton's classical vision of
aristocratic leadership required more than just
himself and Washington, more than just a handful
of farsighted, cosmopolitan, and great-souled
gentlemen who remained virtuous and above the
concerns of crass moneymaking.
can anyone direct me to sources citing Obama
wanting to reform Medicare & SS?? This isn't
surprising, but I guess I was too busy trying to
make a living at the time.
"Bottom line - Wall Street invested millions in
Barack Obama's career in 2008 and 2012."
It started well before 2008. Even before Obama's
2004 speech at the Democratic convention he had
drawn the attention of the movers and shakers, and
after his speech Obama essentially entered into
their world, became friends with and an acolyte of
Pete Peterson and that whole circle.
Their investment paid off handsomely for Wall
Street and the Republican Party; America and the
Democratic Party are the worse for it.
"[Obama] just a few days ago went and met with
the editorial board of The Des Moines Register, the
leading newspaper out in that portion of Iowa, and
he had a discussion off the record, and emphasized
that because it was off the record he could be more
blunt, and said that his first course of business,
and one that he believed he could get done very
quickly should he be reelected, would be to strike a
grand bargain. And he described the grand bargain,
and there would be $2 in budget cuts for every
dollar in increased taxes.
So this grand bargain is: we will weight this
much more heavily towards killing social programs,
or at least cutting them back significantly and
raising taxes on the rich."
'For example, late in the Obama administration the board that is supposed to oversee the US
Postal Service had zero members out of the nine possible appointments. The reported reason is
that Senator Bernie Sanders put a hold on all possible appointees, as a show of solidarity with
postal workers. If it isn't obvious to you how Sanders preventing President Obama from appointing
new board members would influence the US Postal Service in the directions that Sanders would prefer,
given that President Trump could presumably appoint all nine members of the board, you are not
alone.'
"... A Libyan military solution to the civil war is fast becoming the only option however a Mandela type Truth and Reconciliation Commission following straight after such military victory is also a top priority. ..."
The West retains it's out of touch Libyan policies when in Luca, Italy last week the G7
'warned and commanded' that the fractious warring Libyan parties 'must' work with the dying
UN appointed and recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), situated only in a small
naval base in Tripoli and its so called Presidency Council (PC). And further ordered
Libyans to work together to fix the economic crisis by recognising that the Central Bank of
Libya (CBL) need to only collaborate with the GNA/PC, so out of touch with the real issues
on the ground in Libya are the G7 Countries. Their language almost expressed in colonial
terms!
Other global interference in Libya continues. Most recently also the GNA and Presidency
Council (PC) leader Fayez Serraj was seeing the head, at his HQ in Stuttgart, of the United
Stated Africa Command (AFRICOM) General Thomas Waldhauser. I didn't know Stuttgart was in
Africa?
Other pronouncements of one kind or another backing the phantom GNA appear almost
weekly.
All a waste of time, as UN and EU efforts have proven these past years. As far as Serraj
is concerned he is unelected by Libyans but chosen by the foreigners. That's never going to
achieve forward progress for Libya's future.
The one year anniversary of the General National Accord (GNA) created by the UN and
headed by Serraj was on the 30th March just two weeks ago. But the GNA doesn't function. To
compound the GNA's inability to govern, an acute emergency has emerged in the last 7 days
revolving around further direct sales by Cyrenaica (East Libya) of oil bypassing Tripoli
and the West. If this issue remains unresolved the country may split into two or three
pieces. There is now tremendous in-fighting between National Oil Company (NOC) and a
variety of diverse interests. The West's reactions to these realities remain puzzling and
totally unrealistic to say the least.
A Libyan military solution to the civil war is fast becoming the only option however a
Mandela type Truth and Reconciliation Commission following straight after such military
victory is also a top priority.
These developments are part of a new dynamic that is entering the Libyan Civil War that
is another trend that may satisfy weary Libyans themselves. The re-entry of two of Gaddafis
children who are seeking a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, similar to South Africa's,
in order to bring unity to the country. Specific Libyan tribes are starting to back the
Gaddafi clan a new and hopefully peaceful attempt at country unification may appear that
ousts the GNA and other Tripoli militias and extremists for good from the political scene.
This is becoming a realistic proposition.
It is to this point that national reconciliation must be addressed. South Africa's
process helped to unify the country after decades of apartheid.
The LNA's Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar is close to Elders of Warfalla tribe that give
him their support in the war against terrorism. Warfalla tribe is the biggest tribe in
Libya located in Bani Walid and Sirte area, the Warshfana tribe is second located to the
South West of Tripoli. Both tribes are from the west of Libya and both are against
extremists and very sympathetic to the Gaddafis. Importantly, the tribes believe that the
Gaddafis can reach an accommodation with Libyan parties to one another forgive crimes
committed before and after the revolt of 2011. Already, evidence can be seen of this trend:
In the past week, Libyan authorities have released some Gaddafi era nobles from prison. The
involvement of the former AQ-LIFG fighters to take credit for these releases is a vain
attempt to try to align themselves with Gaddifites which will never succeed.
While the limelight is on Saif, who still is believed to suffer from physical and mental
injuries sustained during his capture, his sister Aisha Gaddafi is fast becoming the most
important member of the family. She is generating a good deal of attention and she may well
be very influential in future. Aisha is a pragmatic and sensible Libyan with acute
political acumen and a sharp wit and intellect. She has a dynamic personality and is the
most well educated of the Colonel's siblings. There is an argument that she needs to return
to the political scene. Whether she wants to, no one knows due to her low profile so far.
However with Aisha's victory last week in the European Court of Justice against the UN
Security Council-sponsored sanctions this may very well be the first indicator. She has
also had her travel ban lifted. A major achievement. Together with her brother, when he
achieves 100 percent fitness, both Gaddafi's can begin to work together with all Libyans to
rescue the country from its dreadful plight as part of a team never a return to
dictatorship.
This tandem approach -Gaddafi siblings and the Tribes- is the possible solution to
Libya's civil war. Haftar recognizes the values of tribes and the Libyan Field Marshall is
now using all his might to solidify and unify all Libyans whilst continuing to fight
terrorists. As stated earlier, South Africa's dismantling of decades of apartheid serves as
the example, the model for Libya.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to help deal with
what awful things happened under apartheid, much worse than Gaddafi's crimes ever were. The
remnants of conflict during this post-apartheid period resulted in still some limited
violence and human rights abuses from all sides but no section of society escaped exposure
or punishment.
Libya is suffering under a system of constant outside international interference in a
Libyan decision about their own future. Self-reflection is an important part of
reconciliation and it is thought that if the Gaddafis assistance in such an effort will
help in a "cleansing" to build a new Libyan future, this would be a good thing. Of course,
Libya is not South Africa, and the issues completely different, yet it is the process of
reconciliation and forgiveness itself which has its primordial roots in today's modern
Libyan tribes.
Russia involvement with Egypt is essential. Also African countries must unite to help
Libya through this process, not US's AFRICOM, UN or even the EU. The only other country
that appears to be a true friend to Libya is the UAE who also have the advantage of being
anti-Muslim Brotherhood, a dangerous sect that has influence in the West of Libya.
If body language is anything to go by, this picture (of Mohamed bin Zayed, the powerful
Crown Prince of the UAE with Haftar) taken last week in Abu Dhabi speaks volumes!
AFRICOM headquarters are in Stuttgart, because Gaddafi was adamantly against its
location on Africa's soil. One of the reasons for NATO's war against Libya and the
killing of Gaddafi.
If only we could get a similar update for Yemen, where only continued famine and bombing
seem on the agenda.
And Somalia is such a black hole that not even its despair and deaths reach the MSM or
social networks.
Only tangentially relevant to this post, but Libya is a good example of the power we
have allowed our politicians to confer to central banks.
Few will remember that whilst
the war in Libya was raging, somehow, some faction found it both relevant and a priority
to announce the creation of the central bank of Libya. This piece of news was reported
far and wide by the international press too.
i hope the libyans can rally round aisha gaddafi and put their country back together.
they need to keep the us/eu out of the country. sue for damages - at least, and bigtime
- in international court if they are unable to prosecute the war criminals themselves.
show the iraqis and the syrians and the afghans and the ukrainians and everyone else how
war criminals must be treated.
Libya deserves far more attention than it gets. The war is still going on there but
receives no attention because the deaths there are not politically useful anymore.
That's why after 2011 all the media coverage shifted to Syria. If the Israel/Nato
alliance had their way, Syria would now be in the same situation Libya is - a failed
state. This is what they mean when they refer to "bringing democracy" to the Middle
East.
Only Russia's intervention in August 2013 prevented that, which explains why they
decided to punish Russia by organising the "regime change" in Ukraine and spreading the
chaos to Russia's doorstep. Ukraine is now also a failed state with two different
governments embroiled in a civil war. Funny how that always seems to be the result of
the Israel/Nato alliance bringing "freedom and democracy" to countries - it's almost as
if that was their plan all along...
Perhaps Libya will be brought together again, the world can hope. Will that old saying:
"what goes around, comes around" ring true on this? Colonialism is alive still, but
there are those who just don't see the light. One fact is certain, the "war on terror"
birthing after 9-11, if anything, created the mother of all C-F's to date. One might get
the impression that the end game is to destroy the U.S./western ways?
We don't hear much of US (Hillary, Obama, etc) "successes" in Libya from the US MSM.
It's shameful that the UN tries to force govt from above (with outsiders) on these
people like the US does in places like Iraq. What happened to the other two govts in
Tripoli and Tobruk? I doubt any govt in the east will go along due to extremist
influences and greed to dominate oil in that area. I wish Gaddhafis all the luck and
success in fixing the wrong done to them and bringing this to the world. It's bad enough
the US and especially western media participation in the death, destruction, pain, and
suffering.
Re: the photo
Haftar had better hope Zayed's left hand does not contain a knife. The emirates and
saudis are not known to be trustworthy fans of others in the ME neighborhood who do not
conform.
AFRICOM is in Stuttgart because it was created out of the staff from US EUCOM (European
Command). At first, the staff sections did both areas of operations (Europe & Africa).
Once additional staff officers and NCOs were sent to EUCOM, AFRICOM was separated from
EUCOM, but stayed in Stuttgart. AFRICOM was moved to another base in Stuttgart, Kelly
Barracks. EUCOM is on Patch Barracks - a few miles away. The German government was quite
displeased at the addition of a major US headquarters in their country, but had little
power or courage to do anything except grumble. The US DoD wanted to put AFRICOM in
Africa, but there were no countries willing to accept it that were in any way safe for
families. When no options in Africa were viable, the US simply created the new
headquarters in Stuttgart.
I am a retired US Army officer that was assigned to US EUCOM from 2008-2009.
How to understand the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) and its love of lies.
The MCM
will report factual truths, but usually buried somewhere in a long article, bracketed by
the acceptable lies. Or, if the inconvenient truths do get an article of their own,
those facts are subsequently ignored by the MCM with the lies being repeated over and
over.
And, then, even the lies become the conventional wisdom.
Such as has happened with the lies about the August 2013 chemical attack in Syria.
The MCM did note that the proof was not there to accuse the Syrian government, BUT it
was buried and ignored and now, in 2017, it is accepted history that the Assad
government did attack their own supporters with sarin.
It's enough to make one never trust anything the MCM puts out.
Again b is mistakenly describing the attack on Libya as a civil war. A civil war is a
war between different factions of a country; the war against Libya was carried out al
most entirely external forces, by NATO and mercenaries. This constant reference to the
attack on Libya, and indeed the attack on Syria, as civil wars, is the language of
propaganda.
Massive bombing by NATO led to the death and wounding of at least many
tens of thousands of Libyans, and the destruction of much infrastructure, followed by
hell on earth via head choppers and mass murdering and raping mercenaries.
Libya in 2010 was leading the UN human development index for Africa, with a high
standard of living, high literacy rate, largely happy and healthy people, with free
education and health care, and generous financial presents for marriage and birth, and
wonderful development projects. Blacks were doing well there. When Gaddafi took over,
Libya was a colonized, wretchedly poor basket case.
Libya had built up large gold reserves on the basis of its high quality oil and was
attempting to implement a pan African alternative to the parasitic and criminal western
banking system and its debt enslavement of much of Africa.
Lurid lies were used to 'justify' a 'no fly zone' via the UNSC and this was then used
to commit the ultimate crime according to Nuremberg trials, a war of aggression, by NATO
and their useful mercenary monsters.
The Stephen Miller Band | Apr 19, 2017 11:24:58 AM |
14
What's interesting is the lack of interest in JASTA. I brought it up yesterday and there
was nothing but silence. Hmmmm. One would think it would be ripe for critical dissection
at this venue considering the revelatory implications that could possibly emanate from
it. Unless. That's it. I think it's the unless. I'll let you guess what the unless is.
Let me just say, it's what I've always known to be true.
Where do Trump & Sessions
stand on JASTA? If Trump truly is a patriot and believes his jingoistic "America First"
rhetoric, then he has to support the integrity of this legislation and direct his DOJ
and all the alphabet agencies to comply and let the chips fall where they may and act
accordingly to the facts. Or he can be a Saudi chump and continue to bomb Yemen and
Syria for the Saudi pricks.
Needless to say, this is getting hardly any coverage in the press. Gee, I wonder why?
But I expected different at this venue. Not really.
On March 29, 2016, the 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism
organization filed a letter with the Department of Justice to request the DOJ
commence an immediate national security investigation into potential widespread
criminal violations of the Foreign Regisration Act ("FARA"), by foreign agents
retained to conduct what we view as an unprecedented foreign influence campaign on
behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The apparent goal of the massive Saudi-funded foreign agent offensive is to delude
Congress into passing unprincipled and unwarranted amendments to the Justice Against
Sponsors of Terrrorism Act ("JASTA").
In service of this dangerous effort to influence Congress into passing legislative
text promoted by a foreign power, the Kingdom and its foreign agents have targeted
U.S. veterans nationwide through a campaign that deeply mischaracterizes JASTA, and
even more importantly has been conducted in ways that conceal the fact that the
influence and propaganda onslaught has been and continues to be orchestrated and
financed by the Saudi government and foreign agents working on its behalf. Read full
complaint here:
http://passjasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/FARA-COMPLAINT-20170329.pdf
i 2nd @5 jfls comments and hope they can move forward with the children of gaddaffi
in forming a gov't and coalition.
@7 mina.. i think you have the answer - yes.. every time the usa state dept mention
libya it is in the context of everyone working with the gna.. i guess that will give the
required structure for continued abuse from the west - bend over and take this..
Libya is hard to read. France, Russia, Egypt, and UAE are supposed to be supporting
Haftar. Then France issues a
statement
yesterday supporting Serraj and the GNA in the wake of Haftar's Libyan
National Army attack on Tamenhant air base in the south. Italian troops were reported to
be stationed at Tamenhant working with the pro-GNA militias there.
Fascinating article.
Inspiring in that the T&R process allows the Libyans to take their future into their own
hands - A fundemental right!
But that the Gadaffis might actually be the key to the future of Libya is a resoundingly
damning indictment of the West's actions!
It also occurs to me how very imbalanced is the media coverage of the ME conflicts.
Thanks, b, for providing the forum for such writing. And look forward to more articles,
Richard.
Looks like they got rid of ISIS for good, even if some of its former fighters are
probably still in the country. Good. Without major external assistance (as in 'massive
air strikes and special forces'), no side is strong enough to conquer the entire
country. This being obvious, there should be a good chance that they'll come to some
sort of national unity agreement.
Which is pretty much what I predicted in an article in early 2016.
Why would anyone even care about what the West thinks or wants? Clearly, it's a
troubled, fast-declining polity that is desperately trying to cling to the glory days
that are long gone, and will never return. It'll be getting weaker with every passing
year.
As soon as Trump becomes serious about tackling the US trade deficit, the globalization
will stop and then kick into ferocious reverse, as the whole thing is sustained solely
by the US' willingness to endure the unrelenting economic punishment for purely
ideological reasons. Globalization in its present form is devastating America's core,
and its patience is nearly exhausted. Give it a year, or two at the most, then lashing
out begins.
Once it's over, everything that globalization had birthed - the EU, the Singapores and
Dubais of the world, the Israel - the end of globalization will bring to an inevitable
denouement.
Libya will be taken over by a neighboring country that is becoming hideously
overpopulated and is in a dire need of additional living space and inexpensive energy.
Egypt simply has no other options, other than a national implosion.
@24 telescope, '... the whole thing is sustained solely by the US' willingness to endure
the unrelenting economic punishment for purely ideological reasons ...'
the whole
thing is sustained by the globalized 1%'s willingness to inflict unrelenting economic
punishment purely for their own economic 'well-being' ... 'profit', at any rate. they've
made a joke of money as 'a store of value' and - i agree - 'Globalization in its present
form is devastating America's (all the west's) core, and its patience is nearly
exhausted. Give it a year, or two at the most, then lashing out begins.'
as for egypt - overpopulated - taking over libya - 'underpopulated' ... they'll
certainly have to do that without russia's help ... think of the precedent that would
set vis-à-vis russia-china! or do you envision a takeover of russia by china as being in
the cards ... that china, too, simply has no other options, other than a national
implosion.
Libya has a central bank now and no longer exports as much oil to China as it once did.
The people no longer get free health care and education. Why does anyone believe that
the powers that be care much about anything else.
#27: they DO care a lot. you see the positive results of their military campaign, when
people have none of these. like in Egypt, KSA, Jordan and all the major allies.
As of
today, 40 mass graves have been discovered in Kassai (Congo Kinshasa=DRC) and 2 UN
inspectors sent to enquire there were killed ten days ago. But who cares?
In that article, it's funny to think of the NTC wanting to bring back foreign oil
workers after how they treated them especially the blacks from neighboring countries.
Foreigners like that couple who sold Libya cleaning products had to face al Qaeda so
they might not be eager to return. But that was 2011. The current status sounds mixed.
In one of the books I read, there was a Libyan plan with the Chinese (and Russians?) to
build a railway connecting Tripoli, Sirte, and Tobruk. But that ended with Gaddhafi
gone.
"... I confess I really had hopes for some conscience from Trump about America's wars, but I was wrong -- fooled again! -- as I had been by the early Reagan, and less so by Bush 43. Reagan found his mantra with the "evil empire" rhetoric against Russia, which almost kicked off a nuclear war in 1983 -- and Bush found his 'us against the world' crusade at 9/11, in which of course we're still mired. ..."
"... It seems that Trump really has no 'there' there, far less a conscience, as he's taken off the handcuffs on our war machine and turned it over to his glorified Generals ..."
"... well, he got my generation started/up to speed with JFK truth, and took a beating for it. in the eyes of the entertainment media, he was a patriotic steven spielberg before jfk, he was conspiracy theorist with a good director of photography and editing team after. ..."
"... his general analysis for 9/11 and who benefited from it, (<<cui bono, project for new american century>>) was pointing in the right direction. he might have done more harm than good if he started speaking about thermite or whatever, or would have been dismissed as a nut out of hand. ..."
"... Stone is right enough is enough. Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country should be considered naive. ..."
"... Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just how big the government intelligent agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and questions whether we have lost control. ..."
"... We were all deceived by a great, maybe brilliant, actor. ..."
In
March of last year, Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone warned the world :
"we're going to war - either hybrid in nature...or a hot war (which will destroy our country).
Our citizens should know this, but they don't because our media is dumbed down in its 'Pravda'-like
support for our 'respectable', highly aggressive government."
"As much as we may disagree with Donald Trump (and I do) he's right now target number one of the
MSM propaganda -- until, that is, he changes to the anti-Kremlin track over, God knows, some kind
of petty dispute cooked up by CIA, and in his hot-headed way starts fighting with the Russians ...
I never thought I'd find myself at this point in time praying for the level-headedness of a Donald
Trump . "
Stone was correct and in a
Facebook
post tonight expresses his disappointment at Trump and disgust for The Deep State (and America's
wilful ignorance).
"So It Goes"
I confess I really had hopes for some conscience from Trump about America's wars, but I was
wrong -- fooled again! -- as I had been by the early Reagan, and less so by Bush 43. Reagan found
his mantra with the "evil empire" rhetoric against Russia, which almost kicked off a nuclear war
in 1983 -- and Bush found his 'us against the world' crusade at 9/11, in which of course we're still
mired.
It seems that Trump really has no 'there' there, far less a conscience, as he's taken off the
handcuffs on our war machine and turned it over to his glorified Generals -- and he's being
praised for it by our 'liberal' media who continue to play at war so recklessly. What a tortured
bind we're in. There are intelligent people in Washington/New York, but they've lost their minds
as they've been stampeded into a Syrian-Russian groupthink, a consensus without asking -- 'Who benefits
from this latest gas attack?' Certainly neither Assad nor Putin. The only benefits go to the terrorists
who initiated the action to stave off their military defeat.
It was a desperate gamble, but it worked because the Western media immediately got behind it with
crude propagandizing about murdered babies , etc. No real investigation or time for a UN chemical
unit to establish what happened, much less find a motive. Why would Assad do something so stupid
when he's clearly winning the civil war?
No, I believe America has decided somewhere, in the crises of the Trump administration, that we
will get into this war at any cost, under any circumstances -- to, once again, change the secular
regime in Syria, which has been, from the Bush era on, one of the top goals -- next to Iran -- of
the neoconservatives. At the very least, we will cut out a chunk of northeastern Syria and call it
a State.
Abetted by the Clintonites, they've done a wonderful job throwing America into chaos with probes
into Russia's alleged hacking of our election and Trump being their proxy candidate (now clearly
disproved by his bombing attack) -- and sadly, worst of all in some ways, admitting no memory of
the same false flag incident in 2013, for which again Assad was blamed (see Seymour Hersh's fascinating
deconstruction of this US propaganda, 'London Review of Books' December 19, 2013, "Whose sarin?").
No memory, no history, no rules -- or rather 'American rules.'
No, this isn't an accident or a one-off affair. This is the State deliberately misinforming the
public through its corporate media and leads us to believe, as Mike Whitney points out in his brilliant
analyses, "Will Washington Risk WW3" and "Syria: Where the Rubber Meets the Road," that something
far more sinister waits in the background .
Mike Whitney, Robert Parry, and former intelligence officer Phil Giraldi all comment below. It's
well worth 30 minutes of your time to read. Lastly, below is a link to Bruce Cumings's "Nation" analysis
of North Korea, as he again reminds us of the purposes of studying history.
Mike Whitney, "Will Washington Risk WW3 to Block and Emerging EU-Russia Superstate," Counterpunch,
http://bit.ly/2oJ9Tpn
Robert Parry, "Mainstream Media as Arbiters of Truth," Consortiumnews,
http://bit.ly/2oSDo8A
Mike Whitney, "Blood in the Water: the Trump Revolution Ends in a Whimper," Counterpunch,
http://bit.ly/2oSDEo4
Bruce Cumings, "This is What's Really Behind North Korea's Nuclear Provocations," The Nation,
http://bit.ly/2nUEroH
Can we wake up before it's too late? I for one feel like the John Wayne veteran (of war) character
in "Fort Apache," riding with the arrogant Custer-like General (Henry Fonda) to his doom. My country,
my country, my heart aches for thee.
FIAT CON -> knukles •Apr 19, 2017 8:22 PM
Everything is finite on this planet except the US$, I can't see how believing this will
cause any trouble. /s
gregga777 -> SallySnyd •Apr 19, 2017 7:44 PM
"One has to wonder how many fronts Congress thinks that the American military complex
can fight and win wars?"
The truth is that America, as a deliberate policy, does not win wars. Dragging out wars
(e.g., Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.) produces far greater revenues
and profits for the War Profiteers and Merchants of Death that control United States foreign
policy. They all deserve bullets to the back of the neck for their evil takeover of the United
States and their willingness to sacrifice the lives of millions of people to their evil,
illegal and Unconstitutional Wars of Aggression.
well, he got my generation started/up to speed with JFK truth, and took a beating for
it. in the eyes of the entertainment media, he was a patriotic steven spielberg before jfk, he
was conspiracy theorist with a good director of photography and editing team after.
yeah, i've come to see him as a bit of fatuous idiot in some interviews, he sure has got his
own achille's heel and hasn't offered every last truth on the subject, but who has done more
to popularize critical thinking and research on it than him? i'm forever grateful for that
his general analysis for 9/11 and who benefited from it, (<<cui bono, project for new
american century>>) was pointing in the right direction. he might have done more harm than
good if he started speaking about thermite or whatever, or would have been dismissed as a nut
out of hand.
Let it Go •Apr 19, 2017 8:12 PM
Stone is right enough is enough. Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use
psychological warfare and propaganda to sway the opinions of people both in and outside of
their country should be considered naive. To many people America is more than a little
hypocritical when they criticize other countries for trying to gain influence considering our
history of meddling in the affairs of other countries.
Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just
how big the government intelligent agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their
spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and
questions whether we have lost control.
trump is perhaps the best president for the deep state...... a president who doesn't really
care about anything too much.
he has been a carefree billionaire playboy all his life, never gets to involved in any fight,
as he isnt all that bright, so he just
moves along when things get tough.
he betrayed the USA
Anonymous IX •Apr 19, 2017 9:46 PM
A very simple question.
Why has Trump completely reneged on his promise to stay out of foreign wars and regime change?
Not only Syria but Yemen. Why has Trump placed the U.S. in a needless confrontation with
Russia? Before the election, he spoke about establishing strong economic relations with other
countries in favor of the U.S.
Part of making "American Great Again" involves staying out of foreign wars which do not
concern us and using our monies to re-educate and protect the diminishing American worker.
Mr. Stone is right.
Akhenaten II -> Anonymous IX •Apr 20, 2017 12:44 AM
Trump works for Israel and the jewish mob. Always has.
We were all deceived by a great, maybe brilliant, actor. The only saving grace is
that this play is nearing its last act before they knock the entire theatre down, to be
abandoned like the Coliseum.
Really agitated Hillary supporter and a member of coup d'état against Trump/
Notable quotes:
"... "A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life," Morell said. "To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11." ..."
Evidence that Russia attempted to sway the outcome of the presidential election with a hacking
campaign targeting Democrats "is the political equivalent of 9/11," the former acting director of
the CIA, Michael Morell, said in an interview published Monday.
Morell, an intelligence analyst who served as acting director of the CIA twice between 2011 and
2013,
told The Cipher Brief that revelations disclosed
in a new
CIA report about how Russia meddled in the election to help get Donald Trump elected "is an attack
on our very democracy."
"A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to
our way of life," Morell said. "To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political
equivalent of 9/11."
Looks like the former CIA Director Michael Morell is kind of "inside CIA" chickenhawk. Never
was in field operations
Notable quotes:
"... Morell has proposed the US change tactics in Syria by targeting President Bashar Assad's allies, adding that killing Russians should be done covertly. ..."
"... Morell was suggesting to kill Russian and Iranian people – I'm assuming soldiers, even though he wasn't that specific – as payback for their actions in Syria and Iran's actions in Iraq. Apparently Iran was providing supplies and armaments to the people we were fighting there during our occupation. Is this of strategy or tactics the norm or the oddity for the CIA in planning? ..."
"... What Mike Morell is proposing is quite simply illegal. You just can't wantonly kill people because you don't like their politics. One of the important things that Mike Morell has forgotten or has chosen to ignore is that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, whether we like him or not, is the internationally recognized leader of a sovereign country. And the Russian military has been invited into that country by its sovereign leader. So it's not up to us to decide we don't like that, and so we are going to start killing people because of it. ..."
"... What a fraud. A transparent fraud. John knows him better than I do because John dealt with him. ..."
"... Mike Morell was a golden boy for many years. He was a very young manager and rose quickly through the ranks, and had the most important jobs in the CIA, at least on the analytic side Once he got into the senior intelligence service, he took on a broader role, but that role never involved operations. This is a problem inside the agency. ..."
"... You have somebody who has never served overseas except in the very final years of his career in a very cushy position. But certainly never operationally. He's never recruited a foreign national to spy for the United States; he's never been involved in difficult or dangerous operations, yet he's advocating putting American lives on the line to kill foreign nationals against whom we have no declaration of war. ..."
"... Say he gets the chance to implement this great strategy of his which is apparently murdering a bunch of people and blowing up a bunch of stuff around Assad. How does that bring peace to Syria? ..."
"... The definition of a neocon is somebody who has great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel, on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. Israel wants bedlam in Syria, and they've got it. ..."
Former CIA Director Michael Morell sparked uproar when he said in an interview on Charlie Rose
that Russians and Iranians should be killed in Syria. Was the provocative statement an effort to
promote himself as the new CIA Director under Hillary Clinton?
Morell has proposed the US change tactics in Syria by targeting President Bashar Assad's allies,
adding that killing Russians should be done covertly.
"We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria, we need to make the Russians pay a price,"
Morell told a stunned Charlie Rose, who asked if that means killing Iranians and Russians. Morell
answered "Yes," saying the killings should be done "convertly" but done in such way
that "Moscow would get the message."
Two former CIA officials turned whistleblowers, Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, appeared on RT's
"Watching the Hawks" program to give their analysis on the disturbing comments, as well as other
tantalizing bits of information.
RT (Tyrel Ventura): Morell was suggesting to kill Russian and Iranian people
– I'm assuming soldiers, even though he wasn't that specific – as payback for their actions in Syria
and Iran's actions in Iraq. Apparently Iran was providing supplies and armaments to the people we
were fighting there during our occupation. Is this of strategy or tactics the norm or the oddity
for the CIA in planning?
John Kiriakou: This is the exception. It's not the norm. Even under George W.
Bush when the CIA wanted to initiate or institute a policy or program that would result in the killing
of foreign nationals, my God, we went to the UN Security Council and asked for a vote. What Mike
Morell is proposing is quite simply illegal. You just can't wantonly kill people because you don't
like their politics. One of the important things that Mike Morell has forgotten or has chosen to
ignore is that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, whether we like him or not, is the internationally
recognized leader of a sovereign country. And the Russian military has been invited into that country
by its sovereign leader. So it's not up to us to decide we don't like that, and so we are going to
start killing people because of it.
Ray McGovern:What a fraud. A transparent fraud. John knows him better than
I do because John dealt with him.
JK: I worked closely with Mike Morell for several years in CIA headquarters.
Mike Morell was a golden boy for many years. He was a very young manager and rose quickly through
the ranks, and had the most important jobs in the CIA, at least on the analytic side Once he got
into the senior intelligence service, he took on a broader role, but that role never involved operations.
This is a problem inside the agency. It's emblematic of what has happened with what I like to
think is a neoconservative takeover of CIA policy. You have somebody who has never served overseas
except in the very final years of his career in a very cushy position. But certainly never operationally.
He's never recruited a foreign national to spy for the United States; he's never been involved in
difficult or dangerous operations, yet he's advocating putting American lives on the line to kill
foreign nationals against whom we have no declaration of war.
RT (Tabetha Wallace): Say he gets the chance to implement this great strategy
of his which is apparently murdering a bunch of people and blowing up a bunch of stuff around Assad.
How does that bring peace to Syria?
JK: It doesn't, it can't and it won't. This whole idea that he espoused on the
Charlie Rose show will not come to pass. If Mike Morell were serious about this, if this were something
that Hillary Clinton would seriously consider, it would be kept so secret and so private that even
inside the CIA 99 percent of employees wouldn't know anything about it. So for him to just go on
TV and dramatically say this is what he would do it's just grandstanding.
This is such an obviously transparent bid by Michael Morell to be the CIA Director
under a Hillary Clinton administration... This is a political ploy by him that is not thought
through at all - Gareth Porter, investigative journalist, to RT in a separate interview.
RT (Tyrel Ventura): Why do you think Morell is getting on TV and grandstanding
like that? What is his motivation for doing this?
RM: He's not the only one. There are others who are candidates to be head of
the CIA or other high positions. The whole thing is so vacuous. Charlie Rose has had this guy on
11 times in the last two years. They never question the unspoken premises. I mean, Hello? Why does
Bashar al-Assad have to go? Is he a threat to the United States? No. Then why does he have to go?
It's very simple. The neocons want him to go. Why do the neocons want him to go? The definition
of a neocon is somebody who has great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of
Israel, on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. Israel wants
bedlam in Syria, and they've got it.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... And I think I came across as saying U.S. Special Forces should go in there and start killing Iranians and Russians. I did not say that. ..."
"... And here I did argue, Charlie, that the U.S. military itself should take some action, and what I would see as valuable is limited, very, very, very limited U.S. airstrikes against those assets that are extremely important to Assad personally. ..."
"... (Emphasis added) ..."
"... "Now these issues that I'm talking about here, right, are talked about in the sit room. They're talked about in national security circles all the time, right. These are debates that people have, and I certainly understand that there are people on the other side of the argument from me, right. But I wasn't talking about the U.S. starting a major war with Iran and Russia, and I think that was the way people interpreted it." ..."
"... Morell is advocating here violates international law, the rules that – in other circumstances, i.e. when another government is involved – the U.S. government condemns as "aggression" or as an "invasion" or as "terrorism." ..."
Exclusive: Official Washington's disdain for international law – when it's doing the lawbreaking
– was underscored by ex-CIA acting director Morell voicing plans for murdering Iranians and maybe
Russians in Syria, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern says.
On Aug. 17, TV interviewer Charlie Rose gave former acting CIA Director Michael Morell a "mulligan"
for an earlier wayward drive on Aug. 8 that sliced deep into the rough and even stirred up some nonviolent
animals by advocating the murder of Russians and Iranians. But, alas, Morell duffed the second drive,
too.
Morell did so despite Rose's efforts to tee up the questions as favorably as possible, trying
to help Morell explain
what he meant about "killing" Russians and Iranians in Syria and bombing Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad into submission.
Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.
In the earlier interview, Morell said he wanted to "make the Iranians pay a price in Syria.
make the Russians pay a price in Syria."
Rose: "We make them pay the price by killing Russians?"
Morell: "Yeah."
Rose: "And killing Iranians?"
Morell: "Yes You don't tell the world about it. But you make sure they know it in Moscow and
Tehran."
In the follow-up
interview , some of Rose's fretful comments made it clear that there are still some American
non-neocons around who were withholding applause for Morell's belligerent suggestion.
Rose apparently has some viewers who oppose all terrorism, including the state-sponsored variety
that would involve a few assassinations to send a message, and the notion that U.S. bombing Syria
to "scare" Assad is somehow okay (as long as the perpetrator is the sole "indispensable" nation in
the world).
Rose helped Morell 'splain that he really did not want to have U.S. Special Forces kill Russians
and Iranians. No, he would be satisfied if the U.S.-sponsored "moderate opposition" in Syria did
that particular killing. But Morell would not back away from his advocacy of the U.S. Air Force bombing
Syrian government targets. That would be "an okay thing" in Morell's lexicon.
The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property
to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance
of political or social objectives." That would seem to cover Morell's plan.
But Morell seems oblivious to international law and to the vast human suffering already
inflicted in Syria over the past five years by government forces, rebels, terrorists and outside
nations trying to advance one geopolitical goal or another.
What is needed is a serious commitment to peace talks without unacceptable preconditions, such
as outside demands for "regime change." Instead, the focus should be on creating conditions for Syrians
to make that choice themselves through elections or power-sharing negotiations.
Morell prefers to think that a few more U.S.-directed murders and some more aerial-inflicted mayhem
should do the trick. Perhaps he thinks that's the sort of tough-guy/gal talk that will impress a
prospective President Hillary Clinton.
A Slight Imprecision?
Charlie Rose begins the "mulligan" segment with the suggestion that Morell might have slightly
misspoken: "Tell me what you wanted to say so we understand it Tell me what you meant to say
perhaps you did not speak as precisely as you should have or I didn't ask the right questions."
TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
Morell responded, "No, no, Charlie, you always ask the right questions," and then he presented
his killing plan as a route to peace, albeit one in which the United States dictates "regime change"
in Syria: "So there's not a military solution to this, there is only a political solution. And
that political solution is, in my view, a transition of power from Assad to a, a, a transitional
government that represents all of the Syrian people.
"That is only going to happen if Assad wants it to happen, if Russia wants it to happen, if Iran
wants it to happen. So we need to increase our leverage over those three people and countries,
in order to get them more interested in having a conversation about a transition to a new government.
"And sometimes you use military force for military ends. Sometimes you use military force to give
you political leverage. So what I tried to say was, Look, we need to find some ways to put some
pressure on Assad, or put some pressure on Russia, and put some pressure on Iran. Now, with regard
to Russia and Iran, what I said was, what I wanted to say was: Look, the moderate opposition, which
the United States is supporting (everybody knows that, right?), the moderate opposition is already
fighting the Syrian government, and they're already fighting Russians and Iranians.
"So the Syrian military, supported by Russia and the Iranians, is fighting the moderate opposition.
And the moderate opposition is already killing Iranians and Syrians. What, what I said is that's
an okay thing, right, because it puts pressure on Iran and Russia to try to see some value in ending
this thing politically. And what I said is that we should encourage the moderate opposition to continue
to do that and perhaps get a lot more aggressive." (Emphasis added)
Rose: "You weren't suggesting that the United States should do that, but the moderate forces on
the ground."
Morell: "And I think I came across as saying U.S. Special Forces should go in there and start
killing Iranians and Russians. I did not say that.
"So that's Russia and Iran. Now, Assad. How do you put some pressure on Assad, right? And
here I did argue, Charlie, that the U.S. military itself should take some action, and what I would
see as valuable is limited, very, very, very limited U.S. airstrikes against those assets that are
extremely important to Assad personally. So, in the middle of the night you destroy one of his
offices; you don't kill anybody, right, zero collateral. You do this with the same rules of engagement
we use against terrorists . (Emphasis added)
"You take out his presidential aircraft, his presidential helicopters, in the middle of the night,
right, just to send him a message and get his attention that, that maybe your days are numbered here,
just to put some pressure on him to think about maybe, maybe the need to think about a way out of
this.
"Now these issues that I'm talking about here, right, are talked about in the sit room. They're
talked about in national security circles all the time, right. These are debates that people have,
and I certainly understand that there are people on the other side of the argument from me, right.
But I wasn't talking about the U.S. starting a major war with Iran and Russia, and I think that was
the way people interpreted it."
Acts of Illegal War
Not to put too fine a point on this, but everything that Morell is advocating here violates
international law, the rules that – in other circumstances, i.e. when another government is involved
– the U.S. government condemns as "aggression" or as an "invasion" or as "terrorism."
Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after
it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.
Remember, after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014, when Russia intervened to allow
Crimea to hold a referendum on splitting away from the new regime in Kiev and rejoining Russia, the
U.S. government insisted that there was no excuse for President Vladimir Putin not respecting the
sovereignty of the coup regime even if it had illegally ousted an elected president.
However, regarding Syria, the United States and its various "allies," including Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and Israel, have intervened directly and indirectly in supporting various armed groups, including
Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, seeking the violent overthrow of Syria's government.
Without any legal authorization from the United Nations, President Barack Obama has ordered the
arming and training of anti-government rebels (including
some who have fought under Nusra's command structure ), has carried out airstrikes inside Syria
(aimed at Islamic State militants), and has deployed U.S. Special Forces inside Syria with Kurdish
rebels.
Now, a former senior U.S. intelligence official is publicly urging bombing of Syrian government
targets and the killing of Iranians and Russians who are legally inside Syria at the invitation of
the internationally recognized government. In other words, not only does the U.S. government operate
with breathtaking hypocrisy in the Syrian crisis, but it functions completely outside international
law.
And, Morell says that in attacking Syrian government targets - supposedly without causing any
deaths - the United States would employ "the same rules of engagement we use against terrorists,"
except those rules of engagement explicitly seek to kill targeted individuals. So, what kind of dangerously
muddled thinking do we have here?
One can only imagine the reaction if some Russian version of Morell went on Moscow TV and urged
the murder of U.S. military trainers operating inside Ukraine – to send a message to Washington.
And then, the Russian Morell would advocate Russia bombing Ukrainian government targets in Kiev with
the supposed goal of forcing the U.S.-backed government to accept a "regime change" acceptable to
Moscow.
A Fawning Audition
Rather than calls for him to be locked up or at least decisively repudiated, the American Morell
was allowed to continue his fawning audition for a possible job in a Hillary Clinton administration
by extolling her trustworthiness and "humanity."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on
March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)
Morell offered a heartwarming story about how compassionate Clinton was as Secretary of State
when he lost out to John Brennan to be the fulltime CIA Director. After he was un-picked for the
job, Morell said he was in the White House Situation Room and Clinton, "sat down next to me, put
her hand on my shoulder, and she simply said, 'Are you okay?' There is humanity there, and I think
the public needs to know."
And, Clinton was a straight-shooter, too, Morell explained: "You know, it's interesting, Charlie,
I worked with her for four years. Leon Panetta, David Petraeus worked with her for four years. We
trusted her word; we trusted her judgment. You know, [CIA] Director Panetta, [CIA] Director Petraeus,
I provided her with some of the most sensitive information that the CIA collects and she never gave
us one reason to doubt how she was handling that. You know, she spoke to us forthrightly. I trust
her word and I trust her judgment."
Can Morell be unaware that Clinton repeatedly put highly sensitive intelligence on her very vulnerable
private email server along with other data that later investigations determined should have been
marked SECRET, TOP SECRET, CODEWORD, and/or SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAMS?
FBI Director James Comey, in announcing that he would not recommend prosecuting Clinton for compromising
these secrets, called her behavior "extremely careless."
For his part, Charlie Rose offered a lament about how hard it is for Clinton to convey her "humanity"
and how deserving she is of trust. He riffed on the Biblical passage about those who can be trusted
in small matters (like sitting down next to Morell, putting her hand on his shoulder, and asking
him if he is okay) can be trusted on big matters, too.
My Travails With Charlie
Twelve years ago, I was interviewed by Charlie Rose, with the other interviewee (who participated
remotely) James Woolsey, former head of the CIA (1993-95), arch-neocon, and self-described "anchor
the Presbyterian wing of JINSA
" (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs).
The occasion was the New York premier of Robert Greenwald's full-length film version of his documentary,
"Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War," in which I had a small part and which described
the many falsehoods that had been used by President George W. Bush and his neocon advisers, to justify
invading Iraq. Woolsey did not like the film, and Greenwald asked me to take the Rose invitation
that had originally been extended to him.
True to form, Charlie Rose knew on which side his bread was buttered, and it wasn't mine. He was
his usual solicitous self when dealing with an "important" personage, such as Woolsey. I was going
to count the minutes apportioned to me and compare them with those given to Woolsey, but I decided
to spare myself the trouble.
The last time I checked the Aug. 20, 2004 video is available for purchase but I refuse to pay
for it. Fortunately, a friend taped and uploaded the audio onto
YouTube. It might be worth
a listen on a slow summer day 12 years after my travails with Charlie.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour
in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and is now on the Steering Group
of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
300 Words An interesting article. A few random thoughts.
"Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death" – Otto von Bismarck.
In general I agree and wish that the United States military would be more defensive
and waste fewer resources attacking irrelevant nations on the other side of the world.
But. It is nevertheless true that "defensive" Russia has been invaded and devastated multiple
times, and the United States has not. Perhaps creating chaos on the other side of the world
is long-term not quite so ineffective as sitting around waiting for an attack?
The American elites are simply corrupt and insane/don't care about the long-term.
At every level – companies taking out massive loans to buy back their stock to boost CEO bonuses,
loading up college students with massive unplayable debt so that university administrators
can get paid like CEOs, drug prices going through the roof, etc.etc. Military costs will never
be as efficient as civilian, war is expensive, but the US has gotten to the point where there
is no financial accountability, it's all about the right people grabbing as much money as possible.
To make more money you just add another zero at the end of the price tag. At some point
the costs will become so inflated and divorced from reality that we will be unable to afford
anything And the right people will take their loot and move to New Zealand and wring their
hands at how the lazy Americans were not worthy of their brilliant leadership
A "chicken hawk" is a person "who strongly supports war or other military action, yet who actively
avoids or avoided military service when of age." And, according to Wikipedia, "generally the implication
is that chicken hawks lack the moral character to participate in war themselves, preferring to ask others
to support, fight and perhaps die in an armed conflict." Why would the NYT run a column suggesting the
US should support ISIS "the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen... this is "tantamount
to saying that the US should have reduced pressure on the Nazis to keep the Soviets bleeding"
back in the 1940's. In Friedman's defense, ORB International (an American research firm)
revealed in 2015 how 85 percent of Iraqis and 82 percent of Syrians believe the US created ISIS.
With The New York Times publishing columns like this, this just became better proven.
Let's go through the logic: There are actually two ISIS manifestations.
One is "virtual ISIS." It is satanic, cruel and amorphous; it disseminates its ideology through
the internet. It has adherents across Europe and the Muslim world. In my opinion, that ISIS is the
primary threat to us, because it has found ways to deftly pump out Sunni jihadist ideology that inspires
and gives permission to those Muslims on the fringes of society who feel humiliated - from London
to Paris to Cairo - to recover their dignity via headline-grabbing murders of innocents.
The other incarnation is "territorial ISIS." It still controls pockets in western Iraq and larger
sectors of Syria. Its goal is to defeat Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria - plus its Russian, Iranian
and Hezbollah allies - and to defeat the pro-Iranian Shiite regime in Iraq, replacing both with a
caliphate.
Challenge No. 1: Not only will virtual ISIS, which has nodes all over the world, not go away even
if territorial ISIS is defeated, I believe virtual ISIS will become yet more virulent to disguise
the fact that it has lost the territorial caliphate to its archenemies: Shiite Iran, Hezbollah, pro-Shiite
militias in Iraq, the pro-Shiite Assad regime in Damascus and Russia, not to mention America.
Challenge No. 2: America's goal in Syria is to create enough pressure on Assad, Russia, Iran and
Hezbollah so they will negotiate a power-sharing accord with moderate Sunni Muslims that would also
ease Assad out of power. One way to do that would be for NATO to create a no-fly safe zone around
Idlib Province, where many of the anti-Assad rebels have gathered and where Assad recently dropped
his poison gas on civilians. But Congress and the U.S. public are clearly wary of that.
So what else could we do? We could dramatically increase our military aid to anti-Assad rebels,
giving them sufficient anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles to threaten Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah
and Syrian helicopters and fighter jets and make them bleed, maybe enough to want to open negotiations.
Fine with me.
What else? We could simply back off fighting territorial ISIS in Syria and make it entirely a
problem for Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Assad. After all, they're the ones overextended in Syria,
not us. Make them fight a two-front war - the moderate rebels on one side and ISIS on the other.
If we defeat territorial ISIS in Syria now, we will only reduce the pressure on Assad, Iran, Russia
and Hezbollah and enable them to devote all their resources to crushing the last moderate rebels
in Idlib, not sharing power with them.
I don't get it. President Trump is offering to defeat ISIS in Syria for free - and then pivot
to strengthening the moderate anti-Assad rebels. Why? When was the last time Trump did anything for
free? When was the last real estate deal Trump did where he volunteered to clean up a toxic waste
dump - for free - before he negotiated with the owner on the price of the golf course next door?
This is a time for Trump to be Trump - utterly cynical and unpredictable. ISIS right now is the
biggest threat to Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and pro-Shiite Iranian militias - because ISIS is a Sunni
terrorist group that plays as dirty as Iran and Russia.
Trump should want to defeat ISIS in Iraq. But in Syria? Not for free, not now. In Syria, Trump
should let ISIS be Assad's, Iran's, Hezbollah's and Russia's headache - the same way we encouraged
the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan.
How is this administration supposed to 'fix" the chaos that is engulfing and devouring Syria
when it's woefully unprepared to host the annual Easter Egg Roll?
Mr. Friedman is thinking that Trump is a chess player, all strategy and end-game.
Trump is a checkers player. King Me!
He has a very simple set of ideas. ISIS bad. Iran bad. Russia good except when bad. Assad bad
when gasses babies. He isn't thinking of hegemony and spheres of influence. He isn't thinking
of a Hydra that grows a few more heads when you cut one off. He isn't thinking six moves ahead.
Syria is an intractable, long term problem. Sunni ideologues are an intractable long term problem
and a Hydra. Iran is a long term problem, but maybe not totally intractable. And Russia is self
interested and big on hegemony.
Trump has no plan to deal with all that. Just ISIS bad. So that's why he is fighting in Syria.
Your question has an obvious answer. Why did Reagan invade Grenada? Why did Bush attack Panama?
Why did Bush II assault Iraq after being struck by Saudis?
Republican Presidents have learned that flexing military might wins elections for them and their
party. It costs a lot, but has a huge pay off. Trump is just doing what he thinks he needs to
do to improve his odds of staying in office. It is a calculated risk, but given his poll numbers,
and the likely collusion of his people with the Russians during the election, this was a perfect
plan.
That is the answer to your question.
The question should not be why are we fighting ISIS in Syria but why are we fighting in the
literal sense at all? The U.S. is the strongest economic, political and military country in the
world by far and yet we seem to rely on military solutions rather than using our economic and
political assets.
In the Middle East, at least, the answer is not that complicated. Using our political and economic
assets would put us squarely at odds with some of our so-called allies, particularly the Sunni
Saudis who are primarily responsible for the rise of militant Islam in recent decades. We'd have
to call them out on moral grounds, which would be embarrassing for them, as well as on economic
grounds, which might cause us and our other allies some economic pain.
Instead, we use only our military assets to go after what Saudi Arabia's support of radical
Islam has produced, extremists who see terror as their best weapon. Furthermore, our economic
and political assets would be much more effective against both Iran and Russia than essentially
the empty threat of knocking out a Syrian air base for a few hours.
That is, remember, how we brought down the USSR and got Iran to agree to stop their nuclear
arms development. Nary a shot was fired in what were two of our most important victories in the
past few decades. Compare that to our "military solution" in Iraq which still plagues us.
Bruce Rozenblit is a trusted commenter Kansas City, MO
April 12, 2017
This editorial is based upon a false premise. It assumes that Trump has a Syrian strategy.
There is no Syrian strategy. There is no why. There is no goal. There is no policy team. There
is only Trump and he only does what makes him look good at any given moment. The attack on the
Syrian airport was such an event. It is still in operation but Trump got a big boost in the polls
from it.
Mr. Friedman is trying to make sense of the senseless. Trump is a never ending contradiction.
His positions flip flop from day to day. This is exactly how he spoke during the campaign. He
would contradict himself from one minute to the next. This is how his mind works. This is how
he is governing. Why is anyone surprised?
Sometimes when people appear to be doing illogical things, we strain to try to understand the
logic behind them, i.e., what we are missing. But oftentimes people doing apparently illogical
things are just being illogical.
In terms of substantive policy and strategy in Syria, Trump is being illogical. The most logical
thing is to leave the fighting to others and just to help all Syrians who want to emigrate to
do so and then help then to resettle including in the US.
But Trump does not act in the interests of substance. For him, there is no substance. There
is only appearance, his image, that concerns him. He wants that image to be that of a strong leader
protecting the US from terrorism in the form of ISIS.
Attacking the virulent form of ISIS has no optics. It cannot be shown on TV. Attacking territorial
ISIS has optics, and Trump can manipulate the media to show these attacks and thus further his
desired image.
One of Trump's many problems is his obsession with his image. A subsidiary part of that problem
is he wants to project the wrong image. If he could only get past his overwhelming narcissism
to understand that he'd actually be much better liked if people felt that he actually cared about
other people.
Since it is always all about Him, my guess is that He's going
to start a war, maybe two, because war time presidents do well
in the polls. He doesn't have a plan for Syria, remember the
"secret plan to defeat ISIS?" Where's that plan??
This Country is not going to survive 4 years of this.
Everybody is on edge and loosing sleep, but Trump plays
golf on the taxpayer dime at the cost of 3 mill a week end.
Mexico, will you take us when Canada turns us down?
Maybe California and Massachusetts could secede?
(I'm grasping for answers and a new place to live)
Larry Eisenberg is a trusted commenter New York City
April 12, 2017
Commenting on Trump is degrading
All logic and sense he's evading,
Bankruptcy's his gambit
Illogic his ambit
His ego growth isn't abating.
A TV reality show
Is about the one thing he does know
A statesman he's not
The POTUS we've got
As a learner? Egregiously slow.
Your questions are valid absolutely provided that "Defeating Isis" is really some kind of serious
issue rather than a campaign soundbite. This administration hasn't yet figured out the difference.
So "Defeating Isis" is simply the backbeat to an incoherent set of practices.
Christine McM is a trusted commenter Massachusetts
April 12, 2017
"I don't get it. President Trump is offering to defeat ISIS in Syria for free - and then pivot
to strengthening the moderate anti-Assad rebels. Why? When was the last time Trump did anything
for free?"
Good points. I don't think Trump gives one hoot about Syria. Nor do I believe would have done
anything like he did last week if his daughter hadn't spoken up. That blew my mind: it takes a
daughter to convince her father that banned chemical gassing is criminal?
As to your main point, that ISIS is a state of mind that can't be simply eliminated, I say
yes, yes, and yes. Virtually all recent ISIS attacks on American soil were committed by naturalized
Americans converted to jihadism online.
The Trump administration seems unconcerned about the more powerful online ISIS while territorial
ISIS has so many players it's a wonder they all know who they're shooting at.
Syria is going the way of Lebanon, stripped down to rubble. Trump should do some hard thinking
(not easy for him) as to what his objective is in Syria, if any. It's a complex dilemma that risks
focusing on the easier aspects of war ( troops and treasure) over the near impossible task of
eliminating online jihadism made worse by administration policies like the "Muslim ban," all Trump's
(and Bannon's) anti-Islam rhetoric.
Nine times in your essay, Mr. Friedman, you employ this construction. Here's the problem: Donald
Trump doesn't understand any of them. Why do you think he hasn't resorted to his go-to move, the
tweet? He doesn't know what to do.
Had he bothered to attend daily security briefings and acquaint himself with the regional problems
after Nov. 8 it wouldn't be "gee, who knew fighting ISIS would be so complex?" But no; he embarked
upon victory laps, post-Nov. 8 campaign rallies, retreats with good ole boys to Philly when he
should have been assembling a team and a policy and demanding briefing papers. The foreign policy
professionals could have told him that ISIS is like a bad smell after an even worse dinner and
"deal with it."
It says here that if Trump were at all smart (which he is not) he would allow Bashar al-Assad
to remain Vladimir Putin's headache. Let his Russian pal prop up a regime that destroys "babies...beautiful
babies...children." Israel should have some skin in this game; they're all neighbors.
I disagree with you, Mr. Friedman, when you write that ISIS has two manifestations; they have
as many as they have willing warriors. They're like flies at a picnic; you can wave them away
and maybe kill some, but they'll always return. They will always be there. ISIS isn't so much
a fighting force as it is an idea. Trump can't destroy the Internet.
He'll soon learn what his predecessor did: ISIS may be defeated but not destroyed.
Mark Thomason is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich
April 12, 2017
"The Trump foreign policy team"
Stop right there. That is not what we are seeing. It is not a "team."
There are various isolated factions, vying for the favor of a man who does not really know
what he's doing. They slash at each other.
So far, they've drawn a lot of blood internally, but there is not semblance of any accepted
outcome yet. They are in mid-brawl.
My money is on people with experience, discipline, and hard fists. But we'll see. Meanwhile,
there is no "foreign policy team."
Following the 911 attacks, the United States misidentified the enemy and never stepped back.
The media was as complicit as Congress in not demanding answers or questioning rationales prior
to sending this nation to endless war. The enemy was identified as terrorism (a license to attack
any group anywhere deemed too hostile to US goals). Conservatives and republicans, with major
media approval, began identifying terrorists as 'Islamic'.
Media and political leaders never stepped forward to identify the specific enemy as extremist
Muslims influenced and often supported by the Sunni Wahhabi and Salafi sects, not all of Islam
and most certainly not the Shia Islam practiced by much of Iran and Iraq. Why?
Perhaps the answer is that Saudi Arabia is the global promulgator of Wahhabism, the sect most
often fueling terrorist attacks in the region and abroad. It is Saudi Arabia and Israel who worked
together in defiance of the US to block constitutional government in Egypt and install a Salafi
influenced military dictatorship. As I type this the Trump gang is working with the Saudis to
restore order in Syria – a recipe for disaster and long term terrorism.
Trump has no knowledge; the least this paper can do is attempt to educate him.
I understand the urge to write about Trump as if he has a plan, a strategy or even thinks in
depth with intelligence about anything. Americans are yearning for a president, not someone who
sets foreign policy based on what he sees on Fox and Friends or what his handbag selling daughter
whispers in his ear. We want to think that there is something in Trump that is redeemable. But
Mr. Friedman, there isn't.
Five months after the election and he still refers to Hillary Clinton as "crooked Hillary"
in a NYT interview. The man is irredeemable. Give up trying to make something of him and let's
just figure out how to run him from office.
Mr. Friedman: I agree with your strategy: let the Russians and Iranians deal with ISIS on the
ground. I also agree with your assessment of Trump; that he should be unpredictable so our adversaries
don't know what he will do next. But there is one fundamental place where your logic seems to
fall short:
"And those will only emerge if there are real power-sharing deals in Syria and Iraq"
Show me a single Arab country where Sunni and Shi'a factions have a working power sharing arrangement
without one side dominating the other, and I'll agree that this is a reasonable goal. The only
formulas that seem to work in that part of the world are to put a strongman in place to force
compliance, or to divide the place up, Sunni here, Shi'a there.
IMHO if you could help the locals develop a federal method of power sharing that works for
all parties, you could clean up the whole Middle East. There must be enough of them that want
the fighting to stop, but each group is terrified of being subjugated by the other, and for good
reason, because their history shows them that this is inevitable. That is the true knot that must
be untangled before there will be peace in the Middle East.
The problem, it seems to me, is that if "moderate" Sunni movements exist in Iraq and Syria
in the first place, they lack the military power and brutal drive of an ISIS that observes no
humanitarian boundry moral limitation to its behavior.
Obscene brutalization has become so endemic in Syria and the territory around it that it has
become normalized colective behavior. Russia is fully complicit, but the US carries its own oversized
share of the blame. Absent Bush's misguided Iraq debacle, we would be facing a completely different
Middle East today.
These are the consequences of brain-dead, knee-jerk decision-making where the world's greatest
military power resides.
Mr Friedman, I am steadily losing all hope that POTUS and DC politicians have the capability
and the caliber to lead and inspire America through the many and varied challenges we face.
To me, politicians ask citizens for their votes based on a fantasy world where complexity is
never recognized and Americans have the God given right to expect a world where they receive more
of everything without the sacrifice or payment needed to secure these benefits.
Although I am inherently optimistic about life, I think we are facing challenges that will
only be solved by the next generation because our generation is failing to defend our fragile
democracy.
Wahhabism is an essential part of the ISIS problem, but is often overlooked, or hidden. Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf monarchs are responsible for the global reach of ISIS through their support
of Wahhabi schools and preachers. Fighting ISIS in Syria is foolish, for all of the reasons given
here and because America and Europe have failed to tell the truth about the Wahhabi basis of ISIS.
The war in Iraq and Syria is a war between Sunni Wahhabi extremists and Shiites. For propaganda
purposes our government and our pundits have implied that world terrorism is related to Shiites,
knowing all the while that it is and has always been a Sunni Wahhabi terror. Russia's Muslim population
ranges between 6% and 15% of it's population, with 1 million Muslims living in Moscow. 90% of
Russia's Muslim population is Sunni. Chechnya is a Sunni state under Russian sway. Russia is under
threat by ISIS. Why should we fight ISIS in Syria. Friedman is correct. America and the EU have
no interest in defeating ISIS in Syria. We do have an interest in preventing the use of poison
gas.
ISIL in Syria v. ISIL in Iraq? Does terrorism have a border?
Syria is a can of worms. By now, people should appreciate what President Obama. Just as President
Clinton before President Bush the 43rd, Mr Obama navigated the rapid by minimizing damages. But
both Messrs. Clinton and Obama are followed by two simpletons whose one-dimensional thinking will
inevitably lead the U.S. into quagmire. Well, we really don't know what is in Trump's head. His
Syrian excursion might very well be a sleight of hand light show - how else can you explain the
facts that he pre-warned Russia before the raid and little damage was done to an airbase after
59 tomahawks dropped there? If that is a light show for N Korea, then it is doubtful Trump would
do anything more. For all we know, Trump-Russia rift may very well be a charade
While one could argue Syria now is Iraq before Bush's invasion, Syria is too far gone. Everyone
is at risk. Trump is riding the tiger now. There is only one certainty: his bombing of Syria is
as inexplicable as his saying the U.S. no longer cares if Assad wanted to stay. Either there are
ulterior motives in both situations or Trump's ADHD acting up, neither of the scenarios bodes
well to the world's future
The situation in Syria is exactly why our unfit and unstable president is such a danger to
our country and the world.
He doesn't know the history of Syria, he doesn't know the current situation in Syria and he
has no desire to learn either. His missile attack came days after his administration seemed to
be willing to accept Assad as president. It accomplished nothing except to confuse both our allies
and our adversaries.
Now you want him to distinguish between the territorial ICIS and the virtual ICIS, between
the ICIS in Syria and the ICIS in Iraq, and to implement a strategy that involves long term thinking
while Tweeting about something other than himself. It's not going to happen, he doesn't have the
intelligence or the vision to follow through on such a plan.
There are no moderates in Syria, it is a fantasy created in the minds of John McCain and other
neoconservatives who seem to be blind to the disasters they have created in Libya, Iraq and Yemen.
Syria is in the midst of a Sunni-Shia civil war.
Once again there is the usual mistake of thinking that Trump can stick to a plan, any plan.
He is impulsive through and through, in a compulsive way. He has neither a complete functioning
brain nor a complete functioning personality. That is why he needs his daughter-wife-and-second-first-lady
and Kushner as advisers. He does not look for information that experts can provide but to the
family members who serve as a collective nanny to more or less try to keep him in line and to
clean up the messes he makes. Understanding Trump is easier when one thinks of his White House
as an extension of his dysfunctional family relations.
Just because someone has a lot of money doesn't make them smart.
Trump could have been a good President -- we sure could use a fresh look at many policies and
programs but his lack of basic knowledge (enough to select good people and work with them to develop
strategies/plans, which he would then follow) has created chaos. Our adversaries, other governments,
our own government -- nobody knows what our foreign policy is.
In answer to your question, this administration has no coherent military strategy to fight
ISIS at all. The president was all campaign talk and no action. He has yet to lay a glove on ISIS.
He knew more about ISIS than his generals, so his unilateral strike last week was carried out
without the need to consult his military brass or Congress. Just trust him, his actions said.
The missile strike was, in your words, a "headline-grabbing" ploy to distract attention away
from the investigations into his ties to Russia last year. His act of war produced a spike in
his popularity, especially among Republicans and his base who joyfully celebrated the awakening
of the sleeping American giant who finally had enough of Middle East terrorism. The bully was
thumping his chest and braying "bring it on, radical Islam".
Syria, like Viet Nam, is a no-win proposition. Any protracted military involvement there will
cost many American lives and Treasury spending will go through the roof. Mr. President and erstwhile
draft dodger, don't raid the war chest and let your mouth write out a check that your behind can't
cash.
"Where's that Trump when we need him?" Geez Tom, you're asking Trump to think five steps ahead
of today--- you''re talking strategy, Tom? The man is incapable of putting a complex sentence
together with a qualifying clause, and you're asking the Trump we know to "think"--to plot strategy...
never happen.
"... If Assad is removed, Syria falls and Iran is next. Russia absolutely cannot afford to have Iran destroyed by the Anglo-Zionists because after Iran, she will next. Everybody in Russia understands that. But, as I said, the problem with military responses is that they can lead to military escalations which then lead to wars which might turn nuclear very fast. ..."
"... So here is my central thesis: You don't want Russia to stop the USA by purely military means as this places the survival of of mankind at risk. ..."
"... I realize that for some this might be counter-intuitive, but remember that deterrences only works with rational actors . Russia has already done a lot, more than everybody else besides Iran. And if Russia is not the world's policeman, neither is she the world savior. The rest of mankind also needs to stop being a silent bystander and actually do something! ..."
"... Russia and China can stop the US, but they need to do that together. And for that, Xi needs to stop acting like a detached smiling little Buddha statue and speak up loud and clear. ..."
"... So far China has been supporting Russia, but only from behind. This is very nice and very prudent, but Russia is rapidly running out of resources. ..."
"... The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not. The Russians are ready for war. The Americans are not. ..."
"... The problem is that every sign of Russian caution and every Russian attempt to de-escalate the situation (be it in the Ukraine, with Turkey or in Syria) has always been interpreted by the West as a sign of weakness. ..."
"... This is what happens when there is a clash between a culture which places a premium on boasting and threatening and one which believes in diplomacy and negotiations. ..."
"... Russia is in a very difficult situation and a very bad one. And she is very much alone. European are cowards. Latin Americans have more courage, but no means to put pressure on the USA. India hopes to play both sides. Japan and the ROK are US colonies. Australia and New Zealand belong to the ECHELON / FIVE EYES gang. Russia has plenty of friends in Africa, but they more or less all live under the American/French boot. Iran has already sacrificed more than any other country and taken the biggest risks. It would be totally unfair to ask the Iranians to do more. The only actor out there who can do something in China. If there is any hopes to avoid four more years of "Obama-style nightmare" it is for China to step in and tell the US to cool it. ..."
"... Maybe an impeachment of Trump could prove to be a blessing in disguise. If Mike Pence becomes President, he and his Neocons will have total power again and they won't have to prove that they are tough by doing stupid and dangerous things? Could President Pence be better than President Trump? I am afraid that it might. Especially if that triggers a deep internal crisis inside the USA. ..."
But the two countries which really need to step up to the plate are Russia and China. So far,
it has been Russia who did all the hard work and, paradoxically, it has been Russia which has been
the object of the dumbest and most ungrateful lack of gratitude (especially from armchair warriors).
This needs to change. China has many more means to pressure the USA back into some semi-sane mental
state than Russia. All Russia has are superb military capabilities. China, in contrast, has the ability
to hurt the USA where it really matters: money. Russia is in a pickle: she cannot abandon Syria to
the Takfiri crazies, but neither can she go to nuclear war with the USA over Syria. The problem is
not Assad. The problem is that he is the only person capable, at least at this point in time, to
protect Syria against Daesh.
If Assad is removed, Syria falls and Iran is next. Russia absolutely cannot afford to have
Iran destroyed by the Anglo-Zionists because after Iran, she will next. Everybody in Russia understands
that. But, as I said, the problem with military responses is that they can lead to military escalations
which then lead to wars which might turn nuclear very fast.
So here is my central thesis: You don't want Russia to stop the USA by purely military means
as this places the survival of of mankind at risk.
I realize that for some this might be counter-intuitive, but remember that deterrences only
works with rational actors . Russia has already done a lot, more than everybody else besides Iran.
And if Russia is not the world's policeman, neither is she the world savior. The rest of mankind
also needs to stop being a silent bystander and actually do something!
Russia and China can stop the US, but they need to do that together. And for that, Xi needs
to stop acting like a detached smiling little Buddha statue and speak up loud and clear. That
is especially true since the Americans show even less fear of China than of Russia.
[Sidebar: the Chinese military is still far behind the kind of capabilities Russia has, but
the Chinese are catching up really, really fast. Just 30 years ago the Chinese military used to
be outdated and primitive. This is not the case today. The Chinese have done some tremendous progress
in a record time and their military is now a totally different beast than what it used to be.
I have no doubt at all that the US cannot win a war with China either, especially not anywhere
near the Chinese mainland. Furthermore, I expect the Chinese to go full steam ahead with a very
energetic military modernization program which will allow them to close the gap with the USA and
Russia in record time.
So any notions of the USA using force against China, be it over Taiwan or the DPRK, is an absolutely
terrible idea, sheer madness. However, and maybe because the Americans believe their own propaganda,
it seems to me like the folks in DC think that we are in the 1950s or 1960 and that they can terrify
the "Chinese communist peasants" with their carrier battle groups.
What the fail to realize is that with every nautical mile the US carriers make towards China,
the bigger and easier target they make for a military which has specialized in US carrier destruction
operatons. The Americans ought to ask themselves a simple question: what will they do if the Chinese
either sink or severely damage one (or several) US Navy carriers?
Go to nuclear war with a nuclear China well capable of turning many US cities into nuclear
wastelands? Really? You would trade New York or San Francisco for the Carl Vinson Strike Group?
Think again.]
So far China has been supporting Russia, but only from behind. This is very nice and very
prudent, but Russia is rapidly running out of resources. If there was a sane man in the White
House, one who would never ever do something which might result in war with Russia, that would not
be a problem. Alas, just like Obama before him, Trump seems to think that he can win a game of nuclear
chicken against Russia. But he can't. Let me be clear he: if pushed into a corner the Russian will
fight, even if that means nuclear war. I have said this over and over again, there are two differences
between the Americans and the Russians
The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not. The Russians are ready for war. The Americans
are not.
The problem is that every sign of Russian caution and every Russian attempt to de-escalate
the situation (be it in the Ukraine, with Turkey or in Syria) has always been interpreted by the
West as a sign of weakness.
This is what happens when there is a clash between a culture which places a premium on boasting
and threatening and one which believes in diplomacy and negotiations.
[Sidebar. The profound cultural differences between the USA and Russia are perfectly illustrated
with the polar difference the two countries have towards their most advanced weapons systems.
As soon as the Americans declassify one of their weapon systems they engage into a huge marketing
campaign to describe it as the "bestest of the bestest" "in the world" (always, "in the world"
as if somebody bothered to research this or even compare). They explain at length how awesome
their technology is and how invincible it makes them. The perfect illustration is all the (now,
in retrospect, rather ridiculous) propaganda about stealth and stealth aircraft. The Russians
do the exact opposite. First, they try to classify it all. But then, when eventually they declassify
a weapons system, they strenuously under-report its real capabilities even when it is quite clear
that the entire planet already knows the truth!
There have been any instances when Soviet disarmament negotiators knew less about the real
Soviet capabilities than their American counterparts!
Finally, when the Russian export their weapons systems, they always strongly degrade the export
model, at least that was the model until the Russians sold the SU-30MKI to India which included
thrust vectoring while the Russian SU-30 only acquired later with the SU-30SM model, so this might
be changing.
Ask yourself: did you ever hear about the Russian Kalibr cruise missile before their first
use in Syria? Or did you know that Russia has had
nuclear underwater missiles
since the late 1970 s capable of "flying under water" as speeds exceeding 230 miles per hour?]
Russia is in a very difficult situation and a very bad one. And she is very much alone. European
are cowards. Latin Americans have more courage, but no means to put pressure on the USA. India hopes
to play both sides. Japan and the ROK are US colonies. Australia and New Zealand belong to the
ECHELON /
FIVE EYES gang. Russia has
plenty of friends in Africa, but they more or less all live under the American/French boot. Iran
has already sacrificed more than any other country and taken the biggest risks. It would be totally
unfair to ask the Iranians to do more. The only actor out there who can do something in China. If
there is any hopes to avoid four more years of "Obama-style nightmare" it is for China to step in
and tell the US to cool it.
In the meantime Russia will walk a very fine like between various bad options. Her best hope,
and the best hope of the rest of mankind, is that the US elites become so involved into fighting
each other that this will leave very little time to do any foreign policy. Alas, it appears that
Trump has "figured out" that one way to be smart (or so he thinks) in internal politics is to do
something dumb in external politics (like attack Syria). That won't work.
Maybe an impeachment of Trump could prove to be a blessing in disguise. If Mike Pence becomes
President, he and his Neocons will have total power again and they won't have to prove that they
are tough by doing stupid and dangerous things? Could President Pence be better than President Trump?
I am afraid that it might. Especially if that triggers a deep internal crisis inside the USA.
a classical US-executed false flag a Syrian strike on a location which happened to be storing some
kind of gas, possibly chlorine, but most definitely not sarin. This option requires you to believe
in coincidences. I don't. Unless, the US fed bad intelligence to the Syrians and got them to bomb
a location where the US knew that toxic gas was stored.
What is evident is that the Syrians did not drop chemical weapons from their aircraft and that
no chemical gas was ever stored at the al-Shayrat airbase. There is no footage showing any munitions
or containers which would have delivered the toxic gas. As for US and other radar recordings, all
they can show is that an aircraft was in the sky, its heading, altitude and speed. There is no way
to distinguish a chemical munition or a chemical attack by means of radar.
Whatever option you chose, the Syrian government is obviously and self-evidently innocent of the
accusation of having used chemical weapons. This is most likely a false flag attack.
Also, and just for the record, the US had been considering exactly such a false flag attack in
the past. You can read everything about this plan
here and
here .
The attack:
American and Russian sources both agree on the following facts: 2 USN ships launched 59 Tomahawk
cruise missiles at the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria. The US did not consult with the Russians on
a political level, but through military channels the US gave Russia 2 hours advance warning. At this
point the accounts begin to differ.
The Americans say that all missiles hit their targets. The Russians say that only 23 cruise missiles
hit the airfield. The others are "unaccounted for". Here I think that it is indisputable that the
Americans are lying and the Russians are saying the truth: the main runway is intact (the Russian
reporters provided footage proving this) and only one taxiway was hit. Furthermore, the Syrian Air
Force resumed its operations within 24 hours. 36 cruise missiles have not reached their intended
target. That is a fact.
It is also indisputable that there were no chemical munitions at this base as nobody, neither
the Syrians nor the Russian reporters, had to wear any protective gear.
The missiles used in the attack, the Tomahawk, can use any combination of three guidance systems:
GPS, inertial navigation and terrain mapping. There is no evidence and even no reports that the Russians
shot even a single air-defense missile. In fact, the Russians had signed a memorandum with the USA
which specifically comitting Russia NOT to interfere with any US overflights, manned or not, over
Syria (and vice versa). While the Tomahawk cruise missile was developed in the 1980s, there is no
reason to believe that the missiles used had exceeded their shelf live and
there is even evidence that they were built in 2014 . The Tomahawk is known to be accurate and
reliable. There is absolutely no basis to suspect that over half of the missiles fired simply spontaneously
malfunctioned. I therefore see only two possible explanations for what happened to the 36 missing
cruise missiles:
Explanation A: Trump never intended to really hit the Syrians hard and this entire attack was
just "for show" and the USN deliberately destroyed these missiles over the Mediterranean. That would
make it possible for Trump to appear tough while not inflicting the kind of damage which would truly
wreck his plans to collaborate with Russia. I do not believe in this explanation and I will explain
why in the political analysis below.
Explanation B: The Russians could not legally shoot down the US missiles. Furthermore, it is incorrect
to assume that these cruise missiles flew a direct course from the Mediterranean to their target
(thereby almost overflying the Russian radar positions). Tomahawk were specifically built to be able
to fly tangential courses around some radar types and they also have a very low RCS (radar visibility),
especially in the frontal sector. Some of these missiles were probably flying low enough not to be
seen by Russian radars, unless the Russians had an AWACS in the air (I don't know if they did). However,
since the Russians were warned about the attack they had plenty of time to prepare their electronic
warfare stations to "fry" and otherwise disable at least part of the cruise missiles. I do believe
that this is the correct explanation. I do not know whether the Russian were technically unable to
destroy and confuse the 23 missiles which reached the base or whether a political decision was taken
to let less than half of the cruise missiles through in order to disguise the Russian role in the
destruction of 36 missiles.
"... Your long explanation of current reality in Europe, which seemingly contradicts Saker's sentence you quoted, says exactly the same. There is no dignity. What you listed are excuses. None of the European countries condemned the obvious aggression on Syria in UN. Where is dignity in that? Nowhere and is it a shame. I am from EU and I find the EU's position shameful as well. ..."
"... Bolivia mercilessly trolls US over Iraq WMD lie in front of UN Security Council (VIDEO) https://www.rt.com/viral/383979-bolivia-un-syria-us-wmd/ ..."
"... Exactly rigth, well said. There is nothing to admire about EU, but plenty to despise. From its Russophobic mentality to spineless following of orders from their masters in Washington. ..."
"... Not a single one of these puppets have criticised obvious crime of aggression by US against sovereign state of Syria. Not a single one. But they all bark at Russia and follow lies and spread fake news. Like a pack of hyenas. ..."
Some countries, however, are showing an absolutely amazing level of courage. Look at what the
Bolivian representative at the UNSC dared to do:
Bolivia: a profile in courage
And what a shame for Europe: a small and poor country like Bolivia showed more dignity that
the entire European continent. No wonder the Russians have no respect for the EU whatsoever.
Your long explanation of current reality in Europe, which seemingly contradicts Saker's sentence
you quoted, says exactly the same. There is no dignity. What you listed are excuses. None of the
European countries condemned the obvious aggression on Syria in UN. Where is dignity in that?
Nowhere and is it a shame. I am from EU and I find the EU's position shameful as well.
Bolivia clearly condemned the strikes. Speaking at the emergency meeting to discuss the United
States' missile strikes against Syria on Thursday, Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations,
Sacha Llorenti, criticized the Trump's decision to take unilateral action against Syria, which
he described as being "an extremely serious violation of international law."
Exactly rigth, well said. There is nothing to admire about EU, but plenty to despise. From
its Russophobic mentality to spineless following of orders from their masters in Washington.
Not a single one of these puppets have criticised obvious crime of aggression by US against
sovereign state of Syria. Not a single one. But they all bark at Russia and follow lies and spread
fake news. Like a pack of hyenas.
Thanks, NATO. Most people would learn from their 'mistakes'. But not NATO – it can't wait
for the next empowering liberation in the name of freedom and democracy.
"... From the moment the chemical attack was blamed on Assad, however, I expressed my doubts about the claims. It simply makes no sense for Assad to attack civilians with a chemical weapon just as he is winning his war against ISIS and al-Qaeda and has been told by the US that it no longer seeks regime change. On the verge of victory, he commits a suicidal act to no strategic or tactical military advantage? More likely the gas attack was a false flag by the rebels -- or perhaps even by our CIA -- as a last ditch effort to forestall a rebel defeat in the six year war. ..."
"... The gas attack, which took some 70 civilian lives, was horrible and must be condemned. But we must also remember that US bombs in Syria have killed hundreds of civilians. Just recently, US bombs killed 300 Iraqi civilians in one strike! Does it really make a difference if you are killed by poison gas or by a US missile? ..."
"... Donald Trump's attack on Syria was clearly illegal. However, Congress shows no interest in reining in this out-of-control president. We should fear any US escalation and must demand that our Representatives prohibit it. If there ever was a time to flood the Capitol Hill switchboard demanding an end to US military action in Syria, it is now! ..."
Thursday's US missile attack on Syria must represent the quickest foreign policy U-turn in history.
Less than a week after the White House gave Assad permission to stay on as president of his own country,
President Trump decided that the US had to attack Syria and demand Assad's ouster after a chemical
attack earlier in the week. Trump blamed Assad for the attack, stated that "something's going to
happen" in retaliation, and less than two days later he launched a volley of 59 Tomahawk missiles
(at a cost of $1.5 million each) onto a military airfield near where the chemical attack took place.
President Trump said it is in the "vital national security interest of the United States" to attack
Syria over the use of poison gas. That is nonsense. Even if what Trump claims about the gas attack
is true – and we've seen no evidence that it is – there is nothing about an isolated incident of
inhuman cruelty thousands of miles from our borders that is in our "vital national security interest."
Even if Assad gassed his own people last week it hardly means he will launch chemical attacks on
the United States even if he had the ability, which he does not.
From the moment the chemical attack was blamed on Assad, however, I expressed my doubts about
the claims. It simply makes no sense for Assad to attack civilians with a chemical weapon just as
he is winning his war against ISIS and al-Qaeda and has been told by the US that it no longer seeks
regime change. On the verge of victory, he commits a suicidal act to no strategic or tactical military
advantage? More likely the gas attack was a false flag by the rebels -- or perhaps even by our CIA
-- as a last ditch effort to forestall a rebel defeat in the six year war.
Would the neocons and the mainstream media lie to us about what happened last week in Syria? Of
course they would. They lied us into attacking Iraq, they lied us into attacking Gaddafi, they lied
us into seeking regime change in Syria in the first place. We should always assume they are lying.
Who benefits from the US attack on Syria? ISIS, which immediately after the attack began a ground
offensive. Does President Trump really want the US to act as ISIS's air force?
The gas attack, which took some 70 civilian lives, was horrible and must be condemned. But
we must also remember that US bombs in Syria have killed hundreds of civilians. Just recently, US
bombs killed 300 Iraqi civilians in one strike! Does it really make a difference if you are killed
by poison gas or by a US missile?
What's next for President Trump in Syria? Russia has not backed down from its claim that the poison
gas leaked as a result of a conventional Syrian bomb on an ISIS chemical weapons factory. Moscow
claims it is determined to defend its ally, Syria. Will Trump unilaterally declare a no fly zone
in parts of Syria and attempt to prevent Russian air traffic? Some suggest this is his next move.
It is one that carries a great danger of igniting World War Three.
Donald Trump's attack on Syria was clearly illegal. However, Congress shows no interest in
reining in this out-of-control president. We should fear any US escalation and must demand that our
Representatives prohibit it. If there ever was a time to flood the Capitol Hill switchboard demanding
an end to US military action in Syria, it is now!
It was supposed to be different with Trump. Dozens of times as candidate and even early on as
president, he stated that it would be a big mistake to go into Syria. He also finally cancelled Obama's
"Assad must go" policy. Then came reports of a gas attack in Syria which was blamed on Assad with
no evidence given. Suddenly missiles are flying, US boots are on the ground, and again we hear "Assad
must go."
Is it our role to determine who can and cannot rule foreign countries? We are joined in-studio
today by Mises Institute founder Lew Rockwell to discuss:
... Tight ties between Russia and Syria stretch back more than four decades. During the cold war,
a newly independent Syria aligned with the Eastern block. As a young man, Hafez Assad, Bashar's father,
learned to fly fighter jets in the Soviet Union. Soon after taking power in a coup in 1970, the elder
Mr Assad paid a visit to Moscow, seeking weapons and support. A lucrative arms pipeline started flowing;
when Bashar came to power, he expanded the contracts, turning Russia into Syria's biggest supplier.
The Syrian government also allowed the Soviet Union to build a resupply station at the port of Tartus,
which is now Russia's sole remaining naval base in the Middle East and on the Mediterranean sea.
Syria is also an important Russian military-intelligence base and listening post. Cultural connections
elevated the relationship beyond the obvious strategic and commercial interests. Scores of Syrians
came to study in the Soviet Union; many married and raised mixed families.
Yet Russia's support for Mr Assad has less to do with Syria per se, than with the West. The Kremlin
watched the Arab Spring in horror, seeing uprisings against authoritarian leaders as American conspiracies.
While Mr Putin harbors no particular personal affection for Mr Assad, the Syrian leader has become
a symbol of resisting "colour revolutions" and attempts at "regime change". Having backed Mr Assad
thus far, allowing him to fall now would mean that Mr Putin is "retreating under American pressure,
which is the one thing he cannot do," argues Georgy Mirsky of Moscow's Higher School of Economics.
The latest gambit in Syria has also helped Mr Putin deflect attention from the unwon war in Ukraine
and bring Russia back into the company of world powers-Mr Obama met Mr Putin at the UN General Assembly
for the first time in two years. Mr Putin's message, both to the domestic audience and to the non-Western
world, is that Russia remains indispensable to solving global problems, whether the West likes it
or not.
In keeping with his style, Mr Putin has opted to play hardball in Syria. Rather than contributing
to the war's resolution, Russia's presence will likely deepen the conflict. While America has softened
its stance on the need for Mr Assad's immediate exit, his presence presents an intractable obstacle
to any cooperation between Russia's ad-hoc coalition (which so far includes Iran, Iraq and Syria)
and America's. Yet with air defence assets already on the ground, the Kremlin can impose a no-fly
zone for NATO forces; on Wednesday it declared a de facto one, though coalition countries said they
were continuing to fly missions, raising the prospect of potentially disastrous accidents. So far,
Russian officials emphasize that ground operations are not up for discussion. Support among the Russian
population for intervention in Syria remains low, and the spectre of the Soviet Union's decade long
war in Afghanistan still looms. Yet so too does the risk of mission creep. The more chips Mr Putin
places on Syria, the harder it will be for him to fold.
Reply
Saturday, April 08, 2017 at 09:13 PM ilsm said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Soft
propaganda.
If the US were not supporting terrorists.
"Rather than contributing to the war's resolution, Russia's presence will likely deepen the conflict."
Russia is provide resources to prevent Saudi/GCC led, US supported, Sunni jihadis taking over
Syria. And suppression of Shiite minorities.
What do you expect from Economist? This is a neoliberal rag, hell-bent on globalism.
Also UK can win lucrative deals for weapon supplies. All good.
Reply
Sunday, April 09, 2017 at 06:56 AM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to ilsm... Would we agree
that 'Syria' is the latest
chapter in the Shia-Sunni feud. This time
(again) with nerve gas, either used by the
'bad' guys to make the other side look worse,
or the other way around?
Reply
Sunday, April 09, 2017 at 08:54 AM libezkova said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... "Would
we agree that 'Syria' is the latest
chapter in the Shia-Sunni feud."
I actually don't. IMHO this is a neocons strategic geopolitical goal to weaken and isolate Iran
as well as destroy remnants of Arab nationalist regimes.
== quote ==
In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute
excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called "a policy coup" engineered by neocons
in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the
Pentagon's plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described
the aspirations of the "coup" being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what
he called "a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century":
Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: "Why haven't we attacked Iraq? Are we still
going to attack Iraq?"
He said: "Sir, it's worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he
said: "I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack
and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we're going to start with Iraq, and then
we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."
Clark said the aim of this plot was this: "They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn
it upside down, make it under our control." He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years
earlier with Paul Wolfowitz - back in 1991 - in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after
criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: "But one thing we did learn [from the Persian
Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won't
stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic],
Iraq - before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's
desires because, as Clark put it: "the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments?
It's not to deter conflicts?"
== end of quote ==
It took a lot of money (as in trillions spend in Iraq) and planning to amplify the current Shia-Sunni
feud.
Before the USA invasion of Iraq, it was a secular state. Shite and sunny have frictions (government
was dominated by sunnies, who were minority) but there were many intermarriages.
Before the USA, Israel, Turkey and Gulf monarchies armed and trained Syrian opposition Assad was
a brutal, but secular nationalist regime. It actually remains the same, but now it controls only
a fraction of the country. The goal of decimation of Syria was first mentioned by Gen. Wesley Clark
in 2007, long before 9/11.
"... While he said this Susan Rice was "unredacting" the politically motivated surveillance of republicans, calling it "counter intelligence" while none of these people had any critical sensitive information to share unlike Clinton's 30000 e-mails. ..."
"... Those "unredactings" have been leaked to attempt to discredit the US elections. ..."
"... Seems Obama was surrounded by no one who was "serious/sensible" but many who used his office to attack the US Bill of Rights. ..."
In Oct 2016 Obama said "there is no serious/sensible person
who believes the US election could be hacked...."
While he
said this Susan Rice was "unredacting" the politically
motivated surveillance of republicans, calling it "counter
intelligence" while none of these people had any critical
sensitive information to share unlike Clinton's 30000
e-mails.
Those "unredactings" have been leaked to attempt to
discredit the US elections.
Seems Obama was surrounded by no one who was
"serious/sensible" but many who used his office to attack the
US Bill of Rights.
Since 9 Nov 16 the DNC and its media tools have tried a
coup by discrediting the US election using the security
apparatus to assault privacy and they got nothing!
Former CIA operations officer Scott Uehlinger, co-host of
The Station Chief
podcast,
talked about the
Susan Rice "unmasking" story
with SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Tuesday's
Breitbart News Daily.
"I think it's an
issue which deeply concerns people like myself and other people, working-level
officers in the intel community," Uehlinger said. "Even though at this point,
there seems to be no evidence of breaking the law, this 'unmasking' of people was
ill-advised at best. I think it really shows that abuse of power and the fact that
many people in the Obama administration were willing to violate the spirit of the
laws designed to protect Americans, perhaps rather than the law itself."
... ... ...
"As a working-level CIA officer, we were always
told by upper authority, you're always told to – and the quote is – 'avoid the
appearance of impropriety,'" he said. "Well, this does not pass that smell test,
definitely."
Uehlinger said another thing
that concerns working-level officers in the intelligence and military communities
is "the American people, average Americans like myself, are tired of seeing two
sets of rules followed by the higher-ups and then the working-level people."
"This is just part of that again. A
working-level officer would have gotten into big trouble doing anything remotely
like this," he observed. "But now, we have a lot of people saying that she should
just be given a pass."
"While I understand, you know, it's important
that the Trump administration has to move forward with its domestic agenda, but
these allegations demand to be further investigated," he urged.
Kassam proposed that Democrats and their media
would not allow the Trump administration to move forward with any part of its
agenda until this "Russia hysteria" is cleaned up. That will be a difficult task
since, as Kassam noted, the hysteria has been burning at fever pitch for months
without a shred of evidence to back up the wildest allegations.
Uehlinger agreed and addressed Kassam's point
that media coverage alternates between "no surveillance was conducted" and "we
know everything about Trump's Russia connections."
"The Obama administration relaxed the rule that
allowed raw intelligence that was gathered by the NSA to be shared throughout the
government," he pointed out. "First of all, to relax that, there is absolutely no
operational justification for doing that. With all of the counter-intelligence
problems, with espionage, with Snowden, all these things we've had, to raise by an
order of magnitude the access to this very sensitive information makes no
operational sense at all."
"So for someone to approve that, it's clear they
had another intent, and I believe the intent was to allow for further leakage," he
charged. "To give more people access, thus more leaks, which, in fact, would hurt
the Trump administration. It seems very obvious when you put that together and
combine it with the actions of Susan Rice and other people in unmasking people.
That is the true purpose behind this."
"I say this as somebody who – you have to
remember, when I was a station chief overseas, this is what I was reporting on. I
was in countries like Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kosovo – countries which constantly
had the offices of the prime minister or president using the intelligence services
to suppress the domestic opposition. So I've been to this rodeo before, many a
time. I saw the storm clouds gathering several weeks ago, and everything I've
suspected has so far come to fruition," Uehlinger said.
He pronounced it "very disappointing" that such
transparent abuse of government power for partisan politics would occur in the
United States.
"An intelligence service has to have the trust
of the people and the government in order to function effectively," he said. "With
all of these scandals happening, and with the name of perhaps the CIA and other
intelligence community elements in the mud, this makes the object of protecting
our national security more problematic. The agencies have to have the trust of the
American people, and they're losing it, because it seems as though they've been
weaponized – perhaps, like I said, not breaking the law but playing very close to
the line."
Kassam suggested that leaking the information
might have been illegal, even if Rice was legally entitled to request information
on Donald Trump's campaign and unmask the U.S. persons monitored during
surveillance of foreign intelligence targets.
"That's absolutely the case," Uehlinger agreed.
He went on to argue that the absence of hard evidence for any wrongdoing by the
Trump campaign in all of these leaks was highly significant.
"Since basically the Obama administration has
sort of loaded this with these rule changes and all to allow for leaks the fact
that there is no 'smoking gun' of Trump administration collusion with Russia
indicates that there isn't any. There is nothing substantial here because a juicy
morsel like that would certainly have been leaked by the same people that have
been leaking everything else. The fact it hasn't been leaked out means it does not
exist," he reasoned.
Kassam said some of the Russia hysteria came
from imputing sinister motives to conventional business dealings, arguing that
Trump's organization made deals around the world, and it is exceedingly difficult
to do business with any Russian entity that is not somehow connected to the
Russian government.
"That's an excellent point. You're absolutely
right," Uehlinger responded. "It shows these people who are doing these gambits
are relying on the relative ignorance of the American public of the actual nuts
and bolts of intelligence to make their point. Anyone with any background in this
stuff can see it for what it is: a desperate attempt to discredit an
administration because they were crushed in the past elections."
Breitbart News Daily
airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00
a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
"... CIA officers penetrated a network used to share information by Senate Intel committee members, including Sen. Diane Feinstein, the committee's Democrat chair. The bombshell New York Times report went on to disclose: ..."
As the facts about who surveilled whom during the transition get sorted out, it is useful to remember why Trump's team and his
supporters have reason to be suspicious, thanks to a long documented history of Obama using shady surveillance tactics on both political
opponents and international allies. Rhodes himself knows this history but that doesn't seem to matter as he once again attempts to
make people believe he fell out of the sky and onto Twitter on January 21st, 2017.
... ... ...
1. Fox News reporter James Rosen
In 2013 the news broke that Eric Holder's Justice Department
had spied on James Rosen . Obama's DOJ collected Rosen's telephone records as well as tracked his movements to and from the State
Department from where he reported. Rosen was named as a possible co-conspirator in a Justice Department affidavit. Rosen claims that
his parents phone line was also swept up in the collection of his records and DOJ records seem to confirm that. Despite the targeting
of Rosen, there were no brave calls to boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner.
2. Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA
CIA officers
penetrated a network used to share information by Senate Intel committee members, including Sen. Diane Feinstein, the committee's
Democrat chair. The bombshell New York Times report went on to disclose:
The CIA officials penetrated the computer network when they came to suspect that the committee's staff had gained unauthorized
access to an internal CIA review of the detention program that the spy agency never intended to give to Congress. A CIA lawyer then
referred the agency's suspicions to the Justice Department to determine whether the committee staff broke the law when it obtained
that document. The inspector general report said that there was no "factual basis" for this referral, which the Justice Department
has declined to investigate, because the lawyer had been provided inaccurate information. The report said that the three information
technology officers "demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities" during interviews with the inspector general.
The Obama White House defended CIA director John Brennan's actions and response. Imagine that.
3. Associated Press Phone Records
Much like James Rosen and his shady al Qaeda looking parents, Obama's Justice Department
secretly obtained months of phone records belonging to AP journalists while investigating a failed terror attack. And much like
the Rosen spying, this was personally approved by Attorney General Holder.
Mass surveillance and expansion of such under the Patriot Act is one of the most historically prevalent things about the Obama
administration. There's even a Wikipedia page
dedicated to that alone . So why
do the media and former administration officials act shocked and surprised when someone points the finger in their direction and
asks if targeting an incoming President is possible?
There is a long, decorated history of questionable-even unconstitutional-surveillance from the Obama administration none of which
proves Trump's twitter ravings to be true. But it certainly is enough to raise suspicions among Trump's supporters and even some
of this critics that he could be perfectly correct.
If anyone expected former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the same Susan Rice who "stretched
the truth" about Benghazi, to admit in her first public appearance after news that she unmasked members
of the Trump team to admit she did something wrong, will be disappointed. Instead, moments ago she
told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that she categorically denied that the Obama administration inappropriately
spied on members of the Trump transition team.
"The allegation is that somehow, Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political
purposes," Rice told Mitchell. " That's absolutely false.... My job is to protect the American people
and the security of our country. "
"There was no such collection or surveillance on Trump Tower or Trump individuals, it is important
to understand, directed by the White House or targeted at Trump individuals," Rice said.
EXCLUSIVE: Susan Rice says the claim that intelligence was used for political purposes is "absolutely
false" Watch: https://t.co/JdbgCtSgEN
"I don't solicit reports," Rice said Tuesday. "They're giving it to me, if I read it, and I think
that in order for me to understand, is it significant or not so significant, I need to know who the
'U.S. Person' is, I can make that request." She did concede that it is "possible" the Trump team
was picked up in "incidental surveillance."
"The notion, which some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of the American
person is the same is leaking it - that's completely false," Rice said. "There is no equivalence
between so-called unmasking and leaking."
That said, Rice did not discuss what motive she may have had behind what Bloomberg, Fox and others
have confirmed, was her unmasking of members of the Trump team.
Rice also flatly denied exposing President Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn,
who was forced to resign in February after media reports revealed that he misled Vice President Pence
about the contents of a phone call with the Russian ambassador. Asked by Mitchell if she seeked to
unmask the names of people involved in the Trump campaign in order to spy on them, Rice says: "absolutely
not, for any political purpose, to spy, expose, anything." And yet, that is what happened. She was
then asked if she leaked if she leaked the name of Mike Flynn: "I leaked nothing to nobody."
In a follow up question, Rice said that when it comes to Mike Flynn with whom she had "civil and
cordial relations", that she learned "in the press" that he was an unregistered agent for the Turkish
government.
WATCH: Susan Rice says she learned from the press that Flynn was an unregistered agent for the
Turkish government https://t.co/xD41R2fbBL
We doubt that anyone's opinion will change after hearing the above especially considering that,
in addition to Benghazi, Rice is the official who praised Bowe Bergdahl for his "honorable service"
and claimed he was captured "on the battlefield", and then just two weeks ago, she told PBS that
she didn't know anything about the unmasking.
It is thus hardly surprising that now that her memory has been "refreshed" about her role in the
unmasking, that Rice clearly remembers doing nothing at all wrong.
On Monday night, Rand Paul and other Republicans called for Rice to testify under oath, a request
she sidestepped on Tuesday. "Let's see what comes," she told Mitchell, when asked if she would testify
on the matter. "I'm not going to sit here and prejudge."
"... This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas' television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: "I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration." ..."
Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President
Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in
surveillance.
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at
the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including
former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.
The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect
Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.
It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being
posed by the sources late Monday.
... ... ...
This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas' television interview last month in which the former
Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: "I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly
speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get
as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves
the administration."
... ... ...
As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader
powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability
to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies.
... ... ...
Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several
Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration's later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks
on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video.
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested
the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to
the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's
policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic
eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted
from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."
The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting
the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's
multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition
activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed
more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.
The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign
officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members
of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said
they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team
was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.
Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the
identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations
surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration.
Both the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing any ties between Trump associates
and a Russian influence operation against Hillary Clinton during the election. The chairman of the
House intelligence committee, Representative Devin Nunes, is also investigating how the Obama White
House kept tabs on the Trump transition after the election through unmasking the names of Trump associates
incidentally collected in government eavesdropping of foreign officials.
Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked
on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were
swept up in incidental intelligence collection,
Rice said : "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman
Nunes on that account today."
Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate
Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There
remains no evidence to support that claim.
But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence
reports during the transition period does
highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs.
The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that
it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This
suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.
The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It
emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive
allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he
said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive
branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council
that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons.
The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports
on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these
reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself
and other members of the committee.
Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly
how and why it was disseminated.
"... And what Earth-shattering insights were revealed as a result of the hacks? That the DNC was in the tank for Hillary Clinton and had been lying to Bernie Sanders. Everybody in Washington already knew that, and it didn't make any difference to Trump. In fact, the revelations gave the Clinton camp a pretext to get rid of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz - something it wanted to do anyway. Next, Clinton campaign chairman Podesta's emails did not reveal anything beyond Beltway gossip that was only of interest to political junkies. Nothing was revealed that drove any votes. If Russian hackers wanted to harass Podesta, what is the crime that the Trump campaign might have committed? ..."
"... The cacophony of accusations, deflections and distractions has led us to the latest revelation that is causing a "holy cow" double-take, plot-thickening moment in Washington: President Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, sought to unmask the identities of Trump aides whose conversations had been collected through routine electronic intercepts of foreign officials' communications. ..."
"... And there are more suspicious reasons for Obama's national security adviser to have sought to unmask the identities of Trump campaign aides than there are valid reasons. Rice has a history of a strained relationship with the truth, and for a national security adviser, she has, at times, flown close to the partisan political flame. ..."
"... Multiple senators are now demanding her testimony . There could have been crimes committed and a real scandal could develop, so you can bet the full story will be slow to emerge. It appears that Rice has issued the standard denials. And her defenders on Capitol Hill and in the media will do all they can to distract and demand that there is nothing to see here. Democrats and their media allies will continue to make baseless allegations, hoping that the Russia investigations will somehow deliver for them and become this president's Watergate. ..."
"... The result so far? Competing outrage. Just as Democrats are pursuing L-TACs (links, ties, associations or contacts) in search of a crime, the Obama White House's national security adviser has now landed as one of the ones who will have to answer for her actions under oath. ..."
"... How did Ed slip this article past the Wapo /DNC/Loony Left /Bezos Puppet editors? ..."
"... Ms. Rice kept a 'spreadsheet' of phone calls taking place within the Trump campaign. Will that be in the next installment of this ongoing drama? ..."
It is said that Watergate wasn't about the crime, but about the coverup. Well, at least in the Watergate scandal, there was a
proper crime - specifically, the break-in and wiretapping. The media hasn't even settled on what to call its quest for a potentially
nefarious Russia-Trump link. The whole pursuit is vaguely referred to as looking at President Trump's "links," "ties," "associations"
or "contacts" with Russia. Since this is Washington, let's give it an acronym: L-TACs. With no end in sight, the manic pursuit of
L-TACs has produced a basket of denials, lies, half-baked plots, evasions, one-off non sequiturs, side tracks, conspiracies and suspicions
between the Trump administration, Democrats and the media. The frenzy has created a scandal without perpetrators or a crime. There
is a sense that Washington is on the brink, but no one can say on the brink of what.
When they have to be specific, some Democrats have settled on the idea that the Trump campaign may have collaborated with Russia
on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the John Podesta emails. There is no evidence of this, but it is worth remembering
a few things. First, the FBI was
aware of the DNC
hacking when it occurred. This was
confirmed again yesterday
in Politico's interview with Lisa Monaco
, who served as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism in the Obama White House. She said the
hacking was handled as a law enforcement matter. I assume she was referring to when the FBI called the dolts at the DNC, but the
DNC took no action.
Then-national security adviser Susan Rice is seen last year on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated
Press)
And what Earth-shattering insights were revealed as a result of the hacks? That the DNC was in the tank for Hillary Clinton
and had been lying to Bernie Sanders. Everybody in Washington already knew that, and it didn't make any difference to Trump. In fact,
the revelations gave the Clinton camp a pretext to get rid of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz - something it wanted to do anyway.
Next, Clinton campaign chairman Podesta's emails did not reveal anything beyond Beltway gossip that was only of interest to political
junkies. Nothing was revealed that drove any votes. If Russian hackers wanted to harass Podesta, what is the crime that the Trump
campaign might have committed?
The cacophony of accusations, deflections and distractions has led us to the latest revelation that is causing a "holy cow"
double-take, plot-thickening moment in Washington: President Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, sought to
unmask the identities of Trump aides whose conversations had been collected through routine electronic intercepts of foreign
officials' communications. To unmask, or reveal, the identities of U.S. citizens whose names and conversations were gathered
through incidental collection is unusual.
And there are more suspicious reasons for Obama's national security adviser to have sought to unmask the identities of Trump
campaign aides than there are valid reasons. Rice has a history of a strained relationship with the truth, and for a national security
adviser, she has, at times, flown close to the partisan political flame.
So, what was going on? Why did she do it? And with whom, in the government and the media, did she share the information?
Multiple senators are now
demanding her
testimony . There could have been crimes committed and a real scandal could develop, so you can bet the full story will be slow
to emerge. It appears that Rice has
issued the standard denials. And her defenders on Capitol Hill and in the media will do all they can to distract and demand that
there is nothing to see here. Democrats and their media allies will continue to make baseless allegations, hoping that the Russia
investigations will somehow deliver for them and
become this president's Watergate.
The result so far? Competing outrage. Just as Democrats are pursuing L-TACs (links, ties, associations or contacts) in search
of a crime, the Obama White House's national security adviser has now landed as one of the ones who will have to answer for her actions
under oath.
Washington is as scandal-primed as I've ever seen it - there is a lot of smoke right now, but no clear fire. So the noise and
finger-pointing will continue. And I have no idea who is winning. The pursuit of Trump may have caught the Obama White House
Ed Rogers is a contributor to the PostPartisan blog, a political consultant and a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George
H.W. Bush White Houses and several national campaigns. He is the chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which
he founded with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour in 1991. Follow @EdRogersDC
Bigly Fan 5:38 PM EDT
How did Ed slip this article past the Wapo /DNC/Loony Left /Bezos Puppet editors?
theworm1 5:37 PM EDT
"The whole pursuit [ of Trump's Russian engagement] is vaguely referred to as looking at President Trump's "links', 'ties', 'associations'
or 'contacts'" . These are the same nouns the media uses to describe the alleged "connections" between al Qaeda and Saddam and
between ISIS and whoever we don't like today. They carry meaning or they don't. I think most people think they do.
Io fifty 5:37 PM EDT
I just read in Breitbart, sure you have too Mr. Rogers ...... that Ms. Rice kept a 'spreadsheet' of phone calls taking place
within the Trump campaign. Will that be in the next installment of this ongoing drama?
"... A Monday report by Bloomberg's Eli Lake said that Rice requested the unmasking of Trump officials. Names of Americans swept up incidentally in the collection of intelligence are normally masked, or kept redacted, in intelligence briefings ..."
"... the former official did not dispute the reporting by Bloomberg. ..."
A Monday report by Bloomberg's Eli Lake said that Rice requested the unmasking of Trump officials.
Names of Americans swept up incidentally in the collection of intelligence are normally masked, or
kept redacted, in intelligence briefings . However, the law provides for much leeway when it
comes to unmasking by National Security Council officials, which suggests that Rice's request was
legal.
This type of request was not a special practice related to the Trump transition team, though
the former official did not dispute the reporting by Bloomberg.
As a procedural matter, an intelligence briefer would have had to clear a requested unmasking
with the head of the agency providing the intelligence. It is unclear why these intelligence intercepts
were considered so important that they would need to be shared with the president's national security
adviser.
A former national security official told CBS News that when such information on U.S. individuals
is approved and provided by the intelligence community, it is typically given directly to the senior
official who made the request and is not broadly disseminated.
On some occasions, the official added, it is necessary to know the identity of U.S. persons in
order to understand the context and substance of the intelligence. There is nothing improper, unusual
or political about such requests.
President Donald Trump tweeted last month
that Trump Tower had been wiretapped by President Obama , a claim for which there is still no
evidence. Later, House Intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.,
said he had obtained evidence showing that the names of Trump associates that were swept up incidentally
by intelligence agencies had been unmasked. That evidence is believed to have been provided to Nunes
by the White House.
Rice had said that she was unaware of the names of Trump officials being swept up incidentally
by intelligence agencies. "I know nothing about this," she told "PBS NewsHour" last month when asked
about Nunes' claim.
"... Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the " most influential " people in news media in 2016. His new book, ..."
"... , is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak . ..."
President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, allegedly
ordered surveillance of Donald Trump's campaign aides during the last election,
and maintained spreadsheets of their telephone calls, the Daily Caller reports.
The alleged spreadsheets add a new dimension to reports on Sunday and Monday by
blogger
Mike Cernovich
and
Eli Lake
of Bloomberg News that Rice had asked for Trump aides' names to be
"unmasked" in intelligence reports. The alleged "unmasking" may have been legal,
but may also have been part of an alleged political intelligence operation to
disseminate reports on the Trump campaign widely throughout government with the
aim of leaking them to the press.
At the time that radio host Mark Levin and Breitbart News
compiled
the evidence of surveillance, dissemination, and leaking - all based
on mainstream media reports - the mainstream media dismissed the story as a "
conspiracy
theory
."
Now, however, Democrats are backing away from that allegation, and from broader
allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, as additional details of
the Obama administration's alleged surveillance continue to emerge.
"What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice
were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump
associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals," diGenova told
The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.
"The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the
Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with," diGenova said. "In short,
the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the
calls."
The surveillance and spreadsheet operation were allegedly "ordered one year
before the 2016 presidential election." According to a
Fox
News
report on Monday, former White House aide Ben Rhodes was also involved.
Rhodes and Rice were both implicated in a disinformation campaign to describe
the Benghazi terror attack in Sep. 2012 as a protest against a YouTube video.
Rhodes also boasted of creating an "
echo
chamber
" in the media to promote the Iran deal, feeding stories to contrived
networks of "experts" who offered the public a steady stream of pro-agreement
propaganda.
On Monday, Rhodes
retweeted
a CNN story quoting Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) claiming that the alleged
unmasking was "nothing unusual."
To the extent they have reported the surveillance story at all, CNN and other
news outlets have focused on Trump's
tweets last month
that alleged President Obama had "wiretapped" Trump Tower,
describing the claims as unfounded.
CNN continued treating story dismissively on Monday, with
The Lead
host Jake Tapper insisting allegations of Russian interference in the election
were more important than what he referred to as the president's effort to distract
from them.
Later in the day, host Don Lemon
declared
he would ignore the surveillance story and urged viewers to do
likewise.
The potential abuse of surveillance powers for political purposes has long
troubled civil libertarians, and could affect the re-authorization of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act later this year.
Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called on former National
Security Advisor Susan Rice to be brought in front of Congress under subpoena and
asked questions about allegations she was behind the unmasking of American
identities in raw surveillance.
Paul also said she should be asked about former President Barack Obama's
knowledge of these alleged activities.
"For years, both progressives and libertarians have been complaining about
these backdoor searches," Paul said. "It's not that we're searching maybe one
foreign leader and who they talk to; we search everything in the whole world.
There were reports a couple of years ago that all of Italy's phone calls were
absorbed in a one month period of time. We were getting Merkel's phone calls; we
were getting everybody's phone calls. But by rebound we are collecting millions of
Americans phone calls. If you want to look at an American's phone call or listen
to it, you should have to have a warrant, the old fashioned way in a real court
where both sides get represented."
"But a secret warrant by a secret court with a lower standard level because
we're afraid of terrorism is one thing for foreigners but both myself and a
Progressive Ron Wyden have been warning about these back door searches for years
and that they could be politicized," he continued. "The facts will come out with
Susan Rice. But I think she ought to be under subpoena. She should be asked did
you talk to the president about it? Did President Obama know about this? So this
is actually, eerily similar to what Trump accused them of which is eavesdropping
on conversations for political reasons."
It's time to end US military engagements in the Middle East.
Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings - the whole
nine yards. Over and done with.
That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and
other US security interests, but a military withdrawal from the Middle East is by far the safest
path for the United States and the region. That approach has instructive historical precedents.
America has been no different from other imperial powers in finding itself ensnared repeatedly
in costly, bloody, and eventually futile overseas wars. From the Roman empire till today, the
issue is not whether an imperial army can defeat a local one. It usually can, just as the United
States did quickly in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
The issue is whether it gains anything by doing so. Following such a "victory," the imperial
power faces unending heavy costs in terms of policing, political instability, guerilla war, and
terrorist blowback.
Wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits. -- Seneca
Iraq has fallen. Saddam's statues are face down in the dust. His evil tyranny is at an end.
So -- can we, like, go home now?
You didn't have to wait long for a perfect symbol of the fundamental weakness at the heart
of the new American imperialism -- sorry, humanitarianism. I'm talking about its chronically short
time frame. I wasn't counting, but the Stars and Stripes must have been up there on the head of
that statue of Saddam for less than a minute. You have to wonder what his commanding officer said
to the marine responsible, Cpl. Edward Chin, when he saw Old Glory up there. ''Son, get that thing
down on the double, or we'll have every TV station from here to Bangladesh denouncing us as Yankee
imperialists!''
An echo of Corporal Chin's imperial impulse can be heard in the last letter Cpl. Kemaphoom
Chanawongse sent home before he and his Marine unit entered Iraq. Chanawongse joked that his camp
in Kuwait was like something out of ''M*A*S*H'' -- except that it would need to be called ''M*A*H*T*S*F'':
''marines are here to stay forever.''
But the question raised by Corporal Chanawongse's poignant final joke -- he was killed a week
later, when his amphibious assault vehicle was blown up in Nasiriya -- is, Are the marines in
Iraq ''to stay forever''? No doubt it is true, as President Bush said, that the America will ''honor
forever'' Corporal Chanawongse and the more than 120 other service personnel so far killed in
the conflict. Honored forever, yes. But there forever? In many ways the biggest mystery about
the American occupation of Iraq is its probable duration. Recent statements by members of the
Bush administration bespeak a time frame a lot closer to ephemeral than eternal. As the president
himself told the Iraqi people in a television broadcast shortly after the fall of Baghdad: ''The
government of Iraq and the future of your country will soon belong to you. . . . We will respect
your great religious traditions, whose principles of equality and compassion are essential to
Iraq's future. We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the
rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave.''
What the president didn't make entirely clear was whether the departing troops would be accompanied
by the retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and his ''Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance,''
newspeak for what would once have been called Omgus -- the Office of Military Government (United
States). Nor was he very specific about when exactly he expected to see the handover of power
to the ''peaceful and representative government'' of Iraqis.
But we know the kind of time frame the president has in mind. In a prewar speech to the American
Enterprise Institute, Bush declared, ''We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day
more.'' It is striking that the unit of measure he used was days. Speaking less than a week before
the fall of Baghdad, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, suggested that Garner would
be running Iraq for at least six months. Other administration spokesmen have mentioned two years
as the maximum transition period. When Garner himself was asked how long he expected to be in
charge, he talked about just three months.
If -- as more and more commentators claim -- America has embarked on a new age of empire, it
may turn out to be the most evanescent empire in all history. Other empire builders have fantasized
about ruling subject peoples for a thousand years. This is shaping up to be history's first thousand-day
empire. Make that a thousand hours.
Let me come clean. I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang. Two years ago --
when it was not at all fashionable to say so -- I was already arguing that it would be ''desirable
for the United States to depose'' tyrants like Saddam Hussein. ''Capitalism and democracy,'' I
wrote, ''are not naturally occurring, but require strong institutional foundations of law and
order. The proper role of an imperial America is to establish these institutions where they are
lacking, if necessary . . . by military force.'' ...
Michael Hudson explains that the Senate hearings on Russia are an effort by Democrats to
torpedo improvements in Russia-US relations and lack any real evidence of Russian meddling
William W Haywood
•
2 hours ago
He builds his story around Clapper being a truth teller? UNBELIEVABLE
idiocy when you expect me to believe this crap!
Seer
•
5 hours ago
Two top US experts on Russia, Professor Stephen Cohen and Ray McGovern
(ex-CIA analyst) and Robert David Steele (ex-CIA0 and Bill Binney (ex
NSA) ALL state the Dems accusations are ALL BOGUS. I tend to believe
them rather than mainstream media and wonder if RN is going mainstream
soon?
Marko
•
6 hours ago
" Russia Hearings Will Lead Nowhere "
Nowhere involving Russia ,
perhaps , but they're leading somewhere involving the U.S. :
They're leading to the uncovering of an illegal political
witch-hunt , probably on the orders of Obama , though Rice will likely
take the fall. Said fall should include jail time , but we all know
that elites don't "do" jail in the U.S. , unlike in the less-advanced
democracies , like Iceland or S. Korea.
Jon Henri Matteau
•
7 hours ago
Really, this collusion is what is harming any US Russian relation,
that and the Ukraine issue. If there wasn't an issue, sit back and let
the investigations prove it. We had NINE redundant investigations into
an exaggerated scandal. what are people afraid of if this is pursued?
weilunion
•
8 hours ago
They are designed by the deep state to lead to nowhere but destraction.
Octavia Bee
•
9 hours ago
Oh my--how does Hudson know there is no evidence? Does he have some
sort of top-secret security clearance? It's also curious how Hudson is
so supportive of Putin, who is a horrific dictator.
He's obviously another deluded Trumpster. Why would this man be given
the role of an expert? Sad!
Donatella
Octavia Bee
•
8 hours ago
More empty rhetoric from the McCarthyite Democrat party. The
Democrat party did not allow the government to inspect the server
that was "hacked". Instead they used the information from a private
company that depends upon them for income. So we really don't know
if it was a hack or a leak by a Democrat insider like Seth Rich.
Obama was more of a "horrific" leader killing tens of thousands of
innocents than Putin. Anyone calling him a "dictator" is just
either parroting talking points or is uninformed.
Donatella
Wallace
•
7 hours ago
As usual you are mindlessly parroting neocon or
Democrats talking points. Putin won his last election
with 63% of the votes cast. And yes, the oligarchs
stole Russian wealth under Yeltsin with the help of the
U.S. Yeltsin would have lost his reelection if it had
not been for the intervention of American help. You
should take your own suggestion and read some history.
The only reason Russia has not experienced high growth
is because of the U.S. imperial financial sanctions.
The U.S. also pushed Russian into a closer alliance
with China, which the U.S. will learn to regret. The
U.S. is on a long-term decline and the 21st century
will see a rising China and Russia.
And yes, his annexation of Crimea by a 90+ vote by
the Crimean voters (majority are Russian) is a good
example of Putins populist strengthening of Russia.
Better than letting the neo-Nazis in Kiev take over
what has been Russian territory and give NATO a
military base.
Question:
Today we see a growing split of the world political
elites. There are globalists who express the interests of transnational corporations
and world financial organisations and there is a new political concept, the so-called
populists who express the interests of the people in their countries. A vivid example
is the election of US President Donald Trump, and there are a number of other
political leaders who are seen as fringe politicians in the West, for example Marine
Le Pen. Given this, it is not by chance that Russia is seen as a leader in half of
the world. Is this view justified? Can we talk about a future victory for one of
these ideologies? How would this influence today's world order?
Sergey
Lavrov:
I wouldn't call Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen "fringe politicians"
if only because they absolutely fit into the principles that underlie the functioning
of the American and French states. Marine Le Pen is a European member of parliament
and her party is active in the national parliament. Donald Trump has been elected in
full accordance with the American constitution, with its two-level indirect system of
electing the president. I would not even call them populists. The word "populist" has
a negative connotation. You said interestingly that populists are those who represent
the people. There are nuances in the interpretation of the word "populist." In modern
Russian it tends to be applied to people who go into politics, but do not bear the
responsibility for their words and just seek to lure voters. A populist is someone
who might promise to triple wages while the budget absolutely cannot support it, etc.
So I would rather call them realists or anti-globalists, if you like. Having said
that, anti-globalists are also associated with hooligans who try to disrupt the G20
and G7 summits, and so on. Come to think of it, even now that the new president of
the world's largest power has declared that it is necessary to think not of global
expansion, but of how America lives, the role of globalists will be changing.
American corporations have already demanded a reduction in manufacturing in
developing countries to move it to the US in order to create jobs there. Granted,
this may not be very good news for the consumer because labour is more expensive in
the US, so the prices for goods, cars and so on will increase. But this is the trend.
In general, President Trump's conceptual slogans during his election campaign to the
effect that America should interfere less in the affairs of other countries and
address its own issues send a very serious signal to the globalists themselves.
Again, up until now the US has been perceived as a symbol of globalism and the
expansion of transnational corporations. Those who represent their interests are the
huge team that has taken up arms against President Trump and his administration and
in general against everything he does, and which tries, in any way possible, to throw
a spanner in the works. Something similar things are happening in France where
mountains of compromising materials of ten or fifteen years ago have been unearthed
which invariably are presented through an "anti-Russia prism." It's been a long time
since I've seen such a dirty campaign when at stake are the concepts and ideas of how
to develop the state and their country, and a smear war is being waged. We had this
not so long ago, and I don't see anything good about it.
In parallel the global market and the global trade system are being reappraised
through the actions and statements of the new US administration. As you know, they
have walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership and said they would work through regional and bilateral
agreements. We believe, though, that the World Trade Organisation which it took us
such a long time to join did provide a common umbrella for world trade. Some regional
structures could be built into these universal systems so as not to break the ties
with the non-members of these regional organisations to maintain some common contact
and exchanges through the WTO. That too is now under threat. So, we are in a period
of rethinking our approaches, and I don't think it has everything to do with Trump.
These changes have been brewing; otherwise the American position on so many issues
could not have changed so abruptly. They were long in coming, and the WTO was in a
major crisis when the Western countries categorically refused to listen to the
leading developing countries on a range of issues connected with investment,
financial services, etc.
I wouldn't say that there are globalists and populists. There are simply people
who want to get elected and follow a well-trodden path and preserve the neoliberal
structures that are all over the place in the West, and then there are people who see
the neoliberalism and permissiveness which are part of the neoliberal approach as a
threat to their societies, traditions and cultures. This is accompanied by
philosophical reflections and practical discussions of what to do about the problem
of illegal migrants, their own roots and religions, whether it is politically correct
to remind people that you are an Orthodox or Catholic or whether you should forget
about religion altogether. I have said more than once that the European Union wanted
to adopt a constitution many years ago and was drafting it. The commission was headed
by Giscard d'Estaing and he proposed a very simple sentence about Europe having
Christian roots. He was prevented from doing so on the grounds that it would not be
politically correct and would insult the Muslims. In reality it turns out that if you
are cautious about making your religious roots known you end up not caring about the
religious roots of others and the consequences are not usually good. Therefore, at
the UN and UNESCO, we actively support all the initiatives that are particularly
relevant today: the Dialogue of Civilisations, the Dialogue of Cultures and the
Dialogue of Religions. It is not by chance that they have become topical issues on
the agenda because they reflect the fermentation within societies and the need to
somehow search for a national consensus.
"... Additionally, the Friday Fox News report cited "a number of sources" with claims that not only were the two White House officials not the sources of the information shared with Nunes, but that Nunes knew of the information in January, and that the agencies where the information came from had blocked Nunes from gaining access to it. Further, the report cited officials within the agencies who said they were frustrated with the spreading of names for political purposes. ..."
After
slamming NBC's coverage
of the "Fake Trump/Russia story",
congratulating
the NYTimes
for "finally getting it" on Obamacare, Trump on Saturday commented on
the previously discussed Fox News story about a "very senior, very well known" U.S.
intelligence official who was allegedly involved in unmasking the names of Trump
associates, and who had reprotedly surveilled Trump before the nomination.
"Wow,
@FoxNews just reporting big news. Source: 'Official behind unmasking is high up. Known
Intel official is responsible. Some unmasked not associated with Russia. Trump team
spied on before he was nominated. If this is true, does not get much bigger. Would be
sad for U.S.," he added.
Wow,
@FoxNews
just
reporting big news. Source: "Official behind unmasking is high up. Known Intel
official is responsible. Some unmasked....
As
discussed Friday night
, A Fox News source (unnamed, because these days that's all
there is, just ask the NYT and Wapo) said that the U.S. official behind the systematic
unmasking of Trump associates and private individuals was "very well known, very high
up, very senior in the intelligence world" and was doing so for political, not nationa
security reasons, intent on "hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team." In other
words, another intel agency war between the old, pro-Hillary Clinton, guard and the new
administration.
Additionally, the Friday Fox News report cited "a number of sources" with claims that
not only were the two White House officials not the sources of the information shared
with Nunes, but that Nunes knew of the information in January, and that the agencies
where the information came from had blocked Nunes from gaining access to it. Further,
the report cited officials within the agencies who said they were frustrated with the
spreading of names for political purposes.
"Our sources, who have direct knowledge of what took place, were upset because those
two individuals, they say, had nothing to do with the outing of this information," Fox
reported.
"We've learned that the surveillance that led to the unmasking of what started way
before President Trump was even the GOP nominee," Fox News reported Adam Housley said.
"The person who did the unmasking, I'm told, is very well known, very high up, very
senior in the intelligence world and is not in the FBI."
"This led to other surveillance which led to multiple names being unmasked. Again
these are private citizens in the United States," said Housley. "
This had
nothing to do with Russia, I'm told, or foreign intelligence of any kind."
"Fox also learned that an individual with direct knowledge that after Nunes had been
approached by his source, the agencies basically would not allow him in at all," said
Housley.
Understandably, the Fox News report has gotten zero media attention on any other news
outlet.
Intel Official Behind "Unmasking" Of Trump Associates Is "Very Senior, Very
Well Known"
Day after day, various media outlets, well really mostly the NYT and WaPo, have
delivered Trump-administration-incriminating, Russia-link-related tape bombs sourced via
leaks (in the hope of keeping the narrative alive and "resisting."). It now turns out,
according to FXN report
, that the US official who "unmasked" the names of multiple
private citizens affiliated with the Trump team is someone "
very well known,
very high up, very senior in the intelligence world."
As Malia Zimmerman and Adam Housley report
, intelligence and House sources with
direct knowledge of the disclosure of classified names (yes, yet another "unnamed
source") said that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, now knows who is
responsible - and that person is not in the FBI (i.e. it is not James Comey)
Housley said
his sources were motivated to come forward by a New York Times
report yesterday which reportedly outed two people who helped Nunes access
information during a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building.
However, Housley's sources claim the two people who helped Nunes "navigate" to the
information were not his sources. In fact,
Nunes had been aware of the information
since January (long before Trump's 'wiretap' tweet) but had been unable to view the
documents themselves because of "stonewalling" by the agencies in question.
Our sources: This surveillance that led to the unmasking of
private names of American citizens started before Trump was the GOP nominee.
For a private citizen to be "unmasked," or named, in an intelligence report is
extremely rare. Typically, the American is a suspect in a crime, is in danger or has to
be named to explain the context of the report.
"The main issue in this case, is not only the unmasking of these names of
private citizens, but the spreading of these names for political purposes that have
nothing to do with national security or an investigation into Russia's interference in
the U.S. election,"
a congressional source close to the
investigation told Fox News
.
The White House, meanwhile, is urging Nunes and his colleagues to keep pursuing what
improper surveillance and leaks may have occurred before Trump took office. They've been
emboldened in the wake of March 2 comments from former Obama administration official
Evelyn Farkas, who on MSNBC suggested her former colleagues tried to gather material on
Trump team contacts with Russia.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Friday her comments and
other reports raise "serious" concerns about whether there was an "organized and
widespread effort by the Obama administration to use and leak highly sensitive
intelligence information for political purposes."
"Dr. Farkas' admissions alone are devastating," he said.
The Trump folks,
if they found out how we knew what we knew
about
the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that
they would try to compromise
those sources and methods
, meaning we would not longer have access to that
intelligence.
Furthermore, Farkas effectively corroborated a
New
York Times article
from early March which cited "Former American officials"
as their anonymous source regarding efforts to leak this surveillance on the Trump
team to Democrats across Washington DC.
* * *
In addition, citizens affiliated with Trump's team who were unmasked were not
associated with any intelligence about Russia or other foreign intelligence, sources
confirmed. The initial unmasking led to other surveillance, which led to other private
citizens being wrongly unmasked, sources said.
"
Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes ...
specifically of Trump transition team members ... is highly suspect and questionable
,"
according to an intelligence source. "Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies
who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was
elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by
one."
* * *
So if the source isn't Comey, has anyone seen Jim Clapper recently? The answer should
emerge soon, meanwhile the ridiculous game with very high stakes of spy vs spy, or in
this case source vs source, continues.
So sorry. Journalism is shit. Very tired of 'source' stories. Cannot trust
any of this crap. Breathless reporters --"We've been talking to sources...."
BFD. Give me a fucking break. Fox tries a little bit of the time, but Fox is
no better than NBC or CNN. Journalists today have no courage. They write
these stories for each other, not for me and you.
There are no journalists; they are simply pritning whatever they are given
by the "sources". They show no curiosity, no suspicion, too credulous to be
a journalist and these are really end times for the MSM.
You are correct. They have been exterminated
... along with the need for truth in media. Since 9-11, all over the
world there has been a concerted and determined effort to target and
remove all those who would stay true to the principles of that craft.
And, to in their place, raise up a raft of imitators who style themselves
reporters, but need have no accountability, nor take the trouble to ever
leave their computer screens to go and "follow" a story.
But what most folks don't see is that this faux-journalism is a direct
consequence of the so-called 'new media' - packaged as "alternative
media" in order to
seem
a challenge and
opposition to special interest groups controlling all communication
channels - but actually just more special interests with even less
accountability!
"There is no longer a stage, not even the minimal illusion that
makes events capable of adopting the force of reality-no more stage
either of mental or political solidarity
:
Only the medium can
make an event - whatever the contents, whether they are conformist or
subversive.
AND -
There are no more media in the literal sense
of the word - that is, of a mediating power between one reality and
another, between one state of the real and another."
The role of medias, in other words, has switched from 'mediating'
between real events and the reader... to medicating the reader with
concocted storylines custom made to appeal to the pre-existing
information preferences of same.
Even more ominously, with the arrival of the TRUMP TWITTER medium, we
reach the full blossoming of the point predicted last year - when a
government staged a coup against itself, using the tools of social media
to coverup their ruse!
https://storify.com/SuaveBel/requiem-for-the-media
"The State has subsumed the role and space of "the media" in
organizing and communicating with "the people." It has re-defined the
terms "democracy" and "participation" on it's own terms, and in
picking up the social media tools which had formerly belonged to "the
people" as a network of communicants, relegated "the media" to the
role of gelded hierophant!"
All of which has been blandly accepted and passed over by a
web-entranced audience which has given over critical thinking skills to a
cabal of 'communications experts' determined to put the lie to that old
adage - 'you can't fool all of the people, all of the time!'
They got that fucker now, whom ever it was. I hope we can finally see some of
the other media pick up on this blockbuster story, probably not though, they
are completely out of their minds with irrationality.
I'd like to see Clapper
get 10 years in buttfuck prison where leroy and shantis practice using their
10" BBCs to make him watertight. Whom ever did this is a complete piece of shit
just like most of the other libtards that don't give a shit about the rule of
law or basic fairness.
Either way, the cat's out of the bag and CNN, et al, won't be able to ignore
this much longer. This story, unlike the Russian fairy tale, actually has some
proof and they will get to the bottom of this crime.
I wish (and hope) you're right. But remember, the intelligence community is
best at misdirection, obfuscation, deceit, and manipulation. If there was
ever a group that could successfully distract or 'arrange' an alternate
truth, it's them.
Isn't Obama pretty much immune from any prosecution? Sure, his reputation
or "legacy" can be tainted (meaning more people will realize what an
a$$clown and criminal he was), but you can't do anything to him, can you?
We have seen no evidence of Trump/Russia collusion and we all know the same
people leaking and smearing Trump aren't waiting for some special moment to
release it....it never works that way and he would not have been allowed by NSA
or CIA to take power if they had it...
Nunes and Schiff have seen info that
was compartmentalized to executive branch obviously, which is all branches
appointed by president CIA,NSA,Defense(Farkas),State(Hillary) etc etc
This has been a set up by Trump from beginning. Flynn knew all his calls
were being recorded and he was fired after eaks to the NYT and WAPO. He
questioned why the info on ISIS he was writing up as head of Defense
Intelligence Agency was being down played and ignored by the half breed...Flynn
will blow the doors off this entire thing...Look up his career...He is a top
level intelligence operative with an ax to grind..He is not some flunky and he
has many sources all throughout the intelligence branches...Nicely played
President Trump...Job is much easier dealing with simpletons
It is definitely someone from the executive branch and that includes CIA
head..The SCIF they are going to is in the old executive office building and
only deals with executive..... state,defense,CIA,NSA etc etc
If I understand correctly, the intel official behind the unmasking of
folks affiliated with Trump campaign, which was taking place dating back
to last summer, is a separate issue from who sheperded Nunes into the
SCIF on the WH grounds (so that he could see docs he had been stonewalled
from seeing), reported to be Ezra Cohen-Watnick of the NSC.
The faction which killed JFK and MLK to send us as papal catspaw to Vietnam
after the president ordered us out with 120 dead; and to restart the Vatican
banker/FedScam he had ended, went on to do 9/11 and is terminally threatened by
God-fearing Americans.
May God bless our president and may Satan's ruling
false-elite pedo homo Fifth Column Beast of (((Gog))) and Babylon on Our Holy
Land be soon cast down, praise God.
Folls forget Trump already ran a sting on his Intel briefing during transistion.
When he was briefed on piss dossier and told no one on his staff, then it was
leaked to press immediately afterwards..President Trump is using tactics folks
like General Flynn perfected in 33 years in the intelligence service.
Funny
shit this letter by Clapper..Trump has been playing these folks BIGLY
"... From Nunes's statements, it's clear that he suspects that this information came from NSA intercepts of Kislyak's phone . An Obama official, probably in the White House, "unmasked" Flynn's name and passed it on to Ignatius. ..."
"... Regardless of how the government collected on Flynn, the leak was a felony and a violation of his civil rights. ..."
"... The leaking of Flynn's name was part of what can only be described as a White House campaign to hype the Russian threat and, at the same time, to depict Trump as Vladimir Putin's Manchurian candidate. ..."
"... On Dec. 29, Obama announced sanctions against Russia as retribution for its hacking activities. From that date until Trump's inauguration, the White House aggressively pumped into the media two streams of information: one about Russian hacking; the other about Trump's Russia connection. In the hands of sympathetic reporters, the two streams blended into one. ..."
"... On Dec. 30, the Washington Post reported on a Russian effort to penetrate the electricity grid by hacking into a Vermont utility, Burlington Electric Department. After noting the breach, the reporters offered a senior administration official to speculate on the Russians' motives. Did they seek to crash the system, or just to probe it? ..."
"... This infrastructure hack, the story continued, was part of a broader hacking campaign that included intervention in the election. The story then moved to Trump: "He has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama's suggestion that the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin." ..."
"... Especially damaging were the hundreds of Internet addresses, supposedly linked to Russian hacking, that the report contained. The FBI and DHS urged network administrators to load the addresses into their system defenses. Some of the addresses, however, belong to platforms that are widely used by the public, including Yahoo servers. At Burlington Electric, an unsuspecting network administrator dutifully loaded the addresses into the monitoring system of the utility's network. When an employee checked his email, it registered on the system as if Russian hackers were trying to break in. ..."
"... While the White House was hyping the Russia threat, elements of the press showed a sudden interest in the infamous Steele dossier, which claimed that Russian intelligence services had caught Trump in Moscow in highly compromising situations. The dossier was opposition research paid for by Trump's political opponents, and it had circulated for months among reporters covering the election. Because it was based on anonymous sources and entirely unverifiable, however, no reputable news organization had dared to touch it. ..."
"... With a little help from the Obama White House, the dossier became fair game for reporters. A government leak let it be known that the intelligence community had briefed Trump on the dossier. If the president-elect was discussing it with his intelligence briefers, so the reasoning went, perhaps there was something to it after all. ..."
Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman
Adam Schiff have both castigated Devin Nunes, the chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee, for his handling of the inquiry into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. They
should think twice. The issue that has recently seized Nunes is of vital importance to anyone who cares about fundamental civil liberties.
The trail that Nunes is following will inevitably lead back to a particularly significant leak . On Jan. 12, Washington Post columnist
David Ignatius
reported that "according to a senior U.S. government official, (General Mike) Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
several times on Dec. 29."
From Nunes's statements, it's clear that he suspects that this information came from NSA intercepts of Kislyak's phone . An Obama
official, probably in the White House, "unmasked" Flynn's name and passed it on to Ignatius.
Regardless of how the government collected on Flynn, the leak was a felony and a violation of his civil rights. But it
was also a severe breach of the public trust. When I worked as an NSC staffer in the White House, 2005-2007, I read dozens of NSA
surveillance reports every day. On the basis of my familiarity with this system, I strongly suspect that someone in the Obama White
House blew a hole in the thin wall that prevents the government from using information collected from surveillance to destroy the
lives of the citizens whose privacy it is pledged to protect.
The leaking of Flynn's name was part of what can only be described as a White House campaign to hype the Russian threat and,
at the same time, to depict Trump as Vladimir Putin's Manchurian candidate.
On Dec. 29, Obama
announced sanctions against Russia as retribution for its hacking activities. From that date until Trump's inauguration, the
White House aggressively pumped into the media two streams of information: one about Russian hacking; the other about Trump's Russia
connection. In the hands of sympathetic reporters, the two streams blended into one.
A report that appeared the day after Obama announced the sanctions shows how. On Dec. 30, the Washington Post
reported on a Russian effort to penetrate the electricity grid by hacking into a Vermont utility, Burlington Electric Department.
After noting the breach, the reporters offered a senior administration official to speculate on the Russians' motives. Did they seek
to crash the system, or just to probe it?
This infrastructure hack, the story continued, was part of a broader hacking campaign that included intervention in the election.
The story then moved to Trump: "He has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama's suggestion that
the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin."
The national media mimicked the Post's reporting. But there was a problem: the
hack
never happened . It was a false alarm - triggered, it eventually became clear, by Obama's hype.
On Dec. 29, the DHS and FBI
published
a report on Russian hacking, which showed the telltale signs of having been rushed to publication. "At every level this report
is a failure,"
said
cyber security expert Robert M. Lee. "It didn't do what it set out to do, and it didn't provide useful data. They're handing
out bad information."
Especially damaging were the hundreds of Internet addresses, supposedly linked to Russian hacking, that the report contained.
The FBI and DHS urged network administrators to load the addresses into their system defenses. Some of the addresses, however, belong
to platforms that are widely used by the public, including Yahoo servers. At Burlington Electric, an unsuspecting network administrator
dutifully loaded the addresses into the monitoring system of the utility's network. When an employee checked his email, it registered
on the system as if Russian hackers were trying to break in.
While the White House was hyping the Russia threat, elements of the press showed a sudden interest in the infamous Steele
dossier, which
claimed
that Russian intelligence services had caught Trump in Moscow in highly compromising situations. The dossier was opposition research
paid for by Trump's political opponents, and it had
circulated for months among reporters covering the election. Because it was based on anonymous sources and entirely unverifiable,
however, no reputable news organization had dared to touch it.
With a little help from the Obama White House, the dossier became fair game for reporters. A government
leak let it be known that the intelligence community had briefed Trump on the dossier. If the president-elect was discussing
it with his intelligence briefers, so the reasoning went, perhaps there was something to it after all.
By turning the dossier into hard news, that leak weaponized malicious gossip. The same is true of the Flynn-Kislyak leak. Ignatius
used the leak to
deepen speculation about collusion between Putin and Trump: "What did Flynn say (to Kislyak)," Ignatius asked, "and did it undercut
the U.S. sanctions?" The mere fact that Flynn's conversations were being monitored deepened his appearance of guilt. If he was innocent,
why was the government monitoring him?
It should not have been. He had the right to talk to in private - even to a Russian ambassador. Regardless of what one thinks
about him or Trump or Putin, this leak should concern anyone who believes that we must erect a firewall between the national security
state and our domestic politics. The system that allowed it to happen must be reformed. At stake is a core principle of our democracy:
that elected representatives control the government, and not vice versa.
"... We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security. ..."
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511
January 11, 2017
DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump
This evening, I had the opportunity to speak with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss recent media reports about our briefing
last Friday. I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are
extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.
We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members
of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence
Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information
in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure
that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.
President-elect Trump again affirmed his appreciation for all the men and women serving in the Intelligence Community, and I assured
him that the IC stands ready to serve his Administration and the American people.
James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence
" if Obama had not created 5 years of shelter to small oil drill baby fracking on private land
with oil embargoes limiting global supply in conjunction with restrictions on oil production on
Federal leases?"
This would be an interesting myth: the myth about this great oilman Obama ...
Do you know how much junks bonds were issued during this spectacular increase is shale oil
output ?
and it was really spectacular: from 5.7 million barrels/day in 2011 to 9.2 million barrels/day
in 2014 and 9.4 million barrels/day in March 2015.
The United States increased production by 5.1 million barrels per day (Mb/d) from 2010 to 2015.
In comparison, the increase in production from Persian Gulf was less at 5.0 Mb/d. Total world
production increase was 8.4 Mb/d. Which means the rest of the world oil producers declined by
some ~ 1.7 Mb/d. This was despite Canadian production rising 1.0 Mb/d plus increases from Russia,
and Brazil. Most oil producing countries are now in a long term decline or plateau at best. US
is in decline, but that might reverse with prices hitting $70.
But it was not just oil production. It was oil plus junk bonds production and it is unclear
in what area they were the most efficient :-).
If you add cost of bankruptcies in 2015-2017 to the cost of US shale oil it becomes so high,
that it would be more cost efficient to buy it elsewhere and do not risk ecological consequences.
"Half of the current [US] producers have no legitimate right to be in a business where the
price forecast even in a recovery is going to be between, say, $50, $60. They need [above] $70
oil to survive,"
And even now then prices somewhat recovered to $50 per barrel level the only possibility to
survive for US shale oil producers are "evergreen" loans.
That might change if the price hits $70 or higher. But I would keep my fingers crossed on that:
something is happening in the world if oil managed to get this low and stay at this level in 2015-2017.
But Obama has one thing under the belt: his administration managed to crash oil prices and
this way "saved" Obama recovery, while partially wiping out the US shale.
There is no way to
tell what might have been done to Obama's passport records by those who accessed them.
Key information could have been altered or destroyed. On April 8, 2008, after the
breach became public,
Obama
confessed
to having taken a trip to Pakistan in 1981. The then-candidate said: "I
traveled to Pakistan when I was in college." Journalist Jake
Tapper
was surprised and said: "This last part -- a college trip to Pakistan -- was news to
many of us who have been following the race closely. And it was odd that we hadn't hear
about it before, given
all the talk
of Pakistan during this campaign."
Did Obama confess
to this trip, which he doesn't mention in either of his autobiographies, because of the
passport breach? While the oft-repeated charge that Americans were forbidden to travel
to Pakistan in 1981
appears
to be false
, questions remain about why Obama took the trip at all, and what he did
there. Indian counterterrorism expert
Bahukutumbi Raman asked
pointed questions about this trip:
Why did he
keep mum on his visit to Pakistan till this question was raised? Has he disclosed all
the details regarding his Pakistan visit? Was it as innocuous as made out by him --
to respond to the invitation of a Pakistani friend or was there something more to it?
As I read about Obama's visit to Pakistan in the 1980s, I could not help thinking of
dozens of things. Of the Afghan jihad against communism. Of the fascination of many
Afro-Americans for the jihad. Of the visits of a stream of Afro-Americans to Pakistan
to feel the greatness of the jihad. Of their fascination for Abdullah Azzam[.]
It bears noting
that John Brennan has made some incredible
pro-terror remarks
-- some in Arabic no less -- about the beauty of jihad.
Raman
acknowledged that these were "morbid" speculations but said they were "understandable
when one has a feeling that one has not been told the whole story, but only a part of
it."
And Obama
confessed to this trip two weeks after his passport was tampered with. There is a video
here
of Obama's
response to the passport breach back on March 21, 2008. It's telling that he assures
everyone that he has nothing to hide: "
not because I have any particular concerns"
(0:23). This is before the birth certificate controversy. Who would say that -- unless
he
did
have particular concerns?
Obama said at
the time that attempts to "tap into people's personal records" were "a problem not just
for me, but for how our government functions."
The absolute nadir of Obama's presidency was the moment
he chose to try to negotiate
with Republicans over the debt ceiling (which limits the amount
the federal government can borrow) to try to get a "grand bargain" on taxes and social insurance.
If Republicans would agree to some tax hikes, he would get Democrats to support large cuts to Social
Security and Medicare. This was stone idiocy on several levels: It accepted the legitimacy of Republicans
taking the debt ceiling hostage - thus threatening national default and world financial crisis -
to extract unrelated policy concessions; and as policy it was actively harmful. The narrative of
looming debt crisis due to excessively generous social insurance was and is
despicable
garbage
- and austerity and cuts to social insurance were the exact opposite of what was needed
in July 2011, when the unemployment rate was
9.0 percent
.
Obama was so enamored of the idea of being the president who finally cut through the partisan
gridlock that he nearly undermined two of the country's most foundational programs. The only reason
the grand bargain didn't pass was that the extremist faction of House Republicans refused to countenance
any tax increases whatsoever
.
After that humiliating failure, Obama retreated somewhat from trying to get compromises. Locked
out of traditional governing, but still needing to address emergencies like climate change, he ended
up resorting to a lot of unilateral executive orders.
But it seems this was merely a tactical retreat. In his
2015 State of the Union address
, and
again at the
2016 Democratic National Convention
, he once more sounded the same anti-partisan notes of compromise
and reasoned discussion. And as
Jeff Stein reports
after interviewing multiple top figures in Obama circles, the former president
is preparing to redouble his anti-partisan efforts with a new foundation dedicated towards a rather
content-free notion of "citizenship." This was also one major reason why Obama installed his loyal
follower Tom Perez at the DNC - because he could liberate "himself from having to personally respond
to Trump over the next several years" and thus stay above the partisan fray.
Now, as
Steve Randy Waldman writes
, it's
not wrong to believe that a nation-state needs a basic commonality of belief and fellow feeling among
the citizenry to succeed. Tying the nation together with cords of mutual dependence is one underrated
function of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, for instance. But when confronted with a political
faction fanatically dedicated to cutting those cords, the right approach is not to keep reaching
across the aisle to get tased. Instead, as FDR showed when New Deal Democrats constructed the basic
structure of modern American society, one must comprehensively defeat that faction politically, over
and over, until their views are exiled from the political mainstream. With agreement again defined
along reasonable lines, civil political discourse will flourish once more.
But until then, it's fight or lose.
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
"... Unmasking could be legitimate as well – we don't know right now. But to continue to put forward the proposition that Trump associates were not surveilled (by the Obama ADMINISTRATION) is simply preposterous. ..."
"... And the trust in the honor and integrity of CIA and intelligence agency officials assumed by the MSM when there are so many instances of documented lying is hard to reconcile with an objective press. ..."
"... I pretty much suspect there were some standard Washington scams/influence peddling going on – more so because this is Trump – and someone in the Obama administration was over anxious to leak this information, developed from classified information to hurt Trump. The only problem is that intelligence gathered information is not to be used for common criminal law. So we have the common law breaking on the Trump side and we have constitutional law breaking from the Obama side. Unfortunately, this country seems to have lost all desire to restrain the government from access to ALL communications of US citizens. And the MSM seems entirely unconcerned about unlimited government snooping. ..."
"What Devin Nunes Knows" [Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal]. Why Nunes
left his cab:
Around the same time, Mr. Nunes's own intelligence sources informed him that
documents showed further collection of information about, and unmasking of,
Trump transition officials. These documents aren't easily obtainable, since
they aren't the "finished" intelligence products that Congress gets to see.
Nonetheless, for weeks Mr. Nunes has been demanding intelligence agencies turn
over said documents-with no luck, so far.
Mr. Nunes earlier this week got his own source to show him a treasure trove
of documents at a secure facility. Here are the relevant details:
First, there were dozens of documents with information about Trump
officials. Second, the information these documents contained was not related to
Russia. Third, while many reports did "mask" identities (referring, for
instance, to "U.S. Person 1 or 2") they were written in ways that made clear
which Trump officials were being discussed. Fourth, in at least one instance, a
Trump official other than Mr. Flynn was outright unmasked. Finally, these
documents were circulated at the highest levels of government.
=============================================================
Other than right wing sites, this is the first instance of the argument I have
seen of the repubs that has been put forward coherently and the issue stated
cogently. That does not mean its true, but at least it is put forward.
I was watching CNN last night and the blonde commentator woman (Kirsten ???)
put forward the proposition that the intelligence agencies "collecting"
information on Trump associates does not mean Trump associates were surveilled
– now this was in the context that the discussion was about the fact that Trump
individuals were supposedly illegally "unmasked" by the intelligence agencies
because the information was ..collected because they were under surveillance.
Parsing "collection: vs "surveilling" was disingenuous beyond reality. One can
put forward the idea that Trump personnel had conversations because of
"incidental collection" or that Trump personnel are lawbreakers or treasonous
as a reason for the surveillance (if surveillance happened – it seems obvious
that it did happen) and the surveillance was legitimate.
Unmasking could be legitimate as well – we don't know right now. But to
continue to put forward the proposition that Trump associates were not
surveilled (by the Obama ADMINISTRATION) is simply preposterous.
Again, I just see purposeful obtuseness. And the trust in the honor and
integrity of CIA and intelligence agency officials assumed by the MSM when
there are so many instances of documented lying is hard to reconcile with an
objective press.
I pretty much suspect there were some standard Washington scams/influence
peddling going on – more so because this is Trump – and someone in the Obama
administration was over anxious to leak this information, developed from
classified information to hurt Trump. The only problem is that intelligence
gathered information is not to be used for common criminal law. So we have the
common law breaking on the Trump side and we have constitutional law breaking
from the Obama side. Unfortunately, this country seems to have lost all desire
to restrain the government from access to ALL communications of US citizens.
And the MSM seems entirely unconcerned about unlimited government snooping.
"... "The question is why? Who else did it? Was it ordered? By whom?" Mr. Spicer said. "But I think more and more the substance that continues to come out on the record by individuals continues to point to exactly what the president was talking about that day." ..."
"... TheGatewayPundit.com, a right-wing site, called it a "notorious" interview and said it proved Obama administration officials had disseminated "intel gathered on the Trump team." Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that Ms. Farkas had made "just an incredible statement." Breitbart News reported on Mr. Priebus's comments. ..."
"... The comments by Ms. Farkas, Mr. Spicer said, were evidence that Mr. Trump or his associates "were surveilled, had their information unmasked, made it available, was politically spread." He said that such stories were proof that Obama administration officials had "misused, mishandled and potentially did some very, very bad things with classified information." ..."
The White House on Friday revived President Trump's unproven wiretapping allegations against the Obama administration, insisting
that there is new evidence that it conducted "politically motivated" surveillance of Mr. Trump's presidential campaign.
Senior government officials, including James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, and lawmakers from both parties have repeatedly and
forcefully rejected the president's claim, saying they have seen no evidence of direct surveillance. A spokesman for former President
Barack Obama has denied that Mr. Obama ever ordered surveillance of Mr. Trump or his associates.
But Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, asserted to reporters during his daily news briefing that members of Mr. Obama's
administration had done "very, very bad things," just as Mr. Trump
alleged without proof on March 4 when
he posted messages on Twitter accusing Mr. Obama of
"wire tapping" his phones at Trump Tower.
"The question is why? Who else did it? Was it ordered? By whom?" Mr. Spicer said. "But I think more and more the substance that
continues to come out on the record by individuals continues to point to exactly what the president was talking about that day."
... ... ...
Mr. Spicer's remarks on Friday seemed designed to give new life to the allegations against Mr. Obama after weeks of trying to
focus attention on the damage that Mr. Spicer said had been caused by leaks from the investigations into Russia's involvement in
the 2016 presidential campaign.
TheGatewayPundit.com, a right-wing site, called it a "notorious" interview and said it proved Obama administration officials had
disseminated "intel gathered on the Trump team." Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show
that Ms. Farkas had made "just an incredible statement." Breitbart News reported on Mr. Priebus's comments.
In fact, the reports do not back up the allegations that Mr. Trump or any officials in his campaign were ever under surveillance.
In the March 2 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, Ms. Farkas said she had expressed concern to her former colleagues about
the need to secure intelligence related to the Russian hacking of the American election.
Ms. Farkas was commenting on a New York Times article a day earlier that documented how in the days before Mr. Trump's inauguration,
Obama administration officials had sought to ensure the preservation of those documents in order to leave a clear trail for government
investigators after Mr. Trump took office.
In a statement she gave to the American Spectator, a conservative publication, Ms. Farkas said the furor over her remarks was
"a wild misinterpretation of comments I made on the air in March." She added, "I was out of government, I didn't have any classified
information, or any knowledge of 'tapping' or leaking or the N.Y.T. article before it came out." White House officials also confronted
on Friday the disclosure that Mr. Flynn, who resigned in February over his contacts with Russian officials, has offered to testify
before the two congressional committees investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia about those contacts in exchange for immunity
from prosecution.
Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Friday morning that he agreed with Mr. Flynn's proposal.
"Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic
proportion!" Mr. Trump wrote.
The comments by Ms. Farkas, Mr. Spicer said, were evidence that Mr. Trump or his associates "were surveilled, had their information
unmasked, made it available, was politically spread." He said that such stories were proof that Obama administration officials had
"misused, mishandled and potentially did some very, very bad things with classified information."
"... The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780's and 1790's both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything resembling true economic democracy ..."
Thank you, thank you, Lambert, for that excellent Matt Stoller piece ( https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hamilton-hustle-stoller
). At the risk of repeating what others I hope have already read, this stood out for me:
As economist Simon Johnson pointed out in a 2009 essay in The Atlantic titled "The
Quiet Coup," what the bailouts truly represented was the seizure of political power by a small
group of American financiers. Just as in the founding era, we saw a massive foreclosure crisis
and the evisceration of the main source of middle class wealth. A bailout, similar to one that
created the national debt, ensured that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of a small
group. The Citizens United decision and the ever-increasing importance of money in
politics have strong parallels to the property disenfranchisement along class lines that occurred
in the post-Revolutionary period. Just as turnout fell to record lows in much of the country
in 2014, turnout collapsed after the rebellions were put down. And in another parallel, Occupy
Wall Street protesters camped out across the country were evicted by armed guards-a martial
response coordinated by banks, the federal government, and many Democratic mayors.
The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780's and 1790's
both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything
resembling true economic democracy "
b's quote from Obama is from January 2016. I don't think Obama was EVER serious about fighting ISIS.
He helped to create ISIS when he ignored their rise, calling them al Queda's "JV team". He confirmed
his support for ISIS with his "leading from behind" policy.
In January 2016, the US was starting the charade of separating moderate rebels. We know how that
farce turned out.
Even after the San Bernardino (Dec. 2015) and Orlando (Jun. 2016) terror attacks - attributed to
ISIS - nothing really changed. For Obama it was business as usual.
Trump initiated talks between US military command and Russians for the first time since 2014. Gen.
Dunford met with Gen. Gerasimov in Feb. 2017. We now see Israel stepping up operations in Syria as a
result of US pulling back from the failed
'Assad must go!'
policy.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Has there been any real change or just a hiatus? I don't think we'll know until Trump meets with
Putin.
Many in the US (esp. neocons) will have a hard time coming to terms with a multi-lateral world. Whatever
peace is offered to Russia is likely to be conditioned on pulling Russia out of China's orbit.
I'm sorry about this long contribution, but as I was writing this, more information and
ideas came to hand.
Iraqi situation:
Recently, Iraqi PM Al-Abadi met with President Trump in the White House.
As well as the usual niceties of a meeting between two heads of state in Washington,
the meeting centred around three main areas where the US has objectives that need to be
address by their Iraqi counterparts:
1) The Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU): These forces must be disbanded, and are seen as
a stumbling block in the face of US objectives in Iraq and the wider region. There has been
some indications that PM Al-Abadi will disband them after the elimination of Daesh/ISIS,
allowing those that wish to remain to be integrated into the Iraqi security apparatus and
disbanding those that do not. This is the "objective", but whether Al-Abadi can deliver
is an entirely different matter. Already, Iraqi members of parliament have come out in protest
at there mere possibility of the disbandment of the PMU, stating that the PM does not have
the legal authority to disband them, and it needs parliamentary approval, where any MP voting
for this will be committing political suicide due to the popularity the the PMU among ordinary
Iraqis.
2) Permanent american Bases in Iraq and increasing the number of troops in the country:
This is a big issue for President Trump. During his presidential campaign, he repeatedly
stated the need to control Iraqi oil, and stated that leaving Iraq was a mistake. He even
said this IN FRONT OF PM Al-Abadi several times.There is also widespread concern amongst
Iraqis that the US is on its way back to Iraq, and in large numbers- some report a figure
of up to fifty thousand troops, in permanent bases. There is also a very large US
military base being build in Al Qayyarah area in Northern Iraq (about half way between Beiji
and Mosul), that reports say will equal the size of Incirlik. This is another very "hot"
topic in Iraq, and has widespread rejection by the Iraqi people. Once again, Iraqi MPs state
that Al-Abadi DOES NOT have legal authority to allow permanent bases or keep foreign troops
permanently in Iraq, and that such a step would need approval by parliament. Again, any
MP voting for this will be committing political suicide. There is genuine fear amongst Iraqis
about the situation "after" Daesh/ISIS. The concern is, that in the event the Government
DOES NOT cede to the will of the US, and approve bases and troops etc.. there will be a
dramatic political change, either in the form of a coup, or declaration of a state of emergency,
through which special measures will take place. There is also talk of appointing a military
governor for the mainly Sunni provinces of Nainawa, Salahuldeen (Saladin) and Anbar- a de
facto state within a state- this could link up with Eastern Syria (see bellow).
3) Moving Iraq away from Iran and closer to the Saudi "camp". The recent visit to Iraq by
the Saudi Foreign Minister has been well covered. There was also a meeting between the Iraqi
PM and the Saudi King on the 29th on March. Al-Abadi's speech at the Heads of State of the
Arab League in Jordan (29th March) was notable in that it was close to the Saudi position
on several topics: a) His statement did not mention Syria, b) It stated that Iraq will "expel
ISIS outside Iraq" { ?into Syria as per the objectives of others wishing to topple the Syrian
state}, c) Is stressed the need for a unified Arab front against threats to Iraqi
sovereignty, or the sovereignty of any Arab nation {reference to alleged Iranian interference
in the region}. On the face of it, it seems that Iraq is moving away from Iran and edging
closer to the Saudi camp, albeit slowly, but this is purely at the level of the current
Iraqi government. I think efforts to distance Iraq from Iran and closer to Saudi Arabia
will ultimately fail, for two reasons:
Firstly, The vast majority of Iraqi people view Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Monarchies
very negatively. Unlike Iraqi politicians, who will certainly have some personal gains from
closer ties with Saudi Arabia, Iraqi people are unwilling to just "forgive and forget" how
the Saudis and others persistently conspired against the Iraqi people over the years. It
was the Saudis and other Gulf States who supported Saddam Hussein and his regime, which
oppressed Iraqis terribly, they supported him to the tune of over 200 billion dollars for
the war against Iran and persistently opposed the political process since 2003 (and Democracy
was NOT the reason!). More recently, the Saudis have been supporting Daesh/ISIS
both financially and ideologically. This support has carried on unabated to this day.
Secondly: the links between Iraq and Iran are much closer and deeper than others realise,
and including at a cultural, religious and tribal level, and no government can alter that.
The only exception to this would be a harsh dictatorial regime, such as that of Saddam Hussein,
whereby government policy had absolutely no relation to Iraqi public opinion, and was simply
a tool for carrying out the wishes of the "Dear Leader".
Other Iraq developments:
A) PMU still barred from entering Tel Afar. The Iraqi government has succumbed to pressure
from Turkey to prevent Tal Afar from being liberated, with a threat of invasion by a Turkish
force stationed at the boarder town of Silopi should the PMUs enter Tel Afar.
B) Rumours that Daesh/ISIS evacuating injured/ getting supplies from through a corridor
to the North of Mosul, via Masoud Barzani controlled territory / Turkey, and plans are to
slow down the Iraqi advance long enough for the majority of Daesh/ISIS forces to evacuate
into Syria. The route takes them through Tell Kayf and Batnay (see Southfront mosul situation
update map 31 March
https://southfront.org/military-situation-in-mosul-on-march-31-2017-iraqi-map-update/ ).
Syria situation:
With the ongoing advance towards Raqqa by US/SDF forces, the bid event recently was the
surprise Tabqa operation. It is notable that the airborne landings in Tabqa by a small US/SDF
force occurred with relatively little resistance from Daesh/ISIS, with few casualties.
Some have concluded that the majority of ISIS had already withdrawn. Contrast this with
the Ithriyah-Raqqa offensive carried out by the Syrian Arab Army in 2016, whereby the SAA
suffered heavy casualties and resulted in Daesh/ISIS gains. There are also reports of a
rapid withdraw on ISIS from East As-Suwayda to reinforce strength in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and
As-Sukhnah.
The US/SDF landings in Tabqa aimed at achieving several objectives. The most important is
blocking the path of the Syrian army and allies from Reqqa.
If/when US/SDF forces defeat Daesh/ISIS in Reqqa , they will have virtual control of
the whole of Eastern Syria, save for three pockets of SAA control in Qamishli, Hasakah and
Deir Ezzur, as well as some areas where Daesh/ISIS will remain.
The Eastern part of Syria is where the baulk of the oil and gas is located as well as
being the agricultural heartland of the country. The US secretary of State, Tillerson
stated that the the US longer sees toppling President Assad as a primary objective. This
may be the case (for now), but on the ground, events are such that Syria is being divided
into regions of influence whereby the Damascus Government no longer has authority over large
swathes of it. We are witnessing a de facto federalisation of Syria, with the Eastern part
no longer under the rule of Damascus, and in effect a US protectorate, with troops on the
ground. The creation of this "region" also serves another critical US objective in
the region - it acts as a "wall" separating Iran & "Shia" Iraq from the Government of Syria
and Lebanon. There are whispers that parts of Western Iraq will be added to this new entity
in a "redrawing" of the political maps in the region. As stated in a previous post of mine,
I believe that Daesh/ISIS will concentrate its forces in Deir Ezzor after its defeat in
Raqqa, for a final "showdown" with other forces. It will likely face both US/SDF and Syrian/Russian
forces there, but time will tell.
Turkey announced the Euphrates Shield has concluded. Turkey has managed to split the two
areas of Kurdish influence in Syria, but I believe the operation was concluded as there
was no more room for Turkey to move, rather than by choice. Erdogan has finally got a foothold
in Norther Syria. Could this area now be used to house refugees as per "safe zones" advocated
by Turkey, Saudi and now the new US administration?
Arab Summit:
Some are sating that the recent summit of the Arabs Heads of State held in Jordan on
March 29th marked the unofficial start of the "Arab NATO" to face Iran. There was the usual
anti-Iran rhetoric from the "usual suspects" but Iraq was usually cold towards Iran. The
question of Palestine was high on the agenda at the summit, but it is thought that this
is merely being used as a tool to provide "political cover" for the upcoming Sunni NATO,
with an expected summit to be held sometime down the line in Washington that will bring
together these Arab leaders together with their Israeli counterparts in a public display
of a new type alliance between Arabs and Israelis to face the "Iranian threat".
War in Yemen:
There are signs that the US is about to enter the war in Yemen, against the government
in Sana'a (Houthi-Saleh alliance). This is seen as a war against Iran in Yemen. There
are currently three US destroyers with support vessels in the Red Sea. The is a media storm
from the Saudi side regarding the port of Hodeida, and that it is used to smuggle weapons
into Yemen, stressing the importance of "taking it out". The next large operation could
well be the battle for the West coast of Yemen (on the Red Sea). The Sana'a forces have
stated that they will NOT tolerate an attack on Hodeida, and any such action will mean a
major escalation on their part. At present, the Sana'a forces have refrained from going
deep into Saudi territory- but this could change and their forces may receive the political
green light to proceed if Hodeida is attacked.
End in sight in Syria .....?
Things seem to be clearing up in Syria.. Daesh/ISIS is on the ropes, US/SDF making steady
progress in the East, and the Syrian army, backed by the Russians is in control of most
of the major population areas, and the fact that the US publicly states that removal of
Assad is no longer a priority have lead some to argued that it is the beginning of the end..
that the players are making their final touches before a political settlement is reached..
they argue that at the start, the US and its allies wanted regime change by supporting the
rebels, and aimed at taking the whole of Syria- this has failed. Now, the US and its allies
are involved directly and will settle for a different model, whereby there are regions of
influence, a division between the US and Russian Axis. I disagree with this. I think it
is still too early, and the US, Turkey, Saudi and other will still relish the overthrow
of the Syrian government- and as things stand, they cant do it, but are still open to seizing
any opportunity that may present itself in the future to achieve this. That is the only
explanation for the lack of full co-ordination between the US and Russia to bring a devastating
defeat to Daesh/ISIS, Al-Nusra and groups allied to them. If the US and its allies were
serious in accepting what gains they have made, then they would start the full co-ordination
of efforts to defeat the extremists with a view of working out a final political settlement.
We have to remember that Daesh/ISIS and other groups are only a tool, a means to an end.
they are weapons on mass destruction- some may have outlived their usefulness and will need
to be exterminated, others still have a role to play.
Its not over yet,. it is not clear what the final outcome for both Iraq and Syria will be
after Daesh/ISIS. As regards Syria, I think there is a false sense of security, and the
danger to the Syrian government will stem from the South- contrary to expectations.
I used to use the term "Obusha" for the hybrid nature of the last two administrations where
the Coke/Pepsi branding masked the fact that the core policies were the same. Perhaps "Trama"
is the term for the current state where the Washington-Wall Street consensus types scream
about how Trump is an abomination while in reality business as usual goes in most areas.
Certainly Trama describes the impact on the rest of the world, particularly in Syria, Yemen,
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.
Excellent analysis. I wonder what the Iranian, Syrian, Hezbollah reaction will
be. Part of Trump's goal, I suspect, is moving Russia away from Iran. There are already
points of contention between Russia and Syria/Iran namely that the former has not made the
continued unity of Syrian territory a non-negotiable condition. Which begs the question
what Russia's actual goals in Syria are.
b - thank you... the only dupes who are going to swallow the change in the words, are the
same dupes who believed all the previous lies... meanwhile, until an actual change happens,
it will be the same biz as usual from the same group of liars... they must think folks are
complete idiots to believe any of their bs!! change my ass... hopey changey, lol...
yes b, Haley also said "Assad regime, Iran and Russia committed war crimes"
No, never mind "war crimes" Assad may stay because we failed the regime change thingy
after Mr. Putin entered in support of Syria..Bad Putin who hijacked our elections they are
no match for us. So, our new focus is North Korea, third world dictator Kim Jung-Un, piece
of cake we can readily beat just like we did the Taliban in Afghanistan. Kim Jung's half
brother was offed - we will continue to send a message. This time around we really do intend
to teach NK people a lesson in democracy and vassalship. See..the USA Sec. of War
In London, Mad-Dog Mattis: "North Korea 'Has Got to Be Stopped"
Mad-Dog is an apt descriptor MAD --setting up the final event for total collapse.
I gotta go buy some supplies: plastic sheeting, duct tape, water and food. Can't afford
a luxury underground bunker.
John McCain loves his friends, ISIS.
Here he is outing himself on Hannity Show
saying:
"ISIS! not true" "I know these people intimately, I know these people I am in contact with
them all the time."
Temporarily Sane 19 "There are already points of contention between Russia and Syria/Iran
namely that the former has not made the continued unity of Syrian territory a non-negotiable
condition. Which begs the question what Russia's actual goals in Syria are."
There is
the matter of the UNSC resolution, that Russia put up and US agreed to, that Syria retains
its territorial integrity.
US may occupy part of Syria for awhile. Nothing Russia can do about that in the short term,
short of going to war with the US. Russia is looking at the long term.
Okay, it is now six years and counting. How many years will it take for you to figure out
that the USA prefers Assad to the religiously conservative rural poor? Maybe both Obama
and Trump took the advice of the RAND corporation:: "Regime collapse, while not considered
a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests"
Russia's primary goal in Syria is to destroy the Islamic terrorists
so they can't be sent on to Russia. They have already taken out around 4500 terrorists whose
passports show they were from RF states. The Russia media is littered with details of small
scale takfiri terrorist acts around the RF southern borders - the biggest most recent was
6 or so taken out on the border to Chechnya.
Secondary goals include the support for primacy of international law relating to national
integrity, support for an ally, testing military systems in real conditions and increasing
the strength of the multipolar opposition to Anglo-Zionist hegemony.
There is the matter of the UNSC resolution, that Russia put up and US agreed to, that
Syria retains its territorial integrity.
If Kurds get de-facto independence within Syria (according to their manifesto) a la Barzanistan,
resolution of "territorial integrity" technically remains intact. Russia could make such
concessions (even blasted Assad for desiring to return all of Syria's territory) if only
US would agree to barter, so far they didnt (or maybe Trump/Putin already did, who knows).
While for Syria/Iran its as bad as it gets.
US may occupy part of Syria for awhile. Nothing Russia can do about that in the short
term, short of going to war with the US. Russia is looking at the long term.
US wont be the one occupying, Kurds will (US will just rule them). Do you think Syria
will start a war with Kurds (especially under US protection)? Of course not. Kurds expanded
their territory 10x (now finishing off ethnic cleansing that ISIS started), occupied as
many oilfields as they could.
Kurds themselves are divided, but US will make sure their puppets have the power, while
pro-Syrian Kurds will be marginalized or simply killed. The idea that Kurds will come to
their senses is slim and most likely wont happen, just look at Barzanistan. Independence
US dangling in front of them is powerful motivator, not to speak of how much influence and
money US, Israel, monarchies, etc. have.
As for Russia, both short and long term its looking after its own interests, which may
or may not be whats the best for Syria. Hence the clashes.
The more US soldiers are stuck in Islamic badlands (Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq) - without
any chances of even remotely favorable outcome - the better it's for America's foes. The
US will keep bleeding financially, emotionally, spiritually and literally, until its military
machine simply unravels and disappears into a memory hole. The Russians and the Chinese
must be watching US moves with utter amazement. America's inability to perform even the
simplest geopolitical calculations may very well be unprecedented in world's history.
While i agree that the goal remains one of dividing Syria, I doubt it will work out as planned
by the US/Saudis/Israelis etc. Raqqa is not Kurd territory and I'm skeptical that the various
arab tribes there are going to accept governance by a Kurd/US alliance. I also wonder why
Kurds are liberating Raqqa. The main advantage to them beyond killing ISIS is really leverage
in negotiations with Assad. Do you want Raqqa back? Well here is what we want. I have a
hard time believing the Kurds really expect to occupy Arab territories under the nose of
Assad, Russia and Turkey for any extended period of time?
Net: capturing Raqqa gives the kurds bargaining power against the Asaad government towards
Kurd autonomy.
Tell the American government that they'll have to apply for a VISA before you'll them come
into your country. Personally, I don't know why you'd want the bastards to come for a visit. If
you think your confused now wait until the inmates from the USA finish with their visit.
Obama was never a world-class leader - not even close. An arguably good speaker but not on
topics of state, mostly on ethnic divide, cummunal politics - things that touch heart strings
in disadvantaged sections of society (minorities, unemployed whites, etc).
As a politician he was pedantic (community level); as a statesman, zero.
Don Corleone : Good. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service
for me. But until that day - accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.
It's time they nailed everyone in the Obama Administration to the wall, then follow up with
every Republican in a former Bush Administration who is a NeverTrump douche and handcuff them
to one from Obama's group.
The only reason there are Republican - Never Trumpers is that they're terrified all their sins
will surface.
Once Trump starts reaming Obama and Clinton, they'll turn on Bush, etc.
Someone should shit or get off the pot with this Russian stuff... The REAL STORY IS SPYING
ON US CITIZENS AND CONGRESS AND OBAMA'S USE OF CLASSIFIED INTEL AND COMEY BRENNAN CLAPPER CRIMES.....
Lets get to it
There is nothing Russia could divulge that would come as a surprise to most of us here. At
this point it would just be a confirmation of the highly corrupt and immoral behavior we've seen
this government engage in for decades now. Besides, if we couldn't throw Bush and Cheney in the
slammer after what they did, what hope would we have to hold Obama and Clinton accountable? Until
further notice, this class of folks is above the law.
The Progressive Liberal Democrats who have been staunch allies with the Russians for nearly
50 years have now turned on them to hide their own failure in running Hillary. Big mistake Mr.
Schumer.
The Russians are looking out for Russia. They will uncork a plethora of very bad news for you,
including all the private dealings Progressives have had with them ('ala Ted Kennedy asking Andropov
to help screw Reagan during his last election) and the timing couldn't be better for the mid-term
elections.
The Progressives are no friend of America and as the word gets out to mainstream America, the
result will be devastating to the Democratic Party. Good. About time.
MORE INVESTIGATIONS OF DEMOCRATS!!!! FRY HILLARY!!!
Just like NSA always has and has never released any of it, why is that ? Do we actually have
a legitimate government or simply a giant criminal enterprise control mechanism ? Here are the
answers --
The Russians have their own shit to keep secret and when that is less important and damaging
then they will release the flood gates of hell on BHO and crew as well as Hillary and the Bushites.
Not until, but I suspect that time is approaching or very near. The tangled web of sociopaths
and psychopaths that control us, Hey ?
Most of the American population are so ignorant of the physical laws of nature that they prefer
to believe what the government tells them to believe instead of straining their brains to exercise
a little common sense. I think the disappearing 757 airliners at the Pentagon and Shanksville
are the most blatant of the government lies since they require no knowledge of high-rise building
construction. How people can ignore this kind of thing would be a mystery except that almost everyone
gets their news from the TeeVee.
Fortunately, liberal thugs have not succeeded in derailing Trump-Putin cooperation, even in
the most difficult areas: There is complete Russian-American military coordination in Iraq and
Syria, even where Turkey and Iran disagree. Russia is allowing the US to arm the Kurds against
ISIS in Syria, and Russia has asked Iran to withdraw its troops and militias from Iraq and Syria,
exactly as Trump wants.
Russia can pull out of SWIFT any time they want. Europe depends on their gas. Russia can demand
payment in rubles, too, or gold.
Europe's nuclear energy has already gone off a cliff, due to all the bad reactor parts from
the French. That makes Russian energy much more valueable, and they don't have enough LNG receiving
facilities to buy elsewhere in any significant amounts.
The only option now for the NWO is a quiet retirement, or mass global nuclear suicide. Any
guesses?
"The US Department of State has more than once asked us not to announce planned visits until
the last minute. This is not our tradition. We have been operating openly for years, but we have
respected the requests we have received from our colleagues in Washington in the past few years
. But what happened after that? First, the US Department of State asked us to keep the planned
visit quiet and not to announce it until the last possible minute, until we coordinated the date.
We did as they asked. But a day or two later the information was leaked by the US State Department
and sometimes by the US administration. Frankly, this put Russia and the media in a strange situation,
because they didn't know who to believe – the official agencies or the many leaks."
And as of this moment, the second quietest person in the room just happens to be...John Kerry.
Remember when they released the crystal clear recording of Vicky Nuland organizing the Ukraine
government? They must have been shocked at the utter indifference of supporters of the Obama regime.
"... He has the data that shows the Trump family and many others were under surveillance for a decade or more when he was still there. 600,000,000 pages of data. ..."
I read that info/ letter on another blog. I hope Dennis and Larry succeed, but there is one thing I don't quite understand.
If Montgomery left the NSA a few years ago how can he have hard evidence Trump and his team were surveilled ? ( other than one
of his former workmates telling him). If he has just been told that makes it hard to prove unless the workmate took a copy of
the data and gave it to Montgomery.
He has the data that shows the Trump family and many others were under surveillance for a decade or more when he was still
there. 600,000,000 pages of data.
We're waay beyond Trump being surveilled after the November vote.
Expect some variation of this story below to come from the upcomine revelations. Trump and Nunes want to not only demonstrate
that Obama was scum, but put a major wedge between the DNC and Jews and Israel:
Firstly, there would have to be sufficient information showing Obama initiated the spying. Unless Obama has political knives
out after him, these facts won't come out until 2030.
Secondly, the media, and other powers-that-be would muddy the water. We'll never know *who* and *why* of the story.
Thirdly, if the NSA comes out with genuine evidence, then we may be able to assume there IS a conflict between the FBI, the
CIA vs the NSA. That, in itself, would be very relevant news.
Growing conflicts in any large government are not conducive to a smooth-operating empire.
Or maybe you are right and the NSA are the good guys. Maybe Snowden did what he did because the NSA itself is not happy about
what they are told to do. Snowden did not go rogue but is following orders from within NSA.
It could also be that the NSA dropped vault 7 onto WikiLeaks as well as the various Hillary leaks during the campaign.
And NYPD says Hillary knew that Wiener was sexing underage girl & did not report it to authorities. The NYPD was prevented
from pursuing charges against her.
Still waiting for any evidence to appear that Russians interfered with the elections or colluded with Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, it has been reported. ..."
"... The Dems who were all for collecting on everyone can't (non-hypocritically) complain about Trump having all that now. I mean, we can never know how far the extremist have penetrated into our government unless we trace where all that Saudi money terrorist influence goes. ..."
"... The surveillance state bites the politicians that created it in the ass. I love that. They are not happy, I love that too. ..."
"... It was already a farce when McCain went after Paul. Though it was, before that, a horror film, with the 'ways the intelligence community can get you.' ..."
"... It is a satire, wrapped in a parody, hidden in slapstick, on top of a farce, buried in a bro-mance between a man with a tower and another man riding a horse without a shirt (and the man isn't wearing a shirt either .) ..."
"... Revealing this is treason. ..."
"... People will die. ..."
"... I agree that everybody is surveilled all the time, especially in the Beltway, where probably there are multiple simultaneous operations run against . well, everybody. ..."
There's also
this showing evidence that Trump Tower was specifically monitored during the Obama administration, although the probe was targeting
Russian mafia and not Trump and was done well before he declared his candidacy.
The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election,
it has been reported.
Between 2011 and 2013 the Bureau had a warrant to spy on a high-level criminal Russian money-laundering ring, which operated
in unit 63A of the iconic skyscraper - three floors below Mr Trump's penthouse.
Not exactly a confirmation of Trump's rather wild claims, but something. Still waiting for any evidence to appear that
Russians interfered with the elections or colluded with Trump.
Ok, so they were just after the Russian mafia, phew I feel better already. So they got the felons and they are all arrested?
What utter BS! Why is Semion Mogilevitch still at large in Hungary and no extradition process? What about Felix Sater and Steve
Wynn and on and on. Why are they incapable of prosecuting mafia mobsters and instead chasing politicians?
That said, it was what happening potentially to all citizens, not just Donald Trump. I dislike this intensely, but why should
Trump get special dispensation over other citizens? Would like to know the reason for that.
Like Watergate, it's really about the denial or the lying. "When did you know about the, er, collecting?" For how many
days have we ridiculed Trump for his alternative universe imagination?
> He can join the other 310 million of us who can be "incidentally collected".
Didn't your mother tell you that 310 million wrongs don't make a right? Neither party establishment cares about that
quaint concept, civil liberties. If Obama's flip flip on FISA reform in July 2008, giving the Telco's retroactive immunity for
Bush's warrantless surveillance, didn't convince you, then his 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy should have.
Not to mention monitoring a politician opens up a whole new can of worms. I'm convinced Trump must pretty clean relatively
because the IC hasn't gotten rid of him yet and you know they have all of his communications.
I'm with Lambert on neither party caring. I knew all I needed to when Obama voted for FISA and the following years just reinforced
how corrupt the Dems were. There is an import point here though. I don't think Trump would have thought that all of the surveillance
would be applied to him personally. It was just about other people. It was probably a legitimate eye opener. Now Trump is at the
head of the surveillance apparatus. Instead of asking Wikileaks to release all of Clintons emails, he should just do it himself.
The Dems who were all for collecting on everyone can't (non-hypocritically) complain about Trump having all that now. I
mean, we can never know how far the extremist have penetrated into our government unless we trace where all that Saudi
money terrorist influence goes.
Not just incidental, in Congressional hearings, Comey flat out says that Trump and his team were investigated for Russian connections,
and that none were found. The question now is was the investigations properly secured or not. Something completely in the air.
But team Dem is still playing the "wire tap" canad.
It is a satire, wrapped in a parody, hidden in slapstick, on top of a farce, buried in a bro-mance between a man with a
tower and another man riding a horse without a shirt (and the man isn't wearing a shirt either .)
Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications
intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington
Post.
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden
provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody
else.
And what was the reaction of many Congresspersons
(including many Dems, and all of the GOP except maybe Rand Paul and Justin Amash)? Revealing this is treason. People will die.
And Trump's CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, has called for Snowden's execution.
Sorry allan – I got all excited at seeing a Nunes article in ZeroHedge and posted a comment – your article is better and it
makes for more coherent comment threads to keep them together – I should have looked before I leaped (posted).
Nunes: "I recently confirmed that, on numerous occasions, the Intelligence Community incidentally collected information about
U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.
Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration-details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence
value-were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.
I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked.
To be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or any investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team."
==============================================
So the worm turns. The hypocrisy espoused by all sides is ..well, 11th dimensional.
fresno dan, this was a major topic of discussion during the committee hearing with Comey and Rogers on Monday. I listened to
the whole thing – all five hours and 18 minutes' worth – because I suspected that the corporate media would omit important details
or spin it beyond recognition. And so they did.
The bipartisan divide is being portrayed as Democrats wanting to get to the truth of Russian efforts to snuff out Democracy,
and Republicans wanting to "plug leaks" (see Lambert's RCP except above), with some reports suggesting the Rs are advocating stifling
free speech, prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information, and the like.
Republican committee members were indeed focused on the leaks, and there was talk about how to prevent them, but their concern
– at least as they expressed publicly on Monday – was specifically related to whether all those current and former officials,
senior officials, etc., quoted anonymously in the NYT and WaPo (the infamous "nine current and former officials, who were in senior
positions at multiple agencies") violated FISA provisions protecting information about U.S. persons collected incidentally in
surveillance of foreign actors.
Sure, they're playing their own game, and it could be a ruse to divert attention from the Trump campaign's alleged Russian
ties or simply to have ammo against the Ds. Even so, after listening to all their arguments, I believe they are on more solid
ground than all the Dem hysteria about Russian aggression and Trump camp treason.
I don't think I'll ever get Trey Gowdy's cringe-worthy performance during the Benghazi hearings out of my head, but he made
some pretty good points on Monday, one of which was that investigating Russian interference and possible ties between Trump advisers
and Russia is all well and good, but there may or may not have been any laws broken; whereas leaking classified information about
U.S. citizens collected incidentally under FISA is clearly a felony with up to 10 years. Comey confirmed that by saying that ALL
information collected under FISA is classified.
And then he repeatedly refused to say whether he thought any classified information had been leaked or existed at all (I counted
more than 100 "no comment" answers from Comey, who astonishingly managed to find 50 different ways to say it).
My beef isn't so much the leak of classified information, but the gross dereliction of duty – if not outright abuse of First
Amendment powers – by reporters who collaborate with intelligence agencies and then quote them anonymously, giving everyone cover
to say or write whatever they want with zero accountability.
In fact, there were some interesting comments in Monday's hearing about the possibility that some of what has been reported
was fabricated. Then, you might expect Comey to say something like that. For all his talk about not tolerating leaks from his
agency, blahblah, it was clear that he'll provide his own people with cover, if necessary. I think that's what Gowdy and a couple
other Republicans were getting at.
It goes without saying, but I'll add that the Dems were hardly even trying to disguise their real goal, which isn't protecting
the American People® from the evil Russkies, but taking down Trump.
Thanks for watching the whole thing – the nation owes you a debt of gratitude.
"My beef isn't so much the leak of classified information, but the gross dereliction of duty – if not outright abuse of First
Amendment powers – by reporters who collaborate with intelligence agencies and then quote them anonymously, giving everyone cover
to say or write whatever they want with zero accountability."
First, I a squillion percent agree with you. This is a big, bit deal because essentially the military/IC/neocons is trying
to wrest control of the civilian government – the idea that the CIA is some noble institution that wants the best for all Americans
is preposterous, yet accepted by the media, which proves how much propaganda we are fed. The sheep like following, the mandatory
use of the adjective "murderous thug" before the name of "Putin" just shows that most of the media has been bought off or has
lost all their critical thinking faculties.
But I also don't want to be a hypocrite so I will explain that I don't have too much of a problem with leaks. WHAT I do have
a problem with is the purposeful naivete or ignorance of the media that the CIA and/or facets of the Obama administration is trying
to thwart rapprochement with Russia. Administrations BEFORE they are sworn in talk to foreign governments – the sheer HYSTERIA,
the CRIME of talking to a Russian is beyond absurd. We are being indoctrinated to believe all Russia, all bad
There is a ton of information about Podesta and the Clintons dealing with Russia for money. If Flynn and whatshisname are just
grifting that is pedestrian stuff and everybody in Washington does it (I thing they call it "lobbying"). If there is REAL treason
something should have come out by now.
I began covering congressional hearings while I was still in j-school and sat though many like this during my years as a reporter
in D.C. Even though I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for many years, I still prefer original sources and am willing
to take the time to dig for them or, in this case, to sit through a hearing as though I were covering it as a member of the press
– especially when I don't even have to wash my hair or get dressed!
I didn't mean to imply that I have a problem with leaks. I certainly encouraged enough of them in my time, and I don't think
there's anything inherently wrong with publishing leaked material, even certain kinds of classified information. It depends.
There's the kind of "classified" information that is restricted expressly to keep the public from knowing something they have
a right to know, and there's information that's classified to protect individual privacy. The first kind should be leaked early
and often. The second kind, close to never (and off the top of my head I can't think of an instance when it would be OK).
Even though journalists aren't (and shouldn't be) held liable for publishing classified information given to them by a third
party, they need to be scrupulous in their decisions to do so. Is it in the public interest? Who or what might be harmed? Would
sitting on the information cause more harm than publicizing it? Does it violate someone's constitutional rights?
These questions can get tricky with someone like Flynn, who's clearly a public figure and thus mostly fair game. However, if
I had been reporting that story, I think I would have sat on it until I had more information, even at the risk of getting scooped
– unless, of course, I was in cahoots with the leakers and out to get him and his boss.
At that point, I am no longer an objective journalist committed to fair and accurate reporting, but a participant in a political
cause. Although newspapers throughout history have taken sides, and pure "fact-based" journalism is a myth, there's a big difference
between having an editorial slant and being an active participant in the story. Evidently, BezPo has decided that the latter is
not only acceptable, but advantageous.
Sorry, didn't mean to ramble on when I'm likely preaching to the converted. I feel very strongly about this issue, and it's
disconcerting to me, as a lifelong Democrat, that I agreed more with the Republicans in that hearing. At the same time, the D's
propaganda machine is pumping out so much toxic fog that it's shaking my faith in unfettered freedom of the press.
> I began covering congressional hearings while I was still in j-school and sat though many like this during my years as a
reporter in D.C. Even though I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for many years, I still prefer original sources and am
willing to take the time to dig for them
I agree that everybody is surveilled all the time, especially in the Beltway, where probably there are multiple simultaneous
operations run against . well, everybody.
It doesn't, er, bug me that 70-year-old Beltway neophyte Trump used sloppy language - "wiretap" - to describe this state of
affairs. (I don't expect any kind of language from Trump but sloppy.) All are, therefore one is. It does bug me that
the whole discussion gets dragged off into legal technicalities about what legal regimen is appropriate for which form of Fourth
Amendment-destruction (emptywheel does this a lot). The rules are insanely complicated, and it's fun to figure them out, rather
like taking the cover off the back of a Swiss watch and examining all the moving parts. But the assumption is that people follow
the rules, and especially that high-level people (like, say, Comey, or Clapper, or Morrel, or Obama) follow the complicated rules.
That assumes facts not in evidence.
Incidental collection was always a likely scenario.
We've also seen statements from people like GHCQ that clains they surveilled Trump at Obama's behest were "absurd," but those
are non-denial denials. I can't recall a denial denial. Am I missing something?
As we detailed earlier, it appears Trump may have been right, again.
Two days after FBI director Comey shot down Trump's allegation that Trump was being wiretapped by president Obama before the election,
it appears that president Trump may have been on to something because moments ago, the House Intelligence Chairman, Devin Nunes,
told reporters that the U.S. intelligence community incidentally collected information on members of President Trump's transition
team, possibly including Trump himself, and the information was "widely disseminated" in intelligence reports.
As
AP adds , Nunes said that President Donald Trump's communications may have been "monitored" during the transition period as part
of an "incidental collection."
Nunes told a news conference Wednesday that the communications appear to be picked up through "incidental collection" and do not
appear to be related to the ongoing FBI investigation into Trump associates' contacts with Russia. He says he believes the intelligence
collections were done legally , although in light of the dramatic change in the plotline it may be prudent to reserve judgment on
how "incidental" it was.
"I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community collected information on U.S. individuals involved
in the Trump transition," Nunes told reporters.
"Details about U.S. persons involved in the incoming administration with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were
widely disseminated in intelligence community reports."
The information was "legally brought to him by sources who thought we should know it," Nunes said, though he provided little detail
on the source.
BREAKING!!! Rep Devin Nunes (Intel Cmte Chmn): There was "Incidental collection" of
@realDonaldTrump thru IC surveillance <- BOMBSHELL
Nunes also said that "additional names" of Trump transition officials had been unmasked in the intelligence reports. He indicated
that Trump's communications may have been swept up.
The House Intel Chair said he had viewed dozens of documents showing that the information had been incidentally collected. He
said that he believes the information was legally collected. Nunes said that the intelligence has nothing to do with Russia and that
the collection occurred after the presidential election.
Nunes said he briefed House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on the revelation and will inform the White House later today. Nunes' statement
comes after he and other congressional leaders pushed back on Trump's claims that former President Obama had his "wires tapped" in
Trump Tower ahead of the election.
Nunes said Wednesday that it was unclear whether the information incidentally collected originated in Trump Tower.
The revelation comes in the wake of the committee's explosive hearing on Monday, at which FBI Director James Comey confirmed that
the bureau has been investigating Russia's election hacking since July, which includes probing possible coordination between members
of Trump's presidential campaign and Moscow.
The meeting represented the panel's first open hearing on its investigation into Russia's election meddling and also featured
testimony from NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers.
Nunes says the communications of Trump associates were also picked up, but he did not name those associates. He says the monitoring
mostly occurred in November, December and January. He added that he learned of the collection through "sources" but did not specify
those source
Politico adds that Nunes is going to the White House later Wednesday to brief the Trump administration on what he has learned,
which he said came from "sources."
Nunes says he is "bothered" by this. Won't say whether or not intel community spied on Trump et. al. But says he is "concerned."
Trump wouldn't of tweeted what he did unless he knew something. He doesn't make blind bets, he only moves on things he knows
he can win. Not to mention he has shown that he can bait, watch the other side respond and deny and then present his case to show
them as the liars they are.
How all these people still let trump bait them like this is hilarious. How many times has he said something that seemed baseless
and everyone was sure would sink him, and then he is vindicated? And they still fucking fall for it.
And yes, incidental surveillance is a funny term. As in you swept all his up the same way they listen to all of us all the
time? Maybe this will piss trump off enough to end this shit. I doubt it though.
The NSA 'wiretaps' EVERYONE. All of what you say on your phone, on-line, and in any other form of electronic communications
is Hoovered up and dumped in their mass storage facilities in Utah and elsewhere. The system is set up to get it all AUTOMATICALLY.
In fact, they would have had to go to great efforts to NOT record what Trump and his associates said electronically. Or searched
for. Or visited on the web. Or even visited in person if he/she carried a cell phone with when going about.
Because it is all recorded for ALL OF US! Standard, all the time, no warrant required.
Of course, if there were FISA warrants issued, then the opposition did more than that, because no warrant is required for any
of the above. So they must have also done some non-standard dirty. Like placing recording malware on the relevant cell phones
to record conversations, take pictures, upload stored files, and even take video. Or sift through his financial records.
OK, so why should you care? I don't mean about Trump, although you should care there as well, but about your privacy. You may
not be getting the full Monte he did, by everything you do in the first paragraph now rests with the NSA.
For an answer, consider this conversation between one of the uber-wealthy and a Federal Prosecutor:
*****
"With enough data, my lawyers can always find a crime. They'll prosecute. Bury anyone under legal motions, make his life miserable.
Maybe even send him up for some felony."
"Even if he didn't do anything?"
"Of course he did something. We got 100,000 laws on the books, twice that in regs. Somewhere, sometime, by accident or intentionally,
he broke one. We get a moving x-ray of his life, all we have to do is find it."
*****
It's called the power of selective prosecution. With enough data, what used to be just an annoyance becomes an unstoppable
control technique. Someday, when the deep state wants you cooperation, they will drill down through their Utah stash for your
name. Then they will call you in for a little chat.
Not willing to spy on your best friend or wife? You may change you mind after their little chat.
So how to avoid this trap? How do you avoid becoming a data serf?
Learn to hide your data so it can't be hovered in the first place. I suggest you start with
www.privacytools.io and work your way up from there.
And do it now. Because protecting your privacy is like quitting smoking. It doesn't matter how long you have been engaged in
unclean behavior, it's never too late to start living right.
The quote above, by the way, was from Thieves Emporium by Max Hernandez. It's a primer on the ways TPTB control us in the new
world of fiat money and ubiquitous surveillance and what we can do to prevent it. I strongly recommend you at least investigate
getting a copy.
There is a simple method for Trump to "drain the swamp". Fucked if I know why he hasn't, given how much butt-hurt they are
dishing out to him.
An Executive Order giving immunity and witness protection (and even a fucking Presidential Medal of Freedom, if you ask me)
to all whistleblowers who reveal unconstitutional malfeasance within both overt and covert .gov departments. Because these are
the true patriots, and all that is stopping them shining a fucking huge spotlight on this bucket of scumfuck is persecution from
the swamp dwellers who control all the levers of power.
Maybe with a (secure) hotline/email direct to the White House, just to bypass Comey and all the other cunts installed by Obama.
Or probably better, directly to a morally rock solid independent Special Prosecutor who is prepared to get down and seriously
dirty with the insidious morally bereft creatures infesting DC. A Trey Gowdy-type of bloke. Because , as far as relying on the
FBI et al is concerned, Trump was fucked before he started.
A typewriter can get it done. Hear they're Hot sellers in Germany again.
What people don't understand is, that the Russian PsyOp / False Narrative Script by the Deep State & Pure Evil War Criminal
Treasonous Psychopath Hillary Clinton Globalist was the game plan all long.
Win, stolen or lost. They were going & are going "all in" with the PsyOp, Scripted False Narrative of Russia hacking the Elections
/ Russia / Putin / Trump Propaganda gone full retard via the Deep States Opeatives in the Presstitute Media.
Plausible Deniability is the name of the game. If the Deep State could of pulled off the False Narrative PsyOp of Russia influencing
our Elections the Deep State could & will hack into Russia's National Elections next March. Call it pay back.
The Deep State's destabilization campaign in Ukraine especially Crimea was part of the ZioNeoConFascist Agenda to destabilize
Russia during their upcoming g elections.
Putin countered by expelling all Geroge Sorros NGO's from Russia. However, rest assured those destabilization cells are in
place to ready to be activated come Russia's next election cycle.
The future meeting between the Two Super Powers will be Epic. The Diplomacy which will Prevail out of those meetings will be
a fresh breath of air to the World.
And, final Death Blows to the Pure Evil Criminal Deep State Elite Compartmentalized Hierarchy.
3) All accounts disassociated with you personally - fake names, no phone numbers, do not link to any personal accounts, make
no comments, do not message your contacts.
4) never use your own wifi.
5) never use your own bank account or credit cards, use crypto currency to pay for VPN, etc.
This setup, as I understand it, would keep you completely anon with the exception of cameras at the store you purchase laptop
at or cameras at the cafe you are using wifi. You can now leak without it being linked to you.
Not to say that this setup is immune from CIA In fact the idea is that you know that the CIA is looking, its just important
that they do not know WHO they are looking at (identity).
my Russian compatriot Vlad told me when he was a kid, every typewriter in USSR was cataloged with samples of its output. By
microscopic analysis, they could tell which typewriter was responsible for any typed document.
every computer printer made also has the same kind of ID backdoor - it will print a specific identifier (like a MAC address)
somewhere on the page - except for the old dot matrix and early inkjet. Defeat that by running it thru a low res copier a few
round trips.
East German Stasi, same deal. All typewriters registered and tracked. Such amazing depth of the deep state crap. Coming soon
to a ruined Republic near you...unless......we stop it.
"An Executive Order giving immunity and witness protection (and even a fucking Presidential Medal of Freedom, if you ask me)
to all whistleblowers who reveal unconstitutional malfeasance within both overt and covert .gov departments. Because these are
the true patriots, and all that is stopping them shining a fucking huge spotlight on this bucket of scumfuck is persecution from
the swamp dwellers who control all the levers of power.
Maybe with a (secure) hotline/email direct to the White House, just to bypass Comey and all the other cunts installed by Obama.
Or probably better, directly to a morally rock solid independent Special Prosecutor who is prepared to get down and seriously
dirty with the insidious morally bereft creatures infesting DC. A Trey Gowdy-type of bloke. Because , as far as relying on the
FBI et al is concerned, Trump was fucked before he started."
"... Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can be
unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all of the
unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You can keep tabs
on them every time they end up being incidentally collected. ..."
"... You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas? Your
communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced off various
targets over the last several years. ..."
"... This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination
to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary
of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear
to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag. ..."
"... Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. ..."
"... The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal
on N.Korea etc? ..."
"... But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches
of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. ..."
"... It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..."
The rank and file of the IC are not involved in this. So let's not tar everyone with the same brush, but Obama revised executive
order 12333 so that communication intercepts incidentally collected dont have to be masked and may be shared freely in the IC.
Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can
be unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all
of the unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You
can keep tabs on them every time they end up being incidentally collected.
You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas?
Your communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced
off various targets over the last several years.
What might your "synthetic" surveillance report look like?
There's way more going on here then first alleged. From Bloomberg, not my choice for news, but There is another component to
this story as well -- as Trump himself just tweeted.
It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S.
officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls
between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason.
Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy
reputations from the cloak of anonymity.
This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's
nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests
when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations
with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. "There does appear to be a well orchestrated
effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration," he said. "From the leaking of phone calls between the president and
foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security
clearances, it looks like a pattern."
@?realDonaldTrump?
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening
as I deal on N.Korea etc?
President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous
problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate
public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It's weaponized spin.............
But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political
branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely.
It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..... But the answer isn't to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage - or with a disinformation campaign waged
by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.....
And the plot thickens. Whoever said may you live in interesting times......had no idea. Can you feel the desperation from the
filthy corrupt democrats? The demonic spirits that reside in them are going berserk. The light is starting to shine on them and
their evil deeds are more transparent than ever. It's only gonna get better
Fox better rehire Napolitano before it is too late. But it is too late for the Wall Street Journal comparing Trump to 'a drunk'
clinging to 'an empty gin bottle' in scathing editorial.
Warnings of a 'Powder Keg' in Libya as ISIS Regroups
By ERIC SCHMITT
Punishing strikes in December and January hurt the terrorist group, but it is exploiting the
chaos and political vacuum gripping the country, American and allied officials say.
"... 'Former intelligence analyst Larry Johnson, who has long attacked the U.S. intel community, is standing by his allegation that triggered a feud with America's closest ally' ..."
"How the U.K. spying claim traveled from an ex-CIA blogger to Trump's White House"
'Former intelligence analyst Larry Johnson, who has long attacked the U.S. intel community, is standing by his allegation that
triggered a feud with America's closest ally'
By Matthew Nussbaum...03/18/17...02:38 PM EDT
"...Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and blogger, acknowledges he was one of the sources for Fox News commentator Andrew
Napolitano's claim - later repeated by the White House..."
Britain Livid on Spying Claim, but Trump Isn't Apologizing. White House aides scrambled to deal with an unusual rupture after
suggesting that former President Barack Obama used a British spy agency to wiretap Donald J. Trump during the campaign.
At a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to
retract.
WASHINGTON - President Trump provoked a rare public dispute with America's closest ally on Friday after his White House
aired an explosive and unsubstantiated claim that Britain's spy agency had secretly eavesdropped on him at the behest of President
Barack Obama during last year's campaign.
Livid British officials adamantly denied the allegation and secured promises from senior White House officials never to
repeat it. But a defiant Mr. Trump refused to back down, making clear that the White House had nothing to retract or apologize
for because his spokesman had simply repeated an assertion made by a Fox News commentator. Fox itself later disavowed the report.
...
this equally applied to those with the virulent fixation on Russia completely out of control.
== end of quote ==
Neoliberal DemoRats might pay dearly for this "poisoning of the well" trick -- McCarthyism witch hunt.
We need to remember that corruption of politician is sine qua non of neoliberalism. "Greed is good" completely replaced 10
Commandments.
But the first rule of living in a glass house that modern Internet provides (in cooperation with intelligence agencies, Google,
Microsoft and Facebook) is not to throw stones.
Russia is not Serra Leon with rockets. I am afraid that Russia might have a lot of info about corruption of major Democratic
politicians as most of them took bribes from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs (whom they essentially created) and some (old Clinton
"associates" like Summers) closely participated in "great economic rape of Russia" of 1991-2000. All neatly recorded and waiting
their hour for release.
At some point Putin's nerves might break and he can order to release this information. Then what ?
"... Merkel's reaction was similarly amusing: almost as if she had heard for the first time that in 2010, and for years onward, Barack Obama had been wiretapping her and countless other heads of state. ..."
"... For those unsure what the exchange was about, we suggest you read the Telegraph's " Barack Obama 'approved tapping Angela Merkel's phone 3 years ago'... President Barack Obama was told about monitoring of German Chancellor in 2010 and allowed it to continue, says German newspaper ." ..."
"... And incidentally, in yet another change in the official narrative, after both Sky News and the Telegraph reported earlier today that the White House had apologized to Britain over the accusation that its spy agency had helped Obama spy on Trump, the NYT reported that the White House has said there was no apology from either Spicer or McMaster, and that instead the Administration defended Spicer's mention of the wiretapping story. ..."
"... Finally, as Axios adds , after Trump and Merkel left the stage reporters again asked Sean Spicer whether he apologized for repeating an anonymously sourced Fox News claim that British intelligence helped in wiretapping Trump Tower. His response: " I don't think we regret anything. " ..."
Following today's latest developments over Trump's allegations that the UK's GCHQ may or may not have helped Obama to wiretap the
Trump Tower, an allegation which the infuriated British Spy Agency called "utterly ridiculous" and
prompted it to demand an apology from the White House, a German reporter asked Trump for his current opinion on whether Obama
had indeed wiretapped Trump. The president's response: he gestured to Angela Merkel and said " on wiretapping by this past administration,
at least we have something in common."
Merkel's reaction was similarly amusing: almost as if she had heard for the first time that in 2010, and for years onward, Barack
Obama had been wiretapping her and countless other heads of state.
And incidentally, in yet another change in the official narrative, after both Sky News and the Telegraph reported earlier today
that the White House had apologized to Britain over the accusation that its spy agency had helped Obama spy on Trump, the NYT reported
that the White House has said there was no apology from either Spicer or McMaster, and that instead the Administration defended Spicer's
mention of the wiretapping story.
WH now sez there was no apology to Brits from @PressSec /McMaster;
they fielded complaints & defended Spicer's mention of wiretapping story
Finally, as
Axios
adds , after Trump and Merkel left the stage reporters again asked Sean Spicer whether he apologized for repeating an anonymously
sourced Fox News claim that British intelligence helped in wiretapping Trump Tower. His response: " I don't think we regret anything.
"
"... It is "our job," not Trump's, to "control exactly what people think," gasped MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski last month. This week's gasp from the media assumes a slightly different form and can be translated as: It is our job, not Trump's, to push stories about the government investigation of Trumpworld. ..."
"... For months, the media, drawing upon criminal leaks from Obama holdovers, has been saying in effect: Trumpworld is under investigation for ties to Russia! Then Trump says essentially the same thing on Twitter and the media freaks out. ..."
"... The Obama holdovers are denying the import of the very stories that they planted. ..."
"... The Obama administration used half-baked (or, more likely, completely fabricated) information from some "foreign source" as the pretext to launch a clandestine fishing expedition against Trump during the election. ..."
"... We live in a police state folks under the warrantless eavesdropping program. ..."
George Neumayr
Posted on 3/6/2017 4:42:04 PM by RoosterRedux
It is "our job," not Trump's, to "control exactly what people think," gasped MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski last month. This week's
gasp from the media assumes a slightly different form and can be translated as: It is our job, not Trump's, to push stories about
the government investigation of Trumpworld.
For months, the media, drawing upon criminal leaks from Obama holdovers, has been saying in effect: Trumpworld is under
investigation for ties to Russia! Then Trump says essentially the same thing on Twitter and the media freaks out.
Why does the latter merit condemnation but not the former?
Notice what is happening here: The Obama holdovers are denying the import of the very stories that they planted. Where
did the liberal BBC's story (building on a story first reported by Heat Street) on intelligence agencies receiving a FISA court
warrant to investigate Russian-Trumpworld ties come from? It came from a "senior member of the US intelligence community":
On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me
by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He
would never volunteer anything – giving up classified information would be illegal – but he would confirm or deny what I had
heard from other sources.
Notice on the Sunday talk shows that Obama's CIA director John Brennan did not appear. Yet he served as the genesis of this investigation,
according to the BBC story:
The Obama administration used half-baked (or, more likely, completely fabricated) information from some "foreign source"
as the pretext to launch a clandestine fishing expedition against Trump during the election.
Can't wait to see the application paperwork for the requested FISA orders!!
To: RoosterRedux Don't want to start a separate thread for this and it is somewhat related.
Listening to Hannity show today and William Binney was on and interviewed. Binney was a US Intelligence Official with the NSA
who resigned in 2001 and turned whistleblower.
I am paraphrasing but - He says phone, email, test, surveillance is routinely done on everyone with no warrant. He said they
can go back for years and pull out the data.
Please listen to Hannity at the top of the 3rd hour for details.
We live in a police state folks under the warrantless eavesdropping program.
Vault 7 revelations now shed some light on the possibilities of a muti-step operations to get the court order. The absurdity of
the situation is evident: acting POTUS complains about wiretapping by his predecessor who supposedly used one of intelligence agencies
(supposedly CIA) for this operation. Being now a Commander in Chief.
Ray McGovern who probably knows what he is talking about suggested that Obama might be scared of CIA Director Brennan (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGayl9uNW4A actually this
is a very interesting interview)
The following scheme looks plausible: Scapegoat Russians by hacking into DNC servers; create media hysteria about Russians; implicate
Trump in connections to Russians; get court order for wiretapping on this ground
Notable quotes:
"... Just hours before he publicly responded last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee report accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of torture and deceit, John O. Brennan, the CIA's director, stopped by the White House to meet with President Obama. Ostensibly, he was there for an intelligence briefing. But the messages delivered later that day by the White House and Mr. Brennan were synchronized, even down to similar wording, and the larger import of the well-timed visit was hardly a classified secret: After six years of partnership, the president was standing by the embattled spy chief even as fellow Democrats called for his resignation. ..."
"... I'm not tarring Obama with Brennan's war crimes and that of the Agency, copiously documented in the Senate Report on Torture, and instead am suggesting an active partnership-in-war-crimes, Obama, if anything, giving CIA its head of steam under his watch ..."
"... Obama plucked Brennan to lead the intelligence charge through the interstices of government and military culminating in a permanent war economy and psychosis of vision. ..."
"... in the 67 years since the CIA was founded, few presidents have had as close a bond with their intelligence chiefs as Mr. Obama has forged with Mr. Brennan. It is a relationship that has shaped the policy and politics of the debate over the nation's war with terrorist organizations, as well as the agency's own struggle to balance security and liberty ..."
Baker-Mazzetti's opener says it all: " Just hours before he publicly responded last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee
report accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of torture and deceit, John O. Brennan, the CIA's director, stopped by the White
House to meet with President Obama. Ostensibly, he was there for an intelligence briefing. But the messages delivered later that
day by the White House and Mr. Brennan were synchronized, even down to similar wording, and the larger import of the well-timed
visit was hardly a classified secret: After six years of partnership, the president was standing by the embattled spy chief even
as fellow Democrats called for his resignation. " Nothing could be plainer. As one who remembers well the guilt-by-association
days of McCarthyism, I'm not tarring Obama with Brennan's war crimes and that of the Agency, copiously documented in the Senate
Report on Torture, and instead am suggesting an active partnership-in-war-crimes, Obama, if anything, giving CIA its head of steam
under his watch , as in its role in drone assassination at facilities in Pakistan, Brennan himself installed as Director
after Valiant Service as national security adviser, all despite questions of favoring waterboarding raised in confirmation hearings.
From a pool of gung-ho national-security experts on which to draw, the others still making up his First Team of advisers (include
generals, admirals, members of think tanks with partly disguised neocon credentials), Obama plucked Brennan to lead the intelligence
charge through the interstices of government and military culminating in a permanent war economy and psychosis of vision.
Obama is not Brennan's puppet, nor the other way. Both are electrified by mutual contact and support. The reporters note friction
between the White House and Langley "after the release of the scorching report," Brennan having "irritated advisers by battling
Democrats on the committee over the report during the past year." They do not point out Obama did the same, stalling release,
suffocating criticism of CIA hard-ball tactics against the committee, of which later; yet they make up for that with, given that
this is NYT, an astonishing statement: "But in the 67 years since the CIA was founded, few presidents have had as close a
bond with their intelligence chiefs as Mr. Obama has forged with Mr. Brennan. It is a relationship that has shaped the policy
and politics of the debate over the nation's war with terrorist organizations, as well as the agency's own struggle to balance
security and liberty ."
What they don't say is that counterterrorism is part of the larger US position of counterrevolution, issuing in confrontations
with Russia and China and regime change wherever American interests are challenged. Nor do they say, the Agency's struggle to
balance security and liberty was lost before it had fairly begun, assassination and regime change hardly indicative of liberty,
a no-contest battle.
"... The House intelligence committee says it could resort to subpoenaing the Justice Department if it fails to answer its request for any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during the election. ..."
"... A spokesman for committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, Jack Langer, says the committee might subpoena the information if the Justice Department fails to answer its questions. ..."
"... The department had been expected to provide a response by Monday to the House Intelligence Committee, which has made Trump's wiretapping claims part of a bigger investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times EDT):
7:10 p.m.
The House intelligence committee says it could resort to subpoenaing the Justice Department
if it fails to answer its request for any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during
the election.
The committee set Monday as the deadline for getting the information, but the Justice Department
says it needs more time.
The committee now says it wants the information in hand before March 20 when it holds its first
public hearing on its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
A spokesman for committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, Jack Langer, says the committee
might subpoena the information if the Justice Department fails to answer its questions.
___
6:30 p.m.
The Justice Department is requesting more time to respond to a congressional inquiry into President
Donald Trump's unproven assertion that he was wiretapped by his predecessor.
The department had been expected to provide a response by Monday to the House Intelligence
Committee, which has made Trump's wiretapping claims part of a bigger investigation into Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election.
But spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says in a statement Monday that the department has asked for
more time to "review the request in compliance with the governing legal authorities and to determine
what if any responsive documents may exist."
"... In this regard, a whistleblower named Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA/CIA contractor, came forward to FBI Director Comey with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of largely classified information, under grants of use and derivative use immunity, which I obtained for him with the U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia. Later, Montgomery, who suffers from a potentially fatal brain aneurism, testified under oath, for over 2-and-a-half hours before FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett in a secure room at the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C. The testimony was under oath and videotaped and I have reminded the FBI recently to preserve this evidence. ..."
"... I have also met on several occasions with the staff of Chairman Bob Goodlatte of the House Judiciary Committee, since judges have been illegally surveilled, and asked them to inquire of FBI Director Comey and his General Counsel James Baker why their Montgomery investigation has appeared to have been "buried" for the last few years. They have done so, but as yet have not received, to the best of my knowledge, a clear response. ..."
"... Legally speaking, my cases against the intelligence agencies also encompass the illegal surveillance of President Trump and his men, as what apparently occurred shows a pattern of unconstitutional conduct that at trial would raise a strong evidentiary inference that this illegal behavior continues to occur. Our so called government, represented by dishonest Obama-loyal attorneys in the corrupted Federal Programs Branch of the Justice Department, continues to maintain that they cannot for national security reasons confirm or deny the mass surveillance against me or anyone else. ..."
The newest revelations that the Obama administration wiretapped, that is "bugged" President Trump
and all of his men, in the lead up to and after the November 8, 2016, elections are not surprising.
In this regard, for over 2 years the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
have been secretly investigating the "harvesting" of highly confidential information including financial
records of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, over 156 judges, prominent businessmen
like Donald Trump, and public activists like me.
In this regard, a whistleblower named Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA/CIA contractor, came forward
to FBI Director Comey with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of largely classified information,
under grants of use and derivative use immunity, which I obtained for him with the U.S Attorney for
the District of Columbia. Later, Montgomery, who suffers from a potentially fatal brain aneurism,
testified under oath, for over 2-and-a-half hours before FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William
Barnett in a secure room at the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C. The testimony was under oath
and videotaped and I have reminded the FBI recently to preserve this evidence.
The newest revelations that the Obama administration wiretapped, that is "bugged" President Trump
and all of his men, in the lead up to and after the November 8, 2016, elections are not surprising.
In this regard, for over 2 years the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
have been secretly investigating the "harvesting" of highly confidential information including financial
records of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, over 156 judges, prominent businessmen
like Donald Trump, and public activists like me.
In this regard, a whistleblower named Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA/CIA contractor, came forward
to FBI Director Comey with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of largely classified information,
under grants of use and derivative use immunity, which I obtained for him with the U.S Attorney for
the District of Columbia. Later, Montgomery, who suffers from a potentially fatal brain aneurism,
testified under oath, for over 2-and-a-half hours before FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William
Barnett in a secure room at the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C. The testimony was under oath
and videotaped and I have reminded the FBI recently to preserve this evidence.
I have also met on several occasions with the staff of Chairman Bob Goodlatte of the House Judiciary
Committee, since judges have been illegally surveilled, and asked them to inquire of FBI Director
Comey and his General Counsel James Baker why their Montgomery investigation has appeared to have
been "buried" for the last few years. They have done so, but as yet have not received, to the best
of my knowledge, a clear response.
In addition I have gone back to one of the few intellectually honest judges on the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia (nearly all of the rest, save for another great, Judge Royce C.
Lamberth, are politically biased appointees of either Presidents Clinton or Obama), and asked him
to move forward to trial with the cases which I filed in 2013 against Obama and his intelligence
agencies over the mass spying on hundreds of millions of Americans.
Not coincidentally, before Edward Snowden revealed this unconstitutional conduct by the National
Security Agency (NSA), which then was run under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence
(DNI), James Clapper, Clapper lied under oath to Congress, denying that this illegal surveillance
was occurring under his watch. That he was never prosecuted for perjury at a minimum, not to mention
that it is crime to wiretap innocent Americans without "probable cause," is a testament to the reality
that official Washington is afraid of the intelligence agencies, knowing that they can dig up "dirt"
to destroy their political and personal lives. Indeed, this may help explain Chief Justice Roberts'
"inexplicable" last minute flip on the Obamacare case before SCOTUS. What, for instance, did Clapper
and the NSA/CIA have on Roberts that may have "convinced" him to rubber stamp President Barack Obama's
unconstitutional Affordable Care Act?
Judge Leon, in the course of my cases before him (see
freedomwatchusa.org for more info),
has already issued two preliminary injunction rulings ordering that the illegal mass surveillance
cease and desist. He termed this unconstitutional violation of our Fourth Amendment, "almost Orwellian,"
a reference to George Orwell's prophetic book "1984" about "Big Brother." Judge Leon's rulings then
prompted Congress to amend the Patriot Act, and call it the USA Freedom Act, which sought to leave
telephonic metadata in the hands of the telephone providers, like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, until
a warrant was obtained showing probable cause that a target or subjects communications with terrorists
or a crime was being committed.
It now appears that the Obama intelligence agencies, as I predicted to Judge Leon, have again
ignored and flouted the law, and at the direction of the former President Obama, and/or his men like
Clapper, illegally spied on targets or subjects like Mr. Trump and his associates, including Gen.
Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. This is why I have pushed Judge Leon to move
my cases along to trial, and have offered to bring Montgomery forth to be interviewed by the judge
in camera in the interim, as he has a security clearance to probe Montgomery about classified information
which I cannot and have not accessed.
Legally speaking, my cases against the intelligence agencies also encompass the illegal surveillance
of President Trump and his men, as what apparently occurred shows a pattern of unconstitutional conduct
that at trial would raise a strong evidentiary inference that this illegal behavior continues to
occur. Our so called government, represented by dishonest Obama-loyal attorneys in the corrupted
Federal Programs Branch of the Justice Department, continues to maintain that they cannot for national
security reasons confirm or deny the mass surveillance against me or anyone else.
I have asked Judge Leon to enter a permanent injunction against Obama and his political hacks
at the NSA and CIA, many of whom are still there and are bent on destroying the Trump presidency
and attempting to blackmail prominent Americans, like me, who might challenge the destructive socialist/pro-Muslim
agenda of the Obama-Clinton-Soros left.
... ... ...
Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest
advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more
of his reports, Go
Here Now .
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, on Capitol Hill Tuesday, wants to "verify" that the intelligence community was using its surveillance authority "ethically." Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite ..."
"... The committee's ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, also told reporters Tuesday that he was happy to look into the president's allegations – but warned that if they were proven false, accusing Obama of ordering an illegal wiretap could pose much bigger problems for Trump. ..."
"... "If a sitting U.S. president alleging that his predecessor engaged in the most unscrupulous and unlawful conduct that is also a scandal, if those allegations prove to be false," Schiff said. "And we should be able to determine in fairly short order whether this accusation was true or false." ..."
"... Nunes also questioned the official explanation for why Flynn's calls were recorded. Was it actually because of "incidental collection" – as the intelligence community has argued – "or was it something else?" he asked. ..."
"... Nunes may have a chance to grill intelligence community members about that on March 20, when he plans to hold an open hearing as part of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. ..."
"... Schiff said Tuesday that he plans "on asking the director of the FBI directly whether there was any wiretap directed at Mr. Trump or his associates" at the hearing. ..."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, said Tuesday that he had seen no
evidence supporting President Trump's claim that his phones were tapped by the previous administration.
But unlike many other members of Congress, Nunes did not demand that the administration explain
the basis of Trump's accusation, saying that "we were going to look into it anyway."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, on Capitol Hill Tuesday, wants to "verify" that
the intelligence community was using its surveillance authority "ethically." Associated Press/J.
Scott Applewhite
"The bigger question that needs to be answered is whether or not Mr. Trump or any of his associates
were in fact targeted by any of the intelligence agencies or law enforcement authorities," Nunes
told reporters Tuesday. Over the weekend, he announced that his committee would look into Trump's
accusation delivered via Twitter that "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the
victory."
"At this point we don't have any evidence of that," Nunes said. "But we also don't have any evidence
of many people who have been named in multiple news stories that supposedly are under some type of
investigation."
The committee's ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, also told reporters Tuesday that
he was happy to look into the president's allegations – but warned that if they were proven false,
accusing Obama of ordering an illegal wiretap could pose much bigger problems for Trump.
"We accept – we will investigate this," Schiff said, referring to another Trump tweet in which
the president likened the alleged wiretap to a "Nixon/Watergate" style scandal.
"If a sitting U.S. president alleging that his predecessor engaged in the most unscrupulous and
unlawful conduct that is also a scandal, if those allegations prove to be false," Schiff said.
"And we should be able to determine in fairly short order whether this accusation was true or false."
Nunes told reporters last week that he had seen no evidence of improper contacts between the Trump
team and Russian officials. He repeated that assertion Tuesday, stressing that it was common practice
for incoming administrations to meet with diplomats.
He added that based on his understanding of the transcripts of calls between Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, there was nothing inappropriate
or suspect about the substance of the conversation.
Nunes also questioned the official explanation for why Flynn's calls were recorded. Was it actually
because of "incidental collection" – as the intelligence community has argued – "or was it something
else?" he asked.
"It's important for us to know whether or not the Department of Justice or any other agency tried
to get a warrant on anybody related to the Trump campaign -– or any other campaign for that matter,"
Nunes said, explaining that the committee wanted to "verify" that the intelligence community was
using its surveillance authorities "ethically, responsibly and by the law."
Nunes may have a chance to grill intelligence community members about that on March 20, when
he plans to hold an open hearing as part of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into
allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
The guest list for the hearing is formidable, but not entirely comprehensive: Nunes and Schiff
agreed to invite FBI Director James Comey, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, former
CIA director John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former acting
attorney general Sally Yates, and two senior officers of CrowdStrike – the company that found proof
that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee.
Schiff said Tuesday that he plans "on asking the director of the FBI directly whether there was
any wiretap directed at Mr. Trump or his associates" at the hearing.
"... Thus, it comes as no surprise that the NSA and likely the CIA continue with their spying, this time on our "the president and his men." This is highly dangerous to our republic, and, as found by one of the few intellectually honest and courageous federal judges on the bench in two cases which I filed a few years ago against the NSA, this conduct is "almost Orwellian," that is, reminiscent of George Orwell's prophesy in his landmark book, "1984." Orwell's "Big Brother" has indeed come to pass, as Judge Leon held in ruling in my favor in these lawsuits. (For more information, see FreedomWatchUSA.org .) ..."
The National Security Agency (NSA), having previously been disclosed by Edward Snowden and my whistleblower
client Dennis Montgomery to have unconstitutionally and illegally spied on the telephonic metadata,
internet, and social media communications of hundreds of millions of American citizens - including
Supreme Court justices, hundreds of lower court judges, prominent businessmen like Trump himself,
and ordinary American activists like yours truly - is at it again!
This time, with the resignation of Trump White House National Security Adviser General Michael
Flynn last night - based on telephone NSA intercepts he allegedly had with the Russian ambassador
- it's clear that the NSA is spying on the president, his White House, and the administration in
general.
This is highly dangerous, particularly since the intelligence agencies are chock full of loyalists
to former President Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their leftist comrades.
They are also stung by President Trump's criticism of their incompetence, partisanship, and lawlessness
under the direction of former Director of National Security James Clapper, who lied to under oath
to Congress about his wholesale illegal spying, yet as a card carrying member of the Washington,
D.C., establishment got off scot free from prosecution. And, then there is former CIA Director John
Brennan, who was literally at war with President-elect Trump as the hand-picked intelligence hack
of Obama himself. Even after his resignation a day prior to the inauguration of President Trump,
many of Brennan's agents remain in place at the CIA
Thus, it comes as no surprise that the NSA and likely the CIA continue with their spying, this
time on our "the president and his men." This is highly dangerous to our republic, and, as found
by one of the few intellectually honest and courageous federal judges on the bench in two cases which
I filed a few years ago against the NSA, this conduct is "almost Orwellian," that is, reminiscent
of George Orwell's prophesy in his landmark book, "1984." Orwell's "Big Brother" has indeed come
to pass, as Judge Leon held in ruling in my favor in these lawsuits. (For more information, see
FreedomWatchUSA.org .)
My success in this litigation caused Congress to enact the USA Freedom Act, which requires the
intelligence agencies to get warrants to obtain telephonic metadata based on a showing of probable
cause that terrorism is afoot or that a crime is in the act of being committed. But it's now clear
that, as has been documented time-in and time-out in court filings and from other sources, the NSA
and likely the CIA continue to have no respect for the law.
Now the NSA and likely the CIA as well have predictably turned their sights on the President of
the United States and his White House. This is not just an outrage, it threatens to unleash tyranny
the likes of which this nation has never seen. Because if the intelligence agencies are allowed to
continue, the real likelihood of coercion and blackmail will, as is also predicted, become the norm.
And, when this happens, our democracy will have been destroyed, much less the hope of the new Trump
administration, on behalf of all of us, to "Make America Great Again."
Of course, restoring the nation to greatness may not what the hacks at the NSA, CIA, and other
intelligence agencies may have in mind. The NSA and CIA, with this spying, holds a "Sword of Damocles"
over the heads of President Trump and his administration and in many ways they are control of the
fate of the United States. If King George III had had this power in the days leading up to the American
Revolution, our Founding Fathers would never had made to Philadelphia to debate, agree on, and ultimately
sign the Declaration of Independence. They would have been picked up by the Red Coats, arrested,
imprisoned, and ultimately executed.
I will be going back to Judge Leon in our ongoing cases to hold the NSA and CIA in contempt for
continuing its apparently illegal spying which threatens all of us. If there is one jurist who might
protect We the People, Judge Leon is the one. If not, then American patriots regrettably may ultimately
decide to take matters into their own hands, as happened 1776.
Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public
interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To
read more of his reports,
Go Here Now .
"... Since its inception as the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] at the start of World War II, when it was viewed a somewhat of a gentlemen's club, albeit gentlemen licensed to administer lethal force with great prejudice, to its modern day incarnation as a behemoth with an astounding 21,000 plus employees, there have been rumors of politicization and "cooked" intelligence as well as public demonstrations of same. ..."
"... According to Foreign Policy Magazine the CIA has had some really serious intelligence failures which caught the agency entirely flat footed: the Yom Kippur War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union, Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution, India's successful nuke test, of course 9/11 and finally, the Iraqi WMD fiasco. [see, The Ten Biggest American Intelligence Failures , FP] ..."
"... Exhibit one is obvious: Brennan is fearful of what the incoming administration might do to his porcine agency, one replete with desk jockeys rather than actual field agents so attacking the incoming CIC might prove advantageous in repelling the supposedly imminent attack on Brennan's turf. ..."
"... Bolstering the image of a CIA director willing to grovel to curry favor with the administration, to the detriment of American interests, in 2010 we wrote about what was a firestorm at the time, an address by Brennan, then one of Obama's national security advisors, at an NYU event called, "A Dialogue on our National Security," which was organized by then president of the Hamas linked Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson. ..."
What we must presume has been a behind the scene conflict between politicized elements of America's rather vast intelligence infrastructure
[at least 17 discreet agencies, which doesn't take "dark op" players into account] leading up to and now following the November 8
election, has ingloriously boiled over into a public cat fight.
If not for the subject matter the scene would be reminiscent of the now semi-ancient but nonetheless still hilarious Mad Magazine
cartoon series, Spy vs. Spy it's gotten that bad.
The basic thesis, doggedly argued by the most politicized of the various intelligence agencies' nodes - John Brennan's CIA – is
that Vlad Putin's operatives were responsible for the DNC/John Podesta hack which Hillary supporters believe threw the election into
the Dem's nightmare scenario, victory by the Blond Barbarian from New York, Donald J. Trump.
Since its inception as the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] at the start of World War II, when it was viewed a somewhat of a
gentlemen's club, albeit gentlemen licensed to administer lethal force with great prejudice, to its modern day incarnation as a behemoth
with an astounding 21,000 plus employees,
there have been rumors of politicization and "cooked" intelligence as well as public demonstrations of same.
According to Foreign Policy Magazine the CIA has had some really serious intelligence failures which caught the agency entirely
flat footed: the Yom Kippur War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union, Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution,
India's successful nuke test, of course 9/11 and finally, the Iraqi WMD fiasco. [see,
The Ten Biggest American
Intelligence Failures , FP]
To some observers the very idea that a government organization with the charter of the CIA would not INHERENTLY be politicized
is foolish:
"Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain
itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think
it possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question
will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers." [source,
Has the CIA Been Politicized? , Mises Institute]
So much for background and generalizations, let's turn to the real matter at hand, John Brennan's performance as Obama's lap dog,
parroting [highly questionable at best] the Democrat line that Putin put Trump in the Oval Office and is therefore an illegitimate
president.
This line of attack is so common within the modern progressive/Marxist Democrat Party that it would normally have little effect
outside the I95 corridor except for the fact that this one has a very visible [and presumed by many to be beyond reproach] and public
champion, John O. Brennan and his war-toy, the Central Intelligence Agency.
We believe for a number of reasons that in his effort to discredit Mr. Trump, Brennan is acting as an intelligence operative doing
[a uniquely narcissistic] president's bidding.
Exhibit one is obvious: Brennan is fearful of what the incoming administration might do to his porcine agency, one replete with
desk jockeys rather than actual field agents so attacking the incoming CIC might prove advantageous in repelling the supposedly imminent
attack on Brennan's turf.
An above the fold feature story in the January 5 edition of the Wall Street Journal reflects this view:
"President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would
restructure and pare back the nation's top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said advisers also are working on a plan
to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people
out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment.
'The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized,' said the individual, who is close
to the Trump transition. 'They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.'"
[source, Damian Paletta and Julian E. Barnes,
Trump Plans Spy Agency Overhaul , Wall St. Journal, January 5, 2017]
Exhibit two might be a bit less speculative:
"In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence
that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the
e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign Comey told Trump that James Clapper, the director
of National Intelligence, agreed with this FBI assessment.
The only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was John
Brennan, the director of the CIA, according to sources who were briefed on Comey's conversations with Trump.
Bolstering the image of a CIA director willing to grovel to curry favor with the administration, to the detriment of American
interests, in 2010 we wrote about what was a firestorm at the time, an address by Brennan, then one of Obama's national security
advisors, at an NYU event called, "A Dialogue on our National Security," which was organized by then president of the Hamas linked
Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson.
During the 34 minute speech [video below] Brennan rendered his bizarre - near love affair - with Islam.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mKUpmFb4h_U
[approximately 5:40 into the speech]
"...And as part of that experience, to learn about the goodness and beauty of Islam....I came to see Islam not as it is often
misrepresented, but for what it is...a faith of peace and tolerance and great diversity...[breaks into spoken Arabic]
[approximately 7:30 into the speech]
"...But I did spend time as an undergraduate at the American University in Cairo in the 1970s. And time spent with classmates
from Egypt, from Jordan, from Palestine, and around the world who taught me that whatever our differences of nationality or race
or religion or language, there are certain aspirations that we all share. To get an education. To provide for our families. To
practice our faith freely. To live in peace and security. And during a 25-year career in government, I was privileged to serve
in positions across the Middle East...as a political officer with the State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.
In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina.
I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that privilege [he
corrects himself] that pilgrimage. And in all my travels, the city I have come to love most is Al Quds ...Jerusalem, where three
great faiths come together..." [see, William Mayer,
John Brennan's "Al Quds" NYU Address - Providing Aid and Comfort to the Islamists ]
The use of the Arabic term - Al Quds - for the capital of Israel, Jerusalem by such a high ranking member of any American administration
is really without precedent, leading one to view with great suspicion the allegiance of Brennan as well as raising substantial questions
about his boss.
For our fourth exhibit, we turn simply to the career of Mr. Brennan. He was recruited by the CIA straight out of college, proceeded
to then serve for 25 years as a field agent followed by a long list of high level intel type government jobs. It's our judgment that
though the CIA director really doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the box, that persona is a façade hiding a very skilled
operator who views his current attack on the incoming president as if it were a clandestine assignment in some godforsaken part of
the planet.
In short Brennan is a man on a mission, Obama's bagman.
And finally, as our fifth exhibit let's examine the logic, or lack thereof of why someone like Vlad Putin would prefer Trump over
Hillary, thus providing him with motive.
Let us stipulate for the sake of argument that Putin directed a group of Russia's best programmers to hack into the DNC's Internet
network knowing that internal email would make Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party look so bad that voters would decide
to award the election to Trump.
What on earth would motivate the wily Russian strongman to prefer Trump over Hillary, consider the facts.
1. It's
common knowledge that Hillary's bathroom server network was hacked at least 5 times by foreign intelligence agencies. Thus, her
trading access for money through the Clinton Foundation would be well known to a group of individuals eager to exploit such weaknesses.
So it follows that if Putin was clever enough to hack into the DNC which had a more secure computer network than Hillary's, he had
at the same time a literal encyclopedia of dirt on the Clintons.
This of course would make Hillary, as president an obvious target for blackmail.
Think of what a crafty ex-KGB officer could do with only 1% of the type of information which was so inelegantly stored on the
Clinton email server, let alone the whole enchilada.
It would have made Hillary literally a puppet of Vlad Putin.
2. Contrast this with Trump's promise to rebuild the military as well as America's infrastructure and take an aggressive stance
against America's foes.
Sorry, it just doesn't fly. The idea of Putin hacking Trump to victory is absurd and just the last in a very long list of excuses
why one of the worst candidates for president in modern American history lost on November 8.
"... But instead of telling the story of John Brennan, Obama's Cheney, the story pitches Obama as the key decision-maker–a storyline
Brennan has always been one of the most aggressive pitchmen for, including when he confirmed information on the Anwar al-Awlaki strike
he shouldn't have. In a sense, then, Brennan has done Cheney one better: seed a story of his own power, but sell it as a sign of the
President's steeliness. ..."
"... "Pragmatism over ideology," his campaign national security team had advised in a memo in March 2008. It was counsel that only
reinforced the president's instincts. ..."
"... The memo was written not long after Brennan started playing a more central role among Obama's campaign advisors. But the story
makes no mention of his presumed role in it. Further, in describing Jeh Johnson to introduce a quote, the piece notes that he was "a
campaign adviser" (it doesn't say Johnson was also focused on voter protection). But it does not note that Brennan, too, was a key campaign
advisor, one with an exclusively national security focus. ..."
"... In other words, in several places in this story, Brennan plays a key role that is downplayed. ..."
"... There is clearly an attempt to sell the Team Obama Campaign 2012 political viewpoint of a steely-eyed leader astride his charging
steed slaying the nation's enemies left and right. ..."
"... There is clearly an attempt by Father John, Blabbermouth of Brennan to sanctify his patron Saint Obama (and no less sanctify
himself). ..."
"... In the end, it seems to me that Team Obama Campaign 2012 narrative was the overarching theme, and a somewhat defensive one
at that. ..."
"... By that I mean, the campaign narrative seemed to say that even if Obama hasn't done much of anything else, not much to get
Americans back to work, not much to keep Americans in their homes, not much to calm the waters and heal the American political discourse,
at least the American voting public can rest assured that he's personally taken charge of the nation's war on terrorism and has been
slaying the dragons wherever they've appeared ..."
But I'm very interested in how the stories are structured differently. With Angler 1.0, the story was very clearly about Dick
Cheney and the methods he used to manipulate Bush into following his advice. Here, the story is really about John Brennan, Obama's
Cheney, portrayed deep in thought and foregrounding Obama in the article's picture. Indeed, halfway through, the story even gives
biographical background on Brennan, the classic "son of Irish immigrants" story, along with Harold Koh's dubious endorsement of Brennan's
"moral rectitude."
But instead of telling the story of John Brennan, Obama's Cheney, the story pitches Obama as the key decision-maker–a storyline
Brennan has always been one of the most aggressive pitchmen for, including when he
confirmed information on the Anwar al-Awlaki strike he shouldn't have. In a sense, then, Brennan has done Cheney one better:
seed a story of his own power, but sell it as a sign of the President's steeliness.
The Silent Sources for the Story
I already pointed out how, after presenting
unambiguous evidence of Brennan's past on-the-record lies, the story backed off calling him on it.
But there are other ways in which this story shifts the focus away from Brennan.
A remarkable number of the sources for the story spoke on the record: Tom Donilon, Cameron Munter, Dennis Blair, Bill Daley, Jeh
Johnson, Michael Hayden, Jim Jones, Harold Koh, Eric Holder, Michael Leiter, John Rizzo, and John Bellinger. But it's not until roughly
the 3,450th word of a 6,000 word article that Brennan is first quoted–and that's to largely repeat the
pre-emptive lies of his drone speech from last month.
"The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U.S. persons' lives," Mr. Brennan said in an interview. "It is the
option of last recourse. So the president, and I think all of us here, don't like the fact that people have to die. And so he
wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: The infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base,
the imminence of the threat, all of these things."
That is the only on-the-record direct quote from Brennan in the entire article, in spite of the centrality of Brennan to the story.
And I would bet several of the sources quoted anonymously in the section describing Obama's method of counting the dead (which
still ignores the women and children) are Brennan: "a top White House adviser" describing how sharp Obama was in the face of the
first civilian casualties; "a senior administration official" claiming, in the face of credible evidence to the contrary, that the
number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan were in "single digits."
Note, too, the reference to a memo his campaign national security advisors wrote him.
"Pragmatism over ideology," his campaign national security team had advised in a memo in March 2008. It was counsel that
only reinforced the president's instincts.
The memo was written not long after Brennan
started playing a more central role among Obama's campaign advisors. But the story makes no mention of his presumed role in it.
Further, in describing Jeh Johnson to introduce a quote, the piece notes that he was "a campaign adviser" (it doesn't say Johnson
was also focused on voter protection). But it does not note that Brennan, too, was a key campaign advisor, one with an exclusively
national security focus.
In other words, in several places in this story, Brennan plays a key role that is downplayed.
The Pro-Drone Narrator
Given that fact, I'm really interested in the several places where the story adopts a pro-drone viewpoint (it does adopt a more
critical stance in the narrative voice at the end).
For example, the story claims, in the first part of the story, that the drone strikes "have eviscerated Al Qaeda" without presenting
any basis for that claim. This, in spite of the fact that al Qaeda has expanded in Yemen since we've started hitting it with drones.
Later, the article uncritically accepts the claim that the drone–regardless of the targeting that goes into using it–is a "precision
weapon" that constitutes a rejection of a "false choice between our safety and our ideals."
The care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets, and their reliance on a precision weapon,
the drone, reflect his pledge at the outset of his presidency to reject what he called the Bush administration's "false choice
between our safety and our ideals."
For fucks sake! This article describes how the White House has adopted a "guilt by association" approach to drone targeting. It
describes renamed signature strikes (though presents what is almost certainly an outdated picture of the targeting review process).
Yet it uncritically accepts this "precision" claim–which clearly reflects a source's judgment–as true.
Finally, a potentially even bigger bias is in the presentation of the al-Majala strike on December 17, 2009.
It killed not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and left behind a trail of
cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents. It was hardly the kind of precise operation that Mr. Obama favored.
Videos of children's bodies and angry tribesmen holding up American missile parts flooded You Tube, fueling a ferocious backlash
that Yemeni officials said bolstered Al Qaeda.
The sloppy strike shook Mr. Obama and Mr. Brennan, officials said, and once again they tried to impose some discipline.
The story doesn't name who the target was; it says only that the strike killed him, and the NYT repeats the claim without asking
for such details.
As I have noted
, though, sources speaking immediately after the strike
explained
the target struck where "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned." (The quotes here are from the source, not
the ABC report.) There was, of course, an imminent attack being planned at the time, one about which we had at least some advance
intelligence. That was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attack. I'm pretty sure the strike on a Yemeni site 10 days after he left the
country missed him, though.
These last two quotes–perhaps all three–look like comments a White House figure (and it'll surprise no one that I suspect it's
Brennan) gave on deep background, such that his exact words are used, but without quotation marks or any indication of the source.
Credible journalists would have no other reason to make such unsubstantiated claims, particularly the "precision" claim that they
disprove elsewhere in the same article.
Who Okayed Killing Mehsud's Wife?
Ultimately, the depiction of John Brennan as Obama's puppetmaster is most interesting in the telling of Baitullah Mehsud's killing.
This version conflicts in key ways from the story that Joby Warrick told in his book, starting with
the uranium
claim that provided the excuse for targeting him. And while I'm working from memory, I believe Warrick portrayed the approval
of that killing–which might kill Mehsud's wife in addition to Mehsud–as involving Panetta alone. This version says Panetta consulted
Obama–through Brennan.
Then, in August 2009, the CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, told Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But
taking out the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama's standard of "near certainty" of no innocents
being killed. In fact, a strike would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws' home.
"Many times," General Jones said, in similar circumstances, "at the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target
had people around them and we were able to loiter on station until they didn't."
But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the CIA to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his
wife and, by some reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official.
I'm not surprised by (or critical of) the conflict in the stories. It seems like Warrick relied primarily on CIA sources telling
a packaged version of the strike, while this story tells another packaged version of it. (Note, curiously, Panetta is only named
in this passage and never quoted.)
But I am struck by how obviously this story–whether filtered through Brennan as a direct source for this story, or filtered through
Brennan for Panetta's consumption at the time–depends on John Brennan to narrate Obama's role. If he weren't involved somehow, the
NYT wouldn't have included the "through Mr. Brennan." And while the detail doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things–Mehsud's
wife's death will weigh no more or less against Obama's and Brennan's record than Abdulrahman al-Awlaki or the Bedouin women and
children at al-Majala–it is a testament to the degree to which this story, and so many of those cited in this article, depend on
Brennan narrating Obama's role.
Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She's known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery
of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and generally for her weedy analysis of document dumps. Marcy Wheeler
is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog,
publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the
author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Marcy has a PhD from
the University of Michigan, where she researched the "feuilleton," a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important
in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations
in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse and dog in Grand Rapids, MI.
Like you EW, I got the sense that this NYT story was the product of a number of different motivations.
There is clearly an attempt to sell the Team Obama Campaign 2012 political viewpoint of a steely-eyed leader astride his
charging steed slaying the nation's enemies left and right.
There is clearly an attempt by Father John, Blabbermouth of Brennan to sanctify his patron Saint Obama (and no less sanctify
himself).
There are a number of attempts by lesser Doubting Thomases to question the sanctity of both Saint Obama and Father John.
There is a certain amount of seemingly NYT editorial tut-tutting as well as cheerleading.
In the end, it seems to me that Team Obama Campaign 2012 narrative was the overarching theme, and a somewhat defensive
one at that.
By that I mean, the campaign narrative seemed to say that even if Obama hasn't done much of anything else, not much to
get Americans back to work, not much to keep Americans in their homes, not much to calm the waters and heal the American political
discourse, at least the American voting public can rest assured that he's personally taken charge of the nation's war on terrorism
and has been slaying the dragons wherever they've appeared.
Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize -- for not being George W. Bush. This
seemed unseemly at the time, but not outrageous. Seven years later, it seems
grotesque.
As the steward-in-chief of the American empire, Obama continued
Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and extended his "War on Terror" into Libya,
Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East.
He also became a terrorist himself and a serial killer, weaponized drones and
special ops assassins being his weapons of choice.
Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin claims "the evidence is overwhelming" that the Obama administration spied on Donald
Trump leading up his inauguration
, RadarOnline.com has learned.
"I'm saying the public record is damning of the Obama administration. It was investigating the campaign of a presidential candidate
of an opposing party during the course of the campaign. Its use of FISA, loosening of NSA distribution requirements, husbanding
and protecting information at the behest of White House staff on the way out the door, and recent leaks of confidential and perhaps
classified information is extraordinary," Levin said in the CNN Reliable Sources newsletter.
"... FISA surveillance has to be approved by a special court, which almost always allows the government to spy on people when asked . But when the Justice Department asked to spy on several of Trump's associates, the court refused permission, according to the BBC . As McCarthy writes, this is notable because "the FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests to conduct national security surveillance." ..."
"... Not taking no for an answer, the Obama administration came back during the final weeks of the election with a narrower request that didn't specifically mention Trump. That narrower request was granted by the court, but reports from the Guardian and the BBC don't mention the tapping of phones. ..."
"... Former Obama officials issued denials that the former president had anything to do with it, which McCarthy calls "disingenuous on several levels." Others have characterized them as a " non-denial denial ." ..."
"... The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House." ..."
"... Obama's political allies even alleged that his CIA spied on Congress . ..."
"... Trump has called for a congressional investigation , but what this really needs is a special prosecutor, someone from outside the politically tainted Justice Department, to look into the political abuse of surveillance laws by the Obama administration. ..."
So President Trump set off a firestorm over the weekend with a series of tweets alleging that Obama had tapped Trump Tower. But
getting hung up on imprecise language in the president's tweets isn't the right way to look at things. What seems to be true is that
the Obama administration spied on some of Trump's associates and we don't know exactly how much information was collected under what
authority and who was targeted.
FISA surveillance has to be approved by a special court, which
almost always allows
the government to spy on people when asked . But when the Justice Department asked to spy on several of Trump's associates, the
court refused permission,
according to the BBC . As McCarthy writes, this is notable because "the FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests
to conduct national security surveillance."
Not taking no for an answer, the Obama administration came back during the final weeks of the election with a narrower request
that didn't specifically mention Trump. That narrower request was
granted by the court, but reports from the Guardian and
the BBC don't mention the tapping of phones.
Former Obama officials issued denials that the former president had anything to do with it, which McCarthy calls "disingenuous
on several levels." Others have characterized them as a "
non-denial denial ."
To the Obama camp's claim that the president didn't "order" surveillance of Trump, McCarthy writes:
"First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that 'orders' surveillance. And
by statute, it is the Justice department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court.
So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff 'ordered' surveillance of Trump and his associates.
The
issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether,
if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive
and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate
of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the
candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened
without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House."
And as journalist Mickey Kaus commented on Twitter, there's a reason why presidents name
trusted allies as attorney general.
As close as former attorney general Loretta Lynch was to Obama, and as supportive as she was of his political goals, it seems very
unlikely that this was some sort of rogue operation.
It's certainly not impossible to believe that the Obama administration spied on Trump. Obama wouldn't be the first president to
engage in illegal surveillance of opposition candidates, and his administration has been noted for its great enthusiasm for domestic
spying. In an effort to plug embarrassing leaks, the
Obama administration spied on Associated Press reporters and seized the phone records not only of a Fox News reporter
but also of his parents. Obama's political allies even alleged that his CIA
spied on Congress
.
Nor is it unbelievable that under the Obama administration, supposedly non-partisan civil servants would go after political opponents.
After all, the notorious
IRS scandal was about exactly that.
Trump has called for a
congressional investigation , but what this really needs is a special prosecutor, someone from outside the politically tainted
Justice Department, to look into the political abuse of surveillance laws by the Obama administration. Maybe, upon investigation,
it will turn out that nothing improper happened – that this is a lot of smoke, but that there's no fire. But we can't know without
an investigation, and if there really were political abuses of the Justice Department and the intelligence surveillance process,
those guilty should not simply be exposed but go to jail. Such abuse strikes at democracy itself.
Note that FISA surveillance is severely limited and requires information from surveillance to be kept very secret or, if not relevant,
deleted. If those limits were exceeded, if Obama officials lied to the court, or if the information was – as it appears to have been
– excessively shared within the government, or leaked to outsiders, those are all serious crimes, as
First
Amendment attorney Robert Barnes notes.
Watergate brought down a presidency, but if the worst suspicions here are borne out, we're dealing with something worse. Hopefully
not, but there's no way to tell at this point. As The Washington Post has been saying lately, "Democracy dies in darkness."
Let's shine some light on what the Obama administration was doing during this election.
They can't win hearts and minds of people with discredited neoliberal ideology. So they need to spy on them.
Notable quotes:
"... I find this Real News Network interview with Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, to be astonishing. He effectively says that Trump may not be wrong in his claims that he was spied on. ..."
"... Trump used the word "wiretapping," which gave his opponents a huge out, since that means a judge gave a warrant to allow for monitoring. ..."
"... What is therefore striking about this report is that Wilkerson, who is no fan of Trump, nevertheless is defending him in this matter. That is a sign that he regards the campaign against Trump as dangerous from an institutional perspective. ..."
"... three Trump associates were the subject of surveillance and "wiretapping" and that the information was shared with Obama. ..."
"... I am SURE Trump is being advised not to tip over the apple cart and let everybody know who was RIGHT – we're all monitored all the time. And that's the rub. ..."
"... which legalized warrantless surveillance on domestic soil so long as the target is a foreigner abroad, even when the target is communicating with an American ..."
"... The way I understand it, any conversation with the Russian ambassador in it is monitored (and stored) – Flynn talks to the ambassador, he is being monitored. Supposedly, Flynn should know this. ..."
"... My theory is that Flynn was talking policy – albeit SENSITIVE policy – and PERHAPS the intelligence community didn't like the change in policy and decided by leaking to make Flynn look like a dirty commie – Or Flynn is a turncoat (so why isn't he being prosecuted???) ..."
"... Getting "stuff" on people so that they can be manipulated is par for the course. Have we forgotten about J. Edgar Hoover. Does anybody really believe that the Democrats and the "deep state" don't already have enough "on Trump" to remove him from office given his mafia connections, not to mention Roy Cohn? ..."
"... Could Trump's use of "Obama" just have been a metonym for the previous administration? I mean that's how the names of presidents and other leaders are frequently used. Journalists, historians, and people in general will often say "Bush did this" or "Thatcher did that" or "Stalin did something else" when it's clear that the named individuals didn't and couldn't have personally performed the action, rather functionaries of the regimes they headed did the action. ..."
"... Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW! I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election! How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! ..."
"... Whoa. Wilkerson looks on edge, usually very cool in these pieces. ..."
"... I have the impression he can't contain himself on the subject of Brennan. Is that your take? ..."
I find
this Real News Network interview with Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, to be astonishing. He effectively
says that Trump may not be wrong in his claims that he was spied on.
At the 50,000 foot level, Trump's claim is trivial. Anyone who paid attention to the Edward Snowden revelations knows that the
NSA is in a total data acquisition mode, hoovering up information from smart devices and able to use computers and tablets as monitoring
devices. But Trump used the word "wiretapping," which gave his opponents a huge out, since that means a judge gave a warrant
to allow for monitoring. And pinning surveillance on Obama personally was another huge stretch. In other words, Trump took what
could have been an almost certain statement of fact, and by larding it up with dodgy particulars, pushed it well into crazypants
terrain.
What made Trump look bad was the FBI making clear it was not snooping on Trump, when the FBI would have been involved in a wiretap.
Lambert and I discussed that it wasn't hard to come up with scenarios that weren't wiretaps by which Trump could have been spied
upon while keeping Obama Administration hands clean. The most obvious was to have another member of the Five Eyes do the dirty work.
What is therefore striking about this report is that Wilkerson, who is no fan of Trump, nevertheless is defending him in this
matter. That is a sign that he regards the campaign against Trump as dangerous from an institutional perspective. And he states
that the idea that Lambert and I had casually bandied about, that a foreign spy organization like the GCHQ, did Trump dirty work
for the US government, is seen as a real possibility in the intelligence community.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fgd4WDMG4mQ
PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to another edition of the Wilkerson Report.
Of course the accusations are flying in every direction in D.C.. The latest Donald Trump saying that President Obama spied on
him, ordered the listening of his telephone conversations. Now joining us to talk about these allegations is Larry Wilkerson.
Larry joins us from Falls Church, Virginia. Larry was the former Chief of Staff for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Currently
an Adjunct Professor of Goverment at the College of Willam and Mary and a regular contributor to The Real News Network.
(discussion)
PAUL JAY: So, Larry what do you make of these allegations? Most of the media seems to be saying Trump is alleging this in order
to distract from the real controversy, which they say his and his administration's connections to Putin and Russia. What do you make
of Trump's allegations?
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, I'm certainly not one, Paul, to defend HMS Trump and that whole entourage of people, but I will paint you
a hypothetical here. There are a number of events that have occurred in the last 96 hours or so that lead me to believe that maybe
even the Democratic party, whatever element of it, approached John Brennan at the CIA, maybe even the former president of the United
States. And John Brennan, not wanting his fingerprints to be on anything, went to his colleague in London GCHQ, MI6 and essentially
said, "Give me anything you've got." And he got something and he turned it over to the DNC or to someone like that. And what he got
was GHCQ MI6's tapes of conversations of the Trump administration perhaps, even the President himself. It's really kind of strange,
at least to me, they let the head of that organization go, fired him about the same time this was brewing up. So I'm not one to defend
Trump, but in this case he might be right. It's just that it wasn't the FBI. Comey's right, he wasn't wire-tapping anybody, it was
John Brennan, at the CIA And you say, "What would be John Brennan's motivation?" Well, clearly he wanted to remain Director of the
CIA for Hillary Clinton when she was elected President of the United States, which he had every reason to believe, as did lots of
us, that she would be.
PAUL JAY: Now, Larry, do we have any evidence of this? Is this like a theory or is there some evidence?
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, it's a theory that's making its way around some in the intelligence community right now because they know
about the relationship between the CIA and the same sort of capabilities, maybe not quite as vast as the NSA has, but still good
capabilities that exist in London. I mean, otherwise the president just came out and said something was patently false. Generally
speaking, you know, I would agree with that, with regard to this particular individual, but not in this case.
PAUL JAY: Now why would the British go along with this?
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, you have to understand this is a real problem, Paul, it's been a problem for a long time. Only certain
governments have national technical means that feature $5 billion satellites orbiting the United States and the rest of the globe
and providing intricate national means of looking at other people 24/7. Even streaming video and so forth. There are only so many
people who can afford that. We're the biggest guy on the block so when we sidle up to France or we sidle up to Germany or Japan or
anybody else, they have two choices, either cooperate with us and share in that treasure trove from time to time or they don't cooperate
with us and I'll tell you what we do, we cut them off. So this is a very incestuous relationship. I saw this up close and personal
when we were saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we had Paris and Tel Aviv and Berlin and London and everybody
agreeing with us. I now know why they agreed with us, more recetively(?) (sound difficulties – 00:04:45 – 00:05:05) You still there?
PAUL JAY: Yeah.
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, they agree with us because they don't have any choice. Their choices are stark. They agree with us and
hope it doesn't rebound to their discredit or hurt them or they don't agree with us and we cut them off.
PAUL JAY: Okay, now let's go back to Trump's allegations. Trump does not seem to be shy about just making stuff up from whole
cloth without any basis at all. Why would one thing this isn't just another fabrication?
LARRY WILKERSON: Paul, I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but I'm not so sure you're right in that–
PAUL JAY: I'm not saying it is. I'm just asking, is there any reason to think that we know that he's not making this up?
LARRY WILKERSON: No, except that the series of events that occurred lead me to believe that John Brennan was, in fact, working
with London and perhaps something came out of that, that might have assured John Brennan of a continuation of his role at the CIA
with a new administration headed by Hillary Clinton. That makes every bit of sense to me when I think about it. And remember, I've
been there and I've seen this stuff.
PAUL JAY: Okay. We'll have to wait over the next few days or hours and see if more hard evidence follows out. But let's go look
a little further, if you're right, Brennan's helping Clinton, you have different sections of the intelligence community helping various
players. Some of them seem to be turning on Trump, some are feeding Trump, some are supporting him, it's like you got little fiefdoms
in the intelligence community all with their own agendas here.
LARRY WILKERSON: This is very disturbing. It's happened in the past, of course, when we politicized intelligence. It happened
when Bill Casey and Ronald Reagan when Bill Casey made the case for a Soviet buildup so Reagan could justify his arms buildup in
the U.S.. The Soviets were not involved in a buildup at all. That was all fabricated intelligence. It's happened with Henry Kissinger
and Richard Nixon from time to time. But this is a new level of 17 different heavily funded intelligence agencies and groups, headed
by the DNI and the CIA all apparently playing their own little games within various segments of a political community in this country
and leaking accordingly. And I don't eliminate the FBI from that either. Why else would Comey come out, for example, just prior to
the elections and say he had other e-mails and imply that they might be damning of one of the candidates? It's everyone playing in
this game and it's an extremely dangerous game.
PAUL JAY: Is part of what's going on here, is that all of these institutions whether it's CIA or FBI or NSA and on and on with
all the alphabet, that their first priority, their deepest interest is their own agency. Their existence, their funding, their own
jobs, that this is really - it's not about some supposed national interest to start with it starts with just who these guys are and
they become entities unto themselves.
LARRY WILKERSON: Absolutely. Hoover, take Hoover at the FBI, during World War II, it can be proven, it can be analytically demonstrated
that Hoover spent more man hours and more money trying to look at his own administration, trying to gain power over elements of that
administration than he did looking at the Nazis. I mean, this is not anything new, it's just come to a depth and a profundity of
action that is scary and dangerous.
When you have your entire intelligence community more interested in its own survival and its own power, and therefore, playing
in politics to the degree that we have it doing so today, you've got a real problem. And I'm not talking about the people beavering
away in the trenches who are trying their best to do a good job, I'm talking about these leaders, these people at the top and the
second tier level, who are participating in this political game in a way that they should not be, but they've been doing for some
time and now they've brought it to a crescendo.
PAUL JAY: Is part of what's happening here an overall decay, if you will, of the state itself, of the American government? Which
is a reflection of what's going on in the economy. You have so much of Wall Street is about pure parasitical investment. There's
more money being invested in derivative gambling and billionaires gambling against billionaires and shorting, kind of manupulating
commodity markets and so on, more money in the parasitical activity than there is investment in productive activity. And these are
the guys that are financing political campaigns even electing presidents, in the case of Robert Mercer, who 's the billionaire who
backed Trump and Bannon. Bannon worked for Mercer. The whole state and the upper echelons in the economy they seem to be into such
practically mafioso short-sightedness. Like, "What can we do today for ourselves and damn what happens later?"
LARRY WILKERSON: The decay of (sound difficulties) empire hat on and I will tell you, yes. You're right. This empire is decaying
at a rapid rate. And it is not just reflected in the fact that we can't govern ourselves, the fact that we have a congress that can't
even see the nation for the trees. My political party, Paul, right now thinks that it's going to achieve its full agenda or at least
a good portion of it while this buffoon in the White House twiddles his thumbs. They don't see the country. They don't care about
the country. All they want to do is achieve their agenda; social, economic and otherwise. This country, in all of its components,
whether it's government or it's finance, economics or whatever, is falling apart.
PAUL JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Larry.
LARRY WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.
PAUL JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
I took a glance at the article and read one of its links to the NYTimes article which confirms that three Trump associates
were the subject of surveillance and "wiretapping" and that the information was shared with Obama.
Even without digging into the story, the fact that Trump's claim is viewed with such disdain by the MSM has always struck me
as incredulous. I have generally assumed that most communications among people in power is monitored whether legally or not.
I've read most of those. The problem is that the important thing – was a FISA warrant issued – not been confirmed by the government
to my knowledge. Apparently it is secret by law so it is one of those things that the government will neither confirm nor deny
– and I am SURE Trump is being advised not to tip over the apple cart and let everybody know who was RIGHT – we're all monitored
all the time. And that's the rub.
The other thing about the articles is the incredible amount of contradiction (assuming the government officials aren't being
misquoted there are a LOT of things that just don't square).
I think comes down to this – very simply the government/intelligence community (IC) does not really want to admit how many people's
conversations it actually listens to or CAN listen to. Nobody can look at this and say that the 4th amendment is meaningful .
In this case, a U.S. general, working on behalf of the president elect (or was this before Trump was elected?), was monitored
by the IC and removed from office because of illegal leaks. We don't REALLY know why – but the idea that the IC has a veto over
the president's appointees should give everyone pause.
Would a warrant actually be needed? In the New York Time article on January 12, 2017 they say:
After Congress enacted the FISA Amendments Act - which legalized warrantless surveillance on domestic soil so long as the
target is a foreigner abroad, even when the target is communicating with an American - the court permitted raw sharing of
emails acquired under that program, too.
The way I understand it (gleaned from a National Review article written by a former justice department lawyer Andrew McCarthy
– I excerpted quite a bit of it, but it is now in skynet heaven )
is that Russki subjects of interest (or any nationality) are always monitored. This means that Americans will occasionally get
MONITORED if in communication with such individuals as well and those communications are STORED (monitored and stored ARE NOT
THE SAME AS LISTENED TO). Now, to actually listen to the Americans in these conversation is what supposedly requires the FISA
warrant – it is suppose to be based on something that the person is acting as an AGENT of a foreign power.
Or the FBI could have been doing just a regular financial fraud investigation between Trump companies and Russia found nothing
(OR found something and IS still investigation), and than passed it over as an intelligence matter. I can't do justice to the
article without being skynetted, so you will have to read the article for yourself if interested.
If that is true then what was the basis for Flynn's phone calls being listened to?
So I'm not sure the point about monitored / stored / listened to is the case anymore. The NYT article I referenced is all about
the old privacy rules being removed.
In addition the part of the article I quoted seems to say that isn't the case anymore.
Flynn did a lot of work during the transition from Trump Tower. We know some of his calls where intercepted and not just the
one from the beach.
Evidently Paul Manafort lived in Trump Tower for a while. From the news articles his phone calls where also intercepted.
I did look up a bunch of McCarthy's articles in National Review. Thanks for the pointer.
"If that is true then what was the basis for Flynn's phone calls being listened to?"
The way I understand it, any conversation with the Russian ambassador in it is monitored (and stored) – Flynn talks to the ambassador,
he is being monitored. Supposedly, Flynn should know this.
My theory is that Flynn was talking policy – albeit SENSITIVE policy – and PERHAPS the intelligence community didn't like the
change in policy and decided by leaking to make Flynn look like a dirty commie – Or Flynn is a turncoat (so why isn't he being
prosecuted???)
The issue from the NR article is, as I understand it, is that Flynn should not be listened to unless there was some REAL suspicion
that he was an agent and there was a FISA warrant (a former US general is really suspected of being a Russian agent???). So one
can know that Flynn had a conversation with the ambassador (from monitoring) but not the substance unless there was a FISA warrant
– if I am understanding this correctly.
If he wasn't proven to be an agent than that conversation is suppose to go into the "vault" and never be released or acknowledged.
So there are just a lot of things that don't add up.
I'm thinking like the meme "fake news" that the people who started this whole think may regret looking into whether Trump was
improperly monitored after all. BUT I DON"T KNOW – maybe Trump is guilty of something
Does anybody really believe that these people feel bound by law? This is raw power politics. Getting "stuff" on people so that
they can be manipulated is par for the course. Have we forgotten about J. Edgar Hoover. Does anybody really believe that the Democrats
and the "deep state" don't already have enough "on Trump" to remove him from office given his mafia connections, not to mention
Roy Cohn?
It's not about removing anyone from office but to get them to do your bidding. Likewise it is a big distraction from
the ongoing fraud and corruption consuming this nation. Men like Wilkerson are finally realizing how far along our Mafia culture
has come to complete and utter collapse. Next time the music stops will there be any chairs left?
Could Trump's use of "Obama" just have been a metonym for the previous administration? I mean that's how the names of presidents and other leaders are frequently used. Journalists, historians, and people in general
will often say "Bush did this" or "Thatcher did that" or "Stalin did something else" when it's clear that the named individuals
didn't and couldn't have personally performed the action, rather functionaries of the regimes they headed did the action.
As an example, I've seen a number news articles saying Kim Jong-un killed Kim Jong-nam, even though, as far as I can tell,
Kim Jong-un has an airtight alibi, having been in a different country at the time. Most people understand such claims to mean
that functionaries of the North Korean government headed by Kim Jong-un are responsible for the killing and Kim Jong-un is just
used as a metonym for that government.
Same thing with "wiretap". Trump is of a generation where wiretap was a generic term used to refer to any sort of bugging.
Reading them as specific references comes across as a particularly pedantic and uncharitable interpretation.
Actually, checking the tweet, I see Trump wrote "tapp", an even more generic term for using electronic devices to listen in
on other people's private conversations.
Actually it was "wires tapped" with Trump having put the quotes in. So yeah, very generic term. And it says Trump Tower. Doesn't
he own Trump Tower? All that stuff in the Trump Tower is 'his'. So the claim is even more generic.
There were numerous reports that people associated with the campaign (headquarters in Trump Tower) had their phone conversations
intercepted. I assume it was when they were talking to a 'Russian'.
The first thing I thought when I heard this was "Hey, Trump finally attended an intelligence briefing."
If the NSA really is listening to everything, can anyone answer why the powers that be would even bother with an actual wiretap
anymore? Isn't it something anachronistic, like owning a beeper or something?
This is exactly the way I took it–with "obama" and "wiretap" being generic terms. Funnily enough, it made all the furor over
the tweet initially hard to understand. Now it makes the literal parsing look desperate and deliberately obfuscatory.
I find it impossible to believe that the MSM does not know that wiretap = any kind of monitoring/surveillance and that "Obama"
= white house, and/or Obama administration.
There is nothing wrong about doing a story about the nuances of surveillance, but to go on and on and ON about there is no wiretapping
is absurd. And the MSM professes to wonder why people find them unreliable
I may be "mis-remembering" here, but it reminded me of a time when ben bernanke was testifying in front of some congressional
committee or other. A member of the panel referenced the fed "printing" money. Bernanke replied that the fed doesn't "print" money.
They enter it onto a computer. A textbook distinction without a difference.
OH EXACTLY RIGHT!!! To go off on a tangent – to not say that money is "loaned" into existence and as much as you need can be
obtained from the either, just would beg the question of why Goldman Sachs, somebody who managed to lose trillions is deserving
of more loans, but a borrower who was scammed into some mortgage with some skyrocketing interest rate proviso is not. And the
unpalatable answer – the FED is to protect the rich and f*ck the poor .
Trump's language was very clear (at least to my ear) in attributing personal involvement to Obama (calling him a "bad (or sick)
guy"). But with "wiretap" note the use of quotation marks. When I first heard about these tweets the morning after, the first
thing I did was to go to Trump's twitter feed to have a look for myself. For me the quotation marks scanned as scare quotes and
I instinctively interpreted "wiretap" in its generic sense.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is
McCarthyism!
Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court
earlier. A NEW LOW!
I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just
prior to Election!
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad
(or sick) guy!
In his autobiography "Memoirs of a Revolutionist," Peter Kropotkin describes being interrogated by a member of the Okhrana,
the Tsar's secret police, after his arrest.
In the course of the interview, Kropotkin expresses amazement that the secret police had so deeply infiltrated his revolutionary
cell. His interrogator expressed smug satisfaction, and then informed him that such surveillance was commonplace, and that in
fact no one in the entire empire was more closely surveilled than the Tsar himself.
I've always operated under the assumption that the intelligence agencies devote ample resources to keeping the Executive under
close observation, and that he likely has no more secrets than the rest of us.
The difference now is that the agencies are not just monitoring executive goings-on, but becoming active political players.
Needless to say, clueless, hopeless Democrats are cheering them on.
Your title of "Empire In Decay" reminded me of my last two years at school (late 1980s) and the emphasis on Tudors and Stuarts,
Bourbons and Habsburgs in history classes. The school organised lectures from history professors like Henry Kamen and Paul Kennedy.
Kennedy had just written the book on the rise and fall of empires and been on the airwaves. Kamen is an expert on imperial Spain.
One rarely sees that sort of expertise in the MSM. We get the likes of McCain, Miss Lindsey, David Brooks, Bernard-Henri Levy,
Simon Schama (sic) et al masquerading as experts.
Paul Kennedy knew his stuff. Read his book back in the day, cover to cover. That is the level of state-craft these people are
thinking about. One dinky national election is mere detail. I am sure all the agencies have read the Club of Rome report and what
came after it. It isn't just Global Warming time. Chess end games, all the way down, until checkmate.
It's appalling, isn't. Just the same talking heads going around studios and obsessing over trivia and sound bites.
I remember the Sunday lunchtime and evening shows in the UK thirty years ago, featuring academics and journalists who had been
in a country for years and got to know the country well. The advent of 24 hour and international news seems to have destroyed
what was good coverage / analysis.
FWIW, one of my friends and also son of immigrants from a former French and British colony works at the UK mission to the EU.
He is a professional historian and studied at LSE and Cambridge. He hopes to return to Cambridge by the end of the decade and
teach, but will also write about how Brexit panned out from a ring side seat.
It would be great if Yves could get historians of the calibre of Kamen, Kennedy, Howard, Scarisbrick and Sauvigny to contribute.
Gore Vidal was telling the world about the National Security State years ago seemingly without any impact on the wider public
mindset.
Only when the legitimacy of leaders is seriously in question does this stuff pique the public interest. Isn't there something
called positive vetting? But then, there are no qualifications required for becoming a politician – seemingly every other job
nowadays needs a certificate but not that.
I'm just hoping that when I accidentally delete something important I can type a cry for help into Firefox and GCHQ will get
it all back for me.
If these things are true then there is little reason to think we aren't far, far beyond decay.. we are the festering maggot
laden puss spreading more toxic virulent dangers far and wide.
Little can explain those who circle the wagon in deference to, even in favor of the surveillance state unless they are afraid,
blackmailed etc.
Chaotic unpredictable Trump (who must be clean as a whistle to survive this long) may have grabbed this Shock Doctoring chaotic
beast by the tail. Will he be willing or able to bring it down? If so, he may be the greatest thing that's ever happened to this
country. He's already survived more than I ever dared imagine an individual could. I mean we have long been way past stay out
of any and all airplanes territory here.
The irony is just too rich a man in favor of ever increasing military, more torture, more drones just isn't enough for the
intel state.
A long while back a post Snowden revelation was that there exists a rule and mechanisms in the NSA to make sure that politicians
are put on a list that specifically excludes their communications from being vacuumed with everyone else's. To bypass the list
requires authorization at the highest levels in the agencies involved (and maybe even presidential authority). That is how Congress
protects itself and why it so easily gives all kinds of spying authorities to the agencies. This is not czarist Russia in other
words.
On whose authorities were the protections bypassed in the Trump case ? Comey has already come out to say he didn't do it. Devin
Nunes, the Chairman the House Intelligence committee seems to not have been informed of any surveillance op involving Trump so
the committees maybe out of the loop. This implies either CIA/NSA or GCHQ as I don't see Canada getting involved in it or NZ.
Was the flimflam Russian bs crapped out by GCHQ and CIA to gain such legal authorities and dredge opposition on Trump to prevent
his election or to soft coup him out ? That the Russian 'intel' came from an ex British spy seems suspicious.
The history of the FBI under Hoover makes me question your claim that members of Congress are exempt from surveillance. Are
we really supposed to believe that, the technology being what it is, the intelligence agencies would show such admirable self-restraint?
That's a bet I wouldn't take.
Yes I know and agree it would be foolish to rely on it. In practical terms they might do it anyway specially if safe in Obama's
approval, tacit or otherwise, but the rule exists anyway, if only to be a cudgel if the congress is feeling ornery. If I remember
correctly, it was discussed in Emptywheel's website in the context of the hacking of Angela Merkel.
Eureka Springs below mentions the senate hack. The hacking of the senate computers was a CIA screwup and the agencies don't
like to be in the spotlight that way but CIA seems to mind it less than the others. This is another reason I think CIA may be
behind the Trump tapp.
What strikes me is that this is NOT astounding, and should really come as no surprise. Think of the subterfuge and intrigue
back in the ancient empires of China, Greece, Rome. It's part of our human DNA. What cracks me up is the strength of the kool-aid
the innocence and starry-eyed conviction that we are exceptional. The concept of America spun in elementary school is indeed exceptional-
even exceptionally virtuous. But in fact, with our convenient lives, preoccupation with debt service and preoccupation with Dancing
with the Master Chefs, misdirection has kept us from the ugly reality that we are right in there amongst the best, if not the
most aggressive, in our dominant empire phase.
Think about the outrage when it was determined we were monitoring Merkle's phone. Empire in decline, indeed! Seems to me Homo
sapiens is really heading out toward the end of their dead branch on the tree of life: RIP Too much head, not enough heart.
A reason that I don't completely ignore Trump's claim (I do not like Trump!) is that it is beginning to look as if the entire
Obama Presidency had a few real primary objectives. Firstly was to protect Wall Street from any prosecution but one of the other
primary longterm goals was the TTP. Obama's desire to get the TTP through at any cost makes the act of listening in on Trump (who
said he would kill it) very plausible.
I believe that Cocomaan asked about a new Church committee in yesterday's comments. And the entire post above gives the reasons
why not. There is no one in Congress of the caliber of Frank Church. (Even if McCain has fantasies ) No one will take on a multinational
intelligence system, deliberately interlocked to avoid accountability. And when was the last congressional investigation that
produced results and legal proceedings?
The "Five Eyes" always remind me of V for Vendetta. (Which is not just a great graphic novel, but an unfolding prophecy.)
White-collar America, triumphant: Love means never having to say you're sorry.
I agree. Ron Wyden is perhaps the only one possible, but the fact that Clapper was never humiliated for lying to Congress shows
that we don't have anyone up to the task.
A nice interview and a good example of why I keep coming back to this blog. You don't get this kind of analysis anywhere else.
While all this infighting and spy vs. spy skulduggery goes on, one thing is for certain – the neo-cons and "deep state" are
too distracted by operation "take down the Donald" to pay much attention to their usual work.
The creation of failed states appears to be badly behind schedule now; Syria may actually be restored by the Russians and Iran
back to a functional state, and there appears to be a gutting of the State Department in progress which will make future "color
revolutions" difficult.
Is it any wonder there are so many powerful interests screaming that Russia "hacked" the election?
Having just read "Sleepwalkers" and the new Rasputin biography and reading how everyone of any note
in political circles was monitored in Europe and Russia over 100 years ago these modern revelations come as no surprise. In those
days they did it by opening mail, intercepting telegrams and having people followed 24 hours a day.
It reminded me of when the Chaplain was arrested by the CID men because Yossarian signed the chaplain's name or Washington
Irving's or Irving Washington's name as he censored soldiers letters home while staying in the hospital.
Thanks for this very important post. Nothing that Wilkerson said is a surprise – at all – to me. In fact, it's what I've figured
has been happening since well, at least since Hoover, as Wilkerson indicates.
As others have pointed out, though, this type of spying has gone on in many forms over the eons of time. None of it is new.
The only sort of newsworthy aspect of it is that people in positions of some power and knowledge of behind the scenes stuff, like
Wilkerson, are coming out and saying it.
I always figured, esp since the Snowden reveal, that ALL politicians of any major impact/level would be spied on – or at least
the data is gathered and available to be perused on an as needed basis.
I read somewhere that Trump allegedly was steamingly angry about this. I want to say: SO? What did you expect? THIS is the
way things work. Sometimes you're going like that Intel and sometimes you won't.
I'm not that convinced whether it makes a difference if there was an actual wire tap or the info was gathered by spy satellite
or some other method. But I could be wrong in that regard.
So it seems to me that Trump is naive, albeit I also get it that he's hitting out at his enemies and using his tool of choice:
twitter. So he makes his short tweets and expresses his anger against his enemies to shore up the defences of his supporters.
I can only hope that Trump was NOT naive enough to not realize that he wouldn't be spied on. Trump can hate Obama all he wants
– and I don't like Obama much either – but this kind of spying has be de rigueur for a long long time and no doubt, will continue
to be so for a long long time.
Will Trump be able to "tame" the Spooks? Good luck. JFK tried that, and we all witnessed how that turned out.
Thanks for this post. My guess is Wilkerson is right that intel agencies care most about their own turf and budgets. What's
interesting is, judging by the Chicken Little flailing after the election, imo the CIA and other agencies never saw a Trump win
coming, or really even possible. So, what are these agencies doing with all their big data? Did they simply use Google/Ada for
their election probabilities intel? /s
Sorry about length but I think this puts together some interesting info.
According to the BBC (from a Jan 13 report)
FISA warrants were issued:
On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to
me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community.
He would never volunteer anything – giving up classified information would be illegal – but he would confirm or deny what I
had heard from other sources.
"I'm going to write a story that says " I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he would reply, if my information
was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.
Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation
about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.
It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American
citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.
The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were
the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation,
there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency,
responsible for electronic spying.
Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the
secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted
permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.
Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in
July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election
day.
Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities
– in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United
States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.
A lawyer- outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case – told me that three of Mr Trump's associates were
the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump," he said.
I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said
one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request
for comment.
The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry
Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding back "explosive information" about Mr Trump.
Mr Reid sent his letter after getting an intelligence briefing, along with other senior figures in Congress. Only eight
people were present: the chairs and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and the leaders
of the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress, the "gang of eight" as they are sometimes called. Normally, senior staff
attend "gang of eight" intelligence briefings, but not this time. The Congressional leaders were not even allowed to take notes.
RT: What do you make of the accusations made by Donald Trump? How big of a deal is this?
Larry Johnson: I think it's a huge deal. The problem is Trump probably should not have done this via Twitter because to
call it a "wiretap" is technically inaccurate. And the denials by the Obama people – like Bill Clinton asking what the meaning
of "is" is with respect to "was oral sex a sexual act."
In this case I understand from very good friends that what happened was both Jim Clapper and John Brennan at CIA were intimately
involved in trying to derail the candidacy of Donald Trump. That there was some collusion overseas with Britain's own GHCQ
[Government Communications Headquarters]. That information that was gathered from GHCQ was actually passed to John Brennan
and it was disseminated within the US government. This dissemination was illegal.
Donald Trump is in essence correct that the intelligence agencies, and some in the law enforcement community on the side
of the FBI, were in fact illegally trying to access, monitor his communications with his aides and with other people. All of
this with an end to try and destroy and discredit his presidency. I don't think there can be any doubt of that. I think it's
worth noting that the head of the National Security Agency, an Admiral [Michael] Rogers, made a journey to the Trump Tower
shortly after Trump had won. And in the immediate aftermath of his visit, Jim Clapper and others in the intelligence community
called
for him to be fired . Why did Rodgers go to Trump Tower? My understanding is that it was to cover himself, because he was
aware that the NSA authorities had been misused and abused with respect to Donald Trump.
Another piece of evidence that Wikerson alludes to (
March
1, 2017 ) :
The American media is ignoring a story from London about the abrupt resignation of Robert Hannigan, the head of Britain's
highly secretive Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is the code breaking equivalent of the U.S. National
Security Agency (NSA). Hannigan's resignation on January 23 surprised everyone, with only a few hours' notice provided to his
staff. He claimed in a press release that he wanted to spend more time with his family, which reportedly includes a sick wife
and elderly parents. Given the abruptness of the decision, it seems likely to be a cover story.
Putting it altogether and there seems like a lot of smoke, will the MSM look for the fire?
If we ignore the noise that comes from all sides 24/7 we should ask ourselves what is the worst consequence of this election
cycle. I think that the fact that hatred became acceptable and normal is by far the worst. Will take a long time, if ever, to
heal that.
From the book The Damned Yard by Ivo Andric
The success with which the politicians were able to pursue their campaign of division and mutual antagonism depended to
a very large extend on the power of language to create a reality people are ready to believe in without reference to fact.
Introduction page viii
"It can happen, as you know," wrote Brother Mato, "that some of our people watching the Vizier destroy the Turks and their
"prominent people" would comment on how some good would come of it for the rayah, for our fools think that another's trouble
must do them good. You can tell them straight, so that they know now at least what they refused to see before: that nothing
will come of it. Page 11
Such was their capacity for hatred! And when the hatred of the bazaar attaches itself to an object, it never lets go, but
focuses increasingly on it, gradually altering its shape and meaning, superseding it completely and becoming an end in itself.
Then the object becomes secondary, only its name remains, and the hatred crystallizes, grows out of itself, according to its
own laws and needs, and becomes powerful, inventive and enthralling, like a kind of inverted love; it finds new fuel and impetus,
and itself creates motives for ever greater hatred. Page 19
Well this time Wilkerson did look upset. Just last week he looked tired but not so upset in his RNN interview. The topic this
time is of course Trump being tapped and Wilkerson clearly doesn't like it. But did anybody else notice that Wilkerson is wearing
the exact same clothes as in the most previous interview? And the time of day is very similar by the lighting behind him on the
ceiling and on his face as he speaks down into his computer. So that's odd. Because it indicates to me that they were getting
ready to debunk "Trump is crazy" talk even before Trump's claim hit the news. Or at least as soon as it did; they were ready with
this interview. I get the feeling they waited a few days to make it look spontaneous. Makes me think there is almost a civil war
going on. But regardless of these tactics, it's annoying that the DNC pulled this clumsy crap via the UK.
The Surge Delusion: An Iraq War Anniversary to Forget
By Danny Sjursen
The other day, I found myself flipping through old photos
from my time in Iraq. One in particular from October 2006
stood out. I see my 23-year-old self, along with my platoon.
We're still at Camp Buerhing in Kuwait, posing in front of
our squadron logo splashed across a huge concrete barrier. It
was a tradition by then, three and a half years after the
invasion of neighboring Iraq, for every Army, Marine, and
even Air Force battalion at that camp to proudly paint its
unit emblem on one of those large, ubiquitous barricades.
Gazing at that photo, it's hard for me to believe that it
was taken a decade ago. Those were Iraq's bad old days, just
before General David Petraeus's fabled "surge" campaign that
has since become the stuff of legend, a defining event for
American military professionals. The term has permanently
entered the martial lexicon and now it's everywhere. We
soldiers stay late at work because we need to "surge" on the
latest PowerPoint presentation. To inject extra effort into
anything (no matter how mundane) is to "surge." Nor is the
term's use limited to the military vernacular. Within the
first few weeks of the Trump administration, the Wall Street
Journal, for instance, reported on a deportation "surge."
For many career soldiers, the surge era (2007-2011)
provides a kind of vindication for all those years of effort
and seeming failure, a brief window into what might have been
and a proof certain of the enduring utility of force. When it
comes to that long-gone surge, senior leaders still talk the
talk on its alleged success as though reciting scripture.
Take retired general, surge architect, and former CIA
Director Petraeus. As recently as 2013, he wrote a Foreign
Policy piece entitled "How We Won in Iraq." Now "win" is a
bold word indeed. Yet few in our American world would think
to question its accuracy. After all, Petraeus was a general,
and in an era when Americans have little or no faith in other
public institutions, polls show nearly everyone trusts the
military. Of course, no one asks whether this is healthy for
the republic. No matter, the surge's success is, by now, a
given among Washington's policy elite.
Recently, for instance, I listened to a podcast of a
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) panel discussion that
promoted a common set of myths about the glories of the
surge. What I heard should be shocking, but it's not. The
group peddled a common myth about the surge's inherent wisdom
that may soon become far more dangerous in the "go big"
military era of Donald Trump.
CFR's three guests -- retired General Raymond Odierno,
former commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq and now a
senior adviser to JPMorgan Chase; Meghan O'Sullivan, former
deputy national security adviser under President George W.
Bush; and Christopher Kojm, former senior adviser to the Iraq
Study Group -- had remarkably similar views. No dissenting
voices were included. All three had been enthusiastic
promoters of the surge in 2006-2007 and continue to market
the myth of its success. While recognizing the unmistakable
failure of the post-surge American effort in Iraq, each still
firmly believes in the inherent validity of that "strategy."
I listened for more than an hour waiting for a single
dissenting thought. The silence was deafening.
Establishing the Bona Fides of Victory in Washington, If
Not Iraq
With the madness of the 24-hour news cycle pin-balling us
from one Trump "crisis" to another, who has time for honest
reflection about that surge on its 10th anniversary? Few even
remember the controversy, turmoil, and drama of those days,
but believe me, it's something I'll never forget. I led a
scout platoon in Baghdad and my unit was a few months into a
nasty deployment when we first heard the term "surge." Iraq
was by then falling apart and violence was at an all-time
high with insurgents killing scores of Americans each month.
The nascent central government, supported by the Bush
administration, was in turmoil and, to top it all off, the
Sunni and Shia were already fighting a civil war in the
streets.
In November 2006, just a month into our deployment,
Democrats won control over both houses of Congress in what
was interpreted as a negative referendum on that war. A
humbler, more reticent or reflective president might have
backed off, cut his losses, and begun a withdrawal from that
country, but not George W. Bush. He doubled down, announcing
in January 2007 an infusion of 30,000 additional troops and a
new "strategy" for victory, a temporary surge that would
provide time, space, and security for the new Iraqi
government to reconcile the country's warring ethnic groups
and factions, while incorporating minority groups into the
largely Shiite, Baghdad-based power structure.
Soon after, my unit along with nearly every other American
already in theater received word that our tours had been
extended by three months -- 15 months in all, which then
seemed like an eternity. I sat against a wall and
chain-smoked nearly a pack of cigarettes before passing the
word on to my platoon. And so it began.
Less than nine months later, the administration paraded
General Petraeus, decked out in full dress uniform, at
congressional hearings to plug the strategy, sell the surge,
and warn against a premature withdrawal from Iraq. What a
selling job it proved to be. It established the bona fides of
victory in Washington, if not Iraq.
The man was compelling and over the next three years
violence did, in fact, drop. The additional troops and "new"
counterinsurgency tactics were, however, only part of the
story. In an orgy of killing in Baghdad and many other
cities, the two main sects ethnically cleansed neighborhoods,
expelling each other into a series of highly segregated
enclaves. The capital, for instance, essentially became a
Shiite city. In a sense, the civil war had, momentarily at
least, run its course.
In addition, the U.S. military had successfully, though
again only temporarily, convinced many previously rebellious
Sunni tribes to switch sides in exchange for money, support,
and help in getting rid of the overly fundamentalist and
brutal terror outfit, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). For the time
being, AQI seemed to the tribal leaders like a bigger threat
than the Shiites in Baghdad. For this, the Sunnis briefly bet
on the U.S. without ever fully trusting or accepting
Shiite-Baghdad's suzerainty. Think of this as a tactical
pause -- not that the surge's architects and supporters saw
(or see) it that way.
Which brings us back to that CFR panel. The most essential
assumption of all three speakers was this: the U.S. needed to
establish "security first" in Iraq before that country's
government, set in place by the American occupation, could
begin to make political progress. They still don't seem to
understand that, whatever the bright hopes of surge
enthusiasts at the time, no true political settlement was
ever likely, with or without the surge.
America's man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
was already in the process of becoming a sectarian strongman,
hell-bent on alienating the country's Sunni and Kurdish
minorities. Even 60,000 or 90,000 more American troops
couldn't have solved that problem because the surge was
incapable of addressing, and barely pretended to face, the
true conundrum of the invasion and occupation: any
American-directed version of Iraqi "democracy" would
invariably usher in Shia-majority dominance over a largely
synthetic state. The real question no surge cheerleaders
publicly asked (or ask to this day) was whether an invading
foreign entity was even capable of imposing an inclusive
political settlement there. To assume that the United States
could have done so smacks of a faith-based as opposed to
reality-based worldview -- another version of a deep and
abiding belief in American exceptionalism.
The nattering nabobs' wild, unfounded,
guilt by association conspiracy theory that OMG! the "Russians are coming with Trump" has been
okay for the past 9 month, now that the president is uncovering the deep state's assault on the Bill
of Rights conspiracy theories are an issue!
If Obama's Stalinist candidate had won it would be already be too late save America's liberty!
"... The threat from Russia is nothing compared to the attack on the Bill of Rights by the Obama Stalinists! Neocon hack Strobe Talbot who brought the neocon Kagans into Bill Clinton's State Dept to run Color Coupes and topple Yugoslavia. Estonia and Ukraine should be dismembered like Bill Clinton did Yugoslavia. Filled with malarkey from PNAC humbug tank nattering nabobs' wild, unfounded, guilt by association conspiracy theory up through here: ..."
"... Really! They "know" Putin [anything other than Clinton and the DLC's wretchedness to many people] cost the neolibs their entitlement to run their deep state power. ..."
"... That is where I stopped reading he "can", "could", "would", "assessments" [from the deep state spooks' neolib agendas] and "NATO is not obsolete" are the very fake news themes of the past 14 months of recently ended Clinton con! How could Putin contaminate the neoliberal permanent war crowd's anointed? Putin could NOT have as much power as the DLC crushing Bernie? ..."
The threat from Russia is nothing compared to the attack on the Bill of Rights by the Obama Stalinists! Neocon hack Strobe Talbot who brought the neocon Kagans into Bill Clinton's State Dept to run Color Coupes and topple Yugoslavia.
Estonia and Ukraine should be dismembered like Bill Clinton did Yugoslavia. Filled with malarkey from PNAC humbug tank nattering nabobs' wild, unfounded, guilt by association conspiracy theory up through
here:
"It is bad for Trump, since the ongoing revelations of a foreign adversary's contamination of an American election undermines
the outcome's validity."
Really! They "know" Putin [anything other than Clinton and the DLC's wretchedness to many people] cost the neolibs their entitlement
to run their deep state power.
That is where I stopped reading he "can", "could", "would", "assessments"
[from the deep state spooks' neolib agendas] and "NATO is not obsolete" are the very fake news themes of the past 14 months of
recently ended Clinton con! How could Putin contaminate the neoliberal permanent war crowd's anointed? Putin could NOT have as much power as the DLC crushing Bernie? Barry insists on linking teaching points about the 10 fallacies of logic spewing forth from alt left Trump assassins.
"... "The original pretext was that FISA warrants were obtained in October for some limited capacity of Trump surrogates," Barnes recalled. "The problem is FISA's a very limited law, especially if you are talking about U.S. citizens. If you're talking about foreigners, then the breadth of the law is very broad, and the president can, in fact, intercept and surveil foreign activities at a much wider degree because of a limited application of the Fourth Amendment – although the Ninth Circuit doesn't seem to understand the limits of the Constitution as to foreigners, but that's another story ." ..."
"... "So President Trump is correct that it appears that's what took place here, based on published reports, headlines in the New York Times that use the words 'intercepted calls' involving Trump advisers who are American citizens. It raises very serious issues, and he's absolutely right to raise them," Barnes said ..."
"... "I think that is problematic about Clapper in particular. He'd be the least likely guy you would want to put up as a credible source for the administration," Barnes replied. "But what he really also did at the same time was that he gutted the sort of defense that Obama could have had. Because here you have these stories that come out about intercepted calls, and Clapper goes on TV and says there's actually no legal grounds for any intercepted calls to be taking place, at least not through the FISA authority, which is exactly what was being cited as the reason it was done." ..."
"... "Actually, Clapper's answer raises even more questions. Either (a) Clapper's lying, which is always possible, or (b) Clapper is being truthful, which means all these intercepted calls were done entirely illegally and off the books, or (c) it was done through the Department of Justice in some entirely different manner that would put Obama right in the middle of it," he said. "In other words, if it wasn't done as some sort of national security matter, but was simply done in some sort of disguised investigation that was a politically motivated means of monitoring your adversaries," Barnes elaborated. "So he ended up opening more Pandora's Box than he closed it." ..."
"... "There were three different interpretations of Comey and Clapper combined coming out and saying that," he suggested. "One interpretation was that they were not being fully forthcoming and that it was a message to their underlings that they were not going to be the ones to take the fall if any such activity took place, and that those underlings could take Hillary-style actions in terms of whatever evidence may remain of that." ..."
"... "The second interpretation of what Clapper and Comey did is that they were both kept in the dark – that you had a sort of a rogue operation of people, including Sally Yates at the Department of Justice, who circumvented both Comey and Clapper in order to engage in this sort of illicit personal surveillance," he continued. ..."
Attorney Robert Barnes appeared on Monday's Breitbart News
Daily to talk about President Trump's allegation that the Obama administration wiretapped him during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Barnes's latest article on the subject for
LawNewz
is entitled "Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance."
"The allegations that Trump raises are allegations that derive directly from what the newspapers have reported – the Guardian,
BBC, Heat Street, the New York Times, the Washington Post , where they all talk about there being an interagency
panel of people who were involved in an investigation, who purportedly requested and obtained various means of intercepting phone
calls," Barnes explained.
"So there have been competing stories, and on Sunday, they got even more complicated, as both Clapper and Comey denied any knowledge
of any wiretapping presence," he continued. "Their denials went a little further than Obama's himself, where all he said was that
he himself didn't personally order something – which was a rather absurd cop-out because the president doesn't directly order things
of that nature. His surrogates or delegates do."
"The issue goes right to: why, at any time, was anybody's phone calls being intercepted that were on the Trump team, that are
American citizens?" he said. "The various news stories that are out, including one by Andrew McCarthy, who
recounts
them for the National Review , there's just no legal grounds for any of that surveillance to be taking place. There's
no legal grounds for any of those calls to be intercepted."
"The original pretext was that FISA warrants were obtained in October for some limited capacity of Trump surrogates," Barnes
recalled. "The problem is FISA's a very limited law, especially if you are talking about U.S. citizens. If you're talking about foreigners,
then the breadth of the law is very broad, and the president can, in fact, intercept and surveil foreign activities at a much wider
degree because of a limited application of the Fourth Amendment – although the Ninth Circuit doesn't seem to understand the limits
of the Constitution as to foreigners, but
that's another story ."
"The issue he raises is critical and essential, and it's been ever since these stories started leaking out," he said of McCarthy's
writing. "Aside from the criminality of the leaks, it was that this is information that never should have been gathered in the first
place. What FISA requires is that if you're going to intercept a call where an American is on the line at any level, then what you
have to do is you have to go through certain protocols, and you have to establish basically probable cause that the person is involved
in criminal conduct of some sort. Just the fact that I, as a U.S. citizen, am talking to a foreigner does not allow magically the
Fourth Amendment to disappear as to my right to privacy."
"And yet, purportedly, that's what effectively took place here because here you had Sally Yates discussing a transcript of a call
that involved former NSA assistant Michael Flynn, and that's information that never should have been in her possession or custody,"
he observed.
"Just because one of the people on the phone call may have been not a U.S. citizen, that's no legal grounds to intercept
an American's communications. Another way to think of it is, sometimes you'll see in the movies where the guy is sitting in a van,
and he's listening in on a phone conversation on a wiretap, and the person he's listening to shifts to some personal conversation,
maybe of an intimate nature, that has nothing to do with the criminal investigation going on. You'll see him turn off the recording
device and put down his headphones," he explained.
"If it happens that the manner and method of interception was something that you couldn't physically do that, then what you're
supposed to do is to scrub the information and delete it from the record. In fact, an ex-CIA officer wrote an article for
American Conservative documenting that
that was always the protocol and procedure, whenever they were involved in an intelligence-gathering investigation. Yet apparently
here , according to published reports, what they actually did is they went and they not only kept the information, didn't
scrub it or delete it, they deliberately went back and saved it, and then shared it with a bunch of other people who had no authority
to ever look at it," said Barnes.
"FISA is very particular about this," he noted. "It requires protection of any innocent American's information that ever may be
gathered through this process. You have to not only scrub it and delete it; you cannot disseminate it to people. You can't identify
the individual that's being sourced in the investigation. And the failure to follow FISA's strict procedures is actually a crime.
FISA section 1809 of Title 50 makes it a criminal penalty to either gather the information outside of FISA's procedures or to disseminate
it outside of FISA's procedures."
"So President Trump is correct that it appears that's what took place here, based on published reports, headlines in the
New York Times that use the words 'intercepted calls' involving Trump advisers who are American citizens. It raises very serious
issues, and he's absolutely right to raise them," Barnes said.
SiriusXM host Alex Marlow noted that President Obama's
denial of Trump's wiretapping accusation was "thin." "It clearly leads to many more questions than it answers," Marlow said.
"Oh, absolutely," Barnes agreed. "There's different parts of it that are problematic. The first thing is that if he was being serious
about a denial, you simply issue a two-sentence statement. You say, 'I am not aware of any wiretapping that took place on Mr. Trump
or his campaign, and I would not have supported such a wiretap had it occurred.' He could have been very broad. It's interesting
that Comey and Clapper were much more specific and particular than Obama was."
"The second aspect where there were some ludicrous claims included therein, such as the White House never engaging in electronic
surveillance of a United States citizen," he continued. "Well, as Andrew McCarthy and other attorneys have pointed out, and other
people familiar with the national security operation have pointed out, Obama drone-bombed American citizens in various foreign locations
around the world while he was president, including one in Yemen quite prominently. There's no way you can actually do that without
some form of surveillance on the individuals. It's not like you had a global map tattooed on the wall, and you took a dart and threw
it at the map, and said, 'Oh, okay, we'll drone-bomb there.'"
"The fact that he didn't deny the existence of the wiretap, did not deny his awareness of it, did not deny his approval of it,
and then made clearly materially false or misleading statements about his engagement and involvement with surveillance of American
citizens – and this coming on top of Clapper committing perjury previously before Congress that led to Ed Snowden becoming Ed Snowden
I mean, Ed Snowden probably never becomes Ed Snowden if Clapper doesn't commit perjury, and then, Obama's reaction to Clapper's perjury
was to promote him, rather than to demote him, about spying on American citizens," said Barnes.
After playing a recording of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper flatly denying the existence of any FISA court
order relating to Trump Tower, Marlow asked, "Do we care what this guy says? He's a known liar."
"I think that is problematic about Clapper in particular. He'd be the least likely guy you would want to put up as a credible
source for the administration," Barnes replied. "But what he really also did at the same time was that he gutted the sort of defense
that Obama could have had. Because here you have these stories that come out about intercepted calls, and Clapper goes on TV and
says there's actually no legal grounds for any intercepted calls to be taking place, at least not through the FISA authority, which
is exactly what was being cited as the reason it was done."
"Actually, Clapper's answer raises even more questions. Either (a) Clapper's lying, which is always possible, or (b) Clapper
is being truthful, which means all these intercepted calls were done entirely illegally and off the books, or (c) it was done through
the Department of Justice in some entirely different manner that would put Obama right in the middle of it," he said. "In other words,
if it wasn't done as some sort of national security matter, but was simply done in some sort of disguised investigation that was
a politically motivated means of monitoring your adversaries," Barnes elaborated. "So he ended up opening more Pandora's Box than
he closed it."
Marlow played an excerpt from an
interview
given by former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he essentially said President Trump's accusation
that President Obama directly ordered surveillance on Trump Tower might be "incorrect" in the details, but Trump was "right" to believe
a surveillance operation could have been in progress.
Barnes said Mukasey did "accurately relay what has been reported to the press, which is this request for a FISA warrant in the
summer that was rejected because it put Trump's name in the warrant request."
"To give you an idea of how rare that is, if that did occur, is that the last 35,000-plus requests for the FISA court to issue
a warrant, it's only been denied 12 prior times, to public knowledge," he noted.
"According to the published reports, they went back in October and simply left Trump's name off of it, slightly limited it, and
got it," he said of the FISA request in question. "Now, Clapper's statement completely denies that ever occurred in terms of October,
in terms of ever getting any FISA warrant on anybody connected to, in his own words, the Trump campaign. So there's a major discrepancy
present."
"Secondly, the one area where he doesn't quite correctly describe the situation: there is some misleading information out there
that the government can just tap the phones of anyone involved who's working on any level on behalf of a foreign government, by any
means. Well, if that had been the case, everybody at the Clinton Foundation should have been tapped permanently," Barnes said. "Putting
that aside, the actual law requires that they not only be, quote, 'an agent of a foreign power,' but if they're a United States person,
there has to be evidence that they're engaged in criminal activities of a particular kind."
"So they couldn't just wiretap Michael Flynn, for example, or listen in on his conversations, even if the person on the other
line is not a United States person. They have to have evidence that he was engaged in criminal conduct. That is what was problematic,
as soon as the Flynn story broke, was there was no grounds for them to have ever recorded him, kept the recording, or shared the
recording. FISA law specifically prohibited it under those set of circumstances," he explained.
"That's the illegal aspect of what's going on. It's not just the political motivation that would be impermissible or inappropriate
because it would be First Amendment punitive use, misuse of the search warrant authority. But it actually violates what warrant authority
they could ever obtain in the first place, under both the First and Fourth Amendments, and under the FISA law itself," he said.
Barnes said the
reported request from FBI Director James Comey for the Justice Department to refute Trump's wiretapping accusation was "an interesting
set of statements."
"There were three different interpretations of Comey and Clapper combined coming out and saying that," he suggested. "One interpretation
was that they were not being fully forthcoming and that it was a message to their underlings that they were not going to be the ones
to take the fall if any such activity took place, and that those underlings could take Hillary-style actions in terms of whatever
evidence may remain of that."
"One little-noted story last week was that Trump put out a requirement that everybody connected to the story keep all information,"
he noted. "He did this before he did his tweets, but his motivation may have been to actually prove and document this illicit activity
took place."
"The second interpretation of what Clapper and Comey did is that they were both kept in the dark – that you had a sort of a rogue
operation of people, including Sally Yates at the Department of Justice, who circumvented both Comey and Clapper in order to engage
in this sort of illicit personal surveillance," he continued.
"I've been on the opposite side of Sally Yates in cases where she was at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta," Barnes revealed.
"If you were going to pick an unethical, corrupt prosecutor, she'd be at the top of the list. She tried to help railroad a family
there, in a case I dealt with over ten years."
"The third possibility is that this was just unlawful surveillance," he concluded. "I've had a lot of cases like that, especially
under the Obama administration. It became too frequent and too regular that you had agents that were just doing illegal surveillance,
without ever notifying their supervisors, without ever obtaining judicial authority, without ever doing it legally at all. And so
you may have had an operation that was a true Deep State kind of operation, that was just doing unlawful surveillance."
"There's too much information, like some of the criticism of President Trump. Well, people should be critical then of the New
York Times because it was their story that said there was intercepted calls of multiple members of Donald Trump's campaign. That
was, I think, the story that ran on Valentine's Day, actually. It was in the very first sentence of the story. So either the New
York Times was purely fake news or somebody in the government is lying about what they were up to," Barnes summarized.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
"... The more pertinent question is whether we can trust our government to responsibly seek those court orders, once it is armed with a massive expansion in surveillance power. The evidence there is not encouraging. On the same day that the news broke of the Obama administration's plan to support expanded wiretapping capabilities, CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that, according to documents obtained by the ACLU, the U.S. Department of Justice just doesn't believe that it needs search warrants "to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files." ..."
"... FBI Director Robert Mueller has argued for years that the new wiretapping capabilities are necessary to deal with what he calls the "going dark" problem. As we've moved our communications from voice calls to texting and chatting and tweeting, our activities have become less visible to law enforcement. But even that assumption seems highly questionable. We are now generating vastly more data about our activities than ever before, and great swaths of it are available via subpoenas that don't require a judge's approval. One could easily argue that our incredibly detailed digital trails have put more of our lives in the "light" than ever. ..."
"... So here's why we should be worried about the Obama administration's purported supported for expanded wiretapping. A government that we already know to be overzealous in grabbing our data is using a bogus excuse to justify vastly increased surveillance powers. ..."
Did the surveillance state just take another gigantic Big Brotherish step forward? The New York Times and Washington Post are reporting
that the
Obama
administration is planning to support an FBI plan for "a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to
wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services."
Facebook posts, Skype calls, Google chats, Apple's iMessage - under the new plan, every form of Internet communication would have
to be accessible to law enforcement wiretapping. Civil libertarians, Internet companies and privacy activists are all understandably
unenthused. A blogger at FireDogLake immediately labeled the news proof that Obama intended to support the
"end of the 4th Amendment on the Internet."
That's a little overheated. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, chiefly by requiring that search
warrants be authorized by a judge and supported by probable cause. According to all descriptions of the new FBI wiretapping plan,
if law enforcement wants to listen in on your Facebook chats or Apple iMessages, law enforcement will have to get a court order,
just at it would if it wants to wiretap your phone. If society is going to grant government the right to listen in to our old-school
phone conversations, it's hard to see how, in principle, it can deny the same right with regard to our Skype calls.
The more pertinent question is whether we can trust our government to responsibly seek those court orders, once it is armed with
a massive expansion in surveillance power. The evidence there is not encouraging. On the same day that the news broke of the Obama
administration's plan to support expanded wiretapping capabilities, CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that,
according
to documents obtained by the ACLU, the U.S. Department of Justice just doesn't believe that it needs search warrants "to review
Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files."
Now we're talking violation of the Fourth Amendment. And if we combine that kind of cavalier attitude toward our constitutionally
mandated protections with vastly expanded technical surveillance capabilities, then we've got a real problem. Civil libertarians
have a right to be nervous. Expanded power implies expanded opportunities to abuse that power.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has argued for years that the new wiretapping capabilities are necessary to deal with what he calls
the "going dark" problem. As we've moved our communications from voice calls to texting and chatting and tweeting, our activities
have become less visible to law enforcement. But even that assumption seems highly questionable. We are now generating vastly more
data about our activities than ever before, and great swaths of it are available via subpoenas that don't require a judge's approval.
One could easily argue that our incredibly detailed digital trails have put more of our lives in the "light" than ever.
So here's why we should be worried about the Obama administration's purported supported for expanded wiretapping. A government
that we already know to be overzealous in grabbing our data is using a bogus excuse to justify vastly increased surveillance powers.
Yippee.
Andrew Leonard
is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.
"... "I think the president is absolutely right. His phone calls, everything he did electronically, was being monitored," Bill Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency who resigned in protest from the organization in 2001, told Fox Business on Monday. ..."
"... Binney also told Sean Hannity's radio show earlier Monday, "I think the FISA court's basically totally irrelevant." The judges on the FISA court are "not even concerned, nor are they involved in any way with the Executive Order 12333 collection," Binney said during the radio interview. "That's all done outside of the courts. And outside of the Congress." ..."
"... Binney also told Fox the laws that fall under the FISA court's jurisdiction are " simply out there for show" and "trying to show that the government is following the law, and being looked at and overseen by the Senate and House intelligence committees and the courts." ..."
"... "I think that's what happened here," Binney told Fox. " The evidence of the conversation of the president of the U.S., President Trump, and the [prime minister] of Australia and the president of Mexico. Releasing those conversations. Those are conversations that are picked up by the FAIRVIEW program, primarily, by NSA ." ..."
As we noted previously, Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency's mass surveillance program for digital information,
who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely
regarded as a "legend" within the agency and the NSA's best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control
structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened ("in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet
Union's command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian
atomic weapons"). Binney is the real McCoy.
Binney resigned from NSA shortly after the U.S. approach to intelligence changed following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He "became
a whistleblower after discovering that elements of a data-monitoring program he had helped develop -- nicknamed ThinThread -- were
being used to spy on Americans," PBS reported.
On Monday he came to the defense of the president , whose allegations on social media over the weekend that outgoing President
Barack Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 campaign have rankled Washington.
"I think the president is absolutely right. His phone calls, everything he did electronically, was being monitored," Bill
Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency who resigned in protest from the organization in 2001, told Fox Business
on Monday.
Everyone's conversations are being monitored and stored, Binney said.
Binney also told Sean Hannity's radio show earlier Monday, "I think the FISA court's basically totally irrelevant." The judges
on the FISA court are "not even concerned, nor are they involved in any way with the Executive Order 12333 collection," Binney said
during the radio interview. "That's all done outside of the courts. And outside of the Congress."
Binney also told Fox the laws that fall under the FISA court's jurisdiction are " simply out there for show" and "trying to
show that the government is following the law, and being looked at and overseen by the Senate and House intelligence committees and
the courts."
"That's not the main collection program for NSA," Binney said.
* * *
What Binney did not delve into, however, was if Obama directed surveillance on Trump for political purposes during the campaign,
a core accusation of Trump's. But Binney did say events such as publication of details of private calls between President Trump and
the Australian prime minister, as well as with the Mexican president, are evidence the intelligence community is playing hardball
with the White House.
"I think that's what happened here," Binney told Fox. " The evidence of the conversation of the president of the U.S., President
Trump, and the [prime minister] of Australia and the president of Mexico. Releasing those conversations. Those are conversations
that are picked up by the FAIRVIEW program, primarily, by NSA ."
Since Binney designed the NSA's electronic surveillance system, he would know.
"... With Holden's explicit direction, the DOJ secretly accessed all of Rosen's gmails, contacts, and surveilled of more than 20 phone lines connected to him, including his mother's phone in Staten Island, NY. ..."
"... Here is Rosen recounting his affair and opining on the plausibility of Trump being a target of the Obama administration too -- which he affirmed in the positive, 'in the age of Snowden.' ..."
Back in 2013, Fox News journalist, James Rosen, was named a 'criminal co-conspirator' and 'flight
risk' by then AG Holder -- which led to a series of events that made
Holden later regret doing it . With Holden's explicit direction, the DOJ secretly accessed all
of Rosen's gmails, contacts, and surveilled of more than 20 phone lines connected to him, including
his mother's phone in Staten Island, NY.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote a piece on the ordeal, saying "The Rosen affair is as
flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush's administration, and it
uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. To treat a
reporter as a criminal for doing his job - seeking out information the government doesn't want made
public - deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights
are based."
Here is Rosen recounting his affair and opining on the plausibility of Trump being a target of
the Obama administration too -- which he affirmed in the positive, 'in the age of Snowden.'
"... He's not going to. Trump thinks he can enact his policies and make America great again. He is completely underestimating how controlled the country is. FBI, CIA, NSA all of it.. The learning curve is way to steep and he is losing. ..."
"I hope he cleans fucking house and outs every last shit politician for every last little thing
they are probably already being blackmailed on"
He's not going to. Trump thinks he can enact his policies and make America great again. He
is completely underestimating how controlled the country is. FBI, CIA, NSA all of it.. The learning
curve is way to steep and he is losing.
I hate to say this but we are gonna see a sad end to this
administration. Trump should be dropping any and every bomb he has but he isn't. By the time he
figures out what to do it will be too late. I think it might be already. He expects the American
people to stand behind and we are but that is not enough. I think it may be that time... that
time we all fear would come and will show us the real America and Americans.
Trump, if you read ZH, and you read this, drop everything NOW. DROP EVERY BOMB YOU HAVE. ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree. By now Trump has enough pix and AV to crush the firebugs in public. And if the Deep State and their psychotic friends in the CIA NSA FBI, etc., want to take it
outside, Trump should unleash what good Intel forces are left and go Roman on them.
Since the pervert Dems and their psycho alphabetroid friends are hell bent on destroying this
country if they can't keep it in the swamp, then they may as well take a real beat down in the
process.
The one good thing about all this is that it is forcing all the DC sleaze out in the open where
we can all see them for the power abusers they are.
"... The biggest complaint of the "left" is that Obama could be handing over the surveillance state to someone truly bad like Trump. That was the complaint of libertarians like Edward Snowden. But the moderate establishment types didn't care. They were too busy slandering Wikileaks. ..."
"... There is no evidence so support any of the months of "the Russians coming" screed; there is immense evidence in that screed that the GOP was tapped! To listen on a US citizen who is not an object of investigation is covered by the 4th Amendment etc. If they recorded a call from a Russian diplomat to someone not in an order from that special judge the tape should be sealed. It appears no taps were done legally and none of the illegal taps were kept from becoming innuendo in congressional hearings. The coincidental collection is an assault on US Bill of Rights! In many years in the pentagon bureaucracy I have NEVER seen coincidence where malice could be implied. ..."
"... This fake news hysteria over "Russian contacts" might well be a smoke screen explicitly designed to cover illegal wiretapping. They never expected Trump to be elected (neither did I ) and made some major mistakes hoping the Hillary will cover everything up. ..."
"... That actually might help to explain strange behavior of James Clapper. As if he felt that he is sitting on a hot stove. ..."
"Donald Trump Claims Barack Obama Ordered Wire Tap On Trump Tower Before Election"
'But he offered no evidence to back up the claims'
By Lee Moran...03/04/2017...07:16 am ET...Updated 1 hour ago
"President Donald Trump has accused former President Barack Obama of "wire tapping" Trump Tower
before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump made the claims in a series of tweets that he posted early Saturday, although he offered
no evidence to back his allegations up ― and a former adviser to Obama pointed out that presidents
cannot order wiretaps.
"Terrible!" Trump wrote at 6.35 a.m. E.T. "Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in
Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"
I'd have to go with PGL. You'd think if they were going to tap a Presidential candidate, they'd
have to get Presidential authority.
We just don't know. Probably they'd have to get a judge to sign off on it but the FISA court
is pretty much rubber stamp.
When is the last time the NSA or FBI go in trouble for overstepping their bounds? Never. If
they had flimsy reasons to tap Trump it's probably still legal strictly speaking.
Maybe Trump will reform the way the spies spy on private citizens?
HAHAHAHAA
The biggest complaint of the "left" is that Obama could be handing over the surveillance state
to someone truly bad like Trump. That was the complaint of libertarians like Edward Snowden.
But the moderate establishment types didn't care. They were too busy slandering Wikileaks.
There is no evidence so support any of the months of "the Russians coming" screed; there is immense
evidence in that screed that the GOP was tapped! To listen on a US citizen who is not an object of investigation is covered by the 4th Amendment
etc. If they recorded a call from a Russian diplomat to someone not in an order from that special
judge the tape should be sealed. It appears no taps were done legally and none of the illegal taps were kept from becoming innuendo
in congressional hearings. The coincidental collection is an assault on US Bill of Rights! In many years in the pentagon bureaucracy I have NEVER seen coincidence where malice could
be implied.
This fake news hysteria over "Russian contacts" might well be a smoke screen explicitly designed
to cover illegal wiretapping. They never expected Trump to be elected (neither did I ) and made some major mistakes hoping
the Hillary will cover everything up.
"... Sasse raises several key points: if the wiretap was authorized by a FISA Court, Trump should demand to see the application, find out on what grounds it was granted, and then present it to the US public at best, or at least the Senate. In case there was no FISA court, it is possible that Trump was illegally tapped. Finally, there is the possibility that Trump was not wiretapped at all, although for the president to make such a public allegation one would hope that there is at least some factual basis to the charge. ..."
"... "We are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and the President's allegations today demand the thorough and dispassionate attention of serious patriots. A quest for the full truth, rather than knee-jerk partisanship, must be our guide if we are going to rebuild civic trust and health." ..."
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, has
issued the following statement after President Trump accused former President Obama of wiretapping
his phones in 2016 and Obama's spokesman said that was false.
Sasse raises several key points: if the wiretap was authorized by a FISA Court, Trump should demand
to see the application, find out on what grounds it was granted, and then present it to the US public
at best, or at least the Senate. In case there was no FISA court, it is possible that Trump was illegally
tapped. Finally, there is the possibility that Trump was not wiretapped at all, although for the
president to make such a public allegation one would hope that there is at least some factual basis
to the charge.
"The President today made some very serious allegations, and the informed citizens that a republic
requires deserve more information.
If there were wiretaps of then-candidate Trump's organization or campaign, then it was either
with FISA Court authorization or without such authorization.
If without, the President should explain what sort of wiretap it was and how he knows this. It
is possible that he was illegally tapped.
On the other hand , if it was with a legal FISA Court order, then an application for surveillance
exists that the Court found credible.
The President should ask that this full application regarding surveillance of foreign operatives
or operations be made available, ideally to the full public, and at a bare minimum to the U.S. Senate.
Sasses then concludes:
"We are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and the President's allegations
today demand the thorough and dispassionate attention of serious patriots. A quest for the full truth,
rather than knee-jerk partisanship, must be our guide if we are going to rebuild civic trust and
health."
It appears that the Trump admin may already be working on Sasse's recommendations: as
the NYT reports ,
" a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president's
chief counsel, was working on Saturday to secure access to what the official described as a document
issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing surveillance of Mr. Trump and his
associates. The official offered no evidence to support the notion that such a document exists; any
such move by a White House counsel would be viewed at the Justice Department as a stunning case of
interference ."
Alternatively, it would be viewed as a case president seeking to determine if his predecessor
was actively plotting to interfere with the election via wiretapping, also a quite "stunning" case.
Former President Obama on Saturday denied President Trump's accusation that Obama had Trump Tower
phones tapped in the weeks before the November 2016 election.
"Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.
Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.
Trump made the claim in a series of early Saturday morning tweets that included the suggestion
that the alleged wiretapping was tantamount to "McCarthyism" and "Nixon/Watergate."
"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory.
Nothing found. This is McCarthyism," Trump tweeted.
"Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election?
Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" he said in another tweet.
Trump also tweeted that a "good lawyer could make a great case of the fact that President Obama
was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!"
"How low has President Obama gone to tap (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process.
This is Nixon/Watergage. Bad (or sick) guy!" the president continued.
Trump does not specify how he uncovered the Obama administration's alleged wiretapping.
However, he could be referencing a
Breitbart article posted Friday that claimed the administration made two Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISA) requests in 2016 to monitor Trump communications and a computer server
in Trump Tower, related to possible links with Russian banks.
No evidence was found.
The article was based on a segment by radio host Mark Levin.
However, the timelines for each seems to draw from a range of news reports over the last several
months, including those from The New York Times and Heat Street.
Lewis also said Saturday: "A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House
official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice."
wouldsmash
REOPEN CLINTON EMAIL SERVER INVESTIGATION
encorezzzzzzz
GOP lawmaker calls to investigate Obama's $418 million arms deal with Kenya.
Fox News reported: A North Carolina congressman is calling for a probe into a potential $418
million contract between Kenya and a major U.S. defense contractor announced on President Obama's
last day in office -- a deal the lawmaker claims reeks of cronyism. Republican Rep. Ted Budd wants
the Government Accountability Office to investigate a deal between the African nation and New
York-based L3 Technologies for the sale of 12 weaponized border patrol planes.
He said he wants to know why a veteran-owned small company in North Carolina – which specializes
in making such planes – was not considered as the manufacturer. IOMAX USA Inc., based in Mooresville
and founded by a U.S. Army veteran, offered to build Kenya the weaponized planes for roughly $281
million – far cheaper than what its competitor, L3, is selling them for.
"Something smells wrong here," Budd told Fox News. "The U.S. Air Force bypassed IOMAX, which
has 50 of these planes already in service in the Middle East." "They were given a raw deal," Budd
said of Kenya, which had requested from the U.S. 12 weaponized planes in its fight against terrorist
group Al-Shabaab near its northern border. "We want to treat our allies like Kenya fairly," he
said. "And we want to know why IOMAX was not considered."
ricochetdog
"Had my wires tapped"! Just became the new internet meme.
Andrewmag16
Why are democrats always meeting and dealing with us and then act like its bad if anyone else
speaks to Russians?
evolutionmyths
Coming from an ... that never spoke any kind of truth . If he said false it means True
SheSayEh
Obama was community organizer of Chicago. Look at the mess he left behind there.
MrChainBlueLightning
The so called United States experiment should end. It was ultimately a failure. Red and Blue
states should merge and form their own countries.
CLUTCHCARGO1
DON'T STOP INVESTIGATING. OBAMA NEEDS TO MEET INMATE BUBBA
wouldsmash
Trump has enough evidence to put bammy in JAIL
MickeyQBitskoIII
Soros would certainly have it done, and Obama and Hillary would be in on whatever "intel" is
gathered, but there is NO WAY Soros would allow his favorite Kenyan lap dog to be directly involved
in the operation.
frdm399
Tucker Carlson exposed Politifact, New York Times, and Washington Post fact checkers as liars
last night. You just can't believe anything a democRAT says...
jconnelly
The US Govt was spying on Trump during the election. The Russians were spying on Clinton during
the election. Which is worse?
Funny now Obama and Clinton need to be afraid the Trump will wiretap them ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath ..."
"... The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation. ..."
"... I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH ordered it. ..."
"... Additionally, Philip Rucker, the WaPo's White House bureau chief echoed Favreau's caveat, namely that the Obama spokesman's statement does not deny the existence of wiretaps on Trump Tower ..."
Following Trump's stunning allegation that Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower in October of 2016, prior
to the presidential election, which may or may not have been
sourced from a Breitbart story , numerous Democrats and media pundits have come out with scathing
accusations that Trump is either mentally disturbed, or simply has no idea what he is talking about.
The best example of this came from Ben Rhodes, a former senior adviser to President Obama in his
role as deputy National Security Advisor, who slammed Trump's accusation, insisting that " No President
can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you."
He also said "only a liar" could make the case, as Trump suggested, that Obama wire tapped Trump
Tower ahead of the election.
No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from
people like you. https://t.co/lEVscjkzSw
It would appear, however, that Rhodes is wrong, especially as pertains to matters of Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance, and its associated FISA court, under which the alleged wiretap of Donald Trump would
have been granted, as it pertained specifically to Trump's alleged illicit interactions with Russian
entities.
(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance
without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the
Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at- (i) the acquisition of the contents of
communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers,
as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or (ii) the acquisition of technical
intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under
the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3)
of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any
communication to which a United States person is a party; and
(C) the proposed minimization procedures with respect to such surveillance meet the definition
of minimization procedures under section 1801(h) of this title; and if the Attorney General reports
such minimization procedures and any changes thereto to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at least thirty days prior to their effective date,
unless the Attorney General determines immediate action is required and notifies the committees immediately
of such minimization procedures and the reason for their becoming effective immediately.
While (B) seems to contradict the underlying permissive nature of Section 1802 as it involves
a United States person, what the Snowden affair has demonstrated all too clearly, is how frequently
the NSA and FISA court would make US citizens collateral damage. To be sure, many pointed out the
fact that Fox News correspondent
James Rosen was notoriously wiretapped in 2013 when the DOJ was investigating government leaks.
The
Associated Press was also infamously wiretapped in relation to the same investigation.
As pertains to Trump, the
Guardian reported as much in early January, when news of the alleged anti-Trump dossier by former
UK spy Chris Steele broke in January:
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance
(Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular
contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence
investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant
in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full
investigation.
Furthermore, while most Democrats - not to
mention former president Obama himself - have been harshly critical of Trump's comments, some
such as former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau was quite clear in his warning to reporters that Obama
did not say there was no wiretapping, effectively confirming it:
I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that
neither he nor the WH ordered it.
Additionally, Philip Rucker, the WaPo's White House bureau chief echoed Favreau's caveat, namely
that the Obama spokesman's statement does not deny the existence of wiretaps on Trump Tower, only
that Obama himself and the Obama White House did not approve them if they did exist.
The Obama statement does not say there was no federal wire tapping of Trump Tower. It only says
Obama and White House didn't order it.
Further implying the existence of such a wiretap was David Axelrod, who tweeted today that that
such a wiretap could exist but would have "been OK'ed only for a a reason."
If there were the wiretap @realDonaldTrump
loudly alleges, such an extraordinary warrant would only have been OKed by a court for a reason.
Yet ironically, it was none other than the Trump administration which just earlier this week announced
it supports the renewal of spy law which incorporates the FISA court,
without
reforms :
"the Trump administration does not want to reform an internet surveillance law to address
privacy concerns, a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday, saying it is needed to protect
national security. The announcement could put President Donald Trump on a collision course with Congress,
where some Republicans and Democrats have advocated curtailing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, or FISA, parts of which are due to expire at the end of the year."
"We support the clean reauthorization and the administration believes it's necessary to protect
the security of the nation," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The FISA law has been criticized by privacy and civil liberties advocates as allowing broad, intrusive
spying. It gained renewed attention following the 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden that the agency carried out widespread monitoring of emails and other electronic
communications.
In any event, the bottom line here appears to be that with his tweet, Trump has opened a can of
worms with two possible outcomes: either the wiretaps exist as Trump has suggested, and the president
will use them to attack both the Obama administration and the media for political overreach; or,
there were no wiretaps,
which as Matthew Boyle writes , would suggest the previous administration had no reason to suspect
Trump colluded with a foreign government.
Senator Ben Sasse said as much in his statement issued earlier today:
The President today made some very serious allegations, and the informed citizens that a republic
requires deserve more information. If there were wiretaps of then-candidate Trump's organization
or campaign, then it was either with FISA Court authorization or without such authorization. If without,
the President should explain what sort of wiretap it was and how he knows this. It is possible that
he was illegally tapped. On the other hand, if it was with a legal FISA Court order, then an application
for surveillance exists that the Court found credible.
But what is perhaps most important, is that we may know soon enough. As the
NYT reported on Saturday afternoon , a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn
II, the president's chief counsel, was working on Saturday to secure access to what the official
described as a document issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing surveillance
of Mr. Trump and his associates.
If and when such a document is made public - assuming it exists of course - it would be Trump,
once again, that gets the last laugh.
"... The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump's assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump's phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement. ..."
"... The White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr. Trump's claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called "reports" about the wiretapping "very troubling" and said that Congress should examine them as part of its investigations into Russia's meddling in the election. ..."
"... Mr. Comey's behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to. ..."
"... In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said, "President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016." ..."
"... Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have said there were no secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program, "Not to my knowledge, no. ..."
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to
publicly reject President Trump's assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr.
Trump's phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged
claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter,
has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates
that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice
Department, also declined to comment.
Mr. Comey's request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation's top law
enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump's truthfulness. The confrontation between
the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump's weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores
the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of
a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump's young administration.
The White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr. Trump's claims. On Sunday,
the president demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal
law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a statement from his spokesman,
Mr. Trump called "reports" about the wiretapping "very troubling" and said that Congress should examine
them as part of its investigations into Russia's meddling in the election.
Along with concerns about potential attacks on the bureau's credibility, senior F.B.I. officials
are said to be worried that the notion of a court-approved wiretap will raise the public's expectations
that the federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump campaign in colluding
with Russia's efforts to disrupt the presidential election.
One problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically appointed officials at
the Justice Department who can make the decision to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney
General Jeff Sessions recused himself on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation
into connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.
Mr. Comey's behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to his actions last
year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton email case and disregarded Justice Department
entreaties not to.
It is not clear why Mr. Comey did not issue the statement himself. He is the most senior law enforcement
official who was kept on the job as the Obama administration gave way to the Trump administration.
And while the Justice Department applies for intelligence-gathering warrants, the F.B.I. keeps its
own set of records and is in position to know whether Mr. Trump's claims are true. While intelligence
officials do not normally discuss the existence or nonexistence of surveillance warrants, no law
prevents Mr. Comey from issuing the statement.
In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his press secretary, Sean
Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said, "President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as
part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise
their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused
in 2016."
... ... ...
On Sunday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, said the president
was determined to find out what had really happened, calling it potentially the "greatest abuse of
power" that the country has ever seen.
"Look, I think he's going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this
is a very real potential," Ms. Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" program. "And if it is, this is
the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a huge
attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place."
... ... ...
Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have
said there were no secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant
existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC's "Meet the
Press" program, "Not to my knowledge, no."
"... Moments ago, Barack Obama through his spokesman Kevin Lewis denied Trump's accusation that he had ordered the Trump Tower wiretapped, saying neither he nor any member of the Obama White House, " ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false ." ..."
"... Yet while the carefully-worded statement, an exercise in semantics, claims Obama did not himself, or through members of his White House team, order a potential wiretapping, it does not deny an actual wiretapping of Trump (or Trump Tower), which as some have speculated in the past , did in fact take place after a FISA Court granted surveillance of Trump over accusations of Russian interference. It also does not preclude the FBI - which is the entity that would most likely have implemented such a wiretap - from having given the order. ..."
"... The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. ..."
"... For the definitive answer, we suggest Trump ask Comey whether or not his building was being tapped in the days prior to the election. ..."
"... Analyzing Obama's own statements over the years on the illegal wiretappings, one does not come to the conclusion that he can be trusted ..."
"... Of course Obama himself did not give the order It's someone in his administration that would have ordered it, which he commanded over. His wordsmithing is so tiresome. ..."
"... Obama, "The Russians did it" ..."
"... He says of course: "I am not a crook " R. Nixon. Give me a break the dickhead even tapped Angela Merkel's phone and half of Europe. ..."
Moments ago, Barack Obama through his spokesman Kevin Lewis denied Trump's accusation that he had ordered the Trump Tower wiretapped,
saying neither he nor any member of the Obama White House, " ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise
is simply false ."
Follows the statement from Kevin Lewis, spokesman to former president Barack Obama
"A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation
led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance
on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."
Yet while the carefully-worded statement, an exercise in semantics, claims Obama did not himself, or through members of his White
House team, order a potential wiretapping, it does not deny an actual wiretapping of Trump (or Trump Tower), which as some have
speculated in the past , did in fact take place after a FISA Court granted surveillance of Trump over accusations of Russian
interference. It also does not preclude the FBI - which is the entity that would most likely have implemented such a wiretap - from
having given the order.
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer
in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned
down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally
granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.
For the definitive answer, we suggest Trump ask Comey whether or not his building was being tapped in the days prior to the election.
You have to appreciate the way he puts things out there that cause them to issue carefully worded denials that sound more like
confessions than anything else.
Of course Obama himself did not give the order It's someone in his administration that would have ordered it, which he commanded
over. His wordsmithing is so tiresome.
neither he nor any member of the Obama White House, "ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise
is simply false."
Obama has taken credit for ordering the drone strike which killed US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Now we are being told that no
surveillance preceded that strike. Obama apparently ordered the strike and a drone was launched blindly into the heavens but it
still managed to find and destroy al-Awlaki entirely by chance.
http://theduran.com/obama-replies-trumps-wiretap-charge/
" This statement is classic Obama. It appears on its face to be clear and complete, but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
.. We are at a very early stage in this matter. There are multiple investigations underway, some launched by the outgoing Obama
administration against the incoming Trump administration, and some launched by the current Trump administration against the preceding
Obama administration. ... Obama's highly legalistic statement today – which reads very much like a defence statement – however
gives a good flavour of the direction some of these inquiries are taking. " ...
" The statement hints than any order to wiretap ... was the work of officials in the Justice Department ... This too is almost
certainly true. However it neglects to say that some of these officials were people whom Obama himself appointed, and who were
therefore part of his administration. "
Or he found out about it when his owners told him to make a statement & provide the msm more distraction from the great things
Trump is already accomplishing in this his 7th week on the job , despite the backstabbing congress, senate, spooks, crisis actors,
paid protestors and moochers.
The fanatics who did this are the the same fanatics who bombed London mass transit during a drill, and conducted the 911 heist
and mass execution during a drill.
Is anyone naive enough to think that Loretta Lynch and Obama were unaware that the Republican candidate for POTUS was being
wiretapped the month before the actual election?
This is Hillary like legal speak where Obozo is trying to keep his neck out of a legal sling. Sorry...Nixon tried that.
"A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation
led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered
surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false
When Obama says he did not order the wiretapping, he is probably telling the truth. Obama had no power at all -- he took the position knowing that he was only a cat's paw. He was content to be a facade and he knew it, and so did his wife. He was not smart enough to be a President, but he was egotistical enough to take the position and all the bennies in exchange
for taking orders from his handlers without question.
Does anyone really think he was smart enough to plan all the Middle East attacks for 8 years? Of course not -- the logistical planning for those events were far beyond his intelligence.
For that matter, has anyone seen his Columbia and Harvard transcripts? Of course not -- he was a dummy and a fake and the records would show that.
He was editor of the HLR but has anyone seen a sample of his writing? Of course not -- if it exists at all it is unimpressive.
It is doubtful that the Deep State would allow Obama access to such critical wiretapping. That sort of power is reserved for our tax funded, invisible slavemasters.
This shows Trump and his highest campaign officials at the time complicit in pro-Russian spin
and from those in contact with Russia in the Trump campaign
"Trump Ally Drastically Changes Story About Altering GOP Platform On Ukraine"
By Allegra Kirkland....March 3, 2017....2:16 PM EDT
"In a significant reversal, a Trump campaign official on Thursday told CNN that he personally
advocated for softening the language on Ukraine in the GOP platform at the Republican National
Convention, and that he did so on behalf of the President.nnb877
CNN's Jim Acosta reported on air that J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign's national security policy
representative at the RNC, told him that he made the change to include language that he claimed
"Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for" at a March 2016 meeting at then-unfinished Trump
International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Gordon claimed that Trump said he did not "want to go to World War III over Ukraine" during
that meeting, Acosta said.
Yet Gordon had told Business Insider in January that he "never left" the side table where he
sat monitoring the national security subcommittee meeting, where a GOP delegate's amendment calling
for the provision of "lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army was tabled. At the time, Gordon
said "neither Mr. Trump nor [former campaign manager] Mr. [Paul] Manafort were involved in those
sort of details, as they've made clear."
Discussion of changes to the platform, which drew attention to the ties to a pro-Russia political
party in Ukraine that fueled Manafort's resignation as Trump's campaign chairman, resurfaced Thursday
in a USA Today story. The newspaper revealed that Gordon and Carter Page, another former Trump
adviser, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the GOP convention.
Trump and his team have long insisted that his campaign had no contact with Russian officials
during the 2016 race, and that they were not behind softening the language on Ukraine in the Republican
Party platform."...
This is not an update re: "Trump's Pro-Russiaism".
This is an update of your complete lack of understanding of political situation.
There was a pretty cold and nasty calculation on Trump's part to split Russia-China alliance
which does threaten the USA global hegemony. Now those efforts are discredited and derailed. Looks
like the US neoliberal elite is slightly suicidal. But that's good: the sooner we get rid of neoliberalism,
the better.
Sill Dems hysteria (in association with some Repugs like war hawks John McCain and Lindsey
Graham) does strongly smells with neo-McCarthyism. McCain and Graham are probably playing this
dirty game out of pure enthusiasm: Trump does not threatens MIC from which both were elected.
He just gave them all the money they wanted. But for Dems this is en essential smoke screen to
hide their fiasco and blame evil Russians.
In other words citing Marx: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. "
This farce of making Russians a scapegoat for all troubles does make some short-term political
sense as it distracts from the fact the Dems were abandoned by its base. And it unites the nation
providing some political support for chickenhawks in US Congress for the next elections.
But in a long run the price might be a little bit too high. If Russian and China formalize
their alliance this is the official end for the US neoliberal empire. Britain will jump the sinking
ship first, because they do not have completely stupid elite.
BTW preventing Cino-Russian alliance is what British elite always tried to do (and was successful)
in the past -- but in their time the main danger for them was the alliance of Germany and Russia
-- two major continental powers.
Still short-termism is a feature of US politics, and we can do nothing against those forces
that fuel the current anti-Russian hysteria.
The evil rumors at the time of original McCarthyism hysteria were that this was at least partially
a smoke screen designed to hide smuggling of Nazi scientists and intelligence operatives into
the USA (McCarthy was from Wisconsin, the state in German immigrant majority from which famous
anti-WWI voice Robert M. La Follette was elected (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._La_Follette_Sr.))
So here there might well be also some hidden motives, because everybody, including even you
understands that "Trump is in the pocket of Russians" hypothesis is pure propaganda (BTW Hillary
did take bribes from Russian oligarchs, that's proven, but Caesar's wife must be above suspicion).
What we are witnessing is the truth coming out, too slowly for some of us, but it surely will
come out eventually despite the best efforts of Trump's WH, Gang, and his Republican lackies to
cover it up.
You probably would be better off sticking to posting music from YouTube then trying to understand
complex political events and posting political junk from US MSM in pretty prominent economic blog
(overtaking Fred)
Especially taking into account the fact that English is the only language you know and judging
from your posts you do not have degrees in either economics or political science (although some
people here with computer science background proved to be shrewd analysts of both economic and
political events; cm is one example).
Although trying to read British press will not hurt you, they do provide a better coverage
of US political events then the USA MSM. Even neoliberal Guardian. So if you can't fight your
urge to repost political junk please try to do it from British press.
As for your question: in 20 years we might know something about who played what hand in this
dirty poker, but even this is not given (JFK assassination is a classic example here; Gulf of
Tonkin incident is another)
"... an unwillingness or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public conformism, ..."
"... he daringly points out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially American. ..."
"... The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism. ..."
"... The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities. ..."
"... The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as the invasion of Iraq. ..."
"... " The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis of political stupidity;" ..."
"... "One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward at a vanished and idealized national past; " ..."
"... " [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters..., as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever on American behavior and interests ;" ..."
"... I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do. ..."
... While there are incontestable civilizing elements to America's nationalism, there are
also dangerous and destructive ingredients, a sort of Hegelian thesis and antithesis theme
which places a strong question mark in America's historical theme of exceptionalism.
Unlike in other post-World War II nations, America's nationalism is permeated by values
and religious elements derived mostly from the South and the Southern Baptists, though the
fears and panics of the embittered heartland provide additional fuel.
Lieven's book, among other elements, is also a summation of lots of minor observations--even
personal ones he made as a student in the small town of Troy, Alabama--and historical details
which reflect the grand evolution of America's nationalism. When he says that "an unwillingness
or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public
conformism," then he has the support of Mark Twain who said something to the effect
that we are blessed with three things in this country, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience
and, thirdly, the common sense to practice neither one! Ditto when he daringly points
out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman
in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially
American.
Lieven continues with the impact of the Cold War on America's nationalism and then, having
always expanded the theme of Bush's foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examines
with commendable perspective the complex and very much unadmitted current aspects of the U.S.'s
relationships with the Moslems, the Iraq War and the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby. It
is the sort of assessment one rarely finds in the U.S. media . He exposes the alienation
the U.S. caused among allies and, in particular, the Arabs and the EU.
Lieven wrote this book with passion and commendable sincerity. Though it comes from a foreigner,
its advice would without question serve not only America's interest but also provide a substantial
basis for a detached and objective approach to solving the intractable Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to the satisfaction of all involved before worse deeds and more burdens materialize.
Tom Munro:
What this book suggests is that a significant number of Americans have an outlook similar
to European countries around 1904. A sense of identification with an idea of nation and a dismissive
approach to other countries and cultures. Whilst in Europe the experience of the first
and second world wars put paid to nationalism in America it is going strong. In fact Europeans
see themselves less as Germans or Frenchmen today than they ever have.
The reason for American nationalism springs from a pride in American institutions but
it also contains a deep resentment that gives it its dynamism . Whilst America as a nation
has not lost a war there are a number of reasons for resentment. The South feels that its values
are not taken seriously and it is subject to ridicule by the seaboard states. Conservative
Christians are concerned about modernism. The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip
on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism.
Of course these things alone are not sufficient. Europeans live in countries that are small
geographically. They travel see other countries and are multilingual. Most Americans do not
travel and the education they do is strong in ideology and weak in history. It is thus easier
for some Americans to develop a rather simple minded view of the world.
The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist
party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist
gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American
forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few
and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities.
The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America
to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America
from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as
the invasion of Iraq.
The book is quite good and repeats the message of a number of other books such as "What
is wrong with America". Probably there is something to be said for the books central message.
Keith Wheelock (Skillman, NJ USA)
A Socratic 'America know thyself': READ IT!, August 13, 2010
Foreigners, from de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce to Hugh Brogan and The Economist's John Micklethwait
and Adrian Woodridge, often see America more clearly than do Americans. In the post-World War
II period, R. L. Bruckberger's IMAGES OF AMERICA (1958) and Jean -Jacques Servan-Schreiber's
THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE (1967) presented an uplifting picture of America.
Two generations later, Englishman Anatol Lieven paints a troubling picture of a country
that is a far cry from John Winthrop's' "city upon a hill."
Has America changed so profoundly over the past fifty years or is Mr. Lieven simply highlighting
historical cycles that, at least for the moment, had resulted in a near `perfect storm?' His
2004 book has prompted both praise [see Brian Urquhart's Extreme Makeover in the New York Review
of Books (February 24, 2005)] and brick bats. This book is not a polemic. Rather, it is a scholarly
analysis by a highly regarded author and former The Times (London) correspondent who has lived
in various American locales. He has a journalist's acquaintance of many prominent Americans
and his source materials are excellent.
I applaud his courage for exploring the dark cross currents in modern-day America. In the
tradition of the Delphic oracle and Socrates, he urges that Americans `know thy self.' The
picture he paints should cause thoughtful Americans to shudder. Personally, I found his
book of a genre similar to Cullen Murphy's ARE WE ROME? THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE FATE
OF AMERICA.
I do not consider Mr. Lieven anti-American in his extensive critique of American cross
currents. That he wrote this in the full flush of the Bush/Cheney post-9/11 era suggests that
he might temper some of his assessments after the course corrections of the Obama administration.
My sense is that Mr. Lieven admires many of America's core qualities and that this `tough love'
essay is his effort to guide Americans back to their more admirable qualities.
Mr. Lieven boldly sets forth his book's message in a broad-ranging introduction:
" The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis
of political stupidity;"
"Aspects of American nationalism imperil both the nation's global leadership and its
success in the struggle against Islamic terror and revolution;"
"Insofar as American nationalism has become mixed up with a chauvinist version of Israeli
nationalism, it also plays an absolutely disastrous role in U.S. relations with the Muslim
world and in fueling terrorism;"
"American imperialists trail America's coat across the whole world while most ordinary
Americans are not looking and rely on those same Americans to react with `don't tread on
me' nationalist fury when the coat is trodden on;"
"One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward
at a vanished and idealized national past; "
"America is the home of by far the most deep, widespread and conservative religious
belief in the Western world;"
"The relationship between the traditional White Protestant world on one hand and the
forces of American economic, demographic, social and cultural change on the other may be
compared to the genesis of a hurricane;"
"The religious Right has allied itself solidly with extreme free market forces in the
Republican Party although it is precisely the workings of unrestricted American capitalism
which are eroding the world the religious conservatives wish to defend;"
"American nationalism is beginning to conflict very seriously with any enlightened,
viable or even rational version of American imperialism;"
" [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters...,
as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever
on American behavior and interests ;"
"Nationalism therefore risks undermining precisely those American values which make
the nation most admired in the world;" and
"This book...is intended as a reminder of the catastrophes into which nationalism and
national messianism led other great countries in the past."
Mr. Lieven addressed the above points in six well-crafted and thought-provoking chapters
that I find persuasive. For some readers Chapter 6, Nationalism, Israel, and the Middle East,
may be the most controversial. I am the only living person who has lunched with Gamal Abdel
Nasser and David Ben-Gurion in the same week. I have maintained an interest in Arab-Israeli
matters ever since. I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's
role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents
a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests
in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do.
In 1955 American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote,
"The most prominent and persuasive failing [of political culture] is a certain proneness
to fits of moral crusading that would be fatal if they were not sooner or later tempered
with a measure of apathy and common sense."
I am confident that Professor Hofstadter would agree with me that AMERICA RIGHT OR WRONG
is a timely and important book.
"... "In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party." Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons. ..."
"... Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should anyone listen to what he has to say? ..."
"... Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven. I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory. ..."
"... If you really want to get down on the man, though, follow Columbia professor Andrew Gellman. Here is a sample of his take on Brooks: http://andrewgelman.com/2015/06/16/the-david-brooks-files-how-many-uncorrected-mistakes-does-it-take-to-be-discredited/ ..."
"... To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy" that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination, I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington is crawling with these guys and gals. ..."
"... The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management, a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all. ..."
Bacevich
is one of our very few strategic thinkers. What Bacevich has disclosed here is something far more
significant than merely the faults of Brooks' or of neoconservatism generally (and to be fair,
where Brooks goes beyond neoconservatism/nationalism, he can be thoughtful).
What he has disclosed in fact is that America's primary - I emphasize again, primary - strategic
threat is not N. Korea, or radical Islam, or Russia, but its own revolutionary, messianic, expansionist
ideology. That is the source of our woes, our growing insecurities and looming financial bankruptcy
(to say nothing of the sufferings of millions of our victims).
America's strategic problem is its own mental imprisonment: its self-worship, its inability
to view itself - its destructive acts as well as its pet handful of ideas torn from the complex
fabric of a truly vibrant culture - with any critical distance or objectivity.
Joined to that, and as a logical consequence of it - the United States' persistent inability
to view with any objectivity its endless, often manufactured enemies.
Somehow the current situation in the U.S. reminds me of the end of a TV miniseries, "Merlin",
where Sam Neil plays the role of Merlin. At the end, Merlin speaks to his archenemy, Morgana,
that she will loose her grip on the people because they will just stop believing in her and her
powers. And as he speaks, the group of countrymen surrounding Merlin turn their back one after
another at Morgana and after the last one turns her back, Morgana simply vanishes
The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is
that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock. The terrorists that want to kill
us for our liberties You should have included this in your article.
Also, mentioning Jerusalem, a place of madness and fervor, and pain, and strife, that has brought
nothing civilizational to the world, as in par with Rome, Athens, Baghdad, Florence, and other
cultural centres in Iran, China, India, Japan, is an overstretch
"In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is
inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief.
And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the
problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party."
Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the
fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good
to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons.
David Brooks is a Canadian whose son served by choice in the Israeli Defense Forces rather than
the U.S. military. He passed on playing an active role in the wars that his father so passionately
supports. Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends
will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should
anyone listen to what he has to say?
Brilliant! It's about time someone seriously took down David Brooks & Co's faux innocence narrative
of US history. The only point I would add is that this story predates Brooks by a good century
and a half. By identifying its national "interests" with those of the Divine, the US gives itself
an eternal and perpetual get-out-jail-free-card. It seems not to matter that millions are slaughtered
and entire cultures destroyed, as all was all done with the "best of intentions."
It's a poor kind of child who loves his parents only so long as they are more attractive, richer,
and more powerful than other parents, and it is a poor kind of "patriot" who loves his country
only so long as it is more admired, richer, and more powerful than other countries.
"In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but to the
Church of America the Redeemer." As though having "confessional fealty" to "conservatism" (which
some people indeed have) were any better. Regarding anyone who falls into that category, all I
can do is quote one of the great voices of wisdom for our time: "I pity the fool!"
'The things Americans do they do not only for themselves, but for all mankind.' Well aint that
grand! Brooks must have been intoxicated by his ideas at this point, sounds like Dennis Prager.
It would be easy to laugh at such ideas if they weren't so destructive. Excellent piece.
Brooks son being in the IDF and Brooks own vehemence to destroy an unthreatening (to the US) enemy
of Israel in 2003 is of course of one piece.
Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven.
I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning
but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment
in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory.
Of course Russia has always needed a strong man to stay intact and I couldn't rule out government
sympathizers might have taken action on their own, those who were alarmed at Russian liberal journalists
fomenting the kind of discord which might suit Victoria Nuland but not Russia staying intact that
is.
Although I actively seek out level-headed conservative thinkers/writers, I've never been a fan
of David Brooks (probably for reasons related to those put forth in this article).
Phil giraldi. if brooks'views are less valid because his son skipped Iraq are bill kristol's and
Elliot Cohen's more valid because their sons were u.s.marines in Iraq?
To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss
during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy"
that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb
Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination,
I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill
Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington
is crawling with these guys and gals.
"The global trend has been towards democracy for a century now"
The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management,
a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational
corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all.
"... entitlement and power means you never have to apologize for anything ..."
"... What the American with power does have in nearly limitless abundance is a grandiose yet unacknowledged sense of entitlement and a volcanic sense of indignation . ..."
Here's the American Disease in a nutshell: entitlement and power means you never have to apologize
for anything. Public relations might require a grudging, insincere quasi-apology, but the person
with power can't evince humility or shame--he or she doesn't have any.
What the American with power does have in nearly limitless abundance is a grandiose yet unacknowledged
sense of entitlement and a volcanic sense of indignation .
By Arthur MacEwan. Originally published at
Triple Crisis
The Issue Revisited
Around the time that the United States invaded Iraq, 14 years ago, I was in an auditorium at the
University of Massachusetts Boston to hear then-Senator John Kerry try to justify the action. As
he got into his speech, a loud, slow, calm voice came from the back of the room: "O – I – L." Kerry
tried to ignore the comment. But, again and again, "O – I – L." Kerry simply went on with his prepared
speech. The speaker from the back of the room did not continue long, but he had succeeded in determining
the tenor of the day.
Looking back on U.S. involvement in the Iraq, it appears to have been largely a failure. Iraq,
it turned out, had no "weapons of mass destruction," but this original rationalization for invasion
offered by the U.S. government was soon replaced by the goal of "regime change" and the creation
of a "democratic Iraq." The regime was changed, and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain was captured and
executed. But it would be very had to claim that a democratic Iraq either exists or is in the making-to
say nothing of the rise of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and the general destabilization in
the Middle East, both of which the U.S. invasion of Iraq helped propel.
Yet, perhaps on another scale, the invasion would register as at least a partial success. This
is the scale of O – I – L
The Profits from Oil
At the time of the U.S. invasion, I wrote an article for Dollars & Sense titled "Is It
Oil?" (available online
here
). I argued that, while the invasion may have had multiple motives, oil-or more precisely, profit
from oil-was an important factor. Iraq, then and now, has huge proven oil reserves, not in the same
league as Saudi Arabia, but in group of oil producing countries just behind the Saudis. It might
appear, then, that the United States wanted access to Iraqi oil in order to meet the needs of our
highly oil-dependent lifestyles in this country. After all, the United States today, with just over
4% of the world's population, accounts for 20% of the world's annual oil use; China, with around
20% of the world's population is a distant second in global oil use, at 13%. Even after opening new
reserves in recent years, U.S. proven reserves amount to only 3% of the world total.
Except in extreme circumstances, however, access to oil is not a major problem for this county.
And it was not in 2003. As I pointed out back then, the United States bought 284 million barrels
of oil from Iraq in 2001, about 7% of U.S. imports, even while the two countries were in a virtual
state of war. In 2015, only 30% as much oil came to the United States from Iraq, amounting to just
2.4% of total U.S. oil imports. Further, in 2015, while the United States has had extremely hostile
relations with Venezuela, 24% of U.S. oil imports came from that country's nationalized oil industry.
It would seem that, in the realm of commerce, bad political relations between buyers and sellers
are not necessarily an obstacle.
For the U.S. government, the Iraq oil problem was not so much access, in the sense of meeting
U.S. oil needs, as the fact that U.S. firms had been frozen out of Iraq since the country's oil industry
was nationalized in 1972. They and the other oil "majors" based in U.S.-allied countries were not
getting a share of the profits that were generated from the exploitation of Iraqi oil. Profits from
oil exploitation come not only to the oil companies-ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum,
and the other industry "majors"-but also to the companies that supply and operate equipment, drill
wells, and provide other services that bring the oil out of the ground and to consumers around the
world-for example, the U.S. firms Halliburton, Emerson, Baker Hughes, and others. They were also
not getting a share of the Iraqi oil action. (Actually, when vice president to be Dick Cheney was
running Halliburton, in the period before the invasion, the company managed to undertake some operations
in Iraq through a subsidiary, in spite of federal restrictions preventing U.S. firms from doing business
in Iraq.)
After the Troops
In the aftermath of the invasion and since most U.S. troops have been withdrawn, things have changed.
"Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, U.S. and other western oil companies were all
but completely shut out of Iraq's oil market," oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera
in 2012. "But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing
oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973."
From the perspective of U.S. firms the picture is mixed. Firms based in Russia and China have
developed operations in Iraq, and even an Indonesian-based firm is involved. Still, ExxonMobil (see
box) has established a significant stake in Iraq, having obtained leases on approximately 900,000
onshore acres and by the end of 2013 had developed several wells in Iraq's West Qurna field. Exxon
also has agreements with the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq to explore for oil. Chevron
holds an 80% stake and is the operator of the Qara Dagh block in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, but
as of mid-2014 the project was still in the exploratory phase and there was no production. No other
U.S. oil companies have developed operations in Iraq. The UK-headquartered BP (formerly British Petroleum)
and the Netherlands-headquartered Shell, however, are also significantly engaged in Iraq.
While data are limited on the operations of U.S. and other oil service firms in Iraq, they seem
to have done well. For example, according to a 2011 New York Times article:
The oil services companies Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International [founded in Texas,
now incorporated in Switzerland] and Schlumberger [based in France] already won lucrative drilling
subcontracts and are likely to bid on many more. "Iraq is a huge opportunity for contractors," Alex
Munton, a Middle East analyst for Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm based in Edinburgh,
said by telephone. "There will be an enormous scale of investment."
The Right to Access
While U.S. oil companies and oil service firms-as well as firms from other countries-are engaged
in Iraq, they and their U.S. government supporters have not gained the full legal rights they would
desire. In 2007, the U.S. government pressed the Iraqi government to pass the "Iraq Hydrocarbons
Law." The law would, among other things, take the majority of Iraqi oil out of the hands of the Iraqi
government and assure the right of foreign firms to control much of the oil for decades to come.
The law, however, has never been enacted, first due to general opposition to a reversal the 1972
nationalization of the industry, and recently due to continuing disputes between the government in
Baghdad and the government of the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq.
U.S. foreign policy, as I elaborated in the 2003 article, has long been designed not simply to
protect U.S.-based firms in their international operations, but to establish the right of the firms
to access and security wherever around the world. Oil firms have been especially important in promoting
and gaining from this right, but firms from finance to pharmaceuticals and many others have been
beneficiaries and promoters of the policy.
Whatever else, as the Iraq and Middle East experience has demonstrated, this right comes at a
high cost. The best estimate of the financial cost to the United States of the war in Iraq is $3
trillion. Between the 2003 invasion and early 2017, U.S. military forces suffered 4,505 fatalities
in the war, and allied forces another 321. And, of course, most of all Iraqi deaths: estimates of
the number of Iraqis killed range between 200,000 and 500,000.
Basically the US seems to have invaded for the enrichment of the multinational corporations
at the expense of the rest of the world. Americans will pay a monetary price, but worse many have
died and many more have lost their lives.
Even if it had gone to plan, the average American would not have benefited. They would have
paid the costs for war. Let us face the reality. There was no noble intent in invading Iraq. It
was all a lie.
The ridiculousness of Paul Wolfowitz and his claim that invading Iraq could be paid for through
its oil revenue has become apparent. It has destroyed the stability of the area. We should nor
idealize Saddam, who was a horrible dictator, but the idea that the US is going to be able to
invade and impose its will was foolish.
There was never any need to invade Iraq. If oil was the goal, Washington DC could easily have
lifted the sanctions around Iraq. I doubt that the neoconservatives believed that Saddam was developing
nuclear weapons of destruction or had anything to do with the 9-11-2001 attacks, which is why
they claimed they invaded.
If this madness does not stop, it will do much more damage, and like the Soviet Union, bankrupt
the US.
Great overview of the real tragedy of Iraq-US companies having to share the spoils.
It reminds me of Russia: the US seethes because Putin is the one looting the country and not
them.
Back in the 90s President Clinton issued countless demands to Yeltsin about oil pipelines and
output increases, showing great impatience when the Russians dared to suggest environmental impact
studies. (See the linked UPI article.) If only Putin would have let us frack the Kremlin he'd
be our best friend!
"... In any event, it was "intercepts" leaked from deep in the bowels of the CIA to the Washington Post and then amplified in a 24/7 campaign by the War Channel (CNN) that brought General Flynn down. ..."
"... But here's the thing. They were aiming at Donald J. Trump. And for all of his puffed up bluster about being the savviest negotiator on the planet, the Donald walked right into their trap, as we shall amplify momentarily. ..."
"... But let's first make the essence of the matter absolutely clear. The whole Flynn imbroglio is not about a violation of the Logan Act owing to the fact that the general engaged in diplomacy as a private citizen. ..."
"... It's about re-litigating the 2016 election based on the hideous lie that Trump stole it with the help of Vladimir Putin. In fact, Nancy Pelosi was quick to say just that: ..."
"... 'The American people deserve to know the full extent of Russia's financial, personal and political grip on President Trump and what that means for our national security,' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a press release. ..."
"... And Senator Graham, the member of the boobsey twins who ran for President in 2016 while getting a GOP primary vote from virtually nobody, made clear that General Flynn's real sin was a potential peace overture to the Russians: ..."
"... We say good riddance to Flynn, of course, because he was a shrill anti-Iranian warmonger. But let's also not be fooled by the clinical term at the heart of the story. That is, "intercepts" mean that the Deep State taps the phone calls of the President's own closest advisors as a matter of course. ..."
"... As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with envy: ..."
"... Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind to continue the 2016 election by other means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only be described as an audacious and self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State. ..."
"... Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale secret investigation of her political opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political adversaries. ..."
"... Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and "assessments", the Obama White House imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a handful of Putin's cronies. ..."
"... Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would be soon reversed! ..."
"... But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly about the fact that the very day following Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter, the Donald tweeted that Putin had shown admirable wisdom. ..."
"... That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas Truce of 2016. But like its namesake of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive. ..."
General Flynn's tenure in the White House was only slightly longer than that of President-elect
William Henry Harrison in 1841. Actually, with just 24 days in the White House, General Flynn's tenure
fell a tad short of old "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too". General Harrison actually lasted 31 days before
getting felled by pneumonia.
And the circumstances were considerably more benign. It seems that General Harrison had a fondness
for the same "firewater" that agitated the native Americans he slaughtered at the famous battle memorialized
in his campaign slogan. In fact, during the campaign a leading Democrat newspaper skewered the old
general, who at 68 was the oldest US President prior to Ronald Reagan, saying:
Give him a barrel of hard [alcoholic] cider, and a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year
and he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin.
That might have been a good idea back then (or even now), but to prove he wasn't infirm, Harrison
gave the longest inaugural address in US history (2 hours) in the midst of seriously inclement weather
wearing neither hat nor coat.
That's how he got pneumonia! Call it foolhardy, but that was nothing compared to that exhibited
by Donald Trump's former national security advisor.
General Flynn got the equivalent of political pneumonia by talking for hours during the transition
to international leaders, including Russia's ambassador to the US, on phone lines which were bugged
by the CIA Or more accurately, making calls which were "intercepted" by the very same NSA/FBI spy
machinery that monitors every single phone call made in America.
Ironically, we learned what Flynn should have known about the Deep State's plenary surveillance
from Edward Snowden. Alas, Flynn and Trump wanted the latter to be hung in the public square as a
"traitor", but if that's the solution to intelligence community leaks, the Donald is now going to
need his own rope factory to deal with the flood of traitorous disclosures directed against him.
In any event, it was "intercepts" leaked from deep in the bowels of the CIA to the Washington
Post and then amplified in a 24/7 campaign by the War Channel (CNN) that brought General Flynn down.
But here's the thing. They were aiming at Donald J. Trump. And for all of his puffed up bluster
about being the savviest negotiator on the planet, the Donald walked right into their trap, as we
shall amplify momentarily.
But let's first make the essence of the matter absolutely clear. The whole Flynn imbroglio
is not about a violation of the Logan Act owing to the fact that the general engaged in diplomacy
as a private citizen.
It's about re-litigating the 2016 election based on the hideous lie that Trump stole it with
the help of Vladimir Putin. In fact, Nancy Pelosi was quick to say just that:
'The American people deserve to know the full extent of Russia's financial, personal and political
grip on President Trump and what that means for our national security,' House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi said in a press release.
Yet, we should rephrase. The re-litigation aspect reaches back to the Republican primaries, too.
The Senate GOP clowns who want a war with practically everybody, John McCain and Lindsey Graham,
are already launching their own investigation from the Senate Armed Services committee.
And Senator Graham, the member of the boobsey twins who ran for President in 2016 while getting
a GOP primary vote from virtually nobody, made clear that General Flynn's real sin was a potential
peace overture to the Russians:
Sen. Lindsey Graham also said he wants an investigation into Flynn's conversations with a Russian
ambassador about sanctions: "I think Congress needs to be informed of what actually Gen. Flynn said
to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions," the South Carolina Republican told CNN's Kate
Bolduan on "At This Hour. And I want to know, did Gen. Flynn do this by himself or was he directed
by somebody to do it?"
We say good riddance to Flynn, of course, because he was a shrill anti-Iranian warmonger.
But let's also not be fooled by the clinical term at the heart of the story. That is, "intercepts"
mean that the Deep State taps the phone calls of the President's own closest advisors as a matter
of course.
This is the real scandal as Trump himself has rightly asserted. The very idea that the already
announced #1 national security advisor to a President-elect should be subject to old-fashion "bugging,"
albeit with modern day technology, overwhelmingly trumps the utterly specious Logan Act charge at
the center of the case.
As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic
pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with
envy:
Now, information leaks that Sally Yates knew about surveillance being conducted against
potential members of the Trump administration, and disclosed that information to others. Even
Richard Nixon didn't use the government agencies themselves to do his black bag surveillance operations.
Sally Yates involvement with this surveillance on American political opponents, and possibly the
leaking related thereto, smacks of a return to Hoover-style tactics. As writers at Bloomberg and
The Week both noted, it wreaks of 'police-state' style tactics. But knowing dear Sally as I do,
it comes as no surprise.
Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind
to continue the 2016 election by other means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated
by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only be described as an audacious and
self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State.
Indeed, it seems that the layers of intrigue have gotten so deep and convoluted that the nominal
leadership of the permanent government machinery has lost track of who is spying on whom. Thus, we
have the following curious utterance by none other than the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
Rep. Devin Nunes:
'I expect for the FBI to tell me what is going on, and they better have a good answer,' he told
The Washington Post. 'The big problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his
phone calls recorded.'
Well, yes. That makes 324 million of us, Congressman.
But for crying out loud, surely the oh so self-important chairman of the House intelligence committee
knows that everybody is bugged. But when it reaches the point that the spy state is essentially using
its unconstitutional tools to engage in what amounts to "opposition research" with the aim of election
nullification, then the Imperial City has become a clear and present danger to American democracy
and the liberties of the American people.
As Robert Barnes of LawNewz further explained, Sally Yates, former CIA director John Brennan and
a large slice of the Never Trumper intelligence community were systematically engaged in "opposition
research" during the campaign and the transition:
According to published reports, someone was eavesdropping, and recording, the conversations of
Michael Flynn, while Sally Yates was at the Department of Justice. Sally Yates knew about this eavesdropping,
listened in herself (Pellicano-style for those who remember the infamous LA cases), and reported
what she heard to others. For Yates to have such access means she herself must have been involved
in authorizing its disclosure to political appointees, since she herself is such a political appointee.
What justification was there for an Obama appointee to be spying on the conversations of a future
Trump appointee?
Consider this little tidbit in
The Washington Post . The paper, which once broke Watergate, is now propagating the benefits
of Watergate-style surveillance in ways that do make Watergate look like a third-rate effort. (With
the) FBI 'routinely' monitoring conversations of Americans...... Yates listened to 'the intercepted
call,' even though Yates knew there was 'little chance' of any credible case being made for prosecution
under a law 'that has never been used in a prosecution.'
And well it hasn't been. After all, the Logan Act was signed by President John Adams in 1799 in
order to punish one of Thomas Jefferson's supporters for having peace discussions with the French
government in Paris. That is, it amounted to pre-litigating the Presidential campaign of 1800 based
on sheer political motivation.
According to the Washington Post itself, that is exactly what Yates and the Obama holdovers did
day and night during the interregnum:
Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale
secret investigation of her political opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political
adversaries.
So all of the feigned outrage emanating from Democrats and the Washington establishment about
Team Trump's trafficking with the Russians is a cover story. Surely anyone even vaguely familiar
with recent history would have known there was absolutely nothing illegal or even untoward about
Flynn's post-Christmas conversations with the Russian Ambassador.
Indeed, we recall from personal experience the thrilling moment on inauguration day in January
1981 when word came of the release of the American hostages in Tehran. Let us assure you, that did
not happen by immaculate diplomatic conception -- nor was it a parting gift to the Gipper by the
outgoing Carter Administration.
To the contrary, it was the fruit of secret negotiations with the Iranian government during the
transition by private American citizens. As the history books would have it because it's true, the
leader of that negotiation, in fact, was Ronald Reagan's national security council director-designate,
Dick Allen.
As the real Washington Post later reported, under the by-line of a real reporter, Bob Woodward:
Reagan campaign aides met in a Washington DC hotel in early October, 1980, with a self-described
'Iranian exile' who offered, on behalf of the Iranian government, to release the hostages to Reagan,
not Carter, in order to ensure Carter's defeat in the November 4, 1980 election.
The American participants were Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser,
Allen aide Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who
in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX).
To this day we have not had occasion to visit our old friend Dick Allen in the US penitentiary
because he's not there; the Logan Act was never invoked in what is surely the most blatant case ever
of citizen diplomacy.
So let's get to the heart of the matter and be done with it. The Obama White House conducted a
sour grapes campaign to delegitimize the election beginning November 9th and it was led by then CIA
Director John Brennan.
That treacherous assault on the core constitutional matter of the election process culminated
in the ridiculous Russian meddling report of the Obama White House in December. The latter, of course,
was issued by serial liar James Clapper, as national intelligence director, and the clueless Democrat
lawyer and bag-man, Jeh Johnson, who had been appointed head of the Homeland Security Department.
Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and
"assessments", the Obama White House imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a
handful of Putin's cronies.
Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would
be soon reversed!
But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly
about the fact that the very day following Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would
not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter, the Donald tweeted
that Putin had shown admirable wisdom.
That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas
Truce of 2016. But like its namesake of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the
War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive.
We haven't had deep state (successfully) take out a President since JFK. I am sure they will
literally be gunning for Donald Trump! His election screwed up the elite's world order plans ...
poor Soros ... time for him to take a dirt knap!
Be careful Trump! They will try and kill you! The United States government is COMPLETELY corrupt.
Draining the swamp means its either you or they die!
Let us help Trump's presidency to make America (not globalist) great again.
Not only democrats rigged Primary to elect Clinton as presidential candidate last year even
though she has poor judgement (violating government cyber security policy) and is incompetent
(her email server was not secured) when she was the Secretary of State, and was revealed to be
corrupt by Bernie Sanders during the Primary, but also democrats encourage illegal immigration,
discourage work, and "conned" young voters with free college/food/housing/health care/Obama phone.
Democratic government employees/politicians also committed crimes to leak classified information
which caused former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn losing his job and undermined Trump's
presidency.
However middle/working class used their common senses voting against Clinton last November.
Although I am not a republican and didn't vote in primary but I voted for Trump and those Republicans
who supported Trump in last November since I am not impressed with the "integrity" and "judgement"
of democrats, Anti-Trump protesters, Anti-Trump republicans, and those media who endorsed Clinton
during presidential election and they'll work for globalists, the super rich, who moved jobs/investment
overseas for cheap labor/tax and demanded middle/working class to pay tax to support welfare of
illegal aliens and refugees who will become globalist's illegal voters and anti-Trump protesters.
To prevent/detect voter fraud, "voter ID" and "no mailing ballots" must be enforced to reduce
possible "voter frauds on a massive scale" committed by democratic/republic/independent party
operatives. All the sanctuary counties need to be recounted and voided county votes if recount
fails since the only county which was found to count one vote many times is the only "Sanctuary"
county, Wayne county, in recount states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) last year. The
integrity of voting equipment and voting system need to be tested, protected and audited. There
were no voting equipment stuck to Trump. Yet, many voting equipment were found to switch votes
to Clinton last November. Voter databases need to be kept current. Encourage reporting of "voter
fraud on a massive scale" committed by political party operatives with large reward.
Trump knows whats coming. Rush Limbaugh said "I've known Trump for a long time, he is a winner
and I am sure none of this phases him at all. The media didn't create him, the media can't destroy
him."
Flynn has been there for several years. If he was such a threat why did they not take action
sooner since Soweeto appointed him in 2012? It must be that Soweto Obama is his spy buddy then,
both of them in league with the Russians since Obama has been with Flynn for a much longer time
he had to know if something was up.
The entire Russian spy story is a complete Fake news rouse.
I am wondering what they'll say tomorrow to draw attention awya form the muslim riots in Sweden.
If the news of Muslim riots in Sweden, then Trump will be even more vindicated and the MSM will
look even more stupid and Fake.
The Deep State has accentually lost control of the Intelligence Community via its Agents /
Operatives & Presstitute Media vehicle's to Gas Light the Masses.
So what Criminals at large Obama, Clapper & Lynch have done 17 days prior to former CEO Criminal
Obama leaving office was to Decentralize & weaken the NSA. As a result, Intel gathering was then
regulated to the other 16 Intel Agencies.
Thus, taking Centuries Old Intelligence based on a vey stringent Centralized British Model,
De Centralized it, filling the remaining 16 Intel Agenices with potential Spies and a Shadow Deep
State Mirror Government.
All controlled from two blocks away at Pure Evil Criminal War Criminal Treasonous at large,
former CEO Obama's Compound / Lair.
It's High Treason being conducted "Hidden In Plain View" by the Deep State.
It's the most Bizzare Transition of Power I've ever witnessed. Unprecedented.
Flynn did not tell Pence that Pence's best friend was front and center on the Pizzagate list.
That's what cost Flynn his job...it had fuck all do do with the elections.
"... The BRICS want to use oil to "force the US to lose its incredibly powerful role in owning the world's transactional reserve currency." It gives the US a great deal of power of empire that it would not ordinarily have, since the ability to add debt without consequence enables the expenditures to sustain it. ..."
"... Later, after listening to this again, the thought crossed my mind that this advisor might be a double agent using the paranoia of the military to achieve the ends of another. Not for the BRICS, but for the Banks. The greatest beneficiary of a strong dollar, which is a terrible burden to the real economy, is the financial sector. This is why most countries seek to weaken or devalue their currencies to improve their domestic economies as a primary objective. This is not so far-fetched as military efforts to provoke 'regime change' have too often been undertaken to support powerful commercial interests. ..."
"... A typical observation is that the US did indeed overthrow the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran. But 'the British needed the money' from the Anglo-Iranian oil company in order to rebuild after WW II. Truman had rejected the notion, but Eisenhower the military veteran and Republic agreed to it. Wilkerson says specifically that Ike was 'the last expert' to hold the office of the Presidency. ..."
Aug 15, 2015 | Jesse's Café Américain
"We are imperial, and we are in decline... People are losing confidence in the Empire."
This is the key theme of Larry Wilkerson's presentation. He never really questions whether empire
is good or bad, sustainable or not, and at what costs. At least he does not so in the same manner
as that great analyst of empire Chalmers Johnson.
It is important to understand what people who are in and near positions of power are thinking
if you wish to understand what they are doing, and what they are likely to do. What ought
to be done is another matter.
Wilkerson is a Republican establishment insider who has served for many years in the military
and the State Department. Here he is giving about a 40 minute presentation to the Centre For International
Governance in Canada in 2014.
I find his point of view of things interesting and revealing, even on those points where I may
not agree with his perspective. There also seem to be some internal inconsistencies in this thinking.
But what makes his perspective important is that it represents a mainstream view of many professional
politicians and 'the Establishment' in America. Not the hard right of the Republican party, but much
of what constitutes the recurring political establishment of the US.
As I have discussed here before, I do not particularly care so much if a trading indicator has
a fundamental basis in reality, as long as enough people believe in and act on it. Then it is worth
watching as self-fulfilling prophecy. And the same can be said of political and economic memes.
At minute 48:00 Wilkerson gives a response to a question about the growing US debt and of the
role of the petrodollar in the Empire, and the efforts by others to 'undermine it' by replacing it.
This is his 'greatest fear.'
He speaks about 'a principal advisor to the CIA Futures project' and the National Intelligence
Council (NIC), whose views and veracity of claims are being examined closely by sophisticated assets.
He believes that both Beijing and Moscow are complicit in an attempt to weaken the dollar.
This includes the observation that "gold is being moved in sort of unique ways, concentrated in
secret in unique ways, and capitals are slowly but surely divesting themselves of US Treasuries.
So what you are seeing right now in the supposed strengthening of the dollar is a false impression."
The BRICS want to use oil to "force the US to lose its incredibly powerful role in owning
the world's transactional reserve currency." It gives the US a great deal of power of empire that
it would not ordinarily have, since the ability to add debt without consequence enables the expenditures
to sustain it.
Later, after listening to this again, the thought crossed my mind that this advisor might
be a double agent using the paranoia of the military to achieve the ends of another. Not for
the BRICS, but for the Banks. The greatest beneficiary of a strong dollar, which is a terrible burden
to the real economy, is the financial sector. This is why most countries seek to weaken or devalue
their currencies to improve their domestic economies as a primary objective. This is not so far-fetched
as military efforts to provoke 'regime change' have too often been undertaken to support powerful
commercial interests.
Here is just that particular excerpt of the Q&A and the question of increasing US debt.
I am not sure how much the policy makers and strategists agree with this theory about gold. But
there is no doubt in my mind that they believe and are acting on the theory that oil, and the dollar
control of oil, the so-called petrodollar, is the key to maintaining the empire.
Wilkerson reminds me very much of a political theoretician who I knew at Georgetown University.
He talks about strategic necessities, the many occasions in which the US has used its imperial power
covertly to overthrow or attempt to overthrow governments in Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the Ukraine.
He tends to ascribe all these actions to selflessness, and American service to the world in maintaining
a balance of power where 'all we ask is a plot of ground to bury our dead.'
A typical observation is that the US did indeed overthrow the democratically elected government
of Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran. But 'the British needed the money' from the Anglo-Iranian oil company
in order to rebuild after WW II. Truman had rejected the notion, but Eisenhower the military veteran
and Republic agreed to it. Wilkerson says specifically that Ike was 'the last expert' to hold the
office of the Presidency.
This is what is meant by realpolitik. It is all about organizing the world under a 'balance
of power' that is favorable to the Empire and the corporations that have sprung up around it.
As someone with a long background and interest in strategy I am not completely unsympathetic to
these lines of thinking. But like most broadly developed human beings and students of history and
philosophy one can see that the allure of such thinking, without recourse to questions of restraint
and morality and the fig leaf of exceptionalist thinking, is a terrible trap, a Faustian bargain.
It is the rationalization of every nascent tyranny. It is the precursor to the will to pure power
for its own sake.
The challenges of empire now according to Wilkerson are:
Disequilibrium of wealth - 1/1000th of the US owns 50% of its total wealth. The current
economic system implies long term stagnation (I would say stagflation. The situation in the US
is 1929, and in France, 1789. All the gains are going to the top.
BRIC nations are rising and the Empire is in decline, largely because of US strategic miscalculations.
The US is therefore pressing harder towards war in its desperation and desire to maintain the
status quo. And it is dragging a lot of good and honest people into it with our NATO allies
who are dependent on the US for their defense.
There is a strong push towards regional government in the US that may intensify as
global warming and economic developments present new challenges to specific areas. For example,
the water has left the Southwest, and it will not be coming back anytime soon.
This presentation ends about minute 40, and then it is open to questions which is also very interesting.
Lawrence Wilkerson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the
College of William Mary, and former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"... ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government... ..."
"... The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media! ..."
"... Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection! ..."
This is running now on FoxNews.com, total fabrication especially the last sentence but Trumpers believe this Fake News. I think
this is where ilsm gets his intell insights from, phoney former intell officers, they sound exactly like him - check it out for
yourself
"I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control"
By Bryan Dean Wright...February 18, 2017...Foxnews.com
..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or
withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government...
Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president "will die in jail."..."
The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It
is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have
no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media!
Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right,
give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection!
Brooks said, "
Enemy of the people, I'm an enemy of the people.
You know what? My fear
of the administration as it's shaken out so far is not that it's incipient fascism it is that it
is anarchy. There are 696 appointed jobs that require senate confirmation and the Trump
administration hasn't named 692 of them. So there is nobody home in the government."
"I want Netanyahu to begin telling the truth, what the involvement of Israel was in 9/11. Over
134 Mossad operatives were picked up on 9/11. The FBI picked them up [and] debriefed them." -
Dr. Steve Pieczenik, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
As I understand it, these "IT experts" also worked on Debbie Wassername-Schultz's computers.
Oh no nmewn, what the hell can you possibly be thinking?! Clearly, beyond any shadow of a doubt...
The Russians did it! ;-)
They are definitely trying to quash this one as it goes against most (if not all) false narratives
they've created for public consumption.
False Narrative: Hillary was the more competent candidate! - No, she purposely setup & ran
an unsecured personal network and used it for government business.
False Narrative: The Russians hacked the DNC! - No, according to the dims own sources a phishing
email was clicked on that could have been sent by anyone.
Oldest brother had two years of experience getting paid 157k/yr. Median salary for IT Admin
in Congress: 50k. He was highest paid person of all his (Democrat) Rep's staffers, including her
Chief of Staff. The question is how and why? Were they all employed as a political favor in return
for a large donation from anyone in particular? This should be investigated further.
So... an Islamic spy ring is allegedly acting at the highest echelons of the federal government,
and "American" commentators on ZH are hammering about Israel??? I'm calling bluff on you guys.
You are not American patriots, and you don't belong to the right.
You are a bunch of paid shills, working to white wash Islamic Jihad and obfuscate the ongoing
war which Islam is waging against the west:
I don't have any "cover". I have already announced openly that I'm an Israeli. So what? I still
seem to care about American interests more than most people in this forum.
I think a lot of stuff on 9/11 towers is misdirection.. This is the best examination of the
evidence that disproves and eliminates a lot of what we think we know!
"... This bizarre feature of Trump's executive order shows how deep Official Washington's dysfunction goes. Trump has picked a major constitutional battle over a travel ban that targets the wrong countries. ..."
"... But there's a reason for this dysfunction: No one in Official Washington can speak the truth about terrorism without suffering severe political damage or getting blacklisted by the mainstream media. Since the truth puts Israel and especially Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position, the truth cannot be spoken. ..."
"... There was some hope that President Trump – for all his irascibility and unpredictability – might break from the absurd "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" mantra. But so far he has not. Nor has Trump moved to throw open the files on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts so Americans can assess how the Obama administration sought to manipulate them into supporting these "regime change" adventures. ..."
"... But Trump has resisted intense pressure to again entrust U.S. foreign policy to the neoconservatives, a number of whom lost their jobs when President Obama left office, perhaps most significantly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who helped orchestrate the violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected president and is an architect of the New Cold War with Russia. ..."
"... Other neocons who angled for jobs in the new administration, including John Bolton and James Woolsey, have failed to land them. Currently, there is pressure to ensconce Elliott Abrams, a top neocon dating back to the Reagan administration, in the key post of Deputy Secretary of State but that idea, too, has met resistance. ..."
"... The neocon threat to Trump's stated intent of restoring some geopolitical realism to U.S. foreign policy is that the neocons operate almost as an ideological cabal linked often in a subterranean fashion – or as I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's neocon chief of staff, once wrote in a cryptic letter to neocon journalist Judith Miller that aspen trees "turn in clusters, because their roots connect them." ..."
"... What is less clear is whether Trump, Tillerson and his fledgling State Department team have the intellectual heft to understand why U.S. foreign policy has drifted into the chaos and conflicts that now surround it – and whether they have the skill to navigate a route toward a safe harbor. ..."
"... My first concern, however, is the USA predilection for 'regime change" wars - and for that I blame the neocons. ..."
If you wanted to bring sanity to a U.S. foreign policy that has spun crazily out of control,
there would be some immediate steps that you – or, say, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – could
take, starting with a renewed commitment to tell the truth to the American people.
Instead of the endless "perception management" or "strategic communication" or "psychological
operations" or whatever the new code words are, you could open up the files regarding key turning-point
moments and share the facts with the citizens – the "We the People" – who are supposed to be America's
true sovereigns.
For instance, you could release what the U.S. government actually knows about the Aug. 21,
2013 sarin gas attack in Syria; what the files show about the origins of the Feb. 22, 2014 coup
in Ukraine; what U.S. intelligence analysts have compiled about the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. And those are just three examples of cases where
U.S. government propagandists have sold a dubious bill of goods to the American and world publics
in the "information warfare" campaign against the Syrian and Russian governments.
If you wanted to base U.S. foreign policy on the firm foundation of reality, you also could
let the American people in on who is actually the principal sponsor of the terrorism that they're
concerned about: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban – all Sunni-led outfits, none of which are
backed by Shiite-ruled Iran. Yet, all we hear from Official Washington's political and media insiders
is that Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism.
Of course, that is what Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel want you to believe because
it serves their regional and sectarian interests, but it isn't true. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states are the ones arming and financing Al Qaeda and Islamic State with Israel occasionally bombing
Al Qaeda's military enemies inside Syria and providing medical support for Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate
operating near the Golan Heights.
The reason for this unsavory network of alliances is that Israel, like Saudi Arabia and the
Sunni-led Gulf states, sees Iran and the so-called "Shiite crescent" – from Tehran through Damascus
to Beirut – as their principal problem. And because of the oil sheiks' financial wealth and Israel's
political clout, they control how pretty much everyone in Official Washington's establishment
views the Middle East.
But the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are not in line with the interests
of the American people – nor the average European – who are not concerned about militant Shiites
as much as militant Sunnis. After all, the worst terror attacks on Europe and the U.S. have come
from Sunni extremists belonging to or inspired by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
This gap between the reality of Sunni-extremist terrorism and the fantasy of Official Washington's
"group think" fingering Shiite-ruled Iran explains the cognitive dissonance over President Trump's
travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries. Beyond the offensive anti-Muslim prejudice,
there is the fact that he ignored the countries that produced the terrorists who have attacked
the U.S., including the 9/11 hijackers.
This bizarre feature of Trump's executive order shows how deep Official Washington's dysfunction
goes. Trump has picked a major constitutional battle over a travel ban that targets the wrong
countries.
But there's a reason for this dysfunction: No one in Official Washington can speak the truth
about terrorism without suffering severe political damage or getting blacklisted by the mainstream
media. Since the truth puts Israel and especially Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position, the
truth cannot be spoken.
There was some hope that President Trump – for all his irascibility and unpredictability –
might break from the absurd "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" mantra. But so far he
has not. Nor has Trump moved to throw open the files on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts so Americans
can assess how the Obama administration sought to manipulate them into supporting these "regime
change" adventures.
But Trump has resisted intense pressure to again entrust U.S. foreign policy to the neoconservatives,
a number of whom lost their jobs when President Obama left office, perhaps most significantly
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who helped orchestrate the
violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected president and is an architect of the New Cold War with
Russia.
Other neocons who angled for jobs in the new administration, including John Bolton and James
Woolsey, have failed to land them. Currently, there is pressure to ensconce Elliott Abrams, a
top neocon dating back to the Reagan administration, in the key post of Deputy Secretary of State
but that idea, too, has met resistance.
The neocon threat to Trump's stated intent of restoring some geopolitical realism to U.S. foreign
policy is that the neocons operate almost as an ideological cabal linked often in a subterranean
fashion – or as I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's neocon chief of staff, once wrote
in a cryptic letter to neocon journalist Judith Miller that aspen trees "turn in clusters, because
their roots connect them."
In other words, if one neocon is given a key job, other neocons can be expected to follow.
Then, any Trump deviation from neocon orthodoxy would be undermined in the classic Washington
tradition of strategic leaking to powerful media and congressional allies.
So far, the Trump inner circle has shown the administrative savvy to avoid bringing in ideologues
who would dedicate their efforts to thwarting any significant change in U.S. geopolitical directions.
What is less clear is whether Trump, Tillerson and his fledgling State Department team have
the intellectual heft to understand why U.S. foreign policy has drifted into the chaos and conflicts
that now surround it – and whether they have the skill to navigate a route toward a safe harbor.
Very good analysis.
The first and obvious question about the ban is "why isn't Saudi Arabia included"? As the article
shows, this question unravels this (Trump's) current version of dysfunctional foreign policy based
on misleading the public.
On Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve
relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
Snowden should not be worried, since the report is groundless and is clearly a provocation. To
see why it is only necessary to look at
the NBC report itself , which makes it clear who is behind it...
U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden
as a "gift" to President Donald Trump - who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who
deserves to be executed.
That's according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence
reports detailing Russian deliberations and who says a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to
"curry favor" with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence
about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.
(bold italics added)
It turns out that the story does not originate in Russia. It originates with our old friends the
'anonymous officials' of the US intelligence community.
One of these officials claims that the story is based on "intelligence" of "Russian conversations"
that the US intelligence community has 'gathered since the inauguration". We have no way of knowing
at what level these "conversations" took place, assuming they took place at all, but it is inconceivable
that the US intelligence community is genuinely informed of discussions within the top level of the
Russian leadership – where such a question would be discussed – or if it is that it would publicise
the fact by blurting the fact out to NBC.
The reality is that there is no possibility of the Russians handing Snowden over to the US in
order to please Donald Trump . Not only would doing so almost certainly breach Russian law – as Snowden's
lawyer, who has
denied the whole story , has pointed out – but it contradicts what I personally heard Russian
President Putin say at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2014 when the subject of
Snowden was brought up, which is that Russia never hands over people like Snowden once they have
gained asylum in Russia. That is indeed Russian practice extending far back into the Soviet period,
and I can think of no exceptions to it.
As it happens Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova has denied the story in a
Facebook post which links it to the ongoing struggle between the Trump administration and the
US intelligence community (about which see more below). Here is how RT
translates
her post
Today, US intelligence agencies have stepped up their work, updating two stale stories, 'Russia
can gift Snowden to Trump' and 'confirmation found on the details of the scandalous
dossier
on Trump allegedly collected by an ex-employee of British intelligence.' But it may seem so only
to those who do not understand the essence of the game. None of these statements have been made by
representatives of the special services, but is information coming from NBC and CNN, citing unnamed
sources. The difference is obvious, but only to experts. Yet it is useful for scandalizing the public
and maintaining a degree of [public outrage] .
It is evident that the pressure on the new administration on the part of political opponents within
the United States continues, bargaining is going on. And that's why the US foreign policy doctrine
has not yet been formed
It is just possible that US intelligence overheard some gossip in Moscow about the Kremlin handing
Snowden over to Donald Trump in order to curry favour with him. The various reports the US intelligence
community released during the Clinton leaks hacking scandal show that the US intelligence community
is not actually very well informed about what goes on in Moscow or how the Russian government works.
In light of that it would not be entirely surprising if someone overheard some gossip about Snowden
in Moscow which the US intelligence community is over-interpreting.
Far more likely however is that – as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation,
spread by someone within the US intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what
Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to
Donald Trump of the minimum the US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence
community's support in seeking better relations with Russia.
This story is interesting not because of what it says about what the Russians are going to do
to Snowden – which in reality is nothing. Rather it is interesting because it shows the degree to
which Snowden continues to be an object of obsession for the US intelligence community.
The reason for that is that the US intelligence community knows that Snowden is not a Russian
spy.
As Snowden has pointed out, if he really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would be talking
about the Russians handing him over. The Russians do not hand their spies over any more than the
US does, and if Snowden really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would talking about the Russians
handing him over.
However if Snowden had been a Russian spy his actions would in that case have been simply a Russian
intelligence operation of which the US intelligence community was the victim, of which there have
been many since the Second World War. Espionage is what the US and Russia routinely do to each other,
and there would be nothing remarkable about Snowden in that case.
It is the fact that Snowden is on the contrary a deeply patriotic American who acted from patriotic
motives that has the US intelligence community enraged and alarmed. From their point of view having
a patriotic American publicly expose their practices Jason Bourne style is a far greater threat than
have a Russian spy penetrate their systems, since because of the far greater publicity it is far
more likely to damage them politically.
This explains the extraordinary feud the US intelligence community has waged against Snowden,
which in part explains why it has become so hostile to Russia, the country which has become his protector.
Mr.Sono -> knukles •Feb 12, 2017 5:41 PM
Putin is a man of his words and not a little bitch like Obama. I was suprised that fake news was
all over zerohedge regarding this topic, but at the end zerohedge confirmed the fake news.
Giant Meteor -> FreeShitter •Feb 12, 2017 5:35 PM
One of the smartest plays the deep state could make is allowing him back, make small fuss, and
issue a pardon. It would go far in deflating, diffusing the situation, de minimis so to speak.
But, I suppose it is more about absolute control, control of the narrative, full spectrum dominance,
cautionary tales etc. Pride goeth before the fall (destruction) I believe. Eventually this laundry
is going to get sorted and cleaned, one way or the other.
boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:13 PM
" as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation, spread by someone within the US
intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants
better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to Donald Trump of the minimum the
US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence community's support in
seeking better relations with Russia."
A full pardon from Trump would improve his standing with the American people, IMHO, on both
the left and the right.
HumanMan -> boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:29 PM
This was my thought when the story broke. Putin can no longer claim to be a protector of human
rights if he hands over Snowden...Unless Trump is going to pardon him. As you pointed you, that
would be great (politically) for Trump too. Done this way would be a win win for the two and another
win for We The People. On top of that, Putin doesn't want to babysit Snowden. I'm sure the Russians
would be happy to have a politically expediant way to get the American spy out of their country.
HRClinton •Feb 12, 2017 5:16 PM
The Deep State rules, no matter what DJT thinks.
The roots go deep in my fomer DOS and in the CIA Even in the DOD and Senate. Bill and I know
this better than anyone.
FAKE NEWS:
On Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve
relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
How many gringos were fooled???--- not many
shovelhead •Feb 12, 2017 5:37 PM
Pissgate II...
Brought to you from your friends at the CIA
Mr. Crisp •Feb 12, 2017 5:50 PM
Snowden showed the world that the NSA wasn't just tracking terrorists, they were tracking pretty much
everyone, everywhere. He deserves a full pardon.
Madeleine Albright got her start as the protégé of notorious cold warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski,
who was her dissertation advisor at Columbia. As Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Z-big
put Albright on as his special assistant. The next time a Democrat occupied the White House she
was UN ambassador in Clinton's first term and secretary of state in his second. Madeleine Albright
famously asserted in a 1996 60 Minutes interview that although the US blockade of Iraq which she
vigorously championed killed a half million Iraqi children that "...it was a hard choice but it
was worth it..."
Enrique Ferro's insight: "Progressives" is the name Democrats call themselves when they need to draw
attention away from the greedy and murderous one percenters who actually call the shots in their
party. Lazy, hypocritical progressive followers protest the unconstitutional machinations of Republican
administrations like those of George W. Bush and Donald Trump while they ignore excuse the same crimes
when committed by Democrats like the Clintons or Barack Obama.
Philip Giraldi
January 24, 2017
1,300 Words
151 Comments
Reply
There is no limit to the hubris driven hypocrisy of America's stalwart
neoconservatives. A recent
Washington Post
front page article
entitled "'Never Trump' national-security Republicans fear
they have been blacklisted" shares with the reader the heartbreak of those
so-called GOP foreign policy experts who have apparently been ignored by the
presidential transition team seeking to staff senior positions in the new
administration. Author David Nakamura describes them as "some of the biggest names
in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administration
who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve
their country again."
"But," Nakamura adds, "their phones aren't ringing." And I
wept openly as he went on to describe how they sit forlorn in a "state of
indefinite limbo" in their law firms, think tanks and university faculty lounges
just thinking about all the great things they can do for their country. Yes,
"serve their country," indeed. Nothing personal in it for them. Nothing personal
when they denounced Trump and called him incompetent, unqualified, a threat to the
nation and even joined Democrats in labeling him a racist, misogynist, homophobe,
Islamophobe and bigot. And they really got off when they explained in some detail
how The Donald was a Russian agent. Nothing personal. It's was only business. So
let's let bygones be bygones and, by the way, where are the jobs? Top level
Pentagon or National Security Council only, if you please!
And yes, they did make a mistake about some things in Iraq, but it was Obama
who screwed it up by not staying the course. And then there was Libya, the war
still going on in Afghanistan, getting rid of Bashar and that funny business in
Ukraine. It all could have gone better but, hey, if they had been fully in charge
for the past eight years to back up the greatly loved Vicki Nuland at the State
Department everything would be hunky dory.
Oh yeah, some of the more introspective neocons are guessing that the new
president just might be holding a grudge about those two "Never Trump"
letters
that more than 200 of them eventually signed. Many now believe that
they are on a blacklist. How unfair! To be sure, some of the language in the
letters was a bit intemperate, including assertions about Trump's personality,
character and intelligence. One letter
claimed
that the GOP candidate "lacks self-control and acts impetuously," that
he "exhibits erratic behavior," and that he is "fundamentally dishonest." Mitt
Romney, who did not sign the letters but was nevertheless extremely outspoken,
referred to Trump
as a "phony" and a "fraud."
One of the first anti-Trump letter's organizers, Professor Eliot Cohen
described presidential candidate Trump
as "a man utterly unfit for the
position by temperament, values and policy preferences." After the election, Cohen
even
continued his scathing attacks
on the new president, writing that "The
president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief
qualifications seem to be unquestioning loyalty." He goes on to describe them as
"second-raters."
Cohen, who reminds one of fellow Harvard bombast artist Alan Dershowitz, might
consider himself as "first rate" but that is a judgment that surely might be
challenged. He was a prominent
cheerleader for the Iraq War
and has been an advocate of overthrowing the
Iranian government by force. He opposed the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary
of Defense because Hagel had "made it clear that he [did] not want to engage in a
confrontation with Iran." Cohen, a notable Israel Firster in common with many of
his neocon brethren, has aggressively condemned even well-reasoned criticism of
the Israel Lobby and of Israel itself as anti-Semitism. Glenn Greenwald has
described him as "extremist a neoconservative and warmonger as it gets."
One has to wonder at the often-professed intelligence and experience of Cohen
and his neocon friends if they couldn't figure out in advance that backing the
wrong horse in an election might well have consequences. And there is a certain
cynicism intrinsic in the neoconservative whine. Many of the
dissidents
like Cohen, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Eric Edelman, Kori Schake,
Reuel Gerecht, Kenneth Adelman and Michael Morell who came out most
enthusiastically for Hillary Clinton were undoubtedly trimming their sails to
float effortlessly into her anticipated hawkish administration. Gerecht, who has
advocated war in Syria, said of the Democratic candidate that "She's not a
neoconservative, but Hillary Clinton isn't uncomfortable with American power."
That the defeat of Hillary was also a defeat of the neoconservatives and their
alphabet soup of institutes and think tanks is sometimes overlooked but was a
delicious dish served cold for those of us who have been praying for such a
result. It was well worth the endless tedium when watching Fox News on election
night to see Bill Kristol's face when it became clear that Trump would be
victorious. Back to the drawing board, Bill!
And there may be yet another shocker in store for the neocons thanks to Trump.
The fact that the new administration is drawing on the business world for staffing
senior positions means that he has been less interested in hiring think tank and
revolving door academic products to fill the government bureaucracies. This has
led Josh Rogin of the
Washington Post
to warn that the
death of think tanks
as we know them could be on the horizon. He quotes one
think-tanker as opining that "the people around Trump view think tanks as for sale
for the highest bidder. They have empowered other centers of gravity for staffing
this administration." Rogin adds "If the Trump team succeeds in diminishing the
influence of Washington think tanks and keeping their scholars out of government,
policymaking will suffer. Many of these scholars hold the institutional knowledge
and deep subject matter expertise the incoming administration needs."
Rogin, who is himself a neocon who
has been
an associated "expert" with the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) affiliated Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (WINEP), is peddling bullshit. The record
of the geniuses who have been guiding U.S. foreign policy ever
since the Reagan Administration has not been exactly reassuring
and can be considered downright disastrous if one considers
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Think tanks have agendas
that in most cases actually work against the public interest.
Their designation of staff as "scholars" is a contrivance as
their scholarship consists of advocacy for specific causes and
ideologies. They should be seen for what they are and what they
are is not very pretty as they are into endless self-promotion.
Fear mongering Danielle Pletka, who is vice president for
foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute, has
supported every war coming out of the past two Administrations
and has called repeatedly for more of the same to close the deal
on Syria and Iran. Like Cohen, Rogin, Kagan, Gerecht and many
other neocons she is both Jewish and an Israel Firster. And her
annual salary is
reported to be
$275,000.
It is a pleasure to watch the think tanks begin thinking of
their own demises. It is also intriguing to speculate that Trump
with his populist message might just take it all one step
farther and shut the door on the K Street lobbyists and other
special interests, which have symbiotic relationships with the
think tanks. The think tanks sit around and come up with
formulations that benefit certain groups, individuals and
corporate interests and then reap the rewards when the cash is
handed out at the end of the year. How fantastic it would be to
see lobbies and the parasites who work for them put out of
business, particularly if our much beloved neoconservatives are
simultaneously no longer calling the shots on national security
policy and their think tanks are withering on the vine. What a
wonderful world it would be.
Even more wonderful if these psychopaths were held to account and subjected
to some solitary space for lengthy contemplation. Manning is due to vacate some
digs soon so there is space available.
These losers think they are indispensable. In fact, the talent pool is deep,
deep, deep. In my own social sciences department, in a tier-3 university, there
are multiple people who speak multiple languages from West Asia, and keep
current on what is happening RIGHT NOW. Plug them into the latest info from
NSA, and they would be excellent filters–reducing the noise to policy-relevant
information. If this is true in my shop, it must be true at the tier-1s and 2s.
The President's team can find the talent, if they just look for it.
Mark Green
,
January 24, 2017 at 6:00 am GMT \n
200 Words
What a delicious take on the demise of the neocons. Unfortunately, these
vampires have a way of coming back from the near-dead. They're not going
anywhere right away. NY-Washington is their hood.
True, it's possible that the salaries of a few of these warstars might dip
into the low triple-digits, but these rapacious insiders will never leave
Washington voluntarily. Parasites tend not wander far from their host.
Equally worrisome is the fact that Trump is surrounded by a fresh, new cabal
of Israel-firsters. And the Prez has already indicated (according to MSM news
reports) that he's prepared to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's eternal and
'undivided' capitol.
Maybe this Jerusalem claim is exaggerated or fake, but even The Donald knows
that by pleasing the Jews now he will likely encounter reduced political
headwinds later. So like any politician, Trump's doing a balancing act.
This unspoken truism concerning Jewish power is why the Zions generally
emerge victorious in Washington. Fighting them just doesn't pay; even when
you're the President of the United States.
Cloak And Dagger
,
January 24, 2017 at 7:06 am GMT \n
200 Words
Phil,
if our much-beloved neoconservatives are simultaneously no longer calling
the shots on national security policy and their think tanks are withering on
the vine
From your mouth to Trump's ears! If the lobbies cease to exist, so will the
bribes to Israel-firsters in Congress. Their demise would be particularly sweet
as they, more than anyone, represent the vilest of 5th columnists in our
government, a veritable den of vipers that personifies corruption.
I can only scoff at the "wisdom" of these think-tank "scholars" to conceive
that publicly opposing the election of a victorious president would have no
negative consequences. Even the holiest of saints would refuse to turn the
other cheek. The denouncements from these charlatans were remarkable. By what
possible rationale would they perceive that Trump would welcome them into his
government? It boggles the mind!
I hope that Trump publicly chastises these rogues so that there remains no
possibility of them darkening the doorsteps of the Whitehouse under some future
sympathetic president. Ah, to see them pelted with rotten tomatoes and shamed
for how they have harmed this nation! It would warm the cockles of my heart!
I am beginning to feel the first twinges of optimism after a long time. I
hope nothing happens to piss on this spark before it has had a chance to become
a flame.
Antiwar7
,
January 24, 2017 at 7:16 am GMT \n
This would appear to make the Trump presidency worthwhile no matter how bad
his domestic policy may end up being, though his elimination of the so-called
"trade" pacts is already a positive development which renders many of later
negative developments more reversible than the neoliberal trade pacts would
have been under the harpy. The bottom line is that no nukes is good news, and
that, hopefully, the arrogance and criminality of this crowd of war criminals
has sealed their oblivion.
AmericaFirstNow
,
Website
January 24, 2017 at 8:46 am GMT \n
ISIS result of Israeli Oded Yinon neocon plan vs Iraq, Syria and beyond
:
I don't see what they're whining about since most of them probably don't
really need the jobs and Trump will most likely implement their most cherished
pro-Izzy policies in any case.
Anyway, the more whining the better. It's music to my ears.
these Judeo-globalists aren't just warmongers, they're Class A War
Criminals: the number of people massacred in the neo-cons' wars of choice –
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Syria – in Syria alone nearly a
half-million dead – continues to mount day after bloody day. What's left of
Syria – just look at some of the hundreds of youtube videos on that
Zionist-induced butchery – is enough to make one weep; and it's only thanks to
Russia and Hezbollah that ISIS – Isramerica's pet headchopping terrorists –
aren't setting up shop in Damascus right now and heading for Lebanon. I wish I
could share Giraldi's confidence that Trump will continue to exclude the Jew
neo-cons and their Israel ueber alles machinations from his regime. But, given
Trump's own well-known rabid Zionism, I fear he may eventually blunder into a
terminal war with Russia over yet another object of neo-con bloodlust: Iran.
"How fantastic it would be to see lobbies and the parasites who work for
them put out of business, particularly if our much beloved neoconservatives are
simultaneously no longer calling the shots on national security policy and
their think tanks are withering on the vine. What a wonderful world it would
be."
AMEN!
Israel 1st AIPAC agent Jared Kushner (who is an orthodox Jew too) is senior
White House advisor to Donald Trump and is bringing in AIPAC friends as well
(Trump has put Kushner in charge of bringing about a 'peace agreement' between
Israel and the Palestinians):
@Mark Green
What a delicious take on the demise of the neocons. Unfortunately, these
vampires have a way of coming back from the near-dead. They're not going
anywhere right away. NY-Washington is their hood.
True, it's possible that the salaries of a few of these warstars might
dip into the low triple-digits, but these rapacious insiders will never
leave Washington voluntarily. Parasites tend not wander far from their
host.
Equally worrisome is the fact that Trump is surrounded by a fresh, new
cabal of Israel-firsters. And the Prez has already indicated (according
to MSM news reports) that he's prepared to recognize Jerusalem as
Israel's eternal and 'undivided' capitol.
Maybe this Jerusalem claim is exaggerated or fake, but even The Donald
knows that by pleasing the Jews now he will likely encounter reduced
political headwinds later. So like any politician, Trump's doing a
balancing act.
This unspoken truism concerning Jewish power is why the Zions
generally emerge victorious in Washington. Fighting them just doesn't
pay; even when you're the President of the United States.
if our much-beloved neoconservatives are simultaneously no longer
calling the shots on national security policy and their think tanks
are withering on the vine
From your mouth to Trump's ears! If the lobbies cease to exist, so will
the bribes to Israel-firsters in Congress. Their demise would be
particularly sweet as they, more than anyone, represent the vilest of 5th
columnists in our government, a veritable den of vipers that personifies
corruption.
I can only scoff at the "wisdom" of these think-tank
"scholars" to conceive that publicly opposing the election of a
victorious president would have no negative consequences. Even the
holiest of saints would refuse to turn the other cheek. The denouncements
from these charlatans were remarkable. By what possible rationale would
they perceive that Trump would welcome them into his government? It
boggles the mind!
I hope that Trump publicly chastises these rogues so that there
remains no possibility of them darkening the doorsteps of the Whitehouse
under some future sympathetic president. Ah, to see them pelted with
rotten tomatoes and shamed for how they have harmed this nation! It would
warm the cockles of my heart!
I am beginning to feel the first twinges of optimism after a long
time. I hope nothing happens to piss on this spark before it has had a
chance to become a flame.
"Bribes to Israel firsters in Congress" sounds like wishful thinking (about
the end of lobbying for Israel) confusing your understanding of how things
work.
Isreal firsters aren't the ones who need bribing and the effective bribing
of Congressmen to vote the way any particular lobby wants is all about money
given to or withheld from them or potential opponents so that their campaigns
directly or indirectly have the superior funding.
Lobbies and think tanks may trim their budgets and staff numbers under the
Trump presidency. But can you explain how or why the flow of money in support
of those who vote the "right way" is going to stop?
Ram
,
January 24, 2017 at 11:38 am GMT \n
100 Words
We should NOT be too hasty to judge what's happening. Tel Aviv seems more
than happy with Trump and Trump's appointments from the very same swamp that he
so ridiculed, must be cause for anxiety.
The Neocon Lament
Nobody wants them in Trump's Washington
Even allowing that this is a bit of an exaggeration, it's one of the
happiest headlines I've read in a long, long time.
Now maybe we can get
to work on convincing the MSM that putting
"America First"
isn't actually hideously racist and anti-semitic.
Well I can dream, can't I?
Agree.
"Think tanks have agendas that in most cases actually work against the public
interest They should be seen for what they are and what they are is not very
pretty as they are into endless self-promotion. Fear mongering Danielle Pletka,
who is vice president for foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute,
has supported every war coming out of the past two Administrations Like Cohen,
Rogin, Kagan, Gerecht and many other neocons she is both Jewish and an Israel
Firster. And her annual salary is reported to be $275,000."
They are covered in blood of the innocent people. The ziocons are modern-day
cannibals.
Tom Welsh
,
January 24, 2017 at 2:11 pm GMT \n
100 Words
"She's not a neoconservative, but Hillary Clinton isn't uncomfortable with
American power."
War crimes. Hillary Clinton isn't uncomfortable with American
*war
crimes*
. Power is fine, as long as it is exercised justly and within
the law. Clinton and her tribe have exulted in using power to trample on the
law – and everyone else. Remember – "we came, we saw, he died cackle, cackle,
cackle"?
Tom Welsh
,
January 24, 2017 at 2:14 pm GMT \n
200 Words
"If the Trump team succeeds in diminishing the influence of Washington think
tanks and keeping their scholars out of government, policymaking will suffer.
Many of these scholars hold the institutional knowledge and deep subject matter
expertise the incoming administration needs."
That's a laugh, coming from a colleague of the fellow who told us that:
" guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he
defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study
of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really
works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality. And while you're studying that reality judiciously, as you
will we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too,
and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all
of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
These think tanks are overrated But they are overrated for a purpose – to
have reliable ally in media administration defense and foreign policy They
ensure a continuity. Think Tank is the one -stop shopping point . It provides
ready mix of useful ideas for the imperial adventures and domestic control .
Neocons have lost the job but doesn't mean the same job wont get done or the
jobs be removed from the goals and aims . Neocons are angry mad and fuming
,just like Democrats became when Bush Jr came to power and just like the
antiwar ant corporate pro liberal agenda group are getting mad and furious at
Trump after remaining brain dead for 8 yrs under Obama . Partisan fights for
the spoils and nothing more going on here .
It is still very good .
There will be some nice new developments in the process of fight for lost
ground,the Neocons will start tearing apart the system They are vicious just
like the ISIS is .It's them or none .
The fight will expose more truth and realities to the American public than
any truth commission will ever do . Trump in his few effective and pregnant
moments of arrogance and disdain have exposed more about Iraq war, WMD , role
of the neocons and issues surrounding 911 than any commission ever did or could
have achieved .Those wouldn't have surfaced had the neocons kept quiet and not
fought Trump. Those truths were known to millions but Trump gave it the seal of
approval and made those truths earn the rightful place in American narrative .
Neocons may be warmongers Israeli firtsers but they are also self promoting
bastards To promote themselves against the stiff resistance from the new elites
,they will harm the objectives of the Thinktank They will blame everybody They
have a track record of doing so. They blamed Bush Cheney intelligence and
military for each and every failure they they themselves brought upon America
from pre 911 to -p0st 2007 . WaPo will not stay passive observer .We will be
regaled by the groans and moans of the laments
woodNfish
,
January 24, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT \n
100 Words
How fantastic it would be to see lobbies and the parasites who work for
them put out of business, particularly if our much beloved neoconservatives
are simultaneously no longer calling the shots on national security policy
and their think tanks are withering on the vine. What a wonderful world it
would be.
What a beautiful thing it would be! Pass the popcorn!
"... By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV ..."
"... "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled"" ..."
"... Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. ..."
Posted on
January 28, 2017 by
Yves Smith By
Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist,
was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders,
and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in
Feel
The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on
Citizens'
Media TV
But while it is technically true that Trump did sign the order reversing the decrease, it is a
misleading picture. This story is more a negative reflection on President Obama than it is on Trump.
A Brief Tutorial From Someone Who Is Learning the Subject Right Along With You
Generally speaking, if you are a first time homebuyer and purchase a house with a down payment
of less than 20% of the home's worth, you are required to purchase mortgage insurance. This insurance
is to protect the the lender in case you default on your payments.
Let's use the example of a $200,000 home with a $10,000 (5%) down payment. So you need to borrow
$190,000.
And then every year, you pay the annual premium of $1,520.
$190,000 * .008 = $1,520
As you pay off your principal, this number goes down.
The
Obama administration's reduction of the annual premium rate is .25 points (the upfront premium
remains unchanged). So with the same loan above, your annual premium would instead be $1,045.
.008 - .0025 = .0055
$190,000 * .0055 = $1,045
That's a savings of $475 a year, or about $40 a month.
$1,520 - $1,045 = $475
$475 / 12 months = $39.59
Backlash Against Trump
The criticism of Trump for this move has been unrelenting and, at least in my internet bubble,
unanimous. I have not seen any criticism of the Obama administration at all; including by, disappointingly,
one of my primary sources of news, The Young Turks. (Can't find the video at the moment, but they
briefly criticized Trump for the move, without looking further into the issue.)
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that Trump's words in his inaugural
speech "ring hollow" following the mortgage premium action.
"In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford
a mortgage," he said. "What a terrible thing to do to homeowners. Actions speak louder than
words."
"This action is completely out of alignment with President Trump's words about having the government
work for the people," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition,
through a spokesman. "Exactly how does raising the cost of buying a home help average people?"
Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress,
in an e-mail wrote, "On Day 1, the president has turned his back on middle-class families - this
decision effectively takes $500 out of the pocketbooks of families that were planning to buy a
home in 2017. This is not the way to build a strong economy."
"Donald Trump's inaugural speech proclaimed he will govern for the people, instead of the political
elite," [Liz Ryan Murray, policy director for national grassroots advocacy group People's Action]
said. "But minutes after giving this speech, he gave Wall Street a big gift at the expense of
everyday people. Trump may talk a populist game, but policies like this make life better for hedge
fund managers and big bankers like his nominee for Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, not for everyday
people."
The Full Picture
To say that Trump took savings away from the neediest of homebuyers is not true, because homebuyers
never had the savings to begin with. The rate reduction was not
announced until January 9 of this year–11 days before the end of Obama's eight year term–and
was not set to take effect until January 27, a full week after Trump was sworn in.
In addition, Obama's reduction decision seems to have been made without any advance notice or
even a projection document justifying the decrease.
As I understand it
, both of these things are unusual with a change of this magnitude.
Finally, with the announcement made little more than a week before the new administration was
to be sworn in, and despite Trump being entirely responsible for implementing this change, the incoming
administration was not consulted.
Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive
order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.
"Obama-era policy" implies the reduction was made long ago, and has been in force for much of
that time.
(Rates can't be raised if they were never lowered.)
Conclusion: It Was a Set Up
Finally. After eight years of hard work and multiple requests, your boss approaches you on
a Monday morning and says, "Good news! Starting in two weeks, I'm giving you a raise. Congratulations."
Two days later, you find out that he decided to leave the company months ago, and his final
day is Friday. Your raise doesn't start until a week after that.
You ask him about your new boss. "Well, he's a pretty strict guy." He leans in, puts the back
of his hand to the side of his mouth, lowers his voice, and continues, "Honesty, I hear he is
a bit difficult to work with. Real penny pincher." He sits up, his voice back to its normal cadence,
"But don't worry. I'm leaving a note on his desk telling him just how important this raise is
to you and your family." He stands up and slaps you on the back as he walks away. "I'm sure he'll
keep my word."
If that were me, I would be upset at my new boss, but I would be furious at my old one. He
had eight years to do something.
This was nothing more than an opportunistic political maneuver by the outgoing president, to set
the incoming president up for failure. All while pretending to care about American homeowners. If
the President Obama really wanted to help Americans, he would've considered this move–or something
similar–long ago. Instead, he told them he was giving them a gift and promised that it would be delivered
by Trump, knowing full well that he would never follow through. Lower-income Americans were used
as pawns in a cheap political game.
"The Trump administration would be accused on day one of raising mortgage costs for average
Americans if it reverses the FHA move," analyst Jaret Seiberg, managing director at Cowen Group
Inc., wrote in a note to clients. "Trump's career has been real estate. It would seem out of
character for him to be aggressively negative on real estate in his first week in office."
[ ]
"I have no reason to believe this will be scaled back," [HUD Secretary Julian] Castro told
reporters. The premium cut "offers a good benefit to hardworking American families out there
at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up."
It is not Trump's responsibility to keep the promises that Obama makes on his way out the door.
It is Obama's responsibility to not promise what is not promiseable.
There are so many things for progressives to criticize Trump about. This is not one of them.
So Who Are We Fighting Anyway?
To paraphrase Jimmy Dore ,
"The way to oppose Trump is to agree with him when he's right, and to fight him when he's wrong.
Anything else delegitimizes you, especially in the eyes of his supporters."
And again in another of his videos
: "We don't need to unite against Trump. We need to unite against corruption and corporatism."
If Democrats do something wrong, we need to fight them. If Trump does something wrong, we need
to fight him. If Trump does something right, we need to stand with him.
If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win.
I agree with the sentiment but after watching the D party protest war under Bush, never talk
about it under Obama, and then cheerlead for it with Hillary I don't think they actually stand
for anything except identity politics.
Right, they traded support for real issues for identity politics. Identity politics which is
lovingly celebrated on TYT every day by the way. I'm not sure how or why anyone would go to that
rancid cesspool of biased disinformation for news, but ok.
Here is a litmus test: anyone who gave a pro forma endorsement of Hillary OK, understandable,
and I can kind of tolerate that. But for the others who were in the tank for Hillary like TYT–all
except for Jimmy Dore–those people are persona non grata from here out.
Totally disagree that TYT was in the tank for Hillary. Have watched these guys every day since
around May. They're all pro-Bernie. They clearly wanted Hillary over Trump during the general
(and I did too, but that's waaaaaay not to say I'm pro-Hillary), but I don't think "in the tank
for Hillary" is a fair characterization for any of them.
To me, the best evidence is that I have not witnessed Jimmy Dore being forced to tone his admittedly
louder and more vehement anti-Hillary ranting down on any show, including the main show. They
even gave him his own show around the end of the primaries where he gleefully goes off (Aggressive
Progressives).
As an aside, The Jimmy Dore Show seems fresher than Aggressive Progressives, I believe because
he rehearses the bits on own show first. On TJDS, he is frequently good, and consistently on fire.
Naked Cap, the entire TYT network, Glenn Greenwald, Le Show, and of course, Bernie Sanders,
are among my most important truth tellers.
It's not that clear cut. For instance, if you are a person of color, there was good reason
to be plenty worried about Trump. Violence against immigrants picked up big time in the UK after
Brexit, so there's a close parallel. And his appointment of Jeff Sessions as AG is hardly encouraging.
Did you see their election day coverage? Here are the highlights:
TYT meltdown .
My favorite part starts at 14m50s, when Kasparian rants about how she has no respect for women
who didn't vote for Clinton and calls them "f@#king dumb". Solidarity!
What the – ????? – like the right wing is not all about Identity Politics from an ethnic and
religious foundations .. errrrrrr .
Now that the Democrats embraced free market neoliberalism and went off the reservation with
non traditional views wrt whom could join the club, being the only thing separating the two, its
a bit wobbly to make out like there is some massive schism between the two.
Disheveled . you can't have a "dominate" economic purview running the ship for 50ish years
and then devolve into polemic political warfare ..
jgordon– Identity politics lovingly celebrated on that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation
every day. Wow, takes my breath away. I've watched the TYT evening news for ~10 months virtually
ever day and I'd guesstimate that I viewed 60 of their You Tube clips. Seems to me you're projecting.
Given your strident certitude you should have no trouble provide any links that convinced you
of your opinion, buttress your argument. The daily recurrences of "identity politics" put it out
there. What convinced you they were "in the tank for Hillary"? It'd be hard to come up with a
more inaccurate phrase. They full throatedly endorsed Sanders in the primaries. Cenk announced
on the Monday (IIRC) before that he would be voting for HRC so how do you arrive at using "in
the tank"? I found your remarks a "rancid cesspool of biased disinformation" long on emotion and
very short on facts and evidence. That's why it seems like projection.
The US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is the most clearcut example of the moral worthlessness
of many liberals. Actually, to their credit many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have
opposed it, but it isn't a big cause because Obama was the one doing it. I imagine Trump will
continue the policy, but don't expect anything to change– Trump can be opposed on other issues,
so there will be no incentive to criticize him on an issue when the Trump people can say they
are just continuing what Obama started.
It is infuriating to hear liberals mindlessly repeating how disgraceful it is to see Trump
cozying up with a dictator who has blood on his hands. It is the eternal sunshine of the spotless
mind with these people.
Hear, hear! Thanks to NC that Common Dreams piece set off my bs detector immediately. There's
a larger framing question we can add as well: who benefits from PMI?
Using the example above, the home buyer pays an upfront premium of $3,300 which gives them
no additional equity in their home, and somewhere between $1400 and $1500 a year for their premium,
which also doesn't increase their equity. And, they continue to pay PMI until they achieve a loan
to value ratio of 80%.
So you buy your 200K house and dutifully pay your mortgage and PMI, which, btw, is also not
tax deductible. You finally get to the point where through a combination of paying down your mortgage
and increasing home prices, you have 80% equity in your home. Then the housing market tanks, and
your 200K home is worth 170K. Your house is worth less than you paid for it and you're stuck paying
$1500 a year in fees that don't reduce the amount of your mortgage, that you can't deduct from
your taxes, and that you can't get rid of until you have 80% equity in your house.
Sign me up!
So who benefits? Certainly not the middle class would be homeowner, who not only gets screwed
on the finances, but thanks to inflation of home prices, is getting screwed on the finances so
that they can spend 200K on a crappy little ranch that's a 40 minute commute to their job one
way on a good day.
I also read about this on the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site
for women and manginas Huffington Post, and I have to say that they were spinning really hard
to make this look like something horrible Trump had done. But even in the extremely biased article
I read they surreptitiously had to admit that this was a rule the Obama regime had put in place
the midnight before Obama departed and that Trump was just reversing it. I read this before I
knew anything else about t he subject and already had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
But the above post helped a lot.
Finance benefits – they get to keep promoting unaffordable mortgages.
We refused to pay this BS insurance when purchasing our house, since it wan't insuring us against
anything but rather we'd be paying for the bank's insurance against ourselves. Seems a lot more
like a scam when you frame it that way, considering that the bank is lending you money they just
created in the first place.
Instead we saved up for another year or two until we had the whole 20% down required to avoid
the insurance. I do understand that not everyone can afford 20% down depending on their job and
where they live however if enough people refused both PMI and to purchase because they couldn't
afford 20% down on an overpriced house (and we are in another bubble already, at least in my area),
prices would drop until people could really afford them.
Finance pretends they are just trying to make the American Dream available to everybody and
too many have taken the bait to the point where finance as a percentage of GDP is near or at an
all time high. The reality is that it's mostly just a scam to benefit finance and turn the population
into debt slaves.
The home owner was able to purchase a home with less than 20% down. The PMI protects the lender
during default, which is considerably higher when borrower has no skin in the game. Also, there
are other options such as lender paid mi.
Additionally, most of you are confusing PMI – Private Mortgage Insurance- with FHA Upfront
and MIP. With the latter being required regardless of the down payment. Secondly, the author was
wrong on his facts. MIP is .85 @ 96.5% and .80 @ 30 years. 15 YR.terns offer reduced
PMI is another insurance company rip-off. Requiring people to escrow taxes with no interest
paid to them by the banks using those funds is another rip-off.
Trying to condense this whole article into a tweet is a challenge. . .
"Obama cuts mortg. ins. rate for <20% down by 25 pts ($500 on $200k home) 11days prior to exit
in con artist act sure to be dropped by Trump resulting in bogus media claims about Dem support
for working class homeowners."
I agree. If we Progressives are to make any fwd movement, we can't beat up on DJT on any and
everything. I am also cautioning friends & family to do so too. If cry "foul" everyou time he
acts, that delegitimizes us.
One recent example is the Trumps' arrivall @ wh b4 the inauguration. A snapshot shows DJT entering
WH before the Obamas and Mrs. DJT. Once posted, goes viral and the talk is how ill-mannered, selfish
is and how gracious the Obamas are for escorting the Mrs. after her "oafish" husband
What is not shown is that DJT stops, comes back, and ushers the trio ahead of him. (which you
can see on CSPAN ).
When I saw the truth of what happened, after reading the negative comments, that worried me.
We REALLY need to be more dis corning and employ critical thinking.
Have to be careful not to be swayed by bullshit, no matter where it comes from.
This explanation, while nice, only serves to make Trump look dumb. He jumped into an obvious
trap. Rather than focus on how Obama tricked him, I'm a bit more concerned with what this portends
for the future. See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to
avoid easy pitfalls like this, the odds of his success aren't very high.
By the way, this reads like one more zing at Obama after he's already left the building. He
earned most of the criticism he got, definitely from this site, but I feel like this is overdoing
it. Criticizing him for not doing it sooner? Totally valid. Criticizing him for tripping up his
successor? Petty.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of Schumer and Kaine isn't part of that pettiness, though. That
will be useful to remember as they cozy up to the Don and claim they're doing it to "help working
families."
I am admittedly a political newbie (Bernie woke me up never did anything before him but vote),
and perhaps I am missing something, but I would be much less upset about it if he didn't screw
middle class Americans in the process.
That this is considered petty, by which I believe you mean normal politics, is exactly the
problem.
The article makes it pretty clear, if I am reading it and the links and background right, that
the screwing is principally in the form of requiring mortgage insurance to insure THE LENDER (or
note holder or whoever MERS says gets paid on default). And that the "benefit" you may feel was
(according to the spin) "taken away," was not even an "entitlement" because it would not have
even been in effect until three weeks AFTER Obama (who has screwed the middle class and everyone
else not in the Elite, nine ways from nowhere, for 8 years), and would not change the abuse that
is PMI. And would not have "put dollars in the pockets of consumers" anyway for long after that.
And how many homeowners are in the category?
And banksters and mortgage brokers and the rest, gee whiz, we mopes are supposed to be concerned
about THEM? About people whose paydays come from commissions on the dollar amount of the loans
they write? Where all the "incentives," backed by the Real Economy that undergirds the ability
of the US Government to do its fiat money forkovers to lenders that connived to change the policies
against prudential lending to inflate the bubble that crashed and burned so many, are all once
again being pointed in the direction of making Realtors ™(c)(BS) and lenders even richer on flips
and flops and dumb transactions and churning?
Just to clarify, and please anyone correct me, this was not any kind of "rate reduction." Rate
reductions are what is supposed to happen under the various homeowner "they let
you live in their house as long as you pay the rent mortgage" relief programs
that never happened except to transfer more money to the Banksters. As in "reduce the unaffordable
interest rate on oppressive mortgages." And "mark to market." And PRINCIPAL reductions
as a result. And I do know the nominal difference between "title" states and "equitable interest"
states - in either, the note holder effectively owns the house and property until the last nickel
is paid, and as seen in the foreclosure racket, often not even the. And the "homeowner" gets to
pay the taxes and maintain and maybe improve the place, to protect the note holder's equity "Fee
simple absolute" is a comforting myth.
As the article points out, the only potential reduction in money from borrower to lender/loan
servicer (since the PMI underwriters seem to have such close financial ties to the insured note
holder, there's but slim difference between the parts of the racket) might have been that tiny
reduction in the insurance PREMIUM.
Niggling over terms, maybe, but that's what "the law" is made up of.
And apologies if I mistook the referent of "he" to be "Trump" rather than Obama and his clan
- but nonetheless
This excellent analytic walkthrough is a model for what must be done to ward off any form of
"Obama 2!" as a political battle cry. It must be done relentlessly and without any consideration
of being fair to that neoliberal schemer. The Clintonites will claw their way back from the edge
of their political grave if they can draw on such sentiments.
Exactly, what we need is an FDR approach, which Bernie Sanders Democrats are far more likely
to deliver. Instead of bailing out AIG and Goldman Sachs, FDR would have set up a Homeonwers Loan
Corporation to buy up all the adjustable rate mortgages and convert them to fixed-rate mortgages,
and instead of the zero-interest loans going to Wall Street from the Fed, they'd have gone to
homeowners facing foreclosure, who could then stay in their homes and pay them off over time.
But when Obama came in, he brought in Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who preached about "not
returning to the failed policied of FDR." What a pack of con artists. I prefer your honest hustlers
to those guys (i.e. Team Trump, American Hustle 2.0 at least you know what to expect.)
>See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls
like this
How is this a pitfall? Trump puts a hold on a "last minute Obama change", lets it sit for awhile,
and then reinstates it or maybe even makes it better. Then Trump owns the reduction, not Obama.
This essay focuses on timing and tactics. Not analyzed is the essential question of What
is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?
It's an actuarial question based on prior loss experience. Real estate moves in long cycles.
Each trough is different in depth.
Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of
the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut
to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans.
Obama's action mirrors what's seen in other gov-sponsored insurance programs, such as pension
benefit guarantee schemes which are chronically under-reserved. Cheap premiums look like a free
benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout.
What's so stupendously silly about Obama's diktat is that it was too late to provide
any electoral benefit. Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have
been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis.
Perhaps HUD secretary Ben Carson will ask a more fundamental question: what is HUD doing in
the mortgage insurance business, anyway? Obama's ham-handed tampering with premiums for political
purposes shows why government is not well placed to be in the insurance business - it has skewed
incentives. Ditch it, Ben!
In researching this story (I have no financial background, and have never owned anything beyond
a car), I had a theory that the reduction made no fiscal sense because the Feds raised rates for
the first time in 2016, after hovering above near zero for eight years, to .5%.
My thinking was that
the move was to discourage new borrowers by making loans more expensive, therefore increasing
the cost of mortgages and ultimately threatening the solvency of the FHA. I was wrong, which is
disappointing because it would have made for a more dramatic ending, in that Trump's revoking
the decrease would have been the "correct" thing to do.
Aye. You make an excellent point that essentially everybody in media has ignored.
What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high
enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.
I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and
the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was
the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately
require a taxpayer bailout. Either way , Obama is incompetent.
If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!!
But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous
injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you
have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2%
matters not a whit in this calculation.
Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept
of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.
An analogy could be made to municipal bond insurance, which like mortgage insurance is intended
to protect the lender against loss of principal:
Municipal bond insurance adds a layer of protection in the rare case of default. However,
that protection is dependent on the insurance companies' credit quality.
Municipal bond insurance used to be commonplace; now it's quite rare. Why is that? As of
2008, nearly half of all newly issued municipal bonds carried some form of insurance. Today,
the share is less than 7%.
The number of municipal bond insurers has also declined and their credit ratings have fallen.
A number of bond insurers went bust during the Great Recession. Plus, a large default by
Puerto Rico has caused many municipal market participants to question the ability of insurance
companies to pay on the bonds they insure.
Muni bond insurers were publicly traded, profit seeking companies. But they underpriced their
insurance, probably because no one expected a 1930s-style crisis like 2008.
Obama had no more concept about how to price mortgage insurance than I do about how to perform
brain surgery. He was just mindlessly handing out bennies at public expense in the dark of night,
before skulking away into well-deserved obscurity.
I dunno Jim – perhaps Obama DID know (or was advised) that the rate cut was actuarially unsound
thus setting up his successor for problems down the road or bad optics upfront if the cut was
reversed.
Yep. To quote the White House press release, " Today, the President announced a major new
step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy
families. "
That's not a valid reason to lower PMI rates. PMI rates must cover losses, and higher
interest rates on mortgages may very well mean higher default rates. If so, PMI rates would need
to go up as well.
Now if the press release had talked about PMI overcharges by the FHA, then I might
have have bought it. But they didn't. There was no mention of actuarial soundness at all
.
For a good explanation of how mortgage insurance works and the impact of the discussed premium
increase/decrease, check out David Dayen's (a frequent contributor to NC) article on the Intercept
here . David goes more in depth on the actual numbers and what they mean.
I did briefly hear some discussion in the news about the FHA mortgage insurance program having
been underfunded in the recent past. This could have given an additional reason for Trump to block
the lower rate until the numbers could be analyzed. I did a search and found a couple of articles
from before either of these decisions that illustrate different perspectives on this issue:
The latter article is from 2009 but includes some interesting details about significant amounts
of money being transferred from the fund to the treasury department.
From the first link, as of 2015: " his recent decision to lower mortgage insurance premiums
despite the FHA falling short of its capital reserve requirement." So the fund was out of compliance
with the law, and this was a long-running point of contention between the administration and the
Republicans in Congress.
What we don't know yet is whether the fund reached its goal, which would justify lowing the
premium. The Congress members were complaining about being lied to.
"What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?"
"Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of
the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut
to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans."
The argument here seems to be that what is typical is appropriate. By that argument, 0.55%
which falls in that range would be ok. The argument that it's too low assumes that the range as
it stands is somehow rationally defined, which is another assumption that itself bears scrutiny.
To say that 0.5-1.0% is ok is an assumption, and should be examined in detail right along with
the 0.55 and 0.8 HUD figures before firmer conclusions could be drawn. The results would give
an informed answer to the rhetorical question " what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business,
anyway?" Absent that, we're reduced to arguments, tainted on both sides by political inclinations.
Jeff Epstein's clarification is exemplary.
One may be more effective, but if it's not feasible, it doesn't matter how effective it would
be in theory. See this comment by Martin from Canada a few days ago:
Maybe a viable new progressive party can be created. But it sure won't be easy. If it weren't
extremely difficult, don't you think that the Greens would have done it by now? For now, I think
that people need to be actively looking for candidates to run in the 2018 Democratic primaries.
In a few places, at the state level, this will be happening in 2017. See:
Obama came in off the golf course after Trump was elected and issued dozens of similar diktats i
recall wondering at the time that if all those moves were so important, why didn't he make them
in the 8 years he had
EZ real issue for Democrats to embrace. Stop the sales tax of food at the state/muni level.
Shift that burden (or as much as reasonably possible) to the top income brackets.
Oh wait, the places where Democrats can do this, always solidly vote D and there's no incentive.
There is an art to politics. As anyone who studies the subject knows, one has to be both "Lion
& Fox." Lion .for the strength to drive policies, but also a Fox in order to avoid "Snares and
Traps." Bannon, who actually has been writing these executive orders, stepped right into this
Trap. Rookie mistake. This is what happens when you have ideologues attempting to actually govern.
They "step in it." I believe that Jeff is a bit naive and thin skinned here as to "The Game."
Obama did indeed set a snare ..but I am a bit more concerned by Steve's arrogance for boldly stepping
in it and allowing the opposition a fine platform to grandstand on the issue. Rookie mistake.
Arrogance & Stupidity.
Afaics there are two ways in which this game can be played:
A)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates while simultaneously denouncing 0bama for setting the
trap.
3: MSMedia circus.
B)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates.
3: D-party denounces Trump.
4: MSMedia circus.
5: Trump/Bannon denounces 0bama for setting the trap.
6: MSMedia once again loses credibility, at least in the eyes of Trump supporters.
Why is option A better than B? Am I missing something here?
If everyone with less than 20% equity has PMI, why didn't it pay off after the crash and lessen
the need for a bailout? Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought
most recently with less than 20% down. Did PMI pay any money during the crash and to whom and
for what?
If it didn't do any good during the last crash to lessen the public bailout, what's the point
of requiring it?
That is a very good question and I don't remember hearing anything about PMI paying out during
the crash (but that could just be my memory). In fact it never even crossed my mind but yeah you'd
think that should have mitigated some of the losses. Maybe any payout would only benefit the mortgage
holder directly and wouldn't carry through to the mortgage-based securities? That seems odd though
and if true would be a strong case for severely curtailing if not eliminating at least the more
exotic bets.
I watched a few times until what's his name, the main turk, interrupted and talked over the
female co-host too many times for my stomach. There are too many good choices to give clicks to
that type of behavior. Hey this is the 21st century.
I don't know . Obama made many policy changes after the election results came.
It's not as if government is a fast moving engine. This could have been in the works for years
and got expedited for obvious reasons. It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences,
also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him.
Unless the policy was itself a fraud, it's impossible to know whether it was implemented cynically.
I made this point below, once it escapes moderation, but basically: 1) the article fails to
tell us whether the new rate made sense; and 2) Clinton did the same thing – a bunch of last-minute
progressive moves, designed to stroke his legacy and punk his Republican successor. Let's hope
the clemency actions are less reversible than the policy moves.
The MIP rate reduction was either an ill-advised reaction to the recent spike in mortgage rates
or a simple set-up for the incoming administration. I suspect is was a combination of both, and
likely designed more for political gain than anything.
It's hard to take a guy seriously when he professes to be concerned about home affordability
when he spent the last 8 years "foaming the runway" for banks as millions of people were foreclosed
on their homes, only to watch many of those same homes get gobbled up by Wall Street and rented
back out to them.
Fewer underwater borrowers will at least curtail the path to feudalism in this new echo housing
bubble.
Another issue is who would have actually benefited from the Obama rate cut. We are supposed
to believe it would have been home buyers, but a uniform increase in the spending power of home
buyers as a group is to a large extent offset by a corresponding increase in home prices. To that
extent it would be sellers (including private equity) and not low income buyers who would benefit.
Also, as far as I'm concerned, if Obamamometer was serious about helping homeowners there are
many more better ways to do it than "foaming the runway" for banks, or preempting any meaningful
action through his statewide get out of jail free card settlement, or actually trying to stop
his buddies from blowing asset bubble after asset bubble.
Moreover, if you can´t put up more than 20% up front to buy a house maybe the problem is that
wages are shit compared to property prices and people can´t afford anything more than cheap meth
or oxycontin to cope with their sorry lives.
Pardon if this is a duplication, but: Isn't there a very large omission here? Was the premium
decrease justified, or not? It's supposed to be government insurance, so the premium should cover
the costs. Did it? Would the proposed lower premium cover them? (Yeah, I know, MMT. But apparently
the idea here was to have a self-supporting program, so it should be self-supporting unless you
announce otherwise.)
That said: this is part of a pattern. Obama made a number of progressive policy moves at the
very last minute, most of them reversible. This is nothing but legacy-stroking, as well as setting
a trap for the next Pres. Clinton did the same thing, along with some questionable pardons.
I noticed the false headlines on yahoo news (the bastion of fake and worthless news) and I
immediately checked it to find that O'Liar had planted this landmine so that it could blow up
in Trump's face. Sure enough, when Trump canceled it, he was the bad guy (even though it had never
had gone into effect as this article points out). What a cynical move by O'Liar and how cynical
can his sycophants be?
Great post! I saw the headlines when the story came out and instantly thought there was something
"off", something a little too pat about the stories. But I wasn't sure what was wrong with the
stories, and was left confused. This post of investigative reporting and facts informs me what
was actually happening. Thank you.
The reaction here puzzles me to the point of confusion. Absent any argument that the policy
didn't offer it's claimed benefits (cost savings for the middle-class), is the left so virtuous
that it will reject and refuse to fight for any advance which isn't selflessly arrived at?
Compare this to "conservatives" who successfully campaigned in 2010 against supposed Medicare
cuts related to Obamacare implementation, when they'd love nothing more than to kill the program
outright.
We, by contrast, we won't even fight for what we claim to believe in, if it isn't wrapped in
virtue.
You are missing that this is insurance, and the cost of losses must be paid for somehow. From
Bruce's comment above:
What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should
be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but
no higher.
I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and
the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was
the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately
require a taxpayer bailout. Either way, Obama is incompetent.
If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for
free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require
continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress,
then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or
4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.
Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the
concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.
Granted, but nobody knows the facts. Bruce wants to damn Obama for not doing it before, or
damn him now for doing it. But nothing he either did or didn't do will be deemed acceptable at
this point, even if the reduction is fully warranted.
Have we never heard politics? Process? Delay? Your net conclusion may still prove to be the
correct one, though I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted,
could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?
"... I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions." President Barack Obama, May 29, 2014 commencement speech at West Point ..."
"... "War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.", President Dwight Eisenhower, 1947 commencement speech at West Point ..."
"... "Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by "a world of enemies", "one against all", that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man." Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 ..."
"... " An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this formality is not necessary in an empire." John Adams (1735-1826), 2nd American President ..."
"... Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is an internationally renowned economist and author, whose last two books are The Code for Global Ethics, Prometheus Books, 2010; and The New American Empire, Infinity Publishing, 2003. ..."
The Neocons "Grand Plan" and Obama's Blundering Foreign Policy: "An Actor Playing the Role
of a President"?
July 16, 2014 | Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay | The New American Empire | 378 views
I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us
exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our
willingness to affirm them through our actions." President Barack Obama, May 29, 2014 commencement
speech at West Point
"War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation
is a black crime against all men.", President Dwight Eisenhower, 1947 commencement speech at
West Point
"Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded
by "a world of enemies", "one against all", that a fundamental difference exists between this
people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all
others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is
used to destroy the humanity of man." Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), The Origins of Totalitarianism,
1951
" An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation
but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will
of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this
formality is not necessary in an empire." John Adams (1735-1826), 2nd American President
Am I alone in having the uneasy feeling, while listening to Barack Obama's speeches, that we
are witnessing an actor playing the role of an American president and carefully reading the script
he has been given? As time goes by, indeed, Barack Obama seems to be morphing more and more into
a Democratic George W. Bush. Those who write his speeches seem to have the same warmongering mentality
as those who wrote George W. Bush's or Dick Cheney's speeches, ten years ago.
That's probably no accident since Neocons occupy key positions in Barack Obama's administration
as they did under George W. Bush when they pushed the United States into the war in Iraq, and
as they have also tried to push the United States toward a military showdown with Iran and as
they are now attempting to provoke Russia into a military conflict. How Neocons can infiltrate
both Republican and Democratic administrations and be trouble-makers in both administrations is
the daily wonder of American politics!
But we know the Neocons' "Grand Plan". They have published it. Indeed, this is a plan that
has been outlined in many reports published by the (now defunct) Project for a New American Century
(PNAC), an organization created in 1997, and whose many founders became prominent members of the
Bush-Cheney administration. They have rebranded themselves as the Foreign Policy Initiative and
the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and have now succeeded in becoming influential within
the Obama-Biden administration, especially at the State Department as leftovers of former Secretary
Hillary Clinton. They and their allies are the main force behind the disastrous and incoherent
U.S. foreign policies being pursued by the United States government both in the Middle East and
in Eastern Europe.
Basically, it is a plan that has little to do with the fundamental interests of ordinary Americans,
and everything to do with those of some foreign and domestic entities, most prominently the state
of Israel because of its influence in American domestic politics and the Sunni state of Saudi
Arabia because of its crucial role in influencing the price of oil internationally. It is also
a plan that fits in very well with the interests of the military-industrial complex, which needs
a permanent war environment to justify huge defense budgets.
Such a plan is based on the old principle of "Divide and Conquer" (or in Latin, " Divide ut
Regnes or "Divide et Impera"). This sometimes requires creating political chaos where stability
prevails. And stirring the pot is what the Neocons want to do in order to attain their goals.
In the Middle East, they do it by fanning the flames of the old sectarian conflict between Sunni
Muslims and Shiite Muslims in order to overthrow unfriendly established governments and to disintegrate
countries into smaller and more easily controlled parts, even though the human costs for the local
populations are horrific.
For example, even though it may seem absurd for the Obama administration to arm and support
fanatical Islamist rebels in Syria while fighting them in Iraq with drones and Marines, such a
bizarre policy appears rational in the eyes of the Neocons if it results in Sunnis and Shiites
killing each other and if the country of Iraq is broken down into parts.
In Europe, the Neocons have persuaded the clueless Obama administration that provoking a rekindling
of the old Cold War and re-igniting tensions between Russia and the West were necessary steps
to be taken in order to solidify the U.S.'s influence on the European Union (E.U.) and to establish
a reframed and enlarged NATO as an American-controlled offensive military alliance that can sidestep
the United Nations, justifying military interventionism abroad.
But, because the neocon plan is often in conflict with long-term economic and political American
interests at home and abroad, the neocon plan to launch a string of American-sponsored wars in
the Middle East and in Eastern Europe may explain why Obama's current foreign policy appears to
be so incoherent and so inconsistent. Let us elaborate.
1- First, consider the chaotic situations in Syria, in Libya, and in Iraq, where well-armed
Islamic militias are well positioned to destabilize these countries' established governments through
civil wars that could easily lead to their political disintegration and economic downfall.
However, while permanent chaos in that oil-rich part of the world may serve certain political
interests, especially those of Israel whose geopolitical advantage is to weaken surrounding Islamic
states and even break them up into smaller entities, and those of Sunni and oil-rich Saudi Arabia
whose advantage is to profit from higher oil prices and to weaken the Middle East Shiite states
(Iran, Iraq and their ally Syria), such permanent military conflicts hardly serve the interests
of American consumers and workers and may threaten the business interests of the large American
oil companies operating in the region.
Indeed, higher oil prices are one of the causes behind the current relative economic stagnation
in the United States and in Europe, while the possibility that Islamic militias can attack and
take control of oil fields in those countries runs counter to the interests of American oil companies.
This partly explains why there are conflicting demands being made on the Obama administration
by different political and economic interests, and it has become increasingly difficult to accommodate
them all, notwithstanding how hard President Obama tries to do so. Thus, the apparent incoherence
and inconsistency in that foreign policy.
Sometimes Barack Obama acts as if he accepts the neocon agenda of destabilizing most Middle
East Muslim countries for the benefit of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Witness the U.S. government's
financial and military support of terrorist organizations to provoke "regime change" in Syria
as it has done in Libya. Remember that last September, Obama had acquiesced to his neocon advisers'
recommendation to bomb the country of Syria, whose Assad government was deemed too close to Shiite
Iran, before realizing that the entire cabal of justifications was a false flag operation.
Sometimes, however, the economic costs of such instability are considered too high and a timid
Obama, to the chagrin of his neocon advisers, hesitates to implement fully the Machiavellian neocon
plan. President Obama then becomes the target of the neocon media who picture him as weak, "out
of touch", inexperienced and irresolute, thus contributing to his increasing unpopularity.
2- Secondly, consider the new Cold War that the Neocons have succeeded in rekindling in Europe,
with their aggressive policy of encircling Russia with missiles and hostile neighboring countries
and of engineering a "regime change" in Ukraine. Who profits from these renewed tensions? Certainly
not ordinary Americans and ordinary Europeans. The profiteers are the empire builders and the
arms traffickers, and all those who like to fish in troubled waters.
Conclusion
It is most unfortunate that President Barack Obama has not been able to establish a coherent
and credible American foreign policy of his own, with clear principles and clear objectives, and
has had to rely on discredited Neocons for advice. Therefore, he has placed himself and his government
at the mercy of various and contradictory influences, sometimes jerking in one direction, sometimes
in another direction. That's called a lack of vision and a lack of leadership.
It may not be too late for Barack Obama to be his own man in his second term and to stop emulating
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. For that, however, he would have to fire all the Neocons in positions
of power and policy-making in his administration. If he does not have the guts to do that, he
may turn out to be one of the worst American presidents ever, on a par with George W. Bush.
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is an internationally renowned economist and author, whose last two
books are The Code for Global Ethics, Prometheus Books, 2010; and The New American Empire, Infinity
Publishing, 2003.
"... My feel is nyt don't care for détente and prefers something like the stalemate in central Europe of 1983 ..."
"... 1983 the year I (along with most Germans) realized I could be 'envied by the survivors'. ..."
"... This neocon is really unrepentant Trotskyite hell bent on world neoliberal revolution and the USA world hegemony. Nothing will change such people. ..."
"... In a sense they are real "occupiers" of the USA, the sect that keep the country, and especially its foreign policy, hostage. ..."
"... This represents a continuation of the plan outlined by the neocon think tank known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It was the PNAC that plotted to deceive the US into invading Iraq for the benefit of Israel. (Do some Googling and reading if none of this sounds familiar.) ..."
"... The US government has been making a mess of the world for decades with its overt and covert wars of aggression. Maybe we should insist that "our" government quit dancing to the tune of the special interests who profit from endless war and conflict (the "defense" industry, the Israel lobby, etc.) and try minding our own business in the world for a change? ..."
"... Mc Cain and Portman are of the hillary/nuland/kagan neocon branch of the GOP. Why Jeb! was dumped. Mc Cain just came out for a nearly 50% increase in weapons buying funds! ..."
"... US intelligence officials before the inauguration pandered to Obama about hacking! ..."
In a notorious interview with the Times of London and the
German paper Bild, America's new president, Donald Trump,
opined that NATO is obsolete, that disintegration of the
European Union would make no difference to the United States,
and that he will start off trusting Russian President
Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel equally.
It should come as no surprise that Trump's airing of such
views provoked anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic.
Speaking in his characteristic scattershot style, however,
Trump also said he respected Merkel, he appreciated NATO, and
his trust of either Putin or Merkel could dissipate rapidly.
Thus it was that Trump raised vexing questions about himself.
Is he really in thrall to Putin the war criminal? Does
Trump have some sinister reason for praising Putin as a
strong leader and passing over in silence Putin's propensity
for having meddlesome journalists, dissidents, and turncoat
spooks gunned down or poisoned with potions prepared by his
special services?
Or does Trump's praise of Putin reflect a neophyte's
susceptibility to the views of courtiers such as his
strategic adviser Steve Bannon, promoter of alt-right
nationalism, or national security advisor, Mike Flynn, who
took money from Putin's TV propaganda arm, Russia Today, and
was seated next to Putin at a banquet celebrating the success
of that international enterprise?
To frame the question in a cruder way: Should we look on
Trump as Putin's puppet or merely as a feckless con man from
Queens who is woefully out of his depth on the great stage of
history?
Concern about a suspect relationship between Trump and
Putin's regime cannot be dismissed as pure paranoia - even if
there is no compromising video of Trump cavorting in a Moscow
hotel with sex workers employed by Putin's security services.
The FBI and US intelligence agencies had been looking into
transactions between Trump associates and Putin's people well
before receiving the dossier on Trump's Kremlin ties
assembled by a retired officer of Britain's foreign
intelligence service, MI6.
And there is something yet more worrisome. The Israeli
journalist Ronen Bergman, noted for his exceptional sources
in Israel's intelligence services, reported in the Israeli
paper Yedioth Ahronoth that in a recent meeting between
American and Israeli intelligence officers, the Americans
warned their Israeli counterparts not to disclose sensitive
sources and methods to the Trump White House or security
council. The Israelis were told there is a danger Trump's
people might pass such items to Russia's security services,
and the Russians, wishing to make Iran as dependent on Moscow
as Syria has become, would deliver Israel's most closely
guarded secrets to Iran.
Nevertheless, Trump's ignorance represents a greater danger
than any covert obligation to the Kremlin.
There is, after all, a rational case to be made that
presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush indulged in
geopolitical hubris when, disregarding Russian anxieties
about a vulnerable periphery as well as verbal assurances
originally offered by George H.W. Bush and his secretary of
state, James Baker, they permitted NATO to expand from
Germany's eastern to Russia's western border. At the end of
the Cold War, Russia should have been brought into a Eurasian
partnership with the NATO allies.
Hence it makes sense for a new US president to seek to
resolve dangerous tensions with a nuclear-armed Russia. But
there is no justification for Trump's denigration of NATO and
America's allies.
Someone, perhaps Defense Secretary James Mattis, ought to
explain to Trump what has made Article 5 of the NATO treaty -
the pledge that an attack on one alliance member will be
considered an attack on all - the key to keeping the peace in
Europe. Stalin and his successors understood that Article 5
was an absolute commitment; that once Warsaw Pact troops
marched westward, there would be no parliamentary debates in
Western capitols, no dithering by presidents or prime
ministers; there would be immediate military retaliation.
This has been the secret of Western solidarity and the
primary reason Mattis could say in his confirmation hearing
that NATO might be the most successful military alliance in
history. Success meant never having to use NATO armed forces
in Europe.
When Trump mindlessly hints that he might refuse to defend
NATO allies who don't meet a voluntary pledge to spend 2
percent of their budgets on their militaries, he undermines
Article 5. If he were sitting on Putin's lap and mouthing
words from the Kremlin Godfather, his performance might be
understandable. But if these impulses are his own, they
suggest a perverse worldview that endangers America, its
allies, and world peace.
Angela Merkel's advisers see a chance that Donald Trump's
swipes against the chancellor could work in her favor as she
seeks a fourth term as German leader. ...
Polls suggest most Germans were already put off by the U.S.
president-elect's rhetoric and policy positions even before
his latest volley, published in the country's biggest-selling
Bild newspaper. Though he expressed respect for Merkel as
Europe's pre-eminent leader, Trump laid out stances on the
European Union, NATO and the economy that signal a
fundamental clash with the chancellor's defense of free
trade, open borders and liberal democracy. ...
The rise of ISIS was the direct consequence of the
neocon-controlled US government's attempts at "regime change"
in the Middle East. The CIA and other US government stooges
helped provide arms, training, and funding to rebels in Libya
and Syria in the hope that fueling those civil conflicts
would destabilize the region.
This represents a continuation of the plan outlined by the
neocon think tank known as the Project for a New American
Century (PNAC). It was the PNAC that plotted to deceive the
US into invading Iraq for the benefit of Israel. (Do some
Googling and reading if none of this sounds familiar.)
The situation with ISIS parallels the rise of Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan as a result of covert CIA support for the Islamic
mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet occupiers. Most
Americans are too ignorant to know that Osama Bin Laden and
his comrades were once US allies (just as Saddam Hussein was
a US ally until he ceased to be a cooperative puppet). Here's
a quote from Reagan himself:
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle
modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an
inspiration to those who love freedom."
- U.S. President Ronald Reagan, March 21, 1983
Naturally, those freedom fighters magically turned into
"terrorists" and "cowards" once they started using those
simple hand-held weapons to fight the massive US military
that was invading their land, just as the Soviets had done in
years past.
The US government has been making a mess of the world for
decades with its overt and covert wars of aggression. Maybe
we should insist that "our" government quit dancing to the
tune of the special interests who profit from endless war and
conflict (the "defense" industry, the Israel lobby, etc.) and
try minding our own business in the world for a change?
Mc Cain and Portman are of the hillary/nuland/kagan
neocon branch of the GOP. Why Jeb! was dumped. Mc Cain just
came out for a nearly 50% increase in weapons buying funds!
US intelligence officials before the inauguration
pandered to Obama about hacking!
"... In the real world of modern Washington, Obama's choice of hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State and Republican apparatchik Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense – along with keeping Bush's high command, including neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus – guaranteed that he would achieve little real foreign policy change. ..."
"... Indeed, in 2009, this triumvirate collaborated to lock Obama into a futile counterinsurgency escalation in Afghanistan that did little more than get another 1,000 or so U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans. In his memoir Duty , Gates said he and Clinton could push their joint views – favoring more militaristic strategies – in the face of White House opposition because "we were both seen as 'un-fireable.'" ..."
"... So, Obama's rookie management mistake of surrounding himself with seasoned Washington operatives with a hawkish agenda doomed his early presidency to maneuvering at the edges of change rather than engineering a major – and necessary – overhaul of how the United States deals with the world. ..."
"... Thus, Obama was frequently outmaneuvered. Besides the ill-fated counterinsurgency surge in Afghanistan, there was his attempt in 2009-10 to get Brazil and Turkey to broker a deal with Iran in which it would surrender much of its enriched uranium. But Israel and the neocons wanted a "regime change" bombing strategy against Iran, leading Secretary Clinton to personally torpedo the Brazil-Turkey initiative (with the strong support of The New York Times' editorial page ) as Obama silently acquiesced to her insubordination. ..."
"... Even after Clinton, Gates and Petraeus were gone by the start of Obama's second term, he continued to acquiesce to most of the demands of the neocons and liberal interventionists. Rather than act as a decisive U.S. president, Obama often behaved more like the sullen teen-ager complaining from the backseat about not wanting to go on a family trip. Obama grumbled about some of the neocon/liberal-hawk policies but he mostly went along, albeit half-heartedly at times. ..."
Any
fair judgment about Barack Obama's presidency must start with the recognition that he
inherited a dismal situation from George W. Bush
: the U.S. economy was in
free-fall and U.S. troops were bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly, these
intertwined economic and foreign policy crises colored how Obama viewed his options,
realizing that one false step could tip the world into the abyss.
It's also true that his Republican rivals behaved as if they had no
responsibility for the messes that Obama had to clean up.
From the start, they
set out to trip him up rather than lend a hand. Plus, the mainstream media blamed Obama
for this failure of bipartisanship, rewarding the Republicans for their nihilistic
obstructionism.
That said, however, it is also true that Obama – an inexperienced manager –
made huge mistakes from the outset and failed to rectify them in a timely fashion.
For instance, he bought into the romantic notion of a "Team of Rivals" with his White
House trumpeting the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln (although some of Lincoln's
inclusion of rivals actually resulted from deals made at the 1860 Republican convention
in Chicago to gain Lincoln the nomination).
In the real world of modern Washington, Obama's choice of hawkish Sen. Hillary
Clinton to be his Secretary of State and Republican apparatchik Robert Gates to remain
as Secretary of Defense – along with keeping Bush's high command, including neocon
favorite Gen. David Petraeus – guaranteed that he would achieve little real foreign
policy change.
Indeed, in 2009, this triumvirate
collaborated
to lock Obama into a futile counterinsurgency escalation in Afghanistan
that did
little more than get another 1,000 or so U.S. soldiers killed along with many more
Afghans. In
his
memoir Duty
, Gates said he and Clinton could push their joint views – favoring more
militaristic strategies – in the face of White House opposition because "we were both
seen as 'un-fireable.'"
Seasoned Operatives
So, Obama's rookie management mistake of surrounding himself with seasoned
Washington operatives with a hawkish agenda doomed his early presidency to maneuvering
at the edges of change rather than engineering a major – and necessary – overhaul of how
the United States deals with the world.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on May 1,
2011, watching developments in the Special Forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Neither played a particularly prominent role in the operation. (White House photo by
Pete Souza)
Obama may have thought he could persuade these experienced players with his
intellect and charm but that is not how power works.
At moments when Obama was
inclined to move in a less warlike direction, Clinton, Gates and Petraeus could easily
leak damaging comments about his "weakness" to friendly journalists at mainstream
publications. Obama found himself consistently under pressure and he lacked the backbone
to prove Gates wrong by firing Gates and Clinton.
Thus, Obama was frequently outmaneuvered. Besides the ill-fated counterinsurgency
surge in Afghanistan, there was his attempt in 2009-10 to get Brazil and Turkey to
broker a deal with Iran in which it would surrender much of its enriched uranium. But
Israel and the neocons wanted a "regime change" bombing strategy against Iran, leading
Secretary Clinton to personally torpedo the Brazil-Turkey initiative (with
the
strong support of The New York Times' editorial page
) as Obama silently acquiesced
to her insubordination.
In 2011, Obama also gave in to pressure from Clinton and one of his key advisers,
"humanitarian" warmonger Samantha Power, to support another "regime change" in Libya.
That
U.S.-facilitated
air war
devastated the Libyan military and ended with Islamic militants sodomizing
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with a knife and then murdering him, a grisly outcome that
Clinton celebrated with a chirpy rephrase of Julius Caesar's famous boast about a
conquest, as she said: "We came, we saw, he died."
Clinton was less upbeat a year later when Islamic militants in Benghazi,
Libya, killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel,
launching a scandal that led to the exposure of her private email server and
reverberated through to the final days of her failed presidential campaign in 2016.
Second-Term Indecision
Even after Clinton, Gates and Petraeus were gone by the start of Obama's
second term, he continued to acquiesce to most of the demands of the neocons and liberal
interventionists.
Rather than act as a decisive U.S. president, Obama often
behaved more like the sullen teen-ager complaining from the backseat about not wanting
to go on a family trip. Obama grumbled about some of the neocon/liberal-hawk policies
but he mostly went along, albeit half-heartedly at times.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. President Barack Obama in the
White House on Nov. 9, 2015. (Photo credit: Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)
For instance, although he recognized that the idea of "moderate" Syrian rebels being
successful in ousting President Bashar al-Assad
was
a "fantasy,"
he nevertheless approved covert shipments of weapons, which often ended
up in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists and their allies. But he balked at a
full-scale U.S. military intervention.
Obama's mixed-signal Syrian strategy not only violated international law – by
committing aggression against a sovereign state – but also contributed to the horrific
bloodshed that ripped apart Syria and created a massive flow of refugees into Turkey and
Europe.
By the end of his presidency, the United States found itself largely
sidelined as Russia and regional powers, Turkey and Iran, took the lead in trying to
resolve the conflict.
But one of the apparent reasons for Obama's susceptibility to such fruitless
undertakings was that he seemed terrified of Israel and its pugnacious Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu who made clear his disdain for Obama by essentially endorsing Obama's
2012 Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
Although Obama may have bristled at Netanyahu's arrogance – displayed even during
meetings in the Oval Office – the President always sought to mollify the tempestuous
Prime Minister. At the peak of Obama's power – after he vanquished Romney despite
Netanyahu's electoral interference – Obama chose to grovel before Netanyahu with
an
obsequious three-day visit to Israel
.
Despite that trip, Netanyahu treated Obama with disdain, setting a new standard for
chutzpah by accepting a Republican invitation to appear before a joint session of
Congress in 2015 and urge U.S. senators and representatives to
side
with Israel against their own president
over Obama's negotiated agreement to
constrain Iran's nuclear program. Netanyahu and the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb
Iran.
However, the Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu failed to derail, may have been
Obama's most significant diplomatic achievement. (In his passive-aggressive way, Obama
gave Netanyahu some measure of payback by abstaining on a December 2016 motion before
the United Nations Security Council condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.
Obama neither vetoed it nor voted for it, but let it pass.)
Obama also defied Washington's hardliners when he moved to normalize
relations with Cuba,
although – by 2016 – the passionate feelings about the
Caribbean island had faded as a geopolitical issue, making the Cuban sanctions more a
relic of the old Cold War than a hot-button issue.
Obama's Dubious Legacy
Yet, Obama's fear of standing up consistently to Official Washington's
neocons and cowering before
the
Israeli-Saudi tandem
in the Middle East did much to define his foreign policy
legacy.
While Obama did drag his heels on some of their more extreme demands by
resisting their calls to bomb the Syrian government in 2013 and by choosing diplomacy
over war with Iran in 2014, Obama repeatedly circled back to ingratiating himself to the
neocons and America's demanding Israeli-Saudi "allies."
King Salman greets the President and First Lady during a state visit to Saudi
Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Instead of getting tough with Israel over its continued abuse of the Palestinians,
Obama gave Netanyahu's regime the most sophisticated weapons from the U.S. arsenal.
Instead of calling out the Saudis as the principal state sponsor of terrorism – for
their support for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State – Obama continued the fiction that Iran
was the lead villain on terrorism and cooperated when the Saudis launched a
brutal
air war against their impoverished neighbors in Yemen
.
Obama personally acknowledged authorizing military strikes in seven countries, mostly
through
his
aggressive use of drones
, an approach toward push-button warfare that has spread
animosity against the United States to the seven corners of the earth.
However, perhaps Obama's most dangerous legacy is the New Cold War with
Russia, which began in earnest when Washington's neocons struck back against Moscow for
its cooperation with Obama in getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons
(which short-circuited neocon hopes to bomb the Syrian military) and in persuading Iran
to accept tight limits on its nuclear program (another obstacle to a neocon bombing
plan).
In both cases, the neocons were bent on "regime change," or at least a destructive
bombing operation in line with Israeli and Saudi hostility toward Syria and Iran. But
the biggest challenge to these schemes was the positive relationship that had developed
between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. So, that relationship had to be
shattered and the wedge that the neocons found handy was Ukraine.
By September 2013, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded
National Endowment for Democracy, had
identified
Ukraine as "the biggest prize"
and a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of
ousting Putin. By late fall 2013 and winter 2014, neocons inside the U.S. government,
including Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs
Victoria Nuland, were actively agitating for a "regime change" in Ukraine,
a
putsch against elected President Viktor Yanukovych that was carried out
on Feb. 22,
2014.
This operation on Russia's border provoked an immediate reaction from the Kremlin,
which then supported ethnic-Russian Ukrainians who had voted heavily for Yanukovych and
who objected to the coup regime in Kiev.
The neocon-dominated U.S. mainstream
media, of course,
portrayed
the Ukrainian conflict as a simple case of "Russian aggression,"
and Obama fell in
line with this propaganda narrative.
After his relationship with Putin had deteriorated over the ensuring two-plus years,
Obama chose to escalate the New Cold War in his final weeks in office by having U.S.
intelligence agencies leak unsubstantiated claims that Putin interfered in the U.S.
presidential election by hacking and publicizing Democratic emails that helped Trump and
hurt Hillary Clinton.
Smearing Trump
The CIA also put in play salacious rumors about the Kremlin blackmailing
Trump over a supposed video of him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.
And,
according to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. counterintelligence agents investigated
communications between retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor,
and Russian officials. In the New McCarthyism that now surrounds the New Cold War, any
conversation with Russians apparently puts an American under suspicion for treason.
President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the
sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15,
2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House
Photo by Pete Souza)
The anti-Russian frenzy also pulled in
The
New York Times
,
The
Washington Post
and virtually the entire mainstream media, which now treat any
dissent from the official U.S. narratives condemning Moscow as prima facie evidence that
you are part of a Russian propaganda apparatus. Even some "progressive" publications
have joined this stampede because they so despise Trump that they will tout any
accusation to damage his presidency.
Besides raising serious concerns about civil liberties and freedom of
association, Obama's end-of-term anti-Russian hysteria may be leading the Democratic
Party into supplanting the Republicans as America's leading pro-war party allied with
neocons, liberal hawks, the CIA and the Military-Industrial Complex – in opposition to
President Trump's less belligerent approach toward Russia.
This "trading places" moment over which party is the bigger warmonger could be
another profound part of Obama's legacy, presenting a crisis for pro-peace Democrats as
the Trump presidency unfolds.
The Real Obama
Yet, one of the mysteries of Obama is whether he was always a closet hawk who
just let his true colors show over the course of his eight years in office or whether he
was a weak executive who desperately wanted to belong to the Washington establishment
and underwent a gradual submission to achieve that acceptance.
I know some Obama watchers favor the first answer, that he simply bamboozled people
into thinking that he was an agent for foreign policy change when he was always a
stealth warmonger. But I tend to take the second position. To me, Obama was a person who
– despite his intelligence, eloquence and accomplishments – was never accepted by
America's predominantly white establishment.
Because he was a black male raised in a white family and in a white-dominated
society, Obama understood that he never really belonged. But Obama desperately wanted to
be part of that power structure of well-dressed, well-schooled and well-connected elites
who moved with such confidence within the economic-political system.
An instructive moment came in 2014 when Obama was under sustained criticism for his
refusal to bomb the Syrian military after a sarin gas attack outside Damascus that was
initially blamed on the government though later evidence
suggested
that it was a provocation
committed by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate.
Despite the uncertainty about who was responsible, the neocons and liberal hawks
deemed Obama "weak" for not ordering the bombing strike to enforce his "red line"
against chemical weapons use.
In a 2016 article in The Atlantic, Obama cited his sarin decision as a moment
when he resisted the Washington "playbook" that usually favors a military response.
The article also reported that Obama had been informed by Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper that there was
no
"slam dunk" evidence
pinning the attack on the Syrian military. Yet, still Obama
came under intense pressure to strike.
A leader of this pressure campaign was neocon ideologue Robert Kagan, an architect of
the Iraq War and the husband of Assistant Secretary of State Nuland. Kagan penned a long
essay in The New Republic entitled "
Superpowers
Don't Get to Retire
." A subsequent New York Times article observed that Kagan
"depicted President Obama as presiding over an inward turn by the United States that
threatened the global order and broke with more than 70 years of American presidents and
precedence."
Kagan "called for Mr. Obama to resist a popular pull toward making the United States
a nation without larger responsibilities, and to reassume the more muscular approach to
the world out of vogue in Washington since the war in Iraq drained the country of its
appetite for intervention," the Times article read.
Obama was so sensitive to this criticism that he modified his speech to the West
Point graduation and "even invited Mr. Kagan to lunch to compare world views," the Times
reported. A source familiar with that conversation described it to me as a "meeting of
equals."
So, Obama's subservience to the neocons and liberal hawks may have begun as
a
case of an inexperienced president getting outmaneuvered
by rivals whom he had
foolishly empowered.
But Obama's descent into a full-scale New Cold Warrior by
the end of his second term suggests that he was no longer an overpowered naïf but
someone who had become a committed convert.
How Obama reached that point may be less significant than the fact that he did.
Thus, the world that President Obama bequeaths to President Trump may not have
all the same dangers that Bush left to Obama but the post-Obama world has hazards that
Obama did more to create than to resolve - and some of the new risks may be even
scarier.
America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is
making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving
big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept
the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this
war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further,
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who,
in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads
in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been
Californians.
Equally wrong is the theory that the American and European civilizations are evolving in opposite
directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial
and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense. A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or
Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states
in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would
be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state,
are very close to those of western Europeans.
Both the economic-determinist theory and the clash-of-cultures theory are reassuring: They assume
that the recent revolution in U.S. foreign policy is the result of obscure but understandable forces
in an orderly world. The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable
contingencies – such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 – the
foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative
of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.
The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called
"neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before
moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz,
the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald
Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz
himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned
to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to
head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former
CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam
Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department
advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But
their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political
appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.
Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are
products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s,
which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind
of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their
admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981
raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy."
They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is
really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism.
Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the
center of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative
think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI) provide homes for neocon "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow
at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations,
such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative
foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues,
not opportunists.
The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based
and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish
defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now
slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that
began: "We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have
exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the]
Palestinian Authority."
The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close
ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the
Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an
award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of
power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that
advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush
Yasser Arafat's government.
Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most
fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists.
The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations
spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires,
with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates
propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William
Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece
for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government.
The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black,
who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.
Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times – owned by the South Korean
messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by
John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black
in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic
substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.
The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for
the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R.
technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters
whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team.
They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the
Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these
fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they
are frantically being studied.
How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign
policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported
Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first
– a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into
the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated
by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the
maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the
period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this
opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto
president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed
in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World
War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was
a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas,
a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially
a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination
of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents,
he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with
an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American
intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.
The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him)
even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his
dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son:
Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger,
warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.
It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides
are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam
Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far
too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion
of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between
Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the U.S. to invade
and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran
with U.S. attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect
the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious
anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other,
and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran
next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the U.S., a far
greater problem.
So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S.
into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public
of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and
personality. After the al-Qaida attacks, any U.S. president would likely have gone to war to topple
bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the U.S. has done since then would
have been different had America's 18 th century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency
and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.
For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and
Whitehall controlled by followers of the Rev. Ian Paisley, extreme Euroskeptics, empire loyalists
and Blimpish military types – all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to
invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore
the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.
"... "that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ..."
"... "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ..."
In a famous exchange between a high official at the court of George W. Bush and journalist Ron
Suskind, the official – later acknowledged to have been Karl Rove – takes the journalist to task
for working in "the reality-based community." He defined that as believing "that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality." Rove then asserted that this was no longer
the way in which the world worked:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying
that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which
you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct.
17, 2004).
This declaration became popular as an illustration of the hubris of the Bush-Cheney government.
But we could also see it as fulfilled prophecy. Fulfilled in a manner that no journalist at that
time would have deemed possible. Yes, the neoconservatives brought disrepute upon themselves because
of the disaster in Iraq. Sure, opposition to the reality Rove had helped create in that devastated
country became a first rung on the ladder that could lead to the presidency, as it did for Barack
Obama. But the neocons stayed put in the State Department and other positions closely linked to the
Obama White House, where they became allies with the liberal hawks in continuing 'spreading democracy'
by overthrowing regimes. America's mainstream news and opinion purveyors, without demurring, accommodated
the architects of reality production overseen by Dick Cheney.
This did not end when Obama became president, but in fact with seemingly ever greater eagerness
they gradually made the CIA/neocon-neoliberal created reality appear unshakably substantial in the
minds of most newspaper readers and among TV audiences in the Atlantic basin. This was most obvious
when attention moved to an imagined existential threat posed by Russia supposedly aimed at the political
and 'Enlightenment' achievements of the West. Neoconservatives and liberal hawks bent America's foreign-policy
entirely to their ultimate purpose of eliminating a Vladimir Putin who had decided not to dance to
Washington's tune so that he might save the Russian state, which had been disintegrating under his
predecessor and Wall Street's robber barons.
With President Obama as a mere spectator, the neocon/liberals could – without being ridiculed
– pass off as a popular revolution the coup d'état they fomented in the Ukraine. And because of an
unquestioned Atlanticist faith, which holds that without the policies of the United States the world
cannot be safe for people of the Atlantic basin, the European elites that determine policy or comment
on it joined their American counterparts in endorsing that reality.
As blind vassals the Europeans have adopted Washington's enemies as their own. Hence the ease
with which the European Union member states could be roped into a system of baseless economic sanctions
against Russia, much to the detriment of their own economic interests. Layers upon layers of anti-Russian
propaganda have piled up to bamboozle a largely unsuspecting public on both sides of the Ocean.
In the Netherlands, from where I have been watching all this, Putin was held personally responsible
in much of the media for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner flying over the Ukraine, which
killed 298 people. No serious investigation was undertaken. The presentation of 'almost definitive'
findings by the joint investigation team under Dutch leadership has neither included clues supplied
by jet fighter cannon holes in the wrecked fuselage nor eyewitness stories, which would make the
government in Kiev the prime suspect. Moscow's challenging the integrity of the investigation, whose
agreed-upon rules included publication of findings only if Kiev agreed with them, were met with great
indignation by the Dutch Foreign and Prime Ministers.
As the fighting in Syria reached a phase when contradictions in the official Washington/NATO story
demanded a stepping back for a fresh look, editors were forced into contortions to make sure that
the baddies stayed bad, and that no matter how cruel and murderously they went about their occupation
in Aleppo and elsewhere, the jihadi groups fighting to overthrow the secular Assad government in
Damascus remained strictly labeled as moderate dissidents worthy of Western support, and the Russians
as violators of Western values. Architects of an official reality that diverges widely from the facts
you thought you knew must rely on faits accompli they achieve through military or police
violence and intimidation, in combination with a fitting interpretation or a news blackout delivered
by mainstream media.
These conditions have been widely obtained in the Atlantic basin through a gradual loss of political
accountability at top levels, and through government agencies protected by venerated secrecy that
are allowed to live lives of their own. As a result American and European populations have been dropped
into a fantasy world, one under constant threat from terrorists and an evil dictator in Moscow. For
Americans the never ending war waged by their own government, which leaves them with no choice but
to condone mass murder, is supposedly necessary to keep them safe. For Europeans, at least those
in the northern half, the numerous NATO tanks rolling up to the border of the Russian Federation
and the massing of troops in that area are an extra guarantee, on top of the missiles that were already
there, that Vladimir Putin will restrain his urges to grab a European country or two. On a smaller
scale, when every May 4th the 1940-45 war dead are remembered in the Netherlands, we must now include
the fallen in Afghanistan as if they were a sacrifice to defend us against the Taliban threat from
behind the Hindu Kush.
Ever since the start of this millennium there has been a chain of realities as prophesied by Karl
Rove, enhanced by terrorist attacks, which may or may not have been the work of actual terrorists,
but whose reality is not questioned without risking one's reputation. The geopolitical picture that
they have helped build in most minds appears fairly consistent if one can keep one's curiosity on
a leash and one's sense of contradiction sufficiently blunt. After all, the details of the official
reality are filled in and smoothed out all the time by crafty campaigns produced in the PR world,
with assistance from think tanks and academia.
But the question does reappear in one's thoughts: do the politically prominent and the well-positioned
editors, especially those known for having once possessed skeptical minds, actually believe it all?
Do those members of the cabinet or parliament, who can get hot under their collar as they decry the
latest revelation about one or other outrage committed by Putin, take seriously what they're saying?
Not all of them are believers, I know that from off the record conversations. But there appears to
be a marked difference between the elite in government, in the media, in prominent social positions,
and ordinary people who in these recent times of anguish about populism are sometimes referred to
as uneducated. Quite a few among the latter appear to think that something fishy is going on. This
could be because in my experience the alert ones have educated themselves, something that is not
generally understood by commentators who have made their way through the bureaucracy of standard
higher education.
A disadvantage of being part of the elite is that you must stick to the accepted story. If you
deviate from it, and have your thoughts run rather far away from it, which is quite inevitable once
you begin with your deviation, you can no longer be trusted by those around you. If you are a journalist
and depend for your income on a mainstream newspaper or are hired by a TV company, you run the risk
of losing your job if you do not engage in self-censorship.
Consequently, publications that used to be rightly known as quality newspapers have turned into
unreadable rags. The newspaper that was my employer for a couple of decades used to be edited on
the premise that its correspondents rather than authorities were always correct in what they were
saying. Today greater loyalty to the reality created in Washington and Langley cannot be imagined.
For much of northern Europe the official story that originates in the United States is amplified
by the BBC and other once reliable purveyors of news and opinion like the Guardian
, the Financial Times and the (always less reliable) Economist .
Repetition lends an ever greater aura of truth to the nonsense that is relentlessly repeated on
the pages of once serious publications. Detailed analyses of developments understood through strings
of false clues give the fictions ever more weight in learned heads and debates in parliament. At
the time of writing, the grave concern spread across the opinion pages on my side of the Atlantic
is about how Putin's meddling in upcoming European elections can be prevented.
The realities Rove predicted have infantilized parliamentary debates, current affairs discussion
and lecture events, and anything of a supposedly serious nature on TV. These now conform to comic
book simplicities of evil, heroes and baddies. They have produced a multitude of editorials with
facts upside-down. They force even those who advise against provoking Moscow to include a remark
or two about Putin being a murderer or tyrant, lest they could be mistaken for traitors to Enlightenment
values or even as Russian puppets, as I have been. Layers of unreality have incapacitated learned
and serious people to think clearly about the world and how it came to be that way.
How could Rove's predictions so totally materialize? There's a simple answer: 'they' got away
with momentous lies at an early stage. The more authorities lie successfully the more they are likely
to lie again in a big way to serve the purposes of earlier lies. The 'they' stands for those individuals
and groups in the power system who operate beyond legal limits as a hydra-headed entity, whose coordination
depends on the project, campaign, mission, or operation at hand. Those with much power got away with
excessive extralegal use of it since the beginning of this century because systems of holding the
powerful to account have crumbled on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence, potential opposition to what
the reality architects were doing dwindled to almost nothing. At the same time, people whose job
or personal inclination leads them to ferret out truth were made to feel guilty for pursuing it.
The best way, I think, to make sense of how this works is to study it as a type of intimidation.
Sticking to the official story because you have to may not be quite as bad as forced religious conversion
with a gun pointed at your head, but it belongs to the same category. It begins with the triggering
of odd feelings of guilt. At least that is how I remember it. Living in Tokyo, I had just read Mark
Lane's Rush To Judgment , the first major demolishing in book form of the Warren Report
on the murder of John F. Kennedy, when I became aware that I had begun to belong to an undesirable
category of people who were taking the existence of conspiracies seriously. We all owe thanks to
writers of Internet-based samizdat literature who've recently reminded us that the pejorative use
of the conspiracy label stems from one of the greatest misinformation successes of the CIA begun
in 1967.
So the campaign to make journalists feel guilty for their embarrassing questions dates from before
Dick Cheney and Rove and Bush. But it has only reached a heavy duty phase after the moment that I
see as having triggered the triumph of political untruth.
We have experienced massive systemic intimidation since 9/11. For the wider public we have the
absurdities of airport security – initially evidenced by mountains of nail-clippers – reminding everyone
of the arbitrary coercive potential that rests with the authorities. Every time people are made to
take off their belts and shoes – to stick only to the least inane instances – they are reminded:
yes, we can do this to you! Half of Boston or all of France can be placed under undeclared martial
law to tell people: yes, we have you under full control! For journalists unexamined guilt feelings
still play a major role. The serious ones feel guilty for wanting to ask disturbing questions, and
so they reaffirm that they still belong to 'sane' humanity rather than the segment with extraterrestrials
in flying saucers in its belief system. But there is a confused interaction with another guilty feeling
of not having pursued unanswered questions. Its remedy appears to be a doubling down on the official
story. Why throw in fairly common lines like "I have no time for truthers" unless you feel that this
is where the shoe pinches?
You will have noticed a fairly common response when the 9/11 massacre enters a discussion. Smart
people will say that they "will not go there", which brings to mind the "here be dragons" warning
on uncharted bits of medieval maps. That response is not stupid. It hints at an understanding that
there is no way back once you enter that realm. There is simply no denying that if you accept the
essential conclusions of the official 9/11 report you must also concede that laws of nature stopped
working on that particular day. And, true enough, if you do go there and bear witness publicly to
what you see, you may well be devoured; your career in many government positions, the media and even
academia is likely to come to an end.
So, for the time being we are stuck with a considerable chunk of terra incognita relating to recognized
political knowledge; which is an indispensable knowledge if you want to get current world affairs
and the American role in it into proper perspective.
Mapping the motives of those who decide "not to go there" may be a way to begin breaking through
this disastrous deadlock. Holding onto your job is an honorable motivation when you have a family
to maintain. The career motivation is not something to scorn. There is also an entirely reasonable
expectation that once you go there you lose your voice publicly to address very important social
abuse and political misdeeds. I think it is not difficult to detect authors active on internet samizdat
sites who have that foremost in mind. Another possible reason for not going there is the more familiar
one, akin to the denial that one has a dreadful disease. Also possible is an honorable position of
wishing to preserve social order in the face of a prospect of very dramatic political upheaval caused
by revelations about a crime so huge that hardly anything in America's history can be compared to
it. Where could such a thing end – civil war? Martial law?
What I find more difficult to stomach is the position of someone who is worshiped by what used
to be the left, and who has been guiding that class of politically interested Americans as to where
they can and cannot go. Noam Chomsky does not merely keep quiet about it, but mocks students who
raise logical questions prompted by their curiosity, thereby discouraging a whole generation studying
at universities and active in civil rights causes. One can only hope that this overrated analyst
of the establishment, who helps keep the most embarrassing questions out of the public sphere, trips
over the contradictions and preposterousness of his own judgments and crumples in full view of his
audience.
The triumph of political untruth has brought into being a vast system of political intimidation.
Remember then that the intimidater does not really care what you believe or not, but impresses you
with the fact that you have no choice. That is the essence of the exercise of brute power. With false
flag events the circumstantial evidence sometimes appears quite transparently false and, indeed could
be interpreted as having been purposeful. Consider the finding of passports or identity papers accidentally
left by terrorists, or their almost always having been known to and suspected by the police? What
of their death through police shooting before they can be interrogated? Could these be taunting signals
of ultimate power to a doubting public: Now you! Dare contradict us! Are the persons killed by the
police the same who committed the crime? Follow-up questions once considered perfectly normal and
necessary by news media editors are conspicuous by their absence.
How can anyone quarrel with Rove's prophecy. He told Suskind that we will forever be studying
newly created realities. This is what the mainstream media continue to do. His words made it very
clear: you have no choice!
A question that will be in the minds of perhaps many as they consider the newly sworn in president
of the United States, who like John F. Kennedy appears to have understood that "Intelligence" leads
a dangerously uncontrolled life of its own: At what point will he give in to the powers of an invisible
government, as he is made to reckon that he also has no choice?
Karel van Wolferen
is a Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1969, he has
published over twenty books on public policy issues, which have been translated into eleven languages
and sold over a million copies worldwide. As a foreign correspondent for NRC Handelsblad
, one of Holland's leading newspapers, he received the highest Dutch award for journalism, and over
the years his articles have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post
, The New Republic , The National Interest , Le Monde , and numerous
other newspapers and magazines.
Am nteresting thought (replace imperialism with neoliberalism) : "I think that it is possible
that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from
being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most
self-defeating feature. "
Revival of far right in Europe also is connected with the crisis of neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the Neocons always try to. ..."
"... I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. ..."
"... I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature. ..."
"... Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is 21 st Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism" is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe. ..."
"... Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did sound like a paleo-liberal ..."
"... Today, when Trump pronounced the followings words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. ..."
"... All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears. ..."
Just hours ago Donald Trump was finally sworn in as the President of the United States. Considering
all the threats hanging over this event, this is good news because at least for the time being, the
Neocons have lost their control over the Executive Branch and Trump is now finally in a position
to take action. The other good news is
Trump's inauguration speech which included this historical promise " We do not seek to impose
our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow ".
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon? The mere fact of asking
the question is already an immensely positive development as nobody would have asked it had Hillary
Clinton been elected.
The other interesting feature of Trump's speech is that it centered heavily on people power and
on social justice. Again, the contrast with the ideological garbage from Clinton could not be greater.
Still, this begs a much more puzzling question: how much can a multi-billionaire capitalist be trusted
when he speaks of people power and social justice – not exactly what capitalists are known for, at
least not amongst educated people. Furthermore, a Marxist reader would also remind us that "
imperialism
is the highest stage of capitalism " and that it makes no sense to expect a capitalist to
suddenly renounce imperialism.
But what was generally true in 1916 is not necessarily true in 2017.
For one thing, let's begin by stressing that the Trump Presidency was only made possible by the
immense financial, economic, political, military and social crisis facing the USA today. Eight years
of Clinton, followed by eight years of Bush Jr and eight years of Obama have seen a massive and full-spectrum
decline in the strength of the United States which were sacrificed for the sake of the AngloZionist
Empire. This crisis is as much internal as it is external and the election of Trump is a direct consequence
of this crisis. In fact, Trump is the first one to admit that it is the terrible situation in which
the USA find themselves today that brought him to power with a mandate of the regular American people
(Hillary's "deplorables") to "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American
plutocracy, "great again". This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to
simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the
Neocons always try to.
I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis
and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. If that assumption
of mine proves to be correct, then this is by definition very good news for the entire planet because
whatever Trump ends up doing (or not doing), he will at least not push his country into a nuclear
confrontation with Russia. And yes, I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion
that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions
of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is
21 st
Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was
so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism"
is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects
like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did
sound like a paleo-liberal, something which we did not hear from him during the campaign. You
could also say that Trump sounded very much like Putin. The question is will he now also act like
Putin too?
There will be a great deal of expectations in Russia about how Trump will go about fulfilling
his campaign promises to deal with other countries. Today, when Trump pronounced the followings
words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the
understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the
Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and
Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly
what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people
first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill
will sound like music to the Russian ears.
Then there are Trump's words about " forming new alliances " and uniting " the civilized
world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the
Earth ". They will also be received with a great deal of hope by the Russian people. If the USA
is finally serious about fighting terrorism and if they really wants to eradicate the likes of Daesh,
then Russia will offer her full support to this effort, including her military, intelligence, police
and diplomatic resources. After all, Russia has been advocating for " completely eradicating Radical
Islamic Terrorism from the face of the Earth " for decades.
There is no doubt in my mind at all that an alliance between Russia and the USA, even if limited
only to specific areas of converging or mutual interests, would be immensely beneficial for the entire
planet, and not for just these two countries: right now all the worst international crises are a
direct result from the "tepid war" the USA and Russia have been waging against each other. And just
like any other war, this war has been a fantastic waste of resources. Of course, this war was started
by the USA and it was maintained and fed by the Neocon's messianic ideology. Now that a realist like
Trump has come to power, we can finally hope for this dangerous and wasteful dynamic to be stopped.
The good news is that neither Trump nor Putin can afford to fail. Trump, because he has made an
alliance with Russia the cornerstone of his foreign policy during his campaign, and Putin because
he realizes that it is in the objective interests of Russia for Trump to succeed, lest the Neocon
crazies crawl back out from their basement. So both sides will enter into negotiations with a strong
desire to get things done and a willingness to make compromises as long as they do not affect crucial
national security objectives. I think that the number of issues on which the USA and Russia can agree
upon is much, much longer than the number of issues were irreconcilable differences remain.
So yes, today I am hopeful. More than anything else, I want to hope that Trump is "for real",
and that he will have the wisdom and courage to take strong action against his internal enemies.
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal
enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring
himself a supporter of Donald Trump ,
I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?". What is
certain is that in the near future one of us will soon become very disappointed. I just hope that
this shall not be me.
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon?
Well, another author here, David Chibo, seems to think that the intent is exactly the opposite:
for the US (the nation) to become World Hegemon. As opposed to what we have today, to
multinational capital being World Hegemon
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased
by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago .and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to
save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart a
new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
Guess you didn't watch the debate where Trump said there is a very large bubble over wall street,
and its bigger than the housing bubble (my words not Trumps) and our GDP the figures the government
puts out as David Stockman Reagan budget director said is very suspect to say the least, for I
have seen it stated anywhere from $16 trillion to $18 trillion and change much like the BLS report
I suspect.
Not much wiggle room for Trump a crashing bubble on wall street almost 100,000,000 un-employed
per the Lay-Off-List, no that fails to jibe with the figure the government puts out, much like
the GDP I suspect, and there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the debt will grow under
Trump as he re-builds the military, as more tax dollars are flushed down the drain to keep company
with the trillions already there.
Chalmers Johnson was right in his excellent books from Blowback to The Sorrows of Empire Militarism,Secrecy,and
the End of the Republic and our 900+ bases around the globe, can Trump change that close at least
half of those bases that cost us billions of dollars we don't have or will it be the status quo
I suspect it will be the later
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
Anonymous:
I can back up Horowitz being termed "a rapid maniac". Some time ago I met him at one of his
book signings. At that time I would be regarded as one of his disciples, i.e. his camp followers.
That changed once I actually met him. His eyes were those of a crazed man. Enough said!
"After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and
goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
The problem is that the issues between Russia and US are not that easy to resolve. For example,
will US keep the "anti-Iran" missile defense systems in East Europe? Will they continue to state
that Ukraine and Georgia will be in NATO? Will the recent NATO troops in Poland, Baltic states
and Romania stay? There are a few others, like the Ukraine problem – Crimea, Donbass, economic
collapse.
None of those issues are suitable for a deal. A deal requires things that either side can let
go. We don't have that here. Most likely the tensions will recede, some summits will be held,
a few common policies will be attempted (e.g. Middle East), but none of the really big issues
(missiles, NATO expansion, Crimea, Ukraine) will be addressed. US has gone too far down that road
to backtrack now – it is all logistics at this point. And logistics don't change short of something
like a war.
So we are stuck. But at least we are no longer heading towards a catastrophe.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job
to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart
a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
That's an interesting point, the US does have creditors and it has reached its credit limit,
and hasn't exactly been making good investments with the money that was borrowed.
The real issues seem to be making spending efficient (for example US healthcare that costs
about 2x the Canadian rate per person for the same result), and rebasing production in the US
(more US taxpayers).
The Socialist UK government was in a similar position in the early 1970′s with a "welfare state"
that it couldn't afford, general industrial strife and a "class war". When the UK's creditors
saw that things weren't going to change they sold off government bonds and the country got the
"Sterling Crisis" with Sterling losing what was left of its Reserve Currency status.
At least Trump is indicating a political will for change, but he needs to act quickly.
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
I listened to Trump's speech live on headphones while power walking on a country road. Something
about that scenario allowed me to give it a focus that I may not have had if I was watching it
on the idiot box or reading a transcript.
If I'm not mistaken, he literally called most of his esteemed guests ( ex-presidents especially)
corrupt criminals, frauds and traitors. An unbelievable moment where the mob was reminded that
politicians are not to be fawned over. They work for the people.
The rest of the speech of course was lyrics for a remake of the song 'Dream the Impossible
Dream'. But still, if the population wasn't attention deficit affected, that part of his speech
could have been right up there with Ike's MIC moment.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common:
their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs
like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned
and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
@Chet Roman "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American plutocracy,
"great again"
While I am hopeful and will give Trump the chance to prove himself. Unfortunately, he like Obama
before him, has appointed most the same plutocrats/neoliberal parasites in his administration
that are part of what the Saker calls the "AngloZionist Empire". Will they, like the patrician
FDR, promote policies against their own class interests? Time will tell but, after the same betrayal
by "Hope and Change" Obama I would not bet on it.
Not that I'm very sanguine about all the Goldman Sachs people in Trump's cabinet either, but
if you're looking for reasons for optimism: At least Trump–unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama–hasn't
appointed any retreads; i.e., people who've served in previous cabinets. That may indicate that
some change is in the offing. Let's hope it's a change for the best.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP ..Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not . it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T) it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it ..The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because
it makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over
two trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back
in the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people
, our country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there .and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are ..
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act
of deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire
oligarchs who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls
and seizes all their assets .If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt .then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" .
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same ..the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the
good people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as
they would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
300 Words
@Anon "After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent
to others. All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who
elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship
and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
"Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism."
That seems to be true.
I was shocked to read a letter in the current London Review of Books, actually a rebuttal to another
letter, by Adam Tooze. Tooze had written a review of a book by Wolfgang Streeck. In his rebuttal
Tooze attacked Streeck as an anti-Semite because Streeck had *dared* to write a book that presents
arguments for the primacy of the nation-state as opposed to globalist forces. Tooze's argument
basically came down to: nation-state = chauvinism = anti-Semitism, where globalization = "Semitism,"
I suppose, and Tooze actually more or less accused Streeck of anti-Semitism on this basis: that
you cannot defend the idea of the nation-state without being in effectively anti-Semitic. He didn't
show any other evidence but just this supposed syllogism, all of it theoretical. Interestingly
Tooze was the one making the equation of globalism and Jews-not Streeck! But still, Streeck was
the guilty one. Tooze spent a lot of breath on the word "Volk" for "people." Of coure, Streeck
in German, and that is the German word for "people." Any other overtones "Volk" has acquired in
English are the fault of the English, as English has its own second word, "folk," which German
does not, and so English speakers didn't have to take over the German word and demonize it. They
could have demonized their own word . . . Tooze's pedantry and intellectual sloppiness were quite
startling. I look forward to seeing a rebuttal and maybe counterattack from Streeck in the next
LRB . . .
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)
These are bad news, but the news which are even worse is the fact that of these 18.7 Trillion
of nominal GDP, probably third (most likely more) is a virtual GDP–the result of cooking of books
and of financial and real estate machinations. Trump knows this, I am almost 99% positive, even
99.9%, on that.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from
past mistakes?... Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their
internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned and
I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
" one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far
more dangerous than any external foe. "
"Make America Great Again"- is just an empty political slogan like bait on a fishing hook that
only dumb fish would be attracted to.
I suggest readers look at an article by Andrew Levine, a very insightful Jewish American political
commentator and regular contributor to Counterpunch.
"the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from
the face of the Earth".
What has ISIS done to America or Trump that he should want to totally obliterate them? Before
you denounce or pronounce me as dumb heretical dissenter, read on.
Sunni Arabs in the Middle East have been exploited and controlled by racially arrogant European
interlopers and colonists since the fall of the Ottomans. They have been especially mistreated
and ravaged by vengeful Americans since 2001. They also facilitated a revival of Shia-Sunni sectarian
conflict in Syria and Iraq. Now the displaced and persecuted Sunni minority want to form their
own state, free from foreign interference to practice their chosen religion and way of life. I
grant you that they are also vengeful and violent to those who persecuted them by using terrorist
methods and that they practiced "ethnic cleansing" but that does not make them "uncivilized",
the civilized Americans and Europeans did the same when conquering their settler colonies. So
why not let them have their own land, just like the Jewish Europeans were given and make peace
with time provided they renounce their goal of spreading Wahhabi Muslim empire by force?
The Arab states which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate were not meant
to be replaced by an Arab Caliphate. The fight of the Sunnis is not the fight of a 'persecuted'
minority, but of the former dominant minority for the re-establishment of their dominant position
in the frame of the Caliphate, with wet dreams of world domination. ISIS is but the tip of the
iceberg. Their eradication would cool down the overheated minds of the Caliphate dreamers.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP.....Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not.... it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)...it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it .....The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because it
makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over two
trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back in
the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people , our
country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there....and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are.....
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act of
deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire oligarchs
who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls and
seizes all their assets....If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .......
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt....then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" ....
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same .....the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the good
people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as they
would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ?.....If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability
Not to speak for Anna, but maybe I would – if blessed with balls of titanium, or perhaps by
underestimating the capacity of the deep state to slice them off. Being human, one can only hope
that Trump will do what I cannot, or could not in his shoes.
One thing he cannot do is feign ignorance or pretend to be unaware of the critters festering
in the swamp – after all, he campaigned on the promise of draining it. Where hope falters is in
seeing the cabinet he is building with characters unlikely to do much in the swamp-draining department.
Without a strong cadre of testicular fortitude surrounding him in his cabinet, his most sincere
attempts at swamp-drainage will be quixotic at best.
So, where does one place hope lest one becomes a blathering cynic or a nattering nabob of negativity?
Ego -- That is where my chips are stacked. Nothing defines or motivates Trump more than
his self-perception. I believe that it is much more than showmanship that propels his self-promotion,
and nothing would be more devastating to the man than to be ridiculed or perceived as a failure.
I doubt that Netanyahu could do to him what he did to Obama and survive the retaliatory deluge
that would follow. I think Trump's hidden strength is his desire for vengeance against those that
wrong him (I expect there to be tribulations in HRC's future). If the deep state doesn't do him
in first, there is the strong possibility of damage on the deep state – one that they may never
recover from in this world of instant information that wilts night-flowers.
He may redefine victory on occasion for outcomes that are too difficult for him to accept,
but in the end, he will "Make Trump Great Again," and if fortune favors us, help the US benefit
in the process, if not the rest of the world.
That does not rule out that his naiveté may cause him to stumble and fall, perhaps more than
once, and he has not always succeeded in business, but it seems that he does build on his failures,
and is unlikely to make the same mistake twice.
Doesn't appear like a lot to cling to, but in this dystopic world, it is the best we have.
Is it enough?
"... Alarmed by the spread of anti-imperialist ideas, Lodge invited his closest friend, Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, to join him in Boston to launch a counterattack. On Oct. 31, 1899, both spoke to the Republican Club of Massachusetts at the cavernous Music Hall on Winter Street. "We have got to put down the insurrection!" Roosevelt cried. "If we are men, we can't do otherwise!" Lodge portrayed anti-imperialists as not only defeatist, but complicit in the killing of American soldiers. ..."
"... Tides ran in favor of the expansionist idea. Prominent anti-imperialists lost elections. War in the Philippines slowly reached its bloody end. Americans began focusing on other problems. The United States had leaped from continental empire to overseas empire. ..."
"... That war - which is actually a war against war - has never ended. The debate over American intervention abroad, which began at Faneuil Hall in 1898, is still raging. It will shape the new administration in Washington and, through it, the world. ..."
Where better to launch a patriotic uprising than Faneuil Hall in Boston? It is a lodestone
of American liberty, a cathedral for freedom fighters. That is why a handful of eminent Bostonians
chose it as the place to begin a new rebellion on the sunny afternoon of June 15, 1898.
Like all Americans, they had been dizzied by the astonishing events of recent weeks. Their
country had suddenly burst beyond its natural borders. American troops had landed in Cuba. American
warships had bombarded Puerto Rico. An American expeditionary force was steaming toward the distant
Philippine Islands. Hawaii seemed about to fall to American power. President William McKinley
had called for 200,000 volunteers to fight in foreign wars. Fervor for the new idea of overseas
expansion gripped the United States.
This prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified others. Their debate gripped the nation.
The country's best-known political and intellectual leaders took sides. In the history of US foreign
policy, this is truly the mother of all debates.
When we argue over whether we should depose a government in Iraq or Syria or Libya, whether
we should wage war in Afghanistan, whether we should encourage the bombing of Yemen, or whether
we should seek to bend Russia to our will, we are arguing the same question that was at the center
of this original debate. Every argument about foreign intervention that we make today - on both
sides - was first made in the period around 1898. Today's debates are amazingly precise repetitions
of that first one. The central question is the same: Should the United States project power into
faraway lands? Yes, to guarantee our prosperity, save innocent lives, liberate the oppressed,
and confront danger before it reaches our shores! No, intervention brings suffering and creates
enemies!
Boston was the epicenter of that original debate. Bostonians played such a large role in the
national debate that one California newspaper called anti-imperialists "the kicking Bostonese."
Several hundred of them turned out for the Faneuil Hall meeting. One speaker, the Rev. Charles
Ames, a theologian and Unitarian pastor, warned that the moment the United States seized a foreign
land, it would "sacrifice the principles on which the Republic was founded."
The policy of imperialism threatens to change the temper of our people, and to put us into
a permanent attitude of arrogance, testiness, and defiance towards other nations. ... Once we
enter the field of international conflict as a great military and naval power, we shall be one
more bully among bullies. We shall only add one more to the list of oppressors of mankind.
At the end of that afternoon, one of the meeting's organizers came to the podium and read a
resolution. "Resolved, that the mission of the United States is to help the world by an example
of successful self-government, and that to abandon the principles and the policy under which we
have prospered, and embrace the doctrine and practices now called imperial, is to enter the path
which, with other great republics, has ended in the downfall of free institutions," it declared.
"Resolved, that our first duty is to cure the evils in our own country." The resolution was adopted
by acclamation.
At the very moment these words were shaking Faneuil Hall, debate on the same question - overseas
expansion - was reaching a climax in Congress. It is a marvelous coincidence: The first anti-imperialist
rally in American history was held on the same day that Congress voted, also for the first time,
on whether the United States should take an overseas colony. The colony in question was Hawaii,
but all understood that the real question was immensely greater. It was nothing less than the
future of the Republic: whether or not the United States should become a global military power
and seek to shape the fate of faraway lands.
On that day, as expected, the House of Representatives voted to annex Hawaii. Yet the great debate
had only begun. Working from offices in Boston, anti-imperialists spent the summer and fall of
1898 writing letters to potential sympathizers across the country.
Their work came to fruition on Nov. 18, when an eager crowd packed a law office on Milk Street
to witness the founding of the Anti-Imperialist League. George Boutwell, who had been a passionate
abolitionist as well as a congressman, US senator, and governor of Massachusetts, was chosen by
acclimation as the league's first president. In his mind, every abolitionist was a natural anti-imperialist,
since anyone who opposed keeping human beings as slaves must also oppose ruling other peoples
against their will.
At the end of 1898, American negotiators forced the defeated Spanish to sign the Treaty of
Paris, in which they surrendered Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. On Jan. 4, 1899,
President McKinley submitted the treaty for Senate ratification. That set off a monthlong debate
over what one senator called "the greatest question that has ever been presented to the American
people." The dominant figure on each side was a brilliantly articulate Republican senator from
Massachusetts.
George Frisbie Hoar of Worcester led the anti-imperialist charge. The United States, he insisted,
must not "rush madly upon this new career," lest it become "a cheap-jack country raking after
the cart for the leavings of European tyranny." He ended his speech in a crescendo: "The poor
Malay, the poor African, the downtrodden workman of Europe will exclaim, as he reads this new
doctrine: 'Good God! Is there not one place left on earth where, in right of my manhood, I can
stand up and be a man?' "
Hoar's sharpest opponent was Henry Cabot Lodge of Beacon Hill and Nahant. Lodge told the Senate
that since many foreign peoples were unequipped to govern themselves wisely, they should submit
to American guidance and trust "the American people, who have never failed in any great duty or
feared to face any responsibility, to deal with them in that spirit of justice, humanity, and
liberty which has made us all that we are today or can ever hope to be."
From their bustling office on Kilby Street, leaders of the Anti-Imperialist League fed information
to friendly senators and heavily lobbied the handful who remained undecided. The league also published
a stream of pamphlets, called Liberty Tracts, aimed at bringing its arguments to a larger audience.
Often their titles were questions. "Which shall it be, nation or empire?" asked one. Another:
"Is it right for this country to kill the natives of a foreign land because they wish to govern
themselves?"
On Feb. 6, 1899, despite these intense efforts, senators ratified the Treaty of Paris - by
just one vote more than the required two-thirds majority. Armed rebellion broke out immediately
in the Philippines. Tens of thousands of American troops were sent to suppress it. President McKinley
faced a difficult task: explain to a divided nation why taking foreign lands was no betrayal of
the American idea. He decided to deliver a speech in Boston, home of the Anti-Imperialist League
and thus the heart of enemy territory. To assure himself a friendly audience, however, he chose
as his platform the Home Market Club, one of the country's most potent agglomerations of corporate
power.
A crowd led by Mayor Josiah Quincy cheered as McKinley emerged from South Station around midday
on Feb. 15, 1899. The next night, nearly two thousand guests packed Mechanics Hall for the largest
banquet ever staged in the United States. In his speech, McKinley asserted that the essential
goodness of the American people is the supreme and sole necessary justification of whatever the
United States chooses to do in the world. This goodness, he acknowledged, might not be clear to
the "misguided Filipino," but soon the islands would prosper under the rule "not of their American
masters, but of their American emancipators."
"Did we need their consent to perform a great act for humanity?" he asked. "We had it in every
aspiration of their minds, in every hope of their hearts."
These words disgusted the philosopher William James. In an anguished letter to Boston newspapers,
he called McKinley's speech a "shamefully evasive" attempt to obscure the central truth of the
age: "We are cold-bloodedly, wantonly, and abominably destroying the soul of a people who never
did us an atom of harm in their lives. It is bald, brutal piracy."
Alarmed by the spread of anti-imperialist ideas, Lodge invited his closest friend, Governor
Theodore Roosevelt of New York, to join him in Boston to launch a counterattack. On Oct. 31, 1899,
both spoke to the Republican Club of Massachusetts at the cavernous Music Hall on Winter Street.
"We have got to put down the insurrection!" Roosevelt cried. "If we are men, we can't do otherwise!"
Lodge portrayed anti-imperialists as not only defeatist, but complicit in the killing of American
soldiers.
"I vote with the army that wears the uniform and carries the flag of my country," he said.
"When the enemy has yielded and the war is over, we can discuss other matters!"
Tides ran in favor of the expansionist idea. Prominent anti-imperialists lost elections.
War in the Philippines slowly reached its bloody end. Americans began focusing on other problems.
The United States had leaped from continental empire to overseas empire.
"Well, we are defeated for the time," admitted the Cambridge anti-imperialist Charles Eliot
Norton. "But the war is not ended, and we are enlisted for the war."
That war - which is actually a war against war - has never ended. The debate over American
intervention abroad, which began at Faneuil Hall in 1898, is still raging. It will shape the new
administration in Washington and, through it, the world.
An interesting quote: "So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome
ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. "
Notable quotes:
"... the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and foreign dictators–JD ..."
"... Watch: 'You Have Made Me Proud' – President Obama's Farewell Speech Is a Powerful Road-Map for Upholding Democracy , ..."
"... Donald Trump's News Conference: Full Transcript and Video, ..."
"... On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: ..."
"... On the allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in Moscow: ..."
"... On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: ..."
"... On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia: ..."
"... That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are fake news! " ..."
"... One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures. The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium. ..."
"... Bad news, Trump haters: This bonkers show has made him even MORE popular, writes JUSTIN WEBB. He played to the gallery with something bordering on genius , ..."
"... Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect. Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon . ..."
"... BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts 'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . ..."
"... From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears in public. ..."
"... Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are white or non-white. ..."
"... All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump. But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective? ..."
"... The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators. And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings. ..."
"... So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. ..."
"... Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence, but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians. ..."
"... American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful force in the US is Jewish-Glob power. ..."
"... Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years. ..."
"... This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past, he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him. ..."
"... Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage... ..."
"... The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker) despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism. ..."
"... Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions. ..."
This is the Week of the Two Presidents-
Donald Trump succeeds Barack Obama at noon on Friday January 20. Both men recently addressed
major gatherings: Barack Obama made his official farewell to the nation, Donald Trump held his first
formal press conference since being elected. Each event was highly characteristic. My take: I for
one am glad we have heard the last of Obama. And Trump's rumbustiousness is thrilling .
Obama stepped out in front of a huge audience in
Chicago and delivered a long, gassy speech-51 minutes and 10 seconds. That's
10 minutes longer than the Farewell Addresses of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan
combined .
Bush 41 did not technically give a farewell address, although his speech to
West Point cadets, the last of his presidency, is sometimes cited as such. I don't know its duration,
but the transcript runs
to 3,300 words. The transcript of Obama's farewell address is just short of 5,000 words, so he left
Poppy Bush in the dust, too. This is a guy who really likes the
sound of his own voice.
The gold standard in
political speeches, so far as I'm concerned, was the one
Calvin Coolidge
delivered to the Massachusetts Senate 102 years ago, after being elected President of that body.
It
consisted of forty-four words, thus
:
Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions.
Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth
and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.
That makes
the
Gettysburg Address , at 272 words, look positively flabby. It makes Obama's farewell address
look morbidly obese.
What did Obama's speech actually contain? Well, there was lots of
"hope"
and "change": five "hopes" and sixteen "changes" by my count. I couldn't actually pin down anything
declarative about "hope", but there was definitely a consistent theme on "change." Change is good!
Don't be afraid of change! -
Constant change has been America's hallmark; that it's not something to fear but something
to embrace It [ the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and
foreign dictators–JD ] represents the fear of change; the fear of people who look or speak
or pray differently
If you fear change you are a bad person!
I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that is inane. Some change is good, some isn't. Saying, "Change
is good!" makes as much sense as saying, "
Weather is good!" or "Vegetation is good!" If an asteroid were to strike the earth and wipe out
the human race, that would be a major change, wouldn't it? Not many of us would consider it good,
though.
And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear instinct
for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about whether some one
particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and valuable, not a failing
or a weakness .
Take for example that "fear of people who look or
speak
or
pray differently." If people who look different from me in some one particular way have
a homicide rate seven times that of people who look the same as me, and
a robbery rate thirteen times, isn't fear of those people rational? If violent acts of terrorism
against innocent civilians are almost exclusively committed by people who pray a certain way, is
not fear of people who pray that way justified?
And look at Obama's illogical assumptions:
If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look like
us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children-because those brown kids will represent
a larger and larger share of America's workforce.
Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant; my wife is
an immigrant; neither of us is brown.
Note also the meteorological approach to immigration. It's like the weather! Can't do
anything about it! In fact immigration is just a policy, that we can change at will. We could, without
any offense to the Constitution, stop all immigration and require all noncitizens to leave
our territory.
How would that be for "change"! To fear it would, of course, be weak and un-American.
And then there are Obama's characteristic weaselly little half-truths:
I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.
I have no problem with the first half of that. I too reject discrimination against American citizens
who are Muslims.
Again, I don't know of any constitutional reason why we can't do that.
But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are
just as patriotic as we are, is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like
some non-Muslims, are patriotic, while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears
examining. The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from
the non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic,
atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots.
From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has
shed tears in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed.
My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste.
I just can't, though. I'm from a
nation and a
time
that admired reserve, fortitude, and the stiff upper lip. "I have lost my leg, by God!" Lord
Uxbridge
told the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, as cannonballs whizzed by. "By God, and
have you!" replied the Duke.
Those are my people. They're dead now, or old, even in the Mother Country. But they had something
that's been lost, and the loss of which I regret very much.
The questions and answers, not counting the nested presentation by Trump's lawyer, were seventy-four
hundred words, of which by far the majority were Trump's. So chances are Trump spoke more
words than Obama. And they were pure Trumplish: unfiltered, demotic, boastful, pugnacious in
self-defense, hyperbolic in praise, brutal in scorn, sometimes contradictory, occasionally nonsensical.
When he didn't want to answer a question he just blustered. Would Obamacare guarantee coverage
for current beneficiaries? Trump:
You're gonna be very, very proud of what we put forth having to do with health care We're
going to be submitting, as soon as our secretary's approved, almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter,
a plan. It'll be repeal and replace. It will be essentially, simultaneously. It will be various
segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably,
the same day, could be the same hour. So we're gonna do repeal and replace, very complicated stuff.
And we're gonna get a health bill passed, we're gonna get health care taken care of in this country
The plan will be repeal and replace Obamacare. We're going to have a health care that is far
less expensive and far better.
The information content of that answer is, let's be frank, zero. You could in fact, in the spirit
of Coolidge, you could make an economical translation of that 430-word answer from Trumplish into
Coolidgean using just three words: "Wait and see."
That's OK, though. Donald Trump is by no means the first President to answer a reporter's question
with blustery evasion-by no means.
It was Trump's style and demeanor at the presser that had us Trumpians clapping along with him.
Those, and his one-liners. Four sample one-liners:
On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: "If Putin likes Donald
Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a liability." On the
allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in
Moscow: "I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me." On whether he thinks
the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: "No, I don't think
they care at all." On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia:
"I hadn't heard Lindsey Graham was going to do that. Lindsey Graham. I've been competing
with him for a long time. He is going to crack that one percent barrier one day."
That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask
a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are
fake news! " Similarly with BuzzFeed, which Trump said is, quote, "a failing pile of garbage."
Along the lines of the old
joke about
Harry Truman
and the word "manure," I guess America should be glad he used the word "garbage."
Of all the commentary on Trump's presser, I think the one that got to the heart of the matter
was Justin Webb's in the Daily Mail , January 12th, pertaining to the point in the presser
where Trump brought up his lawyer to explain about his business interests:
One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who
seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they
don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures.
The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under
the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium.
And he was demonstrating that, despite this, he had admirably emerged with his businesses intact.
I am no psychology professor, but this seemed to me to be playing to the gallery-i.e. those "ordinary"
Americans who are so fed up with the political class-with something bordering on genius.
Mail man Webb then goes on to warn that Trump might be too combative, too
much the Alpha Male, for the suits in D.C. to put up with for long, so that
they will find a way to force him out. Webb concludes:
If they succeed, it would be a bitter blow to the millions of working-class Americans who voted
for Trump, folk who felt he alone among politicians understood their aspirations, and who would
have been thrilled by his extraordinary, rumbustious performance this week. It would again confirm
their view that the political establishment looks after its own-while the "little people" are
brushed aside.
I don't think I count as working-class. My hands are rather
soft , and
I only wear boots
for hiking or shoveling
snow . I'll
admit that I was thrilled by Trump's performance, though, just as much as Justin Webb's
hypothetical working-class Americans.
And yes, like Webb, I worry that Trump's don't-give-a-damn rumbustiousness may be too much for
the seat-warmers and log-rollers of Washington, D.C.-among which category I would include our
intelligence agencies -to the degree
that they will find some way to unseat him. Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect.
Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but
they took down
Nixon
.
And in case you're wondering, listeners, "rumbustious" is indeed a word-
I looked it up .
Another great article by El Derbo. BTW an alternate version of Wellington's reply to Uxbridge
goes, "By Jove, so you have!" Whatever his merits the Duke was not strong on empathy. But if he
was, w0uld he have been such a winning general?
Justin Webb was the BBCs US correspondent for years (
as was his father ) . He's also one of the presenters of the R4 Today programme.
( BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts
'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . Today on R4 we had the Observer's literary editor
in conversation about Trump with Malcolm Gladwell – I wonder if that was positive or negative?)
I'm somewhat less worried about Fort Marcy. Important difference between Trump and Nixon or
Reagan: Trump has his own security forces, both physical and cyber. He doesn't have to rely on
the Deepstate-owned Secret Service.
He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper messages
vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively for
decades.
I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.
Perhaps he accepts discrimination against Muslim Americans whose patriotism differs, or is
less than, "us," whoever that is? It's a slimy, unctuous, political phrase.
Another good piece that ought to be gracing the pages of the Spectator and the Telegraph, if
those publications were still traditionalist conservative and weren't firmly in the grip of pc
censorship and neoconnery.
From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears
in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed.
My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste
I agree entirely, and I don't have the burden of having to try to assimilate to a foreign country's
culture, so I can say so without qualification. I don't like men who openly display sentimentality
and don't respect them as leaders.
Women are a different matter, but with a few unusual exceptions they don't make good leaders
anyway.
By the way, here's a matter that affects both your country of origin and your adopted one:
how remarkable is it that supposedly serious people ("Theresa May's advisers") are reported as
putting David Cameron forward as a candidate for Secretary General of NATO? The man who repeatedly
displayed his complete unsuitability for any role in strategic decision making by not only pushing
the disastrous destruction of Libya's government in 2011 but, only two years later and with the
costs of that earlier blunder in full view, actually wanted to do the same to Syria! Worse, not
only did he evidently want to do it, but he lacked the competence to manage a compliant Parliament
into giving him the required rubber stamp!
Of course, it's not all that remarkable if one ditches the naïve idea that those "advising
May" are not either incompetent themselves or acting out of ulterior motives that are incompatible
with any genuine British national interest.
An optimist might suggest that perhaps clever subversion rather than stupidity is the explanation
here. What better way to further undermine an institution that has long outlived its original
purpose and has become a vehicle for troublemaking and disorder, yet has such deep institutional
roots and serves such a useful role for nefarious US deep state purposes that it cannot be rooted
out, than to put at its helm an individual so patently unsuited to such a role?
But that is surely hopelessly optimistic. Most likely the obvious explanation is correct, that
it is just another instance of the trademarked mix of incompetence and evil that seems to have
been running US sphere foreign policy since the 1990s.
If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look
like us "
This is precisely the error made by progressives immersed in the scuzzy identity politics bathtub.
I don't want to "invest" in the children of Irish illegal immigrants either. And they look a lot
like me. Their parents are likely to be moronic leftists who arrived here with disdain and contempt
for rule of law, no different than the parents of MS-13 gangbangers in Brentwood. Very basically,
if you can't stand in line like everyone else, you're not worth investing in.
There will likely be gunplay at the Inaugural. At Maidan snipers shot people on both sides
of the conflict. Maidan is the model for the coup against Trump. Either there will be an Erdogan
style purge, or Trump will be impeached, imprisoned or martyred.
"Secession is just around the corner it's a comming."
That is a pipe dream. Now, Derby "This is a guy who really likes the sound of his own voice."
Pot, meet kettle.
"Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant;
my wife is an immigrant; neither of us is brown."
Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are
white or non-white.
"At the same time, and without any inconsistency I can see, I think we have all the Muslims
we need."
Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no)
be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!
"But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are just as patriotic as we are,
is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like some non-Muslims, are patriotic,
while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears examining.
Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed acts
of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?
"The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from the
non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic,
atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots."
This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal. Now, using Derbs logic, the non-patriotism
of Jew non-patriots is also noteworthy for being a "different kind". Because Jews cause all kinds
of havoc, right?
"Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon."
Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to
buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate. Certainly, Woodward and Bernstein and others
employed questionable means during their investigation, but the LARGER issue was to expose the
lies of an administration. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden merely copied the strategies of these
two reporters, yet somehow they are lionized for their uncovering despite their covert means to
obtain information?
Strangely enough, Trump has already done more to improve the lives of ordinary Americans by
saving some jobs in Indianapolis, before he even takes office, than the last three presidents
have accomplished in 24 years in office.
The disgrace (conundrum?), as it were, is that plenty of 30- and 40- and 50-something Americans
find Obama's shtick appealing, whether the self-referential I, me, my, or the weepiness–it's not
just dopey Millennials without the experience of time. They've all been inculcated with the idea
that it's the feelz that matters.
All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses
the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump.
But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective?
After all, didn't the French welcome the American role in driving out German Occupation during
WWII? Didn't Philippines welcome the Americans in driving out the Japanese?
The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though
the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators.
And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators
are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma
down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white
nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are
assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings.
So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference
that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority.
Any people who are under alien tyranny should welcome other alien forces to counter-balance
the alien force currently in power.
It's like the American Revolution wouldn't have been possible without the crucial help of the
French. The British were too powerful, and most of the major battles won by the Americans were
actually fought by the French.
Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence,
but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians.
After all, there are parallels. In the 90s, the globalists took over Russia and totally looted
and plundered that country.
It was nationalism that restored Russian sovereignty somewhat(though it still has long way
to go).
So, white Americans need to look to Russia and Russian-Americans. Indeed, just as Jewish-Americans
feel closer to Russian-Jews and French Jews than to white gentile Americans(whom most Jews despise),
white gentile Americans should feel closer to white gentiles all over the world than with Jews
or other elements of the GLOB. White Americans and white Russians should regard one another as
brothers. After all, white Russians don't want to destroy White America. It is the Jewish globalists
who have that agenda.
Pan-Zionism and Pan-Jewish-ism govern Jewish mindset and power. Jewish Americans feel closer
to Israeli-Jews, Hungarian Jews, French Jews, and British Jews than with gentile Americans.
So, white gentiles need a pan-white-ism. If Jewish-Americans and Russian Jews work together
to plunder both Russian gentiles and American gentiles, then gentiles in both nations should work
together to defend themselves from avaricious globalist Jewish power. Why should only Jews have
the right to create tribal networks all over the world?
I say white gentiles also need to create pan-white or pan-European networks all over. They
need to bury the hatchet because they face similar threats in both US and EU.
If someone is holding you hostage, and another person saves you from your captor, should you
blame the other person for having saved you? No, of course not. You should thank him.
So, if Russia played a role in helping white Americans liberate themselves from the tyranny
of the Glob, white Americans should be grateful.
Jewish GLOB would like us to believe that their power & control is 'American as bagel and cream
cheese and lox', but their power is alien and anti-American. After all, globalism is a neo-imperialist
war directed at ALL nations. So, if alien Russian influence was crucial in 2016, it was in helping
knock out the alien Jewish influence. While there are good decent patriotic Jewish Americans,
most of Jewish Power in the US is not patriotic or nationalist but GLOBO-IMPERIALIST and committed
to destroying the national sovereignty of all white nations. Consider what Jews tried to do to
Hungary and Poland.
They tried to force those nations to surrender to non-stop Muslim and African invasions caused
by wars fomented by Neocons and their cuck-whores.
Besides, even now, Russian influence in the US is minuscule compared to the power of the GLOB.
Glob elites are just a tiny percentage of US population, but they control 90% of media, Wall Street,
Hollywood, academia, and much else. The fact that such a small minority controls so much of American
Power should be the real scandal.
American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is
under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful
force in the US is Jewish-Glob power.
So, gentile Americans should welcome ANY foreign/alien help to weaken the power of the alien
GLOB that controls most of the institutions in America. Look how the whores of Congress pledge
their main loyalty to Israel, Israel, and Israel.
" His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy ( actually extremely wealthy) white
men"
So it would have made you feel better if he had appointed a cabinet made up exclusively of
poor people of color, right.
I am thinking that you are German because your viewpoints are identical with the german leftist
" Gutmensch" SJW worldview, and you simply do not comprehend that average Americans are not jealous
or spiteful of "Wealthy" folks, on the contrary, they respect them and congratulate them for their
status.
You guys have no problem with wealthy "Old white men" as long as they are leftists, such as BC
or B Sanders or WB, or BG.
Myself I am an "Old white man" and I am not ashamed to be an "Old white man", so put that in your
"Gutmensch" pipe and smoke it.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years and pro jazz artist.
I do think the "the fear of change" is a healthy element to have in a world that looks like
"The Shockwave Rider" come true.
Master Soda , "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to statism. Statism leads to blank
checks for politicians. Blank checks for politicians leads to welfare/warfare and micromanagement
and control freakshows sold as progressivism."
Mr. Derbyshire writes that "Saying, "Change is good!" makes as much sense as saying, "Weather
is good!" or "Vegetation is good!"
I have made the same point, but about different, more contentious words, for decades.
Two of the words I said were silly to regard as good or bad were " intolerance" and "discrimination",
words that for at least 30 years have, in the minds of many politicians, educators, executives
and the brainwashed, morphed into synonyms for "bad!", which is a truly dumb and gutless surrender
of language, it's and meaning and power of independent thought.
A society, any society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses wisely to discriminate
against and what it refuses to tolerate. Sometimes these choices are contentious and harder to
justify against the slogans and sound-bites that we have been relentlessly force-fed for a half
century.
Just mooting, that discrimination or intolerance are, of themselves, not necessarily bad, prompts
the Pavlovian reflex of sharp intakes of breath and dutiful frowns from many listeners. Dare moot
that "racism", sexism or homophobia (a ridiculous word etymologically) of any of the other proscribed
-isms and –obiahs are, in their milder degrees, sensible social phenomena, and vitriol flows from
the mouths of PC believers as reason departs as readily as it does from believers of the ROP when
their cult is challenged logically. One is labelled as irredeemably evil despite, and I repeat,
ANY society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses to discriminate against and what it refuses
to tolerate just as much as it rises by what it encourages.
What we choose to encourage or discriminate against is far too important to be treated as dogma.
The rules that govern society should be open to rigorous debate and examination, not, as is
the case here in the UK and most of Europe, "defended" by a cowed and complicit Fourth Estate,
and enforces by imprisonment for so-called "hate speech."
Good luck America, I hope that Trump grows into the job and proves a much better President
than the tactically-weepy O'Bummer.
Never heard of "The Shockwave Rider" but it's true about how fear can be manipulated, although
it's not just Lefty pols who exploit it.
According to their creed, pols ramp up fears or damp down reasonable and prudent ones, according
to their agenda.
That is indeed a well-informed comment, unsurprisingly made under anonimity. If I published
the same comment under my own name here in the UK, it would be off to the gulag for me, as we
do not have the admirable First Amendment of The US contitution.
If you published this under your own name in America, it would "only" be punishable by a media
hounding, career death and the sort of public vilification seen during The Cultural Revolution.
"And it is important for the United States to stand up for the basic principal that big
countries don't go around and invade and bully smaller countries."
That was so bizarre I had to laugh, but noted the corporate press softball pitchers at this
"news" conference didn't even smile at that absurd statement. No need for a "fact check" news
story. Hell, the USA don't just bully and invade, it destroys and lays waste to entire nations
on a yearly basis. Obama had dozens of foreigners murdered via drones and snipers each week, but
perhaps that's not considered a bully tactic.
"fear of people who look or speak or pray differently."
Typical SJW gobbledygook. First of all, no one looks, speaks, or prays like I do, so that's
right out the window. It may look that way to you, but that's because you're ignorant,
racist, jealous, and un-American.
Second, and much more important: It's not fear that causes me to resist the trashing of my
country. It's love. I'm not remotely fearful of third-world refuse, but I'm definitely disgusted
with the way the country I love seems to be circling the drain, and I'll do just about
anything I can to prevent it.
That most definitely includes supporting a 'rumbustious' president who–despite offering genuine
causes for concern–has made all the right enemies. Even if I agreed with him about nothing, I'd
support him for that reason alone. What's that? They're threatening war? Nonsense. The war has
been going on for half a century. But we have only begun to fight.
On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax
returns: "No, I don't think they care at all."
My favorite part of the whole press conference came right before this:
Reporter: But every president since the '70s has [released his tax returns] - Trump (sarcastically):
Gee, I've never heard that. I've never heard that before.
Nonsense. Derb is an engaging and entertaining writer. You, on the other hand, are a tiresome
bore.
"Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are
white or non-white."
Derb and his family are okay by me. You, however – I'd have no problem having you summarily
deported.
"Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no)
be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!"
No, we have too many of your kind, whatever your kind may be.
"Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed
acts of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?"
Prior to 911? What's so special about that day? Gosh, what might have happened on that particular
date. How many countries did Hitler invade before Czechoslovakia?
"This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal."
No, they can simply be uninterested. I.e., America really isn't their country, it's just a
place they happen to be.
"Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to
buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate."
You are a fool – a contemptible and stupid fool. Nixon was no dirtier than either Johnson or
Kennedy. He was taken down because the Washington Press Corps, the Democratic party (which he
had humiliated), and elements of the Civil Service wanted him gone.
To be fair (why you might ask? But let me slide on) Obama did speak of not bullying small countries.
I am not aware of any drone strikes on people who were government officials or otherwise representative
of their small countries. Are you? Or of any other assassinations. Trade sanctions?
For the first time in history we will have a [sic] oligarch in the White House .
Despite my having voted for him and supported his campaign, I have my suspicions and reservations
about the man as well (I'm a cynic and a pessimist), but the statement above is complete horse-shit.
Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by
stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years.
This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past,
he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him.
Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in
an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage...
"Statists are always gonna state and absolute power always corrupts absolutely. Trump is merely
the right's version of Obama. If you really thought the left-right paradigm was abandoned, that
the powers-that-be would let an actual outsider not only run for president but win well, I suggest
you spend more time researching the new world order and less time voting for some power-hungry
individual who claims to make everything great again." – Dan Dicks
Thanks for a lively piece Mr Derbyshire. As we gain experience in life we realize that there
are probably twenty 'good talkers' for every 'do-er' jockeying for acceptance in positions of
power – and we still get taken in by the talkers, even though they almost invariably have
an insignificant track-record for the desired position. They end up departing with little accomplished,
still talking: Obama being a perfect text book example.
You say:
And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear
instinct for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about
whether some one particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and
valuable, not a failing or a weakness.
I remember, when running a company, there came one of those fashionable (and short-lived) management
crazes promoting the ideas of W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring
about a massive change in Japanese industry. Deming asserted that 'quality' had to be instilled
into everything in the workplace and he had fourteen points for management – mostly sound common
sense except, I could never get along with point number eight "abolish fear in the workplace".
Now, this sounds terrific and who could oppose it?
Except that without a little bit of fear/uncertainty/insecurity, no organization can run well
– people just get too comfortable and secure and discipline declines. But how the Hell can you
ever admit to that in public? Or in a book? Of course you can't!
Congrats USA. Nice article as always Mr. Derb,, but I think you are too optimistic. We will
have to wait and see. From what little I know of USA polititcs, Trump is great because so many
of his attackers are arseholes. Myths floating about the pallets of cash to Iran：simply a retum
of stolen money, Much more to say. Too tired.
The dirt poor white middle Americans whose factories have closed and communities decimated,
voted for him in droves and where are they now? . I expect the poor whites who voted for
him will soon realize that they have been mugged.
yea, we'd have been so much better off with Hillary, huh?
but you're forgetting one thing about Trump's victory regardless of all of that-
and that's how great it makes us deplorables all feel at watching Obama and Michelle and people
like you going through your butt-hurt, existential crisis. Your angst and dread exhilarates us
all and reminds us how wonderful the political process can be. How, in a word; satisfying
.. it can be.
so as your knickers are twisting over your equivocating gender bits, we're buoyed by your tears.
In fact, I'd like to see a veritable ocean of your collective tears, and maybe sail a huge, obnoxious
yacht from Texas to Kalingrad on it, flying a proud confederate, rebel battle flag. And I'll even
name the ship The Deplorables, and when I've had my fill of Budweiser beer, Sherriff Joe and Vlad
and I'll (I'd invite him too) relieve our white male piss into your ocean of tears, and watch
as the salt mingles with the diversity. I'd be fun, no?
Just watching Van Jones and Michelle and all those Hollywood snowflakes and SJW and castrating
Maddow dykes and sodomites and race hustlers and La Raza pendejos and Kristol war pigs and entrenched
ticks in DC- sucking the blood of the republic, and all the assorted butt-hurt losers and haters
that have languished in smug certitude at the destruction of my kind, just seeing them all desolate
and inconsolable, just that, makes the Donald Trump win a precious moment to savor and
cherish.
So please do keep posting, and telling us all how bad it's going to be. How indeed, calamitous
and catastrophic! this all is. Where else can I relish such delicious and tasty morsels of sweet
schadenfreude, than right here on the UR?
His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy (actually, extremely wealthy) white
men.
Obviously you are a dumbass racist or you would know that white people, especially white men
are extremely smart and capable. Don't want to believe me? Pull your head out of your ass for
a second and look around you – we created almost everything you see or use. Your modern world
doesn't exist at all without us because WE created it from the constitutional laws you live by
to the car you drive, cell phone you play Angry Birds on, to the computer and the software that
runs it and lets you post to this site. Oh yeah – we also created the Internet. Yeah, that's right
– White Men – the best thing that ever happened to this world and your shitty life. Get over yourself,
racist!
W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring about a massive change in
Japanese industry.
Deming went to Japan to sell his ideas because American manufacturing wouldn't listen to him.
His quality ideas are now instituted in the ISO requirements which every manufacturer adheres
to if they want to sell internationally.
Certainly – but at least you don't see fellow management saluting you in the corridor with
fourteen fingers anymore – it came and went in US as a fad lasting approximately two years but
required more than ten for full implementation.
One good thing about Trump presidency is the anti-war Left will be activated once again.
Hopefully, they will prevent future wars.
One would like to think that. However the entity that calls itself the Left has become remarkably
fond of war. They've discovered that war could be a useful tool for imposing transgender bathroom
rights on the entire planet.
If Trump (God forbid) looked like starting a war with Russia would there be any opposition
from an anti-war Left?
I have no idea what you mean by "saluting with 14 fingers", but ISO is not a fad. Drive around
any area with manufacturing and you will see companies touting their ISO 9000 certification because
of Deming. His ideas were good and he has had a lasting effect on manufacturing across the globe.
It's the country of those immigrants who are naturalized, either recently or in the past.
That fact is undeniable.
It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they were colonists.
They never left the realms of the British monarch. They simply moved to his dominions beyond the
seas. Thus they never had to be naturalized, since they were already his subjects. When they declared
their independence, they made themselves citizens of their own country. Again, no act of naturalization
was necessary.
As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists,
frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor of
the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore " Yet immigrants past
and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of the efforts of the original
settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings with deserving newcomers.
Immigrant issue is the fig leaf under which certain brand of conservatives hide their frustration
at the fact that the elite,the military-industrial complex , the colonizers of new age globalist
and expansionist have not been to continue to provide them with the certainties and the beauties
of creature comfort at a reduced affordable way as was the case until may be 1990 .
Now they have to work like anyone else New age slavery has not exempted them from rigor of
life and work as have been before. This current scenario also appeared during great depression
They ,then did not have the fig leaf of blaming the immigrants to cover their naked butts that
personify their mental make up and intellectual understanding of their current situation. . They
went for Roosevelt's They supported New Deal. They still love free stuffs and goodies Just look
at the demands for Federal emergency relief program to get their butt out of the natural disasters
.
Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our
institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to
the Commonwealth and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.
It's nice to see a reference to Calvin Coolidge, IMHO Americas finest post 1900 President.
He was Progressive when it meant things like women's suffrage, opportunity for minorities and
universal health care, but at the same time was a Conservative in the truest sense of the word
with a great respect for the Constitution and the Founders of the US.
He also had this really useful idea that most proposals for legislation derived from Special
Interests (and needed to be excluded ), and that any legislation that did go forward had to have
its downsides thoroughly checked beforehand.
Barak Hussein Obama has not returned the Nobel Peace (Piss) Prize. This demonstrates he lacks
decency and self-respect. The warmongers Obama and Hitlery are THE fascists!!! Bush II, Obama
and Hitlery to Nuerenberg! Long live PRESIDENT TRUMP!
He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper
messages vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively
for decades.
The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is
that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something
much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker)
despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism.
The trouble is Pascal's wager implies contradictions because it is simultaneously valid for
any and every god or system that promises (infinite) rewards and most of those religions don't
allow for the others to be true. Anyway the concept of one's sentient self without a body has
surely been impossible to believe in for several generations at least.
Why hasn't Keynes's 1930 "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" worked out? With birth
control and technologucal advances since 1930 all Americans could be living in great material
comfort and with plenty of leisure time for most of their lives. Is it just the crude insatiability
of most human beings untamed by the more ascetic traditions? Is it status seeking by too many?
(That might include enjoying the greatest locations which can't be added to with more storeys).
Is it widespread criminality and its costs? Or .?
"It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they
were colonists."
I wasn't debating nor disputing this point. Mr. Anon pointed out that there are immigrants
by which "America really isn't their country, it's just a place they happen to be." He is other
than accurate in his assessment. Those groups who emigrated here and are now citizens are part
of this country. It is their country as well if they went through the process legally.
"As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists,
frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor
of the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore "
Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like
the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points
in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic
and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions.
"Yet immigrants past and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of
the efforts of the original settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings
with deserving newcomers."
Those original settlers included the British, the Dutch, and the Spanish, among others, who
also forcibly removed tribal groups from their settled areas, as well as invaded the world and
invited the world by instituting slavery in the Thirteen Colonies.
"... Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1, that presents
Trump's views on the topic: ..."
"... "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will
stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because
we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to
join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries,
we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good
will." ..."
"... This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own
the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize
the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies
of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda? ..."
"... But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They
have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner and
remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA. ..."
"... This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News
Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the desperate
character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump in order
to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. ..."
"... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of
Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected]
. ..."
Donald Trump wants to fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy. The President-elect wants to abandon
the destabilizing wars and regime change operations that have characterized US policy in the past
and work collaboratively with countries like Russia that have a mutual interest in fighting terrorism
and establishing regional security. Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati
on December 1, that presents Trump's views on the topic:
"We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past
We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos,
because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that
is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings
with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of
peace, understanding, and good will."
Trump's approach to foreign policy may seem commendable given the disastrous results in Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria and Iraq, but it is also a dramatic departure from the last 70 years of activity during
which time the United States has either overthrown or attempted to overthrow 57 foreign governments.
(According to author William Blum) This is why the political class and their wealthy constituents
are so worried about Trump, it's because they don't want the new president mucking-around in a process
he doesn't understand, a process that has reshaped the world in a way that clearly benefits US mega-corporations
while reinforcing Washington's iron grip on global power. The bottom line is that "violence works"
and any deviation from the present policy represents a direct threat to the people whose continued
power and prosperity depend on that violence.
This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own
the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize
the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies
of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda?
It doesn't, which is why they'd rather the public remain in the dark about what Trump actually
said.
But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They
have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner
and remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA.
This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News
Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the
desperate character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump
in order to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. The CIA's involvement in the
coups in Ukraine and Honduras, as well as the agency's funding, arming and training of Sunni militants
in Libya and Syria, attest to the fact that Brennan does not see peace and reconciliation as compatible
with US foreign policy objectives. Like his elitist paymasters, Brennan is committed to perpetual
war, regime change, and mass annihilation. Trump offers some relief from this 70 year-long nightmare
policy. Check out this quote from Vice President-elect, Mike Pence on FOX News Sunday:
"I think the president elect has made it very clear that we have a terrible relationship with
Russia right now. And that's not all our own doing, but really is a failure of American diplomacy
in successive administrations. And what the president elect has determined to do is to explore
the possibility of better relations. We have a common enemy in ISIS, and the ability to work with
Russia to confront, hunt down and destroy ISIS at its source represents an enormously important
priority of this incoming administration. But what the American people like about Donald Trump
is that he's someone who can sit down, roll his sleeves up and make a deal. And what you're hearing
in his reflections whether it be with Russia, or China or other countries in the world, is that
we're going to reengage. We're going to put America first, we're going to reengage in a way that
advances America's interests in the world and that advances peace."
Not on your life. US elites and their think tank lackeys would never allow it, not in a million
years. Even now, after six years of death and destruction in Syria, elites at the Council on Foreign
Relations are still resolved to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Re: "Aleppo's Sobering
Lessons," Project Syndicate, by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations) The
same is true at the Brookings Institute where chief strategist Michael O' Hanlon leads the charge
for splitting up the battered country so Washington can control vital pipeline corridors, establish
military bases in the east, and eliminate a potential threat to Israeli expansion. Here's a clip
from a recent piece by O' Hanlon that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The author admits that
the US goal is to splinter to country into multiple parts transforming it into a failed state:
"To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One
option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable
but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized
state-similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century .
Many Syrians will not like the idea of a confederal nation, or even of a central government
controlling half the country with the other half divided into three or four autonomous zones.
But the broad vision should be developed soon."
(Wall Street Journal)
"Autonomous zones" in a "confederal system" is a sobriquet for a broken, Balkanized failed state
run by tribal elders, disparate warlords and bloodthirsty jihadists. O' Hanlon's vision for Syria
is a savage dysfunctional dystopia run by homicidal fanatics who rule with an iron fist. Is it any
wonder why the Syrian people have fought tooth and nail to fend off the terrorist onslaught?
The United States is entirely responsible for the bloody decimation of Syria. It is absurd to
think that either the Saudis, the Qataris or the Turks would have launched a war on a strategically-critical
nation like Syria without a green light from Washington. The conflict is just the latest hotspot
in Washington's 15 year-long war of terror. The ultimate goal is to remove all secular Arab leaders
who may pose a threat to US imperial ambitions, open up the region to US-dominated extractive industries,
and foment enough extremism to legitimize a permanent military presence.
Russia's intervention into the Syrian conflict in September 2015, has cast doubt on Washington's
ability to prevail in the six year-long war. The election of Donald Trump has further complicated
matters by affecting a seismic shift in policy that could end the fighting and lead to improved relations
between the US and Russia. Naturally, that is not in the interests of the vicious neocons or their
liberal interventionist counterparts who see the proxy war in Syria as a pivotal part of their plan
to clip Russia's wings, discredit Putin in the eyes of the international community, and lay the groundwork
for regime change in Moscow. Washington's ultimate plan for Russia hews closely to that of Zbigniew
Brzezinski who– in an titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia"– had this to say:
"Given (Russia's) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics
would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia's vast
natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia - composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic,
and a Far Eastern Republic - would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations
with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative
potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized
Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization." (Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Geostrategy
for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997)
Nice, eh? In other words, Washington's plan for Russia is no different than its plan for Syria.
Both countries will be chopped up into smaller bite-size chunks eliminating the possibility of a
strong nationalist government rising up and resisting Washington's relentless exploitation and repression.
It's divide and conquer writ large.
"A loosely confederated Russia" also fits perfectly with Washington's top priority to spread military
bases across Asia, control crucial energy supplies, open up financial markets, impose Washington's
neoliberal economic policies, and maintain a stranglehold on China's explosive growth. It's the Great
Game all over again, and Washington is "In it to win it."
Here's an excerpt from a speech Hillary Clinton gave in 2011 titled "America's Pacific Century".
The speech underscores the importance that elites attach to the "rebalancing" plan contained in the
term "pivot to Asia". The strategy relies on the opening up of new markets to US corporations and
Wall Street, controlling critical resources, and "forging a broad-based military presence" across
the continent. Washington intends to be the main player in the world's most prosperous region. Here's
Clinton:
"The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States
will be right at the center of the action . One of the most important tasks of American statecraft
over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment - diplomatic,
economic, strategic, and otherwise - in the Asia-Pacific region
Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests
and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented
opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology ..American firms (need)
to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia The region already generates more than
half of global output and nearly half of global trade. As we strive to meet President Obama's
goal of doubling exports by 2015, we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in
Asia."
("America's Pacific Century", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", Foreign Policy Magazine,
2011)
Onward, to Asia, the next great US battlefield! The killing never ends.
As we noted earlier, the pivot to Asia is Washington's top priority. Clinton merely confirms what
geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out in his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard:
American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Here's a short excerpt from the book:
"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia (p.30) .. Eurasia is the globe's largest
continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the
world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. .About 75 per cent of the world's
people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its
enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about
three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)
For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all emerging
threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform Europe
and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must be sabotaged
by any means possible. The State Department's coup in Kiev as well as aggressive efforts to restrict
the flow of Russian gas to the EU via Nord Stream and South Stream, have temporarily succeeded in
undermining Moscow's plan for accelerated economic integration. Had Hillary won the election, the
US would have stepped up its provocations, its sanctions, its military buildup on Russia's borders,
its gas war, its attacks on Russia's markets and currency, and its proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine.
But now that Trump has been thrown into the mix, anything is possible. Even a fundamental change
in the policy.
The question is whether the deep state powerbrokers –who have already launched a number of attacks
on Trump in the media - will throw in the towel and allow Trump to develop his own independent foreign
policy or take steps to have him removed from office.
Early indications suggest that a coup is already underway.
Trump to date has been "all talk and no action" and as we know "actions speak louder than words".
The voters who put their trust in Trump rather than Hillary now expect actions and Trump to deliver
on his election "plank".
Needless to say politicians tend to "talk the walk" but not "walk the walk". So unless he delivers
he is going to be another big disappointment for his supporters. I and many other cynics have
maintained he is not going to deliver.
But, what do I know? However the American Establishment probably knows a lot more than me and
if they are worried about Trump and want him out of power then they feel threatened by him and
his supporters may have really voted for a change that challenges the status quo.
A purge of the Neo -liberal Globalist Establishment is long over due and much to be desired BUT
we don't know who and what will replace them. Trump may be an "existential threat" to the malevolent
swamp creatures that dwell in Washington but he might also be a threat to the whole country. We
hope for a benevolent outcome; "Time will tell".
But none of it has worked. Brzezinski, or whoever, can write books, can dream big, can play
with maps after dinner at Georgetown parties – but it is has not worked. The 'divide and conquer'
ended up dividing the world more, and conquering almost nothing. It is a mess, and the coming
consequences were going to be dire.
Results matter. Trump is not just an emotional reaction to the crazy globalist neocon-liberal
idiocy, he is also a reaction to failure. If Clinton took over and doubled down on the same policies
(she was going to), there simply would be a lot more failure. And there is no way to dress up
failures as 'good for us'. Neo-cons/liberals have had everything on their side – power, academia,
media, all institutions – except results.
Trump might fail, or he might succeed, but by coming in at this time, he is in effect saving
the failing policies – they don't have to answer for the obvious and accelerating failures that
these interventions have caused. The authors will avoid consequences and will very quickly
shift into 'we were betrayed', or 'if we just had 10 more years', the usual escapist nonsense
that failed ideologues always use. (The communist ideologues still claim that the problem was
that 'they should had tried harder, had 'purer' communism', blabla .and same is true about other
failed ideologies).
And they will be back. Whether in 'a year or two' as Kerry just said at Davos, or in 2020,
2024, they will be back. This mental state is incurable. (But if we get a few years break, well,
let's be thankful for that.)
An interesting and well-reasoned post. Indeed, it's kind of shocking when you think about it
just how much our government is doing running around the world messing in the affairs of nations
that really shouldn't be our concern
About whether Trump means what he said during the campaign, well yes, there is always the danger
that he will 'pull an Obama' and stab his constituents in the back – talk is cheap. And yet, if
that were the case then, as with Obama, we would expect the elites to make nice with him. Instead
the elites are if anything ramping up their attacks.
Now the enemy of my enemy is not always a friend – Trump could yet be a disaster. But the war
that the deep state is waging on him is perhaps not a bad sign.
And for those who find his tweets repellent, well, that's the only mechanism he has to avoid
letting the corporate press completely shut him out and control the dialog. Trump's genius (or
luck) is that by being outrageous he has, unlike Nader or Perot or Dean etc., been unable to be
silenced by the corporate press. Although in the long run it can't be a sustainable system I would
say that breaking up the big corporate industrial/press cartels should be a prime aim. No more
news outlets owned by (for example) tech titans with a zillion dollars in CIA contracts and numerous
other non-press business interests, you get the idea.
For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all
emerging threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform
Europe and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must
be sabotaged by any means possible.
Too late. In December the last remaining Sharia objections to trade in gold were resolved.
One billion plus Muslims can now bypass paper money at will and trade in gold. (Gaddafi attempted
to do that in Africa and it cost him his life) China has begun to purchase oil with gold all over
the mideast. Bye bye petro dollars. Hello breadlines in the former empire.
It is well worth considering the possibility that were our perpetual war making to finally
end, our "deep state neocon warmongers " might find themselves on the receiving end of a very
robust "reckoning" for the titanic criminal catastrophes they have inculcated.
Please tell me where is it written that they shouldn't be ?
The prodigious assault to disinherit President Trump may well reflect not only their contempt
at the thought he might be ending their "evil" wars, but the very real fear in their hearts, they
may be held to account, for starting them in the first place.
One cannot overstate the level of absolute impunity our Neocons have enjoyed over the last
decade, for committing some of the most horrific crimes the world has seen, since WWII.
Nor can one discount their imperial need of a win for Queen Hillary as being, first and foremost,
a lock on that very impunity.
Her loss at the ballot box had very little to do with the voters rejection of her projected
veneer of "progressive " values, but a frank realization by the electorate that Ms. Clinton was
nothing more than a belligerent neocon warmonger in a phony "liberal" pantsuit.
This "unraveling" has left them all twisting in the wind.
How could it not ?
After all, Donald Trump, is a billionaire oligarch who not only wants "peace", but has been
highly articulate and cuttingly accurate as to how (and why) our wars have been total disasters.
This presents quite an unsettling conundrum for all the back room billionaire oligarchs who
have always been able to buy their wars as well as the Presidents ( and the Press ) willing to
start them.
The fact they might, now, find themselves out of their hegemonic "drivers seat" .and in the
criminals "hot seat", as targets for "bone-crushing" war crimes tribunals, . could have them all
frantically climbing the walls.
Well, even if he does a little of what he promised – such as deport those illegals that have
a criminal record – that alone will be good. If he could also do something for the Millennials
to be able to move out of their parents' homes, that would be good too.
As
the follow-up act to George W. Bush, Barack Obama was supposed to restore the United States
to the fold of respectable nations whose leaders did not devise such foreign policy goals
as "smokin' 'em out."
Particularly given Obama's campaign
pledge
to engage in dialogue with traditional American enemies like Iran and Cuba -
both included in the
Axis of
Evil-plus-three
configuration marketed during the Bush era - optimistic sectors of the
international community predicted the advent of a humane, benevolent superpower.
The naïveté of such thinking was rather evident from the get-go; now, at the end of
Obama's reign, it's glaringly obvious. Consider the recent
calculation
by
the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States "dropped 26,172 bombs in seven
countries" in 2016 alone - an estimate the authors acknowledge is "undoubtedly low."
In February 2015, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
reported
that Obama's covert drone strikes on territories where the United States is
not officially at war had already "killed almost six times more people and twice as many
civilians than those ordered in the Bush years."
Obama's
rapprochement
with Cuba and his nuclear deal with Iran have been hailed by fans as
landmark achievements and alleged evidence of his status as peacemonger-in-chief. Often
lost in the celebrations, however, is the fact that both locales are still targeted with
sanctions
that
undeniably
constitute
"war by other means."
In Cuba, Obama might have bolstered his ethical credentials by fulfilling his promise to
close Guantánamo, thereby terminating the US occupation of Cuban territory and ending a
symbol of America's global impunity.
In the Middle East, efforts to defuse the nuclear issue would have been less blatantly
hypocritical if Obama hadn't also approved a
$38 billion
military aid package
to Israel, the largest in US history.
This is the same Israel that happens to maintain a
nuclear arsenal
and grants itself immunity from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Beyond some
jabs
at Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama has not allowed the Israeli military's recurring
slaughter
of Palestinian civilians to get in the way of his principled commitment to
Israel's right to "
self-defense
."
The full extent of the fallout of Obama's rule, of course, remains to be seen. But for
one particularly troubling hint as to his legacy-in-progress, one need look no further than
Medea Benjamin's recent
remarks
in the
Guardian
: "The twisted legal architecture the Obama
administration has constructed to justify its interventions, especially extrajudicial drone
killings with no geographic restrictions, will now be transferred into the erratic hands of
Donald Trump." Call it
teamwork
.
Trust mainstream media commentators to get their priorities right! While they dished out hell
to Donald Trump the other day over his 10-minute conversation with the president of Taiwan, they
could hardly have been more accommodative all these years of a rather more consequential American
affront to mainland China: Barack Obama's so-called "pivot" to Asia.
As the London-based journalist John Pilger points out, the absurdly named pivot, which has been
a central feature of U.S. foreign policy since 2012, is clearly intended to tighten America's military
containment of the Middle Kingdom. In Pilger's words, Washington's nuclear bases amount to a hangman's
noose around China's neck.
Pilger makes the point in a searing new documentary, The Coming War on China. Little known in
the United States, Pilger has been a marquee name in British journalism since the 1960s. First as
a roving reporter for the
Daily Mirror
and later as a television documentary maker, he has
spent more than fifty years exposing the underside of American foreign policy – and very often, given
London's predilection to play Tonto to Washington's Lone Ranger, that has meant exposing the underside
of British foreign policy also.
Pilger built his early reputation on opposition to the Vietnam war; more recently he emerged as
a scathing critic of the Bush-Blair rush to invade Iraq after 9/11.
In his latest movie, Pilger, a 77-year-old Australian, argues that the "pivot" sets the world
up for nuclear Armageddon. The Obama White House probably disagrees; but, not for the first time,
Pilger is asking the right questions.
This is not to suggest that Washington doesn't have legitimate issues. But its China strategy
is upside down. While it rarely misses an opportunity to lord it over Beijing militarily, its economic
policy in the face of increasingly outrageous Chinese provocation could hardly be more spineless.
Instead of insisting that China honor its WTO obligations, U.S. policymakers have looked the other
way as Beijing has not only maintained high trade barriers against American exports but, far worse,
has contrived to force the transfer of much of what is left of America's once awe-inspiring reservoir
of world-beating manufacturing technologies.
In the case of the auto industry, for instance, Beijing's proposition goes like this: "We'd love
to buy American cars. But those cars must be made in China – and the Detroit companies must bring
their best manufacturing technologies." Such technologies then have a habit of migrating rapidly
to rising Chinese rivals.
By indulging China economically and provoking it militarily, the Obama administration would appear
to be schizoid. But this is to judge things from a commonsensical outsider's perspective – always
a mistake in a place as inbred and smug as Washington. Seen from inside the Beltway, everything looks
perfectly rational. Whether Washington is giving away the U.S. industrial base, on the one hand or
arming to the teeth against a putative Chinese bogeyman on the other, the dynamic is the same: lobbying
money.
As the U.S. industrial base has been shipped machine-by-machine, and job-by-job, to China, America's
ability to pay its way in the world has correspondingly imploded. Although rarely mentioned in the
press (does the American press even understand such elementary and obvious economic consequences?),
this means America has become ever more dependent on other nations to fund its trade deficits. The
funding comes mainly in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds. And guess who is the biggest
buyer? The Communist regime in Beijing, of course. In effect, the bemused Chinese are paying for
the privilege of having nukes pointed at them!
That is not a sustainable situation. Beijing no doubt has a plan. Washington, tone-deaf as always
in foreign affairs, has not yet discovered there is a problem. We have been fated to live in interesting
times.
Pilger's documentary will air in the United States on RT on December 9, 10, and 11. For details
click
here
.
Eamonn Fingleton is the author of
In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming
Era of Chinese Hegemony
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008).
WASHINGTON-Stopping and turning around as he made his way across the South Lawn after hearing
the unmanned aerial vehicle hovering just feet behind him, outgoing President Barack Obama tearfully
shooed away a loyal MQ-9 Reaper drone attempting to follow him out of the White House, sources
confirmed Friday.
"Go on now-get out of here!" said the former commander-in-chief, his lower lip
trembling and his eyes welling with tears as he affected a stern tone of voice in an attempt to
scare off the faithful hunter-killer drone that had spent the past eight years obediently at his
side.
"You can't come with me anymore, you got that? Can't you see this is for your own good?
Now scram. What are you waiting for? Go!" At press time, a heartbroken Obama had thrown a rock
in the drone's direction, causing the unmanned aerial vehicle to flee into the sky, where it paused
to look back one last time at its old master before flying off toward a Yemeni tribal wedding.
"One study shows that through
new options created by the Affordable Care Act, nearly 6 in 10 uninsured
Americans will find that they can get covered for less than $100 a
month. Think about that. Through the marketplaces you can get health
insurance for what may be the equivalent of your cell phone bill. Or your
cable bill. And that's a good deal"
A large portion of America is either very stupid or asleep. Let's hope
it's the latter. If Trump accpplishes half of what he's promised America
will be better off for it.
Oh please, WaPo, you're not even close to Obama's biggest lie. Obama's biggest
lie was that he was a Constitutional scholar. That man has never even read the
Constitution. The only thing he ever did with the Constitution was to wipe his
ass with it. Sheeit. You know how hard it is to remove fecal stains from a
piece of 230 year old parchment?
Our reality is perception generated by people determined to maintain a slave
society for their exclusive benefit. As perception must pass through individual
filters, we have the ability to change reality as we currently experience it.
By the use of intention, firmly expressed, humans as a group can disrupt the
ruling paradigm. By rejecting the hatred and division provided by media and
others, we can choose to embrace love, reciprocity, integrity, charity, etc.
All the attributes we hold as cherished values.
Reality will be changed. Without firing a shot, clubbing a friend/fiend or
destroying one's property. We hold in our hands the power to effectively change
the parasites into friends and family.
However, hateful dialogue will accomplish nothing. There is a reason we all
yearn to be loved and by experiencing it we learn to love others as well. It is
a special kind of magic and we are all grand magicians.
"... Ron Paul went out with a bang in 2008. He refused to endorse the neocon who won the nomination and instead brought together candidates from the "minor" parties to agree on a basic set of principles upon which this Institute was founded in 2013. It was an excellent parting shot. The McCainiacs in their arrogance bade good riddance to the anti-interventionist wing of the party and...the rest is history (as it was four years later). Did they learn? Of course not. ..."
"... So at that time, in 2008, Ron Paul became the steady voice of the non-interventionist movement even as much of the anti-Bush "peace movement" faded into silence hoping that Obama would live up to his Nobel Peace Prize billing. Instead, Obama bombed his way through his final year in the White House as he did the preceding seven years: he dropped an average of three bombs per hour in 2016. That's three per hour, each 24 hours, each 52 weeks, each 12 months. With some admirable exceptions, the Left side of the peace movement went into hibernation for eight years. ..."
"... President Obama is going out with a bang, but of an entirely different sort. After he and his surrogates all but accused President-elect Trump of being a Kremlin agent -- bolstered by the "fake news" experts at the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media -- he made a couple of moves in attempt to bind his successor to a confrontational stance regarding Russia. ..."
"... In today's Liberty Report , Dr. Paul and I mentioned the famous April, 1967 antiwar speech of Martin Luther King where he blasted the superficial patriotism of those who cheer the state's wars without question. ..."
"... We are in the same situation today, where anyone who questions the neocon and mainstream media narrative that to oppose a nuclear confrontation with Russia makes one somehow a Russian agent. ..."
It seems strange that this will be the last time I write you under the presidency of Barack Obama.
I recall the slight ray of hope we felt when he took office, after eight years of the crazed neocons
who ran Bush's White House. At the time, Dr. Paul had just finished his ground-breaking 2008 presidential
run and so much had changed for us in the Congressional office. While we were legally separated from
campaign activities, we felt the mist from the waves crashing on the shore of American political
life. Ron Paul went from being a widely-admired and principled Member of Congress to the world-renowned
ambassador of honest money and non-interventionism! A revolution was born!
By the 2008 race, Bush and his foreign policy were thoroughly discredited, and Ron Paul offered the
strongest opposition to the warmed-over Bushism that the hapless McCain campaign had on offer. Obama
had run as the peace candidate, and the peace candidate always wins -- even if he is a liar (see:
Woodrow Wilson, FDR, GW Bush, etc.). But while many of us hoped for the best, we also knew there
was little chance for us to change course.
Ron Paul went out with a bang in 2008. He refused to endorse the neocon who won the nomination and
instead
brought together candidates from the "minor" parties to agree on a basic
set of principles upon which this Institute was founded in 2013. It was an excellent parting
shot. The McCainiacs in their arrogance bade good riddance to the anti-interventionist wing of the
party and...the rest is history (as it was four years later). Did they learn? Of course not.
So at that time, in 2008, Ron Paul became the steady voice of the non-interventionist movement even
as much of the anti-Bush "peace movement" faded into silence hoping that Obama would live up to his
Nobel Peace Prize billing. Instead, Obama bombed his way through his final year in the White House
as he did the preceding seven years: he dropped an average of
three bombs per hour in 2016. That's three per hour, each 24 hours, each 52 weeks, each
12 months. With some admirable exceptions, the Left side of the peace movement went into hibernation
for eight years.
President Obama is going out with a bang, but of an entirely different sort. After he and his
surrogates all but accused President-elect Trump of being a Kremlin agent -- bolstered by the "fake
news" experts at the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media -- he made a couple of
moves in attempt to bind his successor to a confrontational stance regarding Russia.
First, he sent thousands of
US troops to permanently be stationed in Poland for the first time ever. These troops and military
equipment, including hundreds of tanks and so on, are literally on the border with Russia, but any
complaint or counter-move is reported by the lapdog media as "Russian aggression." Imagine five thousand
Chinese troops with the latest in war-making equipment on the Mexican border with the US, with a
few ships in the Gulf of Mexico to boot. Would Washington welcome such a move? Then today we discover
that Obama has
sent a few hundred US Marines to take up in Norway for the first time since World War II. Of
course it's not enough to be a military threat to Russia nor is it enough to actually defend Norway
if "Russian expansionism" dictates an invasion. So what is the purpose? To wrong-foot any ideas Trump
might have about turning down the nuclear-war-with-Russia dial.
Ron Paul will continue his position as the Trump Administration takes hold of the levers of power:
He continues to push honest money, individual liberties, and non-interventionism. Do you agree that
we must not compromise this position no matter who is in power?
In today's
Liberty Report , Dr. Paul and I mentioned the famous April, 1967 antiwar speech of Martin Luther
King where he blasted the superficial patriotism of those who cheer the state's wars without question.
We are in the same situation today, where anyone who questions the neocon and mainstream media
narrative that to oppose a nuclear confrontation with Russia makes one somehow a Russian agent.
And Obama's big miss while he still had the chance? Just a few days ago the media
reported that whistleblower Chelsea Manning was on the shortlist for having her 35 year sentence
commuted. Imagine decades in solitary confinement for the "crime" of telling your fellow citizens
the crimes being committed by their government.
As the news that Manning was being considered for presidential clemency broke, Dr. Paul joined
with RPI Board Member former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to
send an urgent letter to President Obama to request that Manning's sentence be commuted. This
quick action of the Ron Paul Institute was coordinated with Amnesty International and represents
a new, more activist phase for us. With our collective following in the millions, we can mobilize
opinion quickly on urgent matters such as this. Obama has not yet responded, but you can be sure
that our call to action was well-heard in Washington.
... ... ...
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Barack Obama's Real Legacy
With Barack Obama's
eight year stint in the Oval Office coming to an end and his persona (at least to those who
don't really pay attention) as a "peacemaker", a
recent analysis
by Micah Zenko provides us
with an interesting glimpse at his real foreign military approach.
Before we get into
the meat of this posting, let's look at a
bit of history
from 2009:
Here is
what the Nobel Committee had to say
in October 2009 about the President who had been in office for less than ten months at that
point in time:
"
The
Norwegian Nobel Committee
has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for
2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen
international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special
importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has
as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained
a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international
institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving
even the most difficult international conflicts.
The vision of a
world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.
Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the
great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very
rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its
people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are
to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority
of the world's population.
For 108 years,
the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and
those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses
Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for
a global response to global challenges.
" (my bold)
With that in mind,
let's get back to Micah Zenko's analysis. Here is a table showing the number of U.S.
bombs that were dropped in all of its current theatres of operation during 2016:
The vast majority
of bombs, 24,287 in total, were dropped during the anti-Islamic State Operation Inherent Resolve
in both Syria and Iraq which received 2,963 and 2,941 airstrikes respectively. Of the
7,473 coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the United States was responsible for 5,904 or
79 percent of the total. Of the total of 30,743 bombs that were dropped by America's
coalition partners, the United States dropped 24,287 or 79 percent of the total. When
looking at the coalition bombing statistics on a national basis, in 2016, the United States
conducted 67 percent of the airstrikes in Iraq and 96 percent of the airstrikes in Syria.
Just in case you
wondered,
2015
was also a bomb-dropping bonanza with
a total of 23,144 bombs dropped including 22,110 in Iraq and Syria, the major beneficiaries
of the Peace President's munificence as shown here:
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
JA
X-NONE
Apparently, Obama-style
Nobel Peace Prize-winning international diplomacy included materiel raining from the sky on
the innocent and guilty alike. Barack Obama has the distinction of being the only U.S.
president to serve his entire eight year term in a state of war including operations in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria. That is his legacy.
JohnH -> Fred C. Dobbs...
From the man who studied Obama before he started rising:
"the early Obama phenomenon (dating back to his campaign for
an open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois in 2003-04) was
intimately tied in with the United States' corporate and
financial ruling class. Obama was rising to power with
remarkable backing from Wall Street and K Street election
investors who were not in the business of promoting
politicians who sought to challenge the nation's dominant
domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_were_warned_about_barack_obama_--_by_obama_20170114
Kennedy's wanted to cut taxes on the rich and corporations
and increase inequality.
"President John F. Kennedy brought
up the issue of tax reduction in his 1963 State of the Union
address. His initial plan called for a $13.5 billion tax cut
through a reduction of the top income tax rate from 91% to
65%, reduction of the bottom rate from 20% to 14%, and a
reduction in the corporate tax rate from 52% to 47%. The
first attempt at passing the tax cuts was rejected by
Congress in 1963. Conservatives revolted at giving Kennedy a
key legislative victory before the election of 1964."
LBJ helped pass his agenda. Neoliberal!
"The Office of Tax Analysis of the United States
Department of the Treasury summarized the tax changes as
follows:[2]
reduced top marginal rate (on income over $100,000,
roughly $770,000 in 2015 dollars, for individuals; and over
$180,000; roughly $1,380,000 in 2015 dollars, for heads of
households) from 91% to 70%
reduced corporate tax rate from 52% to 48%
phased-in acceleration of corporate estimated tax payments
(through 1970)
created minimum standard deduction of $300 +
$100/exemption (total $1,000 max)
Jan 17, 2017 4:25 PM Following urges by Edward Snowden and Julian Assange
(who offered his own extradition in exchange) , President Obama has largely commuted the remaining
prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak
that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration,
and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.
Manning will be released in May 2017 according to the White House. The move is part of a final
push of pardons and commutations in the closing days of the administration, and Obama has now shortened
the sentences of more federal inmates than any other president, bringing the total to 1,385 as of
today.
Previously both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who leaked his cache of documents detailing
U.S. intelligence efforts around the same time as Manning's crime, advocated for her clemency. "Mr.
President, if you grant only one act of clemency as you exit the White House, please: free Chelsea
Manning," Snowden tweeted. "You alone can save her life."
Manning was arrested in 2010 after leaking 700,000 military files and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks,
and her sentence exceeded that received by other individuals recently convicted of releasing classified
material. She has twice attempted to commit suicide while incarcerated, and went on a hunger strike
in an effort to get the Army to allow her to undertake gender reassignment surgery.
As The New York Times reports, the decision by Obama rescued Manning from an uncertain
future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the male military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment
ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.
Now, under the terms of Mr. Obama's commutation announced by the White House on Tuesday, Ms. Manning
is set to be freed in five months, on May 17 of this year, rather than in 2045.
The commutation also relieved the Department of Defense of the difficult responsibility of her
incarceration as she pushes for treatment for her gender dysphoria - including sex reassignment surgery
- that the military has no experience providing.
As The New York Times describes, Manning was still known as Bradley Manning
when she deployed with her unit to Iraq in late 2009. There, she worked as a low-level intelligence
analyst helping her unit assess insurgent activity in the area it was patrolling, a role that gave
her access to a classified computer network.
She copied hundreds of thousands of military incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
which, among other things, exposed abuses of detainees by Iraqi military officers working with American
forces and showed that civilian deaths in the Iraq war were likely much higher than official estimates.
The files she copied also included about 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around
the world showing sensitive deals and conversations, dossiers detailing intelligence assessments
of Guantánamo detainees held without trial, and a video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad
in two Reuters journalists were killed, among others.
She decided to make all these files public, as she wrote at the time, in the hope that they would
incite "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." WikiLeaks' disclosed them - working with traditional
news organizations including The New York Times - bringing notoriety to the group and its founder,
Julian Assange.
The disclosures set off a frantic scramble as Obama administration officials sought to minimize
any potential harm, including getting to safety some foreigners in dangerous countries who were identified
as having helped American troops or diplomats. Prosecutors, however, presented no evidence that anyone
was killed because of the leaks.
In her commutation application, Ms. Manning said she had not imagined that she would be sentenced
to the "extreme" term of 35 years, a term for which there was "no historical precedent." (There have
only been a handful of leak cases, and most sentence are in the range of one to three years.)
"I take full and complete responsibility for my decision to disclose these materials to the public,"
she wrote.
"I have never made any excuses for what I did. I pleaded guilty without the protection of a
plea agreement because I believed the military justice system would understand my motivation for
the disclosure and sentence me fairly. I was wrong."
The US Constitution allows a president to pardon "offenses against the United States" and commute
-- either shorten or end -- federal sentences. Obama has so far granted 148 pardons since taking
office in 2009 -- fewer than his predecessors, who also served two terms, George W. Bush (189) and
Bill Clinton (396). But he has surpassed any other president in the number of granted, commutations,
1,385, more than the total number given by the past 12 presidents combined.
The White House is expected to announce another round of clemency grants on Thursday, officials
said. Most of Obama's clemency grants have gone to relatively unknown individuals but Tuesday's batch
contained some who are famous, as is typical for presidents in their final days.
DHS security honchos want to justify their existence. There is not greater danger to national
security then careerists in position of security professionals. Lying and exaggerating the
treats to get this dollars is is what many security professionals do for living. They are
essentially charlatans.
Notable quotes:
"... In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure. ..."
"... Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. ..."
"... Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack." ..."
"... That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012. ..."
"... Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE." ..."
"... according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients. ..."
"... "Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives." ..."
"... The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications private. ..."
"... Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, US officials say." ..."
"... DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability." ..."
"... The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed. ..."
"... Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is encouraging people to run indicators.'" ..."
"... The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion" into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication. ..."
"... The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining that it must have been a Russian hack. ..."
The mainstream hysteria over Russia has led to dubious or downright false stories that have
deepened the New Cold War
In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with
the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria
by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure.
DHS had initiated the now-discredited tale of a hacked computer at the Burlington, Vermont Electricity
Department by sending the utility's managers misleading and alarming information, then leaked a story
they certainly knew to be false and continued to put out a misleading line to the media.
Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking
of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.
The story of how DHS twice circulated false stories of Russian efforts to sabotage US "critical
infrastructure" is a cautionary tale of how senior leaders in a bureaucracy-on-the-make take advantage
of every major political development to advance its own interests, with scant regard for the truth.
The DHS had carried out a major public campaign to focus on an alleged Russian threat to US power
infrastructure in early 2016. The campaign took advantage of a US accusation of a Russian cyber-attack
against the Ukrainian power infrastructure in December 2015 to promote one of the agency's major
functions - guarding against cyber-attacks on America's infrastructure.
Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for
electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications
for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical
impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack."
That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national
infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran
by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012.
Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with
the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald
Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across
the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate
and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that
it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE."
The report clearly conveyed to the utilities that the "tools and infrastructure" it said had been
used by Russian intelligence agencies to affect the election were a direct threat to them as well.
However, according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who
had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US
infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients.
"Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We
ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives."
Lee and his staff found only two of a long list of malware files that could be linked to Russian
hackers without more specific data about timing. Similarly a large proportion of IP addresses listed
could be linked to "GRIZZLY STEPPE" only for certain specific dates, which were not provided.
The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report
as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows
bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications
private.
Lee said the DHS staff that worked on the technical information in the report is highly competent,
but the document was rendered useless when officials classified and deleted some key parts of the
report and added other material that shouldn't have been in it. He believes the DHS issued the report
"for a political purpose," which was to "show that the DHS is protecting you."
Planting the Story, Keeping it Alive
Upon receiving the DHS-FBI report the Burlington Electric Company network security team immediately
ran searches of its computer logs using the lists of IP addresses it had been provided. When one
of IP addresses cited in the report as an indicator of Russian hacking was found on the logs, the
utility immediately called DHS to inform it as it had been instructed to do by DHS.
In fact, the IP address on the Burlington Electric Company's computer was simply the Yahoo e-mail
server, according to Lee, so it could not have been a legitimate indicator of an attempted cyber-intrusion.
That should have been the end of the story. But the utility did not track down the IP address before
reporting it to DHS. It did, however, expect DHS to treat the matter confidentially until it had
thoroughly investigated and resolved the issue.
"DHS wasn't supposed to release the details," said Lee. "Everybody was supposed to keep their
mouth shut."
Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators
of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post
failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking
with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story
under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont,
US officials say."
DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the
grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code
to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's
electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."
The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected
to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid
had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of
a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed.
The day after the story was published, the DHS leadership continued to imply, without saying so
explicitly, that the Burlington utility had been hacked by Russians. Assistant Secretary for Pubic
Affairs J. Todd Breasseale gave CNN a statement that the "indicators" from the malicious software
found on the computer at Burlington Electric were a "match" for those on the DNC computers.
As soon as DHS checked the IP address, however, it knew that it was a Yahoo cloud server and therefore
not an indicator that the same team that allegedly hacked the DNC had gotten into the Burlington
utility's laptop. DHS also learned from the utility that the laptop in question had been infected
by malware called "neutrino," which had never been used in "GRIZZLY STEPPE."
Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending
its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The
DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is
encouraging people to run indicators.'"
Original DHS False Hacking Story
The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking
of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion"
into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication.
Like the Burlington fiasco, the false report was preceded by a DHS claim that US infrastructure
systems were already under attack. In October 2011, acting DHS deputy undersecretary Greg Schaffer
was quoted by The Washington Post as warning that "our adversaries" are "knocking on the doors of
these systems." And Schaffer added, "In some cases, there have been intrusions." He did not specify
when, where or by whom, and no such prior intrusions have ever been documented.
On Nov. 8, 2011, a water pump belonging to the Curran-Gardner township water district near Springfield,
Illinois, burned out after sputtering several times in previous months. The repair team brought in
to fix it found a Russian IP address on its log from five months earlier. That IP address was actually
from a cell phone call from the contractor who had set up the control system for the pump and who
was vacationing in Russia with his family, so his name was in the log by the address.
Without investigating the IP address itself, the utility reported the IP address and the breakdown
of the water pump to the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn passed it on to the Illinois
Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, also called a fusion center composed of Illinois State
Police and representatives from the FBI, DHS and other government agencies.
On Nov. 10 – just two days after the initial report to EPA – the fusion center produced a report
titled "Public Water District Cyber Intrusion" suggesting a Russian hacker had stolen the identity
of someone authorized to use the computer and had hacked into the control system causing the water
pump to fail.
The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine
that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in
putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining
that it must have been a Russian hack.
The fusion center "intelligence report," circulated by DHS Office of Intelligence and Research,
was picked up by a cyber-security blogger, who called The Washington Post and read the item to a
reporter. Thus the Post published the first sensational story of a Russian hack into a US infrastructure
on Nov. 18, 2011.
After the real story came out, DHS disclaimed responsibility for the report, saying that it was
the fusion center's responsibility. But a Senate subcommittee investigation
revealed in
a report a year later that even after the initial report had been discredited, DHS had not issued
any retraction or correction to the report, nor had it notified the recipients about the truth.
DHS officials responsible for the false report told Senate investigators such reports weren't
intended to be "finished intelligence," implying that the bar for accuracy of the information didn't
have to be very high. They even claimed that report was a "success" because it had done what "what
it's supposed to do – generate interest."
Both the Burlington and Curran-Gardner episodes underline a central reality of the political game
of national security in the New Cold War era: major bureaucratic players like DHS have a huge political
stake in public perceptions of a Russian threat, and whenever the opportunity arises to do so, they
will exploit it.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security
policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war
in Afghanistan. His new book is
Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at
[email protected].
"... The people will have no say in the matter. As Oscar Wilde quipped: "All the world's a stage, badly cast." ..."
"... Obama dismissed both attempts to downsize his unilateralist approach to military operations, saying with a chill touch of the surreal that the 14,000-and-counting sorties flown over Libya didn't amount to a "war." ..."
"... This is Barack Obama, the political moralist? The change agent? The constitutional scholar? Listen to that voice. It is petulant and dismissive. Some might say peevish, like the whine of a talented student caught cheating on a final exam. ..."
"... Corporate capitalism just wasn't delivering the goods anymore. Not for the bottom 80 percent, any way. The economy was in ruins, mired in what appeared to be a permanent recession. ..."
"... His vaguely liberal political ideology remained opaque at the core. Instead of an over-arching agenda, Obama delivered facile jingoisms proclaiming a post-racial and post-partisan America. ..."
"... the Obama revolution was over before it started, guttered by the politician's overweening desire to prove himself to the grandees of the establishment. ..."
"... Within weeks of taking office, Obama had been taken to the woodshed by Robert Gates and General David Petreaus and had returned to the White House bruised and humbled. The withdrawal would slowly proceed, but a sinister force would remain behind indefinitely, a lethal contingent of some 50,000 or so CIA operatives, special forces units, hunter-killer squads and ruthless private security details. Bush's overt war quietly became a black op under Obama. Out of sight, out of mind. ..."
"... Obama, in a cynical ploy to prove his martial meddle, journeyed to West Point and announced in a somber speech that he was raising the stakes in Afghanistan by injecting a Petreaus-sanctioned surge of forces into the country and unleashing a new campaign of lethal operations that would track and target suspected insurgents across the Hindu Kush and into Pakistan. ..."
"... There was nothing to win in Afghanistan. Out on that distant rim of the world, there weren't even any standards to gauge military success. This was meant to be a punitive war, pure and simple, designed to draw as much blood as possible, an obscene war fought largely by remote-controlled drones attacking peasant villages with murderous indiscretion. ..."
"... as Obama's wars spread from Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan and Yemen, Somalia and Libya, outside of the redoubtable Catholic Workers and Quakers and a few Code Pinkers -- the last flickering moral lights in the nation -- even those empty yawps of protest dissipated into whispered lamentations, hushed murmurs of disillusionment. Could it be that the American Left had gone extinct as any kind of potent political force and it took the presidency of Barack Obama to prove it? ..."
"... This essay is adapted from Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion . ..."
"... Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: [email protected] . ..."
Barack Obama was in Brasilia on March 19, 2011, when he
announced with limited fanfare the latest regime change war of his presidency.
The bombing of Libya had begun with a hail of cruise missile attacks and air
strikes. It was something of an impromptu intervention, orchestrated largely by
Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and the diva of vengeance Samantha Power, always
hot for a saturation bombing in the name of human rights.
Obama soon upped the ante by suggesting that it was time for
Qaddafi to go. The Empire had run out of patience with the mercurial colonel.
The vague aims of the Libyan war had moved ominously from enforcing "a no-fly
zone" to seeking regime change. Bombing raids soon targeted Qaddafi and his
family. Coming in the wake of the extra-judicial assassination of Osama Bin
Laden in a blood-spattered home invasion, Qaddafi rightly feared Obama wanted
his body in a bag, too.
Absent mass protests against the impending destruction of
Tripoli, it fell to Congress to take some tentative steps to challenge the
latest unauthorized and unprovoked war. At an earlier time in the history of
the Republic, Obama's arrogant defiance of Congress and the War Powers Act of
1973 might have provoked a constitutional crisis. But these are duller and more
attenuated days, where such vital matters have been rendered down into a kind
of hollow political theater. All the players duly act their parts, but
everyone, even the cable news audience, realizes that it is just for show. The
wars will proceed. The Congress will fund them.
The people will have no say in
the matter. As Oscar Wilde quipped: "All the world's a stage, badly cast."
That old softy John Boehner, the teary-eyed barkeep's son,
sculpted a resolution demanding that Obama explain his intentions in Libya. It
passed the House overwhelmingly. A competing resolution crafted by the impish
gadfly Dennis Kucinich called for an immediate withdrawal of US forces from
operations in Libya. This radically sane measure garnered a robust 148 votes.
Obama dismissed both attempts to downsize his unilateralist approach to
military operations, saying with a chill touch of the surreal that the
14,000-and-counting sorties flown over Libya didn't amount to a "war."
This is Barack Obama, the political moralist? The change
agent? The constitutional scholar? Listen to that voice. It is petulant and
dismissive. Some might say peevish, like the whine of a talented student caught
cheating on a final exam.
Yes, all the political players were acting their parts. But
what role exactly had Obama assumed?
Obama, the Nobel laureate, casts himself as a New
Internationalist, a chief executive of the global empire, more eager to consult
with European heads of state than members of Congress, even of his own party.
Indeed, his co-conspirators in the startling misadventure in Libya were David
Cameron and Nikolas Sarkozy, an odd troika to say the least. Even Obama's own
Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, seems to have been discreetly cut out of the
decision loop.
You begin to see why Obama sparks such a virulent reaction
among the more histrionic precincts of the libertarian right. He has a
majestic sense of his own certitude. The president often seems captivated by
the nobility of his intentions, offering himself up as a kind of savior of the
eroding American Imperium.
While Obama sells pristine idealism to the masses, he is at
heart a calculating pragmatist, especially when it comes to advancing his own
ambitions. Obama doesn't want to be stained with defeat. It's one reason he has
walked away from pushing for a Palestinian state, after his Middle East envoy
George Mitchell resigned in frustration. It's why Obama stubbornly refused to
insist on a public option for his atrocious health care bill. It's why he
backed off cap-and-trade and organized labor's card check bill and the DREAM
Act.
Obama assumed the presidency at a moment when much of the
nation seemed ready to confront the unwelcome fact that the American project
had derailed. Before he died, Norman Mailer took to lamenting that the American
culture was corroding from a bad conscience. The country was warping under the
psychic weight of years of illegal wars, torture, official greed, religious
prudishness, government surveillance, unsatisfying Viagra-supplemented sex,
bland genetically engineered food, crappy jobs, dismal movies, and infantile,
corporatized music?all scrolling by in an infinite montage of annoying Tweets.
Even the virtual commons of cyberspace had gone solipsistic.
Corporate capitalism just wasn't delivering the goods
anymore. Not for the bottom 80 percent, any way. The economy was in ruins,
mired in what appeared to be a permanent recession.
The manufacturing sector
had been killed from the inside-out, with millions of well-paying jobs
outsourced and nothing but dreary service-sector positions to take their place.
Chronic long-term unemployment hovered at more than 10 percent, worse, much
worse, in black America. Those who clung to their jobs had seen their wages
stagnate, their home values shrivel and were suffocating under merciless mounds
of debt. Meanwhile, capital moved in ever-tightening circles among a new
odious breed of super-rich, making sweat-free billions from the facile movement
of money.
By 2008, the wistfulness seemed to have evaporated from the
American spirit. The country had seen its own government repeatedly prey on its
citizens' fear of the future. Paranoia had become the last growth industry.
From the High Sierras to the Blue Ridge, the political landscape was sour and
spiteful, the perfect seed-ground for the sprouting of the Tea Party and even
ranker and more venomous movements on the American right. These were not the
ideological descendents of the fiery libertarian Barry Goldwater. The
tea-baggers lacked Goldwater's western innocence and naive idealism. These
suburban populists, by and large, were white, unhappy and aging. Animated by
the grim nostalgia for a pre-Lapsarian fantasyland called the Reagan
administration, many sensed their station in society slipping inexorably away.
They wanted their country back. But back from whom?
Instead of blaming corporate outsourcers or predatory
bankers, they directed their vindictive impulse toward immigrants and blacks,
government workers and teachers, scientists and homosexuals. There's something
profoundly pathetic about the political fatalism of this new species of
Know-Nothings. But, it must be said, their wrath was mostly pure. This strange
consortium of discontent seethed with an inchoate sense of alienation, an
acidic despair at the diminished potentialities of life in post-industrial
America.
No, these were not fanatical idealists or even ante-bellum
utopians. They were levelers, of a sort, splenetic and dread-fuelled levelers,
conspiratorialists with a Nixonian appetite for political destruction. Primed
into a frenzy by the cynical rantings of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, mass
gatherings of Tea Partiers across the summer of 2009 showed signs of a
collective psychopathy, as if the enervating madness from decades of
confinement in the hothouse of the American suburbs had finally ruptured in
primetime for all the world to watch over-and-over again on YouTube with
mounting mortification. Right there on the National Mall could be heard the
vapid gibberish of Michele Bachmann and the new American preterite, those lost
and bitter souls who felt their culture had left them far behind.
With his sunny disposition and Prospero-like aptitude for
mystification, Obama should have been able to convert them or, at least, to
roll over them. Instead, they kicked his ass. How?
Obama is a master of gesture politics, but he tends to flinch
in nearly every pitched battle, even when the odds and the public are behind
him. His political instincts drive him to seek cover in the middle ground. He
is a reflexive compromiser, more Rodney "Can't We All Just Get Along" King than
Reverend King. Even when confronted by bumbling hacks like John Boehner and
Eric Cantor, Obama tends to wilt.
Perhaps Obama had never before been confronted with quite
this level of toxic hostility. After all, he'd lived something of a charmed
life, the life of a star-child, coddled and pampered, encouraged and adulated,
from Indonesia to Harvard. Obama was the physical and psychic embodiment of the
new multiculturalism: lean, affable, assured, non-threatening.
His vaguely
liberal political ideology remained opaque at the core. Instead of an
over-arching agenda, Obama delivered facile jingoisms proclaiming a post-racial
and post-partisan America.
Instead of radical change, Obama offered simply
managerial competence. This, naturally, the Berserkers of the Right
interpreted as hubris and arrogance and such hollow homilies served only to
exacerbate their rage. The virulent right had profiled Obama and found him to
be the perfect target for their accreted animus. And, even better, they had
zeroed-in on an enemy so innately conflict-averse that even when pummeled with
racist slurs he wouldn't punch back.
Of course, Obama's most grievous political wounds were
self-inflicted, starting even before his election when he rushed back to
Washington to help rescue Bush's Wall Street bailout. This was perhaps the
first real indication that the luminous campaign speeches about generational
and systemic change masked the servile psyche of a man who was desperately
yearning to be embraced by the nation's political and financial elites. Instead
of meeting with the victims of Wall Street predators or their advocates, like
Elizabeth Warren and Ralph Nader, Obama fist-bumped with the brain trust of
Goldman Sachs and schmoozed with the creme de la creme of K Street corporate
lobbyists. In the end, Obama helped salvage some of the most venal and corrupt
enterprises on Wall Street, agreed to shield their executives from prosecution
for their financial crimes and, predictably, later got repaid with their scorn.
Thus
the Obama revolution was over before it started,
guttered by the politician's overweening desire to prove himself to the
grandees of the establishment.
From there on, other promises, from confronting
climate change to closing Gitmo, from ending torture to initiating a
nationalized health care system, proved even easier to break.
Take the issue that had so vivified his campaign: ending the
war on Iraq.
Within weeks of taking office, Obama had been taken to the
woodshed by Robert Gates and General David Petreaus and had returned to the
White House bruised and humbled. The withdrawal would slowly proceed, but a
sinister force would remain behind indefinitely, a lethal contingent of some
50,000 or so CIA operatives, special forces units, hunter-killer squads and
ruthless private security details. Bush's overt war quietly became a black op
under Obama. Out of sight, out of mind.
By the fall of 2009 even the most calloused Washington hands
had grown weary over how deeply entangled the US occupation of Afghanistan had
become. The savage rhythms of the war there had backfired. Too many broken
promises, too many bombed weddings and assassinations, too many dead and
mutilated children, too much cowardice and corruption in the puppet satrapy in
Kabul. The tide had irrevocably turned against the US and its squalid policies.
Far from being terminally crippled, the Taliban was now stronger than it had
been at any time since 2001. But instead of capitalizing on this tectonic shift
of sentiment by drawing down American troops,
Obama, in a cynical ploy to
prove his martial meddle, journeyed to West Point and announced in a somber
speech that he was raising the stakes in Afghanistan by injecting a Petreaus-sanctioned
surge of forces into the country and unleashing a new campaign of lethal
operations that would track and target suspected insurgents across the Hindu
Kush and into Pakistan.
That night Obama spoke in a stern cadence, studded with
imperious pauses, as if to suggest that he, unlike the fickle George W. Bush,
was going to wage the Afghan war until it was won. But he knew better. And so
did his high command–even Stanley McChrystal and David Petreaus, who had
trademarked the counter-insurgency strategy.
There was nothing to win in
Afghanistan. Out on that distant rim of the world, there weren't even any
standards to gauge military success. This was meant to be a punitive war, pure
and simple, designed to draw as much blood as possible, an obscene war fought
largely by remote-controlled drones attacking peasant villages with murderous
indiscretion.
Afterwards, the American peace movement could only bray in
impotent outrage. But
as Obama's wars spread from Afghanistan and Iraq to
Pakistan and Yemen, Somalia and Libya, outside of the redoubtable Catholic
Workers and Quakers and a few Code Pinkers -- the last flickering moral lights in
the nation -- even those empty yawps of protest dissipated into whispered
lamentations, hushed murmurs of disillusionment. Could it be that the American
Left had gone extinct as any kind of potent political force and it took the
presidency of Barack Obama to prove it?
And what of Obama's spellbound followers, those youthful
crusaders who saw him illumined in the sacral glow of his ethereal rhetoric and
cleaved to him during the hard slog of two campaigns with a near-religious
devotion? What was running through their minds when the mists finally parted
to reveal that Obama was implementing cunning tracings of Bush-era policies on
everything from the indefinite detention of uncharged prisoners in the war on
terror to raids on medical marijuana distributors in states where medical pot
has been legalized? What, indeed.
Illusions die hard, especially when shattered by cruise
missiles.
"... Napoleon didn't mean fatalism by this, rather that political action is unavoidable if you want personal and national glory. It requires a mastery of fortune, and a willingness to be ruthless when necessary. If this sounds Machiavellian, that's because it is - Machiavelli's arguments about politics informed Napoleon's self-consciousness, whether in appraising fortune as a woman or a river to be tamed and harnessed, or assuming that in politics it is better to be feared than loved. Such views went hand in hand with the grand visions of politics outlined in the ancient histories and biographies Napoleon revered as a young man. "Bloodletting is among the ingredients of political medicine" was Napoleon's cool if brutal reminder of an ever-present item on his exhausting schedule. ..."
"... Those chickenhawk neocons like Hillary, Kagan or Michael Leeden do not want to die, they want that somebody else died for them implementing their crazy imperial ambitions. ..."
"... The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an "official narrative" that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between "the truth" as defined by the ruling classes and any other "truth" that contradicts their narrative. ..."
On July 22, 1789, a week after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote
to his older brother, Joseph, that there was nothing much to worry about. "Calm will return. In a
month." His timing was off, but perhaps he took the misjudgment to heart because he spent the rest
of his life trying to bring glory and order to France by building a new sort of empire. By the time
he was crowned emperor on Dec. 2, 1804, he could say, "I am the Revolution." It was, according to
the historian Andrew Roberts's epically scaled new biography, "Napoleon: A Life," both the ultimate
triumph of the self-made man, an outsider from Corsica who rose to the apex of French political life,
and simultaneously a "defining moment of the Enlightenment," fixing the "best" of the French Revolution
through his legal, educational and administrative reforms. Such broad contours get at what Napoleon
meant by saying to his literary hero Goethe at a meeting in Erfurt, "Politics is fate."
Napoleon didn't mean fatalism by this, rather that political action is unavoidable if you
want personal and national glory. It requires a mastery of fortune, and a willingness to be ruthless
when necessary. If this sounds Machiavellian, that's because it is - Machiavelli's arguments about
politics informed Napoleon's self-consciousness, whether in appraising fortune as a woman or a river
to be tamed and harnessed, or assuming that in politics it is better to be feared than loved. Such
views went hand in hand with the grand visions of politics outlined in the ancient histories and
biographies Napoleon revered as a young man. "Bloodletting is among the ingredients of political
medicine" was Napoleon's cool if brutal reminder of an ever-present item on his exhausting schedule.
His strategy always included dashing off thousands of letters and plans, in a personal regime
calling for little sleep, much haste and a penchant for being read to while taking baths so as not
to waste even a minute. He compartmentalized ruthlessly, changing tack between lobbying for more
shoes and brandy for the army at one minute, to directing the personal lives of his siblings or writing
love letters to the notorious Josephine at another; here ensuring extravagant financial "contributions"
from those whom he had vanquished, there discussing the booty to send back to Paris, particularly
from the extraordinary expedition in Egypt where his "savants had missed nothing." The personal and
the political ran alongside each other in his mind.
Yet when his longtime collaborator but fair-weather political friend, the diplomat Charles-Maurice
de Talleyrand, suggested that Napoleon try to make those he conquered learn to love France, Napoleon
replied that this was an irrelevance. "Aimer: I don't really know what this means when applied to
politics," he said. Still, if grand strategy and national interest lay behind foreign affairs, there
were nevertheless personal rules of conduct to uphold. Talleyrand was a party to Napoleon's strategy
since supporting his coup d'état against the French Directory in 1799. That was O.K. And by short-selling
securities he made millions for himself. But he was called out by Napoleon and dismissed as vice
grand elector when found facing both ways politically at a crucial moment.
Napoleon understood those temptations because he was also flexible enough to tilt toward the winning
side, regularly supporting any form of local religion that could help him militarily. Nonetheless,
Roberts's Napoleon is a soldier, statesman and "bona fide intellectual," who rode his luck for longer
than most intellectuals in politics ever do....
Duncan Kelly teaches political thought at the University of Cambridge.
" "Bloodletting is among the ingredients of political medicine" "
Those chickenhawk neocons like Hillary, Kagan or Michael Leeden do not want to die, they
want that somebody else died for them implementing their crazy imperial ambitions.
The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an "official narrative" that can
be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them.
This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious
scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive
ideological boundary, between "the truth" as defined by the ruling classes and any other "truth"
that contradicts their narrative.
The current "Russian hacking" hysteria is a perfect example of how this works. No one aside
from total morons actually believes this official narrative (the substance of which is beyond
ridiculous), not even the stooges selling it to us. This, however, is not a problem, because
it isn't intended to be believed it is intended to be accepted and repeated, more or less like
religious dogma.
ilsm -> libezkova...
US press is a propaganda mill.
The DNC is not the "US election", therefore how can hacking the
DNC be a serious issue?
Then they give front page to Mr. Lewis who says a deceitful line that 'Russians made Clinton
lose'. Nothing in the hack changed my observation that she is a war monger in wall st's employ.
They print and broadcast the lines fed. Lines which have no basis in truth.
If you think of what is said you have to conclude that criminals should have privacy and those
digging perpetrate harm when the "leaks" exposed truths the public is not supposed to know.
If the average American could think and get a few facts they would conclude there is no democracy
because the things they know are not true.
During the 1976 investigation of the CIA by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by
Senator Frank Church, the dimensions of the Agency's involvement with the press became apparent
to several members of the panel, as well as to two or three investigators on the staff.
...Thus, contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community,
there is ample evidence that America's leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves
and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. "Let's not pick
on some poor reporters, for God's sake," William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church
committee's investigators. "Let's go to the managements. They were witting." In all, about
twenty‑five news organizations including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided
cover for the Agency.
== end of quote ==
This is not about DNC hacking. Hacking is just a smokescreen. The real game is to prevent any
change in the USA foreign policy, especially in Syria and toward Russia. That's why they tried
this "soft coup" against Trump. That's why NYT, CNN, etc published all those dirty stories.
Also many CIA bureaucrats do not want to be sent from bloated Washington headquarters to distant
lands to do what they are supposed to do -- collect intelligence, not to engage is domestic politics
(and they were fully engaged on the side of Hillary).
ilsm -> kthomas..., January 14, 2017 at 03:30 PM
Preparation and objects make one lucky.
Americans are remiss in ignoring Napoleon, many of his students, etc.
libezkova is worth reading.
The problem with HRC, Kagan or Leeden is they thought a new American century was strategy,
then silled a lot of snake oil.
ilsm said... , January 14, 2017 at 06:08 AM
The past year we have had two war parties tilt for the White House. Neither has strategy, both
morally bankrupt!
Rev Martin Luther King at Riverside Church in NYC Apr 1967.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> ilsm... , January 14, 2017 at 01:03 PM
[Awesome, Dude. THX. Should be mandatory reading for everyone that votes or expresses political
opinion in the US. As inappropriate as it is to cherry pick anything from this marvelous speech/sermon
out of context to its entirety, this one tidbit really stood out:] "... There's something strangely
inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward
Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese
children. There's something wrong with that press!..."
ilsm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , January 14, 2017 at 03:34 PM
I wonder had I read it as a young man would I have the courage to accept it the way I do now
after I have made all the wrong decisions.
He opened my eyes nearly as much as my friend Bob who had been an SF advisor at the province
level and confirmed everything written about the corruption and plundering of the RVN government.
MLK was incredibly aware of the truth on the ground in Vietnam.
"... FBI posted on its website more than 300 emails that Clinton had sent to an unnamed colleague not in the government - no doubt her adviser Sid Blumenthal - that had fallen into the hands of foreign powers. It turns out - and the Sunday night release proves this - that Blumenthal was hacked by intelligence agents from at least three foreign governments and that they obtained the emails Clinton had sent to him that contained state secrets. Sources believe that the hostile hackers were the Russians and the Chinese and the friendly hackers were the Israelis. ..."
"... Last Sunday's revelations make the case against Clinton far more serious than Comey presented it to be last summer. Indeed, Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been nominated by Trump to be attorney general and who has been a harsh critic of Clinton's, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he would step aside from any further investigation of Clinton, thereby acknowledging that the investigation will probably be opened again. ..."
"... One of the metrics that the DOJ examines in deciding whether to prosecute is an analysis of harm caused by the potential defendant. I have examined the newly released emails, and the state secrets have been whited out. Yet it is clear from the FBI analysis of them that real secrets were exposed by the nation's chief diplomat - meaning she violated an agreement she signed right after she took office, in which she essentially promised that she would not do what she eventually did. ..."
"... Anyone who thinks that the Clintons represent no threat to the Republic, or that they have no further political ambitions, are delusional. ..."
"... "the friendly hackers' (Israelis )" sounds like it's a page from the same book as "moderate rebels". Is there a name for this language? ..."
"... Begemot: yes, the probability that Clinton has serious dirt on Hussein is high. ..."
"... More like acknowledging the fact that being clear about not lumping Israel in with Russia and China is good for one's future prospects in the media business. Napolitano's got a wide truth-telling streak, so simply not mentioning the Israelis wasn't good enough. ..."
"... A minor but perhaps telling point. Loretta Lynch recently admitted that contrary to her previous denials, Hillary's emails and server were the subject of her infamous conversations with Bill Clinton on the airport tarmac. ..."
The case was briefly reopened 11 days before Election Day. The FBI announced it had stumbled upon
a potential treasure-trove of emails contained in a laptop jointly owned and used by Hillary Clinton's
closest aide, Huma Abedin, and her husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner. The FBI believed at the time
that the laptop contained nearly every email Abedin had received from Clinton. Weiner was under investigation
for various sexual crimes, and the FBI had obtained the laptop in its search for evidence against
him.
Then, a week later, the FBI announced that it had found nothing among the 650,000 emails in the
laptop that would cause it to reopen the Clinton case, and it closed the case a second time.
Donald Trump argued during the last weeks of the presidential election campaign that Clinton had
exposed state secrets to hostile foreign governments. FBI agents who disagreed with their boss's
decision not to seek the indictment of Clinton made the same arguments. Clinton denied vehemently
that she had caused any state secrets to pass into the hands of hostile foreign governments.
Then Trump was elected president of the United States.
Then Clinton left the public scene.
Then, last Sunday evening, during the NFL playoff game between the New York Giants and the Green
Bay Packers, the FBI posted on its website more than 300 emails that Clinton had sent to an unnamed
colleague not in the government - no doubt her adviser Sid Blumenthal - that had fallen into the
hands of foreign powers. It turns out - and the Sunday night release proves this - that Blumenthal
was hacked by intelligence agents from at least three foreign governments and that they obtained
the emails Clinton had sent to him that contained state secrets. Sources believe that the hostile
hackers were the Russians and the Chinese and the friendly hackers were the Israelis.
Last Sunday's revelations make the case against Clinton far more serious than Comey presented
it to be last summer. Indeed, Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been nominated by Trump to be attorney
general and who has been a harsh critic of Clinton's, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week
that he would step aside from any further investigation of Clinton, thereby acknowledging that the
investigation will probably be opened again.
One of the metrics that the DOJ examines in deciding whether to prosecute is an analysis of
harm caused by the potential defendant. I have examined the newly released emails, and the state
secrets have been whited out. Yet it is clear from the FBI analysis of them that real secrets were
exposed by the nation's chief diplomat - meaning she violated an agreement she signed right after
she took office, in which she essentially promised that she would not do what she eventually did.
The essence of the American justice system is the rule of law. The rule of law means that no one
is beneath the law's protections or above its obligations.
Should Clinton skate free so the Trump administration can turn the page? Should the new DOJ be
compassionate toward Clinton because of her humiliating election loss and likely retirement from
public life? Of course not.
She should be prosecuted as would anyone else who let loose secrets to our enemies and then lied
about it.
Copyright 2017 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.
This needs careful consideration, weighing up the pros and cons, determining what's in the
interest of the US republic. Let there be no rush to judgement.
Anyone who thinks that the Clintons represent no threat to the Republic, or that they have
no further political ambitions, are delusional. Jeff Sessions or Congress, or both, should
appoint a special prosecutor to investigate every aspect of the Clintons' conduct, and prosecute
them for every crime that they've committed. States should also be encouraged to open investigations
for criminal activities under state laws. The Clintons should spend the rest of their lives responding
to subpoenaes, facing trials, paying fines and serving prison time.
HRC, Billy boy, Loretta Lynch, Comey, Lois Lerner and the many other criminals and thugs in
the obama, bush and clinton administrations need to be prosecuted to show there is accountability
in government.
Anyone who has had a job involving the handling of classified material knows that Clinton's
actions violated the law. I appreciate Judge Napolitano's update on this case but remain mystified
as to why the issue even needs to be discussed.
Furthermore, the matter of motive seldom gets mentioned in public discussions. While Clinton's
e-mails were left in an unsecured state, the Clinton Foundation was getting tens of millions in
"donations" from the Russians and others, and former President Clinton was getting paid handsomely
for delivering a speech in Russia.
Not only is it reasonable to ask whether she - no, they - committed actual treason, it's
unreasonable not to ask!
Donations from the Russians? Which Russians? We do know that the Clinton Foundation was getting
donations from the Saudis, followed by Clinton approving a massive arms deal with them as Secretary
of State. Those same arms are being used for the slaughter in Yemen.
"She should be prosecuted as would anyone else who let loose secrets to our enemies and then
lied about it"
Especially since similar accusations are being lobbed at Trump. Not identical, of course, but
they can be compared-Trump putatively traitorously associated with Putin.
What's sauce for the gander . . .
But I don't understand this:
"Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been nominated by Trump to be attorney general and who has been
a harsh critic of Clinton's, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he would step
aside from any further investigation of Clinton, thereby acknowledging that the investigation
will probably be opened again."
Why would Sessions step aside? And why would that mean that the investigation will probably
be opened again?
Anyone who has had a job involving the handling of classified material knows that Clinton's
actions violated the law. I appreciate Judge Napolitano's update on this case but remain mystified
as to why the issue even needs to be discussed.
Furthermore, the matter of motive seldom gets mentioned in public discussions. While Clinton's
e-mails were left in an unsecured state, the Clinton Foundation was getting tens of millions
in "donations" from the Russians and others, and former President Clinton was getting paid
handsomely for delivering a speech in Russia.
Not only is it reasonable to ask whether she -- no, they -- committed actual treason, it's
unreasonable not to ask!
Donations from the Russians? Which Russians? We do know that the Clinton Foundation was
getting donations from the Saudis, followed by Clinton approving a massive arms deal with them
as Secretary of State. Those same arms are being used for the slaughter in Yemen.
I wish Hillary wasn't so modest and declared openly what motivated her to act as she did. The
reason why she used private email server is not because she is dumb, but because she is super
smart. You see, she foresaw the Russian hacking of the American election and took steps to minimize
the damage.
What would you do if you were Russian hacker – what is the first place that you would look
in for top secret files? The government run servers of course. You see how smart Hillary was?
She hid those sensitive documents in the last place any self-respecting hacker would look – on
a private server.
This shows how everybody misunderastimated Hillary. She was far ahead of the game and showed
ability of strategic thinking unmatched by anyone. I think that Americans made grave mistake for
not electing her as president and that US would have benefited greatly from having such a superpatriot,
not to mention visionary, as leader. I am also disappointed that the MSM didn't come up with this
most logical of explanations.
Donations from the Russians? Which Russians? We do know that the Clinton Foundation was getting
donations from the Saudis, followed by Clinton approving a massive arms deal with them as Secretary
of State. Those same arms are being used for the slaughter in Yemen.
I think he was referring to the fact that all countries spy on all other countries. Some of
them are enemy countries. The rest are intended by the shorthand, "friendly hackers." And nobody
does more "friendly" spying and hacking than the USA.
Anyone who thinks that the Clintons represent no threat to the Republic,or that they have no
further political ambitions, are delusional. Jeff Sessions or Congress, or both, should appoint
a special prosecutor to investigate every aspect of the Clintons' conduct, and prosecute them
for every crime that they've committed. States should also be encouraged to open investigations
for criminal activities under state laws. The Clintons should spend the rest of their lives
responding to subpoenaes, facing trials, paying fines and serving prison time.
Maybe that's the position that Christie and/or Guiliani have been saved for.
"the friendly hackers' (Israelis )" sounds like it's a page from the same book as "moderate
rebels".
Is there a name for this language?
I think he was referring to the fact that all countries spy on all other countries. Some
of them are enemy countries. The rest are intended by the shorthand, "friendly hackers." And
nobody does more "friendly" spying and hacking than the USA.
I wish Hillary wasn't so modest and declared openly what motivated her to act as she did. The
reason why she used private email server is not because she is dumb, but because she is super
smart. You see, she foresaw the Russian hacking of the American election and took steps to
minimize the damage.
What would you do if you were Russian hacker – what is the first place that you would look
in for top secret files? The government run servers of course. You see how smart Hillary was?
She hid those sensitive documents in the last place any self-respecting hacker would look –
on a private server.
This shows how everybody misunderastimated Hillary. She was far ahead of the game and showed
ability of strategic thinking unmatched by anyone. I think that Americans made grave mistake
for not electing her as president and that US would have benefited greatly from having such
a superpatriot, not to mention visionary, as leader. I am also disappointed that the MSM didn't
come up with this most logical of explanations.
I expect Hillary Clinton will get a pardon from Obama. All of this will then become moot. Unfortunately.
Prosecuting and jailing our masters sets a bad precedent.
I expect Hillary Clinton will get a pardon from Obama.
I don't think he can pardon her as she has not been convicted. He would have to grant her immunity
from prosecution. I don't think that is in his enumerated powers.
Begemot: yes, the probability that Clinton has serious dirt on Hussein is high.
Sources believe that the hostile hackers were the Russians and the Chinese and the friendly
hackers were the Israelis.
Lol, cute. Russian, Chinese hackers, penetrating US gov't and stealing US gov't secrets: "from
Hell's heart, I hack at thee." Israeli hackers, penetrating US gov't and stealing US gov't secrets:
"I'm only doing this because I love you."
Why would Sessions step aside? And why would that mean that the investigation will probably
be opened again?
I take it that Napolitano's reading of the tea leaves is that Sessions will appoint an independent
investigator.
I think he was referring to the fact that all countries spy on all other countries. Some
of them are enemy countries. The rest are intended by the shorthand, "friendly hackers." And
nobody does more "friendly" spying and hacking than the USA.
More like acknowledging the fact that being clear about not lumping Israel in with Russia
and China is good for one's future prospects in the media business. Napolitano's got a wide truth-telling
streak, so simply not mentioning the Israelis wasn't good enough.
What sort of clown thinks that Israel is less of an enemy of the US than China or Russia?
I do. I'd trust the Israelis, before I trusted the Chinese. Not that that's saying a whole
lot. There's a lot of daylight between my position and the "our greatest ally" position, but there's
some room between mine and the "Israel, China, Russia, same diff" position, too, I guess is what
I'm saying.
I expect Hillary Clinton will get a pardon from Obama. All of this will then become moot. Unfortunately.
Prosecuting and jailing our masters sets a bad precedent.
I expect Hillary Clinton will get a pardon from Obama.
I don't think he can pardon her as she has not been convicted. He would have to grant her
immunity from prosecution. I don't think that is in his enumerated powers.
In the United States, the pardon power for federal crimes is granted to the President of
the United States under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution which states
that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against
the United States, except in cases of impeachment." The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted
this language to include the power to grant pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of
sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites,
and amnesties.
Maybe amnesty. It will be interesting to see if he tries. She might have to admit guilt to
get amnesty.
I don't think he can pardon her as she has not been convicted. He would have to grant her
immunity from prosecution. I don't think that is in his enumerated powers.
I looked into this recently, and apparently, the presidential pardon is not so limited by reason
or logic. At least, it's not clear that it is.
A minor but perhaps telling point. Loretta Lynch recently admitted that contrary to her
previous denials, Hillary's emails and server were the subject of her infamous conversations with
Bill Clinton on the airport tarmac.
There are 3 ways we could reduce what we pay for health care:
(1) Ending the oligopoly power of the health insurance companies;
(2) Ending the doctor cartel;
(3) Reducing the monopoly power of Big Pharma.
Alas, the Republicans have no intention in doing any of this. So when they tell people they
want to lower their costs, they are talking to rich people. The cost to the rest of us will go
up if they have their way.
From what I read, and recall from data Anne has posted a number of times, pharma costs are about
10% of total health care costs, and run about 2X EU average, or Canada, if we adopt that as a
reference baseline. If we cut it in half, that would reduce our costs about 5%.
Doctors fees (physicians and clinical services in this reference) are about 20%. I think you
have mentioned before we pay about 2X typical EU wages. So if we cut that in half, it reduces
our costs about 10%.
Taken together, that's ~ 15% reduction. Not nothing, but in a few years of cost growth we are
back to current cost levels.
Do you see that differently?
I don't have offhand figures for what insurance overhead runs. I think reducing that is probably
the best argument for single payer, although comparisons to medicare overhead seem suspect (I'd
expect much lower overhead percentages when much of your costs you are processing are $40K end
of life hospital events vs. routine GP visits.) So one might zero out the profit, and reduce costs
by having one IT/billing system. What's the scale of the opportunity here - another 15%?
Senate Takes Major Step Toward Repealing Health Care Law
By THOMAS KAPLAN and ROBERT PEAR
In its lengthy series of votes, the Senate rejected amendments proposed by Democrats that were
intended to allow imports of prescription drugs from Canada, protect rural hospitals and ensure
continued access to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, among other causes....
"... The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency ..."
"... No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola. ..."
"... Talk about pushing ahead with TPP, this piece is jaw dropping. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/tpp-how-obama-traded-away_b_13872926.html?section=us_politics ..."
"... I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date. I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression in central California. ..."
"... And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for Democrats. There is a piece in the WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue. ..."
"... Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers? ..."
"... Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel. ..."
"... Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do. ..."
"... The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money, the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries. ..."
"... In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative bodies. ..."
"... Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious 'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off, facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank. ..."
"... ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda or whatever ..."
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally
published at Inter Press Service and cross
posted from
Triple Crisis
President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA) on the first day of his presidency. The TPP may now be dead, thanks to Trump and
opposition by all major US presidential candidates. With its imminent demise almost certain, it is
important to draw on some lessons before it is buried.
Fraudulent Free Trade Agreement
The TPP is fraudulent as a free trade agreement, offering very little in terms of additional growth
due to trade liberalization, contrary to media hype. To be sure, the TPP had little to do with trade.
The US already has free trade agreements, of the bilateral or regional variety, with six of the 11
other countries in the pact. All twelve members also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
which concluded the single largest trade agreement ever, more than two decades ago in Marrakech –
contrary to the TPPA's claim to that status. Trade barriers with the remaining five countries were
already very low in most cases, so there is little room left for further trade liberalization in
the TPPA, except in the case of Vietnam, owing to the war until 1975 and its legacy of punitive legislation.
The most convenient computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model used for trade projections
makes unrealistic assumptions, including those about the consequences of trade liberalization. For
instance, such trade modelling exercises typically presume full employment as well as unchanging
trade and fiscal balances. Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that
almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million
from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities
at the national level.
Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations' automation and relocation
abroad. Thus, while most politically influential US corporations would do well from the TPP due to
strengthened intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms,
US workers would generally not. It is now generally believed these outcomes contributed to the backlash
against such globalization in the votes for Brexit and Trump.
Non-Trade Measures
According to the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), the US think-tank known
for cheerleading economic liberalization and globalization, the purported TPPA gains would mainly
come from additional investments, especially foreign direct investments, due to enhanced investor
rights. However, these claims have been disputed by most other analysts, including two US government
agencies, i.e., the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) and the US International
Trade Commission (ITC).
Much of the additional value of trade would come from 'non-trade issues'. Strengthening intellectual
property (IP) monopolies, typically held by powerful transnational corporations, would raise the
value of trade through higher trading prices, not more goods and services. Thus, strengthened IPRs
leading to higher prices for medicines are of particular concern.
The TPP would reinforce and extend patents, copyrights and related intellectual property protections.
Such protectionism raises the price of protected items, such as pharmaceutical drugs. In a 2015 case,
Martin Shkreli raised the price of a drug he had bought the rights to by 6000% from USD12.50 to USD750!
As there is no US law against such 'price-gouging', the US Attorney General could only prosecute
him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.
"Medecins Sans Frontieres" warned that the agreement would go down in history as the worst "cause
of needless suffering and death" in developing countries. In fact, contrary to the claim that stronger
IPRs would enhance research and development, there has been no evidence of increased research or
new medicines in recent decades for this reason.
Corporate-Friendly
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also supposed to go up thanks to the TPPA's ISDS provisions.
For instance, foreign companies would be able to sue TPP governments for ostensible loss of profits,
including potential future profits, due to changes in national regulation or policies even if in
the national or public interest.
ISDS would be enforced through ostensibly independent tribunals. This extrajudicial system would
supercede national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to
appeal.
Thus, rather than trade promotion, the main purpose of the TPPA has been to internationally promote
more corporate-friendly rules under US leadership. The 6350 page deal was negotiated by various working
groups where representatives of major, mainly US corporations were able to drive the agenda and advance
their interests. The final push to seek congressional support for the TPPA despite strong opposition
from the major presidential candidates made clear that the main US rationale and motive were geo-political,
to minimize China's growing influence.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary
Clinton the presidency as she came across as insincere in belatedly opposing the agreement which
she had previously praised and advocated. Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan
and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
The problem now is that while the Obama administration undermined trade multilateralism by its
unwillingness to honour the compromise which initiated the Doha Development Round, Trump's preference
for bilateral agreements benefiting the US is unlikely to provide the boost to multilateralism so
badly needed now. Unless the US and the EU embrace the spirit of compromise which started this round
of trade negotiations, the WTO and multilateralism more generally may never recover from the setbacks
of the last decade and a half.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost
Hillary Clinton the presidency
No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And
they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola.
I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date.
I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression
in central California.
And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for
Democrats. There is a piece in the
WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue.
Not knowing what he does not know may be beneficial. To be freed from the straitjacket of political
sophistry that has led to previous disasters for American workers is, perhaps, a positive.
I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
Corporations, Hollywood, Big Pharma and Silicon Valley will be hurt? Tough luck, they are there
to make profits and are no friend of American workers. Might as well say it, because of their
behavior, they are the enemy of progress for workers.
Short version:
Trump has done more for American workers and has obtained more net benefit out of the car companies,
before he's even sworn in than the Clintons did in ten collective years of 'public service'.
>I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
And I don't think you would even have to every time you can manage to look at what it costs*
to make something in China instead of the USA, and compare it to the retail price, you get a real
"whoa".** The price is just enough less to drive the US manufacturer themselves out of business,
most of the money *does* stay in the US but it goes to the top 0.1%.
This is more about control of the proles than economics, sometimes I think.
*like anybody can totally figure it out given the Chinese state's involvement in everything,
but we can make decent guesses
**I know that American mfg cost is generally 1/2 of retail price and sometimes as low as 1/3.
I'm talking about 1/10 to 1/20th for Chinese goods.
Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers?
Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy
profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part
of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had
low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks
show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel.
Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced
product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do.
It's more about dropping more of the top line to the bottom line. Along with the fake aristo
disdain for wage earners that seems to be a requirement for corporate managers.
That 35% tariff sure equals a lot of profits lost on cars made in Mexico. Therefore, they will
be made in America. Due to the competitive nature of auto sales, the lack of interest in teenagers
in buying cars, I think Detroit will not raise prices to match the labor cost difference. Also,
there will be even less demand for U.S. made cars as most of the Mexican factories will possibly
remain open for the Latin American market, which means even fewer exports of American made cars.
A scarcity of markets means lower prices.
The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money,
the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what
he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries.
The Chinese governments interest for many years was simply receiving the foreign money payments
and paying out the exchange in RMB.
Trump hasn't done a thing for American workers. Indiana taxpayers (American workers) are on
the hook for Carrier taking on roughly 700 jobs of the 2000 that Trump said he would "save". We
don't even know the deep details of that "deal". If anyone thinks that Carrier signed off on that
deal without the permission of Carrier's parent, United Technologies (a pure defense firm), I
have a bridge to sell them. What future "deal" did the American taxpayer (worker) get subjected
to when this "deal" was made behind closed doors to a defense contractor whose *only* means of
revenue is from the American taxpayer (worker)?
What about the citizens (workers) of Indiana who are going to carry the financial and social
burden of the 1300 Carrier workers that Trump promised (early on in his campaign) whose jobs he
would save. The carrier deal, in fact, was virtually the same deal that Pence had put on the table
a year ago.
United Technologies has *three* air conditioning brands; their Mexican lines are still open,
and the 700 jobs that Trump said he "saved" are not committed to any kind of permanent status
in the USA. Again, the Mexican manufacturing lines remain open, operating, and ready to accept
those jobs when Carrier thinks it's appropriate.
As for the auto companies? Please. Trump did NOTHING that wasn't already planned, or that wasn't
already inspired by market forces and in the works.
FORD on the cancelled Mexican plant:
http://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2017/01/04/we-didnt-cut-a-deal-with-trump-ford-on-canceled-mexican-plant
"'To be clear, Ford is still moving its production of small vehicles to Mexico. The Ford Focus
will still be produced in Mexico, just at an existing Mexican plant instead of the canceled plant.
"[T]he reason we are canceling our plant in Mexico, the main reason, is because we are seeing
a decline in demand for small vehicles here in North America.."
Trump is a fraud and an overt liar; he's a pure clinical narcissist who doesn't work for anyone
but his frail ego – ever seeking out his next source of narcissistic supply – a supply he has
been able to control from his early days from the happy accident of inherited wealth – going on
from there to use his inheritance to enrich himself at the expense of others.
Yes, American workers have been screwed over, but they have been screwed over mostly by Plutocrats
who have owned both parties for decades. Ironically (in the face of all the anti-immigration talk),
the vast majority of those Plutocrats have been *white, male* CEOs.
Anyone looking at Trump's early appointments and Cabinet nominees – not to mentioned his unhinged
comments and tweets – who is not scared stiff by the presence of this goon in the White House
– is suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias.
Why would you be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk? Especially if it were still
junk? If I were going to pay twice as much for something, I would rather that something be American
not-junk rather than Chinese junk.
Given the reality that the most modern manufacturing capacity in the world is Chinese when
it comes to consumer durables, it is racist to assume that "American" products are automatically
better. The disinvestment in American manufacturing would take decades to replace.
last night listening to some folks opine re starbucks as a ubiquitous bad, the defense was
they generally treat their employees ok, better than mcdonalds certainly, homeless people are
given a little space before they get cleared out after a few hours if they are civil, which seemed
to make the "striving to be good consumers, attempting to be socially responsible" lean towards
well maybe they guessed it might be ok to go there. They all have i phones, however, and I didn't
say it as I like my job, but was thinking "how many suicide nets does starbucks have in their
global domain?" To call that racist makes me wonder about your comment, maybe if you had said
is it racist, but no further, and in direct relation to that, china got manufacturing
because suicide nets are a solution for apple that would not go over well around here. Maybe that's
why they produce there, and not because the chinese are better at manufacturing?
You can only play the race card but so many times before you wear it out. And it is pretty
thin.
I assume that American-made Science Diet dog food won't have poison in it the way I have to
assume Chinese dog food may have. I assume that American-made sheet rock won't offgas sulfur dioxide
gas which turns into sulfuric acid in moist air ( as in Florida), and destroys household appliances
in a year or less. The way some Chinese high-sulfur sheetrock did at least once in Florida. I
assume an American-made Oakland-Bay-Bridge at twice the price would not now be already having
the decay and bad-build problems which the Cheap China Crap Construction bridge is already having.
Shall I go on?
You sound like a Free Trade Treason hasbarist for China. In fact, I think you are.
You still want to call me racist? Well . . . kiss me, I'm deplorable.
>Trump's plan to enter into bi-lateral trade deals (after supposedly tearing up extant pacts)
Well we never know what the frell he is actually going to do, sure can't judge by what he says.
If he did start with and modifies "extant pacts", that would actually make a lot of sense
and maybe even go decently well at a more-than-glacial speed.
Of course – I hate when people speculate, and especially when they speculate that somebody
is going to do literally the opposite of what they said they were going to do, yet here I am doing
exactly that. My only excuse is that his personality is not to get that deep into anything, so
it just seems more likely that he would simply focus on whatever specific aspect of a given treatry
is problematical, wack a bit at that (for better or worse), and move on.
Bi-lateral trade deals can focus on relatively narrow trade areas and in this case those needn't
so much time to get negotiated and passed. I don't know if that is Trump's strategy.
This is a great summary of the recent fate of the TPP and the reasons for it. It may not be
dead yet – even though it has been unceremoniously tossed on the cart of the dead (monty python).
But the thinking behind it is terminal. Why no one ever discussed the military aspect of the TPP
can be attributed to its strict secrecy. It was obvious to lots of people that the TPP was NATO
for the Pacific and China was the target, and equally obvious that it was bad policy from any
perspective. Bilateral trade will survive this debacle and world trade will continue – but trade
will not be such a military tool, hopefully. It will be a good thing.
It was not obvious to me. It is still not obvious to me. "China" was the excuse advanced for
TPP late in the day when the Tradesters discovered that popular sentiment was turning against
the Corporate Globalonial Plantationist purpose of the TPP, and hence against the TPP itself.
First, she is much closer to correct than you re the purpose of TPP. Secondly, why would you
argue that the 'Tradesters' had to resort to 'China' in order to attempt to sell their putrid
deal if 'China' was not viewed by said 'Tradesters' as a word loaded with a host of negative associations,
most of which are based on typical US foreign policy jingoistic nonsense rooted in what is certainly
a classic case of US/Western supremacist nonsense, if not the more obvious, overt racism now making
a rather spectacular comeback?
Lesson learned is to avoid electing corrupt candidates that call it a gold standard right
away you know who is receiving, and who is paying, the gold.
And then there are sitting elected officials pushing the crap with all their might, anticipating
their gold shares maturing as soon as they leave office
Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned
voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
Bravo! "Concerned voters" is a much better descriptor than "deplorables", "working class whites"
or even, in this case, "working class voters" as there were also sovereignty issues.
The wording of your comment is rather ambiguous – are you stating that "statistics show" that
"sexism played a big role" in the swing states? Where do you situate yourself relative to Lambert's
discussion of the subject?
The sexism card is wearing about as thin as the racism card is wearing. Clinton lost support
in the Midwest when she revealed herself to be a Free Trade Traitor against America by stating
that she would put her husband, NAFTA Bill, in charge of the economic recovery when she got elected.
That expression of support for anti-American Trade Treason guaranteed her loss right there.
Statistics show . . . that figures lie when liars figure.
" trade agreements take a long time to negotiate, typically because they also include services,
and those take way longer to sort out than the physical goods side."
My first reaction: good. Services shouldn't be in trade pacts. And if they take a long time to
get done, all the better. The fetish for "trade pacts" is mostly destructive.
Fundamentally: they're superfluous. People have always traded, mostly without "pacts." When
it comes to "absolute advantage," literally trading apples for oranges, everybody really does
benefit and barriers melt away. Under modern conditions. "comparative advantage" is a falsehood,
as a close look at the conditions Ricardo set for it will show. It requires that labor and capital
don't move at all freely between countries – true in his day, but certainly not in ours. Bizarrely,
his theory is being used, dishonestly, to promote the destructive free movement of capital, and
that's what "services" mostly means.
The point that trade agreements take a long time is probably true, as well as not an objection;
but it isn't an argument for multilateral agreements like the TPP; it's an argument for the WTO,
if it had been done right. The plan was to set up an overarching, worldwide structure for trade.
But it should have been done under the UN, and it shouldn't include attacks on sovereignty like
the tribunals. The real reason for other agreements is that the requirement for consensus in the
WTO put up a dead end sign: thus far, and no farther. So the "Washington Consensus" tried for
work arounds. But the consensus model makes sense, and the rules should be universal.
The real gist of Ricardo is that trade is NOT an unmitigated good. It easily becomes more or
less subtle forms of imperialism. Furthermore, low trade barriers make sense. Diversity depends
on barriers. They encourage a modicum of self-reliance and provide firewalls so that a financial
collapse in one country doesn't automatically go world-wide. We probably had it right in the 50s
and 60s, when the economy was far healthier. Granted, there were still a lot of actual colonies
then, so it's hard to tell how that translates to modern conditions.
I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't very familiar here. We should beware of capitalist
ideologies.
The fetish for Multilaterialism is also destructive. Multilateralism is just "french" for Corporate
Globalonial Plantationist trade pacts designed to exterminate sovereignty for dozens of countries
at a time.
" Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs
would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone.
There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national
level."
Yes, that's what these "trade agreements" are FOR. You don't think the PTB take bullshit economics
seriously, do you?
As an aside, I never particularly liked the sovereignty argument against TPP (which I note
is omitted from this article) because I felt it painted with an overly broad brush. More specifically,
I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to be
bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example.
TPP would have been bad not because it compromised national sovereignty, but because of the
reasons for which it did so. Overriding national legislation to protect human rights is one thing.
Overriding it to grant multinational corporations more power over workers, consumers and governments
is quite another.
"I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to
be bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example."
In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories
are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative
bodies.
The Pacific Rim countries might approve "needless suffering and death" if it keeps them in
the west's good books.
Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious
'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly
established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off,
facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank.
These agreements, whether global or bilateral, are an invitation to central bankers to become
traitors to their own country; an attempt to take over a nation without firing a shot, a blast
from a future that permits only trade blocks and no countries.
I am convinced what the world really wants is a debate on the shape of world government. I
do not agree that the chap with the most printed money calls the shots. We are better than that.
ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative
process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda
or whatever . Imagine if Vladimir Putin were to accomplish a legislative objective in the
U.S. simply by launching an ISDS extortion suit via a Russian state owned enterprise and a willing
ISDS tribunal outside the U.S. court system and not at all accountable to U.S. interests. What
would the pro TPP corporate Dems have to say then?
The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke.
Notable quotes:
"... People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their minds. ..."
"... People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe it. ..."
"... People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story". Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday Night Live sketch about Trump. ..."
"... "This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet another hit." ..."
"... It's just partisan warfare. ..."
"... "Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy. ..."
"... CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else? ..."
"... Glenn Greenwald explains the whole vendetta against Trump based on sham data. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/ ..."
"... With release of the buzz feed data, they overplayed their hand, destroyed their narrative, embarrassed themselves, and ultimately strengthened Trump. ..."
"... "they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man. ..."
"... The long knives will come out during the next recession ..."
"... This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information about Bush43 as a draft dodger. ..."
"... In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus. ..."
"... In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect, though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the buzz feed overreach. ..."
"... Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is Putin's fault' narrative comes in. ..."
"... Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security. ..."
"... Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very sick. ..."
"... There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and too specific. ..."
"... the election should never been about Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary could never wrap here head around. ..."
"... Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news. ..."
The thing about Trump is that people can imagine he's the kind of guy who would enjoy being urinated
on by Russian prostitutes, even if the allegations are untrue. He is so into gold and into women.
People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump
will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their
minds.
I know a lot of people who dislike Trump, and none of them seem to believe the buzzfeed story.
People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe
it.
People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story".
Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday
Night Live sketch about Trump.
"This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials
who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet
another hit."
Kind of like Comey was a huge embarrassment to Republicans? I don't think so. It's just
partisan warfare.
"Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about
how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy.
"This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials
who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet
another hit."
CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else?
Like Trump doesn't use "sham data" and innuendo. Who cares? Poetic justice. Trump is just going
to waste his time pursuing vendettas against those who sullied his good name.
Maybe that drama will "crowd out" some of his plans to enact Paul Ryan's agenda. Maybe it will
cause a backlash among those Americans interested in a free press and democratic norms.
Like I said some of your ideas are good, but they are tarnished by some of the really stupid
things you say by association.
We already know that Trump has a Teflon shield. If the establishment is going to get him, they
damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables. Trumped up charges
won't cut it.
Should-Read: Josh Marshall: What You Didn't See: "What may be the most significant news of
the day barely made a ripple...
...Donald Trump, ten days from becoming President, has an approval rating of 37%. Most presidents
seldom get so low. Some never do. For ten days away from inauguration it's totally unprecedented....
Each of the last three presidents had approval ratings of at least 65% during their presidential
transitions.... Curiously absent from press coverage [has been that] Trump, his agenda and his
party are deeply unpopular... [and have] gotten steadily more unpopular over the last four weeks..."
"they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing
will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man.
The long knives will come out during the next recession, when Trump will have proven
his incompetence. Pretense for impeachment is unknowable, but it better be good!
This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information
about Bush43 as a draft dodger.
In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness
for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus.
In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect,
though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the
buzz feed overreach.
Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative.
There was an interesting movie about the Rather case staring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchette.
Trump is engaging in the same thuggish behavior as Republicans used against Rather and his producer
in that case. Or course CBS folded because they had regulatory changes about affiliate ownership
before the Bush administration.
We can expect the same cowardice from our corporate media regarding the Trump administration.
It would be interesting to know if Trump had something to do with release of the buzz feed report.
It would make Trump smarter than I think he really is. My understanding is that John McCain, who
hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before buzz feed released it.
"My understanding is that John McCain, who hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before
buzz feed released it." A lot of people knew about it. The eight leading congress people on the
intelligence committees knew about it. David Corn reported about it in October in Mother Jones.
"Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative."
I'll agree with you on this. Obama went more positive in 2008 and 2012 than Hillary did in
2016 and was successful at the polls. Negative campaigning works but seems like too much of it
depresses turnout.
Part of it is that establishment Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost.
It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject.
Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that
Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is
Putin's fault' narrative comes in.
Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify
Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security.
Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very
sick.
There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and
too specific.
The Republican's policy ideas are awful. Trump will be a terrible president. Putin wants us
weak, and the Republican party will deliver just as it did during the Bush presidency.
We will make little progress on our important problems, and make massive blunders that cost
us for decades.
Global warming will continue to improve the Russian Climate. Progress on renewable energy will
be slowed, improving the market for Russian oil and gas. The US will worsen its healthcare problems.
The US will exacerbate its inequality. The toxic republican attitude toward the institutions of
democracy will come from all three branches of the federal government, and most state governments.
Putin doesn't like Hillary. At the time, she said Putin's election was rigged. And they were pushing
Russia on all fronts. Trump is an isolationist who doesn't care about human rights or freedom
of the press.
Agreed. There were probably better Putin narratives, and the election should never been about
Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary
could never wrap here head around.
Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of
fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news.
This Paul Wood. is very funny "I understand the CIA believes it is credible..." The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. But
despite this Paul wood provided a
good (albeit very dirty) hatchet job. Looks like neocons declared the open war on Trump. And as
they are just a flavor of Trotskyites they are are capable of everything as they preach " the end justifies
the means"... with their global neoliberal revolution under threat they can do as low as gangsters.
Fake evidence is OK form in the best the "end justified the means" way.
Notable quotes:
"... Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele ..."
"... As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information. ..."
"... Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself, outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" ..."
"... He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together". ..."
"... The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries. ..."
"... Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. ..."
"... At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have cameras." ..."
"Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?"
By Paul Wood...BBC News...Washington...1-12-2017...47 minutes ago
"Donald Trump has described as "fake news" allegations published in some media that his election
team colluded with Russia - and that Russia held compromising material about his private life.
The BBC's Paul Wood saw the allegations before the election, and reports on the fallout now they
have come to light.
The significance of these allegations is that, if true, the president-elect of the United States
would be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.
I understand the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat - or compromising
material - on the next US commander in chief. At the same time a joint taskforce, which includes
the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money
to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.
Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by
a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele.
As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy
giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB,
the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.
They told him that Mr Trump had been filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential
suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel. I know this because the Washington political research company
that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.
The BBC decided not to use it then, for the very good reason that without seeing the tape -
if it exists - we could not know if the claims were true. The detail of the allegations were certainly
lurid. The entire series of reports has now been posted by BuzzFeed.
[Image of Trump's Tweet]
Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself,
outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" Later, at his much-awaited
news conference, he was unrestrained. "A thing like that should have never been written," he said,
"and certainly should never have been released."
He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together".
The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump
superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries.
Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter.
But these are not political hacks - their usual line of work is country analysis and commercial
risk assessment, similar to the former MI6 agent's consultancy. He, apparently, gave his dossier
to the FBI against the firm's advice.
[Photo of Trump in Moscow, 2013 w/beauty contestants]
And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the
president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by
"the head of an East European intelligence agency".
Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with
the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more
than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the
Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".
'Be very careful'
The claims of Russian kompromat on Mr Trump were "credible", the CIA believed. That is why
- according to the New York Times and Washington Post - these claims ended up on President Barack
Obama's desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Mr Trump
himself.
Mr Trump did visit Moscow in November 2013, the date the main tape is supposed to have been
made. There is TV footage of him at the Miss Universe contest. Any visitor to a grand hotel in
Moscow would be wise to assume that their room comes equipped with hidden cameras and microphones
as well as a mini-bar.
At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very
careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have
cameras." So the Russian security services have made obtaining kompromat an art form.
One Russian specialist told me that Vladimir Putin himself sometimes says there is kompromat
on him - though perhaps he is joking. The specialist went on to tell me that FSB officers are
prone to boasting about having tapes on public figures, and to be careful of any statements they
might make.
A former CIA officer told me he had spoken by phone to a serving FSB officer who talked about
the tapes. He concluded: "It's hokey as hell."
Mr Trump and his supporters are right to point out that these are unsubstantiated allegations.
But it is not just sex, it is money too. The former MI6 agent's report detailed alleged attempts
by the Kremlin to offer Mr Trump lucrative "sweetheart deals" in Russia that would buy his loyalty.
Mr Trump turned these down, and indeed has done little real business in Russia. But a joint
intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid
money to his campaign through his associates.
Legal applications
On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian
banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify
only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything -
giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard
from other sources.
"I'm going to write a story that says " I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he
would reply, if my information was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.
Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly -
a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential
campaign.
It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot
act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.
The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic,
US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice.
For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies:
the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency,
responsible for electronic spying.
Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application.
They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic
records from two Russian banks.
Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a
more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order
was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.
Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign
citizens or foreign entities - in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation
is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony
offence.
A lawyer- outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case - told me that three
of Mr Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump,"
he said.
I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any
wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied
any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the
Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding
back "explosive information" about Mr Trump.
Mr Reid sent his letter after getting an intelligence briefing, along with other senior figures
in Congress. Only eight people were present: the chairs and ranking minority members of the House
and Senate intelligence committees, and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in
Congress, the "gang of eight" as they are sometimes called. Normally, senior staff attend "gang
of eight" intelligence briefings, but not this time. The Congressional leaders were not even allowed
to take notes.
'Puppet'
In the letter to the FBI director, James Comey, Mr Reid said: "In my communications with you
and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess
explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers,
and the Russian government - a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr
Trump praises at every opportunity.
"The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this
information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing
it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
The CIA, FBI, Justice and Treasury all refused to comment when I approached them after hearing
about the Fisa warrant.
It is not clear what will happen to the inter-agency investigation under President Trump -
or even if the taskforce is continuing its work now. The Russians have denied any attempt to influence
the president-elect - with either money or a blackmail tape.
If a tape exists, the Russians would hardly give it up, though some hope to encourage a disloyal
FSB officer who might want to make some serious money. Before the election, Larry Flynt, publisher
of the pornographic magazine Hustler, put up a million dollars for incriminating tape of Mr Trump.
Penthouse has now followed with its own offer of a million dollars for the Ritz-Carlton tape (if
it exists).
It is an extraordinary situation, 10 days before Mr Trump is sworn into office, but it was
foreshadowed during the campaign.
During the final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a "puppet" of Russia's
leader, Vladimir Putin. "No puppet. No puppet," Mr Trump interjected, talking over Mrs Clinton.
"You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet."
In a New York Times op-ed in August, the former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote:
"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
Agent; puppet - both terms imply some measure of influence or control by Moscow.
Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni
durak" - a useful fool.
The background to those statements was information held - at the time - within the intelligence
community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration,
they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow."
"... Bill Clinton's generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white working class as a bastion of reactionary racism. Fred Dutton, who served on the McGovern-Fraser Commission in 1970 , saw the white working class as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." This paved the way for the creation of the modern Democratic coalition. Obama is simply the latest in a long line of party leaders who have bought into the ideology of these "new" Democrats, and he has governed likewise, with commercial policies that ravaged the heartland. ..."
Democrats can't win until they recognize how bad Obama's financial policies were
He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.
By Matt Stoller January 12 at 8:25 AM
During his final news conference of 2016, in mid-December, President Obama criticized Democratic
efforts during the election. "Where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte-sipping,
you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks," Obama said, "we have to be in those communities."
In fact, he went on, being in those communities - "going to fish-fries and sitting in VFW halls
and talking to farmers" - is how, by his account, he became president. It's true that Obama is
skilled at projecting a populist image; he beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa in 2008, for instance,
partly by attacking agriculture monopolies .
But Obama can't place the blame for Clinton's poor performance purely on her campaign. On the
contrary, the past eight years of policymaking have damaged Democrats at all levels. Recovering
Democratic strength will require the party's leaders to come to terms with what it has become
- and the role Obama played in bringing it to this point.
Two key elements characterized the kind of domestic political economy the administration pursued:
The first was the foreclosure crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts. The resulting policy framework
of Tim Geithner's Treasury Department was, in effect, a wholesale attack on the American home
(the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power. The second was
the administration's pro-monopoly policies, which crushed the rural areas that in 2016 lost voter
turnout and swung to Donald Trump.
Obama didn't cause the financial panic, and he is only partially responsible for the bailouts,
as most of them were passed before he was elected. But financial collapses, while bad for the
country, are opportunities for elected leaders to reorganize our culture. Franklin Roosevelt took
a frozen banking system and created the New Deal. Ronald Reagan used the sharp recession of the
early 1980s to seriously damage unions. In January 2009, Obama had overwhelming Democratic majorities
in Congress, $350 billion of no-strings-attached bailout money and enormous legal latitude. What
did he do to reshape a country on its back?
First, he saved the financial system. A financial system in collapse has to allocate losses.
In this case, big banks and homeowners both experienced losses, and it was up to the Obama administration
to decide who should bear those burdens. Typically, such losses would be shared between debtors
and creditors, through a deal like the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s or bankruptcy
reform. But the Obama administration took a different approach. Rather than forcing some burden-sharing
between banks and homeowners through bankruptcy reform or debt relief, Obama prioritized creditor
rights, placing most of the burden on borrowers. This kept big banks functional and ensured that
financiers would maintain their positions in the recovery. At a 2010 hearing, Damon Silvers, vice
chairman of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the bailouts,
told Obama's Treasury Department: "We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure
crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both."
Second, Obama's administration let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the
crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored.
Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors.
In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC
for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while
legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still
said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to
act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been
indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.
Third, Obama enabled and encouraged roughly 9 million foreclosures. This was Geithner's explicit
policy at Treasury. The Obama administration put together a foreclosure program that it marketed
as a way to help homeowners, but when Elizabeth Warren, then chairman of the Congressional Oversight
Panel, grilled Geithner on why the program wasn't stopping foreclosures, he said that really wasn't
the point. The program, in his view, was working. "We estimate that they can handle 10 million
foreclosures, over time," Geithner said - referring to the banks. "This program will help foam
the runway for them." For Geithner, the most productive economic policy was to get banks back
to business as usual.
Nor did Obama do much about monopolies. While his administration engaged in a few mild challenges
toward the end of his term, 2015 saw a record wave of mergers and acquisitions, and 2016 was another
busy year. In nearly every sector of the economy, from pharmaceuticals to telecom to Internet
platforms to airlines, power has concentrated. And this administration, like George W. Bush's
before it, did not prosecute a single significant monopoly under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Instead, in the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after such villains as music
teachers and ice skating instructors for ostensible anti-competitive behavior. This is very much
a parallel of the financial crisis, as elites operate without legal constraints while the rest
of us toil under an excess of bureaucracy.
With these policies in place, it's no surprise that Thomas Piketty and others have detected
skyrocketing inequality, that most jobs created in the past eight years have been temporary or
part time, or that lifespans in white America are dropping . When Democratic leaders don't protect
the people, the people get poorer, they get angry, and more of them die.
Yes, Obama prevented an even greater collapse in 2009. But he also failed to prosecute the
banking executives responsible for the housing crisis, then approved a foreclosure wave under
the guise of helping homeowners. Though 58 percent of Americans were in favor of government action
to halt foreclosures, Obama's administration balked. And voters noticed. Fewer than four in 10
Americans were happy with his economic policies this time last year (though that was an all-time
high for Obama). And by Election Day, 75 percent of voters were looking for someone who could
take the country back "from the rich and powerful," something unlikely to be done by members of
the party that let the financiers behind the 2008 financial crisis walk free.
This isn't to say voters are, on balance, any more thrilled with what Republicans have to offer,
nor should they be. But that doesn't guarantee Democrats easy wins. Throughout American history,
when voters have felt abandoned by both parties, turnout has collapsed - and 2016, scraping along
20-year turnout lows, was no exception. Turnout in the Rust Belt , where Clinton's path to victory
dissolved, was especially low in comparison to 2012.
Trump, who is either tremendously lucky or worryingly perceptive, ran his campaign like a pre-1930s
Republican. He did best in rural areas, uniting white farmers, white industrial workers and certain
parts of big business behind tariffs and anti-immigration walls. While it's impossible to know
what he will really do for these voters, the coalition he summoned has a long, if not recent,
history in America.
Democrats have long believed that theirs is the party of the people. Therefore, when Trump
co-opts populist language, such as saying he represents the "forgotten" man, it seems absurd -
and it is. After all, that's what Democrats do, right? Thus, many Democrats have assumed that
Trump's appeal can only be explained by personal bigotry - and it's also true that Trump trafficks
in racist and nativist rhetoric. But the reality is that the Democratic Party has been slipping
away from the working class for some time, and Obama's presidency hastened rather than reversed
that departure. Republicans, hardly worker-friendly themselves, simply capitalized on it.
There's history here: In the 1970s, a wave of young liberals, Bill Clinton among them, destroyed
the populist Democratic Party they had inherited from the New Dealers of the 1930s. The contours
of this ideological fight were complex, but the gist was: Before the '70s, Democrats were suspicious
of big business. They used anti-monopoly policies to fight oligarchy and financial manipulation.
Creating competition in open markets, breaking up concentrations of private power, and protecting
labor and farmer rights were understood as the essence of ensuring that our commercial society
was democratic and protected from big money.
Bill Clinton's generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be
virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white
working class as a bastion of reactionary racism. Fred Dutton, who served on the McGovern-Fraser
Commission in 1970 , saw the white working class as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism
and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." This paved the way for the creation of the modern Democratic
coalition. Obama is simply the latest in a long line of party leaders who have bought into the
ideology of these "new" Democrats, and he has governed likewise, with commercial policies that
ravaged the heartland.
As a result, while our culture has become more tolerant over the past 40 years, power in our
society has once again been concentrated in the hands of a small group of billionaires. You can
see this everywhere, if you look. Warren Buffett, who campaigned with Hillary Clinton, recently
purchased chunks of the remaining consolidated airlines, which have the power not only to charge
you to use the overhead bin but also to kill cities simply by choosing to fly elsewhere. Internet
monopolies increasingly control the flow of news and media revenue. Meatpackers have re-created
a brutal sharecropper-type system of commercial exploitation. And health insurers, drugstores
and hospitals continue to consolidate, partially as a response to Obamacare and its lack of a
public option for health coverage.
Many Democrats ascribe problems with Obama's policies to Republican opposition. The president
himself does not. "Our policies are so awesome," he once told staffers. "Why can't you guys do
a better job selling them?" The problem, in other words, is ideological.
Many Democrats think that Trump supporters voted against their own economic interests. But
voters don't want concentrated financial power that deigns to redistribute some cash, along with
weak consumer protection laws. They want jobs. They want to be free to govern themselves. Trump
is not exactly pitching self-government. But he is offering a wall of sorts to protect voters
against neo-liberals who consolidate financial power, ship jobs abroad and replace paychecks with
food stamps. Democrats should have something better to offer working people. If they did, they
could have won in November. In the wreckage of this last administration, they didn't.
Intelligence Agencies Ask Americans to "Trust, Don't Verify" in New Cold War
By Mark Weisbrot
Just as the first casualty of war is said to be the truth, the first casualty of the New Cold War is irony. Our most prominent
journalists seem to have missed the Orwellian irony of Senator John McCain asking Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James
Clapper at Friday's Senate hearings if Julian Assange has any credibility. Assange has maintained that the hacked or leaked emails
of Democratic Party officials did not come from the Russian government, or any other government.
As is well known, Clapper lied to Congress about a serious violation of the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans.
This lie is a crime for which he actually could have been prosecuted.
In March 2013, Clapper falsely answered, "No, sir" to the question, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions,
or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He later admitted that his answer was untrue.
Clapper lied again in Friday's testimony, saying that Assange was "under indictment" for "a sexual crime." In fact, Assange
has not been indicted for anything, and the government of Sweden has never even charged him with a crime. In reality, he is a
political prisoner, and the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detention has found that he has been arbitrarily detained
since 2010 by the UK and Sweden, and ordered his release and compensation. He has offered from the beginning of his political
persecution to co-operate with the Swedish authorities in any investigation, and to be interviewed at any time in London. He could
not safely return to Sweden without guarantees that he would not be sent to the US, where he currently faces a high likelihood
of imprisonment (even before any trial) for having published leaked documents that exposed US war crimes and other embarrassments.
For years, neither Sweden nor the UK would agree to that because, it appears, their foreign ministries are collaborating with
the US government to keep him imprisoned.
For anyone on a jury who had to weigh the testimony of Clapper against that of Assange, it would be a no-brainer. Not only
is Clapper a proven and serial liar, but in 10 years of WikiLeaks revelations, Assange has never been shown to have lied about
anything.
That said, it is entirely possible the Russian government was involved in the hacking of emails here, and that Assange and
WikiLeaks would not necessarily be able to identify the original source of the leaks, which is very difficult to do. However,
We the People have yet to be presented with evidence that Russian hacking is what actually happened.
But the media has become so distracted with the festivities at America's new 1950's theme party, hating on Putin and Russia
like there's no tomorrow, that the lack of evidence has become almost irrelevant to the big media conversation. The DNI report
released on Friday, supposedly to provide the public with evidence that the Russian government had indeed hacked emails in order
to influence the US elections, contained no actual evidence that they did so. There was a lot of evidence that Trump was the preferred
candidate of Putin and his government. But we didn't need evidence for this; pure logic would have sufficed. What government wouldn't
favor a candidate who promises better relations with them?
About half of the report was littered with a long rant against Russian-sponsored media, including the television station Russia
Today. Here is another deep irony: the media that swung the election for Trump was not Russian but American, despite the fact
that most of these journalists and editors found the candidate repellent. Trump's huge advantage in free publicity not only won
him the primary, but continued into the general election. It was the US media that made the Comey letter so important, because
the broadcast media used it to displace Trump's scandals, including the allegations of sexual assaults, in the crucial last 11
days when millions of voters made up their minds.
Another irony: The US has been hacking elections (and toppling governments) around the world for more than a century. How many
hundreds of millions of people, from Indonesia to Chile and dozens of countries in between, wish that all the United States did
to their elections was what Russia is accused of doing here in 2016? Of course that is no justification for any foreign intervention
here, but it is part of the current story if we want to understand it. Washington's intervention in Ukraine, for example, helped
push that country into a civil war that became the main cause of the current state of Cold War between the US and Russia....
'The US has been hacking elections (and toppling governments) around the world for more than a century. How many hundreds of millions
of people, from Indonesia to Chile and dozens of countries in between, wish that all the United States did to their elections
was what Russia is accused of doing here in 2016?'
Indeed. However, we may insist (feebly) that
this is NOT something which Great Powers do
to one another.
"The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched during the Russian Civil War in 1918. The initial
goals were to help the Czechoslovak Legion, secure supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports, and re-establish the
Eastern Front. After winning World War I, the Allies militarily backed the anti-Bolshevik White forces in Russia. Allied efforts
were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness after they just finished greater conflict, and a lack of domestic support.
These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion, compelled the Allies to withdraw from North Russia and
Siberia in 1920, though Japanese forces occupied parts of Siberia until 1922 and the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925.[3]"
President Obama plans to offer a graceful goodbye to the nation in a
prime-time address Tuesday night from Chicago, transferring executive power
with the same tone of hope and optimism that powered his rise to the
presidency
I, too will offer a gracious (not graceful that mean something very
different) goodby – Please do not let the door hit you on the ways out,
followed by Cromwell's parting statement to the Rump Parliament, as pointed
and relevant now as it was then:
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which
you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your
practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack
of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of
pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you
do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you
have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you
that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned
the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and
wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed
here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the
greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by
putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and
which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart
immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that
shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the minute-long video, Emanuel spoke while
framed by American and Chicago flags and as
pictures of him with the president flashed
through Obama's eight years in office.
However, Emanuel urged those preparing for the
speech not to be swept up in "nostalgia about the
past" but to listen with "optimism and hope about
the future."
"Our work of keeping the dream of America and
the promise of America is just beginning,"
Emanuel said. "We all have in this great country
have a responsibility each day to take America a
step closer to its ideal of what it can be and
the promise of America."
Surprising as it might be to Rahmbo, it's
actually very easy not to be swept up in "nostalgia
about the past".
"... Instead, Ledeen comes across as mildly senile, and disappointingly arrogant. This book, while being a peaen to Machiavelli, attempts to draw glorious parallels between Machiavelli and big egos in the American pantheon of not-so-profound men, like Bill Gates, just one of the "figurines" Ledeen holds aloft like a boy playing with a superman doll. ..."
This staunch neocon believed (or at least publicly promoted for personal gain) the theory
that that all terrorist groups were financed by the USSR. H also was one of the key
participant n yellow case scam (due to his connections in Italy), among other nefarious things. On a
positive side he is a good contract bridge player.
Another
gem in Mike's crown of imperial psuedo-scholarship
"
Much has been hyped of the neocon propensity for
Straussian deception and omission -- the kind supposedly
justified by a transcendent moral calculus -- and the
parallels between this imperative, its rationales, and
Machiavelli's logic all bear a "family resemblance".
Nevertheless, Mike Ledeen has rarely come across as
diabolical, not even when covering a genius famous for his
explication of the darker side of statecraft.
Instead, Ledeen comes across as mildly senile, and
disappointingly arrogant. This book, while being a peaen
to Machiavelli, attempts to draw glorious parallels
between Machiavelli and big egos in the American pantheon
of not-so-profound men, like Bill Gates, just one of the
"figurines" Ledeen holds aloft like a boy playing with a
superman doll.
In the section 'How to Rule,' on page 117, Ledeen writes
"Since it is the highest good, the defense of the country
is one of those extreme situations in which a leader is
justified in commiting evil" -- the book is filled with
passages like these, reminiscent of Strauss's maxim of
"the noble lie", then interwoven with factual innacuracies
(such as Ledeen's claim that Gates "invented" the Basic
programming language).
I remember the fiasco around another book Ledeen wrote
back in the eighties, one that claimed to uncover a vast
world-wide global conspiracy by the Soviet Union. In the
book, Ledeen claimed to have evidence that every terrorist
group around the world was actually controlled by the
USSR: so Abu Nidal and the IRA both collected their
paychecks from the same paymaster, etc. As it turned out,
the book fooled everyone for a while, including William
Casey and Ronald Reagan, until the CIA black ops guys who
had been planting these stories in European publications
since the sixties finally admitted that they created that
myth as part of a black-propaganda campaign.
This would have been funny if Ledeen had not been working
in government at the time. Coincidentally, Ledeen was also
working in Doug Feith's Office of Special plans -- the DoD
project that fabricated Bush's case for war -- before we
invaded Iraq in 2003. Whether intentional or accidental,
this guy's innacuracies are just scary.
Read this is you like to study these men, but avoid this
book if your interest is in Machiavelli as a historical
figure.
"... This is probably very similar to very cunning efforts for preventing alliance between Russia and Germany by British empire. In general the current USA policy toward Russia has British roots. ..."
"... And as for your utter naivety about respect, as Machiavelli pointed out, respect is not everything. Fear might be good substitute. And the US neocons understand this very well. ..."
"... As Michael Ledeen put it "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business..." (Ledeen doctrine). ..."
Trump is making nice with Putin but he's picking fight with
Mexico on our border, China, and North Korea.
By making
nice with Putin and Russia PE Trump puts our long term
traditional Allies in Europe, especially those that border
Russian, on notice that they will not be protected by the USA
to the extent in the past which opens them up to Russian
political and business pressures/extortion as well as
weakening the ties that bind them to us.
Of course, all that rebalanced geopolitics means no nation
in future will trust the USA in the same way again in
politics, business, trade, or global security.
You may like Trump upsetting the apple cart that has been
carefully built by successive President's since WWII but I
doubt most Americans will or do.
You need to understand that splitting alliance of Russia and
China is probably strategically important for the USA
neoliberal elite then anything else.
In this sense Trump just want to end the blunders of Obama
foreign policy which made rapprochement of Russia and China
possible, or even inevitable. The problem is that after
Ukraine Russia does not trust the USA. On any level. Attitude
now is probably much worse then it was during years of Cold
War. Even bitter enemies of Putin now curse the Obama
administration using the last words.
In other words, what Obama did with his Ukrainian
adventure is eliminated any (as in zero) internal opposition
to Putin inside the country. Such a blowback, in CIA terms.
So much for Nobel Peace Price winner foreign policy
achievements (Iran "lifting sanctions" gambit is still
standing as one).
This is probably very similar to very cunning efforts for
preventing alliance between Russia and Germany by British
empire. In general the current USA policy toward Russia has
British roots.
Like French say: "you can't make an omelette without
breaking eggs" (on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser
des œufs )
So interests of some dwarf European states might be
sacrificed to pull Russia from alliance with China. Nothing
personal, just business.
And as for your utter naivety about respect, as
Machiavelli pointed out, respect is not everything. Fear
might be good substitute. And the US neocons understand this
very well.
As Michael Ledeen put it "Every ten years or so, the
United States needs to pick up some small crappy little
country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world
we mean business..." (Ledeen doctrine).
Russia
and China did not come together
during the cold war against the US
empire, big difference today is
the potential for trade
cooperation on a Beijing Moscow
Madrid (with a branch to Tehran)
axis.
That observation aside; a huge
enemy is good for the US' military
industry complex; businesses whose
minimum returns are over 6% and
assured by political influence.
There is money to be made
pushing the Bear and the Dragon
into a corner.
The Queen Empresses workers
were protecting all that exploited
labor in India. The Royal Navy and
coaling stations kept the sea
routes open
ilsm said in reply to Jay...
US funded lesser al Qaeda in Syria at least since 5 years.
The US Russia thing is parallel to the Sunni Shiite thing
where Iran is reluctantly pushed toward Moscow bc the CIA
remains vengeful over the CIA's Shah deposed in 1979.
US funding in Syria is consistent with Gulf Coop Council
actions there and in Yemen, using US provided cluster
weapons.
The phony reason Obama did Qaddafi was Hollande threatened
the French would do it.... of course the French could maybe
get 2 sorties off a day for 3 days!
Reply
Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 10:58 AM
ilsm said in reply to kthomas...
Exceptionalism justifies horror!
The F-111's killed one of
Qaddafi's daughters (by a wife of many) for that one and the
Berlin club!
US vengeance worth giving entire countries over to al
Qaeda.
"... Chickenhawks like you should better be careful what they wish for. With the election of Hillary we would be on the brink of not "cold", but "hot" war, starting in Syria. But chickenhawks like you prefer other people to die to their imperial complex of inferiority. ..."
"... In other words, all you funny "Putin Poodle", "Putin is a kleptocrat", etc noises is just a testament of the inferiority complex of a typical neoliberal chickenhawk. Much like was the case with Hillary. ..."
Why don't you just
buy m16, some ammunition and go to Syria to prove your point and take revenge for Hillary fiasco.
Chickenhawks like you should better be careful what they wish for. With the election of Hillary
we would be on the brink of not "cold", but "hot" war, starting in Syria. But chickenhawks like you
prefer other people to die to their imperial complex of inferiority.
In other words, all you funny "Putin Poodle", "Putin is a kleptocrat", etc noises is just a testament
of the inferiority complex of a typical neoliberal chickenhawk. Much like was the case with Hillary.
Seven years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen
international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," despite having been in office for less
than one year and having pretty much no actual, tangible foreign diplomacy accomplishments at the
time, President Obama will depart the White House having dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign countries
around the world in 2016, 3,027 more than 2015.
You are too quick to judge. Trump will become POTUS only on
20th.
But Obama already proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that he
is "change we can believe in" bait and switch Maestro. That's
his legacy and he can't change it.
What a horrible, brazen betrayer of his voters he proved
to be. 100% neoliberal "wolf in sheep's clothing" ...
Pretty bright student of Bill Clinton. The same "they have
nowhere to go" attitude to working people and lower middle
class.
But in reality they have a place to go: they went to far
right nationalistic movements.
In this sense Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are godfathers
of the US far right renaissance. Barack actually did the same
trick in Ukraine, so this is his double "success". And the
major legacy.
But wait till 2020 and the situation might become very
interesting indeed. Especially if there will be no revival of
economics that Trump promised.
Libezkova -> Libezkova...
, -1
And don't forget his romance with "Muslim brotherhood" (and
his role in the creation of ISIS) as well as his Libya and
Syria adventures.
"... The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform. ..."
"... At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats will soon face enormously risky decisions. ..."
"... I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson. ..."
The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election
issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break
up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform.
For a while we had the Russian hacking accusations, which have suddenly gone dormant (will we
ever get proof?). Now we have divide and conquer identity issues. But no proposed alternatives to
Trump for curing our economic malaise along the lines suggested by Sanders.
We are headed back to business as usual, with the right fighting the so-called center left (our
two neoliberal factions) for dominance. Apparently conditions have not deteriorated enough yet for
a populist uprising. How much more does it take before we reach a critical mass?
Some change is happening. Even Cuomo is now seeking the seal of approval from Bernie for supporting
a new college tuition plan for families making less than $125,000.
It's going to be a slow process though. There is a group within the Democratic Party that is
on the way out historically, and they want to do nothing other than turn the Party's politics
into nothing but vendettas, distraction and obstruction.
This is classic Cuomo. Give a bit to the right - then a bit to the left. Of course the ultra-rich
Uppity East Siders are whining we can't afford this while the Green Party is upset it does not
also cover food and rent. You can't win in NYC politics no matter what you do.
" At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied
away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats
will soon face enormously risky decisions.
Does the party move left, as a choice of Keith Ellison for D.N.C. chairman would suggest? Does
it wait for internecine conflict to emerge among Republicans as Trump and his allies fulfill campaign
promises - repealing Obamacare, enacting tax reform and deporting millions of undocumented aliens?"
It's funny how there has been no discussion of the DNC chair contest, and yet the progressive
neoliberals here still whine that the forum isn't an echo chamber which reflects their views.
And then they fantasize about banning people with whom they disagree.
State governments famously (or infamously) give away billions in tax breaks to lure in firms that
make jobs. 19 Republican governors -- by rejecting Medicaid expansion -- have rejected TAKING
IN federal tax money to generate good medical jobs, not to mention the multiplier effect of new
spending ...
.. and it's the states' own money that they sent to the federal government that they don't
want to TAKE BACK ...
... oh, almost forgot; it's good for uninsured poor people too (almost forgot about that).
There was a reason why the Annapolis Convention that led almost directly to the Constitutional
convention was organized on the need to stop interjurisdictional competition in the favoring of
commercial interests so as to favor uniform commerce rules across the US, should the national
legislature exercise on the matter.
I sure like competition, recognize the federal system as a having great socio-political value,
even appreciate non-uniformity until it grabs the attention of more thoughtful view (experimentation),
but more and more I think Congress should enact the law to proscribe these crony actions by States.
Many politicians, and I've worked with many at the State level would appreciate it if these pandering
and favoring pleadings just went away.
Fed Officials See Faster Economic Growth Under Trump, but No Boom
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
JAN. 4, 2017
"Ms. Yellen has warned that fiscal stimulus, like a tax cut or a spending increase, could increase
economic growth to an unsustainable pace in the near term, resulting in increased inflation. The
Fed quite likely would seek to offset such policies by raising interest rates more quickly."
Progressive neoliberalism...
And Alan Blinder said Hillary's fiscal plans wouldn't be large enough to cause the Fed to alter
its path of rate hikes.
And Trump promised more better infrastructure like clean airports.
An update on the Chevy Cruze controversy. US consumption was 194,500 vehicles with 190,000 made
here in the US. That's 97.7% of them being produced locally. Tweet that.
I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief
that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson.
Can you spend time on the republicans too?
Just asking for a little balance. You and I both share a dismay about the last eight years
and the presidential campaign. Your energy focused on the party in power now, even a bit, would
probably be helpful.
"... "And so, it's been light-years since that report on Iraq WMD has been done and there has been tremendous further development, I think, of our analytic capabilities as well as our intelligence-collecting capabilities," Brennan said. ..."
Outgoing CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday that those who doubt the connection between
Russia and the hacking of Democratic Party email accounts, leading up to November's election,
should take a look at the forthcoming intelligence report "before they make those
judgments."
President-elect Donald Trump, among others, has questioned the
assessment that Russia is behind the hacking, citing past intelligence community mistakes,
including the finding of no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"In the aftermath of that, there was a total review of the review process and the analytic
process and the assessments that are done with the intelligence community with a number of
steps that were taken to ensure that we're going to be as accurate as possible," said Brennan
in an exit interview with PBS NewsHour co-anchor Judy Woodruff.
"And so, it's been light-years since that report on Iraq WMD has been done and there has
been tremendous further development, I think, of our analytic capabilities as well as our
intelligence-collecting capabilities," Brennan said.
"I would suggest to individuals that have not yet seen the report, who have not yet been
briefed on it, that they wait and see what it is that the intelligence community is putting
forward before they make those judgments," he said.
A joint
FBI-Department of Homeland Security report released on Dec. 29 has linked
Russian intelligence services to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. President
Barack Obama has requested an additional report from the intelligence community.
Last week we were
surprised to learn that demand for hotel rooms at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in
Davos, where the world's billionaires, CEOs, politicians, celebrities and oligarchs mingle every
year (while regaled by their public relations teams known as the "media", for whom getting an invite
to the DJ event du jour is more important than rocking the boat by asking unpleasant questions) was
so great, not only are hotel rooms running out, but local employees may be put up in
shipping containers in car parks to free up much needed accommodations.
This scramble to attend what has traditionally been perceived as the hangout for those who have
benefited the most from "peak globalization" was in some ways surprising: coming after a year in
which "populism" emerged as a dominant global force, while sending establishment politics, legacy
policies and even globalization reeling, the message - in terms of lessons learned from 2016 - sent
to the masses from the world's 0.1% was hardly enlightened.
However, while most Davos participants remain tone deaf, one person has gotten the message loud
and clear.
According to
Reuters
, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - who faces a crucial election this year as she runs for her
4th term as German chancellor amid sagging approval ratings - is steering clear of the World Economic
Forum in Davos, a meeting expected to be dominated by debate over the looming presidency of Donald
Trump "and rising public anger with elites and globalization", which is ironic because just two years
prior, the topic was rising wealth inequality which the world's billionaires blasted, lamented and,
well, got even richer as nothing at all changed. What is surprising about Merkel's absence in 2017
is that the Chancellor has been a regular at the annual gathering of political leaders, CEOs and
celebrities, traveling to the snowy resort in the Swiss Alps seven times since becoming chancellor
in 2005. But her spokesman told Reuters she had decided not to attend for a second straight year.
This year's conference runs from Jan. 17-20 under the banner "Responsive and Responsible Leadership".
Trump's inauguration coincides with the last day of the conference.
"It's true that a Davos trip was being considered, but we never confirmed it, so this is not a
cancellation," the spokesman said.
Reuters adds that this is the first time Merkel has missed Davos two years in a row since taking
office over 11 years ago and her absence may come as a disappointment to the organizers because her
reputation as a steady, principled leader fits well with the theme of this year's conference.
There was little additional information behind her continued absencea the government spokesman
declined to say what scheduling conflict was preventing her from attending, nor would it say whether
the decision might be linked to the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people
in mid-December.
The reason for her absence, however, may be far more prosaic: as Reuters echoes what we said previously,
"after the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Trump were attributed to rising public anger
with the political establishment and globalization, leaders may be more reluctant than usual to travel
to a conference at a plush ski resort that has become synonymous with the global elite. "
Another potential complication is that this year's Davod event concludes just hours before Trump's
inauguration. As a result, one European official suggested to Reuters that "the prospect of having
to address questions about Trump days before he enters the White House might also have dissuaded
Merkel, whose politics is at odds with the president-elect on a broad range of issues, from immigration
and trade, to Russia and climate change."
During the U.S. election campaign, Trump described Merkel's refugee policies as "insane". Like
Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, who announced in early December that he would not seek
a second term next year, will not be in Davos.
Most other European political leaders are expected to be present, despite the furious changes
in Europe's political landscape in the past year: the Forum had hoped to lure Matteo Renzi, but he
resigned as Italian prime minister last month. European leaders that are expected include Mark Rutte
of the Netherlands and Enda Kenny of Ireland. British Prime Minister Theresa May could also be there.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who was elected to the WEF board of trustees last
year, is expected to attend, as are senior ministers from a range of other European countries, as
well as top figures from the European Commission.
Members of Donald Trump's team, including Davos regulars like former Goldman Sachs president Gary
Cohn and fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, are also expected. Reuters reminds us that WEF Chairman
Klaus Schwab was invited to Trump Tower last month, although the purpose of the visit was unclear.
Although the WEF does not comment on which leaders it is expecting until roughly a week before
the meeting, the star attraction is expected to be Xi Jinping, the first Chinese president to attend.
Meanwhile, it is was highly unlikely that the one person everyone would like to seek answers from
at Davos, Russian president Vladimir Putin, will be present.
This is an interesting development. Despite the use of epithets like "cunt" and "bitch" in the
oh, so valuable discussion contributions above, the German head of state is quite astute and living
in the real world. She has decided that association with the most elite of global meetings is
a negative. Don't you consider that significant?
Hardly. There are "leaks" of German Govt cables to NDR revealing how far Juncker obstructed crackdown
on corporate tax evasion when PM of Luxembourg. Clear indication Germany wants Juncker gone before
BreXit negotiations start and Wilders gains votes in NL in March.
1st Quarter in Europe is dynamite.
Davos is fluff and irrelevant.
Once UK SC delivers opinion in Jan 2017 there is a 1-line Bill to go through both Houses of
Parliament. If the Lords blocks the Bill it will lead to a 1910 Constitutional Crisis and either
Election, or abolition of House of Lords. UK is especially volatile in 2017 especially if Queen
dies.
Merkel sees nothing but danger ahead. Ukraine will probably implode and set of a refugee wave
into Germany. Turkey could well crash and burn. UK is going to be a very difficult situation.
33% French farmers reportedly earning <350 Euros/month as exports to Russia collapsed. French
election could be volatile. Italy is heading for meltdown.
Merkel is going to burn - she has failed to head off any problem
Davos doesn't care about politicians. Politicians are merely banker's puppets. Look
no further than Trump. He gets to be POTUS and what is his first act of business?
To put Goldman Sachs in charge of his Treasury and put JP Morgan in charge of White House policy.
If anyone thinks a politician will change anything, you are wrong. The banks make the
orders and plans, everything else is theatre.
It's been said that the captain of the Titanic was drunk before the ship struck the iceberg.
Given the above, maybe the Davosians are also equally intoxicated as they helm an economic ship
that's about to go under. Whether it's by psychotropics or just plain hubris, they certainly
don't seem to understand the depth of the danger they are in.
Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ms. Merkel has been the most
consequential voice for punishing Russia. The next year, she welcomed a million refugees into
Germany, and pushed the rest of Europe to do the same - thus, in the view of Russian
ethno-nationalists, diluting European culture. And she still believes in a united, integrated
European Union, a bastion of liberal values and, at least implicitly, a political and economic
bulwark against Russia.
... ... ...
Here, we can draw valuable lessons from the Cold War. What Russia does today is very much the
digital version of what we Germans, before 1989, termed "Zersetzung." The term is hard to
translate, but it's best described as the political equivalent of what happens when you pour acid
on organic material: dissolution and disintegration.
The methods of Zersetzung are to cast doubt on the basic norms of the Western liberal order and
its institutions; to distort and thereby discredit the purposes of the European Union, NATO and
the free-market economy; to erode the credibility of the free press and free elections. The means
of Zersetzung include character assassination and, through the spreading of lies and fake news,
the creation of a gray zone of doubt in which facts struggle to survive.
... ... ...
Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper
Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer.
"... Obama campaigned on change and vague promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw those away fast enough. ..."
"... Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was. ..."
"... The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember "never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism. ..."
"... Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive" and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican. ..."
"... At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what they voted for with them. ..."
"... In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians. ..."
"... Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics. ..."
"... But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal. ..."
"... A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s. ..."
"... At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a perfect fit. ..."
"... "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor." ..."
Now that 0bama is about to exit as US Pres, perhaps it is time to revisit the Who Is Worse: Bush43
v 0bama question.
Conventional wisdom among "Progressive" pundits, even good ones like SecularTalk, seems to be
"yes, 0bama is better than Bush43, but that is a very low bar, & not a real accomplishment. 0bama
still sucks".
IMHO, 0bama's relentless pursue of 1 Grand "Bargain" Ripoff & 2 TPP, may alone make him Even Worse
than Bush43, as far as to damage inflicted on USians had 0bama been successful in getting these 2
policies. 0bama tried for years getting these 2 policies enacted, whereas Bush43 tried quickly to
privatize SS but then forgot it, & IIRC enacted small trade deals (DR-CAFTA ?). Bush43 focus seemed
to be on neocon regime change & War On Terra TM, & even then IIRC around ~2006 Bush43 rejected some
of Darth Cheney's even more extremish neocon policy preferences, with Bush43 rejecting Cheney's desired
Iran War.
IMHO both policies would've incrementally killed thousands of USians annually, far more than 1S1S
or the Designated Foreign Boogeyman Du Jour TM could ever dream of. Grand Ripoff raising Medicare
eligibility age (IIRC 67 to 69+ ?) would kill many GenX & younger USians in the future. TPP's pharma
patent extensions would kill many USians, especially seniors. These incremental killings might exceed
the incremental life savings from the ACA (mainly ACA Adult Medicaid expansion). Furthemore, 0bama
could've potentially achieved MedicareForAll or Medicare Pt O – Public Option in ~2010 with Sen &
House D majorities, & 0bama deliberately killed these policies, as reported by FDL's Jane Hamsher
& others.
Bush43 indirectly killed USians in multiple ways, including Iraq War, War On Terra, & failing
to regulate fin svcs leading to the 2008 GFC; however it would seem that 0bama's Death Toll would
have been worse.
"What do you think?!" (c) Ed Schultz
How do Bush43 & 0bama compare to recent Presidents including Reagan & Clinton? What do you expect
of Trump? I'd guesstimate that if Trump implements P Ryan-style crapification of Medicare into an
ACA-like voucher system, that alone could render Trump Even Worse than 0bama & the other 1981-now
Reganesque Presidents.
It does seem like each President is getting Even Worse than the prior guy in this 21st Century.
#AmericanExceptionalism (exceptionally Crappy)
You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few bad things Obamanation did:
1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President
ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared
by Congress.
2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and
unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate
anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.
3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because
of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity
helped defeat Clinton 2016.
HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm.
Deporting more people than Presidents before him.
Passing the Korea and Columbia free trade pacts, even lying about what the pact did to get the
Columbian one passed. KORUS alone made our trade deficit with Korea soar and lost an estimated
100,000 jobs in the US (and not those part time ones being created).
Had the chance to pass a real infrastructure repair/stimulus package, didn't.
Had the chance to put the Post Office in the black and even start a Postal Bank, didn't. Didn't
even work to get rid of the Post Office killing requirement to fund its pension 75 years out.
Furthering the erosion of our civil rights by making it legal to assassinate American citizens
without trial.
Instead of kneecapping the move to kill public education by requiring any charter school that
receives federal funding to be non-profit with real limits on allowable administrative costs,
expanded them AND expanded the testing boondoggle with Common Core.
Libya.
Expansion of our droning program.
While I do give him some credit for both the Iran deal and the attempt to rein in the Syria
mistake, I also have to take points away for not firing Carter and demoting or even bringing Votel
before a military court after their insubordination killing the ceasefire.
Should I continue. Bush was evil, Obama the more effective one.
Was that a disastrous choice? Certainly and it is a big one, but it also ignores how much of
the disastrous choices attached to that decision Barack H. Obama has either continued or expanded
upon. It also ignores how that war continues under Obama. Remember when we left Iraq? Oh, wait
we haven't we just aren't there in the previous numbers.
And what about Libya? You remember that little misadventure. Which added to our continued Saudi/Israeli
determined obsession with Syria has led to a massive refugee crisis in Europe. How many were killed
there. How much will that cost us fifteen years on?
I get that the quagmire was there before Obama. I also get that he began to get a clue late
in his administration to stop listening to the usual subjects in order to make it better. But
see that thing above about not firing people who undermined that new direction in Syria, and are
probably now some of the most pressing secret voices behind this disastrous Russia Hacked US bull.
But I think only focusing on the original decision also ignores how effective Obama has been
at normalize crime, corruption, torture and even assassination attached to those original choices
– something that Bush didn't manage (and that doesn't even consider the same decriminalization
and normalization done for and by the financial industry). Bush may have started the wheel down
the bumpy road, but Obama put rubber on the wheel and paved the road so now it is almost impossible
to stop the wheel.
As mentioned, Bush is a very low bar for comparison, and if that's the best presidential comparison
that can be made with Obama, then that says it all.
Mr. O long ago received my coveted Worst_President_Ever Award (and yes the judging included
Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson).
Handed the golden platter opportunity to repudiate the myriad policy disasters of Bush (which
as cited above cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives) he chose instead to continue them
absolutely unchanged, usually with the same personnel. Whether it was unprosecuted bank crime
in the tens of billions, foreign policy by drone bomb, health care mega-bezzle, hyper-spy tricks
on everyday Americans, and corporo-fascist globalist "trade" deals, Mr. O never disappointed his
Big Wall St, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Surveillance-Industrial Complex constituents.
Along the way he reversed the polarity of American politics, paving the way for a true corporo-fascist
to say the slightest thing that might be good for actual workers and get into the White House.
History will remember him as the president who lost Turkey and The Philippines, destroyed any
remaining shreds of credibility with utterly specious hacking claims and war crime accusations
of other nations, and presided over an era of hyper-concentration of billionaire wealth in a nation
where 70% of citizens would need to borrow to fund a $400 emergency. Those failures are now permanently
branded as "Democrat" failures. The jury is unanimous: Obama wins the award.
"HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm."
Exactly. That is #1 on my list making him worst president ever.
I would question "ever" simply because I know I don't know enough about the history of previous
presidents, and I doubt any of us do; even historians who focus on this kind of thing, supposing
we had any in our midst, might be hard put to it to review all 44 thoroughly.
I vote the mortgage fraud situation (see
Chain of Title by David
Dayen -not really a plug for the book) as the worst aspect of the Obama Administration. What
to say about it? Regular readers of this site are well versed in the details but one aspect of
it needs to be expounded upon; stand on the housetops and shout it kind of exposition: the mortgage
fraud worked on millions (3, 5, 7, maybe 12 million) shows that rule of law is now destroyed in
the land. Dictionary .com says this about the phrase
Rule of Law: the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable
to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law.
* The government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities
are accountable under the law.
* The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied evenly; and protect fundamental
rights, including the security of persons and property and certain core human rights.
* The process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair,
and efficient.
* Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals
who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities
they serve.
I would invite the reader to take a moment and apply those principles to what is known about
the situation concerning mortgage fraud worked on millions of homeowners during the past two decades.
The Justice Department's infamous attempts to cover up horribly harmful schemes worked by
the mortgage industry perpetrators involved the cruel irony of aiding and abetting systemic racism.
Not a lot was said in the popular press about the subject of reverse redlining but I'm convinced
by the preponderance of evidence that overly complicated mortgage products were taken into the
neighborhoods of Detroit (90% Black or Latin American, Hispanic) and foisted off on unsuspecting
homeowners. Those homeowners did not take accountants and lawyers with them to the signing but
that's how those schemes should have been approached; then most of those schemes would have hit
the trashcan. Many a charming snake oil salesman deserves innumerable nights of uncomfortable
rest for the work they did to destroy the neighborhoods of Detroit and of course many other neighborhoods
in many other cities. For this discussion I am making this a separate topic but I realize it is
connected to the overall financial skulduggery worked on us all by the FIRE sector.
However, let me return to the last principle promulgated by the World Justice Project pertaining
to Rule Of Law and focus on that: "Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent
representatives and neutrals who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect
the makeup of the communities they serve." Now hear this: "are of sufficient number" for there,
and gentle reader, please take this to bed with you at the end of your day: we fail as a nation.
But look to the 'competent, ethical and independent' clause; we must vow to not sink into despair.
This subject is a constant struggle. Google has my back on this: Obama, during both campaigns
of '08 and '12, took millions from the very financial sector that he planned to not dismay and
then was in turn very busy directing the Attorney General of The United States, the highest law
officer in the country, to not prosecute. These very institutions that were in turn very busy
taking property worth billions. 12 million stolen homes multiplied times the average home value
= Trillions?
Finally, my main point here (I am really busy sharpening this ax, but it's a worthy ax) is
the issue of systemic racism- that the financial institutions in this country work long hours
to shackle members of minority neighborhoods into monetarily oppressive schemes in the form of
mortgages, car loans, credit cards and personal loans (think pay day scammers) and these same
makers of the shackles have the protection of the highest officials in the land. Remember the
pitchforks Obama inveighed? Irony of cruel ironies, two black men, both of whom appear to be of
honorable bearing, (Holder moved his chair right directly into the financiers, rent takers of
Covington & Burling ) work to cement the arrangements of racist, oppressive scammers who of
course also work their playbooks on other folks.
To finalize, the subject of rule of law that I have worked so assiduously to sharpen, applies
to all of the other topics we can consider as failures of the Obama Presidency. So besides racism
and systemic financial fraud we can turn to some top subjects that make '09 to '17 the nadir of
the political culture of the United States of America. Drone wars, unending war in the Middle
East, attempts to place a cloak of secrecy on the workings of the Federal Government, the reader
will have their own axes to sharpen but I maintain if the reader will fervently apply and dig
into the four principles outlined above, she, he, will agree that the principles outlining Rule
of Law have been replaced by Rule of the Person.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
Arghhh, the server is apparently napping-more caffeine please for the cables.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
I dunno. President Obama is not great but the comments here make me feel like it's time for
me to skedaddle. Thinking he might be worse than Shrub? 6″ tall, smh
Oh I admit it can be a tough choice, but you might really want to add up the good and the bad
for both. Not surprisingly there is little good and a whole lot of long ongoing damage inflicted
by the policies that both either embraced, adapted to or did little or nothing to stop.
Even if the list of bad was equal, I have to give Obama for the edge for two reasons. First
because Bush pretty much told us what he was going to do, Obama campaigned on change and vague
promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming
about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change
our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw
those away fast enough.
Your position is obviously different.
And I don't give a damn what height either of them are, both are small people.
Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow
jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was.
The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took
power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember
"never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism.
In the end, the black activist constitutional lawyer turned his back on all that he seemed
to be. Feint left, drive right.
With W we got what we expected. With O we got hoodwinked. What a waste.
Look, if you don't like some of the comments you see, say so. We have some thick skinned people
here. A little rancorous debate is fine. If some reasoned argumentation is thrown in, the comments
section is doing it's job. (I know, I know, "agency" issues.)
Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive"
and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican.
At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what
they voted for with them.
Finally, " it's time for me to skedaddle." WTF? I'm assuming, yes, I do do that, that you are
a responsible and thoughtful person. That needs must include the tolerance of and engagement with
opposing points of view. Where do you want to run to; an "echo chamber" site? You only encourage
conformation bias with that move. The site administrators have occasionally mentioned the dictum;
"Embrace the churn." The site, indeed, almost any site, will live on long after any of we commenters
bite the dust. If, however, one can shift the world view of other readers with good argumentation
and anecdotes, our work will be worthwhile.
So, as I was once admonished by my ex D.I. middle school gym teacher; "Stand up and face it.
You may get beat, but you'll know you did your best. That's a good feeling."
Picking the #1 Worst Prez is a fallacy inherent in our desire to put things on a scale of 1
to 10. It's so we can say, in this case, #1 was the WORST, and then forget about #2 thru #10.
It's like picking the #1 Greatest Rock Guitar Player. There are too many great guitar players
and too many styles. It's just not possible.
Even so, I'd like to see the Russian citizen ranking of Putin vs. Yeltsin. Secret ballot, of
course.
I don't think he's worse than Bush but I agree he was horribly dishonest to run as a progressive.
He's far from progressive.
I think the ACA, deeply flawed as it is, was/is a good thing. It wasn't enough and it was badly
brought out. I hope many thousands don't get tossed off health insurance.
My major criticism of him and most politicians is that he has no center. There is nothing for
which he truly stands and he has a horrible tendency to try to make nice w the republicans. He's
not progressive. Bernie, flawed also stands for something always has, always will.
Obama is highly deceptive, but I think that Bush (43) was worse. I doubt that Obama would have
performed many of his worst deeds if Bush hadn't first paved the way. But we'll never know for
sure, so it's possible to argue on behalf of either side of the dispute.
I have to tell you it is inaccurate in material respects, and many of the people who played
important roles in the fight were written out entirely or marginalized.
GW Bush sort of had two administrations. The first two years and the last two years was sort
of a generic Republican but sane administration, sort of like his father's, and was OK. The crazy
stuff happened in the middle four years, which maybe not coincidentally the Republicans had majorities
in both house of Congress.
Obama signed off on the Big Bailout (as did GW Bush, but my impression is that the worst features
of the Big Bailout were on Obama's watch(), and that defined his administration. Sometimes you
get governments defined by one big thing, and that was it. But I suspect he may have prevented
the neocons from starting World War III, but that is the sort of thing we won't know about until
decades have passed, if we make it that long.
Obama promised hope and change and delivered the exact opposite – despair and decline. Obama
should be remembered as the Great Normalizer. All of the shitty things that were around when he
was inaugurated are now normalized. TINA to the max, in other words.
It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics.
You got it. Obama was hired to employ "The Shock Doctrine" and he did. He was and is "a Chicago
Boy"; the term Naomi Klein used for the neoliberals who slithered out of the basements of U of
Chicago to visit austerity on the masses for the enhancement of the feudal lords. It is laughable
that he said last week that he could have beaten Trump. As always, He implied that it was the
"message" not the policy. And that he could "sell" that message better than Hilary. For him it
was always about pitching that Hopey Changey "One America" spleel that suckered so many. The Archdruid
calls this "the warm fuzzies". But the Donald went right into the John Edwards land of "The Two
Americas". He said he came from the 1%; but was here to work for the 99% who had been screwed
over by bad deals. We will see if the Barons will stand in his way or figure out that it might
be time to avoid those pitchforks by giving a little to small businesses and workers in general.
Like FDR, will they try to save capitalism?
The Donald has the bad trade deals right, but looks like he doesn't know what havoc Reagan
wreaked on working people's household incomes and pension plans by breaking any power unions had
and by coming up with the 401K scam; plus the Reagan interest rates that devastated farmers and
ranchers and the idea of rewarding a CEO who put stock price above research and development and
workers' salaries. But again, I believe it was a Democratic congress and a Democratic president
Carter who eliminated the Usury law in 1979. From then on with stagnating wages, people began
the descent into debt slavery. And Jimmy started the Shock Doctrine by deregulating the airlines
and trucking. But he did penance. Can't see Obama doing that.
And once usary laws went away, credit cards were handed out to college students, with no co-sign,
even if students had no work or credit history and were unemployed.
It took until just a few years ago before they revisted that credit card policy to students.
dont want to burst your bubble(or anyone elses) but obama is not and was not the power to the
throne it was michelle and val jar (aka beria) it was a long series of luck that got that krewe
anywhere near any real power mostly, it comes from the Univ of Chicago hopey changee thingee was
a nice piece of marketing by david axelrod..
the grey lady
5-11-2008
In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin
Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the
country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz
greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians.
Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known
in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to
walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year
later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard
than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.
But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States
senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on
a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer,
Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.
but to capture the arrogance of hyde park (read the last line)
A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion
of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington
had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy
black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods
blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white
Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a
perfect fit.
"He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor
and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go
to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor."
also note how the lib racist grey lady can not bring themselves to name the parade it is the
bud billiken parade
peaceful, fun, successful
heaven forbid the world should see a giant event run by black folk that does not end in violence
might confuse the closet racists
There are enough examples of such things for it to be a reasonable expectation.
The parade also hasn't always gone without a hitch:
The 2003 parade featured B2K.[9] The concert was free with virtually unlimited space in
the park for viewing. However, the crowd became unruly causing the concert to be curtailed.
Over 40 attendees were taken to hospitals as a result of injuries in the violence, including
two teenagers who were shot.[38] At the 2014 parade, Two teenagers were shot after an altercation
involving a group of youths along the parade route near the 4200 block of King Drive around
12:30 pm.[39][40]
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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