Americans have grown understandably weary of foreign entanglements over the last 12 years of open-ended
warfare, and they are now more receptive to a noninterventionist message than they have been in decades.
According to a recent Pew survey, 52 percent of Americans now prefer that the U.S. “mind its own business
in international affairs,” which represents the most support for a restrained and modest foreign policy
in the last 50 years. That presents a challenge and an opportunity for noninterventionists to articulate
a coherent and positive case for what a foreign policy of peace and prudence would mean in practice.
As useful and necessary as critiquing dangerous ideas may be, noninterventionism will remain a marginal,
dissenting position in policymaking unless its advocates explain in detail how their alternative foreign
policy would be conducted.
A noninterventionist foreign policy would first of all require a moratorium on new foreign entanglements
and commitments for the foreseeable future. A careful reevaluation of where the U.S. has vital interests
at stake would follow. There are relatively few places where the U.S. has truly vital concerns that
directly affect our security and prosperity, and the ambition and scale of our foreign policy should
reflect that. A noninterventionist U.S. would conduct itself like a normal country without pretensions
to global “leadership” or the temptation of a proselytizing mission. This is a foreign policy more in
line with what the American people will accept and less likely to provoke violent resentment from overseas,
and it is therefore more sustainable and affordable over the long term.
When a conflict or dispute erupts somewhere, unless it directly threatens the security of America
or our treaty allies, the assumption should be that it is not the business of the U.S. government to
take a leading role in resolving it. If a government requests aid in the event of a natural disaster
or humanitarian crisis (e.g., famine, disease), as Haiti did following its devastating earthquake in
2010, the U.S. can and should lend assistance—but as a general rule the U.S. should not seek to interfere
in other nations’ domestic circumstances.
If
parties to a dispute request outside arbitration, the U.S. should be in a position to act as a neutral
mediator—which presupposes that the U.S. is not actively backing one side against another. We have seen
the futility and absurdity of trying to act as an “honest broker” while providing lopsided support to
one side in a conflict, and this should have no place in a noninterventionist foreign policy. There
could be a potentially large and active role for U.S. diplomats abroad, but not one in which the U.S.
was attempting to dictate terms or to promote a particular cause. International engagement could not
and would not cease in a noninterventionist foreign policy, but it would be of a very different kind.
One of the priorities of a noninterventionist agenda would be the scaling back of America’s numerous
commitments overseas. This would be accomplished mainly by shifting burdens gradually to current allies
and regional powers: ceding regional influence in Central Asia to India and Russia, for example, and
encouraging a more independent foreign policy for allies such as Japan and Germany. In general, the
states that have the most at stake in maintaining regional stability should be given the responsibility
for securing it. U.S. commitments have been building up over decades, so it is neither realistic nor
desirable to end them suddenly. Nonetheless, there are also far more commitments than the U.S. can afford,
and many of them are relics of the struggle with the Soviet Union or the remains of a “War on Terror”
that has expanded beyond anything that most Americans imagined when it began a decade ago. Cutting back
security entanglements is a long-delayed and necessary adjustment that the U.S. should have been making
for the last 20 years. But it will not be sufficient simply to return to status quo ante at the start
of the 21st century. The U.S. was already overcommitted around the world before the Bush era and will
still be so after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Ideally, the U.S. would reduce its overseas military
presence in the Near East to at most what it was in the years before Desert Storm in 1991, and continue
to reduce its presence in Europe as European governments bear more of the costs of their own defense.
To date, wealthy allies have been able to skimp on their military spending, on the safe assumption that
the U.S. would be ready and willing to make up the difference, but this arrangement is neither sustainable
nor in our best interests. It not only creates an unhealthy dependence that ends up dragging unwilling
Europeans into U.S. wars of choice, but as we saw in Libya, it perversely pulls the U.S. into European
wars of choice because Europe’s governments cannot fight them on their own.
NATO is outdated and unnecessary, but provided that it functions purely as a defensive alliance it
wouldn’t necessarily have to be dissolved. If the alliance continued to exist, the U.S. should not use
it or permit it to be used as cover for members’ wars of choice and “out of area” missions. It should
go without saying that there would be no further NATO expansion, which does nothing except antagonize
Russia to the detriment of regional stability. If the alliance’s security guarantees to current members
are to mean anything, they shouldn’t be extended to countries that the U.S. and other member nations
are not actually willing to defend. To that end, U.S. and NATO officials should stop giving false encouragement
to would-be member states that will never be admitted.
A noninterventionist U.S. would keep the major treaty allies it has for the time being but would
also review its relationships with the many client states that neither act like nor deserve the name
of ally. Clients that expose the U.S. to unnecessary conflicts or create dangerous tensions with other
major powers are liabilities, and the U.S. should alter relations with them accordingly. That doesn’t
require the U.S. to have poor relations with those states, but it does mean that they would stop receiving
support and indulgence when their interests and ours clearly diverge. Many client state relationships
would need to be downgraded as a result, and U.S. aid to them would be correspondingly reduced or eliminated.
In keeping with President Washington’s exhortation in his Farewell Address, the U.S. would seek to
“observe good faith and justice toward all nations” and to “cultivate peace and harmony with all.” That
means that a noninterventionist U.S. would work to maintain normal and full diplomatic relations with
as many states as possible, and it would restrict or cut off trade with other states only in the most
extreme cases. A noninterventionist foreign policy would very rarely rely on sanctions as a tool, and
then only when they are targeted specifically against regime officials rather than the civilian population.
In general, an America following Washington’s advice would promote both trade and diplomatic engagement
rather than employing the tactics of embargo and isolation.
The U.S. would also refuse to take sides in the internal quarrels of other countries. The sovereignty
of other states would be respected much more consistently than in past decades. The U.S. would refrain
from destabilizing foreign governments or aiding in their overthrow, and it would not make a habit of
siding with whichever protest movement happened to be in the streets of a foreign capital. Likewise,
it would refrain from propping up and subsidizing abusive and dictatorial regimes and would condition
U.S. aid on how a government treats its people. While there may be a need to cooperate with authoritarian
states on certain issues, governments that torture or violently suppress peaceful protests, including
the current Egyptian government, shouldn’t be supported in any way by American taxpayers.
War might be necessary at some point, but if so it would be waged only in self-defense or the defense
of a treaty ally. A noninterventionist U.S. would never wage a preventive war— which is contrary both
to international law and morality—and would generally be wary of using force even when it could be justified.
The U.S. should always avoid giving allies and clients the impression that they have a blank check from
Washington, since that will tend to make them more combative and unreasonable in disputes with their
neighbors. Allies and clients that wanted to pursue reckless and provocative courses of action would
be actively discouraged, and it would be the responsibility of the U.S. to pull these states back from
avoidable conflicts. A noninterventionist U.S. would manage relations with other major powers by seeking
to cooperate on matters of common interest and by avoiding unnecessary disagreements on those issues
where the U.S. has relatively little at stake. The U.S. and other major powers are bound to have conflicting
interests from time to time, but these unavoidable disagreements shouldn’t be compounded by picking
fights over every issue where we differ. As long as the U.S. has allies on the borders of other major
powers, there will always be a certain degree of mistrust and tension in our relations. However, the
U.S. shouldn’t make this worse by seeking to enlarge our alliances or increase our influence in countries
that have historically been in the orbit of another major power. The goal here should be to keep tensions
with other major powers at a tolerable minimum and to reduce the possibility of renewed great power
conflict in the new century.
As George Washington also said: “In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than
that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others,
should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.”
For that reason, a noninterventionist U.S. would be one that doesn’t seek to demagogue or exaggerate
foreign threats, nor would it cultivate either hostility towards or adoration of any other country.
Above all, it won’t seek to make the U.S. the champion of any other country’s interests at our expense.
Noninterventionism is a rather clunky and unappealing label for a set of very appealing ideas: that
the U.S. should mind its own business, act with restraint, respect other nations, refrain from unnecessary
violence, and pursue peace. If future administrations took just a few of these as guiding principles
for the conduct of foreign policy, America and the world would both be better off.
Senior editor Daniel Larison blogs at TheAmericanConservative.com/Larison.
Libertarians (along will less numerous and less influential paleoconservatives)
are the only more or less influential faction of the US society that oppose what Basevich called
New American
Militarism. The foreign policy of the USA since the dissolution of the USSR was and is "open
militarism". Recently John Quiggin tried to define militarism is came to the following
definition (crookedtimber.org):
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from the
catastrophe of the Great War and the decades of slaughter that followed it. Rather than get
bogged down (yet again) in specifics that invariably decline into arguments about who know more
of the historical detail, I'm going to try a different approach, looking at the militarist
ideology that gave us the War, and trying to articulate an anti-militarist alternative.
Wikipedia offers a definition
of militarism which, with the deletion of a single weasel word, seems to be entirely
satisfactory and also seems to describe the dominant view of the political class, and much of
the population in nearly every country in the world.
Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should
maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it
aggressively[^1] to defend or promote national
interests
This new epidemic of the US militarism which started after Cold War ended was well analyzed by
Professor Bacevich (who is former colonel of the US army) who called it
New American
Militarism. Bacevich's book
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War describe the "sacred trinity" of global
military presence, global power projection, global interventionism is used to achieve those ends.
Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination of
the US foreign policy, and, especially, neocons domination in State Department regardless of whether
Republicans or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that we are uniquely qualified
to take on the worldwide foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful
lessons of World War II, Vietnam, and beyond that might have taken the USA into periods of
unprecedented peace, instead of numerous conflicts:
Bacevich scores a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with
this scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the
United States into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive posture of nearly perpetual war.
These assumptions take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the
unique responsibility to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever
means it wants -- and the supporting "trinity" of requirements for the U.S. to maintain a
global military presence, to configure its military forces for global power projection, and to
counter threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.
In other words they advocate permanent war for permanent peace. Lessons that the author shows
President Obama is clearly in the midst of learning, using a modified sacred trinity. Written in
engaging prose, his book
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War is an excellent peace of research with
sections that some may find very troubling. Here is the summary:
UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper
CXXXVII: September 27, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (New York: Metropolitan
Books/Henry Holt and Company, August 2010).
Thesis
The Washington consensus on national security policy that constitutes convention wisdom in
American foreign policy began with the Cold War and survived, remarkably, the Vietnam War and the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, no longer serves American interests, but the failure of the
Obama administration to alter it shows that change can only come from the American people.
Introduction: Slow Learner
The author's faith in orthodoxy began to crumble when visiting the BrandenburgGate in Berlin
in the winter of 1990-1991(1-4). In October 1990 a visit to Jenarevealed the backwardness of
EastGermany (4-6). During his years in the Army, Bacevich had kept down doubts; after the end of
the Cold War he retired, and his loss of status freed him to educate himself (6-10).
"George W.Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into
opposition" (10). "This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom" (11). The past 60 years
of American history shows continuity: a symbiotic "credo" (formulated by Henry Luce in 1941 as
the "American Century") and a "sacred trinity" ("the minimum essentials of international peace
and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its
forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on
a policy of global interventionism") together define "the rules to which Washington
adheres" (11-15).
In this book, "Washington" refers to the upper echelons of the three branches of government,
the main agencies of the national security state, select think tanks and interest groups, "big
banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television
networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the
Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government" (15).
This book aspires to
(1) trace the history of the Washington rules;
(2) show who wins, who loses, and who pays under them;
(3) explain how itis perpetuated;
(4) show that the rules have lost what utility they might once have had;
and (5) re-legitimate "disreputable (or 'radical') views to our national security debates"
(16).
The American Century is ending, and it "has become essential" to devise an "alternative to the
reining national security paradigm" (16-18).
Ch. 1: The Advent of Semiwar.
As president, Barack Obama's efforts to change the U.S.'s exercise of power "have seldom risen
above the cosmetic"(20). He made clear he subscribes to the "catechism of American statecraft,"
viz. that 1) the world must be organized, 2)only the U.S. can do it, 3) this includes dictating
principles, and 4) not to accept this is to be a rogue or a recalcitrant (20-21).
It follows that the U.S. need not conform to the norms it sets for others and that it should
maintain a worldwide network of bases (22-23).
Imagine if China acted in a comparable manner (23-25). The extraordinary American military
posture in the world (25-27). To call this into question puts one beyond the pale(27). James
Forrestal called this a permanent condition of semiwar, requiring high levels of military
spending(27-28).
American citizens are not supposed to concern themselves with it (29-30). As to how this came
about, the "standard story line" presents as the result of the decisions of a "succession of
presidential administrations," though this conceals as much as it reveals (30-32).
Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address on the "military-industrial complex" was a rare exception
(32-34). More important than presidents were Allen Dulles [1893-1969] and Curtis Lemay
[1906-1990] (34-36).
Bacevich attributes the vision for an American-dominated post-World War II world with the CIA
playing an active role to the patrician Dulles (36-43). The development of the U.S. military into
a force capable of dominating the world, especially in the area of strategic weapons, he
attributes to the hard-bitten Curtis LeMay, organizer of the StrategicAir Command (SAC) (43-52).
Dulles and LeMay shared devotion to country, ruthlessness, a certain recklessness (52-55). They
exploited American anxieties and insecurities in yin (Dulles's CIA) yang(LeMay's SAC) fashion,
leaving the mainstay of American military power, the U.S. Army, in a relatively weak
position(55-58).
Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control
Kennedy kept Dulles and LeMay to signal continuity, but there was a behind-the-scenes struggle
led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to reassert the role of the U.S. Army by expanding and modernizing
conventional forces that was "simultaneously masked by, and captured in, the phrase flexible
response " (60; 59-63).
This agenda purported to aim at "resisting aggression" but really created new options for
limited aggressive warfare by the U.S. (63-66).
McNamara engaged in a struggle with LeMay to control U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, but he
embraced the need for redundancy based on a land-sea-air attack "triad" and LeMay et al. "got
most of what they wanted" (66-72).
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy instituted the morally and legally "indefensible"
Operation Mongoose," in effect, a program of state-sponsored terrorism" against Cuba (80; 72-82
[but Bacevich is silent on its wilder elements, like Operation Northwoods]).
U.S. recklessness caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to his credit Kennedy acknowledged this
(albeit privately) and "suspended the tradition" in defusing the crisis (82-87).
Bacevich rejects as a romantic delusion the view that in the aftermath of this crisis Kennedy
turned against the military-industrial complex and the incipient Vietnam war and shows no
interest in Kennedy's assassination itself (87-92).
He sees a parallel between escalation in Vietnam and post-9/11 aggression as "fought to
sustain the Washington consensus" (107; 92-107).
Ch. 3: The Credo Restored.
William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power (1966) urged a rethinking of the Washington rules
(109-15). A radicalized David Shoup, a Medal of Honor winner and former commandant of the
MarineCorps, argued in "The New American Militarism" (Atlantic, April 1969) that the U.S. had
become "a militaristic and aggressive nation" (120; 115-21). The 1960s Zeitgeist shift made LeMay
"an embarrassment, mocked and vilified rather than venerated," which showed that the Washington
rules had incurred serious damage in Vietnam; the Army was in dire shape (122; 121-27).
Yet astonishingly, in the subsequent decade the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) was "fully
restored" (127). As in post-1918 Germany, élites looked for scapegoats and worked to reverse "the
war's apparent verdict" (128). The Council on Foreign Relations 1976 volume entitled The Vietnam
Legacy: The War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy is an expression of
élite consensus that the Vietnam war was insignificant, an anomaly (129-34).
By 1980, Democrats and Republicans were again on the same page (134-36).Reagan's election
"sealed the triumph of Vietnam revisionism" (136; 136-38). Andthe end of the Cold War posed no
challenge to the Washington rules, as Madeleine Albright's pretentious arrogance exemplifies
(138-45).
Ch. 4: Reconstituting the Trinity
The period from 1980 to 2000 saw "not retrenchment but reconfiguration" (147). The
Except from Macmillan
Introduction: Slow Learner Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A
young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it
comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the
inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education
become a possibility.
My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date
with precision: For me, education began in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg
Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen. As an officer in the U.S. Army I had spent
considerable time in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion
to visit this most famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent
history. At the end of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just
months before, been the communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking
the length of the Unter den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was
falling and the pavement glistened. The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of
Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted. Few people were about. It was hardly a night for
sightseeing. For as long as I could remember, the Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol
of the age and Berlin the epicenter of contemporary history.
Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving
on. The Cold War had abruptly ended. A divided city and a divided nation had re united. For
Americans who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily as a metaphor.
Pick a date— 1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989—and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of
power, depravity, tragedy, defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the
past as a chronicle of parables, the modern history of Berlin offered an abundance of material.
The greatest of those parables emerged from the events of 1933 to 1945, an epic tale of evil
ascendant, belatedly confronted, then heroically overthrown.
A second narrative, woven from events during the intense period immediately following World
War II, saw hopes for peace dashed, yielding bitter antagonism but also great resolve. The
ensuing stand-off—the "long twilight struggle," in John Kennedy's memorable phrase— formed the
centerpiece of the third parable, its central theme stubborn courage in the face of looming
peril. Finally came the exhilarating events of 1989, with freedom ultimately prevailing, not only
in Berlin, but throughout Eastern Europe.
.... ... ...
Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire,
East Germany more closely resembled part of the undeveloped world.
... ... ...
Briquettes of soft coal used for home heating made the air all but unbreathable and coated
everything with soot. In the German cities we knew, pastels predominated—houses and apartment
blocks painted pale green, muted salmon, and soft yellow. Here everything was brown and gray
... ... ...
Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble. That worldview had derived from this conviction:
that American power manifested a commitment to global leadership, and that both together
expressed and affirmed the nation's enduring devotion to its founding ideals. That American
power, policies, and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each
element drawing strength from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That,
during my adult life, a penchant for interventionism had become a signature of U.S. policy did
not—to me, at least—in any way contradict America's aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness
to expend lives and treasure in distant places testified to the seriousness of those aspirations.
That, during this same period, the United States had amassed an arsenal of over thirty-one
thousand nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned to units in which I had served, was
not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life and liberty; rather, threats to life
and liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such an arsenal and maintain it in
readiness for instant use.2 I was not so naíve as to believe that the American record had been
without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had been committed in good
faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast Asia as in Western
Europe, in the Persian Gulf as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had simply done what
needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent to any dilution of American power
would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom,
not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.
The choices seemed clear enough. On one side was the status quo: the commitments, customs, and
habits that defined American globalism, implemented by the national security apparatus within
which I functioned as a small cog. On the other side was the prospect of appeasement,
isolationism, and catastrophe. The only responsible course was the one to which every president
since Harry Truman had adhered. For me, the Cold War had played a crucial role in sustaining that
worldview.
Given my age, upbringing, and professional background, it could hardly have been otherwise.
Although the great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had contained moments
of considerable anxiety — I remember my father, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stocking our
basement with water and canned goods — it served primarily to clarify, not to frighten.
The Cold War provided a framework that organized and made sense of contemporary history. It
offered a lineup and a scorecard. That there existed bad Germans and good Germans, their Germans
and our Germans, totalitarian Germans and Germans who, like Americans, passionately loved freedom
was, for example, a proposition I accepted as dogma. Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between
good and evil answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still
others irrelevant.
Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, more than a few members of my generation had
rejected the conception of the Cold War as a Manichean struggle. Here too, I was admittedly a
slow learner. Yet having kept the faith long after others had lost theirs, the doubts that
eventually assailed me were all the more disorienting. Granted, occasional suspicions had
appeared long before Jena and Berlin
My own Vietnam experience had generated its share, which I had done my best to suppress. I
was, after all, a serving soldier. Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in
those days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing the ladder of career success
required curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when
studying the history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges
to orthodoxy, which I vigorously deflected. When it came to education, graduate school proved a
complete waste of time — a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation of facts,
while I exerted myself to ensuring that they remained inert.
Now, however, my personal circumstances were changing. Shortly after the passing of the Cold
War, my military career ended. Education thereby became not only a possibility, but also a
necessity. In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It's the perfect antidote for
excessive self-regard. After twenty-three years spent inside the U.S. Army seemingly going
somewhere, I now found myself on the outside going nowhere in particular. In the self-contained
and cloistered universe of regimental life, I had briefly risen to the status of minor spear
carrier. The instant I took off my uniform, that status vanished. I soon came to a proper
appreciation of my own insignificance, a salutary lesson that I ought to have absorbed many years
earlier. As I set out on what eventually became a crablike journey toward a new calling as a
teacher and writer—a pilgrimage of sorts—ambition in the commonly accepted meaning of the term
ebbed. This did not happen all at once. Yet gradually, trying to grab one of life's shiny brass
rings ceased being a major preoccupation.
Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis.
History—especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War—no longer offered answers; instead,
it posed perplexing riddles. Easily the most nagging was this one: How could I have so profoundly
misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain? Had I been insufficiently
attentive? Or was it possible that I had been snookered all along? Contemplating such questions,
while simultaneously witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s"— the period bookended by two
wars with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights—prompted the realization
that I had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries. Yet that was the
lesser half of the problem. Far worse than misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had
misperceived "us." What I thought I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for
education appeared especially acute.
George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into
opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary—above all, claims relating to the essentially
benign purposes of American power— now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an
ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great
to ignore. The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an
ill-defined and open-ended "global war on terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory
would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto
achieved only by slightly mad German warlords. During the era of containment, the United States
had at least maintained the pretense of a principled strategy; now, the last vestiges of
principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the worldview to which I had adhered as
a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely. *
What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting the
conventional wisdom, substituting a new Manichean paradigm for the old discredited version—the
United States taking the place of the Soviet Union as the source of the world's evil—would not
suffice. Yet arriving at even an approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional
wisdom, both present and past, to sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but with
growing confidence, this I vowed to do. Doing so meant shedding habits of conformity acquired
over decades. All of my adult life I had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to
which institutional loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first recognizing
the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain things as unimpeachable. Here then
were the preliminary steps essential to making education accessible. Over a period of years, a
considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had to go. Belatedly, I learned that more
often than not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply wrong. Adopting fashionable
attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness—the world of politics is flush with such people
hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle—is akin to engaging in prostitution
in exchange for promissory notes. It's not only demeaning but downright foolhardy. This book aims
to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential and enduring form, namely the
package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of statecraft to
which the United States has adhered since the end of World War II— the era of global dominance
now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition combines two components, each one so deeply
embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.
The first component specifies norms according to which the international order ought to work
and charges the United States with responsibility for enforcing those norms. Call this the
American credo. In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States—and the United States
alone—to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto
issued at the dawn of what he termed "The American Century," Henry R. Luce made the case for this
spacious conception of global leadership. Writing in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential
publisher exhorted his fellow citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world
the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see
fit." Luce thereby captured what remains even today the credo's essence.3 Luce's concept of an
American Century, an age of unquestioned American global primacy, resonated, especially in
Washington. His evocative phrase found a permanent place in the lexicon of national politics.
(Recall that the neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied for more militant U.S. policies
named their enterprise the Project for a New American Century.) So, too, did Luce's expansive
claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States.
Even today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they
signal their fidelity to this creed. Along with respectful allusions to God and "the
troops," adherence to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office. Question
its claims and your prospects of being heard in the hubbub of national politics become nil. Note,
however, that the duty Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to
Americans, he wrote, to choose the purposes for which they would bring their influence to bear,
but to choose the means as well. Here we confront the second component of the postwar tradition
of American statecraft. With regard to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over
example, hard power over soft, and coercion (often styled "negotiating from a position of
strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of global leadership as prescribed by the credo
obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities staggeringly in excess of those
required for self-defense. Prior to World War II, Americans by and large viewed military power
and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake of World War II, that
changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American identity. By the
midpoint of the twentieth century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a gigantic five-sided
building.
Like "Wall Street" at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions
veiled in secrecy, its reach extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in
Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the concentration
of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring. A people who had long seen standing
armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them
to lavish resources on the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about
falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a position of
overall primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely
a whisper of national debate, unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an
essential predicate to global leadership. Every great military power has its distinctive
signature. For Napoleonic France, it was the levée en masse— the people in arms animated by the
ideals of the Revolution. For Great Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of the seas,
sustained by a dominant fleet and a network of far-flung outposts from Gibraltar and the Cape of
Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong. Germany from the 1860s to the 1940s (and Israel from 1948
to 1973) took another approach, relying on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational
audacity to achieve battlefield superiority.
The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of a different
order altogether. The United States has not specialized in any particular type of war. It has not
adhered to a fixed tactical style. No single service or weapon has enjoyed consistent favor. At
times, the armed forces have relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times,
long-service professionals. Yet an examination of the past sixty years of U.S. military policy
and practice does reveal important elements of continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an
abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the
United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power
projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global
interventionism. Together, credo and trinity—the one defining purpose, the other
practice—constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and police the
American Century. The relationship between the two is symbiotic. The trinity lends plausibility
to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo justifies the trinity's vast requirements and
exertions.
Together they provide the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to U.S.
policy regardless of which political party may hold the upper hand or who may be occupying the
White House. From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack Obama, that consensus has remained
intact. It defines the rules to which Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which
Washington rules. As used here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of
interlocking institutions headed by people who, whether acting officially or unofficially, are
able to put a thumb on the helm of state. Washington, in this sense, includes the upper echelons
of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. It encompasses
the principal components of the national security state— the departments of Defense, State, and,
more recently, Homeland Security, along with various agencies comprising the intelligence and
federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to select think tanks and interest groups.
Lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, former officials, and retired military officers who still enjoy
access are members in good standing. Yet Washington also reaches beyond the Beltway to include
big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations,
television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities
like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
With rare exceptions, acceptance of the Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into
this world. My purpose in writing this book is fivefold: first, to trace the origins and
evolution of the Washington rules—both the credo that inspires consensus and the trinity in which
it finds expression; second, to subject the resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing
who wins and who loses and also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules
are perpetuated, with certain views privileged while others are declared disreputable; fourth, to
demonstrate that the rules themselves have lost whatever utility they may once have possessed,
with their implications increasingly pernicious and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and
finally, to argue for readmitting disreputable (or "radical") views to our national security
debate, in effect legitimating alternatives to the status quo. In effect, my aim is to invite
readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked two decades ago in Berlin. The
Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and power were approaching their
acme. That moment has now passed. The United States has drawn down the stores of authority and
goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words uttered in Washington command less respect than once was
the case. Americans can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving the world, much less
remaking it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American Century. Similarly, the
United States no longer possesses sufficient wherewithal to sustain a national security strategy
that relies on global military presence and global power projection to underwrite a policy of
global interventionism. Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled
the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military misadventures of
the past decade have demonstrated.
To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules have become
plainly evident. Although those most deeply invested in perpetuating its conventions will insist
otherwise, the tradition to which Washington remains devoted has begun to unravel. Attempting
to prolong its existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the interests
of the American people.
Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a daunting
challenge—especially if Americans look to "Washington" for fresh thinking. Yet doing so has
become essential. In one sense, the national security policies to which Washington so insistently
adheres express what has long been the preferred American approach to engaging the world beyond
our borders. That approach plays to America's presumed strong suit—since World War II, and
especially since the end of the Cold War, thought to be military power. In another sense, this
reliance on military might creates excuses for the United States to avoid serious engagement:
Confidence in American arms has made it unnecessary to attend to what others might think or to
consider how their aspirations might differ from our own.
In this way, the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism—a national trait for
which the United States continues to pay dearly. The persistence of these rules has also
provided an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement. From this perspective, confidence that the
credo and the trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or desires
— whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods—has allowed Washington to postpone
or ignore problems demanding attention here at home.
Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit.
Purporting to support the troops in their crusade to free the world obviates any obligation to
assess the implications of how Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom. When Americans
demonstrate a willingness to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage
seriously with themselves, then real education just might begin.
"... With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base -- politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like reducing health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump's victims can be considered members of the above lobbies. ..."
"... Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved. Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and he conveniently shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, "the buck never stops at his desk." ..."
"... Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians. ..."
There are four groups of one-issue voters to whom President
Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme
Court with ultra conservative judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by
naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel.
Again, on that score, President Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has
unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition to attacking the
Palestinians and tearing up the 'Iran Deal'.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners , whose main demand to Trump was
substantial tax cuts and deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group's
wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public debt increases, which are going
to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm
themselves to the teeth, including with military assault weapons, with as few strings
attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them and against
students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base --
politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible support of between 35 percent and 40
percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like
reducing health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the
middle class, even though some of Trump's victims can be considered members of the above
lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump's supporters regularly rely on hypocrisy and on excuses to
exonerate their favorite but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a
different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does and says, they would be
asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump's rants, his
record-breaking lies , his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to
control information , in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on
the back of a duck. ( -- For the record, according to the
Washington Post , as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims,
which amount to 7.6 a day, since his inauguration.)
The first reason can be found in Trump's view that politics and even government
business are first and foremost another form of
entertainment , i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon.
Trump thinks that is
OK to lie and to ask his assistants to
lie . In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of
post-democracy .
The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and
manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them
into his own tools of propaganda. When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to
give him free coverage to spread his
insults , his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant
threats , his denials or reversals, his convenient
changes of subject or his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his
gratuitous accusations and his attacks ' ad hominem' , and by constantly bullying
and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and by issuing threats
in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write
about him constantly, on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he
can change the political rhetoric when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming
weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report is likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to
some sort of "
Wag the Dog " political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging
report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say
against Iran (a
pet project of Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very
convenient to a crafty politician like Donald Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore,
observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a
war of aggression is a throwback
to ancient times and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics
has fallen. This should be a justified and clear
case for impeachment .
Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as
Fox News and
Sinclair Broadcasting, have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump's
lies and misrepresentations as some 'alternative' truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the Fairness Doctrine for licensing
public radio and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the mass conglomeration of local
broadcasting in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and
Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well financed, and they have essentially become
powerful
political propaganda machines , erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly
presenting fictitious alternative facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason
and logic, at least for those listeners and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source
of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also made Donald Trump the
champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as 'fake' news, as Trump
has done in his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when
his own personal interests are involved. Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to
take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and he conveniently
shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing
President Harry Truman, "the buck never stops at his desk."
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman
diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if
one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they
are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why
would he, since he considers journalists to be his "enemies"! It doesn't seem to matter to him
that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First Amendment. He
prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and
emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel
of communication.
The ABC News
network has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times,
slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he have time left to do anything productive!
Coincidently, Donald Trump's number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright lies
and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration.
The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his,
through the end of May of this year, -- an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his
presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year, he told 5.5
lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and
not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for
his daily 'tweets', most of which are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the
common good and the general welfare of the people to the level of a frivolous private
enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by improvisation,
whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the
expense of planning for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump's approach is not the way to run an efficient
government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution and what it says about the need to have "
checks and balance s" among different government branches, President Donald Trump has
de facto pushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government
Departments, even his own Cabinet
, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the
central political stage for himself. If such a development does not represent an ominous threat
to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political
consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones.
"... Coalition attacks on Yemeni markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never call them out for what they do. ..."
There was another Saudi coalition airstrike on a
crowded market in northern Yemen today. Dozens of civilians have been killed and dozens more
injured. Many of the dead and injured were children whose school bus was hit in the attack:
Coalition attacks on Yemeni
markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike
civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never
call them out for what they do. The U.S. continues to arm and refuel coalition planes
despite ample evidence that the coalition has been deliberately attacking civilian targets. At
the very least, the coalition hits civilian targets with such regularity that they are
ignoring whatever
procedures they are supposed to be following to prevent that. The weapons that the U.S.,
Britain, and other arms suppliers provide them are being used to slaughter wedding-goers,
hospital patients, and schoolchildren, and U.S. refueling of coalition planes allows them to
carry out more of these attacks than they otherwise could. Today's attack ranks as one of the
worst.
Saada has come under some of the most intense attacks from the coalition bombing campaign.
The coalition illegally
declared the entire area a military target three years ago, and ever since they have been
blowing up
homes ,
markets ,
schools ,
water treatment systems, and
hospitals without any regard for the innocent civilians that are killed and injured.
The official U.S. line on support for the war is that even more civilians would be killed if
the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition. Our government has never provided any evidence to
support this, and the record shows that civilian casualties from Saudi coalition airstrikes
have
increased over the last year. The Saudis and their allies either don't listen to any of the
advice they're receiving, or they know they won't pay any price for ignoring it. As long as the
U.S. arms and refuels coalition planes while they slaughter Yemeni civilians in attacks like
this one, our government is implicated in the war crimes enabled by our unstinting military
assistance. Congress can and must halt that assistance immediately.
Update: CNN reports on the
aftermath of the airstrike:
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a hospital it supports in
Saada had received 29 dead bodies of "mainly children" under 15 years of age, and 40 injured,
including 30 children.
"(The hospital) is very busy. They've been receiving wounded and dead since the morning
and it is non-stop ," ICRC head of communications and spokesperson Mirella Hodeib told
CNN.
Second Update: The Associated Press
reports that the death toll stands at 43 with another 63 injured.
Third Update: The death toll has reportedly risen to 50 . 77 were
injured.
Of course I have no right to surprise or shock. They've already targeted hospitals,
foreign doctors and nurses, first responders, wedding parties, and funerals.
School buses.
We used to make movies about killing people who do things like this. Now we help them do
it.
The repetitive frequency and intensity of these attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and
other civilian gatherings, coupled with the indifference of the guilty national governments
and their international enablers, signals that the world and human species is passing through
a mass psychosis. This psychosis is playing itself out at all levels. Fascism, which is very
current as a national psychology, is generally speaking, a coping strategy for dealing with
nasty chaos. This coping strategy is designed around generating even more chaos, since that
is a familiar and therefore more comfortable pattern of behavior; and that does provide a
delusion of stability. A good example would be the sanctions just declared by the Trump
Administration on Iranian commerce. In an intrinsically connected global market, these
sanctions are so thorough that they qualify as a blockade, within a contingency plan for
greater global conflict. But those who destroy hospitals, schools, school buses and public
celebrations are not, otherwise, forward looking nice people. We are descending into a nasty
fascist war psychosis. Just shake it. Live. Long and well.
"even more civilians would be killed if the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition"
If we did not hand them satellite images, did not service, repair and refuel their planes,
and did not sell them the bombs, then they would . kill more civilians how? They could not
even reach their targets, let alone drop explosives they do not have.
What Would Mohammad Do? Buy bombs from the Russians? Who have better quality control and
fewer duds, hence more victims?
What Would Mohammad Do? Get the UAE to hire Blackwater to poison the wells across
Yemen?
How exactly do the profiteers in our country, that get counted out blood money for every
single Yemeni killed, propose that the Saudis and Emiratis would make this worse?
But, good to know that our "smart" and "precise" munitions can still hit a school bus.
Made In America!
The coverage in the media has been predictably cowardly and contemptible in the aftermath of
this story. I read articles from CNN and MSNBC and they were variations on "school bus
bombed", in the passive tense – with no mention of who did it or who is supporting them
in the headline, ad if the bombings were natural disasters.
Fox, predictably, was even worse and led with "Biblical relics endangered by war", which
speaks volumes about the presumed priorities of their viewership.
This, and not anything to do with red meat domestic politics, is the worst media
malpractice of our time. "Stop directly helping the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks drop
bombs on school children" should be the absolute easiest possible moral issue for our media
to take a stand on and yet they treat it like it's radioactive.
Speaking as someone who considers themselves a liberal I am infuriated by the Democrats
response. How can the party leadership not see that if they keep flogging the horse of
Russian trolls and shrugging their shoulders over American given (not sold – *given*)
bombs being dropped on schools and hospitals, no one is ever going to take the supposed
Democratic anti-war platform seriously again. The Republicans can afford to be tarde by
association with these atrocities. The Democrats can't.
I wonder how many Democrats are in the same boat as me right now: I may not like Trump or
the Christian conservatives but fights over the Supreme Court or coal plants or a healthcare
law look terribly petty compared to the apparent decision by Saudi Arabia to kill literally
millions. For the first time in my life I'm seriously wishing there was a third-party
candidate I could support and the congressional elections just so I could send a message on
this.
@Hunter C
Vote Libertarian Party. You won't agree with a lot of their domestic agenda, but they're not
going to win, so it doesn't matter. The noninterventionist foreign policy is your message.
In the wake of President Trump's Helsinki press conference, National Review declared
itself "Against
Moral Equivalence." The magazine claimed that there could be no equating American
meddling in foreign elections with Russian interference in our election because the goal of
the U.S. is to "promote democracy and political liberty and human rights." Though while
America's actions might be noble and have the sanction of heaven, National Review did
concede that its efforts to promote democracy have often been "messy" -- an adjective that the
people of Iraq might find understated.
Like many of Trump's critics, National Review 's embrace of American exceptionalism,
of exempting the United States from the moral laws of the universe because of its commitment to
democracy, is of a type the West has seen before. Swept up in their revolutionary enthusiasm,
the French Jacobins made similar claims. In late 1791, a member of the Assembly, while
agitating for war with Austria, declared that France "had become the foremost people of the
universe, so their conduct must now correspond to their new destiny. As slaves they were bold
and great; are they to be timid and feeble now that they are free?"
Robespierre himself was taken aback by the turn of a domestic revolution into a call for
military adventurism. Of plans to invade Austria and to overthrow "enemies" of liberty in other
nations, he famously remarked, "No one loves armed missionaries." (Robespierre's advice might
have also benefited the American occupiers of Iraq.) The Jacobins' moral preening led France to
declare war on Austria in 1792 and set in motion years of French military adventurism that
devastated much of central Europe. Military imperialism abroad and guillotines at home became
the legacy of self-declared French exceptionalism.
Hubristic nations that claim a unique place for themselves high atop the moral universe tend
to be imperialistic. This is because claims of national exceptionalism, whether of the French
or American variety, are antinomian, even nihilistic. The "exceptional" ones carve out for
themselves an exemption from the moral law. And prideful claims of moral purity are the
inevitable predicate to imposing one's will upon another. Once leaders assert that their
national soul is of a special kind -- indispensable and not subject to the same rules -- the
road to hell has been paved.
While supporters of American exceptionalism are careful to claim the mantle of Western
civilization, their philosophical orientation in fact amounts to a repudiation of the central
principles of the West and the Constitution.
Arguably, the tradition of the Judeo-Christian West has been special because it has asserted
that human nature is not particularly special. And the Constitution has been exceptional
because it's warned Americans that we are not particularly exceptional.
For example, the legacy of Pauline Christianity, Irving Babbitt tells us, is "the haunting
sense of sin and the stress it lays upon the struggle between the higher and lower self,
between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit." No person or nation is above this
moral challenge. The uniquely American repudiation of exceptionalism shines brightly in The
Federalist , where no angels can be found among men, and, because no one's behavior enjoys
the sanction of heaven, extensive checks are placed upon people's ability to impose their wills
upon others. The foreign policy that flowed out of the worldview of the Framers was that of
George Washington, a strong recommendation against hubris and foreign meddling.
These historical and cultural warnings about human nature have since been swept away by
acolytes of American exceptionalism. Our moral superiority, they claim, makes us Masters of the
Universe, not careful and mindful custodians of our own fallen nature. We have been put on
earth to judge other nations, not to be judged. Tossing the legacy of the Framers onto the ash
heap of history, George W. Bush declared in his Second Inaugural Address
that our exceptionalism creates an obligation to promote democracy "in every nation and
culture." In this endeavor, Bush pronounced, the United States enjoys the sanction of heaven,
as "history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty." Bush's
Second Inaugural was probably better in the original French.
Now, the puffed-up American establishment, many of whom supported the bloody Iraq war, drip
with moral condescension as they brand Vladimir Putin an existential outlaw and the enemy of
democracy, foreclosing the possibility of common ground with Russia on nuclear weapons, China,
terrorism, and other issues that matter to the national security of the United States. That
Washington has meddled in countless nations' affairs from Iraq to Russia -- and caused untold
damage -- is of no account to the establishment. Rules do not apply to democracy promoters.
After the Iraq war, we should have reconsidered our hubristic American exceptionalism. One
can take pride in the American tradition without laying claim to a uniquely beautiful national
soul that is exempt from the laws of nature and of nature's God. The hysterical reaction to
Trump's truthful admission that the United States too has made mistakes in its relationship
with Russia is a sign that American exceptionalism is still in full flower among elites.
Without the return of a certain humility, there will be more military adventures abroad and
political strife at home.
William S. Smith is research fellow and managing director at the Center for the Study
of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America.11 Responses to America the
Unexceptional
I agree with the sentiment but the facts show we've always been this way. Historically
speaking our hubris didn't start with George W. Bush. We had quite the exceptionalist spirt
with "Manifest Destiny" back in the 19th century. And indeed it took a bit of hubris to
declare independence from Britain.
Dr. Smith wrote his PhD dissertation in political philosophy on a critique of romanticism in
political thinking. However, in the above article he somehow believes America is unexceptional
for having exempted itself from God's laws and natural law. But what if American policy makers
acted out of political necessity and realism, not "hubris" or un-humility? I might agree with
Smith about using "democracy building" as a pretense for military intervention. But does Smith
take what US presidents and congressmen say at face value? What if US intervention in Iraq had
to do with trying to balance power between Iraq and Iran, or stop Islamic expansionism from
pushing into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states? Moralism can be just as dangerous as democracy
building in foreign affairs.
We did renounce exceptionalism and imperialism after WW1. Wilson's pet agencies faded out and
we focused internally. We remained non-interventionist until 1946 when the Wilsonians snatched
power again.
We should figure out why and how the bureaucracy and media gave up Empire in the early '20s.
Obviously the people were tired, just as they are now, but the people are irrelevant.
Something changed in the power structure. What was it? Can we help it to happen again?
The writer in question of the referenced piece at National Review, Jimmy Quinn, is a
20something college intern, proving they aren't even interested in hiring newer young
conservatives at NRO who don't just mindlessly repeat the neoconservative line on "American
exceptionalism". They are long past their days as a serious magazine. If not by ideology, just
by having a more interesting collection of writers, I'd say even the Weekly Standard is now a
better magazine than National Review. It's become like the boring Pravda rulebook for Official
Conservatism™ in America.
Well done, Mr. Smith. Our hubris blinds this nation to the pain it inflicts in other lands. I
reflect again and again on these words from the hymn (tune Finlandia):
This is my song, oh God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
This is my song, thou God of all the nations;
a song of peace for their land and for mine.
When nations rage, and fears erupt coercive,
The drumbeats sound, invoking pious cause.
My neighbors rise, their stalwart hearts they offer,
The gavels drop, suspending rights and laws.
While others wield their swords with blind devotion;
For peace I'll stand, my true and steadfast cause.
We would be one as now we join in singing,
Our hymn of love, to pledge ourselves anew.
To that high cause of greater understanding
Of who we are, and what in us is true.
We would be one in loving and forgiving,
with hopes and dreams as true and high as thine.
C'mon people, it's right to separate yourselves from the bombast and violent meddling we've
done all over the world, but let's not get carried away with this ridiculous "we're just like
any other bully" mentality.
The exceptionalism is in the elevation of individual human freedom as a foundational
principle. We declared it, the French declared it, and it remains a beacon for many others, no
matter how poorly we've observed it from time to time.
"Military imperialism abroad and guillotines at home became the legacy of self-declared
French exceptionalism." No, that was the paroxysm of revolution, one that the U,S. fortunately
avoided.
The real legacy was the sweeping away of monarchy across the continent, despite the irony of
Napoleon making himself emperor.
For all our imperialism, did we treat western Europe the same as Stalin treated eastern
Europe?
Is it just an accident of history that the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, former
British colonies all, lead the world in the protection of individual human rights? You can draw
a line, crooked though it may be, from those countries right back to the Magna Carta.
Yes, we had slavery, a legacy of our status as an agricultural colony, but the British,
French, and Americans all abolished it because it couldn't square with our declared
principles.
We may forget why we are exceptional but our immigration pressure shows that the the rest of
the world hasn't.
Re: The Jacobins' moral preening led France to declare war on Austria in 1792
It wasn't just the Jacobins: pretty much everyone wanted war. The royalists hoped that
foreign intervention would restore Louis XVI as an absolute monarch. The moderates wanted to
consolidate the gains of the Revolution and deflect public anger at its economic failings. The
radicals, as noted, looked to evangelize Europe with the Rights of Man. And the foreign powers
wanted to crush the Revolution lest its ideals take root in their own country -- and help
themselves to this or that bit of France's empire.
"... Akhilesh "Akhi" Pillalamarri is a fellow at Defense Priorities. An international relations analyst, editor, and writer, he studied international security at Georgetown University. Find him on Twitter ..."
Iranians: Not Pining for American InterventionSome seem to think they can't wait
for us to overthrow their government. Nothing could be further from the truth. By
Akhilesh Pillalamarri
•
August 6, 2018
Ryan
Rodrick Beiler/Shutterstock Defense hawks in Washington think the people of Iran are
waiting with bated breath for the regime in Tehran to collapse and wouldn't mind a little
American help along the way -- whether through direct military intervention, or "naturally" as
the result of grassroots
protests , "with Washington backing," of course.
There is no greater fallacy. While the people of Iran are undoubtedly frustrated with their
government, they are not on the
cusp of changing it, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to believe . In fact, any attempt
by outside actors to change the regime would cause the people of Iran to unify around the
clerics. We would end up deflating the reformist party and enabling the hardliners who have
consistently warned their people that we can't be trusted.
This ongoing mind reading of the Iranian people is pure Washington hokum with no basis in
reality.
After witnessing the debacles of our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, who can
blame the people of Iran for not wanting direct American military aid? As Damon Linker
points out in
The Week , our attitude towards unsavory regimes in other nations is all too often
informed by "an incorrigible optimism about the benefits of change and consequent refusal to
entertain the possibility that a bad situation might be made even worse by overturning it."
Almost nobody in Iran supports the main group pushing for Western-backed regime change, the
National Council for the Resistance of Iran (NCRI). That organization is widely seen as a
front for
the despised Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iranian Marxist group that fought against the late
Shah, was virulently anti-American, and worked with Saddam Hussein to
invade Iran during the Iran-Iraq War before rebranding itself as a democratic opposition
group.
Despite this being common knowledge among unbiased observers, figures like National Security
Advisor John Bolton
continue to promote it as an alternative for Iran.
In actuality, despite the desire among a sizable segment of Iranians -- especially young
people in Tehran and other large cities -- for a pro-Western government, there is no
well-organized, secular, democratic alternative waiting to take charge. Any organization that
bills itself as such is following in the deceitful footsteps of Ahmed
Chalabi , the Iraqi leader-in-exile who sold himself in the United States as the Iraqi
George Washington, but failed to garner any political support after the fall of Saddam
Hussein.
History shows us that there is no quicker way for a leader or group to lose legitimacy than
by seeking the aid of a foreign power. King Louis XVI of France managed to hold on to his
throne for a few years after the storming of the Bastille, but was deposed after fleeing Paris
and seeking the aid of France's enemies. Iranians, like Americans, value liberty in the sense
of national self-determination: they would rather be under-served by their own leaders than by
well-meaning foreigners or those perceived to be puppets.
After wasting almost two decades of blood and treasure trying to rebuild countries with
weaker national identities than Iran -- like Iraq -- U.S. policymakers would have to be
detached from reality to believe that anything good could come of intervention in Iranian
affairs.
The people of Iran have a long historical memory: those who sold out their nation to foreign
powers, even in opposition to tyranny, have garnered not thanks but the collective hatred of
the Iranian people. From the actions
of the satrap Bessus who killed the last Achaemenid Persian king Darius III to curry favor with
Alexander the Great, to the slaying of the last pre-Islamic Persian ruler Yazdegerd III by a
local ruler to appease the invading Arabs, Iranians have long looked askance at collaboration
with foreigners. Numerous 19th-century Qajar rulers failed to implement their policies because
they were thought to be too close to the goals of the imperial powers of Russia or Britain. And
the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, never escaped the perception that his ascent to power in
1953 was enabled by British and American intelligence agencies, regardless of his own
self-portrayal as a nationalist.
Most Iranians, no matter how much they oppose their current government and politics, would
not support an invasion of their own country, let alone the peaceful ascendancy of groups
believed to serve interests other than theirs: it is a matter
of pride and honor.
It is true that Iran has been racked by protests throughout the past year, such as January's
multi-city demonstrations and the closure of the Grand Bazaar in Tehran in June. But those were
spontaneous actions resulting from blue-collar frustrations with the economy and are unlikely
to lead to an outcome favorable to American interests.
If our pressure on Iran leads to regime change, the most likely alternative is
probably a military junta led by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a
shift away from the semi-civilian government that Iran now enjoys. The IRGC has been infringing
on our geopolitical interests throughout the Middle East for decades and could take an even
harder anti-American line than the current government. When confronted with invaders and
foreign pressure, Iranians have always rallied around military strongmen, such as Nader Shah in
the early 18th century, who threw out the invading Afghans, and Reza Shah in the early 20th
century, who saved
Iran from disintegration after World War I.
Washington should be careful what it wishes for. We should not delude ourselves into
thinking that the people of Iran are waiting for our support and intervention. The truth is
much darker.
Akhilesh "Akhi" Pillalamarri is a fellow at Defense Priorities. An international
relations analyst, editor, and writer, he studied international security at Georgetown
University. Find him on Twitter@akhipill.
The people of Iran instinctively love America because everyone in the world loves America.
This is true regardless of the fact that we have never done anything whatsoever to merit
their love. We have never given them assistance when they had an earthquake, we won't let
them get spare parts for passenger airlines causing air travel to be unsafe. We hinder
civilian projects but since we are narcissists, we simply believe that everyone loves us
because of our intrinsically great qualities.
Really, what if the shoe were on the other foot? Trump is very unpopular as our own
President. But if a foreign power were to attempt to depose him and install a new government,
there would be massive popular resistance to that here. Why the neocons think it would be
different in any other country eludes me.
Nothing can unite even a fractiously divided nation more readily than foreign
interference.
US policy since Libya and Syria has been "regime destruction", with not even token
commitments to pretend "nation building". The miscalculation continues: if the US manages to
turn Iran into a "failed to comply" state without effective governance, there will be several
factions with professional military capabilities – especially given the IRGC
"deterrent" of connections and alliances throughout the Middle East – that can continue
where our pathological US "maglinity" plans to stop.
There are no "wars of choice". The only choice the US gets is whether to start an
unnecessary war, from then on our victims get a say, eventually. We are still trapped in
Eisenhower's grandstanding "meddling" in Iranian elections, after all .
Everyone knows that Iranians are not begging for "liberation", just as everyone with the
brains God gave my youngest cat knew damn well that American boots would not transform Iraq
into a western democracy, that American bombs would ruin Libya and American bombs are used
for genocide in Yemen.
The Trump Administration is looking for an excuse to attack. Just as the Bush
Administration shed crocodile tears over the poor Iraqis, and Obama cynically exploited the
fate of Libyans.
In February, the Pentagon announced
a $950 million no-bid contract to REAN Cloud, LLC for the migration of legacy systems to the
cloud. As an Amazon Web Services consulting partner and reseller, REAN Cloud was likely favored
due to Amazon's recent $600 million cloud project for the Central Intelligence Agency. Creating
an unusually large contract with little oversight or competition led to ample criticism of the
Pentagon, as lawmakers demanded an explanation from DoD. In response to the brouhaha, the
Pentagon announced in early March that the maximum value of the contract would be
reduced from $950 million to $65 million.
As it turned out, though, even the Pentagon wasn't exactly sure how to apply the murky
requirements of OTA. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruled in May that the REAN contract did not
accord with federal law, in that REAN was granted an award without even really considering
going through a competitive bidding process. "Vague and attenuated" statements from the
Pentagon to potential bidders in the beginning of the process ensured that the process would
not be an open one. After the cancellation of the REAN deal, the Pentagon finally seems open to
competitive bidding for cloud migration.
Unfortunately, OTA is still alive and well across the DoD procurement process. In June, the
Defense Information Systems Agency
joined the growing list of agencies dabbling in OTA, noting that "many of the companies
we're dealing with are small start-ups." But as the REAN Cloud case shows, many companies
appear "small" but have far larger partners. According to statistics in the
Federal News Radio report , "Only $7.4 billion of the nearly $21 billion went to
nontraditional companies." The problem is created in part by the use of consortiums, which are
comprised of multiple companies, which vary in size. The consortium can decide how money is
allocated for an award, allowing larger businesses to benefit disproportionately out of sight
of the DoD and taxpayers.
Congress has finally started to demand more accountability for OTAs. The 2019 National
Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress requires more data
reporting and analysis by acquisition officials. But far more work remains.
Lawmakers should set stricter limits on when it's okay to eschew competitive bidding, and
lower the threshold for requiring congressional notification (currently set at $500 million).
Allowing tens of billions of dollars to be spent behind the backs of taxpayers without a
bidding process cannot continue.
Ross Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
We have lost some of our democratic habits -- indeed, in many ways we are losing
our very cohesion as a society. But I frame the question very differently.
I know a bunch of Trump supporters. Some of them are intellectuals who write for places like
TAC . But most are not. Neither are any of them raving bigots or knuckle-dragging
neanderthals, and all of them read the news, though with vastly less obsessiveness than people
who work in the business.
None of them "like" things like "unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure" or collusion with foreign governments. Some of them minimize
some of these things at least some of the time -- and I myself have been known to derive a kind
of pleasure from the absurdity of a figure like Mooch. But this isn't what the people who I
know who voted Trump voted for , nor is it why they continue to be happy with their
vote -- which, however unhappy they are with how the administration is conducting itself, most
of them still are.
Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the
election.
"They are, however, people who have lost trust in the individuals and institutions who are
most alarmed about Trump: the political establishment, the press, etc. And so, on a relative
basis, they'd rather continue to put their trust in Trump."
That last line does not follow .We have lost trust in all of the others; so would rather
see what Trump does; not that we have any trust in him to do the right thing
THAT would be ridiculous; especially after the last six months.
Hmmm. Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't help but read
that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites are capable
of governing. As for the American people taking a turn to authoritarianism. This is possible,
after all, our Federal government has spent most of the last century increasing their control
over many of the aspects of our lives and stretching the limits of the Constitution beyond
any recognition. We have been prepared to accept authoritarianism. Increasingly we have had
an authoritarian presidency that surveils its own people and has usurped regulatory and
warmaking authority from the Congress. The Federal government has created, out of whole
cloth, a role for itself in public education. Do not blame the populace for being what the
elite has spent a century shaping them to be.
I am convinced that the saber rattling and fear-mongering concerning Korea, Iran, and Russia
are not happening because we have any reason to be particularly concerned about these
countries or because they threaten our interests. No, this is the way a corrupt and
ineffective regime distracts its citizens from its own failings. Lets be clear, this would be
happening even if She-who-shall-not-be-named had one the Presidency.
Whatever happened to "trust but verify"?
OK, a bunch of people did the political equivalent of a Hail Mary play in voting for Trump.
But now that the ball has not only fallen short but gone way out of bounds and beaned some
spectators in the stands shouldn't they be revoking that trust and casting around for someone
else to represent them? Why stick with a sinking ship?
There is strong evidence to suggest that one factor in Trump's victory was distrust of US
foreign policy. The link above is to an article about exit polls showing Trump won the
veteran's vote 2:1 over Hillary Clinton.
People don't regret their votes for Trump because if they had voted for Clinton, they or
their loved ones would be coming home in body bags–or minus body parts.
As bad as Trump is, his foreign policy instincts are less hawkish than
Clinton's–witness his decision to end the CIA funding of Syrian insurgents.
Trump's behavior is certainly "unpresidential" and chaotic. It is also less horrible than
war by many orders of magnitude.
"The politically relevant, and profoundly disturbing, fact is precisely the opposite of the
conventional wisdom: After six months of unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure, and credible evidence of a desire to collude with a hostile
foreign government to subvert an American election, President Trump's approval rating is
astonishingly high -- with something between one-third and two-fifths of the American people
apparently liking what they see and hear from the White House"
But George W Bush at his nadir averaged 26% approval, and that's seven years in, during an
epic economic collapse, a catastrophic war, and a host of other disasters. Trump is not THAT
far away from that average.
There is simply a line beyond which a president can't decline unless he murders and eats a
puppy in public, and I see no reason to presume that we can judge that Trump hit his bottom
six months in, when the economy is decent and no non-self inflicted crisis looming.
I'd also add that while all your friends have different reasons to stay aboard the Trump
train, all of them sound like high information, fairly ideological voters. This is probably
not the profile of Trump voters set to vote for The Rock in 2020
Well, when a building is rotten to the core, the only thing you can do is raze it to the
ground to start rebuilding. Our government has long passed its sell-by date. Really,
expecting a political solution to arise from a government controlled system such as ours does
not border on insanity – it completely crosses that border in leaves it miles in the
dust. Witness our insane Congress voting by a 98% margin to inflict sanctions based upon
absolute crock. But then the US has never let reality get in the way of statesmenshowmanship.
We get what we deserve, good and hard.
You're OK until the last line. "And populism by its very nature cannot build institutions,
cannot govern "
You're still using the Deepstate definition of populism. In fact populists want only one
thing: We think the government of THIS country should serve the interests of the people of
THIS country.
It's perfectly possible to govern by this rule. FDR did it magnificently.
Why did it work for FDR? Because he was determined to BREAK the monopolies and forces that
acted contrary to the interests of the people, and because governments BELOW the Federal
level were still strong. When he closed the banks for several months, cities and Chambers of
Commerce jumped in immediately to develop scrip systems.
Thanks to an unbroken series of evil judges and presidents after WW2, local governments
and institutions are dead or dying. Even if a competent and determined populist tried to
close down banks or Amazon or the "health" insurance system, there would be no organized way
to replace them.
What exactly did these people think a Clinton administration would do? What nightmarish
dystopia did they see coming around the bend? And what do you think -- were their perceptions
of America's future under a Clinton administration accurate, or at least close to the mark?
And if so, why?
Also, I get that people have lost trust in mainstream institutions. What makes them think
that Trump is trustworthy in comparison? Why do they have more trust in Trump than in the
institutions? And does that seem reasonable?
I didn't vote for Trump: His rhetorical style turns me cold; I don't like his position on
many issues, or his general governing philosophy, to the extent he can be said to have one.
But, BUT, I sure as Hell did not vote for Hilary Clinton(I voted for Johnson and Weld, who
were obvious non-starters from the word Go. I might possibly have voted for Trump if it had
looked like the election might be close in Illinois, but since the Chicago Machine had
already stolen it for HRC, I could salve my conscience and vote for Johnson.
Clinton was the status quo candidate, and since I did not desire "more of the same",
governmentally, Trump and his circus are preferable to Clinton and whatever cabal she would
have assembled to run the country.
You claim that the elite "inevitably" run the machinery of government, but it's worth
noting that once upon a time in America, most of the people in government were political
appointees who could be sent packing(along with their bosses) by the voters. Nowadays, the
'elite' which runs government is dug in pretty much permanently, and the same people will be,
in practice, running the government no matter who wins the next election, or the one after
that
Hilary Clinton was forthrightly the candidate of the permanent, un-elected bureaucracy,
and Trump, well, didn't seem to be. The choice was between Trump, whose actual position on
the size of government was not clear, and Hilary Clinton who was actually promising to make
government bigger, more centralized, more expensive and less responsive. I'm not sorry Trump
won however distasteful he and his henchmen are to me.
I too had a friend who was a huge Ron Paul supporter who not only backed Trump, but became a
major apologist for him ever since. The man ran two back to back campaigns in Georgia for US
Senate, the Ron Paul mold. Now, no on his original team will give him the time of day. Those
who tried to get some sense into him, have been closed off.
As a libertarian, I am no more afraid of the left or the right. In fact, listening to the
right rant about the left yields a lot of ignorance, disinformation and paranoia: stock in
trade for right wing propaganda. But I am disturbed when people spend years fighting for
liberty suddenly joined Cult 45 that has no sense of liberty Ron Paul or his followers would
recognize.
But Trump fit the bankrupt GOP. Lest we forget, those 49 GOP Senators who voted for
"skinny repeal" (even the name is joke!) never gave a moment's consideration to the bill
written by Rand Paul that covers the conservative attributes of free markets and
self-determination. Lest we also forget that Rand is not only one of the few legit
conservatives, but a doctor and the son of doctor or former Congressman. Those credentials
alone would have been enough if GOP was actually interested being conservative. Apparently,
Trumpism is what the GOP is about and 49 of them proved it.
I think that you have identified a problem that transcends Trump and his opponents. Vitriolic
partisanship is one thing. At various points in our history, we have had some nasty spells of
polarization. The deeper problem that the institutions of public life are now losing their
very legitimacy.
Legitimacy is something deeper than mere approval. It relies upon the unspoken acceptance
of political and institutional norms.
We are clearly in the process of publicly reevaluating and even rejecting these norms. The
birthers questioning Obama's background and "not my president" folks do not view their
oppponents as legitimate, if mistaken. In the case of Trump and the radical left, they
contest the legitimacy of the other side even participating in the process, a process by the
way to which they owe no fealty.
Nothing wrong with America that couldn't be fixed, one, by making voting mandatory, and two,
by having top two vote getters in primary face each other in the general.
We'd have a moderate politics with elected officials clustering slightly right and left of
the center.
Speaking as a Commie Pinko Red, I still prefer Trump as President over Clinton, precisely
because he is doing so much to undermine America's "leadership" in world affairs. He's still
a murderous imperialist, maybe even just as much as she would have been, but there's just so
much more damage that she could have done making bi-partisan deals with the GOP for the
benefit of Wall Street and the insurance industry.
The movement against GOPcare – Trumpcare wasn't really a fair name for the wet
dreams of Paul Ryan and Conservative, Inc. – probably couldn't have been so effective
or flew under the radar of the establishment tools running the Democratic Party and its media
mouthpieces if a Democrat was in the White House and the various beltway "movement" honchos
had had their precious seat at the table where they could have rolled over for the Democratic
president of the moment.
The biggest problem is what comes after Trump for the GOP?
He's kicked off a process for the GOP that will be very difficult to manage going forward.
He showed that outright racism, sexism, continuous lying, even treasonous collusion with
Russia to subvert our election is just fine with the Republican Party. How does the GOP sell
family values to their 'base' after they all lined up with Donald j Trump, serial
wife-cheater and money-launderer?
It will be hard for anyone to forget that any of this happened.
Consider this: 8 years of W Bush yielded the first black President – It really could
not have happened if W hadn't burned the house down. What comes after Trump?
I'm a very middle-class worker in the IT sector where most of my coworkers have been
sensible, but my weekend hobby of playing music has put me in contact (largely via Facebook)
with many Trump supporters who do happen to be knuckle-dragging neanderthals. They generally
don't read; their "news" comes from partisan demagogues on the radio or TV. If I give one the
benefit of the doubt and share an article from, say, The American Conservative -- "The
Madness of King Donald" was a favorite -- it's been all too common to receive a
childish/hate-filled meme in response. Bigots are legion: I've unfriended the raving variety,
and unfollowed the milder dog-whistlers. These deplorables have in fact been emboldened by
the current POTUS.
But I get your point. I abhor the current duopoly, but it could be fixed if thinking
citizens wanted to put in some effort. So, it's depressing in a different kind of way that so
many thoughtful and well-read Americans are so cynical about state of US politics that they
are fine with Trump wrecking it.
"Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the election."
They are people who were full of it beforehand, and as the evidence rolls in, they just
sink deeper into lies.
Linker's quote "a desire to collude" you reference later as "collusion". The first instance
is an attempt to broaden the charge from collusion, the second instance is a (sloppy?) change
in language.
@Will Harrington, "Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't
help but read that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites
are capable of governing."
I read that statement as "Once you are governing, once you are the one(s) in a position of
power, then by definition you have become 'the elite' and are no longer 'a plebeian'".
Populists, by definition, are the people who call for the tearing down of institutions that
make up the status-quo, and elites, by definition, are the people who build and maintain
status-quo institutions. At least in my eyes, "being a populist" and "governing institutions"
are mutually exclusive.
Since the conservative party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower was invaded by the right
wingers and became the party of Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth, the goal has been to
tarnish all concept of a functioning a democracy and a government is built to work for the
people, of the people, and by the people. The right wing main tactic is lies and just get
people riled up so that they don't realize and oblivious to the fact that America has slipped
from capitalism to corporatism; from a capitalist democracy to a caste based plutocracy run
for the sole benefit of the oligarchs who bought this country.
Don Trump is the embodiment and distillation of the right winger and their economic and
social cultural policies. He is not an alternative or antidote to the Republicans or
Democrats.
" Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government is in chaos and that Trump is not bringing the change he hoped for. But he doesn't
regret his vote, and he prefers the chaos of Trump to business-as-usual under either the
Democrats or the Republicans. And if Trump winds up discrediting the Federal government
generally, that's fine with him."
I didn't vote this election because I didn't like either candidate. I had been promoting
'America First' as a rallying cry for a candidate for years but Trump wasnt exactly the kind
of leader I had in mind for it.
But I'm with the guy above -- if chaos will bust up the musical chair dual monarchies of the
dems and repubs and the corrupt status quo government bring it on.
A somewhat related question, Noah: If you had been a young man living in China on August 1,
1927, do you think you would have joined the People's Liberation Army?
Originally I wanted to sit out this past election but gave in to peer pressure. And I regret
this. Trump? Clinton? Johnson? Stein? All were mediocre. Clinton/Trump were the two worst
candidates that the "major" parties have ever produced in my lifetime. It was with fear and
trepidation that I voted for Trump, notwithstanding that I fundamentally agreed with him on
the issues of immigration and the need for a reduced American role in global affairs. In the
end, I rationalized this (wasted) vote based upon the notion that not only had his opponent
committed a felony (detouring government emails) but also because (as others have pointed
out) she was the candidate of the status quo, the "permanent bureaucracy", Big Finance etc.
etc. The fact that Trump actually won surprised me, but only moderately, because as terrible
a candidate as he was, his opponent was even worse.
What has transpired since his election comes as no surprise. Had Clinton been elected
conditions would have only been mirror imaged, such being the state of things in this
once-great republic. I continue to maintain that the two-party system is archaic and has to
go. Whether a multi-party system would be better, I don't know. Perhaps we have reached a
point where the country is simply ungovernable. Perhaps more responsibility should be
returned to state and local government (Jefferson would have approved). Again, I don't
know.
What I do know is that the current system is dysfunctional.
And that, my friends, is why we have a real estate/TV personality as President.
i am neither an establishment voter, or a member of the media/press. i am deeply worried
where the man (trump) is taking this nation. the gop is complicit in this chaos as they see
trump as a rubber stamp for their plutocratic agenda. i don't know what it will take to right
the ship of state
I don't regret my vote. And I ave had issues with my choice before and after the election.
The sky is not even close to falling as predicted. And the democracy you claim is at threat
may very well be, but it's from the current executive. And nothing thus far suggests that it
will.
I m not going to dismiss the caterwauling liberals have been making since the campaign or
the election as major distraction to governance.
And by the way there remain not a twiddle's evidence that the WH prior to the election
colluded to undermine the US in any manner. It's time to cease throwing that out as sauce for
the goose.
I think I agree with all four of your "freinds". I am very fond of the establishment, they
have their place. What they provide in cohesion, stability and continuity is valuable to the
state. But they appear to be want for any level of substance, depth thereof or moral
consistency (if any at all). The double standards they hold themselves, their donors and
connections on issues and accountability is unsustainable in a democracy as I think you
understand it.
When I was laid out in the ER, I found myself wrestling with my own position on
healthcare. The temptations are great to bend the guide as to my own conditions -- but I
don't think I could so with a clear conscience. I am nor sot sure that what we haven't lost
is a sense of conscience -- that sense that truth overrides immediate gain. I don't think the
US can survive as the US if the leadership is bent on holding themselves to a standard not
available to the country's citizens.
"Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government . . ."
And the discredited notions that
1. the rich know how to run an economy effectively and
2. that a rise in the market is a sign of economic health.
Pear Conference captures perfectly the 'thinking' i have heard from more than one Trump
voter. This is 'reasoning'?
If there is one system in America that needs blowing up to start over it might be our
education system. I am generally supportive of public ed, and i am impressed by some of the
commitment and inventiveness i see among the proposers of various alternatives to public ed.
So, some folks are trying, even sometimes succeeding, but we have managed to arrive at a
point in our culture where we have elected a President whose election success depended more
than anything else on a public who have lost the ability to think critically. (if they ever
had it, of course)
Yes I know the other one got more votes, by a lot. And i know that this other candidate was
oddly not at all an attractive alternative. I know all that, but still, a huge fraction of
the voting population–a fraction large enough to make themselves now THE base the
government is playing to–is a group who could not/would not see this con-job coming?
There was every opportunity to use actual logic and facts to reach a voting decision, but
these millions of voters chose instead to go with various variations on the theme of 'they
all stink, so i'm using my vote to poke a stick in their eyes." Or, as Pear satirized, "I
hate/mistrust the elites and they like almost anybody else other than my guy, so I'm gonna
turn my country over to the most vulgar non-elite pig the system can come up with."
There is talk now about the damage he can do to American politics and sense of community, but
I think he may be more symptom than cause. We don't value the things we thought were a
standard part of the American process: truthfulness, kindness, authenticity, devotion to the
common good. We value, it turns out, showmanship, machismo, crass shows of wealth and power,
and ..I can't go on.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I know the institutions held in high regard on this site,
such as church, and some factors we all put our faith in such as increasing levels of
education, turn out not to matter so much as we had thought. It is going to take some hard
work and more than a little time to recover from this sickness in the country's soul.
"Trump supporters are just like people who are outraged by something and show it by rioting
and burning down their own neighborhoods." – Greg in PDX
The antifas rioting and destroying in Portland also got very violent when some old folks
held a peaceful rally for Trump there.
Oh, sorry. I forgot that when "progressives" disagree with someone, they consider that
merely disagreeing with them constitutes "violence" against their "safe space" and they are
compelled to go out and punch or shoot people.
No reason why populism couldn't govern. Huey Long was a damn effective governor of Louisiana.
Send the whole Acela Corridor élite to Saddam's woodchipper and the country would
noodle along just fine. I'm not for state violence, and yet the fantasy gives me a
frisson. Forgive me, a sinner.
Is David Brooks openly flirting with the state-worship
of this vexing 19th Century philosopher?Conservatism has gone from a rigid waltz between
libertarians, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks to a limb-flailing rave. Writers
are reaching towards the bookshelf for thinkers that will refine and define first principles
during this time of flux. While it's all been great fun, an esteemed but concerning guest has
now entered the party. Increasingly, the right is dancing with G.W. Hegel.
David Brooks' recent column
is a clear example of a Hegel flirtation. In it, Brooks defines conservatism as an internal
critique of the Enlightenment. Explaining opposition to the idea that individuals randomly
choose to start society, he writes: "There never was such a thing as an autonomous, free
individual who could gather with others to create order. Rather, individuals emerge out of
families, communities, faiths, neighborhoods and nations. The order comes first. Individual
freedom is an artifact of that order."
Family and community are the basic building blocks of society and social contract theory has
plenty of flaws. Yet note how Brooks lists the nation state as prior to individual freedom.
It's dropped so casually that its radicalism is almost obscured. What type of freedom is
dependent on the nation state? Hegelian.
Hegel argued that freedom was the origin of self-consciousness, and defined his work as
tracing "the stages in the evolution of the idea of the will free in and for itself." In
Philosophy of Right , he critiqued how Enlightenment liberals see freedom, arguing
that liberal freedom could be divided into three stages.
First comes freedom defined negatively: "Nothing can determine where I'll eat dinner!" In
the second stage of freedom, we want to choose specific states of mind or to concern ourselves
with a particular. "I'm going to eat at Waffle House." But if we choose to eat at Waffle House,
we've restricted that first stage of freedom. We can no longer say "nothing can determine where
I'll eat dinner" because we've selected a particular place to eat. So the third stage of
freedom is the ability to change one's mind, to keep options open, regardless of prior
commitments. "I will eat at Waffle House, unless I decide to just drink mini-wines in the
Applebee's parking lot." This reveals how our conception of freedom is dependent upon the
options available to us.
Liberal freedom is thus our capacity to enter and exit choices, which are determined by
factors other than ourselves. I did not choose for Waffle House to exist. I did not choose to
get hungry at dinner time. We do not choose what we choose between. Therefore, the order of
society creates freedom.
So Brooks is clearly doing the robot with Hegel. But so what? Maybe Hegel's ideas are both
conservative and correct. Maybe conservatives ought to embrace Hegel openly. There have always
been right-wing Hegelians. These are defensible positions. Yet we should remember that
conservative bouncers have restricted Hegel from their canon before and for good reason.
Hegel has always been associated with state worship, and Marxism largely sprang from his
thought. In History of the Idea of Progress , conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet
wrote that, while many try to disguise Hegel as some sort of liberal, "There is simply no way
of separating him from ideas and expressions which were in themselves acts of obeisance to the
national state and which on the ineffacable record, led others to ever-higher levels of
intensity in the glorification of the state."
Some may disagree with Nisbet's reading. Some
may say that Marxists misread Hegel . Yet the link to state worship and Marxism must be
contended with, and anyone who slips in Hegel without acknowledging it -- like Brooks -- is
masking the potentially radical nature of his statement.
Strip the Brooks column of the usual sentimental odes to "beautiful communities" and his
strange statement stands bare and a little menacing. There is a world of difference between
saying that freedom is dependent upon the family and saying that it's dependent on the nation
state. Brooks sounds an awful lot like former President Barack Obama: "Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody
invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that."
Yet apparently, as Brooks tells us, big government is no longer a threat to the "sacred
space." Community focused conservatives often use Nisbet's Quest for Community to
criticize hyper-individualism, yet they should also remember Nisbet's criticism of Hegelian
freedom: "Hegel clothes the absolute state, just as Rousseau had, in the garments of freedom;
but there cannot be the slightest doubt of Hegel's dedicated belief in the absolutism, the
sanctity, even the divinity of the national state's power."
Perhaps I'm reading too much into a throwaway line. After all, Aristotle offered ideas
similar to those of Hegel and Brooks without the taint of state worship -- maybe that's where
Brooks is drawing his inspiration from. Yet the connection between Brooks and Hegel is still
inescapable because the former is basing his definition of conservatism from British
philosopher Roger Scruton.
Scruton is one of two modern philosophers currently disseminating Hegelian ideas into
mainstream punditry. He reads Hegel in a positive light, and in his book The Soul of the
World , he writes: "Freedom is fully realized only in the world of persons, bound together
by rights and duties that are mutually recognized." Yet Scruton does not say "in the world of
nations," and elsewhere warns that Hegel is like a "beautiful oasis around a treacherous pool
of nonsense." Brooks doesn't offer any such qualifications.
Alasdair MacIntyre is the other philosopher who has helped popularize Hegel in conservative
circles, and in fact Brooks referenced him
just a few days ago . Conservatives who discuss "liquid modernity" as read through
MacIntyre describe something almost identical to Hegel's Absolute Negativity. And McIntyre's
idea of waiting for Benedict is similar to waiting for the Absolute Spirit, which is similar to
waiting for the revolution.
What would a more Hegelian conservatism look like? It's hard to tell. Perhaps we'd see books
declaring an end to one form of consciousness. Perhaps Hegel's ideas on corporations would be
directly referenced by those concerned with working-class alienation. Or perhaps we would see
more fishy ideas about the nation state being a prerequisite for individual freedom.
This isn't about pointing at Brooks and pulling an " Invasion of the Body Snatchers ," or just
beating up on him for the sake of it. He's merely the most obvious example of a conservative
who's done a waltz with the German philosopher. And even then it's always difficult to tell.
Hegel wrote on such a wide range of topics in such confusing prose, that, like a crazed ex, we
might mistakenly spot him everywhere.
Hegel's work is important, and both Scruton and MacIntyre are geniuses. Yet we should always
remember Russell Kirk's warnings that "Marx could draw upon Hegel's magazine; he could find
nothing to suit him in Burke" and that Hegel was "a conservative only from chance and
expediency." Hegel is already at the party; whether we want him to stay is another question
entirely.
James McElroy is a New York City-based novelist and essayist, who also works in
finance.
To some, that fear was not a problem but a tool -- one could defeat political enemies simply by accusing them of being Russian
sympathizers. There was no need for evidence, so desperate were Americans to believe; just an accusation that someone was in league
with Russia was enough. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy
fired his first shot on February 9, 1950,
proclaiming there were 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party working for the Department of State. The evidence? Nothing
but assertions .
Indeed, the very word " McCarthyism " came to mean making
accusations of treason without sufficient evidence. Other
definitionsinclude a ggressively
questioning a person's patriotism, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or discredit
an opponent, and subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security.
Pretending to be saving America while he tore at its foundations, McCarthy destroyed thousands of lives over the next four years
simply by pointing a finger and saying "communist." Whenever anyone invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence, McCarthy
answered that this was "the most positive
proof obtainable that the witness is communist." The power of accusation was used by others as well: the
Lavender Scare , which
concluded that the State Department was overrun with closeted homosexuals who were at risk of being blackmailed by Moscow for their
perversions, was an offshoot of McCarthyism, and by 1951, 600 people had been fired based solely on evidence-free "morals" charges.
State legislatures and school boards
mimicked McCarthy. Books and movies were banned. Blacklists abounded.
The FBI embarked on campaigns of political
repression (they would later claim Martin Luther
King Jr. had communist ties), even as journalists and academics voluntarily narrowed their political thinking to exclude communism.
Hegel: The Uninvited Guest at the Conservative Party
Is David Brooks openly flirting with the state-worship of this vexing 19th Century philosopher?
By
James McElroy
•
August 1, 2018
Columnist David Brooks and German Philosopher G.W. Hagel (public domain)
Conservatism has gone from a rigid waltz between libertarians, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks to a
limb-flailing rave. Writers are reaching towards the bookshelf for thinkers that will refine and define first principles
during this time of flux. While it's all been great fun, an esteemed but concerning guest has now entered the party.
Increasingly, the right is dancing with G.W. Hegel.
David Brooks' recent
column
is a clear example of a Hegel flirtation. In it, Brooks defines conservatism as an internal critique of the
Enlightenment. Explaining opposition to the idea that individuals randomly choose to start society, he writes: "There
never was such a thing as an autonomous, free individual who could gather with others to create order. Rather,
individuals emerge out of families, communities, faiths, neighborhoods and nations. The order comes first. Individual
freedom is an artifact of that order."
Family and community are the basic building blocks of society and social contract theory has plenty of flaws. Yet
note how Brooks lists the nation state as prior to individual freedom. It's dropped so casually that its radicalism is
almost obscured. What type of freedom is dependent on the nation state? Hegelian.
Hegel argued that freedom was the origin of self-consciousness, and defined his work as tracing "the stages in the
evolution of the idea of the will free in and for itself." In
Philosophy of Right
, he critiqued how
Enlightenment liberals see freedom, arguing that liberal freedom could be divided into three stages.
First comes freedom defined negatively: "Nothing can determine where I'll eat dinner!" In the second stage of
freedom, we want to choose specific states of mind or to concern ourselves with a particular. "I'm going to eat at
Waffle House." But if we choose to eat at Waffle House, we've restricted that first stage of freedom. We can no longer
say "nothing can determine where I'll eat dinner" because we've selected a particular place to eat. So the third stage
of freedom is the ability to change one's mind, to keep options open, regardless of prior commitments. "I will eat at
Waffle House, unless I decide to just drink mini-wines in the Applebee's parking lot." This reveals how our conception
of freedom is dependent upon the options available to us.
Liberal freedom is thus our capacity to enter and exit choices, which are determined by factors other than ourselves.
I did not choose for Waffle House to exist. I did not choose to get hungry at dinner time. We do not choose what we
choose between. Therefore, the order of society creates freedom.
So Brooks is clearly doing the robot with Hegel. But so what? Maybe Hegel's ideas are both conservative and correct.
Maybe conservatives ought to embrace Hegel openly. There have always been right-wing Hegelians. These are defensible
positions. Yet we should remember that conservative bouncers have restricted Hegel from their canon before and for good
reason.
Hegel has always been associated with state worship, and Marxism largely sprang from his thought. In
History of
the Idea of Progress
, conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote that, while many try to disguise Hegel as some
sort of liberal, "There is simply no way of separating him from ideas and expressions which were in themselves acts of
obeisance to the national state and which on the ineffacable record, led others to ever-higher levels of intensity in
the glorification of the state."
Some may disagree with Nisbet's reading.
Some may say that
Marxists misread Hegel
. Yet the link to state worship and Marxism must be contended with, and anyone who slips in
Hegel without acknowledging it -- like Brooks -- is masking the potentially radical nature of his statement.
Strip the Brooks column of the usual sentimental odes to "beautiful communities" and his strange statement stands
bare and a little menacing. There is a world of difference between saying that freedom is dependent upon the family and
saying that it's dependent on the nation state. Brooks sounds an awful lot like former President Barack Obama: "Somebody
helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads
and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that."
Yet apparently, as Brooks tells us, big government is no longer a threat to the "sacred space." Community focused
conservatives often use Nisbet's
Quest for Community
to criticize hyper-individualism, yet they should also
remember Nisbet's criticism of Hegelian freedom: "Hegel clothes the absolute state, just as Rousseau had, in the
garments of freedom; but there cannot be the slightest doubt of Hegel's dedicated belief in the absolutism, the
sanctity, even the divinity of the national state's power."
Perhaps I'm reading too much into a throwaway line. After all, Aristotle offered ideas similar to those of Hegel and
Brooks without the taint of state worship -- maybe that's where Brooks is drawing his inspiration from. Yet the connection
between Brooks and Hegel is still inescapable because the former is basing his definition of conservatism from British
philosopher Roger Scruton.
Scruton is one of two modern philosophers currently disseminating Hegelian ideas into mainstream punditry. He reads
Hegel in a positive light, and in his book
The Soul of the World
, he writes: "Freedom is fully realized only in
the world of persons, bound together by rights and duties that are mutually recognized." Yet Scruton does not say "in
the world of nations," and elsewhere warns that Hegel is like a "beautiful oasis around a treacherous pool of nonsense."
Brooks doesn't offer any such qualifications.
Alasdair MacIntyre is the other philosopher who has helped popularize Hegel in conservative circles, and in fact
Brooks referenced him
just a few days
ago
. Conservatives who discuss "liquid modernity" as read through MacIntyre describe something almost identical to
Hegel's Absolute Negativity. And McIntyre's idea of waiting for Benedict is similar to waiting for the Absolute Spirit,
which is similar to waiting for the revolution.
What would a more Hegelian conservatism look like? It's hard to tell. Perhaps we'd see books declaring an end to one
form of consciousness. Perhaps Hegel's ideas on corporations would be directly referenced by those concerned with
working-class alienation. Or perhaps we would see more fishy ideas about the nation state being a prerequisite for
individual freedom.
This isn't about pointing at Brooks and pulling an "
Invasion of
the Body Snatchers
," or just beating up on him for the sake of it. He's merely the most obvious example of a
conservative who's done a waltz with the German philosopher. And even then it's always difficult to tell. Hegel wrote on
such a wide range of topics in such confusing prose, that, like a crazed ex, we might mistakenly spot him everywhere.
Hegel's work is important, and both Scruton and MacIntyre are geniuses. Yet we should always remember Russell Kirk's
warnings that "Marx could draw upon Hegel's magazine; he could find nothing to suit him in Burke" and that Hegel was "a
conservative only from chance and expediency." Hegel is already at the party; whether we want him to stay is another
question entirely.
James McElroy is a New York City-based novelist and essayist, who also works in finance.
"... With impeachment itself on the table, Mueller has done little more than issue the equivalent of parking tickets to foreigners he has no jurisdiction over. Intelligence summaries claim the Russians meddled, but don't show that Trump was involved. Indictments against Russians are cheered as evidence, when they are just Mueller's uncontested assertions. ..."
An answer was needed, so one was created: the Russians. As World War II ended with the U.S.
the planet's predominant power, dark forces saw advantage in arousing new
fears . The Soviet Union morphed from a decimated ally in the fight against fascism into a
competitor locked in a titanic struggle with America. How did they get so powerful so quickly?
Nothing could explain it except traitors. Cold War-era America? Or 2018 Trump America? Yes, on
both counts.
To some, that fear was not a problem but a tool -- one could defeat political enemies simply
by accusing them of being Russian sympathizers. There was no need for evidence, so desperate
were Americans to believe; just an accusation that someone was in league with Russia was
enough. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy fired his first shot on February
9, 1950, proclaiming there were 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party working for
the Department of State. The evidence? Nothing but assertions .
Indeed, the very word " McCarthyism " came to mean making accusations
of treason without sufficient evidence. Other definitionsinclude a ggressively
questioning a person's patriotism, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to
adhere to conformist politics or discredit an opponent, and subverting civil and political
rights in the name of national security.
Pretending to be saving America while he tore at its foundations, McCarthy destroyed
thousands of lives over the next four years simply by pointing a finger and saying "communist."
Whenever anyone invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence, McCarthy answered that this was "the
most positive proof obtainable that the witness is communist." The power of accusation was used
by others as well: the Lavender
Scare , which concluded that the State Department was overrun with closeted homosexuals who
were at risk of being blackmailed by Moscow for their perversions, was an offshoot of
McCarthyism, and by 1951, 600 people had been fired based solely on evidence-free "morals"
charges. State legislatures and school boards mimicked McCarthy.
Books and movies were banned. Blacklists abounded. The FBI embarked on campaigns of political
repression (they would later claim Martin Luther King Jr. had
communist ties), even as journalists and academics voluntarily narrowed their political
thinking to exclude communism.
Watching sincere people succumb to paranoia again, today, is not something to relish. But
having trained themselves to intellectualize away Hillary Clinton's flaws, as they had with
Obama, about half of America seemed truly gobsmacked when she lost to the antithesis of
everything that she had represented to them. Every
poll (that they read) said she would win. Every
article (that they read) said it too, as did every
person (that they knew). Lacking an explanation for the unexplainable, many advanced
scenarios that would have failed high school civics, claiming that only the popular vote
mattered, or that the archaic
Emoluments Clause prevented Trump from taking office, or that Trump was insane and could be
disposed of under the
25th Amendment .
After a few trial balloons during the primaries under which
Bernie Sanders' visits to Russia and
Jill Stein's attendance at a banquet in Moscow were used to imply disloyalty, the fearful
cry that the Russians meddled in the election morphed into the claim that Trump had worked with
the Russians and/or (fear is flexible) that the Russians had something on Trump. Everyone
learned a new Russian word: kompromat .
Donald Trump became the Manchurian Candidate. That term was taken from a 1959 novel made
into a classic Cold War movie that follows an American soldier brainwashed by communists as
part of a Kremlin plot to gain influence in the Oval Office. A
Google search shows that dozens of news sources -- including
The
New York Times , Vanity
Fair ,
Salon ,
The Washington Post , and, why not, Stormy Daniels' lawyer
Michael Avenatti -- have all claimed that Trump is
a 2018 variant of the Manchurian Candidate,
controlled by ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin.
The birth moment of Trump as a Russian asset is traceable to MI-6 intelligence
officer-turned-Democratic opposition researcher-turned FBI mole
Christopher Steele , whose "dossier" claimed the existence of the pee tape. Supposedly,
somewhere deep in the Kremlin is a surveillance video made in 2013 of Trump in Moscow's
Ritz-Carlton Hotel, watching prostitutes urinate on a bed that the Obamas had once slept in. As
McCarthy did with homosexuality, naughty sex was thrown in to keep the rubes' attention.
No one, not even Steele's alleged informants, has actually seen
the pee tape. It exists in a blurry land of certainty alongside the elevator
tape , alleged video of Trump doing something in an elevator that's so salacious it's been
called "Every Trump Reporter's White Whale." No one knows when the elevator video was made, but
a dossier-length article in
New York magazine posits that Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987.
Suddenly no real evidence is necessary, because it is always right in front of your face.
McCarthy accused
Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower of being communists or communist stooges over the
"loss" of China in 1949. Trump holds a bizarre press conference in Helsinki and the only
explanation must be that he is a traitor.
Nancy
Pelosi ("President Trump's weakness in front of Putin was embarrassing, and proves that the
Russians have something on the president, personally, financially, or politically") and
Cory Booker ("Trump is acting like he's guilty of something") and
Hillary Clinton ("now we know whose side he plays for") and John Brennan ("rises to and
exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous.
Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin") and
Rachel Maddow ("We haven't ever had to reckon with the possibility that someone had
ascended to the presidency of the United States to serve the interests of
another country rather than our own") and others have said that Trump is
controlled by Russia. As in 1954 when the press provided live TV coverage of McCarthy's
dirty assertions against the Army, the modern media uses each new assertion as "proof" of an
earlier one. Snowballs get bigger rolling downhill.
When assertion is accepted as evidence, it forces the other side to prove a negative to
break free. So until Trump "proves" he is not a Russian stooge, his denials will be seen as
attempts to wiggle out from under evidence that in fact doesn't exist. Who, pundits ask, can
come up with a better explanation for Trump's actions than blackmail, as if that was a
necessary step to clearing his name?
Joe McCarthy's victims faced similar challenges: once labeled a communist or a homosexual,
the onus shifted to them to somehow prove they weren't. Their failure to prove their innocence
became more evidence of their guilt. The Cold War version of this mindset was well illustrated
in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the classic Twilight Zone episode "
The Monsters Are Due on
Maple Street ." Anyone who questions this must themselves be at best a useful fool, if not
an outright Russia collaborator. (Wrote one
pundit : "They are accessories, before and after the fact, to the hijacking of a democratic
election. So, yes, goddamn them all.") In the McCarthy era, the term was "fellow traveler":
anyone, witting or unwitting, who helped the Russians. Mere skepticism, never mind actual
dissent, is muddled with disloyalty.
Blackmail? Payoffs? Deals? It isn't just the months of Mueller's investigation that have
passed without evidence. The IRS and Treasury have had Trump's tax documents and financials for
decades, even if Rachel Maddow has not. If Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987, or even
2013, he has done it behind the backs of the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and NSA. Yet at the same
time, in what history would see as the most out-in-the-open intelligence operation ever, some
claim he asked on TV for his handlers to deliver hacked emails. In TheManchurian
Candidate , the whole thing was at least done in secret as you'd expect.
With impeachment itself on the table, Mueller has done little more than issue the
equivalent of parking tickets to foreigners he has no jurisdiction over. Intelligence summaries
claim the Russians meddled, but don't show that Trump was involved. Indictments against
Russians are cheered as evidence, when they are just Mueller's uncontested assertions.
There is no evidence the president is acting on orders from Russia or is under their
influence. None.
As with McCarthy, as in those famous witch trials at Salem, allegations shouldn't be
accepted as truth, though in 2018 even pointing out that basic tenet is blasphemy. The burden
of proof should be on the accusing party, yet the standing narrative in America is that the
Russia story must be assumed plausible, if not true, until proven false. Joe McCarthy tore
America apart for four years under just such standards, until finally public opinion, led by
Edward R. Murrow , a
journalist brave enough to demand answers McCarthy did not have, turned against him. There is no
Edward R. Murrow in 2018.
When asking for proof is seen as disloyal, when demanding evidence after years of
accusations is considered a Big Ask, when a clear answer somehow always needs additional time,
there is more on the line in a democracy than the fate of one man.
Peter Van Buren, a
24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and
Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper's War
: A Novel of WWII Japan. Follow him on Twitter @WeMeantWell .
"... This silly article is proof, as if more was needed that what passes for Russia scholarship in the US is little more than politicized group-think. ..."
"... Russia has risen from utter economic, political, and societal collapse (gold reserves, factories, military secrets, science labs stripped bare and shipped or brain-drained out of the country; millions of pre-mature deaths; plunging birth rates) to recover, within a mere 20 years, to the point where the population has stabilized and the nation can credibly hold its own again on the world stage. Infrastructure is being rebuilt and modernized, the military has been restructured and re-equipped, pensions and salaries have risen 3 or 4-fold. ..."
"Vladimir Putin rode a counter-wave of anti-Western nationalism to power in Moscow."
Uh, no. Putin came to power at a time when Russia seemed to be falling apart, quite
literally. There was war in Chechnya, open criminal activity on the streets, and clear social
decay. Putin's popularity begins with his address to the nation after the bombing of the
Moscow metro, promising that the government (which he did not then lead) would chase those
responsible down and kill them, even if that meant chasing them into outhouses. The
relationship between the bombing and Putin's rise is so well-known that the conspiracy
theorists who have Jay Nordlinger's ear over at National Review claim that the bombing was a
set up by Putin's pals in the FSB, precisely to bring Putin to power.
My wife is Russian, from the city of Kazan in the Tatar Republic (part of Russia; it's
complicated), and when we were merely pen pals in 2003 she wrote me what it was like. It was
bad, very bad. At one point her entire neighborhood was placed under curfew on account of
open warfare between criminal gangs. And of course when we visit the cemetery today one sees
the striking spike in tombstones whose date of death is at some point in the mid- to late
90's, when it all seemed to be going to pieces and the government didn't even pay its own
employees for half a year.
Today, by contrast, Russians can walk the streets more or less without fear, count on a
paycheck, read in the news how their country has sent yet another capsule of Western
astronauts to the international space station (because Westerners haven't been able to do
that for the better part of a decade, thanks to Bush and Obama), and even find jobs in a
successful tech sector (Kaspersky, JetBrains, Yandex, the list goes on).
But, hey, if you want to fantasize that Putin's rise is thanks to anti-Western sentiment,
you go ahead and do that.
One other comment, if I may. I share the concern most Westerners have about Russia's seizure
of Crimea. But where is our concern about Turkey's 40-plus-year occupation of northern
Cyprus, also sparked by internal political disorder on the island? Why is it alright for a
NATO country to invade another nation and prop up its separatists, expel the inhabitants of a
disfavored ethnic group -- in this case, the Greeks?
Shame on TAC for publishing this garbage. For one, Putin more or less saved Russia as a
sovereign state, it is easy to forget the sorry condition Russia was in at the turn of the
century. Without him, Russia would've most likely been dismembered or simply colonized by the
West and China. He has performed admirably in the face of massive odds. Russia will still
exist in 100 years as the state of the Russian and other native people of its land –
can the same be said of the United States? Russia is slowly climbing its way out of the pit
of despair created by 80 years of Communism, the United States is crawling into the very same
pit.
I am much more concerned that voter roll purges, suppression of the vote, Citizen's United
Dark Money and folks like the Kochs and Addelson are undermining US democracy than the
Russians. As for the aggression of military machines around the world, the US wins hands
down.
Like Fran my inclination was to bail after the first paragraph but I pushed on.
In the first paragraph Mr Desch lays out his position which is well within the bounds of
polite discussion that Russia is a corrupt oligarchy but don't worry because it's an economic
and military basketcase.
Where to start?
1. Corrupt kleptocracy. The Russian oligarchy/ mafia was a biproduct of the
privatization binge that followed the collapse of the USSR. This evolved under the disastrous
Yeltsin aided and abetted by US elites. The case of William Browder is instructive. Putin has
taken significant measures to reassert government control and has greatly improved the lot of
the average Russian.
2. Political freedom. Putin did not inherit a developed liberal democracy. Russia
needs to be judged in the context of its own historical timeline in this regard not compared
to western democracies. Do you prefer Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov? In contrast compare the
state and trajectory of US democratic institutions to, say the 1970s.
3. Human rights. Again the situation in Russia vis a vis human rights needs to be
judged in terms of Russia's history not against Western nations with a long-standing
tradition of human rights and political freedoms. That said, the illusion of political
repression is largely overstated. For example Putin is routinely accused of murdering
journalists but no real proof is ever offered. Instead, the statement is made again in this
article as though it were self evident.
4. Foreign aggression. This is my favorite because it flies in the face of
observable reality to the point of being ridiculous. Russia did not invade Ukraine. It
provided support to ethnic Russians in Ukraine who rebelled after the illegal armed overthrow
of the Russian leaning democratically elected president.That coup was directly supported by
the United States. Far from ratcheting up tensions Russia has consistently pressed for the
implementation of the Minsk accords. Putin is not interested in becoming responsible for the
economic and political basket case which is Ukraine. The "largely bloodless" occupation of
Crimea was actually a referendum in which the citizens of Crimea overwhelmingly supported
annexation to Russia. Again This result makes sense in light of even a basic understanding of
Russian history. Finally, in the case of Georgia Russia engaged after Georgia attacked what
was essentially a Russian protectorate. This was the conclusion reached by an EU
investigation.
Russia's so-called aggressive foreign-policy has been primarily in response to NATOs
continuous push eastward and the perceived need to defend ethnic Russians from corrupt
ultranationalist governments in former republics of the USSR. This is what Putin was talking
about when he called the dissolution of the USSR one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th
century – the fact that, overnight 20 million Russians found themselves living in
foreign countries. It wasn't about longing for a Russian empire.
As for the current state of Russias military capabilities, Mr Desch Would do well to read
Pepe Escobar's recent article in the Asia Times. Russian accomplishments in Syria illustrated
a level of technology and strategic effectiveness that rivals anything the US can do. Name
one other nation – other than the US – that can design and build a world class
6th generation fighter jet or develop its own space program. Even Germany can't do that.
This silly article is proof, as if more was needed that what passes for Russia
scholarship in the US is little more than politicized group-think.
VG1959
"It is in the pursuit of empire that Putin, like Napoleon or Hitler before him, threatens the
stability of Europe and by extension world peace."
Ah! ha!ha! Right.
Like Russia with a population of 150 million persons inhabiting a land mass that stretches
across 9 or 10 time zones, from the Arctic pole to the Black Sea is chafing for "lebensraum"
!?
No, Russia just wants to develop what it already owns. And, trying to do it on the
strength of their own efforts (no overseas colonies filling the coffers), on a GDP as
Winston, above, has pointed out which is smaller than that some US states. They're focussed,
not on grabbing tiny, constipated territories like Estonia. Latvia, and Lithuania (full of
Nazi sympathizers), but on bringing back to life those ancient trade routes which are their
inheritance from the past (the Silk Road, primarily).
Why not just leave them alone and see what they can do? Those who have been relentlessly
picking fault with Russia (and North Korea) might want to put down their megaphones and start
taking notes.
What I mean is: pause for a moment to consider that:
1. Russia has risen from utter economic, political, and societal collapse (gold
reserves, factories, military secrets, science labs stripped bare and shipped or
brain-drained out of the country; millions of pre-mature deaths; plunging birth rates) to
recover, within a mere 20 years, to the point where the population has stabilized and the
nation can credibly hold its own again on the world stage. Infrastructure is being rebuilt
and modernized, the military has been restructured and re-equipped, pensions and salaries
have risen 3 or 4-fold.
2. North Korea, in 1953, had been so destroyed by war that no structures over a single
story were left standing (and American generals were actually barfing into their helmets at
the horror of what had been done to those people). The DPRK authorities, helpless to assist
the population, could only advise to dig shelters underground to survive the winter. Yet, 70
years later, under international sanctions designed to starve those traumatized people into
surrender, North Korea has restored its infrastructure, built modern cities, and developed a
military apparatus able to credibly resist constant threats from abroad.
See: rather than picking nits to find things that are not yet perfectly hunky-dory with
the governing structures/systems in those countries, I'm taking notes!!
Because, I'm convinced that if those people (those nations) were able to do what they've
done with the time and resources they've had to work with, there is absolutely no reason and
no excuse for our rich nations of "the West" to be caught in a nightmare of austerity
budgeting, crumbling infrastructure, collapsing pensions, and spiralling debt.
Funny how the English speaking world SO resisst learning something that could actually do
us a whole lot of good. I don't know who coined the terms "stiffnecked" and "bloodyminded",
but it sure describes us!
"From Moscow's perspective, the events in Kiev in late 2013 and 2014 looked suspiciously like
a Western-backed coup."
Gee, ya think? Kinda reminds one of the 1996 Russian election. But, hey, don't broadcast
this because, after all, too many people might start, er, noticing.
California – $2.751 trillion
Texas – $1.707 trillion
Russia – $1.578 trillion
Likbez:
@Winston July 28, 2018 at 10:00 am
Cult of GDP is a damaging mental disease. With the size of the USA financial sector it is grossly distorted.
The inflated costs of pharmaceutical and medical-industrial complex add another large portion of air into the US GDP.
Surveillance Valley (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc ) firms valuations are also inflated and their
contribution to the USA economics is overestimated in GDP.
There is also such thing as purchase parity. To compare GDP between countries, you must use purchasing power parity. To
compare GDP without calculating in purchasing parity is just naïve.
I suspect that in real purchasing power Russia is close to Germany (which means it it is the fifth largest economy)
The USA still has dominance is key technologies and cultural influence.
"... While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War. Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. ..."
"... Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of "we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!" ..."
"... "Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures." ..."
"... Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs. The American people just have no say in the matter. ..."
"... Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians ..."
"... Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering (Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there. ..."
"... I'll go a step further and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. ..."
"... It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it. ..."
"... What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished." ..."
"... The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its people. ..."
We have no choice. The 17-year war in Afghanistan has failed at every level, while the violence is only
getting worse.
Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is
instructing
its senior diplomats
to begin seeking "direct talks with the Taliban." It's a
measure that would have been unthinkable at the start of the Afghanistan war yet today it's long overdue. Despite the
criticism it's elicited, such talks offer the best chance of ending America's longest and most futile war.
While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military
operations in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how
to end the fighting on military terms.
Possibly the biggest impediment to ending the war has been the definition of the word
"win." General
Stanley McChrystal
said in 2009 that winning in
Afghanistan meant "reversing the perceived momentum" of the Taliban, "seek[ing] rapid growth of Afghan national security
forces," and "tackl[ing] the issue of predatory corruption by some" Afghan officials.
Nine full years and zero successes later, however, Lieutenant General Austin S.
Miller, latest in line to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan, defined as America's "core goal" at his
confirmation hearing
that "terrorists can never again use Afghanistan as a
safe haven to threaten the United States."
The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that
these objectives
can't be militarily accomplished.
Predicating an end to the war on such is to guarantee perpetual failure. A major course correction is therefore in
order.
Keeping 15,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan does not,
in any way
, prevent terror attacks against the
United States from originating there -- and for this lack of success we will pay at least
$45 billion
this year alone. The real solution
is therefore to withdraw our troops as quickly as can be safely accomplished rather than throw more of them into a
fruitless conflict.
I personally observed in 2011 during my second combat deployment in Afghanistan that
even with 140,000 U.S. and NATO boots on the ground, there were still vast swaths of the country that were ungoverned
and off-limits to allied troops.
Meaning, at no point since October 2001 has American military power prevented
Afghanistan from having ungoverned spaces. What
has
kept us safe, however -- and will continue to keep us safe -- has been our robust, globally
focused
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that work in concert with the CIA, FBI, and local law
enforcement to defend our borders from external attack.
Many pundits claim that if the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan then chaos
will reign there -- and that is almost certainly true. But that's how we found Afghanistan, that's how it is today,
and -- wholly irrespective of when or under what conditions the U.S. leaves -- that's how it will be long into the future
until Afghans themselves come to an accommodation.
The question U.S. policymakers need to ask is which is more important to American
interests: the maintenance of a perpetually costly war that fails to prevent any future attacks, or ending America's
participation in that war?
Continuing to fight for a country that can't be won cements a policy that has drained
the U.S. of vital resources, spilled the blood of American service members to no effect, and dissipated the Armed Forces'
ability to defend against potentially existential threats later on -- while in the meantime not diminishing the threat of
international terrorism. To strengthen our national security, we must end the enduring policy of failure by prudently
and effectively ending our military mission.
While the fundamentals of a withdrawal plan are relatively straightforward, they would
still be met by considerable opposition. One of the arguments against leaving was voiced by McChrystal nine years ago
when
he pleaded
with the American public to "show resolve" because "uncertainty
disheartens our allies [and] emboldens our foe." Yet the facts can't be denied any longer: for all eight years of the
Obama administration and the first 500 days of Trump's tenure, we maintained that "resolve" and were rewarded with an
unequivocal deterioration of the war.
Since McChrystal's admonition to maintain the status quo, the Taliban have exploded in
strength to
reportedly 77,000
, more territory is now in the
hands of the insurgents than at
any point since 2001
, the Afghan government
remains one of the
most corrupt regimes
on the planet, and
civilian casualties in the first half of 2018 are the
highest ever recorded
.
The only way this permanent failure ends is if President Trump shows the courage he
has sometimes demonstrated to push back against the Washington establishment. That means ignoring the status quo that
holds our security hostage, ending the war, and redeploying our troops. Without that resolve, we can count on continued
failure in Afghanistan. With it, American security will be strengthened and readiness improved.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him on Twitter
@DanielLDavis1
.
While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War.
Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. The only way these wars of choice will ever end is
when Congress has the balls to cut off funding. Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these
wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures. Military madness indeed.
Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of
"we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!"
If Trump were going to leave, he
should have done so soon after taking office. At least then he could blame his predecessors.
The financial security of the National Security State and its suppliers now depends on no war ever ending or
being won. The new definition of defeat is having any war end. As long as it continues, that war is being won.
"Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to
re-build our country infrastructures."
Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the
war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs.
The American people just have no say in the matter.
There is only one reason why the USA is still in Afghanistan that makes sense (all the official reasons are an
insult to ones intelligence), it borders on Iran and thus serves as a means to open a new front against Iran.
The more the US pushes for war against Iran, the more this seems correct.
"Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is instructing its senior diplomats to begin seeking
"direct talks with the Taliban."
I have to give my Jr High response here:
"Well, duh."
__________________
"While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military operations in
Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks . . ."
Yeah . . . no.
1. They manipulated the game to make what was a crime an act of war to justify the an unnecessary,
unethical, and strategically unwise invasion. I remain now where I was 14 years ago -- bad decision in every
way.
2. It was even a poor decision based on reason for war. To utterly bend the will of the opponent to conform
to the will of the US. it is possible to win. But to do so would require such massive force, brutality and
will.
3. 9/11 was a simple criminal act, despite the damage. As a crime we should have sought extradition, and or
small team FBI and special forces operations to a small footprint in either capturing, and or if need be
killing Osama bin Laden and company.
Nothing that has occurred since 9/11 provides evidence that the invasion was either justified or effective.
It will if the end game is to quit be one of three losses suffered by the US.
They are: War of 1812
Iraq
Afghanistan
" . . . it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how to end the fighting on military
terms."
Sure leave. Though talking so as to avert whole slaughter of those that aided the US is the decent thing to
do.
Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation
Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians
Solving USA problems in Afghanistan an at the same time pushing for war with Iran is by definition classic
oxymoron. Afghanistan's problems can only be solved with cooperation and understanding with Iran. Conflict of
the USA with Iran will extend indefinitely the suffering of the Afghanis and the eventual lose of the
Afghanistan and Iran to the Russia. Always reigniting and keeping on the front burner the conflict with Iran by
the USA is exactly what Russia and V. Putin want. I can't see any other politicians except D. Trump, B.
Netanyahu and American 'conservatives' for the advancement of the Russia's goals in the Middle East and in the
globalistan. These are the new XXI century 'useful (adjective)'.
Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering
(Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there.
I'll go a step further
and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not
even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. This
should have been a dirty knife fight in all the back alleys of the world, but we responded to the sucker punch
as our attackers intended; getting into a brawl with somebody else in the same bar; eventually, with more than
one somebody else.
It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it.
Indeed, but as others have commented, the entire point of the Afghanistan war is that it is pointless. It can
suck up enormous amounts of money, and generate incredible profits for politically connected defense
contractors – and because Afghanistan is in fact pointless, it doesn't matter if all of that money is wasted or
stolen, how could you tell? The vested interest in these winless pointless foreign wars means that they will
continue until the American economy finally collapses – and anyone who opposes these wars is a fascist, a
Russian stooge, "literally Hitler." Because money.
Thank you for this. I am very surprised to learn that Trump is pursuing this, given his pugilistic nature. I
hope he does in fact, get us the hell out of there. He may be, like Nixon, the one who is politically able to
make this smart move. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if Obama had tried a diplomatic exit from this
sand trap?
We can still be proud of what we attempted to do there. A few years post-9/11, an Afghan colleague of mine
who had come to the US as a boy said, "9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan." He meant that
rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US would do, we
poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads, etc.
"He meant that rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US
would do, we poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads,
etc."
And we could have done a lot more if we had not invaded. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.
The achievable operational level Military objectives in the Afghan war were accomplished in the first year; The
Taliban were out of power and hiding in Pakistan and the Afghans had a somewhat benevolent government that
wanted to guarantee security an property and a measure of individual liberty.
What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous
terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and
Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished."
This has been particularly true with the intense guerrilla actions enabled by the Pakistanis who have a
vested interest in an unstable Afghanistan.
I believe the noble goals 'might' have been doable – but it would have required a level of effort, and more
importantly a 'cultural confidence' on par with the Roman Empire of the 2nd Century to pull it off. That is no
longer us.
"9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan"? I bet none of his family members died or suffered.
Probably they are all living in the US. Are we supposed to feel proud that instead of carpet bombing and
killing millions our war killed only a hundred thousand?
Sadly, Kent, I do know people who still claim that our continued presence in Afghanistan is a good thing. Some
of these are otherwise fairly bright people, so I really can't comprehend why they continue to buy into this
idiocy.
Afghanistan must be Afghanistan and the US must be the US; this is such a simple tautology. If the US leaves,
Afghanistan will become what ever it can for its own reasons and options. If the US stays, it will be for the
US' reasons, not for the Afghans.
The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan
actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic
demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its
people.
The Washington establishment came to their own conclusions about Russia and NATO --
but this is what they missed.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump during the recent
summit in Helsinki. (Office of the Russian Presisdent/Kremin.ru) Sifting through the cacophony
of commentary from the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki, here are four key points missed,
ignored or glossed over by the Washington establishment and mainstream news coverage -- and
they require a good airing.
They are:
It's clear now that Europeans will increase their contributions to NATO. But
Big Media totally ignored the trillion dollar gorilla in room: Why does anyone have to spend so
much on NATO in the first place?
Are we planning a ground attack on Russia because we really think the former Soviet Empire
will invade Poland or the Baltic nations? Are we planning for a land war in Europe to intervene
in the Ukraine? What for is the money? The Trump administration and Big Media, for all their
noise, mainly argue that more spending is good. There is no debate about the reasons why.
Meanwhile
Russia is cutting its military spending.
Washington is so dominated by our military-industrial-congressional complex that spending
money is a major intent. Remember when Washington first insisted that putting up an
anti-missile system in Poland and Romania was supposed to protect Europe from an Iranian
attack? Of course, it was really directed against Russia. Washington was so eager to spend the
money that it didn't even ask the Europeans to pay the cost even though it was supposedly for
their defense. As of 2016 Washington had spent $800 million on the
site in Romania. Now it appears that Poland and Romania will pay billions to the Raytheon
Corporation for the shield to comply with their commitment to increase military spending to 2
percent of gross national product.
There was no focus on the real, growing threat of
nuclear war, intentional or accidental. No one, including journalists at the joint press
conference, spoke about the collapsing missile treaties (the only one who reportedly seemed
keen to discuss it was ejected beforehand).
Scott Ritter details these alarming risks here on TAC .
The U.S. is now funding new cruise missiles with nukes which allow for a surprise attack on
Russia with only a few minutes of warning, unlike the ICBMs which launch gives a half an hour
or more. This was the reason Russia opposed the anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, because
they could have little warning if cruise missiles were fired from the new bases. Americans may
think that we don't start wars, but the Russians don't. The old shill argument that democracies
don't start wars is belied by American attacks on Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.
For
all the Democratic and Big Media attacks on Trump for supposedly caving in to Putin, he gave
Putin nothing. His administration is still maintaining an increasingly stringent economic
attack on Russian trade and banking, announcing (just days after his meeting)
$200 million of new aid to Ukraine's military and threatening Europeans with sanctions if
they go ahead with a new Baltic pipeline to import Russian natural gas. Consequently, some
analysts believe that
Putin has given up on wanting better relations with the U.S. and instead is just trying to
weaken and discredit America's overwhelming power in the world. In a similar vein Rand Paul
writes how we never think
about other nations' interests.TAC argues we should
"Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia, "
showing how Washington wants to keep Russia as an enemy because it's good for business.
Furthermore, releasing the accusations and indictments via a press already out for Trump's
blood is explained away by pointing out that the special prosecutor has separate authority to
that of the president. But the timing, a day before the Helsinki meeting, obviously shows
intent to cause disarray and to prevent meaningful dialogue with Russia. It's interesting to
note that TAC has been criticizing the "Deep
State" since at least 2015.
The casualness with which much of Washington regards conflict and starting wars is only
comparable to the thoughtlessness of Europeans when they started World War I. Like now, that
war followed nearly a century of relative peace and prosperity. Both sides thought a war would
be "easy" and over quickly and were engulfed in it because of minor incidents instigated by
their small nation allies. It was started with a single assassination in Serbia. The situation
is similar now. America is hostage to the actions of a host of tiny countries possibly starting
a war. Think of our NATO obligations and promises to Taiwan and Israel.
America has become inured to the risks of escalation and Congress has ceded its war powers
to the president. The authority of war power was one of the most important tenets of our
Constitution, designed to prevent our rulers from irresponsibly launching conflicts like the
European kings. Witness now how casually Trump talks about starting a war with Iran, with no
thought of possible consequences, including blowing up oil facilities in the Persian Gulf, oil
and gas vital for the world economy.
For most Americans, war means sitting in front of their TVs watching the bombs fall on small
nations unable to resist or respond to our power. "We" kill thousands of "them" in easy battles
and then worry if a single American soldier is harmed. We don't viscerally understand the full
threat of modern weapons because they've never been used against us. This is not unlike World
War I, for which the countries engaged were wholly unprepared for a protracted siege war
against the lethality of new modern artillery and chemical weapons. All had assumed the war
would be over in weeks. I wrote about these issues after visiting the battlefields of the
Crimean war. (See " Lessons in
Empire")
And so we continue careening towards more conflicts which can always lead to unintended
consequences, ever closer to nuclear war. Meanwhile efforts for a dialogue with Russia are
thwarted by our internal politics and dysfunction in Washington.
Mr. Utley is the publisher of The American Conservative 15 Responses to What
Everyone Seemed to Ignore in Helsinki
"And so we continue careening towards more conflicts which can always lead to unintended
consequences, ever closer to nuclear war. Meanwhile efforts for a dialogue with Russia are
thwarted by our internal politics and dysfunction in Washington."
Careful with such cavalier use of the truth. Someone is sure to point out Vlad said just
the same, which means according to D.C. war profiteer sponsored consensus we should do
exactly the opposite.
Lovely article. One aspect of going to war for conquest over and over, is that it leads to
moral deterioration. Defensive wars aren't that bad. I am not sure why we haven't seen any
articles on TAC about this aspect -- is it that it's not a popular idea?
"1) It's clear now that Europeans will increase their contributions to NATO."
No, they are not. Defense budgets are increasing -- very different, and it was happening
already before Trump's tweets came along.
"2) There was no focus on the real, growing threat of nuclear war, intentional or
accidental."
How do you know, since Trump hasn't told anyone what was discussed in Helsinki?
"3) For all the Democratic and Big Media attacks on Trump for supposedly caving in to Putin,
he gave Putin nothing."
Trump abased himself before Putin. That's not nothing. And who knows what else he gave Putin
behind closed doors. One must assume a lot since Trump is not out bragging about
particulars.
"4) The release of intelligence agency findings about Russians' intervention in the last
election just a day before the conference precisely shows the strength of the "Deep State" in
dominating American foreign policy."
Trump personally approved the release of that intelligence.
The myth that NATO has kept Europe at peace since WWII (except for the Balkan war) is still
alive and well. But really, it was the fear of nuclear weapons that kept the peace.
It is the risk of war vs. the hidden agenda of trying to break Russia a second time.
The people who want to break Russia a second time really do believe that Russia is weak and
unwilling to risk war under any circumstances. So they want to expand NATO, get into another
arms race and wait for Russia to go bankrupt again. Rinse repeat China.
If we expand NATO, pull out of INF and even START, we can build missile bases near Russia's
borders, reduce or eliminate their exports, we can drive their economy into overdrive. But this
requires an information war to make it look like they are the aggressors while we are the ones
implementing this strategy.
By 'we' I mean our entrenched Foreign Policy Establishment that blathers about the 'rules
based world order' while we bomb any country we want whenever we want. Queue up another story
on how they encroached on NATO airspace while flying to their enclave in Kaliningrad, look at a
map, it's impossible not to so so.
Tying it back, they do not believe that there is any risk of war. They are wrong.
"The release of intelligence agency findings about Russians' intervention in the last
election just a day before the conference precisely shows the strength of the 'Deep State' in
dominating American foreign policy Releasing the accusations and indictments via a press
already out for Trump's blood a day before the Helsinki meeting, obviously shows intent to
cause disarray and to prevent meaningful dialogue with Russia."
To be sure, the 6-4-3 (Mueller to Rosenstein to Mainstream Media) double play appeared at
first to be a real beauty. However, the video replay showed that the pitcher had not yet
pitched the ball to the batter and that the shortstop Mueller, the second baseman Rosenstein,
and the MSM first baseman had carried out their double play with a ball that Mueller had pulled
out of his hip pocket. ("Hip pocket" is a polite euphemism for the proximate area of the
Mueller anatomy from whence the ball was actually pulled.)
The real question is what did Putin give Trump? Nothing, as far as can be seen. Efforts for a
dialogue with Russia are thwarted by Putin's continued occupation of Ukrainian territory, with
its implicit denial of the principle of the sovereign nation-state, which has been the building
block of the European political order since the French Revolution. For Americans, given the
history of the American continent, European nationalism and the nation-state are wholly
incomprehensible concepts but they're very real to us in Europe. Those Americans who promote a
poorly-understood European nationalism in the hope of destroying the EU are promoting the very
war they so piously claim to oppose.
It's clear now that Europeans will increase their contributions to NATO. But Big Media
totally ignored the trillion dollar gorilla in room: Why does anyone have to spend so much on
NATO in the first place?
Why would you top post a commentor who so clearly doesn't understand the details of what
he's discussing?
I mean -- such fundamental misunderstanding of the issues might qualify him to be the
Republican nominee for President (and thanks to the Electoral College, the President) but it is
beneath your editorial standards.
Enough of this "Deep State" nonsense: stop lambasting U.S. Federal law enforcement and
intelligence professionals for calling out Trump's willful ignorance/intentional lies about
Russia's malicious actions. Russian belligerence against the U.S. is a predictable and
manageable problem, but only by a President (e.g., Reagan, Bush 41) who grasps the complexity
of the issue and who can balance targeted confrontation and selective cooperation with Russia.
Trump is inherently incapable of striking that balance, as Putin clearly understands, therefore
U.S.-Russian relations will remain (usefully for Putin) confrontational for the near term.
Why is it up to the media to address the elephant in the room? Shouldn't the media simply
report what happened? Why doesn't Trump address the elephant in the room?
Our grandparents and parents fought the Commies.
GOP throws that away in search of lower taxes and less regulation.
GOP elites belong to the international elite, namely the highest bidder.
Shame.
"The release of intelligence agency findings about Russians' intervention in the last election
just a day before the conference precisely shows the strength of the 'Deep State' in dominating
American foreign policy"
Others have already pointed out that the facts might not back up that the timing was some
elaborate plot, but even if this was a Derp State conspiracy on full display, it would probably
be proof of the opposite -- this would have not been an indication of influence, control,
domination, but a sign of weakness.
Like all conspiracy theories, "Deep State" implies competence, coordination, capability. Our
problem appears to be that we have too many bureaucracies infighting with each other, and
filled with too many shallow minds. Indeed, one could argue that 9/11 happened precisely
because of this.
That said, the first half of the article makes a compelling case of the foreign policy
aspect of the manufactured "Russia!" hysteria, and the existential threat originating with the
nuclear sector of the war profiteering presidential-congressional-military-industrial complex
-- "We end the world for money!" -- and the Great Gambler faction of the nelibcon biparty --
"We can win nuclear war!".
The other half of the national, collectivized insanity that is "Russia!" is the domestic
fraud: the biggest threat to the integrity of our elections and the functions of our
institutions of government is not Russia, but ourselves.
The semi-organized biparty mob -- the "Derp State" -- that is pushing the "Russia!"
narrative as the Grant Unified Theory of US American Home-Made Failure is systematically
destroying whatever is left of The People's confidence in our processes and institutions --
confidence in our ruling class had to have died before anybody considered voting for Trump --
and soon, we will find ourselves in a nation in which nobody can profess any trust in any
elected representative without being accused of being a traitor or useful idiot.
Putin, for one, could never accomplish that. American Excess: Hamstring your political
opponent? Worth It. Destroy democracy to protect it from The People? Priceless.
I wasn't aware that the U.s. Is finding new niclear-armed cruise missiles that would give
Russia only minutes to respond to an attack, as opposed to a half hour with ICBMs. Russia only
has to recalibrate its fully automated Doomsday Machine to target Warsaw, Berlin, and Cracow
along with U.S. cities, and to shorten the time of response.
We have to ask whether the exponentially greater likelihood of nuclear holocaust by
accident, which is what the U.S. would be bringing about by nuclear-arming cruise missiles,
proves that the Deep State's lust for power is irrational bordering on madness.
"... Rouhani is identifying the current administration policy of trying to strangle Iran's oil exports as a hostile act, a "declaration of war" by the U.S. against the Iranian people. Trump's hostility to Iran is such that he treats a verbal rebuke to a destructive policy he initiated as the same as a threat of attack, and he twists Rouhani's defensive statement into a call for war. ..."
"... Trump's outburst is not the response of someone interested in finding a diplomatic solution to tensions between our countries ..."
"... It is obviously the response of a belligerent bully who overreacts to the slightest opposition and seeks confrontation for its own sake. Trump's Iran obsession is extremely dangerous for both the U.S. and Iran, and it is poisoning relations with Iran for many years to come. ..."
Golnar Motevalli gives the full context for the Rouhani statement that caused Trump to make
his unhinged threat
earlier this week:
Verbatim excerpts of what Rouhani said on Sunday. The entire statement was almost 2 hrs
long. He didn't say he wants to "launch war", he said opposite but warned of what war would
look like. He said US policy to choke Iran's economy is a US declaration of war against
Iranians: pic.twitter.com/XcirZTWi4d
As I said Sunday
night, it's clear that the statement from Rouhani wasn't a threat against the U.S. It was a
warning not to take aggressive action against Iran. Furthermore, Rouhani is identifying the
current administration policy of trying to strangle Iran's oil exports as a hostile act, a
"declaration of war" by the U.S. against the Iranian people. Trump's hostility to Iran is such
that he treats a verbal rebuke to a destructive policy he initiated as the same as a threat of
attack, and he twists Rouhani's defensive statement into a call for war.
It shouldn't have to be said at this point, but Trump's outburst is not the response of
someone interested in finding a diplomatic solution to tensions between our countries
.
It is obviously the response of a belligerent bully who overreacts to the slightest
opposition and seeks confrontation for its own sake. Trump's Iran obsession is extremely
dangerous for both the U.S. and Iran, and it is poisoning relations with Iran for many years to
come.
China is enjoying this as the Dems distract us without real evidence about Russia collusion
we are being blindsided by them. Funny how Brennan a former communist sympathizer who voted
for Gus Hall in 1976 is crying treason. Wow.
Brennan, who voted for the US Communist Party candidate in the 1976 election, is screaming
the treason hyperbole because the CIA is most likely the origin of the Russia Collusion
farce:
"According to one account, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer
2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at
"director level". After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and
intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation."
BTW, Hannigan resigned for the usual "family reasons" the Monday after Trump was sworn
in.
It now appears that there were three dossier versions, all coming via different unofficial
channels, outside the intel community channels which was therefore unvetted. Many suspect
they were all from the same source coming in from different angles to create a false
impression of legitimacy.
What we are going to find out when Trump declassifies everything after the mid-term
election, regardless of whether or not the Dems take the House and try to impeach him, is
that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act put in place after the revelations of
COINTELPRO wasn't adequate protection against the serious misuse of power.
The reason Trump won't declassify now is obvious – if you think screams of
interference/obstruction are loud now, just watch after he does that, something which would
harm the Reps in the mid-terms because any revelations buried within would take time to dig
out and would suppressed as much as possible by the incredibly biased media.
The DOJ/FBI stalling in providing the documents demanded by Congress is an obvious
stalling tactic in the hope that the Dems take the house in the mid-terms. If Clinton had won
as everyone expected, we'd have never heard about any of this which is why they thought they
could get away with it.
We're at a point now where it's really difficult to have an intelligent conversation, a
serious discussion, a rational debate about this stuff.
The reason being that the John Brennans of the world and the lib-Dem-media-neocon mob of
which he is a member, which now routinely traffic in hyperventilating accusations of treason,
have forfeited any claim to credibility or respect.
Having concocted the conspiracy-fantasy of Trump being a puppet of Putin and having
contrived a farcical criminal investigation of imaginary "collusion," that same mob staged
the latest ludicrous meltdown -- over Trump's bumbling, stumbling press conference in
Helsinki with the Evil Monster Putin.
The only appropriate response now to people like John Brennan and his cabal of fools is
sarcasm, mockery, and contempt. They are beyond the reach of reason or evidence or facts.
Indeed, they have zero interest in evidence or facts. They simply emote and spew.
The main question in my mind is this: are the John Brennans of the world really stupid
enough to believe their vicious nonsense or are they so hopelessly dishonest and lacking in
conscience that they propagate poisonous falsehoods for the simple reason they know it
advances their political agenda of delegitimizing Trump's presidency.
I'm guessing more the second than the first.
And if in the process, they whip up an atmosphere of venomous hysteria and damage
U.S.-Russia relations to the point where scholars like Stephen Cohen and John Mearsheimer
call the environment as dangerous as that which existed at the time of the U.S.-Soviet Cuban
missile crisis and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves their Doomsday Clock to two
minutes before midnight (as recently happened) well, you gotta break some eggs to make an
omelette, right?
Honest to God, the dimension and character of this vast circus of corruption and lies is
breathtaking. It's downright freaking biblical.
"Fun experiment: of those old enough, how many today who believe the "Trump is a Russian
asset" story, in 2003 believed the Iraq has WMD story? 'Cause the source who lied to you in
2003, the intel community, is your same source today."
Growing up as I did in the Nixon/Vietnam era, I developed a skepticism of the 'official'
story, something that served me well through Iran contra, incubator babies being tossed to
the floor, and WMD's (a skepticism reinforced at the time by Scott Ritter, among others). As
I recall, the WMD story was less a failure of intelligence as much as an administration
insisting on so-called 'stovepiped' intelligence to sell their war to an American public
through a mostly compliant MSM.
Regardless, my conclusion that Trump is a "Russian asset" is a result of my belief that
Trump- who has yet to disclose the financial information that would disprove that belief- is
reliant on Russian money, some or all of it organized crime related, to sustain his 'empire',
and that there is significant overlap between the Russian mob and the Russian government.
His actions as president haven't done anything to dispel me of my belief that he is a
'Russian asset', including his traitorous behavior this past week.
"... It isn't a pretty face, but one scarred from a dark past, repackaged now by the frenzy of "resistance." Accusing Donald Trump recklessly, implying he knows more than he lets on, promising redemption: John Brennan is the face of American politics in 2018. ..."
"... But before all that, Brennan lived in a hole about as far down into the deep state as one can dwell while still having eyes that work in the sunlight. He was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was Obama's counterterrorism advisor, helping the president decide who to kill every week, including American citizens. He spent 25 years at the CIA, and helped shape the violent policies of the post-9/11 Bush era. He was a fan of torture and extrajudicial killing to the point that a 2012 profile of him was entitled, "The Seven Deadly Sins of John Brennan." Another writer called Brennan "the most lethal bureaucrat of all time, or at least since Henry Kissinger." Today, however, a New York Times ..."
"... On Twitter this week, Brennan cartoonishly declaimed, "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin." ..."
"... Brennan is a man of his times, all bluster and noise, knowing that so long as he says what a significant part of the country apparently believes -- that the president of the United States is under the control of the Kremlin -- he will never be challenged. ..."
"... New York Magazine ..."
"... Only after Clinton lost did it become necessary to create a crisis that might yet be inflated (it wasn't just the Russians, as originally thought, it was Trump working with them) to justify impeachment. Absent that need, Brennan would have disappeared alongside other former CIA directors into academia or the lucrative consulting industry. Instead he's a public figure with a big mouth because he has to be. That mouth has to cover his ass. ..."
"... Brennan is part of the whole-of-government effort to overturn the election. ..."
"... Yet despite all the hard evidence of treason that only Brennan and his supine journalists seem to see, everyone appears resigned to have a colluding Russian agent running the United States. You'd think it would be urgent to close this case. Instead, Brennan admonishes us to wait out an investigative process that's been underway now through two administrations. ..."
"... Is Brennan signaling that there is one step darker to consider? A Reuters commentary observes that "Trump is haunted by the fear that a cabal of national-security officers is conspiring in secret to overthrow him . Trump has made real enemies in the realm of American national security. He has struck blows against their empire. One way or another, the empire will strike back." ..."
"... Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of ..."
He accuses Trump of treason. But what's his bluster really about?
•
It isn't a pretty face, but one scarred from a dark past, repackaged now by the frenzy of
"resistance." Accusing Donald Trump recklessly, implying he knows more than he lets on,
promising redemption: John Brennan is the face of American politics in 2018.
But before all that, Brennan lived in a hole about as far down into the deep state as
one can dwell while still having eyes that work in the sunlight. He was director of the Central
Intelligence Agency. He was Obama's counterterrorism advisor, helping the president decide who
to kill every week, including American citizens. He spent 25 years at the CIA, and helped shape
the violent policies of the post-9/11 Bush era. He was a fan of torture and extrajudicial
killing to the point that a 2012 profile of him was entitled, "The Seven Deadly Sins of John
Brennan." Another writer called Brennan "the most lethal bureaucrat of all time, or at least
since Henry Kissinger." Today, however, a New York Times puff piece sweeps all that
away as a "troubling inheritance."
On Twitter this week, Brennan cartoonishly declaimed, "Donald Trump's press conference
performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It
was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the
pocket of Putin."
Because it is 2018, Brennan was never asked to explain exactly how a press conference
exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution sets for impeachment,
nor was he asked to lay a few cards on the table showing what Putin has on Trump. No,
Brennan is a man of his times, all bluster and noise, knowing that so long as he says what
a significant part of the country apparently believes -- that the president of the United
States is under the control of the Kremlin -- he will never be challenged.
Brennan slithers alongside those like Nancy Pelosi and Cory Booker who said Trump is
controlled by Russia, columnists in the New York Times who called him a traitor, an
article (which is fast becoming the Zapruder film of Russiagate) in New York Magazine
echoing former counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke in speculating that Trump met Putin
as his handler, and another former intelligence officer warning that "we're on the cusp of
losing the constitutional republic forever."
Brennan's bleating has the interesting side effect of directing attention away from who was
watching the front door as the Russians walked in to cause what one MSNBC analyst described as
a mix of Pearl Harbor and Kristallnacht. During the 2016 election, Brennan was head of the CIA.
His evil twin, James Clapper, who also coughs up Trump attacks for nickels these days, was
director of national intelligence. James Comey headed the FBI, following Robert Mueller into
the job. Yet the noise from that crowd has become so loud as to drown out any questions about
where they were when they had the duty to stop the Russians in the first place.
The excuse that "everybody believed Hillary would win" is in itself an example of collusion:
things that now rise to treason, if not acts of war, didn't matter then because Clinton's
victory would sweep them all under the rug. Only after Clinton lost did it become necessary
to create a crisis that might yet be inflated (it wasn't just the Russians, as originally
thought, it was Trump working with them) to justify impeachment. Absent that need, Brennan
would have disappeared alongside other former CIA directors into academia or the lucrative
consulting industry. Instead he's a public figure with a big mouth because he has to be. That
mouth has to cover his ass.
Brennan is part of the whole-of-government effort to overturn the election.
Remember how recounts were called for amid (fake) allegations of vote tampering? Constitutional
scholars proposed various Hail Mary Electoral College scenarios to unseat Trump. Lawsuits
claimed the Emoluments Clause made it illegal for Trump to even assume office. The media set
itself the goal of impeaching the president. On cue, leaks poured out implying the Trump
campaign worked with the Russian government. It is now a rare day when the top stories are not
apocalyptic, rocketed from Raw Story to the Huffington Post to the New York Times .
Brennan, meanwhile, fans the media's flames with a knowing wink that says "You wait and see.
Soon it's Mueller time."
Yet despite all the hard evidence of treason that only Brennan and his supine
journalists seem to see, everyone appears resigned to have a colluding Russian agent running
the United States. You'd think it would be urgent to close this case. Instead, Brennan
admonishes us to wait out an investigative process that's been underway now through two
administrations.
The IRS, meanwhile, has watched Trump for decades (they've seen the tax docs), as have
Democratic and Republican opposition researchers, the New Jersey Gaming Commission, and various
New York City real estate bodies. Multiple KGB/FSB agents have defected and not said a word.
The whole Soviet Union has collapsed since the day that some claim Trump first became a Russian
asset. Why haven't the FBI, CIA, and NSA cottoned to anything in the intervening years? Why are
we waiting on Mueller Year Two?
If Trump is under Russian influence, he is the most dangerous man in American history. So
why isn't Washington on fire? Why hasn't Mueller indicted someone for treason? If this is Pearl
Harbor, why is the investigation moving at the pace of a mortgage application? Why is everyone
allowing a Russian asset placed in charge of the American nuclear arsenal to stay in power even
one more minute?
You'd think Brennan would be saying it is time to postpone chasing the indictments of
Russian military officers that will never see the inside of a courtroom, stop wasting months on
decades-old financial crimes unconnected to the Trump campaign, and quit delaying the real
stuff over a clumsy series of perjury cases. "Patriots: Where are you???" Brennan asked in a
recent tweet. Where indeed?
Is Brennan signaling that there is one step darker to consider? A
Reuters commentary observes that "Trump is haunted by the fear that a cabal of
national-security officers is conspiring in secret to overthrow him . Trump has made real
enemies in the realm of American national security. He has struck blows against their empire.
One way or another, the empire will strike back." James Clapper is confirming reports that
Trump was shown evidence of Putin's election attacks and did nothing. Congressman Steve Cohen
asked, "Where are our military folks? The Commander-in-Chief is in the hands of our enemy!"
Treason, traitor, coup, the empire striking back -- those are just words, Third World stuff,
clickbait, right? So the more pedestrian answer must then be correct. The lessons of Whitewater
and Benghazi learned, maybe the point is not to build an atmosphere of crisis leading to
something undemocratic, but just to have a perpetual investigation, tickled to life as needed
politically.
Because, maybe, deep down, Brennan (Clapper, Hayden, Comey, and Mueller) really do know that
this is all like flying saucers and cell phone cameras. At some point, the whole alien
conspiracy meme fell apart because somehow when everyone had a camera with them 24/7/365, there
were no more sightings and we had to admit that our fears had gotten the best of us. The threat
was inside us all along. It is now, too.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author ofWe Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the
Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan . Follow him on Twitter
@WeMeantWell.
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Under the Constitution, these are the offenses for which
presidents can be impeached.
And to hear our elites, Donald Trump is guilty of them all.
Trump's refusal to challenge Vladimir Putin's claim at Helsinki that his GRU boys did not hack Hillary Clinton's
campaign has been called treason, a refusal to do his sworn duty to protect and defend the United States, by a former
director of the CIA.
Famed journalists and former high officials of the U.S. government have called Russia's hacking of the DNC "an act of
war" comparable to Pearl Harbor.
The
New York Times
ran a story on the many now charging Trump with treason. Others suggest Putin is
blackmailing Trump, or has him on his payroll, or compromised Trump a long time ago.
Wailed Congressman Steve Cohen: "Where is our military folks? The Commander in Chief is in the hands of our enemy!"
Apparently, some on the left believe we need a military coup to save our democracy.
Not since Robert Welch of the John Birch Society called Dwight Eisenhower a "conscious agent of the Communist
conspiracy" have such charges been hurled at a president. But while the Birchers were a bit outside the mainstream,
today it is the establishment itself bawling "Treason!"
What explains the hysteria?
The worst-case scenario would be that the establishment actually believes the nonsense it is spouting. But that is
hard to credit. Like the boy who cried "Wolf!" they have cried "Fascist!" too many times to be taken seriously.
A month ago, the never-Trumpers were comparing the separation of immigrant kids from detained adults, who brought
them to the U.S. illegally, to FDR's concentration camps for Japanese Americans.
Other commentators equated the separations to what the Nazis did at Auschwitz.
If the establishment truly believed this nonsense, it would be an unacceptable security risk to let them near the
levers of power ever again.
Using Occam's razor, the real explanation for this behavior is the simplest one: America's elites have been driven
over the edge by Trump's successes and their failures to block him.
Trump is deregulating the economy, cutting taxes, appointing record numbers of federal judges, reshaping the Supreme
Court, and using tariffs to cut trade deficits and the bully pulpit to castigate freeloading allies.
Worst of all, Trump clearly intends to carry out his campaign pledge to improve relations with Russia and get along
with Vladimir Putin.
"Over our dead bodies!" the Beltway elite seems to be shouting.
Hence the rhetorical WMDs hurled at Trump: liar, dictator, authoritarian, Putin's poodle, fascist, demagogue,
traitor, Nazi.
Such language approaches incitement to violence. One wonders whether the haters are considering the impact of the
words they so casually use. Some of us yet recall how Dallas was charged with complicity in the death of JFK for slurs
far less toxic than this.
The post-Helsinki hysteria reveals not merely the mindset of the president's enemies, but the depth of their
determination to destroy him.
They intend to break Trump and bring him down, to see him impeached, removed, indicted, and prosecuted, and the
agenda on which he ran and was nominated and elected dumped onto the ash heap of history.
Thursday, Trump indicated that he knows exactly what is afoot, and threw down the gauntlet of defiance: "The Fake
News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war," he
tweeted. "They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I'll probably have a good relationship with Putin."
Spot on. Trump is saying: I am going to call off this Cold War II before it breaks out into the hot war that nine
U.S. presidents avoided, despite Soviet provocations far graver than Putin's pilfering of DNC emails showing how Debbie
Wasserman Schultz stuck it to Bernie Sanders.
Then the White House suggested Vlad may be coming to dinner this fall.
Trump is edging toward the defining battle of his presidency: a reshaping of U.S. foreign policy to avoid clashes and
conflicts with Russia and the shedding of Cold War commitments no longer rooted in the national interests of this
country.
Yet should he attempt to carry out his agenda -- to get out of Syria, pull troops from Germany, and take a second look
at NATO's Article 5 commitment to go to war for 29 nations, some of which, like Montenegro, most Americans have never
heard of -- he is headed for the most brutal battle of his presidency.
This Helsinki hysteria is but a taste.
By cheering Brexit, dissing the EU, suggesting NATO is obsolete, departing Syria, trying to get on with Putin, Trump
is threatening the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment with what it fears most: irrelevance.
For if there is no war on, no war imminent, and no war wanted, what does a War Party do?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book,
Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a
President and Divided America Forever
. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators
writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
"... In contrast, the transatlantic alliance should advance American and European security. Absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union, thereby pushing the alliance up to the Russian Federation's border, proved to be a foolish move because it violated assurances made to Russian leaders. Despite being former KGB, Vladimir Putin never appeared to be ideologically antagonistic toward America. However, when he perceived Washington's behavior as threatening -- including dismembering Serbia, backing revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, and promising to include both nations in NATO -- it encouraged him to respond violently. ..."
"... Admitting new members is never costless. Aid will be necessary to improve their militaries. Moreover, newer members sometimes become the most demanding, like the Baltics and Poland, which insist that they are entitled to American bases and garrisons. ..."
"... Continuing expansion also reinforces the message that NATO is hostile toward Russia. That's the only country allies are joining to oppose, after all. Obviously, there are plenty of other reasons Moscow should distrust the United States, but reinforcing negative perceptions for no benefit at all is bad policy. ..."
"... The Mouse that Roared ..."
"... Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of ..."
America Doesn't Need Another Weakling NATO Ally
Macedonia is the latest nation invited into the alliance, but how does that enhance America's (or Europe's)
security?
By
Doug Bandow
•
July 19, 2018
Utenriksdept
/
cc
At last week's NATO summit, President Donald Trump denounced the allies for taking advantage of American taxpayers. Then
he approved their latest subsidies. He even agreed to invite a military weakling, Macedonia, to join NATO, which will
add yet another nation to our military dole.
When George Washington warned Americans against forming a "passionate
attachment" to other countries, he might have been thinking of the Balkans. Indeed, a couple decades later, John Quincy
Adams criticized proposals to aid Greece against the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled that region. America "goes not
abroad, in search of monsters to destroy," he intoned.
On into the 20th century, the Balkans were in turmoil. Germany's "Iron Chancellor," Otto von Bismarck, warned that
"the great European War would come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans." That's exactly what happened in
1914.
It took decades and two world wars for the Balkans to stabilize. But after the Cold War ended, Yugoslavia, which had
emerged from Europe's previous convulsions, broke apart. One of the smaller pieces was Macedonia.
The battles among the Serbians, Croatians, and Bosnians were bloody and brutal. In contrast, Macedonia provided comic
relief. The small, mountainous, landlocked nation of two million people won its independence without a fight in 1991,
though Athens launched a verbal and economic war against Skopje over the latter's use of the name "Macedonia."
Perhaps modern Greeks feared that a resurrected Alexander the Great would lead the newly freed Macedonian hordes
south and conquer Greece. Skopje entered the United Nations under the provisional name Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, or FYROM. In June, after only 27 years, the two governments agreed that Macedonia/FYROM would be called the
Republic of North Macedonia -- though the decision must still be ratified by the Macedonian people in a referendum.
More serious was the insurgency launched by ethnic Albanians who made up about a quarter of the nation's population.
The battle two decades ago over Kosovo inflamed ethnic relations in Macedonia, eventually resulting in a short-lived
insurgency. Although the fighters disarmed, Skopje's politics remained nationalist and difficult. Last year, a more
liberal administration took over, but the country's democratic institutions remain fragile.
Indeed, Freedom House only rates the nation "partly free." The group cites voter intimidation, political patronage
networks, violent protests, and problems with judicial impartiality and due process. Particularly serious were the
threats against press freedom, which led to a rating of "not free" in that area. While NATO's newer members tend to
score lower than "Old Europe," as Donald Rumsfeld once referred to the original allies, Macedonia is a step further
down. Only Turkey, an incipient dictatorship, is worse: it almost certainly would not be considered for membership
today.
None of this mattered last week, however. After suffering Trump's many slings and arrows, alliance members approved
an invitation for Skopje to join NATO. Macedonian lawmaker Artan Grubi called it "our dream coming true. We have been in
the waiting hall for too long."
That's because Macedonia had hoped for an invite back in 2008 at the Bucharest summit, but was blocked by Athens over
the name dispute, and has wanted to join ever since. Macedonia's Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska said, "With NATO
membership, Macedonia becomes part of the most powerful alliance. That enhances both our security and economic
prosperity." Money and status are expected to follow.
But how would this benefit the United States and other NATO members? James Ker-Lindsay at the London School of
Economics made the astonishing claim that "opening the way for the country to join NATO would be a big win for the
organization at a crucial time when concerns over Russian influence in the Western Balkans are growing in many
capitals." As Skopje goes, so goes Europe? Not likely. If Washington and Moscow are engaged in a new "great game," it is
not a battle for Macedonia.
In fact, Macedonia is a security irrelevancy, destined to require American aid to create the pretense that its
military is fit for the transatlantic alliance. Skopje spent just $112 million on its armed forces last year, ahead of
only one NATO member, Montenegro. That was barely 1 percent of its GDP, putting Macedonia near the back of the NATO
pack.
With an 8,000-man military, one is tempted to ask, why bother? But then one could similarly pose that query to
several other NATO members. Skopje's military is roughly the same size as Albania's, slightly bigger than Slovenia's,
and about four times the size of Montenegro's. None will be of much use in a conflict with the only conceivable threat,
Russia.
So why bring Macedonia into NATO?
Some American policymakers see alliance membership as a means to socialize nations like Macedonia, helping them move
towards democracy. However, the European Union, which sets standards governing a range of domestic policies, has always
been better suited to this task, and EU membership imposes no security obligations on Washington. With the name
controversy tentatively resolved, Skopje could begin the EU accession process -- if the Europeans are willing. That is
properly their -- not Washington's -- responsibility.
In contrast, the transatlantic alliance should advance American and European security. Absorbing former members
of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union, thereby pushing the alliance up to the Russian Federation's border, proved to be a
foolish move because it violated assurances made to Russian leaders. Despite being former KGB, Vladimir Putin never
appeared to be ideologically antagonistic toward America. However, when he perceived Washington's behavior as
threatening -- including dismembering Serbia, backing revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, and promising to include both
nations in NATO -- it encouraged him to respond violently.
The Balkans are peripheral even to Europe and matter little to America's defense. The states and peoples there tend
to be more disruptive and less democratic than their neighbors, reflecting the region's unstable history. (North)
Macedonia's 8,000 troops aren't likely to be reborn as the Spartan 300 and hold off invading Russians. So why should
America threaten war on Skopje's behalf?
Admitting new members is never costless. Aid will be necessary to improve their militaries. Moreover, newer
members sometimes become the most demanding, like the Baltics and Poland, which insist that they are entitled to
American bases and garrisons.
Expansion also complicates alliance decision-making. No doubt, Washington wishes its European allies would do what
they're told: spend more, shut up, and deploy where America wants them. That doesn't work out very well in practice,
alas, as Trump has discovered in Europe (though nations with smaller militaries are more likely to acquiesce than
nations with bigger ones). An organization of 30 members, which NATO will become if Macedonia is added, is a more
complex and less agile creature than one of 16, the number that existed before NATO raced east.
Continuing expansion also reinforces the message that NATO is hostile toward Russia. That's the only country
allies are joining to oppose, after all. Obviously, there are plenty of other reasons Moscow should distrust the United
States, but reinforcing negative perceptions for no benefit at all is bad policy.
Finally, expanding the alliance is nonsensical in light of the president's criticisms of the Europeans. Hiking U.S.
military spending, increasing manpower and materiel deployments in Europe, and adding new members all contradict his
demand that the allies do more and signal that the president is not serious in his demands. That leaves the Europeans
with little incentive to act, especially since most of their peoples perceive few if any security threats.
Yet again President Trump has been exposed as a thoughtless blowhard. His rabid supporters have likely enjoyed his
confrontational rhetoric, but he has done nothing to turn it into policy. The Europeans need only wait for his attacks
to ebb and then they can proceed much the same as before. The status quo will continue to reign, impervious to change.
Montenegro always resembled the Duchy of Grand Fenwick from the delightful novel
The Mouse that Roared
.
Macedonia is the Duchy of North Grand Fenwick, a slightly larger neighboring state with similar features but additional
problems. Neither is remotely relevant to American security. America doesn't need yet another security black hole as an
alliance partner.
It was a remarkable moment in a remarkable press conference. President Donald Trump had just
finished a controversial summit meeting in Helsinki with his Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin, and
the two were talking to the media . Jeff Mason, a political affairs reporter with Reuters,
stood up and asked Putin a question pulled straight out of the day's headlines: "Will you
consider extraditing the 12 Russian officials that were indicted last week by a U.S. grand
jury?"
The "12 Russian officials" Mason spoke of were military intelligence officers accused of
carrying out a series of cyberattacks against various American-based computer networks
(including those belonging to the Democratic National Committee), the theft of emails and other
data, and the release of a significant portion of this information to influence the outcome of
the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The names and organizational affiliations of these 12
officers were contained in a detailed 29-page indictment prepared by special
prosecutor Robert Mueller, and subsequently made public by Assistant Attorney General Rob
Rosenstein on July 13 -- a mere three days prior to the Helsinki summit.
Vladimir Putin responded, "We have an existing agreement between the United States of
America and the Russian Federation, an existing treaty, that dates back to 1999, the mutual
assistance on criminal cases. This treaty is in full effect. It works quite efficiently."
Putin then discussed the relationship between this agreement -- the 1999 Mutual Legal Assistance
Treaty -- and the Mueller indictment. "This treaty has specific legal procedures," Putin
noted, that "we can offer the appropriate commission headed by special attorney Mueller. He can
use this treaty as a solid foundation and send a formal and official request to us so that we
would interrogate, we would hold the questioning of these individuals who he believes are privy
to some crimes and our enforcement are perfectly able to do this questioning and send the
appropriate materials to the United States."
In the
uproar that followed the Trump-Putin press conference , the exchange between Mason and
Putin was largely forgotten amidst invective over Trump's seeming public capitulation on the
issue of election interference. "Today's press conference in Helsinki," Senator John McCain
observed afterwards in a typical comment, "was one of the most disgraceful performances by an
American president in memory."
It took an
interview with Putin after the summit concluded , conducted by Fox News's Chris Wallace, to
bring the specific issue of the 12 indicted Russians back to the forefront and give it context.
From Putin's perspective, this indictment and the way it was handled by the United States was a
political act. "It's the internal political games of the United States. Don't make the
relationship between Russia and the United States -- don't hold it hostage of this internal
political struggle. And it's quite clear to me that this is used in the internal political
struggle, and it's nothing to be proud of for American democracy, to use such dirty methods in
the political rivalry."
Regarding the indicted 12, Putin reiterated the points he had made earlier to Jeff Mason.
"We -- with the United States -- we have a treaty for assistance in criminal cases, an existing
treaty that exists from 1999. It's still in force, and it works sufficiently. Why wouldn't
Special Counsel Mueller send us an official request within the framework of this agreement? Our
investigators will be acting in accordance with this treaty. They will question each individual
that the American partners are suspecting of something. Why not a single request was filed?
Nobody sent us a single formal letter, a formal request."
There is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Russia, which makes all the calls for
Trump to demand the extradition of the 12 Russians little more than a continuation of the
"internal political games" Putin alluded to in his interview. There is, however, the treaty
that Putin referenced at both the press conference and during the Wallace interview.
Signed in Moscow on June 17, 1999, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty calls for the
"prevention, suppression and investigation of crimes" by both parties "in accordance with the
provisions of this Treaty where the conduct that is the subject of the request constitutes a
crime under the laws of both Parties."
It should be noted that the indicted 12 have not violated any Russian laws. But the Mutual
Legal Assistance Treaty doesn't close the door on cooperation in this matter. Rather, the
treaty notes that "The Requested Party may, in its discretion, also provide legal assistance
where the conduct that is the subject of the request would not constitute a crime under the
laws of the Requested Party."
It specifically precludes the process of cooperating from inferring a right "on the part of
any other persons to obtain evidence, to have evidence excluded, or to impede the execution of
a request." In short, if the United States were to avail itself of the treaty's terms, Russia
would not be able to use its cooperation as a vehicle to disrupt any legal proceedings underway
in the U.S.
The legal assistance that the treaty facilitates is not inconsequential. Through it, the
requesting party can, among other things, obtain testimony and statements from designated
persons; receive documents, records, and other items; and arrange the transfer of persons in
custody for testimony on the territory of the requesting party.
If the indictment of the 12 Russians wasn't the "dirty method" used in a domestic American
"political rivalry" that Putin described, one would imagine that Assistant Attorney General Rob
Rosenstein would have availed himself of the opportunity to gather additional evidence
regarding the alleged crimes. He would also have, at the very least, made a request to have
these officers appear in court in the United States to face the charges put forward in the
indictment. The treaty specifically identifies the attorney general of the United States "or
persons designated by the Attorney General" as the "Central Authority" for treaty
implementation. Given the fact that Jeff Sessions has recused himself from all matters
pertaining to the investigation by the Department of Justice into allegations of Russian
meddling in the 2016 election, the person empowered to act is Rosenstein.
There are several grounds under the treaty for denying requested legal assistance, including
anything that might prejudice "the security or other essential interests of the Requested
Party." However, it also requires that the reasons for the any denial of requested assistance
be put in writing. Moreover, prior to denying a request, the Requested Party "shall consult
with the Central Authority of the Requesting Party to consider whether legal assistance can be
given subject to such conditions as it deems necessary. If the Requesting Party accepts legal
assistance subject to these conditions, it shall comply with the conditions."
By twice raising the treaty in the context of the 12 Russians, Putin has clearly signaled
that Russia would be prepared to proceed along these lines.
If the indictment issued by the Department of Justice is to be taken seriously, then it is
incumbent upon Rosenstein to call Putin's bluff, and submit a detailed request for legal
assistance per the mandate and procedures specified in the treaty -- in short, compel Russia to
either put up or shut up.
Any failure to do so would only confirm Putin's assertion that the indictment was a
political game to undermine the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former
Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author ofDeal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to
War .
Very cogent analysis. Putin, who's incredibly well briefed, knew exactly what he was
offering, and thought that by doing so, would force the DoJ/Mueller to either take him up on
his offer or otherwise display the overt politicism of the indictments. But the American
anti-Trump mindhive is so completely addled, they of course miss the point entirely. The
absence of reason among the anti-Trump/anti-Russia collective is truly something to behold
– it's scary.
The request V. Putin proposed and Scot Ritter writes about, if send to Russia, would be
equivalent to 'go and whistle' and would be treated the same way the Russians treat the
requests from Poland to return the remains of the Polish plane that crashed in controversial
and strange circumstances near Smolensk on April 10, 2010. They, the Russians, did not return
the remains of the plane up until today and the place where the plane crashed they bulldozed
the ground and paved with very thick layer of concrete.
Such request would only give the Russians propaganda tools to delay and dilute any
responsibility from the Russian side and at the end they would blame the USA for the whole
mess with no end to their investigation, because they would investigate until the US
investigators would drop dead. Anybody who seriously thinks about V.
Putin offer to investigate anything with Russia should first have his head examined by a
very good, objective, and politically neutral head specialist.
"If the indictment issued by the Department of Justice is to be taken seriously, then it is
incumbent upon Rosenstein to call Putin's bluff, and submit a detailed request for legal
assistance per the mandate and procedures specified in the treaty -- in short, compel Russia
to either put up or shut up.
Any failure to do so would only confirm Putin's assertion that the indictment was a
political game to undermine the presidency of Donald J. Trump."
That was one long-winded way of recognizing that Putin just told the US biparty
establishment behind the manufactured "Russia!" hysteria to put up or shut up.
I don't think that Pres Putin has anything to lose here.
"ARTICLE 4 DENIAL OF LEGAL ASSISTANCE
The Central Authority of the Requested Party may deny legal assistance if:
(1) the request relates to a crime under military law that is not a crime under general
criminal law;
(2) the execution of the request would prejudice the security or other essential interests
of the Requested Party; or "whether accurate or not the treaty permits a denial of request,
if said requests threaten Russian security."
Almost by definition, an investigation interrogation by the US of the personnel in
question because said questioning might very well stray into other areas , unrelated to the
hacking charge. Now Pres. Putin has played two cards: a treaty is in place that deals with
criminal matters between the two states and surely must have known that and should have
already made the formal requests in conjunction with the treaty or he didn't know either way,
the rush to embarrass the president may very well backfire. As almost everything about this
investigation has.
Right! That's not going to happen .the DOJ has no proof .their indictment was a ploy to
queer any deal with Russia. Anybody that believes anything the 'intelligence' agencies say,
without proof, is an idiot.
"... Cutting through the crap on foreign policy is something of a Paul family tradition. ..."
"... When Ron Paul suggested on a Republican presidential primary debate stage in 2008 that U.S. foreign policy created " blowback " that led to 9/11, fellow GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani accused Paul of blaming America and defending the attackers. Paul didn't relent: "Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." ..."
"... The American Conservative ..."
"... There are neocons in both parties who still want Ukraine and Georgia to be in NATO. That's very, very provocative. It has stimulated and encouraged nationalism in Russia. George Kennan predicted this in 1998 when we still had Yeltsin and Russia was coming in our direction. He said, "If you push NATO up against Russia's borders, nationalism will arise and their militarist tendencies will increase, and you may get someone like a Putin," basically. ..."
"... "It's a big mistake for us, not to say that we're morally equivalent or that anything Russia does is justified," Paul told Tapper. "But if we don't understand that everything we do has a reaction, we're not going to be very good at understanding and trying to have peace in our world." ..."
"... "Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system," the New York Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Rand Paul said Sunday, "People need to think through these things before they get so eager to rattle their sabers about wanting to have a confrontation with Russia." ..."
"... Jack Hunter is the former political editor of ..."
Ron and Rand Paul Call Out Foreign Policy Hysteria
And like his father, the senator found himself on the wrong end of the media mob this week.
When Mitt Romney called Russia America's "
number
one geopolitical foe
" during the 2012 election campaign, Barack Obama
mocked
him:
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back." Vice President Joe Biden
dismissed
Romney as a "Cold War holdover." Hillary Clinton
said
Romney was "looking backward." John Kerry
said
"Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching
Rocky IV
."
But that was then. This week the Cold War seemed to be back in full force for many former Obama supporters, as
President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the wake of 12 Russian agents
being indicted
for
allegedly meddling in the 2016 election.
In the midst of this hysteria, Senator Rand Paul was
asked
by CNN's Jake
Tapper on Sunday whether he thought Trump should demand that Putin acknowledge Russia's meddling.
"They're not going to admit it in the same way we're not going to admit that we were involved in the Ukrainian
elections or the Russian election," Paul
replied
. "So all countries that can
spy do. All countries that want to interfere in elections and have the ability to, they try." Paul insisted that U.S.
and Russian meddling are not "morally equivalent," but said we must still take into account that both nations do this.
That's when "Rand Paul" began trending on Twitter.
"Rand Paul is on TV delivering line after line of Kremlin narrative, and it is absolutely stunning to watch," read
one tweet
with nearly 5,000 likes. Another
tweet, just as popular,
said
, "Between
McConnell hiding election interference and Rand Paul defending it, looks like Russia's already annexed Kentucky." A Raw
Story headline on Paul's CNN interview read, "
Stunned
Jake Tapper explains why NATO exists to a Russia-defending Rand Paul
."
But was Paul really "defending" Russia? Was he even defending Russian meddling in U.S. elections? Or was he merely
trying to pierce through the hysteria and portray American-Russian relations in a more accurate and comprehensive
context -- something partisans left and right won't do and the mainstream media is too lazy to attempt?
Cutting through the crap on foreign policy is something of a Paul family tradition.
When Ron Paul suggested on a Republican presidential primary debate stage in 2008 that U.S. foreign policy created "
blowback
"
that led to 9/11, fellow GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani accused Paul of blaming America and defending the attackers. Paul
didn't relent: "Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there.
We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years."
No one in the GOP wanted to hear what Ron Paul had to say because it challenged and largely rebutted Republicans'
entire political identity at the time. Paul was roundly denounced. FrontPageMag's David Horowitz called him a "
disgrace
."
RedState
banned
all Paul supporters.
The American Conservative
's Jim Antle would
recall
in 2012: "The optics were
poor: a little-known congressman was standing against the GOP frontrunner on an issue where 90 percent of the party
likely disagreed with him . Support for the war was not only nearly unanimous within the GOP, but bipartisan."
Rand Paul now poses a similar challenge to Russia-obsessed Democrats. Contra Jake Tapper sagely explaining "why NATO
exists" to a supposedly ignoramus Paul, as the liberal Raw Story headline framed it, here's what the senator actually
said:
There are neocons in both parties who still want Ukraine and Georgia to be in NATO. That's very, very provocative.
It has stimulated and encouraged nationalism in Russia. George Kennan predicted this in 1998 when we still had
Yeltsin and Russia was coming in our direction. He said, "If you push NATO up against Russia's borders, nationalism
will arise and their militarist tendencies will increase, and you may get someone like a Putin," basically.
Do you think Jake Tapper Googled "George Kennan"? That's about as likely as Giuliani Googling "blowback."
"It's a big mistake for us, not to say that we're morally equivalent or that anything Russia does is justified," Paul
told Tapper. "But if we don't understand that everything we do has a reaction, we're not going to be very good at
understanding and trying to have peace in our world."
As for Russian spying -- was Paul just blindly defending that, too? Or did he make an important point in noting both
sides do it?
"Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system," the
New York Times
reported in February. "But intelligence veterans, and scholars who have studied covert
operations, have a different, and quite revealing, view."
The
Times
continued: "'If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something
bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,' said Steven L. Hall, who retired in 2015 after 30 years at the C.I.A., where he
was the chief of Russian operations. The United States 'absolutely' has carried out such election influence operations
historically, he said, 'and I hope we keep doing it.'"
The U.S. will no doubt keep meddling in foreign elections. Russia will do the same, just as it did during the
Obama administration and years prior
. The cries against diplomacy and for war will ebb, flow, flip, and flop,
depending on who sits in the White House and how it makes the screaming partisans feel. Many Democrats who view Trump's
diplomacy with Russia as dangerous would have embraced it (and did) under Obama. Many Republicans who hail Trump's
diplomatic efforts
wouldn't
have done so were he a Democrat. President Hillary Clinton could be having the same meeting with Putin and
most Democrats would be fine with it, Russian meddling or no meddling.
So many
headlines
attempted to portray Paul as the partisan hack on Sunday when the opposite is actually true. It's the left, including
much of the media, that's now turned hawkish towards Russia for largely partisan reasons, while Paul was making the same
realist
foreign policy
arguments
regarding
NATO
and
U.S.-Russia relations
long before the Trump presidency.
Responding to Romney's anti-Russia, anti-Obama comments in 2012, Thomas de Waal, a Russia expert at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace,
told
the
New York Times
, "There's a whole school of thought that Russia is one you need to work with to
solve other problems in the world, rather than being the problem." Rand Paul said Sunday, "People need to think through
these things before they get so eager to rattle their sabers about wanting to have a confrontation with Russia."
But think they won't and sabers they'll rattle, as yesterday's villains become today's heroes and vice versa.
There's the elephant in the room, of course. Nobody seems to want to touch it yet, but everybody knows that
Israeli meddling in US elections puts Russian meddling in the shade. Still, it's fascinating watching the
reporting and waiting to see who will break the silence.
In the meantime, wake me up when there's something
called "the Russia-American Political Action Committee" in DC. Wake me up when US politicians vie to win its
favor, as they vie to win the favor of AIPAC, and win the huge financial contributions that result from getting
its support. Wake me up when Russian oligarchs contribute even a fraction of what Israel donors like Sheldon
Adelson already contribute to US political campaigns – and wake me up when they get results like an American
president moving the US embassy to Jerusalem or an America president sending American troops to stand between
Israel and its enemies Russia may have moved a few thousand votes here or there, but Israel gets American
politicians to send America's children to die in Middle East wars. At the moment, Russia can only dream of
meddling with that degree of success.
Yep – American elections have been corrupted by foreign countries for a long time. Russia's only problem is
that it hasn't learned who to pay off, and how much. Next time Mr. Netanyahu visits Mr. Putin (and he visits
him fairly often), he can give him a few pointers. And then Mr. Putin will be invited to give speeches to joint
sessions of Congress. Just like Mr. Netanyahu. And freshmen US congressmen will be frog-marched to Russia for
instructions, just like they're already frog-marched to Israel.
Russia has been engaging in international espionage dating back at least to Peter the Great. As such, they play
the game as well as, or possibly better, than anyone. They, like we, will do what is necessary-even to the
point of injecting themselves in the internal affairs of another country–if they deem it in their interest to
do so or, as the cliche has it, "in the interest of state". Not very nice but–that's the way the game is
played.
Thank you, Rand Paul and Mr. Hunter, for injecting some much needed sanity into this debate.
There is no need to demonize the Russians. Their country has
national interests and goals. If they are patriots, the Russians will seek to advance those interests and
goals.
We also have interests and goals, and if we are patriots, we seek to advance them (though we disagree on
what our real interests are and what our goals should be).
When our interests concide with that of Russia we collaborate. When they clash, we seek to undermine each
other.
The Russians seem to have been doing it, as their interests now clash with ours. Nothing to be worked out
about. That's how the game is played.
Which does not mean that we should defend ourselves strenuously from such undermining. And the President is
precisely tasked with defending this country and advance its interests. This he seems to be unable to do.
Do not hate the Russians. Do not demonize them. But be aware of what they are doing, because we are NOT in a
Kumbayah moment with them.
Well done, Mr. Hunter. It's a shame that the Pauls' position on foreign policy is not shared by ostensibly
"libertarian" commentators who value DC cocktail parties above all principles.
The left's hatred of Russia goes even deeper than US partisan politics. They hate them because they gave up
their world-wide communism ideology. And they hate them because they are not fully on board with the LGBQTXYZ
movement.
The real problem with Russia is that it exists, and it is too big for us to control. The real problem with
Putin is that he is the first strong leader Russia has had since the fall of the Soviet Union, and he is
messing up our plans for world hegemony.
As one who grew up during the Cold War (the real one) and lived
through the whole thing (the Iron Curtain, the Warsaw Pact, the crushing of Hungary, communists behind every
door and under every bed), I find it very hard to take all the current hysteria about Russia very seriously.
Sane, reasonable comments. Totally agree with your sentiments. Unfortunately, since we live in a
3-ring media circus, so few people will listen or pay heed. In a world possibly even more dangerous than any
time since the Cold War, the act of demonizing one of the two greatest nuclear powers on earth is surely
madness.
CNN etc. headlines are not even thinly veiled editorials against Trump. Not related to just publishing the
news. But telling readers how to think. Mainstream media has an M&M type coating. Remove the outer shell and
you find the good old boys and girls as ever-lurking and ever vigilant Neocon Nation pushing their one and only
agenda on the American people. They are insatiable as long as they do not do the fighting and dying. Stay tough
Trump and realize short of complete capitulation you cannot satisfy these people.
Donald Trump took a step towards peace. Of course, not everyone likes this. As can be seen, Donald Trump has
many enemies, even among Republicans. They want war. These are people dangerous to America and the world.
What is better: peace with Russia, or a global nuclear war?
The Book of Revelation warns: "And another horse, fiery red, came out, and the one who rode it was granted
permission to take peace from the earth, so that people would butcher one another, and he was given a huge
sword." (6:4) "The great sword" – what does it mean?
Jesus gave many important details: "Terrors [φοβητρα] both [τε] and [και] unusual phenomena [σημεια –
unusual occurrences, transcending the common course of nature] from [απ] sky [ουρανου] powerful [μεγαλα] will
be [εσται]." (Luke 21:11)
Some ancient manuscripts contain the words "and frosts" [και χειμωνες] (we call this today "nuclear
winter"), and in Mark 13:8 "and disorders" [και ταραχαι] (in the sense of confusion and chaos). There will be
also significant tremors, food shortages and epidemics along the length and breadth of the regions as a result
of using this weapon.
This weapon will also cause climate change, catastrophic drought and global famine. (cf. Revelation 6:5, 6)
So here we have a complete picture of the consequences of the global nuclear war. Is there any sense in
speeding up this war?
He called out the perfidy and incompetence of American intelligence and foreign policy officials during the
Obama era, as he should have. He wants a productive relationship with a declining nuclear and regional power,
as he should have. Is Putin a nice man? No. But neither is he a pusillanimous Leftist eurotwit.
I'm glad to see adults in the room, at long last. The Sixties are over, baby. Good riddance.
"Of course the Paul's are right as they always are."
Always?
"A number of the newsletters criticized civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., calling him a
pedophile and "lying socialist satyr".[2][15] These articles told readers that Paul had voted against making
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a federal public holiday, saying "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national
holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time
again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate
Whitey Day."[2][16][17] During the 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns, Paul and his supporters said
that the passages denouncing King were not a reflection of Paul's own views because he considers King a
"hero".[18][19][20″
That last sentence is a hoot. Talk about "hysteria", but, go ahead, repeat Paul's lies that he knew nothing
about his own newsletter.
Johann:
"The left's hatred of Russia goes even deeper than US partisan politics. They hate them because they gave up
their world-wide communism ideology. And they hate them because they are not fully on board with the LGBQTXYZ
movement."
Like the NRA, The American Conservative needs to open "The Russian Conservative" chapters in Putin's
conservative Russia to protect Putin's murderous government.
It could be that the "Left", whatever that is in addlepated minds, merely desires a little real politik in
our relations with relations with Putin's Russia.
It's hard to tell the difference between ex-KGB Putin and ex-republicans like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.
The latter two make "full of crap" seem mild praise.
Off the top of my head, a few egregious examples in which the US government has "meddled" in other countries
during the last 100 years:
Mexico (Woodrow Wilson had thousands of US troops occupying Mexico until calling
them back to "meddle" in Europe's War to End All Wars, setting the stage for an even worse war 20 years later.)
Russia (Woodrow Wilson used the US military to "meddle" in the Russian revolution after the War to End All
Wars.)
Korea (undeclared war)
Vietnam (undeclared war)
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, and much of the rest of Central and South America.
Iran (helped overthrow its government in the 1950s and install the Shah of Iran, setting the stage for the
Iranian revolution.)
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt.
Yemen (huge humanitarian disaster as I write this. US government fully supporting head-chopping Saudi
Arabians in their campaign to starve, sicken and blow to bits hundreds of thousands of people. Support includes
US planes in-flight fueling of Saudi fighter/bomber jets.)
And let us not forget the enormous "meddling" in numerous US government elections and policy debates by . .
. Israel.
"He called out the perfidy and incompetence of American intelligence and
foreign policy officials during the Obama era, as he should have. He wants a productive relationship with a
declining nuclear and regional power, as he should have. Is Putin a nice man? No. But neither is he a
pusillanimous Leftist eurotwit."
It's important to understand what the US intelligence community is calling "interference in our election."
There has been no accusation that the Russians hacked into our electronic voting and changed results. Rather,
they did what we have done in other countries–the Russians ran an influence campaign. They bought ads and
created bots to spread the word. This is so utterly tame . . . there is nothing out of the ordinary US playbook
here.
Hacking the DNC server and revealing underhanded DNC doings? Hey, that's on the DNC for being both venal and
incompetent.
Anybody in 1962 shouting wild paranoid conspiracy theories about
THERE ARE RUSSIAN SPIES EVERYWHERE, THEY'RE TRYING TO TAKE OVER AMERICA
These people in 1962 would be (correctly) dismissed as Right Wing conspiracy kooks, now it's just standard
Lib Dems, RINOs, Neo Conservatives and fake news lying press.
We commissioned this Farstar comics with this theme – I mean like who in 2018 is really scared that Russians
like Anna Kournikova are going to take over America –
Unfortunately, Rand Paul is acting, but not on principle or in good faith. If he really wanted to stand against
manufactured hysteria, he would not accept the US "intelligence" agency claims and refer to their record – e.g.
on Iraq and before regarding stability of the Soviet Union – he would question the staggering difficulties of
attribution and forensics for networked, digital attacks (the main reason why any claims about who hacked whom
have to be read with skepticism), he would point to the corruption of our foreign politics by Saudi and Israeli
interests and money within the Trump-Kushner clan, and both parties, and he would compare the alleged – and
allegedly ineffectual – attempts to influence an already ridiculous election to the very real, pervasive and
corrupting impact of GOP voter disenfranchisement and bipartisan gerrymandering in service of incumbents and
their networks.
Rand Paul is the man who was going to stand against the Haspel appointment. He is a phoney,
but he serves as a weather vane for niche politicians on how the winds are turning.
Nothing about New START, no word about how George Bush made a promise that might have been in bad faith, how
Gorbachev was foolish enough to accept it, and how Bill Clinton broke it across the board, and piled on by
targeting Serbia in the Balkan conflict. Kennan did not refer to the Ukraine on his missive.
If Rand Paul is our last best hope, we are in deep trouble.
Jack Hunter " Senator Rand Paul was asked by CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday whether he thought Trump should
demand that Putin acknowledge Russia's meddling."
(0:01) TAPPER: 48 hours ago the US government, the Trump
administration, said the top Russian military intelligence officers orchestrated a massive hack to affect the
US election. How much do you want President Trump to try to hold Putin accountable for that?
PAUL: I think really we mistake our response if we think it's about accountability from the Russians.
They're another country. They're going to spy on us. They do spy on us. They're going to interfere in our
elections. We also do the same. Dov Levin at Carnegie Mellon studied this over about a 50-year period in the
last century and found 81 times that the US interfered in other countries' elections. So we all do it. What we
need to do is to make sure that our electoral process is protected. And I think because this has gotten
partisan and it's all about partisan politics we have forgotten that really the most important thing is the
integrity of our election. And there are things we can do and things that I've advocated: Making sure it's
decentralized all the way down to the precinct level; making sure we don't store all the data in one place,
even for a state, and that there's a back-up way so that someone in a precinct can say, 'Two thousand people
signed in, this was the vote tally I sent to headquarters.' There's a lot of ways that we can back-up our
election. Advertising, things like that, it's tricky. Can we restrict the Russians? We might be able to in some
ways, but I think at the bottom line we wanted the Russians to admit it. They're not going to admit it in the
same way we're not going to admit that we were involved in the Ukrainian elections or the Russian elections. So
all countries that can spy do. All countries that want to interfere in elections and have the ability to, they
try."
TAPPER: It sounds as though you are saying that the United States has done the equivalent of what the
Russians did in the 2016 election, and it might sound to some viewers that you're offering that statement as an
excuse for what the Russians did.
PAUL: No, what I would say is it's not morally equivalent, but I think in their mind it is. And I think it's
important to know in your adversary's mind the way that they perceive things. I do think that they react to our
interference in both their elections. One of the reasons they really didn't like Hillary Clinton is they found
her responsible for some of the activity by the US in their elections under the Obama administration. So I'm
not saying it's justified
TAPPER: But surely, Senator Paul, the United States has never done what the Russians did.
PAUL: I'm not saying they're equivalent, or morally equivalent, but I am saying that this is the way that
the Russians respond. So if you want to know how we have better diplomacy, or better reactions, we have to know
their response. But it's not just interference in elections that I think has caused this nationalism in Russia.
Also, I think part of the reason is is we promised them when James Baker, at the end when Germany reunified, we
promised them that we wouldn't go one inch eastward of Germany with NATO, and we've crept up on the borders,
and we still have neocons in both parties who want Ukraine and Georgia to be in NATO.
That's very, very provocative and it has stimulated and encouraged nationalism in Russia. George Kennan
predicted this. In 1998 when we still had Yeltsin and Russia was coming in our direction, he said, if you push
NATO up against Russia's borders, nationalism will arise and their militarist tendencies will increase, and you
may get someone like a Putin, basically.
George Kennan predicted the rise of Putin in 1998. And so we have to understand that for every action we
have, there is a reaction. And it's a big mistake for us -- not to say that we're morally equivalent or that
anything that Russia does is justified – but if we don't realize that everything we do has a reaction, we're
not going to be very good at understanding and trying to have peace in the world (3:38)
...Stuxnet, which was thought to be a joint American-Israeli assault on Iran's nuclear program. And there are reports of U.S.
attempts to similarly hamper North Korean missile development. Some consider such direct attacks on other governments to be akin
to acts of war. Would Washington join Moscow in a pledge to become a good cyber citizen?
Few issues generate a bipartisan response in Washington. President Donald Trump's upcoming
summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is one.
Democrats who once pressed for détente with the Soviet Union act as if Trump will be
giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Neoconservatives and other Republican hawks are equally
horrified, having pressed for something close to war with Moscow since the latter's annexation
of Crimea in 2014. Both sides act as if the Soviet Union has been reborn and Cold War has
restarted.
Russia's critics present a long bill of requirements to be met before they would relax
sanctions or otherwise improve relations. Putin could save time by agreeing to be an American
vassal.
Topping everyone's list is Russian interference in the 2016 election, which was outrageous.
Protecting the integrity of our democratic system is a vital interest, even if the American
people sometimes treat candidates with contempt. Before joining the administration National
Security Adviser John Bolton even called Russian meddling "a casus belli , a true act of
war."
Yet Washington has promiscuously meddled in other nations' elections. Carnegie Mellon's Dov
H. Levin figured that between 1946 and 2000 the U.S. government interfered with 81 foreign
contests, including the 1996 Russian poll. Retired U.S. intelligence officers freely admit that
Washington has routinely sought to influence other nations' elections.
Yes, of course, Americans are the good guys and favor politicians and parties that the other
peoples would vote for if only they better understood their own interests -- as we naturally
do. Unfortunately, foreign governments don't see Uncle Sam as a Vestal Virgin acting on behalf
of mankind. Indeed, Washington typically promotes outcomes more advantageous to, well,
Washington. Perhaps Trump and Putin could make a bilateral commitment to stay out of other
nations' elections.
Another reason to shun Russia, argued Senator Rob Portman, is because "Russia still occupies
Crimea and continues to fuel a violent conflict in eastern Ukraine." Moscow annexed Crimea
after a U.S.-backed street putsch ousted the elected but highly corrupt Ukrainian President
Viktor Yanukovych. The territory historically was Russian, turned over to Ukraine most likely
as part of a political bargain in the power struggle following Joseph Stalin's death. A
majority of Crimeans probably wanted to return to Russia. However, the annexation was
lawless.
Rather like America's dismemberment of Serbia, detaching Kosovo after mighty NATO entered
the final civil war growing out of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Naturally, the U.S. again had
right on its side -- it always does! -- which obviously negated any obligations created by
international law. Ever-virtuous Washington even ignored the post-victory ethnic cleansing by
Albanian Kosovars
Still, this makes Washington's complaints about Russia seem just a bit hypocritical: do as
we say, not as we do. In August 2008 John McCain expressed outrage over Russia's war with
Georgia, exclaiming: "In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations." Apparently he
forgot that five years before the U.S. invaded Iraq, with McCain's passionate support. Here,
too, the two presidents could agree to mutual forbearance.
Worse is the conflict in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, between the Ukrainian army and
separatists backed by Russia. Casualty estimates vary widely, but are in the thousands. Moscow
successfully weakened Kiev and prevented its accession to NATO. However, that offers neither
legal nor moral justification for underwriting armed revolt.
Alas, the U.S. again comes to Russia with unclean hands. Washington is supporting the brutal
war by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates against Yemen. Area specialists agree that the
conflict started as just another violent episode in a country which has suffered civil strife
and war for decades. The Houthis, a tribal/ethnic/religious militia, joined with their
long-time enemy, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to oust his successor, Abdrabbuh Mansur
Hadi. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi attacked to reinstall a pliable regime and win economic control. The
U.S. joined the aggressors . At least Russia could claim national security was at stake,
since it feared Ukraine might join NATO.
The "coalition" attack turned the Yemeni conflict into a sectarian fight, forced the Houthis
to seek Iranian aid, and allowed Tehran to bleed its Gulf rivals at little cost. Human rights
groups agree that the vast majority of civilian deaths and bulk of destruction have been caused
by Saudi and Emirati bombing, with Washington's direct assistance. The humanitarian crisis
includes a massive cholera epidemic. The security consequences include empowering al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula. Perhaps the U.S. and Russian governments could commit to jointly forgo
supporting war for frivolous causes.
Human carnage and physical destruction are widespread in Syria. It will take years to
rebuild homes and communities; the hundreds of thousands of dead can never be replaced. Yet
Moscow has gone all out to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. The Heritage
Foundation's Luke Coffey and Alexis Mrachek demand that Moscow end its support for Assad "and
demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with the international community to bring a political
end to the Syrian civil war." The American Enterprise Institute's Leon Aron urged "a true
Russian withdrawal from Syria, specifically ceding control of the Hmeymim airbase and
dismantling recent expansions to the Tartus naval facility."
But the U.S. is in no position to complain. Washington's intervention has been disastrous,
first discouraging a negotiated settlement, then promoting largely non-existent moderate
insurgents, backing radicals, including the al-Qaeda affiliate (remember 9/11!?) against Assad,
simultaneously allying with Kurds and Turks, and taking over the fight against the Islamic
State even though virtually everyone in the Mideast had reason to oppose the group.
At least Russia, invited by the recognized government, had a reason to be there. Moscow's
alliance with Syria dates back to the Cold War and poses no threat to America, which is allied
with Israel, the Gulf States, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt. Washington also possesses military
facilities in Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. For most Middle Eastern countries Moscow is primarily
a bargaining chip to extort more benefits from America. Trump could propose that both countries
withdraw from Syria.
Coffey and Mracek also express outrage that Moscow "has weaponized its natural gas exports
to Europe, turning off the tap when countries dare go against its wishes." Russia's customers
should not fear coercion via cut-off. Of course, the U.S. never uses its economic power for
political ends. Other than to routinely impose economic sanctions on a variety of nations on
its naughty list. And to penalize not only American firms, but businesses from every other
nation .
Indeed, the Trump administration is insisting that every company in every country stop doing
business with Iran. The U.S. government will bar violators from the U.S. market or impose
ruinous fines on them. The Trump administration plans to sanction even its European allies,
those most vulnerable to Russian energy politics. Which suggests a modus vivendi that
America's friends likely would applaud: both Washington and Moscow could promise not to take
advantage of other nations' economic vulnerabilities for political ends.
Cyberwar is a variant of economic conflict. Heritage's Mracek cited "the calamitous
cyberattack, NotPetya," as "part of Russia's effort to destabilize Ukraine even further than in
the past." Yes, a criminal act. Of course, much the same could be said of Stuxnet, which was
thought to be a joint American-Israeli assault on Iran's nuclear program. And there are reports
of U.S. attempts to similarly hamper North Korean missile development. Some consider such
direct attacks on other governments to be akin to acts of war. Would Washington join Moscow in
a pledge to become a good cyber citizen?
Virtually everyone challenges Russia on human rights. Moscow falls far short, with Putin's
control of the media, manipulation of the electoral process, and violence against those
perceived as regime enemies. In this regard, at least, America is far better.
But many U.S. allies similarly fail this test. For instance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has created an authoritarian state retaining merely the forms of democracy. Egypt's
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has constructed a tyranny more brutal than that of Hosni
Mubarak. Saudi Arabia's monarchy allows neither religious nor political freedom, and has grown
more repressive under Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. It is not just Trump who remains
largely silent about such assaults on people's basic liberties. So do many of the president's
critics, who express horror that he would deal with such a man as Putin.
Moscow will not be an easy partner for the U.S. Explaining that "nobody wanted to listen to
us" before he took over, in March Putin declared: "You hear us now!" Compromise is inevitable,
but requires respect for both nations' interests. A starting point could be returning the two
nations' embassies to full strength and addressing arms control, such as the faltering
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and soon-expiring Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. A
larger understanding based on NATO ending alliance expansion in return for Russia withdrawing
from the conflict in the Donbas would be worth pursuing.
Neither the U.S. nor the Russian Federation can afford to allow their relations to
deteriorate into another Cold War. Russia is too important on too many issues, including acting
as a counterweight to China, the most serious geopolitical challenge to the U.S. Hopefully the
upcoming summit will begin the difficult process of rebuilding a working relationship between
Washington and Moscow.
DARAA, Syria – At first glance, all appears calm in this southern Syrian city where
protests first broke out seven years ago. Residents mill around shops in preparation for the
evening Iftar meal when they break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
But the tension is nonetheless palpable in this now government-controlled city. A few weeks
ago, Russian-brokered reconciliation talks in southern Syria fell apart when Western-backed
militants rejected a negotiated peace.
Whether there will now be a full-on battle for the south or not, visits last week to Syria's
three southern governorates, Daraa, Quneitra, and Suweida, reveal a startling possibility:
al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise -- the Nusra Front -- appears to be deeply entrenched alongside
these U.S.-backed militants in key, strategic towns and villages scattered throughout the
south.
U.S. media and think tanks obfuscate this fact by referring to all opposition fighters as
"rebels" or "moderates." Take a look at their maps and you only see three colors: red for the
Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies, green for opposition forces, black for ISIS.
So then, where is the Nusra Front, long considered by Western pundits to be one of the most
potent fighting forces against the SAA? Have they simply -- and conveniently -- been erased
from the Syrian battle map?
Discussions with Syrian military experts, analysts, and opposition fighters during my trip
revealed that Nusra is alive and kicking in the southern battlefields. The map below
specifically identifies areas in the south controlled by Nusra, but there are many more
locations that do not appear where Nusra is present and shares power with other militants.
Despite its U.S. and UN designation as a terrorist organization, Nusra has been openly
fighting alongside the "Southern Front," a group of 54 opposition militias funded and commanded
by a U.S.-led war room based in Amman, Jordan called the Military Operations Center (MOC).
Specifics about the MOC aren't easy to come by, but sources inside Syria -- both opposition
fighters and Syrian military brass (past and present) -- suggest the command center consists of
the U.S., UK, France, Jordan, Israel, and some Persian Gulf states.
They say the MOC supplies funds, weapons, salaries, intel, and training to the 54 militias,
many of which consist of a mere 200 or so fighters that are further broken down into smaller
groups, some only a few dozen strong.
SAA General Ahmad al-Issa, a commander for the frontline in Daraa, says the MOC is a
U.S.-led operation that controls the movements of Southern Front "terrorists" and is highly
influenced by Israel's strategic goals in the south of Syria -- one of which is to seize
control of its bordering areas to create a "buffer" inside Syrian territories.
How does he know this? Issa says his information comes from a cross-section of sources,
including reconciled/captured militants and intel from the MOC itself. The general cites MOC's
own rulebook for militants as an example of its Israel-centricity: "One, never threaten or
approach any Israeli border in any way. Two, protect the borders with (Israeli-occupied) Golan
so no one can enter Israel."
To illustrate the MOC's control over southern militants, Issa cites further regulations:
"three, never take any military action before clearing with MOC first. Four, if the MOC asks
groups to attack or stop, they must do so."
What happens if these rules are not upheld? "They will get their salaries cut," says
Issa.
The armed opposition groups supported by the MOC are mostly affiliated with the Free Syrian
Army (FSA), itself an ill-defined, highly fungible group of militants who have changed names
and affiliations with frequency during the Syrian conflict.
Over the course of the war, the FSA has fought
alongside the Nusra Front and ISIS -- some have even joined them. Today, despite efforts to
whitewash the FSA and Southern Front as "non-sectarian" and non-extremist , factions
like the Yarmouk Army, Mu'tazz Billah Brigade, Salah al-Din Division, Fajr al-Islam Brigade,
Fallujah al-Houran Brigade, the Bunyan al-Marsous grouping, Saifollah al-Masloul Brigade, and
others are currently occupying keys areas in Daraa in cooperation with the Nusra Front.
None of this is news to American policymakers. Even before the MOC was established in
February 2014, Nusra militants were fronting vital military maneuvers for the FSA. As one Daraa
opposition
activist explains: "The FSA and al-Nusra join together for operations but they have an
agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don't want to frighten Jordan or
the West . Operations that were really carried out by al-Nusra are publicly presented by the
FSA as their own."
Efforts to conceal the depth of cooperation between Nusra and the FSA go right to the top.
Says one FSA commander in Daraa: "In many battles, al-Nusra takes part, but we don't tell the
(MOC) operations room about it."
It's highly doubtful that the U.S. military remains unaware of this. The Americans operate
on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis with regard to FSA-Nusra cooperation. In a 2015 interview with this
reporter , CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines was quizzed about why
Pentagon-vetted fighters' weapons were showing up in Nusra hands. Raines responded: " We
don't 'command and control' these forces -- we only 'train and enable' them. Who they say
they're allying with, that's their business."
In practice, the U.S. doesn't appear to mind the Nusra affiliation -- regardless of the fact
that the group is a terror organization -- as long as the job gets done.
U.S. arms have been seen in Nusra's possession for many years now, including highly valued
TOW missiles , which were game-changing weapons in the Syrian military theater. When
American weapons end up in al-Qaeda hands during the first or second year of a conflict, one
assumes simple errors in judgment. When the problem persists after seven years, however, it
starts to look like there's a policy in place to look the other way.
It's also not difficult to grasp why U.S. maps patently ignore evidence of Nusra embedded
among U.S.-supported militias. The group, after all, is exempt from ceasefires, viewed as a
fair target for military strikes at all times.
In December 2015, UN
Security Council Resolution 2254 called for "Member States to prevent and suppress
terrorist acts committed specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known
as Da'esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and
entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the
Security Council" (emphasis added). Furthermore, the resolution makes clear that ceasefires
"will not apply to offensive or defensive actions against these individuals, groups,
undertakings and entities."
This essentially means that the Syrian army and its allies can tear apart any areas in the
south of Syria where Nusra fighters -- and "entities associated" with it -- are based. In
effect, international law provides a free hand for a Syrian military assault against
U.S.-backed militias co-located with Nusra, and undermines the ability of their foreign
sponsors to take retaliatory measures.
That's why the Nusra Front doesn't show up on U.S. maps.
In an interview last week, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad blamed the sudden breakdown of
southern reconciliation efforts on "Israeli and American interference," which he says "put pressure on the terrorists in that
area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution."
Today, the Israeli border area with Syria is dotted with
Nusra and ISIS encampments, which Israel clearly
prefers over the Syrian army and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies. The Wall Street
Journal even
reported last year that Israel was secretly providing funding for salaries, food, fuel, and
munitions to militants across its border.
In early June, two former Islamist FSA members (one of them also a former Nusra fighter) in
Beit Jinn -- a strategic area bordering Syria, Lebanon, and Israel -- told me that Israel had
been paying their militia's salaries for a year before a reconciliation deal was struck with
the Syrian government. "Every month Israel would send us $200,000 to keep fighting," one
revealed. "Our leaders were following the outside countries. We were supported by MOC, they
kept supporting us till the last minute," he said.
Earlier that day, in the village of Hadar in the Syrian Golan, members of the Druze
community described a bloody Nusra
attack last November that killed 17: "All the people here saw how Israel helped Nusra
terrorists that day. They covered them with live fire from the hilltops to help Nusra take over
Hadar. And at the end of the fights, Israel takes in the injured Nusra fighters and
provides them with medical services," says Marwan Tawil, a local English teacher.
"The ceasefire line (Syrian-Israeli border) is 65 kilometers between here to Jordan, and
only this area is under the control of the SAA," explains Hadar's mayor. "Sixty kilometers is
with Nusra and Israel and only the other five are under the SAA."
Israel is so heavily vested in keeping Syria and its allies away from its borders, it has
actively
bolstered al-Qaeda and other extremists in Syria's southern theater. As Israeli Defense
Minister Moshe Ya'alon famously explained
in 2016, "In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic State, I choose the Islamic
State." To justify their interventions in the battle ahead, the U.S. and Israel claim that
Iranian and Hezbollah forces are present in the south, yet on the ground in Daraa and Quneitra,
there is no visible sight of either.
Multiple sources confirm this in Daraa, and insist that that there are only a handful of
Hezbollah advisors -- not fighters -- in the entire governorate.
So why the spin? "This is a public diplomacy effort to make the West look like they've
forced Iran and Hezbollah out of the south," explains General Issa.
The U.S., Israel, and their allies cannot win this southern fight. They can only prolong the
insecurity for a while before the SAA decides to launch a military campaign against the
54-plus-militias-Nusra occupying the south of Syria. The end result is likely to be a
negotiated settlement peppered with a few "soft battles" to eject the more hardline
militants.
As one SAA soldier on the scene in Daraa tells me: "Fifty-four factions in a small area
shows weakness more than it shows strength." And their cooperation with the Nusra Front just
makes the targets on their backs even larger.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and
analyst of Mideast geopolitics based in Beirut.
Credit:
Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock
The United States has adorned its president with extravagance that makes Roman emperors
appear frugal by comparison. And such visible signs of the deification of our president are complemented by legal
doctrines that echo Richard Nixon's once discredited claim to David Frost: "When the president does it, that means it is
not illegal."
These extra-constitutional developments reflect the transformation
of the United States from a republic, whose glory was liberty and whose rule of law was king, to an empire, whose glory
is global dominion and whose president is law. The Constitution's architects would be shocked to learn that contemporary
presidents play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to any person on the planet deemed a threat to national
security on the basis of secret, untested evidence known only to the White House.
An empire demands a Caesar and blind obedience from its citizens. World leadership
through the global projection of military force cannot be exercised with checks and balances and a separation of powers
that arrests speed and invites debate. Napoleon lectured: "Nothing in war is more important than unity of command .
Better one bad general than two good ones." And Lord Tennyson, saluting the British Empire, versified in
The Charge of the Light Brigade
:
As justice requires the appearance of justice, a Caesar requires the appearance of a
Caesar. Thus is the president protected by platoons of Secret Service agents. The White House, by closing previously
open avenues through the heart of the capital and shielding the president from citizen detractors, has become a castle.
The White House staff has expanded and aggrandized power at the expense of Cabinet officials confirmed with the advice
and consent of the Senate.
Debate, encouraged by the separation of powers, is superfluous where support for
empire is underwritten by the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex, as it is in the United
States. The Republican and Democratic parties are unified behind at least seven ongoing unconstitutional presidential
wars and climbing trillion-dollar national security budgets.
Our warfare state has given birth to subsidiary surveillance, crony capitalism, and a
welfare state. Congress and the judicial branch have become largely sound and fury, signifying nothing. The
Constitution's separation of powers is atrophying.
The life of the law is not justice but genuflections to power. It manufactures
doctrines that honor the power principle that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. When the
configuration of power changes, the law adapts accordingly. The adaptations may not be instantaneous, but they are
inexorable. This is not surprising. Judges are not born like Athena from the head of Zeus. They are selected through a
political process that vets them for compatibility with the views of their political benefactors. Benjamin Cardozo
observed in
The Nature of the Judicial
Process
:
"The great tides and
currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by."
The United States has become the largest and most actively garrisoned empire in
history, built up by World War II and the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union. Our empire has, among other things,
approximately 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, over 240,000 active duty and reserve troops in at least 172
countries and territories
, de facto
or
de jure
commitments to defend 70
countries, and presidential wars as belligerents or co-belligerents in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The president has by necessity become
a Caesar irrespective of whether the occupant of the White House possesses recessive or dominant genes. The law has
adapted accordingly, destroying the Constitution like a wrecking ball.
At present, the president with impunity initiates war in violation of the Declare War
Clause; kills American citizens in violation of the Due Process Clause; engages in indiscriminate surveillance his own
citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment; substitutes executive agreements for treaties to circumvent the
requirements of Senate ratifications by two-thirds majorities in violation of the Treaty Clause; substitutes executive
orders for legislation in violation of Article I, section 1; issues presidential signing statements indistinguishable
from line-item vetoes in violation of the Presentment Clause; wields vast standard-less delegations of legislative
authority in violation of the Constitution's separation of powers; brandishes a state secrets privilege to block
judicial redress for unconstitutional executive action in violation of due process; refuses submission to congressional
oversight in violation of the congressional power of inquiry; and declines to defend defensible duly enacted laws in
violation of the Take Care Clause.
The Constitution will be reborn only if the American people reject their Empire in
favor of a republic where individual liberty is the summum bonum. The odds of that happening are not good.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission
under President Reagan and counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He is a partner in
the law firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
Anthropologist David Vine spent several years visiting and investigating U.S military bases
abroad. To put it mildly, he disapproves of what he found. In his sweeping critique, Base
Nation , Vine concludes that Washington's extensive network of foreign bases -- he claims
there are about 800 of them -- causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too
much money, underwrites dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the
country. Far from providing an important strategic deterrent, the bases actually undermine our
security. To remedy this immense travesty, Vine calls for Washington to bring the troops back
home.
If nothing else, Base Nation is a timely book. The issue of our expensive foreign
commitments has taken center stage in this presidential election. Vine probably finds it ironic
that most of the criticism is coming from Donald Trump.
Our extensive foreign-base network is probably an issue that we can't ignore for long.
Today, there seems more urgency to look at these long-term base commitments and examine what we
are really getting out of them. So, for raising the issue, I say, "Thank you for your service,
Mr. Vine."
But it is a shame that Base Nation , which could have made a strong contribution to
this debate, ends up making a heavy-handed and somewhat unreliable case against and the U.S.
military and U.S. foreign policy in general. His sweeping indictments detract from the
importance of his initial focus, our overextended base network.
There are some positives. Vine stands on firm ground when he details how inefficient the
base system often is. In fact, this is an issue that the federal government has been
addressing, albeit slowly and haltingly. Budget realities are solving the problem; many bases
are being shuttered and their functions consolidated into others. Vine thinks that overseas
bases cost us at least $71 billion a year; maybe closer to $100-200 billion. In one of the more
persuasive sections of the book, he explains how he made these calculations, which follow to
some extent an important 2013 study from the RAND Corporation. That it is difficult coming up
with any precise figures on overseas base spending suggests that we probably need to take a
harder look at how taxpayer money is being used.
Likewise, Vine raises valid criticisms about how many bases were constructed by either
displacing native populations, as the British did for our benefit at the Indian Ocean atoll
Diego Garcia, or by marginalizing the locals, as we allegedly have done at Okinawa in Japan. He
highlights the environmental damage done by U.S. military ordnance, although I think it unfair
that he ignores the more scrupulous attendance to the environment that we find in today's armed
forces. And Vine is right that having many young and bored men based far from home probably
doesn't elevate the morals of the local, host population.
But Vine simply fails to persuade in other parts of his critique. His fundamental distrust
of the military leads him to accept unquestioningly every dubious charge against it. He also
tends to be less than discriminating in some of his sourcing and characterization of events.
These problems undermine the overall credibility of his reporting.
Part of the problem with Base Nation is definitional. Vine's definition of a base --
"any place, facility or installation used regularly for military purposes, of any kind" -- is
far too broad. Even temporary assignments with host governments get defined as "bases." This
leads him to estimate that there are at minimum 686 bases, with 800 being "a good estimate."
Why the need to inflate the numbers?
Vine's foreign-base maps, though compelling to look at, appear a bit suspect in light of his
expanded definition. What's that big star in Greenland? That's Thule Air Station, a Danish
base, where we have about 100 personnel. And the other one in Ascension Island? That's a small
satellite-monitoring station, run by the British. What's that dot in Cairo? Oh, it's a
medical-research facility. These are hardly the footprints of overweening imperialism.
Likewise, he identifies many bases in Africa. To debunk the official position that we have
one permanent base there -- in Djibouti, rented from the French -- plus a few drone sites, Vine
relies on dodgy research from Nick Turse, a noted anti-military critic who thinks that the
Pentagon runs a hidden African empire.
Along similar lines, Vine believes the U.S. maintains an extensive, secret base system in
Latin America. We have one permanent base in the region, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay (GTMO). Once all
the al-Qaeda prisoners are gone, GTMO's main function will return to fleet training and
disaster response for the Caribbean. In addition, we have one arrangement in Soto Cano Air
Field in Honduras, which hosts a squadron of helicopters engaged in counternarcotic operations.
How does this base destabilize Central America, as Vine suggests? You got me.
Soto Cano is featured in one of the more tendentious chapters, which reveals Vine's method.
In discussing the base, he strongly suggests the U.S. military there conspired with the
Honduran Army during the "coup" against President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. He quotes a local
activist insisting the U.S. was behind the coup, and then leaves it at that. In fact, the U.S.
government firmly opposed removing the anti-American Zelaya, slapped sanctions on Honduras, and
negotiated for months to have Zelaya brought back into Honduras. Suggesting the U.S. military
backed the coup is, well, baseless.
Many of Vine's scattershot charges are of a similar nature. He accuses the U.S. Navy of
being in bed with the mob in Naples because, allegedly, it rents housing from landlords who may
have mob connections. He blames the military for the red-light districts around foreign bases,
like in South Korea, as if it directly created them. In another context, he claims, based on
one professor's opinion, that the U.S. Naval Academy fosters a rampant rape culture, and so
on.
Toward the end of the book, Vine challenges those who believe the bases are providing
valuable deterrence to "prove it." I'm not sure I can prove it to his satisfaction, but
regarding Korean-peninsula security, some experts point to our strong presence there as
deterring both sides from overreacting. And regarding Iraq, it seems evident that leaving
without any U.S. military presence destabilized the country. Many of our operations with
foreign militaries in Africa, Latin America, and southeast Asia have a strong humanitarian
focus. It is disconcerting that he dedicates no space to these important, stabilizing missions
that are often enabled by our forward base deployment.
But Vine never demonstrates his main point: that the bases themselves are destabilizing. The
countries with our largest base presence -- Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Japan -- are all
prosperous, peaceful democracies. As for the local protests at our foreign military bases that
occasionally happen, these seem no more problematic than what occurs, certainly more often, at
our many embassies abroad. Should we withdraw our diplomatic missions too?
As for bases destabilizing the developing world, Vine overplays the U.S.-imperialism angle
and fails to appreciate how much control even a weaker government has over its own sovereignty.
Little Honduras could kick us out of Soto Cano tomorrow; we have an agreement that could end at
any time. Ecuador refused to renew our lease at Manta Air Base in 2008; we left without much
fuss. The Philippines in 1992 changed its constitution to prohibit foreign bases, forcing us to
leave Subic Bay. Now Manila, feeling threatened by China over the South China Sea island
disputes, is inviting us back. The Filipinos mustn't feel our presence too destabilizing.
Given Vine's criticism of our large base footprint, you would think he'd approve of the
Pentagon's recent plans on lowering its profile with its "lily pad" strategy -- bilaterally
negotiated, pre-staged locations that might enable a future deployment. Surely this approach
would alleviate the problems of the large, permanent bases Vine so painstakingly sights? But,
somewhat illogically, he objects to this "light footprint" approach as a new sign of
encroaching imperialism, not of gradual U.S. realignment and withdrawal.
Even if he doesn't make a strong case in Base Nation , in the long run, Vine probably
will get his wish. It is hard to imagine that an extensive military base network in Europe and
East Asia, the outcome of our victory in World War II and justified by Cold War strategy, will
still make sense a few decades down the road. Changes are already in the wind. A new strategy
for U.S. foreign policy and military power projection will doubtless be shaped largely by
budget exigencies and shifts in our allies' regional security priorities.
Michael J. Ard, a former naval officer and U.S. government analyst, works in the
security field and lectures on international security at Rice University.
Our critic seems to have some serious cognitive dissonance going on in his avoidance of
recognizing the imperial project that undergirds circling the world with U.S. military power
projection.
Fran Macadam is right. The bases and the problems they create are incidental to the policy
that engendered. Our nation went from a policy of intermittent imperialism after 1898 to one
of permanent imperialism after 1941.
Unless we ditch the empire and return to our correct status as an independent republic, we
will suffer the fate of all previous empires.
If we grant that our global commitments are burdensome, why not take the argument in a
reasonable direction. As we remember from the days of BRAC, closing bases is like pulling eye
teeth, so let's focus on narrowing this argument down to what may be feasible: End NATO,
remove our unwelcome forces from the Middle East, and shutter the bases where we're not
wanted (e.g. AFRICOM, Okinawa) and where leases are due to expire. We need to walk our
projection back from the borders of China & Russia. Even a minimal plan of this sort
would require a decade to accomplish. Ultimately we need a master, strategic foreign policy
vision that walks back our global projection this debate goes nowhere without that.
Unfortunately neither GOP or Democrat parties offer this vision. No need to wring our hands
over a "Close All the Bases" debate until we're back to Constitutional governance and foreign
policy, and are rid of the military-industrial complex. And the odds of that are ?
Our Founding Fathers never wanted or would have allowed foreign military bases. Thomas
Jefferson was adamantly opposed to building a navy but John Adams built a navy and Jefferson
used it to stop muslim barbarians from enslaving the crews of US merchant ships.
I cannot fathom why the US needs basis throughout the world. Id much rather have a strong
Philipines, Japan and Taiwan for us to partner with than vassal states that spend nothing for
their own defense and put the entire burden the their alliance on the US. How many shades is
that from colonialism or parasitism? Not that far in my book.
Europe is a fine example of parasitism. Today Europe expects its protector to be the US,
it has shifted all its resources to social programs and as a result it cannot even defend its
borders from unarmed migrants much less from a hostile aggressor.
So what is the strategy to contain Russia and China by being in Central Asia, to contain
Europe by constraining it with NATO, to constrain Asia via China, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam,
etc.
Im not a fan. The US is spending so much money maintaining these military alliances and
using US money and jobs to bribe compliance that our nation is going bankrupt and our
infrastructure is 3rd world. If these truly are competitor nations the wiser approach would
be to have a strong 1st world infrastructure, a strong economy, strong education and
employment and expansion into Mexico, Central America and South America. Nowhere else in the
world is a nation capable of dominating an entire continent from aggressor competing nations.
Nowhere else in the world is a nation capable of dominating an entire portion of the globe.
Instead of growing North, Central and South America we are constraining the rest of the
globe. Not only is this fiscally irresponsible but one can only shake a bottle of champagne
for so long and expect the bottle to constrain the carbonation. Eventually the cork will pop
and the declining debtor power will be brought down to size with years of animous for holding
others back.
" causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too much money, underwrites
dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the country."
Nowhere in this article is there mention of what I would hope to be the primary purpose of
a forward base.
Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine
Our elites run roughshod over other peoples, and the American people can't constrain them
either. At least we know who the "real" Americans are. L'etat, it is them.
It shouldn't be a surprise that others piggyback on our defense spending. Why would they not?
From our point of view, who pays, says, and since we insist on saying wherever we can, we've
got to pay.
I have frequently wondered how costs of this sort of thing are calculated. Do the taxes
military families pay get deducted from the cost? Given at least some of them would be
unemployed in today's economy, do benefits they would have get deducted? Does the money they
spend in local economies in the US when not deployed get factored in some way? What about the
taxes the corporations which provide goods and services to the military pay, and that their
employees pay? It would seem almost impossible to arrive at an accurate cost figure.
"Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine"
Using that logic, you wouldn't mind Russia or China setting up a military base in Mexico
or Cuba to deter the US (a proven 'bad actor') right??
Like a Dos Equis ad, Mexico is "keeping it interesante ." On July 1, Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador, the veteran left-wing politician known as AMLO,
will likely win Mexico's presidential election , to the horror of policy analysts, U.S.
government officials, and the Mexican business community. As head of the upstart National
Regeneration Movement (MORENA, the Spanish acronym, also means "dark skin"), AMLO pledges to
make Mexico self-sufficient on food, halt foreign investment in the oil industry, and grant
amnesty to drug traffickers. AMLO hates the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) --
although he's promised to stay in it for now -- and "the Wall" even more.
Washington's days of having a predictable and compliant partner in Mexico may be over.
This election is likely to radically transform Mexican politics. MORENA is
surging in the polls and may give AMLO a strong legislative bloc. Nationalist-minded
legislators from other parties could also defect to his agenda. That would cause a major
Mexican political realignment, under which for the next six years it could be governed by a
self-described "revolutionary nationalist" ruling coalition. It makes sense: Mexico's
neoliberal era had to end sooner or later. AMLO's longtime critique of an unfair economy and a
complacent and unresponsive political system has finally resonated.
What accounts for this sudden turnaround? Several factors have aligned in AMLO's favor.
Start with AMLO's opponents, who, in a time of change, represent continuity, splitting the
neoliberal vote in Mexico's "winner-take-all" system. The conservative National Action Party
(PAN), his strongest competitor, diluted its solid brand by running in coalition with two
leftist parties. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) selected a well-qualified
former finance minister who is out of his depth as a campaigner. That's left the once-powerful
PRI mailing this campaign in, and AMLO siphoning up its traditional voters.
Insecurity and corruption,
according to polls , are the top issues for Mexican voters, and on these AMLO scores well.
Especially on managing corruption and crime, Mexico's political elite have appeared notoriously
inept. The former head of the state oil company PEMEX, a close ally of President Enrique
Peña Nieto, has been credibly accused of taking up to
$10 million in bribes to approve contracts from the corrupt Brazilian construction company
Odebrecht. Several governors have been indicted for racketeering and graft; one
even went on the lam and was arrested in Guatemala. Recently, Mexico's 12-year campaign to
corral drug trafficking organizations fell apart, and violence skyrocketed. Twenty-eight
thousand Mexicans were murdered last year, and political candidates are being physically
attacked. Meanwhile, drug trafficking gangs ("cartels") are placing parts of the country off
limits.
Then there's President Trump, who has treated Mexico as a problem and not as a partner by
insisting that it fund his humiliating border wall. When asked in 2015 by Wall Street
Journal editors if he thought the U.S. should promote stability and economic growth in
Mexico, he replied, "I don't care about Mexico honestly. I really don't care about Mexico."
Trump has bolstered AMLO's long-held view that Mexico has relied on the United States for too
long. On the campaign trail, AMLO has vowed to put Trump "in his place."
Still, these more immediate causes don't entirely explain AMLO's impending success. At a
deeper level, AMLO seems to be Mexico's answer to Samuel Huntington's key "who are we?"
question on national identity. AMLO's MORENA explicitly seeks to revive the abandoned ideals of
the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920): anti-imperialism, defense of national resources, equality,
and the protection of peasant rights. Tellingly, AMLO cites as his heroes two successful
presidents who propelled Mexico forward: Benito Juarez, the black-clad Zapotec Indian who
defeated the French-backed 19th-century "empire," and Lazaro Cardenas, the former revolutionary
general who nationalized the oil industry and built the modern Mexican state.
Despite his populism, AMLO hasn't always been an outsider. He started his political career
during the 1980s, when the PRI was still was Mexico's governing party. But he soon saw the
changes happening in his rural native state of Tabasco, when the oil boom pushed out the
farming and fishing industry. AMLO dissented from the PRI's decision to liberalize the economy
and joined the opposition in 1988.
Led by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was president from 1988 to 1994, the country embarked
on a strict neoliberal development path and internationalist agenda, reversing its program of
statist economics and authoritarian governance. Its ruling politicians sold state industries,
embraced market reforms, let the peso float, and joined the North American Free Trade
Agreement. Over the last several years, Mexico City has even permitted greater American
involvement in its war against drug traffickers. Under Peña Nieto, Mexico finally
allowed its oil industry to permit foreign investment.
In truth, these reforms worked well enough: Mexico democratized and developed into a solidly
middle-income country with steady economic growth. Net immigration into the United States has
come to a halt. Security issues were messy, but unlikely to destabilize the country.
These reforms represented a big win for Washington. If American intervention was needed for
the occasional peso crisis or drug trafficker menace, we were happy to oblige. Mexico made a
difficult partner at times, but on the policy side, it was where Washington wanted it to
be.
But the cost of these changes may have been Mexico's identity, its sense of self. Returning
to Huntington, his "The Clash of
Civilizations?" article described Mexico as a state "torn" between its economic future and
political and cultural past. After a top advisor to President Salinas described the sweeping
changes the government was making, Huntington remarked, "It seems to me that basically you want
to change Mexico from a Latin American country into a North American country." Salinas looked
at him with surprise and exclaimed: "Exactly! That's precisely what we are trying to do, but of
course we could never say so publicly."
AMLO and his followers have brooded about these radical changes for years. To this day, he
refers to the arch-neoliberal Salinas simply as El Innombrable -- he that cannot be
named. Neoliberalism launched AMLO not just on a political career but on a personal crusade to
bring the country back to its former ideals.
When AMLO won the Mexico City mayorship in 2000, he built up a national political base and
became a burr in the saddle of President Vicente Fox, who had embraced the liberal reforms of
the formerly ruling PRI. AMLO criticized Fox relentlessly, and in retaliation, Fox attempted to
have him legally prohibited from running for president in 2006.
This clumsy effort failed, giving AMLO a boost. But he narrowly lost the contest to the
PAN's Felipe Calderon, whose campaign linked AMLO with Venezuela's leftist President Hugo
Chavez. Embittered in defeat, AMLO immediately claimed the voting was rigged against him. AMLO
and his raucous followers held protests for months and even formed a parallel government. He
may have lost in 2006, but he solidified his position as the leader of Mexico's alternative
left.
AMLO's anti-system stance has given weight to the claim that he'd be another Chavez. The
comparison seems invidious, as the late comandante of Venezuela, an avowed Marxist and
coup plotter, crushed democratic institutions, set up a socialist economy, and in general drove
what had been a prosperous South American country into the ground. AMLO, an authentic democrat,
appears less megalomaniacal and more rules-focused, more the romantic reactionary than the
revolutionary radical.
Still, many of the same forces that propelled Chavez are driving AMLO now. Like Chavez, AMLO
is coming to power after a period of neoliberal reform and perceived intractable corruption.
Like Chavez, AMLO enjoys an almost mystical bond with his nation's poorer classes. And very
much like Chavez, AMLO is instinctively, but probably not irreversibly, anti-American in
outlook.
How these characteristics will play out with AMLO in power is hard to predict. The two main
parties won't be behind him, but many of their followers might. All of those alienated by
neoliberalism, the perceived kowtowing to Washington, the surrender of economic resources to
foreign companies and the free market, will flock to his banner. It is remarkable how some
former members of the right-of-center National Action Party and the PRI have backed his
campaign.
Some of AMLO's policy proposals seem less the stuff of hard leftism than nostalgic
nationalism. He focuses heavily on national development for industry and agriculture aimed at
self-reliance and reducing imports. He proposes holding referendums on the enacted legislation,
a move to broaden democracy, which would require constitutional reform. He seeks to raise the
minimum wage, but refreshingly pledges "no new taxes."
AMLO loves to wax nostalgic about Mexico's strong state traditions and will almost certainly
attempt to restore the waning power of the Mexican presidency as an anti-corruption pulpit. In
the tradition of newly inaugurated Mexican presidents, he'll probably look to prosecute a node
of corruption in Mexican society: a prominent businessman or politician, rather than a labor
union like his predecessors.
Much of the progress the United States has made with Mexico on security cooperation will
probably be jeopardized. It's hard to believe that AMLO will endorse the close relations that
the DEA, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community have forged with their Mexican
counterparts in the war on drugs. The extradition of the notorious drug kingpin Joaquin el
Chapo Guzman to the U.S. in 2017 will probably be the high watermark in the relationship. It is
doubtful that AMLO will permit more high-profile extraditions. President Trump's disdain for a
close relationship that has taken us decades to build may come back to haunt us.
But a poor relationship between Washington and Mexico City doesn't have
to be inevitable. Despite the rhetoric, the flamboyant American billionaire has much in
common with the austere Mexican populist. Both countries have too many common interests to go
down separate paths. The question is: does AMLO have to build the bomb to get Trump to care
about Mexico?
Michael J. Ard is a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Western
Hemisphere and the author of"An Eternal Struggle: The Role of the National Action
Party in Mexico's Democratic Transition." He teaches international relations at Rice
University's Master of Global Affairs program.
That's just the thing, AMLO isn't "an authentic democrat." He founded MORENA so he could keep
his presidential aspirations going; he's indistinguishable from the party. After losing in
2006, he notoriously said "to hell with institutions." His followers won't admit this, but
his platform is as diluted as the rest: he's taken in suspects of corruption and has allied
himself with both a very "conservative" party (the small, evangelical PES) and Mexico's hard
leftists.
"... The attributions of attacks to countries are very shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation. ..."
Could someone remind me the amount of country's America have invaded since the last world war
30 - 40 , I here'd. Compared to Russia 5-8 ? Russia is in Syria by invitation to deal with
rebels/terrorist's .America is now threatening both. Despite being there to attempt a regime
change. Just who do they think they are ? The sooner they are stopped the better and the
easier.
Russia intervened nowhere; the USSR intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In 1993,
Yeltsin's cabal intervened in Russia to preserve Bush's and Clinton's New World Order. USSR
was invited into Afghanistan; Outlaw US Empire wasn't. An incomplete list from William Blum's
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II . A graphic map based on Blum's
book.
Yesterday, Putin met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Unfortunately, the Kremlin's recap of
the meeting's currently incomplete, but what is recorded is instructive:
"Of course, we look at the Russian Federation as a founder of the United Nations and as a
permanent member of the Security Council, but I would say that at the present moment we look
at the Russian Federation as an indispensable element of the creation of a new multipolar
world.
"To be entirely frank, these are not easy times for multilateralism and not easy times for
the UN. And I think that after the Cold War and after a short period of unipolar world we are
still struggling to find a way to have a structured, multipolar world with multilateral
governmental institutions that can work. And this is something that worries me a lot and is
something in which, I believe, the Russian Federation has a unique role to play."
Considering many think Guterres just an agent for the Outlaw US Empire, maybe his cited
words will cause a reassessment. I'd like to know what followed. Apparently there was some
discussion about Korea and the
economic initiatives being openly discussed since RoK President Moon will arrive in
Russia tomorrow.
Lavrov met with Guterres today, and his
opening remarks shine a bit more light on what was discussed:
"As emphasised by President Putin, we have invariably supported, support, and will
continue to support the UN, this unique universal organisation. We think highly of your
intention, Mr Secretary-General, to raise the profile of the United Nations in world affairs,
particularly in settling regional conflicts. As you noted yourself at the meeting in the
Kremlin yesterday, this is largely dependent on the general state of the international system
as a whole and the UN member states' readiness to act collectively, jointly, rather than
unilaterally, and to pursue the goals enshrined in the UN Charter rather than
self-centred,[sic] immediate aims.
"We note that you have consistently advocated the pooling of efforts by major players to
deal with world problems. This is the logic of the UN Charter, specifically its clauses on
the creation and powers of the UN Security Council. I hope that based on the values we share
we will be able to successfully continue cooperation in the interests of solving
international problems."
Lots of emphasis on the absolute necessity of making the UN Charter whole again and not
allowing any one nation to make a mockery of it by pursuing its "self-centered, immediate
aims."
Ben @ 14
Thanks Ben. Yep that's what l thought reality would look like, that's my sanity safe for a
while longer. Remember we are not alone!
Zanon @ 12
That is a perfect example of 'fake news' we can spot it here ! Or are we here now msm!
Pantaraxia @ 20
Wow that doubles what I was already shocked about ! And then of course there's the comercal
operations destablising country's using greed as a weapon. Plus the banks, I'm sure South
Africa would have been a real success if they'd kept the banking curuption out. Time for
immoral capitalism to fall.
Also don't you just hate victim blaming.There that's me done. Grrr
@b: I know you're just one man and can't do everything, but it would be wonderful if you
could cover the history of hacking accusations against Russia. No one lays out a sequence of
events better than you.
Just yesterday, another accusation has been leveled against Russia by the head of
Germany's BfV intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen:
German intelligence sees Russia behind hack of energy firms - media report (Reuters).
It's a serious accusation, and one would expect a serious proof. However, no proof has been
given except that "it fits the Russian modus operandi". Also, the fact that the alleged
attack has been named "Berserk Bear" by some unknown Western analyst. Apparently, that's
enough proof by today's standards.
There is a critical lack of independent thinking and skepticism in the international
computer security circles nowadays. The attributions of attacks to countries are very
shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain
IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are
uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of
all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and
programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation.
"... "The good news is the Deep State seems less competent than we originally feared" -Well, obviously; or Hillary would be President NOW ..."
"... The Deep State may not have been very competent ( Gee,whudda surprise!)) but– it's still in place. And that fact alone should make all of us uneasy. ..."
"... I'm satisfied that we have the final word on Clinton's guilt and the special treatment she and her staff were given by criminal investigators who believed she was going to win the election. ..."
"... I think a good book to explain what we are seeing is The Fiefdom Syndrome by Robert Herbold. That highlights how various managers set up their own sub organizations in a groups. It focuses on the corporate model yet it can equally apply to any other human organization. ..."
"... Comey took Lynch completely off the hook. She had not recused herself from the case. Prosecution or not was her decision, not Comey's. And even if she had recused herself, the decision would have gone to Yates. Lynch had no good options. If she had said there were no grounds for prosecution, she would have been crucified for partisanship. If she had decided that Clinton should be prosecuted, all hell would have broken loose. Well, there is no way she would have ever made the decision to prosecute, but point is, Comey took her completely off the hook. No wonder Lynch made no big deal about his "insubordination". ..."
"... there were NO pro-Trump factions inside the Bureau. ..."
"... What anti-Clinton faction? Every one of the five agents identified as sending politically biased communications was anti-Trump. As best I can determine every decision by biased decision makers that Horowitz is baffled by, or reports himself "unpersuaded" by the explanations advanced, was anti-Trump. Even when Strzok writes a text message that Horowitz admits is a smoking gun (~"We'll stop Trump") Horowitz says it's no biggie because other decision-makers were involved, "unbiased" ones like, explicitly, Bill Priestap, he of the procedures-violating spy launch against Trump BEFORE any investigation was opened! ..."
"... The real take away is that the Deep State is a reality, far more entrenched than anyone of us knows. Whether it is particularly competent or not ( compared to what? Government in general? ) is irrelevant. No one of any stature in any part of the government bureaucracy will be held accountable ever. They never are. As soon as the media circus moves on, it will be back to business as usual in DC. ..."
"... Speaking of idiocracy, some personal emails between FBI agents were made public this week with the release of the IG report. They give a glimpse into the infantilisation of our ruling "class". It is clear that fatherlessness and the replacement of education with indoctrination have produced a generation of child-men and child-women who view the State as parent, provider, deity (even as lover – supplier of ideologically acceptable bed-mates). ..."
"... jp: "Hard to see how the FBI's mistakes didn't benefit one candidate over the other." That's the standard line from the Clinton campaign. They believe everything begins and ends with Comey causing her to lose. Of course, they never mention why the FBI was investigating her, personally, and key members of her State Dept. staff, not her campaign by the way. ..."
"... The FBI may have hurt her campaign, but only because they were doing their job, albiet badly. She hurt her campaign infinitely by breaking the law and compromising national security, which required a criminal probe into her lawbreaking. ..."
"... Dave: "Peter and Lisa were 2 cops talking about a criminal." Well, that's one more reason not to trust federal law enforcement. I can cite the criminal statutes Hillary Clinton was being personally investigated for. Can anyone cite any criminal statute that Donald Trump was being personally investigated for at the same time? Was he even being personally investigated? A counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. ..."
"a chaotic cluster of competing pro- and anti- Clinton/Trump factions inside the Bureau"
Which is what the FBI looked like at the time and over the last two years, the
anti-Clinton faction seeming to be centered in New York, and the anti-Trump faction in, what,
D.C.?
This report merely provides more talking points for politicians. And, talk they will.
IG Michael Horowitz had a specific mandate. It was to investigate "violations of criminal
and civil law." It was not to investigate breaches of protocol and bureaucratic
regulations.
This report makes no allegations of criminal activity. As such, it can only be read as
exonerating those under investigation, of same. The ultimate remedy for "breaches of protocol and bureaucratic regulations" is termination
of employment. And, Comey has already been fired. The rest is irrelevant and/or superfluous.
Agreed. the report sheds light on some truly incompetent (and unprofessional, inappropriate
behavior). Disagree – the 'deep state' is behind this. perhaps the most depressing
aspect of this circus is the realization there was incompetence and malfeasance in the Obama
administration. there was incompetence and malfeasance in the Clinton campaign.
There was incompetence and malfeasance in the DoJ, there was incompetence and malfeasance
in the Trump campaign, and there is a whole lot of incompetence and malfeasance in the
current administration. see where this is going? "malfeasance" recognized and leveraged by
"foreign actors" (some other 'deep state' as it were) demonstrates competence in terms of
their job(s).
I am reminded of the Seinfeld episode in which "Puddy" and "Elaine" meet with a priest to
discuss their relationship and its impact on their eternal lives – with Puddy being
Christian and Elaine not. the priest says, "oh that's easy, you're both going to hell "
"It will be too easy, however, to miss the most important conclusion of the report: there is
no longer a way to claim America's internal intelligence agency, the FBI, did not play a role
in the 2016 election."
SO we are expected to believe the FBI, et. al; never played a role before? Spare me
"The good news is the Deep State seems less competent than we originally feared" -Well, obviously; or Hillary would be President NOW
Way funny, this! And all the time we've been looking for enemies abroad-in this case the
Rooshians-the real enemy was right in our own backyard. The Deep State may not have been very
competent ( Gee,whudda surprise!)) but– it's still in place. And that fact alone should
make all of us uneasy.
If you are going to have a deep state, and in a large nation, it does seem necessary, then it
should be a meritocracy. Clearly the system of recruiting high level officials from certain
Ivy League schools does not result in a meritocracy.
Erik: "It was not to investigate breaches of protocol and bureaucratic regulations."
Well, he did, and thank goodness. I'm satisfied that we have the final word on Clinton's guilt and the special treatment she
and her staff were given by criminal investigators who believed she was going to win the
election.
If that's not political bias, then we need another word for it. Political consideration in
the outcome of a criminal probe.
Think about that if it had been a GOP candidate, what would the progressives be saying
about the same behavior?
I think a good book to explain what we are seeing is The Fiefdom Syndrome by Robert Herbold. That highlights how various managers set up
their own sub organizations in a groups. It focuses on the corporate model yet it can equally
apply to any other human organization.
What I find amusing is the emphasis on texts between Strzok and Page. They sure were sloppy
in using govt cell phones for their texting. However, at the end of the day, their texts were
the equivalent of pillow talk. What's the remedy? Everybody wear a wire to bed to trap people
in the act of gossiping? Does anybody think that these casual conversations go on all the
time. There is no group of people more cynical that law enforcement people.
At the end of the day, people did their jobs and prevented their opinions from the proper
execution of their jobs.
Comey took Lynch completely off the hook. She had not recused herself from the case.
Prosecution or not was her decision, not Comey's. And even if she had recused herself, the
decision would have gone to Yates. Lynch had no good options. If she had said there were no
grounds for prosecution, she would have been crucified for partisanship. If she had decided
that Clinton should be prosecuted, all hell would have broken loose. Well, there is no way
she would have ever made the decision to prosecute, but point is, Comey took her completely
off the hook. No wonder Lynch made no big deal about his "insubordination".
H. Clinton squirreled away over 30 thousand emails into a private server. I am reliably
informed that if any other federal employee pulled a move like that they would have been
fired, with loss of pension and possible jail time in as much as this is grand jury fodder.
Not ol' Hillary though.
"There is only to argue which side they favored and whether they meddled via clumsiness, as a
coordinated action, or as a chaotic cluster of competing pro- and anti- Clinton/Trump
factions inside the Bureau. "
More fake news – there were NO pro-Trump factions inside the Bureau.
Michael Kenny
June 15, 2018 at 11:29 am
The important point is that Trump has no need to worry about any of this if he really is as
innocent as he claims. In fact, infiltrated informers, wiretaps etc. are a godsend to Trump
if he's innocent because they prove that innocence. Thus, Trump's making such a fuss about
these things is a tacit admission of guilt.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
Yes, of course. Because if someone spied on you looking for a crime of which you were
innocent, you'd be totally ok with it and would keep quiet. Only someone who's guilty of a
crime would speak up being spied upon.
"There is only to argue whether they meddled via clumsiness, as a coordinated action, or as a
chaotic cluster of competing pro- and anti- Clinton/Trump factions inside the Bureau."
What anti-Clinton faction? Every one of the five agents identified as sending politically
biased communications was anti-Trump. As best I can determine every decision by biased
decision makers that Horowitz is baffled by, or reports himself "unpersuaded" by the
explanations advanced, was anti-Trump. Even when Strzok writes a text message that Horowitz
admits is a smoking gun (~"We'll stop Trump") Horowitz says it's no biggie because other
decision-makers were involved, "unbiased" ones like, explicitly, Bill Priestap, he of the
procedures-violating spy launch against Trump BEFORE any investigation was opened!
To believe Horowitz' conclusions about lack of bias in decision making you have to be as
willfully reluctant to connect the dots as he is. And I'm not, nor should you be.
The real take away is that the Deep State is a reality, far more entrenched than anyone of us
knows. Whether it is particularly competent or not ( compared to what? Government in general?
) is irrelevant. No one of any stature in any part of the government bureaucracy will be held
accountable ever. They never are. As soon as the media circus moves on, it will be back to
business as usual in DC.
Those Russians are so clever. They trained agents for a lifetime to master accents of rural
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin then duped the bible thumping gun lovers into rejecting her
highness Hillary. The immense Russian powers are extraordinary when one considers the Russian
economy is smaller than Texas.
But seriously, we had eight years of a Democratic president and people had enough and
chose a Republican even though he was outspent. That is the consistent pattern. After Trump
another Democrat will move into the White House.
Speaking of idiocracy, some personal emails between FBI agents were made public this week
with the release of the IG report.
They give a glimpse into the infantilisation of our ruling "class". It is clear that
fatherlessness and the replacement of education with indoctrination have produced a
generation of child-men and child-women who view the State as parent, provider, deity (even
as lover – supplier of ideologically acceptable bed-mates).
A cosmic ignorance radiates from these email exchanges. These agents appear to have been
dropped here from another planet. They not only seem to have been disconnected from or to
have forgotten the Civilisation that gave birth to the society in which they live, but they
seem never to have had any knowledge or awareness of it in the first place.
(Reading between the lines, deducing their "principles" from their mentality, one could
confidently conclude that these adolescents truly believe that State is God and Marx is His
prophet.)
They're going to get away with it with no adequately serious repercussions meaning they're
competent enough, aren't they? That also means they won't be properly deterred and will
simply do it better next time.
jp: "Hard to see how the FBI's mistakes didn't benefit one candidate over the other." That's the standard line from the Clinton campaign. They believe everything begins and
ends with Comey causing her to lose. Of course, they never mention why the FBI was investigating her, personally, and key
members of her State Dept. staff, not her campaign by the way.
The FBI may have hurt her campaign, but only because they were doing their job, albiet
badly. She hurt her campaign infinitely by breaking the law and compromising national security,
which required a criminal probe into her lawbreaking.
If you're going to fault the FBI, you can't then not fault Secretary Clinton. The two go
hand-in-hand, and she comes first in the chain of event.
Case closed. Though she didn't get her just desserts in court, at least she received
political justice. 🙂
Dave: "Peter and Lisa were 2 cops talking about a criminal." Well, that's one more reason not to trust federal law enforcement. I can cite the criminal statutes Hillary Clinton was being personally investigated
for. Can anyone cite any criminal statute that Donald Trump was being personally investigated
for at the same time? Was he even being personally investigated? A counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation.
"... By the way, the US provides 22% of NATO funding, a formula which is based on population. Thus, if the European members increased their contributions to NATO, the US contribution would also rise! ..."
"... Donald Trump will remain exasperated because he is fighting the good fight but not really understanding who his adversary's are. ..."
"... Foreign countries aren't taking advantage of the USA. American industrialists are taking advantage of the USA. Why does Apple make its iPhones in China? Why does Ford build so many of its SUVs in Mexico? Not because of the decisions those countries have made. It's because of the decisions American industrial leaders have made. ..."
"... The USA has a trade surplus with Canada. Trump lied about that. ..."
At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as "the piggy bank
that everybody is robbing."
After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a
few parting words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: "There's a special place in hell for any
foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then
tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door. And that's what weak, dishonest Justin
Trudeau did. And that comes right from Air Force One."
In Singapore, Trump tweeted more about that piggy bank: "Why should I, as President of the
United States, allow countries to continue to make Massive Trade Surpluses, as they have for
decades [while] the U.S. pays close to the entire cost of NATO-protecting many of these same
countries that rip us off on Trade?"
To understand what drives Trump, and explains his exasperation and anger, these remarks are
a good place to begin.
Our elites see America as an "indispensable nation," the premiere world power whose ordained
duty it is to defend democracy, stand up to dictators and aggressors, and uphold a liberal
world order.
They see U.S. wealth and power as splendid tools that fate has given them to shape the
future of the planet.
Trump sees America as a nation being milked by allies who free-ride on our defense efforts
as they engage in trade practices that enrich their own peoples at America's expense.
Where our elites live to play masters of the universe, Trump sees a world laughing behind
America's back, while allies exploit our magnanimity and idealism for their own national
ends.
The numbers are impossible to refute and hard to explain.
Last year, the EU had a $151 billion trade surplus with the U.S. China ran a $376 billion
trade surplus with the U.S., the largest in history. The world sold us $796 billion more in
goods than we sold to the world.
A nation that spends more than it takes in from taxes, and consumes more of the world's
goods than it produces itself for export, year in and year out, is a nation on the way
down.
We are emulating our British cousins of the 19th century.
Trump understands that this situation is not sustainable. His strength is that the people
are still with him on putting America first.
Yet he faces some serious obstacles.
What is his strategy for turning a $796 billion trade deficit into a surplus? Is he prepared
to impose the tariffs and import restrictions that would be required to turn America from the
greatest trade-deficit nation in history to a trade-surplus nation, as we were up until the
mid-1970s?
Americans are indeed carrying the lion's share of the load of the defense of the West, and
of fighting the terrorists and radical Islamists of the Middle East, and of protecting South
Korea and Japan.
But if our NATO and Asian allies refuse to make the increases in defense he demands, is
Trump really willing to cancel our treaty commitments, walk away from our war guarantees, and
let these nations face Russia and China on their own? Could he cut that umbilical cord?
Ike's secretary of state John Foster Dulles spoke of conducting an "agonizing reappraisal"
of U.S. commitments to defend NATO allies if they did not contribute more money and troops.
Dulles died in 1959, and that reappraisal, threatened 60 years ago, never happened. Indeed,
when the Cold War ended, our NATO allies cut defense spending again. Yet we are still
subsidizing NATO in Europe and have taken on even more allies since the Soviet Empire fell.
If Europe refuses to invest the money in defense that Trump demands, or accept the tariffs
America needs to reduce and erase its trade deficits, what does he do? Is he prepared to shut
U.S. bases and pull U.S. troops out of the Baltic republics, Poland, and Germany, and let the
Europeans face Vladimir Putin and Russia themselves?
This is not an academic question. For the crunch that was inevitable when Trump was elected
seems at hand.
Trump promised to negotiate with Putin and improve relations with Russia. He promised to
force our NATO allies to undertake more of their own defense. He pledged to get out and stay
out of Mideast wars and begin to slash the trade deficits that we have run with the world.
That's what America voted for.
Now, after 500 days, he faces formidable opposition to these defining goals of his campaign,
even within his own party.
Putin remains a pariah on Capitol Hill. Our allies are rejecting the tariffs Trump has
imposed and threatening retaliation. Free-trade Republicans reject tariffs that might raise the
cost of the items U.S. companies make abroad and then ships back to the United States.
The decisive battles between Trumpian nationalism and globalism remain ahead of us. Trump's
critical tests have yet to come.
And our exasperated president senses this.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
America spends 3 times as much on defense as its allies because it is addicted to military
spending. The solution is not to pressure other countries to acquire the same addiction. The
solution is for America cut its own military spending.
This is just another example of America trying to "export" its domestic issues. Quit
blaming foreigners and deal with your issues.
"A nation that spends more than it takes in from taxes, and consumes more of the world's
goods than it produces itself for export, year in and year out, is a nation on the way down.
We are emulating our British cousins of the 19th century." never imagined I'd say this, but
you are absolutely correct. of course you neglect to acknowledge, Trump himself is an "elite"
and a "globalist". the fact his "game" is real estate, as opposed to governance is more of a
semantic distinction than ideological. debt-fueled consumerism drives real estate just as it
drives globalism. this is nothing new. add to this the pathological narcissism and the
ability to leverage moral bankruptcy as he has the tax codes and bankruptcy laws, and voila,
just another globalist in populist clothing. as I have maintained all along, he is not so
much anti-establishment as he is an establishment of one – he simply thrives in a
different type of swamp and favors a smaller oligarchy/plutocracy. and of course, there is
the big news out of Singapore/Korea, but again, much of the 'spin' or upside cited in a
denuclearized Korean peninsula involves the opportunity for North Korea to join the
globalists at the globalists' table. one can only wonder if there will be Ivanka's handbags
will be made in Panmunjom, and if Kim Jong Un will stay at the Trump hotel in DC? either way,
you are correct he is the candidate the American people, and the globalists "elected".
One problem with Trump's rant: the US enjoys a small trade surplus with Canada.
Would someone please get this president some hard facts and drill him on them for however
long it takes top get them fixed in his mind before he goes off half-cocked with any more
nonsense?
As always, Mr Buchanan sets out his personal agenda and then claims that Trump promised to
implement it if elected. The more Trump backs away from globalised free trade (if that's what
he's really doing), the more that suits the EU. The "core value" of the EU is a large
internal market protected by a high tariff wall. Globalization was rammed down an unwilling
EU's throat by the US in the Reagan years and only the British elite ever really believed in
it. As for NATO, nobody now believes that the US will honor its commitments, no matter how
much Europe pays, so logically, the European members are concentrating their additional
expenditure on an independent European defense system, which, needless to say, the US is
trying to obstruct.
By the way, the US provides 22% of NATO funding, a formula which is based
on population. Thus, if the European members increased their contributions to NATO, the US
contribution would also rise!
Donald Trump will remain exasperated because he is fighting the good fight but not really
understanding who his adversary's are.
Foreign countries aren't taking advantage of the USA. American industrialists are taking
advantage of the USA. Why does Apple make its iPhones in China? Why does Ford build so many
of its SUVs in Mexico? Not because of the decisions those countries have made. It's because
of the decisions American industrial leaders have made.
Secondly, there is absolutely no threat to NATO from Russia or Putin. Europe could slash
its already meager defense budget with only beneficial consequences. The same with Japan and
S. Korea. None of these countries need US military help. There are no real military threats
to these countries. US military spending has never been about defending other countries. It
is about enriching the shareholders of American military contractors.
So here is the real world: The United States has established a "liberal rules-based global
order" that allows wealthy American and European commercial interests to benefit mightily
from trade, and property and resource control in foreign countries. And this order is
maintained by US military power. That is why the US is "the one indispensable nation". We are
the nation that is allowed to break the order, to be the bully, in order for the rules-based
order to even exist. That's why we are beating up on countries that try to live outside of
this order like Iran, NK, Venezuela, Russia and everyone else who don't fall in line.
So Donald Trump is fighting against the power elite of the United States, he just doesn't
understand that. He is fighting against the most powerful people in the world, people who are
well represented by both political parties. He can win this fight if he lets the average
American on to this reality. And then leads them properly to a better, more balanced world.
But I suspect that he would be assassinated if he tried.
In re NATO and other oversea DOD spending, the old saying "who pays, says" has a corollary.
Who wants to say has to pay. The US, since WWII, has wanted, insisted, on being in charge of
everything we touch. This costs a lot, not to mention it often doesn't work the way we want.
It would be easy enough to stop spending all this money. The Pentagon and the
military-industrial complex would have a conniption and those whose defense bills we've been
paying would complain to high heaven, but Trump seems intent on trashing all those alliances
anyway and also on spending more money on defense than even the Pentagon thinks they need.
Trade deficits don't work the way you think they work. In todays economy the traditional
measures of deficits don't actually tell us much about what is going on.
Do you know what China does with that $350b trade surplus? A huge percentage of it is
rolled back immediately into US Treasury bonds because we are the only issuer of credit in
sufficient amounts and of suitable stability for them to buy. All of that deficit spending
Trump and the Republicans in congress passed last year is being financed by the very trade
imbalance that Trump is trying to eliminate.
But trade imbalances really don't tell us much about the flow of money. Most of the
imbalance is created by US companies that have built factories in China to sell goods back to
the US, then repatriate money back to the US in the form of dividends or stock buy backs
(which are not counted in the trade balance at all).
At best trade balances tell us very little meaningful about what is really going on, but
can be wildly deceptive. At worst they are an easy tool, for demogogs who have zero
understanding of what is going on, to inflame other uninformed people to justify trade
wars.
Interesting the things that Buchanan ignores (on purpose?). The USA has a trade surplus with
Canada. Trump lied about that. There's nothing wrong with the USA spending less money to defend other countries. Trump
doesn't have to insult our allies to do that.
"Trump understands that this situation is not sustainable."
You give him more credit than he deserves. What he does understand is that while we're
being the world's piggy bank, the American taxpayer is being the Military-Industrial
Complex's piggy-bank and that's just fine with him. As it is with most members of
Congress.
" our NATO allies cut defense spending again. Yet we are still subsidizing NATO in Europe "
Mr. Buchanan, like Trump, does not understand how NATO is funded. All NATO members have
been paying their dues. In fact, many pay a greater proportion relative to GDP per capita
than the U.S. does. Defense budgets are a different matter entirely.
This entire article seems to reduce complex issues into simple arithmetic. Economics and job
creation is about much more than balance of payments both the author and the US president
don't seem to realise this. Very shallow article.
America has a trade surplus with Canada, but seems determined to rub it in.
Some background. As the glaciers retreated south at the end of the ice age, they scraped
away Canada's topsoil and deposited it in America. Rural Canada has little arable areas; it's
beef and dairy by necessity. Costs are high and there are ten Americans to every Canadian
hence the subsidy. America subsidizes it's agriculture $55 billion annually.
Great, if we're upset about having to protect our allies in the Pacific, let's change the
Japanese constitution to allow them to have a real military again to defend themselves and
give the South Koreans nukes to balance out the power situation between them and the Norks/
Chinese. (Why is it so little is ever said about China being a nuclear power?) This whole
fantasy of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is so naive it's laughable. If nukes
exist, there will never be any permanent guarantee of anything, and other countries will just
keep getting the bomb without our permission, like Pakistan and China. The genie is out of
the bottle, so time to be brutally realistic about what we face and what can be done. We can
whine all we want to about how it's not our responsibility, but then we expect other
countries to be hobbled and still somehow face enemy powers.
Lets take a look at the growing list of nations shifting to the right (nationalism and
populism)
-The Czech, Slovak and Slovenia Republics Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, the US.
Nations shifting this year to the right (nationalism and populism)
-Austria, Bavaria and Italy
Nations leaning to the right and leaning toward joining the VISEGRAD
-Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Greece
AS YOU CAN SEE THE PILLARS OF MARXIST / SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST OPEN BORDERS EUROPE/EU ARE
BEING TAKEN DOWN. THE FIGHT WILL BE WITH FRANCE, GERMANY, BELGIUM, NETHERLANDS, BRITAIN,
SWEDEN AND THE UNELECTED EU SUPERSTATE. RIGHT NOW THE FIGHT IS WITH THE POOR SOUTHERN AND
EASTERN EUROPEAN INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS BUT EVENTUALLY IT WILL REACH A TIPPING POINT WHERE IT
BECOMES AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT BUT ITS ONLY AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT FOR THE LEFT AS THE EU
REACHES THE TIPPING POINT AND THE POWER SHIFTS TO THE RIGHT.
He was brilliant, but his vanity turned him into a reckless alarmist and a pro-Israeli
partisan.
I encountered the late Bernard Lewis (1916-2018) during the 1990s culture
wars, when historians and educators met full-frontal multiculturalism, a thematic force
beginning to reshape U.S. and world history curricula in schools and colleges.
The two of us shared early, firsthand experience with Islamist disinformation campaigns on
and off campus. Using sympathetic academics, curriculum officers, and educational publishers as
tools, Muslim activists were seeking to rewrite Islamic history in textbooks and state and
national standards.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, created in 1994, was complaining of anti-Muslim
"bigotry," "racial profiling," "institutional racism," and "fear-mongering," while trying to
popularize the word "Islamophobia," and stoking the spirit of ethnic injustice and prejudice in
Washington politics.
Lewis and I were of different generations, he a charming academic magnifico long associated
with Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. He had just retired from
teaching and was widely regarded as the nation's most influential scholar of Islam. "Islam has
Allah," he said sardonically at the time. "We've got multiculturalism."
Long before I met him, Lewis had alerted those who were listening to rising friction between
the Islamic world and the West. This was, in his mind, the outcome of Islam's centuries-long
decline and failure to embrace modernity. In thinking this way, Lewis had earned the fury of
the professor and Palestinian activist Edward Said at Columbia University, who wrote
Orientalism in 1978.
Said's influential book cast previous Western studies of the Near and Middle East as
Eurocentric, romantic, prejudiced, and racist. For Said, orientalism was an intellectual means
to justify Western conquest and empire. Bernard Lewis's outlook epitomized this approach and
interpretation. Said's line of thought profoundly influenced his undergraduate student Barack
Obama, and would have an immense impact on Obama's Mideast strategies and geopolitics as
president.
For some years, Lewis had warned of the ancient feuds between the West and Islam: in 1990
he'd
forecast a coming "clash of civilizations" in Atlantic magazine, a phrase
subsequently popularized by Harvard professor Samuel E. Huntington.
Throughout his long career, Lewis warned that Western guilt over its conquests and past was
not collateral. "In the Muslim world there are no such inhibitions," Lewis once observed. "They
are very conscious of their identity. They know who they are and what they are and what they
want, a quality which we seem to have lost to a very large extent. This is a source of strength
in the one, of weakness in the other."
Other examples of Lewis's controversial, persuasive observations include:
During the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Lewis suddenly gained immense political
influence, love-bombed by White House neocons Richard Cheney, Richard Perle, and other
policymakers to a degree that preyed on the old man's vanity and love of the spotlight.
Anti-war feeling in official Washington then was unpopular. Among Republicans and Democrats
alike, to assert that Israel and oil were parts of the equation appeared uncouth. Insisted the
neocons and White House: the aim of the war was to bring democratic government and regional
order to the Mideast. Rescued from despotism, Iraqis would cheer invasion, Lewis and his allies
claimed, as Afghanis welcomed relief from Taliban fundamentalists.
In 2004 the Wall Street Journal devised
what it called a Lewis Doctrine, which it defined as "seeding democracy in failed Mideast
states to defang terrorism." The Journal clarified that the Lewis Doctrine "in effect,
had become U.S. policy" in 2001. The article also revealed that Lewis had long been politically
involved with Israel and a confidant of successive Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel
Sharon.
"Though never debated in Congress or sanctified by presidential decree, Mr. Lewis's
diagnosis of the Muslim world's malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed
democracy in the Mideast, have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50
years. The occupation of Iraq is putting the doctrine to the test," the Journal
proclaimed.
And so it has gone. After 15 years of many hard-to-follow shifts in policy and force, with
vast human and materiel costs, some analysts look upon U.S. policy in Iraq and the Mideast as a
geopolitical disaster, still in shambles and not soon to improve.
In other eyes Lewis stands guilty of devising a sophistic rationale to advance Israel's
security at the expense of U.S. national interests. In 2006, Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer
accused Lewis of consciously providing intellectual varnish to an Israel-centered policy
group inside the George W. Bush administration that was taking charge of Mideast policies. The
same year, Lewis's reckless alarmism on Iranian nukes on behalf of Israeli interests drew
wide ridicule and contempt.
A committed Zionist, Lewis conceived of Israel as an essential part of Western civilization
and an island of freedom in the Mideast. Though, acutely aware of Islam's nature and history,
he must have had doubts about the capacity to impose democracy through force. Later, he stated
unconvincingly that he had opposed the invasion of Iraq, but the facts of the matter point in
another direction.
Lewis thus leaves a mixed legacy. It is a shame that he shelved his learned critiques and
compromised his scholarly stature late in life to pursue situational geopolitics. With his role
as a government advisor before the Iraq war, academic Arabists widely took to calling Lewis
"the Great Satan," whereas Edward Said's favored position in academic circles is almost
uncontested.
Yet few dispute that Lewis was profoundly knowledgeable of his subject. His view that
Islamic fundamentalism fails all liberal tests of toleration, cross-cultural cooperation,
gender equality, gay rights, and freedom of conscience still holds. Most Islamic authorities
consider separation of church and state either absurd or evil. They seek to punish free
inquiry, blasphemy, and apostasy. Moreover, it is their obligation to do so under holy law.
Wearing multicultural blinders, contemporary European and American progressives pretend none of
this is so. As has been demonstrated since 2015, Europe provides opportunities for territorial
expansion, as do open-borders politics in the U.S. and Canada.
In 1990, long before his Washington adventures, Lewis wrote in the American Scholar
, "We live in a time when great efforts are being made to falsify the record of the past and to
make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties,
and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have
been."
On and off campus, Islamists today use Western progressive politics and ecumenical dreams to
further their holy struggle.
Lewis would point out that this force is completely understandable; in fact, it is a sacred
duty. What would disturb him more is that in the name of diversity, Western intellectuals and
journalists, government and corporate officials, and even military generals have eagerly
cooperated.
This article is exactly what this so-called intellectual Lewis is:
opinion.
All that's said by this Lewis guy is his opinion and his goal was hatred of Islam, therefore,
he wanted it to then have people follow along with hatred for arabs and Palestinians.
This was, of course, because then, people would keep supporting Israel!
How 'bout that?
Who are we kidding?
When talking about the history of this nation or that religion, Lewis offers mostly his
opinion and takes whatever event out of context to try to prove all this anti-Islam
rubbish. There are nations that have a majority of people of the Moslem religion, that have
different systems of government and so, we have free voting, and had for decades, in Turkey,
Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon and so on.
Pakistan and Turkey had female Prime Ministers decade ago how 'bout that! And so did
Indonesia, the nation most populated by Moslems, in the word, and so did Senegal, in
Africa.
These nations are thousands of miles apart, with different languages and cultures.
What is not pointed out, but I will, since I know, is that whenever there was turmoil in an
election in a mostly Moslem populated nation, why it was the meddling by the U.S. covertly
and with bribes and trouble making.
Like when the CIA did that in Iran in 1953 after a fellow, Mosaddegh was freely elected and
he was stopped and the dictator Shah was put in.
The U.S. constantly either installed or supported anti-democratic leaders in the Middle East
and Asia.
By the way, that's how you put the subject of Edward Said- that he was a professor and a
Palestinian activist? That's it?
How come you didn't tell us readers that he is a Christian?
Lewis knows no more about the makings, origins or history of religions that do many dozens of
thousands of professors in the U.S. alone.
But, he has been is given a lot of media, and still is, because he is liked by the neo-cons.
Also, I know more than Lewis did.
dig what I'm saying
"In 2004 the Wall Street Journal devised what it called a Lewis Doctrine, which it defined
as "seeding democracy in failed Mideast states to defang terrorism." The Journal clarified
that the Lewis Doctrine "in effect, had become U.S. policy" in 2001. The article also
revealed that Lewis had long been politically involved with Israel and a confidant of
successive Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon."
In laymen's terms, Lewis was an Israeli operative working the academic beat. His American
citizenship meant about as much to him as his earlier British citizenship had, a matter of
convenience, nothing more. Stripped of the spurious Ivy League gloss, his "scholarship" was
tendentious; it served to advance a political agenda and was consistently tainted by his
entanglements with politicians and political institutions. Circa 2018 it reads as badly
dated, often wrong, and generally wrong-headed.
I see he died a few weeks ago. Good riddance. "Intellectual father of the Iraq War" isn't
the epitaph of a decent human being.
The consensus I'm aware of is that Obama's foreign policy was just a continuation of the
foreign policy pursued by Bush during his second term. How does Obama continuing the foreign
policy positions of Bush, who was influenced by Lewis, indicate that Obama's views on the
middle east were influenced by Said? It should similarly be noted that while academics are
practically universal in siding with Said over Lewis, they did not universally support him
against other orientalists. While I'm likely butchering his claims, I seem to recall that
Robert Irwin criticized Said's Orientalism for focusing too much on Bernard Lewis, ignoring
the work of German orientalists who would complicate Said's claims about the West's portrayal
of the middle east.
I admire his spirited defense of the Western canon in literature and culture based upon
Judeo-Christian values. But he lost me when he joined forces with the campaign to blacklist
Professors John Meanshimer and Steven Walt with their book The Israel Lobby. The book
originally was an article that was expanded into their book. But because of the blacklist
against them, they coildn't ge their critique published in America and had to go to The
London Review of Books. And of course the article was smeared as anti-Semitic because it was
critical of the Israeli lobby (namely AIPAC) and its influence over our foreign policy.
"He was brilliant, but his vanity turned him into a reckless alarmist and a pro-Israeli
partisan."
*****************
I'm missing how vanity & supporting Israel are connected?
Islamic "fundamentalism" was rare and insignificant until we funded it, armed it, and trained
it. Our purpose was not to defang Islam but to superfang it, so we could have a new enemy to
justify ever-increasing budgets and power for Deepstate.
Now that we've switched back to Russia as the official enemy, our focus on Islam is
fading.
Saying that Lewis fell prey to vanity is easier than saying he, like the rest of the neocons,
was a hypocritical ethnic chauvinist.
In other words:
"Ethnic chauvinism is a sin and a great evil, or evidence of dangerous mental illness,
except for the Zionists who you need to support uncritically and unconditionally."
One thing to remember about zionists is that many of the christian ones are expecting to
trigger the second coming once certain things come to pass and this includes geography in
that region. I grew up with that. Anyway, to them it's not reckless, it's speeding the
prophecy along to its rightful end.
Lewis' so-called analysis and historiography was politicized and deeply flawed, so much so
that he showed himself to be a bigot against Arabs and Armenians – he was a scholar of
Turkish history, who had been, wined, dined, bought and sold, and corrupted by the Turkish
and Israeli governments to serves as their genocide denialist- and of Islam, and anything
else Middle Eastern, that did not serve Israel's interests. He offered himself to the neocons
as a willing academic and did much damage by 'legitimizing' their bogus 'war on terror'.
He should not be allowed to rest in peace or escape accountability in the judgment of
history.
i guess is the question . . . to decipher the depth and scope that islam poses to the US.
There are just not that many non-Muslims shooting people over cartoons, and insults in the
name of god. I have some very fine relational dynamics with muslims, but on occasion, i can't
help but wonder which one is going take me out because i don't use the term honorable when I
say mohammed's name.
The Nt doesn't even advocate throwing stones at people who steal my coat, I am supposed to
offer up the other.
Islamic "fundamentalism" was rare and insignificant until we funded it, armed it, and
trained it.
Islamic fundamentalism blighted and extinguished the lives of millions of Armenians,
Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others in the first half of the 20th century, long before dumb
Westerners funded it or armed it. The fact that people in the West are clueless about this
history does not mean it did not happen.
Obama had an English class with Said as an undergrad at Columbia. So did Leon Wieseltier
years earlier, as did many other Columbia students. Interestingly enough, Wiesaltier remained
an aggressive zionist. The claim that Said had any effect upon Obama's foreign policy ideas;
policies; or actions is profoundly silly.
To support your claim that "Said's line of thought profoundly influenced his undergraduate
student Barack Obama, and would have an immense impact on Obama's Mideast strategies and
geopolitics as president," you need a great deal more evidence. Currently, you have none.
Islamic fundamentalism was created and funded by Israel and the US to compete with the then
Marxist PLO and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.You thought Marxist terrorism was
problematic,look at Islamic terrorism.
"... Just because a country is democratic doesn't mean it is self-governing, as America is quickly discovering. ..."
"... John Adams warned that democracy "soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." ..."
"... James Madison was equally concerned with the pernicious consequences of large-scale democracy, arguing that democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." ..."
"... Even George Washington had his doubts about whether democracy was consistent with wise government. Democracies are slow to correct their errors, and those who try to guide the public down a wise course frequently become the object of popular hatred ..."
"... What we've got now is the tyranny of the ..."
"... minority . It is not "the people" who govern the nation. Instead, the state is run by permanent civil servants, largely unaccountable to any popular control, and professional politicians who are usually hand-picked by party insiders (Hillary over Bernie, anyone?). This has made it such that the actual 2016 election was more akin to ratifying a foregone conclusion than a substantive choice over the direction of future policy. ..."
"... If you're a student of politics, you've probably heard of the iron law of oligarchy . The phrase was coined by Robert Michels, an early 20th-century social scientist, in his landmark study of political parties. The iron law of oligarchy is simple: minorities rule majorities, because the former are organized and the latter are not. This is true even within democratic institutions. As power was concentrated in the federal government, the complexity of the tasks confronting civil servants and legislators greatly increased. This required a durable, hierarchical set of institutions for coordinating the behavior of political insiders. Durability enabled political insiders to coordinate their plans across time, which was particularly useful in avoiding the pesky constraints posed by regular elections. Hierarchy enabled political insiders to coordinate plans across space, making a permanently larger government both more feasible and more attractive for elites. The result, in retrospect, was predictable: a massive executive branch bureaucracy that's now largely autonomous, and a permissive Congress that's more than happy to serve as an institutionalized rubber stamp. ..."
"... One of the cruel ironies of the political status quo is that democracy is unquestioningly associated with self-governance, yet in practice, the more democratic a polity grows, the less self-governing it remains. ..."
Just because a country is democratic doesn't mean it is self-governing, as America is
quickly discovering.
Something has gone wrong with America's political institutions. While the United States is,
on the whole, competently governed, there are massive problems lurking just beneath the
surface. This became obvious during the 2016 presidential election. Each party's nominee was
odious to a large segment of the public; the only difference seemed to be whether it was an
odious insurgent or an odious careerist. Almost two years on, things show little signs of
improving.
What's to blame? One promising, though unpopular, answer is: democracy itself. When
individuals act collectively in large groups and are not held responsible for the consequences
of their behavior, decisions are unlikely to be reasonable or prudent. This design flaw in
popular government was recognized by several Founding Fathers. John Adams warned that
democracy "soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not
commit suicide."
James Madison was equally concerned with the pernicious consequences of large-scale
democracy, arguing that democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in
general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
Even George Washington had his doubts about whether democracy was consistent with wise
government. Democracies are slow to correct their errors, and those who try to guide the public
down a wise course frequently become the object of popular hatred : "It is one of the
evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled,
must often feel before they can act right; but then evil of this nature seldom fail to work
their own cure," Washington wrote. "It is to be lamented, nevertheless, that the remedies are
so slow, and that those, who may wish to apply them seasonably are not attended to before they
suffer in person, in interest and in reputation."
Given these opinions, it is unsurprising that the U.S. Constitution contains so many other
mechanisms for ensuring responsible government. Separation of powers and checks and balances
are necessary to protect the people from themselves. To the extent our political institutions
are deteriorating, the Founders' first instinct would be to look for constitutional changes,
whether formal or informal, that have expanded the scope of democracy and entrusted to the
electorate greater power than they can safely wield, and reverse them.
This theory is simple, elegant, and appealing. But it's missing a crucial detail.
American government is largely insulated from the tyranny of the majority. But at least
since the New Deal, we've gone too far in the opposite direction. What we've got now is the
tyranny of theminority . It is not "the people" who govern the nation.
Instead, the state is run by permanent civil servants, largely unaccountable to any popular
control, and professional politicians who are usually hand-picked by party insiders (Hillary
over Bernie, anyone?). This has made it such that the actual 2016 election was more akin to
ratifying a foregone conclusion than a substantive choice over the direction of future
policy.
But now we confront a puzzle: the rise of the permanent government did coincide with
increased democratization. The administrative-managerial state, and its enablers in Congress,
followed from creative reinterpretations of the Constitution that allowed voters to make
decisions that the Ninth and Tenth amendments -- far and away the most ignored portion of the
Bill of Rights -- should have forestalled. As it turns out, not only are both of these
observations correct, they are causally related . Increasing the scope of popular
government results in the loss of popular control.
If you're a student of politics, you've probably heard of the iron law of
oligarchy . The phrase was coined by Robert Michels, an early 20th-century social
scientist, in his landmark study of political parties. The iron law of oligarchy is simple:
minorities rule majorities, because the former are organized and the latter are not. This is
true even within democratic institutions. As power was concentrated in the federal government,
the complexity of the tasks confronting civil servants and legislators greatly increased. This
required a durable, hierarchical set of institutions for coordinating the behavior of political
insiders. Durability enabled political insiders to coordinate their plans across time, which
was particularly useful in avoiding the pesky constraints posed by regular elections. Hierarchy
enabled political insiders to coordinate plans across space, making a permanently larger
government both more feasible and more attractive for elites. The result, in retrospect, was
predictable: a massive executive branch bureaucracy that's now largely autonomous, and a
permissive Congress that's more than happy to serve as an institutionalized rubber
stamp.
The larger the electorate, and the more questions the electorate is asked to decide, the
more important it is for the people who actually govern to take advantage of economies of scale
in government. If the federal government were kept small and simple, there would be little need
for a behemoth public sector. Developing durable and hierarchical procedures for organizing
political projects would be unfeasible for citizen-statesmen. But those same procedures become
essential for technocratic experts and career politicians.
One of the cruel ironies of the political status quo is that democracy is
unquestioningly associated with self-governance, yet in practice, the more democratic a polity
grows, the less self-governing it remains. This is why an upsurge of populism won't cure
what ails the body politic. It will either provoke the permanent and unaccountable government
into tightening its grip, or those who actually hold the power will fan the flames of popular
discontent, channeling that energy towards their continued growth and entrenchment. We have
enough knowledge to make the diagnosis, but not to prescribe the treatment. Perhaps there is
some comfort in knowing what political health looks like. G.K. Chesterton said it best in his
insight about the relationship between democracy and self-governance:
The democratic contention is that government is not something analogous to playing the
church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping
the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at
all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own
love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if
he does them badly . In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important
things must be left to ordinary men themselves
The first step towards renewed self-governance must be to reject the false dichotomy between
populism and oligarchy. A sober assessment shows that they are one in the same.
Alexander William Salter is an assistant professor in the Rawls College of Business at
Texas Tech University. He is also the Comparative Economics Research Fellow at TTU's Free
Market Institute. See more at his website: www.awsalter.com .
This was going fine until the author decided to blame civil servants for our nation's
problems. How about an electoral system that denies majority rule? A Congress that routinely
votes against things the vast majority want? A system that vastly overpriveleges corporations
and hands them billions while inequality grows to the point where the UN warns that our
country resembles a third world kleptocracy? Nope, sez this guy. It's just because there are
too many bureaucrats.
He avoids the 17th amendment which was one of the barriers to the mob, and the 19th that
removed the power of individual states to set the terms of suffrage.
Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Katy Stanton could simply have moved to Wyoming.
It might be useful to only have property taxpayers vote.
And the problem is the left. When voters rejected Gay Marriage (57% in California!) or benefits
for illegals, unelected and unaccountable judges reversed the popular will.
I find your use of the word populism interesting. Inasmuch the word is generally used when the
decisions of the populace is different from that which the technocrats or oligarchs would have
made for them. The author being part of the technocratic elite thinks that he and his ilk know
best. This entire article is just a lot of arguments in support of this false and self serving
idea.
Making the federal government "small" will not solve the problems the author describes or
really alludes to. The power vacum left by a receding federal government will just be occupied
by an unaccountable corporate sector. The recent dismantling of Toys R Us by a spawn of Bain
Capital is the most recent manifestation of the twisted and pathological thought process that
calls itself "free market capitalism." A small federal government did not end child labor,
fight the Depression, win WW II or pioneer space exploration. Conservatives love the mythology
of a government "beast" that must be decapitated so that "Liberty" may reign. There are far
more dangerous forces at work in American society that inhibit liberty and tax our personal
treasuries than the federal government.
1) The US is not and never has been a ' democracy ' It is a Democratic Republic ' which is not
the same as a ' democracy ' ( one person -- one vote period ) of which there is only one in the
entire world . Switzerland
2) A large part of what has brought us to this point is the worn out well past its sell by
Electoral College which not only no longer serves its intended purpose .
3) But the major reason why we're here to put it bluntly is the ' Collective Stupidity of
America ' we've volitionally become : addled by celebrity , addicted to entertainment and
consumed by conspiracy theory rather than researching the facts
It's time to end the pretension that we live in a democracy. It maybe useful to claim so
when the US is trying to open markets or control resources in 3rd world countries. It's at that
time that we're 'spreading democracy'. Instead it's like spreading manure.
The managerial state arose to quell the threat of class warfare. Ironically those who sought to
organize the proletariat under a vision of class-based empowerment clamored for the same. The
response over time was fighting fire with fire as the cliche goes becoming what the opposition
has sought but only in a modified form.
If we were able to devise a way for distributive justice apart from building a bloated
bureaucracy then perhaps this emergence of oligarchy could have been averted. What
alternative(s) exist for an equitable distribution of wealth and income to ameliorate poverty?
Openly competitive (so-called) markets? And the charity of faith-based communities? I think
not.
Democracy, like all systems requires maintenace. Bernard Shaw said that the flaw of pragmatism
is that any system that is not completely idiotic will work PROVIDED THAT SOMEONE PUT EFFORT IN
MAKING IT WORK.
We have come to think that Democracy is in automatic pilot, and does not require effort of
our part See how many do not bother to vote or to inform themselves.
Democracy is a fine, shiny package with two caveats in it "Batteries not included" And "Some
assembly required" FAilure to heed those leads to disaster.
I see where you are coming from, but I must disagree. We don't have a democracy in any real
way, so how can it have failed?
Despite massive propaganda of commission and omission, the majority of the American people
don't want to waste trillions of dollars on endless pointless oversees wars. The public be
damned: Trump was quickly beaten into submission and we are back to the status quo. The public
doesn't want to give trillions of dollars to Wall Street while starving Main Street of capital.
The public doesn't want an abusively high rate of immigration whose sole purpose is to flood
the market for labor, driving wages down and profits up. And so on.
Oswald Spengler was right. " in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the
preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it
the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the
franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune."
"If the federal government were kept small and simple, there would be little need for a
behemoth public sector. Developing durable and hierarchical procedures for organizing political
projects would be unfeasible for citizen-statesmen. But those same procedures become essential
for technocratic experts and career politicians."
True, but this implies retarding government power as is will lead to an ultimate solution.
It will not. The sober truth is that a massive centralized national government has been
inevitable since the onset of the second world war or even beforehand with American
intervention in the colonoal Phillippines and the Great War. Becoming an empire requires
extensive power grabbing and becoming and maintaining a position as a world power requires
constant flexing of that power. Maintaining such a large population, military, and foreign
corps requires the massive public-works projects you speak of in order to keep the population
content and foreign powers in check. Failure to do so leads to chaos and tragic disaster that
would lead to such a nation a collapse in all existing institutions due to overcumbersome
responsibilities. These cannot be left to the provinces/states due to the massive amounts of
resources required to maintain such imperial ambitions along with the cold reality of state
infighting and possible seperatist leanings.
If one wishes to end the power of the federal government as is, the goal is not to merely
seek reform. The goal is to dismantle the empire; destroy the military might, isolate certain
diplomatic relations, reduce rates of overseas trade and reduce the economy as a whole, and
then finally disband and/or drastically reduce public security institutions such as the FBI,
CIA, and their affiliates. As you well know, elites and the greater public alike consider these
anathema.
However, if you wish to rush to this goal, keep in mind that dismantling the American empire
will not necessarily lead to the end of oppression and world peace even in the short term. A
power vacuum will open that the other world powers such as the Russian Federation and the PRC
will rush to fill up. As long as the world remains so interconnected and imperialist ambitions
are maintained by old and new world powers, even the smallest and most directly democratic
states will not be able to become self-governing for long.
Well, when, statistically speaking, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100 (probably
more than half now that USA has been invaded by the Third World) then a great number of people
are uninformed and easily manipulated voters. That is one of the great fallacies of democracy.
In an era when the word "democracy" is regarded as one of our deities to worship, this article
is a breath of fresh air. Notice how we accuse the Russians of trying to undermine our hallowed
"democracy." We really don't know what we mean when we use the term democracy, but it is a
shibboleth that has a good, comforting sound. And this idea that we could extend our
"democracy" by increasing the number of voters shows that we don't understand much at all.
Brilliant insights.
I believe we are prisoners of so-called "democracy"
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
July 13, 2017
The Prisoners of "Democracy"
Screwing the masses was the forte of the political establishment. It did not really matter
which political party was in power, or what name it went under, they all had one ruling
instinct, tax, tax, and more taxes. These rapacious politicians had an endless appetite for
taxes, and also an appetite for giving themselves huge raises, pension plans, expenses, and all
kinds of entitlements. In fact one of them famously said, "He was entitled to his
entitlements." Public office was a path to more, and more largesse all paid for by the
compulsory taxes of the masses that were the prisoners of "democracy."
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-prisoners-of-democracy.html
America had dramatically changed since John F. Kennedy seduced voters with the promises of
the New Frontier. A young family, the campaign jingles, the embrace of television, and the
prospect of America's first Catholic president injected a sense of patriotic adrenaline into
the 1960 campaign. There were "high hopes" for Jack and a sense of cultural validation for
Catholics who remembered Al Smith's failed presidential bid in 1928. In 1960, the Everly
Brothers and Bobby Darin crooned through the radio, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
proved a national sensation, and Americans flocked to movies like Spartacus in
magnificent downtown theaters.
But the frivolity and innocence, however illusory, were shattered on November 22, 1963.
Kennedy's assassination violently shifted America's cultural fault lines. One afternoon
accelerated the nation's sociological maladies, intensified its political divisions, and
evaporated its black-and-white contentment. Americans proceeded on a Technicolor path of
disruption, one that had transformed the nation by the time of Bobby's announcement on March
16, 1968. It was that year when The Doors and Cream blasted from transistor radios, John
Updike's Couples landed on the cover of Time , and 2001: A Space Odyssey
played in new suburban cinemas. The country had experienced a dervish frenzy, and Bobby was
fully aware of his nation's turbulent course.
The country was rocked by young students protesting a worsening war in Vietnam. Racial
tension exploded and riots destroyed urban neighborhoods. America's political evolution forever
altered its electoral geography. Bobby was embarking on a remarkable campaign that challenged
the incumbent president, a man he despised for many years. But the source of this strife
stemmed from the White House years of Bobby's brother. "While he defined his vision more
concretely and compellingly than Jack had -- from ending a disastrous war and addressing the
crisis in the cities to removing a sadly out-of-touch president -- he failed to point out that
the war, the festering ghettos, and Lyndon Johnson were all part of Jack Kennedy's legacy,"
wrote Larry Tye in his biography of Bobby.
For the 1968 primary, Kennedy metamorphosed into a liberal figure with an economic populist
message. Kennedy's belated entry turned into an audacious crusade, with the candidate
addressing racial injustice, income inequality, and the failure of Vietnam. He balanced this
message with themes touching upon free enterprise and law and order. Kennedy hoped to appeal to
minorities and working-class whites. He quickly became a messianic figure, and the press
embellished his New Democrat image. By late March, Johnson announced that he would not seek
reelection during a televised address. Through his departure, Johnson worked to maintain
control of the party machine by supporting Hubert Humphrey, his devoted Vice President. But in
the following weeks, Kennedy built momentum as he challenged McCarthy in states like Indiana
and Nebraska. His performance in both states, where anti-Catholic sentiments lingered,
testified to Kennedy's favorable electoral position.
In April 4, Kennedy learned that the Rev. King had been assassinated. He relayed the civil
rights leader's death in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis. His words helped spare
Indianapolis from the riots that erupted in cities across the country, ultimately leading to
nearly 40 people killed and over 2,000 injured. MLK's assassination served as an unsettling
reminder to Kennedy's family, friends, campaign aides, and traveling press. During Kennedy's
first campaign stop in Kansas, the press corps stopped at a restaurant where the legendary
columnist Jimmy Breslin asked, "Do you think this guy has the stuff to go all the way?"
"Yes, of course he has the stuff to go all the way," replied Newsweek's John J.
Lindsay. "But he's not going to go all the way. The reason is that somebody is going to shoot
him. I know it and you know it. Just as sure as we're sitting here somebody is going to shoot
him. He's out there now waiting for him. And, please God, I don't think we'll have a country
after it."
Despite what happened in 1963, the Secret Service had yet to provide protection of
presidential and vice presidential candidates and nominees during the 1964 election or the 1968
primary. But all the signs were there that Kennedy needed protection. The frenzied crowds
increased in size, taking a physical toll on the candidate. In one instance, "he was pulled so
hard that he tumbled into the car door, splitting his lip and breaking a front tooth that
required capping," writes Nye. "He ended up on a regimen of vitamins and antibiotics to fight
fatigue and infection For most politicians, the challenge was to attract crowds; for Bobby, it
was to survive them." In California, just 82 days after his announcement, Kennedy met the fate
that so many feared.
♦♦♦
Bobby Kennedy was a complicated figure from a family that continues to engage America's
imagination. In his autobiography, the novelist Philip Roth, who recently passed away,
reflected on Kennedy's assassination:
He was by no means a political figure constructed on anything other than the human
scale, and so, the night of his assassination and for days afterward, one felt witness to the
violent cutting down not of a monumental force for justice and social change like King or the
powerful embodiment of a people's massive misfortunes or a titan of religious potency but
rather of a rival -- of a vital, imperfect, high-strung, egotistical, rivalrous, talented
brother, who could be just as nasty as he was decent. The murder of a boyish politician of
forty-two, a man so nakedly ambitious and virile, was a crime against ordinary human hope as
well as against the claims of robust, independent appetite and, coming after the murders of
President Kennedy at forty-six and Martin Luther King at thirty-nine, evoked the simplest,
most familiar forms of despair.
For those schoolchildren and their parents in June 1968, Kennedy's campaign offered a sense
of nostalgia. They remembered the exuberance of his brother's campaign, the optimism of his
administration, and the possibilities of the 1960s. For the nation's large ethnic Catholic
voting bloc, another Kennedy reminded them of that feeling of validation in the 1960 election.
Of course, it had been a tumultuous decade for these voters. They lived in cities that had
precipitously declined since JFK's campaign visits in 1960. Railroad stations ended passenger
service, theaters closed, factories shuttered, and new highways offered an exodus to suburbia.
As Catholics, they prayed for the conversion of Russia, adapted to Vatican II reforms, and
adjusted to new parishes in the developing outskirts. Young draftees were shipped off to a
catastrophic war, which only intensified their feelings of disillusionment. Their
disenchantment raised questions about their sustained support for Democrats. Kennedy may have
proved formidable for Nixon in the general election, but the Catholic vote was increasingly up
for grabs.
Pat Buchanan understood this electoral opportunity for Republicans. In a 1971 memo, Buchanan
argued that Catholics were the largest bloc of available Democratic voters for the GOP: "The
fellows who join the K.of C. (Knights of Columbus), who make mass and communion every morning,
who go on retreats, who join the Holy Name society, who fight against abortion in their
legislatures, who send their kids to Catholic schools, who work on assembly lines and live in
Polish, Irish, Italian and Catholic communities or who have headed to the suburbs -- these are
the majority of Catholics; they are where our voters are."
In subsequent presidential elections, Catholic voters flocked to Democrats and Republicans.
Their electoral preferences were driven by the issues of the moment and often by location. The
geographical divide of our politics has only intensified. The 2016 presidential election
encapsulated this trend. Voters in Appalachia and the Rust Belt overwhelmingly supported Donald
Trump that year. Many of these voters previously supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012. In
1968, these voters likely appreciated Kennedy's campaign message. But the tragedy of the nation
is now a loss of optimism -- the belief that tomorrow will be a better day. Americans are
overwhelmed by ideological tension and socio-economic angst. The prosperity enjoyed by large
metropolitan regions has not spilled over into the heartland. There is no nostalgia for 1968
because countless Americans understand that the nation has failed to address income inequality,
job displacement, urban decline, and mass poverty. It was so long ago, but America did lose its
innocence on November 22, 1963. Bobby Kennedy's death in 1968 served as a reminder that it
would never return.
Charles F, McElwee III is a writer based in northeastern Pennsylvania. Follow him on
Twitter at @CFMcElwee
.
"... Northern Observer, someday Israel will go the way of Rhodesia if it's lucky. Many believe Israel orchestrated JFK's death; he insisted on inspecting Dimona for nuclear weapon development. ..."
"... If you look at actual evidence in the case you would understand that Sirhan did not and could not have killed Sen. Kennedy. Just look at autopsy report and it says he was killed by bullets fired and virtual point blank range from below and the back of the head. In addition, sound analysis proves that there were 13 shots fired but the alleged murder weapon only held 8 shots. So let's stop this charade. ..."
More troublingly, Robert Kennedy's death occurred within five years of his elder brother's,
and under similar circumstances. It is important to recall how unprecedented their deaths were
to the generation who witnessed them. If time has removed the shock of the assassinations of
the Kennedy brothers, it should not obscure just how anomalous they are. Bad luck may be part
of the mythos of the Kennedy family, but lightning does not strike the same place twice, and
political assassinations are exceedingly rare in American history. Both Kennedy brothers hurled
themselves into the most tumultuous and divisive issues of their time -- Israeli nationalism
and anti-communism -- and both appeared to have paid a heavy price.
In the first place, I don't think that failure of Robert Kennedy had anything to do with a
substantial limitation of the liberal world view, but with another concept, or argument:
The end cannot justify the means because it is the mean, which is a process, which
conditionates the end, in itself only an outcome.
Robert Kennedy supported violence made by the Zionist movement, turned into a State, and
if you ask me, it was that violence which -no pun intended- backfired against him.
Now, about the out balance between loyalty and allegiance homeland/nation, I think it
should be looked at from Sirhan perspective. Yes, he had escaped from what, in his
perspective, was zionist persecution, just to end in a country where that persecution was
supported actively by some high profile politicians. I am not going to say that murder is
right, but some how it had to feel for him as if that anti palestinian israely persecution
had reappeared very near to his home.
From that point of view, he wasn't a refuge anymore; the country where he was living had
become an acomplice of that persecution.
Maybe, if Robert Kennedy had considered a less bellicist way to support Israel, like
sending military support without delivering neither the means nor the command decissions to
the government of Israel, but keeping it in the hand of the U.S., who knows.
This article doesn't quite try to justify Oswald's or Sirhan's actions. But it places them
firmly in a political context rather than a criminal one.
It also suggests that JFK and RFK both went too far – that they "hurled themselves
into the most tumultuous and divisive issues of their time" and thus bear a degree of
responsibility for their own fates.
If we want to debate the merits of arming Israel, or undermining Cuba, then let's have
that debate. But this is altogether the wrong way to frame it. I, for one, don't ever want
the Overton window on such issues to be shifted by the acts, or even the potential acts, of
an assassin.
Israel twice begged Jordan not to join the war that it was already fighting with Egypt and
Syria – a war of aggression and genocide, where Nasser boasted of the impending total
destruction of Israel, Egyptian state media spoke of a road from Tel Aviv to Cairo paved in
Jewish skulls, and Israel's rabbinate consecrated national parks in case they had to be used
for Jewish mass graves.
Sirhan Sirhan's entire identity was wrapped up in the frustrated need for Jewish servitude
and inferiority, the bitterness that a second Holocaust had failed. He was exactly like the
Klan cops in Philadelphia, Mississippi, murdering Freedom Riders who tried to deprive them of
their most cherished resource: assured superiority over their traditional designated victim
group.
Hinted at but ignored is another aspect by which 1968 presaged 2018. In 1968 Bobby Kennedy
waited until after Gene McCarthy had challenged LBJ and LBJ had withdrawn from the race
before entering. For many (most?) McCarthy backers, Kennedy was an opportunistic, privileged
spoiler. In the same way, many of Bernie Sanders' supporters looked upon Hillary Clinton as
the privileged spoiler of a Democratic Party establishment that had tried and failed to move
the party to the right. The McGovern was followed by Carter, who was followed by Mondale, who
was followed by Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, and Hillary. For Democrats, then, it's
been fifty years of struggling to find a center, a struggle Republicans pretty much found in
Ronald Reagan.
John Wilkes Booth was wrapped up in bitterness, defeat & a warped loyalty to his
homeland, too.
It's interesting I guess to examine assassins' motives, but to what point?
Northern Observer, someday Israel will go the way of Rhodesia if it's lucky.
Many believe Israel orchestrated JFK's death; he insisted on inspecting Dimona for nuclear
weapon development.
Let the many who criticize TAC for not printing pro Israeli essays read this one. Also, read
the numerous blogs supporting this thrust. The "small nation" phrase was a tip-off to the
author's loyalties. I think this article is more worthy of the New York Times. Let us not
forget June 8, 1967, is another anniversary, when the sophisticated and unmarked aircraft and
PT boats using napalm of the author's "small nation" attacked the USS Liberty in
international water, with complete disregard to the ship's American markings and large US
flag. http://www.gtr5.com/ This event
received scant coverage on P19 of the aforementioned NYT. "Small nation"; indeed!
The only way one can defend Israel's apartheid policies is by demonizing all of their
victims.
Sirhan Sirhan is Jordanian – a nation that was invented specifically to be an
apartheid state with no Jews at all, forever closed to Jewish inhabitation or immigration.
That is his view of normalcy. I'm sorry it's also yours.
This is pure bunk. The idea that Sirhan Sirhan was the assassin of RFK has been categorically
disproven by the analysis of the fatal bullets, which none of came from Sirhan's gun. And RFKs friends and close advisors all knew that he had no love for Israel. Whatever he
said in support of Israel was for the media purposes only.
Having worked in Jordan and watched Israelis do business and as tourists (Jewish shrines)
there, I saw and heard no antisemitism. From my perspective, there seemed to be a positive
relationship. Elat and Aqaba are like sister cities. In fact, there seemed to be high-level
cooperation. Keep looking you will find bigotry to justify your positions.
I completely agree with Steve Naidamast. This article is indeed "pure bunk" because Sirhan
Sirhan is a side story. That's why this article, with such an angle, should simply never have
been published.
If you look at actual evidence in the case you would understand that Sirhan did not and
could not have killed Sen. Kennedy. Just look at autopsy report and it says he was killed by
bullets fired and virtual point blank range from below and the back of the head. In addition,
sound analysis proves that there were 13 shots fired but the alleged murder weapon only held
8 shots. So let's stop this charade.
TTT -- yo weren't just talking about Sirhan. I wasn't talking about him at all. I have no
sympathy for people who practice terrorism, whether it is done by Palestinians, Jordanians,
or the IDF.
"... Thucydides tells us that war changes the meaning of words . Social media demonstrated this maxim several years ago when " mil-splaining " military-related holidays was all the rage. ..."
"... Increasingly civilians see " soldiers as symbols that allow them to feel good about themselves, and the country" -- but many also see OxyContin that way. ..."
"... A strategy is needed that's rooted in serious analysis of American interests and strengths and a realistic assessment of the world. For nearly a generation, we have failed to align ends, ways, and means . Like " The Weary Titan ," America finds itself unable (or unwilling) to adapt to a changing world. ..."
"... What do we have to show for our expenditures? A divided country, financially exhausted while waging war across the globe against an elusive enemy -- who is, frankly, not a threat remotely approaching the resources we have aligned against him. Beyond the material costs, there's the social. Our military has become a syncretic religion, enjoying the support but not due consideration of the nation. This situation is genuinely tragic . ..."
"... The reason US acts like an empire is because she *IS* an empire. ..."
"... It recently dawned on me that the US' empire status solidified during and after WWII is the biggest reason why it's so easy for America to wage prolonged, deep-involvement wars. NATO, overseas bases, freedom of navigation, etc. ..."
"... But let's be honest: when we "killed" the draft we killed, in part, what is called social cohesion in this country. ..."
"... "This Memorial Day, don't cringe when someone says "Thank you for your service" and proceed to correct them." ..."
"... U.S. policy of perpetual war has been well established since 9/11. Everyone who joins the military is well aware of the job description (kill and destroy) and has free will. ..."
"... The U.S. military is currently providing refueling, logistics and intelligence support to the odious Saudis as they pulverize Yemen to smithereens and starve the population. And those American service people are "defending our freedoms" by doing so? ..."
"... The reason these episodes of introspection are called for is because of the massive propaganda machine (Pentagon, Corporate, MSM) of Military Exceptionalism that is the architect of the pathological incongruence. ..."
"... The 'military-civilian' divide, as the author stated it, is as much a product of a media that no longer holds policymakers accountable for seemingly endless military engagements and, the true effect that our endless military engagements are having on the very fabric of our society and on those engaged in them. ..."
"... With a volunteer military that effectively is at the disposal of whoever happens to be in office, no grass-roots opposition movement to hold politicians accountable, and 95 percent of the population untouched by war, the most veterans will receive is a "thank you for your service" as we go on with our daily lives. ..."
"... In my opinion, Demanding answers and justifications for sending people into harms way is the best expression of respect for our military personnel. ..."
"... " instead of asking 'what' we need to break the stalemate in Afghanistan, could ask 'why' there is a stalemate at all -- and whether American forces can truly ameliorate the structural, cultural, and historical obstacles to achieving desired ends there." ..."
"... Be aware that when you ask why, many people (including, sadly, many veterans) will consider this questioning of government foreign policy as a species of treason. Once, while on active duty with the US Army (1970), I suggested to a fellow officer that sending US troops to fight in Vietnam might not be in nation interest. I was immediately and vigorously condemned as a communist, a fascist, and a traitor. ..."
"... According to this reasoning, once the first soldier dies in battle, any criticism of the war denigrates the sacrifice of the deceased. So, we must continue to pile up the dead to justify those who have already died. This is part of the mechanism of war, and is an important reason why it is always easier to start a war than to stop one. ..."
Thucydides tells us that war
changes the meaning of words . Social media demonstrated this maxim several years ago when
" mil-splaining
" military-related holidays was all the rage. From memes outlining the differences between
Veterans, Armed Forces, and Memorial Day, to Fourth of July "safe space" declarations seemingly
applied to all vets, the trend was everywhere. Thankfully, it seems now to have passed.
Memorial Day is, of course, for remembering the fallen, those who died in service to the
nation. Veterans and their families remember their loved ones in ways they deem appropriate,
and the state remembers, too, in a somber, serious manner.
This remembrance should in no way preclude the typical family barbecue and other customs
associated with the traditional beginning of summer. National holidays are for remembering and
celebrating, not guilt. Shaming those who fail to celebrate a holiday according to one's
expectations is a bit like non-Christians feeling shame for skipping church: it shouldn't
matter because the day means different things to different people. Having a day on the calendar
demonstrates the national consensus about honoring sacrifice; anything more than that is a slow
walk towards superficiality. President Bush stopped golfing during the Iraq war, but it didn't
stop him from continuing it.
Instead, Memorial Day should engender conversation about our military and the gulf between
those who serve and those who don't. The conversation shouldn't just be the military talking at
civilians; it must be reciprocal. Increasingly civilians see " soldiers as symbols
that allow them to feel good about themselves, and the country" --
but many also see OxyContin that way. This situation is lamentable because the
aforementioned "mil-splaining" could only occur in a country so profoundly divided from its
military as to misunderstand basic concepts such as the purpose of holidays. It's also striking
how the most outspoken so-called "patriots" often
have little connection to that which they so outlandishly support. Our "thank you for your
service" culture is anathema to well-functioning civil-military relations.
The public owes its military more consideration, particularly in how the armed forces are
deployed across the globe. Part of this is empathy:
stop treating military members as an abstraction , as something that exists only to serve a
national or increasingly political purpose. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are
deserving of praise and support -- especially considering the burden they've carried -- but
what they need more is an engaged public, one that's even willing to
scrutinize the military . Because scrutiny necessitates engagement and hopefully
understanding and reform.
But the civil-military divide goes
both ways. Military members and veterans owe the public a better relationship as well. This
Memorial Day, don't cringe when someone says "Thank you for your service" and proceed to
correct them. Open a dialogue: you might
build a real connection . Better yet, volunteer to speak at a school or church: partly to
explain your service, sure, but more so to show that military personnel are people, too, not
just
distant abstractions . Veterans are spread across the county and better able to interact
with civilians than our largely cloistered active duty force. They shouldn't go to schools,
churches, and civic organizations for the inevitable praise. They should go to educate, nurture
relationships, and chip away at the civil-military divide.
Perhaps by questioning the fundamentals -- the "why" instead of the so often discussed
"what" in military operations -- the public would be in a better position to demand action from
a Congress that, heretofore, has largely abdicated serious oversight of foreign policy. Perhaps
the public, instead of asking "what" we need to break the
stalemate in Afghanistan , could ask "why" there is a stalemate at all -- and whether
American forces can truly ameliorate the structural, cultural, and historical obstacles to
achieving desired ends there.
A strategy is needed that's rooted in serious analysis of American interests and
strengths and a realistic assessment of the world. For nearly a generation, we
have failed to align ends, ways, and means . Like "
The Weary Titan ," America finds itself unable (or unwilling) to adapt to a changing
world. Consumed by domestic strife and the emergence of nationalism
, American foreign policy has wandered fecklessly since the end of the Cold War. While we can
strike anywhere, this
capability is wasted in search of a lasting peace.
What do we have to show for our expenditures? A divided country, financially exhausted
while waging war across the globe against an elusive enemy -- who is, frankly, not a threat
remotely approaching the resources we have aligned against him. Beyond the material costs,
there's the social. Our military has become a syncretic religion, enjoying the support but not
due consideration of the nation. This situation is
genuinely tragic .
For America to dig its way out of its domestic and foreign troubles it must start with
sobering analysis. For the civil-military dialogue, Memorial Day is as good a place to begin as
any day. So this weekend, civilians should move beyond "Thank you for your service" and ask a
vet about his or her service and lost comrades. Veterans, don't expect praise and don't
lecture; speak with honesty and empathy, talk about what you've done and the conditions you've
seen. You might be surprised what we can learn from each other.
John Q. Bolton is an Army officer who recently returned from Afghanistan. An Army
aviator (AH-64D/E), he is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a 2005 graduate of West
Point. The views presented here are his alone and not representative of the U.S. Army, the
Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
12 Responses to On Memorial Day,
Getting Beyond 'Thank You For Your Service'
(This reply was intended for an older article
"http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-deep-unfairness-of-americas-all-volunteer-force"
from 2017 but since the topics are kind of related, so )
The reason US acts like an empire is because she *IS* an empire.
It recently dawned on me that the US' empire status solidified during and after WWII
is the biggest reason why it's so easy for America to wage prolonged, deep-involvement wars.
NATO, overseas bases, freedom of navigation, etc. Scrapping/re-constituting these
frameworks would put the US on par with most other countries on earth sporting home-bound
defense forces. Congressional authority/oversight would be reinvigorated, and acting under
the auspices of the UN becomes a procedural impairment (sovereignty concerns and selfishness
notwithstanding). A practical start would be lobbying for more base closures abroad, for
those who feel strongly about this.
But there is a danger: nature abhors a vacuum.
The other thing, I am definitely for professionalism in militaries. Better to have one
dedicated soldier than three squirmish kids dragged into the mud.
Seems to me a universal draft would be the best way to say thank you. Under that scenario
most wars would be avoided or resolved quickly as the cost would be political defeat. An all
volunteer/mercenary force is blatantly unfair as virtually no kids of the wealthy fight,
prohibitively expensive, as recruiting and retaining soldiers in these times is an uphill
challenge, and dangerous as it encourages needless risk since only a tiny percentage of the
voting population pay the price
Sir: Thank you for your timely comments. I am a USN veteran and fully support the idea that
communication has to be a two-way street between civilians and our military women and men.
But let's be honest: when we "killed" the draft we killed, in part, what is called social
cohesion in this country. Not having common experiences makes us all more foreign to one
another which leads to isolation and platitudes such as "Thank you for your service." I have
heard that comment many times, too, and after a while it comes across as: "better you than
me." I know I am being cynical but I am also only human .
Re: "This Memorial Day, don't cringe when someone says "Thank you for your service" and
proceed to correct them."
U.S. policy of perpetual war has been well established since 9/11. Everyone who joins
the military is well aware of the job description (kill and destroy) and has free
will.
Thanking someone for signing up for the War Machine to wreck havoc on natives thousands of
miles from American shores makes little sense.
The U.S. military is currently providing refueling, logistics and intelligence support
to the odious Saudis as they pulverize Yemen to smithereens and starve the population. And
those American service people are "defending our freedoms" by doing so?
The U.S. military slaughters the Syrian army operating in their own country and we are
supposed to thank them for "their service"? Military drone drivers who slaughter Yemeni
wedding parties from comfortable installations in Florida and the operators on U.S. Navy
ships who launch missiles into Syria based on bogus False Flag scenarios are "Warrior
Heroes"?
The veterans we should be thanking are the ones who realized early on that they were being
played for chumps by the war-mongers and got out. If John Q. Bolton has that understanding,
why hasn't he gotten out?
The real "heroes" in America are the young people who get real jobs in the real economy
providing real value to their fellow citizens.
The reason these episodes of introspection are called for is because of the massive
propaganda machine (Pentagon, Corporate, MSM) of Military Exceptionalism that is the
architect of the pathological incongruence.
This is an excellent article. Memorial Day should call upon all Americans to ask some
essential questions.
As an aside, The Washington Post ran an article today about the funeral of Spec. Conde who
recently was killed in Afghanistan. The article spoke of Spec. Conde's motivations for
serving, the events that led to his death, the funeral service, and the effect that his death
at age 21 had and will have on his family and those who knew and loved him.
What struck me most about the article was how remote the funeral service and the family's
grief seem from the rest of what is taking place in America. For example, there was an
oblique reference to a funeral detail for a veteran who committed suicide that apparently no
one attended.
The 'military-civilian' divide, as the author stated it, is as much a product of a
media that no longer holds policymakers accountable for seemingly endless military
engagements and, the true effect that our endless military engagements are having on the very
fabric of our society and on those engaged in them.
The vast majority of the American public go about their daily lives, seemingly insulated
from the effects of our endless engagements. For example, Spec. Conde's death in Afghanistan
did not even make the front page of our major media when it first happened. The death of four
soldiers in Niger has faded from view.
With a volunteer military that effectively is at the disposal of whoever happens to be
in office, no grass-roots opposition movement to hold politicians accountable, and 95 percent
of the population untouched by war, the most veterans will receive is a "thank you for your
service" as we go on with our daily lives.
Thank you, Sir, for articulating my position. In 7 Second Soundbite format, "I Support the
Troops, not the Policy that put them in harms way."
The military should never be deployed for political purposes. As a nation, we have willfully
refused to learn anything from the lessons of Korea and Viet Nam.
Military service preserves the Ultimate Expression of America, "Question Authority!" (I
recognize the Irony of suppressing it within it's ranks.) In my opinion, Demanding
answers and justifications for sending people into harms way is the best expression of
respect for our military personnel.
Accept Officer Bolton's challenge. When you see me kneeling at the National Anthem, ask me
why. [The Answer: I do it to show respect for those that have fallen at the hands of those
who oppose the Values embodied in the American Flag.]
" instead of asking 'what' we need to break the stalemate in Afghanistan, could ask 'why'
there is a stalemate at all -- and whether American forces can truly ameliorate the
structural, cultural, and historical obstacles to achieving desired ends there."
Be aware that when you ask why, many people (including, sadly, many veterans) will
consider this questioning of government foreign policy as a species of treason. Once, while
on active duty with the US Army (1970), I suggested to a fellow officer that sending US
troops to fight in Vietnam might not be in nation interest. I was immediately and vigorously
condemned as a communist, a fascist, and a traitor.
According to this reasoning, once the first soldier dies in battle, any criticism of
the war denigrates the sacrifice of the deceased. So, we must continue to pile up the dead to
justify those who have already died. This is part of the mechanism of war, and is an
important reason why it is always easier to start a war than to stop one.
Perhaps we need "our leaders" to do some war "Service."
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
March 9, 2009
"Should We Have War Games for the World's Leaders"?
Yesterday's enemies are today's friends and today's friends are tomorrow's enemies, such
is the way of the world, and wars of the world. All these wars cause enormous bloodshed,
destruction and suffering to those affected. Therefore, would it not be much simpler to have
war games for all of the world's leaders and elites every few years? We have Olympic Games
every four years where the world's athletes from different countries compete. And many of
these countries are hostile to each other, yet they participate in the Olympics. So if
enemies can participate for sport, why not for war games? How could this be arranged? All the
leaders and elites of the world would have to lead by example, instead of leading from their
political platforms, palaces and offshore tax havens, while the ordinary people have to do
the dirty work in wars. The world's leaders and elites would all be in the front lines first.
A venue could be arranged in a deserted area and the people of the world could watch via
satellite TV their courageous leaders and other elites leading the charge in the war games
.
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2009/03/should-we-have-war-games-for-worlds.html
Powerful is the man who, with a short series of tweets, can single-handedly send the bluest
of the blue-chip stocks into a headlong tumble. For better or for worse, the current occupant
of the Oval Office is one such man, tapping into his power with the following missive that
crossed the Twitter transom on the morning of March 29:
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay
little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery
Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of
business!
Over the next few trading days, with four subsequent tweets peppered in, Amazon's stock
dropped by more than $75 a share, losing a market value of nearly $40 billion. Card
carrying-members of the Resistance and Never Trump brigade quickly portrayed the president's
scorn as the latest evidence of his "soft totalitarianism" and general disdain for the First
Amendment and the free press. They noted that Amazon's CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the
Washington Post -- a leading "perpetrator" of what Trump has called the "opposition
party" and "fake news."
Concerns of politically motivated impropriety are not without merit. Trump has repeatedly
proven himself unworthy of the benefit of the doubt. As presidential candidate and commander in
chief, he has demonstrated an eagerness to use his Twitter account as a bully pulpit in his
petty brawls with lawmakers, media personalities, and anyone else who might draw his ire.
And yet, ulterior motives though there may be, knee-jerk dismissals of the president's
attack are short-sighted. The president's bluster in this instance is rooted in reality.
Indeed, contra the libertarian ethos that Amazon and its leader purport to embody, the
company has not emerged as one of history's preeminent corporate juggernauts through thrift and
elbow grease alone. Although the company's harshest critics must concede that Amazon is the
world's most consistently competent corporation -- replete with innovation and ingenuity -- the
company's unprecedented growth would not be possible without two key ingredients: corporate
welfare and tax avoidance.
Amazon has long benefitted from the procurement of taxpayer-funded subsidies, emerging in
recent years as the leading recipient of corporate welfare. According to Good Jobs First, a
Washington, D.C., organization dedicated to corporate and government accountability, Amazon
has, since 2000, received more than $1.39 billion in state and local tax breaks and subsidies
for construction of its vast network of warehouses and data centers.
These private-public "partnership" deals are perhaps best illustrated by the sweepstakes for
Amazon's second headquarters. Touted as the economic development opportunity of the century,
the chosen destination will reap the benefits of 50,000 "high-paying" jobs and $5 billion in
construction spending. The possibility of securing an economic development package of this
magnitude elicited proposals from 238 North American cities and regions, fomenting what some
have called a "bidding war" between mayors, governors, and county executives desperate for
economic invigoration.
After a first round deadline of October 19, the pool of applicants was, in mid-January,
whittled down to a list of 20. As expected, each finalist offered incentive packages worth more
than a billion dollars, with Montgomery County, Maryland, ($8.5 billion) and Newark, New
Jersey, ($7 billion) offering the most eye-popping bundles. Proposals utilized a wide array of
state and local economic development programs: property tax discounts, infrastructure
subsidies, and, in the case of Chicago's proposal, an incentive known as a "personal income-tax
diversion." Worth up to $1.32 billion, Amazon employees would still pay their income taxes in
full -- but instead of Illinois receiving the money, the tax payments would be funneled
directly into the pockets of Amazon itself.
While critics condemn the ostentatious bids of Maryland and New Jersey and decry the
"creative" gimmicks of cities such as Chicago, they are equally worried about the details -- or
lack thereof -- of the proposals from the other finalists. Despite demands for transparency
from local community leaders and journalists, only a handful of cities have released the
details of their bids in full, while six finalists -- Indianapolis, Dallas, Northern Virginia,
Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh, North Carolina -- have refused to release any of
the details from their first-round bids. Viewing themselves as players in a zero-sum game of
high-stakes poker, they claim that there is little to gain, but a lot to lose, in making their
proposals public.
Such secrecy has, in the second round of bidding, become the rule more than the exception.
Although he owns a newspaper with the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness," Bezos has required
state and local officials involved in negotiations to sign non-disclosure agreements. With the
opportunity to revisit and revise their bids (i.e., increase their dollar value), the
transition from public spectacle to backroom dealing introduces yet another cause for concern.
If the finalists don't apprise citizens of their bids' details, the citizens can't weigh the
costs and benefits and determine whether inviting the company into their midst will be a net
positive or net negative.
Amazon's pursuit of public tithes and offerings is matched by its relentless obsession with
avoiding taxes. Employing a legion of accountants and lawyers, the company has become a master
at navigating the tax code and exploiting every loophole. Illegality is not the issue here but
rather a tax system that allows mammoth corporations to operate with huge tax advantages not
available to mom-and-pop shops on Main Street.
Of course Amazon isn't unique in its desire to avoid the taxman. It is, however, unrivaled
in its ability to do so. Last fall's debate concerning the merits of lowering the corporate tax
rate from 35 percent to 20 percent was, for Amazon, a moot point. In the five years from 2012
to 2016, Amazon paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 11.4 percent.
The company fared even better in 2017. Despite posting a $5.6 billion profit, Amazon didn't
pay a single cent in federal taxes, according to a recent report from the Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy. What's more, Amazon projects it will receive an additional $789 million in
kickbacks from last year's tax reform bill.
Even by the standards of mammoth corporations, this is impressive. By way of comparison,
Walmart -- no stranger to corporate welfare and tax avoidance -- has paid $64 billion in
corporate income tax since 2008. Amazon? Just $1.4 billion.
Amazon's tax-avoidance success can be attributed to two things: avoiding the collection of
sales taxes and stashing profits in overseas tax havens. The IRS estimates that Amazon has
dodged more than $1.5 billion in taxes by funneling the patents of its intellectual property
behind the walls of its European headquarters city, Luxembourg -- a widely used corporate tax
haven. Again, nothing illegal here, but there's something wrong with a tax system that allows
it.
From day one, Amazon's business model involved legally avoiding any obligation to collect
sales taxes, and then using the subsequent pricing advantage to gain market share. It did this
by first locating its warehouses in very few states, most of which did not have a sales tax. It
then shipped its goods to customers that resided in other states that did have sales tax. This
game plan allowed Amazon to avoid what is known as "nexus" in sales-tax states, meaning that
those states could not compel it to collect the tax -- a two to 10 percent competitive
advantage over its brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Amazon exploited this tax advantage for years until state legislatures -- realizing how much
revenue they were losing -- gradually began passing legislation requiring Internet retailers to
collect sales taxes for items purchased by their citizens. In 2012, having already benefited
from this competitive advantage for more than a decade and a half, Bezos -- under the pretense
of a "level playing field" -- began advocating for federal legislation that would require
Internet retailers to collect sales tax. No such legislation has been passed.
And despite Bezos's carefully calculated public relations posturing, Amazon's advantage over
brick-and-mortar retailers persists: not only does Amazon not collect city and county sales
taxes (where applicable) but it also doesn't, with few exceptions, collect sales tax on items
sold by third-party distributors on Amazon Marketplace -- sales that account for more than half
of Amazon's sales.
It is difficult to overstate how instrumental tax breaks and tax avoidance have been in
Amazon's unprecedented growth. As Bezos made clear in his first letter to shareholders in 1997,
Amazon's business plan is predicated on amassing long-term market share in lieu of short-term
profits. As a result, the company operates on razor-thin margins in some retail categories,
while actually taking losses in others.
Amazon has not squandered these competitive advantages. Half of online retail purchases are
made through Amazon, and more than half of American households are enrolled in the Amazon Prime
program -- a subscription service that engenders platform loyalty and leads to increases in
consumer spending.
In fact, Amazon's ascent and tactics have led an increasing number of public policy experts
to call for a renewed enforcement of America's antitrust laws. The concern is that Amazon has
used its market power to crush smaller competitors with a swath of anti-competitive practices,
including predatory pricing and market power advantages stemming from Amazon Marketplace --
Amazon's vast sales platform for third-party retailers.
Such practices may be a boon for consumers and Amazon stockholders, the reasoning goes, but
they are only possible because Amazon uses economic power to squeeze its retail partners on
pricing at various points in the production line, which harms the health of many other
businesses. In fact, some suggest this bullying tendency calls to mind the actions of John D.
Rockefeller in his dealings with railroad companies at the turn of the last century.
These monopolistic practices have squeezed local, state, and federal revenue streams in two
ways. Not only do these governments forego the collection of needed tax revenue but Amazon's
rise has also knocked out many brick-and-mortar competitors that previously had provided
streams of tax revenue. By wooing Amazon with taxpayer-funded subsidies and other giveaways,
government leaders are, in a very real sense, funding the destruction of their own tax base.
There is little evidence that such taxpayer-funded inducements have resulted in a net positive
to the states and localities doling out the subsidies.
By forsaking the tenets of free market orthodoxy, forgoing the collection of much-needed tax
revenue, and giving big businesses major competitive advantages, state and local governments
have generated increasing controversy and political enmity from both ends of the political
spectrum. And yet, though bipartisan accusations of crony capitalism and corporate welfare
abound, such opposition does little to dissuade state and local governments from loosening the
public purse strings in their efforts to woo big corporations such as Amazon.
Daniel Kishi is associate editor of The American Conservative. Follow him on
Twitter:@DanielMKishi .
These findings reminded me of the suggestion in Patrick Deneen's recently released
Why Liberalism Failed that the political ideology of liberalism drives us apart, making us more lonely and polarized
than ever. As Christine Emba
writes in her Washington Post review of Deneen's book:
As liberalism has progressed, it has done so by ever more efficiently liberating each individual from "particular places,
relationships, memberships, and even identities-unless they have been chosen, are worn lightly, and can be revised or
abandoned at will." In the process, it has scoured anything that could hold stable meaning and connection from our modern
landscape-culture has been disintegrated, family bonds devalued, connections to the past cut off, an understanding of the
common good all but disappeared.
likbez
Our political differences are strengthening, with an increasing number of urban Americans moving further left and more than
half of rural voters (54 percent)
There is actually no way to move to the left in the two party system installed in the USA. The Democratic Party is just another
neoliberal party. Bill Clinton sold it to Wall Street long ago.
Neoliberalism uses identity wedge to split the voters into various groups which in turn are corralled into two camps representing
on the federal level two almost identical militaristic, oligarchical parties to eliminate any threat to the status quo.
And they do very skillfully and successfully. Trump is just a minor deviation from the rule (or like Obama is the confirmation
of the rule "change we can believe in" so to speak). And he did capitulate to neocons just two months after inauguration. While
he was from the very beginning a "bastard neoliberal" -- neoliberal that denies the value of implicit coercion of neoliberal globalization
in favor of open bullying of trade partners. Kind of "neoliberalism for a single exceptional country."
The current catfight between different oligarchic groups for power (Russiagate vs. Spygate ) might well be just a smoke screen
for the coming crisis of neoliberalism in the USA, which is unable to lift the standard of living of the lower 80% of population,
and neoliberal propaganda after 40 or so years lost its power, much like communist propaganda in the same time frame.
The tenacity with which Clinton-Obama wing of Democratic Party wants Trump to be removed is just a testament of the political
power of neoliberals and neocons in the USA as they are merged with the "deep state." No deviations from the party line are allowed.
There are, in my judgment, three great novels that explore American military life in the
twentieth century. They are, in order of publication, Guard of Honor (1948) by James
Gould Cozzens, From Here To Eternity (1951) by James Jones, and The Sand Pebbles
(1962) by Richard McKenna.
The first is a book about airmen, set at a stateside air base during World War II. The
second is a soldier's story, its setting Schofield Barracks in the territory of Hawaii on the
eve of Pearl Harbor. In The Sand Pebbles, the focus is on sailors. It takes place in
China during the 1920s when U.S. Navy gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River and its
tributaries.
As far as I can tell, none of the three enjoys much of a following today. Despite winning
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Guard of Honor has all but vanished. To the extent that
the other two retain any cultural salience, they do so as movies, superb in the case of From
Here to Eternity , colorful but mediocre in the case of The Sand Pebbles.
Yet for any American seeking an intimate account of military service, all three novels
remain worth reading. Times change, as do uniforms, weapons, and tactics, but certain
fundamentals of military life endure. Leaders and led see matters differently, nurse different
expectations, and respond to different motivations. The perspective back at higher headquarters
(or up on the bridge) differs from the way things look to those dealing with the challenges of
a typical duty day. The biggest difference of all is between inside and outside -- between
those in uniform and the civilians who necessarily inhabit another world. Each in his own way,
Cozzens, Jones, and McKenna unpack those differences with sensitivity and insight.
Of the three, McKenna's novel in particular deserves revival, not only because of its
impressive literary qualities, but because the story it tells has renewed relevance to the
present day. It's a story about the role that foreign powers, including the United States,
played in the emergence of modern China.
Prompted in part by the ostensible North Korean threat, but more broadly by the ongoing rise
of China and uncertainty about China's ultimate ambitions, the American military establishment
will almost inevitably be directing more of its attention toward East Asia in the coming years.
To be sure, the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism continues and appears
unlikely to conclude anytime soon. Yet the character of that conflict is changing. Having come
up short in its efforts to pacify the Islamic world, the United States is increasingly inclined
to rely on proxies, generously supported by air power, to carry on the jihadist fight in
preference to committing large numbers of U.S. troops. Almost imperceptibly, East Asia is
encroaching upon and will eventually eclipse the Greater Middle East in the Pentagon's
hierarchy of strategic priorities.
It's this reshuffling of Pentagon priorities that endows The Sand Pebbles with
renewed significance. If past is prologue, McKenna's fictionalized account of actual events
that occurred 90 years ago involving U.S. forces in China should provide context for anyone
intent on employing American military power to check China today.
Of course, the armed forces of the United States have a long history of involvement in East
Asia. Ever since 1898, when it liberated, occupied, and subsequently annexed the Philippines,
the United States has maintained an enduring military presence in that part of the world.
To the extent that Americans are even dimly aware of what that presence has entailed, they
probably think in terms of three 20th-century Asian wars: the first in the 1940s against Japan;
the second during the 1950s in Korea; the third from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s in
Vietnam. In each, whether as ally or adversary, China figured prominently.
Yet even before the attack on Pearl Harbor initiated the first of those wars, U.S. air,
land, and naval forces had been active in and around China. Dreams of gaining access to a
lucrative "China Market" numbered among the factors that persuaded the United States to annex
the Philippines in the first place. In 1900, U.S. troops participated in the China Relief
Expedition, a multilateral intervention mounted to suppress the so-called Boxer Rebellion,
which sought to expel foreigners and end outside interference in Chinese affairs. The mission
succeeded and the U.S. military stayed on. Army and Marine Corps units established garrisons in
"treaty ports" such as Shanghai and Tientsin.
Decades earlier, the U.S. Navy had begun making periodic forays into China's inland
waterways. In the early 20th century, employing small shallow-draft vessels captured from Spain
in 1898, this presence became increasingly formalized. As American commercial and missionary
interests in China grew, the Navy inaugurated what it called the Yangtze Patrol, with Congress
appropriating funds to construct a flotilla of purpose-built gunboats for patrolling the river
and its tributaries. Under the direction of COMYANGPAT back in Shanghai, small warships flying
the Stars-and-Stripes sailed up and down the Yangtze's immense length to "protect American
lives and property."
This is the story that McKenna, himself a YANGPAT veteran, recounts, focusing on a single
fictional ship the U.S.S. San Pablo. Known as "Sand Pebbles," the few dozen sailors
comprising the San Pablo's crew are all lifers. A rough bunch, their interests rarely
extend beyond drinking and whoring. In 1920s China, an American sailor's modest paycheck
provides ample funds for both pursuits.
Even afloat, life for the Sand Pebbles is more than agreeable. Onboard the San Pablo,
an unofficial second crew consisting of local Chinese -- "contractors," we would call them
today -- does the dirty work and the heavy lifting. The Americans stay topside, performing
routines and rituals meant to convey an image of power and dominance.
San Pablo is a puny and lightly armed ship. Yet it exists to convey a big impression,
thereby sustaining the privileged position that the United States and the other imperial powers
enjoyed in China.
The revolutionary turmoil engulfing China in the 1920s necessarily challenged this
proposition. Nationalist fervor gripped large parts of the population. Imperial privilege
stoked popular resentment, which made San Pablo 's position increasingly untenable, even
if the Sand Pebbles themselves were blind to what was coming. That their own eminently
comfortable circumstances might be at risk was literally unimaginable.
McKenna's narrative describes how the world of the Sand Pebbles fell apart. His nominal
protagonist is Jake Holman, a machinist mate with a mystical relationship to machinery. Jake
loathes the spit-and-polish routine topside and wants nothing more than to remain below decks
in the engine compartment, performing duties that on San Pablo white American sailors
have long since ceased to do. In the eyes of his shipmates, therefore, Jake represents a threat
to the division of labor that underwrites their comforts.
The ship's captain, one of only two commissioned officers assigned to San Pablo,
likewise sees Jake as a threat to the status quo. To my mind, Lieutenant Collins is McKenna's
most intriguing creation and the novel's true focal point. Although the Sand Pebbles are
oblivious to how they may figure in some larger picture, for Collins the larger picture is a
continuing preoccupation. He sees his little ship, the entire U.S. Navy, America's providential
purpose, and the fate of Western civilization as all of a piece. Serious, sober, and dutiful,
he is also something of a fanatic.
Collins dimly perceives that powerful forces within China pose a direct threat not only to
the existing U.S. position there, but to his own worldview. Yet he considers the prospect of
accommodating those forces as not only intolerable, but inconceivable. So in the book's
culminating episode he leads Jake and several other Sand Pebbles on a symbolic but utterly
futile gesture of resistance. Fancying that he is thereby salvaging his ship's honor (and his
own as well), he succeeds merely in killing his own men.
I interpret McKenna as suggesting that there is no honor in denying reality. Only waste and
needless sacrifice result. Today a national security establishment as blind to reality as
Lieutenant Collins presides over futile gestures far more costly than those inflicted upon the
Sand Pebbles. It's not fiction and it's happening right before our eyes.
So skip the movie. But read McKenna's book. And then reflect on its relevance to the present
day.
"... Despite receiving all this government money, Musk's company has not shown demonstrable results. Yesterday, Bloomberg released a story under the headline "Tesla Doesn't Burn Fuel, It Burns Cash," detailing how the company spends $6,500 a minute and may run out of money by the end of the year. Just weeks ago, Moody's downgraded Tesla's credit rating due to its seeming inability to meet deadlines. Mr. Musk's estimate of producing 20,000 vehicles in December, for instance, turned into just over 2,400 in the entire fourth quarter. ..."
"... Norm Singleton is the chairman of Campaign for Liberty. ..."
Anyone familiar with the hit sitcom Seinfeld knows that Cosmo Kramer, the
rambunctious, eccentric neighbor of Jerry Seinfeld, had a lot of big ideas. From make-your-own-pizza parlors to
tie dispensers to the
infamous " mansierre
," Kramer was -- in his own mind -- a world-changing revolutionary.
Of course, aside from one notable exception ( the Regis Philbin-approved pop-out coffee table
book ), none of his ideas ever panned out. But lack of achievement is exactly what viewers
expected every week. The whole fun of Kramer was his dream-big mentality and the impracticality
that came with it.
No one on the show was senseless enough to support Kramer in his work. In fact, in one
episode, Leland fired
him even though he did not hold any standing position. Kramer couldn't even keep a job at a bagel store for
longer than a few days. It was his friends' open refrigerators that provided him with the life
support he needed to continue dreaming and inventing.
This comedy sitcom case study is ironically much more sensible than what occurs in real
life. There are plenty of Cosmo Kramers out in the world today with ideas that are even more
ambitious than anything Kramerica Industries could have
formulated. The only difference is that these individuals have armies of lobbyists that can
convince our spendthrift government to finance their ideas, even though they have yet to pass
any free-market smell tests.
Perhaps the most recent example of such a politically astute, Kramer-like figure is Elon
Musk. This larger-than-life media personality plans to do everything from sending men to the
moon and Mars, to creating a 700-miles-per-hour tunnel transportation system, to turbocharging
human brains by implanting computers.
All of these are excellent ideas, to be sure, but ones that bear significant amounts of
risk. Unfortunately, Mr. Musk does not seem willing to bear all the risk himself. His business
model revolves around hiring experts to navigate the waters of the Washington swamp to discover
ways to make the American people pick up the tab.
Take Tesla, for example. The car company was created to bring electric vehicles to the
general public en masse -- a mission that oddly requires over $1
million in lobbying expenditures annually. As a result, the cars are financed by over $280
million in federal tax incentives, including a $7,500 federal tax break, and tens of millions
more in state rebates and development fees.
Despite receiving all this government money, Musk's company has not shown demonstrable
results. Yesterday, Bloomberg released a story under the headline "Tesla Doesn't Burn
Fuel, It Burns Cash," detailing how the company spends $6,500 a minute and may run out of money
by the end of the year. Just weeks ago, Moody's
downgraded Tesla's credit rating due to its seeming inability to meet deadlines. Mr. Musk's
estimate of producing 20,000 vehicles in
December, for instance, turned into just over 2,400 in the entire fourth quarter.
It is no wonder that when these government subsidies die, electric vehicle sales plummet.
Three years ago, sales sunk by
more than 80 percent in the state of Georgia when the $5,000 state tax credit phased out.
Last year, sales declined by
60 percent when its EV tax breaks sharply fell. These empirical case studies do not paint a
positive picture of Tesla's future, especially given that its federal tax break is expected to phase out
sometime this year. Perhaps funding Kramer's big ball of oil in the name of alleviating
the world's spillage problems would have been just as, if not more, fruitful.
SpaceX is no better. Roughly 85 percent of its contracts come directly from the federal
government. The aerospace manufacturer hit a
then-personal record of $2 million in annual lobbying spending not long ago as it continued
its quest to conquer the stars. New York magazine once asked
"Are Elon Musk's Aggressive Lobbyists Bad for Silicon Valley? " but without them the
government-dependent company might not even exist.
SpaceX has already received roughly
$15 billion in subsidy guarantees from Texas, and despite
meeting just one sixth of the hiring goals it promised, it is requesting
$5 million more . Similarly, even though SpaceX has already received over $70 million from
the federal government to develop its BFR, the company would
like more on that front as well.
Meanwhile, just last week, NASA's Office of Inspector General found that SpaceX has raised the cost of some
launches by over 50 percent due to having "a better understanding of the costs involved after
several years of experience with cargo resupply missions." This new development means that the
government's deal -- already diluted by costly rocket failures -- continues to get worse and
worse.
And don't even get me started on SolarCity, Mr. Musk's solar panel company, which has still
not turned an annual profit despite receiving over $490
million in grants from the Treasury Department over the years and the government covering
30 percent of its installation costs.
As a free market capitalist, I am rooting for Mr. Musk to pull it together and succeed. But
I don't want the federal government to waste any more of Americans' hard-earned cash to make it
happen.
We will never know what the well-intentioned Cosmo Kramer could have accomplished had Jerry
and the rest of the gang cut him off from their refrigerators, homes, and other welfare as a
means of forcing him to follow through with his goals. However, we can still explore how taking
away such measures of comfort will affect Elon Musk's motivation and decision-making.
Ironically, it just may be the recipe for success that the ambitious CEO needs.
Norm Singleton is the chairman of Campaign for Liberty.
There are legitimate questions to ask regarding tesla, but SpaceX is a whole other issue.
Pretty much every rocket manufacturer gets massive government subsidies. SpaceX is not the
first and probably not the last. but their increase in price is still cost competitive
compared to other manufacturers.
Ford Says Farewell
America's most iconic automaker plans to drive almost all of their passenger sedans into the sunset by 2020.
By
Telly Davidson
•
May 16, 2018
1959 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon Advertisement Life Magazine November 10 1958
By SenseiAlan /Flickr/CreativeCommons
Ford Motor Company recently dropped a bombshell -- one that would have been largely
unthinkable before the Great Recession. FoMoCo announced that it would be phasing out virtually all passenger cars built
for the U.S./Canadian market (they will continue in Europe) by 2020, except for the upcoming Focus Active and
always-popular Mustang -- a move all the more grim in that it was founding father Henry Ford that pioneered the mass-market
sedan for both America and the world.
The Focus will be first to go this month, followed by the Taurus next March and the
Fiesta in May 2019.
Ford Motor Company was always the Eve to General Motors' Adam in Detroit, not only
making cars (and profits) by the trunkload, but leading the league in midcentury style. The "Jackie Kennedy"
Lincoln
Continental Town Car
.
The Thunderbird
. But during the "Big
Government" era of unapologetically high property taxes and ballooning environmental regulations, Ford suffered its
first postwar crash. Amid the 1975 fuel shortages, Congress passed -- and Detroit's own liberal Republican stalwart Gerald
Ford (despite some quibbles and misgivings) signed -- the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Act (CAFÉ), which started off by
requiring an 18 mpg standard by the 1978 model year (1975 models were around 13 mpg by average.) The standard would
rise to 19 mpg in 1979, 20 in 1980, and then not one but
two
mileage points per year through 1984 -- with massive, multi-million-dollar IRS and court-imposed fines if a manufacturer
was found to be non-compliant.
Like a small-town mayor futilely trying to resist a federal court order, Ford mocked
GM's newly streamlined "large" cars when they debuted for 1977 (GM had been planning to go on a diet even before CAFÉ,
and had vastly more R&D money than Ford or Chrysler). Ads noted that Ford's family-priced LTD sedan was now the same
length as a "downsized" (but still gargantuan by today's standards) new '77 Cadillac. Cynically, both Ford and Chrysler
made no secret of the fact that their 1978 model full-size cars would be the last of their kind (Cadillac also let
everyone know that their big 1978 Eldorado was heading for the exit door), encouraging not only the "buy it while you
still can!" panic buying of the hyperinflationary late '70s -- but also as good as telling customers that next year's
forcibly-downsized models would be decidedly inferior. Lincoln gave its Town Car and Mark V one last victory lap before
they went, and Ford also renewed the Mark V's shorter-wheelbase platform-mates the Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar for
1979. Still fuming at the imminent loss of their league-leaders, Ford so grossly overproduced for 1979 that Lincoln had
a backlog of 210 days' worth of cars by July of 1979,
effectively
giving them a 1980 model year.
Not surprisingly, the downsized 1979 Ford (and Chrysler) "full size" sedans initially
bombed -- sales declined drastically for the '79 LTD and Mercury Grand Marquis, and went off a cliff in 1980. And while the
Mark VI "only" fell by half of its 1979 numbers, the Town Car went off Thelma and Louise's cliff -- barely managing
one-third of its '79 numbers.
And all this was just a sampling of what became arguably the biggest one-year
euthanasia in Ford history, as the 1980 Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch (and their upscale twin, the luxury Lincoln
Versailles), and the iconic Pinto/Bobcat were all put to sleep at year's end. All but the Granada were canceled
outright, in nameplate as well as body style, with the Granada barely hanging on as a thinly-disguised Fairmont (Ford's
first big downsizing-era success, which kept the lights on at Dearborn during the 12-15 percent interest rate era from
1978 to 1983.)
Now the plot thickens. The first downsizing era was complete, but the second one, to
bring things into compliance for 1984-85 (and what Detroit assumed would be even more draconian) standards, was now
underway. Ford suffered catastrophic losses in 1980-82, and Chrysler had to beg a stern President Carter for a
too-big-to-fail bailout in 1979-80 to avoid bankruptcy, as they frantically redesigned their slow-selling car lines yet
again.
But out of this "Big Government" intrusion came the impetus to design what became
Ford's biggest successes in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s -- the 1983-88 and 1989-97 Thunderbird, the 1984-94 Ford
Tempo, and the 1986-95 Ford Taurus. (Already their 1981-90 Escort flirted with #1 bestseller status in recessionary
1982.) Meanwhile, arch-competitor GM euthanized all but the station wagons and the Chevy Caprice sedan (which lasted
until 1990) of their full-size 1977 lines in spring 1984. The cars GM replaced them with were engineering marvels
(except when it came to reliability, perhaps) of front-wheel-drive, V6-powered efficiency -- but as folksinger Malvina
Reynolds might have said, they all looked ticky-tacky and they all looked the same. GM suffered its largest decade-loss
in its then-history during the '80s, according to auto historian Paul Niedemeyer.
But just as it had in 1978, Ford held out -- and this time, the move paid off. As
Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. began relaxing CAFE laws (or at least refusing to raise the standards dramatically), the
"downsized" big cars of the first wave of downsizing that still remained in production began selling like
hotcakes -- especially to Greatest and Silent Generation traditionalists who wanted cars that reminded them of the
unapologetic luxury they drove in the 70s, when they were at the height of their earning power and still healthy. The
1991 LTD/Marquis looked much the same as they did in 1979, and the Town Car of 1989 (and its closest competitor, the '89
Chrysler Fifth Avenue) were virtual reruns of 1980. And the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham (the only other GM survivor of
1984-85's "second downsizing") was still wearing its chrome-finned, formal-roofed, stately 1977 body all the way into
1992, with only a couple of reshaped-sheetmetal facelifts in between.
But Boomers had already been converted during the energy-conscious '70s to efficient
Japanese (and soon, Korean) cars. (Their Gen-X and Millennial children also would have no qualms at all about buying
"foreign.") By the late 80s and 90s, the Japanese were second to none in reliability, and rising suns like Hyundai and
Kia began offering league-leading, bumper-to-bumper warranties. As the
Roger &
Me
era of globalization took hold, even the saltiest WWII and Korea veterans
who were left began seriously considering Japanese and Korean autos -- given that the Asian automakers were consciously
building plants in the U.S. and Canada to erase the stigma of buying foreign (and head off potential tariffs), while the
allegedly "all American" Big 3 were sending jobs by the thousand to Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and eventually China.
The one big exception, however, was American trucks and vans -- including that ultimate
"soccer moms" symbol, the "minivan" (introduced by Chrysler in 1984 and Ford in 1985) and the luxury SUV. Because even
the biggest global-warming advocates and environmentalists had to concede that a civilized society needed ambulances,
hearses, construction, repair, and delivery trucks, and so forth, trucks were held to a significantly lower MPG
standard.
Conscious of his fellow Yuppies (and not wanting to be a gloomy Debbie Down-size-er
like Jimmy Carter), Bill Clinton said "No way!" to raising CAFE standards, much less cracking down hard on American-made
trucks, vans, Jeeps, and SUVs that were all the rage (and already paying the Big Three's bills) in the late '90s. And
naturally, Texas oilman George W. Bush (with his bestie, "Kenny-Boy" Lay of Enron) and Dick "Halliburton" Cheney barely
even touched fuel standards. The CAFÉ standard never rose above 27.5 mpg for passenger cars from 1985 all the way
through 2010 -- a full 25 years.
By 2010, the US auto industry was in the worst shape since the Great Depression, if
not the Carter years. GM was pulling itself out of bankruptcy, and cancelled their Saturn and Pontiac brands on
Halloween 2010 (Oldsmobile had been the first to the cemetery in the relatively prosperous June of 2004). Chrysler had
long ago put Plymouth and what was left of AMC/Eagle to sleep, and was even more bankrupt than GM. The only real
survivor was, ironically, Ford, thanks to its European partnerships and its red-hot truck/SUV presence, and the
ever-popular Mustang. (The Focus, Taurus, and Fusion were still doing well, although largely behind the Japanese and
Korean majors.) The Town Car (whose body dated to 1998) and Crown Victoria (which went back to 1991-92) finally died in
early 2012, after shutting down production at the end of August 2011. And though the iconic Lincoln Continental was
revived for 2017, it has largely failed to meet expectations.
So this was your life, Ford Motor Company. You invented the modern working-class
hero's sedan with the Model T, you survived and thrived as arguably midcentury middle-class America's most iconic
automaker, you stumbled badly and nearly OD'ed on gasoline and outdated styling through the last days of disco, but woke
up with Morning in America. "Big Gov'mint" forced you -- kicking and screaming -- to innovate in ways you didn't want to, but
that kept you alive during that time. And then, when deregulation happened, and the focus became trucks/minivans/SUVs
that didn't need year-to-year changes to stay popular, you had to play it as it laid.
Fare thee well, Ford sedans and wagons. It wouldn't have been the same without ya.
If oil prices his $100 a barrel as Citi is predicting next year (side effect of Trump's Iran move), this could
turn out badly for Ford.
I hope I have purchased my last gas car – a Prius Prime – a year ago. I am in my
later 60's and I like long range trips. At 50 mpg+ on gas, I will be able to afford to drive it when I am
retired. And for my about town commuting and short trips, I am averaging over 130 mpg – relying mostly upon the
battery. With luck, it will last until I am not up for long haul trips.
I hope to buy a fully self driving electric car in 4 years when I have finished paying off the Prius. My
wife is directionally challenged and we are likely to be somewhat rural, making Uber-like services less able.
In the mean time, she drives her 10 year old Toyota corolla, which gets quite good mileage.
I have driven gas guzzlers in my time, but given the amount I drive, I have decided to optimize my cars for
reliability and mileage. The Prius replaces a Suburu Forester that got ~ 23 mpg. It had over 230,000 miles on
it before it sustained enough damage from road debris that it wasn't worth repairing.
I don't need another suv or pickup, the kids are finally moving out.
The larger problem with Thiessen's "analysis" is that it fails to grasp that North Korea's
government won't accept the "offer" Trump is making because accepting it means giving up the
one thing that does more to guarantee the regime's security than any promise that the U.S.
could ever make. Trump talked about giving Kim "very strong protections" if he agreed to get
rid of the nuclear weapons, but there are no protections that the U.S. could offer that would
be any stronger than the ones he currently possesses. Kim is coming to the summit as the leader
of a nuclear-weapons state conducting talks at the highest level with the global superpower,
and he isn't going to agree to give up that status in exchange for obviously worthless promises
from Donald Trump. The more that the Trump administration and its boosters delude themselves
into thinking that they have North Korea on the defensive, the worse the summit will go for the
U.S. and its allies.
" The more that the Trump administration and its boosters delude themselves into thinking
that they have North Korea on the defensive, the worse the summit will go for the U.S. and
its allies."
This summit can really only go one way. Trump, ever the fool, will swagger in, offer
nothing, bluster, and in the end be handed his hat. I don't think there's anyway to spin this
as anything other than the poop storm that it is. No Nobel is Trump's future. Sad.
"giving up the one thing that does more to guarantee the regime's security than any promise
that the U.S. could ever make"
It could be argued at this point that nuclear proliferation in a world of unipolar
aggression might well be stabilizing not only whichever regimes the US decides to destabilize
on a given day, but also the international order and even peace. Certainly, China's modest
arsenal of minimum means of reprisal and Russia's outsized arsenal matching US folly warhead
for warhead and warhead for interceptor demonstrate that US impunitivism is not even deterred
by that. But Iraq was attacked precisely because Bush and his cronies were certain Saddam had
no effective WMD deterrent – no nukes, everything else a desirable post-hoc
justification.
Trump has the EU "cornered", and only fools will believe that this is to the benefit of
the world, or even the US – unless the EU finally recognizes the magnitude of its
"ally" problem, and their captive populations elect politicians that, for good or ill, will
break with the US.
Trump has zero leverage over Iran and North Korea, not only because he is already
committed to acts of aggression including all-out economical warfare and soon naval blockade,
but also because both nations – and their backers in China and Russia – have long
realized that any possible "appeasement" on their part will have as much impact on US conduct
as EU "consultations" or South Korean "coordination" – now with a US theater commander
as "ambassador". The Moon government has relegated itself to the bleachers as the welfare of
South Korea is at stake because, just like the EU3, it does not dare question the unilateral
"alliance" it has acquiesced to over decades.
We live in the age of a nation unhinged. But Guatemala, Paraguay and Romania are following
from ahead, demonstrating that the US might be acting unilaterally, but not alone, and this
"coalition of the unseemly eager" is, in terms of outcomes, no different from posturing
collaborators in Germany, France and the UK, or the hapless hostages in South Korea.
Surely, Thiessen and Trump have the world outnumbered and surrounded. What could possibly
go wrong, with leaders of such sparkling brilliance in charge?
The most pathetic display here is the establishment biparty published opinion applauding
Trump for pursuing the purest expression of Godfather Diplomacy, turned into farce. America's
sickening fascination with and glorification of organized crime and racketeering aside
– prosperity gospel wins – it is quite obvious that we cannot make "offers they
cannot refuse" by putting a horse's ass on a pillow.
America's sickening fascination with and glorification of organized crime and
racketeering aside – prosperity gospel wins – it is quite obvious that we cannot
make "offers they cannot refuse" by putting a horse's ass on a pillow.
Actually b., that was a horse's head on a pillow in "The Godfather." Were you
thinking of Trump or Bolton when you wrote that?
Former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden's new book The Assault on Intelligence: American
National Security in an Age of Lies wants to be the manifesto behind an intelligence
community coup. It ends up reading like outtakes from Dr. Strangelove .
Trump cannot discern truth from falsehood, Hayden says, and is the product of too much
fact-free thinking, especially on social media ("computational propaganda" where people can
"publish without credentials") where lies are deployed by the Russians to destroy the United
States. Instead Hayden calls for artificial intelligence and a media truth-rating system to
"purify our discourse" and help "defend it against inauthentic stimulation."
Hayden believes in the "fragility of civilization" as clearly as he believes there is a
"FOX/Trump/RT" alliance in place to exploit it. Under Trump, "post-truth is pre-fascism, and to
abandon facts is to abandon freedom." Hayden claims Trump has a "glandular aversion" to even
thinking about how "Russia has been actively seeking to damage the fabric of American
democracy."
Salvation, it would seem, depends on the intelligence community. Hayden makes clear,
ominously quoting conversations with anonymous IC officers, that no one else is protecting
America from these online threats to our precious bodily fluids .
He warns that "the structures we rely on to prevent civil war and societal collapse are
under stress." The IC on the other hand "pursues Enlightenment values [and] is essential
not just to American safety but to American liberty."
Hayden recalls how he reminded a lad fresh to the IC to "protect yourself. And above all
protect the institution. American still needs it." He has a bit of advice about the CIA: "We
are accustomed to relying on their truth to protect us from foreign enemies. Now we may need
their truth to save us from ourselves." The relationship between Trump and the IC, Hayden
threatens, is "contentious, divisive, and unpredictable" in these "uncharted waters for the
Republic."
Simply put, Hayden's book is blowing 10 dog whistles at once. Arise ye patriots [of
neoliberalism] of Langley and Fort Meade!
Yet for all his emphasis on truth, Hayden is curiously lax in presenting actual evidence of
the apocalypse. You are left to believe because Hayden says you must: paternalism at its best.
Plus, to disbelieve is to side with Putin. The best we get are executive summary-like
statements along the lines of "There is clear evidence of what I would call convergence, the
convergence of a mutually reinforcing swirl of Presidential tweets and statements, Russian
influenced social media, alt right websites and talk radio, Russian 'white' press like RT and
even mainstream U.S. media like Fox News."
With that established, Hayden informs us that when the IC tried to warn Trump of the Russian
plot, he "rejected a fact-based intel assessment because it was inconsistent with a preexisting
world view or because it was politically inconvenient, the stuff of ideological
authoritarianism not pragmatic democracy." Comrade, er, Candidate Trump, says Hayden
matter-of-factly, "did sound a lot like Vladimir Putin." The two men, he declaims, are "Russian
soulmates."
Hayden figures that if you've read this far into his polemic, he might as well just splurge
the rest of his notes on you. Trump is "uninformed, lazy, dishonest, off the charts, rejects
the premise objective reality even existed." He's fueled by Russian money (no evidence of this
is presented in the book, Hayden says, because it's hidden in the tax returns, as if Line 42 on
Trump's 1040 would read "Putin Black Funds $5 mil," and the IRS, which does have the returns,
overlooked that).
Trump is an "unwitting agent" of Putin, which Hayden tells us in Russian is polezni
durak , so you can see he knows his Cold War lingo. We hear how Wikileaks worked with the
Russkies, how Trump Jr. worked with the Russkies, how the Russkies wormed their way into Tower
so they could see the Big Board, how the whole brouhaha over #TakeAKnee was Russian meddling,
and how Jill Stein existed to "bleed off votes from Clinton" -- every Mueller fan-fiction trope
tumbling from the pages like crumbs left over from an earlier reader.
That's why The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies
reads like as a polemic. But it also fails as a book.
There are pages of filler, jumbled blog post-like chapters about substate actors and global
tectonics. Hayden writes in a recognizable style that might be called Bad Military, where
everything must eventually be tied to some Big Idea, preferably with classical references
Googled-up to add gravitas.
So it is not enough for Hayden to state Trump is a liar. He has to blame Trump for usurping
the entire body of Western thought: "We are in a post-truth world, a world in which decisions
are far more based upon emotion and preference. And that's an overturning of the Western way of
thought since the Enlightenment." Bad things are Hobbesian; good things Jeffersonian,
Madisonian, or Hamiltonian. People Hayden agrees with get adjectival modifiers before their
names: the perceptive scholar ____, the iconic journalist ____, the legendary case officer
____. It makes for tiresome reading, like it's Sunday night edging 4 a.m. and you still have
nine undergrad papers on the causes of the Civil War to grade.
Hayden is openly contemptuous of the American people, seeing them as brutes who need to be
led around, either by the Russians, as he sees it now, or by the IC, as he wishes it to be.
Proof of how dumb we are? Hayden cites a poll showing 83 percent of Republicans and 27 percent
of Democrats don't believe the IC analysis that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when they
damn well should. Further proof? Russian bots at work on Twitter influencing conservative minds
by using the hashtags #God and #Benghazi.
In our odd times, Hayden is a Hero of the Resistance. Seemingly forgotten is that, as head
of the NSA, he implemented blanket surveillance of American citizens in a rape of the Fourth
Amendment, itself a product of the Enlightenment, justifying his unconstitutional actions with
a mishmash of post-truth platitudes and still-secret legal findings. Hayden also supported
torture during the War on Terror, but whatever.
This book-length swipe right for the IC leaves out the slam dunk work those agencies did on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Any concern about political motives inside the IC is swept
away as "baseless." Gina
Haspel , who oversaw the torture program, is an "inspired choice" to head CIA. Hayden
writes for the rubes, proclaiming that the IC produces facts when in reality even good intel
can only be assessments and ambiguous conclusions.
That people so readily overlook Hayden's sins simply because he rolls off snark against
Trump speaks to our naiveté. That men like Hayden retain their security clearances while
serving as authors and paid commentators to outlets like CNN speaks to how deep the roots of
the Deep State reach. That some troubled Jack D. Ripper squirreled inside the IC might
take this pablum seriously is frightening.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the
Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. Follow him on Twitter
@WeMeantWell .
He's not blinded by hate. If you actually read the book, he describes his issues with Obama,
Clinton and everyone else. The fact remains he outlined the truth: Trump is a bumbling fool
who cannot distinguish truth fro fiction and is the most corrupt president ever to inhabit
the oval office, and has no idea what he's doing.
This interesting article states:
Gina Haspel, who oversaw the torture program, is an 'inspired choice' to head CIA. Really, torture is used by gangsters and other underworld villains. Therefore, I ask based
on the evidence against governments. "Are We Seeing Government by Gangsters"?
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2018/03/are-we-seeing-government-by-gangsters.html
The guy sounds like a certain Senator from Wisconsin:
"The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has
sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have
had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer – the finest
homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government we can give."
Peter Van Buren reminds us all: "Seemingly forgotten is that, as head of the NSA, he
implemented blanket surveillance of American citizens in a rape of the Fourth Amendment "
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Barker points out that Marx was correct that "capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to destroy
itself." I would add that Marx's view that capitalism was heretofore the most revolutionary
force in human history is also true. From the Communist
Manifesto :
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that
bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and
man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in
the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,
and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and
political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up
to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the
family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the
Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most
slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has
accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic
cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations
and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of
production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of
society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary,
the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising
of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away,
all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connexions everywhere.
You see what he means here. Capitalism -- for Marx, the merchant class (the "bourgeoisie")
were the carriers of capitalism -- turns everything into a market. Capitalism is a
revolutionary force that disrupts and desacralizes all things. All that talk in The Benedict Option about "liquid modernity"? That's based in Marx, actually.
Zygmunt Bauman, the late sociologist from whom I took the idea, was a Marxist.
Look, most of us conservatives in the West are to some degree supporters of the free market.
What we missed for a very long time was that it is hard to support a fully free market while at
the same time expecting our social institutions -- the family, the church, and so forth -- to
remain stable. This is an insight of Marx's that we conservatives -- and even conservative
Christians -- ought to absorb. I write about this a lot, though not in specific Marxist
terms.
The thing is, Christian Democratic parties throughout Western Europe have largely absorbed
this truth. Catholic social teaching is based in these insights as well. They aren't
necessarily against the free market, but rather say that the market must be tempered
for the common good.
That wasn't Marx's view, obviously. Marx thought the free market was itself wicked, and
ought to be totally controlled by the state. We know where that all ended up: with a hundred
million dead, and entire economies and societies destroyed.
But we can agree that Marx was right to diagnose the revolutionary nature of capitalism, if
catastrophically wrong about the cure for capitalism's excesses. If that was as far as Jason
Barker went, that would be fine. But he doesn't -- and this is the warning. Barker
continues:
The key factor in Marx's intellectual legacy in our present-day society is not
"philosophy" but "critique," or what he described in 1843 as "the ruthless criticism of all
that exists: ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and
in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be." "The
philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it," he
wrote in 1845.
Racial and sexual oppression have been added to the dynamic of class exploitation. Social
justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, owe something of an unspoken debt to
Marx through their unapologetic targeting of the "eternal truths" of our age. Such movements
recognize, as did Marx, that the ideas that rule every society are those of its ruling class
and that overturning those ideas is fundamental to true revolutionary progress.
We have become used to the go-getting mantra that to effect social change we first have to
change ourselves. But enlightened or rational thinking is not enough, since the norms of
thinking are already skewed by the structures of male privilege and social hierarchy, even
down to the language we use. Changing those norms entails changing the very foundations of
society.
There it is, reader. There is the "cultural Marxism" that you hear so much about, and that
so many on the left deny. It is in the Marxist principle that there is no such thing as truth;
there is only power.
Lenin understood this well. This is the meaning of his famous dictum, "Who, whom?" In Lenin's view,
co-existence with capitalism was not possible. The only question was whether or not the
communists will smash the capitalists first, or the other way around. One way of interpreting
this is to say that the moral value of an action depends on who is doing it to
whom .
This is why it is pointless for us conservatives and old-school liberals to stand around
identifying contradictions and hypocrisies in how the progressives behave. They don't care!
They aren't trying to apply universal standards of justice. They believe that "universal
standards of justice" is a cant phrase to disguise white heterosexist patriarchal supremacy.
They believe that justice is achieving power for their group, and therefore disempowering other
groups. This is why it's not racist, in their view, to favor non-whites over whites in the
distribution of power. This is why they don't consider it unfair to discriminate against men,
heterosexuals, and other out-groups.
They will use things like "dialogue" as a tactic to serve the long-term strategy of
acquiring total power. Resisting them on liberal grounds is like bringing a knife to a gun
fight. The neoreactionaries have seen this clearly, while conservatives like me, who can't
quite let go of old-fashioned liberalism, have resisted it.
I have resisted it because I really would like to live in a world where we can negotiate our
differences while allowing individuals and groups maximum autonomy in the private sphere. I
want to be left alone, and want to leave others alone. This, I fear, is a pipe dream. Absent a
shared cultural ethos, I can't see how this is possible. I hate to say it -- seriously, I do --
but I think that today's conservatives (including me) are going to end up as neoreactionaries,
just as today's old-school liberals are going to end up as progressives, because the forces
pulling us to these extremes are stronger than any centrism.
For example, check this out:
I'm running into irreligious people who think that a religious person violating their
deeply held principles is just a matter of choice, that they don't truly have any genuine
beliefs.
We can't even converse any more b/c we're not speaking the same language.
This is our country -- and this is the danger we religious people are facing, and are going
to face much more intensely. Many non-religious people simply cannot understand why we see the
world the way we do, and assume that it can only be out of irrationality and bigotry.
I invite you to read
this blog post from three years ago, based on my interview with "Prof. Kingsfield", a
closeted Christian teaching at an elite law school. This excerpt:
"Alasdair Macintyre is right," he said. "It's like a nuclear bomb went off, but in slow
motion." What he meant by this is that our culture has lost the ability to reason together,
because too many of us want and believe radically incompatible things.
But only one side has the power. When I asked Kingsfield what most people outside elite
legal and academic circles don't understand about the way elites think, he said "there's this
radical incomprehension of religion."
"They think religion is all about being happy-clappy and nice, or should be, so they don't
see any legitimate grounds for the clash," he said. "They make so many errors, but they don't
want to listen."
To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, "at best religion is something consenting
adult should do behind closed doors. They don't really understand that there's a link between
Sister Helen Prejean's faith and the work she does on the death penalty. There's a lot of
looking down on flyover country, one middle America.
"The sad thing," he said, "is that the old ways of aspiring to truth, seeing all knowledge
as part of learning about the nature of reality, they don't hold. It's all about power.
They've got cultural power, and think they should use it for good, but their idea of good is
not anchored in anything. They've got a lot of power in courts and in politics and in
education. Their job is to challenge people to think critically, but thinking critically
means thinking like them. They really do think that they know so much more than anybody did
before, and there is no point in listening to anybody else, because they have all the
answers, and believe that they are good."
This is a small part of a larger struggle.
Many on the left deny that cultural Marxism exists, but you have in The New York
Times a column by a Marxist professor saying that yes it does, and it's a good thing, too.
His final line:
On that basis, we are destined to keep citing him and testing his ideas until the kind of
society that he struggled to bring about, and that increasing numbers of us now desire, is
finally realized.
Marx didn't come from nowhere. The world of 1848 (when the Communist Manifesto appeared) is
a lot like our own world; re-read the section above from that document and see how familiar it
sounds. He was more or less right in his diagnosis of the revolutionary nature of capitalism,
but his materialism and its relationship to human nature was catastrophically wrong. His
thought may have resulted in mass murder, but it is clearly not dead; it is simply turned
against culture, not the means of production.
Therefore, I'll end here with this excerpt from Carlo Lancellotti's recent
Commonweal essay about Marx, culture, and Catholicism. Excerpt:
Contra the "Catholic Left," which tended to regard Marx's atheism as accidental, and tried
to rescue his socio-political analysis from his religious views, Del Noce concluded that what
Marx proposed was not just a new theory of history or a new program of political economy, but
a new anthropology , one completely different from the Christian tradition. (Louis
Dupré had made a similar argument in the pages of Commonweal ; see "Marx and Religion: An
Impossible Marriage," April 26, 1968.) Marx viewed humans as "social beings" entirely
determined by historical and material circumstances rather than by their relationship with
God. He viewed human reason as purely instrumental -- a tool of production and social
organization rather than the capacity to contemplate the truth and participate in the divine
wisdom. Finally, Marx viewed liberation as the fruit of political action, not as a personal
process of conversion aided by grace. Marxist politics was not guided by fixed and absolute
ethical principles, because ethics, along with philosophy, was absorbed into politics. Del
Noce concluded that there was no way to rescue Marx's politics from his atheism, which had as
much to do with his view of man as with his view of God.
Nonetheless, after World War II Marxism experienced a resurgence in Western Europe, not
only among intellectuals and politicians but also in mainstream culture. But Del Noce noticed
that at the same time society was moving in a very different direction from what Marx had
predicted: capitalism kept expanding, people were eagerly embracing consumerism, and the
prospect of a Communist revolution seemed more and more remote. To Del Noce, this
simultaneous success and defeat of Marxism pointed to a deep contradiction. On the
one hand, Marx had taught historical materialism, the doctrine that metaphysical and ethical
ideas are just ideological covers for economic and political interests. On the other hand, he
had prophesied that the expansion of capitalism would inevitably lead to revolution, followed
by the "new man," the "classless society," the "reign of freedom." But what if the revolution
did not arrive, if the "new man" never materialized?
In that case, Del Noce realized, Marxist historical materialism would degenerate into a
form of radical relativism -- into the idea that philosophical and moral concepts are just
reflections of historical and economic circumstances and have no permanent validity. This
would have to include the concept of injustice, without which a critique of capitalism would
be hard, if not impossible, to uphold. A post-Marxist culture -- one that kept Marx's radical
materialism and denial of religious transcendence, while dispensing with his confident
predictions about the self-destruction of capitalism -- would naturally tend to be
radically bourgeois. By that, Del Noce meant a society that views "everything as an
object of trade" and "as an instrument" to be used in the pursuit of individualized
"well-being." Such bourgeois society would be highly individualistic, because it could not
recognize any cultural or religious "common good." In the Communist Manifesto, Marx
and Engels described the power of the bourgeois worldview to dissolve all cultural and
religious allegiances into a universal market. Now, ironically, Marxist ideas (which Del Noce
viewed as a much larger and more influential phenomenon than political Marxism in a strict
sense) had helped bring that process to completion. At a conference in Rome in 1968, Del Noce
looked back at recent history and concluded that the post-Marxist culture would be "a society
that accepts all of Marxism's negations against contemplative thought, religion, and
metaphysics; that accepts, therefore, the Marxist reduction of ideas to instruments of
production. But which, on the other hand, rejects the revolutionary-messianic aspects of
Marxism, and thus all the religious elements that remain within the revolutionary idea. In
this regard, it truly represents the bourgeois spirit in its pure state, the bourgeois spirit
triumphant over its two traditional adversaries, transcendent religion and revolutionary
thought."
If Del Noce is correct, we may not have to worry about the cultural Marxists of our time
taking total power, as consumer capitalism and its comforts will compromise their revolutionary
spirit. When and if university presidents start kicking these bumptious brats out of college,
the revolution will sputter like Occupy Wall Street did. But before it's all over, they may end
up destroying the institutions and ways of life that make life stable and meaningful. Then
again, unrestrained capitalism has done the same thing. The problem with Marxism is that it
burns the boats so that nobody can return, and calls the resulting fire enlightenment.
The warning is twofold: First, that cultural Marxism is a real thing willing and capable of
doing real damage, and that you cannot negotiate with these people; and second, that unless
capitalists figure out how to ameliorate the excesses of market and technological change on
society, they are tempting fate, just as their 19th and early 20th century forebears did.
UPDATE: Reader Dave:
The bigger problem with the NYT piece that you either missed or didn't feel added to your
thesis is the irony that Marx's critiques are seen as a good and carrying that forward
cultural Marxist critiques are good, unless you are critiquing those critiques. You aren't
allowed to critique arguments from BLM or La Raza or LGBTQXYZ groups or etc because taking a
critical eye to those groups is just hateful bigoted nonsense. Never mind that those groups'
manifestos generally don't hold up to scrutiny, just accept it as a means to an end (even if
that end isn't really where we should like to be). In a world where there is no objective
truth and all individuals' "truths" are valid there is no basis culture or society. But you
can't bring that up, lest you be labeled an insensitive bigot who should be burned at the
stake. My guess is if Marx were revived today he would be ashamed more of the intellectual
rot his philosophy has spawned than he would over the millions of innocents dead.
Significantly left of center, "hard left", may only describe 20-25% of the U.S.
population, but in certain geographic areas, they control virtually all of the political
levers of government. Seattle for instance.
Seattle. Right. The domain of corporate liberalism on steroids. Hard left. Uh-huh. I won't
ask what you've been smoking, because I think its congenital.
should read "Goldman bankers aren't interested in funding class consciousness"
Much better and more accurate than removing "not" from the original. Thank you.
Marx was a smart guy, but too smart. It was really really weird the older I got and the more
I found out about recurring class struggles and sometimes riots and even revolutions, again
and again, in ancient Greece and Rome. There's so much documentation, over centuries, that it
seems pretty obvious to me that there's nothing significantly new about Marxism at all, it's
just a slightly more complex manifestation of a permanent phenomenon: inequality. Can
anything be done about it? Nothing, you just have to idealize "equality" and KNOW inequality.
"... The U.S. military presence in Syria is illegal, and the same would be true of any occupying force provided by U.S. clients. Instead of looking for a substitute occupation force or maintaining one of our own, the U.S. should accept that controlling any part of Syria is not worth the costs and risks that go along with it. ..."
The Trump administration is struggling to assemble a coalition of Arab military forces to
replace U.S. troops battling Islamic State militants in eastern Syria, a roadblock that could
indefinitely delay President Trump's goal of pulling American forces out of the country, U.S.
officials said.
Allies in the region are deeply skeptical about sending their troops -- and many are even
reluctant to contribute funds -- to help stabilize cities and towns liberated from Islamic
State, according to senior U.S. officials, if the United States intends to pull out, as Trump
has threatened.
It comes as no surprise that these governments have no interest in taking Trump up on this
offer. Each of them has other more pressing concerns than policing parts of Syria, some have no
interest in opposing the Syrian government, all of them are ill-equipped for the task at hand,
and it would be a terrible mistake to invite these governments to occupy Syrian territory in
any case. That doesn't mean that the U.S. has to keep its forces in Syria, but it should remind
us how useless our clients are to the U.S.
The U.S. military presence in Syria is illegal, and the same would be true of any
occupying force provided by U.S. clients. Instead of looking for a substitute occupation force
or maintaining one of our own, the U.S. should accept that controlling any part of Syria is not
worth the costs and risks that go along with it. The U.S. has no business fighting in
Syria, and it has no authority to keep its forces there, so a complete withdrawal from Syria is
the only appropriate and legal course of action open to the U.S.
"... However the declining U.S. with massive debt, a hollowed out manufacturing capability, an unsustainable health care model and a Ponzi scheme financial engineering Levithan that generates nothing of actual tangible value is still a very dangerous animal. ..."
"... Because it still has only superior capability, it's War Machine. And the big danger to the planet is the parasitic and deluded Power Elite franchise in Washington that militarizes EVERY element of foreign policy activity. The U.S. response to concerted and coordinated economic activity by China and its Eurasian partners can only be war-mongering. Because other than that, the U.S. will have no other leverage. ..."
Remove the North Korea crisis from Asia and the Trump administration has the needed
bandwidth to contain Beijing's aspirations.
Fat chance. China will continue with its BRI and AIIB initiatives. It will continue to
lash-up with Russia and its EAEU to create a pan-Eurasian economic architecture in which the
U.S. is largely economically irrelevant. Especially when hard asset pricing is decoupled from
the dollar.
And China now has a huge supply of highly trained (many in the U.S.) scientists and
engineers. Russia and Europe also have highly skilled technologists making Eurasia
self-sufficient in both natural resources and technology development.
The U.S. will be eventually shut out. Because dealing with the Global Cop Gorilla in any
context is more trouble than it's worth.
However the declining U.S. with massive debt, a hollowed out manufacturing capability, an
unsustainable health care model and a Ponzi scheme financial engineering Levithan that
generates nothing of actual tangible value is still a very dangerous animal.
Because it still has only superior capability, it's War Machine. And the big danger to the
planet is the parasitic and deluded Power Elite franchise in Washington that militarizes
EVERY element of foreign policy activity. The U.S. response to concerted and coordinated
economic activity by China and its Eurasian partners can only be war-mongering. Because other
than that, the U.S. will have no other leverage.
The U.S. driven into the ditch by the Power Elite Parasites and Neocon War-mongers will
get its clocked cleaned in the next 10 years no matter what. North Korea is merely background
noise.
If you ever wanted a condensed example of the kind of blithe solipsism and wish-thinking that
passes for thinking among our "international relations" "scholars", I don't think you could
do much worse than this silly paragraph:
In many respects, nothing should scare China more, as America, and specifically the
Trump administration, has never been fully capable of taking on the challenges presented by
Beijing thanks to Pyongyang and its growing nuclear arsenal. China has taken full advantage
of Washington's wandering eye, putting itself in position to dominate the South China Sea,
further subjugate Taiwan, and try to develop a stronger position in the East China
Sea.
All you saps who think that China's greater prominence might be a consequence of its
culture, its history, its recent extraordinary economic growth -- wrong! Turns out it all
hangs on North Korea and its mighty Brooklyn-size GDP! And that means .
Remove the North Korea crisis from Asia and the Trump administration has the needed
bandwidth to contain Beijing's aspirations.
All this, and daffodils will cover the meadows again, once Pyonyang comes around, gets its
mind right. Simple!
It should surprise absolutely nobody that the guy who wrote this inanity is behind "The
National Interest", which daily publishes all kinds of sophistry generally aimed at getting
Americans to wade into the "crisis" du jour . Sooner or later Trump will be a bad
memory, but Kazianis and his ilk will still be there, as firmly embedded in the Beltway veins
as any tick.
"... "Since the WTO was created in the mid-90s, the U.S. has run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and among the organization's biggest beneficiaries -- the EU." ..."
"Together," President Macron instructed President Trump, "we can resist the rise of
aggressive nationalisms that deny our history and divide the world."
In an address before Congress on Wednesday, France's Macron denounced "extreme nationalism,"
invoked the UN, NATO, WTO, and Paris climate accord, and implored Trump's America to come home
to the New World Order.
"The United States is the one who invented this multilateralism," Macron went on, "you are
the one now who has to help preserve and reinvent it."
His visit was hailed and his views cheered, but on reflection, the ideas of Emmanuel Macron
seem to be less about tomorrow than yesterday.
For the world he celebrates is receding into history.
The America of 2018 is coming to see NATO as having evolved into an endless U.S. commitment
to go to war with Russia on behalf of a rich Europe that resolutely refuses to provide for its
own defense.
Since the WTO was created in the mid-90s, the U.S. has run $12 trillion in trade deficits,
and among the organization's biggest beneficiaries -- the EU.
Under the Paris climate accord, environmental restrictions are put upon the United States
from which China is exempt.
As for the UN, is that sinkhole of anti-Americanism, the General Assembly, really worth the
scores of billions we have plunged into it?
"Aggressive nationalism" is a term that might well fit Napoleon Bonaparte, whose Arc de
Triomphe sits on the Champs-Elysees. But does it really fit the Hungarians, Poles, Brits,
Scots, Catalans, and other indigenous peoples of Europe who are now using democratic methods
and means to preserve their national homes?
And the United States would seem an odd place to go about venting on "aggressive
nationalisms that deny our history."
Did Macron not learn at the Lycee Henri IV in Paris or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration
how the Americans acquired all that land?
General Washington, at whose Mount Vernon home Macron dined, was a nationalist who fought
for six years to sever America's ties to the nation under which he was born.
How does Macron think Andrew Jackson acquired Florida from Spain, Sam Houston acquired Texas
from Mexico, and Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor acquired the Southwest? By bartering?
Aggressive nationalism is a good synonym for the Manifest Destiny of a republic that went
about relieving Spain of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
How does Macron think the "New World" was conquered and colonized if not by aggressive
British, French, and Spanish nationalists determined to impose their rule upon weaker
indigenous tribes?
Was it not nationalism that broke up the USSR into 15 nations?
Was not the Zionist movement that resurrected Israel in 1948, and in 1967 captured the West
Bank and then annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, a manifestation of aggressive
nationalism?
Macron is an echo of George H.W. Bush who in Kiev in 1991 warned Ukrainians against the
"suicidal nationalism" of declaring independence from the Russian Federation.
"Aggressive nationalisms divide the world," warns Macron.
Well, yes, they do, which is why we have now 194 members of the U.N., rather than the
original 50. Is this a problem?
"Together," said Macron, "we will build a new, strong multilateralism that defends pluralism
and democracy in the face of ill winds."
Macron belongs to a political class that sees open borders and free trade thickening and
tightening the ties of dependency, and eventually creating a One Europe whose destiny his crowd
will forever control.
But if his idea of pluralism is multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural nations, with a
multilateral EU overlord, he is describing a future that tens of millions of Europeans believe
means the deaths of the nations that give meaning to their lives.
And they will not go gently into that good night.
In America, too, millions have come to recognize that there is a method to the seeming
madness of open borders. Name of the game: dispossessing the deplorables of the country they
love.
With open borders and mass migration of over a million people a year into the USA, almost
all of them from third-world countries that vote 70 to 90 percent Democratic, the left is
foreclosing the future. They're converting the greatest country of the West into what Teddy
Roosevelt called a "polyglot boarding house for the world." And in that boarding house the left
will have a lock on the presidency.
With the collaboration of co-conspirators in the media, progressives throw a cloak of
altruism over the cynical seizure of permanent power.
For, as the millions of immigrants here legally and illegally register, and the vote is
extended to prison inmates, ex-cons, and 16-year-olds, the political complexion of America will
come to resemble San Francisco.
End goal: ensure that what happened in 2016, when the nation rose up and threw out a
despised establishment, never happens again.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
Let's remember, it was nationalism that led German, Japan and Italy into the two world wars.
Like everything, nationalism is not absolutely good or absolutely bad.
European nationalism that led them to colonize other weaker countries was not a good
thing. Nationalism that led the colonized countries to fight for independence was a good
thing.
The current rising of nationalism is not a good thing because it is often bound up with
white nationalism, a belief that the non-whites are inferior people undeserving of care and
happiness.
While I understand the anxiety of White people for losing their power of dominance,
multiculturalism is a future that can't be rolled back no matter how much they long for the
past white homogeneity. Because technology that made our world smaller and flatter can't be
uninvented.
I agree the West can't absorb all the immigrants who want to find new life in the West.
The solution is not to shun the immigrants and pretend they don't exist. The solution is to
acknowledge their suffering and their need for a stable home and help them build that at
their home countries.
Biologically, it is known that our genes get stronger with more diversity, that community
gets weaker with too much in breeding. So is our strength as a people, culturally,
philosophically, spiritually and creatively.
Another nice notion on the mis/abuse of the world nationalism from Mr. Buchanan. From a
Central European perspective, however Macron's alleged multilateralism as presented in
Washington is just a pretence peddled for the media – teaming up with Angela Merkel
(more specifically, with Germany's economic strength), Macron pretty much insists on reining
in the rebellious Visegrad 4 politically, without the slightest interest in reaching a
mutually beneficial compromise with them.
Pat points to Macron's globalist trade babble to Congress answers:
"Since the WTO was created in the mid-90s, the U.S. has run $12 trillion in trade
deficits, and among the organization's biggest beneficiaries -- the EU."
President Trump's economic nationalist/fair trade agenda can fix this problem.
It strikes me that both France and Germany have large enough populations, economies and
technical know-how to produce effective modern fighting forces. Second, given the size of EU,
it is clear that the EU, if it could get its act together, would be capable of projecting
force in the world on an equal playing field with the United States.
The European Leaders appeals to Trump to pursue European interests in American foreign
policy are simply pathetic. If Europe has foreign interests, they will only be able to
protect and insure them if they retake their sovereignty and independence on the world
stage.
Europe can, and I suspect Europe will, because their problem is not just Trump and whether
he is impeached or re-elected, it is that European interests are being held hostage to the
American Electorate, which can and will return a Cowboy to the Presidency long after Trump is
gone.
I don't see how, given the developments with the Iran Deal, as well as other frictions,
that the NATO alliance can remain standing. None of the above reflections are particularly
ideological, and it seems impossible that Merkel and Macron couldn't entertain such
thoughts.
Europe can, and inevitably will, declare independence from the Americans, and I see NATO
unraveling and a new dawn of European "multilateralism" taking its place.
Nationalism and Multiculturalism cannot coexist separately, they're in tendsion as we all try
to balance the scales.
Without the benefit of nationalism, the Koreas would not have done what they just did. My
own "ethnic people" are the minority of 1.2 million Hungarians who live in Romania, who have
lived there for centuries and will not leave their homeland except many of them do, like my
parents did, and many of my other relatives and friends–the number was 1.5 million not
too long ago, and I was estimating 1.8, but man, we are dwindling. Only 1.2 million! That
shocks me. Nationalism keeps us alive. But if that's all we had, then the Romanians would be
totally nationalistic too, and they will forcefully seek to curtail minority rights,
language, culture, and slowly choke us out. That's the nationalist philosophy on
minorities.
That's your philosophy, and you're saying what will happen here is liberals will slowly
turn the country into San Francisco. You make the same error as my friend in another thread.
You cannot compare a city and its politics to a province or a country, or to any territory
that contains vast farmlands.
Pat, you are saying that it's possible for the entire Byzantine Empire to take on the
precise political complexion of the walled city of Constantinople. That city cannot feed
itself, it's not a self-contained social or political entity.
The roiling cities of San Francisco/Bay Area and glorious Constantinople are and were
completely and totally dependent on the countryside, and thus, on the politics the rurals
tend to practice. The rurals need to feel the effects of city politics too.
No city anywhere is self-contained, and most cities are more liberal than their
hinterlands, so should we do away with cities?
You can see it as symbiotic or some kind of yin and yang tension, however you prefer. But
one is good and the other is evil? I don't buy that.
I'm pretty sure I should say ALL cities are more liberal then the surrounding countrysides
which feed them. After all, the city is really just the most commonly known major local
market, which the villages eventually form organically. One village in particular stands out,
and the neighbors start flocking more and more to its market, some decide to move there and
contribute even more to the good energy, and voila, the first city is soon born.
Then it takes on pride, and starts thinking it's superior to the "rubes." It isn't. I was
lucky enough to get my foundations in a village, I know its incredible efficiency and
_conservative_ values and lifestyle, but trust me, there's plenty of drunkenness and scandal,
even among the sainted rubes who raised me.
Keep slapping down the cities, Pat, but don't exaggerate the threat, no self-supporting
society on Earth could live the way those freaks live in San Francisco, or Constantinople,
that's a fact.
My apologies, I know I go on a little long sometimes:
I am an American now, and America is my "us," I don't have mixed political allegiances,
just cultural ones. I don't live in my original homeland anymore. The choice to leave wasn't
mine, though.
If I had a choice to leave my country of origin, the land I was raised in and find
familiar–and I have been in America since age twelve, so I do see it as home and very
familiar–I would be daunted. Speaking as an average American adult, I know that moving
to another English-speaking and equally advanced country is complicated enough for the
average American. Imagine uprooting and going to a foreign land whose language you don't know
yet, where everything is a lot more expensive. Try getting a job there. Let's say you have no
college degree. Try it. I wouldn't want to.
Immigrants are tough as nails, I'm sorry to say. You have no chance against them,
actually. You cannot even conceive of the willpower and trials by fire. Most people quite
understandably can't fathom it, unless they actually try it or see it with their own
eyes.
"... But even before that there was the first Iraq war in 1991, justified in part by the story of Iraqi soldiers reportedly dumping babies out of incubators to die in a Kuwaiti hospital. The 15-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador cleverly lied to a set-up congressional committee. The Christian Science Monitor ..."
Official Washington and those associated with it have misrepresented the facts numerous
times in the service of military actions that might not otherwise have taken place. In the
Middle East, these interventions have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians,
brought chaos to Iraq and Libya, and led to the expulsion of a million Christians from
communities where they have lived since biblical times.
The most famous of these episodes, of course, was the U.S. government's assurance to the
world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which formed the basis for the 2003
U.S. invasion of Iraq. The government also insisted Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, bolstering the
call to war. Of course neither was true.
But even before that there was the first Iraq war in 1991, justified in part by the story of
Iraqi soldiers reportedly dumping babies out of incubators to die in a Kuwaiti hospital. The
15-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador cleverly lied to a set-up congressional
committee. The Christian Science Monitor
detailed this bizarre episode in 2002.
There were also the lies about the Iraqi army being
poised to invade Saudi Arabia. That was the ostensible reason for the U.S. sending troops
to Kuwait -- to defend Saudi Arabia. Writing in the the Los
Angeles Times in 2003, Independent Institute fellow Victor Marshall pointed out that
neither the CIA nor the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency viewed an Iraqi attack on Saudi
Arabia as probable, and said the administration's Iraqi troop estimates were "grossly
exaggerated." In fact, the administration's claim that it had aerial photographs proving its
assertions was never verified because, as we later learned, the photos never existed. The
Christian
Science Monitor also reported on this in 2002 ahead of the second Iraq war.
America attacked Iraq in 1991, bombing and destroying that nation's irrigation, sanitation,
and electricity plants. (See here regarding Washington's knowledge of and
planning for the horrific mass contamination of Iraqi drinking water.) Then we blockaded
reconstruction supplies for nine years while some half-million children died of disease and
starvation. We blamed it all on Saddam, although we controlled Iraq's money flows through the
UN food-for-oil program. Fortunately, we have a rare admission by Madeleine Albright on 60
Minutes about what was done.
Before that, there was the Kosovo war when America attacked Serbia on the basis of
lies that 100,000 Kosovans had been
massacred by Serbs in suppressing their civil war. This led to massive American bombing,
brutally
destroying much of that nation's civilian infrastructure and factories, including most of
the bridges in the country, and all but one of those over the Danube River. The Americans
imposed peace, then expelled most Serbs out of their former province. Subsequently there was
the mass destruction of hundreds of ancient Christian churches and the creation of a European
enclave now filled with Saudi money that sponsors Wahhabi education, with its rote memorization
of the Koran and its 13th-century hatred of Christians.
More recently there was the British, French, and American attack on Libya in response to
lies that Moammar Gaddafi was planning to massacre civilians in Benghazi. The U.S. destroyed
his armed forces and helped to overthrow him. Widespread looting of his weaponry subsequently
filled black markets in Asia and Africa and contributed to the ability of Boko Haram terrorists to sow chaos in
Nigeria and parts of Northern Africa. Masses of African refugees have been flooding Western
Europe ever since, traveling through Libya. Some of those weapons also made their way into the
hands of the Islamic State, which overran parts of Iraq and Syria.
Most recently we had cable news inundating us with stories of a new poison gas attack in
Syria. The "news" came from rebel sources. TheAmerican Conservative
has published a detailed analysis by former arms inspector Scott Ritter questioning the
evidence, or lack of it, that the Assad regime initiated the attack. The former British
ambassador to Syria also cast doubts on the poison gas attack and its sources from rebel
organizations.
It doesn't make sense that Assad would use poison gas just as Trump was saying that he
wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. It does make sense for the rebels to have staged a
set up to get America to stay and attack Assad. This happened before in the summer of 2014 when
President Obama nearly went to war over similar accusations. Only after asking Congress to vote
on the matter did he decide against the attack because Congress wasn't interested. Some
congressmen's mail was running 100-to-one against bombing. It was a welcome reminder of why
Washington doesn't want actual votes on starting wars: because most Americans don't want more
Washington wars.
After all the hundreds of thousands of innocents abroad killed by America and the human
misery caused because of clever U.S. and foreign manipulations, one would think we might pause
before attacking Syria and running the risk of killing Russians who are advising the Syrians.
That could ignite an entirely new kind of war with a nuclear-armed Russia -- all without
congressional approval.
Obama, whose policies were predicated on the view that Assad must go, seemed to think
Syrians would live happily after in some magically sprouting democracy. To believe this one
would have to ignore the prior examples of Iraq and Libya. Nor do these war party advocates
seem in the least concerned about the 10 percent of Syria's population who are Christians, many
of whom would surely by massacred after any overthrow of Assad.
Further, the so-called Free Syrian
Army is a hodgepodge of rebel groups that include many Islamist radicals. With funding from
fundamentalist Saudis and Turkey, they took over from more liberal forces early on. It's worth
noting also that Turkey provided the black market for ISIS to sell Syria's captured oil.
Going back a hundred years there were the clever British lies that helped coax America into
joining the Allies in World War I. England controlled the trans-Atlantic cables and most of our
"news" about the war. That intervention resulted in the Treaty of Versailles instead of a
compromise peace between Germany and England/France that would have prevented the wreckage of
Europe out of which came the rise of communism and Nazism.
For an analysis of the risks of accidental nuclear war, see my 2017 January
Publisher's Report , in which I once wrote about how Osama bin Laden's ultimate aim was to
get Russia and America to destroy each other. It still could happen, triggered by false
atrocity stories, cable TV's 24-hour hyping of any and every threat, and Washington's
propensity to believe lies -- and sometimes perpetrate them -- to promote wars.
Jon Basil Utley is publisher of The American Conservative .
Lies can be fun, especially the ones I tell myself, and they're also a lot of fun to
discover, just like your lies. The worst bummer, however, is that the lies we tell each other
very quickly do get tiresome and repetitive, if not downright frustrating:
"Oh My God, It's Still The Same Lies. That Makes It Worse."
Apparently–and this is tragic–it looks like we're just too selfish to come up
with new ones: Say what, you want me to lie the country into war in some fascinating novel
way, just for your entertainment? I don't think so. It's easier to stick to the routine, and
I'm lazy, so I'll just do as you do, I'll keep telling you the same old lies, which explains
why you are bored as well–meanwhile, I spend my quality time investigating all the ways
I hide things from myself.
Wars are little more than armed robberies on an industrial scale.
Wars are begun, to take what belongs to someone else.
The sheer magnitude of a crime transforms it into heroic achievement – at least, in
historical perspective, for the winners, as long as they retain power. In the long run, the
consequences are malignantly pernicious.
The United States isn't being manipulated into war.
The only manipulation is of American public opinion- fortunately for the War Party,i.e. the
US government, there's enough blind nationalism & tribal loyalty on both sides of the
political divide for their propaganda to (usually) succeed.
Look at any public figure. Their salary is less than $190K. BUT, They are worth $10 Million
or more. That is why we go to war. Foreign influence (Saudi and Israel) as well as the
Military Industrial Complex. (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, )Our Leaders are paid off!
Now that the war profiteering classes and their retainee camp followers are running into the
problem that more and more citizens are prepared to doubt, if not outright dismiss – if
just on principle – their claims and anonymous trickyleaks regarding "secret evidence"
and elusive "proof", the Democratic Party has become an eager handmaiden to the neolibcon con
of projecting all that justified and overdue doubt and dissent – distrust to
unaccountable power – and the citizens' frustration with their corrupt representative
and dysfunctional institutions – on, you know it Russia!
So now that we stop accepting government claims by default – something no reasonable
citizen should ever do, on principle – we are denounced as "gullible" –
projection at its best – and as "useful idiots" of some Kremlin mirage that happens to
be a mirror image of our own government's betrayals at its worst. Once dissent has been
"discredited" by claiming it could not possible have any other cause except uninformed and
misled voters – see the published responses to Sanders and Trump supporters – and
could, of course, not have any merit, the next step is to make sure that our "democracy" is
safeguarded even more against "populists" – those that speak truth to power, not those
that lie blatantly to claim power for themselves – and the unruly mob in the streets
that questions the establishment, the wholly owned elites, and the oligarchic owners of our
very own autocratic franchise.
That is the progression – from being lied into war, whether we believe the BS or
not, to being denounced as useful idiots or traitors if we dare to doubt the BS we are being
fed, to being disenfranchised under the pretext of protecting the franchise.
The biggest obstacle to establishing a precedents under international law to obtain UN
General Assembly consensus for intervention in the inner affairs of a nation- in response
crimes committed by the government of that nation – is the US, because the US has acted
as a rogue nation for decades, and has eroded the international order to the point where the
"allied" governments of Germany and other EU states think nothing of "supporting" those acts
of aggression, and post-colonial wannabe powers like the UK and France have joined the US
"coalition of the willing". That "international order" will fall unless the US finally leads
by example and commits itself to uphold the UN Charter – and its own Constitution
– in letter and spirit. Until then, there is nothing we can do to help those that
suffer under the yoke of what are, under our current international order, legitimate
governments of sovereign nation.
The US cannot assert and pursue primacy and unipolar super-sovereignty over every other
nation on this planet and at the same time claim to uphold the principles of sovereign
states, and nobody will be able to redefine or constrain the rule of sovereign states within
the existing international order as long as what little order we have claim to is being set
aside and ignored wholesale by any nation that can get away with it, with the US and the
so-called "West" in the lead.
We cannot lie our way to life, liberty and justice, not for ourselves, and certainly not
on behalf of others, especially if we do not hesitate at all to make those we claim to help
and "protect" pay the ultimate price for our acts of aggression. These are indeed the most
dishonest and offensive words in the English language: "We are from the US government, and we
are here to help." The "responsibility to protect" is nothing but another attempt to address
the necessity to pretend.
"because most Americans don't want more Washington wars."
I wish this was true. But I doubt it. The citizens must be held partially responsible for our
era of permanent war.
" most Americans don't want more Washington wars."
Actually, most Americans don't care, really. Oh, you ask one if he likes war, and he will
say, "No". But ask him if Uncle Joe should lose his job at Boeing, and what will he say?
Wars are, of course, a jobs program on a massive scale. And if some dark-skinned civilians
die, Americans aren't concerned.
My own theory of hawkishness is that voters are much more comfortable with putting
national defense in the hands of someone far more hawkish then themselves, than in the hands
of someone slightly less hawkish.
See, for example, how people who theoretically wan lower taxes, smaller government, and a
balanced budget, keep electing GOP leadership that always attacks their Democratic opponents
on gutting defense spending (even when defense spending has been going up), and always
equates larger DOD budgets with more "security" for Americans.
Until voters are willing to accept a US President saying "bad stuff happens in other parts
of the world – we can't control everything" we'll keep getting more and more wars.
"because most Americans don't want more Washington wars."
I wish this was true. But I doubt it. The citizens must be held partially responsible for our
era of permanent war."
I've found my elderly mother is very enthusiastic about our overseas wars. I believe it is
because she somehow projects America's ability to bully the rest of the world onto herself.
She is a small woman and she recently purchased a pickup. She raves about how she can
tailgate people and they will get out of her way.
" my elderly mother is a small woman and she recently purchased a pickup. She raves about how
she can tailgate people and they will get out of her way."
What a great country! Where else do you have elderly drivers with poor eyesight and slow
reflexes trying to navigate 5000 pound trucks while harassing other drivers at 50mph?
"Where else do you have elderly drivers with poor eyesight and slow reflexes trying to
navigate 5000 pound trucks while harassing other drivers at 50mph?"
I can say from experience and the related stories of others, one very recent and sad
--
cyclists don't stand a chance.
-- -- -- -- -- -
"Until voters are willing to accept a US President saying "bad stuff happens in other
parts of the world – we can't control everything" we'll keep getting more and more
wars."
World gone wrong when we agree -- things must be really be SNAFU.
Echoing Professor Nerd & balconesfault & Kent. It's certainly true that Lockheed
Martin, the Israel lobby, our Saudi "friends", et al have a ton of influence, and use
it for ends that I'd call malign. But for at least the last 20 years we've been living in a
world in which it's effortless to find information contrary to the latest war marketing PR
campaign. When Bush the Lesser was getting ready for his war, did any of his
hysterical claims last even a week before it was discredited? But off to war we went.
It'd be nice if we could blame all of our lousy decisions on those wily Zionists and Arabs
and Russians, but the causes seem to lie a little closer to home .
"... The common good "cannot be reduced to the goods of individual private parties, and cannot be deduced from them. Just as the sum of the parts does not make up the whole, in the same way the sum of private interests may sometimes work even against itself it is the state that represents the common good." Isn't this something we can learn from in the West today? ..."
"... Russia's "[Christian] Orthodox spirit and the ethic of solidarity ..."
"... Like the Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church has recently forged its own Social Concept of the ROC, which fleshes out this call for fairness as an aspect of human dignity. ..."
"... The City of Man ..."
"... Among Russia's virtues, it must be emphasized, is a far greater freedom of speech than it is typically given credit for. Russian participants in the Kaliningrad conference demonstrated a boldness of imagination, a variety and depth of thought on alternate futures for their country that is by no means always evident in political speech even in the United States. ..."
"... The author would like to thank Dr. Adrian Walker, Matthew Cooper and especially Dr. Matthew Dal Santo for their valuable suggestions and comments on an earlier draft. ..."
"... Paul Grenier is an essayist and translator who writes regularly on political-philosophical issues. ..."
A
staunchly traditional society grapples with modernity's disruptions, seeking conservatisms far
beyond Putinism.
It's a truism that America is a liberal place. Americans emphasize the importance of the
individual and tend to reject notions of hierarchy and authority. Russia by contrast is known
to be a more conservative society, one where the interests of the group come ahead of those of
the individual; and where, for centuries, respect for hierarchy and authority has usually been
the norm.
All the same, the "news" of Russia's return to conservatism has hit many observers in the
West like the proverbial ton of bricks. The typical response has been to
blame the Russian president for steering Russia away from the liberal path, the path of
becoming a "
normal country" with "Western values."
Others have sought to understand Russian political culture on its own terms. A recent
analysis ("The New Eurasians," Times Literary Supplement , May 13, 2015) stands out
from the crowd by making a serious effort to read present-day Russian conservatism in its
historical context. Lesley Chamberlain dismisses the glib reduction of Russia to its
present-day leader. Russia, she writes, is not ruled by Vladimir Putin: to the contrary, "the
power that rules Russia is tradition." Far from it being the case that a benighted Russian
public is being led to conservatism artificially by its government, the reverse is the case:
the vast majority of Russians, perhaps eighty percent "are intensely conservative."
Like most in the commentariat, Chamberlain finds cause for alarm in Russia's return to type.
She worries about a Russia seeking to create "an alternative version of the contemporary
Christian, or post-Christian, world, contiguous with but distinct from the West."
Chamberlain reduces today's incarnation of Russian conservatism to the more or less vague
bundle of geographic and neo-imperial notions that goes by the name Eurasianism, often linked
with the name of Alexander Dugin.
To be sure, anti-Western Eurasianism is part of contemporary Russian conservatism.
But it is only one part. Excessive focus on this angle has created the impression that
Dugin-esque Eurasianism is the only game in town when it comes to Russian conservatism. It
isn't. It's not even the only version of what might be called the 'Russian national greatness'
school of conservatism.
If we wish to understand Russia in something like its true complexity, we have to take the
trouble to listen to it, to let it speak in its own voice instead of constantly projecting onto
it all our own worst fears. Precisely because Eurasianism has already hogged all the attention,
I won't deal with it here.
... ... ...
Liberal Conservatism
Some participants straddled several categories of conservatism at once. In other cases, for
example that of the above-mentioned Makarenko, their thought fit neatly within a single
category -- in his case, that of liberal conservatism.
For Makarenko, modern Russian political practice has far too utilitarian an attitude toward
rule of law and democracy. If it can be demonstrated that the latter support state sovereignty,
then all is well and good; but whenever either are perceived as a threat to the state -- then
democracy and rule of law are always the ones that have to suffer. From his perspective, Russia
would do better to learn from Burke, who looked not so much to the sovereignty of the
state as to the sovereignty of the parliament .
Matveichev, no doubt the most eclectic thinker in the group, on certain subjects occupied
the liberal end of the spectrum. For example, in an essay on corruption and the state, he
approvingly cites the work of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto to make the point that rule
of law -- as it is practiced, nota bene , in the United States -- is the sine qua
non of economic prosperity. What I found fascinating about Matveichev's position is that
he then takes his argument in a Hegelian and Platonic direction.
It is the state -- not the market on its own -- that provides these all important
forms , and bad as the corruption of state institutions may be, a bad form is
nonetheless better than no form at all -- including for business. The common good "cannot
be reduced to the goods of individual private parties, and cannot be deduced from them. Just as
the sum of the parts does not make up the whole, in the same way the sum of private interests
may sometimes work even against itself it is the state that represents the common good." Isn't
this something we can learn from in the West today?
Left Conservatism
The "left conservatives" at the conference -- represented most prominently by Dr. Alexander
Schipkov, an expert on Church-state relations -- are critical of liberal capitalism
and indeed are also critical of the current Russian state to the extent that its "conservatism"
is reducible merely to "family values" without including the all-important component of
economic fairness. His views are close to that of Catholic Distributists as well as to those of
"radical orthodox" theologians like William Cavanaugh and John Milbank.
According to Schipkov, Russians of various backgrounds (left and right, secular and
religious, red and white) need to forge a common ethic. But in truth, Russia already
has such an ethic, one that unifies all the disparate phases in its often tragic and
contradictory history. Consciously playing off of Weber, Schipkov refers to Russia's
"[Christian] Orthodox spirit and the ethic of solidarity ." In a fascinating essay on
this same subject, Schipkov makes clear that his concept of solidarity owes much to the
writings of the early 20th century German philosopher Max Scheler, who likewise had such a big
impact on the thought of Pope John Paul II.
Though the Russian Church continues to play a defining role in the ethical formation of the
nation -- no other pre-1917 institution, after all, still exists -- over time it will be
replaced by other institutions, according to Schipkov. Like the Catholic Church, the
Russian Orthodox Church has recently forged its own Social Concept of the ROC, which fleshes
out this call for fairness as an aspect of human dignity.
Creative Conservatism
Because it tends to evoke the disastrous social and economic effects of "liberalisation"
during the 1990s, the term "liberal" has become something of a swear word in today's Russia.
But what, exactly, does this much reviled "liberalism" consist in? In my own presentation
(English translation forthcoming at SolidarityHall.org ) I suggested that Russians need to define
liberalism -- and conservatism -- more carefully, while distinguishing both from their
ideological perversions.
To his credit, Oleg Matveichev has taken the trouble to craft a precise definition of the
liberal doctrine of human nature in terms worthy of a Pierre Manent ( The City of Man
). According to Matveichev, liberalism reconceives the very essence of man as freedom,
self-sufficiency, and self-definition. Seen through this liberal prism, the goal of our
existence becomes self-emancipation from the chains of the past and the dead weight of
tradition.
Having redefined the meaning of history, Matveichev continues, the "liberals" then set about
condemning those who would thwart its "progress," dismissing them as "conservatives" and
"reactionaries." Is it not time, Matveichev asks, to throw off the chains of this label
invented for us by our adversaries? Why define ourselves as mere "conservatives"? Why not
creatively reimagine an alternative 'meaning of history" ourselves?
Can conservatism be "creative?" And if so, how? Mikhail Remizov, president of the National
Strategy Institute, answered, in effect, "how can it be anything else?" Critics on the left
sometimes attack conservatism by saying, that conservatives do not preserve tradition, they
invent it. Remizov dismisses the implied insult, because it demonstrates a misunderstanding of
how traditions work: (re)invention " is the normal, creative approach to tradition." Remizov
agrees with Hans-Georg Gadamer that sharply contrasting tradition and modernity is a silly and
flat-footed way of looking at tradition, because the latter is always in any case a complex
creative task of making adjustments and dialectical zig-zags. Such an understanding of culture
and tradition as creativity fits, of course, quite nicely with the philosophy of
Nicholas Berdyaev. It is hard to think of another thinker for whom creativity plays a more
central role.
Alexei Kozyrev, associate dean of the philosophy department at Moscow State University,
illustrated the same creative conservative principle when he spoke of the Russian Orthodox
Church's Social Concept. The task of modern man, according to that document, is to find
creative ways to retrieve the thought of the Church Fathers, for example that of Gregory of
Nyssa, who counseled demonstrating our human dignity "not by domination of the natural world
but by caring for and preserving it." The Social Concept likewise calls for defending the
dignity of the unborn embryo and of the mentally ill. Here, in an unexpected twist, the Western
environmental movement meets the pro-Life movement, challenging perhaps our own ideological
boundaries.
... ...
Dialogue with Russia?
Lesley Chamberlain claimed that Russia is not a puzzle. In fact that is precisely what it
is. As should be clear even from the above very partial survey, Russian conservatism, like
Russia itself, embraces a contradictory collection of flaws and virtues. Both the flaws and the
virtues are large.
Among Russia's virtues, it must be emphasized, is a far greater freedom of speech than
it is typically given credit for. Russian participants in the Kaliningrad conference
demonstrated a boldness of imagination, a variety and depth of thought on alternate futures for
their country that is by no means always evident in political speech even in the United
States.
For Western liberals, it is tempting to present Russian conservatism as always intrinsically
dangerous. But I believe the loss is ours. Russian conservatism -- or at any rate important
elements of it -- contains something potentially valuable to the West as it seeks to forge a
strategy for dealing with the growing disorder in the world. What justifies engagement with
Russia is before all else its ability to contribute to solving the problem that all of us face:
how to devise a softer version of western modernity, one which allows for the preservation of
tradition while simultaneously retaining what is most valuable in the liberal
tradition.
The author would like to thank Dr. Adrian Walker, Matthew Cooper and especially Dr.
Matthew Dal Santo for their valuable suggestions and comments on an earlier draft.
Paul Grenier is an essayist and translator who writes regularly on
political-philosophical issues.
The presumption amongst Russian conservatives is not that Russia is perfect as it is but
that Russia's foundational values are good. This is something they have in common with
American conservatives, British Conservatives like Peter Hitchens, and probably most
conservatives in most societies. They would also lament their social ills.
I am not going to accuse you of not having read the article, but that comment of yours
could easily have been made by someone who simply read the title and jumped to the comments
section.
The author's point on free speech is an important one – there is a lot of very deep and
open discussion in Russia at the moment about the country's direction (including even
television debates with ten times the intellectual content of what we find in the States).
Putinism is not a clear ideological system, and for the most part there is no official
orthodoxy being pressed on scholars or the public, many currents exist. Most of the major
viable currents, as this article suggests, are variants of conservatism; Western-style
liberal democracy has (at the moment) lost nearly all it's appeal to the intelligentsia and
the average person alike.
Re: Jon F's comment – unfortunately, in my view he is right. We shouldn't believe
that Russia is a place of thriving family values simply because they say it more often and
louder. Statistics are not the best way to see this – I personally believe (from
experience in the capital and the provinces) that if Russians divorce less, they cheat more.
If they have fewer abortions, they have more children born into undesirable childhoods.
Russian conservatism does have its virtues and the country must to admire, but respect for
women and children are far from a given.
The tendency to see Russia in black/white only, with a pre-imposed bias is no different than
the tendency to see the US (and sometimes the west) and its values in similar manichean
perspectives. Adding depth and colour to the other takes work, and especially the willingness
to empathise, even for a little while, in order to gain more understanding, before employing
a critical eye. And from this perspective I think the article does a good job.
W. Burns: I don't recall that specific issue raised at the conference, but the Revolution and
subsequent experience is much debated, including in other writings by the participants, e.g.
by Shchipkov (his preferred spelling btw, not my Schipkov), whose take is much like that of
Berdyaev: the communist experience is in partial continuity with aspects of Russia's
tradition, e.g. of economic 'fairness' (equalizing plots on the peasant commune, etc.) and
privileging the group over the individual. I started with the analysis by L. Chamberlain in
part because her wide lens-perspective helps make sense of that experience.
David Naas and Cornel Lencar: I wish there were more who shared your perspective. Thanks.
Regarding Russian values vs. practice, aspirations vs. real-world problems. Who among us is
without sin? Is U.S. practice so pristine that we should disdain talking to the Russian side?
That is the material point.
Since the conference I have continued reading the work of these (and other conference)
attendees meant for a Russian audience. They are very, very far from smug about their
internal problems; quite the contrary.
Dave P.: As far as I know, the conference Proceedings so far are only in Russian, but there
are pretty detailed English-language abstracts. Try contacting ISEPR (their site, ISEPR.ru,
also has an English-language version).
Paul has made reclaiming Congress' role in matters of war one of his signature issues.
Pompeo testified before the Foreign Relations Committee that he doesn't think the president
needs Congressional authorization to order attacks on other states. Trump's nominee thinks that
the president can start wars on his own authority, so Paul should be voting against his
nomination for that reason alone. Voting to confirm Pompeo is an effective endorsement of the
very illegal and unauthorized warfare that Paul normally condemns.
"Instead, Paul will get nothing except widespread derision for caving to pressure. "
Depressing. I thought he'd have more guts. Perhaps he's keeping his ammunition dry for
some important purpose, and maybe the White House IOU he now holds has value. We'll see.
I have disliked Sen. Paul ever since the British Petroleum disaster, when he bemoaned that
making BP pay for damages was "anti-business" as if seafood fisheries, motels, and
restaurants were not businesses too.
Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme here, and to Peterson it is not
necessarily even a primary goal.
His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers don't get it.
Notable quotes:
"... Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering) ..."
"... You will suffer. Accept that, and shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude. ..."
His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers
don't get it.
"Aphorisms," wrote James Geary, "are like particle accelerators for the
mind." When particles collide inside an accelerator, new ones are formed as the energy of the
crash is converted into matter. Inside an aphorism, it is minds that collide, and what spins
out is that most slippery of things, wisdom.
... ... ...
These reviewers have done a disservice to their readers. In large measure, they have failed
to engage with a work that is complex, challenging, and novel. Peterson is sketching out a
draft for how we can survive, look in the mirror, and deal with psychological pain.
To understand his message, the first task is not to be distracted by the title or genre, and
look for the metaphorical glue that binds it all together. 12 Rules sets out an
interesting and complex model for humanity, and it really has nothing to do with petting a cat
or taking your tablets or being kind to lobsters. It is about strength, courage,
responsibility, and suffering, but it is deep and difficult, and it is not easy to pigeonhole.
In a sense, 12 Rules contains a number of hidden structures and hidden processes, and
confusingly, these are not always made explicit in the text.
The first of these is Deep Time.
We are biological creatures, evolved beings who can only be truly understood through a model
that encapsulates the notion of geological time. The concept of Deep Time is very recent: just
a few generations ago science thought that the earth was a few thousand years old. The
realization that the planet has been around for billions of years and that life itself not much
younger has brought about a shift in the story of ourselves and our place in the world. We are
the products of processes that are old, old, old. We stretch back across unfathomable reaches,
incomprehensible spans, but we carry that history within us.
... ... ..
Unlike almost every modern book in the self-help genre, happiness is a not a major theme
here, and to Peterson it is not necessarily even a primary goal. Like Freud, Peterson sees life
as suffering. Pain is its one incontrovertible fact (he remarks at one point that it is a
miracle that anything in the world gets done at all: such is the ubiquity of human suffering). 12 Rules is not about the pursuit of pleasure, and indeed parts of his message are
pure Stoicism. Resistance to life's depredations is futile. You will suffer. Accept that, and
shift your focus to the one thing that is within your control: your attitude.
...
His much-derided directive to "tidy your room" makes sense at every level. Indeed, if your room
is too big, start with "tidy your desk," and then move forward. Find meaning in the tiniest
acts of kindness, and push on from there. Concede the transience of pleasure and the
inevitability of death. This isn't happiness, but it is a step closer to the Good Life, and
contra the reviewers, readers are responding. Active, purposeful "Being in the World" is the
dominant theme, and much of the book is taken up with exploring the whys and wherefores of
this. Courage and strength and kindness, yes, to be sure, but importantly, courage "in spite
of" and kindness "in spite of."
Following Carl Rogers, meaning is to be found in active
engagement in a wondrous and hazardous world, and here there is no shirking the "hazardous." It
seems to me that Peterson is calling for a return to ataraxia , that imperturbability
and equanimity that has been out of fashion amongst the intelligentsia (at least in the West)
for a century or more.
The underlying political philosophy is conservative, without question. As Christian Gonzalez
identified in TheAmerican Conservative , Peterson's closest contemporary
equivalent is Roger Scruton. "We have learned to live together and organize our complex
societies slowly and incrementally, over vast stretches of time," he writes, "and we do not
understand with sufficient exactitude why what we are doing works."
Peterson on the American
culture wars sounds like Scruton on the English Common Law: we are "from the soil," we need
time, it is senseless to break what we barely understand. Each person's private trouble cannot
be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous. Those
left-leaning critics who see "just another reactionary" have failed to understand the
complexity. What permeates this project is an implicit biopsychosocial model of the
human condition (Peterson spares the reader that dread term but it is the only description I
know for his integrative model).
... ... ...
Tim Rogers is a consultant psychiatrist in Edinburgh. He's written for Encounter
magazine, and has published in both Quillette and Areo .
Looks like Iran is Carnage for Bolton and neocon fellow travelers in Trump administration
such as Haley and Pompeo.
Notable quotes:
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly." ..."
"... Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington, D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler . ..."
Last week, John Bolton ascended to the office of National Security Advisor, following in the
hurried footsteps of Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster. Two peculiar characteristics set Bolton
apart from most folks in D.C.: an unabashedly luxurious
mustache and an unmatched penchant for unjustified preemptive violence.
At the University of Chicago in 2009, Bolton warned
, "Unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran's program, Iran will have
nuclear weapons in the very near future." Thankfully, Israel didn't take Bolton's advice and,
as most predicted, Iran never lived up to his expectations. Similarly, in a 2015 op-ed in the
New York Times , Bolton opined ,
"The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will
sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure . Time is terribly short,
but a strike can still succeed." Three short months later, a non-proliferation deal wherein
Iran agreed to a 98 percent reduction in its enriched uranium stockpile and a 15-year pause in
the development of key weapons infrastructure was negotiated.
More recently in February, Bolton advised in
the Wall Street Journal that "Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea,
we should not wait until the very last minute . It is perfectly legitimate for the United
States to respond to the current 'necessity' posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking
first."
By this point Bolton's record of calling for war in every possible situation had lost the
ability to shock. Still, the Founding Fathers would probably be appalled.
A comparatively irenic vision pervades the philosophy of the founders. James Wilson, in his
Lectures on Law, wrote that when a nation
"is under an obligation to preserve itself and its members; it has a right to do everything"
that it can "without injuring others." In Federalist 4, John Jay
advised that the American people ought to support steps that would "put and keep them in
such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it." And in
his Farewell Address, George Washington asserted that the United States should be "always
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."
A preemptive nuclear strike justified on the flimsy basis of "gaps in U.S. intelligence"
hardly seems concordant with such military restraint and "exalted justice." And lest it be
thought these ideals were mere lofty notions, consider how, as American history proceeded, they
became enshrined in American diplomacy.
In 1837, Canadian rebels sailing aboard the Caroline fled to an island in the
Niagara River with the help of a few American citizens. British forces boarded their ship,
killed an American member of the crew, and then set the Caroline ablaze before forcing
it over Niagara Falls. Enraged, American and Canadian raiders destroyed a British ship. Several
attacks followed until the crisis was at last ended in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In
the aftermath, the Caroline test was established, which stipulates that an attack made in
self-defense is justifiable only when, in the words of Daniel Webster, the necessity is
"instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." This
principle remains the international standard, though some like Bolton think it's outdated.
With the Caroline test in mind, Bolton wrote while
arguing in favor of a preemptive strike against North Korea, "The case against preemption rests
on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile
times." In other words, Bolton believes that we can no longer afford to wait for the situation
to be "instant" and "overwhelming," and makes an offense out of abstaining from immediate
preemptive action, regardless of the potential costs involved.
Relatedly, one of Bolton's most colorful jabs at President Obama involved likening him to
Æthelred the Unready, a medieval Anglo-Saxon king remembered for his tragic
indecisiveness. Yet given the costs of groundless preemption, indecisiveness is often a midwife
to careful contemplation and peace. Had Prime Minister Netanyahu or Obama been persuaded by
Bolton's retrospectively warrantless calls for preemption in Iran, tragedy would have
followed.
In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a
conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and
invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was
neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power
and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the
Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at
seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly."
In order that we never find ourselves standing alongside Scipio knee-deep in unjustly spilt
blood, Bolton should reconsider whether the flimsy merits of rash preemption truly outweigh the
durable wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the lessons of history.
Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington,
D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler .
During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers
corresponded to birth dates.) As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations' decisions
to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve
unit became a way to avoid service in the Vietnam War. Before graduating from Yale in 1970,
Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than wait to find out if his draft
number would be called. (The highest number called to military service was 195.) He saw
active duty for 18 weeks of training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November
1970.
After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army
Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.[1]
He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast
Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." In an interview, Bolton
discussed his comment in the reunion book, explaining that he decided to avoid service in
Vietnam because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that
opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no
great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to
take it away from."
Why is it that the US leads the world in production of chicken-hawks? Even these mangy
ex-colonial countries like the UK and France do not have as many chicken-hawks as we do.
Comparing Obama to Athelred is absurd. Athelred's problem was not that he was indecisive, but
rather that he refused to listen to advice from anyone (the moniker "Unready" actually meant
"Uncounseled" in Old English) and that he was extremely impulsive and deeply bigoted. Hence
he ordered a general massacre of the Danes in England. Luckily it was only carried out in a
limited region, unluckily the victims included the King of Denmark's sister and her children,
leading to an open blood feud war, and also cost Aethelred any support he might have had from
his wife's kinsman, the Duke of Normandy. If anyone is a good match for old Aethelred, it's
Donald Trump.
Trump became a despicable warmonger. That true. And undisputable after the recent attack on
Syria ("operation Stormy Daniels"). But was it War Party that coerced him or were other processes
involved?
The main weakness of Buchanan hypothecs is that it is unclear wether Trump was coerced by War
Party, or he was "Republican Obama" from the very beginning performing classic "bait and switch"
operation on gullible electorate (as in "change we can believe in") . The second hypothesis is
now strong then the fist and supported by more fact. just look at the "troika" of
Haley-Bolton-Pompeo -- all three were voluntarily selected by the President and all three are
rabid neocons. So it looks liek no or little coercion from the War Party was necessary.
Notable quotes:
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Defense Secretary James Mattis called the U.S.-British-French attack a "one-shot" deal. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appears to agree: "The rest of the Syrian war must proceed as it will." ..."
"... Clearly, with the U.S. fighting in six countries, Commander in Chief Trump does not want any new wars, or to widen any existing wars in the Middle East. But he is being pushed into becoming a war president to advance the agenda of foreign policy elites who, almost to a man, opposed his election. ..."
"... We have a reluctant president being pushed into a war he does not want to fight. This is a formula for a strategic disaster not unlike Vietnam or George W. Bush's war to strip Iraq of nonexistent WMDs. ..."
"... The assumption of the War Party seems to be that if we launch larger and more lethal strikes in Syria, inflicting casualties on Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Syrian army, they will yield to our demands. ..."
"... As for Trump's statement Friday, "No amount of American blood and treasure can produce lasting peace in the Middle East," the Washington Post ..."
April
16, 2018, 9:55 PM "Ten days ago, President Trump was saying 'the United States should
withdraw from Syria.' We convinced him it was necessary to stay."
Thus boasted French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, adding, "We convinced him it was
necessary to stay for the long term."
Is the U.S. indeed in the Syrian Civil War "for the long term"?
If so, who made that fateful decision for this republic?
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley confirmed Sunday there would be no drawdown of the 2,000 U.S.
troops in Syria, until three objectives were reached. We must fully defeat ISIS, ensure
chemical weapons will not again be used by Bashar al-Assad and maintain the ability to watch
Iran.
Translation: whatever Trump says, America is not coming out of Syria. We are going deeper
in. Trump's commitment to extricate us from these bankrupting and blood-soaked Middle East wars
and to seek a new rapprochement with Russia is "inoperative."
The War Party that Trump routed in the primaries is capturing and crafting his foreign
policy. Monday's Wall Street Journal editorial page fairly blossomed with war
plans:
The better U.S. strategy is to turn Syria into the Ayatollah's Vietnam. Only when Russia
and Iran began to pay a larger price in Syria will they have any incentive to negotiate an
end to the war or even contemplate a peace based on dividing the country into ethnic-based
enclaves.
Apparently, we are to bleed Syria, Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran until they cannot stand the
pain and submit to subdividing Syria the way we want.
But suppose that, as in our Civil War of 1861-1865, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and
the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949, Assad and his Russian, Iranian, and Shiite militia allies
go all out to win and reunite the nation.
Suppose they choose to fight to consolidate the victory they have won after seven years of
war. Where do we find the troops to take back the territory our rebels lost? Or do we just bomb
mercilessly?
The British and French say they will back us in future attacks if chemical weapons are used,
but they are not plunging into Syria.
Defense Secretary James Mattis called the U.S.-British-French attack a "one-shot" deal.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appears to agree: "The rest of the Syrian war must
proceed as it will."
The Journal 's op-ed page Monday was turned over to former U.S. ambassador to Syria
Ryan Crocker and Brookings Institute senior fellow Michael O'Hanlon: "Next time the U.S. could
up the ante, going after military command and control, political leadership, and perhaps even
Assad himself. The U.S. could also pledge to take out much of his air force. Targets within
Iran should not be off limits."
And when did Congress authorize U.S. acts of war against Syria, its air force, or political
leadership? When did Congress authorize the killing of the president of Syria whose country has
not attacked us?
Can the U.S. also attack Iran and kill the ayatollah without consulting Congress?
Clearly, with the U.S. fighting in six countries, Commander in Chief Trump does not want
any new wars, or to widen any existing wars in the Middle East. But he is being pushed into
becoming a war president to advance the agenda of foreign policy elites who, almost to a man,
opposed his election.
We have a reluctant president being pushed into a war he does not want to fight. This is
a formula for a strategic disaster not unlike Vietnam or George W. Bush's war to strip Iraq of
nonexistent WMDs.
The assumption of the War Party seems to be that if we launch larger and more lethal
strikes in Syria, inflicting casualties on Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Syrian army,
they will yield to our demands.
But where is the evidence for this?
What reason is there to believe these forces will surrender what they have paid in blood to
win? And if they choose to fight and widen the war to the larger Middle East, are we prepared
for that?
As for Trump's statement Friday, "No amount of American blood and treasure can produce
lasting peace in the Middle East," the Washington Post on Sunday dismissed this as
"fatalistic" and "misguided." We have a vital interest, says the Post , in preventing
Iran from establishing a "land corridor" across Syria.
Yet consider how Iran acquired this "land corridor." The Shiites in 1979 overthrew a shah
our CIA installed in 1953. The Shiites control Iraq because President Bush invaded and
overthrew Saddam and his Sunni Baath Party, disbanded his Sunni-led army, and let the Shiite
majority take control of the country. The Shiites are dominant in Lebanon because they rose up
and ran out the Israelis, who invaded in 1982 to run out the PLO.
How many American dead will it take to reverse this history?
How long will we have to stay in the Middle East to assure the permanent hegemony of Sunni
over Shiite?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
"... "This is clientism," the senior military officer with whom I spoke explains. "All of these guys have served together and trust each other. And, you know, this is the way it works. The U.S. Central Command has the Middle East as a client and the European Command has the Europeans and Turkey as clients. But if you take a look at Mattis and the people around him, well, you know, it's all Centcom. ..."
"... Erdogan emphasized three growing concerns he has that America's temporary and "transactional" support for the YPG is becoming permanent. This same official went on to note that, in his opinion, it's not a coincidence that Trump floated the idea of withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria ("I want to get out," he said. "I want to bring our troops home") -- a suggestion that did not go over well with Centcom partisans at the Pentagon. ..."
In fact, just how "ugly" the relationship has become is fast becoming a matter of public
debate. During his March visit, Scaparrotti appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee
to give testimony on the challenges facing his command. While most members focused on Russia
and cyberwar issues, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine explored the U.S.-Turkey dust-up, hinting that
it might be time for the U.S. to dampen its YPG ties. Scaparrotti didn't disagree, while
soft-pedaling the disagreements over the issue that he's had with Votel and Centcom. "Where do
we want to be in a year, two years and five years?" he asked. "With a close NATO ally like
Turkey, we know that we want to maintain and strengthen our relationship. So that's the
long-term objective and if we look at the long-term objective, it can begin to inform what
we're doing today with respect to NATO." The senior military officer with whom I spoke proved a
willing translator: "What Scaparrotti is saying is that the real marriage here is between the
U.S. and Turkey. The YPG is just a fling."
But convincing James Mattis of that is proving difficult, in part because Scaparrotti is
outgunned. Every defense secretary surrounds himself with people he can count on and who he
listens to. But for Mattis almost all of them have had experience in the Middle East -- and at
Centcom. There's Mattis himself (a former Centcom commander), JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford (who
served with Mattis in Iraq), Joint Staff Director Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, Jr. (a
Marine who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq), retired Rear Admiral Kevin M. Sweeney (the
former Centcom executive officer), Rear Admiral Craig S. Faller (a Mattis advisor, and a Navy
commander during both the Afghan and Iraq wars), and current Centcom commander General Joseph
Votel -- the former commander of the U.S. Special Operation Command ("a trigger puller," as he
was described to me by a currently serving officer). Votel is the most outspoken YPG supporter
of any of them, and because he's the combatant commander, his support carries weight.
"This is clientism," the senior military officer with whom I spoke explains. "All of
these guys have served together and trust each other. And, you know, this is the way it works.
The U.S. Central Command has the Middle East as a client and the European Command has the
Europeans and Turkey as clients. But if you take a look at Mattis and the people around him,
well, you know, it's all Centcom. So Scaparrotti is worried, and he ought to be. We don't
want to be sitting around 30 years from now reading historical pieces with titles like 'Who
Lost Turkey?'"
Even someone as careful in his public utterances as Admiral James Stavridis, who once held
Scaparrotti's command and is now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, is
raising concerns. While he waves off the "who lost Turkey" formulation as "a trope that is
moving around the Internet," he told me in an email exchange that "it would be a mistake of
epic proportions to allow Turkey to drift out of the transatlantic orbit" -- a repeat of the
warning issued by Scaparrotti to Mattis in March. But like Scaparrotti, Staviridis is
slow-rolling his disagreement. "This is a distinction without a difference," the senior officer
and NATO partisan with whom we spoke says. "By drifting out of NATO, Stavridis means leaving.
He's as worried as anyone else."
Concerns over Turkey are probably a surprise in the White House, given its almost daily
crisis over the looming Russia-gate investigation, but they shouldn't be. The president has had
extended telephone exchanges with Turkish President Tayyip Erodogan twice in the last three
weeks. While the White House has refused to give details of these conversations, the Turkish
official with whom we spoke told TAC that in both conversations (on March 23 and again
on April 11), Erdogan emphasized three growing concerns he has that America's temporary and
"transactional" support for the YPG is becoming permanent. This same official went on to note
that, in his opinion, it's not a coincidence that Trump floated the idea of withdrawing U.S.
troops from Syria ("I want to get out," he said. "I want to bring our troops home") -- a
suggestion that did not go over well with Centcom partisans at the Pentagon.
On April 3, the same day Trump issued his let's-get-out statement, Joseph Votel and Brett
McGurk appeared at the U.S. Institute of Peace, arguing that the U.S. needed to stay in. "The
hard part, I think, is in front of us," Votel said, "and that is stabilizing these areas,
consolidating our gains, getting back to their homes. There is a military role in this," he
went on to say. "Certainly in the stabilization phase."
The Votel appearance was exasperating for those worried about NATO's future, and for those
concerned that the endless conflicts in the region are draining the defense budget of badly
needed funds to rebuild U.S. military readiness. For them, a group that now includes a growing
number of very senior and influential military officers, "stabilization" is not only a codeword
for "nation building," it signals support for a mission that is endangering the future of NATO,
the institution that has guaranteed peace in Europe for three generations.
"It's not worth it," the senior military commander who spoke with TAC concludes. "On
top of everything else, it puts us on the wrong side of the political equation. This whole
thing about how the enemy of my enemy is my friend is a bunch of bullshit. The enemy of my
enemy is now making an enemy of our friend. I don't know who we think we're fooling, but it
sure as hell isn't Turkey. And it isn't the American people either."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a contributing editor to The American
Conservative, and the author of The
Pentagon's Wars (2017).
"Monica styles"... Trump is fighting fore survival with Tomahawks trying to solve his problem
with junfoism.
Notable quotes:
"... "[I]f this president can decide unilaterally to bomb Syria, I worry that he can make the same decision about North Korea or Iran or other nations. And these decisions are not supposed to be made without consultation and voting by Congress." Unfortunately, Congressional leaders have shown no signs of wanting to hold a debate or have a vote before the attack takes place. ..."
"... The Trump administration has not offered a public legal justification for last year's strikes, and it seems unlikely to offer one this time. That is probably because there is no plausible interpretation of the law that permits the president to initiate hostilities against foreign governments on his own when the U.S. has not been attacked. ..."
"... Daniel Larison is a senior editor at ..."
"... where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the ..."
"... Front Porch Republic, and ..."
"... . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter . ..."
One year since the U.S. illegally launched 59 cruise missiles at Syrian government forces in
response to an alleged chemical weapons attack, the Trump administration is preparing to take
similar military action despite an increased risk of escalation that could lead to the start of
a wider war.
The U.S., France, and Britain have been
preparing to strike the Syrian government over the last several days, and Syria's Russian
patron has threatened the "gravest consequences" in response to an attack. Russia didn't
respond to last year's one-off airstrikes, but Moscow isn't likely to tolerate a larger U.S.
attack carried out with other governments. Syria's government and its allies seem more willing
to
fight back than they were a year ago, and that should give the Trump administration and our
European allies pause. There is a greater risk of great power conflict erupting in Syria than
there has been at any time since the end of the Cold War, and if Russian military personnel are
killed by U.S. or allied strikes there is no telling how quickly things could deteriorate there
and in other parts of the world.
President Trump's public statements have strongly suggested that an attack will be happening
soon, going so far as to
taunt Russia on Twitter that they should "get ready" for the "new" and "smart" missiles
that the U.S. would be using. Some members of Congress have insisted that the president lacks
the legal authority to launch an attack on Syria without their authorization. As Sen. Tim Kaine
(D-Virginia)
put it , "[I]f this president can decide unilaterally to bomb Syria, I worry that he
can make the same decision about North Korea or Iran or other nations. And these decisions are
not supposed to be made without consultation and voting by Congress." Unfortunately,
Congressional leaders have shown no signs of wanting to hold a debate or have a vote before the
attack takes place.
The Trump administration has not offered a public legal justification for last year's
strikes, and it seems unlikely to offer one this time. That is probably because there is no
plausible interpretation of the law that permits the president to initiate hostilities against
foreign governments on his own when the U.S. has not been attacked. There is no provision
in international law that allows a U.S. attack on another government without explicit Security
Council authorization, and we know that this authorization that will never be forthcoming in
this case because of Russia's veto. While the attack is being sold as the enforcement of a norm
against chemical weapons use, it isn't possible to uphold an international norm while violating
the most fundamental rule of international law.
To date, the U.S. and its allies have presented no definitive evidence to support their
claims against the Syrian government. It is entirely plausible that the Syrian government is
guilty of using chlorine or sarin against its enemies and the civilian population, but there
has been no real effort on the part of the U.S. and its allies to prove their accusation before
deciding to act as executioners. Regardless, the U.S. and its allies have no authority to
punish the Syrian government, and in doing so they may do significant harm to international
peace and security.
A U.S.-led attack on the Syrian government could lead to war with Russia or Iran or both at
once, and there is also a danger that it could help set off a war between Israel and Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said earlier this week that Israel would not "allow" an Iranian military presence to be
established in Syria. The prime minister's threat came on the heels of Israeli strikes inside
Syria that reportedly killed seven Iranians serving alongside the Syrian regime's forces. Iran
has threatened retaliation for the attack, and it has the ability through Hizbullah to make
good on that threat if Israel carries out additional strikes. Israel might use a U.S.-led
attack on Iran's allies in Syria as an excuse to strike more Iranian targets, and Iran might
then respond in kind with missile attacks on Israel. Lebanese, Syrian, and Israeli civilians
would all suffer if that happened, and it would make an already chaotic international situation
even worse.
It is a measure of how divorced from U.S. and allied security our Syria policy has become
that our government is seriously preparing to launch another illegal attack on a government
that hasn't attacked us and doesn't threaten us or our allies. Attacking the Syrian government
won't make the U.S. or any other country more secure, and it will likely weaken the government
just enough to prolong Syria's civil war and add to the suffering of the civilian population.
It is a perfect example of a military intervention that is being done for its own sake with no
connection to any discernible interests or strategy. No one stands to gain from such an attack
except for the ideologues that have incessantly demanded deeper U.S. involvement in Syria for
the last six years.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published
in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Front Porch Republic, and
The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. Follow him on
Twitter .
"... Cohen acknowledged that he paid porn star "Stormy Daniels" $130,000 two weeks before the 2016 election in exchange for her staying silent about her 2006 affair with Trump. No one pays for silence unless there is something to hide. The payment was made 10 years after the alleged dalliance. ..."
"... The obvious purpose was to influence the outcome of the election by concealing damaging information about Mr. Trump's character. That made Mr. Cohen's payment an undisclosed campaign "contribution" to Mr. Trump vastly exceeding the individual statutory limit of $2,700. ..."
"... Maybe you should have picked an example where the defendant wasn't acquitted. It's easy to see how an expansive definition of the term "campaign contribution" could be dangerous. ..."
So what of these charges against Cohen and could they really hurt the president?
Federal election laws define a campaign contribution as "anything of value given to
influence a Federal election." It is common knowledge that Mr. Cohen acknowledged that he paid
porn star "Stormy Daniels" $130,000 two weeks before the 2016 election in exchange for her
staying silent about her 2006 affair with Trump. No one pays for silence unless there is
something to hide. The payment was made 10 years after the alleged dalliance.
The obvious
purpose was to influence the outcome of the election by concealing damaging information about
Mr. Trump's character. That made Mr. Cohen's payment an undisclosed campaign "contribution" to
Mr. Trump
vastly exceeding the individual statutory limit of $2,700.
Similarly, Democrat John Edwards was prosecuted (later acquitted) for soliciting and
spending nearly $1 million in his 2008 presidential campaign to conceal his affair with Rielle
Hunter, so this is not a crime normally brushed under the rug. The public record also
establishes probable cause to believe Cohen was behind the payment of $150,000 to Playboy Bunny
Karen McDougall to kill her story about a protracted extramarital relationship with Mr. Trump
that could have torpedoed his presidential ambitions. The question remains, of course, how much
this will implicate and hurt Trump, who has denied the affair with Daniels and any other
"wrongdoing." Cohen said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed by Trump
or the campaign.
John Edwards was acquited on one charge and a mistrial on five others w/o retrial. So there
was no conviction there, these actions are not business as usual, and the DOJ lesson from
that case should have been to cease such abusive prosecutorial misconduct, not to repeat it.
These examples show why campaign finance restrictions are an unconstitutional burden on
freedom of association. Trump is a rich man, so could afford to pay the hush money if he
believed it necessary without it being a crime. As it appears, Cohen believed it important to
pay w/o asking Trump, thinking he's helping a friend. Now what of Edwards? Maybe Edwards
couldn't afford to pay hush money, so he needed and solicited help from friends. By making it
a crime for friends to help him, the law favors rich candidates like Trump that can afford to
do things others can't without breaking the law.
There is zero chance of a jury conviction here, so DOJ shouldn't have pursued it given the
incendiary effect of conducting raids on someone's attorney. Furthermore, there's zero chance
of Muller getting jury convictions on the pile of horse manure prosecutions he's pursuing.
The only convictions Muller is getting is from people buckling under the fiduciary extortion
inherent in his tactics and copping a plea even though a jury would never convict them.
Similarly, Democrat John Edwards was prosecuted for soliciting and spending nearly $1
million in his 2008 presidential campaign to conceal his affair with Rielle Hunter, so this
is not a crime normally brushed under the rug.
Maybe you should have picked an example where the defendant wasn't acquitted. It's
easy to see how an expansive definition of the term "campaign contribution" could be
dangerous.
President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Defense
Secretary Mattis. (DoD) On Sunday, President Trump
announced his intention to make those responsible for an alleged chemical weapons attack on
Douma, including the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies, pay a "big price"
for their continued disregard for international law. The next day U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Nikki Haley declared
that "The United States is determined to see the monster who dropped chemical weapons on
the Syrian people held to account."
President
Trump reinforced his call for action on Monday, noting that the United States would not sit
back in the face of the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria. "It will be met, and it will
be met forcefully," the president said, adding that those responsible for the attack will be
held accountable, whether it was Syria, Russia, Iran or "all of them together."
Trump noted that a decision to use military force would be made "over the next 24 to 48
hours."
The pronouncements of imminent military action by the United States are not made in a
vacuum. Russia, which has considerable military forces deployed inside Syria, including
advanced military aircraft and anti-aircraft missile batteries,
has rejected the allegations of chemical weapons use by Syria as a "fabrication," and
promised that any attack on Syria would result in "serious repercussions." Russian forces
inside Syria have reportedly been placed on "full alert" as American naval
vessels capable of launching cruise missiles have arrived off the Syrian coast.
The United States and Russia appear to be heading toward a direct military confrontation
that, depending on the level of force used and the number, if any, casualties incurred by
either side, carries with it the risk of a broader conflict. While Russian (and Syrian) claims
of innocence regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack cannot be accepted at face value,
the fact that the United States has not backed up its own claims with anything other than a
recitation of accusations made by rebel groups opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad is
problematic insofar as it shows a rush to judgement on matters of war. Given the potentially
devastating consequences of any U.S.-Russian military clash over Syria, it would be better for
all parties involved to wait for a full and thorough investigation of the alleged attack before
any final decision on the use of force in response is made.
There are two versions of what happened in Douma, a suburb of Damascus home to between
80,000 and 150,000 people. The one relied upon by the United States is provided by rebel forces
opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a non-profit organization
comprised of various Syrian opposition groups funded by the Asfari Foundation and George Soros' Open Societies Foundation , at
approximately
12 p.m. the Syrian Air Force attacked the vicinity of the Saada Bakery using munitions
believed to contain "poisonous gas." The VDC cited eyewitness accounts from members of the
Syrian Civil Defense, or "White
Helmets," who described the smell of chlorine and the presence of numerous bodies assessed
to have succumbed from gas sourced to a Syrian "rocket." Later, at 7 p.m., a second air strike
struck an area near Martyr's Square, again using munitions assessed by eyewitnesses to contain
"poisonous gas." Doctors from the Syrian
American Medical Society (SAMS) described symptoms that indicated that a nerve agent had
been used. Images of victims in the locations allegedly attacked were released by a
rebel-affiliated social media entity known as the "Douma Revolution" and the "White
Helmets."
Douma is part of a larger district known as Eastern Ghouta which has, since 2012, been under
the control of various militant organizations opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad. In early February 2018, the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force, began
operations to recapture the Eastern Ghouta district. The joint Syrian-Russian offensive was as
brutal as it was effective -- by March, Eastern Ghouta had been split into three pockets of
resistance at a cost of more than 1,600 civilian dead. Two of the pockets capitulated under
terms which had the opposition fighters and their families evacuated to rebel-held territory in
the northern Syrian province of Idlib. Only Douma held out, where Salafist fighters from the
"Army of Islam" (Jaish al-Islam) refused to surrender. On April 5, the situation had
deteriorated inside Douma to the point that the rebel defenders had agreed to negotiations that
would lead to their evacuation of Douma; the very next day, however, these discussions had
broken down, and the Syrian military resumed its offensive. The air attacks described by the
VDC occurred on the second day of the resumption of hostilities.
There is a competing
narrative , however, provided by the Russian government and those sympathetic to its
position. After the breakdown of negotiations between the Douma rebels and the Russian
government on April 6, the story goes, the Syrian government offensive to liberate Douma
resumed. The Douma rebels, faced with imminent defeat, fabricated the allegations of a chemical
attack. Russia had warned of such a
provocation back in March 2018, claiming the rebels were working in coordination with the
United States to create the conditions for a massive American air attack against Syrian
government infrastructure.
Shortly after the Syrian government resumed its offensive against Douma (and after the
opposition forces publicized their allegations of Syrian government chemical weapons attacks),
the rebel resistance inside Douma collapsed, with the fighters agreeing to be evacuated to
Idlib. The
Russian military was able to dispatch units to the sites of the alleged chemical weapons
attacks and conduct a survey. According to the state-run Russian news, no evidence of a
chemical weapons attack was discovered. Representatives of the Syrian Red Crescent who claim to have
worked in Douma stated that they have seen no evidence of any chemical weapons use there,
either.
Beyond providing a competing narrative, however, Russia has offered to
open up Douma to inspectors from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons , or OPCW, for
a full investigation. This offer was
echoed by the Syrian government , which extended an official invitation for the OPCW to
come to Douma. On April 10, the
OPCW announced that it would be dispatching an inspection team "shortly" to carry out this
work. The forensic technical investigatory capabilities of an OPCW inspection team are such
that it would be able to detect the presence of any chemical agent used in Douma. While the
investigation itself would take days to conduct and weeks to process, its conclusions would,
under these circumstances, be conclusive as to the presence of any prohibited substance.
One major drawback to any OPCW investigation is its inability to assess responsibility for
the presence of any banned substances detected. In prior investigations inside Syria, the OPCW
was able to operate as part of the United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism
(JIM) , an entity specifically empowered by Security Council resolution to make such
determinations. The
mandate of the JIM was not extended , however, after Russia expressed its displeasure over
what it deemed to be the inaccurate and politicized findings regarding previous allegations of
chemical weapons use by the Syrian government. The United States has submitted a resolution to
the Security Council demanding that a new investigatory body be formed that would be able to
provide attribution for any chemical weapons attack inside Syria; whether Russia would veto
such a resolution or allow it to be passed has yet to be seen.
The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria
over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided.
This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations
would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons (thereby contradicting the
Russian claims that no such evidence was detected by its troops), and if the Security Council
passes a resolution allowing for a properly mandated investigation team, actual attribution
could be assigned.
Moreover, President Trump's rush to judgment on Syrian guilt is being done in a highly
politicized environment, coming as it does on the heels of
an FBI raid on the offices of the president's personal attorney . In times such as this, a
president is often attracted by the prospect of "looking presidential" in order to offset
personal problems (one only need to look at President Clinton's decision in August 1998 , at
the height of the Lewinsky scandal, to launch cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and
Sudan.)
If America is to place its military in harm's way, it needs to be in support of a cause
worthy of the sacrifice being asked of those who serve. Giving the OPCW time to carry out its
investigation in Syria would allow a fact-based case to be made whether military force was
justified or not, as well as support a determination of whether or not the risks associated
with the use of force were warranted. Pulling the trigger void of such information, especially
when Trump is distracted by personal political issues, is not something the American people,
nor their representatives in Congress, should tolerate.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former
Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author ofDeal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to
War .
The president also faced unsurprising pushback
from his national security team, forcing him to clarify this week that the 2,000 troops there
now will stay only until the mission to defeat ISIS, which is "coming to a rapid end," is
finished. Of course his military advisors and many of his aides disagree.
A Pentagon spokesman has warned that ISIS is looking for " any opportunity to regain momentum
." Anonymous military officers speak of fumbling the ball "
on the two yard line ." Officials tell reporters that while the group is "almost completely
defeated," a string of renewed ISIS attacks could signal a resurgence.
Regardless of the outcome in Washington, Trump's instincts on Syria deserve discussion.
Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, the operation in Syria has cost us very little blood and
treasure, at least so far. Special operations forces (SOF) and "other government agencies" ably
partnered with our largely Kurdish proxies to break the back of ISIS's nascent state. The
group's conventional military power has been destroyed. Howev er menacing officials make it
sound, it's been estimated that the Islamic State has fewer than 1,000 fighters left on the
battlefield. Mosul, its largest city, was retaken by Iraqi security forces, while its de facto
capital Raqqa was conquered by the Kurds. Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor are back in government hands.
Areas of ISIS control are tough to
even find on a map of the Syrian conflict.
For all these successes, however, we have been walking a knife's edge in Syria ever since
openly intervening there in 2014. Deconfliction with Russia has not been flawless: Turkey shot
down a Russian plane in 2015 and U.S. firepower reportedly killed hundreds of Russian
mercenaries earlier this year. That knife's edge has only gotten sharper over the past two
months, as Turkish troops invaded the Afrin region of northern Syria. Turkey's "Operation Olive
Branch" exposed the elephant in the room: America's only successful proxy, the Syrian Kurds,
are linked to Turkey's PKK, which Turkey, the European Union, and the U.S. have declared a
terrorist group. Our NATO ally is now openly at war with our Kurdish partner, as American
advisors do their best to stay off the frontline. In 2008, Vice President-Elect Joe Biden
bluntly told Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai: "Pakistan is 50 times
more important for the United States than Afghanistan." The same obvious wisdom applies in
spades to Turkey and Syria respectively.
What of the Kurds? If recent reports are to be believed, American Special Forces are
incensed they are being told to abandon a valiant, reliable battlefield ally. Squeezed
between a revanchist Turkey and a stabilized Syrian state, Syria's Kurds are not likely to keep
their independent project of Rojava. The United States declined to intervene to protect Iraq's
Kurds last year, when Iraqi forces quickly seized the Kurdish "Jerusalem," oil-rich Kirkuk,
after an abortive independence referendum. To pretend we have a greater will or ability to
protect Syria's Kurds is folly.
The Kurds should ask Vietnam's Montagnards how they fared as an American proxy, or question
the Palestinians about what they've gained from an American mediator .
Loathe though we may be to admit it, America has been a fickle friend for the majority of small
nations and peoples that have looked to her as a protector. Even many of our Afghan
interpreters who served in American uniforms and cashed American paychecks have been
abandoned to their enemies . Like a serial philanderer we can pretend that this time will
be different, but the reality is that America seldom has the patience or stomach for sustained
non-existential military intervention outside our hemisphere, particularly when casualties
mount. The victims of pretending otherwise are seldom Americans; they are Vietnamese, Somalis,
Iraqi Marsh Arabs, and many others. The current state of political polarization in Washington
and the primacy of the 24-hour news cycle have only hardened this long-standing reality.
Left to their own devices, Syria's Kurds can probably work out a modus vivendi with Assad's
government, which has other battles to fight and foreign backers of its own who would like to
draw down their commitments. Battles between the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces and
Assad's Syrian Arab Army have been few. Turkey has tolerated a Kurdish autonomous region on its
border with Iraq -- but it will not do so with Kurds who remain affiliated with the PKK.
Regardless of Rojava's fate, ISIS may well regenerate. It already has the local ties and
financial network
to thrive as an insurgency in western Iraq. That, however, is a governance and security problem
for Iraqis and Syrians, not Americans. The United States maintains an unparalleled ability to
project military power and destroy targets around the world, both with standoff firepower and
by putting troops into battle via air and sea. Should ISIS or another Salafist successor build
any real base of power again in the Levant we can rapidly deploy combat power to destroy it.
But staying there any longer remains a fool's errand.
Gil Barndollar served as a Marine infantry officer from 2009 to 2016. His writing has
appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette , the Journal of Military Operations , and the Michigan
War Studies Review .
"I don't like "abandoning an ally" like this, but that alliance was never going to be long
lasting, and the Kurds have to have known that."
Yes. As a parting gesture, we could round up some of the louder-mouthed neocons and ship
them over to "independent Kurdistan" to spend a few quiet hours with their erstwhile heroes.
Let the Kurds vent their entirely understandable anger out on those who lied to and
manipulated them with the same glib ease that they once lied to America about Iraq's
WMDs.
'Mosul, its largest city, was retaken by Iraqi security forces, while its de facto capital
Raqqa was conquered by the Kurds. Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor are back in government hands.'
I'd like to correct a couple of things, ISIS was destroyed in Syria, by the Syrian Arab
Army, and by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Mosuls and Raqqa were not 'retaken' or 'conquered'.
They were utterly destroyed by aerial bombardment, which is about the only thing we are good
at doing.
"... Trump's statement is a particularly stupid piece of revisionism on his part. Trump was opposed to Obama's threatened attack in 2013 , and then as president Trump ordered an illegal military attack on the Syrian government one year ago to punish it for an alleged chemical weapons attack. ..."
"... The danger in having an ongoing illegal military presence in Syria is that it exposes U.S. forces to unacceptable and unnecessary risks and creates the possibility of escalation with the Syrian government and its allies. If Trump orders another illegal attack on the Syrian government or the forces of any of its supporters, it could easily trigger a larger conflict. Russia has given an explicit warning against a U.S. attack this time, saying that it could trigger "the gravest consequences." Even if it doesn't lead to a larger conflict with a nuclear-armed major power, it isn't worth taking the risk for the sake of policing the conduct of a foreign civil war. ..."
"... If Trump were really interested in extricating the U.S. from war in Syria, he would not be engaged in mindless saber-rattling against the Syrian government and its allies. Unfortunately, Trump's bellicosity always seems to take over in these situations. That is what we get from Trump's anti-restraint foreign policy. ..."
"... But the odd thing is, the most stable and invested country in the region is Iran. Crazy as it might sound to an Iran-hater-dead-ender, the country we should be chatting with about Syria is Iran. If we genuinely cared about anything humanitarian. The two countries with the most likely influence over Bashar with the aim of mitigating his violence would likely be Iran and Russia. If we wanted to actually accomplish something we could quietly and diplomatically arrange that chat and encourage some beneficial influence there. ..."
"... If Assad is really the brute that the West portrays him to be he would have been toppled by now. That the Syrian population by and large has stood by him in 6 years of war should tell you something. I make a point to get most of the news about Syria from Christian organisations who live there – and they are all unequivocal. They are now beyond livid of what the US and its allies has allowed and even facilitated to happen there. Tthankfully for them they still have the Syrian Arab Army and Russia to protect them unlike their brethren in Iraq, one of the oldest Christian communities in existence which has been practically wiped out thanks to America's intervention. ..."
"... Clinton ignored the Russian objections to the West's unilateral recognition of Balkan breakaways. Bush, Saakashvili and the usual entourage of the neocon meddler travelling circus that nowadays haunts the Ukraine dismissed both the Russian warnings and the Russian military response. The result was utter failure. ..."
"... Putin might never see an opportunity for a similarly deadly and promising "play" in the circle jerk of Syria free-for-all invasions – Gulf states, Turkey, US, Israel – but if he should ever see an opening, I would expect him to seek another object lesson. His hand might not be strong, but he appears to play it well. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Kurdish YPG and Syrian government troops ally against NATO partner Turkey, and the US military has repeatedly attacked Syrian regular military and boasts – by leak – about massacring Russian "private military contractors". ..."
"... Iran demonstrated in Iraq that US ineptitude combined with impunitivism provides many openings to stabilize, in a sense, the region. ..."
Trump's statement is a particularly stupid piece of revisionism on his part. Trump was
opposed to
Obama's threatened attack in 2013 , and then as president Trump ordered an illegal military
attack on the Syrian government one year ago to punish it for an alleged chemical weapons
attack. He had no authority to do this, the attack was a flagrant breach of the U.N. Charter,
and it apparently failed to discourage the Syrian government from carrying out similar attacks
later on. The president ordered the "unbelievably small attack" that Obama administration
threatened to launch in 2013, and it made no meaningful difference to the course of the war or
the regime's behavior.
Trump tweeted out earlierin the day that
"President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay."
He didn't say what that "big price" was or how it will be "paid," but the fact that he thinks
it is a good idea to make threats against the Syrian government's patrons bodes ill for the
future of U.S. policy in Syria. The foreign policy establishment was beside itself last week
when they thought that Trump wanted to withdraw from Syria, but they should be much more
worried that he will launch an illegal attack and plunge the U.S. in even deeper.
The danger in having an ongoing illegal military presence in Syria is that it exposes
U.S. forces to unacceptable and unnecessary risks and creates the possibility of escalation
with the Syrian government and its allies. If Trump orders another illegal attack on the Syrian
government or the forces of any of its supporters, it could easily trigger a larger conflict.
Russia has given an explicit warning against a U.S.
attack this time, saying that it could trigger "the gravest consequences." Even if it doesn't
lead to a larger conflict with a nuclear-armed major power, it isn't worth taking the risk for
the sake of policing the conduct of a foreign civil war.
If Trump were really interested in extricating the U.S. from war in Syria, he would not be
engaged in mindless saber-rattling against the Syrian government and its allies. Unfortunately,
Trump's bellicosity always seems to take over in these situations. That is what we get from
Trump's anti-restraint foreign policy.
It's true that I'm no genius, but after reading as much as I can and thinking it over I still
don't know who is the right horse to back, or what is the right side to be on in Syria. Assad
is a brute, Isis are brutes, the other parties of opposition are useless, and etc., and none
of it has anything to do with us anyway. To Daniel's point, we're keeping an army hanging
around in a volatile and illegal situation for no discernible point.
Except to hate Iran.
The longterm on Syria doesn't look good for anyone. I'm guessing, because of his long
history of ignorance and incoherence, Trump has no plan.
But the odd thing is, the most stable and invested country in the region is Iran.
Crazy as it might sound to an Iran-hater-dead-ender, the country we should be chatting with
about Syria is Iran. If we genuinely cared about anything humanitarian. The two countries
with the most likely influence over Bashar with the aim of mitigating his violence would
likely be Iran and Russia. If we wanted to actually accomplish something we could quietly and
diplomatically arrange that chat and encourage some beneficial influence there.
If Assad is really the brute that the West portrays him to be he would have been
toppled by now. That the Syrian population by and large has stood by him in 6 years of war
should tell you something. I make a point to get most of the news about Syria from Christian
organisations who live there – and they are all unequivocal. They are now beyond livid
of what the US and its allies has allowed and even facilitated to happen there. Tthankfully
for them they still have the Syrian Arab Army and Russia to protect them unlike their
brethren in Iraq, one of the oldest Christian communities in existence which has been
practically wiped out thanks to America's intervention.
"If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line "
Interesting view. Obama imagined he drew a "red line" that Assad was not to cross, and
allegedly did. Trump's tongue apparently wore a Freudian slip when he rubi-conned this phrase
into twitter.
To make this a turn worthy of Croesumpus, let us just say that if Trump crosses that red
line of his own, a great war criminal will be destroyed.
"In early March 2008, Abkhazia and South Ossetia submitted formal requests for their
recognition to Russia's parliament shortly after the West's recognition of Kosovo to which
Russia was opposed. [The] Russian ambassador to NATO, warned that Georgia's NATO membership
aspirations would cause Russia to support the independence of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia."
Clinton ignored the Russian objections to the West's unilateral recognition of Balkan
breakaways. Bush, Saakashvili and the usual entourage of the neocon meddler travelling circus
that nowadays haunts the Ukraine dismissed both the Russian warnings and the Russian military
response. The result was utter failure.
Putin might never see an opportunity for a similarly deadly and promising "play" in the
circle jerk of Syria free-for-all invasions – Gulf states, Turkey, US, Israel –
but if he should ever see an opening, I would expect him to seek another object lesson. His
hand might not be strong, but he appears to play it well.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish YPG and Syrian government troops ally against NATO partner
Turkey, and the US military has repeatedly attacked Syrian regular military and boasts
– by leak – about massacring Russian "private military contractors".
Iran demonstrated in Iraq that US ineptitude combined with impunitivism provides many
openings to stabilize, in a sense, the region.
Trump doesn't have any instincts. He's just playing the old DC game. Pretend that you want to
do something, then act shocked after you didn't do it. Each party plays the game against the
other party, each house of Congress plays the game against the other house, Presidents play
it against Congress and the "courts".
===
This game wouldn't work in real life.
Example:
I shout to everyone in the house, "I'm going to the store to get groceries."
One hour later, after sitting in the living room watching TV, making no move toward the
car, I shout again:
"See what happens? I tried, but these evil other-party spirits wouldn't let me. You need
to vote these evil other-party spirits out of the house so we can have food!"
Huh you elect someone who says his military strategy will always be "listen to the Generals",
and are then surprised when the Generals want to keep fighting?
Of course Trump will accede. He has no coherent and consistent policy just Fox News
buzzwords spinning in his head. Now add John Bolton as his guiding light.
Mr. Buchanan is correct the U.S. is: "in a country where we have no right to be "
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
The U.S. is in Syria illegally, and what is even worse it is reportedly supporting
terrorists.
This is surely a crime, yet no charges have been laid. Why?
"Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaeda,
ISIS or other terrorist groups. If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or
ISIS, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for
years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaeda, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and
other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to
overthrow the Syrian government.[i] Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, December 8, 2016,Press Release.
https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/video-rep-tulsi-gabbard-introduces-legislation-stop-arming-terrorists
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Much more evidence on this and other matters at link below. http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html
The important point in Syria is that Putin is irreversibly bogged down there. He sinks or
swims with Assad, which means, sooner or later, sinks. He's a sitting duck who can do nothing
but sit there and wait until the US chooses to attack him. So there's no harm in leaving him
to stew. John Bolton's bête noire has always been Iran, which is supposed to be Putin's
ally. Going after Iran will put Putin on the spot. He has to decide whether to back his
"ally" or leave Iran in the lurch. Thus, putting Syria on the back burner and concentrating
on Iran forces Putin either to discredit himself by abandoning his "ally" or to bog himself
down in yet another conflict. Heads, Ukraine wins, tails, Putin loses!
"Yes, folks, your tax dollars are going to support Islamist crazies in Syria. The same
people who attacked Paris are being aided and abetted by the US – and if that isn't a
criminal act, then there is no justice in this world." Justin Raimondo, November 25, 2015 http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/11/24/turkeys-stab-in-the-back/
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The USA has hundreds of military bases overseas. We should close most of them. Trump is
saying the right thing, unfortunately, we all know he doesn't follow through (that NRA thing,
that DACA thing, that wall thing, that coal thing, that lock-her-up thing, etc. etc).
It seems that the failure in Syria is related to the classical policy verse strategy
conflict. The military is once again put in a difficult position when the civilian leadership
tries to use a military solution to solve a diplomatic problem. The military was given the
task to destroy ISIS but that goal will be impossible without Turkey's cooperation and the
leader of that country has chosen a path toward appeasement by the United States or
confrontation.
There seems to be credible evidence of Turkey's support for ISIS in the flow of combatants
and military logistics into Syria as well as profiting from the sale and transport of ISIS
controlled Syrian oil through Turkey. Now we are seeing Turkey invading Syria and ethnically
cleansing our Kurdish allies from Syria's Northern Boarder. We still don't know what the
Obama/Clinton CIA and State Department was up to in Benghazi, but it did seem to involve the
flow of arms from Libya, and I have read reports that members of the Turkish government were
meeting with the killed ambassador before the attack.
In Syria is appears that the Assad, Iranian and Russian alliance was more focused upon the
rebels attempting to overthrow the government; rather than destroying ISIS. Once the United
States leaves there may be greater tolerance for ISIS as long as the government is not
threatened and ISIS may even be allowed to join that alliance to get some revenge against the
Kurds who were allied with the U.S.
We saw the recent Russian test of US resolve using mercenaries with disastrous
consequences. As long as the US remains in Syria there will be similar tests and what if is
Turkey decides to test the resolve of US forces?
Our NATO partner Turkey seems to have become more of an enemy than a friend, and also more
of a liability than an asset. Removing U.S. military assets from Turkey may be prudent,
followed by its expulsion from NATO. Expelling Turkish citizens from other NATO countries and
economic sanctions may be another strategy to make Turkey reconsider its continued
belligerence.
I don't recall anyone forcing Trump to appoint to top positions people who flat out refuse
his orders and block him from carrying out policy he campaigned on. There is a limit on how
much sincerity you can attribute to a man who says one thing, does the exact opposite, and
defend him as fighting some Don Quixotic struggle tilting at windmills.
Twelve days
after 9/11, on the night of September 23, 2001, the CIA's Islamabad station chief, Robert Grenier, received a telephone
call from his boss, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. "Listen, Bob," Tenet said, "we're meeting tomorrow at
Camp David to discuss our war strategy in Afghanistan. How should we begin? What targets do we hit? How do we sequence our
actions?"
Grenier later wrote in his book,
88 Days to
Kandahar
, that while he was surprised by the call he'd been thinking about these
same questions -- "mulling them over and over and over," as he later told me -- so he was ready. President George Bush's address
to the U.S. Congress just a few days before, Grenier told Tenet, was a good start: demand that Afghanistan's Taliban ruler,
Mullah Omar, turn bin Laden over to the United States. If he refused, the U.S. should launch a campaign to oust him.
Grenier had thought through the plan, but before going into its details with Tenet he abruptly stopped the conversation.
"Mr. Director," he said, "this isn't going to work. I need to write this all down clearly." Tenet agreed.
Grenier set to work, and over the next three hours he laid out the battle for
Afghanistan. Included in the paper was a detailed program of how the CIA could deploy undercover teams to recruit bin
Laden's enemies among Afghanistan's northern Tajik and Uzbek tribes (an uneasy coalition of ethnic militias operating as
the Northern Alliance), supply them with cash and weapons, and use them in a rolling offensive that would oust the Taliban
in Kabul. With U.S. help, which included deploying American Special Forces teams (under CIA leadership) coupled with
American airpower, the Northern Alliance (more properly, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan) would
start from its Panjshir Valley enclave in Afghanistan's far northeast and, recruiting support from anti-Taliban forces
along the way, roll all the way into Kabul.
Grenier gave the eight-page draft paper to his staff to review, then sent it to Tenet in
Washington, who passed it through the deputies committee (the second-in-command of each of the major national security
agencies), then presented it to Bush. "I regard that cable," Grenier wrote, "as the best three hours of work I ever did in
my twenty-seven-year career."
Three days after the Tenet-Grenier telephone conversation, on September 26, the CIA
landed a covert-operations team in Afghanistan to recruit local allies in the hunt for bin Laden. The quick action was
impressive, but then events slowed to a crawl. It wasn't until October 20 that the first U.S. Special Forces team linked up
with anti-Taliban rebels, and it took another week for U.S. units to land in strength. But by early November al Qaeda was
on the run and the Taliban's grip on the country was slipping away. On November 13, militias of the Northern Alliance
seized Kabul. The Taliban was defeated, its badly mauled units fleeing south and east (its last bastion, in the south, fell
on December 6), and into nearby Pakistan, while what remained of al Qaeda holed up in a series of cave complexes in the
Spin Ghar mountain range of eastern Afghanistan.
By almost any measure, the CIA-led anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban offensive (dubbed
Operation Enduring Freedom by George Bush) marked a decisive victory in the war on terror. The U.S. had set out a plan,
marshaled the forces to carry it out, and then seen it to completion.
But this triumph came with problems. The first was that the offensive was hampered by
Washington infighting that pitted the CIA against a puzzlingly recalcitrant U.S. military and a carping Donald Rumsfeld,
who questioned George Tenet's leadership of the effort. This bureaucratic squabbling, focused on just who was responsible
for what (and who exactly was running the Afghanistan war), would remain a hallmark of American efforts well into the Obama
administration. The second problem was that Afghanistan's southern Pashtun tribes were only marginally included in the
effort, and they remained suspicious of their northern non-Pashtun counterparts. The mistrust, CIA officers believed, would
almost certainly plant the seeds of an endless inter-tribal Afghan conflict, embroiling the United States in an effort to
prop up an unpopular Kabul government. The third problem was Pakistan -- or, more precisely, Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, the ISI, and the ISI's "Directorate S," responsible for covertly supplying, training, and arming
Pakistan's Islamist allies, including the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.
♦♦♦
The intractability of these variables, and America's 17-year effort (sometimes focused
but often feckless) to resolve them, form the basis of Steve Coll's
Directorate S
,
a thick but eminently readable account of America's Afghanistan misadventure. While
Directorate S
stands alone as a comprehensive
exposition of the Afghanistan conflict dating from 9/11, it's actually a follow-on of
Ghost Wars
, Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004
narrative of America's efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan following their invasion in December 1979. Given the
breadth of Coll's dual treatments and the depth of his research, it's likely that these books will remain the standard
exposition of the period for years to come.
While the focus of
Directorate S
is on Pakistan and its shady intelligence services, each of the obstacles that confronted the United States in Afghanistan
from the moment the Taliban abandoned Kabul is embraced in detail. These obstacles included America's post-9/11 attention
deficit disorder (the pivot away from al Qaeda to Iraq was being considered in Washington even as the Northern Alliance
cleared the Afghan capital) and the deeply embedded antipathy toward the new Kabul government among Pakistani-supported
southern tribesman. Thus, after the United States ousted al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters, it embarked on a program to
strengthen the new Kabul government, anointing Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's president and pledging billions in
reconstruction aid. And so, or so it seemed, everything had gone as planned. The Taliban was routed; al Qaeda was on the
run; a new anti-terrorism government was in place in Kabul; and the United States had signed Pakistan on as a willing
accomplice. On May 1, 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declared an end to major combat operations in Afghanistan. The war
was over. Won.
But of course it wasn't.
Coll's account provides a disturbing catalogue of the U.S. mistakes in the wake of the
Taliban defeat. Almost all of them are well known: Hamid Karzai, the consensus choice of a grand assembly (a loya jirga) as
Afghanistan's interim president, proved to be a weak leader. The monies appropriated for Afghanistan's postwar
reconstruction were woefully inadequate for the task -- "laughable," as one U.S. official put it. American soldiers
responsible for countering the Taliban's return (and hunting al Qaeda terrorist cells) were thinly and poorly deployed
(and, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, of secondary importance in the Pentagon). Tentative Taliban efforts to engage the
United States in political talks were summarily and unwisely spurned. Allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention
facilities consistently undermined U.S. legitimacy. American funds were funneled into Afghan ministries laced with corrupt
officials. Afghani poppy production increased, despite faint-hearted U.S. eradication efforts. And U.S. counter-terrorism
actions proved ham-handed and caused preventable civilian casualties, pushing Afghanis into a resurgent anti-Kabul
resistance.
More crucially, Pakistan's unstinting support for America's Afghanistan efforts proved to
be anything but unstinting. The reason for this was not only entirely predictable but was actually the unintended result of
the American victory. When the Northern Alliance and U.S. airpower pushed what remained of the Taliban (along with the
remnants of al Qaeda) out of Afghanistan, they pushed them into Pakistan, creating conditions that, as Coll tells us,
"deepened resentment among Pakistan's generals, who would come to see their country's rising violence as a price of
American folly . . ." Put simply, for the United States to seal the Operation Enduring Freedom victory, it had to ensure
that its effects did not spill over into the one nation that could ensure that its victory would, in fact, be enduring.
That didn't happen. The result was that the Taliban was able to rebuild and rearm its networks not only in Pakistan, and
under the eyes of the ISI, but also in Afghanistan.
It might have been otherwise. During a series of discussions I had about America's
intervention in Afghanistan in the months immediately following 9/11, a number of currently serving and former senior U.S.
officials told me they believed that, given enough time, the Taliban might well have handed bin Laden over to the
Americans, obviating the need for a full-on invasion. One of these officials was Milton Bearden, a famed CIA officer (his
close friends refer to him as "Uncle Milty") who, during his time as a station chief in Pakistan, had helped to head up the
CIA's war against the Soviets in the mid 1980s.
♦♦♦
After 9/11, Bearden recharged his Pakistan and Afghanistan networks in an effort to
convince the Taliban that turning bin Laden over to the Americans was a better option than the one they were facing. All
the while, Bearden kept senior U.S. officials apprised of what he was doing, even as he was attempting to head off their
rush to war. Bearden told me that, while his efforts had not reached fruition by the time the Bush White House had decided
on a course of action, he believes the United States had not fully explored all of its options -- or thought through the
long-term impact of its intervention. "I don't know what would have happened, I don't know," he says wistfully, "but I
think we have a handhold in history. We should have seen what was coming." He notes that Alexander the Great "took one look
at Afghanistan's mountains and decided against it. He thought his whole army could get swallowed up in there, and he wasn't
going to take that chance. So, well, you tell me if I'm wrong, but Alexander was no slouch, right?"
Not everyone agrees with this, of course. The dissenters include Robert Grenier, the
first drafter of what became the American war plan. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he told me, was committed to his pledge to
protect Osama bin Laden; he viewed it as a blood oath that could not be broken. Moreover, argues Grenier, "Omar viewed
himself as a kind of world historical figure, a person on whom the axis of history would turn." One result was that he
believed his fight against the Americans would be epochal.
That said, Grenier believes America's foray into Afghanistan, and the mistakes that
followed, might at least have been dampened by a more diligent focus on the inherent divisions of Afghan society. "We [at
the CIA]," he told me several months ago, "were very aware that the march of the Northern Alliance into Kabul would likely
create real difficulties in the south. And we tried to slow it, precisely for this reason. But events overtook us, and it
just wasn't possible. So, yes, things might have been otherwise, but in truth we just don't know."
The value in Coll's
Directorate S
comes not from the elegant telling of a story not fully known, but from the dawning realization that Afghanistan is the
kind of lock for which there is no key. There is no reason to believe that a different outcome would have ensued if other
events had intruded -- for example, more personnel, money, focused diplomacy, or robust and disciplined enemy-defeating and
nation building; or that our war there and the occupation that followed would have yielded the same results that we
realized in, say, Japan after 1945. The real hubris here is not that we tried and failed but that we thought we could
actually succeed. Afghanistan is simply not that kind of place.
There is a term of art for this in the military, which found its first usage in Iraq in
2009, when U.S. commanders adopted it as an appreciation of what could and could not be accomplished. Instead of focusing
on defeating corruption, inefficiency, disunity, and poor leadership, the focus shifted almost exclusively to dampening
violence, to keeping the doors to Iraq open even as its factions battled for its control. More importantly, the adoption of
the phrase marked the abandonment of high expectations and an embrace of realism. The United States would have to yield the
business of replicating a Western-style democracy on the banks of the Euphrates. That goal, if it was going to be
accomplished at all, would have to be realized by the Iraqis.
Analyst Anthony Cordesman, one of America's premier military thinkers, adopted the phrase
and applied to Afghanistan in 2012 in an essay he entitled, "Time to Focus on 'Afghan Good Enough.'" His plan was simply
stated but had all the elegance of actually working: keep the Taliban out of Kabul and the major cities, preserve the
central and provincial government even in the face of endemic corruption, and work to provide security to large numbers of
Afghanis. Cordesman conceded that this was not the kind of victory that Americans had hoped for on September 12. And it was
difficult to describe the outcome as even vaguely passable -- or "good." But it was far better than adopting goals that could
not be realized or embracing an illusion that disappeared even as it was grasped. For the time being at least, it would
have to be "good enough."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a contributing editor to
The American Conservative
and the author of
The Pentagon's Wars
.
Robert Jervis and Mira Rapp-Hooper
warn about the dangers that come from misperception on both sides of the standoff with
North Korea:
If any U.S. strategy toward North Korea is to have a chance of succeeding (or even of just
averting catastrophe), it must be guided by an accurate sense of how Kim's regime thinks,
what it values, and how it judges its options. Washington must understand not just North
Korean objectives but also how North Korean officials understand U.S. objectives and whether
they consider U.S. statements credible.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is remarkably bad at understanding these things accurately. This is
not just a Trump administration failing. Most American politicians and policymakers routinely
misjudge the intentions and goals of our adversaries, and they often invent a fantasy version
of the regime in question that leads them astray again and again. One reason for this is that
it is simply easier to project our assumptions about what a regime must want than it is to make
the effort to see things as they do. Another reason is that many of our politicians and
policymakers mistakenly think that if they try to understand an adversary's views that must
somehow mean that they sympathize with the adversary or condone its behavior. Instead of trying
to know their enemy, our leaders would prefer not to for fear of being "tainted" by the
experience. This lack of knowledge is compounded in some cases by the absence of normal
diplomatic relations with the adversary. Our leaders are encouraged to take this self-defeating
approach to international problems by a political culture that rewards the people that strike
tough-sounding-but-ignorant poses about a problem and marginalizes those that seek to
understand it as fully as possible.
The first step in correcting these failings is to accept that some of these regimes regard
the U.S. as an "existential threat" and therefore view all U.S. actions with at least much
suspicion and fear as our government views theirs. The next step would be to recognize that the
main goal of any regime is its own preservation. We should be very wary of any explanation of
their actions that claims that an adversary is irrationally suicidal. Another step would be to
acknowledge that regime behavior that we regard as purely aggressive is very often the result
of the adversary's belief that it needs to deter our aggression against them. Our politicians
often talk about North Korea threatening the entire world with its nuclear weapons, but this
misses that in their relative isolation and paranoia the North Korean regime sees the rest of
the world, and especially the U.S., as a threat that needs to be defended against. Recognizing
these things doesn't make their acquisition of nuclear weapons desirable and it doesn't mean
that we approve of it, but it does make it understandable.
Our government's frequent inability to understand how an adversary thinks and what an
adversary wants is usually bound up with our government's overestimation of its own power and a
denial of the other state's agency. If many of our policymakers invent a fantasy version of the
regime to serve as a foil, they come up with unrealistic demands that they think the U.S. can
force the adversary to accept. Because we fail to understand what the adversary is trying to
do, we make demands that we ought to know will never be accepted. Because our government fails
to take the other side's agency into account, our policies are often crafted solely to punish
and compel and rarely to give them an incentive to cooperate or compromise. We then claim to be
surprised when this approach yields only intransigence and more of the behavior that we want
the other state to stop.
Why do you think it would be absurd to think our highest government officials are that
ignorant? Did our Presidents, who never have to prove merit, only popularity, ever appoint
people based on reliably tested knowledge of their field? No. They tend to appoint their
cabinet based on political calculation. Sometimes political calculation will raise up
knowledgeable people, more often not.
Welp, this is certainly a different kettle of fish from WWII, where the US government hired
ethnologists like Ruth Benedict to analyze Japanese culture and thought patterns (resulting
in her book "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.")
I really believe it would be absurd to think our highest government officials are that
ignorant
Our highest officials are by design more ignorant than the rank and file. During the Iraq
war aftermath, Arabic speakers were actively rejected from jobs within the Coalition
Provisional Authority, because it was assumed their knowledge of the region would prejudice
them against the W adninistration's vision for the Middle East, and they didn't want nay
sayers telling them what they didn't want to hear.
This mindset is persistent, especially in republican administrations, and mirrors the
Soviet Union -- people are selected on the basis of their willingness to toe the ideological
line rather than their expertise.
They are not ignorant, the politicians support these policies because their donors benefit..
They have sold out to greed over country.. I assume that some do it for the easy wealth that
can be had, some of the wealthy ones for fame and never losing elections, but they have their
reasons, our country is not high on that list.
The one exception to this would be Obama's approach to Iran. He had no illusions about the
mullahs and IRGC, but he knew that it was simply impossible to perpetually diplomatically
isolate and militarily surround a nation of 80 million in its own region. The nuke deal was a
tradeoff – Iran gives up its nukes in exchange for being reintegrated with the world.
Of course, this is the last thing that Israel or Saudi Arabia want.
Knowledge of History and Language would help enormously, but the US is so arrogant it expects
other countries to merely accept US assertions and to speak in English, on the basis of its
supposed Exceptionalism.
The Never Trump cabal can now claim total victory. Unsuccessful at preventing Trump from
winning the nomination or the general election, they have instead co-opted his presidency for
their own policies and programs.
With the nomination of John Bolton, Never Trump interventionists have installed one of the
unrepentant architects of the catastrophic Iraq War to head the National Security Council.
In recent months, ignoring and rejecting his own party's convention platform, Trump has
agreed to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Besides accelerating the deaths of Ukrainians and
ethnic Russians while laying waste to the civilian population of the Donbas, what advantage to
the people of the United States does this military escalation provide?
Last summer, in one of the strangest speeches in American history, President Trump announced
he would surge troop levels in Afghanistan -- and then in the same breath admitted it was a
mistake and something he didn't really want to do. That should show the conflict here: Trump's
instincts versus the establishment sorts around him.
Never Trumpers are not so secretly celebrating. They got the president they thought they
didn't want. And now, pretending they still don't want him, they can hardly believe their good
fortune.
Achieving their foreign policy goals is just the icing on the cake. They also got the
president to implement the entire Wall Street agenda: lowering taxes on the super rich;
advancing huge subsidies to the medical insurance industry; keeping the Export-Import Bank
funded; re-authorizing the ivory trade; shrinking the size of national monuments so that
multi-national corporations can turn our wilderness areas into strip mines and clear-cut
wastelands.
Then, just this week, in a reckless act of generational theft, Trump endorsed the second
biggest budget in U.S. history, caving in to every demand and desire of the UniParty and the K
Street lobbyists whom they serve.
In the 18th century, the cry went "Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute!"
Trump's cry is "Billions for defense, but not one penny for a wall!"
Trump justifies his signature on the omnibus bill by claiming it was necessary for national
security. But that claim rings hollow when comparatively little is allocated for the protection
of America's own borders and the defense of its homeland. Americans intuitively know that the
real danger to their safety is not along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; it's along the
U.S.-Mexico border. But Trump's own laudable instincts have been neutered by the globalist,
interventionist generals and policy wonks who now populate powerful positions at the White
House and the departments of State and Defense.
Many reading this might now protest: what's wrong with passing the omnibus? Isn't it
providing the funds necessary for making America great again? But Donald Trump did not run for
office on a platform of bloating spending; he ran on opposition to massive debt increases and
specifically to many of the programs they pay for. The budget can be summed up in a paraphrase
of a Broadway musical hit tune: whatever crony wants, crony gets.
Has there been a fiercer critic of the Iraq war than Donald Trump? Yet he promotes to the
head of the NSC perhaps that conflict's most vociferous apologist. Trump promised he would end
the wars of choice, that he would refrain from taking sides in other nation's internal
conflicts. He called for a reasonable rapprochement with Russia with the goal of making America
and Americans safer. He specifically said he would wind down the military commitment in
Afghanistan as quickly and safely as possible.
His only bellicose pledge concerned ISIS, which he promised to destroy. As we have seen,
that was one of the few promises he kept. In most other policy areas he has reversed his
campaign pledges. His foreign policy is no longer America First; it's evolved into the same,
old, dangerous, meddling, interventionist program of the last quarter century. Trump has
deepened U.S. involvement in Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan without clearly defining
the missions, the goals, and the risks. If voters had wanted this, they would have elected
Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.
Yet of all the betrayals, the war on nature is the most grievous and shocking. As someone
who supported Trump from day one in June 2015, who has seen virtually every one of his
speeches, interviews, and tweets, I cannot recall a single word about the national parks or
monuments.
Had Trump forecast during the campaign how he would govern on environmental issues, would he
have been elected? Could those narrow margins of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Iowa have gone the other way? With his appointment of Ryan Zinke to the Department of the
Interior, Trump needlessly and recklessly alienated tens of thousands of voters who might
otherwise have supported him and who may indeed have voted for him in 2016. Although its hard
to discern exactly why the president's poll numbers are as low as they are, it would be a
mistake to discount the animus engendered by the unexpected assault on wilderness, open space,
endangered species, and America's magnificent national monuments.
The only national monument that Trump has failed to shrink is the Beltway swamp. In fact,
judging from the continuing spread of McMansions in Potomac, Maryland and Falls Church,
Virginia, he has effectively widened its borders. It's as if the chants from all those packed
stadiums during that long ago presidential campaign were "Fill that swamp! Fill that
swamp!"
It is now abundantly clear why the Never Trumpers are tittering over their cocktails. Trump
has staffed most departments of his government with establishment cronies and neoconservative
zealots. He now presides over the implementation of their agenda. In effect, we're
getting a variation on what could be called the third Bush presidency -- minus the decorum.
Trump's is also the all-talk presidency: talk tough on illegal immigration, but fail to
build the wall; talk tough on sanctuary cities, but fail to cut federal subsidies; talk tough
on illegal immigration, then push for the biggest amnesty since 1986; talk tough against the
Export-Import Bank, then fund it; talk tough on Obamacare, then fund big insurance to keep the
subsidies flowing; talk tough on reducing taxes, then screw millions of homeowners across
America by actually raising their taxes; talk tough on trade, then tiptoe around
Mexico and Canada on everything that really matters; talk tough on the deficit, then sign the
second biggest boondoggle spending bill in U.S. history.
Still, it cannot be denied: President Trump has accomplished much -- for the establishment
and their K Street lobbyists. They write the bills, Paul Ryan guides them through the House
amendment-free, and Trump signs them in to law.
For those who packed those campaign rallies, who wore those red "Make America Great Again"
caps, and for the rest of us mere plebs, Donald Trump's presidency is best summed up by The
Bard: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the Civil War motion-pictures Gettysburg ,
Gods & Generals , and Copperhead .
Sebastian Rotella reports
on how many of the people that worked with Bolton remember his tendency to distort intelligence
and ignore facts that contradicted his assumptions:
"Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so
ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser," said Robert Hutchings, who
dealt extensively with Bolton as head of the National Intelligence Council, a high-level
agency that synthesizes analysis from across the intelligence community to produce strategic
assessments for policymakers. "He's impervious to information that goes against his
preconceived ideological views." [bold mine-DL]
That assessment lines up with what I understood about Bolton, and it points to one of the
biggest problems with his appointment. I wrote this shortly
before Trump announced that he was choosing Bolton:
The real danger is that he is such an ideologue that he would keep information from the
president that contradicts his views and prevent Trump from getting the best available
advice. Trump is poorly informed to begin with, and having Bolton as his main adviser on
matters of national security and foreign policy would make sure that he stays that way.
Trump is especially susceptible to being manipulated by his advisers into endorsing the
policies they want because he knows so little and responds so favorably to flattery, and he has
shown that he is already more than willing to select a more aggressive option when he is told
that it is the "presidential" thing to do. We should expect that Bolton will feed Trump bad or
incomplete information, present aggressive options in the most favorable light while dismissing
alternatives, and praise Trump's leadership to get him to go along with the hard-line policies
Bolton wants. Bolton will run a very distorted policy process and he will be the opposite of an
honest broker. That won't serve Trump well, and it will be terrible for our foreign policy.
"... Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism, Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall, Stanford University Press 2018, 280 pages ..."
Millennials and members of Generation Z have spent much of if not their entire lives at war.
As I've noted in these
pages and elsewhere , the
Afghan conflict is now in its 17th year, with
more than 6,000 days having gone by, making it the longest war in American history. I was
12 years old when that war began in 2001; I'm now a month out from my 29th birthday. Beginning
next year, the newly enlisted 18-year-olds who are deployed to Afghanistan will be younger than
the war they are fighting.
The Iraq war began in 2003, saw a major troop withdrawal in 2011, and then was re-escalated
by former President Obama in 2014. American forces remain there today to aid in the fight
against the Islamic State, despite an agreement
with the Iraqis that was supposed to begin a troop drawdown. An American-led regime change
intervention turned Libya into a failed state. And we have blanketed countries such as Pakistan
and Yemen with drone warfare, so much so that
drones now haunt their citizens' dreams . U.S. Special Forces were on
the ground conducting activities in 149 countries as of 2017.
This kind of foreign policy adventurism is hardly unique to the present day. America has
been aggressively deploying its military on foreign soil since the late 19th century. As
Stephen Kinzer shows in his book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to
Iraq, we got our foot in the door of the regime change business all the way
back in 1893 with our acquisition of Hawaii.
Living in a post-9/11 world has shattered any inclination to view domestic life as separate
from and unaffected by foreign policy, particularly since the 2013 publication of classified
NSA documents leaked to the press by Edward Snowden. Snowden's revelations threw back the
curtain on an omnipresent surveillance apparatus under which very few aspects of our digital
lives were left unmonitored -- all in the name of national security and the global war on
terror.
The Snowden leaks demonstrate how an adventurous foreign policy can have negative
consequences for liberty at home. Now, political economists Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall
have documented this phenomenon in their important new book, Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism .
In their words, "coercive foreign intervention creates opportunities to develop and refine
methods and technologies of social control."
Coyne and Hall, economists at George Mason University and the University of Tampa
respectively, introduce a concept for understanding this phenomenon called the "boomerang
effect." It works like this: the constraints on the activities of the U.S. government in the
realm of foreign policy are generally weak, which enables those involved in foreign
interventions to engage in practices abroad that would meet some institutional resistance on
the home front. Eventually, though, interventions end, the interveners come home, and the
practices employed on foreign soil are imported for use against the domestic population.
This importation happens along three separate channels. First, there is the development of
human capital -- the skills, knowledge, and other characteristics that contribute to one's
productive capacity. All companies, organizations, and agencies have goals they seek to
accomplish, so they hire people with the right kind of human capital to execute said goals.
Foreign intervention is no different.
Among the characteristics necessary for interveners include extreme confidence in their
ability to solve complex problems in other countries, a sense of superiority and righteousness,
comfort with pushing the ethical envelope, limited compassion and sympathy for the targeted
population, and the association of state order with control. Interventionists, as Coyne and
Hall put it, treat "society as a grand science project that can be rationalized and improved on
by enlightened and well-intentioned engineers."
The second phase occurs when the interventionists come home. Some may retire, but many go to
work in various public- and private-sector jobs. The skills and mentalities that served them
well abroad don't disappear, so they begin employing their unique human capital domestically.
Those who land in the public sector are able to influence domestic policy, where they see
threats to liberty becoming manifest. Because of the relative lack of constraints when
operating in a foreign theater, tactics that would otherwise cross the line domestically are
seen as standard operating procedure.
Finally, physical capital plays a significant role in bringing methods of foreign
intervention back home. Technological innovation "allows governments to use lower-cost methods
of social control with a greater reach." The federal government spends billions annually on
research and development, which buys a variety of different capabilities. These technologies,
many originally intended for foreign populations, can be used domestically. One example the
authors point to are the surveillance methods originally used in the Iraq war that found their
way to the Baltimore Police Department for routine use.
The implication of the boomerang effect for policing doesn't end with surveillance. It can
also help explain police militarization, the origins of which lie in the foreign interventions
of the Progressive Era, specifically in the Philippines.
In the wake of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded its colonial territories to the United
States. This led to the Philippine-American War, a bloody conflict
that directly and indirectly caused the deaths of 200,000 Filipino civilians, and which
ended in 1902.
As veterans returned home from the Philippines, many sought careers in law enforcement where
they were able to implement practices inspired by their days in the military. The effect of
this was to "establish precedents whereby military personnel and tactics not only would be
considered legitimate but welcomed" by police administrations. Police militarization wouldn't
kick into high gear until the latter half of the 20th century, with the introduction of SWAT
teams and the federalization of law enforcement during the LBJ and Nixon years. The men behind
the development of SWAT were veterans of the Vietnam War.
What ultimately creates the conditions for this boomerang effect to take place? One factor,
Coyne and Hall argue, is fear. Fear and crisis, both perceived and real, creates "space for
government to expand the scope of its powers and adopt the techniques of state-produced social
control that it has developed and honed abroad." Fear can lead people to seek assurances from
authorities, which goads them into tolerating and even demanding expansions of state powers --
powers that in less fearful times they would not accept.
Once accumulated, that power becomes a normal part of life, and isn't easily given up, as
the great economic historian Robert Higgs shows in his classic work Crisis and Leviathan . Anyone who has gone through airport
security over the last 17 years understands this, as the fear of terror attacks after 9/11 has
led to ratcheted up airline security measures by the TSA. This has resulted in some fairly
egregious violations of person and privacy, despite very
little evidence that they work.
Coyne's and Hall's book is a great, conceptually holistic investigation into how the state
can threaten our liberty. Economists regularly recognize the unintended consequences of
domestic policy; Coyne and Hall have explained the unintended consequences of foreign policy,
and their costs. It's particularly timely, as President Trump's tenure has seen decision-making
authority at the Pentagon pushed down the chain of command, leaving the United States'
war-making capabilities even less accountable and transparent. This book is an incisive
elucidation of what writer Randolph Bourne recognized a century ago and of which we could use a
perpetual reminder: war truly is the health of the state.
Jerrod A. Laber is a writer and Free Society Fellow with Young Voices. He is a
contributor to the Washington Examiner , and his work has appeared in Real Clear
Defense , Quillette , and the Columbus Dispatch , among others.
Journalists are always "soldiers of the party". You just need to understand what party.
Notable quotes:
"... 'Fair and balanced' was a mid-20th century marketing tool and really, a confabulation of the times. ..."
"... The great Joseph Pulitzer largely founded his namesake prize for the same motives as Alfred Nobel, when the latter tried to make up for the incalculable injuries and deaths caused by the explosives he invented by endowing a Peace Prize. Pulitzer was attempting to atone for the "yellow journalism" sins of his own papers -- and even more, those of his arch rival, William Randolph "Citizen Kane" Hearst -- when he launched the prize that bears his name. ..."
"... To put it bluntly, as Frances McDormand's professor-mother in Almost Famous might have said, "Objective Journalism" was as much a marketing tool as anything else. It took off not because news neutrality was always enshrined in American journalistic ethics, but because of how rare it actually was. ..."
"... the Ochs-Sulzbergers of New York, the Meyer-Grahams of Washington, and the Chandlers of Los Angeles -- made a conscious decision to brand their newspapers as being truly fair and balanced to differentiate them from the competition. ..."
"... And even then, "objectivity" only went as far as the eyes and ears of the beholder. ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Whether it's MSNBC on the left or Fox News on the right, the editorial decisions of how to spin a piece, where and how often to broadcast it, what kind of panelists you invite to "debate" a story, which anchors should be promoted and which ones will forever remain mere worker bees -- all these decisions are anything but "objective" or "unbiased." ..."
'Fair and balanced' was a mid-20th century marketing tool and really, a confabulation of the times.
"The Yellow Press", by L. M. Glackens, portrays newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories
in 1910. (Library of Congress/Public Domain) What the Greatest, Silent, and Boomer generations always regarded as the ideal of "objective
journalism" was actually the exception, not the rule. That was true from the time of Gutenberg until that of Franklin Roosevelt.
The great Joseph Pulitzer largely founded his namesake prize for the same motives as Alfred Nobel, when the latter tried to
make up for the incalculable injuries and deaths caused by the explosives he invented by endowing a Peace Prize. Pulitzer was attempting
to atone for the "yellow journalism" sins of his own papers -- and even more, those of his arch rival, William Randolph "Citizen
Kane" Hearst -- when he launched the prize that bears his name.
And if Pulitzer repented of his past, Hearst never did -- he went full speed ahead well into the 1920s and beyond, normalizing
Nazi science,
openly endorsing eugenics and white superiority, and promoting "Birth of a Nation"-like racism against African Americans, Latinos,
and Native Americans. His dehumanizing attacks against so-called
sneaking and treacherous "Japs" and "Chinks" -- well before Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, and communist China -- were even uglier.
To put it bluntly, as Frances McDormand's professor-mother in Almost Famous might have said, "Objective Journalism"
was as much a marketing tool as anything else. It took off not because news neutrality was always enshrined in American journalistic
ethics, but because of how rare it actually was. High-minded notions of "fairness" and "objective journalism" came to
the print media largely because the visionary first families of the papers that finally succeeded the Hearsts and Pulitzers in clout
and cache -- the Ochs-Sulzbergers of New York, the Meyer-Grahams of Washington, and the Chandlers of Los Angeles -- made a conscious
decision to brand their newspapers as being truly fair and balanced to differentiate them from the competition.
Meanwhile, the broadcast media (which didn't exist until the rise of radio and "talking pictures" in the late 1920s, followed
by TV after World War II) labored under the New Deal's famed Fairness Doctrine.
And even then, "objectivity" only went as far as the eyes and ears of the beholder. The fairness flag was fraying when
Spiro Agnew and Pat Buchanan took "liberal media elites" to task a generation ago during the Vietnam and civil rights era, while
Tom Wolfe made good, unclean fun out of the "radical chic" conceits of Manhattan and Hollywood limousine liberals.
What today's controversies illustrate is that a so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and "objective" newspaper reporting could only have
existed in a conformist Mad Men world where societal norms of what was (and wasn't) acceptable in the postwar Great Society
operated by consensus. That is to say, an America where moderate, respectable, white male centrist Republicans like Thomas Dewey,
Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, and Gerald Ford "debated" moderate, respectable, white male centrist Democrats like Harry
Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, and Jimmy Carter.
Now contrast that with today. On November 25, the New York Times made a now-notorious attempt to
understand the Nazi next door,
running a profile of young suburban white supremacist, Tony Hovater. Transgender social media superstar Charlotte Clymer spoke for
her fellow liberals when she savagely satirized the Times with a
tweet-storm that included things like:
Bob is a vegan. He believes we should protect the environment. He likes "Big Bang Theory". He pays taxes. He served in the
military.
He's a serial killer who has tortured and murdered 14 people. He dissolved their bodies in acid at a remote site. He made
them beg for their lives as he tortured them.
He attends PTA meetings. He DVR's episodes of his wife's fave shows when she's late at work.
The moral of the fable being (as Miss Clymer put it): "Bob is a mass-murdering f***head. STOP GIVING BOB NUANCE!"
When the Times followed their neo-Nazi profile by turning an entire op-ed column over to Donald Trump supporters in mid-January,
the Resistance went to red alert. And after Ross Douthat penned a column in defense of (Jewish) anti-immigration hardliner Stephen
Miller on Holocaust Memorial Day in January,
they went full DEFCON.
"F*** you @nytimes for publishing this article on #HolocaustMemorialDay from me & from those in my family whose voices were silenced
during the Holocaust. Shame on you!" said Nadine Vander Velde on Twitter. London left-wing journalist Sarah Kendzior agreed that
"The NYT is now a white supremacist paper. The multiple Nazi puff pieces, constant pro-Trump PR, and praise for Miller on today of
all days is not exceptional – it's [now] the guiding ideology of the paper."
And the current furor over The Atlantic
's hiring of National Review firebrand Kevin D. Williamson only underscores that it isn't just campus leftists or Tea Partiers
who are hitting the censor button.
But revealingly, it wasn't just the usual left-wing snowflakes who have needed a trigger warning of late. Just six weeks into
the new year, the Washington Post and CNN ran a series of tabloidy, Inside Edition -style stories glamorizing Kim Yo-jong,
the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The Washington Post even went so far as to call Ms. Yo-jong North Korea's
answer to Ivanka Trump (just ignore the fact she is the DPRK's assistant head of the Ministry of Propaganda and Agitation). That
led Bethany Mandel of the New York Post to wonder
what
was up with all the "perverse fawning over brutal Kim Jong-un's sister at the Olympics?"
Additionally, some of the most provocative critiques of "journalistic objectivity" have come from liberal polemicists like Matt
Taibbi and Sam Adler-Bell, who argue that before we go on blathering about untrammeled First Amendment freedom and "objectivity,"
the first question that must be asked is who has the balance of power and whose hands are on deck in the editing room. (And they're
not wrong to ask that question -- it was the same one that Pat Buchanan asked 50 years ago and Ann Coulter asked 20 years ago from
the opposite side of the newsroom.)
Whether it's MSNBC on the left or Fox News on the right, the editorial decisions of how to spin a piece, where and how often
to broadcast it, what kind of panelists you invite to "debate" a story, which anchors should be promoted and which ones will forever
remain mere worker bees -- all these decisions are anything but "objective" or "unbiased."
Let's face it: the supposedly more civilized, serious ecosystem of the pre-social media past would come across to identity-conscious
Millennials today as nothing more than stale white bread dominated by stale white men. Even among the campus leftists who protest
and violently riot to shut down and silence "hate speech," most of them would probably rather live in a world where Steve Bannon
and Richard Spencer anchored the nightly news on one channel -- so long as there was a hijab-wearing Muslim or a transgendered man
on another, equally highly-rated one.
What would be totally unacceptable to today's young consumer is any kind of return to the mid-century world where "the
news" was whatever Ben Bradlee, Johnny Apple, Robert Novak, and The Chancellor/Brinkley Nightly News said it was -- in essence,
the world where Punch Sulzberger, Otis Chandler, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw white-mansplained "facts" through their
own elite establishment filters, de facto ignoring everyone else.
Meanwhile, the beat goes on. From the left, conservative Sinclair Media
is accused of "forcing" its local anchors to read "pro-Trump propaganda." The Nation stalwart Eric Alterman
says that "When one side is
fascist, there's no need to show Both Sides." As for the right -- just ask your Fox-watching or Limbaugh-listening friends and families
what they think of the "mainstream media," the "Communist News Network," or the "opinion cartel."
The great Joan Didion once said "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Maybe "objective journalism" was always just a little
social white lie we in the media told ourselves to make ourselves feel better -- fairer, kinder, gentler, more "professional." But
if there's one lesson that Barack Obama, the Tea Party, Bernie Sanders, Antifa, Donald Trump, and the Great Recession have taught
us over the past decade, it isn't just that the mythical "center" will no longer hold. It's that there may no longer be a center
for any of us to hold on to.
Telly Davidson is the author of a new book on the politics and pop culture of the '90s,Culture War : How the 90's Made Us Who We Are Today (Like it Or Not). He has written on culture for ATTN, FrumForum, All About Jazz, FilmStew, and Guitar Player ,andworked
on the Emmy-nominated PBS series "Pioneers of Television."
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz
spells out what the nuclear deal with Iran does and what withdrawing from it would
mean:
Conversely, if Trump withdraws the United States from the agreement, with Iran complying
and with our allies clearly committed to its continuation, he will have compromised the most
stringent nuclear verification standard ever achieved, with no credible prospect for
restoring or improving it [bold mine-DL]. Such a move would hand Iran a political "wedge"
dividing the international community, and undercut vital arguments for verification of any
agreement reached with North Korea.
Opponents of the deal often claim to be against it because it isn't "tough" enough, but as
Moniz explains the deal contains the "most robust verification measures the world has ever
known." Withdrawing from the deal means throwing that away for no good reason. If Trump follows
through on his threat to withdraw, he will confirm that his complaints about the agreement were
made in bad faith. Reneging on the deal just because some of its restrictions expire after a
decade or more gives the game away. It gives Iran the excuse to ignore some or all of the
deal's restrictions immediately instead of having some of them lifted in the 2020s or 2030s.
We're supposed to believe that the gradual expiration of some restrictions is so intolerable
that we should throw away all of the restrictions right away. It's a completely irrational
position, and so it's obviously just a bad excuse for killing an agreement that Iran hawks
never wanted.
If Iran is supposed to ratify the Additional
Protocol that it is currently implementing voluntarily. Ratification will make these
verification measures permanent, and that will make ensuring that Iran abides by its NPT
obligations much easier. Blowing up the deal now would give Iran an excuse to stop voluntarily
complying with the Additional Protocol years before they have to ratify it. Sina Azodi
suggests that this is how Iran might respond to a U.S. withdrawal:
One possible response to a US withdrawal would be for Iran to declare that it will no
longer implement the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This
supplementary protocol significantly enhances the ability of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) to monitor and verify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA.
Under the agreement, Iran is required to implement the protocol and to ratify it within
eight years of the January 2016 implementation of the JCPOA. If the deal collapses, Iran will
no longer feel obliged to allow the intrusive inspections required by the protocol or to
ratify it. This would significantly reduce the IAEA's ability to monitor Iran's nuclear
activities. However, this seems to be a relatively safe option for Iran, since implementation
of the protocol is on a voluntary basis.
As Azodi explains, this is the least provocative response available to Iran, and it allows
Iran to further divide the U.S. and our European allies, who remain committed to honoring the
agreement. It's also quite possible that Iran will follow the U.S. out of the deal to protest
the resumption of U.S. sanctions. Either way, the verification measures that make the JCPOA
such a strong nonproliferation agreement will be lost.
The verification measures in the deal were so stringent because of the fear that Iran
wouldn't keep its side of the bargain, but if the deal dies it won't be because of Iranian
cheating. Opponents of the deal have shown that the one truly fatal flaw of the deal was that
it contained no provision to make sure that the U.S. fulfills its obligations. Posted in
foreign
policy , politics . Tagged
Iran ,
IAEA ,
Donald Trump ,
JCPOA
, Sina Azodi , Ernest
Moniz .
For the time being, Trump's lack of impulse control and self-discipline may frustrate his
strongman tendencies at home, but that's cold comfort, given the damage he can do with U.S.
military might. In "the most powerful office in the world,"
impulsive, ignorant incompetence can be just as dangerous as sinister purpose -- but it
represents a different set of threats than the ones that most concern Frum.
"Trumpocracy has left Americans less safe against foreign dangers," Frum charges, by which
he seems to mean mainly Russian cybermeddling. He spends an order of magnitude more time on
that subject than on the foreign dangers Trump has gratuitously stoked with brinksmanship on
North Korea.
In the near term, what's to be most feared is the president lumbering into a major conflict
with either (or both?) of the two remaining "Axis
of Evil" members. Uncertain plans for a North Korean summit aside, that risk may be
increasing. As the New York Times 's Maggie Haberman recently explained , Trump "was
terrified of the job the first six months, and now feels like he has a command of it" -- a
terrifying thought in itself. Newly emboldened, the president wants unrepentant uber-hawks John
Bolton and Mike Pompeo for national security advisor and secretary of state, respectively. "Let
Trump be Trump" looks a lot like letting Trump be Bush-era Frum .
In fairness, Frum does seem queasy about all this, but he's
awkwardly positioned to sound the alarm. The author who declared that it's
"victory or holocaust" in the war on terror and lauded George W. Bush as The Right
Man may not be the right man to guide us through the particular dangers of this moment
in history.
We may yet avoid a disaster on the scale of the Iraq war, aided by what Frum terms "the
surge in civic spirit that has moved Americans since the ominous night of November 8, 2016" --
or God's special affection for fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Perhaps, in
hindsight, the Trump years will look more like a Great Beclowning than a Long National
Nightmare. If so, we may look back on this period and say, as "43" apparently did of Trump's
First Inaugural: "that was
some weird shit " -- and give thanks that Trump wasn't as competent as Bush.
This is about American Imperialism and MIC. Neocons are just well-laid MIC lobbyists. Some
like Bolton are pretty talented guys. Some like Max Boot are simply stupid.
Notable quotes:
"... What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? [bold mine-DL] ..."
"... So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again. ..."
The conclusion of Stephen Walt's column on
John Bolton is exactly right:
Don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to "normalize" this appointment or suggest that it
shouldn't concern you. Rather, I'm suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you
should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone
with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous
war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the
same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again?
[bold mine-DL]
So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits
people like him to screw up and move up again and again.
There is a strong bias in our foreign policy debates in favor of "action," no matter how
stupid or destructive that action proves to be. That is one reason why reflexive supporters of
an activist foreign policy will never have to face the consequences of the policies they
support. Bolton has thrived as an advocate of hard-line policies precisely because he fills the
assigned role of the fanatical warmonger, and there is always a demand for someone to fill that
role. His fanaticism doesn't discredit him, because it is eminently useful to his somewhat less
fanatical colleagues. That is how he can hang around long enough until there is a president
ignorant enough to think that he is qualified to be a top adviser.
Bolton will also have reliable supporters in the conservative movement that will make
excuses for the inexcusable. National Review recently published an article by
David French in defense of Bolton whose conclusion was that we should "give a hawk a chance."
Besides being evasive and dishonest about just how fanatical Bolton is, the article was an
effort to pretend that Iraq war supporters should be given another chance to wreck U.S. foreign
policy again. It may be true that Bolton's views are "in the mainstream of conservative
foreign-policy thought," but that is an indictment of the so-called "mainstream" that is being
represented. Bolton has been wrong about every major foreign policy issue of the last twenty
years. If that doesn't disqualify you from holding a high-ranking government position, what
does?
Hawks have been given a chance to run our foreign policy every day for decades on end, and
they have failed numerous times at exorbitant cost. Generic hawks don't deserve a second chance
after the last sixteen-plus years of failure and disaster, and fanatical hard-liners like
Bolton never deserved a first chance.
French asserts that Bolton is "not extreme," but that raises the obvious question: compared
to what?Bolton has publicly, repeatedly urged the U.S. government to launch illegal preventive
wars against Iran and North Korea, and that just scratches the surface of his fanaticism. That
strikes me as rather extreme, and that is why so many people are disturbed by the Bolton
appointment. If he isn't "extreme" even by contemporary movement conservative standards, who
is? How psychopathic would one need to be to be considered extreme in French's eyes? If
movement conservatives can't see why Bolton is an unacceptable and outrageous choice for
National Security Advisor, they are so far gone that there is nothing to be done for them and
no point in listening to anything they have to say.
The rule No.1: do not buy cheap routers. Do not use routers which are supplied for free by
your ISP. Buy only from proven companies with good security record. To use your own firewall (a
small linux server is OK) is a must in the current circumstances
There is no special value in Kaspersky anti-virus software. all such products can be used as
a backdoor in your computer (for example via update mechanism). Using complex and opaque software
actually makes Windows less secure not more secure. Periodic (say, daily) reinstallation from
trusted image is probably a better way, especially if Windows is really minimized and does not
contain third party software that has it's own update mechanisms or such mechanism are
blocked.
But attacks on routers is a new fashion and should be taken very seriously as most people pay
no attention to this crucial part of their business or home network. In any case a separate
firmware is needed after Internet router which now is not that expensive (a decent box can be
bought for around $300. For those who know Unix/Linux see for example Firewall Micro Appliance
or QOTOM
(both can be used of pfSense or your custom Linux solution) For those who don't see, for example,
Zyxel [USG40] ZyWALL (USG) UTM Firewall
Notable quotes:
"... Further findings suggest that Slingshot had common code with only two other known pieces of software, both malwares, which were attributed to the NSA and CIA, respectively, by analysts. Though various U.S. agencies are all denying comment, things are clearly pointing uncomfortably in their direction. ..."
"... Malware is not a precision munition, it hits wide targets and spreads out to bystanders. This is particularly disturbing to note if, as some reports are indicating, this malware was Pentagon in origin. ..."
Slingshot . The
malware targeted Latvian-made Internet routers popular in the
Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Kaspersky's reports reveal that the malware had been active since at least 2012, and
speculates that it was government-made, owing to its sophistication and its use of novel
techniques rarely seen elsewhere.
Those investigating the matter further have drawn the conclusion that Slingshot was
developed by the U.S. government, with some reports quoting former
officials as connecting it to the Pentagon's JSOC special forces. For those following the
cyber security and malware sphere, this is a huge revelation, putting the U.S. government in
the hot seat for deploying cyber attacks that harm a much greater range of innocent users
beyond their intended targets.
Kaspersky's own findings note that the code was written in English, using a driver flaw to
allow the implanting of various types of spyware. Among those mentioned by Moscow-based
Kaspersky was an implant named "GOLLUM," which notably was mentioned in
one of the leaked Edward Snowden documents .
Further findings suggest that Slingshot had common code with only two other known pieces
of software, both malwares, which were attributed to the NSA and CIA, respectively, by
analysts. Though various U.S. agencies are all denying comment, things are clearly pointing
uncomfortably in their direction.
Cyberscoop
, one of the first news outlets to break the story, reported a mixed reaction among officials.
Some noted that Kaspersky Labs was simply doing what a security company is supposed to do.
Others, however, were less agreeable, suggesting it was an intentional attempt by Kaspersky to
undermine U.S. security.
The argument, as far as it goes, is that given the ostensible target areas -- the Middle
East, North Africa, Afghanistan -- Kaspersky should have concluded it was related to the War on
Terror and sat on their findings. The Trump administration already views Kaspersky as a sort of
hostile actor --
banning the use of Kaspersky products by any government or civilian federal contractor in
December, citing Kremlin influence (a charge that has been vehemently denied by the company).
This just gives them more justification for seeing Kaspersky as an adversary in the space.
Unfortunately for the Russian company, some American retailers have even followed suit,
pulling the software from the shelves on the grounds that it's Russian, and that therefore
suspect.
There has been no clear evidence that Kaspersky's software was serving as a backdoor for
Russian intelligence, though it was reported last fall that sensitive documents were stolen
from a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor's laptop via
its Kaspersky-made antivirus software . In a statement at the time, the company said,
"Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its
cyberespionage efforts." Turns out that Israeli spies, spying on the Russian spies, disclosed
the intrusion to U.S. officials.
Kaspersky has consistently ranked near the top of antivirus ratings from virtually all
third-party reviewers. The company has sold its products to nearly 400 million users worldwide,
with 60 percent in the U.S. and Western Europe. Until now, Kaspersky was being used by several
major agencies in the federal government, including the State Department and Department of
Defense.
Ironically, this new Slingshot issue itself appears just to be a testament to how well the
company's security works at digging up extremely dangerous malware. It also underscores the
uneasy reality that the U.S. has been engaging in its own brand of cyber warfare all along.
Any claims that a specific piece of U.S. malware -- in this case, Slingshot -- was targeting
only al-Qaeda or ISIS bad guys is disingenuous as well. The exploit on routers is hitting an
entire region,
infecting an untold number of innocent people . Internet cafés are said to have been
hit in this, meaning everyone going into the cafes is at risk.
Malware is not a precision munition, it hits wide targets and spreads out to bystanders.
This is particularly disturbing to note if, as some reports are indicating, this malware was
Pentagon in origin.
U.S. civilian government surveillance is already doing great harm to general Internet
security, and does so by remaining in denial about the balance of good to harm that is being
done. The U.S. military, by contrast, has shown its willingness to inflict major harm on
innocents in pursuit of any war goal. As they start hitting regions with malware, all bets are
off on how far it will spread.
Security companies like Kaspersky Labs only afford the private user limited protection from
all of this malware, because they're constantly playing catch-up, finding new variants and new
exploits that the various pieces of software are using. Slingshot, for instance,
went undetected for six solid years .
The discovery means fixes can finally be implemented for the routers and the computers.
Novel exploits like this are rarely a one-time fix, however, as a slew of similar exploits from
other sources tend to crop up after one gets taken out. It's a never-ending battle.
In August, President Trump made U.S. Cyber Command
a formal military command , reflecting the growing view of the Internet as a military
objective. Much as America's other battlefields result in collateral damage on the ground, the
cyberwar is going to have a deleterious impact on day-to-day life in cyberspace. The big
questions are how bad things will get, and how quickly.
Jason Ditz is news editor at Antiwar.com , a nonprofit organization dedicated to the cause of
non-interventionism. In addition to TAC, his work has appeared in Forbes, Toronto Star,
Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Daily Caller, Washington Times and Detroit Free
Press.
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Consider. To cut through the Russophobia rampant here, Trump decided to make
a direct phone call to Vladimir Putin. And in that call, Trump, like Angela Merkel,
congratulated Putin on his re-election victory.
Instantly, the briefing paper for the president's call was leaked to the Post . In
bold letters it read "DO NOT CONGRATULATE."
Whereupon the Beltway went ballistic.
How could Trump congratulate Putin, whose election was a sham? Why did he not charge Putin
with the Salisbury poisoning? Why did he not denounce Putin for interfering with "our
democracy"?
Amazing. A disloyal White House staffer betrays his trust and leaks a confidential paper to
sabotage the foreign policy of a duly elected president, and he is celebrated in this capital
city.
If you wish to see the deep state at work, this is it: anti-Trump journalists using First
Amendment immunities to collude with and cover up the identities of bureaucratic snakes out to
damage or destroy a president they despise. No wonder democracy is a declining stock
worldwide.
And, yes, they give out Pulitzers for criminal collusion like this.
The New York Times got a Pulitzer and the Post got a Hollywood movie
starring Meryl Streep for publishing stolen secret papers from the Pentagon of JFK and LBJ --
to sabotage the Vietnam War policy of Richard Nixon.
Why? Because the hated Nixon was succeeding in extricating us with honor from a war that the
presidents for whom the Times and Post hauled water could not win or end.
Not only have journalists given up any pretense of neutrality in this campaign to bring down
the president, ex-national security officers of the highest rank are starting to sound like
resisters.
Ex-CIA director John Brennan openly speculated Tuesday that the president may have been
compromised by Moscow and become an asset of the Kremlin.
"I think he's afraid of the president of Russia," Brennan said of Trump and Putin. "The
Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump and may have things they could
expose."
If Brennan has evidence Trump is compromised, he should relay it to Robert Mueller. If he
does not, this is speculation of an especially ugly variety for someone once entrusted with
America's highest secrets.
What's going on in this city is an American version of the "color revolutions" we have
employed to knock over governments in places like Georgia and Ukraine.
The goal is to break Trump's presidency, remove him, discredit his election as contaminated
by Kremlin collusion, upend the democratic verdict of 2016, and ash-can Trump's agenda of
populist conservatism. Then America can return to the open borders, free trade,
democracy-crusading Bushite globalism beloved by our Beltway elites.
Trump, in a way, is the indispensable man of the populist right.
In the 2016 primaries, no other Republican candidate shared his determination to secure the
border, bring back manufacturing, or end the endless wars in the Middle East that have so bled
and bankrupted our nation.
Whether the Assads rule in Damascus, the Chinese fortify Scarborough Shoal, or the Taliban
return to Kabul, none are existential threats to the United States.
But if the borders of our country are not secured, as Reagan warned, in a generation,
America will not even be a country.
Trump seems now to recognize that the special counsel's office of Robert Mueller, which this
city sees as the instrument of its deliverance, is a mortal threat to his presidency.
Mueller's team wishes to do to Trump what Archibald Cox's team sought to do to Nixon: drive
him out of office or set him up for the kill by a Democratic Congress in 2019.
Trump appears to recognize that the struggle with Mueller is now a political struggle -- to
the death.
Hence Trump's hiring of Joe diGenova and the departure of John Dowd from his legal team. In
the elegant phrase of Michael Corleone, diGenova is a wartime consigliere.
He believes Trump is the target of a conspiracy, under which Jim Comey's FBI put in the fix
to prevent Hillary's prosecution and then fabricated a crime of collusion with Russia to take
down the new president the American people had elected.
The Trump White House is behaving as if it were the prospective target of a coup d'etat. And
it is not wrong for them to think so.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The
Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more
about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators website at www.creators.com.
Another chickenhawk in Trump administration. Sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence. ..."
"... Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able to flout normal State Department rules by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs. ..."
"... During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit, those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S. strike against Iran. ..."
"... Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days. ..."
"... Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia. ..."
"... So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce. ..."
"... Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to create them with no regards for consequences. ..."
"... I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling". ..."
"... I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done mankind a favor. ..."
"... But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq. ..."
"... Bolton and Cheney must have been livid about Stuxnet, for all the wrong reasons ..."
"... Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something. These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry. ..."
"... Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to ..."
John Bolton (Gage Skidmore/Flikr)
In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the
United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time -- in
2007
,
in
2008,
and again in 2011
-- those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging
attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government.
But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose John Bolton as his next
national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative
hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing
Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of
such a policy.
His is not merely a rhetorical stance: Bolton actively conspired during his tenure as
the Bush administration's policymaker on Iran from 2002 through 2004 to establish the political conditions necessary for
the administration to carry out military action.
More than anyone else inside or outside the Trump administration, Bolton has already
influenced Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Bolton parlayed his connection with the primary financier behind both
Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself -- the militantly Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson -- to get Trump's ear
last October, just as the president was preparing to announce his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He spoke with Trump by phone from Las Vegas after
meeting
with Adelson
.
It was Bolton who
persuaded
Trump
to commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the JCPOA if
Congress and America's European allies did not go along with demands for major changes that were clearly calculated to
ensure the deal would fall apart.
Although Bolton was passed over for the job of secretary of state, he now appears to
have had the inside track for national security advisor.
Trump
met with Bolton on March 6
and told him, "We need you here, John," according
to a Bolton associate. Bolton said he would only take secretary of state or national security advisor, whereupon Trump
promised, "I'll call you really soon." Trump then replaced Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with former CIA director
Mike Pompeo, after which White House sources
leaked
to the media
Trump's intention to replace H.R. McMaster within a matter of
weeks.
The only other possible candidate for the position
mentioned
in media accounts
is Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was
acting national security advisor after General Michael Flynn was ousted in February 2017.
Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well
known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex
and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic
Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of
diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence.
Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of
State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton
was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able
to
flout
normal State Department rules
by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003
and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs.
Thus, at the very moment that Powell was saying administration policy was not to
attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for just such a war. During a February 2003
visit, Bolton
assured Israeli
officials in private meetings
that he had no doubt the United States would
attack Iraq, and that after taking down Saddam, it would deal with Iran, too, as well as Syria.
During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had
unannounced
meetings, including with the head of Mossad,
Meir Dagan, without the usual
reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit,
those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S.
strike against Iran.
Mossad played a very aggressive role in influencing world opinion on the Iranian
nuclear program. In the summer of 2003, according to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in their book
The
Nuclear Jihadist
, Meir Dagan created a new Mossad office tasked with
briefing the world's press on alleged Iranian efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons capability. The new unit's
responsibilities included circulating documents from inside Iran as well from outside, according to Frantz and Collins.
Bolton's role in a joint U.S.-Israeli strategy, as he
outlines
in his own 2007 memoir
, was to ensure that the Iran nuclear issue would be
moved out of the International Atomic Energy Agency and into the United Nations Security Council.
He
was determined to prevent IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei from reaching an agreement with Iran that would make
it more difficult for the Bush administration to demonize Tehran as posing a nuclear weapons threat.
Bolton began accusing Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons program in mid-2003, but
encountered resistance not only from ElBaradei and non-aligned states, but from Britain, France, and Germany as well.
Bolton's strategy was based on the claim that Iran was hiding its military nuclear
program from the IAEA, and in early 2004, he came up with a dramatic propaganda ploy: he sent a set of satellite images
to the IAEA showing sites at the Iranian military reservation at Parchin that he claimed were being used for tests to
simulate nuclear weapons. Bolton demanded that the IAEA request access to inspect those sites and leaked his demand to
the Associated Press in September 2004. In fact, the satellite images showed nothing more than bunkers and buildings for
conventional explosives testing.
Bolton was apparently hoping the Iranian military would not agree to any IAEA
inspections based on such bogus claims, thus playing into his propaganda theme of Iran's "intransigence" in refusing to
answer questions about its nuclear program. But in 2005 Iran allowed the inspectors into those sites and even let them
choose several more sites to inspect. The inspectors found no evidence of any nuclear-related activities.
The U.S.-Israeli strategy would later hit the jackpot, however, when a large cache of
documents supposedly from a covert source within Iran's nuclear weapons program surfaced in autumn 2004. The documents,
allegedly found on the laptop computer of one of the participants, included technical drawings of a series of efforts to
redesign Iran's Shahab-3 missile to carry what appeared to be a nuclear weapon.
But the whole story of the so-called "laptop documents" was a fabrication. In 2013, a
former senior German official
revealed
the true story
to this writer: the documents had been given to German
intelligence by the Mujahedin E Khalq, the anti-Iran armed group that was well known to have been used by Mossad to
"launder" information the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves. Furthermore, the drawings showing the redesign
that were cited as proof of a nuclear weapons program were clearly done by someone who didn't know that Iran
had
already abandoned the Shahab-3's nose cone
for an entirely different design.
Mossad had clearly been working on those documents in 2003 and 2004 when Bolton was
meeting with Meir Dagan. Whether Bolton knew the Israelis were preparing fake documents or not, it was the Israeli
contribution towards establishing the political basis for an American attack on Iran for which he was the point man.
Bolton reveals in his memoirs that this Cheney-directed strategy took its cues from the Israelis, who told Bolton that
the Iranians were getting close to "the point of no return." That was point, Bolton wrote, at which "we could not stop
their progress without using force."
Cheney and Bolton based their war strategy on the premise that the U.S. military would
be able to consolidate control over Iraq quickly. Instead the U.S. occupation bogged down and never fully recovered.
Cheney proposed taking advantage of a high-casualty event in Iraq that could be blamed on Iran to
attack
an IRGC base in Iran in the summer of 2007.
But the risk that pro-Iranian
Shiite militias in Iraq would retaliate against U.S. troops was a key argument against the proposal.
The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were also well aware that Iran had the
capability to retaliate directly against U.S. forces in the region, including against warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
They had no patience for Cheney's wild ideas about more war.
That Pentagon caution remains unchanged. But two minds in the White House unhinged
from reality could challenge that wariness -- and push the United States closer towards a dangerous war with Iran.
I believe "War With Iran" is on the agenda.
I wrote the article below some time ago.
"Will There Be War With Iran"?
Is it now Iran's turn to be subjected to the planned and hellish wars that have already engulfed Iraq, Libya,
Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan and other countries? Will, the gates of hell be further opened to include an attack
on Iran?
Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal
standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days.
The re-emergence of Bolton is the result of Trump's electoral victory, a phenomenon that resembles the upheavals
that followed when an unhinged hereditary ruler would take the reins of power in bygone empires.
There's a big difference between the wars with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and a war with Iran. The
difference is, this is a war the United States could lose. And lose very, very badly. As Pompeo remarked, it would
take "only" 2000 airstrikes to eliminate the Iranian nuclear facilities. But what will it take to land 20,000
marines on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf to secure the straits, and there fend off 1.7 million Iranian
regulars and militia on the ground? How will the navy cope with hundreds and hundreds of supersonic cruise
missiles fired in volleys? What about the S-300 missiles that are by now fully operational in Iran?
A look at
the map shows that this is a war that the US simply cannot win.
Unless it uses nuclear weapons and simply sets out to kill every last man, woman, and child in Iran, all 80
million of them.
Which I suppose is not out of the question. As all options are sure to be on the table.
"Everyone worshipped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshipped the beast also,
saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?'" Revelation 13:4
Who can fight against the U.S/NATO?
Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at
FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia.
So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service
forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce.
Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to
create them with no regards for consequences.
Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required.
But I don't need background to know that advocating for wars that serve little in the way of US interests
because we simply are not in any "clear and present danger".
Odd that so many "old schoolers" have abandoned some general cliche's that serve as sound guide.
Just when you think you've heard the last of the various catastrophes, blunders, and odd capering about involving
Bolton, you hear that voice from the old late night gadget commercials barking "wait,
there's more
!!"
I
doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly
given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling".
"The Boltons, Frums, and Boots of the world never have to fight the wars they start."
Hey now, Bolton's service
in the Maryland National Guard made sure the North Vietnamese never landed in Baltimore. Can you imagine the
horror if the Russians had captured our supply of soft shell crab?
John Bolton a 75 year old loser, a has Never-been, which is the mouth piece of the Zionists who keep him on the
pay roll. He likes to hear his own voice and to feel important because he wants war with Iran or all the Middle
East. He's actions and speeches are all emotional and lack logic and reasoning.
So, what is he good for?!
Re: "Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required."
Not sure about that. We definitely need Roosevelts and Lincolns, Grants and Shermans and Eisenhowers and Pattons.
I'm not clear on what function the likes of Bolton serve.
I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it
sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done
mankind a favor.
But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency
from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some
minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian
Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq.
And if the Iranians had any sense RIGHT NOW, they would make sure every family had a stock of 10 powerful
anti-vehicle mines, REALLY powerful mines. Make sure all are safely buried with locations memorized. And make sure
everyone had the training to use them, even older children (who will be the front-line guerrillas in 5 years).
So if that devil Bolton gets his way, his own country will pay a price too, and deservedly too. I want my
country to be peaceful and friendly to the world like the Germans are now. But it may take the same type of "WWII
treatment" to get my hateful war-loving countrymen to walk away from their sin.
The guerrilla war in Iraq was fought against only 5 million Sunni Arabs, the US occupiers having successfully
pealed away the Kurds and Shia to be collaborators, or at least stay uninvolved with the insurgency.
But Iran is
not just bigger than Iraq, but much more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Imagine what kind of insurgency
you might get from 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites?
My advice to the Iranians RIGHT NOW is to mass-produce the most lethal anti-vehicle mines possible and
distribute them to the entire civilian population. Train everyone how to use them, then once trained, bury maybe
20 mines per family, all in known but hidden locations.
THAT will stop the Bolton/Zionist plan dead in its tracks.
Maybe it was a career-enhancing move. It is a legitimate question, along
with "follow the money"? Regardless of why sociopaths like Keith Payne or John Bolton become obsessed with
"winning nuclear war" or "bombing Iran" . How do they make a living? Who would bankroll somebody – over many decades – to not just consider or plan, but actively provoke illegal
acts of aggressive war, against declared policy of the government and the demands of the Constitution they have
sworn an oath to uphold?
It is also educational to see that the fabrications and other "war-program related activities" in regards to
Iran resemble the same stovepipelines that provide the Iraq 2003 pretexts – with Powell reprising his role as
useful idiot – which clashes badly with the "blunder" narrative that anybody in the US government actually
believed Iraq had WMD – was beyond "the point of no return".
This also bodes ill for a Bolton-formulated policy on Korea, and any "National Security Advice" he would see
fit to fabricate and feed to the Bomber In Chief.
Furthermore, we learn just how unhinged Cheney et.al. really were – expecting Iraq to be a mere stepping stone
along their adventures on the "Axis of Evil" trail. If these are our gamblers, nobody would suspect them of
counting cards.
We must look into our very national soul and ask why are we entertaining a war with Iran? The answer is clear. It
is to further the goals of a fanatical, right-wing, group of Zionists. When a truthful history is written about
this era of endless wars, the errant and disgraceful behavior of this group will be clearly identified and they
will not have anywhere to hide. You may fool some of the folks, some of the time, but not all the folks, all of
the time.
Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something.
These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was
true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry.
Israel and the Zionists are exactly the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington warned us about. Bolton is
a neocon-Zionist who wants the United States blood and taxes to ensure Israel's dominance of the Middle East.
So Gareth Porter cites his own Truthout article as authority for the assertion that the "laptop documents" are
fabrications. Most of the cited article seems to be devoted to "Curveball", the impeached source of Iraqi
intelligence, in order to prop up the bona fides of the German who claims the Iranian intelligence is a forgery.
Any other sourcing for this allegation available?
Judging from a quick look at what else Truthout has on offer,
I'm not sure about the credibility of Mr. Porter.
Thank you Mr. Porter for your insightful and intelligent articles, being that I am from Iran Originally brings
tears to my eyes to even imagine such tragedy, I pray this will never happen. Having lived in America more than
half of my life and having children that are Americans makes these thoughts even more horrifying . I am however
thankful to read all the comments from so many intelligent , decent and true Americans and that gives me hope that
such disaster will not take place. The people of Iran are decent and kind and cultured , I am hopeful that they
will find their way and bring about a true democracy soon and again become a positive force to the humanity.
First of all British did have the poison they detected. Otherwise they would be unable to
detect "Novichok" (if there was such substance and this is not just a myth).
Notable quotes:
"... Pat asks, Cui bono? I would say rogue players in the deep state right here in the US along with their brethren in the military/industrial/intelligence complex. ..."
"... Of course, that makes me a conspiracy theorist. But I actually saw war as a young man based upon lies. By the way, in the lead-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, I told people at work that this war would eventually rival the military blunder in Vietnam. The propaganda reminded me so much of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They all laughed at me and essentially said I was an old Vietnam veteran living in the past. They aren't laughing now. ..."
I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam and ever since then I have been a card-carrying
skeptic of my own country. But I saw the human face of a war based upon lies and propaganda
that became the worst foreign policy debacle in our nation's history. If we would get into a
shooting war over this affair, we would have to bring back the draft to prosecute this war
against Russia. Then the proverbial "merde" would definitely hit the fan.
And when Kim Sung Un assassinated his half-brother in Malaysia, the VX nerve agent was used.
The UK invented this agent in the 1950s at its government laboratory. But not one nation blamed
Great Britain as the culprit.
Pat asks, Cui bono? I would say rogue players in the deep state right here in the US
along with their brethren in the military/industrial/intelligence complex.
Of course, that makes me a conspiracy theorist. But I actually saw war as a young man
based upon lies. By the way, in the lead-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, I told people at
work that this war would eventually rival the military blunder in Vietnam. The propaganda
reminded me so much of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They all laughed at me and essentially
said I was an old Vietnam veteran living in the past. They aren't laughing now.
"... It says that the United States is always virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators, military governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy." ..."
American Exceptionalism is perhaps the most toxic ideology since Nazism and Stalinism. It says that the United States is
always virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators,
military governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy."
At least this appointment along with the election of Trump shows the true face of the
United States in international affairs. When we face the fact we are (a) an oligarchy and (b)
a brutal Empire we might have a chance to return to something more human. Few readers, even
of TAC, will want to look at our recent history of stunning brutality and lack of interest in
even being in the neighborhood of following international law.
"... I was not in the least surprised at reports that a known torturer was slated to head the CIA, and I expected quick confirmation. Such is my opinion of our ruling classes. ..."
"... Whatever Haspel may be, we can be sure the CIA will continue to torture, detain people without charge, assassinate and terrorize with its own drone force, and cause mayhem around the world and at home. No one can be trusted with the Ring of Power. ..."
"... American Exceptionalism is perhaps the most toxic ideology since Nazism and Stalinism. It says that the United States is always virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators, military governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy." ..."
"... Fast forward to January, 2017 and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer telling MSNBC's Rachael Maddow that President-elect Donald Trump is "being really dumb" by criticizing the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia's cyber activities: Shumer: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you, So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this." No, Shumer wasn't joking. He was serious. ..."
"... There won't be a 'Nuremberg' tribunal because Al Qaida didn't defeat the United States, and you'd have to convict not just Ms. Haspel, but a sizeable portion of the U.S. Government. ..."
"... If nothing else, the appointment of Bloody Gina as CIA head finally drives a wooden stake through the heart of the myth that "we're The Good Guys(tm)!" or its cousin "all we gotta do is elect Team D and we can be The Good Guys(R) again!" ..."
"... I do not know whether to admire Mr. van Buren's idealism or be astonished at his naivete. Has he never heard of the School of the Americas, of sinister reputation, or the Condor Plan, aided and abetted by U.S. intelligence? People in Latin America know better than to believe the U.S. protestations of virtue. They know about torturers, and the U.S. support for them. ..."
"... She was put in charge there not long after and oversaw the waterboarding of at least one prisoner, and later followed orders to destroy the tapes of waterboarding at that site. Your claim that " She had nothing to do with torture anywhere" is incorrect. ..."
"... furbo: your contention that " US extreme interrogation techniques are not equivalent to forcible sodomy, beating the genitals, pounding the kidneys, or breaking bones" is wrong. The UN Convention against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, states " For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person " Ask anyone who has been waterboarded whether that fits the official definition? ..."
"... Ceterum censeo: given that the Iraq invasion and occupation was an act of aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter and thus illegal under US law, it is not just torturers but also war criminals in government and general staff that have to be considered in the contexts of these words. ..."
Nothing will say more about who we are, across three American administrations -- one that demanded torture, one that covered it
up, and one that seeks to promote its bloody participants -- than whether Gina Haspel becomes director of the CIA.
Haspel oversaw the
torture of human beings in Thailand as the chief of a CIA black site in 2002. Since then, she's worked her way up to deputy director
at the CIA. With current director Mike Pompeo slated to move to Foggy Bottom, President Donald Trump has proposed Haspel as the Agency's
new head.
Haspel's victims waiting for death in Guantanamo cannot speak to us, though they no doubt remember their own screams as they were
waterboarded. And we can still hear former CIA officer
John Kiriakousay : "We did
call her Bloody Gina. Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because
they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information."
It was Kiriakou who exposed the obsessive debate over the effectiveness of torture as false. The real purpose of torture conducted
by those like Gina Haspel was to seek vengeance, humiliation, and power. We're just slapping you now, she would have said in that
Thai prison, but we control you, and who knows what will happen next, what we're capable of? The torture victim is left to imagine
what form the hurt will take and just how severe it will be, creating his own terror.
Haspel won't be asked at her confirmation hearing to explain how torture works, but those who were waterboarded under her stewardship
certainly could.
I met my first torture victim in Korea, where I was adjudicating visas for the State Department. Persons with serious criminal
records are ineligible to travel to the United States, with an exception for dissidents who have committed political crimes. The
man I spoke with said that under the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee he was tortured for writing anti-government
verse. He was taken to a small underground cell. Two men arrived and beat him repeatedly on his testicles and sodomized him with
one of the tools they had used for the beating. They asked no questions. They barely spoke to him at all.
Though the pain was beyond his ability to describe, he said the subsequent humiliation of being left so utterly helpless was what
really affected his life. It destroyed his marriage, sent him to the repeated empty comfort of alcohol, and kept him from ever putting
pen to paper again. The men who destroyed him, he told me, did their work, and then departed, as if they had others to visit and
needed to get on with things. He was released a few days later and driven back to his apartment by the police. A forward-looking
gesture.
The second torture victim I met was while I was stationed in Iraq. The prison that had held him was under the control of shadowy
U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. Inside, masked men bound him at the wrists and ankles and hung him upside-down. He said they
neither asked him questions nor demanded information. They did whip his testicles with a leather strap, then beat the bottoms of
his feet and the area around his kidneys. They slapped him. They broke the bones in his right foot with a steel rod, a piece of rebar
ordinarily used to reinforce concrete.
It was painful, he told me, but he had felt pain before. What destroyed him was the feeling of utter helplessness, the inability
to control things around him as he once had. He showed me the caved-in portion of his foot, which still bore a rod-like indentation
with faint signs of metal grooves.
Gina Haspel is the same as those who were in the room with the Korean. She is no different than those who tormented the Iraqi.
As head of a black site, Haspel had sole authority to halt the questioning of suspects, but she allowed torture to continue.
New information
and a redaction of earlier reporting that said Haspel was present for the waterboarding and torture of Abu Zubaydah (she was
actually the station chief at the black site after those sessions) makes it less clear whether Haspel oversaw the torture
of all of the prisoners there, but pay it little mind. The confusion arises from the government's refusal to tell us what Haspel
actually did as a torturer. So many records have yet to be released and those that have been are heavily redacted. Then there are
the tapes of Zubaydah's waterboarding, which Haspel later pushed to have destroyed.
Arguing over just how much blood she has in her hands is a distraction from the fact that she indeed has blood on her hands.
Gina Haspel is now eligible for the CIA directorship because Barack Obama did not prosecute anyone for torture; he merely signed
an executive order banning it in the future. He did not hold any truth commissions, and ensured that almost all government documents
on the torture program remained classified. He did not prosecute the CIA officials who destroyed videotapes of the torture scenes.
Obama ignored the truth that sees former Nazis continue to be hunted some 70 years after the Holocaust: that those who do evil
on behalf of a government are individually responsible. "I was only following orders" is not a defense of inhuman acts. The purpose
of tracking down the guilty is to punish them, to discourage the next person from doing evil, and to morally immunize a nation-state.
To punish Gina Haspel "more than 15 years later for doing what her country asked her to do, and in response to what she was told
were lawful orders, would be a travesty and a disgrace,"
claims one of
her supporters. "Haspel did nothing more and nothing less than what the nation and the agency asked her to do, and she did it well,"
said Michael Hayden,
who headed the CIA during the height of the Iraq war from 2006-2009.
Influential people in Congress agree. Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will soon review
Haspel's nomination,
said , "I know Gina personally and she has the right skill set, experience, and judgment to lead one of our nation's most critical
agencies."
"She'll have to answer for that period of time, but I think she's a highly qualified person,"
offered Senator
Lindsey Graham. Democratic Senator Bill Nelson
defended Haspel's
actions, saying they were "the accepted practice of the day" and shouldn't disqualify her.
His fellow Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, signaled her likely acceptance,
saying , "Since my concerns were raised over the torture situation, I have met with her extensively, talked with her She has
been, I believe, a good deputy director." Senator Susan Collins
added that Haspel "certainly has the expertise and experience as a 30-year employee of the agency." John McCain, a victim of
torture during the Vietnam War,
mumbled only that Haspel would have to explain her role.
Nearly alone at present, Republican Senator Rand Paul says he will
oppose Haspel's nomination. Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, have told Trump she is unsuitable and will
likely also vote no.
Following World War II, the United States could have easily executed those Nazis responsible for the Holocaust, or thrown them
into some forever jail on an island military base. It would have been hard to find anyone who wouldn't have supported brutally torturing
them at a black site. Instead, they were put on public trial at Nuremberg and made to defend their actions as the evidence against
them was laid bare. The point was to demonstrate that We were better than Them.
Today we refuse to understand what Haspel's victims, and the Korean writer, and the Iraqi insurgent, already know on our behalf:
unless Congress awakens to confront this nightmare and deny Gina Haspel's nomination as director of the CIA, torture will have transformed
us and so it will consume us. Gina Haspel is a torturer. We are torturers. It is as if Nuremberg never happened.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of
We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. He tweets@WeMeantWell.
Covering up torture is quite possibly the worst thing Obama did. (I'd put it neck-and-neck with targeted killing.) This nation
desperately needs a president who will expose all of these horrors, and appoint an attorney general who will prosecute these acts
as war crimes.
Trump likes waterboarding. He said so himself. One assumes he meant, being a whimpering coward himself, when someone else does
it to someone else. But who knows? Enjoy judge Gorsuch.
"doing what her country asked her to do, and in response to what she was told were lawful orders"
To complete the parallel, we would need to prosecute and punish those who asked her to do it, and those who told her those
orders were lawful. Instead, some are doing paintings of their toes, some are promoted to be Federal judges, and some are influential
professors at "liberal" law schools. Why punish *only* her?
I was not in the least surprised at reports that a known torturer was slated to head the CIA, and I expected quick confirmation.
Such is my opinion of our ruling classes. I am in full support of Mr. Van Buren's thesis. However, Pro Publica, which seems
to have been the source of much reporting of Haspel's torture record, has retracted the claim that Haspel had tortured in Thailand.
Mr. Van Buren quotes another source from his blog that supports the thesis that Haspel is a torturer. How does one know what to
believe? Whatever Haspel may be, we can be sure the CIA will continue to torture, detain people without charge, assassinate
and terrorize with its own drone force, and cause mayhem around the world and at home. No one can be trusted with the Ring of
Power.
Its because we lost our sense of what makes us who we are. We are an empire that dances for private interests. In Rome they were
called families and led by patricians, they had money private guards, gladiators, and even street people supporting them. In the
Modern USA they are called Interest Groups and/or Corporations. They are lead by CEOs and instead of gladiators they have Lawyers.
Our being better matters less then their own squabbles which is why a torturer could reach the highest seat in intel. The majority
of Americans have lost their sense of being Americans instead they are Republicans, Democrats, etc, etc. Things that once use
to be part of an American have come to define us.
American Exceptionalism is perhaps the most toxic ideology since Nazism and Stalinism. It says that the United States is always
virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators, military
governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy."
At least this appointment along with the election of Trump shows the true face of the United States in international affairs.
When we face the fact we are (a) an oligarchy and (b) a brutal Empire we might have a chance to return to something more human.
Few readers, even of TAC, will want to look at our recent history of stunning brutality and lack of interest in even being in
the neighborhood of following international law.
CIA has purposefully refused to disclose Haspel's role for a decade+ They have selectively released information last week to discredit
those criticizing her. I don't think we should play their game, letting them set the agenda. Instead, I declaim torture itself
and any role she played in it, whether she poured the water or kept the books.
Does Peter Van Buren's criticism of the CIA's Haspel put him at risk?
In the 2003 film "Love Actually" the British Prime Minister (played by Hugh Grant) jokes with a Downing Street employee Natalie
(Martine McCutcheon):
"PM: You live with your husband? Boyfriend, three illegitimate but charming children? –
"NATALIE: No, I've just split up with my boyfriend, so I'm back with my mum and dad for a while.
"PM: Oh. I'm sorry.
"NATALIE: No, it's fine. I'm well shot of him. He said I was getting fat.
"PM: I beg your pardon?
"NATALIE: He said no one's going to fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks. Not a nice guy, actually, in the end.
"PM: Right You know, being Prime Minister, I could just have him murdered.
"NATALIE: Thank you, sir. I'll think about it.
"PM: Do – the SAS are absolutely charming – ruthless, trained killers are just a phone call away."
It's just a film. It's just a joke. But the joke works because the public knows that – in reality – the security services have
the skills-sets and the abilities, to do damage anyone they want to do damage to -- and to probably get away with it.
Fast forward to January, 2017 and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer telling MSNBC's Rachael Maddow that President-elect
Donald Trump is "being really dumb" by criticizing the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia's cyber activities:
Shumer: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you, So even
for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this." No, Shumer wasn't joking. He was serious.
Fast forward again to yesterday, March 17, 2018: Former CIA Director John Brennan wasn't joking when he reacted to the firing
of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe -- and President Donald Trump's tweeted celebration of it -- by tweeting this attack against
Trump:
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful
place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America America
will triumph over you."
Obama UN Representative Samantha Power followed up on the Brennan tweet with this:
"Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan."
When public officials and former public officials -- like Shumer, Brennan and Power -- make such public statements it must
necessarily have a chilling effect on public criticism of the security services.
After all, none of the three are joking. They're serious. And the American people know that they're serious.
Does Peter Van Buren's criticism of CIA operative Haspel put him at risk?
New information makes it less clear whether Haspel oversaw the torture of all of the prisoners at her black site, but pay it little
mind. The confusion is because the government refuses to tell us what Haspel actually did as a torturer. Arguing over just how
much blood she has on her hands is a distraction when she indeed has blood on her hands.
The idea is her participation on any level at the black site is sufficient to disqualify her from heading the Agency. If the
Agency wishes to clarify her role, as was done via trial for the various Nazis at Nuremberg, we can deal with her actions more
granularly.
Since we have not had any more successful attacks on the scale of 9-11, it is very easy to be scrupulous regarding rough treatment
of terrorists.
But if we had suffered a dozen or more such attacks, of increasing magnitude and maybe involving nuclear weapons, how many
of you would still be condemning Mrs Haspel et al.? Or would you then be complaining they had not used water-boarding enough?
The 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was caught weeks before 9-11. Investigators figured out he was up to no good, tried
to get permission to search his computer, but were denied. The U.S. Government carefully protected his privacy rights. So are
you pleased with the outcome, Mr van Buren?
I'm sorry – this whole piece is a massive non sequitur. Ms. Haspel has no 'blood' on her hands as US extreme interrogation techniques
(sleep deprivation, uncomfortable positions, waterboarding) didn't draw any. They are not equivalent to forcible sodomy, beating
the genitals, pounding the kidneys, or breaking bones. US techniques might have been bad policy – won't argue – but lets not fall
for a false equivalency.
Ms. Haspel was an agent of her government, acting on it's orders under it's policies and guidelines. Which leads to
Nuremberg. The Nuremberg tribunals (they were military tribunals – not trials) were conducted by a victorious military force
against a defeated military force. They were widely criticized as vengeance even by such august people as Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court Stone and associate Justice Douglas. There won't be a 'Nuremberg' tribunal because Al Qaida didn't defeat the
United States, and you'd have to convict not just Ms. Haspel, but a sizeable portion of the U.S. Government.
And lastly there's this from a comment of the authors: "The idea is her participation on any level at the black site is sufficient
to disqualify her from heading the Agency." Utter nonsense. That was the mission of the Agency at that time. It's like saying
a 33yr old Drone Pilot who takes out an ISIS/Al Qaida operative as well as 15 civilians is disqualified to be the Sec Def 2 decades
later.
If nothing else, the appointment of Bloody Gina as CIA head finally drives a wooden stake through the heart of the myth
that "we're The Good Guys(tm)!" or its cousin "all we gotta do is elect Team D and we can be The Good Guys(R) again!"
We demonize Russia at every opportunity, but I don't see Russia rewarding torturers by appointing them to high office.
I didn't know too much about this woman's background until I read that Rand Paul opposes her nomination. I tend to take notice
whenever Rand Paul holds forth on any subject. All I can say is that if her actual record even approximates what has been alleged,
then this woman is unfit for the post–Nuremberg or no Nuremberg.
"As we've proved, we're not better than them. Any of them." Oh, -PLEASE-, spare us the hyperbole! WE burn alive captives
held in cages? WE saw off their heads?
Thousands of US Navy and Air Force pilots have been waterboarded as part of their Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape
(S.E.R.E.) training programs.
All of the torturers should be brought to justice. So should all of the officials who ordered or authorized torture.
There is no statute of limitations on capital Federal crimes. For a U.S. citizen to kill via torture is a capital Federal crime,
no matter where the torture took place. If statutes of limitations make it too late to prosecute some acts of torture, it is not
too late to bring about some measure of justice by making torturers pariahs. As many sexual harassers have recently learned, there
is no statute of limitations in the court of public opinion.
The story linking her to torture has been formally retracted. She had nothing to do with torture anywhere. How about a retraction
of this story and an apology.
I do not know whether to admire Mr. van Buren's idealism or be astonished at his naivete. Has he never heard of the
School of the Americas, of sinister reputation, or the Condor Plan, aided and abetted by U.S. intelligence? People in Latin America
know better than to believe the U.S. protestations of virtue. They know about torturers, and the U.S. support for them.
Personally, I prefer that the cruelty should be, as Lincoln once put it, "unalloyed by the base metal of hypocrisy"
bob sykes: you should read Pro Publica's retraction (
https://www.propublica.org/article/cia-cables-detail-its-new-deputy-directors-role-in-torture
) of the claim that Haspel was in charge of the Thai black site when Abu Zubaydeh was tortured. She was put in charge there
not long after and oversaw the waterboarding of at least one prisoner, and later followed orders to destroy the tapes of waterboarding
at that site. Your claim that " She had nothing to do with torture anywhere" is incorrect.
Winston: why do you suppose "thousands of US Navy and Air Force pilots have been waterboarded as part of their Survival, Evasion,
Resistance and Escape (S.E.R.E.) training programs"? Is it not to prepare them for the possibility of what we call torture when
used by our adversaries?
furbo: your contention that " US extreme interrogation techniques are not equivalent to forcible sodomy, beating the genitals,
pounding the kidneys, or breaking bones" is wrong. The UN Convention against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, states "
For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,
is intentionally inflicted on a person " Ask anyone who has been waterboarded whether that fits the official definition?
Wilfred, the problem was not that the Feds protected Zacarias Moussaoui's right to privacy. The problem is that it let any of
the 20 Arab Muslims into the US in the first place. Closing our borders and mass deportations would have been the best thing to
do in the aftermath of 9/11, not torture and invasions.
Very well put. Lest we forget: Bush also delivered the stern warning that "war crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be
punished, and it will be no defense to say, 'I was just following orders'."
Ceterum censeo: given that the Iraq invasion and occupation was an act of aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter
and thus illegal under US law, it is not just torturers but also war criminals in government and general staff that have to be
considered in the contexts of these words.
Chris Mallory (Mar 19 @1:47 p.m.), I agree with you. We shouldn't be letting them in.
But if someone had sneaked-a-peek at Moussaoui's laptop during the 3 weeks they had him before 9-11, we might have been able
to thwart the attack altogether. (And the Press has been strangely incurious about investigating whoever it was who issued the
injunction protecting Moussie's precious computer). This type of hand-wringing cost us 3,000 lives. Even more, considering the
Afghan & 2nd Iraq wars would never have been launched, were it not for 9-11.
"... Iran yielded a great deal, but they were never going to give up their entire nuclear program. That is not just because Iran is permitted to have such a program under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but also because Iran had already invested so many resources at significant cost that retaining some part of it was a matter of national pride. ..."
Uri Friedman reviews
Mike Pompeo's hard-line foreign policy views. Here he quotes Pompeo's criticism of the
negotiations leading up to the nuclear deal with Iran:
The Obama administration failed to take "advantage of crushing economic sanctions to end
Iran's nuclear program," he declared when the deal was struck. "That's not foreign policy;
it's surrender."
Pompeo's statement is ridiculous, but it does provide us with a useful window into how he
understands foreign policy issues. Like many other Iran hawks, he opposes the nuclear deal
because it "failed" to bring an end to Iran's nuclear program. He dubs Iran's major concessions
on the nuclear issue as "surrender" by the U.S. because they were not forced to give up
absolutely everything. That reflects the absurd all-or-nothing view of diplomacy that prevails
among hard-line critics of the JCPOA.
Iran yielded a great deal, but they were never going to give up their entire nuclear
program. That is not just because Iran is permitted to have such a program under the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but also because Iran had already invested so many resources at
significant cost that retaining some part of it was a matter of national pride. If the Obama
administration had insisted on the elimination of Iran's nuclear program, the negotiations
would have failed and the restrictions on that problem that are now in place would not exist.
There would have been no nuclear deal if the U.S. had insisted on maximalist demands. What Pompeo calls surrender is what sane people call compromise. Putting someone so inflexible and
allergic to compromise in charge of the State Department is the act of a president who has
nothing but disdain for diplomacy, and Pompeo's all-or-nothing view of the nuclear deal bodes
ill for talks with North Korea.
The Secretary of Defense has
written to Congressional leaders to express his opposition to S.J.Res. 54, the resolution
that would end U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen:
In a letter sent to congressional leaders Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post,
Mattis wrote that restricting military support the United States is providing to the
Saudi-led coalition "could increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our
partners on counterterrorism, and reduce our influence with the Saudis -- all of which would
further exacerbate the situation and humanitarian crisis."
He urged Congress not to impose restrictions on the "noncombat," "limited U.S. military
support" being provided to Saudi Arabia, which is "engaging in operations in its legitimate
exercise of self-defense."
The Pentagon has been putting forward very weak legal
arguments against S.J.Res. 54, and Mattis'
statement of the policy arguments against the resolution are not any better. The Saudi-led
coalition would have great difficulty continuing their war without U.S. military assistance.
U.S. refueling allows coalition planes to carry out more attacks than they otherwise could, so
it is extremely unlikely that ending it could possibly result in more civilian casualties than
the bombing campaign causes now. Mattis is taking for granted that U.S. military assistance
somehow makes coalition bombing more accurate and less likely to result in civilian casualties,
but that is hard to credit when coalition forces routinely target civilian structures on
purpose and when the military
admits that it doesn't keep track of what happens after it refuels coalition planes.
Secretary Mattis says that cutting off support could jeopardize cooperation on
counter-terrorism, but the flip side of this is that continuing to enable the Saudi-led war
creates the conditions for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the local ISIS affiliate to
flourish. The coalition's war has made AQAP stronger than it was before, and AQAP members have
sometimes even fought alongside coalition forces on the ground. Instead of worrying about
whether the U.S. is jeopardizing cooperation with these states, we should be asking whether
that cooperation is worth very much in Yemen.
He claims that the Saudis and their allies are engaged in "a legitimate exercise of
self-defense," and this is simply not true. The Saudis and their allies were not attacked and
were not threatened with attack prior to their intervention. Saudi territory now comes under
attack because the coalition has been bombing Yemen for years, but that doesn't make continuing
the war self-defense. If an aggressor launches an attack against a neighboring country, it is
the neighbor that is engaged in self-defense against the state(s) attacking them.
Mattis also warns that ending support for the Saudi-led coalition would have other
undesirable consequences:
As Mattis put it in his letter to congressional leaders Wednesday, "withdrawing U.S.
support would embolden Iran to increase its support to the Houthis, enabling further
ballistic missile strikes on Saudi Arabia and threatening vital shipping lanes in the Red
Sea, thereby raising the risk of a regional conflict."
These claims also don't hold water. Iranian support for the Houthis remains limited, but it
has increased as a direct result of the war. The longer that the war goes on, the greater the
incentive the Houthis and Iran will have to cooperate. The absurdity of this intervention is
that it was dishonestly sold as a war against Iranian "expansionism" and yet it has done more
to aid Iran than anything Iran's government could have done on its own. Missile strikes on
Saudi Arabia wouldn't be happening if the Saudis and their allies weren't regularly bombing
Yemeni cities. If the coalition halted its bombing, the missile strikes would almost certainly
cease as well. Continuing the war is a guarantee that those attacks will continue, and U.S.
military assistance ensures that the war will continue. Every reason Mattis gives here for
continuing U.S. support for the war is actually a reason to end it.
Shipping lanes weren't threatened before the intervention and won't be threatened after it
ends. Yemenis have every incentive to leave shipping lanes alone, since these are their
country's lifeline. Meanwhile, the cruel coalition blockade is slowly starving millions of
Yemenis to death by keeping out essential commercial goods from the main ports that serve the
vast majority of the population. Mattis is warning about potential threats to shipping from
Yemen while completely ignoring that the main cause of the humanitarian disaster is the
interruption of commercial shipping into Yemen by the Saudi-led blockade. The regional conflict
that Mattis warns about is already here. It is called the Saudi-led war on Yemen. If one wants
to prevent the region from being destabilized further, one would want to put an end to that war
as quickly as possible.
Mattis mentions that the U.S. role in the war is a "noncombat" and "limited" one, but for
the purposes of the debate on Sanders-Lee resolution that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that
the military assistance the U.S. is providing doesn't put Americans in combat. That is not the
only way that U.S. forces can be introduced into hostilities. According to the War Powers Resolution
, the U.S. has introduced its armed forces into hostilities under these circumstances:
For purposes of this joint resolution, the term "introduction of United States Armed
Forces" includes the assignment of member of such armed forces to command, coordinate,
participate in the movement of, or accompany [bold mine-DL] the regular or irregular military
forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there
exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.
Any fair reading of this definition has to apply to the regular U.S. refueling of coalition
planes that are engaged in an ongoing bombing campaign. The U.S. is obviously participating in
the "movement" of coalition forces when it provides their planes with fuel. Indeed, our forces
are making the movement of their forces possible through refueling. U.S. involvement in the war
on Yemen clearly counts as introducing U.S. forces into hostilities under the WPR, and neither
administration has sought or received authorization to do this. No president is permitted to do
this unless there is "(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a
national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or
its armed forces." There has obviously been no action from Congress that authorizes this, and
there is certainly no emergency or attack that justifies it. U.S. involvement in the war on
Yemen is illegal, and the Senate should pass S.J.Res. 54 to end it.
"Mattis wrote that restricting military support the United States is providing to the
Saudi-led coalition "could increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our
partners on counterterrorism, and reduce our influence with the Saudis -- all of which would
further exacerbate the situation and humanitarian crisis.""
Wow. So MBS is blackmailing us. He's threatening to kill more civilians, to stop
anti-terror cooperation, and to shut us out of other Saudi regional security decisions if we
don't help him starve and wreck Yemen.
Maybe the situation is a little clearer, but how can anyone take Trump seriously after
this embarrassing confession by Mattis?
We may assume that Trump has no self-respect, but doesn't he have any respect for his
office? Is he really going to let this disgusting little torture freak jerk him around like
this? When it implicates all Americans in Saudi war crimes?
Re: "Mattis' Weak Case for Supporting the War on Yemen"
Unfortunately, in this day of warped Military Exceptionalism as the civic religion, a
4-Star pedigree fronting weak arguments makes them essentially unassailable. No matter how
immoral, idiotic or costly to the taxpayers.
Mad Dog Mattis got a free ride with his logically incoherent, hyper-belligerent
pronouncements related to the National Security Strategy. Expect no different response to his
perverse rationalizations of the Yemen catastrophe.
Generals and Admirals now pop off stupid and dangerous opinions right and left and are
never challenged by an MSM that is bedazzled by anyone wearing stars on their shoulders.
Mattis' case for Yemen is not only weak, it's pathetic. Too bad the co-opted and seduced
MSM will never suggest that to the public at large deluded by the omnipresent propaganda of
the National Security State.
Nothing will change until the undeserved fawning adoration of the War Machine Elite is
substantially attenuated.
The neocons will stop at nothing to bring down anyone they suspect of threatening Israel or
U.S. military hegemony in the Middle East.
First, they lied about WMDs in Iraq and started a completely illegal war, killing millions
and devastating that country for generations. That led directly to the creation of ISIS and
the havoc it has wrought on both Iraq and Syria (and increasingly in other countries).
Then under Obama and Sec. Clinton, they allowed the military takeover of Egypt by the
murderous and oppressive El-Sisi and launched an aggressive war of regime change in Libya,
throwing both North African countries into turmoil.
Then they supported the brutal and savage ongoing Saudi war against Yemen to curb
non-existent Iranian influence, followed by politically isolating Qatar for its supposed
chumminess with Iran.
The neocons will do absolutely anything to bring down the Iranian regime, no matter how
many foreign and American lives and destroyed to achieve that end.
The details of Mattis' letter of indulgence do not matter as much as the fact that he is
willing to defend the indefensible. Even if his professed concerns were not only genuine, but
actually reflected reality, he also has to know better than anybody else within the
administration about the consequences of the US-backed Saudi/UAE invasion of Yemen.
Mattis has joined Graham and Albright in the "worth it" campaign to sustain and extend
perfectly predictable atrocities.
If he wants to make the case that we cannot accept uncertainty with respect to an alleged
Iranian aggression towards Saudi Arabia – and with even more unlikely acquiescence by
the Houthi to let Iran use them the way the US uses the Kurds – or even assuming that
Mattis wants to misrepresent possible Houthi blowback against Saudi Arabia as "Iranian" just
for convenience – then it should be clear that he is claimng we can easily accept
uncertainty with respect to Yemeni blowback against the US – blowback that he also uses
to justify the US campaign inside Yemen, and that fueled Obama's pathological obsession with
ideological cleansing in Yemen and other prospective "safe harbors".
Mattis is proving the validity of the actual Powell Doctrine – if you join it, you
own it – both with respect to US co-belligerence in Yemen, and with respect to Mattis
personally. He is also proving the observation that anybody who is willing to join an
administration as criminal as that of Bush, Obama or Trump is unlikely to do any good –
by their voluntary association they have irredeemably tainted themselves.
We do not want to get in the middle of this Sunni vs. Shiite war. The Saudis want to destroy
the Shiites in Yemen and we are fools at best and criminals at worst to help them. The people
of Yemen are no threat to the US and for theAmerican Government to cooperate with the Saudis
in the murderof Yemeni women and children is revolting.
Americans have heard for years that supporting "democracy" and popular uprisings throughout
the Middle East are in our national interests, the basis being that oppressed people are more
likely to resort to terrorism.
Yet in the cases of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and now Yemen popular revolutions of Shias
demanding equal rights are actually deemed a threat to our national security.
The neocons have gotten so deep in the Gulf/Israel v. Iran conflict that they're not even
keeping to the ostensible reasons for interventionism.
Republicans have revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) treats
Americans not as citizens, but as subjects to spy on. I'd expect nothing less from a Court
created and perpetuated by George W. Bush and his Republicans.
But, what do you know? Following Barack Obama's lead, President Donald Trump and his
Republicans have renewed FISA Section 702, which, in fact, has facilitated the usurpations the
same representatives are currently denouncing.
Also in contravention of a quaint constitutional relic called the Fourth Amendment is
Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller has taken possession of "many tens of thousands of
emails from President Donald Trump's transition team." There is no limit, seemingly, to the
power of the special counsel.
Look, we're living in a post-Constitutional
America. Complaints about the damage done to our "democracy" by outsiders are worse than
silly. Such damage pales compared to what we Americans have done to a compact rooted in the
consent of the governed and the drastically limited and delimited powers of those who
govern.
In other words, a republic. Ours was never a country conceived as a democracy.
To arrive at a democracy, we Americans destroyed a republic.
The destruction is on display daily.
Pray tell where-oh-where in the US Constitution does it say that anyone crossing over into
the US may demand and get an abortion? But apparently, this is settled law -- a universally
upheld right, irrespective of whose property and territory it impinges.
The only aspect our clodhopper media -- left and right -- deign to debate in such
abortion-tourism cases is the interloper's global reproductive rights. So, if abortion is a
service Americans must render to the world, why not the right to a colonoscopy or a
facelift?
Cannabis: The reason it's notin the Constitution is because letting states and
individuals decide is in the Constitution. That thing of beauty is called the Tenth
Amendment:
" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That's right. In American federalism, the rights of the individual were meant to be secured
through strict limits imposed on the power of the central government by a Bill of Rights and
the division of authority between autonomous states and a federal government. Yet on cannabis,
the meager constitutional devolution of power away from the Federales and to states
and individuals Republicans have reversed. Some are even prattling about a constitutional
cannabis amendment, as if there's a need for further "constitutional" centralization of
authority.
After 230 years of just such "constitutional" consolidation, it's safe to say that the
original Constitution is a dead letter; that the natural- and common law traditions, once
lodestars for lawmakers, have been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute that
would fill an entire building floor. However much one shovels the muck of lawmaking aside,
natural justice and the Founders' original intent remain buried too deep to exhume.
Consider: America's Constitution makers bequeathed a central government of delegated and
enumerated powers. The Constitution gives Congress only some eighteen specific legislative
powers. Nowhere among these powers is Social Security, civil rights (predicated as they are on
grotesque violations of property rights), Medicare, Medicaid, and the elaborate public works
sprung from the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses.
The welfare clause stipulates that "Congress will have the power to provide for the general
welfare." And even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the
limited powers so delegated; our overlords, over decades of dirigisme , have taken Article I,
Section 8 to mean that government can pick The People's pockets for any perceivable purpose and
project. Witness a judiciary of scurrilous statists that had even found in the Constitution a
mandate to compel commerce by forcing individual Americans to purchase health insurance on
pains of a fine, an act of force President Trump has mercifully repealed.
A few more observations, with which Ms. Mercer should agree:
The invertebrate Congress has been a weak link in the Constitutional system, deferring in
the last 50 years to the judiciary in matters of domestic policy and to the executive in
matters of foreign policy, most obviously war.
Turning the Constitution into a mystical, living document speaking through robed priests
has served to trash it.
The loss of the States' authority was gradual, but amending the Constitution to have
voters directly elect senators looks in retrospect like a key step in the national
government's arrogation of authority.
The world's gaudiest whorehouse is also wide open for business with foreign interests. And
why not? If Uncle Sam is trying to run the world, then shouldn't everyone in the Empire be
allowed to participate in the democracy?
" treats Americans not as citizens, but as subjects to spy on."
To be correct, the US government considers its subjects to be chattels property. For my
part, the US is my crazy ex-girlfriend, who always wants to know where I'm going, who I'm
seeing, what I'm doing, and who annually wants a full accounting of every Dollar, Pound, Euro
and ounce I earn, spend or hold.
Looks like Bannon self-immolated himself by his cooperation with Wolff
Notable quotes:
"... Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them. ..."
"... The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words. ..."
"... Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least. ..."
"... Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be "investigated." ..."
"... I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in that during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. . . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past." ..."
"... five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks. ..."
"... I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment. ..."
Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the
CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked
and ridiculed them.
The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media
should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition
party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words.
Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CNN that "this kind of speech not [only] undermines the work of the
media in this country, it emboldens autocratic leaders around the world." Jacob Weisberg, the head of the Slate Group, tweeted that
Bannon's comment was terrifying and "tyrannical."
Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director,
Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat
an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least.
Ever since Bannon's outburst, you can hear the media gears meshing in the effort to undermine him. In TV green rooms and at Washington
parties, I've heard journalists say outright that it's time to get him. Time magazine put a sinister-looking Bannon on its
cover, describing him as "The Great Manipulator." Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time , boasted to MSNBC that
the image was in keeping with a tradition of controversial covers that put leaders in their place. "Likewise, putting [former White
House aide] Mike Deaver on the cover, the brains behind Ronald Reagan, that ended up bringing down Reagan," he told the hosts of
Morning Joe . "So you've got to have these checks and balances, whether it's the judiciary or the press."
Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week,
MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in
the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should
be "investigated."
I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in
that during the Obama administration.
It wasn't until four years after the passage of Obamacare that a journalist reported on just how powerful White House counselor
Valerie Jarrett had been in its flawed implementation. Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill
, in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group
of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much
of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly
with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything.
. . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett
inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At
this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past."
Brill then bluntly told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter
. . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position
by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment
of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received
as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks.
I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that
if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with
that sentiment.
But the media's effort to turn Bannon into an enemy of the people is veering into hysterical character assassination. The Sunday
print edition of the New York Times ran an astonishing 1,500-word story headlined: "Fascists Too Lax for a Philosopher Cited
by Bannon." (The online headline now reads, "Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists.") The Times based this
headline on what it admits was "a passing reference" in
a speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in 2014 . In that speech, Bannon made a single mention of Julius Evola, an obscure
Italian philosopher who opposed modernity and cozied up to Mussolini's Italian Fascists.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act requires the president to submit a "National Security Strategy"
report each year. Every president since Ronald Reagan has failed to comply with the law in one
or more years of his administration, but on December 17 Donald Trump issued his
report .
Unfortunately, Trump's offering is of a piece with his prior displays of economic illiteracy
and foreign policy jingoism. It's a dog's breakfast of policy pronouncements that couldn't be
more opposed to real "national security" if that had been the author's intention.
The document reiterates Trump's commitment to economic protectionism in the guise of "fair
and reciprocal" trade, rattles sabers at Russia, China, and North Korea, and commits to
extending decades of disastrous US military adventurism in the Middle East.
Trump's distant predecessors showed us what a real "National Security Strategy" would look
like.
At the end of his two terms as president, George Washington warned in his farewell address
that "[t]he great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our
commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible."
Thomas Jefferson echoed that sentiment in his first inaugural address, announcing a doctrine
of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with
none."
While serving as US Secretary of State, future president John Quincy Adams observed that
America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the
freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Those principles served the US well to the extent that they were followed – with a few
exceptions, throughout the 19th century. But since the Spanish-American War of 1898, the US has
increasingly styled itself an imperial power, attempting to dictate to the world at a cost of
hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions more abroad, as well as trillions of
dollars redirected from productive endeavors to paying the butcher's bill. The 20th century was
a near-continuous orgy of bloodshed which, for the US, was entirely optional.
A real "National Security Strategy" comes down to two things: Free trade, and minding our
own business.
Early in his presidential campaign, Trump hinted at the latter, but quickly reverted to
business as usual. He's clearly never grasped the former at all. Unfortunate, as the two are
also the elements of a great presidency, if such a thing is even possible.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy
Journalism . He lives and works in north central Florida. This article is reprinted with
permission from William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
Today's struggle for 'America First' foreign policy on Capitol
Hill.
Before the tragic events in Charlottesville on August 12th, President Donald
Trump had received a deserved amount of scrutiny for his
heated rhetoric
pertaining to the North Korean nuclear issue. This recent swing in media
coverage is regrettable, given that Trump's foreign policy statements and actions matter
more, or should matter more, to Americans.
More
Americans
(not to mention
foreign
civilians
) have been killed or wounded by American
foreign policy interventionism since September 11, 2001, than by
foreign-born
terrorists
white nationalists
, and
hate
crimes
combined. Sadly, underplaying the consequences of war
overseas
may be a good thing these days, since over-exposure has often yielded perverse
incentives for interventionism, to which Trump has
shown
himself quite susceptible.
The need for new political incentives that reinforce President Trump's "America First"
instincts has not been lost on his non-interventionist supporters. In an
article
for
The American Conservative
on June 26th, William Lind called for the creation of an
"America First Caucus" to serve as a non-interventionist beachhead on Capitol Hill similar to
how the
"Military Reform Caucus"
of the 1980s served as a congressional pressure point for
effectiveness and efficiency in the defense budget. According to Lind, this caucus would
provide support for the President when he took a non-interventionist course and criticize the
President when he erred on the side of intervention. By adopting "America First" in its name,
the caucus would insulate itself from neoconservative charges of being "weak" while
simultaneously shielding itself (
in theory at
least
) from criticism by the President.
So what would an America First Caucus on Capitol Hill look like? Unlike the "Military
Reform Caucus" of the 1980s, which boasted a bipartisan membership of more than 130 at its
height, Lind argues that an America First Caucus would need to be explicitly partisan (a
"Republican anti-intervention caucus") and confined to non-interventionist conservatives on
the grounds that a bipartisan caucus would be impractical in the current political climate.
Although he did not identify specific congressmen, Lind presumably had Senator Rand Paul and
Representatives Thomas Massie, Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and John "Jimmy" Duncan in mind as
prime candidates for this caucus.
Which America First?
One immediate problem that the new America First Caucus would face would be how to define
which brand of 'America First' anti-interventionism they would want to espouse. Would it
mirror the philosophy of the namesake of the America First Committee (AFC) of 1940-1941? Or
would it use the
updated version
used by the
Trump Administration? Given that the current administration has
adopted policies
, and is considering
additional policies
that conflict with its own definition of 'America First,' it might be
wiser for the new caucus to look to the original AFC for inspiration.
Founded on September 4,1940, the AFC was a bipartisan anti-interventionist movement
opposed to American involvement in Europe during World War II which they saw as a
continuation of the mindless bloodletting of World War I. In
America First: The Battle
Against Intervention 1940-1941
(1953), Wayne Cole
identified
four
founding principles and four objectives of the AFC (listed below).
Principles:
The United States must build an impregnable defense for America.
No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America.
American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
"Aid
short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war
abroad.
Objectives:
To bring together all Americans, regardless of possible differences on
other matters, who see eye-to-eye on these principles. (This does not include Nazists,
Fascists, Communists, or members of other groups that place the interest of any other nation
above those of our own country.)
To urge Americans to keep their heads amid rising
hysteria in times of crisis.
To provide sane national leadership for the majority of
the American people who want to keep out of the European war.
To register this opinion
with the President and with the Congress.
What is perhaps most striking about the principles and objectives of the AFC is the extent
to which it, with a minimal amount of updating, can be borrowed by non-interventionists
today. Below is a modified list of these principles and objectives that an America First
Caucus could use as a guiding charter.
Principles:
The United States must maintain an impregnable defense for America.
No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America without
incurring an unacceptably high cost for such an attack on itself.
American democracy
can be preserved only by keeping out of the next undeclared war of choice.
"Meddling
short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war
abroad."
The only way to neutralize the threat Al-Qaeda and Daesh (ISIL) pose to the
United States is through smart and effective diplomacy. This diplomacy must contain the
following features: A withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Islamic countries over the
next three years, prioritizing cooperation with all foreign governments in lawfully
undermining these organizations, and aggressively promoting nuclear non-proliferation in
accordance to international law (i.e. without resorting to the use of military force or
implying the use of military force).
Objectives:
To bring together all Americans, regardless of possible differences on
other matters, who see eye-to-eye on these principles.
To urge Americans to keep their
heads amid rising hysteria in times of crisis.
To provide sane national leadership for
the majority of the American people who want to keep out of the next undeclared war of
choice.
To register this opinion with the President and with the rest of our
colleagues in Congress.
What can realistically be accomplished?
What could an America First Caucus realistically accomplish? At first glance, not much.
Its small size (initially no more than five or so members expected), partisan make up (all
Republicans), and declining membership (Rep. Jimmy Duncan will not seek re-election in 2018)
would make it difficult for its voice to be heard amid the
cacophony
of voices on Capitol Hill.
That said there are reasons to be optimistic. It would contain a former presidential
candidate and prominent conservative U.S. Senator who occupies a seat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee (Sen. Rand Paul), two House members on the Oversight and Government
Reform Subcommittee on National Security (Rep. Justin Amash and Rep. Jimmy Duncan), two House
members with military service (Rep. Walter Jones and Rep. Jimmy Duncan), one House member on
the Committee on Armed Services (Rep. Walter Jones), one House member that is not up for
re-election and thus has nothing to lose (Rep. Jimmy Duncan), and one House member who is an
all-around
non-interventionist
anchor
(Rep. Thomas
Massie).
Another reason for optimism is that it would be the only caucus of its kind on the Hill
pushing this message. That message, that the lives of American service members are not cheap
and that America should practice nation-building at home instead of intervening abroad, is
popular. The voters who bore the human cost of American interventionism
put
Trump in the White
House.
There are several courses of action the caucus could take that would stand a reasonable
chance of succeeding. These actions could also create new political incentives in Washington
that discourage interventionism.
The first would be to introduce or support
existing
legislation that would repeal both the
2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force
and the
2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq
(AUMFs). Support for repealing
the 2001 AUMF is
growing
within the 115th Congress and the 2002 AUMF has its share of
bipartisan
critics
. Yet these congressional misgivings have not translated into an organized
opposition. An America First Caucus would provide this while also lending a distinctly
non-interventionist voice to those who simply wish to replace these AUMFs with new ones that
are not necessary to protect the country (i.e. let Syria, Iran, Russia, and Turkey fight ISIL
in Syria and let Iraq and Iran fight ISIL in Iraq).
The second would be to introduce a resolution in the House re-establishing the tradition
of reading
George Washington's Farewell
Address
in the House at the beginning of every new session of Congress. Unlike the
Senate, which currently holds to this tradition, the House
discarded
this tradition in
1979. Although a symbolic move, it would nevertheless bring attention to the broader
non-interventionist message by making the America First Caucus the public voice responsible
for bringing back this otherwise uncontroversial and bipartisan tradition.
A third course of action would be to introduce legislation amending the National Security
Act of 1947 and renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War. In his
inaugural
address
Trump noted that the U.S. "defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own."
By pushing for this name change, the America First Caucus would force a public conversation
regarding whether our foreign and defense policy is really "defensive" in nature.
Lastly, the America First Caucus would provide a congressional forum where deviant foreign
policy views such as non-interventionism and intelligent diplomacy can be heard, expressed,
and debated. This would include providing a congressional audience to like-minded advocates,
policy practitioners, and scholars.
Challenges
Carrying the non-interventionist banner and keeping Trump accountable would not be easy.
Republicans railed against the Obama Administration's foreign policy for eight years on the
grounds that it was not sufficiently belligerent in rhetoric or in action. Trump shares this
sentiment and seems intent on conducting his foreign policy in a way that highlights the
contrast in bellicosity between himself and Obama. Although this bellicosity has been largely
confined
to the
diplomatic
sphere, the president's
announcement
last week regarding Afghanistan, along with his ordered attacks on the Syrian government back
in April, shows that he is willing to convert these sentiments into action.
Where this bellicosity could turn into a real shooting war would be with Iran. Trump seems
intent
on undermining the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama Administration. His
hostility to the agreement, and to Iran in general, is shared by both parties, particularly
his "never Trump" Republican detractors. Terminating the Iran deal would accomplish three
things. First, it would immediately unite an otherwise fractured GOP in Congress behind the
president. Second, it would immediately isolate the U.S. from the rest of the international
community and expose American non-proliferation efforts as having been conducted in bad
faith. Lastly, it would pave the way for a shooting war with Iran which a GOP-controlled
Congress would support.
Compounding this problem further is that none of the individual members of an America
First Caucus supported the Iran nuclear deal (albeit for different and less belligerent
reasons). An America First Caucus might not be able to alter the political incentives for
Trump regarding the Iran nuclear deal. Then again, it might not have to. If the caucus can
highlight an issue where Trump can both secure a political "win" and pivot back to his
domestic agenda!such as withdrawing U.S. military personnel from most of its
overseas
bases
and using the savings to pass a Trump-endorsed transportation bill!it might be
sufficient to redirect the president's attention away from Iran. This would give those who
are more favorably disposed to the Iran nuclear deal in the
administration
Capitol Hill
, and
the Beltway
time to convince the president that undoing the deal is more work than it is
worth.
Given the lack of major legislative accomplishments, and the likelihood that
tax
and
immigration
reform proposals
would meet the same fate as the recent healthcare bill, Trump is more likely to secure a
political "win" in the realm that past presidents have retreated to when their domestic
agendas are stymied by Congress: foreign policy. These perverse political incentives towards
interventionism, particularly as they pertain to Iran, will be the most difficult challenge
facing an America First Caucus.
With the
departure
of Steve Bannon from the White House and the administration
opting
to deploy more American forces to Afghanistan, the
need
for a new set of political incentives towards non-interventionism has never been
greater. Trump was elected because the American electorate believed he, and not Hillary
Clinton, would put the well-being of Americans first. It is time members of Congress stand up
and hold him to that promise.
Jonathan Tkachuk is a former congressional staffer for a House Republican. He has a
M.A. in Diplomacy (Counter-Terrorism) from Norwich University.
The sanctions are a smart play for world domination by the cabal that controls the Empire. that the rest of the world
suffers while this plays out is of no concern to them.
Those wringing their hands over Trump's failure to confront Congress are foolish. His caving was entirely predictable
because he is a faux-Populist like Obama before him. Isn't it clear by now that "America First" is as much as lie as
"Change You Can Believe In"?
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Russia is more susceptible than China to being politically undermined by both overt and covert means.
As the economic cost of conflict with the US mounts, so too does the potential benefits of restoring ties. The potential
for a HUGE economic boost by restoring ties with the West will play a big part in post-Putin politics.
If US can disrupt energy trade with China and new Silk-Road transport links (via proxies like ISIS) , the Russian
economy will sink and pro-Western candidates will gain much support.
The new additional sanctions, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Magnitsky act, were shaped by domestic U.S.
policy issues.
Yeah, sure. (((Domestic U.S. policy issues.)))
Seriously though, as a committed isolationist, I'm actually overjoyed that our congress is idiotic enough to start
up a trade war with the EU. The notion that the Germans are going to import overpriced fracked gas all the way from the
US is a total fantasy. No: these sanctions will accelerate the coming break-up of NATO ... an outcome I very much welcome.
And even if the Germans were to cave and cancel Nordstream, the Russians would simply sell all that extra gas to Asia
anyway. So this isn't going to have any real effect on them either.
If Trump and Tillerson are quietly able to have the Europeans to raise a constant hue and cry about the bill's negative
impact on their ability to conduct international trade, an excellent groundwork would be laid for Trump to go to the
US SC to attack the constitutionality of the bill.
Grieved @36 - I appreciate your most thoughtful comment. When I read Mercouris' article I immediately thought - Whoa,
if this turns out to be the correct analysis, my God man the U.S. government is in way more trouble than I understood.
Navigating a soft coup takes a great deal of skill to avoid, but if the globalists continue to escalate their warmongering
demands from the White House and Trump/Team continue to form their own path, the people of the U.S. should be warned
a hard coup isn't far behind...Antifa and others are being readied for just such an event.
That in itself is astonishing and frightening. Can no one in the U.S. see where this will lead to?
When analyzing the United States' relations with the rest of the world it helps to keep in mind the deep state goal
of world domination via "full spectrum dominance". It is a dangerous delusion of the highest order but it is one that
is actively being put into practice. The actions taken against Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations all lead to
one thing: war.
my apologies, this is a bit long but...On Trump's perceived option of signing vs not signing; I think he knew that the
Congress/DNC/MSM would have tarred and feathered him as a RUSSIAN PAWN (RP) till the cows come home if he didn't sign.
However by signing the bill with notations stating its flaws and forwarding it the the SC for their review, he blocked
this latest RP label attempt and attendant witch hunt.
And assuming the SC thinks as little of the two bills legislative incursions into the exec domain as I do, it can
be tossed back to both houses of Congress (with a 2018 election cycle staring them in the face)with a statement from
Trump saying something to the effect of "Merciful God, how can you represent your constituents when you clearly don't
have a grasp of your own job description??
Now I have to fund Trump supporting candidates to run against every single one of you." Remember he has already raised
75 million and he raised 250 million plus 66 million of his own and beat a 1.3 billion DNC machine. I do not see him
as a great candidate but I do see that every single current congressional seat is held by people who are bought and paid
for by business/MIC interests opposed to mine. I believe this latest attack on him via these bills will give him the
opportunity to "drain the swamp" some of it anyway, in the upcoming election cycle and I will contribute to his effort
to wipe them out of office and I suspect others will as well. There will be no coup on my watch if I can help it by helping
him.
rather than press China directly in the south China Sea, it seems DC keeps on pressing the North Koreans to do something
rash and the Chinese having to invade to forestall the rash attack then being stuck in a long Guerrilla war against Korean
resistance.
the US strategy seems to be to create a problem and force other nations to choose "the Axis of Evil" or "the Free
World"
There are two faces to Europe - the ordinary elected representatives and business people see the futility and danger
of the sanctions. The bought Eurocrat and high political placemen will repeat what they are paid to say as the waters
rise above their lips.
Trump can go on TV anytime and appeal to the Public with some creative truth. Why not? Afraid of the PTB? or he's a fraud
like Obama going along with the PTB?
Mostly from Trump we get boilerplate global terror war bullshit, immigrant and gay bashing - gruel for the knuckleheads.
There is no question that Pence would gladly run the bus over Trump and be a real warmonger for Zion. The "real" Republicans
(and the "business-friendly New Democrats") would love President Pence. Everything (media) would quiet down.
Regarding the Mercouris article myself and others have linked to and discussed, one possibility he didn't really explore
was Trump Pocket Vetoing the bill. Congress would then upon returning from its recess need to reenact the entire measure
after getting lots of heat from constituents for their votes during recess. Indeed, I think the overwhelming Pro vote
was due to many congresscritter's assumption that Trump would do just that.
For me, the important question is why the Deep State instigated this move; so, I posted links to 6 incisive articles
also looking for an answer in one manner or other that all together pointing to a Deep State flailing its arms in the
deep end of the Hubris Pool realizing its drowning in its own effluent yet unable to utter that truth as it never will--it
will break the mirror before allowing it to utter the truth. The Law of Diminishing Returns is finally laying the lumber
to the Deep State after 130 years of grossly naked imperialism. Luce would be spinning in his grave if he knew how his
American Century was being destroyed for A Few Dollars More.
>> The US political system is designed to prevent real populists from ever gaining office. Examples: Citizens United
and the rules to qualify for inclusion in candidate debates.
>> Obama was a faux populist and Sanders was a sheep-dog. Are we to believe that these populists were phonies but
Trump is the real deal?
>> Only Sanders and Trump positioned themselves as populists. And even more importantly, Hillary didn't counter
Trump by taking a more populist approach.
>> Hillary made it clear that she wanted to face Trump in the general election. The media dutifully covered Trump
as a serious candidate. Supposedly, she felt that she had a better chance to defeat him. She then ran a terrible campaign
(see: NYPost:
Hillary ran the worst presidential campaign ever despite having every advantage.
>> Why would any oligarch oppose the establishment? Especially since Trump was so close to Hillary who was considered
to be the likely next President. In fact, Trump served Hillary by becoming a leader of the 'Birthers'. Hillary was
the first to question if Obama was foreign born.
>> Pence is a friend of McCain's. Why would any populist pick Pence as VP?
>> One of Trump's first announcements after he was elected was that he would not seek to prosecute Hillary. The
strange, and short-lived, media frenzy regarding Hillary's health helped Trump to make this choice. It seems likely
that this was coordinated.
>> Trump acts or doesn't act in ways that are inconsistent with 'America First' and/or fuel the scaremongering over
Russia:
> The missile attack on Syria (despite tweeting warnings to Obama not to bomb Syria in 2013) and sword dancing
with the Saudis (WTF?);
> Not dismissing Comey early in his Administration - then alluding to 'tapes' after he did;
> Drip-drip of info regarding Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian; Publicly attacking Sessions; etc.
> Trump complains about 'Fake News' but has accepted that Russia interfered in the election;
Use of the terms "Isolationist" and "Isolationism" within the context of US History differs little from the use of the
terms "Conspiracy Theory," Conspiracy Theorist," and "Revisionist"--all are used in an attempt to degrade the credibility
of an individual or organization. A priori, everyone aside from First Peoples is an Internationalist as commerce with
other nations of the world isn't optional--it's mandatory, thus the phrase within the Declaration about telling the world
why. Rather, Isolationist is used to tar someone against Imperialism, the best examples being the very heated debate
during the 1930s over the various Neutrality Acts when the hoi polloi last had some vestige of control over the federal
government. (Pacifist was also a derogatory term used then for similar reasons.) Did Trump say he would close US borders
to one and all--people, goods, financial instruments? No, of course not; so, he cannot be labeled an Isolationist. Now,
is he what's known as a Nativist promoting an America First Nativism? During his campaign, he did use rhetoric of that
sort, but his actions in office don't provide confirmation. (The 1932 presidential election also gives an excellent example
of how the terms Internationalist and Isolationist are used politically, with FDR steadfastly refusing to acknowledge
his Internationalism thanks to the divisive League of Nations debate after WW1.)
Essentially, to be an informed citizen of almost any nation, one needs the equivalent of a PhD in their national and
world history, with minors in philosophy, anthropology and economics, which is why the citizenry seems so ill-informed--they
are!--and easily led by the nose.
"... Unlike the Roman Empire, the 1990's were not to be the prelude to an unchallenged US empire of long duration. Since the 'unipolarists' were pursuing multiple costly and destructive wars of conquest and they were unable to rely on the growth of satellites with emerging industrial economies for its profits. US global power eroded. ..."
"... The domestic disasters of the US vassal regime in Russia, under Boris Yeltsin during the 1990″s, pushed the voters to elect a nationalist, Vladimir Putin. President Vladimir Putin's government embarked on a program to regain Russian sovereignty and its position as a global power, countering US internal intervention and pushing back against external encirclement by NATO. ..."
"... The mostly likely site for starting World War III is the Korean peninsula. The unipolarists and their allies in the state apparatus have systematically built-up the conditions to trigger a war with China using the pretext of the North Korean defensive weapons program. ..."
"... The unipolarists' state apparatus has gathered its allies in Congress and the mass media to create public hysteria. Congress and the administration of President Trump have fabricated the North Korean missile program as a 'threat to the United States'. This has allowed the unipolarist state to implement an offensive military strategy to counter this phony 'threat'. ..."
"... The elite have discarded all previous diplomatic negotiations and agreements with North Korea in order to prepare for war – ultimately directed at China. This is because China is the most dynamic and successful global economic challenger to US world domination. ..."
"... South Korea's deeply corrupt and blindly submissive regime immediately accepted the US/THADD system on their territory. Washington found the compliant South Korean 'deep state' willing to sacrifice its crucial economic links with Beijing: China is South Korea's biggest trading partner. In exchange for serving as a platform for future US aggression against China, South Korea has suffered losses in trade, investments and employment. Even if a new South Korea government were to reverse this policy, the US will not move its THAAD installation. China, for its part, has largely cut its economic and investment ties with some of South Korea's biggest conglomerates. Tourism, cultural and academic exchanges, commercial agreements and, most important, most of South Korean industrial exports face shut down. ..."
"... The rise and fall of unipolar America has not displaced the permanent state apparatus as it continues to pursue its deluded strategies ..."
"... On the contrary, the unipolarists are accelerating their drive for global military conquest by targeting Russia and China, which they insist are the cause of their losing wars and global economic decline. They live on their delusions of a 'Golden Age' of the 1990's when George Bush, Sr. could devastate Iraq and Bill Clinton could bomb Yugoslavia's cities with impunity. ..."
"... You don't seem to understand the definitions of legal and illegal in the current context: Anything the US declares legal and subject to its jurisdiction anywhere in the world is legal, otherwise it is still subject to US interpretation on its legality or not. In other words, US troops always operate legally, international law notwithstanding, and US laws have effect everywhere and at all times. What an idiotic statement. ..."
Introduction: US Empire building on a world-scale began during and shortly after WWII. Washington
intervened directly in the Chinese civil war (providing arms to Chiang Kai Shek's army while the
Red Army battled the Japanese), backed France's re-colonization war against the Viet Minh in Indo-China
and installed Japanese imperial collaborator-puppet regimes in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
While empire building took place with starts and stops, advances and defeats, the strategic goal
remained the same: to prevent the establishment of independent communist or secular-nationalist governments
and to impose vassal regimes compliant to US interests.
Bloody wars and coups ('regime changes') were the weapons of choice. Defeated European colonial
regimes were replaced and incorporated as subordinate US allies.
Where possible, Washington relied on armies of mercenaries trained, equipped and directed by US
'advisors' to advance imperial conquests. Where necessary, usually if the client regime and vassal
troops were unable to defeat an armed people's army, the US armed forces intervened directly.
Imperial strategists sought to intervene and brutally conquer the target nation. When they failed
to achieve their 'maximum' goal, they dug in with a policy of encirclement to cut the links between
revolutionary centers with adjoining movements. Where countries successfully resisted armed conquests,
empire builders imposed economic sanctions and blockades to erode the economic basis of popular governments.
Empires, as the Roman sages long recognized, are not built in a day, or weeks and months. Temporary
agreements and accords are signed and conveniently broken because imperial designs remain paramount.
Empires would foment internal cleavages among adversaries and coups in neighboring countries.
Above all, they construct a worldwide network of military outposts, clandestine operatives and regional
alliances on the borders of independent governments to curtail emerging military powers.
Following successful wars, imperial centers dominate production and markets, resources and labor.
However, over time challenges would inevitably emerge from dependent and independent regimes. Rivals
and competitors gained markets and increased military competence. While some vassal states sacrificed
political-military sovereignty for independent economic development, others moved toward political
independence.
Early and Late Contradictions of Expanding Imperialism
The dynamics of imperial states and systems contain contradictions that constantly challenge and
change the contours of empire.
The US devoted immense resources to retain its military supremacy among vassals, but experienced
a sharp decline in its share of world markets, especially with the rapid rise of new economic producers.
Economic competition forced the imperial centers to realign the focus of their economies – 'rent'
(finance and speculation) displaced profits from trade and production. Imperial industries relocated
abroad in search of cheap labor. Finance, insurance, real estate, communications, military and security
industries came to dominate the domestic economy. A vicious cycle was created: with the erosion of
its productive base, the Empire further increased its reliance on the military, finance capital and
the import of cheap consumer goods.
Just after World War II, Washington tested its military prowess through intervention . Because
of the immense popular resistance and the proximity of the USSR, and later PRC, empire building in
post-colonial Asia was contained or militarily defeated. US forces temporarily recognized a stalemate
in Korea after killing millions. Its defeat in China led to the flight of the 'Nationalists' to the
provincial island of Taiwan. The sustained popular resistance and material support from socialist
superpowers led to its retreat from Indo-China. In response, it resorted to economic sanctions to
strangle the revolutionary governments.
The Growth of the Unipolar Ideology
With the growing power of overseas economic competitors and its increasing reliance on direct
military intervention, the US Empire took advantage of the internal disintegration of the USSR and
China's embrace of 'state capitalism' in the early 1990's and 1980s..The US expanded throughout the
Baltic region, Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans – with the forced breakup of Yugoslavia.
Imperial strategists envisioned 'a unipolar empire' – an imperial state without rivals. The Empire
builders were free to invade, occupy and pillage independent states on any continent – even bombing
a European capital, Belgrade, with total impunity. Multiple wars were launched against designated
'adversaries', who lacked strong global allies.
Countries in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were targeted for destruction. South
America was under the control of neo-liberal regimes. The former USSR was pillaged and disarmed by
imperial vassals. Russia was ruled by gangster-kleptocrats allied to US stooges. China was envisioned
as nothing more than a slave workshop producing cheap mass consumer goods for Americans and generating
high profits for US multinational corporations and retailers like Walmart.
Unlike the Roman Empire, the 1990's were not to be the prelude to an unchallenged US empire
of long duration. Since the 'unipolarists' were pursuing multiple costly and destructive wars of
conquest and they were unable to rely on the growth of satellites with emerging industrial economies
for its profits. US global power eroded.
The Demise of Unipolarity: The 21st Century
Ten years into the 21st century, the imperial vision of an unchallenged unipolar empire was crumbling.
China's 'primitive' accumulation led to advanced domestic accumulation for the Chinese people and
state. China's power expanded overseas through investments, trade and acquisitions. China displaced
the US as the leading trading partner in Asia and the largest importer of primary commodities from
Latin America and Africa. China became the world's leading manufacturer and exporter of consumer
goods to North America and the EU.
The first decade of the 21st century witnessed the overthrow or defeat of US vassal states throughout
Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil) and the emergence of independent
agro-mineral regimes poised to form regional trade pacts. This was a period of growing global demand
for their natural resources and commodities- precisely when the US was de-industrializing and in
the throes of costly disastrous wars in the Middle East.
In contrast to the growing independence of Latin America, the EU deepened its military participation
in the brutal US-led overseas wars by expanding the 'mandate' of NATO. Brussels followed the unipolarist
policy of systematically encircling Russia and weakening its independence via harsh sanctions. The
EU's outward expansion (financed with increasing domestic austerity) heightened internal cleavages,
leading to popular discontent .The UK voted in favor of a referendum to secede from the EU.
The domestic disasters of the US vassal regime in Russia, under Boris Yeltsin during the 1990″s,
pushed the voters to elect a nationalist, Vladimir Putin. President Vladimir Putin's government embarked
on a program to regain Russian sovereignty and its position as a global power, countering US internal
intervention and pushing back against external encirclement by NATO.
Unipolarists continued to launch multiple wars of conquest in the Middle East, North Africa and
South Asia, costing trillions of dollars and leading to the loss of global markets and competitiveness.
As the armies of the Empire expanded globally, the domestic economy (the 'Republic') contracted .The
US became mired in recession and growing poverty. Unipolar politics created a growing multi-polar
global economy, while rigidly imposing military priorities.
The Empire Strikes Back: The Nuclear Option
The second decade of the 21st century ushered in the demise of unipolarity to the dismay of many
'experts' and the blind denial by its political architects. The rise of a multi-polar world economy
intensified the desperate imperial drive to restore unipolarity by military means, led by militarists
incapable of adjusting or assessing their own policies.
Under the regime of the 'first black' US President Obama, elected on promises to 'rein in' the
military, imperial policymakers intensified their pursuit of seven, new and continuing wars. To the
policymakers and the propagandists in the US-EU corporate media, these were successful imperial wars,
accompanied by premature declarations of victories in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. This triumphal
delusion of success led the new Administration to launch new wars in Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Yemen.
As the new wave of wars and coups ('regime change') to re-impose unipolarity failed, even greater
militarist policies displaced economic strategies for global dominance. The unipolarists-militarists,
who direct the permanent state apparatus, continued to sacrifice markets and investments with total
immunity from the disastrous consequences of their failures on the domestic economy.
A Brief Revival of Unipolarity in Latin America
Coups and power grabs have overturned independent governments in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay,
Honduras and threatened progressive governments in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador. However, the pro-imperial
'roll-back' in Latin America was neither politically nor economically sustainable and threatens to
undermine any restoration of US unipolar dominance of the region.
The US has provided no economic aid or expanded access to markets to reward and support their
newly acquired client regimes. Argentina's new vassal, Mauricio Macri, transferred billions of dollars
to predatory Wall Street bankers and handed over access to military bases and lucrative resources
without receiving any reciprocal inflows of investment capital. Indeed the servile policies of President
Macri created greater unemployment and depressed living standards, leading to mass popular discontent.
The unipolar empire's 'new boy' in its Buenos Aires fiefdom faces an early demise.
Likewise, widespread corruption, a deep economic depression and unprecedented double digit levels
of unemployment in Brazil threaten the illicit vassal regime of Michel Temer with permanent crisis
and rising class conflict.
Short-Lived Success in the Middle East
The revanchist unipolarist launch of a new wave of wars in the Middle East and North Africa seemed
to succeed briefly with the devastating power of US-NATO aerial and naval bombardment .Then collapsed
amidst grotesque destruction and chaos, flooding Europe with millions of refugees.
Powerful surges of resistance to the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan hastened the retreat
toward a multi-polar world. Islamist insurgents drove the US into fortress garrisons and took control
of the countryside and encircled cities in Afghanistan; Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Libya drove
US backed regimes and mercenaries into flight.
Unipolarists and the Permanent State: Re-Group and Attack
Faced with its failures, unipolarists regrouped and implemented the most dangerous military strategy
yet: the build-up of nuclear 'First-Strike' capability targeting China and Russia.
Orchestrated by US State Department political appointees, Ukraine's government was taken over
by US vassals leading to the ongoing break-up of that country. Fearful of neo-fascists and Russophobes,
the citizens of Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. Ethnic Russian majorities in Ukraine's Donbass region
have been at war with Kiev with thousands killed and millions fleeing their homes to take refuge
in Russia. The unipolarists in Washington financed and directed the Kiev coup led by kleptocrats,
fascists and street mobs, immune as always from the consequences.
Meanwhile the US is increasing its number of combat troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to buttress
its unreliable allies and mercenaries.
What is crucial to understanding the rise and demise of imperial power and the euphoric unipolar
declarations of the 1990's (especially during the heyday of President Clinton's bloody reign), is
that at no point have military and political advances been sustained by foundational economic building
blocks.
The US defeated and subsequently occupied Iraq, but it also systematically destroyed Iraq's civil
society and its economy, creating fertile ground for massive ethnic cleansing, waves of refugees
and the subsequent Islamist uprising that over ran vast territories. Indeed, deliberate US policies
in Iraq and elsewhere created the refugee crisis that is overwhelming Europe.
A similar situation is occurring during the first two decades of this century: Military victories
have installed ineffective imperial-backed unpopular leaders. Unipolarists increasingly rely on the
most retrograde tribal rabble, Islamist extremists, overseas clients and paid mercenaries. The deliberate
US-led assault on the very people capable of leading modern multicultural nations like Iraq, Libya,
Syria and Ukraine, is a caricature of the notorious Pol Pot assaults on Cambodia's educated classes.
Of course, the US honed its special skills in 'killing the school teachers' when it trained and financed
the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
The second weakness, which led to the collapse of the unipolar illusion, has been their inability
to rethink their assumptions and re-orient and rebalance their strategic militarist paradigm from
the incredible global mess they created
They steadfastly refused to work with and promote the educated economic elites in the conquered
countries. To do so would have required maintaining an intact social-economic-security system in
the countries they had systematically shredded. It would mean rejecting their paradigm of total war,
unconditional surrender and naked, brutal military occupation in order to allow the development of
viable economic allies, instead of imposing pliable but grotesquely corrupt vassal regimes.
The deeply entrenched, heavily financed and vast military-intelligence-police apparatus, numbering
many millions, has formed a parallel imperial state ruling over the elected and civilian regime within
the US.
The so-called 'deep state', in reality, is a ruling state run by unipolarists. It is not some
'faceless entity': It has a class, ideological and economic identity.
Despite the severe cost of losing a series of catastrophic wars and the multi-billion-dollar thefts
by kleptocratic vassal regimes, the unipolarists have remained intact, even increasing their efforts
to score a conquest or temporary military victory.
Let us say it, openly and clearly: The unipolarists are now engaged in blaming their terrible
military and political failures on Russia and China. This is why they seek, directly and indirectly,
to weaken Russia and China's 'allies abroad' and at home. Indeed their savage campaign to 'blame
the Russians' for President Trump's election reflects their deep hostility to Russia and contempt
for the working and lower middle class voters (the 'basket of deplorables') who voted for Trump.
This elite's inability to examine its own failures and the political system's inability to remove
these disastrous policymakers is a serious threat to the future of the world.
Unipolarists: Fabricating Pretexts for World War
While the unipolarist state suffered predictable military defeats and prolonged wars and reliance
on unstable civilian regimes, the ideologues continue to deflect blame onto 'Russia and China as
the source of all their military defeats'. The unipolarists' monomania has been transformed into
a provocative large-scale offensive nuclear missile build-up in Europe and Asia, increasing the risk
of a nuclear war by engaging in a deadly 'game of chicken'.
The veteran nuclear physicists in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published an important
description of the unipolarists' war plans. They revealed that the 'current and ongoing US nuclear
program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability
of the US ballistic missile arsenal. These new technologies increase the overall US killing power
of existing US ballistic missile forces threefold'. This is exactly what an objective observer would
expect of a nuclear-armed US unipolar state planning to launch a war by disarming China and Russia
with a 'surprise' first strike.
The unipolar state has targeted several countries as pretexts for launching a war. The US government
installed provocative missile bases in the Baltic countries and Poland. These are regimes chosen
for their eagerness to violate Russia's borders or airspace and insanely willing to invite the inevitable
military response and chain reaction onto their own populations. Other sites for huge US military
bases and NATO expansion include the Balkans, especially the former Yugoslav provinces of Kosovo
and Montenegro. These are bankrupt ethno-fascist mafia states and potential tinderboxes for NATO-provoked
conflicts leading to a US first strike. This explains why the most rabid US Senate militarists have
been pushing for Kosovo and Montenegro's integration into NATO.
Syria is where the unipolarists are creating a pretext for nuclear war. The US state has been
sending more 'Special Forces' into highly conflictive areas to support their mercenery allies. This
means US troops will operate (illegally) face-to-face with the advancing Syrian army, who are backed
by Russian military air support (legally). The US plans to seize ISIS-controlled Raqqa in Northern
Syria as its own base of operation with the intention of denying the Syrian government its victory
over the jihadi-terrorists. The likelihood of armed 'incidents' between the US and Russia in Syria
is growing to the rapturous applause of US unipolarists.
The US has financed and promoted Kurdish fighters as they seize Syrian territory from the jihadi-terrorists,
especially in territories along the Turkish border. This is leading to an inevitable conflict between
Turkey and the US-backed Kurds.
Another likely site for expanded war is Ukraine. After seizing power in Kiev, the klepto-fascists
launched a shooting war and economic blockade against the bilingual ethnic Russian-Ukrainians of
the Donbass region. Attacks by the Kiev junta, countless massacres of civilians (including the burning
of scores of unarmed Russian-speaking protesters in Odessa) and the sabotage of Russian humanitarian
aid shipments could provoke retaliation from Russia and invite a US military intervention via the
Black Sea against Crimea.
The mostly likely site for starting World War III is the Korean peninsula. The unipolarists
and their allies in the state apparatus have systematically built-up the conditions to trigger a
war with China using the pretext of the North Korean defensive weapons program.
The unipolarists' state apparatus has gathered its allies in Congress and the mass media to
create public hysteria. Congress and the administration of President Trump have fabricated the North
Korean missile program as a 'threat to the United States'. This has allowed the unipolarist state
to implement an offensive military strategy to counter this phony 'threat'.
The elite have discarded all previous diplomatic negotiations and agreements with North Korea
in order to prepare for war – ultimately directed at China. This is because China is the most dynamic
and successful global economic challenger to US world domination. The US has 'suffered' peaceful,
but humiliating, economic defeat at the hands of an emerging Asian power. China's economy has grown
more than three times faster than the US for the last two decades. And China's infrastructure development
bank has attracted scores of regional and European participants after a much promoted US trade agreement
in Asia, developed by the Obama Administration, collapsed. Over the past decade, while salaries and
wages have stagnated or regressed in the US and EU, they have tripled in China.
China's economic growth is set to surpass the US into the near and distant future if trends continue.
This will inevitably lead to China replacing the US s as the world's most dynamic economic power
. barring a nuclear attack by the US. It is no wonder China is embarked on a program to modernize
its defensive missile systems and border and maritime security.
As the unipolarists prepare for the 'final decision' to attack China, they are systematically
installing their most advanced nuclear missile strike capacity in South Korea under the preposterous
pretext of countering the regime in Pyongyang. To exacerbate tensions, the US High Command has embarked
on cyber-attacks against North Korea's missile program. It has been staging massive military exercises
with Seoul, which provoked the North Korean military to 'test' four of its medium range ballistic
missiles in the Sea of Japan. Washington has ignored the Chinese government's efforts to calm the
situation and persuade the North Koreans to resist US provocations on its borders and even scale
down their nuclear weapons program.
The US war propaganda machine claims that Pyongyang's nervous response to Washington's provocative
military exercises (dubbed "Foal Eagle') on North Korea's border are both a 'threat' to South Korea
and 'evidence of its leaders' insanity.' Ultimately, Washington intends to target China. It installed
its (misnamed) Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) in South Korea .An offensive surveillance
and attack system designed to target China's major cities and complement the US maritime encirclement
of China and Russia. Using North Korea as a pretext, THAAD was installed in South Korea, with the
capacity to reach the Chinese heartland in minutes. Its range covers over 3,000 kilometers of China's
land mass. THAAD directed missiles are specifically designed to identify and destroy China's defensive
missile capacity.
With the THADD installation in South Korea, Russia's Far East is now encircled by the US offensive
missiles to complement the build-up in the West.
The unipolar strategists are joined by the increasingly militaristic Japanese government – a most
alarming development for the Koreans and Chinese given the history of Japanese brutality in the region.
The Japanese Defense Minister has proposed acquiring the capacity for a 'pre-emptive strike', an
imperial replay of its invasion and enslavement of Korea and Manchuria. Japan 'points to' North Korea
but really aims at China.
South Korea's deeply corrupt and blindly submissive regime immediately accepted the US/THADD
system on their territory. Washington found the compliant South Korean 'deep state' willing to sacrifice
its crucial economic links with Beijing: China is South Korea's biggest trading partner. In exchange
for serving as a platform for future US aggression against China, South Korea has suffered losses
in trade, investments and employment. Even if a new South Korea government were to reverse this policy,
the US will not move its THAAD installation. China, for its part, has largely cut its economic and
investment ties with some of South Korea's biggest conglomerates. Tourism, cultural and academic
exchanges, commercial agreements and, most important, most of South Korean industrial exports face
shut down.
In the midst of a major political scandal involving the Korean President (who faces impeachment
and imprisonment), the US-Japanese military alliance has brutally sucked the hapless South Korean
people into an offensive military build-up against China. In the process Seoul threatens its peaceful
economic relations with China. The South Koreans are overwhelmingly 'pro-peace', but find themselves
on the frontlines of a potential nuclear war.
China's response to Washington's threat is a massive buildup of its own defensive missile capacity.
The Chinese now claim to have the capacity to rapidly demolish THAAD bases in South Korea if pushed
by the US. China is retooling its factories to compensate for the loss of South Korean industrial
imports.
Conclusion
The rise and fall of unipolar America has not displaced the permanent state apparatus as it
continues to pursue its deluded strategies.
On the contrary, the unipolarists are accelerating their drive for global military conquest
by targeting Russia and China, which they insist are the cause of their losing wars and global economic
decline. They live on their delusions of a 'Golden Age' of the 1990's when George Bush, Sr. could
devastate Iraq and Bill Clinton could bomb Yugoslavia's cities with impunity.
Gone are the days when the unipolarists could break up the USSR, finance violent breakaway former
Soviet regimes in Asia and the Caucuses and run fraudulent elections for its drunken clients in Russia.
The disasters of US policies and its domestic economic decline has given way to rapid and profound
changes in power relations over the last two decades, shattering any illusion of a unipolar 'American
Century'.
Unipolarity remains the ideology of the permanent state security apparatus and its elites in Washington.
They believe that the marriage of militarism abroad and financial control at home will allow them
to regain their lost unipolar 'Garden of Eden'. China and Russia are the essential new protagonists
of a multipolar world. The dynamics of necessity and their own economic growth has pushed them to
successfully nurture alternative, independent states and markets.
This obvious, irreversible reality has driven the unipolarists to the mania of preparing for a
global nuclear war! The pretexts are infinite and absurd; the targets are clear and global; the destructive
offensive military means are available; but so are the formidable defensive and retaliatory capacities
of China and Russia.
The unipolarist state's delusion of 'winning a global nuclear war' presents Americans with the
critical challenge to resist or give in to an insanely dangerous empire in decline, which is willing
to launch a globally destructive war.
"This means US troops will operate (illegally) face-to-face with the advancing Syrian
army, who are backed by Russian military air support (legally)."
You don't seem to understand the definitions of legal and illegal in the current context: Anything
the US declares legal and subject to its jurisdiction anywhere in the world is legal, otherwise
it is still subject to US interpretation on its legality or not. In other words, US troops always
operate legally, international law notwithstanding, and US laws have effect everywhere and at
all times. Read More
What's this "unipolarist" stuff ..some kind of trendy academic euphemism? A land war in Asia?
Even the American public isn't that stupid.
There is zero chance of an attack on Korea .for a couple of reasons:
1) nothing in it for the jooies who need to conserve their satrap's military for an attack
on Iran,
2) if feasible, would have already happened, and lastly
3) the paper tiger would lose another one.
Think about it .goodbye Seoul, goodbye 30,000 US troops, goodbye all those lucrative samsung-kia-hyundai
franchises, kiss off a couple carriers from torpedos, goodbye lots of attack aircraft ..and that's
all before the Chinese enter the fray. Right now the biggest problem is how to let jooie butt
boy Trumpstein and his ridiculous VFW geezer generals back down without losing face. Face is everything
to westerners, you know . Read More
No doubt the Zionists want to focus on Syria and Iran because there is a direct benefit to
them there, but don't forget their goal. Their goal is total control of the world, and China and
Russia stand in their way.
Using N Korea to threaten China and Russia is probably high on their to do list too.
But I do agree with you. There is no way a N Korea war would be easy or fast for America. We
would probably lose 30k soldiers and many ships at least. Wr would burn through a ton of money
when we are flat broke. And I doubt we can be in a 2 front war right now anyway. So probably Middle
East will take the priority.
So the most plausible explanation to me is that Trump re-read one of the chapters he wrote
on negotiation and tried to convince China to go to war for us. But the Chinese aren't stupid
and they didn't take the bait.
China talked tough to N Korea and suspended their coal exports to make it look like they would
play game, and America sent ships to threaten N Korea. But that was all Trump negotiation tactics.
And Trump would be stupid to go to war and have this define his presidency.
China is not happy with North Korea either. Speculation is that China is planning an invasion
with a secret green light from Washington. Even if the US went in, it may be that if China were
granted basing rights in the North, or if there was an agreement for a multinational peacekeeping
force, with equal US/Chinese troops, there may be a way of providing assurance to China on the
national security front while getting rid of a gangster regime that threatens the security of
everyone.
Robert
Magill ,
April 26, 2017 at 5:30 pm GMT \n
China was envisioned as nothing more than a slave workshop producing cheap mass consumer
goods for Americans and generating high profits for US multinational corporations and retailers
like Walmart.
Walmart announced this week the planned opening of 40 new stores in China by 2020. This adds
to the nearly 500 Walmart stores already operating. Very cleaver of them to sell cheap mass consumer
goods made in China to Chinese customers and still generate profit. Where is the disconnect here?
The mostly likely site for starting World War III is the Korean peninsula. The unipolarists
and their allies in the state apparatus have systematically built-up the conditions to trigger
a war with China using the pretext of the North Korean defensive weapons program.
What happened in New York on 9/11 totally unhinged America for a generation. One small nuke
landing anywhere in the US would totally do us in. Russia and China could probably survive a dozen
each and soldier on.
One small nuke landing anywhere in the US would totally do us in.
What do you mean by this ? Are you talking about most Americans leaving their cities and thus
collapsing the entire economic system. Or are you saying that people will get so unhinged that
it will launch all its missiles (without knowing who is responsible) and thus have more nuclear
strikes hitting it ? Read More
Reply
Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
Commenter Display
All Comments
Washington intervened directly in the Chinese civil war providing arms to Chiang Kai
Shek's army while the Red Army battled the Japanese
This is COMPLETELY ass-backwards and there is not enough facepalm for such a statement. The
Red Army kept itself well ensconced and recruited desperate peasants while Chiang Kai Check fought
against the Japanese with not a lot of support from the US, then got the cold shoulder from Churchill.
After that, the Nationalist Chinese were such an utter wreck that Mao could easily clean the floor.
Any student of the Sino-Japanese war should have the basics right.
The per cent of Americans killed on 9/11 was less than 0.000097. The per cent of Japanese killed
in the 2011 Tsunami was 0.0144 with nary a whimper. The Japanese total was 148 times the US total!
from what I have read. the first half of that statement is true, while the 2nd half is wrong.
45-49, ccp got the left overs of manchuria, while the kmt got hardware and training directly from
the usa.
Didn't we fight China for many years in a place called Vietnam? How did that war work for
us? Of course we are stupid and our conscious memory is hardly good for 4 years. Our distant memory
is as good as every election cycle and the Vietnam war happened centuries ago on the US memory
calendar! Read More
The White Muslim Traditionalist ,
April 29, 2017 at 11:30 am GMT \n
"This means US troops will operate (illegally) face-to-face with the advancing Syrian army,
who are backed by Russian military air support (legally)."
You don't seem to understand the definitions of legal and illegal in the current context:
Anything the US declares legal and subject to its jurisdiction anywhere in the world is legal,
otherwise it is still subject to US interpretation on its legality or not. In other words, US
troops always operate legally, international law notwithstanding, and US laws have effect everywhere
and at all times. What an idiotic statement.
The United States doesn't decide what is right and what is wrong.
200 Words
@Monty Ahwazi Didn't we fight China for many years in a place called Vietnam? How did that
war work for us? Of course we are stupid and our conscious memory is hardly good for 4 years.
Our distant memory is as good as every election cycle and the Vietnam war happened centuries ago
on the US memory calendar! Didn't we fight China for many years in a place called Vietnam?
It was a mixed bag. Primarily Vietnam was more a Soviet ally than Chinese. You must remember
that during the '60s the Chinese and Soviets were at odds, and Chinese-Vietnamese relations were
not good, either. After the Americans retreated (Nixon-Kissinger's "Peace with Honor"), China
and Vietnam fought some skirmishes over Vietnam's Cambodian intrigue.
Amazing, when you think about it, how Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean brothers and
cousins can't get along. If they could, it would be very difficult for the Anglo-American-Jewish
alliance in the region. Think about it. Chinese are as crafty as Jews, they are patient as hell
(they think in long terms), they are every bit as tribal as Jews. Plus, unlike Jews, they have
demonstrated an ability to create an indigenous (i.e., non parasitic) culture. Finally, Chinese
don't feel any guilt over the Jew's Holocaust Six Million shekel religion, so they can't be whipped
into a subservient paroxysm over it. Maybe that makes war with them inevitable.
Read More
Walmarts in China are not like the one's in America. I'm convinced the US stores are supported
by welfare checks and food stamps. Without those, my guess is that the stores would have closed
a long time ago. Also, in China you don't see half the store filled up with overweight diabetics
on disability, riding around on motorized scooters, looking like land-locked Barron Harkonnens,
etc.
Exactly. The doomsday prognosticators keep up with the Fake News about the
impending end of the world scenarios and they fail to materialize repeatedly.
Just my little thought : in fact China is not going to intervene in a conflict between US-SK-Japan
versus NK. It will sit back and just wait until they all are exhausted and then collect .
Agent76
,
April 29, 2017 at 3:35 pm GMT \n
Mar 25, 2016 Is China Ready to Challenge the Dollar?
Introduction to the report: Is China Ready to Challenge the Dollar? Internationalization of
the Renminbi and Its Implications for the United States.
Apr 12, 2017 China Russia Move For Gold Against Dollar Makes Them A Target By Trump
In this video we talk about all the latest breaking news regarding the financial quite feud
between Russia, China and U.S. Its important to note that this move against Donald Trump and the
U.S petro dollar being the world reserve currency was made before Trumps aggressive actions against
a mutual ally to Russia and China.
@mp Didn't we fight China for many years in a place called Vietnam?
It was a mixed bag. Primarily Vietnam was more a Soviet ally than Chinese. You must remember
that during the '60s the Chinese and Soviets were at odds, and Chinese-Vietnamese relations were
not good, either. After the Americans retreated (Nixon-Kissinger's "Peace with Honor"), China
and Vietnam fought some skirmishes over Vietnam's Cambodian intrigue.
Amazing, when you think about it, how Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean brothers and
cousins can't get along. If they could, it would be very difficult for the Anglo-American-Jewish
alliance in the region. Think about it. Chinese are as crafty as Jews, they are patient as hell
(they think in long terms), they are every bit as tribal as Jews. Plus, unlike Jews, they have
demonstrated an ability to create an indigenous (i.e., non parasitic) culture. Finally, Chinese
don't feel any guilt over the Jew's Holocaust Six Million shekel religion, so they can't be whipped
into a subservient paroxysm over it. Maybe that makes war with them inevitable. OK until you come
to "the Chinese are every bit as tribal as Jews," Whatever you might say about some 12 million
Jews who; if in Israel, learn to speak a version of their old tribal language makes little sense
when applied to 1.3 billion people speaking many mutually incomprehensible languages (or dialects
as some prefer if you think Russian and Polish are two dialects) and with a long history of warlordism
and the barbarism of the Cultural Revolution less than two generations behind them. Still I guess
that it is wise to protect your IP from a Mandarin speaking Chinese employee who only became an
Amrrican citizen yesterday .
May 31, 2017 "Men in dark suits" rule the US – Putin on Deep State
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with French publication Le Figaro, has revealed
that a US president is more often than not just a figurehead of government.
Mar 6, 2017 Zakharova warns of Orwellian US Media 2.03.17
Have a listen to what Zakharova has to say in relation to "fake news". Is there a deliberate
campaign to undermine trust in all traditional media, so that the public can no longer form an
opinion?
"... I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never been our enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase St. Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism." ..."
"... Apart from opportunistic careerism, the subtext to this realignment is a larger issue of culture, education, and class. A mostly urban, highly educated, and high-income globalized elite often shares more cultural and political affinities with their counterparts on the other side of the aisle than they do with the lower-middle and working classes of their own countries. ..."
"... I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent! ..."
"... The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would do anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason to be against her. ..."
"... "What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt." ..."
Of course, this begs an obvious question. Traitor to what? In an "America" which no longer
has a definable culture, language,
ethnos
, history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?
The open celebration of what any other generation would have called "treason" reveals how fully
self-discrediting is the Russian "interference" narrative.
John Harington
famously quipped: "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare
call it treason." The "Russian interference" narrative is false because the fact it can be loudly
denounced without being shut down for being the equivalent of "racist" or "xenophobic" shows Russia
isn't very powerful within our government and society.
In contrast, our government and media seem to not only tolerate openly subversive or even hostile
actions by foreign governments against the United States, but celebrate them.
To criticize any of these countries, or to suggest dual loyalty on the part of their supporters
in this country, is political death. Of course, that is because such dual loyalty is sufficiently
strong that it is dangerous to broach the topic.
Indeed, for some in our Congress, dual loyalty would be a massive improvement.
The only reason we can't call men like these traitors is because there's no evidence they ever
considered themselves Americans in any meaningful way. What could be more ridiculous than considering
Chuck
Schumer "a fellow American" with some imaginary "common interest" he shares with me?
It's not double loyalty; that would be giving Maher too much credit. And it's not treason, because
Maher just isn't part of my people, by his own standards. When Bill Maher refers to "us," I know
that doesn't include me or my readers, and I know "the Russians" hate me a lot less than he does.
Of course, there is a Trump associate who has disturbing ties with a country doing just that.
The main focus of the investigation into "Russian collusion" is focusing on former
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn . But Flynn's strongest ties to a foreign power seem
to be to be increasingly
extreme and anti-European Turkey of the autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Incredibly, Flynn even
wrote an editorial demanding more support for Turkey on election day itself. [
Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support , by Michael Flynn, The Hill, November
8, 2016]
As Turkey is quite openly facilitating the migrant invasion of Europe and helping ISIS, there's
a far better case to claim our NATO "ally" is a threat than Russia. And yet Flynn's ties to Turkey
go all but unmentioned outside evangelical Christian websites [
Best-selling author predicted Flynn's departure , WND, February 14, 2017].
The MSM is utterly indifferent to Flynn's ties to Erdogan, even when they seem to be utterly dedicated
to destroying General Flynn personally.
Part of it simply could be the defense industry and the
"Deep State" need an enemy with a powerful conventional military to justify their wealth and
power. As it can't be China (that would be racist), Russia will do.
The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat. Russia is funding, or
at least is tied to, several alternative media sources such as RT, possibly Wikileaks,
Sputnik etc. Contrary to MSM claims, RT is hardly friendly to the "Alt-Right," instead
promoting progressive hosts such as Thom Hartmann. But there is at least a slightly different point
of view than the monolithic Narrative promoted on every late night comedy show, network news broadcast,
cable news broadcast, newspaper headline, and Establishment website [
The Hard Road For Putin , by Gregory Hood, Radix, July 22, 2014].
There is also an undeniable,
and openly articulated , sense of racial hatred expressed against Russians by Jewish members
of the media. Russians are hated both as a specific ethnos and as a white nation which does
not seem to be fully committed to "our values," which, as defined by Weimerica's journalist class,
consists of various forms of degeneracy. [
Welcome to
Weimerica , by Ryan Landry, Daily Caller, May 5, 2017].
John Winthrop's "City Upon A Hill" we are not.
It's not just idiotic but obscene that the same journalists gleefully involved in deconstructing
the American identity now demand Middle America rally round the flag out of some misplaced Cold War
nostalgia. Needless to say,
these same journalists loved Russia back when it was Communist and killing millions of Orthodox
Christians.
For immigration patriots, it's especially obnoxious because the eradication of the American identity
is a result of mass immigration. And immigration is more important than every other issue for two
reasons.
Immigration cuts to the heart of what a country is, of who you mean when you say "my people."
Are Americans still one people? Indeed, it's hard to claim America is even a geographic expression:
referring to the United States shorthand
as "America" is
now designated as offensive . The replacement of existing American citizens is
celebrated by the media and
funded by our own government.
And even citizenship means nothing, The MSM constantly promotes
Jose Antonio Vargas and his illegal friends or the protesters who parade under foreign flags
not just as "Americans" but as people somehow more American than us.
It's a strange definition of patriotism where wanting peaceful relations with Russia is "treason"
but banning the American flag in public schools because it might offend Mexicans
is government policy .
Naturally, Leftist intellectuals and the reporters who parrot their ideas do have some vague idea
of "American" identity-that of a "proposition" or "universal" nation which exists only to fight a
global struggle for equality [
Superpowers , by James Kirkpatrick, NPI, June 24, 2013].
But can you betray a "proposition nation?" How exactly does someone turn against a "universal
nation?"
Actually, you can. If you are part of the historic American nation, one of those European-Americans
who actually think of this country as a real nation with a real culture, you are in a strange way
the only people left out of what it means to be a modern "American." To consider America a particular
place with a specific culture and history that not everyone in the world can join simply by existing
is treason to a "universal nation." Everyone in the world can be an "American," except, you know,
actual Americans.
This is why the MSM is insistent that the governing philosophy of "
America First ,"
which should simply be a truism for any rational American government, is instead
something subversive and dangerous .
The hard truth is that "our" rulers aren't the guardians of our sovereignty, but the greatest threat
to our independence.
And this isn't an unprecedented circumstance in history. During the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia,
Carl von Clausewitz
violated his king's orders to join the invasion of Russia and instead joined the Tsar's forces
in the hope of someday liberating his own country. After all, it wasn't Tsar Alexander that was occupying
Prussia; it was Napoleon. And in the end, he won, Prussia was restored, and eventually it was Prussia
that would unite all of Germany.
The same situation applies today. Today, those actively pursuing the destruction of my people,
culture and civilization aren't in Moscow. I don't even concede those are enemies at all.
Our enemies are in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, in "our" own media companies, government
bureaucracies and intelligence agencies.
The real America is under occupation – and resistance to collaborators is patriotism to our country.
We elected Donald Trump because we thought he could help disrupt and perhaps even end that occupation
so we could have a country once again.
The attempt to destroy the President has ripped the mask off
the forces behind
this occupation . And we owe no loyalty to the collaborators who are trying to destroy his administration,
dispossess our people, and destroy our country.
Because in the end, "treason" to the occupation is loyalty to America.
I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never been our
enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase St.
Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities
of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism."
Once it cast off those chains, Russia became a natural ally of the American people, but not,
of course, of the Atlanticist Zionist empire which the American deep state serves. Orthodox Christian
Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until the advent of Roosevelt
I and his war party of would be empire builders.
This kind of purposeful switching of truth for lies and lies for truth, described excellently
here by Mr. Kirkpatrick ( of VDare! ) is straight outta the Bible, and that's not a good sign
at all. PeakStupidity
here is on the search for the passage in question. Anyone, anyone .. Buehler?
"I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone
directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
- Buckley
We'd also be better off governed by names from the Moscow phone book than by the New York Times
and Washington Post.
"It's not merely that [Jacob] Schiff wielded enormous power, but rather the fact that his actions,
more so than anyone else's, fundamentally altered the course of American history. Schiff was really
the first true Jewish Mega-Mogul of the whole United States (Judah Benjamin had previously run
the confederacy). As the first, Schiff, more than anyone who followed him, was able to leverage
his power into eternity. That is why the MVZ award must go to him .
Schiff hated Christian Russia with a passion. He worked ceaselessly to overthrow the Romanov
Dynasty and replace it with Jewish Reds / Communists. Toward that end, he personally financed,
and sold bonds on behalf of, about 50% of the entire Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese
War. As a result, the war ended with a Japanese victory. Russia's loss was also facilitated by
Schiff's boy, President (and also a former New York Governor) Teddy Roosevelt*, whose negotiating
intervention clearly favored Japan over Russia
(* Roosevelt became President after the conservative William McKinley was conveniently assassinated
by aPolish[?]-American anarchist Leon Czolgosz, Teddy being conveniently Vice-President. Roosevelt
was Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the first false-flag incident of the USS Maine occured,
later on followed by the Lusiatania – when FD Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy- and
Pearl Harbour).
"Schiff's Jewish agents in Russia skillfully used the humiliating loss of the Russo-Japanese
war as an occasion to launch a Communist revolution. The bloody Revolution of 1905 ultimately
failed, but the Tsar's regime was left considerably weakened. Many of the returning Russian POW's
came home brainwashed after Schiff had arranged for Communist propaganda to be given to them while
in Japanese captivity. The final Bolshevik overthrow of Russia in 1917 will owe its success, in
large part, to the damage done to Russia by the team of Jacob Schiff & Ted the Red Roosevelt on
1905.
President William H. Taft proved to be a Constitutional Conservative, and not a big government
"progressive" like his predecessor Teddy Roosevelt. But what really angered Jacob Schiff most
of all was Taft's refusal, told to Schiff in person, to dampen trade relations with Tsarist Russia*.
According to Henry Ford's sources, Schiff and his entourage left the White House saying. "This
means war .
[*Schiff imposed also the abrogation of the Russian American Trade Treaty of 1832 in 1911,
first instance of 'sanctions' motivated by the 'ill-treatement' of Jews in Russia (actually of
the Jews emigrated to America returning to Russia holding American passports and engaged in subversive
activities)].
"In order to oust the popular Republican Taft in 1912, Schiff and company recruited Teddy Roosevelt
to run for President again, as a third party challenger. This maneuver split the Republican vote
in two, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to steal the Presidency. Wilson's Jewish owned presidency
would turn out to be disastrous for America, and the world (The Fed, World War I, Russian Revolution,
Jewish foothold in Palestine, Depression of 1919-1920)
As was the case during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the chaos of World War I enabled the
Communists (Bolsheviks) to stage another uprising in 1917. Leading the diabolical efforts was
Jacob Schiff's loyal agent, Leon Trotsky, freshly reestablished in Russia after having hidden
in Brooklyn for the past decade. The Tsar had been forced to abdicate earlier that same year.
The provisional government would then be overthrown by the Jewish-led Bolsheviks.
The following year, Schiff's agents murdered the Tsar and his entire family. The reign of terror
that the Soviets then ushered in would plague humanity for decades to come. Scores of millions
would be murdered! And it could never have happened without the tireless leadership of Rothschild,
Schiff and their Junior partners.
Soon after the Revolution, Schiff removed Russia (now the Soviet Union) from his "do-not-lend
list".
Just for a little 'piquant'. The granddaughter of Jacob, Dorothy, had a 'relationship' (which
detractors called an 'affair') with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
... No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with
capitalism. Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
And when the truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism,
most Jews lost faith in communism.
Some still had nostalgia for Old Idealism and did credit USSR for having defeated Nazi Germany,
but few Jews were communist by the 80s when Soviet Union entered into its death throes. Also,
the New Left of the 60s was more about drugs and rock n roll than revolution.
Also, the Soviet Union became gentile-dominated by the late 30s, and after WWII, especially
as Zionists in Israel chose US over USSR, Jews came under increasing suspicion and even discrimination
in the communist world. Initially, Stalin installed many Jewish communists in Eastern European
nations, but after the fallout over Israel, many were purged as 'Zionists'.
So, most Jews welcomed the fall of the USSR. If anything, Jews used finance-capitalism to amass
control of much of Russian resources.
And in the 90s, most powerful Jews did everything in their power to make sure the Russian Communist
Party would not be come to power. They pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure Yeltsin
winning another term.
Those were the good ole days for Jews in Russia. And if they had been less greedy, they may
have kept the power. But they grabbed too much loot and turned a blind eye to all the suffering,
and this gave an opening to the Russian nationalists(mild though they may be). Mild nationalists
like Putin didn't purge Jews, but he sent a message that Russia would no longer be a 'vacationland
for Jewish lawyers in love'.
So, Jews tried various means to crack Russian nationalism, neo-traditionalism, and sovereignty.
They used Pussy Riot and Homomania. They didn't work.
So, the main reason for anti-Russianism has nothing to do with communism. The problem for Jews
is that Russia rejects globalism or at least globalist domination. Jewish power is centered on
globalism. Nationalism is anathema to Jews because it means that the national elites should represent,
defend, and serve their national masses. All nations except Israel is majority gentile. So, nationalism
makes national gentile elites grow closer to national gentile masses. This accounts for mass support
for Putin in Russia.
In contrast, under globalism, the national elites serve globalist elites than their national
people, and that means national leaders serve Soros and his ilk than their own folk.
Now, you'd think that the masses would rebel against the leaders if for treason, but Public
Education and Pop Culture have brainwashed tons of masses too. Look at all the white dummies in
the US who support globalism that is actually hurting them. And they would rather side with Diversity(invasion)
than with their own hurting kind.
These whites attack Trump for opposing mass invasion of the US by More Diversity. Why would
they want to invaded and be made into a minority people? They've been mentally-colonized by the
Glob Virus.
Many USA jews, and rabbis, were against Zionism because the USA was the new Zion. Henry Ford
around 1918 began to see the increase of jewish power in the USA, and began resistance.
Around 1933 world jewry accomplished a world wide boycott of Ford cars, and Ford gave up. Trump,
though he has many close jewish contacts, is not the puppet of the neocons. Hillary is. So Deep
State wants to get rid of Trump,in order to continue their plans to subjugate the whole world,
the globalised world, where all cultures have disappeared, the whole world one big USA clone.
High-quality TV with Victor Davis Hanson and Tucker Carlson:
Inside Dems' 'big lie' about Trump and Russia
Published on May 18, 2017
Historian dissects 'boogeyman of Russian collusion' that Democrats and the media cling to
in quest to get Pres. Trump out of office #Tucker
This is a very welcome new development for the Alt Right:
Tucker Carlson's Reinvention
[...] We've become fans of the show in this household even though we consume far more more information
from the internet than cable television. He's reaching an audience which normally doesn't watch
FOX News.
Apart from opportunistic careerism, the subtext to this realignment is a larger issue
of culture, education, and class. A mostly urban, highly educated, and high-income globalized
elite often shares more cultural and political affinities with their counterparts on the other
side of the aisle than they do with the lower-middle and working classes of their own countries.
Just as Hillary Clinton may feel more comfortable with the old neoconservatives, Trump supporters
have little in common with either Clintonites or neocons.
Clinton versus Trump is a war of NPR, CBS, and the New York Times against the National Enquirer,
conservative talk radio, and the Drudge Report. Clinton supporters such as former New York
mayor Michael Bloomberg, onetime Bush officials Hank Paulson and Brent Scowcroft, and billionaire
Meg Whitman certainly have nothing in common with Republican Trump supporters such as Mike
Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh.
Culture, not just politics, is rapidly destroying - but also rebuilding - traditional political
parties.
Moscow has 92 synagogues for less than a thousand practicing Jews – they are staffed and manned
by the imported American Rabbis of Habad. Best and the choicest pieces of Russian municipal land
are given to synagogues and Jewish cultural centres for free.
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-russian-scare/
Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ
such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent!
The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would
do anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason
to be against her.
Take a recent incident The NYT publishes a smear story accusing Trump of revealing classified
information to Lavrov. McMaster and other American officials present in the meeting rush to deny
that Trump reveal classified information, and only mentioned things about the laptop scare that
had already been public for weeks. Putin follows by offering to send Congress the Russian transcript
of the meeting to show Trump didn't reveal any classified information. Then Trump goes on Twitter:
Of course I revealed classified information! I'm the President and it's my right! Go help somebody
like that
"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using
anti-Russian slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing
to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything,
in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."
@Wally Moscow has 92 synagogues for less than a thousand practicing Jews ....
Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs
Shamir is an inveterate liar and the figure of 90+ synagogues in Moscow is fraudulent.
@Sebastian Puettmann Don't kid youselves.
The Russians hate you more than Keith Olberman.
He is just confused.
The Russians hate you more than Keith Olberman.
We all hate Keith Olberman, but the Russians don't get the same cable channels. Why would they
hate Keith Olberman when he doesn't even come on TV there?
I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever once been "one
people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its elites have always
propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom ever.
There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and jews),
but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc.
I think there might be Anglo-American, Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American
identities, but there never was a true American identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians
or even Canadians have.
The reason is first the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American
society is a dog eat dog society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being
independent as individual or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part
of and embedded in a social group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It
was always more patchwork than melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive
massacres did its part as well.
There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army
– but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has
always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism,
materialism, hedonism – an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material
goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity
either.
There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity.
I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will
create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or
the Germans.
@Authenticjazzman " The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat"
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and it does not cater
to gays.
Communist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they
are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running
the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.
The Democrats were convinced that they had the election in the bag , and therefore the accomplishment
of eternal one-party government. They would have legalized the illegals as a gigantic voting block,
and the huge upset dealt to them by the deplorables has driven them off the cliff and into total
madness.
"Media threat" is such a vague non-descript concept that I don't have the energy or patience
to even elaborate thereon.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz artist.
PS off subject but relevant : Russia has a thriving Jazz scene, and the are some monster American-style
Jazz players coming out of Russia. You are making several good points, but I won't hit the 'agree'
button, because I agree with the Priss Factor's reply to your main points.
Again, it is amusing that you post the same potted description of you on every post.
If you post under a pseudonym and won't identify your 'authentic jazz', you may be wiser to
drop the claims.
Just leave the occasional incidental.
Nice to see you making a post that makes much sense, though.
@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the
Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional
war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the
ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the
Russian expeditionary force regularly use.
Unfortunately Trump will have to
kill some Russians now
. Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because
the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and
Iraq. A typical cuckservative response, how about you respond to what this article is about. The
facts are absolutely clear the greatest enemies are those that exist in America, they have been
mentioned in this article, your obsession with Russia is not going to deflect from this fact.
Its rather simple, Ukraine is not American, despite all your stupid domino theories yourwill
no doubt bring up, on the other hand extremists like Olberman openly support mass non white immigration
into the USA, what would any reasonable nationalist think is the bigger issue.
@Mulegino1 I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never
been our enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase
St. Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities
of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism." Once it cast off those
chains, Russia became a natural ally of the American people, but not, of course, of the Atlanticist
Zionist empire which the American deep state serves.
Orthodox Christian Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until
the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Here's a 1200-page read
for you. It's from a traditionalist Catholic perspective.
@Serg Derbst I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever
once been "one people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its
elites have always propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom
ever. There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and
jews), but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc. I think there might be Anglo-American,
Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American identities, but there never was a true American
identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians or even Canadians have. The reason is first
the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American society is a dog eat dog
society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being independent as individual
or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part of and embedded in a social
group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It was always more patchwork than
melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive massacres did its part as well.
There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army
- but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has
always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism,
materialism, hedonism - an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material
goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity
either.
There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity.
I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will
create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or
the Germans. I partially agree with you on the identity thing, but on the other hand the American
identity (I say this as a non American) was based on being white. There was the notable exception
of the blacks, but they did not make up the majority of the population and their acceptance as
being American was the exception more than the rule, their distinct culture added some spice to
what was America, but nobody can seriously believe that if the USA was 90% black it would still
be America.
You also now have the situation that people arrive off planes from places like India, China
or Somalia and are declared American, I find that ridiculous. Sadly this is no longer a problem
only in America, its the same in Sweden, France, Germany, UK, etc, they all have made what being
a people is completely meaningless.
@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty
Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall,
they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in.
General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening
Russia.
There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main
Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great
Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas .
Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them.
That is a very strange assertion, as are many of your others. Strong evidence has been widely
reported about the gas attack while Obama was Prex of the USA having had a Turkish connection.
Erdogan imprisoned many reporters on this and other ties with al Qaeda and the Islamic state.
It is easy to look up.
Assad is an idiot.
He was a respected opthalmolagist in London for years, testimonials from former (British) patients
are not hard to find. Opthalmology may not be the most demanding medical speciality, but it is
up there, and is not a nest of idiots.
If you want to see an idiot, you may try the mirror.
@Serg Derbst I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever
once been "one people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its
elites have always propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom
ever. There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and
jews), but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc. I think there might be Anglo-American,
Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American identities, but there never was a true American
identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians or even Canadians have. The reason is first
the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American society is a dog eat dog
society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being independent as individual
or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part of and embedded in a social
group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It was always more patchwork than
melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive massacres did its part as well.
There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army
- but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has
always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism,
materialism, hedonism - an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material
goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity
either.
There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity.
I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will
create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or
the Germans.
There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity.
I don't see it.
and, with a name like Serb, I can see why. Why are you writing about something that you obviously
(from your racism drivel in the 1st paragraph) know not a damn thing about?
You are an prime example of the data points we at
PeakStupidity use to prove that America
and the West has arrived at a global maximum.
The United States of America, that dream of what a democratic republic ought to be, has become
the Fascist States of America. As the 2016 elections have more than revealed, we have moved beyond
the era of representative government and have entered into a new age. You can call it the age
of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Either way, argues John W. Whitehead, we are being
played for fools.
@Mulegino1 I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. ....
Orthodox Christian Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until
the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Stalin was our enemy,
a Roosevelt creation.
He died in 1953, probably murdered.
Then the threat was over, those that did nog believe it should have realised it when Chrustjow
removed his rockets and atomic warheads from Cuba.
But the USA went on with the madness of possible mutual destruction, I suppose in the hope that
the cost of the war effort would cause the collapse of the USSR.
@Seraphim @the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Just a
reminder of who made Teddy. Everybody knows by now (a short overview@http://www.tomatobubble.com/id695.html)
....
I had never heard of that before.
It is irony on at least two levels, the treatment of the Japanese P.o.W.s from Manchuria, 40
years later, included much Communist indoctrination, although that was the time of the nadir of
Jewish Bolshevism, I am quite sure that demoted Jewish officials would have been in charge of
the Siberian prison camps where P.o.Ws from Japan were.
The other irony is the German High Command's use of Lenin as a kind of human bomb that spectacularly
misfired on their intentions.
So, you are saying that Japan tried the same thing 12 years earlier, on a smaller scale?
It is an interesting idea, but foundation of the JCP was later but a joke version "was"founded
earlier, perhaps that has a connection.
A comment not connected to this thread, some idiot on another claiming knowledge said that
the victory in the Russo-Japanese war is not commemorated here. It is a lie.
The order is, how we were victimised by cruel bombings and having soldiers imprisoned in Manchuria,
how we were great to invade China and other places, the technical genius of the Mitsubisi Zero
(and I am to fully agreeing with that one), the sadness of the Special Attack Forces, and how
clever was Admiral Togo in the Russo-Japanese war (also to agreeing with that, just from a military
perspective).
@Achmed E. Newman This kind of purposeful switching of truth for lies and lies for truth,
described excellently here by Mr. Kirkpatrick ( of VDare! ) is straight outta the Bible, and that's
not a good sign at all.
PeakStupidity here
is on the search for the passage in question. Anyone, anyone ..... Buehler? Isiah 5:20:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
There are similar passages elsewhere but I think this is the most commonly cited.
@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly
diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed
in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?
@What has changed in 2000 years?
A steady Judaization of Christianity. They are no more Christians.
@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the
Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional
war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the
ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the
Russian expeditionary force regularly use.
Unfortunately Trump will have to
kill some Russians now
. Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because
the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and
Iraq. Trump doesn't "have" to do any such thing.
The Russians in Syria are protecting Christians, and they are fighting against our worst enemies,
radical Sunni jihadists such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
In addition to defeating Al-Qaeda and protecting Middle Eastern Christians, Russian-American
friendship would have many other benefits – boosting American exports, balancing the rise of China,
and cooperating to end the migrant invasion of Europe.
@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty
Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall,
they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in.
General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening
Russia.
There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main
Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great
Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas . The 1986 amnesty was
Reagan's biggest mistake.
His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.
We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will
commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get.
Toward that end, he personally financed, and sold bonds on behalf of, about 50% of the entire
Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese War.
Much of what you are saying I had read in passing (interesting post), but that is interesting
to me. Do you have a pointer to something I could read on it, preferably on the 'net or a book
in Japanese (also the below).
Schiff had arranged for Communist propaganda to be given to them while in Japanese captivity.
I had never heard of that before.
It is irony on at least two levels, the treatment of the Japanese P.o.W.s from Manchuria, 40
years later, included much Communist indoctrination, although that was the time of the nadir of
Jewish Bolshevism, I am quite sure that demoted Jewish officials would have been in charge of
the Siberian prison camps where P.o.Ws from Japan were.
The other irony is the German High Command's use of Lenin as a kind of human bomb that spectacularly
misfired on their intentions.
So, you are saying that Japan tried the same thing 12 years earlier, on a smaller scale?
It is an interesting idea, but foundation of the JCP was later ... but a joke version "was"founded
earlier, perhaps that has a connection.
A comment not connected to this thread, some idiot on another claiming knowledge said that
the victory in the Russo-Japanese war is not commemorated here. It is a lie.
The order is, how we were victimised by cruel bombings and having soldiers imprisoned in Manchuria,
how we were great to invade China and other places, the technical genius of the Mitsubisi Zero
(and I am to fully agreeing with that one), the sadness of the Special Attack Forces, and how
clever was Admiral Togo in the Russo-Japanese war (also to agreeing with that, just from a military
perspective). You will find it in:
Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership
@Agent76 Aug 9, 2016 Kill Russians, kill Iranians, scare Assad!
Ex CIA deputy Mike Morell - Aug 8 - Charlie Rose
https://youtu.be/UZK2FZGKAd0 It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation,
my definition of fascism being 'the use of power without any ideology'.
@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.
His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.
We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will
commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. Raegan never made any mistake:
'he slept through it all'.
Thank you, James Kirkpatrick, for another excellent article. Some of the hyperlinks in his
essay however seem not to be functioning properly.
It's heartening to see Kirkpatrick finally explore (though gingerly) the Jewish angle to the
never-ending chain of Trump-loathing 'experts' and Russia-hating politicians. Indeed, it is the
Israel factor that remains the most potent as well as the most sacrosanct element in this fake
drama about US secrets and 'compromised' national security.
Indeed, it is the marauding kosher beast–not Russia–that gets to graze unmolested throughout
Washington while smaller, non-threatening animals are hunted down and slaughtered.
This top-down smoke and fog and hysteria suggests that America is no longer a sovereign state.
This is true. But Russia has nothing to do with our nation's loss of self-rule. All this malarky
about Putin's interference in our presidential election is a media-orchestrated farce. America
should actually be aligned with Christian Russia, not engaged in damaging the Russian economy
via sanctions or marching NATO up to its doorstep. But the warmongering and the deceptions about
Russia, as well as the special treatment accorded Israel, continues.
Thus the MSM shrieks endlessly about non-existent Russian subversion but deliberately looks
away when Israeli interference in US elections is operating and evident and functioning as designed.
It's fake news about what is fast becoming a fake, lobotomized, Zionized nation.
Big media beats its chest over compromised US intelligence, yet it is nuclear Israel–not Russia–that
has apparent access to raw US intelligence like no other foreign state.
And it is Israel–not Russia–that routinely steers America into needless conflicts against the
foes of Zionism, even though these small, distant counties (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Palestine,
Lebanon) seek no war with Washington and pose no threat to the American people.
Trump, for all his subservient, pro-Israel posturing (not to mention his needless attack on
Assad's Syria) remains too white, too independent, too 'old America' for his Jewish overlords
or for the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. This is why Trump must go.
Just as Mel Gibson will always be radioactive in Hollywood for making accurate remarks about
Jews being in the center of most European wars, Trump let the cat out of the bag by suggesting
that Washington's serial warfare in the Middle East is "not in our national interest". The truthfulness
of his simple observation rendered Trump a long-term threat to Israel's special status in America
as well as Israel's unannounced goal of upending and reshaping the Middle East via US military
power.
Even though Trump has recently changed course, his patriotic and nationalistic messages linger
in the mind. If acted upon, Trump's campaign promises pose a threat to 1) increased (non-white)
multiculturalism inside America and 2) more wars against Israel's enemies abroad. The Zions don't
like this brand of nativism one bit. That political highway is reserved for Israelis, not Americans.
Most importantly, Israel and crypto-Israelis inside Washington remain committed to smashing
the alliance between Iran, Syria and Russia. This requires a subservient president. Trump's erratic
conduct and rhetoric endangers this Israeli objective. This animates the anti-Trump coup now underway.
US-based Israelis believe that VP Pence is a far more reliable Christian Zionist than the bombastic
and unpredictable 'America First' president. This is why Trump is being targeted with such unceasing
venom.
The Russians in Syria are protecting Christians, and they are fighting against our worst enemies,
radical Sunni jihadists such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
In addition to defeating Al-Qaeda and protecting Middle Eastern Christians, Russian-American
friendship would have many other benefits - boosting American exports, balancing the rise of China,
and cooperating to end the migrant invasion of Europe. Your benefits are to Deep State horrible
losses.
The real reason is that the Russians are a convenient cover-up for Democratic incompetence.
It is an alternate reality to convince the base and the sponsors that Hillary lost the election
because she was co-opted by the Red Tide.
Dems really think that Trump and Putin colluded to steal the DNC emails and give it to Wikileaks.
It really is a mental illness at this point.
They wanted Comey fired, but when Trump did it, it was obstruction. They wanted a Special Prosecutor,
but now are worried that he may not find anything. They believe the incessant hysteria is whipping
up their base and will guarantee the House in the 2018 election. Hope they crash and burn in 2018.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
There are similar passages elsewhere but I think this is the most commonly cited. Thank you
very much, Linda! I know there are plenty of search tools and places to search on-line, but I
didn't have the wording right.
@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.
His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.
We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will
commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. I agree with your point, John,
but would like to say that Ronald Reagan's mistake with the amnesty of 1986 was in
trusting members of
the US Congress , not so much what should have been a 1-time deal – though, I grant you, any
amnesty was a bad deal for Americans.
Here is more regarding
Reagan's regrets on that whole fiasco.
@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.
His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.
We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will
commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. With that amnesty he could never
win any vote California if he existed now, this the problem with all these cuck types, they all
want to believe in the magic dirt of America that somehow they will have another Reagan one day,
this will never happen and Reagan shares part of the blame.
@Agent76 Aug 9, 2016 Kill Russians, kill Iranians, scare Assad!
Ex CIA deputy Mike Morell - Aug 8 - Charlie Rose
https://youtu.be/UZK2FZGKAd0 Do you think think this middling intellect, son of an autoworker
from Akron, Ohio with a degree in accounting from U. of Akron, realizes he's only a useful goyim
tool and has no real power??
@Mark Green Thank you, James Kirkpatrick, for another excellent article. Some of the hyperlinks
in his essay however seem not to be functioning properly.
It's heartening to see Kirkpatrick finally explore (though gingerly) the Jewish angle to the
never-ending chain of Trump-loathing 'experts' and Russia-hating politicians. Indeed, it is the
Israel factor that remains the most potent as well as the most sacrosanct element in this fake
drama about US secrets and 'compromised' national security.
Indeed, it is the marauding kosher beast--not Russia--that gets to graze unmolested throughout
Washington while smaller, non-threatening animals are hunted down and slaughtered.
This top-down smoke and fog and hysteria suggests that America is no longer a sovereign state.
This is true. But Russia has nothing to do with our nation's loss of self-rule. All this malarky
about Putin's interference in our presidential election is a media-orchestrated farce. America
should actually be aligned with Christian Russia, not engaged in damaging the Russian economy
via sanctions or marching NATO up to its doorstep. But the warmongering and the deceptions about
Russia, as well as the special treatment accorded Israel, continues.
Thus the MSM shrieks endlessly about non-existent Russian subversion but deliberately looks
away when Israeli interference in US elections is operating and evident and functioning as designed.
It's fake news about what is fast becoming a fake, lobotomized, Zionized nation.
Big media beats its chest over compromised US intelligence, yet it is nuclear Israel--not Russia--that
has apparent access to raw US intelligence like no other foreign state.
And it is Israel--not Russia--that routinely steers America into needless conflicts against
the foes of Zionism, even though these small, distant counties (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Palestine,
Lebanon) seek no war with Washington and pose no threat to the American people.
Trump, for all his subservient, pro-Israel posturing (not to mention his needless attack on
Assad's Syria) remains too white, too independent, too 'old America' for his Jewish overlords
or for the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. This is why Trump must go.
Just as Mel Gibson will always be radioactive in Hollywood for making accurate remarks about
Jews being in the center of most European wars, Trump let the cat out of the bag by suggesting
that Washington's serial warfare in the Middle East is "not in our national interest". The truthfulness
of his simple observation rendered Trump a long-term threat to Israel's special status in America
as well as Israel's unannounced goal of upending and reshaping the Middle East via US military
power.
Even though Trump has recently changed course, his patriotic and nationalistic messages linger
in the mind. If acted upon, Trump's campaign promises pose a threat to 1) increased (non-white)
multiculturalism inside America and 2) more wars against Israel's enemies abroad. The Zions don't
like this brand of nativism one bit. That political highway is reserved for Israelis, not Americans.
Most importantly, Israel and crypto-Israelis inside Washington remain committed to smashing
the alliance between Iran, Syria and Russia. This requires a subservient president. Trump's erratic
conduct and rhetoric endangers this Israeli objective. This animates the anti-Trump coup now underway.
US-based Israelis believe that VP Pence is a far more reliable Christian Zionist than the bombastic
and unpredictable 'America First' president. This is why Trump is being targeted with such unceasing
venom. If any state in the world is sovereign it is the USA.
USA military power, and political power still enable the USA to do as it pleases.
All other states in the world are less sovereign, just because of USA power.
What you write about is USA democracy, is what the USA does what the USA people want ?
The election of Trump, though he did not get the popular vote, means in my opinion that a large
part of the USA population is fed up with the establishment politicians.
What USA citizens who did not vote want, I do not know, I wonder if anyone knows.
Just now on Belgian tv was a report on USA citizens who are pro Trump, what they mean by 'making
America great again', not very clear to me.
A USA commentator stated that many Americans do not recognise the present USA as the USA they
knew, or want.
Mentioned was socialism: the welfare state, gays, migrants.
And hostility to establishment politicians.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/05/17/lets-connect-the-dots/#more-150513 Leon Czolgosz
was not Polish.
He was a Jew whose family lived in Poland for a few generations and then moved to Anerica.
He was a follower of Emma Goldberg and Alexander Berkman who thanks be to God were deported back
to Russia just in time to participate in the revolution.
Id just like to point out that the reason so many Chinese are giving tech and military secrets
to China is my personal bete noire affirmative action. Were it not for affirmative action those
military and tech secrets would be in the hands of White Americans, not foreign spies whose only
qualification that they are not White.
I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot of holes in its foundations.
To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is
a bit absurd.
No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills
for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good
measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).
Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States.
His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental
positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency,
his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy,
and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many
other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of
a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all
shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.
As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking
what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American
history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.
Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the
winners are always the highest bidders.
Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for
Southern Independence.
America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their
way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out
of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason;
he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America
in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.
So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never
was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but
one to protect the wealthy and their needs.
There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself
while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward
spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to
protect the White privileged classes .
@Achmed E. Newman I agree with your point, John, but would like to say that Ronald Reagan's
mistake with the amnesty of 1986 was in
trusting members of
the US Congress , not so much what should have been a 1-time deal - though, I grant you, any
amnesty was a bad deal for Americans.
Here is more regarding
Reagan's regrets on that whole fiasco. A decade before he even ran for governor Reagan was spotted
by DART industries and other cut throat capitalists who wanted to reverse every gain the working
class made in the 20th century.
Reagan's backers knew that the easiest way to do this was to import millions of legal and illegal
immigrants to replace Americans in every job from physician to dishwasher.
So Reagan CLAIMED to regret his amnesty after the damage was done. There is an old French saying.
"Don't listen to what he says, look at what he does."
That's what I do. I look beyond the rehetoric and look at what is done. Reagan betrayed his
working and middle class White voters with amnesty and making affirmative action worse.
@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the
Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional
war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the
ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the
Russian expeditionary force regularly use.
Unfortunately Trump will have to
kill some Russians now
. Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because
the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and
Iraq. " because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine"
Since then the UnzReview has become a platform for the Kagans' clan propaganda? The data on
three (3) referenda have shown that Crimeans wanted a greater autonomy from Kiev long before the
US-sponsored thugs of neo-Nazi leaning followed cookie-carrying Nuland-Kagan towards the "bright
future" of today's economic and moral decline in Ukraine. Are not you longing for more auto-da-fe
in Odessa, which was conducted by neo-Nazis battalion Azov in 2014? At that time the battalion
was financed by an Israeli citizen and pillar of Jewish community of Ukraine Mr. Kolomojsky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeguAaPYKU8
It is understandable why Israel-firsters hate Russian federation; the russkies dared to stop the
advance of ISIS in a great game for Eretz Israel and other attractive mythological trinkets of
supremacist kind.
When the US and EU are hollowed out by your insatiable tribe, where would the "eternal victims"
have to go? To Rothschild bunkers?
@Zogby I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ
such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent!
The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would do
anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason to
be against her.
Take a recent incident...
The NYT publishes a smear story accusing Trump of revealing classified information to Lavrov.
McMaster and other American officials present in the meeting rush to deny that Trump reveal
classified information, and only mentioned things about the laptop scare that had already been
public for weeks.
Putin follows by offering to send Congress the Russian transcript of the meeting to show Trump
didn't reveal any classified information.
Then Trump goes on Twitter: Of course I revealed classified information! I'm the President
and it's my right!
Go help somebody like that... Actually it's true. The president, not state or justice and certainly
not the liberal press is completely in charge of foreign affairs and the President can classify
or not classify any and all information.
Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back.
The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed
at the beginning.
@Steve Naidamast I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot
of holes in its foundations.
To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is
a bit absurd.
No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills
for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good
measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).
Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States.
His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental
positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency,
his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy,
and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many
other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of
a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all
shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.
As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking
what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American
history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.
Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the
winners are always the highest bidders.
Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for
Southern Independence.
America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their
way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out
of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason;
he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America
in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.
So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never
was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but
one to protect the wealthy and their needs.
There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself
while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward
spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to
protect the White privileged classes....
So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that
never was.
As most people understand the term, American identity refers to the racial and cultural characteristics
of the people.
American identity has, since the nation's inception, been chiefly European and Christian. Today,
the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction
(induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education) and mass replacement immigration.
The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what
you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to
do the same to their people.
I just got out of the car after listening to the vomitorium NPR's daily short-stroke
session with Brooks and Dudiowhocares how the weasel spells his fairy-sounding name. It's interesting,
listening to a Jew (I could be wrong, but it's NPR, so probably not) interview a Jew pretending
to be an Anglo Conservative, and a goy leftist that I find indistinguishable from a Brooklyn Jew.
Anyhoo, between tossing each other off, Brooks (loyalty: Israel, his son serves in the IDF FFS)
called Russia our "adversary." You know it's a lie when the media says it. Did NPR's pet "Conservatives"
refer to the Soviet Union as our "adversary"?
Media = scum. Otherwise, they couldn't get work in that business.
Indeed. Many years ago, I used terms like "ZOG" only with emotional trepidation. That is long
since gone. Now the trepidation is entirely practical; it puts off the idiots we need to get through
to. It is an entirely accurate term for the regime.
No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with capitalism.
Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam. And when
the truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism, most
Jews lost faith in communism.
After Stalin, the Russians removed Jews (and many other aliens) from their former heights of
power in the USSR. That didn't win them any (((friends))). More to the point, Putin brought (((the
oligarchs))) to heel, and reversed all their (((important work))). That's when the (((hate)))
really started for Russia.
It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation, my definition of fascism
being 'the use of power without any ideology'.
Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs
And you will most certainly ignore:
Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
and:
The Zionist attempt to control language.
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014
and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media
and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook
Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back.
The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed
at the beginning.
Jame Bamford of Wired subsequently reported that the NSA had hired secretive contractors with
extensive ties to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key telecommunication
points throughout the country."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impact-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6#ixzz3NxPMujNo
and:
Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz3NxPnnUFg
and:
IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology
Read more:http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/08/idf-unit-8200-cyberwar-veterans-developed-nsa-snooping-technology/
'Join the US army, Fight for Israel
http://68.media.tumblr.com/639563970a638b606f4adb0ef05c778b/tumblr_inline_o7t4eewwJn1r75mb5_500.jpg
You proved nothing about 90+ synagogues in Moscow. You only parroted Shamir. For all I know the
rest of your claim might be right. I don't know one way or the other whether your other links
are right, nor do I care. That's why I didn't respond to them, nor am I under any compulsion to.
@Anon You proved nothing about 90+ synagogues in Moscow. You only parroted Shamir. For all
I know the rest of your claim might be right. I don't know one way or the other whether your other
links are right, nor do I care. That's why I didn't respond to them, nor am I under any compulsion
to.
Because you're wrong and are too much an intellectual cripple to admit it. And that's why I
have beaten you in every debate. The list is rather large as I'm sure you remember.
I dodged nothing because I saw nothing.
How's your "English Literature" class going? LOL!!
@Anon The real reason is that the Russians are a convenient cover-up for Democratic incompetence.
It is an alternate reality to convince the base and the sponsors that Hillary lost the election
because she was co-opted by the Red Tide.
Dems really think that Trump and Putin colluded to steal the DNC emails and give it to Wikileaks.
It really is a mental illness at this point.
They wanted Comey fired, but when Trump did it, it was obstruction. They wanted a Special Prosecutor,
but now are worried that he may not find anything. They believe the incessant hysteria is whipping
up their base and will guarantee the House in the 2018 election. Hope they crash and burn in 2018.
Exactly, good point.
Like when Zionists claim that scrutiny of the '6M Jews, 5M other & gas chambers' is hateful
to Jews.
Forgetting that making such claims in the first place is hateful to Germans and to Gentiles who
Jews claim 'let it happen'.
Count me with the Russians, too. Non self hating whites in America are stateless and behind
enemy lines. We are told the nation belongs to every racial and religious group except those of
the founding racial stock (Christian or not). We have laws promoting and protecting most non-white
racial groups at the expense of the white majority. Our history is being rewritten to cast aspersions
on our founding and villainize great white men who built America while lionizing non-whites who
did next to nothing.
(((Hollywood))) movies and television shows depict whites as either corrupt, vapid, moronic
or untrustworthy compared to non-whites and generally dehumanize us and foment racial hatred against
us. The golden rule in politics is that white politicians are strictly forbidden from acknowledging
whites as a group let alone show any sympathy or compassion for them or working on their behalf.
Donald Trump has only done so half heartedly and implicitly and he's derided as a white supremacist
24/7 and as "un-American" while facing calls to resign simply for enforcing immigration laws and
failing to take a wrecking ball to the last vestiges of the old, white America.
This is conquest and occupation, not progress as the (((authors))) of all these trends inform
us. With a straight face. Everything most of us loved and held dear has been destroyed by the
JOG and remade in their vile image and likeness.
Therefore, if Putin were to invade the U.S. this would be cause for celebration for the embattled
and shrinking white majority. We would have nothing to lose. This nation betrayed us long ago
and no longer deserves our loyalty, support or affection.
The pot bellied, "race doesn't matter" patriotards and antifa scumbags can have it.
@Wally And that's why I have beaten you in every debate. The list is rather large as I'm sure
you remember.
I dodged nothing because I saw nothing.
How's your "English Literature" class going? LOL!! You clearly have no interest in debate.
Challenged on an intellectual debate, you wilt. Enjoy yourself.
@Priss Factor The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and
it does not cater to gays. Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for
the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism
with Russia running the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.
No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with capitalism.
Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam. And when the
truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism, most Jews
lost faith in communism.
Some still had nostalgia for Old Idealism and did credit USSR for having defeated Nazi Germany,
but few Jews were communist by the 80s when Soviet Union entered into its death throes. Also,
the New Left of the 60s was more about drugs and rock n roll than revolution.
Also, the Soviet Union became gentile-dominated by the late 30s, and after WWII, especially
as Zionists in Israel chose US over USSR, Jews came under increasing suspicion and even discrimination
in the communist world. Initially, Stalin installed many Jewish communists in Eastern European
nations, but after the fallout over Israel, many were purged as 'Zionists'.
So, most Jews welcomed the fall of the USSR. If anything, Jews used finance-capitalism to amass
control of much of Russian resources.
And in the 90s, most powerful Jews did everything in their power to make sure the Russian Communist
Party would not be come to power. They pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure Yeltsin
winning another term.
Those were the good ole days for Jews in Russia. And if they had been less greedy, they may have
kept the power. But they grabbed too much loot and turned a blind eye to all the suffering, and
this gave an opening to the Russian nationalists(mild though they may be). Mild nationalists like
Putin didn't purge Jews, but he sent a message that Russia would no longer be a 'vacationland
for Jewish lawyers in love'.
So, Jews tried various means to crack Russian nationalism, neo-traditionalism, and sovereignty.
They used Pussy Riot and Homomania. They didn't work.
So, the main reason for anti-Russianism has nothing to do with communism. The problem for Jews
is that Russia rejects globalism or at least globalist domination. Jewish power is centered on
globalism. Nationalism is anathema to Jews because it means that the national elites should represent,
defend, and serve their national masses. All nations except Israel is majority gentile. So, nationalism
makes national gentile elites grow closer to national gentile masses. This accounts for mass support
for Putin in Russia.
In contrast, under globalism, the national elites serve globalist elites than their national
people, and that means national leaders serve Soros and his ilk than their own folk.
Now, you'd think that the masses would rebel against the leaders if for treason, but Public
Education and Pop Culture have brainwashed tons of masses too. Look at all the white dummies in
the US who support globalism that is actually hurting them. And they would rather side with Diversity(invasion)
than with their own hurting kind.
These whites attack Trump for opposing mass invasion of the US by More Diversity.
Why would they want to invaded and be made into a minority people? They've been mentally-colonized
by the Glob Virus. 60′s Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.
The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized
abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural"
Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of
"me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak
and pathetic
Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence.
@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly
diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed
in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?
"Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? "
Here we are.
Don't look for leadership from the Whore of Babylon.
All of these "hierarchical" churches are pyramids of power in the Beast System.
Authority among men is on a level field; with the Word of God- Jesus of the scriptures- as
King.
So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never
was.
As most people understand the term, American identity refers to the racial and cultural characteristics
of the people.
American identity has, since the nation's inception, been chiefly European and Christian. Today,
the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction
(induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education) and mass replacement immigration.
The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what
you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to
do the same to their people. Mr. Kirkpatrick stated "In an "America" which no longer has a definable
culture, language, ethnos, history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?"
His proceeding argument is built on a false premise. We clearly have these things. Then, we
have you doubling down. The American identity refers to a host of traits that reflect its citizens.
Initially, our nation was predicated on several European ethnic groups who held different faiths.
Africans were imported. Tribal groups were removed by force for white settlement. Gradually, the
Germans, the Irish, the Assyrians, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, and the Nigerians immersed themselves
into what is an American. We are a nation of mutts.
"Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive
dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education)."
Did it ever occur to you that tens of millions of whites are other than brainwashed, that they
created an educational system that represents their beliefs and values?
" mass replacement immigration."
No.
"The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it
what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites
to do the same to their people."
There is observably no genocide taking place here in the States. Your Alt Right talking point
is tiresome to say the least.
@Anon You clearly have no interest in debate. Challenged on an intellectual debate, you wilt.
Enjoy yourself. Problem is that you're not an intellectual. Not in the slightest. Dream on.
@jilles dykstra If any state in the world is sovereign it is the USA.
USA military power, and political power still enable the USA to do as it pleases.
All other states in the world are less sovereign, just because of USA power.
What you write about is USA democracy, is what the USA does what the USA people want ?
The election of Trump, though he did not get the popular vote, means in my opinion that a large
part of the USA population is fed up with the establishment politicians.
What USA citizens who did not vote want, I do not know, I wonder if anyone knows.
Just now on Belgian tv was a report on USA citizens who are pro Trump, what they mean by 'making
America great again', not very clear to me.
A USA commentator stated that many Americans do not recognise the present USA as the USA they
knew, or want.
Mentioned was socialism: the welfare state, gays, migrants.
And hostility to establishment politicians. By definition, since the polity of the USA is controlled
by the Izzies, it can not be a sovereign state.
It is a bizarre colonial posession of Israel. So, by your argument, Israel is the only truly
sovereign state.
@Stonehands 60's Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.
The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized
abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural"
Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of
"me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak
and pathetic...
Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires...
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence. The
likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion)
led the charge through the institutions.
Not true. The hardline feminists turned on Friedan.
Sontag went her own way and didn't involve herself much with institutions. She was too independent
to be academic hack.
Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs
And you will most certainly ignore:
Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
and:
The Zionist attempt to control language.
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014
and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media
and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook
Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back.
The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed
at the beginning.
Jame Bamford of Wired subsequently reported that the NSA had hired secretive contractors with
extensive ties to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key telecommunication
points throughout the country."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impact-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6#ixzz3NxPMujNo
and:
Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz3NxPnnUFg
and:
IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology
Read more:http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/08/idf-unit-8200-cyberwar-veterans-developed-nsa-snooping-technology/
'Join the US army, Fight for Israel
http://68.media.tumblr.com/639563970a638b606f4adb0ef05c778b/tumblr_inline_o7t4eewwJn1r75mb5_500.jpg
In view of the contents of your last link, you may be interested in this :
https://eonic1.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/the-dumb-american-poem/
@Stonehands 60's Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.
The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized
abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural"
Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of
"me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak
and pathetic...
Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires...
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence. " An all-knowing
judge/creator"
Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler
and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future
victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of
the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician.
@Corvinus Mr. Kirkpatrick stated "In an "America" which no longer has a definable culture,
language, ethnos, history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?"
His proceeding argument is built on a false premise. We clearly have these things. Then, we
have you doubling down. The American identity refers to a host of traits that reflect its citizens.
Initially, our nation was predicated on several European ethnic groups who held different faiths.
Africans were imported. Tribal groups were removed by force for white settlement. Gradually, the
Germans, the Irish, the Assyrians, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, and the Nigerians immersed themselves
into what is an American. We are a nation of mutts.
"Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive
dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education)."
Did it ever occur to you that tens of millions of whites are other than brainwashed, that they
created an educational system that represents their beliefs and values?
"...mass replacement immigration."
No.
"The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it
what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites
to do the same to their people."
There is observably no genocide taking place here in the States. Your Alt Right talking point
is tiresome to say the least. I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in
the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people
by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired
judge with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise
this controversial interpretation in Australia.)
As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So ..
Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism
and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by
importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion
of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important.
Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al
@jilles dykstra It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation, my definition
of fascism being 'the use of power without any ideology'. Just keeping it real from inside the
D.C. operations and from folk's in power!
@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly
controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping
out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge
with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial
interpretation in Australia.)
As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....
Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism
and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by
importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion
of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important.
Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ... Stop being gentle and delicate with
the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born
White American Working Class.
Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal .Corvinus the Cockroach
is very well aware of this and likes it
If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them they would view
it as genocide
America is not a proposition nation and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus
pines for will be already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day 365 days a year as
Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of
The future for the Native Born White America Working Class .Wichita HS football field gang
rape and executions .and Rampage 82
Paul Kersey
Go by Rampage 82 my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous
Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives
and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands .my cousin committed suicide three years
later .Oh my God what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen I know some of the emergency
room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's
John Derbyshire
I was just in Book Review this morning .there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage
82 " go by it read it ..
The alleged patriotism of the US Congress (and Olderman, Maddow, and other hysterical "progressives")
and the reality of meddling into the US affairs, as documented by the facts:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/19/the-open-secret-of-foreign-lobbying/
"When AIPAC director Morris Amitay was caught red-handed mishandling classified missile secrets
in 1975, he could have been prosecuted under FARA. When AIPAC and an Israeli diplomat purloined
the entire 300-page book of classified trade secrets compiled from 70 U.S. industry groups opposed
to unilateral trade concessions for Israel in 1984, they could have been prosecuted for failing
to report their clandestine subversion of due process. When in 2005 [AIPAC officials] Steven J.
Rosen and Keith Weissman met with Israeli diplomats during efforts to pass classified information
to the press they thought could trigger a U.S attack on Iran, FARA consequences would have awaited
them all. However, because the U.S. Department of Justice has unilaterally abrogated its responsibility
to enforce FARA, people, ideas, money and propaganda campaigns continue to secretly slosh freely
between Tel Aviv and Israeli fronts in America with taxpayer funds thrown into the toxic brew."
In short, "support the troops" by sending them to fight for Tel Aviv projects.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/05/neocons-protest-us-spying-on-israel/
Meanwhile, the US homeland security is in the Israelis' hands.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2013/08/21/homeland-security-made-in-israel/
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/US-Deputy-of-Homeland-Security-US-Israel-to-sign-automated-cyber-information-sharing-agreement-457261
@Anon The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and
legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions.
Not true. The hardline feminists turned on Friedan.
Sontag went her own way and didn't involve herself much with institutions. She was too independent
to be academic hack.
Jong was a sexual libertarian, not a PC whore. All 3 women heavily promoted cultural Marxism
and were the products of the Jew commie academic system. They were mentored by the dregs of the
Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and neocon svengali Leo Strauss, and were responsible for the
kindling of second wave feminism.
If you have any doubts about the open genocidal intent of the Democratic Party
Do the following thought experiment ..What would happen if Richard Spencer incessantly in his
his US College Tour stated emphatically:"WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFULL IF YOUNG NATIVE BORN WHITE
AMERICAN COUPLES STARTED HAVING LARGE WHITE FAMILIES .so Native Born White Americans can go back
to being a 90 racial minority in America again!!!!"
How would Melissa Harris Perry react?
How would Maxine Waters react?
How would the TATA Institute grads react?
How would Ciela Munoz react?
How would the smelly hairy bulldyke Hillary Clinton react?
Paul Kersey
Go buy Rampage 82 .."Oh my God what they did to that waitress" .this is what the Greek owner
of the restaurant next to Walt Whitman High School said to me several years ago .the restaurant
by the Colonial Era..historic grave yard that the Salvadoran youth trample over disrespectefully
every morning on their way to Walt Whitman High School ..West Hills area
@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly
controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping
out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge
with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial
interpretation in Australia.)
As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....
Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism
and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by
importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion
of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important.
Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ... "I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's
use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide"
which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and
coherent culture."
CanSpeccy employed that term with the intent of bastardizing its use for his own demonic ends.
"As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So .."
Thank you for your opinion on this matter, even if it is not relevant here.
@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for
it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.
Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach
is very well aware of this and likes it...
If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it
as genocide...
America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus
pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a
year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...
The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang
rape and executions....and Rampage 82...
Paul Kersey
Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous
Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives
and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years
later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of
the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's
vagina's...
John Derbyshire
I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage
82..."...go by it read it..... "Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for
it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class."
The only thing creepy are your numerous sock puppets–Anonym and Anon, for starters.
"America is not a proposition nation "
Regarding posterity, the concept does NOT refer exclusively to one's own children. In particular,
"Novus Ordo Seclorum" reflects the intention of the Founding Fathers to install political checks
and balances to safeguard against tyranny REGARDLESS of one's racial or ethnic background. It
is other than accurate to state that the Founding Fathers sought to exclusively preserve a genetic
legacy, i.e. Anglo-America, since there is no racial or gender criteria to adhere to the universal
principles of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" which are embedded in our representative
form of government. Recall that Congress has the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization "
By definition, naturalization extends citizenship, and all the rights and duties related to it,
to those other than the "original" settlers and immigrants. The proposition remains that immigrants
must meet the criteria as established by Congress to enter our shores.
@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for
it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.
Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach
is very well aware of this and likes it...
If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it
as genocide...
America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus
pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a
year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...
The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang
rape and executions....and Rampage 82...
Paul Kersey
Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous
Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives
and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years
later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of
the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's
vagina's...
John Derbyshire
I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage
82..."...go by it read it..... I grew up in Glen Cove, l remember that hideous event- it was life
changing
on LI.
In addition, there was a mad scramble by restaurants to install windows everywhere; the old
style of hospitality featured privacy.
The thought that rampaging niggers would take advantage of these circumstances was beyond anyone's
scope of the imagination at the time.
@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly
controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping
out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge
with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial
interpretation in Australia.)
As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....
Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism
and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by
importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion
of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important.
Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ...
I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial
and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence
as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.
That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the
elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely
arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.
The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government
directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn)
as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass
immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example,
are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for
at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where
English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban
centers throughout Europe and North America.
Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler
and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future
victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of
the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician. You are correct.
Free will is paramount.
And with that free will we are given autonomy and responsibility for our actions.
Jesus said not to fear the first death.
Accounts will be settled at the final judgement.
Your actions will be tossed into a crucible and will burn like wood, hay or stubble (self-
aggrandizement) or they will be refined like Gold if done for Jesus' sake.
Hey man, l am just stonehands. I say crazy, ardent statements that may turn you off to this
message.
But please consider the great men of history- such as Bach- who wrote "Jesu Joy of Mans Desire";
who also added the addendum:
"ALL MUSIC is for the greater glory of God and the refreshment of the mind"
I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors
fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is so
much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There are plenty
of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight for this country?
@Stonehands I grew up in Glen Cove, l remember that hideous event- it was life changing
on LI.
In addition, there was a mad scramble by restaurants to install windows everywhere; the old
style of hospitality featured privacy.
The thought that rampaging niggers would take advantage of these circumstances was beyond anyone's
scope of the imagination at the time. As you know Glen Cove has been completely colonized by El
Salavodor and Mexico
Glen Cove used to be a beautifull North Shore Town
I used to go to that health food store down past the firehouse that used to proudly display
the great big Convederate Flag in the firetruck bays .
Interestingly Tom Suozzi's uncle was the Mayor of Glenn Cove and got trashed by Newday for
cracking down on the Mexicans and Salvadoran illegals .his nephew Tom the Cockroach is onboard
with importing the nonwhite Democratic Party Voting Bloc .and war with Christian Russia
Congressman Tom Suozzi a creepy looking short Italian with cornrows of hairplugs and platforms
in his shoes .and speaks with a lisp
@Corvinus "Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open
genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class."
The only thing creepy are your numerous sock puppets--Anonym and Anon, for starters.
"America is not a proposition nation..."
Regarding posterity, the concept does NOT refer exclusively to one's own children. In particular,
"Novus Ordo Seclorum" reflects the intention of the Founding Fathers to install political checks
and balances to safeguard against tyranny REGARDLESS of one's racial or ethnic background. It
is other than accurate to state that the Founding Fathers sought to exclusively preserve a genetic
legacy, i.e. Anglo-America, since there is no racial or gender criteria to adhere to the universal
principles of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" which are embedded in our representative
form of government. Recall that Congress has the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization..."
By definition, naturalization extends citizenship, and all the rights and duties related to it,
to those other than the "original" settlers and immigrants. The proposition remains that immigrants
must meet the criteria as established by Congress to enter our shores. Oh shut the fuck up you
libertarian Cuck as you sit in front of your computer in a white granny gown ..wrinkly and old .the
demographic profile of a typical National Review reader these days .
"The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington,
D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law
enforcement sources told Fox News.
A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer
Seth Rich's computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks
through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker,
and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time Okay, so where's the computer?
Who's got Rich's computer? Let's do the forensic work and get on with it.
But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren't interested in such matters
because it doesn't fit with their political agenda. They'd rather take pot-shots at Fox for running
an article that doesn't square with their goofy Russia hacking story.
Murray should be the government's star witness in the DNC hacking scandal, instead, no one even
knows who he is. But if we trust what Murray has to say, then we can see that the Russia hacking
story is baloney. The emails were "leaked" by insiders not "hacked" by a foreign government. Here's
the scoop from Robert Parry at Consortium News:
"Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from
a "disgruntled" Democrat upset with the DNC's sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the
Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community .He (Murray) appears to have undertaken
a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25
visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University.
With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Russia hacking case, you'd think that Murray's eyewitness
account would be headline news, but not in Homeland Amerika where the truth is kept as far from
the front page as humanly possible. Bottom line: The government has a reliable witness (Murray)
who can positively identify the person who hacked the DNC emails and, so far, they've showed no
interest in his testimony at all. Doesn't that strike you as a bit weird?"
"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian
slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own
country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case
they are dangerous and corrupt."
What Putin said yesterday:
"Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case
they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."
Putin was being tactful, obviously.
Clearly, what he meant was that the US is now dominated by dangerously corrupt people. The
same is true of virtually all states in all times. What is unusual about America today is the
scale of harm that the US plutocracy is in a position to inflict, and is indeed inflicting, on
both Americans and the world.
@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for
it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.
Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach
is very well aware of this and likes it...
If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it
as genocide...
America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus
pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a
year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...
The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang
rape and executions....and Rampage 82...
Paul Kersey
Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous
Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives
and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years
later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of
the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's
vagina's...
John Derbyshire
I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage
82..."...go by it read it.....
Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus
Yes, there is certainly something weird about Corvy. I have sometimes wondered if he might
be an early CIA implementation of an artificially intelligent (sort of) propaganda bot, with the
"agent provocateur" function enabled. The AP function would explain the repeated demands to know
what someone opposed to European genocide proposes to do about it: bomb throwing being, presumably,
the desired response, leading to arrest and incarceration under anti-terrorism laws.
One has to wonder though, whether Corvy's Euro-Holocaust denial should be tolerated. If he
were denying the Jewish Holocaust he would be censored here, or if not, probably targeted for
some kind of legal sanction, as would only be right. Why then should he be free to spew his anti-European
hatred here?
And...with that free will we are given autonomy and responsibility for our actions.
Jesus said not to fear the first death.
Accounts will be settled at the final judgement.
Your actions will be tossed into a crucible and will burn like wood, hay or stubble (self-
aggrandizement)...or they will be refined like Gold if done for Jesus' sake.
Hey man, l am just stonehands. I say crazy, ardent statements that may turn you off to this
message.
But please consider the great men of history- such as Bach- who wrote "Jesu Joy of Mans Desire";
who also added the addendum:
"ALL MUSIC is for the greater glory of God and the refreshment of the mind" First of all, myself
a graduate of classical flute study with Bach as a center focus, I am most certainly more versed
within his, Bach's, artistic accomplishments than you could probably imagine, and point is : He
was trying to survive in an age of absolute enslavement by the aristocratic PTB, therefore he
had no choice but to pen his works in a religious vein if he wanted to continue eating, and this
holds true for all of the Baroque/classical composers.
Now as to whether he believed the dogma, within which his works were set, this is up for speculation,
and you, me or nobody else can state that he was or was not a pious advocate of religious ideas.
And as far as "ALL MUSIC" being for the greater glory of God, and refreshment of the mind : I
agree with the "Refreshment of the mind" aspect, however being a confirmed atheist, I am unable
to go along with the "Greater glory of God" approach.
I can say this much, when engaged within the action of performing/inprovising music within the
jazz idiom, and attempting to create so-called "swinging" solos, there are no thoughts entering
my mind regarding the "Greater glory of God, rather my focus is upon the moment and the effort
at hand : Making it, the music, swing.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro
jazz artist.
@Corvinus "I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly
controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping
out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture."
CanSpeccy employed that term with the intent of bastardizing its use for his own demonic ends.
"As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber
people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat
of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might
have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a
diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now,
quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being
a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So .."
Thank you for your opinion on this matter, even if it is not relevant here.
"Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is..."
Maybe. Or maybe not. "not relevant here". Fair enough unless you are willing to allow in these
often discursive conversations an attempt to lead people on a path of thought which will spark
tecognition – in this case perhaps of the loss of much that used to bind even if it wasn't an
essential eternal part of human existence.
@Steve Naidamast I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot
of holes in its foundations.
To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is
a bit absurd.
No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills
for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good
measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).
Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States.
His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental
positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency,
his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy,
and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many
other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of
a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all
shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.
As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking
what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American
history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.
Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the
winners are always the highest bidders.
Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for
Southern Independence.
America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their
way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out
of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason;
he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America
in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.
So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never
was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but
one to protect the wealthy and their needs.
There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself
while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward
spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to
protect the White privileged classes.... "The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the
complete degeneracy of th electorate
So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the white
house.
Look friend you are labeling myself, my sister and my upstanding, decent, friends and family
who in fact did pull the lever for DT as : Degenerate.
You are the "degenerate" malevolent one here and you have no clue as to what you are blathering
about.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa"society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician.
I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial
and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence
as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.
That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the
elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely
arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.
The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government
directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn)
as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass
immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example,
are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for
at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where
English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban
centers throughout Europe and North America. At least Leicester has got a lot of successful Indians
has it not (many ex East Africa I believe)? By chance I had dinner tonight at a Two Fat Indians
restaurant, not nearly as cheap as in the UK but also no fat Indians but a couple of gorgeous
smiling smart young women from Punjab. I wouldn't want all our immigration of the relatively smart
to be Chinese, though I welcome them, so it tended to confirm my relatively optimistic view about
Australia's population. Clearly native white Australians are breeding almost as dysgenically as
outback Aborigines and Lebanese immugrants from 40 yeats ago so I see the Chinese and Indians
who have often been educated in Australia as making up for that. It is curious however that our
school PISA ranking has declined in the last 10 years or so. I suspect parties of the left and
teacher unions though another cause for puzzling over it is that a larger proportion of children
get their education in non government schools in Australia than almost anywhere in the First World.
I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial
and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence
as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.
That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the
elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely
arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.
The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government
directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn)
as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass
immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example,
are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for
at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where
English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban
centers throughout Europe and North America. "But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded
policy aimed at the elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide
or the severely arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny."
Clearly your fixation on something that does not observable exist, chiefly the extermination
of whites in the "West" by elites and their toadies, is a trait of you as an aspie. I have nothing
personal against your affliction. I just find it fascinating that you rinse and repeat this phenomenon.
"The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement "
Another one of your obsessions. Modern married white couples rarely look at their situation
in this fashion. They have children. They will take care of them as best they are able. Tens of
thousands of mothers and fathers assuredly are not going to be badgered by you and your ilk into
thinking about ensuring the viability of the "white race" by having more babies. Have you met
your obligation here? Do you have at least five white offspring? Have you properly indoctrinated,
I mean discussed, of their future duty?
(consistent with government directed sex "education,")
Yes, sex education. A product of our society. The decision made by citizens. A fact of life.
"plus no-fault divorce"
Yes, no-fault divorce. A product of our society. The decision made by citizens. A fact of life.
"and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn)"
Finally, we agree. This is a big deal.
"as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of
mass immigration, then you have replacement of the original population."
NOT genocide. Mass immigration has been a historical and global phenomenon. Nations sent colonists
to explore. The undesired and unwanted left their home countries and, as immigrants, arrived to
other parts of the globe. Immigration policies were informal or formal, and they varied from nation
to nation. Furthermore, there always has been some level of augmentation in a nation's population.
The British helped to found the American colonies; other Europeans, along with Africans and Asians
and Latin Americans, arrived there, either voluntarily or by force. The British were "replaced"
in the fact they were no longer the dominant group to control the region, and that they increasingly
intermarried with non-British. This ethnic "mixing" had been considered taboo in Europe (except
among the elite to secure their power and authority), but in America it became the rule.
"Hence the English, for example, are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester
where my ancestors lived for at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham
(England's second city) where English children are not even the largest minority in elementary
school, and in many other urban centers throughout Europe and North America."
Tragic. But a fact of life. I suggest you run for political office. Make a difference in England,
your home nation. Promote what you believe in.
"Yes, there is certainly something weird about Corvy. I have sometimes wondered if he might
be an early CIA implementation of an artificially intelligent (sort of) propaganda bot, with the
"agent provocateur" function enabled."
From what I've been told by a good friend who does work for this organization, the CIA has
been targeting you since you were eight years old. They have a dossier on you and your family.
You have been on notice for decades given your "pro-race is code for anti-humanity" mindset.
"One has to wonder though, whether Corvy's Euro-Holocaust denial should be tolerated."
Of course it should be "tolerated". In fact, it should be relished and replicated by other
posters here to expose your lies and propaganda. There is no "Euro-Holocaust". That is Fake News.
I'm sure at some point in time the CIA will engage in psycho-ops and reprogram you.
"Why then should he be free to spew his anti-European hatred here?"
False characterization. I am "spewing" my love for the human race. Unfortunately, there are
people who are bitter and lost.
@War for Blair Mountain Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck......as you sit in front
of your computer in a white granny gown .....wrinkly and old....the demographic profile of a typical
National Review reader these days.... "Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck as you sit in
front of your computer in a white granny gown ..wrinkly and old .the demographic profile of a
typical National Review reader these days ."
Are your sock puppets on eight hour or daily shifts?
Now, regarding my posterity comment, do you have a rebuttal?
@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for
it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.
Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach
is very well aware of this and likes it...
If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it
as genocide...
America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus
pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a
year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...
The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang
rape and executions....and Rampage 82...
Paul Kersey
Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous
Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives
and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years
later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of
the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's
vagina's...
John Derbyshire
I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage
82..."...go by it read it..... That's why militias were formed to take care of the wild dogs that
roam thru society Join one today..
@Aaron8765 I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and
whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt
that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.
There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight
for this country?
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in
the comment section.
Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think
most people are coming from on the issue you've raised.
While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.
It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are.
I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is,
actually doing.
One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the
following material they've posted on their website:
This is America.This is ADL. (NB – disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking
individuals)
The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These
differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave
the fabric of our pluralistic society.
For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept
by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's
premier human relations and civil rights organization.
If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote
diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's
leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition
benefits are available to Corporate Partners.
More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity.
They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."
Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the
perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression – promoting a policy of diversity, while
damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.
While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic.
Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of
diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's
position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend
the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many
goyim – i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism one cannot
favour both at the same time.
So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up
their minds and choose one of the following options:
1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors
to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or
2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from
promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.
If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this
this film will not have a happy ending.
-----
P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's
why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice
of life."
@War for Blair Mountain Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck......as you sit in front
of your computer in a white granny gown .....wrinkly and old....the demographic profile of a typical
National Review reader these days.... Waste of time, really, responding to the troll for the replacement
of Euro-Americans. It only initiates another spew of hate speech. According to Corvy, there's
something wrong with those who are for the survival of their own kith and kin. In fact, being
against extinction of your own people is how Corvy seems to define hate speech and racism.
Wiz Oz is not quite so crude about it, but seems to think its fine for the English people of
the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare,
Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.
There are something like a billion Hindus in India, so why should they occupy the tiny homeland
of the English? England, it is true, ruled India for a while, no doubt over the objection of the
Indian ruling class, but in doing so they merely replaced another and more exploitive alien ruling
elite, and at no time attempted to settle India with millions of Europeans. Indeed they set out,
from the time of
Macaulay's memorandum on Indian Education, dated Feb 2nd, 1835 , to prepare India for self-government
as the modern, independent, democratic nation state that it now is.
@Stonehands All 3 women heavily promoted cultural Marxism and were the products of the Jew
commie academic system. They were mentored by the dregs of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse
and neocon svengali Leo Strauss, and were responsible for the kindling of second wave feminism.
Sontag's main place wasn't in the academia. She was essentially a person of letters.
Friedan is credited with second-wave feminism, but it would have happened anyway without her.
The media just needed someone as 'leader'.
Jong was attacked by feminists. I'm not gonna defend her horny crap, but she' s not part of
long march through institutions.
Also, these are more the products of capitalism. They have nothing to with Marxism. This term
'cultural marxism' should really be called 'cultural consumerism'.
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the
comment section.
Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think most
people are coming from on the issue you've raised.
While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.
It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are.
I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is,
actually doing.
One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the
following material they've posted on their website:
This is America.This is ADL. (NB - disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking
individuals)
The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These
differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave
the fabric of our pluralistic society.
For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept
by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's
premier human relations and civil rights organization.
If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote
diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's
leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition
benefits are available to Corporate Partners.
More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity.
They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."
Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the
perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression - promoting a policy of diversity, while
damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.
While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic.
Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of
diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's
position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend
the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many
goyim - i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism... one cannot
favour both at the same time.
So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up
their minds and choose one of the following options:
1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors
to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or
2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from
promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.
If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this
this film will not have a happy ending.
-------------
P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's
why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice
of life."
while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend
the idea of an ethno-state in the ME.
well said Geo,
we've all seen this genocidal hag shilling for the destruction of the West
no reasonable person blames all Jews for this evil that only a few of them are perpetrating,
(with the eager assistance of many goys [homos and fat, ugly white women and other malcontents]
who want the migrants to come for their own reasons, just like corporate/business interests who
want to pay lower wages in general)
but the destruction of Europe and N. America by massive and transformational immigration is,
at heart- being foisted by Jewish sludge like Sheldon Adelson, who demands open borders for the
US, and uses his money to buy cucks in the Republican party to ensure that he gets just that,
but then also uses his ill-gotten gains to promote racial purity in Israel, where his newspapers
call all non-Jewish immigrants – invaders.
So you're right. It's the raging hypocrisy and demonic, Old Testament hatred for all non-Jewish
tribes and the efforts to see all white nations founder under racial and ethnic hatred and strife,
while simultaneously advocating for a racially pure state in Israel- that makes a lot of people
exasperated with Jewish influence and nefarious intrigues.
There are of course other stuff too. Fomenting and foisting wars, false flag attacks, financial
swindles, cultural sewage, etc.. But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience
is the psychotic imperative of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only)
white countries that outs (some of) them as existential enemies.
@Aaron8765 I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and
whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt
that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.
There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight
for this country?
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in
the comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely,
would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.
Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy
such as this . Anti-European
advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish
ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism
and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.
I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that
because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It
is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact
that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process
of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies
and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The
role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews,
but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring
anti-Semitism.
Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions
or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter,
or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups,
black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews.
@Authenticjazzman First of all, myself a graduate of classical flute study with Bach as a
center focus, I am most certainly more versed within his, Bach's, artistic accomplishments than
you could probably imagine, and point is : He was trying to survive in an age of absolute enslavement
by the aristocratic PTB, therefore he had no choice but to pen his works in a religious vein if
he wanted to continue eating, and this holds true for all of the Baroque/classical composers.
Now as to whether he believed the dogma, within which his works were set, this is up for speculation,
and you, me or nobody else can state that he was or was not a pious advocate of religious ideas.
And as far as "ALL MUSIC" being for the greater glory of God, and refreshment of the mind : I
agree with the "Refreshment of the mind" aspect, however being a confirmed atheist, I am unable
to go along with the "Greater glory of God" approach.
I can say this much, when engaged within the action of performing/inprovising music within the
jazz idiom, and attempting to create so-called "swinging" solos, there are no thoughts entering
my mind regarding the "Greater glory of God, rather my focus is upon the moment and the effort
at hand : Making it, the music, swing.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro
jazz artist. I own a small restaurant where l occassionally feature solo artists or duets, myself
included. I have been playing classical/jazz guitar for 45 years. I recently performed for Jason
Vieaux [2016 solo classical Grammy award] and friends, and one of the pieces l played was "Jesu."
He agreed that my original transcription [key of G] and fingering were unique and pleasing to
the ear and probably easier to commit to memory then the Rick Foster or Christopher Parkening
renditions; we're talking non- stop double and triple stops here!
As per Christianity; you may believe there is no God (that's your faith and hope) but
you cannot confirm it.
@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the
Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional
war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the
ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the
Russian expeditionary force regularly use.
Unfortunately Trump will have to
kill some Russians now
. Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because
the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and
Iraq. What makes you think Assad is an idiot? He seems more intelligent than most politicians,
journalists, and politicians in Washington, D.C. (I cringe at having to name the place. It's like
speaking Orc-language in Rivendell.)
Millions of Americans, having been raised on TV propaganda, still have a screaming need to
feel superior to everyone – except perhaps the Israelis.
The government of the USA has marked Putin for destruction. But I think the rest of the world
is rooting for him, and the Russian people, to survive the American onslaught.
While the "progressives" badmouth bad-bad russkies for "destroying our democracy," an obscene
spectacle of persecution of the most important whistleblower of our times continues.
"Getting Assange: the Untold Story," by JOHN PILGER
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/getting-assange-the-untold-story/
"Hillary Clinton, the destroyer of Libya and, as WikiLeaks revealed last year, the secret supporter
and personal beneficiary of forces underwriting ISIS, proposed, "Can't we just drone this guy."
According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington's bid to get Assange is "unprecedented in
scale and nature." In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought for almost seven years
to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. Assange's ability to defend himself
in such a Kafkaesque world has been severely limited by the US declaring his case a state secret.
In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the "national
security" investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was "active and ongoing" and would harm
the "pending prosecution" of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to
show "appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security." This is a kangaroo
court."
@Authenticjazzman " The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat"
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and it does not cater
to gays.
Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they
are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running
the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.
The Democrats were convinced that they had the election in the bag , and therefore the accomplishment
of eternal one-party government. They would have legalized the illegals as a gigantic voting block,
and the huge upset dealt to them by the deplorables has driven them off the cliff and into total
madness.
"Media threat" is such a vague non-descript concept that I don't have the energy or patience
to even elaborate thereon.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz artist.
PS off subject but relevant : Russia has a thriving Jazz scene, and the are some monster American-style
Jazz players coming out of Russia.
Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and
they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia
running the show
I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm
at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because
they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia
refuses to join in the persecution of Christians. The Russians aren't communists any more but
they (quite rightly) recognise that global capitalism is every bit as evil as marxism ever was,
if not more so.
I haven't noticed any of these so-called leftists in the modern US calling for the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Have you?
It's amazing how many Americans on the right still subscribe to paranoid Cold War delusions
about global Marxism.
@ThereisaGod This comment reflects the mindless nationalism of a person who has spent too
much time reading mainstream Zionist propaganda.
The USA INSTIGATED the Syrian "revolution". It armed and funded the rebels (Al Qaeda) and told
them we would support them. The Assad government had NO CHOICE but to act as they did or die,
handing Syria over to friends of Israel who would then set about dismantling the defences of the
Shias in the region who effectively oppose the racist state of Israel.
As this article lays out, American patriots should be supporting Russia and Assad. If these countries
fall to international finance (as the entire western world has done) the Washington swamp will
turn its full attention to destroying the USA in a similar manner to the Soviets destruction of
Christian Russia (it's the same people, folks. The NeoCons are Trotsyists pretending to be Conservatives).
Sean. Your comment is, umm ...... confused.
The NeoCons are Trotsyists pretending to be Conservatives
I hear this all the time. I know that many Trotskyists morphed into neocons but that's not
quite the same as saying that Trotskyists are neocons are identical. Trotsky may have been a heretical
communist but he was still a communist. Are neocons actual communists? In what way are they actual
communists?
@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly
diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed
in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?
Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?
In the West Christian leaders are not Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. They're
liberals. They're not liberal Christians, they're just liberals.
In Russia they take Christianity a bit more seriously. In Russia Christian leaders actually
believe in God (which is extremely rare among western Christian leaders).
The problem with Christianity is that once you take away belief in God what you're left with
really is just liberalism.
@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty
Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall,
they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in.
General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening
Russia.
There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main
Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great
Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas . Your comment is totally
senseless!
Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler
and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future
victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of
the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician. @why did he not rethink
Did that false 'judge/creator' not know that he would be taken to task by an Authenticjazzman,
the 'authentic' judge of what God should or should not do as to not displease his 'Authenticity'?
So, he is not all-knowing. QED.
@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.
His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.
We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will
commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. How exactly did Reagan biggest
mistake was amnesty? Explain and give some examples, please.
@Alden Id just like to point out that the reason so many Chinese are giving tech and military
secrets to China is my personal bete noire affirmative action. Were it not for affirmative action
those military and tech secrets would be in the hands of White Americans, not foreign spies whose
only qualification that they are not White. Regardless of ethnicity, these spies deserve the death
penalty, for treason to the people who gave them the welcome into our land. As for "white christian",
Christianity is either underground or dying, thanks to the power of the sons of the devil, as
told by Iesous Christos, (greek), (John 8:44-45 King James Version (KJV)
44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh
a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
So now we know that 'churchianity' has become a den of thieves, and a cave of robbers, teaching
that whom Christ called sons of the devil, Churchianity teaches that they are the children of
god. What a contradiction by those who profess to represent Christ!
@Anon Sontag's main place wasn't in the academia. She was essentially a person of letters.
Friedan is credited with second-wave feminism, but it would have happened anyway without her.
The media just needed someone as 'leader'.
Jong was attacked by feminists. I'm not gonna defend her horny crap, but she' s not part of
long march through institutions.
Also, these are more the products of capitalism. They have nothing to with Marxism. This term
'cultural marxism' should really be called 'cultural consumerism'. "They have nothing to do with
communism"
Bullshit they have everything to do with communism, as all, without exception, all of these
characters are hoping and waiting for the transformation of capitalism to marxism, and they, as
stupid and naive as they are, they think that they will be running the show thereafter, when fact
is they will be the first to be purged.
You simply have no insight, and you are in above your head with these themes.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician.
Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they
are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running
the show
I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm
at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because
they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia
refuses to join in the persecution of Christians. The Russians aren't communists any more but
they (quite rightly) recognise that global capitalism is every bit as evil as marxism ever was,
if not more so.
I haven't noticed any of these so-called leftists in the modern US calling for the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Have you?
It's amazing how many Americans on the right still subscribe to paranoid Cold War delusions
about global Marxism. "I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the
US today have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism.
The Russians are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international
bankers, and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians."
Agree.
@annamaria "I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today
have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians
are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers,
and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians."
Agree. " They serve the interests of global capitalism"
Right and "global capitalism" serves the interests of global marxism, and you are unable to
decifer the connections, which is your own shortcoming, and does not change the situation.
Almost all of the honchos involved in big-money are in essence : marxists, and they are plotting
and waiting for the shift to collectivism.
Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when
they could have simply left things are they were.
I know it is very hard for most people to imagine big-time capitalists as communists, but it
is fact.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro
jazz musician.
I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors
fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is
so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There
are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight
for this country?
No, I won't reject you. That would be actual anti-Semitism, and would make no sense. But if
you follow the usual pattern, and spend more time fighting critics of Jewry than you do fighting
the Jews who deserve critiquing, then yeah, I've no use for you.
Basically I expect pro-White Jews to join the White Tribe, and put the Jewish Tribe at the
back of the bus, or better yet, off the bus altogether (other than some special cases, I don't
even see why most of them would even need to announce (or even hold) their Jewish identity; it's
not like anyone's going to put you on the rack and force you to confess it – Jewish identity
is something you can reject or opt out of).
As for those special cases: the most valuable thing a pro-White Jew can do is go into his own
(former?) tribe and fight Whites' enemies there. You guys have a calling of epic importance waiting
for you, if you'll have it.
We have enemies within and enemies without. Regarding our enemies without: the most dangerous
are the Islamic supremacists, and China. The Chinese are a more traditional challenge, and hence
more manageable. The Russians are a natural ally- and perhaps a necessary ally- against both of
these threats. A traditional geopolitical analysis suggests that we always side with the weaker
party- in this case the Russians- against rising/hegemonic states in Eurasia. So our foreign policy
is out of joint. Why our foreign policy class insists upon supporting this policy is an interesting
question- the policy is clearly in error.
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the
comment section.
Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think most
people are coming from on the issue you've raised.
While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.
It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are.
I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is,
actually doing.
One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the
following material they've posted on their website:
This is America.This is ADL. (NB - disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking
individuals)
The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These
differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave
the fabric of our pluralistic society.
For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept
by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's
premier human relations and civil rights organization.
If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote
diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's
leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition
benefits are available to Corporate Partners.
More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity.
They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."
Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the
perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression - promoting a policy of diversity, while
damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.
While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic.
Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of
diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's
position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend
the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many
goyim - i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism... one cannot
favour both at the same time.
So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up
their minds and choose one of the following options:
1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors
to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or
2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from
promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.
If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this
this film will not have a happy ending.
-------------
P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's
why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice
of life." I don't agree with everything you say, but thanks for your thoughts on this. If that
is what the ADL is supporting- and I have no reason to doubt you- then they have to be opposed
vigorously. On a lighter note, assimilated Jewish Americans never call our Christian brethren
'goyim' anymore- it might be a problem, considering that 60% of us, including yours truly, have
married outside our religion of birth.
Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal
intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.
Agreed. Corvinus is a piece of shit. CanSpeccy makes a great point about his "hi fellow kids!"
"yeah but guys where can we buy some dynamite?" federal informant type trolling.
So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make
up their minds and choose one of the following options:
1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its
doors to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or
2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist
from promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.
Shit or get off the pot, as I like to say. If I may be so bold, I would strike "embrace mono-culturalism
for all nations" from the list of demands. It would certainly be the right thing for Jews to do,
given their embrace of ethnopatriotism for themselves, but I would be satisfied with the demand
(which is non-negotiable, I agree) "immediately cease and desist from promoting the anti-ethnopatriotic
agenda for non-Jewish Whites" being met.
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the
comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely,
would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.
Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy
such as this . Anti-European
advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish
ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism
and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.
I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that
because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It
is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact
that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process
of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies
and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The
role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews,
but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring
anti-Semitism.
Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions
or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter,
or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups,
black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews.
I appreciate the sympathy. The whole situation is a complete mess and getting worse. On a historical
note, a biography just came out about Ernst Kantorowicz, a Jewish- German medievalist. You might
find it interesting. His life was also discussed in a book about the great medievalists of the
20th Century- 'Medieval Lives', by Cantor. It's a fascinating book. Kantorowicz was a wealthy,
assimilated Jewish- German who grew up with the Prussian upper class. He was a German officer
in World War I, and after the war joined the paramilitary- right Freikorps and fought against
the Communists inside Germany. As a medievalist, he was a romantic- nationalist associated with
a circle of poets and scholars, and friends with Percy Ernst Schramm, who along with Kantorowicz
was one of the great medievalists of his generation. Then the Nazis took power. Kantorowicz was
purged from academic life. Some of his friends protected him as best they could, while others
sided with the Nazis. He got out, barely, in 1938 and ended up at Berkeley, of all places, and
the Institute for Advanced Study. His friend Schramm became the official historian of the Wehrmacht
in WWII, and observed Hitler at first hand. After the war Schramm turned to Kantorowicz for help
in reentering official, academic life (Kantorowicz helped.) The whole story is a tragic metaphor
for the tragedy of the patriotic, assimilated- nationalist German Jews.
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the
comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely,
would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.
Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy
such as this . Anti-European
advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish
ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism
and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.
I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that
because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It
is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact
that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process
of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies
and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The
role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews,
but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring
anti-Semitism.
Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions
or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter,
or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups,
black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews.
oh btw there was an amusing codicil to the Kantorowicz story. At Berkeley in the 50′s he and the
other faculty were called to take an oath before some Govt Commission that they were not communists.
Kantorowicz as a matter of principal refused to take the oath, since he believed in academic liberty,
and was dismissed. In his explanation for his refusal he stated something to the effect that he
was not a communist- in fact, he had shot a bunch in his youth!- but he wouldn't take the oath.
@Aaron8765 oh btw there was an amusing codicil to the Kantorowicz story. At Berkeley in the
50's he and the other faculty were called to take an oath before some Govt Commission that they
were not communists. Kantorowicz as a matter of principal refused to take the oath, since he believed
in academic liberty, and was dismissed. In his explanation for his refusal he stated something
to the effect that he was not a communist- in fact, he had shot a bunch in his youth!- but he
wouldn't take the oath. 'principle' (sic)
I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the
comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely,
would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.
Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy
such as this . Anti-European
advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish
ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism
and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.
I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that
because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It
is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact
that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process
of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies
and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The
role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews,
but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring
anti-Semitism.
Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions
or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter,
or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups,
black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews.
"Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy
such as this."
False characterization.
"I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that
because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It
is not."
It is evidence of irrational hatred due to a belief that Jews overall engage in the purposeful
destruction of cultures. There is the assumption that diversity/multi-culturalism/tolerance is
the bane of existence, that the Jewish propaganda machine serves as an ethnic and societal meat
grinder. Unwitting people are being brainwashed into promoting these concepts. Except you are
conveniently discounting this important fact human beings have free will. Increasing numbers of
people have made decisions of their own accord about these issues. They embrace these philosophies
for a host of reasons. You are a snake oil salesman of how Cultural Marxism allegedly is murdering
our youth. Let us assume that this Jewish menace would be neutralized. Do you not believe there
would be some other group filling in for that void through their own strategies of indoctrination
and mind control? Perhaps the philosophies you tout would then be force fed down the throats of
the masses.
"According to Corvy, there's something wrong with those who are for the survival of their own
kith and kin. In fact, being against extinction of your own people is how Corvy seems to define
hate speech and racism."
That's not what I stated. I'm not a fan shall we say of you denigrating wholesale a particular
group and characterizing that same group of being a proponent of genocide. You have every liberty
to protect "your own kind", just as those individuals from "your own kind" have the freedom to
question the reasons why you want those protections as well as how those protections are put in
place. Furthermore, don't you realize there is no such thing as "racism" and "hate speech"? It's
a ruse.
no reasonable person blames all Jews for this evil that only a few of them are perpetrating,
(with the eager assistance of many goys [homos and fat, ugly white women and other malcontents]
who want the migrants to come for their own reasons, just like corporate/business interests who
want to pay lower wages in general)
but the destruction of Europe and N. America by massive and transformational immigration is,
at heart- being foisted by Jewish sludge like Sheldon Adelson, who demands open borders for the
US, and uses his money to buy cucks in the Republican party to ensure that he gets just that,
but then also uses his ill-gotten gains to promote racial purity in Israel, where his newspapers
call all non-Jewish immigrants - invaders.
So you're right. It's the raging hypocrisy and demonic, Old Testament hatred for all non-Jewish
tribes and the efforts to see all white nations founder under racial and ethnic hatred and strife,
while simultaneously advocating for a racially pure state in Israel- that makes a lot of people
exasperated with Jewish influence and nefarious intrigues.
There are of course other stuff too. Fomenting and foisting wars, false flag attacks, financial
swindles, cultural sewage, etc.. But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience
is the psychotic imperative of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only)
white countries that outs (some of) them as existential enemies.
But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience is the psychotic imperative
of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only) white countries
Don't be so sure about some . One hundred percent of Jews serving in both chambers of
Congress have supported efforts at granting mass amnesty of third world illegal aliens. Seventy
to eighty percent consistently vote Democrat no matter how far to the left or anti-white the party
becomes. Even so called conservative (or neocon) Jews like Krauthammer, Bernie Goldberg and others
have voiced support for amnesty or partial amnesty.
So it certainly seems that, based on the evidence, most of them are on board with America
as proposition nation and the race replacement of whites while hypocritically supporting the militant
racial nationalism and exclusivity of the Israeli state.
it certainly seems that, based on the evidence, most of them are on board
I can't argue with that Ken
and you could say the same of all non-white peoples, they're mostly on board for an immigration
policy that will eventually rip white nations apart and see the white people trampled under like
they were in Zimbabwe, or Haiti when the whites received their comeuppance then.
They all seem to hate us, but none more so than Jews
but it is worth pointing out that certainly not all Jews (or other minorities) want us genocided
some can see past their blind racial hatred and envy to the day that whitey is finally ground
under the mire of their collective hatred, to what comes next.
what kind of world will it be without Western civilization and the Rule of Law?
Zimbabwe, Palestine, Darfur, the Balkans, Drug cartels and corruption running S. America outright,
India and Pakistan cutting each other's throats, cannibalism returning to Africa and Indonesian
islands, New Guinea, New Zealand, etc.
And I mention New Zealand, because the only thing protecting the white people (and the meek
of all races) in places like Oceana or Latin America or Africa, the Middle East, etc is the fragile,
amorphous sense of the law , that permeates the jungles and hinterlands of the planet,
where some American expatriate living in Mexico is left unmolested by the cartels and corrupt
governments down there. On the day that whitey is unable to protect his own families in the US,
that is the day that certain ex-patriots in Mexico will find out just how loved they really are
by the Mexicans, who've suffered their arrogance and relative wealth with bitter, quiet, simmering
resentment.
If your society has reached the point where your women and children are brutalized by hostile
invading armies and there's nothing you can do to protect them, and the courts and authorities
will not punish the orcs, then it's only a short distance until the day of Zimbabwe comes and
you're run out of your home in terror for your life.
There was a time when the whites of Zimbabwe could count on England and the rule of law to
protect them. They discovered too late how wrong they were. It will be the same for all white
places when the global system of the Rule of Law breaks down and we return to the law of the jungle
with a vengeance.
how well will Israel fare when there's no more white guilt to milk for funding and arms and
"moral" sanction?
already Norway and other nations are talking about BDS, in part because of the burgeoning Muslim
populations in these countries.
when Europe becomes multicultural, as that Zionist hag insists it must, how well are the Jews
of the world going to prosper when the governments of Europe are Islamized?
@Aaron8765 We have enemies within and enemies without. Regarding our enemies without: the
most dangerous are the Islamic supremacists, and China. The Chinese are a more traditional challenge,
and hence more manageable. The Russians are a natural ally- and perhaps a necessary ally- against
both of these threats. A traditional geopolitical analysis suggests that we always side with the
weaker party- in this case the Russians- against rising/hegemonic states in Eurasia. So our foreign
policy is out of joint. Why our foreign policy class insists upon supporting this policy is an
interesting question- the policy is clearly in error. Treason in high places: " Not Remembering
the USS Liberty," by Ray McGovern
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/not-remembering-the-uss-liberty/
"The only investigation worth the name was led by Adm. Moorer, who had been Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among the findings announced by the commission on October 2003:
" Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the USS Liberty bridge, and fired 30mm
cannon and rockets into the ship; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship
by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes.
" The torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but machine-gunning of Liberty's
firefighters and stretcher-bearers. The Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun
at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors
to rescue the most seriously wounded."
"Shortly before he died in February 2004, Adm. Moorer strongly appealed for the truth to be brought
out and pointed directly at what he saw as the main obstacle: " I've never seen a President
stand up to Israel. If the American people understood what a grip these people have on our
government, they would rise up in arms." Echoing Moorer, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck,
who served many years in the Middle East, condemned Washington's attitude toward Israel as "obsequious,
unctuous subservience at the cost of the lives and morale of our own service members and their
families"
@Aaron8765 I don't agree with everything you say, but thanks for your thoughts on this. If
that is what the ADL is supporting- and I have no reason to doubt you- then they have to be opposed
vigorously. On a lighter note, assimilated Jewish Americans never call our Christian brethren
'goyim' anymore- it might be a problem, considering that 60% of us, including yours truly, have
married outside our religion of birth.
have married outside our religion of birth
That makes no difference, since being jewish is ultimately a racial category not a religious
one. You don't have to take my word for it, you can research how the state of Israel defines what
a jew is, and it is not on religious grounds. In fact they use the Nuremberg race acts that defined
what a jew was as their own criteria, obviously they will claim they are using it for those fleeing
oppression, but anyone who is sincere about this knows it is because the Nuremberg race acts were
correct in their definitions.
Jimmy, I like reading your but bluing your scripts (doesn't that usually indicate a reference
or example) to send me to a VDARE donation page is tacky. JMO
@Authenticjazzman "The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy
of th electorate
So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the white
house.
Look friend you are labeling myself, my sister and my upstanding, decent, friends and family
who in fact did pull the lever for DT as : Degenerate.
You are the "degenerate" malevolent one here and you have no clue as to what you are blathering
about.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa"society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician.
So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the
white house.
Quite.
Conservatives despair to find that Trump scores only a 1.5 or 2 relative to the ideal 10 they
had hoped for.
However, Hillary would have been a solid and consistent -8 (MINUS EIGHT) or worse. Every day
of Trump – however betrayed Conservatives may feel relative to their ideals – is a day on which
the ALL-OUT DESTRUCTION of America does not proceed with the organized, unopposed vigor that it
would have done under Hillary. (Also known as Mrs. Vincent Foster #2.)
Of course, the lackey MSM are doing their level best to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD)
among those opposed to the oligarchy. Their "Russia hacked the election" complex of lies (aka
"narrative") would certainly have drawn admiring applause from Joseph Goebbels himself, both for
the boldness of the original conception – tapping into old *conservative* mistrust of the USSR,
and for the shameless repetitive execution.
Right now, the U.S. still has remnants of the Second Amendment, which alone is the true,
long-term measure of a free country. (Various states and their complicit federal judges are
working hard to get rid of this final obstacle to billionaire rule and death camps.)
Don't believe that the SECOND Amendment is the true measure of a free country? Spend 6 weeks
in Canada or any other advanced country in Europe, Asia, talk to people, see what they say about
sensitive subjects. Read and watch their MSM and alternative media. Ask yourself where the subject
country was 100 years ago, and where it is likely to be in 100 years.
Has free speech in the subject country been OFFICIALLY curtailed under rubrics such as "hate
speech," "incitement," "libel/slander" etc.? What is the extent of INFORMAL censorship, e.g. through
publishers' associations, codes of conduct, post-modern J-schools and official "certification"
of "journalists," etc.?
What do they/don't the MSM in the subject country report? Secret/informal taboos? Is there
REAL criticism of the power structure? Of existing laws and institutions? Are politicians REALLY
subject to the rule of law? Do they REALLY lock up corrupt politicians as the U.S. used to do?
Are politicians' families exempt from public scrutiny?
Political murder is another indication of the health or otherwise of a free society. Are mysterious
deaths of politicians and their staff commonplace in the subject society? Does interest in major
incidents die down after 2-3 days? Or persist for years (JFK) despite repeated attempts at whitewashing?
@CanSpeccy Waste of time, really, responding to the troll for the replacement of Euro-Americans.
It only initiates another spew of hate speech. According to Corvy, there's something wrong with
those who are for the survival of their own kith and kin. In fact, being against extinction of
your own people is how Corvy seems to define hate speech and racism.
Wiz Oz is not quite so crude about it, but seems to think its fine for the English people of
the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare,
Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.
There are something like a billion Hindus in India, so why should they occupy the tiny homeland
of the English? England, it is true, ruled India for a while, no doubt over the objection of the
Indian ruling class, but in doing so they merely replaced another and more exploitive alien ruling
elite, and at no time attempted to settle India with millions of Europeans. Indeed they set out,
from the time of
Macaulay's memorandum on Indian Education, dated Feb 2nd, 1835 , to prepare India for self-government
as the modern, independent, democratic nation state that it now is.
Wiz Oz seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced
by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many
other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:
Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions
in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American
experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint
– vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are – are particularly maddening
as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of
Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason
why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations
from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.
@Aaron8765 I appreciate the sympathy. The whole situation is a complete mess and getting worse.
On a historical note, a biography just came out about Ernst Kantorowicz, a Jewish- German medievalist.
You might find it interesting. His life was also discussed in a book about the great medievalists
of the 20th Century- 'Medieval Lives', by Cantor. It's a fascinating book. Kantorowicz was a wealthy,
assimilated Jewish- German who grew up with the Prussian upper class. He was a German officer
in World War I, and after the war joined the paramilitary- right Freikorps and fought against
the Communists inside Germany. As a medievalist, he was a romantic- nationalist associated with
a circle of poets and scholars, and friends with Percy Ernst Schramm, who along with Kantorowicz
was one of the great medievalists of his generation. Then the Nazis took power. Kantorowicz was
purged from academic life. Some of his friends protected him as best they could, while others
sided with the Nazis. He got out, barely, in 1938 and ended up at Berkeley, of all places, and
the Institute for Advanced Study. His friend Schramm became the official historian of the Wehrmacht
in WWII, and observed Hitler at first hand. After the war Schramm turned to Kantorowicz for help
in reentering official, academic life (Kantorowicz helped.) The whole story is a tragic metaphor
for the tragedy of the patriotic, assimilated- nationalist German Jews. Re: Kantorowicz
Bureaucracies, governmental or academic, hate a non-conformist. I know. I worked (briefly)
for three governments and also held academic appointments at three universities, the last, a tenure-track
appointment, that I abandoned after three days.
The problem for all groups in a multi-cultural society is that group interests are liable to
conflict and thus generate antagonisms that often have a racial or religious aspect. For Jews,
it is worse than for most because they are adherents, or associates by descent, of a religion
that is fundamentally racist. Yahweh, after all, is the God of the Jews, and urges the Jews to
go forth, multiply and rule over the nations of the Earth.
Thus, when Jews succeed as they have done in large numbers in America in gaining positions
of great wealth and power, and especially when they exercise that power for specifically Jewish
interests such as the defense of the state of Israel, they naturally raise feelings of suspicion,
fear and antagonism, as would say a bunch of Russian nationalists if they
ran much
of Hollywood , were
among the principal peddlers of porn in America , had
massive media influence , and held many seats in Congress and used their financial clout to
determine
who holds many of the other seats in Congress .
None of this, of course, alters the fact that it may at times seem tough being a Jew and an
American-firster.
@annamaria Treason in high places: " Not Remembering the USS Liberty," by Ray McGovern
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/not-remembering-the-uss-liberty/
"The only investigation worth the name was led by Adm. Moorer, who had been Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among the findings announced by the commission on October 2003:
" Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the USS Liberty bridge, and fired 30mm
cannon and rockets into the ship; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship
by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes.
" The torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but machine-gunning of Liberty's
firefighters and stretcher-bearers. The Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun
at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors
to rescue the most seriously wounded."
"Shortly before he died in February 2004, Adm. Moorer strongly appealed for the truth to be brought
out and pointed directly at what he saw as the main obstacle: " I've never seen a President
stand up to Israel. If the American people understood what a grip these people have on our
government, they would rise up in arms." Echoing Moorer, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck,
who served many years in the Middle East, condemned Washington's attitude toward Israel as "obsequious,
unctuous subservience at the cost of the lives and morale of our own service members and their
families" WHY did the Israeli leadership collectively decide to attack the USS Liberty spy
ship and risk serious damage to its relationship with its only superpower supporter? What did
the Israelis know about the Liberty's activities? Why was this a matter of top-level national
importance to Israel?
Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial
WHY of the operation.
Without addressing the WHY, any account of the attack itself is little more than beating around
the bush. Also, it is remarkable that no consistent U.S. version of the incident has evolved despite
several generations of military and secret service officials transitioning to the relative safety
and anonymity of retirement since then.
One conventional fake answer can easily be disposed off – it is sometimes claimed that the
Israelis hoped to blame the sinking of the Liberty on Egypt, and cause damage to Egypt's relationship
with the U.S. This version is wholly untenable.
First, an air attack would have been plainly visible on military radar across the Red Sea.
Second, then as now, the U.S. had extensive secret service contacts throughout the Egyptian government.
An Egyptian air attack on the USS Liberty would most likely have leaked in advance, and certainly
within hours of a putative Egyptian attack which by definition would have to involved hundreds
of individuals to propose, prepare and implement.
Right and "global capitalism" serves the interests of global marxism, and you are unable to
decifer the connections, which is your own shortcoming, and does not change the situation.
Almost all of the honchos involved in big-money are in essence : marxists, and they are plotting
and waiting for the shift to collectivism.
Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when
they could have simply left things are they were.
I know it is very hard for most people to imagine big-time capitalists as communists, but it
is fact.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro
jazz musician.
Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution,
when they could have simply left things are they were.
Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it. A revolution is a great chance
to loot a country (as the Russians discovered to their cost in the 1990s).
The "moneyed" classes do not believe in marxism because they do not believe in any ideology.
They believe in money and power. Ideologies are for the rubes.
The US is currently making a massive arms deal with the Saudis. Does this mean that the US
moneyed classes have suddenly converted to Islam? No, it means they see a chance to make money.
@Sowhat Jimmy, I like reading your but bluing your scripts (doesn't that usually indicate
a reference or example) to send me to a VDARE donation page is tacky. JMO Mr. What, that "bluing"
is called a hyperlink *. They've been around for well nigh 25 years now by my recollection.
The guy's link is fine, but VDare right now is raising some money, and that "splash" page will
appear on anyone's initial visit, so to speak, to the site right now. If you mash that X in the
right corner, you will get directly to the article that the guy you're replying to wants you to
see.
I hope that helps I would like to AGREE with myself here too, because, as usual, I know I
am right. I don't know how to do that though without joining faceboot or some such crap.
* Here is one, just as a
random example. It'd be interesting to see what happens when you single-click on it. You might
as well now – it'll bug you the rest of the evening if you don't.
@Eagle Eye WHY did the Israeli leadership collectively decide to attack the USS Liberty
spy ship and risk serious damage to its relationship with its only superpower supporter? What
did the Israelis know about the Liberty's activities? Why was this a matter of top-level national
importance to Israel?
Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial
WHY of the operation.
Without addressing the WHY, any account of the attack itself is little more than beating around
the bush. Also, it is remarkable that no consistent U.S. version of the incident has evolved despite
several generations of military and secret service officials transitioning to the relative safety
and anonymity of retirement since then.
One conventional fake answer can easily be disposed off - it is sometimes claimed that the
Israelis hoped to blame the sinking of the Liberty on Egypt, and cause damage to Egypt's relationship
with the U.S. This version is wholly untenable.
First, an air attack would have been plainly visible on military radar across the Red Sea.
Second, then as now, the U.S. had extensive secret service contacts throughout the Egyptian government.
An Egyptian air attack on the USS Liberty would most likely have leaked in advance, and certainly
within hours of a putative Egyptian attack which by definition would have to involved hundreds
of individuals to propose, prepare and implement. "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty
story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation."
First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been
hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest
no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad
and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write
a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]
is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough.
We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We
have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential
community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:"
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind – that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the
Friends of Israel and such – have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU?
Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when
they could have simply left things are they were.
Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it. A revolution is a great chance to
loot a country (as the Russians discovered to their cost in the 1990s).
The "moneyed" classes do not believe in marxism because they do not believe in any ideology.
They believe in money and power. Ideologies are for the rubes.
The US is currently making a massive arms deal with the Saudis. Does this mean that the US
moneyed classes have suddenly converted to Islam? No, it means they see a chance to make money.
" Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it"
Hogwash, this idea is beyond absurd.
What you are saying is that for the purpose of "Making a fast buck" they will support a political/economic
system, namely communism, which has the goal of destroying them , in other words the chickens
are voting for Colonel Sanders.
" The monied classes do not believe in marxism" . Again hogwash, and you would be in a state
of shock if you were able to engage certain billionaires in conversation regarding this issue.
The motivation behind their fixation upon Marxism is their striving to considered as "Intellectuals",
and they are plagued by inferiority complexes regarding their status as "Businessmen", whereas
marxists are looked upon as : "Intellectual".
I was never convinced that rich people were exceptionally intelligent, rather to the contrary.
Wall street being a perfect example of stupidity prevailing amongst millionaires and billionaires.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro
jazz artist.
@annamaria "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing
the crucial WHY of the operation."
First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been
hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest
no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad
and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write
a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]
is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough.
We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We
have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential
community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind - that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the
Friends of Israel and such - have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU?
First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has
been hushed for many years.
yep
also as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be
blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them.
It is the well-known modus operendi of cowards. Commit crimes and blame them on people you
don't like, so that those people will be punished for it. It happens all the time in America with
hate "crime" hoaxes. The most egregious example of Israeli's treachery and endemic cowardice was
the false flag attack on 9/11 – that is being used even today to get Americans to mass-murder
people Israel doesn't like and reduce entire nations and regions into smoking ashes.
Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced
by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many
other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:
Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions
in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American
experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint
- vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening
as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of
Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason
why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations
from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French. "and it turned out that traditional English
cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled
the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did."
You do realize that those traditions were a result of the combined efforts of the Britons,
the Picts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxon tribes. Moreover, this "American experiment" was the
product of the English, Greek, and Roman ways of governance, as well as the philosophies of the
Enlightenment.
"English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
Thank you for your opinion on this matter.
"One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher.""
The English language does not prohibit anyone from indicating that their profession is a "philosopher",
considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and instructs
students in this field.
"Support our troops!" in the time of institutionalized treason.
Two ugly siblings or why ISIS is a best friend of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.
"Israel and Saudi Arabia have always been enemies of secular, Arab nationalist states and federations.
Whether an Arab state is Nasserist, Ba'athist, socialist, Marxist-Leninist or in the case of Gaddafi's
Libya a practitioner of the post-Nassierist Third Political Theory: Israel and Saudi Arabia have
sought to and in large part have succeeded, with western help, at destroying such states.
Unlike Israel's Apartheid military state and Saudi Arabia's human rights free monarchy, the aforementioned
Arab styles of government are worthy of the word modern. These are countries which had progressive
mixed economies, had secular governments and societies, had full constitutional rights for religious
and ethnic minorities, they championed women's rights and engaged in mass literacy programmes
and infrastructural projects. ..
Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world. Unlike in Israel, minorities have
full constitutional rights and unlike in Saudi Arabia, all religions are tolerated. In Syria,
women can act, speak and dress as they wish. Syria's independence has in the past thwarted Israel's
ambition to annex Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and additional parts of Syria itself (Israel still
occupies Syria's Golan Heights).
Syria remains strongly independent and refuses to surrender its values. Saudi Arabia and Israel are allies in the material and psychological war against secular, modern
Arab countries. It is a war which the United States has been fighting on behalf of Riyadh and
Tel Aviv for decades ."
" considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and
instructs students in this field"
So what you are saying is that holding a "doctoral degree" in philosophy automatically transforms
the individual involved into being a "Philsopher"
This is pure unadulterated nonsense, and I personally have had the aquaintance of two persons
who did indeed hold doctoral degrees in philosophy and they were both light years away from the
qualification of "Philosopher".
Homer was a"Philosopher", Marc Aurel, was a philosopher, Goethe was a philosopher, etc, but
none of the BS artists in this day and age holding doctoral degrees in philosophy, could ever
with a straight face claim to be a "philosopher".
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro
jazz musician.
@annamaria "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing
the crucial WHY of the operation."
First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been
hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest
no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad
and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write
a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]
is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough.
We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We
have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential
community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind - that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the
Friends of Israel and such - have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU?
The basic question – which remains unaddressed in the response – is very simply:
What was the Israeli leadership trying to do by launching a combined airborne and naval
attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War in 1967?
You mention the Lavon affair in 1954. This scandal arose out of an attempted Israeli false-flag
operation in Egypt that went spectacularly wrong.
The Suez Crisis in 1956 was another major disaster for Israel, the UK and France.
This experience will have informed Israeli government thinking in 1967.
Moreover, as noted in the original post, radar technology at the time, as well simple visual
identification of the attacking jet fighters and vessels precluded even a remote possibility
of dressing up the attack as having been perpetrated by Egypt.
Further, the U.S. had plenty of intelligence assets in both Egypt and Israel to find out what
actually happened to the USS Liberty within hours. An operation of this magnitude involves at
a minimum hundreds of people across different countries and cannot be kept completely secret.
The Lavon affair was intended to involve small anonymous attacks against random civilian targets,
but failed to achieve this relatively modest objective.
Are we now to believe that the Israelis thought they could pull off a massive combined air-sea
attack against a United States vessel on the high seas (where radar and visual observation is
unobstructed) and blame it on Egypt? The very idea is insane.
So why did Israel resort to this desperate gamble?
Barring a collective bout of insanity throughout Israel's civilian and military leadership,
the most likely explanation is that the USS Liberty itself was seen as a major and indeed mortal
threat to Israel, to such an extent that the Israeli leadership decided to risk a major rift with
the U.S. to eliminate the threat.
How would the USS Liberty itself be a threat? Most likely by compiling high-grade military
intelligence and passing it to Egypt and the other Arab nations. This could have occurred either
pursuant to official directives from the top of the U.S. hierarchy, or perhaps because the local
command went rogue.
@Corvinus "and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics
and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the
world forward as and when it did."
You do realize that those traditions were a result of the combined efforts of the Britons,
the Picts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxon tribes. Moreover, this "American experiment" was the
product of the English, Greek, and Roman ways of governance, as well as the philosophies of the
Enlightenment.
"English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
Thank you for your opinion on this matter.
"One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher.""
The English language does not prohibit anyone from indicating that their profession is a "philosopher",
considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and instructs
students in this field.
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow
a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."
Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher."
Notice how ridiculous it sounds?
French does not have the same inbuilt resistance to unreality. "Moi, je suis philosophe" does
not sound inherently ridiculous to a French speaker.
First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been
hushed for many years.
yep
also as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be
blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them.
As was the Lavon affair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
It is the well-known modus operendi of cowards. Commit crimes and blame them on people you
don't like, so that those people will be punished for it. It happens all the time in America with
hate "crime" hoaxes. The most egregious example of Israeli's treachery and endemic cowardice was
the false flag attack on 9/11 - that is being used even today to get Americans to mass-murder
people Israel doesn't like and reduce entire nations and regions into smoking ashes.
as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be
blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them
This suggestion at least makes logical sense.
However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a
combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained
in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the
attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.
In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second
about who launched the attack.
Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE
action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt.
@annamaria "Support our troops!" in the time of institutionalized treason.
Two ugly siblings or why ISIS is a best friend of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.
http://theduran.com/heres-why-saudi-arabia-and-israel-are-allies-in-all-but-name/
"Israel and Saudi Arabia have always been enemies of secular, Arab nationalist states and federations.
Whether an Arab state is Nasserist, Ba'athist, socialist, Marxist-Leninist or in the case of Gaddafi's
Libya a practitioner of the post-Nassierist Third Political Theory: Israel and Saudi Arabia have
sought to and in large part have succeeded, with western help, at destroying such states.
Unlike Israel's Apartheid military state and Saudi Arabia's human rights free monarchy, the aforementioned
Arab styles of government are worthy of the word modern. These are countries which had progressive
mixed economies, had secular governments and societies, had full constitutional rights for religious
and ethnic minorities, they championed women's rights and engaged in mass literacy programmes
and infrastructural projects. ..
Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world. Unlike in Israel, minorities have
full constitutional rights and unlike in Saudi Arabia, all religions are tolerated. In Syria,
women can act, speak and dress as they wish. Syria's independence has in the past thwarted Israel's
ambition to annex Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and additional parts of Syria itself (Israel still
occupies Syria's Golan Heights). ...
Syria remains strongly independent and refuses to surrender its values. Saudi Arabia and Israel are allies in the material and psychological war against secular, modern
Arab countries. It is a war which the United States has been fighting on behalf of Riyadh and
Tel Aviv for decades ."
Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world.
Modern, secular Syria TREBLED its population since 1980 even though water and land were already
exhausted then.
as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed
on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them
This suggestion at least makes logical sense.
However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a
combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained
in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the
attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.
In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second
about who launched the attack.
Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE
action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt.
" it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC."
This is not true. Try do read the accounts objectively.
Who is really a philosopher? What is really a philosopher? What is philosophy after all?
At the end of 'Antiquity' (6th Century) an Armenian Christian 'Neo-Platonic' philosopher, David
Anhagt (the Invincible), wrote an 'Introduction to philosophy' in which he epitomized all the
current definitions of Philosophy, which by logical necessity are only six (according to the object
and purpose):
1) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things that exist as they [really] are'.
2) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things divine and human'.
3) 'Philosophy is preparation for death'.
4) 'Philosophy is becoming like the God to the best of human abilities.
5) 'Philosophy is the art of arts and science of sciences'.
6) 'Philosophy is love of wisdom' (filia sophias).
For David (and all 'philosophers') philosophia is a 'care of the soul'. It starts with 'Gnoti
seauton- Know thyself) and ends with 'becoming like God' (theosis) and here it coincides with
the purpose of Christianity ('If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods', 'For the
Son of God became man so that we might become God', 'The Word was made flesh in order that we
might be made gods. Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are
both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life' – the definitions of
the Fathers). Christianity is the 'true philosophy'. Jesus answered the Pharisees: "Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God
came, and the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:34-35)*
*"I have said, Ye are gods; and all [of you] children of the Most High" (Psalm 81:6 – Septuagint).
'Know thyself' because 'The Kingdom of God is within you'.
@annamaria "...it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC."
This is not true. Try do read the accounts objectively. (1) I said that "reading between the lines,"
one might conclude that Israel IMMEDIATELY set about containing the fall-out in Washington. Of
course, such efforts (if they indeed took place) would be hugely embarrassing to Israel and would
be kept top secret even years later.
(2) You have still not given us any real theory of WHY Israel would launch a combined air/sea
attack on the USS Liberty.
The idea that Israel was at this precise moment in the middle of the Six Day War trying
to pin the blame on Egypt does not hold water as explained in several posts above.
CONCLUSION: The best working theory at present is that the USS Liberty was providing high-grade
intelligence to the Arab countries fighting Israel in the Six Day War.
If you have a better explanation consistent with the known facts, including the use of radar
by the USS Liberty and airborne units in the area please share it here.
QUESTION: What is known about LBJ's stated and actual positions vis-a-vis Israel, Egypt, other
Arab countries? Post-retirement contacts by LBJ and his family?
Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced
by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many
other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:
Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions
in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American
experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint
- vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening
as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of
Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason
why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations
from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow
a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."
I don't understand why you say that or why Corvinus thinks it would be silly if anyone did
say in English "I am a philosopher."
Most significant universities in the English-speaking world have a philosophy department whose
faculty members would, in most cases, be prepared to assert that "I am a philosopher."
This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to
make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.
No doubt there are plenty of bad English-speaking philosophers as there are bad English-speaking
academics in every other field, but it is simply false to suggest that philosophical works in
the English language are characterized by ponderous bad writing. In fact, the great English-speaking
philosophers lead the world in the clarity of their analysis:
David Hume
, for example, or
George
Berkeley .
Who is really a philosopher? What is really a philosopher? What is philosophy after all?
At the end of 'Antiquity' (6th Century) an Armenian Christian 'Neo-Platonic' philosopher, David
Anhagt (the Invincible), wrote an 'Introduction to philosophy' in which he epitomized all the
current definitions of Philosophy, which by logical necessity are only six (according to the object
and purpose):
1) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things that exist as they [really] are'.
2) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things divine and human'.
3) 'Philosophy is preparation for death'.
4) 'Philosophy is becoming like the God to the best of human abilities.
5) 'Philosophy is the art of arts and science of sciences'.
6) 'Philosophy is love of wisdom' (filia sophias).
For David (and all 'philosophers') philosophia is a 'care of the soul'. It starts with 'Gnoti
seauton- Know thyself) and ends with 'becoming like God' (theosis) and here it coincides with
the purpose of Christianity ('If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods', 'For the
Son of God became man so that we might become God', 'The Word was made flesh in order that we
might be made gods. ... Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are
both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life' - the definitions of
the Fathers). Christianity is the 'true philosophy'. Jesus answered the Pharisees: "Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God
came, and the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:34-35)*
*"I have said, Ye are gods; and all [of you] children of the Most High" (Psalm 81:6 - Septuagint).
'Know thyself' because 'The Kingdom of God is within you'. David Anhagt may have been at the
forefront of philosophy at the end of antiquity, but things have moved on a bit since then. Today,
surely, the key questions in philosophy are of the following kind:
(1) How do we know what we know, if we know anything at all?
(2) What is the nature of external reality, if there is an external reality, and what can we
know of it and how?
(3) If there is an external reality, how come? How did it come to exist?
(4) What is morality?
(5) What is free will, and does it make us morally responsible for our actions?
Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced
by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many
other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:
Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions
in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American
experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies."
To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint
- vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening
as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of
Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason
why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations
from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism
That is probably the exact opposite of the fact. The English sense of tolerance, such as it
is (think the burning of witches and heretics, the gaoling of or chemical castration of queers),
restraint, such as it is (think football hooliganism and the crass obscenity of some BBC entertainment
programming), etc. are probably the result of Britain's unique set of traditions, the common law,
the breakdown of serfdom as the result of the crash in population caused by the Black Death, property
law, the rights of women dating from pre-Norman times, the King's Courts that provided litigants
access to a court presided over by a professional judge, English trust law, that gave rise to
so many special purpose clubs and organizations from scientific societies to sporting associations
and explains why nearly all the world's most popular sports were invented by the English, and
Henry VIII's marital problems that largely freed Britain from the influence of the Catholic church.
As for:
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions
balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies.
LOL
Privacy? The Brits have more surveillance cameras per capita than any country on earth. They
even have
listening lamp posts.
Secularism? The present archbishop of Canterbury may be of Jewish extraction and experienced
as a oil company money man, but until recent times the British were, for the most part, devout,
mainly protestant, Christians.
Fads? Well maybe the Brits didn't trust them but they had plenty from rock and roll, flick
knives, and ducks arse hair cuts, to mini-skirts, beatlemania, balsa wood airplanes, bellbottom
pants, and on and on.
As for philosophies, the British empiricists are clearly among the most important of the modern
age as the British who know anything about philosophy are happy to acknowledge.
What is you point, that Syria has no right for her sovereignty?
A country at three times carrying capacity talking about "sovereignty" is like a 600 lb person
talking about running a marathon. as compared to an artificial state that has been squeezing the
native population and importing the (allegedly) ethnically-proper economic migrants?
You seem have peculiar explanations to why such formerly functioning states as Iraq, Libya, and
Syria should better cease to exist (along with the USSLiberty staff). According to your logic,
the ongoing Syrian slaughter is a good deed because it allows for weeding out the excess of population
there. The weeding out also works as a rationale for grabbing the Syrian natural resources by
the "most moral" apartheid state.
And please don't try at lecturing the readers on Israel's virtues vs the US perfidy, considering
the history of betrayal of the US by Israel-firsters. Pollard and more, the despicable PNAC crowd
and the ziocons' obnoxious and stupid global games against ethnically-wrong humanity. At the head
of the current mess is the Israel-occupied Congress, "conditioned" for guiding the hapless host
in a desired direction.
@CanSpeccy David Anhagt may have been at the forefront of philosophy at the end of antiquity,
but things have moved on a bit since then. Today, surely, the key questions in philosophy are
of the following kind:
(1) How do we know what we know, if we know anything at all?
(2) What is the nature of external reality, if there is an external reality, and what can we
know of it and how?
(3) If there is an external reality, how come? How did it come to exist?
(4) What is morality?
(5) What is free will, and does it make us morally responsible for our actions?
And much more. All these 'moves' have been already made long before the end of Antiquity. There
were the essential questions of 'philosophy' to which Plato, Aristotle and a score of 'Oriental'
philosophers have offered the answers.
Didn't a noted philosopher of the 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead, famously said that: 'The
safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of
a series of footnotes to Plato'?
One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a
person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."
Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher."
Notice how ridiculous it sounds?
French does not have the same inbuilt resistance to unreality. "Moi, je suis philosophe" does
not sound inherently ridiculous to a French speaker. "Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher.""
The Saker publishes some interesting news re the MH17 tragedy:
"SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] orders to destroy all evidence of the conducted special operation
MH17″
http://thesaker.is/sbu-orders-to-destroy-all-evidence-of-the-conducted-special-operation-mh17/
by Scott Humor: " If you want to know my opinion that hasn't changed since 2014. The Boeing flight
MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian air force fighter jets, but not necessarily piloted by Ukrainian
pilots. It was a CIA and NATO operation to frame Russia. Most likely the Dutch government was
a part of this operation. Now, they are trying to hang all the dogs on Waltzman -Poroshenko, because
neither the Dutch monarchs, nor the CIA would fancy to be implicated in this crime."
as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed
on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them
This suggestion at least makes logical sense.
However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a
combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained
in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the
attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.
In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second
about who launched the attack.
Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE
action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt.
Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the attack would be traced
back to them within hours at the latest.
then why did they machine gun the lifeboats, eh?
that in itself is a war crime you know, and the ONLY reason they would have done it is to sink
the ship with ALL hands. Thereby leaving no survivors to expose the treachery.
and they had the Johnson regime and traitor McNamara on board with their cowardly, murderous
treason.
@annamaria as compared to an artificial state that has been squeezing the native population
and importing the (allegedly) ethnically-proper economic migrants?
You seem have peculiar explanations to why such formerly functioning states as Iraq, Libya, and
Syria should better cease to exist (along with the USSLiberty staff). According to your logic,
the ongoing Syrian slaughter is a good deed because it allows for weeding out the excess of population
there. The weeding out also works as a rationale for grabbing the Syrian natural resources by
the "most moral" apartheid state.
And please don't try at lecturing the readers on Israel's virtues vs the US perfidy, considering
the history of betrayal of the US by Israel-firsters. Pollard and more, the despicable PNAC crowd
and the ziocons' obnoxious and stupid global games against ethnically-wrong humanity. At the head
of the current mess is the Israel-occupied Congress, "conditioned" for guiding the hapless host
in a desired direction. You still haven't answered the question:
What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?
As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces
were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.
Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also
explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan
(i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).
@Eagle Eye You still haven't answered the question:
What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?
As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces
were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.
Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also
explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan
(i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).
Thank you. if you (and Annamaria) don't mind, I'll address this..
What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?
there was a war going on between a US ally and a nation of strategic importance to the US-
Israel and Egypt. The USS Liberty was a NSA intelligence ship. It was there to monitor what was
going on. Duh.
explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty"
of Cis-Jordan (i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).
unless you an admiral in the US Navy at the time, no one knows for sure. But a lot of people
have speculated that the USS Liberty was sent by the Johnson regime to get sunk by Israel and
be used as a false flag to take America into war against Egypt.
We already know for a fact that jets were scrambled to assist the USS Liberty and were called
back and ordered not to assist by Johnson through Secretary of State McNamara. And not once, but
twice.
So obviously Johnson wanted her sunk. Whether or not the ship was sent there for that purpose,
or whether Johnson simply decided to let the Israelis sink her once he heard about it, we'll likely
never know.
What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?
As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces
were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.
Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also
explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan
(i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).
"As Israel controls US Middle East policy, Israel uses its control to have Washington eliminate
obstacles to Israel's expansion. So far Israel has achieved the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's
government and chaos in Iraq, Washington's war on Syria, and Washington's demonization of Iran
in the hope that sufficient demonization will justify war."
@Seraphim There are more, but most of them are sloppy footnotes.
but most of them are sloppy footnotes
True. But that's true of most of what passes for thought or scholarship in every field of intellectual
endeavor. Still mankind has come a long way since the time of Plato in understanding many things
- so far that, in our morally unregenerate state, we appear on the brink of creating Hell on Earth,
either as the result of a final global conflagration or the creation of a global slave state.
How does Russia ( read Putin ) embracing Christianity and encouraging it again in Russia factor
in the sudden sour attitude of our progressives in the US? The LOVED the USSR.. as it was atheistic,
no? But as a non-threat-Russia, and a Christian Russia, eh, not so much; especially since Russia
has decided they are not so fond of the Muslim.
True. But that's true of most of what passes for thought or scholarship in every field of intellectual
endeavor. Still mankind has come a long way since the time of Plato in understanding many things
- so far that, in our morally unregenerate state, we appear on the brink of creating Hell on Earth,
either as the result of a final global conflagration or the creation of a global slave state.
You can see what sloppiness leads to.
@in the middle How exactly did Reagan biggest mistake was amnesty? Explain and give some examples,
please. Giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants who were in America in 1986 encouraged more illegal
immigrants to come, in hopes of a future amnesty.
In 1986 there were only 1 million illegal immigrants. Now there are at least 11 million.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism
That is probably the exact opposite of the fact. The English sense of tolerance, such as it is
(think the burning of witches and heretics, the gaoling of or chemical castration of queers),
restraint, such as it is (think football hooliganism and the crass obscenity of some BBC entertainment
programming), etc. are probably the result of Britain's unique set of traditions, the common law,
the breakdown of serfdom as the result of the crash in population caused by the Black Death, property
law, the rights of women dating from pre-Norman times, the King's Courts that provided litigants
access to a court presided over by a professional judge, English trust law, that gave rise to
so many special purpose clubs and organizations from scientific societies to sporting associations
and explains why nearly all the world's most popular sports were invented by the English, and
Henry VIII's marital problems that largely freed Britain from the influence of the Catholic church.
As for:
privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced
by distrust of fads and "philosophies.
LOL. Privacy? The Brits have more surveillance cameras per capita than any country on earth. They
even have
listening lamp posts.
Secularism? The present archbishop of Canterbury may be of Jewish extraction and experienced
as a oil company money man, but until recent times the British were, for the most part, devout,
mainly protestant, Christians. Fads? Well maybe the Brits didn't trust them but they had plenty from rock and roll, flick
knives, and ducks arse hair cuts, to mini-skirts, beatlemania, balsa wood airplanes, bellbottom
pants, and on and on.
As for philosophies, the British empiricists are clearly among the most important of the modern
age as the British who know anything about philosophy are happy to acknowledge.
English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint,
privacy and secularism
It may have escaped you that my earlier post referred to the time of the American Revolution,
and in particular to sophisticated British traditions and conventions as they were perceived by
the educated class in the colonies.
The sad decline of Britain in the modern era, and its more colorful history in earlier ages,
are neither here nor there for these purposes.
Paul Craig Roberts views Zbigniew Brzezinski through the rose glasses. In reality Zbig
Russophobia was based on that same desire to dominate the globe that had driven British elite to
Russophobia before. Plus desire of MIC to preserve its size and profits and return to
the good old days of Cold War. The US militarism is business driven militarism, which makes it even more dangerious.
Notable quotes:
"... The Soviet Threat removed itself when hardline communists arrested Soviet President Gorbachev. This ill-conceived intervention collapsed the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Threat removed, the US military/security complex no longer had a justification for its massive budget. ..."
"... Despite 16 years of Washington's wars against countries ranging from North Africa to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, the "Muslim threat" does not suffice to justify the $1.1 trillion US military/security annual budget. Consequently, the Russian Threat has been resurrected. ..."
"... Russia can bite back. For a quarter century Russia has watched Washington prepare for a paralyzing nuclear strike on Russia. Recently, the Russian High Command announced that the Russian military has concluded that Washington does intend a surprise nuclear strike against Russia. ..."
"... The insouciant populations of the West, including the members of the governments, do not appreciate that they are living on the edge of nuclear destruction. ..."
"... The very few of us who alert you are dismissed as "Russian agents," "anti-semites," and "conspiracy theorists." When you hear a source called a "Russian agent," an "anti-semite," or a "conspiracy theorist," you had better listen to them. These are those in the know who accept arrow slings in order to tell you the truth. ..."
"... The most important truth of our time is that the world lives on the knife-edge of the American military/security complex's need for an enemy in order to keep profits flowing. The brutal fact is this: For the sake of its profits, the American military/security complex has subjected the entire world to the risk of nuclear Armageddon. ..."
I think that the "Soviet Threat," the basis for the Cold War, was a hoax. It was created by the military/security
complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us to no effect. The patriotic war movies, the patriotic
Memorial Days and July 4ths with emotional thanks to those who died "saving our freedoms," which
were never in danger from the Japanese and Germans, only from our own government, succeeded in brainwashing
even National Security Advisors. Little wonder the insouciance of the American population today.
The Cold War was an orchestration of the military/security complex, and there are many victims.
Brzezinski was a victim as the Cold War was his life. JFK was a victim as he lost his life to it.
The Vietnamese, who died in the millions, were victims The photo of the naked young Vietnamese girl
fleeing down the road in terror from the American napham behind her made us aware that the Cold War
had many innocent victims. The Soviet troops sent to Afghanistan were victims as were the Afghans
themselves.
The Soviet Threat removed itself when hardline communists arrested Soviet President Gorbachev.
This ill-conceived intervention collapsed the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Threat removed, the US
military/security complex no longer had a justification for its massive budget.
Treading water while looking for a new justification for bleeding the American taxpayer, the military/security
complex had President Clinton declare the US to be the World Policeman and to destroy Yugoslavia
in the name of "human rights." With Israeli and neoconservative input, the military/security complex
used 9/11 to create the "Muslim Terrorist Threat." This hoax has now murdered, maimed, dispossessed,
and displaced millions of Muslims in seven countries.
Despite 16 years of Washington's wars against countries ranging from North Africa to Iraq, Syria,
Yemen and Afghanistan, the "Muslim threat" does not suffice to justify the $1.1 trillion US military/security
annual budget. Consequently, the Russian Threat has been resurrected.
The Muslim Threat was never a danger to the US. It is only a danger to Washington's European vassal
states, who had to accept millions of Muslim refugees from Washington's wars. However, the newly
created Russian Threat is a threat to every American as well as to every European.
Russia can bite back. For a quarter century Russia has watched Washington prepare for a paralyzing
nuclear strike on Russia. Recently, the Russian High Command announced that the Russian military
has concluded that Washington does intend a surprise nuclear strike against Russia.
This dire Russian announcement received no western press coverage. No high official of any Western
government, Trump included, called Putin to give reassurances that no such attack on Russia was being
planned.
So, what happens next time when a false alarm, such as the one Brzezinski received, is received
by his counterpart in Moscow or the National Security Council? Will the animosities resurrected by
the evil US military/security complex result in the Russians or the US believing the false signal?
The insouciant populations of the West, including the members of the governments, do not appreciate
that they are living on the edge of nuclear destruction.
The very few of us who alert you are dismissed as "Russian agents," "anti-semites," and "conspiracy
theorists." When you hear a source called a "Russian agent," an "anti-semite," or a "conspiracy theorist,"
you had better listen to them. These are those in the know who accept arrow slings in order to tell
you the truth.
The most important truth of our time is that the world lives on the knife-edge of the American
military/security complex's need for an enemy in order to keep profits flowing. The brutal fact is
this: For the sake of its profits, the American military/security complex has subjected the entire
world to the risk of nuclear Armageddon.
Headliner of the week was the Muslim
terrorist attack on a pop concert in Manchester, England. The bomber blew
himself up and took 22 others with him. That's the count as I go to tape
here; over a hundred were injured, some critically, so the death count may
be higher as you hear this.
The bomber was a 22-year-old Muslim, name
of Salman Abedi, born in Britain to parents from Libya. Those parents had
been settled in England as refugees from Colonel
Gaddafy's
government; so that's where the bomber was born, in England,
1994.
Salman Abedi's parents thereupon, in 2011,
returned to Libya. Salman Abedi, then 17, stayed in the U.K.
So I'll just pause to note here that this
is yet another case of
absimilation
. Here yet again is the relevant
passage from
We Are Doomed
, the one book you need to explain the modern
world. Chapter 10, edited quote:
The English word "assimilation" derives
from the Latin prefix
ad
-, which indicates a moving towards
something, and the same language's verb simulare, "to cause a person or
thing to resemble another." You can make a precisely opposite word using
the prefix
ab
-, which marks a moving away from something. Many
immigrants of course assimilate to American society Many others,
however, especially in the second and following generations,
ab
similate.
That's what Salman Abedi did: He
absimilated, ending up hating the country that had taken in his parents.
It wasn't just him, either. His younger
brother Hashim, 20 years old, and so presumably also born in England, seems
to have been an accomplice to the bombing. He was arrested by authorities in
Libya on Tuesday. There's also a slightly older brother, 23-year-old Ismail,
arrested by British police in Manchester, also on Tuesday.
The father has been arrested, too, also in
Libya. The authorities there say he belongs to an extremist sect of Islam.
There's also a sister, 18-year-old
Jomana Abedi
, also born in Manchester, where she is studying molecular
biology with a view to advancing cancer research No, sorry, I got my news
stories mixed up there. Ms. Abedi actually works at a mosque, though I
haven't been able to discover what she does there.
@Anon
The terrorist bombing was terrible, but the concert was worse.
It was a celebration of open borders, degeneracy, interracism, slut
culture for little girls, and jungle fever. It was all about globalist
propaganda for kiddies.
British masses seem to welcome this cultural degeneracy and mass
invasion by foreigners.
How ironic that an Islamic terrorist who gained entry into UK via
globalism threw a monkey wrench at globalism?
If Muslims want to bomb every globalist celebration of open borders,
degeneracy, Afro-colonization of white wombs, and slut culture for kids,
who cares?
Globalism isn't about respect for world cultures and world histories.
It is about spreading mono-culture of Afromania, Homomania, and Ziomania
all over the world.
And the bombing of Libya has nothing to do with it. Stop killing Muslims,
and they will stop killing u. U killmy brother, I kill yours, u kill my
kids I kill yours, simple logic.
Sure, lack of assimilation is the culprit but as a "truther" might say,
this could well be an operation carried out by the deep state. Indeed,
someone put this kid up to this, supplied explosives and logistics, so
perhaps it was an Israeli plot, for certain some Anglo-Zionist one
percenter must be behind all of this. Naturally, as it is often published
here, white Europeans are superior to all other races so the kid was by
virtue of ancestry a lesser, defective human being to begin with
Manchester police announced where the Abedi family got the tens of
thousands of pounds that enabled them to fly back and forth from England
to several countries in the Middle East for years.
Welfare fraud and student loans funded the bombing. Apparently the
English student loan system does not require class attendance and
accumulation of credits to continue receiving loans.
BBC radio useful
idiot programs claim the Abedi brothers might have been bullied by evil
Whites. But they lived on the middle of the Libyan neighborhood so it's
unlikely they were bullied by Whites.
In 2004 the King of Jordan, the ruling Saud at the time in Saudi Arabia,
and Mucharraf in Pakistan all told senator Hollings that the only way to
end terrorism was to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Since 2004 the west did nothing for peace, on the contrary, efforts to
destabilise the ME, and North Africa continued, an were intensified.
Deradicalisation is making Muslims believe that what they see happening
is not happening.
It may succeed in a few cases, but it so me seems impossible in general.
So attacks in the west will continue, it is, as Mearsheimer and Walt
write 'the strategy of the weak'.
On top of that, the west needs terrorism, if necessary does it herself,
in order to make the western societies more totalitarian all the time
'for our safety'.
The destabilisation in ME and N Africa causes massive migration, the
destabilisation of the European countries is welcome, in order to create
an Europe, a USA clone.
This latest Manchester bombing is the perfect illustration of the twofold
nature of the problem of invade the world/invite the world. Furthermore
it comes on top of another similarly perfect illustration of that twofold
nature, in the Orlando shootings. In both cases a 2nd generation
immigrant whose parents were only here because it suited the US/UK
regimes to have them here as oppositionist tools for the destabilisation
and overthrow of foreign governments, who in each case openly declare the
ongoing butchery our governments are responsible for in the ME and North
Africa as direct motivating factors for their own violence, was enabled
to attack their host nations by immigration.
Derbyshire's piece does a
good job of skewering the "invite the world" side of the issue, but
ignores "invade the world".
In 2011, you'll recall, Barack Obama, prompted by the Three
Horsegirls of the Apocalypse-Samantha Power of Obama's National
Security Council, his U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and his Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton-who in turn were prompted by Britain and France,
with an assist from George Soros-overthrew Colonel Gaddafy.
Salman Abedi's parents thereupon, in 2011, returned to Libya.
Salman Abedi, then 17, stayed in the U.K.
That's barely the beginning of the story, with its murky elements of
the UK regime's security forces using jihadist terrorism as a weapon for
regime change in Libya and Syria, in which this family seem to have been
up to their necks. Even the BBC reported on some of these murky aspects
in the immediate aftermath of the bombing (though doubtless that line of
inquiry will be quietly dropped, or suppressed).
@Anon
The terrorist bombing was terrible, but the concert was worse.
It was a celebration of open borders, degeneracy, interracism, slut
culture for little girls, and jungle fever. It was all about globalist
propaganda for kiddies.
British masses seem to welcome this cultural degeneracy and mass
invasion by foreigners.
How ironic that an Islamic terrorist who gained entry into UK via
globalism threw a monkey wrench at globalism?
If Muslims want to bomb every globalist celebration of open borders,
degeneracy, Afro-colonization of white wombs, and slut culture for kids,
who cares?
Globalism isn't about respect for world cultures and world histories.
It is about spreading mono-culture of Afromania, Homomania, and Ziomania
all over the world.
"Others said he was a bit of a party animal, who drank vodka and
smoked weed daily, was popular with girls and "always clubbing or at
house parties", listening to rap and grime music. A young man, in
other words,
like so many others in Manchester: unconcerning,
unremarkable
. "
This is how the globalist media
want
us to live.
IIRC the 9/11 bombers liked clubbing, booze and strippers. Lots of
jihadists were petty criminals or drug dealers before the gods of their
far-off land repossessed their blood – and spilled ours
Salman's father Ramadan reportedly was a member of the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group back in the 90′s which had AQ links. Weren't those people
in cahoots with British intelligence back then in schemes to overthrow
Khaddafi? This explains his supposed resettlement in Britain; he was
connected. Also, Daily Mail has described him as a "former airport
security worker in the UK". Think about that one for a while. They were
reported to the authorities years ago but apparently they were allowed to
go on unencumbered. The son may have gone off and become a loose cannon
but otherwise there's a lot of murkiness involved with these people.
Like the author, I grew up in the UK in happier times and am now a US
citizen.
It is a pity that free speech no longer exists in England,
because prohibiting discussion of ideas skews all political debate. For
example, it is pretty obvious that the successful Brexit vote was pretty
much a plebiscite on unlimited immigration and loss of sovereignty,
except that it would be illegal to say so in a UK publication, as this
would be "hate speech."
However I do believe that the well-intended reason for the hate speech
laws is to prevent a bad situation getting even worse, rather than to
stop people from knowing what they can see with their own eyes.
I am reminded of a court case in the UK a few years ago in which a
well-known soap opera star was on trial for the rape of a 6 year old girl
several years earlier. Many UK readers were baffled by the story since
secrecy laws meant that nearly all the salient details of the case could
not be reported upon, nor were the media even allowed to say what they
were not allowed to report on.
For example, it was not clear why the girl and the allegist rapist
were living under the same roof. Had the public known that the girl in
question was the man's own daughter, and that the rape allegations were
part of a particularly nasty divorce dispute several years later, they
might have been better able to form an opinion of his guilt or innocence.
As it happens, the accused was acquitted, possible because forensic
medical evidence showed that the alleged victim was still a virgin at the
time of the trial, but it was a close run thing, and the judge directed
that jury that medical proof of the girl's virginity did not necessarily
mean that she has not been raped. (Whatever!)
When so much of public life and politics cannot be reported upon, it
is not surprising that people will arrive at false conclusions, or find
ways of protesting that which cannot be discussed.
We should be thankful that all these bombers and shooters leave behind
what those conspiracy nutcases might call magically indestructible
identification so the authorities can go straight to the perp's family
and friends. Apparently these imitators hope to outdo the ID that
survived 911 among incinerated debris in perfect condition. And we should
be doubly thankful that our loyal and patriotic msm have such incredible
journalists that they simultaneously uncover the same evidence and reach
exactly the same conclusions within minutes of each other.
@Alden
Manchester police announced where the Abedi family got the tens of
thousands of pounds that enabled them to fly back and forth from England
to several countries in the Middle East for years.
Welfare fraud and student loans funded the bombing. Apparently the
English student loan system does not require class attendance and
accumulation of credits to continue receiving loans.
BBC radio useful idiot programs claim the Abedi brothers might have been
bullied by evil Whites. But they lived on the middle of the Libyan
neighborhood so it's unlikely they were bullied by Whites.
@Swing
And the bombing of Libya has nothing to do with it. Stop killing Muslims,
and they will stop killing u. U killmy brother, I kill yours, u kill my
kids I kill yours, simple logic.
@jilles dykstra
In 2004 the King of Jordan, the ruling Saud at the time in Saudi Arabia,
and Mucharraf in Pakistan all told senator Hollings that the only way to
end terrorism was to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Since 2004 the west did nothing for peace, on the contrary, efforts to
destabilise the ME, and North Africa continued, an were intensified.
Deradicalisation is making Muslims believe that what they see happening
is not happening.
It may succeed in a few cases, but it so me seems impossible in general.
So attacks in the west will continue, it is, as Mearsheimer and Walt
write 'the strategy of the weak'.
On top of that, the west needs terrorism, if necessary does it herself,
in order to make the western societies more totalitarian all the time
'for our safety'.
The destabilisation in ME and N Africa causes massive migration, the
destabilisation of the European countries is welcome, in order to create
an Europe, a USA clone.
Jun 27, 2016 What Does G4S Know About the Orlando Nightclub Massacre?
Much has been made in recent weeks of Omar Mateen's background. The
perpetrator of the Orlando, Fla., massacre was alternately a "radical
Islamist," a deeply closeted gay man, a wife abuser, a mental case,
everybody's best friend in high school and a loser. The list goes on. But
what the mainstream media-and the government, for that matter-have not
talked about is the fact that Mateen was employed at the time of his
crime by G4S, a London-based company that is one of the largest mercenary
firms in the world, with intelligence contractors deployed in war zones
and hot spots around the globe.
@Cyrano
The west has two faces in regards to the middle east. One is kind,
welcoming and accepting refugees and immigrants from the ME. The other
face of the west is also supposedly kind – it goes to Muslim counties and
helps them get rid of dictators – although nobody asked them to, but I
guess kindness cannot be contained. Unfortunately, in the process of
helping them reach the pinnacle of human achievement – democracy – the
west wrecks country after country in the ME. My point is that both faces
of the west are phony. You can't be kind and cruel at the same time. It
just doesn't work that way. One overrides the other and can't be
counterbalanced by phoniness.
@unit472
No doubt the murderer Abedi chose his target well. Western pop culture
threatens Islam a helluva of a lot more than democracy or capitalism. It
is assimilative and transcends race and national borders. Its not
possible to put this genie back in the bottle. That battle was lost with
Elvis and the Beatles.
... ... ...
If I ran the CIA I would put my efforts into creating an Islamic
Ariana Grande or forming some 'boy group' Saudi tweens would go crazy
over. Let the devout Muslim mom and dad experience the 'generation gap'.
@Corvinus
"If Muslims want to attack such degeneracy, they have my blessing."
Exactly what I thought. Justify the murder of people because you oppose
the ways they express themselves culturally. Listen, why don't YOU man up
and actually do something about the situation rather than be an armchair
warrior?
@Randal
His comment went too far, perhaps as hyperbole, when he endorsed murder,
for certain.
On the other hand, he was not really expressing sympathy for the
islamists per se as much as expressing agreement with some of their
positions, and that is certainly not unacceptable, treasonous or
perverse, unless you think we should allow our opinions to be determined
by what (a particular brand of) terrorists think.
That's a common trend in the modern US sphere, unfortunately (we must
embrace sexual perversion and general degenerate decadence or we are the
same as sunni muslim terrorists), to the ludicrous extent that we are now
told that opinions and attitudes that the vast majority of our ancestors
up until a couple of generations ago would have regarded as disgusting or
contemptible at best and abominations at worst are "British values" or
"European" or "western" values that we must defend to the death, and even
murder foreigners in order to impose them in their countries.
@LauraMR
Sure, lack of assimilation is the culprit but as a "truther" might say,
this could well be an operation carried out by the deep state. Indeed,
someone put this kid up to this, supplied explosives and logistics, so
perhaps it was an Israeli plot, for certain some Anglo-Zionist one
percenter must be behind all of this. Naturally, as it is often published
here, white Europeans are superior to all other races so the kid was by
virtue of ancestry a lesser, defective human being to begin with...
@Swing
And the bombing of Libya has nothing to do with it. Stop killing Muslims,
and they will stop killing u. U killmy brother, I kill yours, u kill my
kids I kill yours, simple logic.
The terrorist bombing was terrible, but the concert was worse.
It was a celebration of open borders, degeneracy, interracism, slut
culture for little girls, and jungle fever. It was all about globalist
propaganda for kiddies.
British masses seem to welcome this cultural degeneracy and mass
invasion by foreigners.
How ironic that an Islamic terrorist who gained entry into UK via
globalism threw a monkey wrench at globalism?
If Muslims want to bomb every globalist celebration of open
borders, degeneracy, Afro-colonization of white wombs, and slut
culture for kids, who cares?
Globalism isn't about respect for world cultures and world
histories. It is about spreading mono-culture of Afromania, Homomania,
and Ziomania all over the world.
Is Iran a threat to Europe? Is Indonesia (the largest "Islamic" country
in terms of population)?
The real Islamic threat, such as it is, is that propagated by Saudi
Arabia, a country which is embraced with open arms by Western governments
(and their arms industries). And which for some time now has had a de
facto alliance (or "united front" if you like) with Israel.
The Jew entertainment culture lures 8-year-old girls into concerts – then
an enemy of the Jews, kills them. It is called lose – lose!
What are
8-year-old girls doing at a concert where they yell and scream for hours
watching some immature adult bump and grind her intimate body parts,
singing sex empowerment songs.
Isn't there something very wrong about that scene?
Meanwhile – a 145-year-old venerable institution of Western
entertainment – was being closed down forever – Barnum & Bailey Circus.
8-year-olds at the circus are in danger of eating too much cotton candy.
Peace – Art
p.s. Jew entertainment have taken our youth from sugar highs, to sex
highs.
@biz
What about the ongoing Islamist terror campaigns in southern Thailand and
the Philippines, directed largely at Buddhists and tribal villagers? How
about the slow motion genocide of Melanesians in Irian Jaya at the hands
of Indonesian Muslims? Al Shabab slaughtering black Kenyans in a mall?
Are your 'zio-natos' responsible for those too?
@Diversity Heretic
John has in past columns expressed what I interpret as an anti-invasion
policy: wall the Middle East off. The wall keeps them out of the west and
keeps the west out of the Middle East. I concur. The West is following
the worse strategy possible: invade Middle Eastern countries and kill
Muslims, then invite Muslims with a grudge (sometimes justifiable) to
settle here.
madonna as interracist whore and 'pussy march' leader and her ilk have done
more harm than a handful of terrorists.
Terrorists kill a few hundred per year.
Weaponized celebrities are globo agents who colonize the minds of 100s of
millions of whites into accepting slut culture, interracism, 'diversity',
jungle fever, ACOWW, pederasty, 'gay marriage', 'inclusion', cuckery, etc.
Indeed, the reason why Manchester let in all those foreigners and continues
to self-hug itself with ugly anti-racist pseudo-virtue is because its people
have been mentally colonized by PC and pop culture.
Colonization of minds is more dangerous than killing a few.
Romans defeated the Jews and oppressed the Christians, but Christians
colonized Roman minds and Christians won. Romans fed few 100s of Christians
to lions, but Christians colonized the minds of millions of Romans. Today's
mass media spread not only ideas but idols on a global scale to billions of
people.
Pop Culture and PC are weaponized globalist jihad. Pop Culture is no longer
just for fun or a diversion. It is the MAIN culture for most white kids.
Kids worship celebrities as angels of globalism.
Those young white girls at the concert were being mentally colonized and
sensually manipulated into open borders for immigrant invaders and open
vaginas for black Africans.
The concert was a propaganda act of war.
Culture matters. This is why the Progs and Glob tear down Confederate
statues in the South. It is why they make movies like GET OUT, which are far
more dangerous than terror bombings. Terror kills a few 100. Pop Culture or
Prop Culture(as it is propaganda) colonize hundreds of millions of white
hearts/minds and EFFECTIVELY MURDER the patriot soul-spirit within them.
Soul-Murder of whites makes whites welcome invasion and their own
racial-territorial demise.
If you want to know why Manchester welcomed so much invasion and continue to
do so after the bombing, it is because white minds have been colonized by PC
and Pop Culture.
Indeed, these mentally-colonized whites hate terror bombings not because
such attacks are consequences of invasion but because they may strengthen
the nationalists who oppose immigrant-invasion.
Why do whites welcome immigrant-invasion? Because they've been mentally
colonized by PC and Pop Culture that says being a white woman means to whore
out to the world.
Suppose Nazis hadn't dropped bombs in UK in WWII but only propaganda
material from the air and succeeded in winning over the hearts and minds of
millions of Brits. That would have been more damaging.
It's like US took over so many nations with the 'soft power' of media,
academia, and entertainment. Take over minds, you take over souls. The
mind-colonized become your slaves.
Progs know the true meaning of culture as political instrument. This is why
they denounce D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION. They see it as more
than just a movie. They see it as proud statement of white racial
consciousness. This is why they wage culture war. Culture is a weapon. And
as mass media has access to every home via the TV, the TV is the open gate
thru which the globalisys get to attack and colonize your minds.
Why did Jews react so harshly to PASSION OF THE CHRIST? They saw it as
Culture War in favor of Christian Pride and Jewish Guilt. Why won't
Hollywood make a movie about Nakba or Knoxville Massacre? Because they can
be propaganda against Jewish power.
How did the West come to accept 'gay marriage'? Colonization of white minds
via Pop Culture and PC. PC and Pop Culture are globo-jihad.
They can also be violent. Look at BLM. Look at 'spreading democracy'. Look
at destruction of Libya and coup in Ukraine. Look at destruction of
Christian businesses for not baking 'gay wedding cake'. Globalism uses both
soft jihad and hard jihad. Indeed, even the unleashing of ISIS and Alqaeda
is the result of globalism's war on enemies of Israel. Zionist-globalists
undermined Arab regimes and let ISIS run riot to mess things up. Thus,
Islmic Jihadis are both agents of globalism and its enemy(as Muslims hate
western degeneracy).
Anyway, the real shame is that whites acquiesced to defeat at hands of
globalists without resitance and violence.
I think part of the reason why white rightists rag on Muslim terrorists is
this: Muslims have guts enough to resist globalism(even as they've been
enabled by it). In contrast, even white patriots make a lot of noise but are
afraid to take real action.
There was a time when whites would have used violence against those who'd
dare to stick homo flags in churches, push 'gay marriage' and destroy
Christian bakers, and tear down Confederate statues.
But whites, even right wing ones, don't fight back but only complain NO
MATTER HOW MUCH THEY ARE HUMILIATED, ABUSED, AND ATTACKED. Only the Alt
Right did some pushing back at Berkeley.
So, when they see the courage of Muslim terrorists, they call them 'losers'
and 'cowards'.
Really? The real cowards are whites who do nothing while General Lee statue
is torn down. Real cowards are whites who do nothing while Trump reneges on
all his promises. Real cowards are white men who raise their girls to whore
out to Negroes. Real cowards are white men who let freaks turn big cities
into homo celebration centers and invoke homomania as 'western value' that
must be defended from Muslims. Real cowards are whites who praise Jewish
globalists who are behind homomania, the attack on Confederate culture, open
borders, and Afro-colonization of white wombs.
Compared to these loser white cowards, at least Muslim terrorists take
action against globalist filth.
A Palestinian child with a rock in west Bank has more guts than all white
men in the West who cuck out to Jewish globalists, homo freaks, and black
thugs.
White fathers who let their girls attend that concert are far worse scum
than the terrorist who blew it up.
A Palestinian child with a rock in west Bank has more guts than all white
men in the West who cuck out to Jewish globalists, homo freaks, and black
thugs.
White fathers who let their girls attend that concert are far worse scum
I often call them human urinals
white "men" so filled with racial self-loathing that they symbolically allow
themselves to be pissed on to mollify their excruciating self-hatred
I condemn the terrorist with all my breath, but I have to admit, he isn't
perhaps as morally execrable as the white men who sat by in Rotherham as
their daughters were being passed around
A symbolic pinprick pipe bomb attack on a slut fest and the Brits are
cringing and whining like school girls. At least the muzzies take their
losses (100 to 300/day, mostly civilians) like men without all the
moralizing and faggy hysteria. It's embarrassing
"... If History is "a set of lies agreed upon," as Napoleon is supposed to have said, then American politics has increasingly become a series of induced hysterias by elite agreement. ..."
"... Trump Impeachment Talk Started Before He Was Even Nominated ..."
"... The good news: this demystifies impeachment, which VDARE.com has long argued is not a juridical proceeding but an assertion of political control like a no-confidence motion in a Parliamentary system ..."
"... Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Broke A President And Divided America Forever ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Conservative Review ..."
"... Even after Manchester terror, Congress silent on US problems ..."
"... Well, start with a Gulf of Tonkin made-up "incident" and you never know how might be dying and for what. My disgust is tempered by the political background history of the whole show where Good Guys were hard to find anywhere. ..."
"... President Trump could order thousands of American soldiers deployed to existing military bases near our borders to actually defend the USA. This was the primary role of the US Army before World War II. The US Border Patrol didn't even exist until 1924. ..."
"... European queen Merkel sees her chance to improve her position, as she says 'the USA no longer supports us, thus we need a stronger Europe', with Merkel as emperor. Luckily NATO is nothing without the USA military might, and European tax payers in general do not see the need for high military expenses. ..."
"... My main caveat with Mr. Brimelow's article is his sympathetic view of the Vietnam war. It was an immoral war sold on a lie no smaller than Iraq WMDs. ..."
"... Scratch a Brit and you always come up with an imperialist .and a delusional imperialist at that. ..."
If History is "a set of lies agreed upon," as Napoleon is
supposed to have said,
then American politics has increasingly become a series of induced hysterias by elite agreement.
Thus the Ruling Class's
Trayvon Martin ,
Ferguson
and
Baltimore frenzies came and went, shamelessly unaffected by repeated
Narrative Collapses -- inexplicable, unless you were aware of Left's amoral imperative to incite
its black clients against the white American majority.
It's as simple as this: If the Evil Party gets control of the House of Representatives, Trump
was
always going to be impeached, regardless of what he did. (Conviction, which requires 67 Senate
votes, might be more difficult-although Democrats probably assume any Republican President could
be guilted into capitulation,
like Richard Nixon,
unlike Bill
Clinton ).
The good news: this demystifies impeachment, which VDARE.com has long argued is not a juridical
proceeding but an assertion of political control like a no-confidence motion in a Parliamentary system
- and should be more broadly applied, by a patriot Congress, not just to Presidents but to
bureaucrats and
kritarchs
.
Buchanan's book is important and powerful-but somber: he's not joking at all with the last four
words of his title, although he doesn't dwell on it. It's a theme that has increasingly appeared
in his recent columns,
here and
here
and
here .
... ... ...
Buchanan vividly recreates the MSM-hyped atmosphere of crisis in Washington in the fall of 1969,
now completely forgotten but at the time an incipient elite coup even more serious than anything
yet seen under Trump:
Directly ahead was the largest antiwar protest in US history, October 15, when hundreds of
thousands were expected on the Washington Monument grounds, within sight of the White House. Major
media had become propagandists for the antiwar movement and were beating the drums for getting
out of Vietnam now. It seemed as though the fate of Lyndon Johnson, his presidency broken by the
Tet Offensive in 1968 and his humiliation by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire, could be ours as
well. David Broder of the Washington Post saw President Nixon's situation as did I. "It
is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon
Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969," wrote Broder on October 7.
"The likelihood is great that they will succeed again."
This was a particularly dangerous situation for Nixon because his Republican Party controlled
neither Senate nor House. In theory, the Democrats could have wrested policy from him at any point,
although in those days the prestige of the Presidency and respect for its prerogatives, sacralized
by years of Democratic dominance, was still a serious inhibition.
Contrary to his current
Demon King image, Nixon had responded after his election very much as Trump (notwithstanding
his more abrasive rhetoric) has done: appeasement.
... ... ...
Needless to say, appeasement did not work for either man. Partly this was because both provoked
a really peculiar blind personal hatred from the political class -- "for reasons I could not comprehend,"
says Buchanan in the case of Nixon, "given his centrist politics and even liberal policies "
... ... ...
Although it's now hard to imagine, the Main Stream Media had been as generally respected as the
office of the Presidency itself. Agnew and Buchanan burst that bubble for good.
.... ... ...
What this means in the current situation is clear: Trump must wheel and fight. And he must fight
on the issue that elected him, which poses an existential threat to the American nation (and, incidentally,
the GOP) that is even more serious than global Communism: mass out-of-control non-traditional immigration,
which out-of-control Leftist
judicial imperialists have now made unmistakably clear they intend to read into the constitution.
Trump must make clear (especially to cowardly Republican Congressman) that the survival of the Historic
American Nation is inextricable from his own.
Block funding for all refugees and visas from the Middle East for the remainder of the fiscal
year. Further enforce provisions of the INA that strip the courts of jurisdiction to adjudicate
rejections of visas. Pass a supplemental funding bill for the border wall and the construction
of a visa exit-entry tracking system, a goal Democrats officially support and that has been
passed by Congress numerous times since 1996.
In order to accomplish this or anything else, Congressional Republicans need to modify the
filibuster rules. Otherwise, they face electoral oblivion. It's time they actually confront the
issues of our time and harness the news cycle to pass common-sense national security bills. The
president must use the bully pulpit and his status as leader of the party to craft specific proposals
for the do-nothing Congress. Then, place the onus on them to act. He should give a televised address
from the Oval Office outlining his response to the growing threat of homegrown terrorism and demanding
action from Congress to deal with the courts.
Or we could just use up this once-in-generation electoral mandate on naming post offices and
continuing every major Obama policy.
He continued Johnson's suspension of the bombing of North Vietnam, a disgustingly irresponsible
ploy originally designed to shore up Democratic support in the 1968 presidential election campaign
at the expense of the Americans troops fighting and dying in great numbers in the South.
Well, start with a Gulf of Tonkin made-up "incident" and you never know how might be dying
and for what. My disgust is tempered by the political background history of the whole show where Good Guys
were hard to find anywhere.
President Trump could order thousands of American soldiers deployed to existing military bases
near our borders to actually defend the USA. This was the primary role of the US Army before World
War II. The US Border Patrol didn't even exist until 1924.
This would cost little and could be paid for by existing Army operational and training funding,
and could be done in a matter of weeks. Congress would have no say and no permission is required.
Anyone who doubts this has been confused by corporate propaganda and can learn from reading this.
http://www.g2mil.com/border.htm
Dat Trump zichzelf als brexiteer ziet en het anti-Europese populisme aanmoedigt, vormt een
breuk met alles waar het naoorlogse Amerika voor staat.
The above is written by a Dutch journalist living in Berlin, Van Baar, a pro EU writer.
Translation:
That Trump sees himself as brexiteer and encourages anti European populism, is a rupture with
all that post WWII USA has as values.
Van Baar is quite right, Trump wants good relations with Russia, this does not fit in with
EU expansion plans, the Ukraine association, an association with a military paragraph.
European queen Merkel sees her chance to improve her position, as she says 'the USA no longer
supports us, thus we need a stronger Europe', with Merkel as emperor.
Luckily NATO is nothing without the USA military might, and European tax payers in general do
not see the need for high military expenses.
The last volume is almost finished. Each of those books is a superb piece of research and writing.
It's taken him around 35 years in total. The last volume (LBJ 1968-dead) ought to be coming out
soon. And his biggest problem? Almost everyone that knew all the players is gone. Especially those
who knew of LBJ's ongoing corruptions to his end.
My main caveat with Mr. Brimelow's article is his sympathetic view of the Vietnam war. It was
an immoral war sold on a lie no smaller than Iraq WMDs. Other than that, it's on the money, Trump
really needs to come out swinging.
I have always despised the English Foreigner Peter Brimelow. Brimelow is an unrepentant Cold
Warrior. The Cold War which imposed the the Civil Rights Act of 1964(Maxine Waters) on us was
a high speed highway-Route 1964-to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act=The Native Born
White American Extermination Act.
Immigration to the USA should be severely curtailed ..starting with Brits like Brimmie.
Scratch
a Brit and you always come up with an imperialist .and a delusional imperialist at that.
All evidence
points to the loss of the Vietnam War on the battlefield, and the complete collapse of the US
civilian military. All evidence points to the exceptional stupidity of a land war in Asia.
Evidence
is no problem for a Brit imperialist ..just ignore it and assert we were stabbed in the back by
an evil cabal in the US Knesset er Congress. As to Nixon and Buchanan ..they are relics from a
bygone age when white people were 90% of the population and Americans still worked for a living
i.e. growing, building, repairing something. Times change ..the white silent majority has disappeared
and so will the ragtag American empire.
With Trump now officially joining this ugly alliance,
the US will contribute the military "expertise" of a country which can't
even take Mosul, mostly because its forces are hiding, literally, behind the
backs of Kurdish and Arab Iraqis. To think that these three want to take on
Hezbollah, Iran and Russia would be almost comical if it wasn't for the kind
of appalling bloodshed that this will produce.
Alas, just look at what the Saudis are
doing to Yemen, what the Israelis did to Gaza or Lebanon or what the US did
to Iraq and you will immediately get a sense of what the formation of this
nefarious alliance will mean for the people of Syria and the rest of the
region. The record shows that a military does not need to be skilled at real
warfare to be skilled at murdering people: even though the US occupation of
Iraq was, in military terms, a total disaster, it did result in almost
one and a half million dead people
.
What is also clear is who the main target
of this evil alliance will be:
Iran, the only real democracy in the Middle-East
. The pretext? Why –
weapons of mass destruction, of course: the (non-existing) chemical weapons
of the Syrians and the (non-existing) nuclear weapons of the Iranians. In
Trump's own words
: "
no civilized nation can tolerate the massacre of
innocents with chemical weapons
" and "
The United States is firmly
committed to keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and halting their
support of terrorists and militias that are causing so much suffering and
chaos throughout the Middle East
". Nothing new here. As for how this
evil alliance will fight when it does not have any boots worth putting on
the ground? Here, again, the solution as simple as it is old: to use the
ISIS/al-Qaeda takfiri crazies as cannon fodder for the US, Israel and the
KSA. This is just a re-heated version of the "brilliant" Brzezinski plan on
how to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Back to the future indeed. And
should the "good terrorists" win, by some kind of miracle, in Syria, then
turn them loose against against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against the Shias
in Iraq and Iran. Who knows, with some (a lot) of luck, the Empire might
even be able to re-kindle the "Caucasus Emirate" somewhere on the southern
borders of Russia, right?
Wrong.
For one thing, the locals are not
impressed. Here is what the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah,
had to say about this
:
"The Israelis, are betting on Isis and
all this takfiri project in the region but in any case they know, the
Israelis, the Americans, and all those who use the takfiris, that this is
a project without any future. I tell you, and I also reassure everyone
through this interview. This project has no future."
The problem is that the Americans do
not know our region and those who advise US officials are misleading them
It is pretty clear who these 'advisors'
are: the Saudis and the Israelis. Their intentions are also clear: to get
the Americans to do their dirty work for them while remaining as far back as
possible. You could say that the Saudis and Israelis are trying to get the
Americans to do for them what the Americans are trying to get the Kurds to
do for them in Iraq: be their cannon fodder. The big difference is that the
Kurds at least clearly understand what is going on whereas the Americans
are, indeed, clueless.
Not all Americans, of course. Many fully
understand what is happening. A good example of this acute awareness is
what b had to say on Moon of Alabama
after reading the transcript of the
press briefing of Secretary of Defense Mattis, General Dunford and Special
Envoy McGurk on the Campaign to Defeat ISIS:
My first thought after reading its was:
"These people live in a different world. They have no idea how the real
word works on the ground. What real people think, say, and are likely to
do." There was no strategic thought visible. Presented were only some
misguided tactical ideas.
A senior British reporter, the Secretary
General of Hezbollah, the President of Iran and a US blogger all seem to
agree on one thing: there is no real US "policy" at work here, what we are
seeing is a dangerous exercise in pretend-strategy which cannot result in
anything but chaos and defeat.
So why is the Trump administration plowing
ahead with this nonsense?
The reasons are most likely a combination
of internal US politics and a case of "
if
all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail
". The anti-Trump
color revolution
cum
coup d'état
which
the Neocons and the US deep state started even before Trump actually got
into the White House
has never stopped and all the signs are that the
anti-Trump forces will only rest once Trump is impeached and, possibly,
removed from office. In response to this onslaught, all that Trump initially
could come up with was to sacrifice his closest allies and friends (Flynn,
Bannon) in the vain hope that this would appease the Neocons. Then he began
to
mindlessly endorse their "policies"
. Predictably this has not worked
either. Then Trump even tried floating
the idea of having Joe Lieberman for FBI director
before
getting 'cold feet' and chaning his position yet again
. And all the
while while Trump is desperately trying to appease them, the Neocons are
doubling-down, doubling-down again and then doubling-down some more. It is
pretty clear by now that Trump does not have what it takes in terms of
allies or even personal courage to tackle the swamp he promised to drain. As
a result what we are seeing now looks like a repeat of the last couple of
years of the Obama administration: a total lack of vision or even a general
policy, chaos in the Executive Branch and a foreign policy characterized by
a multiple personality disorder which see the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, the
CIA and the White House all pursuing completley different policies in
pursuit of completely different goals. In turn, each of these actors engages
in what (they think) they do best: the Pentagon bombs, the State Department
pretends to negotiate, the CIA engages in more or less covert operation in
support of more or less "good terrorists" while the White House focuses its
efforts on trying to make the President look good or, at least, in control
of something.
Truth be told, Trump has nothing at all to
show so far:
Russia
: according to rumors spread
by the US, former corporate executive Rex Tillerson was supposed to go to
Moscow to deliver some kind of ultimatum. Thank God that did not happen.
Instead Tillerson spent several hours talking to Lavrov and then a couple
more talking to Putin. More recently, Lavrov was received by Tillerson in
the US and, following that meeting, he also met with Trump. Following all
these meetings no tangible results were announced. What does that mean? Does
that mean that nothing was achieved? Not at all, what was achieved is that
the Russians clearly conveyed to the Americans two basic thing: first, that
there were not impressed by their sabre-rattling and, second, that as long
as the US was acting as a brain-dead elephant in a porcelain store there was
no point for Russian to work with the US. To his credit, Trump apparently
backed down and even tried to make a few conciliatory statements. Needless
to say, the US Ziomedia crucified him for being "too friendly" with The
Enemy. The outcome now is, of course, better than war with Russia, but
neither is it some major breakthrough as Trump had promised (and, I believe,
sincerely hoped for) during his campaign.
DPRK/PRC
: what had to happen did,
of course happen: all the sabre-rattling with three aircraft carriers strike
groups ended up being a gigantic flop as neither the North Koreans nor the
Chinese were very impressed. If anything, this big display of Cold War era
hardware was correctly interpreted not as a sign of strength, but a sign of
weakness. Trump wasted a lot of money and a lot of time, but he has
absolutely nothing to show for it. The DPRK tested yet another intermediate
range missile yesterday. Successfully, they say.
The Ukraine
: apparently Trump
simply does not care about the Ukraine and, frankly, I can't blame him.
Right now the situation there is so bad that no outside power can
meaningfully influence the events there any more. I would argue that in this
case, considering the objective circumstances, Trump did the right thing
when he essentially "passed the baby" to Merkel and the EU: let them try to
sort out this bloody mess as it is primarily their problem. Karma, you know.
So, all in all, Trump has nothing to show
in the foreign policy realm. He made a lot of loud statements, followed by
many threats, but at the end of the day somebody apparently told him "we
can't do that, Mr President" (and thank God for that anonymous hero!). Once
this reality began to sink in all which was left is to create an illusion of
foreign policy, a make-believe reality in which the US is still a superpower
which can determine the outcome of any conflict. Considering that the
AngloZionist Empire is, first and foremost, what Chris Hedges calls an "
Empire
of Illusions
" it only makes sense for its President to focus on creating
spectacles and photo opportunities. Alas, the White House is so clueless
that it manages to commit major blunders even when trying to ingratiate
itself with a close ally. We saw that during the recent Trump trip to Saudi
Arabia when both Melania and Ivanka Trump
refused to cover their heads while in Riyadh but did so when they visited
the Pope in the Vatican
. As the French say, this was "worse than a
crime, it was a blunder" which speaks a million words about the contempt in
which the American elites hold the Muslim world.
There is another sign that the US is
really scraping the bottom of the barrel: Rex Tillerson has now declared
that "
NATO
should formally join the anti-Daesh coalition
". In military terms, NATO
is worse than useless for the US: the Americans are much better off fighting
by themselves than involving a large number of "pretend armies" who could
barely protect themselves in a real battlefield. Oh sure, you can probably
scrape a halfway decent battalion here, maybe even a regiment there, but all
in all NATO forces are useless, especially for ground operations. They, just
like the Saudis and Israelis, prefer to strike from the air, preferably
protected by USAF AWACs, and never to get involved in the kind of ugly
infantry fighting which is taking place in Syria. For all their very real
faults and problems, at least the Americans do have a number of truly combat
capable units, such as the Marines and some Army units, which are
experienced and capable of giving the Takfiris a run for their money. But
the Europeans? Forget it!
It is really pathetic to observe the
desperate efforts of the Trump Administration to create some kind of halfway
credible anti-Daesh coalition while strenuously avoiding to look at the
simple fact that the only parties which can field a large number of combat
capable units to fight Daesh are the Iranians, Hezbollah and, potentially,
the Russians. This is why Iranian President Rouhani
recently declared
that
"Who fought against the terrorists? It
was Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia. But who funded the terrorists?
Those who fund terrorists cannot claim they are fighting against them"
and "Who can say regional stability can be restored without Iran? Who can
say the region will experience total stability without Iran?"
In truth, even the Turks and the Kurds
don't really have what it would take to defeat Daesh in Syria. But the worst
mistake of the US generals is that they are still pretending as if a large
and experienced infantry force like Daesh/ISIS/al-Qaeda/etc could be
defeated without a major ground offensive. That won't happen.
So Trump can dance with the Wahabis and
stand in prayer at the wailing wall, but all his efforts to determine the
outcome of the war in Syria are bound to fail: far from being a superpower,
the US has basically become irrelevant, especially in the Middle East. This
is why Russia, Iran and Turkey are now attempting to create a trilateral "US
free" framework to try to change the conditions on the ground. The very best
the US are still capable of is to sabotage those efforts and needlessly
prolong the carnage in Syria and Iraq. That is both pathetic and deeply
immoral.
* * *
When I saw Trump dancing with his Saudi
pals I immediately thought of the movies "Dances with Wolves" and "Titanic".
Empires often end in violence and chaos, but Trump has apparently decided to
add a good measure of ridicule to the mix. The tragedy is that neither the
United States nor the rest of the planet can afford that kind of ridicule
right now, especially not the kind of ridicule which can very rapidly
escalate in an orgy of violence. With the European politicians paralyzed in
a state subservient stupor to the Rothschild gang, Latin America ravaged by
(mostly US-instigated) crises and the rest of the planet trying to stay
clear from the stumbling ex-superpower, the burden to try to contain this
slow-motion train wreck falls upon Russia and China.
As for Trump, he made a short speech
before NATO leaders today. He spoke about the "
threats from Russia and on
NATO's eastern and southern borders
". QED.
{Tillerson was supposed to go to Moscow to deliver some kind of
ultimatum.}
What kind of so-called
'ultimatum'
could
Tillerson possibly deliver to Moscow? What hasn't Washington already
'ultimatumed'
to Russia that has failed to force Russia to submit to
Washington's will:
1) Assault on the Ruble: failed.
2) Engineered oil price collapse: failed.
3) Sanctions: failed.
4) Syria: failed.
5) ..
{Thank God that did not happen.}
And as Mr. Spock said to Dr. Bones in one of the episodes " ..the
Deity had nothing to do with it: it was my cross-linking to B that did
it ..": Deity had nothing to do with it. It was thems 8,000 or so nuclear
warheads that Russia has that did it. US issues ultimatums only to
countries that can't bite back, like telling Saddam he has 48 hours to
get, and then promptly invading.
@Avery
{Tillerson was supposed to go to Moscow to deliver some kind of
ultimatum.}
What kind of so-called
'ultimatum'
could Tillerson possibly
deliver to Moscow? What hasn't Washington already
'ultimatumed'
to
Russia that has failed to force Russia to submit to Washington's will:
1) Assault on the Ruble: failed.
2) Engineered oil price collapse: failed.
3) Sanctions: failed.
4) Syria: failed.
5) ........
And as Mr. Spock said to Dr. Bones in one of the episodes ".....the Deity
had nothing to do with it: it was my cross-linking to B that did
it.....": Deity had nothing to do with it. It was thems 8,000 or so
nuclear warheads that Russia has that did it. US issues ultimatums only
to countries that can't bite back, like telling Saddam he has 48 hours to
get,...and then promptly invading.
I've been waiting for someone to point out the
silliness of asking Russia and China to sanction North Korea, when the US
currently has sanctions on Russia and is threatening China in the South
China sea. Maybe that is what Lavrov talked about with Trump.
Here is Jack Perry's take on the war against ISIS Inc:
"If there's one
thing Democrats and Republicans can agree upon, it's war. Both of them
never saw a war they didn't like unless the other party started it, it's
going badly, and it's an election year."
"They want to declare war this time as opposed to just start bombing
and worry about legality later. Okay, but who will they send the
declaration of war to? ISIS is a non-state entity. What, will they just
Twitter it out and hope ISIS cadre picks it up? In reality, what they
better understand is this: When it's a non-state entity, you can't sign a
cease-fire with them, either. Therefore, how will the U.S. exit this war,
since cease-fires are its preferred route to getting someone else to take
over the payments?"
"let's keep in mind the U.S. government has technically been fighting
ISIS via an air war for a few years now and we haven't seen the "For
Sale" sign up at ISIS, Inc. so far. Let's also not forget the United
States government could not find Osama bin Laden for several years, has
not defeated al-Qaida for these 15 years plus since 9/11, and didn't even
defeat the Taliban over in Afghanistan where the U.S. military still
remains today. And now they want to mortgage our future in order to buy
the ISIS Boardwalk piece on the World Monopoly board?! Excuse me, but say
what?! "
The real answer is to stop supporting the fanatical Wahhabism of Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf state and shutdown their religious schools that
export radical Islam:
See how Ramzan Kadyrov the President of Chechnya successfully
reeducates Muslims who lose their way and make the mistake of listening
to Wahhabist Imams:
Likewise it is important to stop supporting Israel and their radical
Jewish doctrine and close down their concentration camp, eliminate their
chemical, biological and radiological weapons stockpiles, and close down
their support for Al Qaeda and their allies including ISIS.
Providing an apology to the sailors of the USS Liberty for their
sacrifice and abandonment by the US government for the last 50 years is
also in order. This shameful treatment of these US military is a major
stain on America.
A useful article, as is always the case with our fine Saker.
Though I
cannot understand why writers continue to follow the trawler like the
seagulls waiting for the sardines, (a nod in the direction of King
Eric!). Trump has been proven, as Obama was proven, and many before him,
to be nominally a script reader, a totem for the masses to look towards
as their 'leader' when the reality is that the government of the US
especially and most obviously is merely tangible facet of a much bigger
group. In short, Trump is a businessman given the chance to make a few
extra millions and go down in history as a President. All he has to do is
try to keep his mouth shut, make these visits to other countries for
effect, make speeches given to him by others and he gets more gold and
his place in history. It is all theatre
The real power is so obviously in Israel, alongside old and new money,
the military industrial complex which is spearheaded by the US and
UK with the mass media another major power group and connected.
Pharmaceutical and Agricultural corporations have also risen to huge
prominence. Essentially, the 'government' is mainly for show.
Trump has forged no new alliance. The KSa is run by immensely dodgy
fiends who might even be Jews themselves. The two countries are an axis
or seat of power in the region with the same aims, the same MO, the same
funding, arming and support of the same militant groups. Anyway, much of
this is outlined by the Saker.
However, as I have seen elsewhere, this idea of the europeans being so
weak and offering nothing on the power stage is either very poor
reporting or some form of racism. The secret services of the Uk are
involved in likely every theatre of war around the globe. They simply do
not allow themselves to be so easily seen as the CIA or other military
facets of the US death machine.
I suspect the French also are very well connected and hugely involved.
Behind the scenes. Mainly the Brits though. Always have been, always will
be. Their bread and butter is serving interests well beyond the
government, nothing to do with the people. I would also add that some of
the special forces at least in the motherland (England to me) are revered
as much as feared across the globe this has been confirmed to me by
soldiers, not just what I have read.
Also, still on Europe, well at least the UK Unlike the US, which
managed to elect a racist, misogynist, bigot, the UK voted in enough
numbers for their independence. They also have provided enough support
from the people, not the Establishment to present to the world a
candidate of decency, purity of heart and integrity, the likes of which
have not been seen in the US, at such a high level, not anywhere else a
handful of latin american countries, for many moons indeed.
The witch hunt against him from his own party, from the Conservatives,
from the mass media, from his so called 'friends' is a disgrace, yet the
mere fact the people have caused such a tidal wave to even give such a
man a chance, brings me pride and a slither, fast fading as it will
prove, of hope
Too many writers generalize Europe too much for me to conclude
anything other than their experience of Europe comes from words on a
screen rather than practical living in the countries and peoples they
write of.
The Dutch university professors Laslo Maracs and Wolfferen agree, Trump
understands that eight years Obama cannot be continued, leads the USA to
political and economic ruin.
China and Russia were driven together, the economic centre of the world
moved from the Atlantic to Central Asia.
John Maynard Keynes already knew, 'ideas are the most powerful in the
world', even obsolete ideas as the west controlling the world.
This is the obstruction by CNN, Washpost and NYT, they do not understand
that their world no longer exists.
Trump, in the view of the mentioned profs, and in mine, is manoevring
cautiously in order to change history, as Roosevelt needed some seven
years to get the USA people in the mood for war, Trump maybe needs as
many years to remove the mood for war from the USA.
Trump has to move cautiously, I do not think he believes the Oswald story
about the murder of Kennedy.
Trump may be influenced by the MIC and major industry groups, but they
are not the deep state, which should be narrowly defined as Israel
itself, its fifth column, and those elements in gov and the media who
succeeded in pulling off and covering up 911, without which we wouldn't
be dealing with any of this.
What I find alarming is Conservativism
Inc's willingness to accept the preposterous official narrative about 911
while "bravely" challenging gov data and narratives in all other
respects. Conservatives such as Pat Buchanan on down are willing to throw
out over one thousand years of Western development regarding the rational
relationship between evidence and conclusion, and not least the
scientific method, to support what amounts to fantastical storytelling.
I find it helpful to pull up Google images of these conservative
opposition voices, almost invariably cowardly looking little nerds, to
understand why we are being neutralized instead of organized to fight the
deep state and in our efforts to restore order.
@Johan Nagel
A useful article, as is always the case with our fine Saker.
Though I
cannot understand why writers continue to follow the trawler like the
seagulls waiting for the sardines, (a nod in the direction of King
Eric!). Trump has been proven, as Obama was proven, and many before him,
to be nominally a script reader, a totem for the masses to look towards
as their 'leader' when the reality is that the government of the US
especially and most obviously is merely tangible facet of a much bigger
group. In short, Trump is a businessman given the chance to make a few
extra millions and go down in history as a President. All he has to do is
try to keep his mouth shut, make these visits to other countries for
effect, make speeches given to him by others and he gets more gold and
his place in history. It is all theatre...
The real power is so obviously in Israel, alongside old and new money,
the military industrial complex which is spearheaded by the US and
UK...with the mass media another major power group and connected.
Pharmaceutical and Agricultural corporations have also risen to huge
prominence. Essentially, the 'government' is mainly for show.
Trump has forged no new alliance. The KSa is run by immensely dodgy
fiends who might even be Jews themselves. The two countries are an axis
or seat of power in the region with the same aims, the same MO, the same
funding, arming and support of the same militant groups. Anyway, much of
this is outlined by the Saker.
However, as I have seen elsewhere, this idea of the europeans being so
weak and offering nothing on the power stage is either very poor
reporting or some form of racism. The secret services of the Uk are
involved in likely every theatre of war around the globe. They simply do
not allow themselves to be so easily seen as the CIA or other military
facets of the US death machine.
I suspect the French also are very well connected and hugely involved.
Behind the scenes. Mainly the Brits though. Always have been, always will
be. Their bread and butter is serving interests well beyond the
government, nothing to do with the people. I would also add that some of
the special forces at least in the motherland (England to me) are revered
as much as feared across the globe...this has been confirmed to me by
soldiers, not just what I have read.
Also, still on Europe, well at least the UK...Unlike the US, which
managed to elect a racist, misogynist, bigot, the UK voted in enough
numbers for their independence. They also have provided enough support
from the people, not the Establishment to present to the world a
candidate of decency, purity of heart and integrity, the likes of which
have not been seen in the US, at such a high level, not anywhere else a
handful of latin american countries, for many moons indeed.
The witch hunt against him from his own party, from the Conservatives,
from the mass media, from his so called 'friends' is a disgrace, yet the
mere fact the people have caused such a tidal wave to even give such a
man a chance, brings me pride and a slither, fast fading as it will
prove, of hope...
Too many writers generalize Europe too much for me to conclude
anything other than their experience of Europe comes from words on a
screen rather than practical living in the countries and peoples they
write of.
NB. Also, for a bit of fun, I used a couple of introductions of
characters from Dostoyevsky's The Devils, as I watched interviews with
Corbyn and May last night, and tailored the text to provide...Fyodor's
analysis of the candidates!>> http://thedissolutefox.com/profiling-the-candidates-uk-elections-corbyn-and-may/
)
Trump may be influenced by the MIC and major industry groups, but they are not the deep state,
which should be narrowly defined as Israel itself, its fifth column, and those elements in gov
and the media who succeeded in pulling off and covering up 911, without which we wouldn't be
dealing with any of this.
What I find alarming is Conservativism Inc's willingness to accept
the preposterous official narrative about 911 while "bravely" challenging gov data and narratives
in all other respects. Conservatives such as Pat Buchanan on down are willing to throw out over
one thousand years of Western development regarding the rational relationship between evidence
and conclusion, and not least the scientific method, to support what amounts to fantastical
storytelling.
I find it helpful to pull up Google images of these conservative opposition voices, almost
invariably cowardly looking little nerds, to understand why we are being neutralized instead of
organized to fight the deep state and in our efforts to restore order.
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people
rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim community in Britain and the
world. Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out such atrocities is
to provoke the communal punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a
portion of them who will then become open to recruitment by Isis and
al-Qaeda clones.
This approach of not blaming Muslims in
general but targeting "radicalisation" or simply "evil" may appear sensible
and moderate, but in practice it makes the motivation of the killers in
Manchester or the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015 appear vaguer and less
identifiable than it really is. Such generalities have the unfortunate
effect of preventing people pointing an accusing finger at the variant of
Islam which certainly is responsible for preparing the soil for the beliefs
and actions likely to have inspired the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.
The ultimate inspiration for such people
is Wahhabism, the puritanical, fanatical and regressive type of Islam
dominant in Saudi Arabia, whose ideology is close to that of al-Qaeda and
Isis. This is an exclusive creed, intolerant of all who disagree with it
such as secular liberals, members of other Muslim communities such as the
Shia or women resisting their chattel-like status.
What has been termed Salafi jihadism, the
core beliefs of Isis and al-Qaeda, developed out of Wahhabism, and has
carried out its prejudices to what it sees as a logical and violent
conclusion. Shia and Yazidis were not just heretics in the eyes of this
movement, which was a sort of Islamic Khmer Rouge, but sub-humans who should
be massacred or enslaved. Any woman who transgressed against repressive
social mores should be savagely punished. Faith should be demonstrated by a
public death of the believer, slaughtering the unbelievers, be they the 86
Shia children being evacuated by bus from their homes in Syria on 15 April
or the butchery of young fans at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday
night.
The real causes of "radicalisation" have
long been known, but the government, the BBC and others seldom if ever refer
to it because they do not want to offend the Saudis or be accused of
anti-Islamic bias. It is much easier to say, piously but quite inaccurately,
that Isis and al-Qaeda and their murderous foot soldiers "have nothing to do
with Islam". This has been the track record of US and UK governments since
9/11. They will look in any direction except Saudi Arabia when seeking the
causes of terrorism. President Trump has been justly denounced and derided
in the US for last Sunday accusing Iran and, in effect, the Shia community
of responsibility for the wave of terrorism that has engulfed the region
when it ultimately emanates from one small but immensely influential Sunni
sect. One of the great cultural changes in the world over the last 50 years
is the way in which Wahhabism, once an isolated splinter group, has become
an increasingly dominant influence over mainstream Sunni Islam, thanks to
Saudi financial support.
A further sign of the
Salafi-jihadi impact is the choice of targets: the
attacks on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, a gay
night club in Florida in 2016 and the Manchester Arena
this week have one thing in common. They were all
frequented by young people enjoying entertainment and a
lifestyle which made them an Isis or al-Qaeda target.
But these are also events where the mixing of men and
women or the very presence of gay people is denounced
by puritan Wahhabis and Salafi jihadis alike. They both
live in a cultural environment in which the
demonisation of such people and activities is the norm,
though their response may differ.
The culpability of
Western governments for terrorist attacks on their own
citizens is glaring but is seldom even referred to.
Leaders want to have a political and commercial
alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil states.
They have never held them to account for supporting a
repressive and sectarian ideology which is likely to
have inspired Salman Abedi. Details of his motivation
may be lacking, but the target of his attack and the
method of his death is classic al-Qaeda and Isis in its
mode of operating.
The reason these two
demonic organisations were able to survive and expand
despite the billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars
spent on "the war on terror" after 9/11 is that those
responsible for stopping them deliberately missed the
target and have gone on doing so. After 9/11, President
Bush portrayed Iraq not Saudi Arabia as the enemy; in a
re-run of history President Trump is ludicrously
accusing Iran of being the source of most terrorism in
the Middle East. This is the real 9/11 conspiracy,
beloved of crackpots worldwide, but there is nothing
secret about the deliberate blindness of British and
American governments to the source of the beliefs that
has inspired the massacres of which Manchester is only
the latest – and certainly not the last – horrible
example.
(Reprinted from The Independent by permission of author
or representative)
Thanks! For a while I thought you might identify
their motivation with our having bombed Muslim
countries pretty much continuously since 1946.
Nice save!
@Godfree Roberts
Thanks! For a while I thought you might identify
their motivation with our having bombed Muslim
countries pretty much continuously since 1946.
Nice save!
Why do those responsible deliberately miss the
target and have gone on doing so? Because they all
profit greatly from it. Who are they? The war
industry and its various 'communities', the Jews.
the media, you name it, they're all in it for fun
and profit. None of them would have an income if it
all just stopped, if they actually wanted, you know,
peace whatever that is.
They can manufacture an
invasion of Iraq based on non-existent WMDs as
punishment for 911, when apparently the real
culprits were supposed to be Saudis. They can
pretend that the conflict in Syria is a 'civil war'
rather than a proxy invasion by the US, Saudi Arabia
and other Arab states. They can manufacture groups
like Al-Qaeda and ISIS but pretend that these groups
arose independently from their own funding,
operations and just plain meddling in everybody
else's business. They can pretend that Iran is the
major sponsor of terrorism in the ME when clearly it
isn't. They can bullshit really anything they want
and everybody just buys it.
If they can do all this, then 911 ought not be
too difficult either. The press and so-called
intellectual class just buys into whatever the
narrative is supposed to be. Karl Rove's statement
that 'the empire can create it's own reality now' is
fairly obviously a sly reference to 911. How does
the empire get to this level of expertise? Clearly a
military industrial complex funded to the tune of a
trillion dollars per year that can research any
problem and do whatever it wants could run such a
project without much difficulty. It can also buy off
the press and influence the intellectual classes in
all sorts of ways that conform to some manual in
some top secret facility that nobody has ever heard
of and never will.
The release of the redacted 28 pages shows that
Prince Bandar, good friend of the Bush family,
funded two the supposed hijackers for a year while
they prepared for the 'attack'. This indicates
without any doubt that the hijackers were Saudi
intelligence assets pretending to be hijackers.
(Unless you are wacky enough to believe that Prince
Bandar, good friend of the Bush family, secretly
sought to stab his good friends in the back by
committing a heavy atrocity upon them, or at least
didn't tell them about it in advance). So its
obvious that the Saudis were running the hijacker
side of the 911 operation for their good friends in
America because thats what good friends do. That's
why the hijackers were Saudi, rather than say Iraqi
or Iranian, and thats why America didn't invade the
Saudis as punishment for the terrible deed.
Of course we also know that the CIA let these
same two hijackers, or rather Saudi intelligence
assets, into the United States without telling the
FBI about it although it had several occasions to do
so. How odd, yet these same two hijackers, or rather
Saudi intelligence assets, were known terrorists and
the CIA definitely knew all about them.
Please Mr Cockburn can you explain in your own
words why believing 911 was an inside job is somehow
crackpot?
@The Anti-Gnostic
So how come these attacks only happen in proudly
tolerant, liberal countries at venues like teen
concerts, coastal promenades, gay nightclubs, rock
concert halls? I'd venture to say the victims were
probably 90+% opposed to Middle Eastern wars or
discrimination against Muslims.
We Know What Inspired the Manchester Attack –
We Just Won't Admit It
No, you won't, it seems.
You'll happily point to wahhabism as one of the
contributory factors. I'd have thought you would be
prepared to point to the history of aggressive US
sphere military intervention in muslim countries,
though you seem a little coy about that in this
case, presumably so as not to distract from your
case against wahhabism, which so conveniently ties
in with your bête noir Trump's recent stupidity in
Saudi Arabia.
But you won't ever admit that immigration is one
of the prime factors.
So in this case we have a bombing carried out by
a 2nd generation immigrant muslim Libyan whose
father was admitted to the country for political
reasons because he was an active member of the
opposition to the Libyan government, which our
government sought to encourage, in the context of
Libya having recently been effectively destroyed and
consigned to brutally murderous, bloody chaos by
aggressive UK military action.
And yet for Cockburn and for most of the media
and political establishments, it's seemingly vital
to pretend that it's nothing to do with either
"invade the world" or "invite the world".
It now seems this was a bombing carried out by a 2nd
generation immigrant muslim Libyan whose father was
admitted to the country for political reasons
because he was an active member of the opposition to
the Libyan government, which our government sought
to encourage, in the context of Libya having
recently been effectively destroyed and consigned to
brutally murderous, bloody chaos by aggressive UK
military action.
Here's the BBC on the tangled web
of foreign conflicts our government has enmeshed us
in in Libya, by allowing immigration from a country
and regime changing its government by aggressive
military force:
There is a stark similarity here with the recent
Orlando nightclub shooting. In that case the
attacker was likewise a second generation immigrant
muslim from a country (in that case Afghanistan) the
US government has destroyed by aggressive military
action, whose parents were admitted to the country
because his father was part of the opposition to a
government the US regime wanted changed. Mateen made
online posts calling for revenge on the US for what
it had done to ME countries and even called the
police in the midst of his shootings to declare it
was an act of retaliation for US killings, and yet
those with an interest in obfuscation have looked
high and low for other motivations to obscure the
obvious one.
Invade the world and invite the world. It really
is as simple as that. Our governments interfere
murderously in other countries whilst importing
foreigners from those same countries and related
ones, and then act all horrified when it turns out
they have imported those wars along with the people.
@The Anti-Gnostic
So how come these attacks only happen in proudly
tolerant, liberal countries at venues like teen
concerts, coastal promenades, gay nightclubs, rock
concert halls? I'd venture to say the victims were
probably 90+% opposed to Middle Eastern wars or
discrimination against Muslims.
Taking punitive action against all Muslims is the
strategic goal of these people, widening the gulf
between Muslims and non-believers and moving towards
some kind of major clash of civilisations. They will
not be dissuaded by the West making Islam illegal,
shutting mosques and – somehow – exiling their own
third-and-fourth generation citizens. As well as not
being practical, it stands counter to our values, to
whit punishing the actions of the overwhelming
majority for the actions of the lunatic fringe few.
Britain endured 300,000 dead to defeat Nazi
Germany, France over 700,000 dead. We are simply not
going to be intimidated by such measures. If
anything, they will strengthen our resolve.
These people are also not part of a centralised
campaign being run by ISIS they are lone actors
What we need is more immigration so that Muslims
feel more comfortable. As long as white hold any
power in any society these attacks will continue
We can't control what goes on in
darkies'/non-Europeans' heads. They may hate us and
want to kill us, or they may not. They may decide to
set off bombs, chop off heads, etc., or they may
not.
But if we don't let them into our countries,
it doesn't matter if they hate us, want to kill us,
want to set off bombs, or want to chop off heads.
They won't
be able
to do any of those things.
See how logic works, lefties? (Please say you do.
The matter is very much in doubt.)
In that case the attacker was likewise a
second generation immigrant muslim from a country
(in that case Afghanistan) the US government has
destroyed
Has anyone really made the case that Afghanistan
was destroyed, by anyone? I've never seen it done
convincingly.
The place has long been a complete dump; there's
just never been anything to destroy. Not within
living memory, anyway.
Beyond the question of Islam, the people from Muslim
nations are for the most part lousy human specimens,
Islam or not. Does Islam put them into garish track
suits? Is Islam commanding them to grift on welfare
and other public services? Is it Islam that has them
sex grooming young white girls?
Or is this just the behavior one would expect
from an invading army that faces no resistance?
Indeed, not only are they not resisted, they are
feted (but never vetted). They are given MORE RIGHTS
by law than the native population. They are
encouraged to remain tribal.
In other words, they see their host nations as
weak, foolish, cowardly places simply asking to be
exploited to the max. For one Mohammed maybe it's
welfare fraud. For another it's hanging about in
public spaces, threatening the native population.
For another, it's bullying the white kids at school.
For another, it's strapping on a bomb. These are all
the same things, just at different places on a
continuum.
And since they are nearly all low IQ with little
future time orientation, they will never turn into
the doctors and layers and computer programmers of
Liberal fantasy.
Sure, it's pretty convenient that Islam is
morally OK with any and all of this behavior. But
the bottom line is that Europe is importing vast
numbers of degenerate human specimens that will
never amount to a thing and will be a problem in
perpetuity. That is, until they take over and kill
or enslave the remaining whites. Then hey, no more
problem!
@Svigor
We can't control what goes on in
darkies'/non-Europeans' heads. They may hate us and
want to kill us, or they may not. They may decide to
set off bombs, chop off heads, etc., or they may
not.
But if we don't let them into our countries,
it doesn't matter if they hate us, want to kill us,
want to set off bombs, or want to chop off heads.
They won't
be able
to do any of those things.
See how logic works, lefties? (Please say you do.
The matter is very much in doubt.)
In that case the attacker was likewise a second
generation immigrant muslim from a country (in
that case Afghanistan) the US government has
destroyed
Has anyone really made the case that Afghanistan was
destroyed, by anyone? I've never seen it done
convincingly.
The place has long been a complete
dump; there's just never been anything to destroy.
Not within living memory, anyway.
The real reason is the politically correct genocidal
racism and racist colonialism that brought this
bomber and his fellow invaders to the West in the
first place. Those forces spend a hell of a a lot
more money and effort in exterminating the West and
its peoples than Wahhabism does promoting Sunni
extremism. Stop cucking around the real issue,
violent Muslim terrorism and crime in the West is a
by-product of white-hating racism so intense and
genocidal that its perpetrators will import,
embrace, and support Muslims and Muslim terrorists.
Taking punitive action against all Muslims is the
strategic goal of these people, widening the gulf
between Muslims and non-believers and moving towards
some kind of major clash of civilisations. They will
not be dissuaded by the West making Islam illegal,
shutting mosques and - somehow - exiling their own
third-and-fourth generation citizens. As well as not
being practical, it stands counter to our values, to
whit punishing the actions of the overwhelming
majority for the actions of the lunatic fringe few.
Britain endured 300,000 dead to defeat Nazi Germany,
France over 700,000 dead. We are simply not going to
be intimidated by such measures. If anything, they
will strengthen our resolve.
These people are also not part of a centralised
campaign being run by ISIS they are lone actors
What we need is more immigration so that Muslims
feel more comfortable. As long as white hold any
power in any society these attacks will continue
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester,
people rightly warn against blaming the entire
Muslim community in Britain and the world.
Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out
such atrocities is to provoke the communal
punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a
portion of them who will then become open to
recruitment by Isis and al-Qaeda clones.
Thats a good one . The British are completely
helpless against Muslims, the police are trained to
punish whites not Muslims. Look at the Rotherham
(actually every city in England) scandal. The only
immigration that is vulnerable to public opinion is
EU immigration.
President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran
of being the source of most terrorism in the
Middle East.
Americans like Trumps defence advisor McMaster
way have been rather put off Iran due to them
supplying explosively formed penetrator weapons to
their Shia proxy terrorist force in Iraq,which used
them to kill hundreds of US troops., and leave many
others without arms legs or testicles. McMaster was
in Iraq at the time and he knows it was the Iranians
.
Trump's original pick for McMaster's job, General
Flynn, was there in Iraq too and later head of the
DIA. By all accounts he was infuriated by Iranians
supplying the Explosively formed penetrator weapons
to Shia groups so their IEDs could blast though
armour on US vehicles in Iraq. They, especially
Flynn had access to all the examination of the
wrecked vehicles and I suppose autopsies on US
soldiers as well. Iran ludicrously took on the US,
and now comes the reckoning.
@Randal
Because those are the easy targets that create the
most impact.
Of course they don't "mostly happen at venues like
teen concerts, coastal promenades, gay nightclubs,
rock concert halls", those are just the ones that
make the big news splashes.
Nor do they "only happen in proudly tolerant,
liberal countries": they mostly happen in the
countries destabilised by US sphere military action.
The vast, vast majority of all islamist terrorism
happens in those countries (Iraq, Libya, Syria) and
not "in proudly tolerant, liberal countries" at all.
@Svigor
We can't control what goes on in
darkies'/non-Europeans' heads. They may hate us and
want to kill us, or they may not. They may decide to
set off bombs, chop off heads, etc., or they may
not.
But if we don't let them into our countries,
it doesn't matter if they hate us, want to kill us,
want to set off bombs, or want to chop off heads.
They won't
be able
to do any of those things.
See how logic works, lefties? (Please say you do.
The matter is very much in doubt.)
In that case the attacker was likewise a second
generation immigrant muslim from a country (in
that case Afghanistan) the US government has
destroyed
Has anyone really made the case that Afghanistan was
destroyed, by anyone? I've never seen it done
convincingly.
The place has long been a complete
dump; there's just never been anything to destroy.
Not within living memory, anyway.
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people
rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim
community in Britain and the world. Certainly one
of the aims of those who carry out such
atrocities is to provoke the communal punishment
of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of
them who will then become open to recruitment by
Isis and al-Qaeda clones.
Thats a good one . The British are completely
helpless against Muslims, the police are trained to
punish whites not Muslims. Look at the Rotherham
(actually every city in England) scandal. The only
immigration that is vulnerable to public opinion is
EU immigration.
President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of
being the source of most terrorism in the Middle
East.
Americans like Trumps defence advisor McMaster way
have been rather put off Iran due to them supplying
explosively formed penetrator weapons to their Shia
proxy terrorist force in Iraq,which used them to
kill hundreds of US troops., and leave many others
without arms legs or testicles. McMaster was in Iraq
at the time and he knows it was the Iranians .
Trump's original pick for McMaster's job, General
Flynn, was there in Iraq too and later head of the
DIA. By all accounts he was infuriated by Iranians
supplying the Explosively formed penetrator weapons
to Shia groups so their IEDs could blast though
armour on US vehicles in Iraq. They, especially
Flynn had access to all the examination of the
wrecked vehicles and I suppose autopsies on US
soldiers as well. Iran ludicrously took on the US,
and now comes the reckoning.
Very good posts. Also, as I pointed out in another
thread, the security services have two different
levels of prioritization when it comes to elites vs
proles.
Note that this guy was reported to the police by his
own family, acquaintances and security agencies knew
he had traveled to Daesh-controlled territory in
Libya:
"Two people who knew Salman Abedi are said to have
called the police counter-terrorism hotline five
years ago to raise concerns that he thought 'being a
suicide bomber was OK'.
And a senior US intelligence official has claimed
that members of his own family had warned police
that he was 'dangerous' It is understood that Abedi
was 'known' to the Security Services through his
associations to those linked to terrorism in
Manchester's Libyan community According to NBC, a
senior US intelligence official said Abedi's family
had warned police that he was 'dangerous'. He was
identified after the attack by his bankcard and had
used a 'big and sophisticated bomb' using materials
not widely available in Britain."
But when a guy was reported last month by the Muslim
community, they picked up on it right away - well,
guess what the target was:
"A suspected terrorist attack was foiled after armed
police arrested a man who is alleged to have been
found carrying knives near the Houses of Parliament.
The Guardian understands the operation was triggered
following a tip-off to police by a member of
Britain's Muslim community who was concerned about
the man's behaviour."
Let us not leave out the good offices of the DNC,
from where Hillary and Obama murdered millions
collectively. The butcher's bill is still piling up
in Syria, Iraq and especially, Libya. Bomb churches,
they might get bombed back. And bomb a Synagogue?
Not smart unless you want your entire crew invited
to a seance with the Mossad. Wall Street and oil
companies? Too secure, public venues are the
easiest. But we get your point, Anti, you want
Republicans, Jews and Christians and money to die,
that will make you happy. Too bad for you, everyday
gays and women are suffering the most anywhere you
have the Muslims in all the Euro-flophouses..
Feminists, gays and Liberals in general are the
first to the beheading line when the Caliphate is
installed.
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people
rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim
community in Britain and the world. Certainly one
of the aims of those who carry out such
atrocities is to provoke the communal punishment
of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of
them who will then become open to recruitment by
Isis and al-Qaeda clones.
Thats a good one . The British are completely
helpless against Muslims, the police are trained to
punish whites not Muslims. Look at the Rotherham
(actually every city in England) scandal. The only
immigration that is vulnerable to public opinion is
EU immigration.
President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of
being the source of most terrorism in the Middle
East.
Americans like Trumps defence advisor McMaster way
have been rather put off Iran due to them supplying
explosively formed penetrator weapons to their Shia
proxy terrorist force in Iraq,which used them to
kill hundreds of US troops., and leave many others
without arms legs or testicles. McMaster was in Iraq
at the time and he knows it was the Iranians .
Trump's original pick for McMaster's job, General
Flynn, was there in Iraq too and later head of the
DIA. By all accounts he was infuriated by Iranians
supplying the Explosively formed penetrator weapons
to Shia groups so their IEDs could blast though
armour on US vehicles in Iraq. They, especially
Flynn had access to all the examination of the
wrecked vehicles and I suppose autopsies on US
soldiers as well. Iran ludicrously took on the US,
and now comes the reckoning.
Though in this particular case I doubt they had much
to go on with just a report that a teenager was
spouting off about suicide bombing - that must be
pretty commonplace.
Americans like Trumps defence advisor McMaster
way have been rather put off Iran due to them
supplying explosively formed penetrator weapons
to their Shia proxy terrorist force in Iraq,which
used them to kill hundreds of US troops., and
leave many others without arms legs or testicles.
McMaster was in Iraq at the time and he knows it
was the Iranians .
Then the likes of McMaster need to grow up a bit and
recognise that going to war doesn't just mean that
Americans get to kill other people without anyone
fighting back.
Iran was being menaced and harmed by the US long
before - decades before - the US chose to invade its
neighbour whilst giving clear signals that if its
occupation went well then Iran would be next. A
grownup would understand that just as the US killed
all the Iraqis it felt were necessary to the success
of its policy, so Iran in turn helped kill all the
Americans it felt were necessary to prevent that
success and prevent the likely subsequent attack on
Iran.
Hardball cuts both ways and big boys take their
lumps and move on, when (as with the US and Iran)
there is nothing the US can gain by coming back for
another round and vast opportunities for yet
another, worse, disaster.
And, of course, the Iranians weren't the ones
supplying the sunni jihadists in Iraq, who killed
more than their share of US troops, with money to
buy weapons, for that McMaster would need to look
closer to home - at the very same foreign interests
currently trying to manufacture another
confrontation of Iran.
Iran ludicrously took on the US, and now comes
the reckoning.
Unlikely, since those who would gain from a
confrontation between the US and Iran live in Riyadh
and Tel Aviv, and in plush offices in Washington,
not in the real America. Most likely the US regime
will back away from a full confrontation when it
comes down to it, as they have on every previous
occasion since they were rightly turfed out of Iran
with their tails between their legs in 1979.
And while those people do have the clout to
manufacture consent for a war with Iran as they did
with Iraq, they obviously (and rightly) fear the
consequences for themselves when it all goes bad.
And if they don't back away from it then the
consequences will be every bit as costly, and more,
as the invasion and occupation of Iraq proved for
the region and for the US and for American soldiers,
and this time those responsible for it will likely
face a lot more than general political
embarrassment.
The ultimate inspiration for such people is
Wahhabism, the puritanical, fanatical and regressive
type of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, whose
ideology is close to that of al-Qaeda and Isis
Absolutely right. And we just swindled them for out
of $110 billion to prop up our war industries so
these "sand#@*&#$s" can go and do the dirty job for
our masters in Tel-Aviv and their representatives in
Washington.
Are we really "friends" with a regime that is only
different from N. Korea because of its oil?
Even the Islam they're propagating is exactly what
The Prophet Muhammad fought against, until they lost
and had to convert. Its Islam, is a cult that
follows strict Bedouin traditions, that are typical
Semitic. Women and others who rank low in the tribe
are considered less human. Orthodox Judaism, and
their Bedouin half brothers have had this law of no
rights to the above mentioned since time immemorial.
Jewish women are forbidden to touch or read the
Torah. This is a religious law. If they do it now
its only because of progress.
So Arabs who have adopted Wahhabism (they have lots
of money to spend) are trying to infuse their
culture as part of Islam. Which it is not
Good luck to those who will receive the brunt of our
mighty bombs thru the Wahhabis
Young men, and occasionally women, from Muslim
cultures are particularly prone to turn to a very
nasty form of murder suicide when things go wrong in
their lives, or they become depressed.
They tend
to externalize their own unhappiness and blame
others. Often the unhappiness is related to sexual
frustration and their inability to form satisfying
relationships.
Probably this killer found Ariana Grande sexually
desirable, but unobtainable.
Within their cultures there are plenty of other
equally embittered individuals willing to encourage
and facilitate them and give them material support.
@Svigor
We can't control what goes on in
darkies'/non-Europeans' heads. They may hate us and
want to kill us, or they may not. They may decide to
set off bombs, chop off heads, etc., or they may
not.
But if we don't let them into our countries,
it doesn't matter if they hate us, want to kill us,
want to set off bombs, or want to chop off heads.
They won't
be able
to do any of those things.
See how logic works, lefties? (Please say you do.
The matter is very much in doubt.)
In that case the attacker was likewise a second
generation immigrant muslim from a country (in
that case Afghanistan) the US government has
destroyed
Has anyone really made the case that Afghanistan was
destroyed, by anyone? I've never seen it done
convincingly.
The place has long been a complete
dump; there's just never been anything to destroy.
Not within living memory, anyway.
But it's saying the guy's family called him out to
the police. And that he was known to security
services based on ties to terrorist sympathizers in
the Libyan community in Manchester. Furthermore, the
article mentions that they knew he went to Libya and
what part of Libya - what the hell??!!
Furthermore, at this point - if you have teenager
talking smack about suicide bombing - take it
seriously.
@Randal
I'm not sure it's feasible to take seriously every
report of a teenage immigrant (1st or 2nd gen) lad
making big talk about suicide bombing or whatever.
There are probably thousands of them, most of them
just hormoned up boys making themselves feel big or
expressing their inadequately controlled emotions.
In this case it was complicated by the fact that his
family connections were to "our" terrorists in Libya
and Syria. On the one hand that might suggest you
should take it more seriously (he clearly had access
to dodgy contacts and materials the average teenage
wannabee doesn't have), but apart from whatever
connections his family undoubtedly had in the UK
security forces themselves, how would they be sure
he was talking about blowing up people here and not
blowing up people our government likes to see blown
up in Libya or Syria?
The latter, of course, is an area we will never see
honestly reported.
I think this lady has found the solution to stop
these guys:
"'Much needs to be done to eradicate this evil. 'But
there is one simple step which we can take now: we
must bring back the death penalty.'"
So long as the Afghan government is aligned
with India, as it now is, Pakistan must support
the Taliban. The Taliban offers its only option
for an alliance with Afghanistan, which it must
have for strategic depth vis-a-vis India.
Remember, India is Pakistan's number one
strategic threat. A pro-India Afghanistan
threatens Pakistan with a two-front war, which is
intolerable. So Pakistan is tied to the Taliban
whether it wants to be or not (my guess is not).
Makes perfect sense.
This is literally stupid, and I have no doubt
you know better. You imply that in this context
actions have no consequences, but in the real
world of course they do.
We can influence those things, but we have no
control, and no guarantee. Keeping them out is fully
under our control, and is guaranteed to work.
This is true only up to a point
It's far truer and more reliable than treating
Muslims nicely.
Actions have consequences.
Yep; open borders leaves us vulnerable to foreign
terrorism.
Really, I say to the Libertardians/Leftists/Muslim
sympathizers, and to the Zionists/Cucked
Right/'Murricans, a pox on both your houses. Both of
you lie through your teeth on a constant basis. Both
groups are fanatically pro-open-borders, for the
most part.
This is such an ignorant statement that it
almost defies belief. It is the type of statement
that, were I from a Muslim nation, would almost
make me think that the terrorists were not
completely unjustified.
It's beyond your ken that when people talk of the
destruction of Afghanistan, some other people point
out that there wasn't far to fall?
Keep it to talk of dead Afghans, that works a lot
better.
So long as the Afghan government is aligned with
India, as it now is, Pakistan must support the
Taliban. The Taliban offers its only option for
an alliance with Afghanistan, which it must have
for strategic depth vis-a-vis India. Remember,
India is Pakistan's number one strategic threat.
A pro-India Afghanistan threatens Pakistan with a
two-front war, which is intolerable. So Pakistan
is tied to the Taliban whether it wants to be or
not (my guess is not).
Afghanistan is a pawn in the Pakistan-India
conflict, just as Syria is caught up in a
Arab-Persian quarrel that started at the dawn of
recorded history. All this reduction to the variant
of Islam promoted by the Saudis Cockburn does leaves
you none the wiser.
The irony is that the places that terrorists
targeted were the very places that would give the
most support to Muslims and refugees. And they still
would, too. The very same neighborhood in Paris that
suffered from the 2015 attacks rejected Le Pen at an
even higher margin than the last election. I suppose
these people have a death wish.
@Svigor
Really, I say to the Libertardians/Leftists/Muslim
sympathizers, and to the Zionists/Cucked
Right/'Murricans, a pox on both your houses. Both of
you lie through your teeth on a constant basis. Both
groups are fanatically pro-open-borders, for the
most part.
Sorry, but the Wahhabis were happily slaughtering
fellow Sunni, Jews, Shia, and anyone else they
decided to declare a "pagan" (kaffirun) in order to
legitimize raping, robbing, enslaving, and murdering
them LONG before the West even considered bothering
to colonize the Arabs.
The Wahhabi originated in
the one part of Arabia that the Prophet (SAAW)
refused to bless – the Najd. He stated that that was
the place where fitnah (disorder, chaos) came from.
The preaching of Abdul-Wahhab was very popular
among the bedu clan ruled by the Saud family. This
practice of takfir, insisting other Muslims were
heretics, polytheists, pagans (kaffirun) made
robbing pilgrimage and other caravans a
*virtue*
instead of brigandage. The British
put the Sauds in charge of the Arabian peninsula,
now known as Saudi Arabia.
The Wahhabis promptly slaughtered those they
considered pagan – Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi, Shia – it
didn't matter. Unless you believed in their
literalist primitive understanding of Islam, you
were obviously a pagan. The Wahhabi focus almost
entirely on outward conformity from what I have
seen. While other Muslims are discussing the
attributes of God, the Wahhabis are ordering Hanafi
women to "follow the stronger evidence" and cover
their *feet.* Seriously. For real.
Go to any Saudi supported masjid in the US, and
notice how many have filthy, horrible areas for
women to pray, often only accessible by passing
through the area outside where the dumpsters are,
and note that the women's restroom many be filthier
than a porta-potti in Tijuana. This is no accident.
Wahhabis think women should be neither seen nor
heard. They know more than the Caliph Umar who
accepted a correction on Islamic law from a woman –
in public – and acknowledged to all present that she
was correct, and he was wrong. No danger of that
happening in Wahhabi land – a woman's voice is
considered part of her awrah or nakedness.
If a religious education program for women even
*exists*
, it will tend to focus on
the importance of wearing a head scarf, and covering
one's feet. Sometimes it will stress how a woman's
prayer is "better" for her at home – so why are all
of you ladies here for Juuma every Friday?
The importance of prayer seems to be limited to
having the exact "correct" position of the hands,
feet, etc. – and saying the "correct" exact words.
Imagine my surprise when I was earnestly informed
that I should never, ever pray in sadl – with my
arms down – because Imam Malik only did that
"because he had been tortured." When I asked a
Mauritania Shaykh, a noted religious scholar about
this statement, he was rather blunt. It seems that
"whoever says that is a liar." And that they really
need to fear God.
So, while silly westerners are running around and
claiming that Daesh and crew are really upset about
colonialism or whatever, the extremists keep telling
us all what they really want – and the left of the
west is so bigoted and patronizing that it literally
insists that the extremists are so backward and
stupid that they don't really mean what they say
because anyone with half a brain would be irate over
*material*
issues, not religious
matters.
You can find the Daesh English language
publication on line. Read it before you continue
blathering endless irrelevancies about
"colonialism."
While I fully concur the views stated here by Mr.
Cockburn on this matter, "western" regimes have a
more direct link to the Manchester terrorist act:
the fact that the destruction of Libya by Obama and
the French, spearheaded in the US by then foreign
secretary Hillary Clinton against the advice of
Gates, the war minister at the time, and contrary to
Obama's instincts was a direct link in the chain
leading to this Libyan's terrorist act. There are
also rumours published elsewhere that this terrorist
underwent training to act as one of the "tame"
rebels working to overthrow the Assad government.
The support for the Cameron government for the Libya
action puts the blood of this event on the hands of
the successor tory May government, in its use of
this blowback event to gain electoral mileage in its
effort to stay in power in Britain.
As indicated,
I concur with inferences of the comment by Randal,
#8 above that western actions, including the
destruction of Libya, played the key role in this
attack.
@The Kid
Sorry, but the Wahhabis were happily slaughtering
fellow Sunni, Jews, Shia, and anyone else they
decided to declare a "pagan" (kaffirun) in order to
legitimize raping, robbing, enslaving, and murdering
them LONG before the West even considered bothering
to colonize the Arabs.
The Wahhabi originated in the one part of Arabia
that the Prophet (SAAW) refused to bless - the Najd.
He stated that that was the place where fitnah
(disorder, chaos) came from.
The preaching of Abdul-Wahhab was very popular among
the bedu clan ruled by the Saud family. This
practice of takfir, insisting other Muslims were
heretics, polytheists, pagans (kaffirun) made
robbing pilgrimage and other caravans a *virtue*
instead of brigandage. The British put the Sauds in
charge of the Arabian peninsula, now known as Saudi
Arabia.
The Wahhabis promptly slaughtered those they
considered pagan - Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi, Shia - it
didn't matter. Unless you believed in their
literalist primitive understanding of Islam, you
were obviously a pagan. The Wahhabi focus almost
entirely on outward conformity from what I have
seen. While other Muslims are discussing the
attributes of God, the Wahhabis are ordering Hanafi
women to "follow the stronger evidence" and cover
their *feet.* Seriously. For real.
Go to any Saudi supported masjid in the US, and
notice how many have filthy, horrible areas for
women to pray, often only accessible by passing
through the area outside where the dumpsters are,
and note that the women's restroom many be filthier
than a porta-potti in Tijuana. This is no accident.
Wahhabis think women should be neither seen nor
heard. They know more than the Caliph Umar who
accepted a correction on Islamic law from a woman -
in public - and acknowledged to all present that she
was correct, and he was wrong. No danger of that
happening in Wahhabi land - a woman's voice is
considered part of her awrah or nakedness.
If a religious education program for women even
*exists*, it will tend to focus on the importance of
wearing a head scarf, and covering one's feet.
Sometimes it will stress how a woman's prayer is
"better" for her at home - so why are all of you
ladies here for Juuma every Friday?
The importance of prayer seems to be limited to
having the exact "correct" position of the hands,
feet, etc. - and saying the "correct" exact words.
Imagine my surprise when I was earnestly informed
that I should never, ever pray in sadl - with my
arms down - because Imam Malik only did that
"because he had been tortured." When I asked a
Mauritania Shaykh, a noted religious scholar about
this statement, he was rather blunt. It seems that
"whoever says that is a liar." And that they really
need to fear God.
So, while silly westerners are running around and
claiming that Daesh and crew are really upset about
colonialism or whatever, the extremists keep telling
us all what they really want - and the left of the
west is so bigoted and patronizing that it literally
insists that the extremists are so backward and
stupid that they don't really mean what they say
because anyone with half a brain would be irate over
*material* issues, not religious matters.
You can find the Daesh English language publication
on line. Read it before you continue blathering
endless irrelevancies about "colonialism."
@Godfree Roberts
Thanks! For a while I thought you might identify
their motivation with our having bombed Muslim
countries pretty much continuously since 1946.
Nice save!
@aceofspades
The irony is that the places that terrorists
targeted were the very places that would give the
most support to Muslims and refugees. And they still
would, too. The very same neighborhood in Paris that
suffered from the 2015 attacks rejected Le Pen at an
even higher margin than the last election. I suppose
these people have a death wish.
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people
rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim
community in Britain and the world. Certainly one
of the aims of those who carry out such
atrocities is to provoke the communal punishment
of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of
them who will then become open to recruitment by
Isis and al-Qaeda clones.
Thats a good one . The British are completely
helpless against Muslims, the police are trained to
punish whites not Muslims. Look at the Rotherham
(actually every city in England) scandal. The only
immigration that is vulnerable to public opinion is
EU immigration.
President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of
being the source of most terrorism in the Middle
East.
Americans like Trumps defence advisor McMaster way
have been rather put off Iran due to them supplying
explosively formed penetrator weapons to their Shia
proxy terrorist force in Iraq,which used them to
kill hundreds of US troops., and leave many others
without arms legs or testicles. McMaster was in Iraq
at the time and he knows it was the Iranians .
Trump's original pick for McMaster's job, General
Flynn, was there in Iraq too and later head of the
DIA. By all accounts he was infuriated by Iranians
supplying the Explosively formed penetrator weapons
to Shia groups so their IEDs could blast though
armour on US vehicles in Iraq. They, especially
Flynn had access to all the examination of the
wrecked vehicles and I suppose autopsies on US
soldiers as well. Iran ludicrously took on the US,
and now comes the reckoning.
Why do those responsible deliberately miss the
target and have gone on doing so? Because they
all profit greatly from it. Who are they? The war
industry and its various 'communities', the Jews.
the media, you name it, they're all in it for fun
and profit. None of them would have an income if
it all just stopped, if they actually wanted, you
know, peace whatever that is.
They can
manufacture an invasion of Iraq based on
non-existent WMDs as punishment for 911, when
apparently the real culprits were supposed to be
Saudis...
"Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent)"
This is laughable, the term "anti-semitism" was invented in the first place to silence criticism,
this whole surprise about the broadening of the definition to include Israel is nothing.
You know what are other "shut-up" words? Racist, Islamophobic, Homophobic, Xenophobic, Sexist,
etc that along with "Anti-Semitic" make up the bulk of the Capital Sins of the new Globalist Religion
(of course, made by and for Jews).
I have the right to hate, speak badly and denounce anyone I want. It would be a crime if I
infringed one's rights, which means, physical violence – but then again, physical violence alone
is enough of a crime without motive, so it doesn't discriminate and doesn't need special snowflake
groups and orwellian newspeech laws.
I have little patience for Jewish victimization propaganda, but Israel does have a right to
exist: there were a substantial number of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, and when it was broken up
after WWI, everybody got their own country, except the Kurds and the Jews.
Antisemitism is a logical absurdity. It creates an offense that relies solely on the identity
of the victim for its definition.
This is an anomaly for it can be committed against only one class of human beings, regardless
of their behavior. Thus it differs from prejudice against gender or class.
In actuality, the offense referred to is fully described by the term "racism", for all practical
purposes Although many Jews do not claim to be a "race", by claiming antisemitism they are self-identifying
as such. Singling out a race for special treatment defines racism.
What is being proposed here is a consequence of a greater absurdity – a State that claims special
status for one class of human being and that, like the World-bearing Elephants on a Turtle, is
dependent on another absurdity – a chosen race. From there, it is turtles (absurdities) all the
way down.
The jewish identity is 'eternal innocent victim'.
Therefore any criticism of jews, jewry, or the judaic religion, is antisemitism.
It is like the Armenians, their identity is the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman
regime...
Likewise, the present German identity is guilt about two world wars, no chance to make them
understand that the great majority of Germans never wanted any war.
The USA identity is saviours of the world, that all over the world people have quite other
ideas about the USA, they simply are wrong.
Terrorism by Muslims, they must be 'deradicalised', this means make them think that western
atrocities against Muslims are for their own good, or caused by bad Muslims.
As John Maynard Keynes long ago already knew, ideas are the most powerful in the world, even
if they have no relation with reality whatsoever.
CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas, yet people all over the world believe that CO2 does great
harm to us, despite the simple fact that climate changed as long as the earth exists, when humans
had little influence, except when they began agriculture.
Its unbelievable.
Makes the term "Örwellian" look weak.
Words that come to mind are " ïnsidious", "sneaky", "fascistic", "devious", ëvil".
Ironically - sadly ? - this "new" antisemitism seems perfectly designed to inspire traditional
antisemitism. Such a cynical manipulation of nation states by another state & a particular ethnic/cultural
group (often working against the interests of their own citizens/nations) seems perfectly adapted
to generating hate & fear in the recipients of this wholly anti-democratic, anti-humanistic program.
International Campaign Is Criminalizing Criticism of Israel as 'Antisemitism'
Yes, this is certainly true as a matter of observable fact and personal experience, but this
is merely one aspect of a much broader societal trend, exploited in this particular case by the
supporters of Israel.
It is not the fact that the enemies of liberty are falsely conflating criticism of Israel with
antisemitism that is the problem, but the fact that they seek to define antisemitism as inherently
evil and illegitimate, to ban the expression of any opinions classed as antisemitism from the
public sphere, and wherever possible to criminalise it. The former would not be a problem were
it not for the latter.
Spreading the New Definition Under Cover of "Anti-Racism" Movement
In the never-ending war on liberty waged by the powerful, for whom the freedom of ordinary folk
to say and do things that annoy or offend them, or that threaten their position, is an eternal
impertinence, the most vital front is freedom of speech. To the extent that freedom of speech
is restricted, to that same extent is democracy negated. That front is also currently the most
active in the war against liberty, and the attempt to separate and suppress "hate speech" is the
schwerpunkt of the efforts by the enemies of liberty.
Those who call people or their opinions racist or anti-Semite or homophobic or islamophobic
or whatever, and thereby seek to define their opinions as illegitimate per se, are the most dangerous
enemies of liberty in the societies of the modern US sphere.
The apposition of 'antisemitism' to any 'phobias' has a long history (it was just the list
of phobias that grew overtime):
"The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism-or Ligue Internationale Contre le
Racisme et l'Antisémitisme (LICRA) in French-was established in 1927, and is opposed to intolerance,
xenophobia and exclusion.
In 1927, French journalist Bernard Lecache created "The League Against Pogroms", and launched
a media campaign in support of Sholom Schwartzbard who assassinated Symon Petliura on 25 May 1926
in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Schwartzbard viewed Petliura as responsible for numerous pogroms
in Ukraine. After Schwartzbard's acquittal, the league evolved into LICA (Ligue internationale
contre l'antisémitisme-or international league against anti-semitism). Schwartzbard was a prominent
activist in this organization
The LICRA keeps fighting neonazism and Holocaust denial. This was demonstrated when it supported
the Klarsfeld couple (Serge and Beate Klarsfeld), and during Klaus Barbie's trial in 1987.
In the last few years, LICRA intensified its international actions by opening sections abroad,
in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Luxembourg, in Germany, in Portugal, in Quebec and more recently
in Congo Brazzaville and in Austria.
Since 1999, with the arrival of president Patrick Gaubert, LICRA has extended its area of action.
It now addresses social issues such as work discrimination, citizenship, and disadvantaged youth".
"Likewise, anti-Semitism is a universally accepted notion, but goy-hatred is not.
These are just two amongst many other such 'one-way mental blocks" Friends, this is not a coincidence.
This is a *system* designed to make us all stupid and gullible."
This is how Jews always get themselves into trouble. They have no "off" switch on advantage-seeking.
They can't not press an advantage. Someone needs to tell them that bullying people into assent
isn't the same as making them forget – people do tend to remember this stuff.
The mechanism of this crackdown is the redefinition of "antisemitism"[1] to include criticism
of Israel, and the insertion of this definition into the bodies of law of various countries.
And what if, as has been the norm at a great many points in history, humanity decides to redefine
"anti-semitism" as "good"?
Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent)
Not if Jews get their way, apparently. I am reminded of a (very memorable) book title: Jews and the State: the Fatal Embrace.
Second, Sharansky declared that it's antisemitic to apply a "double standard" to Israel
- in other words, to criticize Israel for actions that other states may also take. However,
if one could never criticize, protest or boycott abuses without calling out every single other
similar abuse, no one would ever be able to exercise political dissent at all.
If it's bigotry to apply double standards (it's a double standard to limit the conversation
to anti-semitism, by the way), then Jews have been the world's greatest bigots beyond living memory. This was a long piece, I hope I have time to read it all closely at some point.
Criticizing Israel or Jewish organizations is a hate crime because, you see, Israel and Jews
acting collectively have never and can never do anything wrong.
This follows from those purported
standards of proof being textbook examples of logical fallacies and thinly veiled hate crimes
themselves, requiring us to look elsewhere for the implicit justification. Jewish martyrology
and absolute goodness, therefore, must become the one, supreme ontological truth before which
all peoples, nation states, and religions must genuflect. Maybe Chris Smith has the courage to
introduce a new preamble to the Constitution enshrining this as the ultimate law of the land.
"Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent), for two decades a campaign has been underway to replace that definition
with an Israel-centric definition."
I pretty much wrote this piece off as soon as I read the above quote. Any non-Jew, especially
white Christians in America and Europe, who doesn't at least have a prejudiced or bigoted view
of Jewish organizations or power is an idiot. If Jews want less antisemitism, then they need to
police their own for signs of hostility, bigotry, racism and corruption towards others, but I
doubt that will happen, since the hostility, bigotry, racism and corruption seem organic to Jews
in general.
Maybe if "activists" like Ms. Weir would concentrate on taking on Jewish power of all kinds,
then the West could reform and Israel would be forced to reform, go extinct, or whatever. As it
is, they just play a shell game with "Palestinian rights," while going full SJW on the rest of
us. I don't give a damn about Israel, neocon Jews, Palestinians or leftist Jews. I care about
my people and my country, and Jews of all political stripes are far more of a threat to both than
Palestinians or whatever Muslims who are allowed to infiltrate will ever be.
I state everything above understanding full well that Palestinians are the victims of Jewish
power and the world-wide Jewish community. Unfortunately, outside of the Israel issue, most Palestinians
and Muslims side with the multicult, anti-Western, heavily Jewish (phony) left. In the end, I
can't see how Jews will be able to play all the different groups against each other for their
own benefit, and I don't care. I just want to be rid of Jewish influence and Jewish power.
Jews always forget basic Newton laws:
"For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction".
In a long run you can not silence people, it will backfire.
Feb 24, 2017 Israeli Spying in the US: A Brief History
NOTE: This video was produced for BoilingFrogsPost com on April 11, 2012. It is being made
available in its entirety here for the first time.
The knowledge that Israeli-connected companies and intelligence agents have been involved in
detailed and elaborate spying operations in the US is of course nothing new. The phenomenon has
been painstakingly documented over the years by numerous journalists and sources. Indeed, the
documented cases of Israeli spying on their supposed ally - the self-same American government
that is supplying it with $3 billion in grants each year - are nearly too numerous to document.
I keep trying to explain this "popular vote" thing: The Electoral College system is essentially
mandatory voting: every person casts a vote via the electoral college, whether they actually fill
out a ballot or not. Choosing not to fill out a ballot is a vote for "I'll go with the majority's
decision."
The entire population of the United States of America is represented in this process: everyone
is either a proxy (voter), or has his vote cast by a proxy.
The "popular vote" mantra is the scuzzbucket Democrat way of dismissing the legitimacy of the
people who vote by proxy. It's Democrats' way of saying these people don't matter. And this from
the party that claims to support mandatory voting!
The will of the people is expressed in the Electoral College. And in the 2016 election, that will
very much favored Trump over Clinton.
The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all
50 states
That's the theory. The reality is more like:
The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all
15 battleground states
or better still:
The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all
5 states (CO, FL, NV, OH, VA) that have been truly competitive over the last five presidential
elections
@anarchyst The electoral college was put in place to keep the major population centers from
determining the vote. Without the electoral college, the prospective presidential candidates would
only have to cater to the major population centers and could safely ignore "flyover country",
as the east and west coasts would have enough "clout" to determine the direction of the vote.
The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states...
@anarchyst The electoral college was put in place to keep the major population centers from
determining the vote. Without the electoral college, the prospective presidential candidates would
only have to cater to the major population centers and could safely ignore "flyover country",
as the east and west coasts would have enough "clout" to determine the direction of the vote.
The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states...
"... No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup. ..."
"... Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, ..."
"... So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters. ..."
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
The witches in Macbeth.
President Trump's administration is now at a high boil as he faces intense heat from all sides.
The Republican Party has backed away from their embattled president. US intelligence agencies are
baying for his blood. The US media plays the role of the witches in 'Macbeth' as it plots against
Trump.
One increasingly hears whispers about impeachment or the wonderful 1964 film about a military
coup in Washington, 'Seven Days in May.'
As in Shakespeare's King Lear, Trump stands almost alone on a blasted heath, howling that he has
been betrayed. The world watches on in dismay and shock.
One thing is clear: the US presidency has become too powerful when far-fetched talk of possibly
Russian involvement in Trump's campaign could send world financial markets into a crash dive. And
when Trump's ill informed, off the cuff remarks can endanger the fragile global balance of power.
Trump has made this huge mess and must now live with it. Yes, he is being treated unfairly by
appointment of a special prosecutor when the titanic sleaze of the Clintons was never investigated.
But that's what happens when you are widely detested. No mercy for Trump, a man without any mercy
for others.
Trump is not a Manchurian candidate put into office by Moscow though his bungling aides and iffy
financial deals often made it appear so. His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn
was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Who else paid off Flynn? Disgraceful.
But what about all the politicians and officials who took and take money from the Saudis and Gulf
emirates, or Sheldon Adelson, the ardent advocate of Greater Israel? What about political payoffs
to the flat-earth Republicans who now act as Israel's amen chorus in Washington?
The growing scandals that are engulfing Trump's presidency seem likely to delay if not defeat
the president's laudatory proposals to lower taxes, prune the bureaucracy, clean up intelligence,
end America's foreign wars, and impose some sort of peace in the Mideast.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers,
cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals
for a living.
No wonder Trump stands almost alone, like Rome's Horatio at the Bridge. One increasingly hears
in Washington 'what Trump needs is a little war.'
That would quickly wrong-foot his critics and force the neocon media – Washington Post, Wall Street
Journal, New York Times, and CNN – to back him. We already saw this happen when Trump fired salvos
of cruise missiles at Syria. It would also provide welcome distraction from the investigations of
Trump that are beginning.
Trump has appeared to be pawing the ground in a desire to attack naughty North Korea or Syria,
and maybe even Yemen, Somalia or Sudan. A war against any of these small nations would allow the
president to don military gear and beat his chest – as did the dunce George W. Bush. Bomb the usual
Arabs!
' As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents. more and more closely, the
inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach
their hart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Shee-it! I thought Dubya accomplished this . Apparently the M'urkan public is being defiant
and really wants to flaunt it's ignorance. Well, howdee! we got us a real contest goin' on now.
Trump is obviously the proverbial monkey with a machine-gun. My inner survival instincts are starting
to kick in. Does anyone see this this presidency as leveling out and trying to conduct business
like you know as it has been in the last 200 years?
This is too insane. I honestly think that some kind of the fix is in. How? Don't know.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is
no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Eric wrote: His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder.
Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Hunsdon said: The notorious Islamophobe, in pay of the Next Sultan? Too delicious.
Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest
about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates
got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside
of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, and the Electoral College was put into place
precisely to keep a big state or a couple of big states from dominating the election of a President.
Even in the 1780′s, many Americans didn't want NY to have the power to pick a President on their
own.
So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for
most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated
election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy
rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want
to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters.
Thus, its not that Trust is simply the most detested. He's not. At worst, the last election
said he's the second most detested person in the country. But, the "right" people all detest him.
So, a small minority of government insiders and the members of the media want to run him out of
town.
There's things he's done since he's been elected that I don't like. I don't like the way that
saying he was against regime change and more wars in the middle east has turned out to be a massive
lie. But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
If not, then CA and NY and the Deep State and the Media millionaires will run this country
and everyone will know that elections don't matter.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace
until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Few ruling classes had an opportunity to build an idyllical structure of society and governance
over the last four centuries as the two ruling US classes had.
Instead, they created numerous cliquish cliques and with political powers of each clique diminishing
from the two top classes down to the last class: prisoners, indigenes, white and black trash.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
Citizens United worsened the crisis of dark money influencing our country. We need to
get corporate money and lobbyists out of politics.
I've decided to stop accepting PAC/lobbyist $$. Bottom line: we can't allow our future to
be driven and shaped by special interests.
It always amazes me so few zamericans seem to even discuss these basic themes; with such a
completely corrupt political system, there is little chance even a solid, well meaning president
could accomplish much.
In fact , such corrupt system hardly produces any good statesmen to begin with
She, and Whitney, include the principals (primary sources) and their witness and actions:
Julian Assange -recipient of Democratic emails. Gavin MacFadyen -alleged recipient of Seth Rich's emails according to law enforcement
source. Craig Murray -recipient of Democratic emails in a DC park.
Now we have another man claiming to be a principal, Kim Dotcom. Says he was a friend of Seth's and worked on the leak. He has
lived in New Zealand since 2010, I believe. The main principal, Julian Assange, just spoke out again on Seth Rich, seemingly in
response to Kim, that informants may have spoken to others, but they don't out leakers.
Anyway, as always, keep your eye on the principals.
.Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in his
testimony that two dozen or so "seasoned experts" were "handpicked" from
the contributing agencies" and drafted the ICA "under the aegis of his
former office" While Clapper claimed these analysts were given
"complete independence" to reach their findings, he added that their
conclusions "were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of
the three agencies and me."
Sounds a bit like the Warren Commission and 9/11 Commission, with both
being presented with the results of what their investigation would uncover
prior to any investigation taking place.
US
Nuclear Weapon Upgrade Program:
"CBO estimates that nuclear forces will
cost $348 billion
between FY 2015 and FY 2024. Three independent estimates put the expected
total cost over the next 30 years at as much as $1 trillion."
[aircarft carrier] The Gerald R. Ford, $12.8 billion + $4.7 billion R&D (estimated). The Navy
wants ten.
Columbia
, the Navy's upcoming new nukey-boomer, formerly ORP, Ohio Replacement Program. "The
total lifecycle cost of the entire class is estimated at $347 billion.": Wikipedia
..."
Trump's
proposed increase in US military spending is almost as big as Russia's entire defense
budget."
Well, this is very ironic. Back in the 1980′s, the Soviets spent a
massive amount of money on their military to keep up with America, and
this ended up bankrupting them and causing their collapse. Now the US of
A is spending a horrific amount of money on their military, despite the
fact we are 20 trillion dollars in debt. Not to mention that fact that we
need to rebuild our infrastructure and pay off all the people on welfare
and government benefits. 20 trillion will become 30 trillion, which will
be 40 trillion ..whats the end game?
@aceofspades
Well, this is very ironic. Back in the 1980's, the Soviets spent a
massive amount of money on their military to keep up with America, and
this ended up bankrupting them and causing their collapse. Now the US of
A is spending a horrific amount of money on their military, despite the
fact we are 20 trillion dollars in debt. Not to mention that fact that we
need to rebuild our infrastructure and pay off all the people on welfare
and government benefits. 20 trillion will become 30 trillion, which will
be 40 trillion.....whats the end game?
@aceofspades
Well, this is very ironic. Back in the 1980's, the Soviets spent a
massive amount of money on their military to keep up with America, and
this ended up bankrupting them and causing their collapse. Now the US of
A is spending a horrific amount of money on their military, despite the
fact we are 20 trillion dollars in debt. Not to mention that fact that we
need to rebuild our infrastructure and pay off all the people on welfare
and government benefits. 20 trillion will become 30 trillion, which will
be 40 trillion.....whats the end game?
The aircraft relies on the assumption that, in thirteen years when
it enters service, anti-stealth technology will not have reached the
point of making it even more obviously useless.
The purpose of this sort of technology is to make lots and lots of
money for the right people. Whether it works or not is entirely
irrelevant.
@Sunbeam
One thing I'm waiting to see is when non-American culture producers start
to beat Americans.
Bollywood is gigantic. And has a huge presence in parts of Asia.
There used to be Hong Kong Cinema. Not sure what happened to it.
Successful, but not on the scale of Star Wars or The Fast And The Furious
or something.
Brazilian T&A soap operas are spreading around the world.
K-Pop is doing the same.
Japanese Anime and Manga, maybe the odd pop star, is worldwide now as
well.
But one day we are going to see that the past year's biggest movie
worldwide was made in Bollywood or China.
I'm a nationalist, but I will absolutely cheer as the first nail goes in
Hollywood's coffin.
As someone who has travelled to the US and China (Beijing), I was
astounded by how advanced China's infrastructure was to that of the US.
Subways, freight trains, highways, airports, bridges you name it. The
investment is still on going and only really been going on for 25 or so
years. I had the feeling in the US things were being neglected. Also
China is almost unbelievably safe walking the streets. Everybody behaved
like mature adults. No forty year olds who dressed like teenagers, in
fact most of the teenagers dressed like forty year olds should.
Infrastructure is critical to a modern society, the military merely
protects it. Economy is the source of viable military spending, not the
other way around.
This marvelous revelation from Wikipedia: "In July 2016, the U.S.
Air Force stated they would not release the estimated cost for the
B-21 contract with Northrop Grumman. The Air Force argued releasing
the cost would reveal too much information about the classified
project to potential adversaries." As, for example, taxpayers.
"The aircraft relies on the assumption that, in thirteen years when it
enters service, anti-stealth technology will not have reached the
point of making it even more obviously useless."
It will still be good for terrorizing ... sorry ... for policing rogue
states like N. Korea, Serbia, Yemen, and Syria.
"... the NSA has to prioritize its efforts: shall they use their supercomputers, translators, analysts,
senior officers, etc. to spy after, say, the girlfriend of a senior Chinese diplomat or spy after you?
..."
"... Using sophisticated ComSec technologies only draws unwanted attention to you ..."
"... My advice is simple: never use any form of encryption while at work ..."
"... .If ComSec is important for you, you really ought to ditch your Windows or Mac/Apple machines.
They – like anything Google, are basically a subsidiary of the NSA. ..."
"... The real cost of security will always be convenience : the painful reality is that good security
is always inconvenient. ..."
"... The key here is "is it worth it?" and that is a personal decision of yours to take. Also, you
will also need to factor in the costs of not using high-tech ..."
"... when the General Petraeus sex scandal made news, it was revealed that he communicated with
is lover using this method. Since they are both career CIA officers, I guess it works. ..."
"... It's been discussed that the CIA and Deep State promoted Abstract Art as ideological weapon
during the Cold War. When will people discuss the fact that Homomania is now the #1 ideological weapon
of Globo-Imperialism in the Gold War. ..."
"... And the content of your messages is almost irrelevant. GCHQ doesn't monitor content of UK residents
without explicit authority. It hardly needs to. It can monitor who you call, when, how often, how long
are the calls, your locations, the receiver's locations, your other contacts, their other contacts.
With that much information, the content is almost irrelevant. ..."
"... Re: Peter Principle. Your discussion of the open-source community level of quality made me
wonder if there is a mirror image of the Peter Principle, say, the Paul Principle? ..."
"... Does anyone trust Android phones? I was sad that the Ubuntu phone failed. ..."
Second, both spying and ComSec are cost-driven . Yes, even the NSA has a limited (if huge) budget.
And yes, even the NSA has to prioritize its efforts: shall they use their supercomputers, translators,
analysts, senior officers, etc. to spy after, say, the girlfriend of a senior Chinese diplomat or
spy after you?
It is true that all our communications are intercepted and recorded. This is especially true of
the 'metadata' (who contacted whom and when and how and how often), but it is also true of our more
or less 'secure' communications, be they protected by a very weak encryption algorithm or a military-grade
encryption system. Once that data is stored, the NSA has to parse it (mostly looking at the metadata)
and take a decision as to how much resources it is willing to allocate to your specific case. No
offense intended, but if you are a small pot grower with a history of political activism who emigrated
to the USA form, say, Turkey 10 years ago and if you are emailing your friends in Antalya, the NSA
would need to decrypt your email. That would take them less than 1 milisecond, but somebody needs
to authorize it.
Then they would have to get a machine translation from Turkish into English which will be hopefully
good enough (I am quite sure that the few Turkish-language translators they have will not be allocated
to you, sorry, you are just not that important). Then some analyst must read that text and decide
to pass it on to his boss for follow-up. If the analyst finds your email boring, he will simply send
it all into a virtual trash bin. Conclusions: For the bad guys to spy after you must be worth their
time as expressed in dollars and cents, including opportunity costs (time spend *not* going after
somebody more important) It is exceedingly unlikely that the NSA will put their best and brightest
on your case so don't assume they will.
... ... ...
Using sophisticated ComSec technologies only draws unwanted attention to you . This one
was very true and is still partially true. But the trend is in the right direction. What this argument
says is that in a culture where most people use postcards to communicate using a letter in a sealed
envelope makes you look suspicious. Okay, true, but only to the extend that few people are using
envelopes. What has changed in the past, say, 20-30 years is that nowadays everybody is expecting
some degree of security and protection. For example, many of you might remember that in the past,
most Internet addresses began with HTTP whereas now they mostly begin with
HTTPS: that "s" at the end stands for
"secure" . Even very mainstream applications like Skype or Whatsapp use a very similar technology
to the one justifying the "s" at the end of HTTPS. We now live in a world were the number of users
of sealed envelopes is growing where the usage of postcards is in free fall. Still, it IS true that
in some instances the use of a top-of-the-line encryption scheme will draw somebody's attention to
you.
... ... ...
My advice is simple: never use any form of encryption while at work or on the clock. ...Just
keep a reasonably low profile. For public consumption, I also recommend using Google's Gmail. Not
only does it work very well, but using Gmail makes you look "legit" in the eyes of the idiots. So
why not use it?
...The US government has many ways to spy on you. You can use the most advanced encryption schemes,
but if your computer is running Windows you are *begging* for a backdoor and, in fact, you probably
already have many of them in your machine. But even if your operating system is really secure like,
say OpenBSD or SEL-Debian, the NSA can spy on you ,,,
...If ComSec is important for you, you really ought to ditch your Windows or Mac/Apple machines.
They – like anything Google, are basically a subsidiary of the NSA.
If you use remote servers to provide you with "
software as a service
" try to use those who have a stake in being peer-reviewed and who only use open source technologies
(Silent Circle's Silent Phone is an example). There are public interest and "watchdog" type of organizations
out there who will help you make the right choices, such as the
Electronic Freedom Foundation .
... ... ...
The real cost of security will always be convenience : the painful reality is that good security
is always inconvenient. In theory, security does not need to harm convenience, but in reality
it always, always does. For example, to become more or less proficient in ComSec you need to educate
yourself, that takes time and energy. Using a key to enter a home takes more time than to open an
unlocked door. A retinal scan takes even more time (and costs a lot more). You might always spend
a great deal of time trying to convince your friends to adopt your practices, but they will reject
your advice for many more or less valid reasons. The key here is "is it worth it?" and that is
a personal decision of yours to take. Also, you will also need to factor in the costs of not using
high-tech.
I have read about a simpler method. Open a web mail account with yahoo or whoever and share
the username/password. Then compose a message and save the draft. Your partner later opens the
draft and adds a response, saves draft, and so on. No e-mail is ever sent, so there is nothing
to intercept.
This sounded crafty but I was unsure if it was secure and have no need anyway, but when
the General Petraeus sex scandal made news, it was revealed that he communicated with is lover
using this method. Since they are both career CIA officers, I guess it works.
Medieval methods work best. Surround a large building with guards. In the middle of the large
internal space place a circle of (inspected) chairs. Meet in a huddle.
For the poor, nothing beats a walk in the countryside, even a park.
It's been discussed that the CIA and Deep State promoted Abstract Art as ideological weapon
during the Cold War. When will people discuss the fact that Homomania is now the #1 ideological
weapon of Globo-Imperialism in the Gold War.
And the content of your messages is almost irrelevant. GCHQ doesn't monitor content of
UK residents without explicit authority. It hardly needs to. It can monitor who you call, when,
how often, how long are the calls, your locations, the receiver's locations, your other contacts,
their other contacts. With that much information, the content is almost irrelevant.
Re: Peter Principle. Your discussion of the open-source community level of quality made
me wonder if there is a mirror image of the Peter Principle, say, the Paul Principle?
A great way to keep your cellphone radio-silent is to wrap it in a (2 is better still) metallized
mylar potato chip or Doritos bag. (The more silvery looking, the better, in my experience.)
The cell sites will NOT be able to ask your phone for its ID or give up its location, until
you take it out of the bag, of course.
It's a great way to take a road trip without the NSA knowing EXACTLY where you are at every
point along the way. And generally, you will be able to return your calls when you get home since
there will be a record of the calls at your provider, which will come up (in your message box)
when the phone is re-enabled.
Be aware though, once the phone is taken out of the bag, it will register with the local cell
sites (i.e. your cover will be blown.)
Debian with the ssl bug that quietly existed for years – most likely for spying? That OS? That
"community" effort? Which is basically derived from (Redhat) which is the DOD? Pffrt. Most of
this is nonsense.
The NSA has made people their bitch, in the most obvious ways. In the spirit of security then
and being a dutiful patriotic bitch – keep posting on social media given to you by the "truth
tellers". They are here to help you right? Tell you all the truthiness because they "were" in
the military, and "were" spooks. Keep your iphones close and let your mind do the deep state's
thinking.
As others have pointed out (if not in so many words), 95% of the spying efforts by the NSA
and others are directed at traffic analysis , not analyzing the CONTENT of communications.
Who contacted whom, when, for how long, etc. can tell you a lot about what is going on, and is
very easy and cheap to do on a massive (humanity-wide) scale using existing computer technology.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation referred to in the Saker's piece illustrates the point:
• They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don't
know what you talked about.
• They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the
topic of the call remains a secret.
• They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance
company in the same hour. But they don't know what was discussed.
• They know you received a call from the local NRA office while it was having a campaign against
gun legislation, and then called your senators and congressional representatives immediately
after. But the content of those calls remains safe from government intrusion.
• They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local Planned
Parenthood's number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.
In a similar vein, it is said (almost certainly correctly) that Target can spot whether a shopper
is pregnant long before she starts buying obvious baby-related stuff.
I didn't know about the phone apps. They look nice. Does anyone trust Android phones? I
was sad that the Ubuntu phone failed. I'd like smart phones to be more like PCs where new
operating systems can be installed on them. Is "SEL-Debian," Security Enhanced Linux? The NSA
developed that. OpenBSD supposed to be real nice and encrypted. How about systemd? The good thing
about open source is that the code is open but does anyone read it?
"... The exposure of this story takes the mask off the exponents of the Russian conspiracy theory. Their sanity is now in question,
as is their loyalty. ..."
For the past several months, Democrats have based their "Resist 45″ movement on unsubstantiated assertions that the Trump campaign
coordinated with Russian intelligence officials to undermine the 2016 Presidential Election thereby 'stealing' the White House from
Hillary Clinton. Day after day we've all suffered through one anonymously sourced, "shock" story after another from the New York
Times and/or The Washington Post with new allegations of the 'wrongdoing'.
But, new evidence surfacing in the Seth Rich murder investigation may just quash the "Russian hacking" conspiracy theory. According
to a new report from
Fox News , it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber
terrorist, as we've all been led to believe.
According to Fox News, though admittedly via yet another anonymous FBI source, Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin
MacFadyen, an American investigative reporter and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time. According to Fox News
sources, federal law enforcement investigators found 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments sent between DNC leaders from January 2015
to May 2016 that Rich shared with WikiLeaks before he was gunned down on July 10, 2016.
The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his
home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.
A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich's computer generated
within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative
reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.
"I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen
connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.
Then, on July 22, just 12 days after Rich was killed, WikiLeaks published internal DNC emails that appeared to show top party
officials conspiring to stop Bernie Sanders from becoming the party's presidential nominee. As we've noted before, the DNC's efforts
to block Sanders resulted in Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigning as DNC chairperson.
Expect the Comey-Russia hysteria to escalate as the Seth Rich matter ripens. The DNC is eyeing the 2018 midterm elections and
hoping that they can keep the focus off their problems (Hillary, Podesta, ad nauseam). How will they snatch defeat from the jaws
of victory yet again? CNN and MSNBC are preparing to levitate over the issues.
@Ivy Expect the Comey-Russia hysteria to escalate as the Seth Rich matter ripens. The DNC is eyeing the 2018 midterm elections
and hoping that they can keep the focus off their problems (Hillary, Podesta, ad nauseam). How will they snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory yet again? CNN and MSNBC are preparing to levitate over the issues.
Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would astonish most
people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".
Three days after the Seth Rich murder Comey had the information (IF he didn't already know) gleaned from Rich's laptop that
he had been in correspondence with Wikileaks, yet went along with the canard that the DNC was hacked by the Russians till the
very end. Assange's confirmation that Russians had no connection to the LEAK was also ignored, because they wanted Assange painted
as a criminal.
His murder is very troubling. Nothing was taken so it seems he was targeted. Assassinations taking place in the US should be
of great concern to everyone. This shouldn't be allowed to go down the memory hole. Does the trail lead to Clinton or other domestic
spook groups?
Only scanned the article quickly, but I'm very confident an untold number of political decisions in America are made by political
violence and threats of violence, blackmail, bribery, and so on. There are good people in politics, even in my preternaturally
corrupt area, but they have to be tough as nails, and that can wear you out. We may be closer to Tinpot-istan in our political
culture than Norman Rockwell, but–Chrissake–where are the mainstream media in this Seth Rich case? I'm just a casual reader of
the story, but I'd like to know if this was a political assassination.
I suspect there's as much evidence in the Seth Rich matter as there is in The-Russians-Did-It theory. So let's have congress
drop all other business and "investigate" this Rich matter.
"According to a new report from Fox News, it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and
not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we've all been led to believe."
Does it occur to Durden that there may be SEPARATE WikiLeaks, one allegedly from Rich and one from another source?
@Corvinus "According to a new report from Fox News, it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to
WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we've all been led to believe."
Does it occur to Durden that there may be SEPARATE WikiLeaks, one allegedly from Rich and one from another source?
@SteveRogers42 Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would
astonish most people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".
@Alfa158 The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus
from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. They did offer a reward for
information on the murder of Seth Rich, which implies, but does not state, that the DNC leaks came from Rich.
The Hillary e-mails could have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur.
Then on top of all that fog, other conflicting information is that the DNC lost control of the e-mails due to Podesta falling
for a phishing probe, even after his IT people warned him not to respond to it.
Yet another journalist claims he was the guy who forwarded the e-mails to Wikileaks and got them from a DNC staffer, but not Rich!
I think I'll go take a nap for about 5 years and you can wake me up after it is all sorted out.
@SteveRogers42 Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would
astonish most people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".
@anon Is there a specific combination on DNA of Negroes that carries the "pathological liar" trait?
What is that DNA pattern?
Does it appear only on NEGRO DNA or has its presence been noted on non-Negro DNA?
A majority of Black callers to C Span declare, with gospel certainty, that "Trump is a liar, has been all his life."
Does that mean that Trump carries Negro DNA?
Or that Trump is a Negro?
Or that the code for lying can be present in non-Negroes?
Or that Negroes, being "pathological liars," lie about Trump being a liar?
Is that last statement disproved if it happens that Trump does, indeed, lie?
My but it does get complicated when blanket, prejudiced generalizations are slung about.
I'm not impressed. For quite some time there has been a credible witness to the fact of an insider leaked the DNC mails that
doesn't require going through anonymous FBI sources or climbing over a Rich family in denial:
"I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's
a leak, not a hack; the two are different things" -wikileaks associate and former British foreign service officer Craig Murray
So why would 'tyler durden' toss all of this doubt inducing crap from the faux news channel into the stew of it? It's been
black & white, case closed for quite some time.
@Ronald Thomas West I'm not impressed. For quite some time there has been a credible witness to the fact of an insider leaked
the DNC mails that doesn't require going through anonymous FBI sources or climbing over a Rich family in denial:
"I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's
a leak, not a hack; the two are different things" -wikileaks associate and former British foreign service officer Craig Murray
So why would 'tyler durden' toss all of this doubt inducing crap from the faux news channel into the stew of it? It's been
black & white, case closed for quite some time.
@Corvinus One can have reasonable doubt that Craig Murray "knows" who leaked them since he has self-interest and self-preservation
in mind.
Mr. Murray made this statement--"A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals"
involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign
hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power
to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited,
or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks."
Except if the "Deep State" is playing for keeps and is hell-bent on removing Trump, then they are going to play it close to
the vest in certain matters and wait until they have the absolute goods to nail him to the cross. So it's not as "simple" as Mr.
Murray makes it out to be. Arrests and/or extraditions are most likely made when there is hard-core evidence, which is required
in this case given Trump status and popularity among his base. They have ONE bullet in their chamber and have to get the KILL
SHOT. The CIA has their attack dogs out en masses to smoke out the culprits. If it is revealed that in the two grand juries that
Trump's crew are joined at the hip with the Russians and/or engaged in shenanigans, then Republicans will have to think about
cutting their ties to Trump given the importance of the mid-term elections.
@Ronald Thomas West Clearly you're just way too smart for ordinary folk with common sense; kind of like the IQ 180 that believes
Jesus will return and straighten everything out. Meanwhile, I'll take Murray at his word.
JHC .. we do it/have been doing it (eg) meddling in foreign elections, wars, whacking the occasional candidate since the Spanish-American
War and say "its okay, it's in the national interest."
What's the point with the supposed Russia-US election bashing? Ie, it's okay and national interest legal for the US to meddle
and others not?
May 17, 2017 The Seth Rich Story Changes Once Again
Less than 24 hours after Private Investigator Rod Wheeler claimed that "investigation up to this point shows there was some
degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the story has changed. Wheeler is now claiming that he had no additional
evidence to suggest that Seth Rich contacted WikiLeaks prior to his murder.
14.05.2017 International Cyber Attack: Roots Traced to US National Security Agency
Over 45,000 ransomware attacks have been tracked in large-scale attacks across Europe and Asia - particularly Russia and China
- as well as attacks in the US and South America. There are reports of infections in 99 countries. A string of ransomware attacks
appears to have started in the United Kingdom, Spain and the rest of Europe, before striking Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines
on May 12. According to Kaspersky Laboratory, Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan were hit hardest. Mikko Hypponen, chief research
officer at the Helsinki-based cybersecurity company F-Secure, called the attack "the biggest ransomware outbreak in history".
It is not known who exactly was behind it.
@Corvinus "Clearly you're just way too smart for ordinary folk with common sense...:
I'm merely offering my analysis from multiple sources.
"kind of like the IQ 180 that believes Jesus will return and straighten everything out."
Exactly. It is faith. One can question that belief, but you nor I actually know.
"Meanwhile, I'll take Murray at his word."
In order to maintain his narrative, absolutely. But you may be missing key things along the way. We'll see how it all plays
out. The two grand juries being convened on the Trump Administration will be telling.
@Agent76 May 17, 2017 The Seth Rich Story Changes Once Again
Less than 24 hours after Private Investigator Rod Wheeler claimed that "investigation up to this point shows there was some
degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the story has changed. Wheeler is now claiming that he had no additional
evidence to suggest that Seth Rich contacted WikiLeaks prior to his murder.
@Ram Three days after the Seth Rich murder Comey had the information (IF he didn't already know) gleaned from Rich's laptop
that he had been in correspondence with Wikileaks, yet went along with the canard that the DNC was hacked by the Russians till
the very end. Assange's confirmation that Russians had no connection to the LEAK was also ignored, because they wanted Assange
painted as a criminal.
@Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11
That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?
The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be
any mechanism to even look into it.
@Corvinus One can have reasonable doubt that Craig Murray "knows" who leaked them since he has self-interest and self-preservation
in mind.
Mr. Murray made this statement--"A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals"
involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign
hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power
to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited,
or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks."
Except if the "Deep State" is playing for keeps and is hell-bent on removing Trump, then they are going to play it close to
the vest in certain matters and wait until they have the absolute goods to nail him to the cross. So it's not as "simple" as Mr.
Murray makes it out to be. Arrests and/or extraditions are most likely made when there is hard-core evidence, which is required
in this case given Trump status and popularity among his base. They have ONE bullet in their chamber and have to get the KILL
SHOT. The CIA has their attack dogs out en masses to smoke out the culprits. If it is revealed that in the two grand juries that
Trump's crew are joined at the hip with the Russians and/or engaged in shenanigans, then Republicans will have to think about
cutting their ties to Trump given the importance of the mid-term elections.
@anon Is there a specific combination on DNA of Negroes that carries the "pathological liar" trait?
What is that DNA pattern?
Does it appear only on NEGRO DNA or has its presence been noted on non-Negro DNA?
A majority of Black callers to C Span declare, with gospel certainty, that "Trump is a liar, has been all his life."
Does that mean that Trump carries Negro DNA?
Or that Trump is a Negro?
Or that the code for lying can be present in non-Negroes?
Or that Negroes, being "pathological liars," lie about Trump being a liar?
Is that last statement disproved if it happens that Trump does, indeed, lie?
My but it does get complicated when blanket, prejudiced generalizations are slung about.
@Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11
That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?
The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be
any mechanism to even look into it.
@Alfa158 The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus
from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. They did offer a reward for
information on the murder of Seth Rich, which implies, but does not state, that the DNC leaks came from Rich.
The Hillary e-mails could have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur.
Then on top of all that fog, other conflicting information is that the DNC lost control of the e-mails due to Podesta falling
for a phishing probe, even after his IT people warned him not to respond to it.
Yet another journalist claims he was the guy who forwarded the e-mails to Wikileaks and got them from a DNC staffer, but not Rich!
I think I'll go take a nap for about 5 years and you can wake me up after it is all sorted out.
@Corvinus "The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus
from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. The Hillary e-mails could
have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur."
Exactly. So Zerohedge is being a White Knight here for Trump. It is possible that Rich could have supplied those documents,
but it is also possible that the Russians was involved. We don't know for sure.
Why doesn't Assange release at least some of the e-mails from Seth Rich to Wikileaks?
According to the standard version of the story, Rich did not email the pilfered DNC data to Wikileaks. Rather, he met in
DC with Craig Murray--a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a personal friend of Julian Assange--and gave him the information
on a flashdrive of some type. Murray then flew back to Britain and gave the drive to Assange in person.
@Don Bass ......We don't know for sure.....
Sure, we do. Wikileaks has stated emphatically and categorically the leaks - and they were leaks, not " hacks", were not sourced
from the Russians.
What also know - for sure - is that the "Russians hacked our elections" psy-op/misdirect was constructed (workshopped) by the
Podesta + David Brookes media matters "team" immediately after the HRC election failure.
@Don Bass ......We don't know for sure.....
Sure, we do. Wikileaks has stated emphatically and categorically the leaks - and they were leaks, not " hacks", were not sourced
from the Russians.
What also know - for sure - is that the "Russians hacked our elections" psy-op/misdirect was constructed (workshopped) by the
Podesta + David Brookes media matters "team" immediately after the HRC election failure.
Well, it must have been the Russians that hacked into the NY Times and published that damning article about Hil and Libya.
It was a rather complete exposé of incompetence and savagery. Note; the New York Times! And where did Trump live? Pretty conclusive;
Trump and the Russians victimizing poor Hil and the voice of liberals in one dastardly hack.
@Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11
That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?
The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be
any mechanism to even look into it.
There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up
Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian
Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from
insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.
I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed
up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians
did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.
Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts
doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
Anyway
One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.
I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story Am I wrong?
If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources
said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
(if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)
Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray
We have two questions:
a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
b. Who killed Seth Rich?
The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest
organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs
who got away!
I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:
@Dahlia There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up...
Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian
Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from
insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.
I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed
up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians
did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.
Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts
doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
Anyway...
One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.
I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story... Am I wrong?
If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources
said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
(if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)
Gavin MacFadyen seems to have had a relationship with Craig Murray, and both had/have a relationship with Julian Assange. Seth
Rich being in contact with Gavin MacFadyen greatly lends credibility to Craig Murray's account.
(Here, both are mentioned together in the book "Ghost Plane: The True Story Story of the CIA Torture Program"
https://books.google.com/books?id=NLzB7YXDHNUC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=gavin+macfadyen+craig+murray+cia&source=bl&ots=KKy1_V2atM&sig=1CYGRZjnOxmcRIGk9RNx1iQhWcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigk-7br_3TAhXo7oMKHTOrCT0Q6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=gavin%20macfadyen%20craig%20murray%20cia&f=false)
Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray
We have two questions:
a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
b. Who killed Seth Rich?
The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest
organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs
who got away!
I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/
In reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that "Julian Assange took very close interest in the death of Seth
Rich, the Democratic staff member" who had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10 near his
Washington, D.C., home.
Murray continued, "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his killers. So, obviously
there are suspicions there about what's happening and things are somewhat murky. I'm not saying – don't get me wrong – I'm
not saying that he was the source of the [DNC] leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to
draw that WikiLeaks believes that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks whether correctly
or incorrectly. "
It may be worth noting that conspiracy theories have sprung up around other Democratic figures, but Julian Assange hasn't brought
them up. Just took a strong interest in this one.
Final comment in this string, so readers can check out Craig Murray's site. Maybe Ron Unz can get a hold of him?
Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes,
very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it
is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation
for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity
successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.
Can't say it enough: Discount anybody who doesn't reference Julian Assange or Craig Murray (and Gavin MacFadyen if the national
Fox News stands by its sources and I believe they do) when opining on Seth Rich or the Democratic emails.
I saw that Dave Weigel is planning on writing a piece on the Seth Rich conspiracy
The #1 thing fueling it is the Media ignoring Assange and his associates emphatically stating that it was insiders, not Russia,
involved with the Democratic leaks. These people received them, and long after the election when they have no possible motive,
still vehemently deny that it was Russia. Craig Murray spoke out in December. They have perfect credibility, and at this stage,
no motive that could be suspect. But they continue to be utterly, completely, ignored while the Russia circus runs on. So, a bona
fide Bernie supporter is murdered and Julian Assange took extreme interest How do people *not* question what is going on?
My spidey sense tells me that Seth Rich was a provider of intelligence to Julian Assange, but he really does not know who killed
him. I think Assange holds out some hope that it was a random one-off thug thing, but deep down, suspects it's not. The guilt
would be tremendous. But, he doesn't know. Strongly suspects. Tortured with guilt.
@Dahlia There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up...
Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian
Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from
insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.
I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed
up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians
did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.
Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts
doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
Anyway...
One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.
I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story... Am I wrong?
If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources
said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
(if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)
Gavin MacFadyen seems to have had a relationship with Craig Murray, and both had/have a relationship with Julian Assange. Seth
Rich being in contact with Gavin MacFadyen greatly lends credibility to Craig Murray's account.
(Here, both are mentioned together in the book "Ghost Plane: The True Story Story of the CIA Torture Program"
https://books.google.com/books?id=NLzB7YXDHNUC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=gavin+macfadyen+craig+murray+cia&source=bl&ots=KKy1_V2atM&sig=1CYGRZjnOxmcRIGk9RNx1iQhWcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigk-7br_3TAhXo7oMKHTOrCT0Q6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=gavin%20macfadyen%20craig%20murray%20cia&f=false)
Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray
We have two questions:
a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
b. Who killed Seth Rich?
The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest
organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs
who got away!
I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/
@Dahlia Final comment in this string, so readers can check out Craig Murray's site. Maybe Ron Unz can get a hold of him?
Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes,
very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it
is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation
for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity
successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.
Can't say it enough: Discount anybody who doesn't reference Julian Assange or Craig Murray (and Gavin MacFadyen if the national
Fox News stands by its sources and I believe they do) when opining on Seth Rich or the Democratic emails.
@Eagle Eye Seth Rich was quite young and perhaps not 100% wise to the ways of the world.
Is it conceivable that he passed the DNC emails to Comey's FBI FIRST as evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and THEN handed another
copy to Wikileaks as backup?
Perhaps Rich went to Wikileaks only after Comeys' FBI gave him the brush-off?
But I must say something ....Every recent article pertaining to Seth Rich, including Mike's , misses the MEAT of the entire
story.
The MEAT of the story is to be found in Seth Rich's JOB.
What did he do, Dahlia ?
He was a VOTER DATA DIRECTOR for the DNC....for gosh sakes!
If the story begins anywhere, it begins HERE.
Seth Rich's story begins when we recognize the high probability that Seth came across SUBSTANTIAL and REPEATED irregularities
in the VOTER DATA, tilting the outcomes in favor of Hillary.
This is the crux of the case.
It is also fair to assume that Seth Rich , given his role as "data director" , was able to COLLECT these voter data discrepancies,
and collate them into a fool proof evidentiary format.
Its the DATA which Seth found , that is the key... ...its the MEAT of the story.
But the DATA and the repeated systemic irregularities which he became aware of, could have been glitches in the system for
all he KNEW.
This is where we get to ......the POTATOES.
What are the potatoes?.....the potatoes are the EMAILS which show an INTENTIONALITY behind the DATA irregularities......and
expose them not just as "glitches" in the system,but as potentially deliberate and "treasonous" voter fraud.
A very serious case of multiple felonies by the DNC machine, and its party bosses, could be made if you have both the MEAT
(the data)and the POTATOES(the emails) of the case.
But you need BOTH, one without the other is not enough.
Givens Seth's JOB, the high probability he had the DATA in HAND, may well be why he was shot in the back at four in the morning
on July 10th, 2016.
If anyone wishes to solve this case..(or prosecute it)..they need to find the DATA CHIP....because
while the emails may show an "intentionality" to usurp the voters say in the DNC nomination , the DATA provides the PROOF.
May there be no doubt on this,.... everyone "involved" in these "dirty shenanigans" wants that data "exterminated" for all
time, .....and the entire story SHUT DOWN.
Seth Rich , given his role as "data director" , was able to COLLECT these voter data discrepancies, and collate them into a
fool proof evidentiary format.
This explanation - that Seth Rich had direct evidence of massive vote fraud - has always seemed most likely to me. The leaks are
secondary.
Again, he most likely went to the FBI and/or the U.S. media FIRST, but was betrayed by them leading to his murder. He ALSO
passed the data to Wikileaks.
So let's estimate the NUMBER of fraudulent votes controlled by the DNC. There are several categories:
(1) Illegal aliens registered to vote through La Raza, SEIU and similar DNC fronts.
(2) Other spurious voter registrations, e.g. dead voters, double voting (different addresses), completely fictitious voter
registrations concocted by complicit SEIU staff at registrars' offices.
(3) Zombie votes - technically correct voter registration, but the vote is actually cast by the SEIU, e.g. residents of nursing
homes, mental hospitals, military votes (which often mysteriously are not delivered to the military voter),
Given the period of time during which this has been operative, and the need to make a serious nation-wide impact, it seems
reasonable to estimate that the DNC controls about 3-7 million illegal votes nationwide .
The largest number would be in California. Although California overall is a blue state, there are conservative pockets and
some conservative candidates came close to the Democratic candidate in statewide and local races.
DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the
doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.
DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the
doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.
@JackOH I read the links. My understanding is that some cops will go rogue without instruction and on their own initiative
to jump the queue for advancement. There's not much deep-think to it. The political benefactor won't know any more than something
like "the problem was taken care of".
Seth Rich. Is there someone in the food chain who can apply pressure to find a credible suspect and, if possible, a motive?
Again, I'm just a casual reader, but the failure to get to the truth of the Seth Rich killing seems to empower a whole lot of
political mischief.
@JackOH SR42, your references are exactly what I was getting at in my comment #12 above.
I never took seriously the notion that American political decisions are made by violence and other criminal activities until
I got a very minor rough-up by a crooked cop for my smalltime local politicking. That cop later got a cushy government job under
the influence of a local Mr. Big whom I'd offended. Karma kicked in, and that cop's alcoholism and boorish behavior got him canned.
I never quit writing, but I was pretty damn scared for a while.
In all the categories of potential voter fraud you cited.
But I would imagine the vote "switching" from Bernie to Hillary, or the mysterious "disappearance" of a substantial percentage
of "Bernie votes" in key districts and perhaps certain states, too, is what caught Seth's eye.
But it could be all of it....and more too...for all we know....Without the data to look at..it's all just speculation.
DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the
doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.
My own experience, which included a failed blackmail attempt against me, and, possibly, the failed solicitation of a bribe,
taught me something about American political process. I asked myself why in the hell are a few important local people getting
their knickers in a twist over a not very important guy who's doing no more than writing a lot and doing local radio a lot? The
only answer I came up with was they believed, falsely , I was staging a run for political office, that I was reasonably
persuasive and therefore a threat of some sort, and they wanted me pre-emptively in the bag. BTW-I did consider legal action against
some of these slobs, but effective legal process costs money I didn't have.
FWIW-I'm unhappy, too, about the hair-tearing speculation over the Seth Rich case. The only way I can think of to put much
of that speculation to rest is to find the killer and make the case against him.
I'd heard something echoing this a couple days ago, but found it so unbelievable. Then, Dave Weigel, et al., knowing for a
fact that statements from Julian Assange, Craig Murray, and the late Gavin MacFadyen are the reasons for interest in Seth Rich's
murder, completely write them out. They don't exist.
William Binney, arguably one of the best mathematicians ever to work at the National Security Agency, and former CIA officer
Ray McGovern, have argued that the emails must have come from a leak because a hack would be traceable by the NSA.
I'd forgotten this so many people including Scott Ritter of "Iraq has no WMD" fame have said similar.
But seriously, if you don't believe Assange or Murray who have firsthand knowledge, William Binney rests the case: leak not
hack.
Doesn't mean the murdered DNC operative was involved with leaks or that even if he was, that's why he was killed, but one can't
be closed-minded.
"... Global neo-liberal establishment. Say it three times and click your heels. ..."
"... You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for people's hatred and fear. ..."
Neoliberalism, another word for 'money rules the world'.
Draghi visited the Dutch parliament, Baudet, FVD, asked him if, since
Draghi had warned Italy that leaving the euro would cost them about 100
billion euro, Ittalians debts, the Netherland would get about 100 billion
if we left the euro.
100 billion is what we lent, say, Draghi.
His 'answer' was that the euro is irreversible.
He apparently does not know that within tn years after the dissolution of
the Habsburg empire all the new states ahd created their own money.
Since all euo zone members still have their central banks, it is quite
easy to leave the euro.
No one ever went bankrupt because he overestimated the stupidity of the
US people, especially the liberal/neoliberal half. Yet, it escapes both
the author and me why this dumber liberal half of Americans has the
propensity to call itself "intellectual". Maybe intellectual is a synonym
for stupid in the New US Speak, you know like War is Peace, Freedom is
Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Idiocracy it truly is.
As to the intellectuals' media it is the usual assortment of The Jew
Pork Slimes, The Washington Compost, The Independent from the Truth, The
Guardian of the Lies and so on.
Oct 17, 2015 Paul Craig Roberts on the failure of Neoliberalism
Paul
Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a
columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder
of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street
Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified
before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic
policy.
@Agent76
Oct 17, 2015 Paul Craig Roberts on the failure of Neoliberalism
Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a
columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder
of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street
Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified
before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic
policy.
If Hopkins continues to write in this vein, he may eventually produce a
truly first rate play. Which will mark him forever as a tool of Russia
and the mastermind of all
EVIL
, Putin.
@joe webb
one of the characteristic forms of comments here is this: one or two
sentences and nothing else. No sustained thought process which can relate
X to Y and Z, as in multi-factor analysis, historical parallels,
psychology, etc.
Failure of intelligence.
There is nothing like intelligence. (or lack thereof)
@Agent76
Mar 18, 2014 US support of violent neo-Nazis in Ukraine: Video
Compilation
Shocking and insightful videos detailing the neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic,
ultra-nationalist movement in Ukraine. The videos examine the ongoing US
support of these groups, including the Svoboda party and Right Sector.
@Kiza
No one ever went bankrupt because he overestimated the stupidity of the
US people, especially the liberal/neoliberal half. Yet, it escapes both
the author and me why this dumber liberal half of Americans has the
propensity to call itself "intellectual". Maybe intellectual is a synonym
for stupid in the New US Speak, you know like War is Peace, Freedom is
Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Idiocracy it truly is.
As to the intellectuals' media it is the usual assortment of The Jew
Pork Slimes, The Washington Compost, The Independent from the Truth, The
Guardian of the Lies and so on.
This 'impeachment' thing should really be called JEW COUP.
Jews run the media and shape the Narrative.
So, the Liberation of Aleppo was called the 'Fall of Aleppo'.
So, Alqaeda elements in Syria were called 'moderate rebels'. So, we were fed lies about Libya to have it destroyed.
And so much fuss is made about Evil Putin but we hear nothing of what
Jewish oligarchs did to Russian economy in the 90s.
Jews are so powerful they can even convince American Morons that
marriage = two men buggering one another.
This is not about impeachment. Jews hate Trump because he wants better
ties with Russia, a nation that freed itself from total Jewish Control.
"Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not
always chosen intelligently" - Larry Niven from "Protector"
Also,
You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of
seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the
place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for
people's hatred and fear.
Not at all.
After the awkward "russian reset" attempt by the Clinton-Obama axis of
diplomacy, which somehow failed, the intolerance to all things Russian
started during Snowden's "Summer of Surveillance" redpilling (i.e. 2013).
Systemic shock mode was entered when the Ukraine liberation encountered
unsuspected and sudden (and definitely "reactive") pushback in 2014 and
Russia started supporting Syria against the ISIS "our temporary friends"
clownshow in 2015.
(The other "primary target for people's hatred and fear", the always good
to amuse the hoi polloi cardboard cutout Ghaddafi had sadly shuffled of
this mortal coil a bit earlier. So sad! And the bullshit of "Iran's gonna
have da bomb next week, this time for sure" stuff going on since the 90s
didn't get much traction anymore.)
@ThereisaGod
It is time to start saying it out loud. The west is occupied territory
and our occupiers are, unfortunately, largely Jews whose first loyally is
tribal and NOT to the country in which they reside.
@Anon
single factor analysis. It is not just the jews. The Dems are a
coalition of blacks, jews, asians, indians, mexers, and some working
class whites who have not left yet for the GOP and Trump, AND White
Liberals, mostly professionals, who have sold out to globalism and its
One World of Consumers.
Yes, there is a so-called 'Liberal
Coalition' of various groups. But are they equal in power and influence?
In truth, Jews dominate.
For example, Asians have no agency of their own. They just follow the
narratives of other. Mexers are happy to be Guillermos and have no
interest apart from tacos. Their only politics is calling whites
'gringos', blacks 'negritos', and Asians 'chinos'. Blacks are loud and
vocal, but it's all about blacks. Blacks have no knowledge and interest
in the larger world. They are very tribal and provincial.
If not for Jewish Power, NO ONE would be interested in Russia. That is
a Jewish thing.
If blacks ran the Democratic Party, they would fixate on some OTHER ISSUE
to get at Trump.
Blacks jumped on the Russia bandwagon ONLY BECAUSE Jews set the template
and the meme. Since that is the Anti-Trump Meme as chosen by Jews, all
anti-Trumpers are parroting the same crap. But Russia became the Key
Issue because Jews are obsessed with Russia and what it implies. Jews set
the Narrative and others play do the Parrotive.
The Powerful get to decide the Narrative. The less powerful just tag
along like dogs and repeat the mantra set by the Powerful. They are
parrots with the Parrotive.
Also, only Jews have the direct power in media, deep state, and
finance(owning all politicians through AIPAC) to pull off what is
happening.
Just think. Suppose Asians don't want to go after Trump but Jews want
to. What would happen? Jews would decide, and Asians would have choice
but to go along.
Now, suppose Asians want to go after Trump, but Jews don't want to. Could
Asians push for impeachment without Jewish support? NO way.
Or suppose blacks want to go after Trump, but Jews say NO and won't
give anti-Trump support in media and Deep State. Would it happen? No.
Or suppose blacks want to work with Trump but Jews want to go after him.
Would it happen? Yes, because Jews get to pull all the strings.
So, while it is true that there is a Democratic Coalition, Jews have
1000x the power of other groups. I mean consider how most Jews and most
Arabs are in the Democratic Camp, but Zionists have far more power than
Palestinians/Muslims do.
This is a
Jew Coup
because Jews are the single-most powerful
element in Democratic Party, GOP, Congress(by buying up politicians),
FED, Wall Street, and etc.
Sep 9, 2016 US-funded Ukrainian army is terrorizing civilians. Russell
Bentley is a former US marine, that now fights for the Donbass, Eastern
Ukraine, against the US-funded Ukrainian army.
@Ace
We are awash in lies: race, racism, white privilege, constitutional
America, living Constitution, propositional nation, nation of immigrants,
American exceptionalism, responsibility to protect (humanitarian war),
Assad the Dictator, Islamism/moderate Muslims, our ally Israel, our ally
Saudi Arabia, evilevil Putin, the one and only holocaust, right-wing
National Socialism, N"A"TO, evil Serbia, Islam's contribution, the
Crusades, patriarchy, gender, homosexual marriage, women's suffrage,
diversity, multiculturalism, open borders, welfare state, socialized
medicine, objective MSM, Saint Abraham, Saint Ze-dong, Obama the natural
born citizen, the administrative state, frustrated ghetto rocket
scientists, indispensable nation, Gaddafi the Tyrant, Axis of Evil,
Judeo-Christianity, the Three Abrahamic religions, globalism, free trade,
immigrant monetary contribution doing jobs Americanswon't do, climate
change, agw, alternative energy, reasonable gun control, nation building,
the glass ceiling, pay inequality, vote suppression, the evil of
segregation, black nationalism, private prison oppression, disparity in
sentencing, Roe v. Wade, the innocence of Mumia Jaba Jabu, reparations,
BLM, debt ceiling, government shutdowns, unemployment, inflation, the
"Federal" Reserve, dual citizenship, the EU, refugees, metissage
commercials, homosexuality in commercials, white burglars in commercials,
POC in commercials. Mexico our friend, GOP principles, bipartisanship,
McCarthy the Indecent, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Israel's mistake re the
Liberty, the _________ Commission, St. Martin the Patriot, Robert Mueller
the FBI Muslim realist, the neocon patriot, Saint Franklin, the New Deal,
the "US" Chamber of Commerce Keynesianism, quantitative easing, and St.
Hillary the Incorrupt.
Oh yes. And our desperate need for Nigerians, Syrians, and Somalis. And
Hindu software engineers.
I'm out of ideas now at which point one must say, "And I could go on and
on."
@El Dato
This must be the next basic text for an updated Billy Joel's "We didn't
Start the Fire" (clip needs to be updated to have Snowden on 24/7 TV and
no-one cares)
@Agent76
Sorry joe webb I do not partake in any flavor of Kool-aid! DECEMBER 25,
2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W.
Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier
Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German
reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand "one inch"
eastwards towards Russia.
@huswa
That's a really interesting view about operating on principle vs. on
in-group relations. Can you please reply with some relevant articles if
you have them?
I've traveled quite a lot and have seen principled people in all parts of
the world. Sometimes they are really drowned out by the masses. I do not
think that altruism is specific to whites. The "White Man's Burden"
wasn't altruism. Colonizers weren't in it to lift up the world. They
wanted money and other resources. As an example they crippled local
economies t Of course, they did a lot of good
"... Excellent, concise summary of Cold War and post-Cold War military history. I also thought that during the campaign Trump was broadly outlining a less interventionist approach – with the exception of ISIS. It's clear now his only political philosophy is "flexibility" and he surrounds himself with people of all kinds of persuasions, including neocons. ..."
"... Patrick again draws attention to our over commitment around the world. It is time to implode and focus on issues here at home. ..."
Excellent, concise summary of Cold War and post-Cold War military history. I also thought
that during the campaign Trump was broadly outlining a less interventionist approach – with the
exception of ISIS. It's clear now his only political philosophy is "flexibility" and he surrounds
himself with people of all kinds of persuasions, including neocons. I tend to favor "flexibility"
over a all-neocon administration (Geo. W. Bush) but Trump's "flexibility" is in reality "impulsiveness"
- let's just hope more stable voices prevail inside the White House of the President of the United
States Donald "It's Complicated" Trump, AKA The Apprentice.
Patrick again draws attention to our over commitment around the world. It is time to implode
and focus on issues here at home. We still have an immigration problem. The problem of chronic
unemployment continues to exist. The people that were displaced by the transfer of our industrial
sector overseas continue to haunt us. Student loans are like a millstone around our academic necks.
We bailed out the banksters after giving them an open-door policy to near ad infinitum indebt
our student body. The Fed not only creates money out of thin air, but it is a price setting entity
owned and operated in large foreign bankers; not Federal but Foreign. Does anyone know when setting
wages and prices have been successful? We know the Fed has been a dismal and costly failure. Count
their made in DC disasters since its inception in 1913. The unemployment stabilizer for the young
from the non- elite class is the U.S. military with risk to life and limb. Time to bring back
the military draft without any exceptions then designer wars will be challenged by the vast-unwilling
when war becomes a reality not something to watch on nightly TV. Is there hope? There was absolutely
no hope in the 2016 presidential election. The worst imaginable field of candidates in modern-history
and we are now stuck with Trump and family who seem to enjoy wars, but have not participated in
U.S. wars.
Is Mr. Buchanan aware that these "war guarantees" are a two-way street? Is he aware that Latvians
and Montenegrans have fought for America? And out of proportion to their size?
I believe the question should be more like what is the Pentagons Empire Dreams and Goals?
December 24, 2013 The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases The Global Deployment of US Military
Personnel
The US Military has bases in *63* countries. Brand new military bases have been built since
September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed
Worldwide. These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The
underlying land surface is of the order of *30* million acres. According to Gelman, who examined
2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of *737* bases in foreign lands.
Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically
within the US and internationally is of the order of *2,202,735 hectares*, which makes the *Pentagon*
one of the largest landowners worldwide!
"Donald Trump once seemed to understand this. Does he still?"
It appears he never did nor cared to ..
P.T. Barnum was right again .
We who clamored for an alternate path stuck our jaws out in desperation and were sucker-punched
again .
The Donald laughing all the way as he had no intent to know, care, or understand what he was getting
into or what he wanted to do.
He just wanted to be the Boss .
SO he is; and floundering by the hour.
May I suggest taking a different course here? Why are the 'Peace' Presidents winners change when
in they are in the White House? And for all the complaints of the liberal MSM, why is the MSM
so pro-war? Look the peace writers on the Times are the economist, Krugman, and religious one,
Douthat.
Anyway, I don't think Trump ever understood this because he believed the big mistake of the
Iraq was not winning in 12 months and taking their oil.
USA made a strategic mistake in the 1990s, focusing on the destruction and the weakening of Russia
after the collapse of communism and the collapse of the USSR.
If the US instead went the other way and supported Russia and strengthened its position in the
post-Soviet space and in Eastern Europe, now US would have had a good ally in Eurasia, and not
on what the Baltic dregs and torn by civil war fascist Ukraine.
Eurasia under the control of the United States, anyway, will not take place for any scenario,
but especially now – with the loss of the state of world hegemony.
Eurasia under the leadership of Germany, Poland or Ukraine is the same scenario from the category
of unscientific fantasy.
But Eurasia led by Russia – it was a very real and viable project in the 1990s, the word, alive
now only in a different, less responsive to the interests of the United States, form.
By the way, the project more attractive to US than indicated by the perspective of the hegemony
of China in Eurasia.
Only now, the US should try very hard to, despite the flaws in his politics in the 1990s, to strengthen
the position of Russia, and not any other player as Eurasian leader.
Nonsense. It's perfectly well and good to be exceptional and think of oneself as such. The
issue does one's exceptionalism lead to taking unnecessary risks or needlessly throwing one's
weight around.
I think that is the issue. I think we are also being reminded that our exceptionalism does
always make us right or intimidate others to do our bidding. That in the long run, it might have
been a good idea not to disrupt the lives of others merely because they disagree or live a life
different from our own. It fact, needlessly destroying the life of others for the sake of whatever
– in unethical, something we used to press for, despite our own imperfections.
Nothing quite so empty as undermining other people to get one's way and then attempting to
blackmail with the consequence of your underhanded behavior.
"... "What Is America's Goal in the World?" Total domination. ..."
"... You're conflating Russia and the Soviet Union. No country has been more hegemonic that the US ..."
"... Any country, family, tribe, organization etc. on the rise is driven by the shared concern of expanding the pie. But once the pie gets big enough, the major concern of most participants is increasing their own personal share of the pie. Thus whether or not America has a goal in the world, the goal of the deep state participants is to enrich themselves – to keep the gravy train rolling. ..."
"... Kosovo, Iraq and the recent symbolic (but still murderous) attack on Syria were all openly in defiance of the established rules, to which the US had voluntarily signed up. For the globalists, the rules only have any force when they serve the purposes of the globalists. ..."
For the World War II generation there was clarity.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941, united the nation as it had never been before - in the
conviction that Japan must be smashed, no matter how long it took or how many lives it cost.
After the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, however, Americans divided.
Only with the Berlin Blockade of 1948, the fall of China to Mao and Russia's explosion of an atom
bomb in 1949, and North Korea's invasion of the South in 1950, did we unite around the proposition
that, for our own security, we had to go back to Europe and Asia.
What was called the Cold War consensus - that only America could "contain" Stalin's empire - led
to NATO and new U.S. alliances from the Elbe to the East China Sea.
Vietnam, however, shattered that Cold War consensus.
The far left of the Democratic Party that had taken us into Vietnam had repudiated the war by
1968, and switched sides to sympathize with such Third World communists as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara,
Ho Chi Minh and the Sandinistas.
Center-right presidents - JFK, Nixon, Reagan - accepted the need to cooperate with dictators who
would side with us in fighting Communism.
And we did. Park Chung-Hee in Korea. The Shah in Iran. President Diem in Saigon. Gen. Franco in
Spain. Somoza in Nicaragua. Gen. Mobuto in the Congo. Gen. Pinochet in Chile. Ferdinand Marcos in
Manila. The list goes on.
Under Reagan, the Soviet Empire finally fell apart and the USSR then disintegrated in one of the
epochal events of history.
The American Century had ended in America's triumph.
Yet, after 1989, no new national consensus emerged over what ought to be our role in the World.
What should we stand for? What should we fight for?
What Dean Acheson had said of our cousins in 1962: "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not
yet found a role," was true of us.
What was our role in the world, now that the Cold War was history?
George H.W. Bush took us to war to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Soaring to 90 percent approval,
he declared America's new role was to construct a New World Order.
Those who opposed him, Bush acidly dismissed in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1991, the 50th anniversary of
Pearl Harbor:
"We stand here today on the site of a tragedy spawned by isolationism. And it is here we must
learn - and this time avoid - the dangers of today's isolationism and its accomplice, protectionism."
Neither Bush nor his New World Order survived the next November.
Then came payback for our sanctions that had brought death to thousands of Iraqis, and for the
U.S. bases we had foolishly planted on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia - Sept. 11, 2001.
George W. Bush reacted by launching the two longest wars in our history, in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and announced that our new role was to "end tyranny in our world."
The Bush II crusade for global democracy also fizzled out.
Barack Obama tried to extricate us from Afghanistan and Iraq. But he, too, failed, and got us
into wars in Yemen and Syria, and then started his own war in Libya, producing yet another failed
state.
What does the balance sheet of post-Cold War interventions look like?
Since 1991, we have lost our global preeminence, quadrupled our national debt, and gotten ourselves
mired in five Mideast wars, with the neocons clamoring for a sixth, with Iran.
With the New World Order and global democracy having been abandoned as America's great goals,
what is the new goal of U.S. foreign policy? What is the strategy to achieve it? Does anyone know?
Globalists say we should stand for a "rules-based world order." Not exactly "Remember the Alamo!"
or "Remember Pearl Harbor!" A quarter century after the Cold War, we remain committed to 60-year-old
Cold War alliances to defend scores of nations on the other side of the world. Consider some of the
places where America collides today with nuclear powers: the DMZ, the Senkakus, Scarborough Shoal,
Crimea, the Donbass.
What is vital to us in any of these venues to justify sending an American army to fight, or risking
a nuclear war?
We have lost control of our destiny. We have lost the freedom our Founding Fathers implored us
to maintain - the freedom to stay out of wars of foreign counties on faraway continents.
Like the British and French empires, the American imperium is not sustainable. We have issued
so many war guarantees it is almost assured that we will be dragged into every future great crisis
and conflict on the planet.
If we do not review and discard some of these war guarantees, we shall never know peace. Donald
Trump once seemed to understand this. Does he still?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, out May 9, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
"The far left of the Democratic Party that had taken us into Vietnam "
"During his term, Eisenhower will greatly increase U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam
to prevent a Communist victory. U.S. military advisors will continue to accompany American supplies
sent to Vietnam. To justify America's commitment, Eisenhower will cite a 'Domino Theory' in which
a Communist victory in Vietnam would result in surrounding countries falling one after another
like a 'falling row of dominoes'. The Domino Theory will be used by a succession of Presidents
and their advisors to justify ever-deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam."
So, in complete honesty, who "took" us to Vietnam?
Pat Buchanan is not an historian. He is a propagandist with an agenda to persuade.
Anonym, May 12, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT • 100 Words
Any country, family, tribe, organization etc. on the rise is driven by the shared concern
of expanding the pie. But once the pie gets big enough, the major concern of most participants
is increasing their own personal share of the pie. Thus whether or not America has a goal in the
world, the goal of the deep state participants is to enrich themselves – to keep the gravy train
rolling. If only one does this, it will not harm the overall much but when most are more
problem than solution, the pie starts to shrink.
Corvinus, May 12, 2017 at 3:26 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Realist
"No country has been more hegemonic that the US."
The British up until the 1950′s would have something say about it in light of their vast colonial
empire crumbling. Remember, the United States for most of its history has been an isolationist/neutral
nation. It was post-World War II that has America employed the "invade the world, invite the world"
strategy.
Rurik, May 12, 2017 at 4:09 pm GMT • 200 Words
what is the new goal of U.S. foreign policy? What is the strategy to achieve it? Does anyone
know?
to destroy all resistance to global Zionist domination and the Zio/Anglo boot upon the face
of humanity for all eternity. Duh. (please note that the Zio/Anglo boot in question -- will stamp
on the face of the working class Brits as much as anyone else. The Anglo in the Zio/Anglo boot
represents the aristocrat/Royal/pedophile faction of England, [and their like-minded fellow travelers
in Hollywood and NYC, DC, Paris, Berlin, etc..) and not the average British man and women on the
street, who are slated for hell on earth, just as much as everyone else, perhaps a little more
so than others).
~ all of this was foreseeable as soon as Woodrow Wilson handed the keys to the US Treasury
to the world's greediest, most treacherous, tribal and ethnocentric men (war pigs) on the planet.
In fact it wasn't just foreseeable, but inevitable.
Corvinus, May 12, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT
"Fair enough. No country is more hegemonic that the US."
No country is more hegemonic than the U.S. post-World War II. Then you could make a legitimate
case.
Randal, May 12, 2017 at 8:35 pm GMT • 100 Words
Globalists say we should stand for a "rules-based world order."
Which of course is every bit as dishonest as you'd expect from globalists. Kosovo, Iraq
and the recent symbolic (but still murderous) attack on Syria were all openly in defiance of the
established rules, to which the US had voluntarily signed up. For the globalists, the rules only
have any force when they serve the purposes of the globalists.
Randal, May 12, 2017 at 8:45 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Corvinus
Remember, the United States for most of its history has been an isolationist/neutral
nation
LOL! Amazing how an "isolationist/neutral" nation managed to expand continuously from a small
collection of remote and backward colonies in 1781 to a globe-bestriding empire with a history
of interfering all around the world from South and Central America to the Mediterranean, Russia,
China and the Pacific, and Africa, all before 1939.
The US might have been "isolationist/neutral" in the sense that it saw it as being in its own
interests to mostly stay out of the wars that were conveniently destroying its British and European
rivals, but it was certainly aggressively expansionist and ruthless from the outset in the use
of both military and economic power to impose its will on other peoples and countries, often on
the other side of the world.
It was hegemonic from the start, albeit starting small. A true heir of the British and European
nations which begat it.
What you describe is America's mendacious self-image, not reality.
"... Trump is another vassal/tool of the power elite. as all Presidents have been for decades. Some unhappily, but all completely. ..."
"... Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms. Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat Senators. ..."
"... He is thinning out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. ..."
"... "EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh, give me a break -- ..."
"... Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't get his wall. Period. For the rest of the agenda other than the wall – I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because his agenda is supported by a majority. ..."
"... The other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they care for Trump's agenda. ..."
"... Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and needs to be reigned in. ..."
"... Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected. ..."
The Trumpocalypse is already building a wall in the minds of the
prospective immigrant.
Amid immigration setbacks, one Trump strategy seems to be working:
Fear
Most notably, Trump signed an executive order during his
first week in office that, among other things, vastly expanded the
pool of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants who are deemed
priorities for deportation. [...] The most vivid evidence that Trump's
tactics have had an effect has come at the southern border with
Mexico, where the number of apprehensions made by Customs and Border
Patrol agents plummeted from more than 40,000 per month at the end of
2016 to just 12,193 in March, according to federal data.
Had a similar story, mutatis mutandis, been written by somone French in
France about French immigration, he or she would have been labeled
extreme right, or even fascist.
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning
out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US
embassy in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles
airport. Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by
stepping on US soil. Making health care a matter for the states to
determine will erode Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford
to hand out free medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
"EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me
mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In
a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh,
give me a break --
H2B is a clear example that those researchers from Stanford (?) where
right: that the views/interests etc of 80-90% of Americans has exactly
ZERO influence over government/s policy.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit
Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't
get his wall. Period.
For the rest of the agenda other than the wall –
I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because
his agenda is supported by a majority. The 40% approval rating Trump
enjoys – that's how many support his agenda. It's not a majority.
The
other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they
wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they
care for Trump's agenda.
Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a
Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and
needs to be reigned in. His agenda is not particulary popular among
people that voted against Hillary, not for Trump. Support for it is soft,
and as Trump continues a divisive agenda push that creates too much
opposition – soft support withers away.
he is going to be the same in office as all previous Republican
administrations
. Worse: Hard to see how the following story can be
interpreted as anything up Trump-Kushner selling visas for personal
enrichment. This is FILLING the swamp with corrupt Chinese .
There's been all kinds of cucking from Trump. I knew it would happen
eventually, but never dreamed it would happen within the first 100 days.
His latest cuck is leaving DACA in place and agreeing to accept the
1250 Muslim refugees who Australia did not want after blustering that
Obama made a "stupid deal" and we would not take them. You can't take
anything Trump says to the bank as it could change tomorrow or next week
and he acts like it's nothing.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words - one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
Where I live, in Montana, young white guys still work construction and
landscaping jobs. It's an amazing oasis, really.
What scares me is that
immigration decisions are being made by people who just
can't imagine
themselves or their family ever working these kinds of jobs or
anything close. They're out of touch. They have no right to capitulate
like this.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
@ThreeCranes
A former psychology professor of mine who also worked as a counselor at a
crisis center told our class that he could tell the real suiciders from
the wannabes by whether, after the "bang" of the supposed gunshot to the
head, he could actually hear the phone dropping onto the floor. If he
didn't, then presumably the caller was clinging to some hope, which it
was his job to nurture.
Mr. Derbyshire, like you I chuckle whenever Pres. Trump's makes the PC
crowd clamor for a safe space. But if you are concerned with the
vilification and death of traditional America then snark doesn't cut it.
If you voted for Trump, then sorry, the joke' on you, bloke.
We probably both miss the Scranton PA or Binghamton NY of 1955, but
Trump or any pol is powerless to bring them back. The best we rubes stuck
in the heartland can hope for is that the transfer payments from the
costal elites keep coming, and that the dollar remains a reserve currency
so that the government can borrow to support us. As I see it, Trumps
policies , gutting healthcare, tax cuts for the investor class, will hurt
us "badwhites". That is a bad bargain for seing Rosie ODonnell cry, no
matter how sweet.
@Clark Westwood
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words -- one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
" How were these reptiles able to get their way on a major issue in the
Trump electoral agenda"
Very simple : Because they, the Democrats, own
and wield the "Racism" bludgeon, and there is nothing which terrifies a
meek, mild-mannered "Fair" Republican politico more than being labeled as
a :
RACIST
( not forgetting : " Enemy of women" , Homophobe, etc)
period.
And until these cowards learn to do their duty and persue that which
they were elected for, and ignore the tauntings of racism, and until they
begin to just throw it back, the racist label, at the crazy democrats,
they will be in the losers seat, period.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified
US Army vet, and pro jazz artist.
Nobody here thinks that, you sanctimonious jerk-store.
Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to
be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because
Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero
or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected.
Worry not! The vice grip has been tightened , and now it's welded. You
think a con man from New York will betray his cabal buddies for a down on
his luck, beer chugging, and his world possession of a lifted 4×4, when
he has resorts to build and secure his little Zionist grand children that
one day will inherit the earth .Keep dreaming!
@Joe Hide
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
Congress is the problem – not the president. Congress is dysfunctional.
Getting reelected is everything to those people. First and foremost,
congress people represent themselves – not their voters. Taking campaign
money from lobbyists to stop challengers in jerrymandered districts and
blue or red states, is paramount.
The last time congress really accomplished something was in the
Clinton administration. Newt Gingrich did good things (balancing the
budget and changed welfare). Other than open ended war, Bush congresses
did nothing. Obama's congress got a disastrously bad healthcare bill
passed and nothing else.
For sixteen years, the Bush and Obama congresses just spent more and
more money driving up the debt.
Trump is going to show his colors, when in a couple of months – a new
long-term spending bill is coming up for a monumental vote.
Will Trump veto the trillion-dollar deficit that congress will send to
him or not?
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
"... Last week, Madame Le Pen declared that 'finance' is a primary enemy of France. Bankers are now lumped with Muslims as dire threats to the republic. ..."
"... With promises to "drain the swamp!" still ringing in our ears, we have watched Trump appoint nothing but Goldman banksters, Soros stooges, neocon war hawks and police state zealots to head his cabinet. ..."
200 Words
As Ed Margolis comments in his latest piece in the Unz Review,
"
Last week, Madame Le Pen declared that 'finance' is a primary
enemy of France. Bankers are now lumped with Muslims as dire threats to
the republic.
Outgoing President Francois Hollande made the same
warning last year, but no one paid him any attention.
Coming from the hard-right Le Pen, it's a bombshell. 'Finance' is
really political code for Jews who dominate parts of France's media,
banking, and industry. France has Europe's largest Jewish population,
followed by Ukraine.
Le Pen's gun sights are trained squarely on the youthful Macron who
may, it is rumored, have some Jewish background, and squarely on his
former employer, the mighty French Rothschild banking empire."
It seems we have the same problem in the United States with a
(((tribal))) faction who dominate parts of media, banking, and industry in
the United States also holding our country ransom to their globalist agenda
albeit we call them Neocons, which is also a code word for Jews.
With promises to "drain the
swamp!" still ringing in our ears, we have watched Trump appoint nothing but
Goldman banksters, Soros stooges, neocon war hawks and police state zealots
to head his cabinet.
Two Nations..one White...one non-White...occupying and competing for the
exact same LIVING AND BREEDING SPACE=VIOLENT RACE WAR...with great
international c0nsequences...I personally would like to see China nuked off
the map for exporting its population....
Trump is an enthusiast for importing Chinese Legal Immigrants into the
US...so they can enthusiastically vote his White Male voting bloc...into a
violently persecuted racial minority within the borders of America....And
while this is going on...Jared Taylor...Richard Spencer....and Steve Sailer
want to have eternal discussions about IQ test score psychometrics...and
PISA test scores...I despise all three of the aforementioned....
Nothing breathing space, control of oil, gas, mineral resources.
The USA consumes some 40% of those resources on this planet, with some 5% of
the world population.
Bill
,
May 5, 2017 at 5:40 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@jilles dykstra
In W European eyes the USA does not have political parties.
A USA correspondent long ago explained the mystery of the difference between
democrats and conservatives: conservatives is old money, democrats new.
Yet I do see a difference, democrats want war, conservatives are more
prudent about war.
So I was quite happy that Hillary was defeated, who I saw, and see, capable
of fighting a nuclear war against Russia, far from her home, but destroying
ours.
I had hoped that Trump would end USA militarism, what since Roosevelt has
been the great evil of this world.
Alas I fear that Deep State still is pursuing its goals, the goals Hillary
was expected to attain.
If Trump really wants to end USA militarism, or that Deep State is more
powerful than an elected president, for the present it is wait and see.
A USA correspondent long ago explained the mystery of the difference
between democrats and conservatives: conservatives is old money,
democrats new.
That's not it at all. The difference is in the industry they represent.
The Republicans represent the state: the energy, defense, and what's left of
the manufacturing industries. The Democrats represent the church: finance,
high-tech, education, entertainment, social work, and Sillycon Valley (now
that the valley is no long about manufacturing).
jilles dykstra
,
May 6, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT \n
200 Words
@IvyMike
mindless anti semitic blind worms wriggling throughout the internet
A great war cry, antisemitism, it is supposed, and, I must admit it does
most of the time, to silence any criticism of jews.
In the row in Europe
between Brussel and Hungary about ending Soros's activities in Hungary this
war cry now also has been used.
The Hungarian prime minister Orban had a talk with Brussels bureaucrat
Timmermans about throwing Soros out of Hungary, especially his 'prestigious'
university, in my view meant to undermine Hungarian nationalism.
Orban in his talk with Timmermans seems to have called Soros a
speculator, what he was, he made his fortune speculating in currencies.
He even was condemned to three months jail by a French court for trading
with foreknowledge.
Soros is hated to this day in Malaysia, they feel he lowered the value of
their currency, making their lives more expensive.
But now Timmermans has labeled 'speculator' as 'reeking of antisemitism'.
Hungary now demands that Timmermans be fired.
Brussels wants Hungary to adhere to EU values, this seems to include
allowing Soros to undermine the Hungarian government.
Sean
,
May 6, 2017 at 9:44 pm GMT \n
200 Words
Wellington was aghast at the size of the army Napoleon brought to Waterloo
(and that was after Napoleon had made the fatal error of dividing his
force). Any objective objective observer aware of the correlation of forces
would have given Napoleon a far greater chance of victory at Waterloo that
any expert gave Trump. He risked everything including his fortune, because
it endless investigation by a hostile Hilary administration would have taken
it from him had he lost
Trump is like Peisistratos of Athens–the good tyrant who broke the
stranglehold of the aristocracy. A very capable businessman, who relies on
the support of the common people, just as the wealthy Peisistratos did.
Trump has also mobilised an army of the lower orders to overturn all
received wisdom about who rules and who can expect to benefit. Expect him to
reward his supporters in the only way that he would want to be rewarded
himself: with money. Trump will move left domestically.
As one commenter explained below, the encryption of communications change very little if all your
communications are watched. Envelope (metadata) in enough to watch you pretty closely.
What the NSA does not tell the FISA court is that its requests for approvals are a sham. That's
because the NSA relies on vague language in a 35-year-old executive order, known as EO 12333, as
authority to conduct mass surveillance. That's surveillance of everyone - and it does capture the
content of every telephone conversation, as well as every keystroke on every computer and all fiber-optic
data generated everywhere within, coming to and going from the United States.
This is not only profoundly unlawful but also profoundly deceptive. It is unlawful because it
violates the Fourth Amendment. It is deceptive because Congress and the courts and the American people,
perhaps even the president, think that the FISA court has been serving as a buffer for the voracious
appetite of the NSA. In reality, the NSA, while dispatching lawyers to make sophisticated arguments
to the FISA court, has gone behind the court's back by spying on everyone all the time.
In a memo from a now-former NSA director to his agents and vendors, leaked to the public, he advised
capturing all data from everyone all the time. This produces information overload, as there is more
data than can be analyzed; each year, it produces the equivalent of 27 times the contents of the
Library of Congress. Therefore, safety - as well as liberty - is compromised.
The recent mass killings in Boston, San Bernardino and Orlando were all preceded by text messages
and cellphone conversations between the killers and their confederates. The NSA had the digital versions
of those texts and conversations, but it had not analyzed them until after the killings - because
it has and has had too much data to analyze in a critical and timely manner.
So, why did the NSA announce that it is pulling back from its customary uses of Section 702? To
give the false impression to members of Congress that it follows the law. Section 702, the great
subterfuge, expires at the end of this year, and the NSA, which has spied on Donald Trump since before
he was president, fears the debate that will accompany the efforts to renew it - hence its softening
public tone.
Does anyone seriously think that senior NSA officials do NOT personally ENRICH themselves through
stock market manipulation in anticipation of earnings reports, mergers etc. based on illegal NSA
intercepts?
Does anyone think that at least NO NSA officer EVER uses illegally intercepted information
to blackmail others or otherwise to secure a secret advantage in dealing with others?
Does anyone think that Hillary's and the FBI's access to grossly illegal NSA intercepts was
NOT a key factor in the 2016 presidential and Congressional elections?
The backstory is that Trump has the power to fire them all, easily and without much in the
way of red tape. And that he can't be relied upon not to do so.
So, why did the NSA announce that it is pulling back from its customary uses of Section
702? To give the false impression to members of Congress that it follows the law. Section 702,
the great subterfuge, expires at the end of this year, and the NSA, which has spied on Donald
Trump since before he was president, fears the debate that will accompany the efforts to renew
it - hence its softening public tone.
Oh, and Trump can veto any renewal bill. Too bad he won't.
What will happen with this privacy thingy is that people with stuff to hide (legitimate
or not) will get their hands on strong encryption and the hoi polloi just doesn't care enough.
There needs to be a public movement toward encryption, so that everyone uses it. Then using
it won't be prone to the abuse of "probable cause."
What will happen with this privacy thingy is that people with stuff to hide (legitimate or
not) will get their hands on strong encryption and the hoi polloi just doesn't care enough.
There needs to be a public movement toward encryption, so that everyone uses it. Then using it
won't be prone to the abuse of "probable cause."
movement toward encryption
Think of a colleague, a personal enemy, a business partner, a spouse etc. Imagine you have access to their communications logs – a long list of times and other details
of each email, text, USPS letter, phone call, wire transfer etc. to or from the subject, including
the name of every person with whom she communicated, but NOT including the content of the message.
What conclusions could you draw from the following (with HT to Electronic Frontiers Foundation):
(1) Your business partner called a bankruptcy lawyer last Thursday and spoke for 27 minutes.
You do not know what was discussed because the communication was encrypted.
(2) Your spouse made several hours-long phone calls, wired money to a sibling in Brazil on
five occasions in 2 days, and contacted an airline. You do not know any details because the communications
were encrypted.
(3) The senior dean of admissions at Princeton exchanged 17 encrypted emails with an individual
in Saudi Arabia, and two days later received two bank transfers from another individual in Saudi
Arabia to her numbered bank account in Moldova. You do not know the content of the emails, nor
the amount of the wire transfers, because the communications were encrypted.
Spring in Washington would not be complete without
the city's famous cherry blossoms and the annual
"Policy Conference" meeting
of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC). The 15,000 plus participants began arriving on Sunday and
will be here at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center until tomorrow
morning, at which point many of them will descend on Congress like a swarm
of ravenous locusts to make sure that our Solons on the Potomac are doing
what is right by Israel.
AIPAC is the most powerful foreign policy
lobby in Washington. Its annual budget exceeds $77 million plus it has an
endowment of $100 million
. It has nearly
400 employees
and also supports local chapters and initiatives
throughout the United States. What do all those employees do? They mostly
lobby Congress and increasingly state legislatures shamelessly on behalf of
a foreign country that has little in the way of actual common interests with
the United States. When anything happens in the Middle East, AIPAC's drones
get to work, drafting up position papers detailing the Israeli position
which are then placed by runners on the desks of every single congressman
within a matter of hours. The congressmen, too lazy to engage in any real
inquiry into what is going on, rely on the AIPAC research. That is,
lamentably, how our system works. And if the congressman ignores the
"expert" advice, AIPAC and its friends makes sure he or she has a strong,
well-funded opponent in the next election, someone who knows how to say "I
love Israel" without moving his or her lips.
The current speakers' list for the 2017
conference includes many of the leading political parasites that have long
made the nation's Capitol a "must miss" destination. I will not attempt to
summarize what Michael Pence, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Paul Ryan,
Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Steny Hoyer and others said on Sunday night
and yesterday as it was all basically the same speech, declaring undying
love for Israel and the Jewish people and pledging that the United States
will always have "Israel's back," whatever that is supposed to mean.
Twenty-nine congressmen were featured as attendees on the
AIPAC website
but more than two thirds of the entire Congress is
expected to appear for a photo op while muttering something about that
apparently vulnerable "back." Or do they mean backside? Whatever. I won't
name any more of the specific panderers as the reader probably already has a
good idea who they are.
And, of course, the redoubtable Professor
Alan Dershowitz was also a featured speaker, a wonderful human being who
recently told
us goyim that Jewish power in this country is both
deserved and granted by Jehovah. It is interesting how Jews among themselves
boast about
their power but if a gentile so much as suggests the same
thing it is anti-Semitism.
There were also two certifiable loonies
among the speakers, apart from Dershowitz. They were Nikki Haley, America's
stalwart U.N. Ambassador, and Stephen Harper, until recently Prime Minister
of Canada. Those who are following Haley's meteoric career are probably
aware that while governor of South Carolina she took the lead on making her
state
the first in the nation
to legislate against the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement (BDS) which supports peaceful pressure on Israel to
abandon its apartheid policies when dealing with its own Arab citizens as
well as the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Such legislation is an
abrogation of First Amendment rights and will likely prove to be
unconstitutional if it ever gets to the Supreme Court, but Haley clearly
believed then and believes now that nothing is too good when it comes to
Israel. Since going to the U.N., Haley has spoken more about Israel than
about any possible American interests, pledging full support and protection
for Netanyahu and his government. She blocked the appointment of a
well-qualified Palestinian to a senior U.N. position purely because he was
Palestinian. Ignorant of nearly everything that goes on in the world outside
the U.S., it might be said that she is so horribly inept that she actually
makes her ghastly predecessor Samantha Power look good.
Stephen Harper is another certified knee
jerker when it comes to Israel. A fundamentalist Christian who believes the
second coming of Christ is imminent, while Prime Minister he led what was
possibly the world's
most pro-Israeli government
. Harper
described
Israel as a light that " burns bright, upheld by the universal
principles of all civilized nations – freedom, democracy justice." He has
also said
"I will defend Israel whatever the cost" to Canada, an
interesting proposition for those who might have believed that his duty was
to protect his own country and advance its interests. Harper, who has
received awards
from both Canadian and American Jewish organizations,
personally endorsed Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006, calling it
"measured" even when Canadian peacekeepers
were killed
in the bombardment.
Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of
Rwanda, also spoke at the conference. Why? I don't know but it probably has
something to do with characteristically liberal American Jews pulling their
usual doublespeak trick, trying to pretend that fundamentally racist
Israelis are not actually racist by inviting a black man to speak at a
pro-Israel conference. I'll bet he was paid handsomely to do so.
And former British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, perhaps suggesting that love for Israel is truly international, spoke
and was also probably paid handsomely to do so as he an incorporated brand.
Between 2007 and 2015 Blair was the "special envoy" representing (and
personally profiting from) the Quartet seeking to bring about a peace
agreement between Israel and Palestine. Marwan Bishara
explained
in
The New York Times
: "A natural panderer to power,
Mr. Blair morphed his complicity with the United States over Iraq into a new
complicity with Israel. The assumption that operates is that schmoozing with
the powerful is the only way to make a difference. So while Mr. Blair worked
to reform the Palestinian Authority's finances, security and governance, he
turned a blind eye as Israel expanded its illegal settlements and tightened
its hold on the autonomous territories. In the process, Mr. Blair helped
render the Palestinian Authority more, not less, dependent on Israel.
Instead of protecting the Palestinians from the Israeli settlers,
Palestinian security forces have since been protecting Israeli settlers from
Palestinian resentment." Blair also attacked the Palestinian leadership's
decision to seek United Nations recognition of the Palestinian state,
calling it "deeply confrontational." Bishara dismisses him as "Israel's
puppy." As I am extremely fond of dogs, I would modify that to read "Israel
and now AIPAC's butt boy."
The avenging angel Benjamin Netanyahu also
addressed the conference by satellite link and yet again described the
threat posed by Iran. The satellite visit was somewhat surprising, as he
usually likes to drop by in person so he can pick up his annual tribute
money from the U.S. Treasury. This year's Danegeld will be $3.8 billion
thanks to President Barack Obama, guaranteed for ten years, and there will
be, of course, various supplements as the Israelis discover things that they
just need to have to stave off Netanyahu's wily Persians and fight the
rising tide of anti-Semitism. A rising tide, which we have just learned,
was carried out
by an Israeli Jew who also holds U.S. citizenship, which
again leads to the question why so many Israelis are allowed to have
American passports even though they live in Israel and serve in the Israeli
Army?
And, of course, Persia was an
integral part
of the conference as it is tough to want to destroy the
entire Muslim Middle East without having a really formidable enemy to focus
on. Iran fits the bill quite nicely, but speakers were also prone to skewer
those terrible Ay-rabs who just do not want peace. And the Israelis
settlements are not a problem, nosiree! The theme of this year's gathering
was, in fact, "Many voices, one mission," the mission presumably being the
expansion of Israel so it will stretch east to west from the Nile to the
River Jordan and north to the Turkish border. The indigenous inhabitants
will have to be removed, but as they are mostly terrorists that should be
okay with the world community and Donald Trump.
And with the 15,000 AIPAC attendees. The
AIPAC gathering is really all about subverting Congress, so it is a good
thing that a large majority of Congressmen were attending, making the
necessary bowing and scraping that much easier. And they will enjoy it even
more when the 15,000 AIPAC loyalists descend on Capitol Hill as the
conference ends to make sure that Congress is listening. Democracy in action
is great, isn't it?
Even though I jest about the absurdity of
thousands of Americans who appeared to be confused about what country they
actually live in gathering to honor a foreign country that has an army that
acts like a terrorist group, does not believe in equal rights even for its
own citizens and bans visitors who do not accept its more questionable
policies, the AIPAC people are not a joke. They are a deadly serious threat
to our own democracy and way of life as they have figured out how to use
money and the power that money buys to leverage and corrupt the system in
such a way as to produce wars and turmoil that have blown back on the United
States and made every American citizen both less safe and poorer.
I have written and spoken before how AIPAC
is ultimately doomed as Israel and its basic policies towards Arabs and its
neighbors are unsustainable both from a human rights and practical point of
view. But that does not mean that it is going away any time soon. The Israel
Lobby has the U.S. Congress and media by the throat and the Trump
administration promises to be completely uncritical in its relationship with
Netanyahu and whatever homicidal kleptocrat might be in line to succeed him.
Ms. Haley and her peers in state governments have successfully pushed
legislation in a majority of states that punishes anyone who tries to
boycott Israeli institutions or products. On university campuses non-violent
criticism of Israel is being suppressed. There is also increasing pressure
to define any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism and therefore a hate
crime, modeled on similar legislation in Canada, Britain and France.
In a number of European countries it is a
crime to challenge the standard narrative on "the Holocaust." Why should
that be? You can in much of Europe stand in a town square and say horrible
things about your own country but if you criticize the factual basis of one
particular "event" that took place in the 1940s you will go to jail.
So hang on to your hats, my fellow
Americans. AIPAC is not going away and it will be doing all it can to keep
neighboring Syria a cauldron of death and destruction while also calling for
war on Iran. And AIPAC as well as the other bits and pieces of the Israel
Lobby will have many Quislings in the Congress and U.S. media who will echo
whatever they propose, even if it does grave damage to American interests.
Meanwhile the billions and billions of dollars will continue to flow from an
increasingly straitened United States to a wealthy Israel. At its conference
AIPAC announced
the latest windfall from America, applauding " the U.S.
House of Representatives for significantly bolstering its support of
U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation in the FY 2017 defense
appropriations bill. The House appropriated $600.7 million for U.S.-Israel
missile defense programs." That is on top of everything else Israel gets.
Will it ever end? I don't know.
It's revealing that Zionist support Israeli immigration laws which
specify JEWS ONLY, while those same Zionists demand massive 3rd world
immigration into the US & Europe.
It's also revealing that we don't see Zionists criticizing Israel's
very real WALL.
Fake News Versus No News
How Russia is pilloried while real news about Israel goes unreported
Israel interferes in our politics all the time, and it's never a
scandal.
"The Israeli interference in our politics is the conspiracy in plain
sight that no one in the media talks about because they're too implicated
themselves."
Israeli Mossad's motto: "By deception thou shalt do war"
Moscow has 92 synagogues for less than a thousand practicing Jews –
they are staffed and manned by the imported American Rabbis of Habad.
Best and the choicest pieces of Russian municipal land are given to
synagogues and Jewish cultural centres for free.
200 Words
Very well said, Phil Giraldi. The power of the Israel Lobby in the US is
almost absolute. Slowly but surely, they get also a hold of the political
elites in Great Britain, France, and Germany. None of these folks have
the guts to criticize the brutal Apartheid regime in Israel and the
Palestinian Occupied Territories out of fear of being branded an
"anti-Semite".
The US Congress doesn't serve the interest of the American people but
only the Zionist regime and their expansionist lust for territory and
their aggression towards Iran. Not Iran is the major sponsor of terrorism
such as the Zionist and their cheerleaders in the US pretend but Israel
with its terrorist military gang, the so-called IDF, which should be
renamed in ITF (Israeli Terrorist Forces).
Miko Peled, the author of "The General's Son" described this military
gang as follows: "the IDF is the best trained, best equipped, best fed
terrorist organization in the world". And the US taxpayers are financing
a terror organization that is against US law.
"Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's choice of neighborhood narrows the
focus on Chabad":
The residence they have reportedly picked, on Tracy Place NW, is about
half a mile from TheShul of the Nation's Capital, a synagogue run by the
active Orthodox Jewish organization Chabad .
ome of Washington's highest-profile observant Jews, including Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew and longtime senator and 2000 vice presidential
candidate Joseph I. Lieberman, have sometimes attended services at
TheShul as an alternative to Kesher Israel, where they more frequently
spent Shabbat. Numerous Jewish ambassadors from foreign countries have
chosen to worship at TheShul "
@
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/01/05/ivanka-trump-and-jared-kushners-choice-of-neighborhood-narrows-the-focus-on-chabad/?utm_term=.1bce47e39bc2
"Recently, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner visited the Ohel*, and every
Jewish media outlet covered their visit. However Trump and Kushner's
visit was not publicized by Chabad".
@
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/227102
*The Cambria Heights, Queens "Ohel" (literally 'tent' but used by
Chabad hassidim to mean 'tomb') of the sixth and seventh Chabad-Lubavitch
Rebbes, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Scheerson and his son-in-law Rabbi Menachem
Mendel Schneerson, has become a 24-hour hub of activity with visitors
stopping at all hours of day and night to pray and ask for blessings.
Thousands of Jews, from all backgrounds and ethnicities, as well as
politicians, diplomats, and many others, visit the site every day of the
year.
Yes, the ones with silly hairstyles.
"Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday put the issue of moving the U.S.
embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem back on the table, telling
pro-Israel lobbying group that President Donald Trump was giving "serious
consideration" to the issue.
@
http://www.newsweek.com/mike-pence-trump-us-embassy-jerusalem-consideration-574576
These are the folks who put the Zio in Anglo/Zio Empire. If you are an
Imperialist (Hillary supporter) you gotta love these people. Nationalists
not so much.
Spiridon
,
March 28, 2017 at 8:58 am GMT \n
100 Words
You are wrong when it comes to explain Kagame presence ; it is not
cosmetic at all, it is not to give some "antiracist" acceptable face to
AIPAC. But it has to do with many years of Israel lobbying in Africa,
it's hidden role in managing access to resources and manipulating powers
in Africa. Besides, Kagame is himself this kind of terrorist, most
probably at the very origin of Rwanda massacre, blaming others for being
terrorist and dressing himself in innocent pure white colour a fake
victim. He received officially last year Netanyahu in Rwanda. Israel has
been secretly very active in Africa for the benefit of UK and USA, trying
to encroach on French turf. One famous journalist has written crystal
clear book on this influences : "Carnages" by Pierre Pean. Israel was
eager to play a role in destabilizing Sudan, an Rwanda was a piece on the
chessboard. The FPR (patriotic front of Rwanda) led by Kagame was an
important tool of this war.
Incitatus
,
April 1, 2017 at 8:40 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@iffen
(deliberate) attack on the USS Liberty '67
What do the parentheses mean? Why did you use deliberate? Of course it
was deliberate. Are you trying to obscure the issue of mis-identification
by using deliberate?
LBJ's reaction was shameful.
Why was it shameful? Are you joining in with the warmonger, flag waving
casket jumpers now?
" (deliberate) attack on the USS Liberty '67 "
"What do the
parentheses mean?"
"Deliberate"
was thus noted because I tried to make a larger
point about Israel's possible motive (mistrust after Suez). No question
the attack was sustained and deliberate.
"Why was it [LBJ's reaction] shameful?"
The whole incident reeked cover up. LBJ planned to run for reelection.
QED the clumsy obfuscation, willing acceptance (wink-wink) of Israel's
lame excuse, and turning the MOH into a consolation prize to keep
survivors quiet. He even avoided personally awarding it (customary).
That's why LBJ's reaction was shameful.
"Are you joining in with the warmonger, flag waving casket jumpers
now?"
Not at all. Truth – correcting the record – would satisfy me. And be
healthier for Israel. It's too easy to drink koolaid and believe one's
own lies (e.g. GW Bush Iraq 2003).
L.K
,
April 1, 2017 at 10:37 pm GMT \n
Do yourself a favor? Spread your "wings" and ass cheeks, fly to Israel,
and stay there.
U.S. Liberty Calling Sam The Sham: Cease meditations for a moment and
show ''iffen-iffen the open door to Israel?
Hey Chuck,
Yeah, I guess iffen-iffen, sam the sham and all these other hasbara
assholes should indeed move to their beloved israel(Palestine).
Except, if all the diaspora zio slime moved there, it would only make the
Palestinians' lives even more miserable. Then again, they don't wanna go
anyway
Read the following interview with the brave Jeffrey Blankfort(who is
Jewish), a journalist and Middle-East analyst, well worth it. He closes
it with;
"Should Israel find a way to attack Iran, the repercussions from
that might be sufficient to send Israel on the road to what will
ultimately be viewed as self-destruction. At the moment, thanks to the
unconditional backing by the U.S. for all it crimes, and given its
arsenal of nuclear weapons, I consider Israel to be the most immediate
threat to the future of the planet."
BTW Chuck, and I only ask bc you already revealed even your home
address, do you have any email address you'd be willing to share?
Perfectly alright if don't wish to, of course.
Maybe you can help me with this. (You seem to have a good filing system
(-: )
When I mentioned to a friend (not a person who follows Israel/Palestine)
that MOCs are "invited" to pledge loyalty to Israel, she couldn't believe
it, and asked for proof.
Is there hard evidence? Is there a written document, or is this an oral
pledge? [I imagine an AIPAC delegation in every new MOCs office.] Has any
official - besides Cynthia McKinney - spoken about this?
Judging from my friend's reaction, this should go to the top of the
LFTL list of essential information,
(not to mention prominent
placement at If Americans Knew).
The only thing I know about (to send to my friend) is the video of
Cynthia at a past WRMEA conference, telling her story. Also, I think one
of the other speakers, a former AIPAC employee, mentioned this.
Is there hard evidence? Is there a written document, or is this an
oral pledge? [I imagine an AIPAC delegation in every new MOCs office.]
Has any official – besides Cynthia McKinney – spoken about this?
Hi, RobinG. I wasn't even aware of this allegation. Thanks for
bringing it to our attention. I did a Google search and the only thing I
could come up with was this article:
Cynthia McKinney Drops Bombshell: Candidates to sign pledges of
support for "Israel"
by Richard Edmondson
In an interview which aired on Press TV on Saturday–one day before
the AIPAC conference got under way in Washington–former Georgia
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney revealed what amounts to some pretty
startling news regarding the extent of the Israeli lobby's influence
over Congress.
During her years in Congress, she stated, candidates for both the
House and the Senate were requested to sign pledges of support for
Israel, documents in which the candidate promised to vote to provide
consistent levels of economic aid to the Zionist state. Refusal to
sign the pledge meant no funding for the candidate's campaign.
"You make a commitment that you will vote to support the
military superiority of Israel-the economic assistance that Israel
wants, that you would vote to provide that,"
McKinney, who served
in Congress from 1993-2003 and again 2005-2007, tells Press TV
interviewer Marzieh Hashemi in the two-part video program below.
According to McKinney, the pledge also included a vow to support
Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
"
Every candidate for Congress at that time had a pledge, they
were given a pledge to sign
" she said.
"If you don't sign the
pledge, you don't get money.
For example, it was almost like water
torture for me. My parents observed this. I would get a call and the
person on the other end of the phone would say 'I want to do a
fundraiser for you.' And then we would get into the planning. I would
get really excited, because of course you have to have money in order
to run a campaign.
And then two weeks, three weeks into the
planning, they would say, 'Did you sign the pledge?' And then I would
say, 'No, I didn't sign the pledge.' And then my fundraiser would go
kaput."
During her years in Congress, McKinney opposed U.S. involvement in
foreign wars, questioned the official version of the events of 911,
and introduced articles of impeachment against former President George
W. Bush. Her final term in Congress came to an end after AIPAC, or the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, funneled money into the
campaign of her opponent, Hank Johnson.
In the interview, Miss McKinny also references one of her
predecessors, Gus Savage, who was targeted by the Lobby before she was.
Here's what she had to say:
Gus Savage was a black Member of Congress who was targeted by the
Israel Lobby. And he had the foresight to use his position as an
incumbent of the HofR to put his experience on the congressional
record.
Here's an excerpt from Gus Savage's excellent speech:
Now, let me say something about my position regarding Israel that
may explain the concern, but certainly does not justify a body with no
legal right to do so whose primary concern is a foreign nation rather
than the interests of America, trying to determine the outcome of an
American election for Congress. That, my friends, Mr. and Mrs.
America, is dangerous, indeed.
Israel receives almost one-third of all the United States' foreign
assistance, $3 billion in the foreign assistance bill, and usually
$400 million or $500 million more tacked on here and there, roughly
$3.5 billion a year. That is not the Government's money. That is your
money, your tax dollars.
We do not have enough money to maintain full funding for student
grants and student loans for those in need to attend the colleges of
their choice, for which they are qualified, not enough money to create
jobs programs for those pockets of poverty in our Nation, not enough
funds for long-term Medicare for our senior citizens in need, but $3
1/2 billion of your tax dollars to one little nation, Israel, a nation
with only about 3 1/2 million citizens. That means then that you are
giving $1,000 a year to every man, woman, and child citizen of Israel.
Think about that.
Is there hard evidence? Is there a written document, or is this an
oral pledge? [I imagine an AIPAC delegation in every new MOCs office.]
Has any official – besides Cynthia McKinney – spoken about this?
Hi, RobinG. I wasn't even aware of this allegation. Thanks for bringing
it to our attention. I did a Google search and the only thing I could
come up with was this article:
Cynthia McKinney Drops Bombshell: Candidates to sign pledges of
support for "Israel"
by Richard Edmondson
In an interview which aired on Press TV on Saturday–one day before the
AIPAC conference got under way in Washington–former Georgia
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney revealed what amounts to some pretty
startling news regarding the extent of the Israeli lobby's influence
over Congress.
During her years in Congress, she stated, candidates for both the
House and the Senate were requested to sign pledges of support for
Israel, documents in which the candidate promised to vote to provide
consistent levels of economic aid to the Zionist state. Refusal to
sign the pledge meant no funding for the candidate's campaign.
"You make a commitment that you will vote to support the military
superiority of Israel-the economic assistance that Israel wants, that
you would vote to provide that,"
McKinney, who served in Congress
from 1993-2003 and again 2005-2007, tells Press TV interviewer Marzieh
Hashemi in the two-part video program below.
According to McKinney, the pledge also included a vow to support
Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
"
Every candidate for Congress at that time had a pledge, they were
given a pledge to sign
" she said.
"If you don't sign the
pledge, you don't get money.
For example, it was almost like water
torture for me. My parents observed this. I would get a call and the
person on the other end of the phone would say 'I want to do a
fundraiser for you.' And then we would get into the planning. I would
get really excited, because of course you have to have money in order
to run a campaign.
And then two weeks, three weeks into the
planning, they would say, 'Did you sign the pledge?' And then I would
say, 'No, I didn't sign the pledge.' And then my fundraiser would go
kaput."
During her years in Congress, McKinney opposed U.S. involvement in
foreign wars, questioned the official version of the events of 911,
and introduced articles of impeachment against former President George
W. Bush. Her final term in Congress came to an end after AIPAC, or the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, funneled money into the
campaign of her opponent, Hank Johnson.
Here's the video of CM's interview:
https://youtu.be/hXaCym8RjJU
In the interview, Miss McKinny also references one of her predecessors,
Gus Savage, who was targeted by the Lobby before she was. Here's what she
had to say:
Gus Savage was a black Member of Congress who was targeted by the
Israel Lobby. And he had the foresight to use his position as an
incumbent of the HofR to put his experience on the congressional
record.
Here's an excerpt from Gus Savage's excellent speech:
Now, let me say something about my position regarding Israel that may
explain the concern, but certainly does not justify a body with no
legal right to do so whose primary concern is a foreign nation rather
than the interests of America, trying to determine the outcome of an
American election for Congress. That, my friends, Mr. and Mrs.
America, is dangerous, indeed.
Israel receives almost one-third of all the United States' foreign
assistance, $3 billion in the foreign assistance bill, and usually
$400 million or $500 million more tacked on here and there, roughly
$3.5 billion a year. That is not the Government's money. That is your
money, your tax dollars.
We do not have enough money to maintain full funding for student
grants and student loans for those in need to attend the colleges of
their choice, for which they are qualified, not enough money to create
jobs programs for those pockets of poverty in our Nation, not enough
funds for long-term Medicare for our senior citizens in need, but $3
1/2 billion of your tax dollars to one little nation, Israel, a nation
with only about 3 1/2 million citizens. That means then that you are
giving $1,000 a year to every man, woman, and child citizen of Israel.
Think about that.
The only revision I would make to Rep. Savage's great list of what the
large annual tribute could be better spent on in the US would be
repairing broken down fire trucks for bankrupt cities like Detroit, MI
(just south of the border from Canada, where some suggest these fire
trucks are said to be mfged).
Talha
,
April 2, 2017 at 3:22 pm GMT \n
The only revision I would make to Rep. Savage's great list of what the
large annual tribute could be better spent on in the US would be
repairing broken down fire trucks for bankrupt cities like Detroit, MI
(just south of the border from Canada, where some suggest these fire
trucks are said to be mfged).
Hey Geo,
Don't forget support for the thousands of veterans and their
families that are traumatized by their participation in the overseas ME
'adventures' – these guys are committing suicide left and right and it
should be made into headlines, but that would mean more scrutiny on why
the hell we went to war in the first place.
Is there hard evidence? Is there a written document, or is this an
oral pledge? [I imagine an AIPAC delegation in every new MOCs office.]
Has any official – besides Cynthia McKinney – spoken about this?
Hi, RobinG. I wasn't even aware of this allegation. Thanks for bringing
it to our attention. I did a Google search and the only thing I could
come up with was this article:
Cynthia McKinney Drops Bombshell: Candidates to sign pledges of
support for "Israel"
by Richard Edmondson
In an interview which aired on Press TV on Saturday–one day before the
AIPAC conference got under way in Washington–former Georgia
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney revealed what amounts to some pretty
startling news regarding the extent of the Israeli lobby's influence
over Congress.
During her years in Congress, she stated, candidates for both the
House and the Senate were requested to sign pledges of support for
Israel, documents in which the candidate promised to vote to provide
consistent levels of economic aid to the Zionist state. Refusal to
sign the pledge meant no funding for the candidate's campaign.
"You make a commitment that you will vote to support the military
superiority of Israel-the economic assistance that Israel wants, that
you would vote to provide that,"
McKinney, who served in Congress
from 1993-2003 and again 2005-2007, tells Press TV interviewer Marzieh
Hashemi in the two-part video program below.
According to McKinney, the pledge also included a vow to support
Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
"
Every candidate for Congress at that time had a pledge, they were
given a pledge to sign
" she said.
"If you don't sign the
pledge, you don't get money.
For example, it was almost like water
torture for me. My parents observed this. I would get a call and the
person on the other end of the phone would say 'I want to do a
fundraiser for you.' And then we would get into the planning. I would
get really excited, because of course you have to have money in order
to run a campaign.
And then two weeks, three weeks into the
planning, they would say, 'Did you sign the pledge?' And then I would
say, 'No, I didn't sign the pledge.' And then my fundraiser would go
kaput."
During her years in Congress, McKinney opposed U.S. involvement in
foreign wars, questioned the official version of the events of 911,
and introduced articles of impeachment against former President George
W. Bush. Her final term in Congress came to an end after AIPAC, or the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, funneled money into the
campaign of her opponent, Hank Johnson.
Here's the video of CM's interview:
https://youtu.be/hXaCym8RjJU
In the interview, Miss McKinny also references one of her predecessors,
Gus Savage, who was targeted by the Lobby before she was. Here's what she
had to say:
Gus Savage was a black Member of Congress who was targeted by the
Israel Lobby. And he had the foresight to use his position as an
incumbent of the HofR to put his experience on the congressional
record.
Here's an excerpt from Gus Savage's excellent speech:
Now, let me say something about my position regarding Israel that may
explain the concern, but certainly does not justify a body with no
legal right to do so whose primary concern is a foreign nation rather
than the interests of America, trying to determine the outcome of an
American election for Congress. That, my friends, Mr. and Mrs.
America, is dangerous, indeed.
Israel receives almost one-third of all the United States' foreign
assistance, $3 billion in the foreign assistance bill, and usually
$400 million or $500 million more tacked on here and there, roughly
$3.5 billion a year. That is not the Government's money. That is your
money, your tax dollars.
We do not have enough money to maintain full funding for student
grants and student loans for those in need to attend the colleges of
their choice, for which they are qualified, not enough money to create
jobs programs for those pockets of poverty in our Nation, not enough
funds for long-term Medicare for our senior citizens in need, but $3
1/2 billion of your tax dollars to one little nation, Israel, a nation
with only about 3 1/2 million citizens. That means then that you are
giving $1,000 a year to every man, woman, and child citizen of Israel.
Think about that.
Hank Johnson
, who still holds that seat, is a typical Dem., and
CBC (Congressional Black Caucus) Member. While his obeisance to Israel is
less blatant than some others (CBC's Alcee Hastings touts his unwavering
support of Israel, and his official site now features photos of his
recent AIPAC appearance), Rep. Johnson demonstrates his loyalty in only
slightly more subtle ways. His official site lists these accomplishments:
•Co-authored legislation to impose sanctions on Iran's petroleum
sector. It passed the House.
•Cosponsored the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, which passed the House.
It would sanction Iran for its failure to make good on its international
legal commitments with regard to its clandestine nuclear program.
It's all about the money. As said in your excerpts, you can't run an
effective campaign in the US w/o cash. The Israel Lobby's method is to
"primary" non-compliant MOCs like McKinney and Savage by throwing money
behind a similar candidate from the same Party – but one who has pledged
support for Israel if elected.
"... This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left' is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism, mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. ..."
"... The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases than they make in outsourcing and insourcing. ..."
"... And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. ..."
"... The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think) ..."
Introduction: Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right,
from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
They obfuscate her program, substituting the label 'extremist' for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist
commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into
Emmanuel "Manny" Macron's champagne-soaked dinner parties. He has good reason to be afraid: Le Pen
addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees,
unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.
The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le
Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies. They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove
France from NATO's integrated command – effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars.
Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched
bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the
EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase
trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.
Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel
Macron's ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.
Le Pen's program will raise taxes on banks and financial transactions while fining capital flight
in order to continue funding France's retirement age of 62 for women and 65 for men, keeping the
35 hour work-week, and providing tax free overtime pay. She promises direct state intervention to
prevent factories from relocating to low wage EU economies and firing French workers.
Le Pen is committed to increasing public spending for childcare and for the poor and disabled.
She has pledged to protect French farmers against subsidized, cheap imports.
Marine Le Pen supports abortion rights and gay rights. She opposes the death penalty. She promises
to cut taxes by 10% for low-wage workers. Marine is committed to fighting against sexism and for
equal pay for women.
Marine Le Pen will reduce migration to ten thousand people and crack down on immigrants with links
to terrorists.
Emmanuel Macron: Macro Billionaire and Micro Worker Programs
Macron has been an investment banker serving the Rothschild and Cie Banque oligarchy, which profited
from speculation and the pillage of the public treasury. Macron served in President Hollande's Economy
Ministry, in charge of 'Industry and Digital Affairs' from 2014 through 2016. This was when the 'Socialist'
Hollande imposed a pro-business agenda, which included a 40 billion-euro tax cut for the rich.
Macron is tied to the Republican Party and its allied banking and business Confederations, whose
demands include: raising the retirement age, reducing social spending, firing tens of thousands of
public employees and facilitating the outflow of capital and the inflow of cheap imports.
Macron is an unconditional supporter of NATO and the Pentagon. He fully supports the European
Union. For their part, the EU oligarchs are thrilled with Macron's embrace of greater austerity for
French workers, while the generals can expect total material support for the ongoing and future US-NATO
wars on three continents.
Propaganda, Labels and Lies
Macron's pro-war, anti-working class and 'supply-side' economic policies leave us with only one
conclusion: Marine Le Pen is the only candidate of the left. Her program and commitments are pro-labor,
not 'hard' or 'far' right – and certainly not 'fascist'.
Macron, on the other hand is a committed rightwing extremist, certainly no 'centrist', as the
media and the political elite claim! One has only to look at his background in banking, his current
supporters among the oligarchs and his ministerial policies when he served Francois Holland.
The 'Macronistas' have accused Marine Le Pen of extreme 'nationalism', 'fascism', 'anti-Semitism'
and 'anti-immigrant racism'. 'The French Left', or what remains of it, has blindly swallowed the
oligarchs' campaign against Le Pen despite the malodorous source of these libels.
Le Pen is above all a 'sovereigntist': 'France First'. Her fight is against the Brussels oligarchs
and for the restoration of sovereignty to the French people. There is an infinite irony in labeling
the fight against imperial political power as 'hard right'. It is insulting to debase popular demands
for domestic democratic power over basic economic policies, fiscal spending, incomes and prices policies,
budgets and deficits as 'extremist and far right'.
Marine Le Pen has systematically transformed the leadership, social, economic program and direction
of the National Front Party.
She expelled its anti-Semites, including her own father! She transformed its policy on women's
rights, abortion, gays and race. She won the support of young unemployed and employed factory workers,
public employees and farmers. Young workers are three times more likely to support her national industrial
revitalization program over Macron's 'free market dogma'. Le Pen has drawn support from French farmers
as well as the downwardly mobile provincial middle-class, shopkeepers, clerks and tourism-based workers
and business owners.
Despite the trends among the French masses against the oligarchs, academics, intellectuals and
political journalists have aped the elite's slander against Le Pen because they will not antagonize
the prestigious media and their administrators in the universities. They will not acknowledge the
profound changes that have occurred within the National Front under Marine Le Pen. They are masters
of the 'double discourse' – speaking from the left while working with the right. They confuse the
lesser evil with the greater evil.
If Macron wins this election (and nothing is guaranteed!), he will certainly implement his 'hard'
and 'extreme' neo-liberal agenda. When the French workers go on strike and demonstrators erect barricades
in the streets in response to Macron's austerity, the fake-left will bleat out their inconsequential
'critique' of 'impure reason'. They will claim that they were right all along.
If Le Pen loses this election, Macron will impose his program and ignite popular fury. Marine
will make an even stronger candidate in the next election if the French oligarchs' judiciary does
not imprison her for the crime of defending sovereignty and social justice.
This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left'
is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism,
mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. Thus any salves by the 'left'
or 'far-left' (Hi Syriza and your blanket amnesty of illegal immigrants at a time of 40% unemployment
in Greece!) will be temporary at best. No amount of welfare will make up for increased unemployment,
lowered wages, a lack of housing, a lack of affordable family foundation and ethnic displacement.
It makes me sick when I see so-called socialists making energetic campaigns to stop failed asylum
seekers being deported.
The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore
welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more
an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases
than they make in outsourcing and insourcing.
And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so
many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the
working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. It's painful to watch. One's ethnic
group having a majority and centrality in it's homeland is the most valuable thing imaginable.
The wealthy whites who sneer pay an exorbitant tax to insulate their children and raise them among
their own kind, but don't ever seem to realise.
The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often
exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they
don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and
thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think)
Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short
video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with
Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:
The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though opinion polls suggest
most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
"Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have
enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum
over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and,
instead, increase trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran
and Palestine."
Do you remember anybody from recent history who also made similar lofty promises, but found
himself neutered by invisible rulers?
France (that hypocrite nation) is a proud part of the western civilisation, which thrives on
hegemony. So, LePen-the-cursed will not do anything to change that fundamental world order. Therein
lies the rub.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
True but misleading. Most of those deaths were due to accidentally introduced diseases. North
America, in particular, was largely emptied out by waves of new diseases that struck down tribes
that had never seen or heard of the white man.
Yes, there was some fighting, though much of it was factional rather than racial - eg, the
abused slaves of the Aztecs sided with the Spaniards for good reason . the Spaniards, at least,
weren't cannibals (except in the transubstantiational sense.) Yes, there were a few cases where
- after the vast accidental wipeout - whites noticed the disease vulnerability of the natives
and intentionally exploited it (smallpox tainted blankets).
But even if none of the deliberate massacres had been done, the demographics wouldn't look
much different - a Europe teeming with starving peasants simply wasn't going to stay put while
the recently-emptied North America sat mostly idle. Nature abhors a vacuum and adverse-possession
laws exist for a reason.
Today, of course, whites in Europe and America contracept themselves to extinction and then
bitch and moan about Moslem and Mexican invasion . silly people. At least the American Indians
didn't do it to themselves.
@Z-man Amanpour isn't a Neocon, per say, as she isn't genetically a Jew. However since she
married and had an offspring with a Jew and from this interview's tone she now qualifies. lol
She is also a beast to look at or listen to. (Grin)
@jilles dykstra The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
- the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
- the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@unpc downunder The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though
opinion polls suggest most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
"... America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them. ..."
"... I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking through what would happen later ..."
"... A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through? I don't think so. ..."
"... Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany, probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect their elites? I don't think so. ..."
"... Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and therefore from an immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed feel somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with Russians on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper level you need to read "200 years together." ..."
The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort
to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance
their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new
technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal.
This increase in capability is astonishing - boosting the overall killing power of existing US
ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three - and it creates exactly what one would
expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a
nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.
It continues:
Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers
outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed
its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security.
This study was co-authored by America's top three scientists specializing in analysis of weaponry
and especially of the geostrategic balance between nations: Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and
Theodore Postol. Their report continues:
This vast increase in US nuclear targeting capability, which has largely been concealed from
the general public, has serious implications for strategic stability and perceptions of US nuclear
strategy and intentions.
Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly
feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability - a capability that would require Russia to undertake
countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian
nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the
possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created
by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used
in response to early warning of an attack - even when an attack has not occurred.
The authors explain why an accidental start of World War III or global annihilation would be
likeiier from Russia than from the U.S.:
Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily
on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot
see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States.
(The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)
In other words: whereas Trump would have about 30 minutes to determine whether Putin had launched
a blitz-first-strike attack, Putin would have less than 15 minutes to determine whether Trump had
- and if at the end of that period, on either side, there is no certainty that no blitz-first-strike
attack had been launched by the other, then that person would be obligated to launch a blitz attack
against the other, upon the assumption that not to do so would result not only in a toxic planet
with nuclear winter and universal starvation, but also in a humiliating and scandalous absence of
retaliation against that perpetrator, which would be a humiliation on top of an annihilation, and
thus a sharing of blame along with the actual perpetrator, which sharing, for whatever term might
remain during that passive party's continued existence, would probably be an unbearable shame and
result quickly in suicide, if that national leader's own surviving countrymen don't execute him before
he kills himself.
Inevitably, the strictly personal morality and self-image of a nation's leader in that type of
situation are factors other than the very public global consequences that will determine the person's
decision; but, with only (at most) 15 minutes to decide on the Russian side, and 30 minutes to decide
on the American side, there is an inestimably high chance now, that a nuclear war will terminate
the lives of everyone who currently exists and who doesn't soon die from the ordinary causes before
then. Even the most dire projections of the dangers from global warming come nowhere close to matching
that danger.
The question, now, then, is: How did the world come to this extraordinarily ominous stage? The
co-authors repeatedly refer to the secretiveness at the top of the American government as one essential
source, such as " which has largely been concealed from the general public " and " policymakers
outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed
," and these passages refer to an ordinary phenomenon in conspiracies at the top of a large criminal
operation such as corporate criminality, where only a very small circle of individuals, commonly
a half-dozen or even less, are made aware of the operation's chief strategic objective and of the
main tactical means that are being put into place so as to execute the plan. In this particular instance,
it wouldn't include the head of every Cabinet department, nor anything nearly so broad as that; but,
clearly, since the key decision, to implement the "super-fuze" on "all warheads deployed on US ballistic
missile submarines" was made by Obama, he is the principal person reasonably to be blamed for this
situation. However, Trump as the person who has inherited this situation from his predecessor has,
as yet, given no indication at all of reversing and eliminating the now-operative top U.S. strategic
objective of conquering Russia. The more time that passes without Trump's announcing to the public
that he has inherited this morally repulsive operation from his predecessor and is removing all of
the super-fuses, the more that Trump himself is taking ownership of Obama's plan. Typically in such
a situation, the leader who has inherited such a plan will be assassinated if he gives any clear
indication of an intention to reverse or cancel it (the key insiders are typically obsessive about
'success', especially at so late a stage in it); and, so, if Trump were to try to do that, he would
almost certainly try to hide that fact until the inherited plan has already become effectively deactivated
and no longer a threat.
The key turning-point that led up to the present crisis was the gradual and increasing acceptance,
on the American side, of the concept of using nuclear weapons for conquest instead of only for deterrence
- the prior system, for deterrence, having been called "MAD" for Mutually Assured Destruction, the
idea that if the two nuclear superpowers were to go to war against each other, then the entire world
would be destroyed so catastrophically as to make any idea of a 'winner' and a 'loser' in such a
conflict a grotesque distortion of the reality: that reality being mutual annihilation and an unlivable
planet. A landmark event in the process of reconceptualizing such a war as being 'winnable', was
the publication in 2006 of two articles in the two most prestigious journals of international relations,
Foreign Affairs and International Security , both formally introducing the concept
of "Nuclear Primacy" or the (alleged) desirability for the U.S. to plan a nuclear conquest of Russia
. Until those two articles (both of which were co-authored by the same two authors), any such
idea was considered wacky, but since then it has instead been mainstream. As the final link above
(the article that's linked-to immediately before) explains, the source even prior to George W. Bush
goes all the way back to 24 February 1990 when his father, then also the U.S. President, secretly
initiated the operation ultimately to conquer Russia, and within that article are links to the ultimate
source-documents about that origin of the path toward world-ending nuclear war; so, getting to the
original causes of the steady progression after 24 February 1990 in the direction of a conquest of
Russia by the U.S. (assisted by its allies) can now be addressed by historians, even though only
now is it finally being revealed to the public as news, though 27 years after it had actually begun
in a very fateful decision by George Herbert Walker Bush, which has already cost American taxpayers
trillions of dollars for no good purpose and resulting perhaps in the ghastliest ultimate end.
This article is being submitted for publication to all news-media without charge, in the hope
that the current U.S. President will comment publicly upon it, even if only to ridicule it so as
to avoid being assassinated for referring to it at all. This is an extremely dangerous time in history,
and Donald Trump is now on a very hot seat, which any intelligent and accurately informed person
recognizes to be the case. If ever the world needed courageous great leadership, now is the time;
because, without that, we might all soon be entering hell. To avoid it, starting now 27 years after
the U.S. government initiated this path, would be enormously difficult, but not yet totally impossible.
This is where we are at the present time; and,
ever since the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the purchases of 'nuclear-proof' bunkers have been soaring
as a result.
This extreme danger is the new global reality. If the elimination of the threat does not come
from the U.S. White House, the culmination of the threat will - regardless of which side strikes
first. The decision - either to invade Russia, or else to cancel and condemn America's decade-plus
preparation to do so - can be made only by the U.S. President. If he remains silent about the matter,
then Putin can reasonably proceed on the assumption that he'll have to be the one to strike first.
He didn't place himself in that position; the U.S. regime did. Let's hope that the U.S. will stand
down the threat, now.
100 Words What our media overlooks is that the USA blatantly violated arms agreements with
Russia by building missile bases in Poland and Romania with MK-41 launchers, capable of launching
nuclear tipped cruise missiles to quickly strike key targets in Russia. The Pentagon promises
to only place SM-3 anti-missile missiles in these silos. Trust us, our Generals proclaim!
Read More
100 Words I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but I' skeptical
that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The Pentagon's
claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude above the
reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make
meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.
Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa
Rica, let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. Read
More
300 Words It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000′s of civilians in the
Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have
caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared
to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same – indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs – calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as
a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated,
this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the
whole world, not just America. Read More
A global coalition of former military leaders and diplomats who had responsibility over
nuclear weapons is launching a "shadow security council" to offer advice to world leaders on
how to reduce what they consider to be the growing danger of a nuclear conflict fueled by the
rhetoric of President Donald Trump and destabilizing moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
I wonder what these "destabilizing moves" are. Today we have launch-on-warning, precise nukes,
stealth delivery services, hacks in hardware and software, weird stuff in orbit, and "missile
defense against Iran" in Europe which can be repurposed in a second to attack Russia. Unless the
airheads notice that the "destabilizing moves" come from the US, there won't be much progress.
We survived the MAD phase only through tremendous luck, there were more computer errors, brown
pants moments and lost nukes than one would like to think possible. Let's not waste this break
that God has given us.
100 Words Or rather than have the US destroy Russia, or Russia destroy the US, it would be
preferable to root out the activist Jewish Neo Bolshevik war party that is behind it all. They
have their own agenda, and regard themselves as above the law.
They gave the US the WMD lies, 9/11 and destroyed the Middle East. They've also taken ownership
of the US media to push their war agenda, apart from attacking Anglo America, sowing discord and
promoting their financial interest (e.g. forcing the US public to bail out their 2008 loses at
full $ while they kept their bonuses).
If the US public can't wake up soon and deal with this cancer they've had it.
Read More Agree:
Z-man
200 Words If you think the President makes final decisions on all matters, I have a beach
front property to sell you in Iowa. He is the public face of career Pentagon, State Department,
and other Deep State proxies. Not a capstone critical thinker but a fall man.
Nuclear war isn't a reality, it's a game of chess bluffs and the winner defeats the loser when
there is only a logical option of loss. Because when supremacy is achieved, and understood by
the opponent, you don't suddenly nuke them – you take its periphery (Ukraine, Baltics and E. Europe,
and other color revolution hot-spots), you destabilize it's source of income (oil), you cut her
off from the financial world (sanctions), you ostracize them politically (media/hacking), and
you deny them future income (Syria) while cementing their future (denying the New Silk Road by
local animosity – maritime disputes, arming India, etc).
Real sudden catastrophic loss never materializes because we live in a non-zero sum situation
– called living on the same planet – where abrupt destabilization backfires onto you from nuclear
fallout and global market failure. It's just a check-mate scenario understood by both parties
that begets a slow suffocation due to 'pawn sacrifice'.
Unless you don't have nuclear weapons then your country and lore is up for the taking on a
whim. Read More
200 Words Well. Now we know what constitutes the true Obama legacy: "The new kill capability
created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will
be used in response to early warning of an attack - even when an attack has not occurred."
This is in addition to the Obama-approved mess on the Russian borders with Ukraine ("ever since
the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the purchases of 'nuclear-proof' bunkers have been soaring as a result")
and the Israel-pimped war in Syria where Russians have been fighting ISIS along with the legitimate
government of Syria, while Israel and the US were caught on helping the ISIS- and Al Qaeda-affiliated
"freedom fighters."
Is there any honest and knowledgeable person in a vicinity of the "deciders" to explain them the
consequences of a high-level radiation for their grandkids? The deciders care not about the hundreds
of thousands of other-peoples' children that died as a result of US-led "humanitarian interventions,"
but maybe they could get some resemblance of empathy rush when picturing their own progeny hit
by a nuclear force? Idiots. Read More
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,
May 5, 2017 at 12:10 pm GMT \n
100 Words Is the NeoCon foreign policy establishment, which rules both Democrats and Republicans,
insane enough to think it can pull of a nuclear first strike against Russia without any significant
damage to the US or the world?
Probably. Many of the individuals are bluffing, but mob mentality inside military intelligence
is the same basic mess it is on the inner city streets.
America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic
Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked
would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that
if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them.
Put that pair together, and the entire world should fear.
Read More
100 Words The other requirement to make a counterforce first strike viable is missile defences
which, although not effective enough to see off a full Russian launch, would be very capable of
"mopping up" the much smaller numbers of missiles launched in response to an incomplete disarming
first strike.
So we don't need to worry too much about this kind of improvement to the US capability so long
as we don't see the US regime simultaneously installing missile defences everywhere they can on
the pretext, say, of defending against non-existent, propagandist third party regional "threats"
Read More
200 Words A great article by Eric Zuesse, the best I have seen on the subject. A devastating
nuclear war is almost inevitable if the situation is allowed to persist. There were several nearly
catastrophic incidents in the last cold war when warning times were much more generous. Similar
incidents, in the near future would likely be game over for human civilisation and even the human
race itself.
It really doesn't matter whether the US/European oligarchy is really planning to nuke Russia
and/or China or not, the situation is just as dangerous either way. The setting up of what is
evidently a first strike capability while simultaneously degrading their potential opponents warning
times is well nigh suicidal. One could hope that there is someone in the US/NATO military who
is not too functionally autistic to see things from the other guys point of view but I doubt it.
If such a person existed, they might reflect on the fact that if the roles were reversed, most
of their colleagues would be clamouring for a first strike of their own before the missile "defence"
is fully operational.
Finally, it doesn't even matter whether the missile "defence" works or not. Unless both sides
know it doesn't work, and can also be sure that the other side knows that it doesn't work, and
also that it can't be made to work, it is just as dangerous.
Read More
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@Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle
East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused,
and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to
spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a
crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
@Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle
East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused,
and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to
spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a
crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
100 Words Frankly, it's about time "compellence" replaced deterrence in dealing with Russia.
For all his faults, Putin seems more or less sane, but he's already 64 years old. When Russia
has its next succession crisis (they're good at this stuff), the new incumbent may be much less
tractable and dangerous.
100 Words Is this article mis-information or dis-information? I get those two confused.
We have been able to put a nuke in a 100 ft circle anywhere on earth for a long time. The "super-fuze"
has nothing to do with the guidance system or speed of delivery but enhances perhaps the yield
and the accuracy (elevation of detonation) of an already devastating weapon.
How is this destabilizing? How does this yield a first-strike capability?
Read More
Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill
the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive,
we win!
Thomas S. Power, CIC, Strategic Air Command
Apparently, breathing the cold, dry air of madness takes you to the top of Washington's pyramid
of skulls. Read More
@Seraphim Conquest of Russia (the 'Heartland' of the 'World-Island') was the single minded
obsession, followed with uncanny determination, of the 'Anglo-Zionist' Empire (supposed successor
of the not so mythical 'Arthurian Atlantic British Empire') from its bastard birth in the glorious
days of the 'Gloriana', the hideous 'Virgin Queen' witch and her 'Magus' John Dee, to the theories
of Mackinder ("Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands
the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."), masked by the 'collateral
damages' of the 'colonization' (i.e. conquest) of 'The Indies' (America and India proper), steps
towards the encirclement of the 'Heartland'. The 'Great Game' the Viking merchant-adventurers
cum pirates (financed by the Jewish money lenders and receivers) played against the Powers that
blocked their way to the gold and spices of the Eldorado of East Asia and the inexhaustible source
of slaves that was 'East Europe'. That block was the Orthodox Russia since the 'betrayal' of the
Baptism of the Viking Vladimir. The 'Vikings' and the receivers of stolen goods never forgave
it. They realize that as long as the 'Heartland' is not conquered none of their other conquests
is secure. Ah, now some of the stranger things you have said become a little less puzzling as
you reveal your romantic Russian mythmaking soul.
Read More Pandos
,
May 5, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT \n
@Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle
East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused,
and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to
spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a
crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
200 Words
@Intelligent Dasein I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but
I' skeptical that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The
Pentagon's claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude
above the reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable
to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.
Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa Rica,
let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed
explanation of how they work. Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly
hard for the Russians and the Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession
of the same technology would NOT reduce the likelihood of US using it first.
In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea
of super-fusing is relatively simple – unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles
have one huge weakness – once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown
rocks – there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined
envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the
target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it
is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile
launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched
ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback – in single digit percent.
This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving
more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.
As I explained, ABMD is the weak link in this – it is far from effective yet, but give it unlimited
$ printing and another 10 years or so and this scenario could become reality.
Read More
100 Words This "investigative historian" confects his bad dream out of very little substance.
Quotes from the respectable enough Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists plus a great deal of imagination
and major omissions allow him to paint a fantastic picture of raving lunatics thinking of "conquering"
or "invading" Russia. (Yes he did use those words despite positing a scenario in which the Dr.
Strangeloves would wipe out Rusdia with a first strike! His psychic medium clearly has forgotten
to consilt the ghosts of Napoleon and Hitler).
One major omission is to note what a quick search for "super fuze" immediately discloses, namely
that the US Navy's upgrade is already old news and largely complete so far as the increase in
capacity that Zuesse describes is concerned.
Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the
bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!
Thomas S. Power, CIC, Strategic Air Command
Apparently, breathing the cold, dry air of madness takes you to the top of Washington's pyramid
of skulls. Useless quote without a believable source and still needs to have the context provided.
Read More Anonymous
White Male ,
May 5, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle
East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused,
and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to
spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a
crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated,
this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the
whole world, not just America. "If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed,
no doubt the reaction would be the same – indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from
moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically
or financially."
@Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.
Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle
East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused,
and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to
spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender
"toilet rights".
If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would
be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and
only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.
If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each
Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never
have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously
put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really
bothered about that either.
Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed
cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest
related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public
accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.
If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a
crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.
It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated,
this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the
whole world, not just America. "Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder "
Apparently you haven't heard of what England, France and other colonial nations had been doing
in centuries past, and heck, even up till now (Libya, anyone?).
200 Words
@another fred Is this article mis-information or dis-information? I get those two confused.
We have been able to put a nuke in a 100 ft circle anywhere on earth for a long time. The "super-fuze"
has nothing to do with the guidance system or speed of delivery but enhances perhaps the yield
and the accuracy (elevation of detonation) of an already devastating weapon.
How is this destabilizing? How does this yield a first-strike capability? For an explanation,
read my previous comment and this one.
START treaties have limited the number of missiles on both sides, at a time when super-fusing
did not exist. This means that each side had enough missiles to destroy a percentage of the missiles
of the other side (probably around 40-50%), but not all of them, thus MAD. With super-fusing,
the side which strikes first can destroy a much higher percentage of retaliatory missiles on fixed
and mobile launchers (90-95%) and still have some left over to threaten civilians in large cities,
especially if ABMD can destroy all of the remaining 5-10% of retaliatory missiles.
The hardest to destroy will remain the submarine launched missiles, but US military feel confident
that they are tracking all Russian nuclear missile submarines with their attack submarines (and
all the new and noisy Chinese submarines as well) and they could destroy them all on command.
On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles
of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not
to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have no
command any more. Read More
In this particular instance, it wouldn't include the head of every Cabinet department, nor
anything nearly so broad as that; but, clearly, since the key decision, to implement the "super-fuze"
on "all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines" was made by Obama, he is the
principal person reasonably to be blamed for this situation. However, Trump as the person who
has inherited this situation from his predecessor has, as yet, given no indication at all of
reversing and eliminating the now-operative top U.S. strategic objective of conquering Russia.
The more time that passes without Trump's announcing to the public that he has inherited this
morally repulsive operation from his predecessor and is removing all of the super-fuses, the
more that Trump himself is taking ownership of Obama's plan.
Reading statements like this one, and other observations by Philip Giraldi, have reluctantly
made me into a conspiracy minded person when it comes to politics. After all, does anyone seriously
believe that the pretentious, metro-sexual Barry Obama entertained any such "Dr. Evil" like plots
to concur the world prior to being sworn in as POTUS? Of course he didn't. He, even less than
Trump, probably had no idea what he was getting himself into by running for president. It must've
been a shocker for both of these men when they found out just how much potentially damaging intel
that the CIA and NSA has on them through perfectly legal NSA spying. Would the CIA assassinate
a president who got in the way of America's interests (as defined by them)? Maybe, but why would
they need to?
The Deep State is in complete control of our foreign policy now. Our democracy and freedom
were already largely lost due to giant asymmetries in knowledge between the US Citizenry and elected
officials on the one hand, and the Deep State on the other. "Knowledge is power" as they say.
This state of affairs was gradually imposed on an unsuspecting public through such legislative
gems as the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 and the Patriot Act.
Read More
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100 Words
@Pandos Russia ;and China must target Israel and Saudi as the primary targets in any nuke
exchange. It is their fault.
Russia should release the soviet archives to show the holocaust is a giant exaggeration - a lie.
Rip that shield from their hands. You have hit upon something that is extremely important, and
studiously avoided by most: the Israeli-Saudi alliance. The worst of the Arabs are Saudi Arabians.
The worst of the Sunnis are Saudi Arabians (and on average, Sunnis are worse than Shites). No
doubt, the worst ruling caab in the Middle East,. whether royal family or political party (such
as Likud), is the House of Saud.
200 Words One of the WWII planners was Frankfurter, also the writer of the Lend Lease Law
that enabled Roosevelt to give war aid to any country.
Bruce Allen Murphy, 'The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, The Secret Political Activities of Two
Supreme Court Justices', New York, 1983
After Hitler began deporting jews to concentration camps, one of them escaped, and was smuggled
tot the USA, the Vichy France, Spain, Portugal route.
This jew told Frankfurter what was going on.
Frankfurter answered 'I do not believe one word you're saying'.
Much later Frankfurter explained 'I did not say he was lying, I said I did not believe him'.
In 1939 Hitler threatened jews with 'ausrottung', the exact meaning of this word then is debated,
'if they again started a world war'.
My interpretation of the Frankfurter statements is that he had not expected Hitler to carry
out his threat.
100 Words
@Jake Is the NeoCon foreign policy establishment, which rules both Democrats and Republicans,
insane enough to think it can pull of a nuclear first strike against Russia without any significant
damage to the US or the world?
Probably. Many of the individuals are bluffing, but mob mentality inside military intelligence
is the same basic mess it is on the inner city streets.
America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic
Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked
would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that
if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them.
300 Words Here is a simplified First Strike plan by US on Russia and China, in my opinion.
China is more of the same as Russia, just at a lower level of military sophistication right now
(but advancing in leaps and bouts).
The First Strike starts with the launch of nuclear tipped cruise missiles from the "ABMD sites"
in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea and any other new ones in the future. These cruise
missiles are launched against Russian military communications, command and control sites, as well
as early warning radars. The second wave are the ballistic missiles from the silos in US, which
target the Russian silo based missiles and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered
by US satellites. Simultaneously, the US bombers with nuclear bombs on board are launched, to
target any remaining Russian military infrastructure. Also, a command is issued to destroy any
on-duty Russian ballistic and cruise nuclear missile submarines. The ABMD sites on land (at least
two in Canada in the future) and on ships now switch to defence to try to destroy any Russian
missiles that got launched. At the same time US propaganda to dissuade the commanders of the Russian
submarines, not destroyed already by the US attack submarines, fills the radio. Apparently, Russia
has only eight nuclear missile submarines, and not more than 4-6 would be on active duty at any
given time.
Ok this could be the US plan, but what do Russians have to counter it? The Russians have at
least two tools in development. The first is the Bulawa MIRV, which is virtually impossible to
shoot down with ABMD. The second are the submarine launched hypersonic cruise missiles, which
are also almost impossible to shoot down by ABMD. Neither of these two are ready yet, but nor
is the US ABMD. Therefore, the Russian approach is to make ABMD never effective, which would make
even a partial retaliatory strike too expensive to US.
Read More
100 Words
@Sebastian Puettmann Well, in their defense, Russia is pretty fascist. "Russia is pretty fascist."
Is this a voice from the Kagans' clan' sinecures (AEI, Brookings) or directly from the land
of the "chosen" handlers?
For your information, even the Israel-occupied US Congress accepted an obvious truth and made
a decision re real fascists: " US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:"
https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
One wonders when the US Congress will finally discover that it was a leader of the Ukrainian Jewish
Community Mr. Kolomojsky who had been financing the Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion when the
Azov's thugs were burning the civilians alive in Odessa:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1d0_1462104943&comments=1
Similar to you, The Wall Street Journal (the nest of ziocons) cries in unison with Mrs. Clinton
that "Putin is Hitler." The same WSJ published a fawning article about Mr. Kolomojsky, a Ukrainian/Israeli
citizen and financier of the neo-Nazis:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-secret-weapon-feisty-oligarch-ihor-kolomoisky-1403886665
Read More
@Seraphim Conquest of Russia (the 'Heartland' of the 'World-Island') was the single minded
obsession, followed with uncanny determination, of the 'Anglo-Zionist' Empire (supposed successor
of the not so mythical 'Arthurian Atlantic British Empire') from its bastard birth in the glorious
days of the 'Gloriana', the hideous 'Virgin Queen' witch and her 'Magus' John Dee, to the theories
of Mackinder ("Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands
the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."), masked by the 'collateral
damages' of the 'colonization' (i.e. conquest) of 'The Indies' (America and India proper), steps
towards the encirclement of the 'Heartland'. The 'Great Game' the Viking merchant-adventurers
cum pirates (financed by the Jewish money lenders and receivers) played against the Powers that
blocked their way to the gold and spices of the Eldorado of East Asia and the inexhaustible source
of slaves that was 'East Europe'. That block was the Orthodox Russia since the 'betrayal' of the
Baptism of the Viking Vladimir. The 'Vikings' and the receivers of stolen goods never forgave
it. They realize that as long as the 'Heartland' is not conquered none of their other conquests
is secure. I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be.
Read More SolontoCroesus
,
May 5, 2017 at 4:13 pm GMT \n
200 Words Zuesse's very important essay could be improved immeasurably by identifying the
authors of these dire policy statements:
Keir Lieber, professor in the Edmund Walsh school at Georgetown, is son of Robert Lieber, also
a professor of foreign policy studies at Georgetown -
For 2
Professors, Like Father, Like Son
Based on a quick review of Robert Lieber's dozen appearances on C Span, the description,
Like Father like Son is apt: the senior Lieber is a an unabashed zionist and Israel firster
who has operated behind the scenes to implement neoconservative policies that favor Israel, to
be carried out at the expense of American blood and treasure, under the mendacious gloss that
they are "in America's interest." Those policies date back at least to the Clinton administration
bombing of Kosovo
https://www.c-span.org/video/?100370-1/bosnia-russia-gulf-beyond
; then the Persian Gulf war to "liberate" Kuwait
https://www.c-span.org/video/?23811-1/anniversary-persian-gulf-war
and the war in Afghanistan where "Afghanis welcomed our liberation of Afghanis from the Taliban."
https://www.c-span.org/video/?168019-4/postcold-war-conflicts
Read More
@Kiza I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed explanation of how they work.
Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly hard for the Russians and the
Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession of the same technology would NOT
reduce the likelihood of US using it first.
In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea
of super-fusing is relatively simple - unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles
have one huge weakness - once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown
rocks - there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined
envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the
target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it
is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile
launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched
ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback - in single digit percent.
This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving
more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.
As I explained, ABMD is the weak link in this - it is far from effective yet, but give it unlimited
$ printing and another 10 years or so and this scenario could become reality. This just sounds
like an air burst detonation. Is this one of those American things where they relabel something
and remarket it? Read More
100 Words
@Kiza Here is a simplified First Strike plan by US on Russia and China, in my opinion. China
is more of the same as Russia, just at a lower level of military sophistication right now (but
advancing in leaps and bouts).
The First Strike starts with the launch of nuclear tipped cruise missiles from the "ABMD sites"
in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea and any other new ones in the future. These cruise
missiles are launched against Russian military communications, command and control sites, as well
as early warning radars. The second wave are the ballistic missiles from the silos in US, which
target the Russian silo based missiles and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered
by US satellites. Simultaneously, the US bombers with nuclear bombs on board are launched, to
target any remaining Russian military infrastructure. Also, a command is issued to destroy any
on-duty Russian ballistic and cruise nuclear missile submarines. The ABMD sites on land (at least
two in Canada in the future) and on ships now switch to defence to try to destroy any Russian
missiles that got launched. At the same time US propaganda to dissuade the commanders of the Russian
submarines, not destroyed already by the US attack submarines, fills the radio. Apparently, Russia
has only eight nuclear missile submarines, and not more than 4-6 would be on active duty at any
given time.
Ok this could be the US plan, but what do Russians have to counter it? The Russians have at least
two tools in development. The first is the Bulawa MIRV, which is virtually impossible to shoot
down with ABMD. The second are the submarine launched hypersonic cruise missiles, which are also
almost impossible to shoot down by ABMD. Neither of these two are ready yet, but nor is the US
ABMD. Therefore, the Russian approach is to make ABMD never effective, which would make even a
partial retaliatory strike too expensive to US. "and the mobile platforms (truck and train based)
discovered by US satellites."
Forget about it, the real ones can be parked in any farm, the inflatable ones cannot be distinghuised
from the real ones.
Even in Saddam's Irak USA planes were unable to find Saddam's mobile V2′s.
Iran's underground silo's are even atomic bomb proof.
Read More SolontoCroesus
,
May 5, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Proud_Srbin US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.
Russia, China, DPRK are not Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Siria.
US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
Adolf shared that goal
Adolf did NOT "share the goal" of "conquest and enslavement of mankind."
Adolf's goal was nationalistic, not global; the clue is hidden in plain sight:
National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)
Is this a voice from the Kagans' clan' sinecures (AEI, Brookings) or directly from the land
of the "chosen" handlers?
For your information, even the Israel-occupied US Congress accepted an obvious truth and made
a decision re real fascists: " US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:"
https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
One wonders when the US Congress will finally discover that it was a leader of the Ukrainian Jewish
Community Mr. Kolomojsky who had been financing the Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion when the
Azov's thugs were burning the civilians alive in Odessa: https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1d0_1462104943&comments=1
Similar to you, The Wall Street Journal (the nest of ziocons) cries in unison with Mrs. Clinton
that "Putin is Hitler." The same WSJ published a fawning article about Mr. Kolomojsky, a Ukrainian/Israeli
citizen and financier of the neo-Nazis: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-secret-weapon-feisty-oligarch-ihor-kolomoisky-1403886665
If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem to have internalized
every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other side as well, once
in a while.
By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their
Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to
joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion,
is not more fascist than the US? Read More
200 Words
@Randal The other requirement to make a counterforce first strike viable is missile defences
which, although not effective enough to see off a full Russian launch, would be very capable of
"mopping up" the much smaller numbers of missiles launched in response to an incomplete disarming
first strike.
So we don't need to worry too much about this kind of improvement to the US capability so long
as we don't see the US regime simultaneously installing missile defences everywhere they can on
the pretext, say, of defending against non-existent, propagandist third party regional "threats"
...... Even that wouldn't be enough.
Even if the US government was installing a huge global missile system while simultaneously
building a potent first-strike capability, we'd only have to worry if they also had a history
of attacking many other countries without provocation. Also if their political elite was pushing
for military confrontation with Russia, like proposing to implement no-fly zones in Syria where
Russian planes are flying missions (legally), with some members of the US establishment (people
like Senator McCain) even calling for the downing of Russian planes if needed to accomplish that.
Even in that hypothetical scenario it would only be really really dangerous if in the past some
random senior US general (someone like General Wesley Clark) had already proposed to attack Russian
troops – otherwise we could rely on the sanity of the generals to prevent such insanity.
300 Words I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however, a
plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack Russia
with the possibility of winning such a war.
I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies
just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities
relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone
thinking through what would happen later , or what would be the logical consequence of the
actions which they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia,
for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of
such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously,
it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result.
Did anyone think it through? I don't think so.
Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the
end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany,
probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms
of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect
their elites? I don't think so.
The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing.
Read More
" Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the
EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist
than the US?"
Are you serious? Israel has been caught red-handed on cooperating with ISIS. Following your logic,
ISIS is much, much better than Russian Federation. Though in this case you are actually in agreement
with Israeli brass.
" maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian
Federation."
A truly amazing observation! Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and
therefore from an immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed
feel somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with
Russians on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper
level you need to read "200 years together."
Read More
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100 Words I am very much appreciating this article and many comments.
Having some military time, at peace, thankfully, and interest in arcane English words, I am
knowing the diff.between material and materiel, fuze and fuse, etc.
What this article and all of the comments are to lacking is a definition of 'super-fuze'.
I am suspecting that it is just a mis-use of the word 'fuze'.
@Miro23 Or rather than have the US destroy Russia, or Russia destroy the US, it would be preferable
to root out the activist Jewish Neo Bolshevik war party that is behind it all. They have their
own agenda, and regard themselves as above the law.
They gave the US the WMD lies, 9/11 and destroyed the Middle East. They've also taken ownership
of the US media to push their war agenda, apart from attacking Anglo America, sowing discord and
promoting their financial interest (e.g. forcing the US public to bail out their 2008 loses at
full $ while they kept their bonuses).
If the US public can't wake up soon and deal with this cancer they've had it. Absolutely right.
Read More
Britain's Lee Child created superhero Jack Reacher. In "Night School" Child locates Reacher
in Hamburg, where he beats up young Germans who call out that they are fed up with being occupied
by USA; having delivered the characteristic chops to the face then kick to the nuts, Reacher taunts
the downed German patriots, er, neo-Nazis, "how does it feel to lose a war?"
When, still in Hamburg, Reacher ultimately confronts the head of a group of Germans attempting
to revitalize German identity and culture, Reacher shoots him in the heart and then the head,
carrying out the ideals he had learned in West Point Military Academy bull sessions. For Reacher
- Child - British propagandists - New York publishers, a German who is not fully on board with
USA (Anglo-zionist) demands is, by definition, a Nazi deserving only to be extrajudicially exterminated.
American (Anglo-zionist) popular culture reinforces "lack of remorse" at every turn and by
numerous venues –
We'll put a boot in your eye, It's the American way . . .
As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long
history: it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II
@annamaria This is a long and passionate anti-war article by Michel Chossudovsky, which includes
a nice picture of Bin Laden teaching Brzezinski how to handle a rifle, Afghanistan:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/reversing-the-tide-of-war-say-no-to-nuclear-war/21866
The neocons used the mujahaddins with great success, particularly on the US soil on 9/11.
In short, "America's biggest foreign policy problem is that the U.S. cannot be trusted."
100 Words Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With USA
DECEMBER 25, 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary
of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation
on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand "one inch" eastwards
towards Russia.
100 Words
@Sebastian Puettmann If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem
to have internalized every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other
side as well, once in a while.
By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their
Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to
joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion,
is not more fascist than the US?
But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO
or the EU.
comedygold.jpg
NATO brings obligations, and Israel already get all the dough they demand directly from the
US without going through the "US occupation forces Europe" gentleman's club. In case of integration,
imagine that there would be Israeli forces in islamic countries far away from the homeland? That
would be awkward.
While Israel would be happy to be in some new model European Trading Zone (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_areas_in_Europe
), being "in the EU" is another kettle of fish entirely. First, Israel is not European. And
then again, obligations. In particular to stop shooting people held in reservations. Nyet, not
happening. Read More
This is not Bin Laden on this picture with Brzezinski! It looks like a guy with Pakistani or Indian
paratrooper markings demonstrating the use of Russian RPD machine gun.
But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or
the EU.
comedygold.jpg
NATO brings obligations, and Israel already get all the dough they demand directly from the
US without going through the "US occupation forces Europe" gentleman's club. In case of integration,
imagine that there would be Israeli forces in islamic countries far away from the homeland? That
would be awkward.
While Israel would be happy to be in some new model European Trading Zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_areas_in_Europe),
being "in the EU" is another kettle of fish entirely. First, Israel is not European. And then
again, obligations. In particular to stop shooting people held in reservations. Nyet, not happening.
In fact NATO already trains jointly with Israel, and Israel has narrow ties with the EU.
Israel also participates in the European Song Contest.
El Al uses Schiphol, Amsterdam airport, as its main base in Europe.
Read More
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100 Words
@Nils If you think the President makes final decisions on all matters, I have a beach front
property to sell you in Iowa. He is the public face of career Pentagon, State Department, and
other Deep State proxies. Not a capstone critical thinker but a fall man.
Nuclear war isn't a reality, it's a game of chess bluffs and the winner defeats the loser when
there is only a logical option of loss. Because when supremacy is achieved, and understood by
the opponent, you don't suddenly nuke them - you take its periphery (Ukraine, Baltics and E. Europe,
and other color revolution hot-spots), you destabilize it's source of income (oil), you cut her
off from the financial world (sanctions), you ostracize them politically (media/hacking), and
you deny them future income (Syria) while cementing their future (denying the New Silk Road by
local animosity - maritime disputes, arming India, etc).
Real sudden catastrophic loss never materializes because we live in a non-zero sum situation
- called living on the same planet - where abrupt destabilization backfires onto you from nuclear
fallout and global market failure. It's just a check-mate scenario understood by both parties
that begets a slow suffocation due to 'pawn sacrifice'.
Unless you don't have nuclear weapons...then your country and lore is up for the taking on
a whim. US is losing military ground in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to the Russian, while USA
is losing economic ground in SE Asia, Africa, South America and North America to the Chinese,
are you saying the super-fuze is a fake news? And the American understood they are being check-mated
by the Russian and Chinese? Read More
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100 Words
@SolontoCroesus Zuesse's very important essay could be improved immeasurably by identifying
the authors of these dire policy statements:
Keir Lieber, professor in the Edmund Walsh school at Georgetown, is son of Robert Lieber, also
a professor of foreign policy studies at Georgetown --
For 2
Professors, Like Father, Like Son
Papa Lieber is one of the driving forces behind creating -- rather, demanding that Georgetown
agree to create-- the department for Jewish Civilizational Studies at Georgetown. https://www.georgetown.edu/center-for-jewish-civilization-launch
Based on a quick review of Robert Lieber's dozen appearances on C Span, the description, Like
Father like Son is apt: the senior Lieber is a an unabashed zionist and Israel firster who
has operated behind the scenes to implement neoconservative policies that favor Israel, to be
carried out at the expense of American blood and treasure, under the mendacious gloss that they
are "in America's interest." Those policies date back at least to the Clinton administration bombing
of Kosovo https://www.c-span.org/video/?100370-1/bosnia-russia-gulf-beyond ; then the Persian
Gulf war to "liberate" Kuwait https://www.c-span.org/video/?23811-1/anniversary-persian-gulf-war
and the war in Afghanistan where "Afghanis welcomed our liberation of Afghanis from the Taliban."
https://www.c-span.org/video/?168019-4/postcold-war-conflicts Good to know, SolontoCroesus. I'm
sure we'll remember to thank that cuddly pair of parasites when they manage to kill a few tens
of millions of Russians to get their 21st century war groove going. It's really too bad about
Christianity having bred the spirit of vengeance out of the white man. Do Russians thirst for
revenge? Does anyone? Read More
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Comments Randal
,
May 5, 2017 at 8:44 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@reiner Tor I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however,
a plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack
Russia with the possibility of winning such a war.
I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just
happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative
to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking
through what would happen later, or what would be the logical consequence of the actions which
they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find
it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they
feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have
led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it
through? I don't think so.
Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end
of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany,
probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms
of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect
their elites? I don't think so.
The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing. Probably correct,
but as the events surrounding Able Archer in 1983 highlight it's not whether the Yanks have such
intentions that matters, but whether the Russians think they might have them.
Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously,
it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result.
Did anyone think it through?
The ones who thought it through, like Kissinger, cautioned against it and were proved correct.
100 Words
@Proud_Srbin US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.
Russia, China, DPRK are not Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Siria.
Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.
Where did you hear that?
FYI: "Adolph" faced some real threats, not phony ones like we use as excuses to go to war.
Since yer on a first name basis with the dude, you oughta know the truth.
Here's a primer.:
" this entire myth, so prevalent then and even now about Hitler, and about the Japanese,
is a tissue of fallacies from beginning to end. Every plank in this nightmare evidence is either
completely untrue or not entirely the truth.
If people should learn this intellectual fraud about Hitler's Germany, then they will begin
to ask questions, and searching questions "
I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be.
From where do you think many Americans internalized the characteristic that Miro23 pegged:
"Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000′s of civilians in the
Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have
caused, and show zero empathy for their victims." http://www.unz.com/article/americas-top-scientists-confirm-u-s-goal-now-is-to-conquer-russia/#comment-1860779
Britain's Lee Child created superhero Jack Reacher. In "Night School" Child locates Reacher in
Hamburg, where he beats up young Germans who call out that they are fed up with being occupied
by USA; having delivered the characteristic chops to the face then kick to the nuts, Reacher taunts
the downed German patriots, er, neo-Nazis, "how does it feel to lose a war?"
When, still in Hamburg, Reacher ultimately confronts the head of a group of Germans attempting
to revitalize German identity and culture, Reacher shoots him in the heart and then the head,
carrying out the ideals he had learned in West Point Military Academy bull sessions. For Reacher
-- Child -- British propagandists -- New York publishers, a German who is not fully on board with
USA (Anglo-zionist) demands is, by definition, a Nazi deserving only to be extrajudicially exterminated.
American (Anglo-zionist) popular culture reinforces "lack of remorse" at every turn and by numerous
venues --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9r0haVPDAo
We'll put a boot in your eye, It's the American way . . .
As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long history:
it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II
I can't think of anything more evil than lying to an entire population in order to induce them
to hate, and then kill, another entire population.
"Who sins not with the tongue sins not at all." -
As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long
history: it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II
200 Words
@Sebastian Puettmann If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem
to have internalized every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other
side as well, once in a while.
By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their
Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to
joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion,
is not more fascist than the US? This post was intended for you, Sebastian:
" Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the
EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist
than the US?"
Are you serious? Israel has been caught red-handed on cooperating with ISIS. Following your logic,
ISIS is much, much better than Russian Federation. Though in this case you are actually in agreement
with Israeli brass.
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/06/21/israeli-intel-chief-we-dont-want-isis-defeated-in-syria/
" maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian
Federation."
A truly amazing observation!
Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and
therefore from immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed feel
somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with Russians
on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper level
you need to read "200 years together." Read More
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@reiner Tor I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however,
a plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack
Russia with the possibility of winning such a war.
I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just
happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative
to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking
through what would happen later, or what would be the logical consequence of the actions which
they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find
it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they
feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have
led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it
through? I don't think so.
Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end
of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany,
probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms
of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect
their elites? I don't think so.
The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing. "The most frightening
thought is that they have no idea what they are doing."
Their sick psychopathic heads could well contain the "grandiose strategic thinking" for attacking
Russia and China with nuclear weaponry, on some opportunistic impulse.
Read More
100 Words
@Intelligent Dasein I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but
I' skeptical that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The
Pentagon's claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude
above the reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable
to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.
Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa Rica,
let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. " We've just spent the better part of two decades being
unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan, for crying out loud."
The idea is not to win the war in Afghanistan, but to prolong it for ever if possible. Thus
making billions for the power elite And in this country of dumb bastards it's a snap.
Read More
100 Words
@Max Payne This just sounds like an air burst detonation. Is this one of those American things
where they relabel something and remarket it? Not exactly. The super-fuse is an envelope around
the target which is underground, in which the explosion results in the destruction of the target
even if the missile has not hit the ground within the radius of destruction for its potency. The
optimum destruction envelope around the target looks like a church bell, as one would expect.
Therefore, it is in air-burst detonation, but this is not the essence of the super-fusing technique.
An air-burst too early or too late, still does not destroy the target . The essence is
to "save" a missile which would have missed the target and still destroy the underground silo.
A computer on-board the missile decides when to detonate the missile for its existing trajectory.
Read More
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,
May 5, 2017 at 11:07 pm GMT \n
400 Words
@El Dato Is this a plot for a new Spielberg movie.
Is this a plot for a new Spielberg movie.
No, it's the prequel:
Mackinder -> Mahan (who taught the theory to West Pointers)
Walter McDougall on Mahan (among other things - listen to the whole thing (skip the intros)
In this insightful paper, Walter McDougall explores the options and outcomes facing Japan,
Germany, Italy, USA, and the British in their interpretations, or misinterpretations, of Mahan's
theories.
The most pertinent quote from McDougall's paper recites that:
"Thus, Germany's naval program might be a weapon designed to overthrow the world order or
a tool to help her forge a larger (responsible) stake in that order. But Sir Thomas Sanderson,
a brilliant veteran just retired from Whitehall, responded to Crowe with a sigh. He bade him
(and by extension his chief, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray) to see world politics from
Germany's point of view:
It has sometimes seemed to me that to a foreigner reading our press ** the British Empire
must appear in the light of some huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers
and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream.
In short, Sanderson argued that Britain's empire and its maritime lifelines could be secured
better through accommodation of a rising peer competitor than by arrogant outrage and dogged
defense of the status quo. The parallels to the United States and China today are obvious."
Finally, in the next-best-thing-to-Spielberg, Frank Capra devotes much of the second film in
the 7-part Why We Fight series to projecting upon Germany - and Germany alone - the "militaristic"
desire to "control the (Mackinder) World Island." Capra succumbed to the British propaganda dominating
the American populace as well as agents of influence and decision-makers; in the clutch of the
"huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction,"
Capra responded to competition with amped up "arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status
quo," a status quo that was, by the way, ludicrously sanitized in Capra's saccharine portrayal
of the unalloyed virtue of American life.
{ ~4 min, Capra claims that Germany seeks control of the World Island.
In the first installment of the Why We Fight series, Capra has Germany plotting the conquest of
the entire world.)
** Once again, the British, masters of propaganda, can't control their tongues –
Read More
On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles
of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not
to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have
no command any more.
I won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding of the super fuses.
How the hell do you know what U.S. intelligence is being "tasked with?" Are these intelligence
agencies or your personal informers? Have these "tasks" been reported to the general public? And
if so where is the intelligence value in such?
Are you a movie script writer? Have you ever heard of counter-intelligence? Yes, maybe, never?
Who cares if you "won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding
of the super fuses"? You have made zero contribution to the debate on his topic and I recognise
a troll who is too ready for personal insults from the peak of his/her superior knowledge which
does not exist.
200 Words
@jilles dykstra "and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered by US satellites."
Forget about it, the real ones can be parked in any farm, the inflatable ones cannot be distinghuised
from the real ones.
Even in Saddam's Irak USA planes were unable to find Saddam's mobile V2's. Iran's underground
silo's are even atomic bomb proof. I do not dispute what you wrote – the Russians would not be
keeping their mobile launchers in plain sight, certainly not parading them around the country
ready for photo- and video-shoot, just like the BUK battery according to the utterly ridiculous
Dutch-lead Investigation of MH17 shoot-down.
However, the issue is always – how much of "own" damage are the US/NATO leaders ready to accept?
Somehow, my feeling is that if the bombs are not falling on Tel Aviv the damage becomes acceptable.
Lately, there has been a very powerful push in the media to disapprove nuclear winter and radiation
damage to the population. Some commenters here are trying the same tack. In other words, if
you are not killed by the nuclear explosion, you will be ok , so say the warmongers, those
who claim the destruction of the planet are fools , again so say the warmongers. I have no
doubt that "someone" is trying to sell the advantages of the nuclear war to the population.
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100 Words
@annamaria "The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing."
Their sick psychopathic heads could well contain the "grandiose strategic thinking" for attacking
Russia and China with nuclear weaponry, on some opportunistic impulse. Let us look at it this
way – MAD was a destruction of the two opponents, were the one which strikes first is destroyed
say 60% and the one which was struck first is destroyed 90%. This is looking only at the effect
of the explosions, not at any residual effects.
On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles
of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not
to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have
no command any more.
I won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding of the super fuses.
How the hell do you know what U.S. intelligence is being "tasked with?" Are these intelligence
agencies or your personal informers? Have these "tasks" been reported to the general public? And
if so where is the intelligence value in such?
Mackinder ---> Mahan (who taught the theory to West Pointers)
Walter McDougall on Mahan (among other things -- listen to the whole thing (skip the intros)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGSq2rvucQ
In this insightful paper, Walter McDougall explores the options and outcomes facing Japan,
Germany, Italy, USA, and the British in their interpretations, or misinterpretations, of Mahan's
theories.
http://www.fpri.org/article/2011/11/history-and-strategies-grand-maritime-and-american/
The most pertinent quote from McDougall's paper recites that:
"Thus, Germany's naval program might be a weapon designed to overthrow the world order or a
tool to help her forge a larger (responsible) stake in that order. But Sir Thomas Sanderson,
a brilliant veteran just retired from Whitehall, responded to Crowe with a sigh. He bade him
(and by extension his chief, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray) to see world politics from
Germany's point of view:
It has sometimes seemed to me that to a foreigner reading our press** the British Empire
must appear in the light of some huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers
and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream.
In short, Sanderson argued that Britain's empire and its maritime lifelines could be secured
better through accommodation of a rising peer competitor than by arrogant outrage and dogged
defense of the status quo. The parallels to the United States and China today are obvious."
Finally, in the next-best-thing-to-Spielberg, Frank Capra devotes much of the second film in the
7-part Why We Fight series to projecting upon Germany -- and Germany alone -- the "militaristic"
desire to "control the (Mackinder) World Island." Capra succumbed to the British propaganda dominating
the American populace as well as agents of influence and decision-makers; in the clutch of the
"huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction,"
Capra responded to competition with amped up "arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status
quo," a status quo that was, by the way, ludicrously sanitized in Capra's saccharine portrayal
of the unalloyed virtue of American life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaiXs_e-ekI
{ ~4 min, Capra claims that Germany seeks control of the World Island.
In the first installment of the Why We Fight series, Capra has Germany plotting the conquest of
the entire world.)
**Once again, the British, masters of propaganda, can't control their tongues -- I would recommend
the longest piece of video that you quoted, the one by Walter McDougall. I do not agree with all
his explanations of the beginnings of US Imperialism, but it is still a very, very interesting
lecture, well worth more than an hour of our time. It helps understand better the non-partisan,
non-propagandist US historians and their views.
Great assembly of proofs of your points, thank you for broadening my perspectives.
Read More
@Wizard of Oz Ah, now some of the stranger things you have said become a little less puzzling
as you reveal your romantic Russian mythmaking soul. Again your ignorance of history tricks you
into talking nonsense. Read More Anon 2
,
May 6, 2017 at 1:52 am GMT \n
300 Words
@Carlton Meyer What our media overlooks is that the USA blatantly violated arms agreements
with Russia by building missile bases in Poland and Romania with MK-41 launchers, capable of launching
nuclear tipped cruise missiles to quickly strike key targets in Russia. The Pentagon promises
to only place SM-3 anti-missile missiles in these silos. Trust us, our Generals proclaim! A little
history: Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia refused to withdraw from the Kaliningrad
Region in the early 1990s, and to this day it effectively remains a Russian colony. Russia also
initially refused to withdraw its troops from western Poland, and finally did so in stages until
all troops were withdrawn by 1994-5. The conclusion is: Russia cannot be trusted, which, of course,
is something that any child in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine learns
based on the Russian behavior in the last 300 years.
The area known today as Kaliningrad Oblast' was conquered by the (predominantly Germanic) Teutonic
Knights in the 13th century from Sambians (related to Lithuanians) who were then effectively ethnically
cleansed. The upshot is that neither Russia nor Germany can make the original claim to that piece
of land (located between Poland and Lithuania). In a sane and rational world the Kaliningrad region
would be demilitarized and made into an independent country (with Lithuania perhaps having the
greatest claim to the territory) but when was the last time humans behaved rationally in foreign
affairs?
The U.S./NATO has over 300 military installations in Germany, incl. nuclear weapons. It makes
little difference whether missiles are in western Poland or eastern Germany. The territory is
so small that Berlin lies right next to the Polish border. Russia correspondingly placed Iskander
missiles in Kaliningrad which are capable of hitting Berlin. So now we have a balance of terror.
This seems to be the highest solution that humans in our current primitive state of consciousness
are capable of. To quote Trump: sad Read More
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@Kiza I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed explanation of how they work.
Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly hard for the Russians and the
Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession of the same technology would NOT
reduce the likelihood of US using it first.
In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea
of super-fusing is relatively simple - unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles
have one huge weakness - once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown
rocks - there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined
envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the
target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it
is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile
launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched
ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback - in single digit percent.
This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving
more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.
100 Words
@Realist " We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful
progress in freaking Afghanistan, for crying out loud."
The idea is not to win the war in Afghanistan, but to prolong it for ever if possible. Thus making
billions for the power elite And in this country of dumb bastards...it's a snap. The war in Afghanistan
is all about preventing / disrupting Eurasian integration. Afghanistan is a good spot to do that
as, in addition to being centrally located it is also militarily weak. It borders the important
'Stans into which disruption could exported, and even offers a corridor to China.
The US saw success there, but it's fleeting. It did temporarily disrupt Eurasian integration,
but this is overshadowed by its failure to set up a political structure capable of sustaining,
much less expanding the disruption in its absence. Unless the US invests a politically unacceptable
amount of resources, it's stuck there playing a spoiler's game and will continue to do so until
something happens to oust it. Read More
@Kiza I would recommend the longest piece of video that you quoted, the one by Walter McDougall.
I do not agree with all his explanations of the beginnings of US Imperialism, but it is still
a very, very interesting lecture, well worth more than an hour of our time. It helps understand
better the non-partisan, non-propagandist US historians and their views.
Great assembly of proofs of your points, thank you for broadening my perspectives. thank you for
reading.
"... People should recall that back in the 1950s, Henry Kissinger wrote a study of the idea of limited nuclear war. As head of Nixon's NSC, Kissinger gave us SALT I, the first and in many respects most successful nuclear arms agreement. SALT I banned ballistic missile defense. It was understood by everyone, that ballistic missile defense is not a "defensive" system, but is part of a first strike weapons package. Ballistic missile defense can never be made good enough to defend against someone else's first strike. Ballistic missile defense can, however, be expected to defend after YOU have launched your own first strike and taken out most of the other side's nuclear forces. ..."
The North Korean "crisis" is a Washington orchestration. North Korea was last at war 1950-53.
N. Korea has not attacked or invaded anyone in 64 years. N. Korea lacks the military strength
to attack any country, such as South Korea and Japan, that is protected by the US. Moreover, China
would not permit N. Korea to start a war.
So what is the demonization of N. Korea by the presstitutes and Trump administration about?
It is about the same thing that the demonization of Iran was about. The "Iranian threat" was
an orchestration that was used as cover to put US anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia's borders.
An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is intended to intercept and destroy nuclear-armed ICBMs (intercontinental
ballistic missiles) and prevent them from reaching their targets.
Washington claimed that the anti-ABM bases were not directed at Russia, but were for the protection
of Europe against Iran's nuclear ICBMs. Insouciant Americans might have believed this, but the
Russians surely did not as Iran has neither ICBMs nor nuclear weapons. The Russian government
has made it clear that Russia understands the US bases are directed at preventing a Russian retalliation
against a Washington first strike.
The Chinese government also is not stupid. The Chinese leadership understands that the reason
for the N. Korean "crisis" is to provide cover for Washington to put anti-ballistic missile sites
near China's border.
In other words, Washington is creating a shield against nuclear retalliation from both Russia
and China from a US nuclear strike against both countries.
China has been more forceful in its reply to Washington's efforts than have the Russians. China
has demanded an immediate halt to the US deployment of missiles in South Korea.
https://www.rt.com/news/386828-china-thaad-south-korea/
In order to keep Americans confused, Washington now calls anti-ABMs THAAD, Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense. China understands that THAAD has nothing whatsoever to do with N. Korea, which borders
S. Korea, making it pointless for N. Korea to attack S. Korea with ICBMs.
THAAD in S. Korea is directed against China's retaliatory forces. It is part of Washington's
preparations to nuke both Russia and China with minimal consequence to the US, although Europe
would certainly be completely destroyed as THAAD or anti-ABMs are useless against Russian nuclear
cruise missiles and the Russian air force.
But no Empire has ever cared about the fate of its vassals, and Washington is uninterested
in Europe's fate. Washington is interested only in its hegemony over the world.
The question is: now that Russia and China understand that Washington is preparing for a preemptive
nuclear strike against them in order to remove the two constraints on Washington's unilateral
behavior, will the two countries sit there and wait for the strike?
What would you do?
On April 27 I posted on this website a column, "Washington Plans to Nuke Russia and China."
My column was a report that this was the conclusion of the Russians and Chinese themselves. I
quoted Russian Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir, Deputy Head of Operations of the Russian General Staff
and provided links for his expression of concern such as:
https://www.rt.com/news/386276-us-missile-shield-russia-strike/
Jus' Sayin'... May 4, 2017 at 9:07 pm GMT
BTW, I agree entirely with the essential point of this essay, Mr. Roberets. It's obvious to
any rational and informed person that the USA is engaged in a geopolitical strategy to surround
Russia and China with a coordinated anti-ballistic-missile system. The posting of THAAD in the
Korean peninsula is the latest phase of this plan. The USA's establishment seems to be planning
a strategic system that they think will give the USA a first-strike capability and the flexibility
to start a nuclear war with impunity. This plan is insanely dangerous and puts the entire world
at risk of a nuclear conflagration.
But the poignancy of your message is greatly diminished by the overwrought, paranoid style with
which you present it.
dearieme May 4, 2017 at 10:44 pm GMT
Are the people who run the US really prepared to gamble on a guaranteed 100% success
rate for anti-missile missiles? Won't they die too if they are wrong?
Still, it's the simplest way to explain their very odd behaviour. Perhaps they think they can
frighten the Russians and Chinese into surrender. Sounds awfully risky to me.
What I find disturbing in all this is that the U.S. has to know that they can't simultaneously
neutralize Russia and China's entire nuclear arsenals and every means of delivery. But if so then
this means they are ready and willing to sacrifice a portion of the American landmass and tens
of millions of people to nuclear fire just to be the last man standing. Russia has "boomers" or
submarines that can fire nuclear missiles from sea. I don't think the Chinese have that capability
yet but I haven't been paying close attention.
Russia has multiple ways to deliver nuclear warheads and even if our nuclear defenses are only
partially breached that means a terrible loss of life. It seems the U.S. high command has war
gamed every scenario imaginable and thinks we will win with "acceptable" losses which of course
doesn't include they or their loved ones.
We've become as bloodthirsty and psychopathic as the Likud party of Israel. For all intents
and purposes the mover and shakers within our government are either real or honorary Likudniks.
I have to wonder if the South Korean regime change of a few months back wasn't a CIA color revolution
designed to put a puppet into government in SK that would be willing to host these missiles.
It had all the hallmarks:
-Fancy stage with a visual/audio propaganda machine
-Highly coordinated crowd (lighters, etc )
-Trumped up charges
-Demonization of the 'Church of Eternal Life', which is basically just another wacky protestant
op,not a cult. If one looks at the google search results for this church (as opposed to, say bing)
it is clear that they are on google's CIA list of organizations to demonize by leading search
results to propaganda sites
-Use of the media to constantly demonize a single individual (Choi Soon) whose father was adviser
to Ms Park (sounds like a pretty legit advisor to me)
-Ms Park had expressed a desire to work with both China and the US
In Tolkien's Silmarillion
he describes the lineage of Sauron as essentially a fallen angel, aka a demon.
There is no doubt that Washington is run by a host of people who are possessed by demons.
As far as using real names, the reason I don't spell a full name out is not the desire to be
unknown, but to avoid a search engine like google from collating everything I do online into a
search result. Its one thing to be known in a certain circle of the internet, another for any
bloke to pull everything together without context or participation in the actual discussions.
Harry Huntington, May 5, 2017 at 3:35 pm GMT
@Paul Craig Roberts
Folks who have seriously looked at the subject cannot help but agree with you. People
should recall that back in the 1950s, Henry Kissinger wrote a study of the idea of limited
nuclear war. As head of Nixon's NSC, Kissinger gave us SALT I, the first and in many respects
most successful nuclear arms agreement. SALT I banned ballistic missile defense. It was
understood by everyone, that ballistic missile defense is not a "defensive" system, but is
part of a first strike weapons package. Ballistic missile defense can never be made good
enough to defend against someone else's first strike. Ballistic missile defense can, however,
be expected to defend after YOU have launched your own first strike and taken out most of the
other side's nuclear forces.
Of course the Russians have not been standing still with all of this. Their S400 system has
capabilities against both US stealth aircraft and ballistic missiles. The Russians make
incremental changes to their systems and the Russian S500 system will have full blown
ballistic missile defense capabilities. The Russians are also deploying their Topol M ICBM
systems, and soon a successor, which is mobile and has multiple maneuverable warheads and
penetration aids designed to defeat US ballistic missile defense systems. Most likely, as it
seems is always the case, the US neocons will trust too much in US technology and will be
unpleasantly surprised by the Russian response to any US nuclear first strike.
The wildcard of course is that a nuclear war need not be fought entirely with nuclear weapons.
US conventional cruise missiles can be launched to target Russian radars. Likewise, however,
the Russian Kalibr cruise missiles can directly take on US ballistic missile defense by
threatening both US sea based defensive systems and land based THAAD systems.
It is easy to picture a scenario where in a crisis Russia strikes first using its
conventional cruise missiles to target US ballistic missile defense sites. US sea based
systems cannot engage in ballistic missile defense if they have to expend all of their
missiles defending themselves from conventional attack. Similarly, a THAAD system is of
limited use if Russians successfully destroy the missiles on the ground, or if they destroy
the radars.
The US was surprised when the Russians used their Kalibr missiles with great success in
Syria. That success created another layer of complexity in the US planning for nuclear war.
botazefa: May 5, 2017 at 7:16 pm GMT
It is my understanding that our THAAD deployments are not particularly numerous in
comparison to the existing ICBM arsenal. It is also my understanding that THAAD is not
particularly accurate.
If the author is so thin skinned that he cannot handle disagreement, then perhaps he lacks the
self awareness to label dissenters as narcissists. To put it more plainly, the inability to
take criticism is one of the diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. To
believe that ones comments are so interesting that they invite active espionage on the part of
Mossad and NATO is indicative of grandiose thinking, another diagnostic criteria of NPD.
alexander says:
May 5, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT • 100 Words
@alexander
As though perhaps in the final tally we will have hit fifty two of "their" cities and they will
only have hit 20 of "ours" .like Seattle , Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Albany , Denver,
Boston, Charlotte, San Francisco,Richmond, Trenton, Juneau,Wilmington, Raleigh,
Concord,Providence,Detroit, Hartford and Columbia .
Is this "victory "in your mind , Utu ?
Can you really be suggesting this ?
34.Mao Cheng Ji says:
May 5, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT • 100 Words
@utu
What is the purpose of anti-ABM installations around Russia and China? What is the purpose of
claims of inflated abilities of these systems? Certainly not to prepare the first strike. It
is to make Russia and China think that they will not win the first strike.
It's exactly the opposite. Modern ABM systems are useless against the first strike with 1500
nuclear ICBMs among god knows how many decoys. They are useful, however, against a much weaker
retaliation strike, provided that most of the enemy's ICBMs have been destroyed (by your first
strike) inside their silos. You will probably lose a few cities, but win Total World
Domination. And that's the game.
"... Unfortunately all of that has been pretty much unknown to most folks for a couple of centuries despite it being known to a few. Thomas Jefferson had a low regard for the press, Mark Twain wrote about it ( from an inside perspective), and Upton Sinclair wrote his excellent The Brass Check detailing the corruption of the press, and I think it's still worth a read. ..."
Might there be a way for some members of the press to become part of
the solution, and no longer part of the problem?
The simple answer would be for an alternative press to gain enough ground
to make the MSM irrelevant. The MSM already has some problems.
It made every effort to get Clinton elected but failed, so the public is
already not taking everything it says at face value, and seem to agree with
Trump in his many speeches when he called them propagandist liars. It can
reach a point that the public rejects everything that comes out of the MSM
(like the last days of the Soviet Union) and it's interesting to read the
WaPo comments section (which gets fairly light censorship) and see the
spreading confusion about mass immigration, ME wars, fake WMD ,
unquestioning support for Israel etc.
I don't think that Loss of Faith is an overnight process. The public
(including myself) has to discard their comfortable memories of what the
Washington Post used to be and face up to the unwelcome fact that "
journalists" like Jennifer Rubin and Anne Applebaum are full on Zionists
(same as the management) and have pushed for every single MENA war.
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Unfortunately, almost all media-owners have an agenda that overrides
truth - they don't obtain the huge funding that's necessary to build
audience-share if they aren't backed by big money (billionaire investors,
and mega-corporate advertisers) to begin with. Opposing the big money is
a sure pathway to obscurity in the field of 'journalism'; and
'journalism' prizes (especially on international-news or other major
stories) are pig's lipstick, far more than indications of journalistic
competence.
Unfortunately all of that has been pretty much unknown to most folks
for a couple of centuries despite it being known to a few. Thomas Jefferson
had a low regard for the press, Mark Twain wrote about it ( from an inside
perspective), and Upton Sinclair wrote his excellent
The Brass Check
detailing the corruption of the press, and I think it's still worth a read.
This letter is amazing too.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow
citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they
have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell (14 June 1807)
A quarter of a million Americans buy [The New York Times] every day,
and form their whole view of life from its columns. And never a day out
of more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and
cunningly distorted the news of the world in the interest of special
privilege.
- UPTON SINCLAIR, THE CRIMES OF THE "TIMES" A Test of Newspaper
Decency,
1921
(Pamphlet published by Sinclair)
It's a wonder that corporate media ever had a grain of credibility.
If a person isn't skeptical of his own beliefs, then he becomes a
waste-dump of falsehoods, instead of an accumulator of truths - a truly
(i.e., truthfully) educated person.
On that basis, I estimate there may be 2 or 3 at most, educated people in
America, land of the gulls and home of the dupes.
Another Bingo!
Because, to trust 'authority' (note: this refers to fake authorities,
not to methodologically careful scientific research)
Because, to trust 'authority' (note: this refers to fake authorities,
not to methodologically careful scientific research) is to invite fascist
rule, aggressive wars, and mass-exploitation.
Getting to the truth, and staying with it, requires constant vigilance
and a constantly open mind to the possibility that there are falsehoods
in one's own beliefs. If a person isn't skeptical of his own beliefs,
then he becomes a waste-dump of falsehoods, instead of an accumulator of
truths - a truly (i.e., truthfully) educated person. Democracy is thus
virtually impossible in America
In a very well-worded way you clarify how democracy and human nature
aren't compatible, then you conclude that "Democracy is virtually impossible
in America".
No, it is virtually impossible wherever there are humans. Except for brief
periods when the force of opposite teams competing for power are
approximately equal (and then people like "journalists" "intellectuals"
"bankers" and other public-opinion and policy-determiners part equally
between the two sides).
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sebastian puettmann
,
January 20, 2017 at 12:04 pm GMT \n
100 Words
The author makes a good case against the establishment.
To make things short,
Americans must chose now:
Continue the empire and lose their own country.
Or end American hegemony and survive as a culture.
America has given the world great values.
It'd be a shame if they were to lose in one wrong play at the 'great game'.
Get your army home and let the free market provide security in foreign
markets.
Nice article
– that begins to explain just how
completely we American People are Brainwashed. My fellow American Citizens
are only beginning to have a clue as to how they are controlled – by means
of misinformation and the 'carrot and the stick.'
Zuesse pithily explains – the costs of resistance
:
"Journalism - especially about important matters - is not a profession.
It's a calling. Or else, if it's not a calling, then it is public relations;
it is propaganda, "PR" - done for the purpose of receiving pay, not really
for the purpose of conveying truth."
"The employees are purely megaphones for their boss's views. That's what
they were hired to be, and that's what they are if they succeed in their
profession and rise up the career-ladder in it. Anything that a staff
journalist writes (or allows to be published, if that person is an editor)
contradicting the owner's views, counts against that employee, and increases
his/her likelihood of being eliminated, or at least of being denied a
deserved promotion (because not doing the person's job for the employer)."
Even such a wealthy and powerful man as
Mel Gibson
, is still
trying to return to Hollywood (from where he has been banned – under penalty
of ???).
Today we will view
Hollywood Obomber
being replaced by another
frontman ("purely megaphones for their boss's views"), as explained by
Zuesse; he will be replaced by
Casino Trump
, who was chosen by the
Oligarchs – in preference to a clearly mentally (and physically?) ill
Killery Clinton
.
A mid level crook is thrown the title of 'President.' An individual who
has twice declared bankruptcy, and each time returned to action with more
$wealth, than ever, and no political history whatever, attains office in
preference to a vicious mass murdering war criminal. Call that progress if
you will. However, the scum allowed to become the frontrunners (thanks to
the Mainstream Media brainwashing of our American citizens), have never been
less human, or morally qualified to represent the people.
This political pattern of the
Oligarch controllers
, Rothschilds,
Rockefellers, Duponts, Soros, et. al., choosing the least moral, the least
humans to become their "public relations" tools has continued, without
letup, from the hour after the murder of our last Constitutional President,
John F.Kennedy
, and the Coup D'etat against our beloved American
Republic (in the first successful -Modern Arab Spring).
In 2017, the current political pattern
reminds one of Roman
Emperor
Caligula
's placing of his favorite Horse, in the Roman
Senate. And the Roman Senators, (possibly all corrupted by AIPAC), continued
their deliberations; they even allowrd the Horse to vote. There is no
evidence that Caligula's Horse voted any less intelligently than our
Prostituted Congress. Indeed, there is no evidence that Caligula descended
to the low level of anti-democratic or any anti-human depravity, so common
in modern Politics.
Freedom is, indeed, not Free
We either
Restore our Beloved Democratic Republic
, or we wallow in
depraved servility, as slaves, but not as Free Humans.
Unfortunately, almost all media-owners have an agenda that overrides
truth - they don't obtain the huge funding that's necessary to build
audience-share if they aren't backed by big money (billionaire investors,
and mega-corporate advertisers) to begin with. Opposing the big money is
a sure pathway to obscurity in the field of 'journalism'; and
'journalism' prizes (especially on international-news or other major
stories) are pig's lipstick, far more than indications of journalistic
competence.
Unfortunately all of that has been pretty much unknown to most folks for a
couple of centuries despite it being known to a few. Thomas Jefferson had a
low regard for the press, Mark Twain wrote about it ( from an inside
perspective), and Upton Sinclair wrote his excellent
The Brass Check
detailing the corruption of the press, and I think it's still worth a read.
This letter is amazing too.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow
citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they
have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell (14 June 1807)
A quarter of a million Americans buy [The New York Times] every day, and
form their whole view of life from its columns. And never a day out of
more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and
cunningly distorted the news of the world in the interest of special
privilege.
- UPTON SINCLAIR, THE CRIMES OF THE "TIMES" A Test of Newspaper
Decency,
1921
(Pamphlet published by Sinclair)
It's a wonder that corporate media ever had a grain of credibility.
Where do people get their faith?
They get it in elementary school, and in the 'news'media (which inundate
their parents). It's continued in subsequent 'education', which doesn't tell
them that what they had learned earlier was the aristocracy's lies about
their country and its history. Especially at the prestigious universities,
the professors occupy seats that are endowed by the aristocracy, for the
aristocracy. In other words: we are surrounded with it, from birth.
Read More
Astuteobservor II
,
January 20, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT \n
100 Words
the last hurrah was the watergate :/ after that, it was deemed too
dangerous. for profit news = death of journalism. cnn didn't help much.
foxnews was the the original fake news
even 60 minutes became shit. I was a huge fan of charlie rose, but then I
watched the interview with putin.
100 Words
All journalism is propaganda for one side or another.
The only way to describe a human event without a viewpoint is to write a
police report.
"Subject proceeded south on Quincy for 3.7 miles at 83 miles per hour.
Subject halted after colliding with parked car at Quincy and 14th. Subject
exited car and officer pursued on foot."
This isn't journalism, it's measurement.
The Onion's "autistic reporter" parody also illustrates TV journalism
without a human viewpoint.
Journalism - especially about important matters - is not a profession.
It's a calling. Or else, if it's not a calling, then it is public
relations; it is propaganda.
200 Words
You lost me at the fake coup news. If the EU association would have cost
Ukraine 160 billion, why didn't Yanokovich simply calla press conference and
detail the problem to the Ukrainian people? The fact is, he didn't. he
simply turned to Russia because he liked the idea of an association with
Russia better because that's where his sympathies lay.
His murderous
reaction to the Maidan protesters simply cooked his goose. When he realized
he would be brought to book for the killings he ordered, he ran for his
buddy Putin's protection. Same with the Berkut that carried out the murders.
He was then removed from office by the parliament under a constitutional
proceeding.
How do you know Crimea wanted to be a Russian province again? The
referendum? That was fake and held under the guns of the Russian Army after
thousands had been imported, allowing the Russian Army to vote and
suppressing the vote of the natives, particularly of the Crimean Tatars.
100 Words
Excellent.
Norman Solomon wrote about this problem in his book "War Made Easy, How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death"
from Amazon: In War Made Easy, nationally syndicated columnist, media
critic, and author Norman Solomon cuts through the dense web of spin to
probe and scrutinize the key "perception management" techniques that have
played huge rolls in the promotion of American wars in recent decades.//
It's all about managing and shaping perception, not news.
– The CNN president recently: "One of the things I think this administration
hasn't figured out yet is that there's only one television network that is
seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran and
Damascus - and that's CNN," Zucker said. "The perception of Donald Trump in
capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN. Continuing to
have an adversarial relationship with that network is a mistake."
Read More
Inertiller
,
January 20, 2017 at 6:24 pm GMT \n
@Astuteobservor II
the last hurrah was the watergate :/ after that, it was deemed too
dangerous. for profit news = death of journalism. cnn didn't help much.
foxnews was the the original fake news :) even 60 minutes became shit. I was
a huge fan of charlie rose, but then I watched the interview with putin.
took the last 3 decades to kill off news, to get to what we have now,
propaganda and pr outlets.
False – Watergate was at best a distraction, more technically a psyop. The
history of the United States is a press that claims to be free, but is
probably the most effective military weapon available. 1973, otherwise, was
an especially signifigant year.
Read More
Intelligent Dasein
,
Website
January 20, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT \n
@Don Bacon
Excellent.
Norman Solomon wrote about this problem in his book "War Made Easy, How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death"
from Amazon: In War Made Easy, nationally syndicated columnist, media
critic, and author Norman Solomon cuts through the dense web of spin to
probe and scrutinize the key "perception management" techniques that have
played huge rolls in the promotion of American wars in recent decades.//
It's all about managing and shaping perception, not news.
-- The CNN president recently: "One of the things I think this
administration hasn't figured out yet is that there's only one television
network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad,
Tehran and Damascus - and that's CNN," Zucker said. "The perception of
Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN.
Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a
mistake."
Donald Trump can block CNN's broadcasts, occupy and shut down their studios,
seize their property, and blow their satellites out of the sky if he wants
to. We're playing the game on a new level now, and Zucker can shove up his
megaphone.
Read More
Astuteobservor II
,
January 20, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT \n
@Intelligent Dasein
Donald Trump can block CNN's broadcasts, occupy and shut down their studios,
seize their property, and blow their satellites out of the sky if he wants
to. We're playing the game on a new level now, and Zucker can shove up his
megaphone.
Not to mention the Donald has the power to seize ALL of Zucker's assets and
throw him in Guantanamo Bay.
They get it in elementary school, and in the 'news'media (which
inundate their parents). It's continued in subsequent 'education', which
doesn't tell them that what they had learned earlier was the
aristocracy's lies about their country and its history. Especially at the
prestigious universities, the professors occupy seats that are endowed by
the aristocracy, for the aristocracy. In other words: we are surrounded
with it, from birth.
The birth of our species as we use to see it, you mean.
Language and deception were born the same day.
So did power hierarchy and society.
1. Break up the big media/industrial
cartels. It was of course Bill Clinton – who gave us NAFTA and the repeal of
Glass Steagall, who allowed the news media to consolidate. So now we have
the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, who has many other interests than
journalism, and who can easily subsidize the Post from his other enterprises
and use the Post to push his own agenda. A newspaper that was not owned by a
parent entity with other interests MIGHT possibly be more focused on
journalism.
2. In general you can only get honest reporting in a prosperous society
with a tight labor market. Then, if a talented reporter is fired, the
company loses a hard-to-replace talent and the reporter easily finds another
good job, because talented people are in short supply. But with a flooded
labor market, even talented people can be easily replaced, being fired is a
de-facto sentence of lifetime poverty, and only the occasional saint will
take a stand on principle. That's why in poor countries there is always
horrible sycophancy and nepotism. And, aside from the direct profits of
cheap labor, this is another reason that the rich like cheap labor, because
it gives them more social power. If we limited immigration to a more modest
level, and stopped bleeding main street and feeding Wall Street and
pointless foreign wars, and created a tight labor market where companies
were desperate to find qualified people and qualified people had their pick
of jobs, I think a lot of these issues might be reduced.
Read More
anonymous
,
January 21, 2017 at 2:25 am GMT \n
200 Words
his actual actions did nothing to punish) increased economic
inequality, flatlined wages, and soaring poverty with lots of new
burger-flipping jobs
Listening to NPR today the panelists were cooing that Obama was handing
over a greatly improving economy and that unemployment was a mere 4.5% and
so on. Huh, that's not what I see daily, homelessness and panhandling like
never before all over the place. Service jobs, 'burger-flipping', are pretty
much it for a lot of people and don't pay enough for them to pay rent let
alone make any plans for the future. What, did Ceausescu's propaganda team
find work over here? Ideological blindness or paid to lie, who can tell the
difference? It seems the gap between the narratives coming out of the street
corner loudspeakers and observed reality is getting more blatant in recent
years. It strikes me that it represents something of an end stage of control
through deceit and manipulation. Next step will be recourse to coercion and
force.
Obama was merely a more-articulate and cunning version of Bush, in
blackface
1. Break up the big media/industrial cartels. It was of course Bill Clinton
- who gave us NAFTA and the repeal of Glass Steagall, who allowed the news
media to consolidate. So now we have the Washington Post, owned by Jeff
Bezos, who has many other interests than journalism, and who can easily
subsidize the Post from his other enterprises and use the Post to push his
own agenda. A newspaper that was not owned by a parent entity with other
interests MIGHT possibly be more focused on journalism.
2. In general you can only get honest reporting in a prosperous society with
a tight labor market. Then, if a talented reporter is fired, the company
loses a hard-to-replace talent and the reporter easily finds another good
job, because talented people are in short supply. But with a flooded labor
market, even talented people can be easily replaced, being fired is a
de-facto sentence of lifetime poverty, and only the occasional saint will
take a stand on principle. That's why in poor countries there is always
horrible sycophancy and nepotism. And, aside from the direct profits of
cheap labor, this is another reason that the rich like cheap labor, because
it gives them more social power. If we limited immigration to a more modest
level, and stopped bleeding main street and feeding Wall Street and
pointless foreign wars, and created a tight labor market where companies
were desperate to find qualified people and qualified people had their pick
of jobs, I think a lot of these issues might be reduced.
"In general you can only get honest reporting in a prosperous society with a
tight labor market."
@Don Bacon
Excellent.
Norman Solomon wrote about this problem in his book "War Made Easy, How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death"
from Amazon: In War Made Easy, nationally syndicated columnist, media
critic, and author Norman Solomon cuts through the dense web of spin to
probe and scrutinize the key "perception management" techniques that have
played huge rolls in the promotion of American wars in recent decades.//
It's all about managing and shaping perception, not news.
-- The CNN president recently: "One of the things I think this
administration hasn't figured out yet is that there's only one television
network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad,
Tehran and Damascus - and that's CNN," Zucker said. "The perception of
Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN.
Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a
mistake."
"One of the things I think this administration hasn't figured out yet is
that there's only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow,
Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus - and that's CNN,"
LOL. Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Baghdad, etc are going to trust CNN?
his actual actions did nothing to punish) increased economic inequality,
flatlined wages, and soaring poverty with lots of new burger-flipping
jobs
Listening to NPR today the panelists were cooing that Obama was handing over
a greatly improving economy and that unemployment was a mere 4.5% and so on.
Huh, that's not what I see daily, homelessness and panhandling like never
before all over the place. Service jobs, 'burger-flipping', are pretty much
it for a lot of people and don't pay enough for them to pay rent let alone
make any plans for the future. What, did Ceausescu's propaganda team find
work over here? Ideological blindness or paid to lie, who can tell the
difference? It seems the gap between the narratives coming out of the street
corner loudspeakers and observed reality is getting more blatant in recent
years. It strikes me that it represents something of an end stage of control
through deceit and manipulation. Next step will be recourse to coercion and
force.
Obama was merely a more-articulate and cunning version of Bush, in
blackface
200 Words
@Eric Zuesse
They get it in elementary school, and in the 'news'media (which inundate
their parents). It's continued in subsequent 'education', which doesn't tell
them that what they had learned earlier was the aristocracy's lies about
their country and its history. Especially at the prestigious universities,
the professors occupy seats that are endowed by the aristocracy, for the
aristocracy. In other words: we are surrounded with it, from birth.
Yup, it's the human condition, hence my question regarding faith.
You may
find this true today as well.
As a 16 year old, with 2 years of formal schooling ending at the age
of 10, Benjamin Franklin wrote this. Note the date:
I reflected in my Mind on the extream Folly of those Parents, who,
blind to their Childrens Dulness, and insensible of the Solidity of their
Skulls, because they think their Purses can afford it, will needs send
them to the Temple of Learning, where, for want of a suitable Genius,
they learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely, and enter
a Room genteely, (which might as well be acquir'd at a Dancing-School,)
and from whence they return, after Abundance of Trouble and Charge, as
great Blockheads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited.
I related my Dream with all its Particulars [to a friend], and he,
without much Study, presently interpreted it, assuring me, That it was a
lively Representation of HARVARD COLLEGE, Etcetera.
I remain, Sir,
Your Humble Servant,
SILENCE DOGOOD.
@Quartermaster
You lost me at the fake coup news. If the EU association would have cost
Ukraine 160 billion, why didn't Yanokovich simply calla press conference and
detail the problem to the Ukrainian people? The fact is, he didn't. he
simply turned to Russia because he liked the idea of an association with
Russia better because that's where his sympathies lay.
His murderous reaction to the Maidan protesters simply cooked his goose.
When he realized he would be brought to book for the killings he ordered, he
ran for his buddy Putin's protection. Same with the Berkut that carried out
the murders. He was then removed from office by the parliament under a
constitutional proceeding.
How do you know Crimea wanted to be a Russian province again? The
referendum? That was fake and held under the guns of the Russian Army after
thousands had been imported, allowing the Russian Army to vote and
suppressing the vote of the natives, particularly of the Crimean Tatars.
100 Words
@Don Bacon
Excellent.
Norman Solomon wrote about this problem in his book "War Made Easy, How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death"
from Amazon: In War Made Easy, nationally syndicated columnist, media
critic, and author Norman Solomon cuts through the dense web of spin to
probe and scrutinize the key "perception management" techniques that have
played huge rolls in the promotion of American wars in recent decades.//
It's all about managing and shaping perception, not news.
-- The CNN president recently: "One of the things I think this
administration hasn't figured out yet is that there's only one television
network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad,
Tehran and Damascus - and that's CNN," Zucker said. "The perception of
Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN.
Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a
mistake."
I think he meant to say there is only one US network in those countries. The
way he said it, it would be just as easy to say that RT is the only network
in the USA, and that that network is what forms American's perceptions of
Vladimir Putin. Typical news man putting his spin on things. Fake news.
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DB Cooper
,
January 21, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT \n
Opposing the big money is a sure pathway to obscurity in the field of
'journalism'; and 'journalism' prizes (especially on international-news
or other major stories) are pig's lipstick
100 Words
@Quartermaster
You lost me at the fake coup news. If the EU association would have cost
Ukraine 160 billion, why didn't Yanokovich simply calla press conference and
detail the problem to the Ukrainian people? The fact is, he didn't. he
simply turned to Russia because he liked the idea of an association with
Russia better because that's where his sympathies lay.
His murderous reaction to the Maidan protesters simply cooked his goose.
When he realized he would be brought to book for the killings he ordered, he
ran for his buddy Putin's protection. Same with the Berkut that carried out
the murders. He was then removed from office by the parliament under a
constitutional proceeding.
How do you know Crimea wanted to be a Russian province again? The
referendum? That was fake and held under the guns of the Russian Army after
thousands had been imported, allowing the Russian Army to vote and
suppressing the vote of the natives, particularly of the Crimean Tatars.
You people need to quit spreading Putin's lies.
I believe you are misinformed about the validity of the Crimean referendum.
". . . an interesting study, 'The Socio-Political Sentiments in Crimea,' was
released by the Ukrainian branch of GfK, the well-known German social
research organization, as part of the Free Crimea initiative. Intriguingly,
the primary objectives of this project, launched with the support of the
governmental Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, were to "debunk aggressive
Russian propaganda" and to 'reintegrate Crimea into Ukraine.' Thus the
researchers can hardly be suspected of being Russian sympathizers. So let's
take a look at the results."
"... More Americans are becoming aware and demanding action, who are demeaned as crazy "truthers", which now include two former members of our government's official 9-11 Commission once tasked with investigating these crimes. ..."
None of these were exposed via "Fact check" stories afterwards. One Obama
lie was this:
"I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban
people, shut down Iran's nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and
take out the mastermind of 9/11″
Most experts agree that the Osama Bin Laden killing story is false, but
there is no disagreement that OBL was not the 9-11 mastermind. He played no
role at all, but was only said to have inspired the attack by our FBI. For
those confused by our corporate media and their spokesmen like B. Obama,
here is something from my blog:
Here is a summary of events for those confused by American corporate
media. Al Qaeda is not an organization. It is a CIA computer database of
armed Arab nationalists who violently oppose western domination of the Arab
world. (Al Qaeda is Arabic for database.) This database was established by
the CIA in the 1980s when our CIA trained and armed Arabs to fight the
Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden (OBL) was never an
official leader since it has never been a real organization, although he did
lead a large group of Arab nationalists who lived in Afghanistan.
OBL had nothing to do with 9-11, he didn't even know about it until it
was reported in the media. He was never formally accused of the attacks
because there is zero evidence. OBL was a wealthy Saudi who is said to have
inspired the attacks. Our government blamed a Kuwaiti, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammad (pictured), and a dozen Saudis who died in the airplanes. These
persons had never been to Afghanistan and are said to have planned and
trained for the attacks in the Philippines, Germany, and the USA. Then why
was Afghanistan invaded, and later Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and
Yemen? But we did not invade Saudi Arabia! Instead, recall that days after
9-11 several jets from our federal Justice Department rounded up Saudi
suspects in the USA and flew them home before FBI agents could ask them
questions.
All this explains why the accused mastermind of the attacks, Khalid
Shaikh Mohammad, has yet to go to trial almost 16 years since 9-11! He has
not been allowed to speak to anyone outside the CIA Even the 9-11
Commission was not allowed to interview him. The U.S. military set up a
kangaroo court at Gitmo to hold a trial many years ago, but brave military
defense lawyers keep causing delays by insisting on a fair trial. It seems
evidence is so "sensitive" that our CIA does not want it revealed. even in a
secret military court. Whenever documents are requested by the defense, some
are destroyed instead! This included all the CIA interrogations of the
accused!
Our media propaganda is so prevalent that nearly all Americans think OBL
was the 9-11 mastermind, and since he is dead the case is closed. However,
there is zero evidence of his involvement, something our government has long
acknowledged. Americans watched thousands of hours of television coverage of
the 9-11 attacks. Ask one if they think the accused mastermind of the
attacks should be put on trial, and they'll have no idea what you are
talking about.
More Americans are becoming aware and demanding action,
who are demeaned as crazy "truthers", which now include two former members
of our government's official 9-11 Commission once tasked with investigating
these crimes.
2) Trucklers – (LBJ) lower class White Americans who gain wealth and power by championing
non White, minority causes just because it's a path to power, pleasing the elites who would otherwise
dismiss them as hicks.
3) Pussyfooters (Bush Sr. Country Club Conservatives) White Americans who prefer their
own safe life, don't hate their own people but rarely defend them – they don't like trouble, they're
pussies. Alt Right has given them a new word "Cuckservatives".
4) Old Believers (Ron Paul, Pat Robertson) Sincere old guys who wish things could go back
to the way things used to be when some systems supposedly worked for us when we were 90% White European
American, before the Great Society, New Deal, feminism, etc
5) Proditors – (John Brown, Jane Fonda, SDS)
These are the forms of White traditional British oriented American traitors, not racial or ethnic
groups with historic envy, hatreds of our people.
Do you have links to other Wilmot Robertson sites?
100 Words I really can't emphasize #2 strongly enough. The term "fog of war" is an apt one.
People in a war generally don't know much at all about what's going on, at the time. They're lucky
if they ever do. But in every single orthodox eye-witness account I've ever read, the storytellers
know exactly what was going on, and why . Even when they shouldn't. They set off
my skeptic alarms left and right.
Read some of the accounts critically, and see for yourself. They're mostly "everybody knows,"
"it is known," type stuff. Not credible at all. These are the bricks the orthodox narrative is
made of.
"... Robert Fisk writes for the Independent , where this column originally appeared. ..."
"... And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed will end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life. ..."
"... How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the New Zealand government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island. ..."
"... Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist bankers. Once in the White House he folded to their demands. He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3. ..."
It's one thing to have a lunatic in the White House who watches late night television and tweets
all day. But when the same lunatic goes to war, it now emerges, he's a safer bet for democracy, a
strong President who stands up to tyrants (unless they happen to be Saudis, Turks or Egyptians) and
who acts out of human emotion rather than cynicism.
How else can one account for the extraordinary report in The New York Times which recorded
how Trump's "anguish" at the film of dying Syrian babies had led him to abandon "isolationism"?
Americans like action, but have typically confused Trump's infantile trigger finger with mature
decision-making. What else is there to think when a normally sane US columnist like David Ignatius
suddenly compares Trump to Harry Truman and praises his demented President for his "flexibility"
and "pragmatism"?
This is preposterous. A madman who goofs off at something he doesn't like on CNN is just plain
wacky. A man of unsound mind who attacks three Muslim countries – two of which were included in his
seven Muslim nation refugee ban – is a danger to the world. Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at
Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent chemical attack which he blames on Assad –
but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave
of her senses and praises Trump, along with the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry
other potentates. Hasn't someone cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a
shooting war?
Handing more power to the Pentagon – about the most perilous act of any US President – means that
Defence Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis is now encouraging the head-chopping Saudis to bomb Yemen
– adding even more American intelligence "assets" to this criminal enterprise - and encouraging the
Gulf Arabs' delusional idea that Iran wants to conquer the Arab world. "Everywhere you look," Mattis
told his Saudi hosts this month, "if there's trouble in the region, you find Iran."
Is that the case with Egypt, then, now under Isis attack as its President "disappears" thousands
of his own people? Is that the case in Turkey whose even more crazed President has now locked up
tens of thousands of his own people while turning himself into a dictator-by-law?
Let's just briefly take a look at Trump's reaction to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dodgy referendum,
which has given him a Caliph's power over Turkey. A round-up of the latest figures from Turkey by
the French newspaper Liberation show that there have been 47,000 arrests since last year's attempted
coup, 140,000 passports revoked, 120,000 men and women fired from their jobs (including 8,000 military
officers, 5,000 academics, 4,000 judges and lawyers, 65 mayors and 2,000 journalists). One thousand
two hundred schools and 15 universities have been closed down, 170 newspapers, television and radio
stations shut.
And after the referendum which gave Erdogan a narrow (if very dubious) majority to legitimise
these outrages, Trump called the Turkish President to congratulate him on his victory. Just as he
continues to congratulate Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in his "battle" against "terror",
a war which al-Sisi – whose coup d'etat against Egypt's first elected president originally brought
him to power – appears to be losing. Al-Sisi, Trump enthused, would be someone "very close to him".
We know that the US Special Forces raid on Yemen, in which Navy Seal William Owens died, killed
more civilians than al-Qaeda members. We don't know (or, I suspect, care) very much what the "mother
of all bombs" did in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan. First it killed 60 Isis fighters. Then
it killed 100 Isis fighters and not a single civilian – surely a first in US military history? But
then, weirdly, nobody has been allowed to go to the site of this monster bomb's explosion. Because
civilians were indeed killed? Or because – and this is a fact – Isis survivors went on fighting American
ground troops after the bombing?
Now Trump is sending a naval battle group to threaten North Korea, a past master at childish threats
itself. Ye gods! And this is a man who is now "flexible" and "pragmatic"? It's instructive to note
that after its first edition, The New York Times changed its headline about Trump's Syrian "anguish"
to "Trump Upends His Own Foreign Policy", still gifting him with a "foreign policy" (which doesn't
exist) while cutting out the "anguish". I am told the first original edition headline read: "On Syria
Attack, Trump's Heart Came First". Intriguing. If that is correct, you can see how The New York Times
slowly – far too slowly – realised it had itself started to fall in love with its shooting-from-the-hip
President.
Now we await the battle for Korea, forgetting that earlier war which drowned the peninsula in
blood, American and British as well as Korean and Chinese. Maybe Trump, in his vague, frightening
way, has decided that Southeast Asia will be his real war. And there, of course, the comparison with
Truman gets rather too close to home. For Truman only came in at the end of the Second World War,
after Roosevelt's death, and his crowning wartime achievement was also in Southeast Asia: the atom-bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Heaven spare us the next 100 days.
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent
, where this column originally appeared.
jilles dykstra, April 27, 2017 at 6:29 am GMT
I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and
to satisfy his voters. The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all
this eloquently, alas only in Dutch, as far as I know.
And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed
will end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life.
How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the
New Zealand government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island.
Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist bankers.
Once in the White House he folded to their demands. He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3.
Ignatius (not "normally sensible" but normally a blood-sucking Zionist warmonger) applauds
Trump for his betrayal of those who elected him, for his submission to the usual suspects . by
the way this guy (see below) explains what the power is that obedience-monkeys like Trump (and,
more importantly, the rest of us) actually serve:
Trump underestimated the problems he was going to have in government. It is true – he is a
good business negotiator – he has proven himself at making business deals. The goal of the participants
in a business deal is to create an ongoing business. The all-encompassing goal of government is
to maintain power – second is getting things done. Trump must learn a new game – he must learn
the game power. The first rule of power is you need to instill fear – you need to take someone
out!
Trump must use government power to crush someone (not twitter). Trump must take one of those
jerk judges immediately to the supreme court. Trump needs to stick something that Schumer really
wants, right where the sun don't shine. Using government power, Trump needs to make an example
of some media person.
Trump dropped some bombs and the world now has respect – that's power politics.
100 Words
@ThereisaGod Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist
bankers.
Once in the White House he folded to their demands.
He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3.
Ignatius (not "normally sensible" but normally a blood-sucking Zionist warmonger) applauds Trump
for his betrayal of those who elected him, for his submission to the usual suspects .... by the
way ... this guy (see below) explains what the power is that obedience-monkeys like Trump (and,
more importantly, the rest of us) actually serve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEpcY5JU120&t=543s It is not easy, if that is what Trump wants,
to turn around the policy of a country, that has been followed since Pearl Harbour.
The one and only period that the USA was not imperialistic was from 1919, when the American people
discovered why their sons had died in Europe, until 1933, when Roosevelt got power.
Read More Robert
Magill ,
April 27, 2017 at 10:16 am GMT
100 Words Donald Trump evokes in us the same distortion of reality as a funhouse mirror at
an amusement park.
Apparently no one is immune to the phenomenon. Maybe it's black magic. Maybe it's Jungian.
Whatever it is; it's pretty dark. In fact, the Trump effect on us has become a Litmus Test
of more
@Wizard of Oz Just sometimes Robert Fisk says something interesting and convincing, or at
least, believable. But what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia? "what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia?"
Robert Fisk the Iranian shill, and secret Shiia convert, doesn't even know that Hiroshima
and Nagasaki are NOT in Southeast Asia. Thank God that Trump and Israel are a lot smarter than
this turd. Read More Sean
,
April 27, 2017 at 11:29 am GMT
@jilles dykstra It is not easy, if that is what Trump wants, to turn around the policy of
a country, that has been followed since Pearl Harbour.
The one and only period that the USA was not imperialistic was from 1919, when the American people
discovered why their sons had died in Europe, until 1933, when Roosevelt got power. The last American
occupation troops did not leave Germany until the 1930′s.
Read More Logan
,
April 27, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT
@Wizard of Oz Just sometimes Robert Fisk says something interesting and convincing, or at
least, believable. But what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia? SE, NE, at this point in time what difference does it make?
Read More jacques
sheete ,
April 27, 2017 at 11:46 am GMT
200 Words Trump, the malleable Chimp, is just the latest iteration of Cleopatra's monkeys,
and the mask is off.
It's now reported that Trump just did a NAFTA flip-flop.
But at least the boob isn't Hillary, and maybe his simian antics will awaken a few more people
to the reality of the futility of our political systems.
All the dreamers ought to wake up to the fact that the Amerika of their fantasies has been
dead for some time, and will never be resurrected.
Somewhat different circumstances, but the idea is the same:
22 1 Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes
of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. 2
After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities
must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to
the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself,
the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:
A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.1
1 Iliad VI.448 9.
-POLYBIUS , THE HISTORIES,Fragments of Book XXXVIII, p389
100 Words
@Abdul Alhazred Actually its the British!....well they are bloody insane!
Anyone who says they reserve the right to make a thermonuclear "First Strike" is totally mad.
https://larouchepac.com/20170426/brits-nuclear-first-strike-jolly-good Anyone who wants to
stage a preemptive nuclear attack wouldn't say so beforehand. No-one can come up with a scenario
in which Britain would ever first use nukes, so refusing to rule it out is simply the practice
of confronting potential aggression with uncertain consequences though being slow to say what
you will do, and never saying what you won't.
Lets be clear: the British nukes are out in subs and if they got the coded order to fire off
a first use strike (for some reason we cannot yet imagine) the Trident captain and crew would
obey the command. Any statement to the contrary made by some politician on BBC radio years before
is going to be bloody irrelevant. Read More
100 Words Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars
and despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in need
of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
Read More quercusalba
,
April 27, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT
200 Words I must disagree with Fisk on a number of his statements and to my surprise and chagrin
he sounds almost unhinged in his article. Excuse me, but the misogynist claim is just too juvenile
and so terribly, terribly boring. And those admittedly predominately Muslim countries from whom
Trump wishes to ban immigration - they are also countries (with the exception of Iran, and we
all know why it is on the list) which have no effective governments (thanks in good measure to
policies of these United States), as a result there is very little background information available
to our immigration officials for anyone wishing to come here from one of those countries. Wanting
to find an improved 'vetting' process for such an individuals is prudent.
I found Trump's rhetoric about the 'alleged' chemical weapons use in Syria troubling to say
the least. His authorization to bomb that airport though seemed like a pinprick action (to my
delight) and appeared to be an action to shut up his critics. I'm unsure if that is so, of course.
Trump's tweeting is not 'crazed'. It is his only means to get out his own message as an extremely
hostile and biased news media is not going to do it.
It is very hard to know what is true and what is not true anymore. I don't think Fisk in this
possesses the truth anymore than the rest of us. Read
More
@Art Trump underestimated the problems he was going to have in government.
It is true – he is a good business negotiator – he has proven himself at making business deals.
The goal of the participants in a business deal is to create an ongoing business.
The all-encompassing goal of government is to maintain power – second is getting things done.
Trump must learn a new game – he must learn the game power.
The first rule of power is you need to instill fear – you need to take someone out!
Trump must use government power to crush someone (not twitter). Trump must take one of those
jerk judges immediately to the supreme court. Trump needs to stick something that Schumer really
wants, right where the sun don't shine. Using government power, Trump needs to make an example
of some media person.
Trump dropped some bombs and the world now has respect – that's power politics.
Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent
chemical attack which he blames on Assad – but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian
suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave of her senses and praises Trump, along with
the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry other potentates. Hasn't someone
cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a shooting war?
Well Fisk, having been pontificating about Middle Eastern issues for quite a long time, haven't
you cottoned to the fact that Merkel and the "Matron of Downing Street" and all the rest of these
whores of the Zio-West are nothing more than quislings for the international PTB (Rothschild/Soros,
et al)?
I mean how ******** dumb can you be not to know that it's Israel that wants Assad out,
and that just like with Saddam and Gadhafi and all the rest, it is Israel's bidding that is getting
done here with all these serial and myriad atrocities and war crimes. Duh fucking duh!
And if Merkel and May and the entire length and breath of the CIA controlled msm are finally
happy about something Trump did, then it's only because what he did pleases the Likudicks in Israel.
Duh.
For a man of Fisk's stature in the realm of journalism to pretend that Merkel and May are acting
the way they are independent of nefarious banking/war mongering/Zio-forces in the Western world
is what is truly preposterous. Note to Fisk, Merkel and May are controlled, just like that
other little bitch of Zion, Toady Blair.
What would Mr. Fisk make of this video I wonder. A remarkable coincidence?!
When Fisk pretends that there's no comprehensible reason for why the NYT all in the sudden
gushes over Trump once he starts bombing Israel's foes, then you know it's all just dishonest
blather.
Perhaps Mr. Fisk is simply 'smart' enough to understand the score, and like all intellectual
whores, use his pen to obscure the truth, and please the PTB, rather than tempt them like Dr.
Udo Ulfkotte did. Eh Robert?
As for N. Korea, whenever you want to understand the id of the Zio-Fiend, just look to this
guy
"The North Koreans - this very erratic, unstable regime - may soon have the capability to
harm us directly," Bolton said in an interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on
New York's AM 970
200 Words
@quercusalba I must disagree with Fisk on a number of his statements and to my surprise and
chagrin he sounds almost unhinged in his article. Excuse me, but the misogynist claim is just
too juvenile and so terribly, terribly boring. And those admittedly predominately Muslim countries
from whom Trump wishes to ban immigration -- they are also countries (with the exception of Iran,
and we all know why it is on the list) which have no effective governments (thanks in good measure
to policies of these United States), as a result there is very little background information available
to our immigration officials for anyone wishing to come here from one of those countries. Wanting
to find an improved 'vetting' process for such an individuals is prudent.
I found Trump's rhetoric about the 'alleged' chemical weapons use in Syria troubling to say the
least. His authorization to bomb that airport though seemed like a pinprick action (to my delight)
and appeared to be an action to shut up his critics. I'm unsure if that is so, of course.
Trump's tweeting is not 'crazed'. It is his only means to get out his own message as an extremely
hostile and biased news media is not going to do it.
It is very hard to know what is true and what is not true anymore. I don't think Fisk in this
possesses the truth anymore than the rest of us. I speak four languages, it is amazingly simple
in these internet times, by comparing 'news', to find out, not always dead sure, what the truth
is.
On MH370 I still do not have more than suspicion, the USA again, the plane carried two groups
of Chinese technicians experts in making planes invisible for radar.
The control of the plane was taken from the crew, from the outside, this is nowadays possible
with any modern plane, on sept 11 there was a problem.
I suppose this failure led to some improvements.
MH17, someone leaked a secret Australian report, Ukraine used passenger jet flights as human
shields for their bombers.
A BUK was nevertheless fired, dit not hit an Ukrainian bomber, but a passenger flight.
Dutch prime minister the afternoon of the carnage made a very secret phone call to his vice prime
minister, the call had to be over a land line, the vice was so stupid to state in public, 'because
the Russians should not be able to listen to the call'.
At that moment officially Rutte, prime minister, knew nothing about the cause.
The only conclusion possible for me is that he did know, and told Asscher, vice, that the Russians
should be blamed.
100 Words
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in need
of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
as an American, I'm worried about our hands (souls) being clean
if you want to go suit up for the IDF and get involved with interventions, then be my guest,
but America needs to come home (like Trump promised)
battle for Korea Trump, in his vague, frightening way, has decided that Southeast Asia
will be his real
[Truman's] crowning wartime achievement was also in Southeast Asia: the atom-bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I never knew that Japan and the Koreas were in south-east Asia.
Are the winters a collective delusion? Does it mean that parts of Russia and China are the
only places in north-east Asia or even that there *is* no north-east Asia?
600 Words Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional
support of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
Zio-Washington's double-standards vis-a-vis Israel are at the root of ongoing US lawlessness.
No bilateral arrangement in our nation's history epitomizes this moral/political fraud better.
Washington's 'unshakable' alliance with the Zionist entity is artificial. Americans do not benefit
by this arrangement. In fact, the opposite is true. Yet no one says a word. It's taboo.
Fragile, dubious myths involving US (and Israeli) exceptionalism endure and in plain view;
this despite the fact that America (the 'proposition nation') is wedded to the ideas of 'Equality'
and 'Freedom'.
Sure we are–except when it doesn't suit us; except when it doesn't suit Israel.
Thus, enforced inequality is just peachy in Israel. And American supremacism is how Washington
implements its foreign policies. Zio-Washington decides.
Thus, when it comes to defending the rights and interests of Palestine or Iran or Syria, principles
involving freedom, equality and sovereignty are sidelined. And any references to 'existential
threats' are reserved for you-know-who. It's a one-way street.
Lesser peoples and 'bad' countries are not entitled to invoke their own interests and entitlements.
Israel on the other hand, always is.
Indeed, Trump's preemptive missile attack on Syria is a great example of Zio-American privilege
and Zio-American lawlessness. Legal restraints are for other nations. Not Zio-America. When Zio-Washington
gets upset, Zio-Washington gets to invade and bomb sovereign states, even though these same states
have not attacked us.
Washington has not only become 'the world's policeman', but the world's judge and jury.
Both the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention however identify aggressive war (including a
'first strike') as the supreme international crime. Shouldn't this matter?
Double-standard are nevertheless used routinely by Israel and Washington. This allows them
to initiate serial warfare that lacks a clear legal foundation. It's all ad hoc. It subverts the
rule of law.
And our pro-Zionist MSM sanitizes this conduct and worldview.
Special counties (and we know who they are) are therefore not bound by cumbersome restrictions
that were designed to prevent war, expansion and aggression. Feelings and 'outrage' now matter
more. This is part and parcel of Zio-American exceptionalism. Laws and ethics have been downgraded
to accommodate political objectives and feelings.
This is why Trump's anti-Assad 'outrage' (and subsequent missile attack) did not focus on aggressive
war or the unjustified killing of civilians. Because if it did, Zio-Washington would be caught
with its own pants down.
Instead, Trump got weepy over the type of weapons used to kill civilians–not the slaughter
itself.
After all, we 'good guys' kill civilians all the time. And in massive quantities.
The flimsy moral principle underlying Trump's strike on Syria strike is this:
Gas is uncool. But missiles are perfectly fine.
Gas, remember, is reminiscent of the Holocaust. And that's a no-no!
Hidden within this fake moral paradigm is the message to always respect Jewish taboos (!) when
initiating violence. Kill properly.
These ethical distinctions however are politicized and empty. Murder is still murder. Aggression
is still aggression. When will Zio-Washington take a look in the mirror?
This declining level of moral thinking undermines real legal principles. Possessing nuclear
weapons (and threatening to use them) has become 'OK' for exceptional nations but 'evil' when
bad (anti-Israel) nations follow suit. And it's Zio-Washington alone that gets to decide which
is which and who is who.
This chicanery confers unique privilege. Our Zionized media gives cover to this fraud.
Fisk does correctly note that Trump is being steered into a pattern of malevolent neoconservatism.
This means war. Ironically, as Trump reverses the stated policies and goals that got him elected
(and in the direction of neocon aggression) the MSM has done a similar about-face (supporting
Trump).
Trump is finally 'acting presidential'!
These deceptions and grotesque fairy tales benefit global militarists, government careerists,
and of course, Zionists. Read More Agree:
anarchyst
Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent
chemical attack which he blames on Assad – but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian
suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave of her senses and praises Trump, along with
the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry other potentates. Hasn't someone
cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a shooting war?
Well Fisk, having been pontificating about Middle Eastern issues for quite a long time, haven't
you cottoned to the fact that Merkel and the "Matron of Downing Street" and all the rest of these
whores of the Zio-West are nothing more than quislings for the international PTB (Rothschild/Soros,
et al)?
I mean how ******** dumb can you be not to know that it's Israel that wants Assad out,
and that just like with Saddam and Gadhafi and all the rest, it is Israel's bidding that is getting
done here with all these serial and myriad atrocities and war crimes. Duh fucking duh!
And if Merkel and May and the entire length and breath of the CIA controlled msm are finally
happy about something Trump did, then it's only because what he did pleases the Likudicks in Israel.
Duh.
For a man of Fisk's stature in the realm of journalism to pretend that Merkel and May are acting
the way they are independent of nefarious banking/war mongering/Zio-forces in the Western world
is what is truly preposterous. Note to Fisk, Merkel and May are controlled, just like that
other little bitch of Zion, Toady Blair.
What would Mr. Fisk make of this video I wonder. A remarkable coincidence?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEudf8NOuY
When Fisk pretends that there's no comprehensible reason for why the NYT all in the sudden
gushes over Trump once he starts bombing Israel's foes, then you know it's all just dishonest
blather.
Perhaps Mr. Fisk is simply 'smart' enough to understand the score, and like all intellectual
whores, use his pen to obscure the truth, and please the PTB, rather than tempt them like Dr.
Udo Ulfkotte did. Eh Robert?
As for N. Korea, whenever you want to understand the id of the Zio-Fiend, just look to this
guy
"The North Koreans - this very erratic, unstable regime - may soon have the capability to harm
us directly," Bolton said in an interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on New York's
AM 970
I was just going to press 'Agree', but your last sentence mystifies me.
Bolton was, as usual, talking out of his arse, but assuming sincerity on his part (with great
strain), which *us* do you think he meant?
which *us* do you think he meant?
Hey Che,
when someone like Bolton says 'they directly threaten us'
you can take it to the bank that the "us" he's referring to is Israel
us, the Jews
he purports to mean the American people, but anyone on the planet who knows the first thing
about Ziocons like Bolton, know damn well he'd see virtually every single American goyim ground
up into the dirt rather that see one fingernail on one Jewish hand suffer harm.
N. Korea does not threaten America or our interests. If anything, it threatens its neighbors.
And if so, then our trading partner China could effectively deal with it.
the only reason N. Korea is in the crosshairs is because somehow Israel considers it a threat
Read More
100 Words Syria and Hizbollah represent resistance to Israel and its client state, the USA.
So when Trump attacked Syria he was immediately praised by the ziocohen controlled American media
and Congress who have consistently placed Israeli interests ahead of American interests. This
is by no means a new development in world affairs and I am surprised that Fisk is surprised. I'm
guessing that the only folks who were really shocked were the people who believed what Trump said
during his campaign about the uselessness of US intervention in the Middle East and how he was
going to change US policy . Read More
Reply
Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
Commenter Display
All Comments Sam Shama
,
April 27, 2017 at 3:29 pm GMT
200 Words
@Mark Green Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional
support of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
Zio-Washington's double-standards vis-a-vis Israel are at the root of ongoing US lawlessness.
No bilateral arrangement in our nation's history epitomizes this moral/political fraud better.
Washington's 'unshakable' alliance with the Zionist entity is artificial. Americans do not benefit
by this arrangement. In fact, the opposite is true. Yet no one says a word. It's taboo.
Fragile, dubious myths involving US (and Israeli) exceptionalism endure and in plain view;
this despite the fact that America (the 'proposition nation') is wedded to the ideas of 'Equality'
and 'Freedom'.
Sure we are--except when it doesn't suit us; except when it doesn't suit Israel.
Thus, enforced inequality is just peachy in Israel. And American supremacism is how Washington
implements its foreign policies. Zio-Washington decides.
Thus, when it comes to defending the rights and interests of Palestine or Iran or Syria, principles
involving freedom, equality and sovereignty are sidelined. And any references to 'existential
threats' are reserved for you-know-who. It's a one-way street.
Lesser peoples and 'bad' countries are not entitled to invoke their own interests and entitlements.
Israel on the other hand, always is.
Indeed, Trump's preemptive missile attack on Syria is a great example of Zio-American privilege
and Zio-American lawlessness. Legal restraints are for other nations. Not Zio-America. When Zio-Washington
gets upset, Zio-Washington gets to invade and bomb sovereign states, even though these same states
have not attacked us.
Washington has not only become 'the world's policeman', but the world's judge and jury.
Both the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention however identify aggressive war (including a
'first strike') as the supreme international crime. Shouldn't this matter?
Double-standard are nevertheless used routinely by Israel and Washington. This allows them to
initiate serial warfare that lacks a clear legal foundation. It's all ad hoc. It subverts the
rule of law.
And our pro-Zionist MSM sanitizes this conduct and worldview.
Special counties (and we know who they are) are therefore not bound by cumbersome restrictions
that were designed to prevent war, expansion and aggression. Feelings and 'outrage' now matter
more. This is part and parcel of Zio-American exceptionalism. Laws and ethics have been downgraded
to accommodate political objectives and feelings.
This is why Trump's anti-Assad 'outrage' (and subsequent missile attack) did not focus on aggressive
war or the unjustified killing of civilians. Because if it did, Zio-Washington would be caught
with its own pants down.
Instead, Trump got weepy over the type of weapons used to kill civilians--not the slaughter
itself.
After all, we 'good guys' kill civilians all the time. And in massive quantities.
The flimsy moral principle underlying Trump's strike on Syria strike is this:
Gas is uncool. But missiles are perfectly fine.
Gas, remember, is reminiscent of the Holocaust. And that's a no-no!
Hidden within this fake moral paradigm is the message to always respect Jewish taboos (!) when
initiating violence. Kill properly.
These ethical distinctions however are politicized and empty. Murder is still murder. Aggression
is still aggression. When will Zio-Washington take a look in the mirror?
This declining level of moral thinking undermines real legal principles. Possessing nuclear
weapons (and threatening to use them) has become 'OK' for exceptional nations but 'evil' when
bad (anti-Israel) nations follow suit. And it's Zio-Washington alone that gets to decide which
is which and who is who.
This chicanery confers unique privilege. Our Zionized media gives cover to this fraud.
Fisk does correctly note that Trump is being steered into a pattern of malevolent neoconservatism.
This means war. Ironically, as Trump reverses the stated policies and goals that got him elected
(and in the direction of neocon aggression) the MSM has done a similar about-face (supporting
Trump).
Trump is finally 'acting presidential'!
These deceptions and grotesque fairy tales benefit global militarists, government careerists,
and of course, Zionists.
Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional support
of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
it isn't only 'key' Mark. It's the frothing, slathering gorilla in the living room tossing
hand grenades and breaking bones.
And yet Fisk, whose very identity is undistinguishable from Western (British) based, Middle
Eastern journalism ~ can not mention it.
How the f are people supposed to get a glimmer of the things you (heroically) write about when
the very people who are trusted to keep the West informed- would rather use their skills and position
to specifically and methodically mislead and dissemble and obscure- by design?
You're too kind to these intellectual whores Mark, imho.
When Fisk writes about Trump's, (and Merkel's and May's) murderous treachery and folly in the
Middle East by not mentioning *why* any of it is happening, he reminds me of Walter Duranty writing
about the Soviet Union, and the ornery resistance to the agricultural reforms by certain classes
of well-to-do peasants, who were just too greedy to understand the greatness of Stalin and his
vision.
100 Words
@Sam Shama Why spew the common nonsense?
Why spew the common nonsense?
you mean how the whole nightmarish holocaust of Eternal War and strife and horrors writ large
in the Middle East today are mostly a consequence of Zionist $ubversion of our governments and
media?
and that destroying Iraq and Libya and Syria (eventually Iran, Lebanon, etc..) are all part
of a transparent agenda to remake the greater Levant into a giant concentration camp a la Palestine?
100 Words I really doubt whether seeing pictures of dead Syrian children had anything to do
with the decision to bomb the Syrian airfield.
Fake news is at its best when it seems almost plausible. In reality no candidate for leader
of the free world since the time of King Herod would lose a moment of sleep over killing a few
Syrian children. Remember Trump even succeeded in killing an American child in Yemen.
100 Words Not a peep out of turncoat traitor Trump regarding "9/11 truth." The deafening silence
on this matter as-well-as other harsh issues facing rank-and-file Americans and the western world,
speaks volumes.
Now we've got masked gangs of ANTIFA punks running roughshod like spoiled brats and being handled
with kid gloves, as law enforcement is ordered by owned politicians, to stand down.
The self-serving globalist "elite" (~0.01%) and their Zionist trust fund baby financiers continue
to engineer civil war, as revolutionary war would be their worst nightmare.
Read More
you mean how the whole nightmarish holocaust of Eternal War and strife and horrors writ large
in the Middle East today are mostly a consequence of Zionist $ubversion of our governments and
media?
and that destroying Iraq and Libya and Syria (eventually Iran, Lebanon, etc..) are all part
of a transparent agenda to remake the greater Levant into a giant concentration camp a la Palestine?
that 'common nonsense'?
or is it common knowledge? Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
There access to oil and gas is simple and cheap.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone, where money reigns.
One just has to be enough cynical to see it all.
With me this cynicism began three years after sept 11, when I could no longer fool myself.
Then the question came 'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war for
USA world supremacy.
Charles A Beard published his book on Roosevelt politics in 1946, also the year where the Pearl
Harbour investigation took place.
According to the democrats there had been no Roosevelt conspiracy, the republicans had other ideas.
Roosevelt needed an attack, he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be
sent overseas, unless the USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
The republican ideas have many times been confirmed since then.
Read More
100 Words
@wayfarer Not a peep out of turncoat traitor Trump regarding "9/11 truth." The deafening silence
on this matter as-well-as other harsh issues facing rank-and-file Americans and the western world,
speaks volumes.
Now we've got masked gangs of ANTIFA punks running roughshod like spoiled brats and being handled
with kid gloves, as law enforcement is ordered by owned politicians, to stand down.
The self-serving globalist "elite" (~0.01%) and their Zionist trust fund baby financiers continue
to engineer civil war, as revolutionary war would be their worst nightmare.
https://kenfm.de/untergang-der-humanitaet/
Warren Buffett, eine der reichsten Personen auf dieser Welt, war es, der den Begriff ?„Finanzielle
Massenvernichtungswaffen" prägte. ??In einem Interview mit der New York Times am 26. November
2006 erklärte er zudem freimütig:
„Es herrscht Krieg Reich gegen Arm. Es ist meine Klasse, die Klasse der Reichen, ?die den Krieg
begonnen hat ?und wir werden diesen Klassenkampf gewinnen"
Warren Bufett in 2006 'there is war between the rich and the poor, we, the rich, will win'.
Finanzielle Massenvernichtungswaffen: financial WMD's.
English is great in short expressions.
200 Words The litmus test for a Trump foreign policy is not disengagement and isolation from
the rest of the world.
It is whether or not such foreign policy is calibrated to undermine the United States from
within. Policies like rules of engagement and "war crimes" legal action designed to demoralize
and kill US soldiers needlessly or refugee resettlement programs designed to give non-white enemies
a fighting chance to kill Americans on their own soil.
The US projecting power around the world is something that it has always done since WWII. The
difference of late, starting under Bill Clinton, was utilizing foreign interventions in a way
that deliberately blow back on the United States and are designed to hurt it or the West in general
from within.
So far, we have seen a pivot away from the anti-American foreign interventions of the recent
past. Trump has pivoted to Asia which all but guarantees there won't be any boots-on-the-ground
in North Korea. He has attempted to stem the flow of immigrants and refugees, so far, unsuccessfully,
but it is still early in the game. Syria has not amounted to anything of note, but at least Trump
is not propping up ISIS the way the Obama administration did.
Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
as an American, I'm worried about our hands (souls) being clean
if you want to go suit up for the IDF and get involved with interventions, then be my guest, but
America needs to come home (like Trump promised)
no more wars for Israel
wouldn't you agree Sean? If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to
live on global famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually
few do that and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die
of famine and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout
some careful military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby
killer pilots is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians. Read More
@Fuzzy My hopes for détente under Trump were obviously a pipe dream. He folded like a cheap
lawn chair. A lawn chair cannot collapse like that, obviously it was the result of a controlled
demolition Read More Rurik
,
April 27, 2017 at 6:10 pm GMT
500 Words
@jilles dykstra Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
There access to oil and gas is simple and cheap.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone, where money reigns.
One just has to be enough cynical to see it all.
With me this cynicism began three years after sept 11, when I could no longer fool myself.
Then the question came 'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war for
USA world supremacy.
Charles A Beard published his book on Roosevelt politics in 1946, also the year where the Pearl
Harbour investigation took place.
According to the democrats there had been no Roosevelt conspiracy, the republicans had other ideas.
Roosevelt needed an attack, he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent
overseas, unless the USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
The republican ideas have many times been confirmed since then. Hallo Jilles,
what a treat it is to see people from Europe here at the inimitable Unz Review!
Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
well, I guess it's just a matter of perspective. What Libya or Iraq (or the Palestinian occupied
territories) seem like to me are one big open air prison of hopelessness and despair. Wrought
with daily horrors and death. At least in a concentration camp the young women might be able to
walk the streets without being raped by savages unleashed upon the people, as it seems is the
case in Libya. Or blown to bits by CIA/Mossad car bombs like Iraq. Or subjected to random torture,
white phosphorous or having their organs harvested like in Gaza.
But then I guess it depends on the "concentration camp", since the ones Eisenhower ran for
teenage German boys after the war was over are probably as bad as it gets. So perspective in all
things, I suppose.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone,
that's what you call a twofer for the Zionists. Such a deal!
'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
savior?!
the US was never your savior Jilles. That's just the propaganda speaking that all German (and
American) children were/are marinated in following that evil war.
when a nation like America does to a people what American bombers did to cities like Dresden,
it's hardly fitting to refer to such people as saviors. I read accounts where fighter pilots said
that after the bombing, when the survivors were fleeing the holocaust, that they'd strafe anything
with blonde hair, men women or children. That's not the talk of a savior, but of a race-hate crazed
murderous demon. Remember, at the time Dresden was bombed, the war was effectively already over.
They were unleashing genocidal hatred on the German people, not saving them.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage
war for USA world supremacy.
it goes back farther than that, to W oodrow W ilson's I.
and the point was always to secure the founding of the state of Israel.
he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent overseas, unless the
USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
you really do have an excellent handle on things Jilles. But you're not cynical enough yet.
the fount of treachery starts with the charter of the Federal Reserve Bank, the original treason
and betrayal of biblical enormity that has set in motion all of these wars and assorted horrors
and atrocities. And threatens to make this century just as bloody and Satanic as the last one,
unless we can somehow collectively manage to waylay these Fiends.
100 Words
@Sean If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to live on global
famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually few do that
and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die of famine
and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout some careful
military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby killer pilots
is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians. Hmm Assad has a looong way to go to catch up with us, Nam
Cambodia Thailand Philippines South America Iran Iraq Libya Syria and all other points on the
compass, my your an ass for you don't even know your own history as you always try to blame others,
the mark I presume of a real troll. Read More
200 Words
@Sean If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to live on global
famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually few do that
and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die of famine
and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout some careful
military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby killer pilots
is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke.
golly Sean
you could use that same argument with so many conflicts eh?
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Iraq is a joke.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Libya is a joke.
it works just the same with them all, huh?
but then the notorious cowards in the IDF never like to get in harms way now do they, so just
like with your hero general Ariel Sharon, they always prefer to stay in safety and get other goons
to do their fighting for them, huh?
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American
hands may be less than white
isn't that pretty much what Sharon said about the Sabra and Shatila massacre?
funny how that's always your modus operendi.. to use false flags to get others to do your fighting
for you?
like the Syrian false flag chemical attacks
or 9/11
or getting Druze Phalangist militia to slaughter women and children, lest one of them have
a sharp object to fight back with, and pose a threat to a brave IDF soldier, huh?
I suspect Robert Fisk may even know a little about that proud episode in chronicles of Zio-brave
warrior-history. Read More
what a treat it is to see people from Europe here at the inimitable Unz Review!
Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
well, I guess it's just a matter of perspective. What Libya or Iraq (or the Palestinian occupied
territories) seem like to me are one big open air prison of hopelessness and despair. Wrought
with daily horrors and death. At least in a concentration camp the young women might be able to
walk the streets without being raped by savages unleashed upon the people, as it seems is the
case in Libya. Or blown to bits by CIA/Mossad car bombs like Iraq. Or subjected to random torture,
white phosphorous or having their organs harvested like in Gaza.
But then I guess it depends on the "concentration camp", since the ones Eisenhower ran for
teenage German boys after the war was over are probably as bad as it gets. So perspective in all
things, I suppose.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone,
that's what you call a twofer for the Zionists. Such a deal!
'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
savior?!
the US was never your savior Jilles. That's just the propaganda speaking that all German (and
American) children were/are marinated in following that evil war.
when a nation like America does to a people what American bombers did to cities like Dresden,
it's hardly fitting to refer to such people as saviors. I read accounts where fighter pilots said
that after the bombing, when the survivors were fleeing the holocaust, that they'd strafe anything
with blonde hair, men women or children. That's not the talk of a savior, but of a race-hate crazed
murderous demon. Remember, at the time Dresden was bombed, the war was effectively already over.
They were unleashing genocidal hatred on the German people, not saving them.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war
for USA world supremacy.
it goes back farther than that, to W oodrow W ilson's I.
and the point was always to secure the founding of the state of Israel.
he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent overseas, unless the USA
was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
you really do have an excellent handle on things Jilles. But you're not cynical enough yet. ;)
the fount of treachery starts with the charter of the Federal Reserve Bank, the original treason
and betrayal of biblical enormity that has set in motion all of these wars and assorted horrors
and atrocities. And threatens to make this century just as bloody and Satanic as the last one,
unless we can somehow collectively manage to waylay these Fiends.
Prost -- Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour declaration
was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november 1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the unification
in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second half
of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
Read More
100 Words
@jilles dykstra I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and to
satisfy his voters.
The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all this eloquently, alas
only in Dutch, as far as I know.
And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed will
end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life.
How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the New Zealand
government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island. Don't be
too sure that Trump voters favor this kind of mindless and dangerous violence abroad. On the contrary,
for me, my family, and many Trump voters of our acquaintance.
Many of us voted for trump in part because he was proposing a less belligerent, less unreasonable
attitude towards Russia, if not towards Iran. We voted for him because he continually lambasted
the US invasions of Iraq and said that the US should stop invading and trying to dictate how other
peoples should operate in their countries.
I don't think a majority of people who voted Trump OR a majority of people who voted Clinton
favors attacking Syria or Iran or Russia. Yet here we are threatening each of them, attacking
Assad's regime to the benefit of Islamists, and encircling& sanctioning & trying to humiliate
and impoverish Russia.
@jilles dykstra I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and to
satisfy his voters.
The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all this eloquently, alas
only in Dutch, as far as I know.
200 Words
@The White Muslim Traditionalist I find it interesting that people from America think that
Merkel is some sort of crazed loon.
She's an incredibly astute, conservative, pious Lutheran politician. Sure, because she's such
a pious woman, Kohl today got one million euro's in damages, because the ghost writer of his memoirs
published volume four without his permission, with his statements about Merkel like 'she put the
dagger in my back and turned it'.
In 2001 or so there was a financial scandal in Kohl's party, Merkel made it public knowledge.
The other remark was 'she just has lust for power', or something like that.
I suppose now millions of copies of volume four will be sold.
I also like to recall Merkel's statement about the huge numbers of immigrants 'wird Deutschland
für immer ändern', 'will change Germany forever'.
As if any German asked for this change, change for which Sarrazin already warned in 2010:
Thilo Sarrazin, 'Deutschland schafft sich ab, Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen', München 2010
Sarrazin warned that Germany is destroying itself through the immigration of large numbers
of immigrants with low IQ.
Merkel fired him immediately. Read More Agree:
Dan Hayes
100 Words
@bluedog Hmm Assad has a looong way to go to catch up with us, Nam Cambodia Thailand Philippines
South America Iran Iraq Libya Syria and all other points on the compass, my your an ass for you
don't even know your own history as you always try to blame others, the mark I presume of a real
troll. The US isn't as moral as it claim but who is? There is a thing called cognitive dissonance
.Sounds like you believe the US should stay at home for ever after, because it was solely responsible
for all deaths those conflicts, though many had started before US involvement. The lesson of US
failure in Vietnam was that military strength was not enough against a opponent that was politically
strong, Assad is not strong politically, the majority in Syria opposed him and dispute his inherited
police state and even more ruthless army facing a rag tag piecemeal rebellion he would have lost
by now without the Russians . The US is supposed to stay out and look on as Russia turns the rebels
the US tried to protect into mincemeat and Assad sprays entire villages with poison gas like they
were bugs, is it? Read More
The White Muslim Traditionalist ,
April 27, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra Sure, because she's such a pious woman, Kohl today got one million euro's
in damages, because the ghost writer of his memoirs published volume four without his permission,
with his statements about Merkel like 'she put the dagger in my back and turned it'.
In 2001 or so there was a financial scandal in Kohl's party, Merkel made it public knowledge.
The other remark was 'she just has lust for power', or something like that.
I suppose now millions of copies of volume four will be sold.
I also like to recall Merkel's statement about the huge numbers of immigrants 'wird Deutschland
für immer ändern', 'will change Germany forever'.
As if any German asked for this change, change for which Sarrazin already warned in 2010:
Thilo Sarrazin, 'Deutschland schafft sich ab, Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen', München 2010
Sarrazin warned that Germany is destroying itself through the immigration of large numbers
of immigrants with low IQ.
Merkel fired him immediately. Bro, how did that contradict anything that I just said?
All the Christian churches advocate taking in migrants, it's literally in the Bible. In the
Qur'an and Hadith we have similar obligations, but they're more measured.
Read More
The more dangerous America's crackpot President becomes, the saner the world believes him
to be.
What does this mean? That the world is insane and that as Trump spins into greater insanity
he becomes more in sync with the prevailing insanity? Prior to the election he seemed to be the
peace candidate which is a major reason why he won. Therefore not everyone out there is insane,
least of all "the world". The war hounds are a minority of people who are in a position to publicly
lobby for war through their mass media and spread fear and hysteria. The leaders of various countries
have more in common with each other than with their own citizens and trade notes on how to keep
their rabble in line. This sudden turn towards belligerence and war has taken people by surprise
and everyone is puzzled as to what's really going on.
The author's book "Pity the Nation" was a good read.
Read More
Reply
Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
Commenter Display
All Comments
300 Words
@jilles dykstra Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour
declaration was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november
1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the unification
in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second half
of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking, as
you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to be
left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc ) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon us
by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
Anyways God bless and please keep commenting..
Read More
All the Christian churches advocate taking in migrants, it's literally in the Bible. In the Qur'an
and Hadith we have similar obligations, but they're more measured. Salaam Bro,
Welcome to UNZ! Are you in the US or Germany? It sounded like you might be German.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke.
golly Sean
you could use that same argument with so many conflicts eh?
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Iraq is a joke.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Libya is a joke.
it works just the same with them all, huh?
but then the notorious cowards in the IDF never like to get in harms way now do they, so just
like with your hero general Ariel Sharon, they always prefer to stay in safety and get other
goons to do their fighting for them, huh?
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American
hands may be less than white
isn't that pretty much what Sharon said about the Sabra and Shatila massacre?
funny how that's always your modus operendi.. to use false flags to get others to do your fighting
for you?
like the Syrian false flag chemical attacks
or 9/11
or getting Druze Phalangist militia to slaughter women and children, lest one of them have
a sharp object to fight back with, and pose a threat to a brave IDF soldier, huh?
I suspect Robert Fisk may even know a little about that proud episode in chronicles of Zio-brave
warrior-history. Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments
without believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view. It
wouldn't because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any evidence
at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going to be anything
but hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would use a wedge on Arabs
fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions within a country of
between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were at war in the 80s and Israel
supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't create the conflict, which was
a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots- just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy
war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now but Assad
and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a proven ability to
make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against a false flag is that the
US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack last year and got a major US
airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had been virtually annihilated in the
cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now argument cuts both ways.
Read More
100 Words
@Abdul Alhazred Actually its the British!....well they are bloody insane!
Anyone who says they reserve the right to make a thermonuclear "First Strike" is totally mad.
https://larouchepac.com/20170426/brits-nuclear-first-strike-jolly-good Actually its the
British! .well they are bloody insane!
"Muhammed really is most popular baby name in the UK – as is Mohammed, Muhammad "
(Reported in The Independent, Monday 1 December 2014).
So do me a favour, Abdul, old chap: do stop blaming "the British" for what some of their
politicians say. You wouldn't like them to make sweeping generalisations about British people
called Mohammed being "bloody insane", now would you!
Read More
200 Words
@jilles dykstra Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour
declaration was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november
1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the
unification in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews
is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
I'd appreciate a source for that quote.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century,
Depends.
Politically that's probably close to true except for the fact that back then we had at least
a few politicians with spines and gonads. Now we just have slithering grubs and the intestinal
parasites of swine, e.g. the Swine Large Roundworm, Ascaris suum.
Morally, it hasn't even left the Stone Age.
it never became democratic,
True and you obviously know more than most Americans do about that. Democracy, in this country,
is nothing more than a deeply ingrained fetish. As you probably know, democracy only works
in small, homogeneous, MORAL groups otherwise it's simply mob rule.
money still rules the USA.
More precisely, money is the main idol that's worshipped. The rulers are vicious, sociopathic,
corrupt, insatiable, moneyed hyenas and jackals. And they are completely incorrigible.
Read More Agree:
bluedog
@Sean The last American occupation troops did not leave Germany until the 1930's. The last
American troops left Germany in 1923. The French stayed until 1935 when Hitler forced them
out. Read More Alden
,
April 28, 2017 at 12:38 am GMT
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking,
as you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to
be left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc...) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon
us by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking,
as you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to
be left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc...) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon
us by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
Anyways God bless and please keep commenting.. I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA
people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end
of the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore,
so why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to
run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens
and far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and
destruction but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
Read More Agree:
jacques
sheete
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is
jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
I'd appreciate a source for that quote.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century,
Depends.
Politically that's probably close to true except for the fact that back then we had at least
a few politicians with spines and gonads. Now we just have slithering grubs and the intestinal
parasites of swine, e.g. the Swine Large Roundworm, Ascaris suum.
Morally, it hasn't even left the Stone Age.
it never became democratic,
True and you obviously know more than most Americans do about that. Democracy, in this country,
is nothing more than a deeply ingrained fetish. As you probably know, democracy only works
in small, homogeneous, MORAL groups otherwise it's simply mob rule.
money still rules the USA.
More precisely, money is the main idol that's worshipped. The rulers are vicious, sociopathic,
corrupt, insatiable, moneyed hyenas and jackals. And they are completely incorrigible. The
Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
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.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly
how jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized.
Read More
100 Words
@jilles dykstra The Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
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.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly how
jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized. Many thanks to you, fine sir!
You appear to be one of the few who seems to have a grip on reality and I find your comments
and insights informative and refreshing.
100 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end of
the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore, so
why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to run
foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens and
far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and destruction
but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
I'm a native, and agree with that. What's even more shocking is the smug, even hostile resistance
to learning anything beyond the National Anthem and such.
It's a continuous struggle especially when you're dealing with people such as you describe
such as "professors."
There is a locally well known personality, a "professor" of history, who is in great demand
here for his presentation of the American Civil War ( poor label that), who disgorges"patriotic"
nonsense as nauseating as it is mythical. Listening to one of his talks is as much an exercise
of extreme self flagellation on my part as it is mental masturbation on his part yet people
practically worship the sappy stuff he spews. There is no point in even attempting to counter
what he sez.
His audiences are completely deaf to anything but self (national) praise. It's as if nearly
the whole nation positively delights in wallowing in prideful ignorance and they turn to the
tube for their daily doses of it. Read More
@jilles dykstra The Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
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.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly how
jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized.
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in
need of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others'
interventions in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise. Indeed.
Nobody ever does anything wrong. How could they?
Read More
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,
April 28, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT
@Sean Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments without
believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view. It wouldn't
because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any evidence at all
that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going to be anything but
hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would use a wedge on Arabs
fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions within a country of
between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were at war in the 80s and Israel
supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't create the conflict, which was
a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots- just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy
war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now but Assad
and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a proven ability to
make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against a false flag is that the
US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack last year and got a major US
airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had been virtually annihilated in the
cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now argument cuts both ways.
I don't think there is any evidence at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown.
200 Words
@naro Robert Fisk the Iranian shill, and secret Shiia convert, doesn't even know that Hiroshima
and Nagasaki are NOT in Southeast Asia. Thank God that Trump and Israel are a lot smarter than
this turd. Why don't you simply praise Trump for being obedient to Israel? "Never again," naro?
You should have already noticed that the ordinary Americans are getting to realize that the
US has been used as a living host by the paraziotid Israel that needs the US to implement the
Oded Yinon plan for Eretz Israel. It also obvious that the implementation could end up with
a glassy Middle East, where Israel would become a heap of ashes. Or you are ready to cry antisemitism,
Holocaust, and special victimhood, despite your bloody subhuman ziocons that have arranged
the slaughter of millions of human beings in the Middle East?
Your people are collaborating with ISIS in the struggling Syria and with neo-Nazis in the deteriorating
Ukraine. The Israel-firsters have "convinced" the US government to channel the country' resources
towards the wars of aggression in the Middle East – all in the name of Eretz Israel (and war
profits). Very moral. Read More
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All Comments jilles
dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:00 pm GMT
Thanks! First time in maybe ten years that anyone really wants to read books.
The wonderful thing about old books is that they're cheap, easy to get these days, and, most
important 'often history books tell more about the time they're written than about the time
they describe'.
In other words, they carry the old bias, not the bias of today.
If you're interested in Islam
Reuben Levy, 'The social structure of Islam', London, New York, 1931, 1932, 1957, 1971
Richard Fletcher, 'Moorish Spain', Berkeley 1992
100 Words
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in
need of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others'
interventions in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise. Lets be
precise: the ongoing wars in the Middle East have been planned and pushed by the US/UK ziocons
to protect and enlarge the territory of Israel. Both Libya and Syria were doing quite well
(particularly Libya) until the ziocon "ameliorators" came to fix the situation in the Middle
East. The "big and strong" America and her resources have been used by the tribe to protect
their supremacist home of shameless colonizers. Instead of developing trade and cooperation,
the US came to the Midde East with weapons of mass destruction. The Israel-firsters cooked
the plan for the interventions. Millions died as a result.
Read More annamaria
,
April 28, 2017 at 4:14 pm GMT
@Sam Shama Why spew the common nonsense? Well, why don't you explain the UNZ readers the
rationale for Israelis' collaboration with ISIS? This collaboration is well-documented and
it has been discussed in Israeli press.
So, why does Israel help to and protect ISIS? Read
More annamaria
,
April 28, 2017 at 4:21 pm GMT
100 Words
@Sean The US isn't as moral as it claim but who is? There is a thing called cognitive dissonance
.Sounds like you believe the US should stay at home for ever after, because it was solely responsible
for all deaths those conflicts, though many had started before US involvement. The lesson of
US failure in Vietnam was that military strength was not enough against a opponent that was
politically strong, Assad is not strong politically, the majority in Syria opposed him and
dispute his inherited police state and even more ruthless army facing a rag tag piecemeal rebellion
he would have lost by now without the Russians . The US is supposed to stay out and look on
as Russia turns the rebels the US tried to protect into mincemeat and Assad sprays entire villages
with poison gas like they were bugs, is it? China and Russia:
" regardless of the circumstances, we will not change our policy of deepening and developing
our strategic partnership and cooperation; our policy, based on joint development and prosperity,
will not change; and our joint efforts to defend peace and justice and promote cooperation
in the world will not change. These were the words of President Xi Jinping."
Imagine: crazy US brass wielding various weapons of mass destruction over Europe, Middle
East, and Asia. Versus the Silk Road – a net of trade connections between Asia and Europe.
Read More
600 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end of
the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore, so
why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to run
foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens and
far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and destruction
but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens
and far more foreign citizens.
I can't argue with that Jilles
and you're right about the general ignorance and bovine stupidity of most Americans, but
that has been very carefully created by the PTB, who don't want an educated, thinking populace.
what was it papa Bush said?
"if the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts"
if the American people could think, the results would be the same. If the American
people could think and were in possession of a moral soul, then they'd know that wars based
on lies should be repudiated and the war criminals brought to justice. But the American sheople
have been systematically dumbed down to the point of zombies, infatuated with Kim Kardashian's
ass. Today Idiocracy is a reality. It's true.
But, let me just say on behalf of Americans, that I don't really see it any better across
the pond. Sure, the Europeans are better educated, and generally speak at least two languages,
and have heard of Yalta and Copernicus, but with all that education, they just don't seem to
me to be any more principled or moral than the zombified Americans.
Sure, it is the US military that is the biggest bully on the block, but does that
excuse the other little bullies that stand behind him and give him moral support? There were
French jets bombing Libya just as ferociously as any American ones. The Brits have never seen
an act of aggression from the US military that they don't reverently applaud. And the Germans,
whose government goes along with every war crime America commits in principle, are today complicit
in a racial supremacist, genocidal holocaust against a completely innocent victim whose only
crime is that they existed – in Palestine, on land that some Jewish supremacist coveted for
themselves.
The irony? That these very same Germans feel excruciating and debilitating guilt for a crime
that they had nothing to do with, while at the same time facilitating the same crime of genocide
today, in their names, by funding and arming and providing "moral" cover for the Zionists.
So sure, Europeans are far more educated, but seem to fall very short when it comes to using
that education to augment a moral foundation for their actions and the actions of their respective
governments. There seems to me to be a sort of all-pervasive cowardice in Western Europe, and
a Pavlovian, knee-jerk propensity to wallow in prostrate abasement and self-flagellate as soon
as anyone says "Holocaust". Sort of what they used to be able to bludgeon Americans with by
the pejorative "racist", until it became a joke.
Anyways, yes, we're ignorant, and bovine and dangerous, but morally, I just don't see too
many paragons of virtue or honor to hold up as examples today. Uruguay perhaps, and I would
include Putin's Russia insofar as he's trying to put out the fires the Zio-Western-fiend is
lighting all over the place, but then he too bolsters their agenda by antagonizing the former
Soviet satellite states with ultra-nationalistic chest thumping over the "great war", (that
the Bolsheviks in Russia were mainly responsible for). Note to Putin, let it rest! The great
victory that you celebrate in May was a catastrophe for Eastern Europe (and millions of Russians
too)
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
I'm a native, and agree with that. What's even more shocking is the smug, even hostile resistance
to learning anything beyond the National Anthem and such.
It's a continuous struggle especially when you're dealing with people such as you describe
such as "professors."
There is a locally well known personality, a "professor" of history, who is in great demand
here for his presentation of the American Civil War ( poor label that), who disgorges"patriotic"
nonsense as nauseating as it is mythical. Listening to one of his talks is as much an exercise
of extreme self flagellation on my part as it is mental masturbation on his part yet people
practically worship the sappy stuff he spews. There is no point in even attempting to counter
what he sez.
His audiences are completely deaf to anything but self (national) praise. It's as if nearly
the whole nation positively delights in wallowing in prideful ignorance and they turn to the
tube for their daily doses of it. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts', 1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in different
European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over the
Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen as colonialism,
as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old age,
at the plantations they could stay until their deaths.
Read More
@annamaria China and Russia:
"...regardless of the circumstances, we will not change our policy of deepening and developing
our strategic partnership and cooperation; our policy, based on joint development and prosperity,
will not change; and our joint efforts to defend peace and justice and promote cooperation
in the world will not change. These were the words of President Xi Jinping."
http://thesaker.is/breaking-personal-message-from-xi-jinping-to-vladimir-putin-our-friendship-is-unbreakable/
Imagine: crazy US brass wielding various weapons of mass destruction over Europe, Middle East,
and Asia. Versus the Silk Road - a net of trade connections between Asia and Europe. There
were allegations that Hillary was prepared to wage an atomic war in Europe.
Read More jilles
dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:43 pm GMT
100 Words
@annamaria Lets be precise: the ongoing wars in the Middle East have been planned and pushed
by the US/UK ziocons to protect and enlarge the territory of Israel. Both Libya and Syria were
doing quite well (particularly Libya) until the ziocon "ameliorators" came to fix the situation
in the Middle East. The "big and strong" America and her resources have been used by the tribe
to protect their supremacist home of shameless colonizers. Instead of developing trade and
cooperation, the US came to the Midde East with weapons of mass destruction. The Israel-firsters
cooked the plan for the interventions. Millions died as a result. I was in Syria, 1987 or so.
Of course it was dictatorial, secret services galore, five it was said.
But the country was peaceful, not rich, but also not as poor as I experienced India some ten
years before.
Aleppo was the most cosmopolitan city I ever visited, anything accepted, from miniskirts to
burka's.
The sukh, now destroyed, was wonderful, medieval, happy looking people.
Read More
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dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:46 pm GMT
100 Words
@jilles dykstra Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts',
1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in
different European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over
the Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen
as colonialism, as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with
slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old
age, at the plantations they could stay until their deaths. Rereading, I do not want
to defend slavery, not even in the USA, where it seems to have been far better for slaves
than in Brazil
Herbert Aptheker, 'Negro Slave Revolts in the United States 1526 – 1860 ', New York
1939
@Sean Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments
without believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view.
It wouldn't because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any
evidence at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going
to be anything but hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would
use a wedge on Arabs fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions
within a country of between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were
at war in the 80s and Israel supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't
create the conflict, which was a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots-
just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now
but Assad and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a
proven ability to make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against
a false flag is that the US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack
last year and got a major US airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had
been virtually annihilated in the cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now
argument cuts both ways. Very good comment, Sean
Read More LOL:
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100 Words
@jilles dykstra There were allegations that Hillary was prepared to wage an atomic
war in Europe. The US has contingency plans for nuking in almost every scenario without
ever intending to do it. Very different from intending to carry out a nuclear first strike.
I would not be surprised if the US has the targeting dating for a nuclear strike on Britain,
just in case there was a need someday. But no way would the US ever dream of actually
using nuclear weapons in Europe, because no ally country would agree to be a nuclear
battlefield and hitting the enemy homeland would mean a nuclear strike on the US mainland
in response. Read More
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Shama ,
April 28, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT
100 Words
@annamaria Well, why don't you explain the UNZ readers the rationale for Israelis'
collaboration with ISIS? This collaboration is well-documented and it has been discussed
in Israeli press.
So, why does Israel help to and protect ISIS? Israel has a free press in which a great
deal of speculation is tolerated, even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of
the major journals, or even in the smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced – Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one – portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
So, Israeli med corps will, as modern protocol demands, aid any and all injured.
Read More
1,400 Words
@jilles dykstra Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts',
1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in
different European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over
the Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen
as colonialism, as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with
slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old
age, at the plantations they could stay until their deaths. Egad! Houston Stewart Chamberlain
was a neurotic character. I haven't read his Grundlagen , but Shirer's description
of it is sufficient. Chamberlain wrote in spurts, gripped by a demonic fervour; he says
so in his autobiography, Lebenswege , that he was often unable to recognise them
as his own work because they surpassed his expectations!
French scholar of Germanism Edmond Vermeil said Chamberlain's ideas were essentially
"shoddy."
This son of an English admiral, nephew of a British field marshal, Sir Neville
Chamberlain, and of two British generals, and eventually son-in-law of Richard Wagner,
was born at Portsmouth in 1855. He was destined for the British Army or Navy, but
his delicate health made such a calling out of the question and he was educated in
France and Geneva, where French became his first language.
Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen fate brought him into touch with two Germans
and thereafter he was drawn irresistibly toward Germany, of which he ultimately became
a citizen and one of the foremost thinkers and in whose language he wrote all of his
many books, several of which had an almost blinding influence on Wilhelm II, Adolf
Hitler and countless lesser Germans.
In 1870, when he was fifteen, Chamberlain landed in the hands of a remarkable tutor,
Otto Kuntze, a Prussian of the Prussians, who for four years imprinted on his receptive
mind and sensitive soul the glories of militant, conquering Prussia and also – apparently
unmindful of the contrasts – of such artists and poets as Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller
andWagner. At nineteen Chamberlain fell madly in love with Anna Horst, also a Prussian,
ten years his senior and, like him, highly neurotic. In 1882, at the age of twenty-seven,
he journeyed from Geneva, where he had beer, immersed for three years in studies of
philosophy, natural history, physics, chemistry and medicine, to Bayreuth. There he
met Wagner who, as he says, became the sun of his life, and Cosima, the composer's
wife, to whom he would remain passionately and slavishly devoted all the rest of his
days. From 1885, when he went with Anna Horst, who had become his wife, to live for
four years in Dresden, he became a German in thought and in language, moving on to
Vienna in 1889 for a decade and finally in 1909 to Bayreuth, where he dwelt until
his death in 1927.
He divorced his idolized Prussian wife in 1905, when she was sixty and even more
mentally and physically ill than he (the separation was so painful that he said it
almost drove him mad) and three years later he married Eva Wagner and settled down
near Wahnfried, where he could be near his wife's mother, the revered, strong-willed
Cosima.
Hypersensitive and neurotic and subject to frequent nervous breakdowns, Chamberlain
was given to seeing demons who, by his own account, drove him on relentlessly to seek
new fields of study and get on with his prodigious writings. One vision after another
forced him to change from biology to botany to the fine arts, to music, to philosophy,
to biography to history. Once, in 1896, when he was returning from Italy, the presence
of a demon became so forceful that he got off the train at Gardone, shut himself up
in a hotel room for eight days and, abandoning some work on music that he had contemplated,
wrote feverishly on a biological thesis until he had the germ of the theme that would
dominate all of his later works: race and history.
Whatever its blemishes, his mind had a vast sweep ranging over the fields of literature,
music, biology, botany, religion, history and politics. There was, as Jean Real has
pointed out, a profound unity of inspiration in all his published works and they had
a remarkable coherence. Since he felt himself goaded on by demons, his books (on Wagner,
Goethe, Kant, Christianity and race) were written in the grip of a terrible fever,
a veritable trance, a state of self-induced intoxication, so that, as he says in his
autobiography, Lebenswege, he was often unable to recognize them as his own work,
because they surpassed his expectations.
Minds more balanced than his have subsequently demolished his theories of race
and much of his history, and to such a French scholar of Germanism as Edmond Vermeil
Chamberlain's ideas were essentially "shoddy." Yet to the anti-Nazi German biographer
of Hitler, Konrad Heiden, who deplored the influence of his racial teachings, Chamberlain
"was one of the most astonishing talents in the history of the German mind, a mine
of knowledge and profound
ideas."
The book which most profoundly influenced that mind, which sent Wilhelm II into
ecstasies and provided the Nazis with their racial aberrations, was Foundations of
the Nineteenth Century (Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) a work of some twelve
hundred pages which Chamberlain, again possessed of one of his "demons," wrote in
nineteen months between April 1, 1897, and October 31, 1898, in Vienna, and which
was published in 1899.
As with Gobineau, whom he admired, Chamberlain found the key to history, indeed
the basis of civilization, to be race. To explain the nineteenth century, that is,
the contemporary world, one had to consider first what it had been bequeathed from
ancient times. Three things, said Chamberlain: Greek philosophy and art, Roman law
and the personality of Christ. There were also three legatees: the Jews and the Germans,
the "two pure races," and the half-breed Latins of the Mediterranean – "a chaos of
peoples," he called them. The Germans alone deserved such a splendid heritage. They
had, it is true, come into history late, not until the thirteenth century. But even
before that, in destroying the Roman Empire, they had proved their worth, "It is not
true," he says, " that the Teutonic barbarian conjured up the so-called 'Night of
the Middle Ages'; this night followed rather upon the intellectual and moral bankruptcy
of the raceless chaos of humanity which the dying Roman Empire had nurtured; but for
the Teuton, everlasting night would have settled upon the world." At the time he was
writing he saw in the Teuton the only hope of the world. Chamberlain included among
the "Teutons" the Celts and the Slavs, though the Teutons were the most important
element. However, he is quite woolly in his definitions and at one point declares
that "whoever behaves as a Teuton is a Teuton whatever his racial origin." Perhaps
here he was thinking of his own non-German origin. Whatever he was, the Teuton, according
to Chamberlain, was "the soul of our culture. The importance of each nation as a living
power today is dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic blood in its population.
. . True history begins at the moment when the Teuton, with his masterful hand, lays
his grip upon the legacy of antiquity."
And the Jews? The longest chapter in Foundations is devoted to them. As we have
seen, Chamberlain claimed that the Jews and the Teutons were the only pure races left
in the West. And in this chapter he condemns "stupid and revolting anti-Semitism."
The Jews, he says, are not "inferior" to the Teuton, merely "different." They have
their own grandeur; they realize the "sacred duty" of man to guard the purity of race.
And yet as he proceeds to analyze the Jews, Chamberlain slips into the very vulgar
anti-Semitism which he condemns in others and which leads, in the end, to the obscenities
of Julius Streicher's caricatures of the Jews in Der Stuermer in Hitler's time. Indeed
a good deal of the "philosophical" basis of Nazi anti-Semitism stems from this chapter.
The preposterousness of Chamberlain's views is quickly evident. He has declared
that the personality of Christ is one of the three great bequests of antiquity to
modern civilization. He then sets out to "prove" that Jesus was not a Jew. His Galilean
origins, his inability to utter correctly the Aramaic gutturals, are to Chamberlain
"clear signs" that Jesus had "a large proportion of non-Semitic blood." He then makes
a typically fiat statement: "Whoever claimed that Jesus was a Jew was either being
stupid or telling a lie .. . Jesus was not a Jew."
300 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think
the title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads
Readers Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time,
end of the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars
galore, so why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA
citizens and far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol
Lieven as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death
and destruction but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all
its citizens; Your conception of American health care is incorrect. Yes, there are flaws,
but ANYONE can walk into an American hospital emergency room and they will be treated
REGARDLESS OF ABILITY TO PAY. Even illegal aliens will be treated
Patients in countries with "socialized medicine" quite often, have interminable wait
times for procedures that are routine here in the USA. Even Canada, our neighbor to the
north, has problems with timely availability of services. Canada has first-rate medical
personnel, who have to work under the constraints of a public system.
It is interesting to note, that in most countries with "socialized medicine" there is
a two-tier system of treatment those with private health insurance (or money) can (and
do) get better treatment than those who depend on the "public system".
In addition, there are life saving drugs that are unavailable in the public system as
they are considered "too expensive"
Witness Great Britain's "National Health Service" (NHS) with its NICE (National Institute
for Health and Care Excellence), which refuses to pay for certain breast cancer drugs,
deeming them to be "too expensive". One could argue that NICE is a "death panel" relegating
those who are unfortunate enough to need care relegated to death.
Go outside the NHS system to pay for your own care, and the door closes and locks behind
you. "NHS has invoked a policy of refusing care altogether to patients who, often upon
physician recommendation, choose to pay out-of-pocket for best-available drug treatments".
A breast cancer patient in the UK "Found that out the hard way when she tried to buy
Avastin out of her own pocket, only to have her doctor inform her that if she did so,
she would have to pay for all her treatment." Yet she has been paying income taxes of
20 to 45 percent for her "government provided free healthcare".
American health care needs improvement, but socializing it is not the answer
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April 28, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
100 Words
@Sam Shama Israel has a free press in which a great deal of speculation is tolerated,
even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of the major journals, or even in the
smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced - Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one - portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
So, Israeli med corps will, as modern protocol demands, aid any and all injured. You
should be more diligent in your search. Israel has been cooperating with ISIS and the
Israeli generals have loudly proclaimed their preference for ISIS over sovereign Syria.
200 Words
@Sean Anyone who wants to stage a preemptive nuclear attack wouldn't say so beforehand.
No-one can come up with a scenario in which Britain would ever first use nukes, so refusing
to rule it out is simply the practice of confronting potential aggression with uncertain
consequences though being slow to say what you will do, and never saying what
you won't.
Lets be clear: the British nukes are out in subs and if they got the coded order to
fire off a first use strike (for some reason we cannot yet imagine) the Trident captain
and crew would obey the command. Any statement to the contrary made by some politician
on BBC radio years before is going to be bloody irrelevant. Sean,
I think you are underestimating the utter evil and horror of such a pronouncement which
is an act of war and terrorism that is and has been standard operating practice of the
British Empire. There are two operative words at play "Gunboat Diplomacy" where the emphasis
is upon a canon in the face. Boom Baboom, but that's not gunpowder, nor iron ball, but
a big flash of a sun exploding
But there are those who think they can have a limited nuclear war
And "The Bitch Set Him Up!"
Yeah its LaRouche, he is the only one who called this, Donny doing the 180, and why
because Trump invoked the American System of Economics and was ready for peace with Russia
and China and because the DEAL, the real deal, the only Deal is the invitation by the
The Chinese and Russians as concerns the New Silk Road and One Belt Initiatives, which
Lyndon and Helga Zepp LaRouche and associates are noted architects of this strategic
move that would end British Empire Geopolotics
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300 Words
@annamaria You should be more diligent in your search. Israel has been cooperating
with ISIS and the Israeli generals have loudly proclaimed their preference for ISIS over
sovereign Syria.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/alliance-of-convenience-israel-supports-syrias-isis-terror-group/5587203
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315347/Watch-heart-pounding-moment-Israeli-commandos-save-Islamic-militants-Syrian-warzone-risking-lives-sworn-enemies.html
http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/02/19/un-report-reveals-how-israel-is-coordinating-with-isis-militants-inside-syria/
http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/1633-moshe-yaalon.html
And please spare us your lecturing on special moral qualities of IDF and Israelis
at large. Listen to your bloody Shaked; she is a Minister of Justice in your morally-lost
lands: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes
"Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza:" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
The ongoing blood bath in the Middle East (millions died) is directly related to Oded
Yinon plan for Eretz Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw You remind me
of someone I can't quite remember this moment, flitting hither and thither, the busy
little bee, nary a thought to what they are actually reading.
Take e.g., the Daily Mail article you deposited, apparently a bolster for you claim.
The Mail piece headlines say:
Saving their sworn enemy: Heartstopping footage shows Israeli commandos rescuing
wounded men from Syrian warzone – but WHY are they risking their lives for Islamic
militants?
++ Elite Israeli troops rescue wounded Syrians from the world's worst war almost every
night
++They have saved more than 2,000 people since 2013, at a cost of 50 million shekels
(£8.7million)
++Many are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated
to Al Qaeda
++MailOnline embedded with Israeli commandos stationed on the border between Israel
and Syria
++Dramatic video filmed by MailOnline and the Israeli army shows these operations
taking place
++Israel says that the operation is purely humanitarian but analysts believe Israel
also has strategic reasons
Go on, read the whole damned article. Take it from one of the victims, Ahmed, treated
by IDF medical corps:
'I will not fight against Israel in the future. Israel looks after wounded people
better than the Arabs. The Arabs are dogs,' said a wiry rebel fighter who gave his
name as Ahmed, 23, who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the groin.
This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there. At most, what you twist and label
a collaboration, is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard, to form an alliance
of convenience, such that rockets are not launched into Israel, especially in the North.
And why shouldn't she?
You start your post, as usual, by instructing me to be more diligent in my readings.
As I note that proposal with the seriousness it deserves, I take the occasion to remind
you that you adopt the same attitude more broadly, as exempli gratia, when you bake goods,
not inflict your male relatives with cordite when the bite was expectant of a sweet morsel.
Read More
300 Words
@Sam Shama You remind me of someone I can't quite remember this moment, flitting
hither and thither, the busy little bee, nary a thought to what they are actually reading.
Take e.g., the Daily Mail article you deposited, apparently a bolster for you claim.
The Mail piece headlines say:
Saving their sworn enemy: Heartstopping footage shows Israeli commandos rescuing wounded
men from Syrian warzone - but WHY are they risking their lives for Islamic militants?
++ Elite Israeli troops rescue wounded Syrians from the world's worst war almost every
night
++They have saved more than 2,000 people since 2013, at a cost of 50 million shekels
(£8.7million)
++Many are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated
to Al Qaeda
++MailOnline embedded with Israeli commandos stationed on the border between Israel
and Syria
++Dramatic video filmed by MailOnline and the Israeli army shows these operations
taking place
++Israel says that the operation is purely humanitarian but analysts believe Israel
also has strategic reasons
Go on, read the whole damned article. Take it from one of the victims, Ahmed, treated
by IDF medical corps:
'I will not fight against Israel in the future. Israel looks after wounded people
better than the Arabs. The Arabs are dogs,' said a wiry rebel fighter who gave his
name as Ahmed, 23, who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the groin.
This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there. At most, what you twist and label
a collaboration, is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard, to form an alliance
of convenience, such that rockets are not launched into Israel, especially in the North.
And why shouldn't she?
You start your post, as usual, by instructing me to be more diligent in my readings.
As I note that proposal with the seriousness it deserves, I take the occasion to remind
you that you adopt the same attitude more broadly, as exempli gratia, when you bake goods,
not inflict your male relatives with cordite when the bite was expectant of a sweet morsel.
"This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza?
http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/ :
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that
burned the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote
a flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish
community in Ukraine:
https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" Read More
when someone like Bolton says 'they directly threaten us'
you can take it to the bank that the "us" he's referring to is Israel
us, the Jews ;)
he purports to mean the American people, but anyone on the planet who knows the first
thing about Ziocons like Bolton, know damn well he'd see virtually every single American
goyim ground up into the dirt rather that see one fingernail on one Jewish hand suffer
harm.
N. Korea does not threaten America or our interests. If anything, it threatens its
neighbors. And if so, then our trading partner China could effectively deal with it.
the only reason N. Korea is in the crosshairs is because somehow Israel considers
it a threat Hello Rurik.
Having thought about it, there are a few, but I will not list the others.
The real and plausible threat (anybody knowing about the effects of nuclear weapons
will know about the effects of US stratospheric tests of megaton weapons in the early
'60s and understand) is beyond the technical capabilities of the DPRK.
Their atomic bombs, on seismic data, are all damp fizzers. They don't have the lift
to do maximum economic damage, either.
They do seem to have the capacity to sink an attacking carrier battle group or two
with conventional weapons.
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth.
Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I vaguely recall the Izzy government being good buddies with DPRK.
Will add one digression that is of interest, in old, turn-of-last century photos of
party conferences in the DPRK, several officials in military uniform are cleary from
former Warsaw Pact places, or from the USSR, but I have never seen an article to mention
it. Read More
100 Words
@annamaria "This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza? http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/:
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-and-isis-are-allies-there-we-said-it/ri19708
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
On your sweet morsel of moral relativism: "...what you twist and label a collaboration,
is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard..."
For some time, the state of Israel was hailed as a "moral" project. Here is one of the
minor facts to dispel the nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
"Israelis sit on a hill to watch air strikes on Gaza, some bring drinks and snacks as
they cheer the explosions a few miles away." Never again, in short.
Meanwhile the warmongering Kagans' clan has got into collaboration with neo-Nazis:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article182892.html
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that burned
the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote a
flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish community
in Ukraine: https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at... Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" The usual dribblings.
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to .Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head.
Read More
Having thought about it, there are a few, but I will not list the others.
The real and plausible threat (anybody knowing about the effects of nuclear weapons will
know about the effects of US stratospheric tests of megaton weapons in the early '60s
and understand) is beyond the technical capabilities of the DPRK.
Their atomic bombs, on seismic data, are all damp fizzers. They don't have the lift to
do maximum economic damage, either.
They do seem to have the capacity to sink an attacking carrier battle group or two with
conventional weapons.
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth. Korea
just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I vaguely recall the Izzy government being good buddies with DPRK.
Will add one digression that is of interest, in old, turn-of-last century photos of party
conferences in the DPRK, several officials in military uniform are cleary from former
Warsaw Pact places, or from the USSR, but I have never seen an article to mention it.
Hey Che,
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with
Nth. Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I just read something from one of the commenters here (Kiza) that the saber-rattling
at DPRK is a less than oblique threat to Russia and China, as the need for Rothschild,
et al- to exercise absolute and unilateral domination of the entire planet is growing
to an event horizon type imperative. (I'm not quoting, but I think that's the gist)
and that's as good of an analysis as I've seen yet, and it's consistent with everything
I know about human nature and history and everything I know about Rothschild, et al
Read More
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to ....Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head.
stop the rockets.
then stop the occupation
- and murder and theft and oppression and torture and daily horrors and humiliations
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to ....Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head. "There are no realpolitik interests
in Gaza "
Because the illegally occupied Gazans are defenseless, like dwellers of the former ghettos
in Europe?
By the way, why are you taking everything personally in my posts and then insert some
cheap childish insults into every response-comment, instead of answering point by point
to the documented facts ?
One of the main points of my posts is the congruence of ziocons' policies in the Middle
East with Oded Yinon plan. Another point is the incongruence of Israelis' pretense on
being in possession of superior morality (this one always goes with references to Holocaust)
in the context of the extraordinary influence of Israel-firsters on making military decision
by the US/NATO in the Middle East. You have been steadily avoiding these two points,
as if you have some case of cognitive blindness. Though to be fair, you did utter something
about realpoitic (moral relativism, in other words) being factored in Israel's policies.
But if you recognize this relativism, then your tribe should stop pestering Germans,
reminding them again and again about their guilt. It is over. Israel's policies, beginning
with the open terrorism in the 30-s and 40-s and up to the promoting the ongoing slaughter
in the Middle East, have already concealed any pretense on victimhood. Whether in Europe,
damaged by the influx of refugees from the ME and of low-IQ migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa, or in the US, irritated by the price for the illegal wars in the ME, the citizenry
is taking on a rather sour attitude towards the Lobby and other Friends of Israel. The
floods of refugees (of various kinds) make a point for the populace. The cause of the
wars and the Israel-firsters' efforts towards initiating these wars have been under discussion.
The Israel-firsters love their mythological fatherland so much that they put the well-being
of their countries of residence second to Israel. Not good for national policies.
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@Sam Shama Israel has a free press in which a great deal of speculation is tolerated,
even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of the major journals, or even in the
smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced - Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one - portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
@annamaria "This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza? http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/:
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-and-isis-are-allies-there-we-said-it/ri19708
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
On your sweet morsel of moral relativism: "...what you twist and label a collaboration,
is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard..."
For some time, the state of Israel was hailed as a "moral" project. Here is one of the
minor facts to dispel the nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
"Israelis sit on a hill to watch air strikes on Gaza, some bring drinks and snacks as
they cheer the explosions a few miles away." Never again, in short.
Meanwhile the warmongering Kagans' clan has got into collaboration with neo-Nazis:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article182892.html
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that burned
the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote a
flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish community
in Ukraine: https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at... Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" What do you expect from Ziofascists like Sam et al
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My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others,
USA citizens and far more foreign citizens.
I can't argue with that Jilles
and you're right about the general ignorance and bovine stupidity of most Americans,
but that has been very carefully created by the PTB, who don't want an educated, thinking
populace.
what was it papa Bush said?
"if the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp
posts"
if the American people could think, the results would be the same. If the American
people could think and were in possession of a moral soul, then they'd know that wars
based on lies should be repudiated and the war criminals brought to justice. But the
American sheople have been systematically dumbed down to the point of zombies, infatuated
with Kim Kardashian's ass. Today Idiocracy is a reality. It's true.
But, let me just say on behalf of Americans, that I don't really see it any better across
the pond. Sure, the Europeans are better educated, and generally speak at least two languages,
and have heard of Yalta and Copernicus, but with all that education, they just don't
seem to me to be any more principled or moral than the zombified Americans.
Sure, it is the US military that is the biggest bully on the block, but does that
excuse the other little bullies that stand behind him and give him moral support? There
were French jets bombing Libya just as ferociously as any American ones. The Brits have
never seen an act of aggression from the US military that they don't reverently applaud.
And the Germans, whose government goes along with every war crime America commits in
principle, are today complicit in a racial supremacist, genocidal holocaust against a
completely innocent victim whose only crime is that they existed - in Palestine, on land
that some Jewish supremacist coveted for themselves.
The irony? That these very same Germans feel excruciating and debilitating guilt for
a crime that they had nothing to do with, while at the same time facilitating the same
crime of genocide today, in their names, by funding and arming and providing "moral"
cover for the Zionists.
So sure, Europeans are far more educated, but seem to fall very short when it comes to
using that education to augment a moral foundation for their actions and the actions
of their respective governments. There seems to me to be a sort of all-pervasive cowardice
in Western Europe, and a Pavlovian, knee-jerk propensity to wallow in prostrate abasement
and self-flagellate as soon as anyone says "Holocaust". Sort of what they used to be
able to bludgeon Americans with by the pejorative "racist", until it became a joke.
Anyways, yes, we're ignorant, and bovine and dangerous, but morally, I just don't see
too many paragons of virtue or honor to hold up as examples today. Uruguay perhaps, and
I would include Putin's Russia insofar as he's trying to put out the fires the Zio-Western-fiend
is lighting all over the place, but then he too bolsters their agenda by antagonizing
the former Soviet satellite states with ultra-nationalistic chest thumping over the "great
war", (that the Bolsheviks in Russia were mainly responsible for). Note to Putin, let
it rest! The great victory that you celebrate in May was a catastrophe for Eastern Europe
(and millions of Russians too)
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth.
Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I just read something from one of the commenters here (Kiza) that the saber-rattling
at DPRK is a less than oblique threat to Russia and China, as the need for Rothschild,
et al- to exercise absolute and unilateral domination of the entire planet is growing
to an event horizon type imperative. (I'm not quoting, but I think that's the gist)
and that's as good of an analysis as I've seen yet, and it's consistent with everything
I know about human nature and history and everything I know about Rothschild, et al Hello
Rurik.
Have you read the Illuminatus! trilogy? I have, twice, once before and once after
struggling through Anna Rosenbaum's Atlas Shrugged.
It was better the second time, because it is partly a parody of Ayn Rand.
It is dirty hippy material, but it is fun.
All of these ideas, the Rothschilds, the Brit. Royal family, etc. do it all, they
work even less than the Protocols of the Elders, which seems to be a template for reality,
and the claims for it to just to being malicious fake are on very shallow foundations.
Sure, I have no doubt that the Rothschild clan is mainly evil, but I do not see any
sense in ideas that they have some solo supevillain role.
If you have not read the book(s), it was originally published in three, I recommend,
it should make you laugh at times.
Billionaire businessman
Marc Cuban
insists
that the H-1B visa racket is a
feature of the vaunted American free market.
This is nonsense on stilts. It can't go
unchallenged.
Another
billionaire, our president, has
ordered
that the H-1B program be reformed.
This, too, is disappointing. You'll see why.
First, let's
correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free
economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets
are intertwined. Trade, including trade in
labor, is not free; it's regulated to the hilt.
If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an
example of a fascistic government-business
cartel in operation.
The H-1B
permit, in particular, is part of that
state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B
hogs-Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian
firms), Microsoft, and Intel-import labor with
what are grants of government privilege. Duly,
the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like
incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do
they get to replace the American worker, but
they get to do so at his expense.
Here's how:
Globally, a
series of sordid liaisons ensures that American
workers are left high and dry. Through the
programs of the International Trade
Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the
International Monetary Fund, and other
oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker
is forced to subsidize and underwrite the
investment risks of the very corporations that
have given him the boot.
Domestically,
the fascistic partnership with the State amounts
to a subsidy to business at the expense of the
taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic
welfare state externalize their employment costs
onto the taxpayers.
So while
public property is property funded by taxpayers
through expropriated taxes; belongs to
taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit-at
least one million additional immigrants a year,
including recipients of the H-1B visa, are
allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported
infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival
avails himself of public works such as roads,
hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and
welfare.
Does this
epitomize the classical liberal idea of
laissez faire
?
Moreover,
chain migration or family unification means
every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an
entire tribe. The initial entrant-the meal
ticket-will pay his way. The honor system not
being an especially strong value in the Third
World, the rest of the clan will be America's
problem. More often than not, chain-migration
entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.
Spreading like
gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic
population growth is detrimental to all
ecosystems: natural, social and political.
Take Seattle
and its surrounding counties. Between April 2015
and 2016, the area was inundated with "86,320
new residents, marking it the region's biggest
population gains this century. Fueled in large
part by the technology industry, an average of
236 people is moving to the Seattle area each
day,"
reported
Geekwire.com. (Reporters for our
local fish-wrapper-in my case, parrot-cage
liner-have discharged their journalistic duties
by inviting readers to "share" their traffic-jam
stories.)
Never as dumb
as the local reporters, the likes of Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Cuban
are certainly as detached.
Barricaded in
their obscenely lavish compounds-from the
comfort of their monster mansions-these social
engineers don't experience the "environmental
impacts of rapid urban expansion"; the
destruction of verdant open spaces and farmland;
the decrease in the quality of the water we
drink and air we breathe, the increase in
traffic and traffic accidents, air pollution,
the cellblock-like housing erected to
accommodate their imported I.T. workers and
extended families, the delicate bouquet of amped
up waste management and associated seepages.
For locals,
this lamentable state means an inability to
afford homes in a market in which property
prices have been artificially inflated. Young
couples lineup to view tiny apartments. They
dream of that picket fence no more. (And our
"stupid leaders," to quote the president before
he joined leadership, wonder why birthrates are
so low!)
In a true free
market, absent the protectionist state,
corporate employers would be accountable to the
community, and would be wary of the strife and
lowered productivity brought about by a
multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All
the more so when a foreign workforce moves into
residential areas almost overnight as has
happened in Seattle and its surrounds.
Alas, since
the
high-tech traitors
can externalize their
employment costs on to the community; because
corporations are subsidized at every turn by
their victims-they need not bring in the best.
Cuban thinks
they do. High tech needs to be able to "search
the world for the best applicants," he
burbled
to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Yet more crap.
Why doesn't
the president know that the H-1B visa category
is not a special visa for highly skilled
individuals, but goes mostly to average workers?
"Indian business-process outsourcing companies,
which predominantly provide technology support
to corporate back offices," by
the Economist's accounting.
Overall, the
work done by the H1-B intake does not require
independent judgment, critical reasoning or
higher-order thinking. "Average workers;
ordinary talent doing ordinary work," attest the
experts who've been studying this intake for
years. The master's degree is the exception
within the H1-B visa category.
More
significant: THERE IS a visa category that is
reserved exclusively for individuals with
extraordinary abilities and achievement. I know,
because the principal sponsor in our family
received this visa. I first
wrote
about the visa that doesn't displace
ordinary Americans
in 2008
:
It's the O-1
visa.
"Extraordinary
ability in the fields of science, education,
business or athletics,"
states
the Department of Homeland Security,
"means a level of expertise indicating that the
person is one of the small percentage who has
risen to the very top of the field of endeavor."
Most
significant:
There is no cap on the number
of O-1 visa entrants allowed. Access to this
limited pool of talent is unlimited.
My point
vis-à-vis the O-1 visa is this: The H-1B hogs
are forever claiming that they are desperate for
talent. In reality, they have unlimited access
to individuals with unique abilities through the
open-ended O-1 visa program.
There is no
limit to the number of geniuses American
companies can import.
Theoretically,
the H-1B program could be completely abolished
and all needed Einsteins imported through the
O-1 program. (Why, even future first ladies
would stand a chance under the business category
of the O-1A visa, as a wealth-generating
supermodel could certainly qualify.)
Now you
understand my disappointment. In his
April 18 Executive Order,
President Trump
promised to merely reform a program that needs
abolishing. That is if "Hire American" means
anything to anybody anymore.
Borges writes, "dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships
foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy." As a preeminent mind, Borges
rightly considers the mind to be a man's greatest asset, for without mind, a man is nothing. The
more oppressive a political system, then, the greater its assault on its subjects' minds, for it's
not enough for any dictator, king or totalitarian system to oppress and exploit, but it must, and
I mean must, make its people idiotic as well. Every wrongful bullet is preceded and accompanied,
then followed up by a series of idiotic lies, but we're so used to such a moronic diet by now, our
trepanned intelligentsia don't even squirm in their tenured chairs.
Sane men and women don't consent to kill, rob and rape, much less be killed, robbed and raped,
least of all to enrich their masters , and that's why their minds must be molested as early
and as much as possible. Hence our nonstop media brainwashing us from the cradle, literally, to the
grave. Fixated by flickering boxes, even infants are now mind-conditioned to become scatterbrained
idiots before they stagger into kindergarten, to begin a lifelong process of becoming docile and
slogan-shouting Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, savages killed, but, like apes, our ancestors, they mostly tried to intimidate and trash
talk their way out of conflicts. Take the Maoris: from all accounts, they were a rather belligerent
people, but their killing of each other really took off with the introduction of the musket. The
greater a civilization, the greater its ability to accomplish great tasks, including massacre. A
savage tribe could never imagine wiping out entire cities by defecating exploding metal from the
sky, or sitting in a brightly lit and spic-and-span office stroking a joy stick to ejaculate missiles
half a planet away. Drone hell fire for y'all, with sides of bank-sponsored debt slavery and austerity,
plus an unlimited refill of American pop bullshit. Would you like a public suicide with that? No,
sir, these savages need to take webcast courses from us sophisticates when it comes to genocide,
or ecocide, or any other kind of cides you can think of. When it comes to pure, unadulterated savagery,
these quaint brutes ain't got shit on us plugged-in netizens chillaxin' in that shiny upside down
condo on da capital-punishment-for the-entire-world, y'all, hill.
You'd think that a government with absolute power would not bother with expensive parades and
elaborately-staged rallies in stadia, as are routine in North Korea, but such is the importance of
propaganda and mind-control. America has gone way beyond Kim Jong-Un and his Nuremberg-styled pageantry,
however, because the Yankee Magical Show is relentlessly pumped into our minds via television and
the internet, at home, in office or even as we're walking down the street, so that we're always swarmed
by sexy sale pitches, soft and hard porn, asinine righteousness and imbecilic trivia. All day long,
we can stuff ourselves with unlimited kitsch. Today's urgent topic, "Sylvester Stalone Spotted in
16th Century Painting." Yesterday's, "Tom Cruise's Daughter Gets Inked." Imagine a triple-amputee
Iraq vet or an unemployed mother, sitting in an about to be foreclosed home with unpaid bills scattered
across her kitchen table, staring at such headlines. At 48, I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't
this overwhelmingly stupid, though the dumbing down of America will only accelerate as this cornered
and bankrupt country becomes ever more vicious to its citizens and foreigners alike.
Not content to kill and loot, America must do it to pulsating music; cool, orgasmic dancing; raunchy
reality shows and violence-filled Hollywood blockbusters, and these are also meant for its victims,
no less. In a 1997 article published by the US Army War College,
Ralph Peters
gushes about a "personally intrusive" and "lethal" cultural assault as a key tactic in the American
quest for global supremacy. As information master, the American Empire will destroy its "information
victims." What's more, "our victims volunteer" because they are unable to resist the seductiveness
of American culture.
Defining democracy as "that deft liberal form of imperialism," Peters reveals how the word is
conceived and used these days by every American leader, whether talking about Libya, Syria, Iran
or America itself. Recognizing that the lumpens of his country are also victims of empire, Peters
frankly acknowledges that "laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan
are brothers in suffering."
Much has been made of the internet as enabling democracy and protest, but whatever utility it may
have for the disenfranchised and/or rebellious, the Web is most useful to our rulers. As
Dmitry Orlov points out in a recent blog, the internet is a powerful surveillance tool for the
state and, what's more, it also keeps the masses distracted and pacified. Echoing Queen Victoria's
remark, "Give my people plenty of beer, good and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among
them," Orlov observes that virtual sex thwarts rebellion. In sum, while the internet may empower
some people, as in allowing John
Michael Greer , Paul Craig Roberts
or Orlov to publish their unflinching commentaries, the same internet also drowns them out with
an unprecedented flood of drivel. Defending the empire, Ralph Peters cheerfully agrees, "The internet
is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the
illusion of empowerment and community."
Though our only hope is to be expelled from this sick matrix, many of us will cling even more
fiercely to these illusions of knowledge, love, sex and community as we blunder forward. A breathing
and tactile life will become even more alien, I'm afraid. Here and there, a band of unplugged weirdos,
to be hunted down and exterminated, with their demise shown on TV as warning and entertainment. Inhabiting
a common waste land, we can each lounge in our private electronic ghetto. Until the juice finally
runs out, that is.
"... Although the US claims to support democracy in Syria, that is not its aim at all. Although tomorrow would be a step forward for Syrian democracy, the US already pre-empted the results by saying that it is illegitimate because frankly the US is not interested in democracy in Syria. ..."
"... I would like to quote al-Maliki, the prime minister in Iraq who asked hypothetically, since when did Saudi Arabia become interested in democracy? ..."
"... Syria has been an enemy of Israel for a long time so Israel has always been trying to destroy Syria. And then you have the Sunni Shiite divide, which is the Persian Gulf states involvement. And then the US is fighting on behalf of Israel and the US benefits from any war – any kind of warfare benefits the military industrial & banking complex that is the US. ..."
"... So there are many reasons why so many countries are ganging up on Syria, it is incredible. You are basically seeing Libya all over again. ..."
"... They want a weak Syria because Syria is an ally of Iran. Syria is an ally of the Palestinian people. There are many reasons to weaken Syria and so they don't want stability in Syria; they want a weak and chaotic and undemocratic Syria. That is their aim. ..."
Syrians have begun voting in the first parliamentary elections after a public referendum approved
a new constitution.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Linh Dinh, a political analyst and
writer from Pennsylvania about the response by the US and its allies to the reforms in Syria.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Our other guest Mr. Ibrahim said they are challenging the violence, but let's
look at that with the US actually not particularly happy with this election and basically has supported,
along with certain regional countries, armed groups.
How likely are we to see peaceful elections? How likely is it that perhaps those entities that
are against seeing a democratic process going forward in Syria may try to cause some chaos on the
ground?
Dinh: The view from the US is that NATO countries, the US and the Persian Gulf states are
fighting for democracy against a dictator. This is inherently absurd because the Persian Gulf states
don't have democratic governance either.
In essence the US is not interested in establishing democracy in Syria; it has been destabilizing
and weakening Syria because it wants to take over. Israel is behind this also for regional interests.
Although the US claims to support democracy in Syria, that is not its aim at all. Although tomorrow
would be a step forward for Syrian democracy, the US already pre-empted the results by saying that
it is illegitimate because frankly the US is not interested in democracy in Syria.
I would like to quote al-Maliki, the prime minister in Iraq who asked hypothetically, since when
did Saudi Arabia become interested in democracy?
Also, there are 250,000 Iraqi refugees living in Syria. So, just think about that for a second
They are living in Syria and they're not citizens, they don't have full citizenship, they don't have
full rights they are living there as refugees and yet they prefer to live in Syria rather than in
Iraq, which is a country that was taken over and destroyed by the US.
So, if the US has its way, Syria will become another Iraq and refugees will flee from Syria instead
of trying to come into Syria.
Press TV: Usually in any country, they benefit if their neighbors are stable entities;
however, in the situation with Syria we have some of their neighbors actually trying to support these
armed gangs and to cause destabilization inside of the country.
Why are we seeing these continued efforts by these types of entities to destabilize Syria in the
way that we're still witnessing?
Dinh: Syria has been an enemy of Israel for a long time so Israel has always been trying
to destroy Syria. And then you have the Sunni Shiite divide, which is the Persian Gulf states involvement.
And then the US is fighting on behalf of Israel and the US benefits from any war – any kind of warfare
benefits the military industrial & banking complex that is the US.
So there are many reasons why so many countries are ganging up on Syria, it is incredible.
You are basically seeing Libya all over again.
In spite of these enormous military and economic pressures – let's not forget the economic sanctions
that have been applied on Syria that is making life very difficult for the average Syrian. In spite
of all that, Syria is still intact.
Whatever gains that will be made tomorrow in the elections or in the days and months ahead I don't
think it will satisfy these international bullies that are trying to destroy Syria
Press TV: Let me just jump in here. What does that mean? Let's say the elections go well
and there is a massive turnout But you're saying it is not going to satisfy those entities whose
interests are something else. What are you saying – What do you think will happen?
Dinh: They want a weak Syria because Syria is an ally of Iran. Syria is an ally of
the Palestinian people. There are many reasons to weaken Syria and so they don't want stability in
Syria; they want a weak and chaotic and undemocratic Syria. That is their aim.
"... Map 1: The 2014 election–İhsanoğlu, the Kemalist wins the blue metro regions, Erdoğan wins the yellow rural regions, and Kurdish candidate wins the purple Kurdish regions: ..."
"... Map 2: The birth rate–low in the metropolitan, Europeanized regions, higher as you go east into the heartland. Demography is destiny–especially electoral destiny. ..."
"... Map 3: The referendum results. Steyn writes "The Kurdish south-east, the old secular Rumelian west – and in between the vast green carpet of a new post-Kemalist caliphate:" ..."
"... The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America ..."
"... John Derbyshire [ ..."
"... email him ..."
"... incredible amount ..."
"... on all sorts of subjects ..."
"... for all kinds of outlets. (This ..."
"... no longer includes ..."
"... whose editors had some kind of tantrum and ..."
"... fired him. ..."
"... and several other ..."
"... . He's had two books published by VDARE.com: ..."
Turkish President,
Recep Erdoğan
won his referendum by a narrow margin last weekend, so
Turkish politics will move off in the general direction of
Venezuela
, though with an Islamic flavor-
Erdoğan
is a devout Muslim.
I
respect the Turks for having done a great and remarkable thing in a short time.
The old
Ottoman Empire
was a classic instance of
imperial-bureaucratic despotism:
a permanent small ruling class enforcing a
state religion while they tax-farmed a passive peasantry with no property
rights-what Karl Marx called "
The
Asiatic Mode of Production
."
It
was a tremendous revolution. And unlike most revolutions, it was revolutionary
in a positive direction. It once fired me up with the hope that, if Turkey
could accomplish such a transformation, then perhaps other old
imperial-despotic nations could too.
Nothing is impossible when History means
business. The Turks passed from a very "pure" form of oriental despotism to
republican liberty, or a fair approximation of it, in 20 years. No one
should think that the Chinese, with their great resources of national pride
and historical consciousness, cannot pull off the same trick.
Now, 28 years later, that looks naïvely
Whiggish
. It turns out that when History means business, the business it
means is sometimes a 180-degree turn back to the past.
In
the commentary on Turkey's referendum vote, Mark Steyn's column
Who Lost Turkey? (Revisited)
stands out. Mark returns to the theme
he worked over in his 2006 best-seller
America Alone
,
that demography is destiny. He explains
that the old despotic-Islamist order was not vanquished-only
relegated to the boondocks
. The Turks of the cities, especially in the
Europe-facing
western part of Turkey, were keen to modernize; the peasants
of the hinterland, not so much.
But the peasants had an advantage over the
urban Turks: their birth-rate. Turkish nationalism simply out-bred globalism.
Turkish Islamism
out-bred secularism
. It took 94 years. But in the long run, yes, demography
is destiny.
Mark supports his argument with some very
cool maps:
Map 1: The 2014 election–İhsanoğlu, the
Kemalist wins the blue metro regions, Erdoğan wins the yellow rural regions,
and Kurdish candidate wins the purple Kurdish regions:
Map 2: The birth rate–low in the
metropolitan, Europeanized regions, higher as you go east into the heartland.
Demography is destiny–especially electoral destiny.
Map 3: The
referendum
results. Steyn writes "The Kurdish south-east, the old secular
Rumelian west – and in between the vast green carpet of a new post-Kemalist
caliphate:"
I caught a flavor of it in its Turkish form
twenty years ago. I was working for an investment bank. One of my colleagues
was a Jew from Turkey. I thought this was interesting. What's it like, I asked
him, being Jewish in Turkey? He said it was all right, he'd never had any
trouble.
The spirit of an open and tolerant society,
free inquiry, the disinterested pursuit of truth, is under mortal threat here
as well as in Turkey. The big difference: here, the threat comes from the top,
from our
elites
at
places
like
Pomona College.
In Turkey, it comes from below.
What accounts for the difference? My guess
would center on two factors.
First factor: religion. Christianity, leaving
aside occasional episodes like the Counter-Reformation, has never been much of
a hindrance to the development of open societies or modernism. The
mid-20th-century United States was very religious; but we
put men on the Moon.
Heck,
even the astronauts were religious
.
Islam is a
different story
. The metaphysics of Islam is occasionalist: Whatever is, is
good, because God wills it. Where that kind of thinking takes hold you end up
with a stifling obscurantism, hostile to all openness and free inquiry.
Second factor: mass immigration. In Western
countries, the hostility of urban elites towards their countries' native
Deplorables
has expressed itself most noticeably in
policies of mass immigration.
In
Western countries the elites, rather than have those horrid white proles doing
the grunt work for them, have imported great masses of Third Worlders. These
immigrants are cheaper; and, in the first generation at least, they are more
obedient and harder-working. Their exoticism also plays into the modernist
esthetic, which, as
Eric Kaufmann
says in his book
The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America
, "values the new and
different."
So
we
have enstupidation, the
killing off of free inquiry, from the top down,
urban elites
imposing their dogma on the rest of us, in alliance with their
Third World clients.
Turks
are getting it from the bottom up, the
underclass in the hinterlands demanding a new Sultanate under institutionalized
Islam.
ORDER IT NOW
Might it be that Peak Reason has come and
gone, reaching its highest point sometime round about 1960? That
Atatürk's
modern, secular republic was carried aloft on that rising wave,
as were our own great achievements through the middle of the last century? And
that the tide is now receding?
Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years
since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain
on the Communist country. Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation, prevented its government
from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions,
and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.
Negotiations aren't possible because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees
as its inferior. Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats
as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington's ultimatums as threateningly as possible.
The hope, of course, is that Pyongyang will cave in to Uncle Sam's bullying and do what they are
told.
But the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there's no sign that it will. Instead,
they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the
US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war.
There's no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans,
who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier
strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border
(with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently.
They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing
something really stupid.
And let's be honest, the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn't joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great
hereafter, is because (a)– The North does not sit on an ocean of oil, and (b)– The North has the
capacity to reduce Seoul, Okinawa and Tokyo into smoldering debris-fields. Absent Kim's WMDs, Pyongyang
would have faced a preemptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi's.
Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism.
The American people –whose grasp of history does not extend beyond the events of 9-11 - have no
idea of the way the US fights its wars or the horrific carnage and destruction it unleashed on the
North. Here's a short refresher that helps clarify why the North is still wary of the US more than
60 years after the armistice was signed. The excerpt is from an article titled "Americans have forgotten
what we did to North Korea", at Vox World:
"In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it
had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included
32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating
the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with
many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry .
According to US journalist Blaine Harden: "Over a period of three years or so, we killed off
- what - 20 percent of the population," Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air
Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter
of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed "everything that moved
in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another." After running low on urban targets, U.S.
bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland
and destroying crops
"On January 3 at 10:30 AM an armada of 82 flying fortresses loosed their death-dealing load
on the city of Pyongyang Hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiary compound were simultaneously
dropped throughout the city, causing annihilating fires, the transatlantic barbarians bombed the
city with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for a whole day making
it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets. The entire city has now been burning,
enveloped in flames, for two days. By the second day, 7,812 civilians houses had been burnt down.
The Americans were well aware that there were no military targets left in Pyongyang
The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated
by smoke is incalculable Some 50,000 inhabitants remain in the city which before the war had a
population of 500,000." ("Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea", Vox World)
The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national
security. Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically
engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems.
The US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula, it was mix of imperial overreach
and pure unalloyed viciousness the likes of which we've seen many times in the past. According to
the Asia-Pacific Journal:
"By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant
town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953,
the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice
crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs
were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to
the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.10 Only emergency assistance from China,
the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine." ("The Destruction and Reconstruction
of North Korea, 1950 – 1960", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus)
ORDER IT NOW
Repeat: "Reservoirs, irrigation dams, rice crops, hydroelectric dams, population centers"
all napalmed, all carpet bombed, all razed to the ground. Nothing was spared. If it moved it was
shot, if it didn't move, it was bombed. The US couldn't win, so they turned the country into an uninhabitable
wastelands. "Let them starve. Let them freeze.. Let them eat weeds and roots and rodents to survive.
Let them sleep in the ditches and find shelter in the rubble. What do we care? We're the greatest
country on earth. God bless America."
This is how Washington does business, and it hasn't changed since the Seventh Cavalry wiped out
150 men, women and children at Wounded Knee more than century ago. The Lakota Sioux at Pine Ridge
got the same basic treatment as the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Nicaraguans, or the
Iraqis and on and on and on and on. Anyone else who gets in Uncle Sam's way, winds up in a world
of hurt. End of story.
The savagery of America's war against the North left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people.
Whatever the cost, the North cannot allow a similar scenario to take place in the future. Whatever
the cost, they must be prepared to defend themselves. If that means nukes, then so be it. Self preservation
is the top priority.
Is there a way to end this pointless standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, a way to mend
fences and build trust?
Of course there is. The US just needs to start treating the DPRK with respect and follow through
on their promises. What promises?
The promise to built the North two light-water reactors to provide heat and light to their people
in exchange for an end to its nuclear weapons program. You won't read about this deal in the media
because the media is just the propaganda wing of the Pentagon. They have no interest in promoting
peaceful solutions. Their stock-in-trade is war, war and more war.
The North wants the US to honor its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework. That's it. Just
keep up your end of the goddamn deal. How hard can that be? Here's how Jimmy Carter summed it up
in a Washington Post op-ed (November 24, 2010):
" in September 2005, an agreement reaffirmed the basic premises of the 1994 accord. (The
Agreed Framework) Its text included denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a pledge of non-aggression
by the United States and steps to evolve a permanent peace agreement to replace the U.S.-North
Korean-Chinese cease-fire that has been in effect since July 1953 . Unfortunately, no substantive
progress has been made since 2005
"This past July I was invited to return to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American,
Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with
top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized
Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted
by the six powers in September 2005 .
"North Korean officials have given the same message to other recent American visitors and have
permitted access by nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying uranium. The same officials
had made it clear to me that this array of centrifuges would be 'on the table' for discussions
with the United States, although uranium purification – a very slow process – was not covered
in the 1994 agreements.
" Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States,
it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection
and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the 'temporary' cease-fire of 1953 . We should
consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever
actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military
attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime."
("North Korea's consistent message to the U.S.", President Jimmy Carter, Washington Post)
Most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn't. The problem lies with the
United States; it's unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic
security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who –through
Washington's own stubborn ignorance– are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be
capable of hitting American cities.
How dumb is that?
The Trump team is sticking with a policy that has failed for 63 years and which clearly undermines
US national security by putting American citizens directly at risk. AND FOR WHAT?
To preserve the image of "tough guy", to convince people that the US doesn't negotiate with weaker
countries, to prove to the world that "whatever the US says, goes"? Is that it? Is image more important
than a potential nuclear disaster?
Relations with the North can be normalized, economic ties can be strengthened, trust can be restored,
and the nuclear threat can be defused. The situation with the North does not have to be a crisis,
it can be fixed. It just takes a change in policy, a bit of give-and-take, and leaders that genuinely
want peace more than war.
"... In layman's lingo, the United States lacks geographic, historic, cultural, economic and technological pressures to develop and have a coherent defensive military doctrine and weapons which would help to implement it. As Michael Lind writes: ..."
"... At this point, the only locality where the US can hope to "defeat" Russia is in Syria, to reassert, even if for a little while longer, itself as "greatest military in history". But even there the window of opportunities is closing fast since the Russian conventional response in Europe would be devastating. ..."
"... As Colonel Pat Lang's blog noted : "If Russia decides to call our bluff and escalate things Trump will likely preside over a public humiliation that will explode America's military delusions of grandeur". ..."
There is a popular point of view in some of Russia's political circles, especially among those who
profess monarchist views and cling to a famous meme of 1913 Tsarist Russia development statistics,
that WW I was started by Germany to forestall Russia's industrial development which would inevitably
challenge Germany's plans on domination of Europe. A somewhat similar argument could be made for
the WW II, but, in general, preventive wars are nothing new in human history. While "preventive"
argument may or may not be a valid one regarding WW I, there is no doubt that it could be used, among
others, when explaining the origins of a war.
A classic example of such "preventive" war is, of course, US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the
mayhem which ensued there when US, as was stated then, "prevented" Saddam from obtaining Weapons
of Mass Destruction, that is nuclear weapons, which, of course, he never had and wasn't intent on
obtaining . It is becoming increasingly clear that "preventive war" has become a preferred instrument
in the hands of Washington establishment, be it Iraq, Libya or Syria.
But what about Russia, one may ask, or China. Are "preventive wars" against them possible? Taken
at face value the question may seem strange-both China, and especially Russia are nuclear armed states
which can defend themselves. They do have deterrents and that supposedly should stop any attempt
on any kind of war on them. This all is true but only so far. One may consider the current geopolitical
situation in which China has all but created a new alternative economic power pole , and in which
the US finds herself increasingly in the position of the still extremely important but second and,
eventually, even third place player in Eurasian economic development. The United States doesn't like
being in second and doesn't take such a reality kindly.
But for Washington, whose political discourse is based on American exceptionalism and foreign
policy now is defined completely in terms of military power, emergence of a "peer" military power
is absolutely unacceptable. While China is an economic giant and is now arguably the largest economy
in the world, she still has a long way to go until she becomes a true "peer" to the United States
militarily. This is not the case with Russia. It becomes also true when one begins to look at doctrinal
and technological developments both in the US and Russia. The contrast is startling, even if one
considers a very dubious US intelligence analysis on Russia .
Russia's military doctrine and posture are explicitly defensive. Power Projection in Russian strategic
considerations is secondary, if not tertiary, to the defense of Russia proper and her immediate geographic
vicinity which can roughly be defined as about 80-85% of territory of the former USSR. This is not
the case with the United States who is a consummate expeditionary power and fights wars not on
own territory, and whose population and political elites are not conditioned by continental warfare.
Arthur J. Alexander in his "
Decision Making In Soviet Weapons Procurement " came up with quantification of what he called
"classes of forces" (or constants) influencing aggregate defense expenditures for USSR. This quantification
remains virtually unchanged for modern day Russia. To quote Alexander, two of the most "heavy" constants
he mentions are: "History, culture and values–40-50 percent. International environment, threat
and internal capabilities–10-30 percent" . Taken by their maxima, 50+30=80%, we get the picture.
80% of Russia's military expenditures are dictated by real military threats, which were, time after
time over centuries, realized for Russia and resulted in the destruction and human losses on a scale
incomprehensible for people who write US military doctrines and national security strategies. This
is especially true for Neocon "strategists" who have a very vague understanding of the nature and
application of military power-expeditionary warfare simply does not provide a proper angle on the
issues of actual defense. The nation whose 20 th Century losses due to wars from WW I,
to Civil War to WW II number roughly in 40-45 million range, would certainly try to not repeat such
ordeals. Even famous Russophobe and falsifier, Richard Pipes, was forced to admit that:
Such figures are beyond the comprehension of most Americans. But clearly a country must define
"unacceptable damage" differently from the United States which has known no famines or purges,
and whose deaths from all the wars waged since 1775 are estimated at 650,000-fewer casualties
than Russia suffered in the 900-day siege of Leningrad in World War II alone. Such a country (Russia)
tends also to assess the rewards of defense in much more realistic terms.
In layman's lingo, the United States lacks geographic, historic, cultural, economic and technological
pressures to develop and have a coherent defensive military doctrine and weapons which would help
to implement it. As Michael Lind writes:
The possibility of military defeat and invasion are usually left out of discussion .in the
United states and Britain. The United States, if one discounts Pearl Harbor has not suffered a
serious invasion from 1812; Britain, though it has been bombed from the air in the (20th century),
has been free from foreign invasion even longer .Elsewhere in the world, political elites cannot
as easily separate foreign policy and economics.
Russia lives under these pressures constantly and, in fact, Russians as ethnos were formed and
defined by warfare. Russia is also defined by her weapons and it is here where we may start looking
for one of the most important rationales for anti-Russian hysteria in Washington which have proceeded
unabated sincethe return of Crimea in 2014, in reality even earlier.
The Western analytical and expert community failed utterly in assessing Russia's both economic
and, as a consequence, military potential. The problem here is not with Russia, which offers unprecedented
access to all kinds of foreigners, from businessmen and tourists to political and intelligence (overt
and covert) professionals. The problem is with Western view of Russia which as late as three years
ago was completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities. That is the reality
not defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices.
It took a complete and embarrassing failure of the West's economic sanctions on Russia to recognize
that the actual size of Russia's economy is about that of Germany, if not larger, and that Russia
was defining herself in terms of enclosed technological cycles, localization and manufacturing long
before she was forced to engage in the war in Georgia in 2008. Very few people realistically care
about Russia's Stock Market, the financial markets of Germany are on the order of magnitude larger,
but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can. Germany
doesn't have a space industry, Russia does. The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics
industry and her military-industrial complex which dwarfs that of any "economic" competitor Western
"economists" always try to compare Russia to, with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk,
not quality, only. Third or Second World economies do not produce such weapons as Borey-class strategic
missile submarines or SU-35 fighter jets, they also do not build space-stations and operate the only
global alternative to US GPS, GLONASS system.
Whether this lesson will be learned by the combined West is yet to be seen. So far, the learning
process has been slow for US crowd which cheered on US deindustrialization and invented a fairy tale
concept of post-industrial, that is non-productive, virtual economy.
The Russian economy is not without problems, far from it-it still tries to break with the "heritage"
of robbery and deformities of 1990s and still tries to find its way on a path different from destructive
ideology of Russia's "young reformers" who still dominate policy formulation, be it from the positions
of power or through such institutions as notorious High School of Economics.
Yet, it seems this economy which was "
left in tatters " or was an economy of a "
gas station masquerading as a country ", is the only other economy in the world which can produce
and does produce the whole spectrum of weapons ranging from small arms to state-of-the-art complex
weapon and signal processing systems. No other nation with the exception of the US and Russia, not
even China, can produce and procure a cutting edge military technology which has capabilities beyond
the reach of everyone else.
Here, the US establishment, also known as the Neocon interventionist cabal, it seems, has begun
to wake up to actual reality, not the fictitious one that the US can allegedly create for itself.
Such as the fact that Russia, in a planned and well executed manner, without any unnecessary fanfare,
launched a complete upgrade of her naval nuclear deterrent with the state of the art SSBNs of Borey-class
(Project 955 and 955A). Three submarines of this type are already afloat while other 5 are in a different
stages of completion and this is the program which most of US Russia "analysts" were laughing at
10 years ago. They are not laughing anymore.
Today it is US Navy which is in dire need for upgrade of its nuclear deterrent, with the youngest
of Ohio-class SSBN, SSBN-743 USS Louisiana, being 20 year old. The future replacement of venerable
Ohio-class SSBNs, a Columbia-class is slated to go into production in 2021 that is if the R&D
will go smoothly. But one has to consider a feature which became defining of US R&D and weapons procurement
practices-delays and astronomical costs of US weapons, which, despite constantly being declared "superior",
"unrivaled" and "best in the world" are not such at all, especially for the prices they are offered
both domestically and abroad. As in the case with above mentioned Columbia-class SSBN,
the GAO expects the cost of
the whole program to be slightly above 97 billion dollars and that means that the average cost
for each sub of this class will be around 8.1 billion dollars. That is much more than the cost
of the whole-8 advanced submarines-program of Russia's naval nuclear deterrent.
And this single example demonstrates well an abyss in fundamental approaches to the war between
US and Russia: not only do Russian weapons rival those made in US, they are much-much less expensive
and they provide Russia with this proverbial bang for a buck, also known in professional circles
which deal with strategy and operation's research as cost/effectiveness ratio. Here, United States
is simply no competition to Russia and the gap not only remains, it widens with ever-increasing speed.
As Colonel Daniel Davies admitted : " The truth is, the United States is nowhere near as powerful
and dominant as many believe ." That brings us to a second issue, of doctrines, operational concepts
and weapons themselves.
A complete inability to see the evolution of Russia's Armed Forces is another failure which
not only irritated but continues to irritate US military-political establishment since it proved
them completely wrong. Economic "blindness" factored in here very strongly-it was inevitable
in a system that looks at the world through a grossly distorted Wall Street monetarist spyglass.
Many times it was pointed out that direct linear comparison, dollar-for-dollar, of military budgets
is wrong and does not reflect real military, in general, and combat, in particular, potentials in
the least.
While the US Navy was busy spending 420 million dollars per hull on its 26-ship fleet of Littoral
Combat Ships (LCS), Russian Navy spent two times less per unit on a frigates whose combat capabilities
dwarf those of any LCS in any aspect: ASW, Air Defense and Sensors, including the ability to launch
supersonic anti-shipping cruise missiles from 600 kilometers and land-attack missiles from 2500.
The same goes to much smaller and even much cheaper missile corvettes of Buyan and Karakurt classes
which can engage any US Navy's targets, let alone something of LCS caliber.
Experiences with a technological embarrassment known as F-35 merely confirm the fact that US is
being tangled in a bizarre combination of unrealistic doctrinal views, unachievable technological
and operational requirements and, in general, a complete failure to follow Sun Tzu's popular dictums
of "Know Thy Enemy" and "Know Thy Self". On both counts the US policy makers and doctrine mongers
failed miserably.
As late as two years ago a number of US Russia's military "experts" declared that Russia's ground
forces return to division structure was merely "symbolic". Symbolic they were not, with Russia resurrecting
both divisions and armies as appropriate operational-tactical and operational-strategic units in
order for a large scale combined arms operations. While following closely the evolution of US forces
within the framework of initially much touted Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), Russia never
changed her focus on the large scale combined arms operations. This came as a nasty surprise on 08/08/2008
when the elements of the supposedly "backward" Russian 58 th Army demolished NATO and
Israel trained, and partially equipped, Saakashivili's Army in a matter of 96 hours. Nobody celebrated
this victory and Russian Army was subjected, somewhat justifiably, to scathing criticism from many
quarters. But it was clear already then that combined arms operations of large army units remain
a principle method of the war between peer-to-peer state actors. The issue then, in 2008, was that
US didn't consider Russia a peer and even near peer "status" was grudgingly afforded due to Russia's
nuclear arsenal.
Things changed dramatically after the coup in Kiev and junta unleashing a war in Donbass. Brigade
and Division size forces there engaged in a full blown combined arms warfare, including head to head
armor clashes, employment, especially for LDNR forces, of full C4ISR capabilities and Net-Centric
warfare principles. So much so that it created a cultural shock for US military's COIN crowd
, which got used to operate in the environment of total domination over its rag-tag lightly armed
guerilla formations in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And it was then, and later, in 2015, demonstrated by Russia's Syria campaign, that the realization
of an inability to defeat Russia conventionally began to dawn on many in D.C. establishment. Thus
the whole premise of last quarter century "Pax Americana"-alleged conventional military superiority
over any adversary-was blown out of the water. American military record of the last quarter century
is not impressive for a power which proclaimed herself to be a hyper-power and as having the most
powerful military in history. As US Marine Corps Captain Joshua Waddle bitterly admitted :
"Let us first begin with the fundamental underpinnings of this delusion: our measures of performance
and effectiveness in recent wars. It is time that we, as professional military officers, accept
the fact that we lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Objective analysis of the U.S. military's
effectiveness in these wars can only conclude that we were unable to translate tactical victory
into operational and strategic success".
Delusion, of course, being the fact of US expecting a decisive tactical and technological superiority
on the battlefield. Overwhelming empirical evidence tells a completely different story:
United States military in future conflicts will have to deal, in case of conventional conflict
against near-peer, let alone peer, with adversary who will have C4ISR capability either approaching
that or on par with that of the US. This adversary will have the ability to counter US military
decision cycles (OODA loop) with equal frequency and will be able to produce better tactical, operational
and strategic decisions. US real and perceived advantage in electronic means of warfare (EW) will
be greatly reduced or completely suppressed by present and future EW means of adversary thus forcing
US forces fight under the conditions of partial or complete electronic blindness and with partially
or completely suppressed communications and computer networks. US will encounter combat technologies
not only on par but often better designed and used , from armor to artillery, to hyper-sonic
anti-shipping missiles, than US military ever encountered. Modern air-forces and complex advanced
air defense systems will make the main pillar of US military power-its Air Force-much less effective.
Last but not least, today the US military will have to deal with a grim reality of its staging
areas, rear supply facilities, lines of communications being the target of massive salvos of long-range
high subsonic, supersonic and hyper-sonic missiles . The US military has never encountered such
paradigm in its history. Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive
missile strike.
But above all, if to finally name this "peer", which is Russia, and that is who pre-occupies the
minds of former and current Pentagon's and National Security brass, in case of conventional conflict
Russians will be fighting in defense of their motherland. Here Russia has a track record without
equals in human history. Meanwhile, if the current military trends continue, and
there are no reasons for them to stop
, the window of opportunities for the Neocon cabal to attack Russia conventionally and unleash
a preventive war is closing really fast (if it ever existed). That is what drives to a large extent
an aggressive military rhetoric and plans, such as National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's doctrine
and war mongering.
By mid 2020s Russia's rearmament program will be largely complete, which will allow Russia's Armed
Forces to field and float a technology which will completely prevent NATO from exercising any illusions
about the outcome of any conventional war in Russia's geographic vicinity, including her littoral,
and that will mark the end of US designs on Eurasia by military means. It wouldn't matter how many
carrier battle groups US will be able to move to forward areas or how many submarines, or how many
brigades it will be able to deploy around Russia it will not be able to defeat Russia conventionally.
With that, especially when one considers China's growing military potential, comes the end of Pax-Bellum
Americana, the one we all hoped for this election cycle.
At this point, the only locality where the US can hope to "defeat" Russia is in Syria, to
reassert, even if for a little while longer, itself as "greatest military in history". But even there
the window of opportunities is closing fast since the Russian conventional response in Europe would
be devastating.
As Colonel Pat Lang's blog noted : "If Russia decides to call our bluff and escalate things
Trump will likely preside over a public humiliation that will explode America's military delusions
of grandeur".
Today, the United States in general, and her military in particular, still remain a premier geopolitical
force, but increasingly they will have to content with the fact that the short-lived era of self-proclaimed
superiority in every single facet of modern nation-states' activity is over, if it ever was the case
to start with. Will the US "Deep State" unleash a preventive war to prevent Russia from serving US
with the pink slip for its position as world's chaos-monger or will it be, rephrasing the magnificent
Corelli Barnett: " US Power had quietly vanished amid stupendous events of the 21
st Century, like a ship-of-the-line going down unperceived in the smoke and confusion
of battle ". This is the most important question of the 21 st Century so far, but
knowing US deep state ignorance of Russia one can never discount its insanity and an acute case of
sour grapes.
Andrei Martyanov has extensive knowledge of naval issues, and has been published in US Naval Institute Proceedings . Using the handle "SmoothieX12," he has written over
130,000 words of comments at The Unz Review , overwhelmingly on Russian and military
matters.
Anonymous , April 17, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT
• 100 Words Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3%
and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
Intelligent Dasein , •
Website April 17,
2017 at 5:40 am GMT
• 400 Words I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's
Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with
Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding
the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump
of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged
world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as
well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
• Agree: Amanda , bluedog , Seamus Padraig •
anon , April 17, 2017 at 5:57 am GMT
• 100 Words "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..
Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military
threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military
and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political
establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson
who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917.
• Agree: Randal •
Art , April 17, 2017 at 7:30 am GMT
• 100 Words Russia said it was going to bolster Syria's air defenses.
If true – what does this mean for Israeli air power over Syria and Lebanon?
Hezbollah has shown, even with its air force behind it that the IDF is a paper tiger.
Without its air forces at 100%, Israel is very vulnerable. A war would be very costly. Many
Jews want to leave Israel as it is now.
Peace - Art
•
animalogic , April 17, 2017 at 7:48 am GMT
• 100 Words The US – with its NATO dogs contributing their yaps – has driven Russia & China
into an economic & strategic partnership. Such a foreign policy must rate in the top ten of historical
blunders. Essentially they have given a very helpful shove towards Eurasian unity - not yet, but
forseeable, perhaps probable.
Russia & China's continuing military advances are just one side of a coin: economic integration
& advance is the other.
If or when the US loses this struggle it need look no futher than classic Greek tragedy for the
first causes of its decline: HUBRIS. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 9:27 am GMT
Hey 'Neocon Cabal' is my phrase!!!!! (wink)
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity that scares the Americans and the Jews to death.
I hope the Iranians get as many of those SAM's as they need to defend against the Zionist threat!
•
mp , April 17, 2017 at 9:52 am GMT
• 100 Words It is one thing to let a woman "man" a game console in order to fire a missile,
or pilot a killer drone, hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away from the action. But it's
another when "boots" hit the ground. I wonder how effective our Americanized, feminized, transgendered,
gay friendly, diversified Army and Navy will be when they actually have to storm a beach, somewhere,
against a real army–and not some third world outpost. •
Verymuchalive , April 17, 2017 at 9:57 am GMT
• 200 Words This is a situation that should never have permitted to arise. The US Federal
Deficit is approaching $20 trillion, 2016′s Trade Deficit is $0.5 trillion and the Accumulated
Trade Deficit over the last 30 years about $10 trillion. The US is to all intents bankrupt, and
bankrupt states quickly lose their empires.
Of course, America's creditors – China, Japan etc – have rigged the financial sector so that America
is still able to afford their goods. Herein, lies the solution. The US dollar is a fiat currency
and will collapse sooner or later. It is in Russia and China's interests that they precipitate
such a collapse ASAP, even if they themselves suffer negative economic consequences.
Faced with an imploding economy, and a choice between minimum social welfare measures and a grotesquely
expansive military, there can only be one outcome for America. The Neocons will be defanged.
This form of economic warfare has got to be a lot safer and more effective in achieving its aims
than actual warfare. I sincerely hope that the Russians and Chinese have some such plan formulated.
The era of military confrontation should have been over with the end of the Soviet Union. The
Neocons have stolen the Peace, and helped themselves to the Peace Dividend. Reply More...
This Commenter Display All Comments
reiner Tor , • Website
April 17, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT
I think that while it's a grave mistake for Americans to underestimate Russians, it's also
a grave mistake for Russians to underestimate Americans.
Since I cannot claim to be an expert in military technology, I always read such articles with
great interest, but never know with how much grain of salt I need to take them – none? a little?
a lot? a whole salt mine?
•
LondonBob , April 17, 2017 at 10:09 am GMT
• 100 Words Trump's isolationism and embrace of realpolitik is just a recognition of realities,
interestingly this is a viewpoint shared in many European capitals, despite their fulminating
over Trump. If Trump isn't co-opted he deserves congratulations for stymieing the traditional
imperial overstretch, that is unless recent events in Syria and the Ukraine, perhaps analogous
to the Boer War, don't already represent the high points of US power before inevitable decline.
Avoiding a WWI type general conflagration will be achievement enough.
We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.
•
Anatoly Karlin , • Website
April 17, 2017 at 10:28 am GMT
• 400 WordsNEW! Excellent article – and congratulations on your first article here.
Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles
.
* GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket
capitalizations.
* The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
* The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability
to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the
Baltics).
* The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger
who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight
the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come
to fruition.
* You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs.
More skeptical about:
* " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can " – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am
sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones)
and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
* "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry with the exception of
US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in
semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art
is now 10nm).
* It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made
that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics,
Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated.
To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30
years time.
•
NoseytheDuke, April 17, 2017 at 11:06 am GMT
Having read many, many of SmoothieX12′s knowledgable comments and now this article, I would imagine
that his many critics have enough egg on their faces to have their eggs any way they want them,
except sunny side up of course.
Nobody should be surprised by the revelations here nor should they feel disheartened. It is
doubtful that Russia has any plans or even thoughts to ever invade or harm the US. The upside
could be that the Neocons and the AIPAC crowd might become so disempowered that they will be finally
held to account for their many crimes and that would be good for everyone.
AP , April 17, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT
@Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and
with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Goods and services
in Russia are considerably less expensive than in the West (and this includes the cost of producing
fighter jets or rockets), so for such purposes GDP PPP is a better indicator than is nominal GDP.
In terms of GDP PPP, Russia is of course not on par with the United States but is considerably
higher than Mexico. It is in the same neighborhood as places such as Hungary.
Russia's overall GDP PPP places it slightly below Germany – 6th place in the world:
@anon "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..
Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military
threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military
and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political
establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson
who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917. I agreed with the main thrust of
your comment, but I would just note that I don't agree with the last sentence:
It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war
in 1917.
The essence of the US was always expansion by military and other means, from its settler colonial
origins and the Manifest Destiny to the expansionist wars against Mexico and Spain, the Monroe
Doctrine, and colonial expansions into Hawaii, the Philippines and central America, all before
Wilson, who admittedly took the opportunity handed to him by the self-destructive warring of the
European powers to go for the big one.
It's just the nature of the beast.
Lewl42, April 17, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMT
@Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent
3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Russia is a middle
income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita.
But the US GDP is of an different structure. Compared it is overblown with pure financial sales
and "hedonistic adjustments". More is blown by the culture. In the US much more everyday things
relies on money. In case of case they are all worth nothing. Furthermore, if it comes to conflicts
than the whole US Infrastructure has to be "revalued", and i doubt that it can withheld some stress
tests.
If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke
No country that relies on oil ( Russia do not) has made substantial improvements. Normally
they are problem states where the problems made by oil are solved by money.
So from my point of view the opposite is true. Russia has made the big mistake to open itself
to the west and was bitten. Now they readjust (with a border to china). Thank's to the US Oligarchs
which thrown away that chance for they're primitive Neanderthal tribe thinking.
reiner Tor, Website April
17, 2017 at 12:33 pm GMT
@mp It is one thing to let a woman "man" a game console in order to fire a missile, or pilot a
killer drone, hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away from the action. But it's another when
"boots" hit the ground. I wonder how effective our Americanized, feminized, transgendered, gay
friendly, diversified Army and Navy will be when they actually have to storm a beach, somewhere,
against a real army--and not some third world outpost. Don't worry, when the going gets tough,
suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality".
•
alexander, April 17, 2017 at 12:36 pm GMT
Thank you Mr Martyanov, for a highly informative article.
I am always amazed at the "euphemisms" of our "belligerent war" era, and how they affix themselves,
and have affixed themselves, to our mendacious and deceitful behavior.
Take the idea of a "surge", as was used during the Iraq disaster, as a substitute for the word
"escalation" because nobody was comfortable with "escalating the war" once the imminent WMD threat
had proven to be phony .so our belligerent elites substituted the word "surge" to ram through
funding for the escalation.
Or lets look at the "euphemisms" of "pre-emptive war" or "preventive war". Do they not function
as substitutes for what is , in reality, the greatest crime any nation on earth can commit "War
of Aggression"?
There are other areas too, where we need to take a long, hard look a this " parade of euphemisms"
which is constantly inserting itself into the hearts and minds of our citizens .
For example, lets take a look at the word "propaganda", which is a word that, for the most
part, stands on its own ,yet, for arguments sake, does it not function as a "euphemism",( in our
ongoing global belligerence) for FRAUD ?
As we think about these assorted "euphemistic realities" set upon us in our tragic age..we
understand the acute distinction between defining something as "war propaganda" versus "WAR FRAUD".
"War propaganda", however desultory a term, is understood as a legitimate tool within the toolbox
of belligerence whereas WAR FRAUD is implicitly understood as a CRIME..which is in need of punishment.
Have not our euphemistic manipulations , like "preemptive war", or "preventive war",overwhelmed
the integrity of our national discourse, and paved the way for heinous murderous behavior which
would normally not be tolerated ?,
Is not their primary purpose to insulate us from our own awareness of the CRIMES we have committed
, and will continue to commit ?.
What a blessing it will be for the whole wide world, once we end this " charade of euphemisms" and
start calling things what they truly are.
Erebus, April 17, 2017 at 12:39 pm GMT
Yes, thank you for an excellent summation of the situation.
The owners of the US face an Either/Or moment. Either they abandon their ambitions of Global
Hegemony, and retreat to attempt to rule over N. America (with some residual dreams of ruling
C. & S. America to sweeten the pot) or they go for broke.
Unlike Dasein, I have no doubt that any dreams of Global Hegemony will come crashing to ground
if any sort of a war breaks out. Putin has made it perfectly plain. Russia will never allow itself
to be invaded again. That means something, and what it means is that Russia will take the fight
to the enemy when it sees its red lines crossed.
The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs
aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being
revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with
none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure.
If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired.
No mushroom clouds or devastated cities, yet, but the Either/Or moment will become acute indeed.
One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow their internationalistic instincts
when that moment has passed.
reiner Tor, Website
April 17, 2017 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.
Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles
.
* GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket
capitalizations.
* The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
* The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability
to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the
Baltics).
* The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger
who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight
the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come
to fruition.
* You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs.
More skeptical about:
* " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's
second most complex economy
would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs
(it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
* "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception
of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind
in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the
art is now 10nm).
* It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has
made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In
robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly
demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years,
but not in 20-30 years time.
The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.
Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was
not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar
terrorists), but then they changed their minds.
In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved – all countries that participated could've
easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none
had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.
AP, April 17, 2017 at 12:50 pm GMT
@Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.
Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles
.
* GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket
capitalizations.
* The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
* The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability
to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the
Baltics).
* The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger
who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight
the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come
to fruition.
* You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs.
More skeptical about:
* " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's
second most complex economy
would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs
(it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
* "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of
US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in
semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art
is now 10nm).
* It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made
that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics,
Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated.
To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30
years time. I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses. But –
You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs
Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side
has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real
test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
"but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can" – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military
spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task.
I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent
AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment
But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.
iffen, April 17, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMT
This is an interesting and informative article.
Can you give us your opinion of the F-35 program and to a lesser extent the LCS program? I
have no doubt that we get good and reliable information in the US, but just in case, a different
perspective on whether the projected capabilities are actually being met by the weapons would
be nice to consider.
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 1:14 pm GMT
@Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.
Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .
* GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket
capitalizations.
* The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
* The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability
to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the
Baltics).
* The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger
who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight
the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come
to fruition.
* You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs.
More skeptical about:
* " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's
second most complex economy
would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs
(it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
* "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of
US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in
semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art
is now 10nm).
* It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made
that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics,
Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated.
To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30
years time.
Excellent article – and congratulations on your first article here.
Thank you.
Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently
began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).
Processing power in military applications is less dependent on 10 or 28 nm, than on mathematics
and algorithms. Both architectures are more than sufficient for the whole spectrum of military
tasks, be it signal processing or developing firing solutions.
I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent
AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
Apples and oranges. Producing a state-of-the-art nuclear sub is on the order of magnitude more
complex task than producing even a very good SSK. China now produces very good AIP SSKs of 039A
type, she still is not capable to produce a nuke with at least third generation characteristics.
Railguns, and associated naval EM systems
Absolutely useless, other than to impress journalists, in combat paradigm where hyper-sonic
missiles with ranges of 1000 kilometers begin to rule the day. I think 3M22 Zircon reaching Mach=8
this weekend on trials is by far more impressive and influential on the tactical and even political
level than any rail-gun. Zircon is a change in combat paradigm of such a scale that it is even
difficult to completely grasp it at this stage. I may elaborate on it in depth at some point of
time.
reiner Tor, • Website
April 17, 2017 at 1:18 pm GMT
@AP I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses. But -
You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs
Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side
has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real
test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
"but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can"
– Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany
just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am
sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones)
and a global positioning system with that kind of investment
But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.
US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a
tougher test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran.
Avery, April 17, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
@reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send
straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". { suddenly the US military will only
send straight white men to die .}
What happens IF straight white men refuse to go and die?
[Stunning Evidence that the Left Has Won its War on White Males]
{White males, in large numbers, are simply losing their will to live, and as a result, they
are dying so prematurely and in such large numbers that a startling demographic gap has emerged.
It is not just the "opioid epidemic" that is killing off white working class males, it is a spiritual
crisis, and Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have the numbers to sustain this conclusion.}
Carlton Meyer, • Website April
17, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT
@Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent
3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Over the years, the
Pentagon encouraged Congress to move parts of national security spending out of its budget to
the extent that almost half is found outside the DOD. The USA really spends over a trillion dollars
a year. For example, nuclear weapons research, testing, procurement, and maintenance is found
in the Dept of Energy budget.
And as others have noted, GDP is a measure of activity, not prosperity. For example, mortgage
refinancing creates lots of GDP, but no real wealth. Hurricanes and arson are good for GDP too!
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 1:45 pm GMT
@Z-man Hey 'Neocon Cabal' is my phrase!!!!! (wink)
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity that scares the Americans and the Jews to death.
I hope the Iranians get as many of those SAM's as they need to defend against the Zionist threat!
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From
people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300
seem almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes
online, well–it is a different game altogether from there.
Randal , April 17, 2017 at 1:48 pm GMT
An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree with all of it. Certainly many
good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly Karlin's points above, both
in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.
But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines
and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends.
Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody
except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they
don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems
will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.
If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying
basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect,
measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:
Share of world gdp, ppp:
US
2020 14.878%
2015 15.809%
2010 16.846%
2000 20.76%
China
2020 19.351%
2015 17.082%
2010 13.822%
2000 7.389%
Russia
2020 2.836%
2015 3.275%
2010 3.641%
2000 3.294%
Source IMF per economywatch.com
Population (2017):
China: 1,388,232,693
US: 326,474,013
Russia: 143,375,006
These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are
concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's
military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all
but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative
to all rivals, for decades to come.
To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its
rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had
around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and
Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the
British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in
the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic
strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).
The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp
from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so
it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely
have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that
might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might
be different.
The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in
the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities.
mushroom, April 17, 2017 at 2:02 pm GMT
When folks discuss Russia's capabilities they often forget what's blatantly obvious – which is
what's not obvious, i.e. what the bear has created and is in it's hidden caves. What happened
to that U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea was just a teasing mini-harbinger of this reality!
So is the genius to create a cavity to eavesdrop, &c If you want to enjoy happy days don't
mess with the bear!
5371, April 17, 2017 at 2:42 pm GMT
@Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent
3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Stupid beyond belief.
Countries can't go broke doing something, if they control the natural and human resources they
need to accomplish it. In addition, you apparently did not read Smoothie's explanation of why
just comparing the sums spent is silly. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread
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anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:45 pm GMT
@Randal I agreed with the main thrust of your comment, but I would just note that I don't
agree with the last sentence:
It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war
in 1917.
The essence of the US was always expansion by military and other means, from its settler colonial
origins and the Manifest Destiny to the expansionist wars against Mexico and Spain, the Monroe
Doctrine, and colonial expansions into Hawaii, the Philippines and central America, all before
Wilson, who admittedly took the opportunity handed to him by the self-destructive warring of the
European powers to go for the big one.
It's just the nature of the beast. Yes but up until 1898 – the war against Spain – the US actually
got something out of its wars. Wars with countries BEYOND the Americas have gained nothing for
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Comments
5371 , April 17, 2017 at 2:45 pm GMT
@reiner Tor
US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher
test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. Turkey's military
has a decent reputation, but I'm not sure that the reputation corresponds with reality any longer.
•
Agent76 , April 17, 2017 at 2:46 pm GMT
• 100 Words March 19, 2017 Putin Prepares For Invasion of Europe With Massive Cuts to Military
Spending
Russia announces "deepest defense budget cuts since 1990s". Putin must be stopped before it's
too late. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace
and prosperity. Long gone are the days of wasteful military expenditures and no-bid contracts
to build airplanes and aircraft carriers that neither fly nor float.
Aug 8, 2016 "I want to scare Assad" Mike Morell on Charlie Rose
Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, discusses the need to put pressure on Syria
and Russia. The full conversation airs on PBS on August 8th, 2016.
Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
ANOSPH , April 17, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people
who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem
almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online,
well--it is a different game altogether from there. Excellent article. I look forward to many
more from you.
Re: the S400, for those interested, TASS developed an excellent and visually appealing overview
on the system in Russian:
Just keep scrolling down.
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anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:51 pm GMT
@reiner Tor
US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher
test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. The real point is
that Russia and Turkey are almost neighbors while N.K. is about 8,000 miles from the US. In other
words the US could ignore Korea. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide
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5371 , April 17, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT
• 100 Words @reiner Tor
The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.
Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was
not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar
terrorists), but then they changed their minds.
In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've
easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none
had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.
Neither France nor Germany could have stayed out once Russia was in, but then both of them had
given their respective allies every encouragement to bring matters to a head. The French had a
great increase in self-confidence just in the last two or three years. You are right that Serbia
didn't even decide to reject the ultimatum until they heard Russia was already going ahead with
pre-mobilisation. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display
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anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
@reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only
send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". Hopefully at least some of those
straight white males will know better. Hopefully.
Then again people often act contrary to their best interests.
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Hunsdon , April 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
Thank you, sir. Great article. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 3:02 pm GMT
• 300 WordsNEW! @Randal An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree
with all of it. Certainly many good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly
Karlin's points above, both in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.
But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines
and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends.
Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody
except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they
don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems
will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.
If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying
basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect,
measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:
Share of world gdp, ppp:
US
2020 14.878%
2015 15.809%
2010 16.846%
2000 20.76%
China
2020 19.351%
2015 17.082%
2010 13.822%
2000 7.389%
Russia
2020 2.836%
2015 3.275%
2010 3.641%
2000 3.294%
Source IMF per economywatch.com
Population (2017):
China: 1,388,232,693
US: 326,474,013
Russia: 143,375,006
These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are
concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's
military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all
but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative
to all rivals, for decades to come.
To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its
rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had
around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and
Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the
British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in
the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic
strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).
The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp
from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so
it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely
have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that
might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might
be different.
The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in
the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities.
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many
of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US
"missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first
phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination
of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.
P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is
a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things
Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the
issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological
dimensions. You want to see operational dimension–look no further than Mosul which is still, after
6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible. In
general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's
definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff
Academy uses virtually identical definition.
•
anon , April 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT
• 200 Words @reiner Tor
The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.
Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was
not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar
terrorists), but then they changed their minds.
In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've
easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none
had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.
That is a point I have often tried to make. Had the Tsar just told the Serbs flat out, "You guys
are on your own. Comply. Or fight the Central Powers by yourself. We are out of it.",' there would
never have been a 'Great' war (WW1). At most the 'war' would have been a minor brawl between Serbia
and Austria-Hungary. History would have recorded it as just another Balkan skirmish. It would
have been virtually forgotten today. This was the initial assumption of the Kaiser when he issued
his 'blank check' of support. The Tsar would have saved millions of lives, including his own and
his family too. Just nine years earlier the Tsar had fought and lost a disastrous war with Japan.
That defeat led to a revolution that came within a hair of deposing him. He SHOULD have learned
his lesson and avoided any future conflict like the plague. Tsar Nicolas was an incredibly stupid
man. He deserves far more vilification then the Kaiser does. •
TG , April 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT
• 300 Words An interesting article. A few random thoughts.
1. "Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death" – Otto von Bismarck.
2. 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?
3. 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 unpayable 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
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Anonymouse , April 17, 2017 at 3:12 pm GMT
@Art Russia said it was going to bolster Syria's air defenses.
If true – what does this mean for Israeli air power over Syria and Lebanon?
Hezbollah has shown, even with its air force behind it that the IDF is a paper tiger.
Without its air forces at 100%, Israel is very vulnerable. A war would be very costly. Many
Jews want to leave Israel as it is now.
Peace --- Art You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear
of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit. •
Vendetta , April 17, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
• 200 Words @reiner Tor
The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.
Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was
not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar
terrorists), but then they changed their minds.
In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've
easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none
had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.
Japan was certainly the greatest beneficiary of the war in economic terms. Their exports ended
up tripling to fuel the demand of the wartime European economies and especially to fill in the
gap for consumer goods in the East Asian markets whose normal suppliers had redirected their production
for the war effort. Shipbuilding in Japan also boomed as a result of wartime demands. Pre-WWI
Japan was still importing most of its major warships from Britain; post-WWI Japan was building
them all on its own.
Romania gained a lot in territory but its doubtful whether these gains were worth it in terms
of the lives they cost.
The United States certainly gained in terms of geopolitical power, but that was largely due
to the same wartime economic circumstances that had benefited Japan, with the addition of supplanting
Britain as the world's leading financial power. These gains, however, would have been won whether
or not we'd sent 100,000 of our own to die in France, so their lives ultimately amounted to little
more than a sacrifice to Woodrow Wilson's egomaniacal dreams of reshaping the world order into
a utopia.
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5371 , April 17, 2017 at 3:18 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article
here.
Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles
.
* GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket
capitalizations.
* The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
* The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability
to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the
Baltics).
* The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger
who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight
the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come
to fruition.
* You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs.
More skeptical about:
* " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia
can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending),
Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's
second most complex economy
would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs
(it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
* "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of
US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in
semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art
is now 10nm).
* It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made
that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics,
Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated.
To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30
years time. WW1, unlike Barbarossa, didn't start with a German attack on Russia, although in each
case the argument was made by some (stronger in retrospective for 1941 than 1914) that Russia
would be too strong to take on in a couple of years. The difference is that a number of factors
– the ideological conflict, the success of "blitzkrieg", the weak Soviet performance at the start
of the Finnish war – created an illusory hope of easy victory for the Germans along with the fear
of later defeat. That tipped the balance in favour of attack.
As I understand it, the claimed regular progress to smaller and smaller chip feature sizes has
for some time been a matter of marketing, not reality. Reply More... This Commenter
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DannyMarcus , April 17, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus
among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out
war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would,
notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long
as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself
as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and
military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China,
which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly
resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions
for hegemony well beyond its shores?
I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present
subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before
any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing
the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American
adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly
to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. •
Randal , April 17, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT
• 200 Words @AP I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses.
But -
You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance
in fighting Arabs
Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side
has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real
test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
"but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can"
– Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany
just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending,
I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am
sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones)
and a global positioning system with that kind of investment
But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.
US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
Russia would crush Turkey very quickly in a straight one on one conflict, though it would struggle
to physically occupy it. The only reason Turkey would have any capability to resist at all is
that Turkey has full US backing, both in terms of the NATO alliance and in terms of the military
systems and capabilities it fields. Russia's capabilities, in contrast, are wholly indigenous.
Individually, the two countries are not remotely in the same class, militarily.
Likewise for the US versus Iran or NK. The problem would likely not be in defeating the military
forces themselves, but in occupying and holding ground longer term, and dealing with problems
caused by horizontal escalation.
These are issues not really of military capabilities, but rather of national political will
to apply those capabilities ruthlessly and to inflict and to take the losses required for total
victory.
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gwynedd1 , April 17, 2017 at 3:30 pm GMT
The US is not worried about Russia. They were worried about the EU and Russia with economic
links to China. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Vendetta , April 17, 2017 at 3:34 pm GMT
• 200 Words @5371 Turkey's military has a decent reputation, but I'm not sure that the
reputation corresponds with reality any longer. Their recent mishaps in Syria certainly cast some
doubts on their formidable reputation. However I would hesitate to go so far as to say that Turkey
has become a paper tiger.
I don't know if there's a more professional terminology for this, but I think there is a difference
between what you might call weakness the surface level and weakness at the core.
The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one
which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.
America in the years before it became a permanently mobilized state was also prone to this
sort of happening in the initial stages of its wars – see the rout at Kasserine Pass in World
War II or the initial defeats it suffered to the North Koreans in 1950. The British made "our
Italians" jokes after Kasserine, but these had a short shelf life as US performance picked up
very quickly afterwards.
The state of the Turkish military right now seems more likely to be one of surface-level weakness
(which would be tempered by exposure to battle) than of core-level weakness (which would be exacerbated
by it).
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Anon , April 17, 2017 at 3:43 pm GMT
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/this-cold-war-is-even-crazier-than-the-last/19689#.WPTiK9QrK4Q
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Astuteobservor II , April 17, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMT
excellent first article on unz. looking forward to more. Reply More... This Commenter
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inertial , April 17, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT
• 100 Words A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding
of the economic and financial realities.
No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian
stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian
financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising,
as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others
don't.
• Agree: Kiza •
Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT
• 100 Words
The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one
which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.
Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief)
was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring
who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.
Gen. Waldemar Erfuth
Wermacht Army Attache in Finish General Staff
from book: Fighting in Hell – German Ordeal on Eastern Front
•
reiner Tor , • Website
April 17, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMT
@Ondrej
The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one
which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.
Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief)
was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring
who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.
Gen. Waldemar Erfuth
Wermacht Army Attache in Finish General Staff
from book: Fighting in Hell - German Ordeal on Eastern Front
Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief) was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their
experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf
in history.
When was it?
•
Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT
• 100 Words @inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical
poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.
No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian
stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian
financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising,
as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others
don't.
No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the
Russian stock market.
Try to make following thought experiment, what would happen with SP100 financial valuation
of shares GN a Lockheed in case of conflict and what would be impact on with Suchoi and MIG shares
and how this would impact real economy instead of economics?
Luckily there is still plenty of people in Russian companies who were educated in economy instead
of economics..
Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others
don't.
From seeing some discussions in Russian TV channels, I can say people in Russia are in fact
disgusted with part of government still trying to apply Western type of economics..
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Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT
@reiner Tor
Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief) was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their
experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf
in history.
When was it? according to book 4. March 1943
Mannerheim in front of German General as reaction to some public speech of H. Göring before.
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bluedog , April 17, 2017 at 5:36 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US
"missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first
phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination
of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.
P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is
a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things
Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the
issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological
dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still,
after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible.
In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's
definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff
Academy uses virtually identical definition. Very good article and David Stockman says the same
thing on our GDP that its do to very creative accounting much like our BLS report . Reply
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Kiza , April 17, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT
• 600 Words Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said – I do not agree
with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.
Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with
your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In
other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and
US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as
an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office.
Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude
that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in
battle.
In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with
the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum:
no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies,
like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority
which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations
of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent
conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which
it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands
in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently
serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly – Russia
has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China
being the master copier.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some
underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful
military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's
extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free
project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?
As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan
of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this
design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle
of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese
apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level – I remember well
the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised
plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.
•
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 6:19 pm GMT
• 300 WordsNEW! @inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the
typical poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.
No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian
stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian
financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising,
as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others
don't.
Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of
real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.
Mind you–this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of
code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever–make your pick).
Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about 10 times less.
https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world
will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such
a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million
people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask yourself a question
whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook or of the corporation
which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes"
on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it
to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual–a
collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking,
of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual
things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many
in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because
constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off
accident.
•
Jonathan Revusky , •
Website April
17, 2017 at 6:40 pm GMT
• 200 Words I think this is a good article. I say "I think so" because the truth of the matter
is that I lack the detailed domain knowledge to be able to evaluate it very well.
The comment I would make about it (which is not a critique of the article per se ) is
that Russia (or the USSR speaking more precisely) did suffer a horrendous defeat from which it
is still recovering - I mean, in the Cold War. However, that defeat was not military in nature.
It was entirely political/psychological/ideological. (N.B. The complete neocon/zionist takeover
of the U.S. and other Western countries also occurred without firing a shot, no?)
Anyway, no grand battles occurred like Stalingrad or Kursk, yet somehow the USSR was as defeated
a nation in the 1990′s as Germany was in 1945! In my view, the AngloZionists would be more interested
in repeating that feat, than actually getting into a real hot war. That, also, would be their
template for defeating China, as opposed to getting into some land war in Asia.
I assume the above, because I have the tendency to think they are crazy, but not that
crazy. But that said, I don't know for sure either. Maybe they really are that crazy and
I just don't want to believe it. After all, it's really terrifying to think they are insane on
that level.
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carlos22 , April 17, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT
• 100 Words Russia is in the position to be king maker out of China & US.
Think about it Russia collapses & disintergrates, Siberia goes to China, which with all this
land mass, energy reserves and population overtakes the US to become leading superpower. Ask yourself
is that what the US wants?
Or
China betrays Russia, Russia then goes on to be US bitch, allows US missile defence to encircle
China with US bases. China looses a key friend at the UN, when the SHTF in Tibet, Tywan or Hong
Kong China finds its self alone. Is that what China wants?
Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 6:52 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said - I
do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.
Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with
your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In
other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and
US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as
an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office.
Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude
that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in
battle.
In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with
the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum:
no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies,
like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority
which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations
of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent
conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which
it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands
in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently
serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia
has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China
being the master copier.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some
underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful
military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's
extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free
project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?
As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan
of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this
design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle
of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese
apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well
the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised
plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia
can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more.
Superb and efficient educational system of USSR. Last generation is in their forties.
Rules –
1. push what you can into children when they young and train them properly
2. Go fast, finish University in 22 – go to production and learn from olders
3. Go trough Army service (only when you are already extremely good you are exempt)
This gives you head start, you are conditioned to design things that work.
Problem with many current – not only military products, that their designers often do not have
idea how they are used..
You simply can not take classes of ergonomic design and design even hammer correctly as it
is often case with different innovative gadgets nowadays:-)
•
Kiza , April 17, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
• 300 Words @reiner Tor
The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.
Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was
not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar
terrorists), but then they changed their minds.
In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've
easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none
had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.
You and your responders are obviously not Russian, because you exhibit a terribly superficial
knowledge of the pre WW1 Europe and Russia. You must have learned your history in US or British
schools.
The situation in Europe in 1914 was much, much more complicated than your simple minds could
comprehend. The key factor was the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the power vacuum that this
has created in the Balkans. This has encouraged all European powers of the time, from U.K., through
Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire, all the way to Russia to have designs for the area. Russia
actually cultivated most Serbian nationalistic groups to counter the influence of U.K. and Germany/Austria
in the Balkans. Therefore, Russia just did not let its Balkan proxies, the Serbs, down when attacked
by Austro-Hungary, but it was involved in what was happening in the Balkans even before the war
started. Yes, there was internal opposition in Russia against getting involved in the Balkans,
but the non-interventionists lost. The U.K. was trying to prop up the dying Turkish Empire to
remain an enemy of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary were trying to acquire as much new territory
and population in the Balkans as possible. Russia just could not allow the Catholic Austro-Hungary
to strengthen further after the annexation of Bosnia in 1908. France was on the same side. And
so on.
Is it not amazing how most of Western history of WW1 starts with Archduke's assassination in
Sarajevo, instead of power vacuum in Southeast Europe and aggressive imperial designs at the turn
of the century? It is typical Western bullshit history. Nobody had evil intentions, everybody
was just dragged into WW1.
You can observe that today's Russians are blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin
with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution in Russia and cause Tsar family's
deaths, instead of the Serbs who were defending themselves against an expansionist Catholic Empire.
It is mainly the British and US "historians", and their Russian liberals who are blaming the Serbs
for WW1, the same old, same old Anglo-Zionist bull.
•
Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 7:35 pm GMT
@Randal An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree with all of
it. Certainly many good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly Karlin's
points above, both in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.
But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines
and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends.
Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody
except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they
don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems
will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.
If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying
basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect,
measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:
Share of world gdp, ppp:
US
2020 14.878%
2015 15.809%
2010 16.846%
2000 20.76%
China
2020 19.351%
2015 17.082%
2010 13.822%
2000 7.389%
Russia
2020 2.836%
2015 3.275%
2010 3.641%
2000 3.294%
Source IMF per economywatch.com
Population (2017):
China: 1,388,232,693
US: 326,474,013
Russia: 143,375,006
These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are
concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's
military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all
but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative
to all rivals, for decades to come.
To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its
rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had
around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and
Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the
British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in
the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic
strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).
The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp
from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so
it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely
have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that
might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might
be different.
The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in
the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities. Randal,
what do you think happens if neutron star approaches red giant? US GDP contains a lot of things
that are irrelevant to fighting wars. Is US going to hit Russia with nice shoes, highly apprised
real estate or S&P500? Creative accounting is another thing that makes US GDP larger than it really
is. •
AP , April 17, 2017 at 7:50 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real
value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.
https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap
Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of
code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).
Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.
https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world
will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such
a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million
people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question
whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation
which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes"
on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it
to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a
collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking,
of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual
things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many
in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because
constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off
accident.
While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace
giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion.
Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:
Great article. Thanks. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 7:56 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last
year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal
points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures "Russia is a middle
income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita." this is very
funny, how about the 20 trillions of US national debt and it is skyrocketing fast? If you only
count asset without counting liability US maybe in the top 10 GDP per capita, but if you count
net asset the US is in the negative GDP per capita, a broke nation. Perhaps it is American Exceptionalism
logic, claiming credit where credit is not due, living in a world detached from reality.
"If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on
the military it will simply go broke." this is even funnier, Russian does not use USD in Russia,
nor Russian government pay its MIC in USD, meanwhile Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru
the thin air just like the Fed, why does oil price have any relationship with Russian internal
spending? Another example of "completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities"
which is defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices and snakeoil economic theories and
rhetoric taught in the western universities.
•
Art , April 17, 2017 at 8:02 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Anonymouse You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many
years for fear of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit.
You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear of their personal
safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit.
Pointing out the evils of Zionist Israel is not mean – it is crucial.
Exposing Judaism and Zionism for their backward ways is the only path to a peaceful just world.
The Kushner White House is now pushing us to war in N Korea.
Congress must stop this – but they cannot because Jews control them also.
Peace - Art
p.s. Good god – Trump is sending two more carrier groups to Korea!
•
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 8:15 pm GMT
• 100 WordsNEW! @AP
While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace
giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion.
Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:
Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:
Faced with the choice between most expensive Tesla and new F-150 truck for free–I would choose
Tesla, sell it back to dealership or would find some moron from Redmond/Kirkland area and sell
Tesla to him and then would go buy F-150 and would use the rest of the money for other useful
purposes, such as donating to animal shelter or will help some family in need. I certainly would
make sure that I have the access to a bottle or two of really good bourbon to celebrate my new
F-150. I wish, though, that Subaru made trucks.
• Agree: AP Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display
All Comments
Wally , April 17, 2017 at 8:17 pm GMT
• 100 Words I seriously doubt the author's statement:
Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet
Seriously? The technological & industrial genius of Germany could not produce it's own jet
fighter?
After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
Laughable.
Granted, AFAIK, it's current fighters are 'collaborative' with other Europeans.
IOW, Germany did the heavy lifting.
•
Diversity Heretic , April 17, 2017 at 8:25 pm GMT
@anon "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..
Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military
threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military
and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political
establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson
who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917. The Spanish-American War was completely
unnecessary for U.S. security. The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course
with Japan and even today we suffer the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto
Rico. •
Art , April 17, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT
• 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of
possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and
the related comments.
Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly
resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions
for hegemony well beyond its shores?
I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present
subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before
any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing
the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American
adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly
to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in
Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy
military adventures in North Korea.
Too late – Trump is sending in two more carrier groups.
US Deploys Two More Aircraft Carriers Toward Korean Peninsula: Yonhap
According to a report by South Korea's primary news outlet, Yonhap, the Pentagon has directed
a total of three US aircraft carriers toward the Korean Peninsula, citing a South Korean government
source.
This is insane – another preventive war like Iraq – but on China and Russia's doorstep.
Congress must stop this!
Peace - Art
Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 8:35 pm GMT
• 400 WordsNEW! @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said
- I do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.
Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with
your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In
other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and
US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as
an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office.
Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude
that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in
battle.
In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with
the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum:
no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies,
like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority
which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations
of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent
conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which
it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands
in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently
serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia
has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China
being the master copier.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some
underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful
military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's
extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free
project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?
As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan
of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this
design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle
of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese
apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well
the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised
plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.
But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military
has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
Generally legitimate point but it will require a very expanded answer. I will, at some point,
elaborate on it–there are some serious nuances.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies
which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus
it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages
in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put
it mildly – Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers
are copy artists, China being the master copier.
Largely true. However, in serious signal processing systems such as radar, sonar, combat control
(management) systems etc. the main secret are mathematics (algorithms). Just to give you an example,
it was impossible for China to copy any software from any Russian-made systems. As an example,
Shtil Air Defense complexes which went to China after she bought Project 956 destroyers in 1990s
are defended such way that any attempt to tamper with their (and other systems') brains results
in a clean slate. It is true today also, actually, especially today. China now is receiving full
Russian "version" of SU-35 and of S-400, they still will not be able to copy it. Mimic somewhat?
Yes. After all they do have their own S-300 knock offs. Copy? No. They will try, of course but,
say, SU-35 engine and avionics is still beyond their reach.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia
can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate
some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these
wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance?
I believe Ondrej made a good, albeit partial case, for you in his response. Let me put it this
way–viewing Russia's public schools' 8-9th grade books on math and physics (and chemistry) may
create a state of shock in many, even elite, US schools and not among students only I know.
•
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 8:36 pm GMT
NEW! @Ondrej
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more.
Superb and efficient educational system of USSR. Last generation is in their forties.
Rules -
1. push what you can into children when they young and train them properly
2. Go fast, finish University in 22 - go to production and learn from olders
3. Go trough Army service (only when you are already extremely good you are exempt)
This gives you head start, you are conditioned to design things that work.
Problem with many current - not only military products, that their designers often do not have
idea how they are used..
You simply can not take classes of ergonomic design and design even hammer correctly as it
is often case with different innovative gadgets nowadays:-) Some very good points you made. •
Sam Shama , April 17, 2017 at 8:39 pm GMT
• 400 Words @Andrei Martyanov
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US
"missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first
phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination
of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.
P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is
a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things
Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the
issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological
dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still,
after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible.
In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's
definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff
Academy uses virtually identical definition.
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely
from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my,
now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts"
know what they are talking about,
Hey Smoothie,
Loved this informative piece.
On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe
the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.
I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep
science & mathematics bench.
Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive
role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in
the department of raw economic endowments.
China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination
of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the
last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities
not far behind many western European states.
The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without
breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste,
which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient
7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their
entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued
there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.
The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still
hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly
friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature
than besting each other on wartime toys.
•
AtomAnt , April 17, 2017 at 8:43 pm GMT
@inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding
of the economic and financial realities.
No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian
stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian
financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising,
as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others
don't. That's just bankster propaganda. In truth, anything past 5% (generously) for the financial
sector is just parasitism. The US S&P 500 hovers around 30% financial sector. That's just elites
extracting resources from productive people. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread
Hide Thread Display All Comments
anonHUN , April 17, 2017 at 8:47 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus
among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out
war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would,
notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long
as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself
as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and
military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia as the enemy,
the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the Soviet Union
collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading but not
by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships. Many
of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy that
the old days are back.
On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the
"job" that was left unfinished in the 90′s according to their view. They want regime change in
Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc.
Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not
nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.
Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close
since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to
challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop
of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small.
•
Verymuchalive , April 17, 2017 at 8:49 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov
Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real
value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.
https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap
Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of
code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).
Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.
https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world
will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such
a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million
people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question
whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation
which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes"
on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it
to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a
collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking,
of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual
things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many
in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because
constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off
accident. The financialisation of the economy has been a disaster in most Western countries, especially
for manufacturing companies. I had personal dealings with Pilkingtons, a World-leading British
glass company. At the first opportunity, the Banks and other corporate investors sold it to a
Japanese competitor. Pilkingtons is now a branch operation and has lost its research base.
Mr Putin seems to realise the importance of indigenous manufacturing industry- and not only for
defence- related purposes. So the capitalisation of such companies has been treated with great
caution, e g Gazprom. I could be wrong, of course.
So I must ask if you think Mr Putin has an Advanced Manufacturing Strategy in place, like Eamonn
Fingleton sees in Japan, Korea, Germany etc. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread
Hide Thread Display All Comments
Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , •
Website April 17, 2017
at 8:52 pm GMT
• 200 WordsNEW! @Wally I seriously doubt the author's statement:
Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet ...
Seriously? The technological & industrial genius of Germany could not produce it's own jet fighter?
After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
Laughable.
Granted, AFAIK, it's current fighters are 'collaborative' with other Europeans.
IOW, Germany did the heavy lifting.
Germany did the heavy lifting.
Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly
British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for
the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved
in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space
to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.
After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
Actually:
Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder,
so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget
about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for
you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed
technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with
the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about
such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude
than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;)
•
Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:08 pm GMT
• 100 Words ,
There is wisdom to the old adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Your WW1 rant is
lacking in accurate facts and the actual facts that you refer to are misapplied subsequently your
logic is flawed and you find yourself in the oft quoted IBM construct of GIGO.
The genesis and the triggers for the eruption of WW1 are broad and complex and could generally
be put in the context of the colloquial term " a perfect storm". Your Slavic tinted glasses illuminate
only a tip of the tip of the iceberg as it were. I state this in the spirit of constructive criticism.
Cheers-
Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 9:14 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov Some very good points you made. Having recent experience
in teaching in former socialist country and remembering and comparing with past I must say
It is quite painful to watch horrors of destruction of once functional educational system of
your own country which is trying to mimic current trends in western education.
I guess in Russia, given by typical Slavic tendency to extremes, is even more horrible. But
it looks like they do get it and they have still chance revert this trend.
First step is always to recognize problem, which is in my opinion given by public discussions
such as
Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
bluedog , April 17, 2017 at 9:33 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Sam Shama
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about,
Hey Smoothie,
Loved this informative piece.
On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe
the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.
I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep
science & mathematics bench.
Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive
role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in
the department of raw economic endowments.
China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination
of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the
last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities
not far behind many western European states.
The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without
breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste,
which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient
7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their
entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued
there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.
The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still
hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly
friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature
than besting each other on wartime toys.
Hmm first we would have to rebuild our manufacturing sector seeing most of our goods including
military are outsourced out, and I question the raw economics endowment what ever they are, and
then you have to retrain the workers for the old class is gone and the new isn't all that inclined
to work, and who would want to invest in a hallowed out economy, trillions in debt more trillions
in future liabilities trillions in derivitives little to no natural resources left military projects
milked to the bone months years overdue I'm afraid your caught in the light on the hill we are
exceptional bit but I presume that's to be expected.. Reply More... This Commenter
This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
anon , April 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm GMT
@DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US
war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related
comments.
Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly
resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions
for hegemony well beyond its shores?
I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present
subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before
any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing
the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American
adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly
to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. If these countries really wanted to stop the USA, why not make
the American troops leave their countries? Reply More... This Commenter This Thread
Hide Thread Display All Comments
Corvinus , April 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm GMT
@Diversity Heretic The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for U.S. security.
The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan and even today we suffer
the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto Rico. "The Spanish-American War
was completely unnecessary for U.S. security."
At the time, yes. In the long run, no.
"The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan "
Imperialistic ambitions in the Pacific by the U.S. and Japan put our nations on a path to fight.
Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
colm , April 17, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMT
@Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among
America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out
war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would,
notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long
as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself
as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and
military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
Those who fought for the Entente in the Great War fought for the sake of the Third World.
Veterans Day should be abolished immediately. Memorial Day is enough.
Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
anon , April 17, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Diversity Heretic The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for
U.S. security. The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan and
even today we suffer the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto Rico. Yes
of course, you are right. The 1898 war with Spain was 100% a war of choice for America. Without
it, it was certainly possible war with Japan could have been avoided. Also agree that Puerto Rico
has proven to be utterly worthless to America. Should be given its independence ASAP. Reply
More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 9:45 pm GMT
• 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of
possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and
the related comments.
Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly
resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions
for hegemony well beyond its shores?
I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present
subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before
any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing
the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American
adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly
to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. Eu, japan, taiwaneses, south koreans Their governements are
all puppets, whores of washington, the people doesnt matter, we (I am european) have no voice-
All westerns politics are the same whores. Countrys and people have no value. Only globalists
are going for bussines. Rusia is the great premium: The major land in the world- Reply More...
This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:46 pm GMT
• 300 Words @SmoothieX12
The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless
social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that
you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP
and GNP tabulations.
Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing
on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected
and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude
would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral
was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval
and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first
and foremost and that was that.
I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did
I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers
at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were
non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.
Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the
event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident
(USS Donald Cook).
Cheers-
•
The Alarmist , April 17, 2017 at 9:51 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Erebus Yes, thank you for an excellent summation of the situation.
The owners of the US face an Either/Or moment. Either they abandon their ambitions of Global
Hegemony, and retreat to attempt to rule over N. America (with some residual dreams of ruling
C. & S. America to sweeten the pot) or they go for broke.
Unlike Dasein, I have no doubt that any dreams of Global Hegemony will come crashing to ground
if any sort of a war breaks out. Putin has made it perfectly plain. Russia will never allow itself
to be invaded again. That means something, and what it means is that Russia will take the fight
to the enemy when it sees its red lines crossed.
The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs aimed
at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being revived,
the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with none of
the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure. If the
subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired.
No mushroom clouds or devastated cities, yet, but the Either/Or moment will become acute indeed.
One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow their internationalistic instincts
when that moment has passed.
"The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs
aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being
revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with
none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure.
If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired."
You have nut-jobs in Congress talking out hacking being an act of war and planners talking
about massive NATO reponse as being appropriate can one seriously believe the US would not repond
with nukes in the event of such an attack, even though it is non-nuclear?
•
Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:54 pm GMT
My WW1 post was for Kiza. Somehow that got scrubbed Reply More... This Commenter
Display All Comments
Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Sam Shama
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about,
Hey Smoothie,
Loved this informative piece.
On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe
the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.
I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep
science & mathematics bench.
Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive
role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in
the department of raw economic endowments.
China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination
of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the
last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities
not far behind many western European states.
The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without
breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste,
which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient
7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their
entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued
there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.
The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still
hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly
friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature
than besting each other on wartime toys.
There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.
I will add bit of Central Europe perspective:-)
Products of US economic endowments which I use in Europe or see some value in them:
a) Military Complex (waste of money)
b) Boeing (OK that is serious, not flying much lately)
c) Hollywod movies (huge industry, some movies are good but mostly rubbish)
d) Coca-Cola (sometimes nice – but can live without it)
e) MacDonald (only in rush for their car ride)
f) Microsoft Windows (I hate it)
g) Apple products (well I have still preference for them, but they are mostly produced in China
anyway)
h) Harley-Davidson (not any value for me, but it is as American as it can be:-)
To be honest, I am more interested if I have heated home and electricity runnig, provided in
form of nuclear, gas or oil fuel from Russia + some Siemens technology provided by Germany for
Electrical Grid regulation and function of PowerPlants..
•
inertial , April 17, 2017 at 10:22 pm GMT
• 300 Words @Andrei Martyanov
Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real
value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.
https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap
Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of
code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).
Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.
https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world
will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such
a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million
people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question
whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation
which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes"
on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it
to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a
collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking,
of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual
things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many
in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because
constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off
accident. You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps – all that shows is
that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom. Well, duh.
Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension
funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments.
There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine
in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises
that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit
on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's
not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise
as much capital as they need.
As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's
been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities.
Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell
and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade
them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on
the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building
engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?
Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an
idiot.
•
Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:23 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people
who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem
almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online,
well--it is a different game altogether from there. Well, it shouldn't be that complicated because
it has to be used rapidly. Hopefully it is easy for the user to operate it.
Thanks for the reply. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread
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Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 10:28 pm GMT
@Ondrej
There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.
I will add bit of Central Europe perspective:-)
Products of US economic endowments which I use in Europe or see some value in them:
a) Military Complex (waste of money)
b) Boeing (OK that is serious, not flying much lately)
c) Hollywod movies (huge industry, some movies are good but mostly rubbish)
d) Coca-Cola (sometimes nice - but can live without it)
e) MacDonald (only in rush for their car ride)
f) Microsoft Windows (I hate it)
g) Apple products (well I have still preference for them, but they are mostly produced in China
anyway)
h) Harley-Davidson (not any value for me, but it is as American as it can be:-)
To be honest, I am more interested if I have heated home and electricity runnig, provided in
form of nuclear, gas or oil fuel from Russia + some Siemens technology provided by Germany for
Electrical Grid regulation and function of PowerPlants..
You are coming as a very pragmatic sort of a man •
Cyrano , April 17, 2017 at 10:31 pm GMT
• 300 Words Any military conflict between Russia and US is bound to degenerate into nuclear
war. That's because only degenerates can plan such event and even try to predict "survivability"
of such war. I believe only recently US funded a study to explore the outcome of such conflict.
You don't have to be military genius to realize that the odds are in Russia's favor.
How so? Simple. More than half of US population lives in 30 major cities. Russia's population
is much more dispersed. I think I read somewhere that during the cold war US had enough nukes
to destroy every USSR city of 10 000 and more inhabitants. Still, the Russians can inflict far
more casualties targeting far fewer cities than US can.
For those who think that western weapons are superior because they are more complicated – perfection
is always simple.
One of the most symptomatic examples of what's wrong with American military technology is F35.
At the end of the cold war the feeling of omnipotence has spread into their military technology.
F35 was supposed to do the job of what previously used to be done by several different planes.
It was supposed to be a ground support, vertical takeoff, interceptor, aircraft carrier based,
bomber, air superiority fighter plane.
While they were at it, why they didn't include in their specifications ability to fly to the
moon, be used as a cargo plane, awacs, fuel refueling tanker and passenger plane. When something
is designed to be universally good at different tasks it usually ends not being particularly good
at any of them.
Congratulations on your first article Andrei, keep up the good work.
Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
inertial , April 17, 2017 at 10:32 pm GMT
@Sergey Krieger Randal, what do you think happens if neutron star approaches red giant?
US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars. Is US going to hit Russia
with nice shoes, highly apprised real estate or S&P500? Creative accounting is another thing that
makes US GDP larger than it really is.
US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars.
You say it as though it's a bad thing.
•
Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:33 pm GMT
@Art You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear
of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit.
Pointing out the evils of Zionist Israel is not mean - it is crucial.
Exposing Judaism and Zionism for their backward ways is the only path to a peaceful just world.
The Kushner White House is now pushing us to war in N Korea.
Congress must stop this - but they cannot because Jews control them also.
Peace --- Art
p.s. Good god – Trump is sending two more carrier groups to Korea!
Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy to submission. It's when
we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land, that's when I get my blood
pressure up! •
Today,s Thought , April 17, 2017 at 10:42 pm GMT
[ ] • 3,200 WORDS • 93 COMMENTS • REPLY [ ]
Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:43 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov
Germany did the heavy lifting.
Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly
British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for
the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved
in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space
to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.
After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
Actually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkhip_Lyulka
Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder,
so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget
about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for
you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed
technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with
the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about
such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude
than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;) This reminds me of the line from 'Ice Station
Zebra' by the Patrick McGoohan played character 'David Jones of MI6′, "The Russians put our (Brits)
camera made by *our* German scientists and your (US) film made by *your* German scientists into
their satellite made by *their* German scientists." LOL! Exaggeration of course but funny and
somewhat true. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display
All Comments
Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 10:53 pm GMT
• 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of
possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and
the related comments.
Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly
resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions
for hegemony well beyond its shores?
I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present
subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before
any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing
the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American
adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly
to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. There are a lot of nations wanting wars between USA, Russia
and China, from top of the list is Japan, India, UK, They believe they will be the next global
hegemons standing on the ashes of USA, Russia and China.
Taiwanese are mentally colonized Japanese wannabes, they will be happy just returning to the
Japanese colony status.
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Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 10:58 pm GMT
• 100 Words @inertial
US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars.
You say it as though it's a bad thing. No, I am just trying to look at it from the point of view
currently discussed. Namely Russian GDP is being mocked as an inadequate to stand up to USA in
military terms.
I am just pointing that what GDP consists of is far more important that nominal size of it.
Namely, Italy might have a large share of GDP coming from tourist industry and designers shoes
and other garments. . How is it relevant to military power?
US GDP also is full of basically fraudulent valuations. Tesla as it was pointed is just one example
and Facebook and others are another. •
Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 11:06 pm GMT
• 100 Words @anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors)
need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back
then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America
is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third
world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now
they are probably happy that the old days are back.
On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the
"job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in
Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc.
Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not
nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.
Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close
since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to
challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop
of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small.
"still 20 years behind on average?" since you are fabricating thru the thin air, why did you stop
at 20 years? Why didn't you say 30 years behind, 40 years behind, ? You should know fake news
is always fake new regardless it is a small fake news or a big fake news. •
martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 11:08 pm GMT
• 200 Words good post smooty. And good coments also.I have three issues I am thinking some
time ago. First: The soviet Union not colapsed, Gorbachev vas not a moron or a traitor. It was
50 years chess-game- The west is in turmoil already. Gorbachev did not do nothing without the
approbation of the hundreds of specialists .The same with Trump, as USA has about more than 5
milions of people working in intel or something about. Second misread: Usa did not lost the war
in Irak or Afganistan., as is said by journalists. Bush (W) said it in clair: I´ll bring the caos
to irak, to stoneage.
In Afganistan they are for 16 years for run the caos meantime. If they left , te country could
go normaly, They cant afford this. Is for future desestabilization of central asia. Three: In
the future war, you can see that the europeens are too sweet for go to war against Russia (Don´t
talk about the gays, trans and woman of de USA Army) : What about theese 2 milions of refugees
(arabs mens in militar age, all men?) All in Germany. This is not an Army for go to fight with
russia? Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Anatoly Karlin , • Website
April 17, 2017 at 11:17 pm GMT
• 100 WordsNEW! @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable
consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton,
that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely
standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable
outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently
enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's
economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just
barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an
acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets
to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the
entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as
merely a means to this end.
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Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 11:23 pm GMT
@reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only
send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality".
US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality"
That did not happen during the Korean War and Vietnam War. The straight white men stayed behind
and played gook hockey games.
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DanC , April 17, 2017 at 11:27 pm GMT
If anyone is interested in the perverse incentives in place in the US military development
system, which result in such spectacular failures and misallocation of resources, you could read
this:
martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT
• 100 Words The westerns politics, that works against their own people (starting with Merkel),
and are absolute whores or the globalists of washington and elsewere .. (city of London, Rotschilds,
Jews,Vatican, , etc) Have learned the trick of the proxys, as they are now in Siria. And conciousness
that the european people are against else war, (and dont talk about the gay-trans-woman army of
the EEUU) The criminals europeans politics are getting milions of future proxy warriors from muslim
countrys. Their job will be the war we are not going. They, the "refugees" will get money, drugs,
guns, slave women, alcohol, and will go to war against rusia, and in europe inf they are said.
cheers.
Ahh!.. They give him the blue pill, also, (Are not than macho men?) Reply More... This
Commenter Display All Comments
Wally , April 17, 2017 at 11:43 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
Germany did the heavy lifting.
Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly
British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for
the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved
in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space
to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.
After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
Actually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkhip_Lyulka
Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder,
so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget
about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for
you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed
technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with
the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about
such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude
than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;) You really need to know what you are talking
about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon
About "Lyulka"?
" In 1945-47 he designed the first Soviet jet engine ".
Hoisted by your own petard.
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Zzz , April 17, 2017 at 11:44 pm GMT
@Kiza You and your responders are obviously not Russian, because you exhibit a terribly
superficial knowledge of the pre WW1 Europe and Russia. You must have learned your history in
US or British schools.
The situation in Europe in 1914 was much, much more complicated than your simple minds could
comprehend. The key factor was the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the power vacuum that this
has created in the Balkans. This has encouraged all European powers of the time, from U.K., through
Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire, all the way to Russia to have designs for the area. Russia
actually cultivated most Serbian nationalistic groups to counter the influence of U.K. and Germany/Austria
in the Balkans. Therefore, Russia just did not let its Balkan proxies, the Serbs, down when attacked
by Austro-Hungary, but it was involved in what was happening in the Balkans even before the war
started. Yes, there was internal opposition in Russia against getting involved in the Balkans,
but the non-interventionists lost. The U.K. was trying to prop up the dying Turkish Empire to
remain an enemy of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary were trying to acquire as much new territory
and population in the Balkans as possible. Russia just could not allow the Catholic Austro-Hungary
to strengthen further after the annexation of Bosnia in 1908. France was on the same side. And
so on.
Is it not amazing how most of Western history of WW1 starts with Archduke's assassination in
Sarajevo, instead of power vacuum in Southeast Europe and aggressive imperial designs at the turn
of the century? It is typical Western bullshit history. Nobody had evil intentions, everybody
was just dragged into WW1.
You can observe that today's Russians are blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin
with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution in Russia and cause Tsar family's
deaths, instead of the Serbs who were defending themselves against an expansionist Catholic Empire.
It is mainly the British and US "historians", and their Russian liberals who are blaming the Serbs
for WW1, the same old, same old Anglo-Zionist bull.
Russians blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold
to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution
Russian who are blaming the Serbs for WW1
Are the same people.
•
inertial , April 17, 2017 at 11:47 pm GMT
@Sergey Krieger No, I am just trying to look at it from the point of view currently discussed.
Namely Russian GDP is being mocked as an inadequate to stand up to USA in military terms.
I am just pointing that what GDP consists of is far more important that nominal size of it.
Namely, Italy might have a large share of GDP coming from tourist industry and designers shoes
and other garments. . How is it relevant to military power?
US GDP also is full of basically fraudulent valuations. Tesla as it was pointed is just one example
and Facebook and others are another. I agree with you. I just wish that Russian GDP had a lot
more of those non-military components.
Incidentally, market cap has nothing to do with GDP. I'm pretty sure that Facebook's contribution
to GDP is minuscule.
•
DanC , April 17, 2017 at 11:48 pm GMT
• 100 Words One of the most spectacular misallocation of resources has been the US Navy's
insistence on building ever-more surface ships of ever-increasing complexity, while allowing their
submarine fleet to languish, and neglecting missile & torpedo technology.
The reason is career path incentives in the Navy, and in the defense contractor corporations,
not in rational consideration of the directions naval warfare is developing in the rest of the
world.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: the first time a surface fleet, no matter how
modern, how large, even a carrier group, is attacked by a well-commanded, networked battery of
modern missles, like the Moskit, Onyx or BrahMos, there will be debacle of historic proportions.
Thousands of sailors and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware will be headed to
the bottom.
•
Sergey Krieger , April 18, 2017 at 12:18 am GMT
• 100 Words @inertial I agree with you. I just wish that Russian GDP had a lot more of
those non-military components.
Incidentally, market cap has nothing to do with GDP. I'm pretty sure that Facebook's contribution
to GDP is minuscule. For this I believe nationalization of what was "privatized" in 90′s is needed
and new industrialization drive to become more self sufficient and less dependent upon outsiders.
Finances also is a matter of concern. Russia has very good experience in how to do it. Political
power will is needed though. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread
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Mark Chapman , • Website
April 18, 2017 at 12:18 am GMT
• 200 Words Agreed; the US Navy only continues to pursue railgun technology to use up budget
dollars – a peculiarity of western defense budgeting is that if you show efficiency by using less
than the full amount allocated for your operations, maintenance and R&D, your budget is likely
to be cut by that much next cycle. The USN has gone back to the drawing-board on railgun development,
but absent a power-supply breakthrough it is unrealistic except as a vanity project.
An additional argument in Russia's favour is that many of its systems are built simply to be
rugged and easily operated by someone with a minimum of training, like a conscript, although the
top end of the air defense systems are still largely operated by specialists. Western systems
often are unnecessarily complex – sometimes seemingly just to impress reviewers – and the fiasco
of the F-35 nightmare serves as exemplary of what happens when corporatism gets the upper hand
on government; any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard
of pork-barreling and design changes.
As far as the navy goes, I made some of the same points myself some years ago, particularly
the gross discrepancy in the cost of the USN's Littoral Combat Ships compared with – in this instance
– China's missile corvettes.
Thanks for a great piece; it was timely, informative, thought-provoking and chock-full of meaty
phrases and terminology I cannot wait to borrow.
•
Avery , April 18, 2017 at 12:22 am GMT
• 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov
The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people
who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem
almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online,
well--it is a different game altogether from there. {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind
boggling capabilities".}
Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g.
U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable
conditions of real war.
To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient
Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which
Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate
of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.
Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s
too, unofficially).
•
AtomAnt , April 18, 2017 at 12:24 am GMT
• 200 Words @anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors)
need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back
then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America
is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third
world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now
they are probably happy that the old days are back.
On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the
"job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in
Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc.
Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not
nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.
Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close
since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to
challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop
of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small.
"Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average"
Dude, you're delusional. The US military is to a large extent a paper tiger. Example: Aircraft
carriers are not survivable against Russian or Chinese missiles and subs. They are good for bombing
3rd world countries only, like 19th century gunboats (plus fattening MIC coffers). Example: A
Rand report found the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, isn't fast enough to run away".
I would argue nothing is as important as missile technology. Russia may be leading in that.
Furthermore, the US has lower income and less capital now than 20 years ago. Russia has a central
bank focused on rational economics rather than milking the country for billionaires' sake. They
insist on positive interest rates so savers get the benefit of their money. That's why Russia
is growing albeit slowly while the US regresses.
The US will find fighting Russia is not like fighting Arabs. (Remember what some Israeli general
said about fighting Arabs.) The US hasn't fought without air superiority in over 74 years.
Note the moral dimension, also. The US has to pay its military 2X the equivalent private sector
wages, because no one wants to die for Lockheed Martin.
• Agree: Kiza •
wayfarer , April 18, 2017 at 12:32 am GMT
SAR (search and rescue) versus SAD (search and destroy)
"Disaster of the Kursk"
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NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 12:53 am GMT
• 200 Words @Sam Shama
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about,
Hey Smoothie,
Loved this informative piece.
On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe
the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.
I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep
science & mathematics bench.
Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive
role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in
the department of raw economic endowments.
China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination
of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the
last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities
not far behind many western European states.
The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without
breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste,
which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient
7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their
entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued
there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.
The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still
hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly
friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature
than besting each other on wartime toys.
The troubles of the US of late have largely stemmed from having an insatiable parasite on its
back sucking all that it can from the military and the economy in general whilst simultaneously
plotting to undermine it.
The senseless wars in the ME to provide Israel with "security", the billions of dollars in
"loans" that will never be repaid, the vast amounts of military hardware worth billions declared
as "scrap" and given to Israel, what a great investment it all has been.
No doubt millions of Americans will welcome more degradation of their cities and infrastructure
in order to field a larger military since it cares for the fruit of their loins so well AND has
accomplished so much good in the world with the trillions already squandered at the behest of
the Neocon Israel Firsters.
You sure have your finger on America's pulse Shammy and clearly want nothing but the best for
the American people, right? What a tosser!
•
NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 12:58 am GMT
@anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia
as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the
Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading
but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships.
Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy
that the old days are back.
On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the
"job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in
Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc.
Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not
nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.
Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close
since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to
challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop
of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small.
Did you skip the article and go straight to comments? Reply More... This Commenter
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NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 1:08 am GMT
• 100 Words @Z-man Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy
to submission. It's when we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land,
that's when I get my blood pressure up! What if the fat boy (and the NK people) feel that they
need those weapons for defensive purposes? After all, it wasn't too long ago that Korea was invaded
by the US (plus a few satraps) and millions of Koreans were killed. Who are we in the west to
interfere with NK? •
Erebus , April 18, 2017 at 1:27 am GMT
• 200 Words @The Alarmist
"The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs
aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being
revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with
none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure.
If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired."
You have nut-jobs in Congress talking out hacking being an act of war and planners talking about
massive NATO reponse as being appropriate ... can one seriously believe the US would not repond
with nukes in the event of such an attack, even though it is non-nuclear? I understand that there
would be great hue and cry to take revenge. That is why I wrote (with a correction in bold):
One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow ed their internationalistic
instincts when that moment has passed.
America's owners aren't necessarily American. That the civilizational consequences of America's
death be limited to the N. American continent is in their interest, and they would make that interest
known.
The geo-political consequences of an attack on the grid in response to a US/NATO attack on Russia
would be that the US would instantly cease to be a military/economic power for at least several
generations. The Great Game would be over. If the US came back with a nuclear response, they know
well that Russia's counter-response would simply extend that timeline. Perhaps to infinity. IOW,
other than suicidal madness, there is no geo-political reason to respond, and there'd be every
reason to take the hit and try to rebuild.
Likewise, Russia's politicians would be hard pressed to resist responding to an American nuclear
attack in kind, but the fact is that there would be no military purpose to doing so. The US would
be finished as a world power. Vaporizing 200M people would be of no military value. Better to
keep what's left of your nuclear forces intact so you don't have to rebuild them.
•
Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 1:38 am GMT
• 100 Words @Zzz
Russians blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold to
foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution
Russian who are blaming the Serbs for WW1
Are the same people. I thought I explained that it is the Russian liberals who picked up the Western
view of who to blame for WW1, just like they picked up everything else from their Western role
models. The Russian nationalists do not blame the Serbs "for dragging them into WW1″ because this
is principally a Western idea of how to push discord among Slavic relatives, not that it even
matters that it is completely untrue. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread
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Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 1:48 am GMT
@Z-man Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy to submission.
It's when we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land, that's when I
get my blood pressure up! You are stupid, are you not? •
Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 2:04 am GMT
• 100 Words @Avery {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities".}
Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g.
U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable
conditions of real war.
To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient
Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which
Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate
of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.
Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s
too, unofficially).
Well Scuds were strange beasts. Saddam's Scuds did not have regular ballistic trajectories, probably
because they were old and falling apart during flight. Thus, their trajectories became unintentionally
unpredictable/random. I agree that the Raytheon's shootdown rate was a boldface lie which professor
Postol exposed. But randomised trajectory is the reason why the shootdown rate was so low.
The Russian MIRV ICBM Bullawa uses exactly the same approach of randomising trajectory of each
vehicle intentionally, small but quick completely random maneuvers, which makes it virtually impossible
to shootdown. The US would have to place supercooled computers on its interceptors to destroy
those babies. Therefore, another relatively cheap but highly effective countermeasure to US ABMD,
a beautiful response.
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Erebus , April 18, 2017 at 2:16 am GMT
• 200 Words @Joe Wong "Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country,
in the top 10 of GDP per capita." this is very funny, how about the 20 trillions of US national
debt and it is skyrocketing fast? If you only count asset without counting liability US maybe
in the top 10 GDP per capita, but if you count net asset the US is in the negative GDP per capita,
a broke nation. Perhaps it is American Exceptionalism logic, claiming credit where credit is not
due, living in a world detached from reality.
"If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on
the military it will simply go broke." this is even funnier, Russian does not use USD in Russia,
nor Russian government pay its MIC in USD, meanwhile Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru
the thin air just like the Fed, why does oil price have any relationship with Russian internal
spending? Another example of "completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities"
which is defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices and snakeoil economic theories and
rhetoric taught in the western universities.
Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed
No, it cannot.
The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local
currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD,
the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand,
and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print
enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough,
and so they stay where they are.
So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest
of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties.
A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of
thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.
The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution
which all but prohibits its restructuring.
You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:
• 100 Words OT, here is some education about North Korea for the stupid people and those who
are not stupid but lack information. This is truly worth a read, it will open your eyes. Particularly
read the comments, and especially the three comments by "b", the zine owner:
The reality about North Korea is that the South Korean US puppets apply the same technique
on NK defectors that the British US puppets apply on Russian "KGB defectors". These poor defecting
souls found themselves in a desperate situation in their new country to which they were attracted
by stories of street paved in gold. Thus even just for food they have to invent more and more
outrageous stories to feed the propaganda machines of their South Korean/British hosts.
This is how Kim Jong Un threw his uncle to the 120 starving dogs and how Putin blew up some
Russian apartments in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, defector's honor!
Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
Mark Chapman , • Website
April 18, 2017 at 2:27 am GMT
• 200 Words @Avery {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities".}
Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g.
U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable
conditions of real war.
To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient
Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which
Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate
of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.
Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s
too, unofficially).
In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic conditions than does the USA
and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when it is confronted with western
jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where the west is obsessed with collecting
test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch site knows the release time of the target
and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black' release. Not always, but often.
I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests,
but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted
the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing
out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and
it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft
element using current tactics.
It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the
S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric
and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry.
•
Carlton Meyer , • Website
April 18, 2017 at 2:31 am GMT
@DanC One of the most spectacular misallocation of resources has been the US Navy's insistence
on building ever-more surface ships of ever-increasing complexity, while allowing their submarine
fleet to languish, and neglecting missile & torpedo technology.
The reason is career path incentives in the Navy, and in the defense contractor corporations,
not in rational consideration of the directions naval warfare is developing in the rest of the
world.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: the first time a surface fleet, no matter how
modern, how large, even a carrier group, is attacked by a well-commanded, networked battery of
modern missles, like the Moskit, Onyx or BrahMos, there will be debacle of historic proportions.
Thousands of sailors and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware will be headed to
the bottom. If you care to read my detailed explanation of why carrier strike groups are obsolete
against a modern navy:
If you prefer to watch a 33 second example:
•
Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 2:42 am GMT
• 300 Words @Sam Shama
Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about,
Hey Smoothie,
Loved this informative piece.
On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe
the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.
I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep
science & mathematics bench.
Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive
role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in
the department of raw economic endowments.
China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination
of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the
last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities
not far behind many western European states.
The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without
breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste,
which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient
7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their
entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued
there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.
The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still
hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly
friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature
than besting each other on wartime toys.
It [US] needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things
around very quickly.
Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
Firstly, US military budget is significantly more than presented because the whole budget has
been divided between different government departments. For example, nuclear weapons are under
the Department of Energy, the huge ongoing cost of Veterans' health is under Department of Health
budget, the free money to Israel is under the Foreign Affairs and so on. Overall, about 40% of
the US military budget is hidden, which means that US spends not 2.5% of GDP on the military then
probably around 4.5%.
Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at
the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump
is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost
collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed
buddies.
Thirdly, the idea of "coming down hard on MIC waste" is utterly ridiculous because the "MIC
waste" is the Deep State profit and we just had an illustration of what happens with those who
oppose the Deep State. In other words, only God could come down on US MIC waste, the Presidents
can only pretend.
Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock
has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump. When the amount of US$ returning
to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the
German one of the 1920s. The US$ is still strong, not because of its intrinsic value then
thanks to skillful FX market manipulation and thanks to 10-12 aircraft carrier groups.
Trump is now amassing three carrier groups near North Korea, Russia and China. What do you
think would happen to US$ if even one of those carriers gets sunk?
•
Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 3:04 am GMT
• 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov
But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has
not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
Generally legitimate point but it will require a very expanded answer. I will, at some point,
elaborate on it--there are some serious nuances.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which
it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it
lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages
in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put
it mildly – Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers
are copy artists, China being the master copier.
Largely true. However, in serious signal processing systems such as radar, sonar, combat control
(management) systems etc. the main secret are mathematics (algorithms). Just to give you an example,
it was impossible for China to copy any software from any Russian-made systems. As an example,
Shtil Air Defense complexes which went to China after she bought Project 956 destroyers in 1990s
are defended such way that any attempt to tamper with their (and other systems') brains results
in a clean slate. It is true today also, actually, especially today. China now is receiving full
Russian "version" of SU-35 and of S-400, they still will not be able to copy it. Mimic somewhat?
Yes. After all they do have their own S-300 knock offs. Copy? No. They will try, of course but,
say, SU-35 engine and avionics is still beyond their reach.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate
some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these
wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance?
I believe Ondrej made a good, albeit partial case, for you in his response. Let me put it this
way--viewing Russia's public schools' 8-9th grade books on math and physics (and chemistry) may
create a state of shock in many, even elite, US schools and not among students only I know. Ok.
so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that there are no congressional districts
and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based on merit and proven capability than
based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or Senatorial whore. Then, there are no
MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works for reasonable salaries with a highly
respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent well established educational system
(for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real technical building skills, supported
by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting accent on lying, financial market wizardry
(again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks to become engineers and importing engineers
from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project experience and cooperative networks from
building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union, in which Russia quickly and effectively
replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which dropped out, especially the important
ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian military manufacturing network compensates
and adjusts for the loss of any piece.
Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck
(or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing
any other component of success?
•
Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 3:48 am GMT
• 200 Words @Mark Chapman In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic
conditions than does the USA and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when
it is confronted with western jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where
the west is obsessed with collecting test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch
site knows the release time of the target and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black'
release. Not always, but often.
I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests,
but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted
the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing
out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and
it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft
element using current tactics.
It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the
S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric
and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry. Very good and relevant explanation. I
would only add that what Russia has in Syria and what Syria has in Syria are not IADS then stand-alone
radars and missiles. What Russia has over Russia is IADS, especially with the new S500 (Russian
ABMD). The Russians do not develop separate systems for air-defence and missile-defence, in Russia
it is all one integrated multi-sensor system. What is completely unknown is the effectiveness
of the Western stealth techniques and jammers against the Russian IADS over Russia. What if, what
the Western airforces call the blue line, the entry space which allows you to destroy the airdefense
before being detected and destroyed, keeps changing, becomes unpredictable or disappears altogether.
What if you cannot overwhelm the airdefense with a barrage of 59 Tomahawks as in Syria, because
you would need to fire several hundred or even thousand missiles simultaneously?
If Russia implements IADS over Syria, which may be what was announced after the US cruise missile
attack, then the "blue line" for US and Israeli jets and missiles may disappear.
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Bayan , April 18, 2017 at 3:51 am GMT
• 100 Words America and Russia will not go for a direct war.
The reason is simple: one is crazy the other is nuts. When crazy meets nuts sanity of both
is restored. They 'll go for a drink and head home.
I sort of drove this conclusion from a Russian poem I read years ago.
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Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 4:09 am GMT
• 200 Words @Mark Chapman Agreed; the US Navy only continues to pursue railgun technology
to use up budget dollars - a peculiarity of western defense budgeting is that if you show efficiency
by using less than the full amount allocated for your operations, maintenance and R&D, your budget
is likely to be cut by that much next cycle. The USN has gone back to the drawing-board on railgun
development, but absent a power-supply breakthrough it is unrealistic except as a vanity project.
An additional argument in Russia's favour is that many of its systems are built simply to be
rugged and easily operated by someone with a minimum of training, like a conscript, although the
top end of the air defense systems are still largely operated by specialists. Western systems
often are unnecessarily complex - sometimes seemingly just to impress reviewers - and the fiasco
of the F-35 nightmare serves as exemplary of what happens when corporatism gets the upper hand
on government; any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard
of pork-barreling and design changes.
As far as the navy goes, I made some of the same points myself some years ago, particularly
the gross discrepancy in the cost of the USN's Littoral Combat Ships compared with - in this instance
- China's missile corvettes.
Thanks for a great piece; it was timely, informative, thought-provoking and chock-full of meaty
phrases and terminology I cannot wait to borrow.
Mark, sorry but I have to disagree on the F-35 project. You are right that
any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard of
pork-barreling and design changes
But it appears that even that original concept was a pie in the sky sold to the government
by a ruthless military almost-monopolistic corporation.
Firstly, the concept was unrealistic, then also the concept was too ambitious in the wrong
direction.
Unrealistic: to create one frame for different airforce roles with very different requirements
I describe as similar to creating a tank which can race on the ground, fly and submerge .
I wonder why this has never been done successfully before. But this is what LM promised to USAF
and on paper it looked fantastic and when greased with a few corrupt bucks the concept won the
decision day. The same frame and 70% of shared components between all versions, ha!
Too ambitious: instead of focusing on the firepower and maneuverability, it focused on stealth
which is relatively easily defeated with multi-sensor IADS. The designers created the best
stealth possible but at the expense of the principal plane performance: the firepower and maneuverability.
LM claims that F-35 is completely new technology and suffers from birthing pains. Although
true, this is not the crux of the problem. The whole design is back-to-the-drawing-board level
of disaster. Even US & Allies cannot afford a trillion dollars stuff-up and a decade of time lost.
In essence, the F-35 is again a good weapon only against the thirld-world opponents who cannot
defeat stealth.
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2stateshmoostate , April 18, 2017 at 4:38 am GMT
• 200 Words I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the
Russian Empire pre-1904.
After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory
by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and
got the shit kicked out of them.
On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption
and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions
are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but
also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign
powers.
Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes)
in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
But, I certainly could be wrong. •
Joe Franklin , April 18, 2017 at 4:42 am GMT
• 300 Words @mushroom When folks discuss Russia's capabilities they often forget what's
blatantly obvious - which is what's not obvious, i.e. what the bear has created and is in it's
hidden caves.
What happened to that U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea was just a teasing mini-harbinger of
this reality!
So is the genius to create a cavity to eavesdrop, &c...
If you want to enjoy happy days don't mess with the bear! The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) is a
4th generation guided missile destroyer whose key weapons are Tomahawk cruise missiles with a
range of up to 2,500 kilometers, and capable of carrying nuclear explosives. This ship carries
56 Tomahawk missiles in standard mode, and 96 missiles in attack mode.
The US destroyer is equipped with the most recent Aegis Combat System. It is an integrated
naval weapons systems which can link together the missile defense systems of all vessels embedded
within the same network, so as to ensure the detection, tracking and destruction of hundreds of
targets at the same time. In addition, the USS Donald Cook is equipped with 4 large radars, whose
power is comparable to that of several stations. For protection, it carries more than fifty anti-aircraft
missiles of various types.
Meanwhile, the Russian Su-24 that buzzed the USS Donald Cook carried neither bombs nor missiles
but only a basket mounted under the fuselage, which, according to the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya
Gazeta [2], contained a Russian electronic warfare device called Khibiny .
As the Russian jet approached the US vessel, the electronic device disabled all radars,
control circuits, systems, information transmission, etc. on board the US destroyer . In other
words, the all-powerful Aegis system, now hooked up – or about to be – with the defense systems
installed on NATO's most modern ships was shut down, as turning off the TV set with the remote
control.
The Russian Su-24 then simulated a missile attack against the USS Donald Cook, which was left
literally deaf and blind. As if carrying out a training exercise, the Russian aircraft – unarmed
– repeated the same maneuver 12 times before flying away.
After that, the 4th generation destroyer immediately set sail towards a port in Romania.
Since that incident, which the Atlanticist media have carefully covered up despite the widespread
reactions sparked among defense industry experts, no US ship has ever approached Russian territorial
waters again.
According to some specialized media, 27 sailors from the USS Donald Cook requested to be relieved
from active service.
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utu , April 18, 2017 at 4:52 am GMT
• 400 Words The article is not backed up by numbers. There is zero specificity.
How many S-300 and S-400 are actually deployed? How many missiles/fighter jets would it take
to overwhelm this defensive force? Does US/NATO have that many missiles/fighter jets to do this
job?
How many Su-35 were deployed so far and how does this compare to the number of F-22 in service?
How many submarines US and Russia have currently in the seas?
What's wrong with Ohio class subs? They are just there to deliver the punch and are perfectly
safe as Russia does not have enough killer subs.
And now this:
Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive missile strike.
What would be the purpose of such a strike? Wasting expensive missile on delivering just singular
500kg explosive? Anybody seriously in Russia's military would consider such an idiocy?
The bottom line is that Russia is a nuclear power that can annihilate the US. All strategies
take this into account. This is the bottom line. Any response or aggression vis a vis Russia must
take this into account.
Russia has conventional defensive capabilities but has negligible ability of projecting its
power beyond its borders. Circa 4 dozens of planes in Syria with half a dozen of fighter jets
to protect them that all are defended by few dozens of S-300/400 tubes is not very impressive.
This force could be overwhelmed in just few hours by Israel AF that has over 400 F-15/16 or Turkey
AF that has over 200 F-16.
I do not believe anybody really wants a war with Russia but certainly they want to conquer
Russia to make it to submit to the Washington consensus. But this will not be done with foreign
troops on Russian soil or with bombs falling or Russian cities. It will be done with a soft coup
d'etat that will depose Putin and his semi-patriotic faction. It all will be done with Russian
hands. The attack on Syria by Trump was perfectly timed with president Xi visit who is very familiar
with the Chinese proverb: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Putin was the chicken and Xi was
the monkey in this case. Putin lost face and Xi lost face. With every incident of this nature
there will be more and more resentment and plotting among various factions in Russia's Deep State.
There is no other choice because certainly Russia will not go to the preemptive nuclear war and
apart of nuclear war Russia will be humiliated in every conventional skirmish.
I am taking bets if Putin will be out of power by the end of this summer.
•
pogohere , • Website
April 18, 2017 at 5:14 am GMT
• 300 Words @Erebus
Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed
No, it cannot.
The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local
currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD,
the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand,
and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print
enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough,
and so they stay where they are.
So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest
of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties.
A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of
thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.
The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution
which all but prohibits its restructuring.
You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:
http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf What international
treaties has the Russian Central Bank entered into, if any?
Re: "The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution
which all but prohibits its restructuring."
Yours is an odd way of interpreting this provision of the Russian Constitution:
The Constitution of the Russian Federation
Article 75 (Chapter 3)
1. The monetary unit in the Russian Federation shall be the rouble. Money issue shall be
carried out exclusively by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Introduction and issue
of other currencies in Russia shall not be allowed.
2. The protection and ensuring the stability of the rouble shall be the major task of the Central
Bank of the Russian Federation, which it shall fulfil independently of the other bodies
of state authority.
3. The system of taxes paid to the federal budget and the general principles of taxation and
dues in the Russian Federation shall be fixed by the federal law.
4. State loans shall be issued according to the rules fixed by the federal law and shall be
floated on a voluntary basis. [emphasis added]
With reference to this @p36 of the treatise cited:
"Laws need to be changed. That means that it is necessary to take the State
Duma under control. That means that a parliamentary majority is required.
And therefore, a party needs to be created that will win the general elections.
A political structure which is currently rather popular starts being created.
The majority party in the Duma now has representation sufficient to enable an amendment to
the constitution to change the above provisions, not to mention the laws pursuant to same. Whether
that is actually politically feasible is another matter.
The treatise you cited appears to be somewhat dated with regard to the constraints, if any,
on changes to central banking in Russia.
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Seraphim , April 18, 2017 at 5:44 am GMT
• 200 Words @anon That is a point I have often tried to make. Had the Tsar just told the
Serbs flat out, "You guys are on your own. Comply. Or fight the Central Powers by yourself. We
are out of it.",' there would never have been a 'Great' war (WW1). At most the 'war' would have
been a minor brawl between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. History would have recorded it as just
another Balkan skirmish. It would have been virtually forgotten today. This was the initial assumption
of the Kaiser when he issued his 'blank check' of support. The Tsar would have saved millions
of lives, including his own and his family too. Just nine years earlier the Tsar had fought and
lost a disastrous war with Japan. That defeat led to a revolution that came within a hair of deposing
him. He SHOULD have learned his lesson and avoided any future conflict like the plague. Tsar Nicolas
was an incredibly stupid man. He deserves far more vilification then the Kaiser does. Tsar Nicholas
was not that stupid to not see that the aggression against Serbia was in fact directed at Russia.
The Dual Alliance of 1879, coming immediately after the Berlin Congress was directed squarely
against Russia. By the time of Nicholas it evolved in the Triple Alliance and I have no doubts
that Russians knew that Romania had adhered in secret in 1882. He could not be unaware of the
'Drang nach Osten' mentality which gripped Germany by the end of the 19th century and that the
plans for the partition of Russia were on the drawing board. He could not have been unaware that
the rejection of his proposals for disarmament has induced Germany to believe that the proposal
reflected the weakness of Russia. He could not been unaware of Moltke's proposal in 1912 for a
preventive war against Russia. He could not have been unaware that an external war was a precondition
of for the revolution.
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Blacktail , April 18, 2017 at 6:34 am GMT
• 200 Words The Russian military is moving in the same direction as the US - toward state-of-the-art
obsolescence. While they build tiny numbers of new weapons, many times that number of their predecessors
are being retired faster than the new weapons can be built.
That fancy T-14 Armata Russia started building a few years ago? It replaces over 20000 T-55s
and T-62s built early in the Cold War, and 6000 T-64s that were all spontaneously retired in the
early 2010s and shipped not to the tank graveyards, but straight to the cutting mills.
The Borei class Ballistic Missile Submarines mentioned in the article currently number about
5 boats, most of which aren't finished yet. They replace not only the infinitely more powerful
and infamous Typhoon class (retired not because of age, but because Russia couldn't afford them),
but also some 50 other Cold War era "Boomers".
And that Su-35 that's all the hype these days? It was back in the mid-1990s as well, and the
Su-27 it was meant to replace is being retired faster than Su-35s can be built. The new T-50 isn't
much of a threat either, because it's been in development almost as long as the F-35, and it's
no closer to being combat-ready.
These are a metaphor for what Russia has become; a nation so insecure about the wrong things
(cutting-edge technology rather than enough weapons to defend itself) that they're over-spending
to weakness.
•
Ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 6:57 am GMT
• 100 Words @Sergey Krieger You are coming as a very pragmatic sort of a man ;) Just for
your warning – well, bit of cultural and genetical conditioning helps in this case.
As one of my grandfathers was helping in early stages of establishing
Unfortunately, I did not have chance to discuss these issues with him.
Unfortunately, depending on point view, I am not enough pragmatic for current ideologically
driven socio-economical society
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anonHUN , April 18, 2017 at 7:22 am GMT
• 600 Words @Joe Wong "still 20 years behind on average?" since you are fabricating thru
the thin air, why did you stop at 20 years? Why didn't you say 30 years behind, 40 years behind,
... ? You should know fake news is always fake new regardless it is a small fake news or a big
fake news. It depends on the area, in some things they are 30 years behind, or even 40. The USSR
collapsed in 1991 and for at least 10 years Russia had no money even to pay its soldiers. As the
Chechen debacles had shown they were in shambles. Their new projects weren't going much forward,
as you can see they resumed their 1980′s projects after 2000 when they had more oil income and
Putin made the Russian state working again (well, kind of it is still hindered by corruption,
disincentivizes citizens from being entrepreneurial (in a state where the rules can be changed
overnight at the ruler's whim (no real rule of law) and you can be a billionaire oligarch but
you can't be sure the state doesn't simple take everything from you and throw you in prison overnight,
even arranging for your "accidental" death, except the money you siphoned to foreign accounts
and real estate abroad etc.) It is mafia state, or a mafia (ex KGB) presenting itself as the state.
Of course it is more ore less true everywhere (in the US too of course), deep under the veneer
of democracy and rule of law, but in Russia it is almost open and blatant. Also the Russians don't
have any traditions of enterpreneurship, private incentive, contrary to China, which is also a
very corrupt country with a corrupt and totally nondemocratic regime (contrary to Russia which
has token Western-style democratic institutions now), but thanks to the industriousness of the
Chinese people they have risen to where they are now. Average Russians still seem to expect the
state to provide for them as it was in the USSR, they need a "Father Tsar" which is now Putin,
or they are just drinking too much and are in a rut, idk.
As for the years it was only an estimate of course, but as I said they first had to make up
for the lost decade after 1991, like finishing subs that were left unfinished since 1992 and things
like that. First really new gadgets were the Armata (and Kurganets) which is still a newcomer,
and T-50, still not an operational fighter. Regarding SAM's I must say the Russians always were
the fans of SAM's but they were ineffective in the ME and Vietnam too. Didn't stop the enemy from
achieving air superiority. I don't doubt that the S-300 /400 is much more advanced than the SAM
systems of the 60′s and 70′s were, but they would have to face a much more advanced opponent too.
Like low RCS planes that cannot be detected until they are well within the range of their air-to-surface
weapons or dozens of targets flying at 20-3o m coming in from multiple directions.
The F-35 is derided around here, the US spent a fortune on it, true. It has problems (only known
because the US is more open, you usually don't read in the media about problems with the new Chinese
or Russian planes, sure you think it is because they don't have any with them?) but it's capabilities
are something. Stealth is not some scam as some believe. It is serious business when your SAM's
or AAM's cannot lock on the damn thing even if you have a monster longwave radar that can detect
it from a few dozen miles
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ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 7:25 am GMT
• 200 Words @Kiza Ok. so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that
there are no congressional districts and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based
on merit and proven capability than based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or
Senatorial whore. Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works
for reasonable salaries with a highly respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent
well established educational system (for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real
technical building skills, supported by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting
accent on lying, financial market wizardry (again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks
to become engineers and importing engineers from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project
experience and cooperative networks from building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union,
in which Russia quickly and effectively replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which
dropped out, especially the important ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian
military manufacturing network compensates and adjusts for the loss of any piece.
Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck
(or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing
any other component of success?
Am I missing any other component of success?
Just a possibility – or my hypothesis I am playing lately:-)
It can be language according Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
The principle of linguistic relativity that the structure of a language affects its speakers'
world view or cognition. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle
is often defined to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines thought,
and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories, whereas the weak version
says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.
and also due to fact that:
Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development
any sudden systemic upheaval. [ ] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part
of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the
present. [ ] Baltic and Slavic are consequently the only languages in which certain modern word-forms
resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European." ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation
of Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp.
59-60).
Which could explain math skills of Russians and Indian:-) because languages are closely related.
+ learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view, if you look at current
Russian elites Shoigu, Lavrov and others they speak usually one or more foreign languages fluently.
•
anon , April 18, 2017 at 8:18 am GMT
• 300 Words @Andrei Martyanov
When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of
the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from
"western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic,
contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what
they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US
"missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first
phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination
of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.
P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is
a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things
Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the
issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological
dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still,
after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible.
In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's
definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff
Academy uses virtually identical definition. Your main point is well taken. PPP instead of simply
GDP captures lower costs in Russia and is a better starting point. Plus, the US military procurement
is remarkably inefficient. The combination of the two plus tacit and institutional knowledge regarding
spending on military hardware makes analysis based on US spending misleading.
However, the US is remarkably efficient in many other areas and has had the best performing
developed economy since 2008.
Regarding access to capital markets, the US over the last decade has developed a massive unconventional
oil industry. This was done with capital investment of $3 trillion. Which came from capital markets.
Not only was this unplanned, but it was done with grudging support from the Obama administration.
And it is of enormous geo strategic value. I wish to hell that our defense doctrine would plug
this new fact - US has no need for Middle East oil - into their strategy. Not to totally discount
its importance, but the idea fighting and dying for a strategic resource that can be bought or
drilled for needs to be thought out.
If we were going to refight WW 2, then we would have some problems with global supply chains,
etc. The next major war, if we have one, won't be like WW 2. The logic of a US conventional war
with Russia is stupid. Either side with a decisive conventional advantage would simply increase
the risk of it going nuclear.
Russia could, if they were so inclined, forcibly take back some of the former USSR. But why
would they want to? Even Crimea is expensive. It has taken what seems like forever to build the
Kerch Strait Bridge. They have their Naval Base and the border dispute will keep Ukraine out of
NATO. Technically, they could try it, but one of the requirements for membership is that the nation
is not involved in conflict. It's held in Georgia and Moldova.
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DanC , April 18, 2017 at 8:41 am GMT
• 400 Words @Carlton Meyer If you care to read my detailed explanation of why carrier
strike groups are obsolete against a modern navy:
http://www.g2mil.com/navwar.htm
If you prefer to watch a 33 second example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ki2-uyCHOA Great article.
Concerning wastage of resources, here's what John Patch of the USN had to say:
The Soviets debated building a significant carrier fleet in the 1960s but determined that
large carriers had no place in the nuclear age, partly because of their vulnerability to missiles
with nuclear warheads.2 While later choosing to build larger carriers, Moscow always retained
the view that carriers remained vulnerable.
It is surely significant that Russia sold or gave away all its cold war-era aircraft carriers
and retains only the hybrid aircraft-capable cruiser, Kuznetsov.
They "get" it that the role of capital surface ships is changing,, and diminishing. This is
also indicative of why the Russians will shock the first fleet that tries to engage them. They
keep their planners and developers focused on what actually matters, and serious war gaming, rather
than rigging things to provide the answer they want for careerist reasons
Note that it took the attacking general about 5 minutes using a swarm of old-generation cruise
missiles to sink enough craft to disable the fleet's networked defense and EW capacity, with crew
amounting to 20,000 on the ships sunk alone. The remaining ships were sitting ducks for the follow
up attacks.
These were subsonic cruise missiles. A bunch of moskits would have wiped everything out.
And still these fools keep spending money on carrier groups. it's noteworthy that they restarted
the war game and ordered the opposing general to stop making effective attacks. That sums up exactly
why the US keeps wasting money and doing stupid things.
__________________
As an aside, note that the CGI from the movie of an aircraft carrier attack is not realistic.
Projectiles travelling at the speeds shown would easily be destroyed or diverted by fleet defense
systems.
The new BrahMos adaptation of the Onyx missile travels at 2,800 mph. By comparison a bullet
fired from a high compression hunting rifle travels at 1,700 mph.
The ballistic missiles such as the Dong feng being developed by the Chinese, will have incoming
speeds as high as 5,000 mph.
The human eye can't actually see objects moving that fast.
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Joey Zaza , April 18, 2017 at 9:48 am GMT
@Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent
3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.
Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per
capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does
on the military it will simply go broke.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia
is between Mexico and Suriname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Hopefully the President
of Russia will take on board your succinct and informed analysis. Reply More... This Commenter
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Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT
@reiner Tor I think that while it's a grave mistake for Americans to underestimate Russians,
it's also a grave mistake for Russians to underestimate Americans.
Since I cannot claim to be an expert in military technology, I always read such articles with
great interest, but never know with how much grain of salt I need to take them - none? a little?
a lot? a whole salt mine?
Underestimate Americans in what ? Stupidity ? Reply More... This Commenter
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Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 9:57 am GMT
@reiner Tor
US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher
test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. Russians have already
defeated Ottomans and Turkey is NOT a tough test for Russia given Turkey invades Russia otheriwse
unlike US you don't expect Russia to go launch a war bravado against them. Reply More...
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Seraphim , April 18, 2017 at 10:39 am GMT
@2stateshmoostate I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US
now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory
by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and
got the shit kicked out of them.
On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption
and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions
are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but
also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign
powers.
Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes)
in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
But, I certainly could be wrong. The war that the Japanese started pushed by the Schiff banking
cabal was ended in 1945 by the people they helped to overturn a friend of Japan, the Tsar Nicholas
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Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT
@utu The article is not backed up by numbers. There is zero specificity.
How many S-300 and S-400 are actually deployed? How many missiles/fighter jets would it take
to overwhelm this defensive force? Does US/NATO have that many missiles/fighter jets to do this
job?
How many Su-35 were deployed so far and how does this compare to the number of F-22 in service?
How many submarines US and Russia have currently in the seas?
What's wrong with Ohio class subs? They are just there to deliver the punch and are perfectly
safe as Russia does not have enough killer subs.
And now this:
Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive missile strike.
What would be the purpose of such a strike? Wasting expensive missile on delivering just singular
500kg explosive? Anybody seriously in Russia's military would consider such an idiocy?
The bottom line is that Russia is a nuclear power that can annihilate the US. All strategies
take this into account. This is the bottom line. Any response or aggression vis a vis Russia must
take this into account.
Russia has conventional defensive capabilities but has negligible ability of projecting its
power beyond its borders. Circa 4 dozens of planes in Syria with half a dozen of fighter jets
to protect them that all are defended by few dozens of S-300/400 tubes is not very impressive.
This force could be overwhelmed in just few hours by Israel AF that has over 400 F-15/16 or Turkey
AF that has over 200 F-16.
I do not believe anybody really wants a war with Russia but certainly they want to conquer
Russia to make it to submit to the Washington consensus. But this will not be done with foreign
troops on Russian soil or with bombs falling or Russian cities. It will be done with a soft coup
d'etat that will depose Putin and his semi-patriotic faction. It all will be done with Russian
hands. The attack on Syria by Trump was perfectly timed with president Xi visit who is very familiar
with the Chinese proverb: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Putin was the chicken and Xi was
the monkey in this case. Putin lost face and Xi lost face. With every incident of this nature
there will be more and more resentment and plotting among various factions in Russia's Deep State.
There is no other choice because certainly Russia will not go to the preemptive nuclear war and
apart of nuclear war Russia will be humiliated in every conventional skirmish.
I am taking bets if Putin will be out of power by the end of this summer. S-300 can destroy
Israeli warplanes even before they leave their airfields for sky. Do you see Russians doing it
? Why ? Because Russia and Israel have friendly relations and Russia doesn't interfere in Hezbollah
and Israelis conflict. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread
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Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 11:48 am GMT
• 300 Words @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said - I
do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.
Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with
your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In
other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and
US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as
an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office.
Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude
that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in
battle.
In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with
the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum:
no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies,
like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority
which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations
of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent
conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which
it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands
in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently
serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia
has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China
being the master copier.
Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can
get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some
underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful
military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's
extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free
project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?
As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan
of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this
design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle
of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese
apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well
the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised
plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.
There is a slight flaw in your comment.
Israeli used Greece's S-300 PMU-1 to prepare their F-16I pilots for potential air strikes on
Iran .
we still don't know which version went to Iran so if they practice on the S-300PMU-1 and Iran
gets the S-300VM it will be like practising on a home cat and then going against a tiger.
Even US and UK had older S-300 models with them. US has S-300PS/PMU systems at Nevada. It has
same value as figuring out Turkish F-16 from Egyptian/Pakistan/UAE/Taiwan /Korean.
But yes earlier S-300 models are not completely protected Israel succeeded where many in NATO
failed against even an old system like PMU. Regarding S-300PMU, it has been upgraded substantially
in previous years.
Its guidance system is literally unjammable unless huge resources are dedicated, ie broadband
noise jamming of the most powerful kind.
Though recently Israel announced that it is upgrading its F-16 variants external link to be
able to handle the vaunted Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system. Iran is perennially about to receive
shipments of the system. But mere intention does not mean they have managed to do so.
It was the middle of the 1990s and money was nonexistent in Russia . They sold components of
an S-300V battery to the US likely the oldest model they had that was incomplete.With the money
they made they upgraded the whole system to S-300VM or Antei-2500.So in effect the US paid for
the next generation to replace the generation that was compromised.And the S-300V was in service
in most former Soviet republics so chances were eventually they would get their hands on it anyway
at least this way they got their own funding to develop a replacement system.
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bb. , April 18, 2017 at 12:01 pm GMT
• 100 Words @inertial You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps
- all that shows is that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom.
Well, duh.
Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors - mutual funds, pension
funds, insurance companies, etc. - who pool private savings and channel them into various investments.
There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine
in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises
that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit
on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's
not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise
as much capital as they need.
As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's
been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities.
Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell
and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade
them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on
the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building
engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?
Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an
idiot. not treating US data seriously is obviously hyperbole, but incidentally a very on spot
one in this case.
all things being equal, you are right about market formation and capitalization. but these are
not normal times. nobody really knows whats going to happen when the shit, which is the US stock
market QE fueled ponzi scheme, hits the fan. it is very hard to take the subprime, derivative,
QE, buyback economy of the last almost 20 years seriously.
it is also false to say that zuckerbook is useless. it generates way too much money(compared to
twitter or tesla) to make that statement. in general, it is hard to estimate the value and effectiveness
of marketing expenses and facebook put a decent metric on it, better than google to some extent.
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AP , April 18, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT
• 200 Words @2stateshmoostate I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between
the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory
by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and
got the shit kicked out of them.
On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption
and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions
are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but
also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign
powers.
Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes)
in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
But, I certainly could be wrong.
I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian
Empire pre-1904.
Sorry, that's just completely wrong.
The best rough analogy to Russia of pre-1904 would be China (though China is further along
in its development, perhaps it would be Russia of 1914 or later, had Russia not stupidly gotten
itself into World War I).
The US would somehow be analogous to the British Empire in its decline. A key difference, however,
is the US' massive population (more than double that of Russia), territory and natural resources
compared to that of the British mainland. This probably provides some sort of floor to the American
decline that Britain didn't have.
Also, keep in mind that western Russophobes plus Bolsheviks exaggerated the Tsars' Russia's
weakness and incompetence, while there was nobody to defend it. This makes the picture unrealistically
negative. During World War I, Russia defeated two of the three Central Powers (compare Russian
vs. British performance vs. the Ottoman Empire) and was able to maintain a stable front vs. the
third.
•
Andrei Martyanov , •
Website April 18, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT
NEW!
They sold components of an S-300V battery to the US
Belarus sold the whole complex to the US, S-300V.
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Andrei Martyanov , •
Website April 18, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT
• 100 WordsNEW! @Blacktail The Russian military is moving in the same direction as the
US --- toward state-of-the-art obsolescence. While they build tiny numbers of new weapons, many
times that number of their predecessors are being retired faster than the new weapons can be built.
That fancy T-14 Armata Russia started building a few years ago? It replaces over 20000 T-55s
and T-62s built early in the Cold War, and 6000 T-64s that were all spontaneously retired in the
early 2010s and shipped not to the tank graveyards, but straight to the cutting mills.
The Borei class Ballistic Missile Submarines mentioned in the article currently number about
5 boats, most of which aren't finished yet. They replace not only the infinitely more powerful
and infamous Typhoon class (retired not because of age, but because Russia couldn't afford them),
but also some 50 other Cold War era "Boomers".
And that Su-35 that's all the hype these days? It was back in the mid-1990s as well, and the
Su-27 it was meant to replace is being retired faster than Su-35s can be built. The new T-50 isn't
much of a threat either, because it's been in development almost as long as the F-35, and it's
no closer to being combat-ready.
These are a metaphor for what Russia has become; a nation so insecure about the wrong things
(cutting-edge technology rather than enough weapons to defend itself) that they're over-spending
to weakness.
They replace not only the infinitely more powerful and infamous Typhoon class (retired not
because of age,
Sir, please, don't write things you don't know about. Pacific Fleet's Delta III (Project 667
BDR) SSBNs are in dire need of replacement, while Northern Fleet's SSBNs of Delta IV class (Project
667 BDRM) are nearing the end of life. Remaining Project 941 (Akula-class> not Typhoon) are not
even consideration for Borey-class, serving out their lives as test platforms, mostly. Borey (Project
955 and 955A) was created to replace aging Deltas.
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Andrei Martyanov , •
Website April 18, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT
• 200 WordsNEW! @Kiza Ok. so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that
there are no congressional districts and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based
on merit and proven capability than based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or
Senatorial whore. Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works
for reasonable salaries with a highly respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent
well established educational system (for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real
technical building skills, supported by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting
accent on lying, financial market wizardry (again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks
to become engineers and importing engineers from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project
experience and cooperative networks from building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union,
in which Russia quickly and effectively replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which
dropped out, especially the important ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian
military manufacturing network compensates and adjusts for the loss of any piece.
Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck
(or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing
any other component of success?
Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie.
This is crucial. Sure, Chemezov's or Rahmanov's salaries are huge by Russian standards (well,
by Western too) and allows the military-industrial elite to live very comfortably, to put it mildly
but the answer is the state's ownership of the whole defense sphere, from industry to doctrinal
development. Relationship between Russians and their state are dramatically different from what
most Westerners ever experienced in their relations. It was inevitable in the nation with such
military history as Russia. As I mentioned Arthur J. Alexander's "spread"–Russia does have this
pressure applied to her institutes to, in the end, become this character from Russian anecdote,
where he buys a crib for his toddler from one of the former MIC plants and after assembling it
at home gets AK-47. Russia is bound to produce (at least mostly) weapons which have to work.
Here is what Russians do, barn, of course, being a representation of Russian State;)
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Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT
@NoseytheDuke What if the fat boy (and the NK people) feel that they need those weapons
for defensive purposes? After all, it wasn't too long ago that Korea was invaded by the US (plus
a few satraps) and millions of Koreans were killed. Who are we in the west to interfere with NK?
Fat boy is developing missiles that will hit the USA, nuff said.
Ok a little more, he can sell those little nuclear bombs to some terrorist group, now 'nuff said!'
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Sam Shama , April 18, 2017 at 1:23 pm GMT
• 100 Words @NoseytheDuke The troubles of the US of late have largely stemmed from having
an insatiable parasite on its back sucking all that it can from the military and the economy in
general whilst simultaneously plotting to undermine it.
The senseless wars in the ME to provide Israel with "security", the billions of dollars in
"loans" that will never be repaid, the vast amounts of military hardware worth billions declared
as "scrap" and given to Israel, what a great investment it all has been.
No doubt millions of Americans will welcome more degradation of their cities and infrastructure
in order to field a larger military since it cares for the fruit of their loins so well AND has
accomplished so much good in the world with the trillions already squandered at the behest of
the Neocon Israel Firsters.
You sure have your finger on America's pulse Shammy and clearly want nothing but the best for
the American people, right? What a tosser! I shall refrain from returning your predictably dumb
insults.
On the topic of foreign aid and loan guarantees, you aren't well-read nor qualified to render
any opinion likely to be worth more than the pixels wasted by your fatuous lines.
First, understand the difference between actual loans and loan guarantees.
It irks you the U.S. sends foreign aid to Israel by an amount which really means not a great
deal [average, $1.86b % $310b = 0.006 of GDP], even as U.S. foreign aid finds a much wider set
of recipients. That's your emotional prerogative, one which breaches a very, very long tradition
observed by powerful nations.
There is little you or I could do about it. Alea iacta est .
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Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
@Kiza You are stupid, are you not? No, I am smarter than you, and probably better looking.
Just a guess, but an educated one, lol! •
Anon , April 18, 2017 at 2:07 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov
Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real
value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.
https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap
Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of
code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).
Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.
https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world
will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such
a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million
people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question
whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation
which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes"
on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it
to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a
collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking,
of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual
things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many
in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because
constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off
accident.
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the
world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however,
such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs
half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask
yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook
or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury.
While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace
giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as
most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual
services.
The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not
need much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics
to live perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus
and the amygdala.
Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality.
•
Joe Wong , April 18, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Erebus
Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed
No, it cannot.
The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local
currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD,
the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand,
and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print
enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough,
and so they stay where they are.
So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest
of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties.
A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of
thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.
The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution
which all but prohibits its restructuring.
You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:
http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf
The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print
local currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves.
The above is your fabrication, the link is a write out by an over zealous nationalist with
half baked truth, and the link is neither a treaty quoted by you to support your claim nor saying
there is such IMF treaty.
Most nations hardly have any hard currency reserves, yet the amount of local currency they
printed proves your "prescribed ratio" a fake news. Even those nations have hard currency reserves,
the amount of local currency they prints makes your "prescribed ratio" a Hollywood fantasy.
Putin has begun de-dollarization Russian economy long time ago, Russian has signed currency
SWAP with China, EU and Japan, so that Russian can trade without USD. China also has set up AIIB
and Alt-SWIFT for rest of the world to bypass the USD as well. Time has changed, man.
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Andrei Martyanov , •
Website April 18, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT
• 300 WordsNEW! @inertial You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps
- all that shows is that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom.
Well, duh.
Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors - mutual funds, pension
funds, insurance companies, etc. - who pool private savings and channel them into various investments.
There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine
in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises
that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit
on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's
not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise
as much capital as they need.
As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's
been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities.
Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell
and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade
them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on
the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building
engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?
Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an
idiot.
Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension
funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments.
There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
Sure, and that is why a company which produces nothing of value "commands" the so called "investments"
which are several times larger than those of Boeing who is de facto US national treasure and who,
as you stated, has problems with raising "capital". That pretty much says it all. Again, I omit
here the trick with stock buybacks. But in the end, you seem to miss completely the point–structure
of GDP.
You may go here and see for yourself how FIRE overtook manufacturing in US in output. What
is "output", of course, remains a complete mystery, same as many other services, once one considers
the "quality" of education in US public schools which reflects in the most profound way on US
labor force which increasingly begins to look like a third world one.
In general, we speak here different languages and I may only refer you back to Michael Lind's
quote in my text. Judged in a larger, geopolitical framework, one can observe very clearly the
process of US literally running out of resources and no amount of "raised capital" can change
it. This is not to speak about the whole house of cards of Pax Americana which rested on US military
imperial mythology. Once this mythology is debunked (the process which is ongoing as I type it)
the house of cards folds.
• Agree: Sergey Krieger •
Joe Wong , April 18, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Anon
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the
world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however,
such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs
half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask
yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook
or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury.
While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace
giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as
most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual
services.
The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need
much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live
perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and
the amygdala.
Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality. I guess what Andrei Martyanov was trying to
say that virtual is not real, intrinsic or tangible, it is fabricated or created thru the thin
air, hence the American economy is not real, intrinsic or tangible, it is fabricated or created
thru the thin air. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display
All Comments
Ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Anon
Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist.
Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the
world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however,
such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs
half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask
yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook
or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury.
While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace
giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as
most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual
services.
The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need
much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live
perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and
the amygdala.
Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality.
It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need much more than clean air, clean shelter,
food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live perfectly well.
Yes, valid argument which true for GB, Belgium, Holland, with their Gulf Stream protected stable
clime, but I would prefer Mediterranean area such as Greece or Balkan for that matter.
Hmm Olive oil, vine, fishing sounds nice, but anything east of Frankfurt and North of let say
Berlin in Europe, will add different perspective. Heating for winter, and shorter summer. Just
ask people in Archangelsk or Petersburg
+ Virtual reality need quite a lot of electrical power to run, not only on your computer but
in cloud as well.
In reading their article they seem to forget about the Mig-15 and Mig-17 in Korea and Vietnam,
respectively, and about the effectiveness of those SAMs in Vietnam as well.
Didn't that traitor, John McCain get downed by a SAM?
@Erebus I understand that there would be great hue and cry to take revenge.
That is why I wrote (with a correction in bold):
One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow ed their internationalistic
instincts when that moment has passed.
America's owners aren't necessarily American. That the civilizational consequences of America's
death be limited to the N. American continent is in their interest, and they would make that interest
known.
The geo-political consequences of an attack on the grid in response to a US/NATO attack on Russia
would be that the US would instantly cease to be a military/economic power for at least several
generations. The Great Game would be over. If the US came back with a nuclear response, they know
well that Russia's counter-response would simply extend that timeline. Perhaps to infinity. IOW,
other than suicidal madness, there is no geo-political reason to respond, and there'd be every
reason to take the hit and try to rebuild.
Likewise, Russia's politicians would be hard pressed to resist responding to an American nuclear
attack in kind, but the fact is that there would be no military purpose to doing so. The US would
be finished as a world power. Vaporizing 200M people would be of no military value. Better to
keep what's left of your nuclear forces intact so you don't have to rebuild them. The more likely
scenario is this: Sensing a number of strategic and tactical indicators of an impending attack,
the US launches a bolt out of the blue attack to cripple the Russian forces before they can attack.
Russian SLBMs and rail-based missiles get off a few MIRVs that take out DC and a few other major
cities (counter-force targetting is pointless after the first-strike), but no-harm no-foul since
the JEEP was executed at the time of the first-strike, so everybody who matters was saved from
harm and that pesky problem of too many idle hands in the major urban centers was finally taken
care of.
Alternatively, the Russians use EMP weapons already in orbit to take out the US grid. The US
NCA execute the SIOP. Outcome: See above.
Winning move is not to play, but the geniuses running things don't see the extintinction of
the little guy as a bug, rather as a feature.
lastnerve , April 18, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT
@Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among
America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out
war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would,
notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long
as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself
as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and
military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.
I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion
regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this
is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions.
And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise
Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible
to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out.
Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will
not be worse than what these people are capable of.
As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to
war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government
is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict.
Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.
The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether
it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House
of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly
on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that
to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.
Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.
I agree with what you write except that the Deep State is but a part of the Globalist (NWO)
plans for their future world.
Sam Shama , April 18, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT
@Kiza
It [US] needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things
around very quickly.
Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
Firstly, US military budget is significantly more than presented because the whole budget has
been divided between different government departments. For example, nuclear weapons are under
the Department of Energy, the huge ongoing cost of Veterans' health is under Department of Health
budget, the free money to Israel is under the Foreign Affairs and so on. Overall, about 40% of
the US military budget is hidden, which means that US spends not 2.5% of GDP on the military then
probably around 4.5%.
Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at
the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump
is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost
collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed
buddies.
Thirdly, the idea of "coming down hard on MIC waste" is utterly ridiculous because the "MIC
waste" is the Deep State profit and we just had an illustration of what happens with those who
oppose the Deep State. In other words, only God could come down on US MIC waste, the Presidents
can only pretend.
Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock
has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump. When the amount of US$ returning
to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the
German one of the 1920s. The US$ is still strong, not because of its intrinsic value then
thanks to skillful FX market manipulation and thanks to 10-12 aircraft carrier groups.
Trump is now amassing three carrier groups near North Korea, Russia and China. What do you
think would happen to US$ if even one of those carriers gets sunk?
Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
Hi Kiza,
I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting
categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to
deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion
based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.
Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either
at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what
Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending
has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close
to your Fed buddies.
"Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long
bond yields have been doing the opposite.
I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually
raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?
Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet
another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of
doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else
in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the
least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?
Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock
has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.
Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?
CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international
use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower),
the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.
The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to
aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows
out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.
Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's
decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value
during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings
imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.
The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give
the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status?
I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance
of such status requires a far more diversified economy.
When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners,
then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.
Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll
have far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously
since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know
with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".
Best
Avery, April 18, 2017 at 3:56 pm GMT
@Mark Chapman In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic
conditions than does the USA and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when
it is confronted with western jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where
the west is obsessed with collecting test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch
site knows the release time of the target and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black'
release. Not always, but often.
I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests,
but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted
the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing
out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and
it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft
element using current tactics.
It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the
S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric
and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry. {I guess much of it boils down to
how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests, but they specify here that the test
took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted the target during the midcourse
phase. }
I don't doubt the veracity of the claim in the article. All I was commenting on was this sentence
of the author of the article: {From people who serve on it, and I quote:" mind boggling
capabilities".}
Traditionally Soviets/Russians have do spend more of their resources on defense, particularly
anti-air. Their anti-air missiles have a solid track record: the highly competent USAF – in personnel,
and training, and technology – lost lots and lots of equipment to Soviet SAMs in Viet Nam. Even
high-flying B52 were not safe.
Also, Egyptians shot down lots of Israeli jets with Soviet AAs during the Yom Kippur war .
So there is no doubt in my mind that S-300/S-400 are very capable systems. But the phrase
'mind boggling' is a bit of a hyperbole.
What is it based on? engineering specifications and simulated tests.
I have a bit of a technical background (commercial, not military).
We'd simulate all sorts real-life conditions in testing the product, but as soon as it was sent
out, humans managed to find some sequence that crashed the system. You just can't simulate the
randomness of the real world.
If and when the S-400 is used in anger, then we'll see if its capabilities are 'mind boggling'
. Until then, it's just conjecture.
Seamus Padraig, April 18, 2017 at 4:08 pm GMT
@LondonBob Trump's isolationism and embrace of realpolitik is just a recognition of realities,
interestingly this is a viewpoint shared in many European capitals, despite their fulminating
over Trump. If Trump isn't co-opted he deserves congratulations for stymieing the traditional
imperial overstretch, that is unless recent events in Syria and the Ukraine, perhaps analogous
to the Boer War, don't already represent the high points of US power before inevitable decline.
Avoiding a WWI type general conflagration will be achievement enough.
We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.
We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.
True, but it can be effective as a propaganda technique nevertheless. Orwell referred to it
as 'doublethink'.
iffen, April 18, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT
@Sam Shama
Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
Hi Kiza,
I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting
categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to
deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion
based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.
Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at
the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what
Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending
has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close
to your Fed buddies.
"Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond
yields have been doing the opposite.
I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually
raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?
Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet
another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of
doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else
in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the
least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?
Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock
has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.
Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?
CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international
use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower),
the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.
The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to
aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows
out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.
Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's
decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value
during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings
imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.
The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give
the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status?
I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance
of such status requires a far more diversified economy.
When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then
the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.
Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll have
far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously
since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know
with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".
Best Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements.
Who gets to define "least desirable"?
I know that you are not talking about IAM members.
A good defense industry is vital. In a capitalist economy, what other model for the MIC do
you have in mind?
ThatDamnGood , April 18, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT
@Timur The Lame @SmoothieX12
The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless
social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that
you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP
and GNP tabulations.
Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing
on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected
and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude
would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral
was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval
and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first
and foremost and that was that.
I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did
I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers
at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were
non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.
Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the
event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident
(USS Donald Cook).
@reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only
send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". Come on! While serving in Africa,
I saw the US Marines, and, and, well, not many whites were visible! Mostly minorities, specially
Hispanics, and Blacks, so there goes your argument; same for the Army. So Hush! (The AF is the
only service with majority whites). The Navy, lots of Philippinos.
Andrei Martyanov , •
Website April 18, 2017 at 5:40 pm GMT
@Timur The Lame @SmoothieX12
The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless
social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that
you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP
and GNP tabulations.
Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing
on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected
and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude
would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral
was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval
and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first
and foremost and that was that.
I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did
I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers
at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were
non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.
Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the
event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident
(USS Donald Cook).
Cheers- There were many cases of Russian SU-24, TU-142, Tu-22s flying over one of the US carriers.
Here is one such case:
There is nothing secret really about it, except for reputational losses. Cases of breaking
through US Carrier Battle Groups air defense and ASW screens are very numerous. As per this USS
Donald Cook "affair", which continues to dominate many "military" forums–a complete baloney, of
course, SU-24 are simply not equipped for alleged "burning of circuits" and "shutting down radars".
Here I discuss a little bit the issue.
@iffen Nah, you are still the greatest idiot on unz
And the field of competition is not that weak.
And a weak sister chimes in. •
Timur The Lame, April 18, 2017 at 6:52 pm GMT
@ Smoothiex12,
Thank you for the information. I shall look up your post regarding the Donald Cook incident.
Your take on it would be news to me as it did seem to be disabled, though I only read relatively
superficial accounts.
As ThatDamnGood pointed out (thanks) it was indeed the Kitty Hawk incident that escaped my
recollection. I know that these type incidents occur but it was something about the aforementioned
case that stuck in my mind, the super low altitude I think.
Time for a revisit and a memory tonic. But then again even Kasparov eventually lost to Deep
Blue.
Cheers-
Seminumerical, April 18, 2017 at 9:59 pm GMT
@AtomAnt "Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average"
Dude, you're delusional. The US military is to a large extent a paper tiger. Example: Aircraft
carriers are not survivable against Russian or Chinese missiles and subs. They are good for bombing
3rd world countries only, like 19th century gunboats (plus fattening MIC coffers). Example: A
Rand report found the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, isn't fast enough to run away".
I would argue nothing is as important as missile technology. Russia may be leading in that.
Furthermore, the US has lower income and less capital now than 20 years ago. Russia has a central
bank focused on rational economics rather than milking the country for billionaires' sake. They
insist on positive interest rates so savers get the benefit of their money. That's why Russia
is growing albeit slowly while the US regresses.
The US will find fighting Russia is not like fighting Arabs. (Remember what some Israeli general
said about fighting Arabs.) The US hasn't fought without air superiority in over 74 years.
Note the moral dimension, also. The US has to pay its military 2X the equivalent private sector
wages, because no one wants to die for Lockheed Martin. Sure the Aircraft carriers are vulnerable.
But the US have a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with a missile
or torpedo. So the carriers get to project power despite their vulnerability. •
inertial, April 18, 2017 at 11:03 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov
Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension
funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments.
There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
Sure, and that is why a company which produces nothing of value "commands" the so called "investments"
which are several times larger than those of Boeing who is de facto US national treasure and who,
as you stated, has problems with raising "capital". That pretty much says it all. Again, I omit
here the trick with stock buybacks. But in the end, you seem to miss completely the point--structure
of GDP.
You may go here and see for yourself how FIRE overtook manufacturing in US in output. What
is "output", of course, remains a complete mystery, same as many other services, once one considers
the "quality" of education in US public schools which reflects in the most profound way on US
labor force which increasingly begins to look like a third world one.
In general, we speak here different languages and I may only refer you back to Michael Lind's
quote in my text. Judged in a larger, geopolitical framework, one can observe very clearly the
process of US literally running out of resources and no amount of "raised capital" can change
it. This is not to speak about the whole house of cards of Pax Americana which rested on US military
imperial mythology. Once this mythology is debunked (the process which is ongoing as I type it)
the house of cards folds. Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned
my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I
can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct
sets.)
And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well
come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are
working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless
cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an
investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the
"real" economy like GM.
Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally
don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or
"fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have
to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems?
Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big?
Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest
of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy,
which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.
Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then
I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid
point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen
to cranks.
Kiza, April 18, 2017 at 11:14 pm GMT
@ondrej Am I missing any other component of success?
Just a possibility - or my hypothesis I am playing lately:-)
It can be language according Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
The principle of linguistic relativity that the structure of a language affects its speakers'
world view or cognition. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle
is often defined to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines thought,
and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories, whereas the weak version
says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.
and also due to fact that:
Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development
any sudden systemic upheaval. [ ] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part
of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the
present. [ ] Baltic and Slavic are consequently the only languages in which certain modern word-forms
resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European." ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation
of Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp.
59-60).
Which could explain math skills of Russians and Indian:-) because languages are closely related.
+ learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view, if you look at current
Russian elites Shoigu, Lavrov and others they speak usually one or more foreign languages fluently.
learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view
I do not know if this has been scientifically established but I can certainly vouch for it
personally because learning every new language gives you a different perspective on existing things.
After starting to learn a new language I would think – I had no idea that lego could be arranged
this way as well! Therefore, learning new languages broadens one's view of the world but whether
it also helps recognize other points of view probably depends on the tolerance of the person.
Maybe the key word in your statement is "helps".
Kiza, April 18, 2017 at 11:27 pm GMT
@Z-man And a weak sister chimes in. I provided a link about North Korea to
a blog which could educate you about it. But you still persisted with your original bull. This
is a clear characteristic of an idiot, because the uninformed inform and correct themselves. And
yes, there is a strong competition here at unz for the title of King of All Idiots.
Here it is again, one last time, The Reason for North Korea's Nuclear Program and Its Unrequited
Offers to End It : http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html#more
On North Korea, the US chefs cook up their usual menu of bullshit and bombs ,
whilst the latest chef being the most prolific on both.
Seraphim, April 19, 2017 at 12:11 am GMT
@AP
I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire
pre-1904.
Sorry, that's just completely wrong.
The best rough analogy to Russia of pre-1904 would be China (though China is further along
in its development, perhaps it would be Russia of 1914 or later, had Russia not stupidly gotten
itself into World War I).
The US would somehow be analogous to the British Empire in its decline. A key difference, however,
is the US' massive population (more than double that of Russia), territory and natural resources
compared to that of the British mainland. This probably provides some sort of floor to the American
decline that Britain didn't have.
Also, keep in mind that western Russophobes plus Bolsheviks exaggerated the Tsars' Russia's
weakness and incompetence, while there was nobody to defend it. This makes the picture unrealistically
negative. During World War I, Russia defeated two of the three Central Powers (compare Russian
vs. British performance vs. the Ottoman Empire) and was able to maintain a stable front vs. the
third.
Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It declared war against Russia
on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg. The declaration of war against France
followed on the 3d of August, followed by the violation of Belgium neutrality.
Russia was far from being defeated in 1916-17. •
NoseytheDuke, April 19, 2017 at 12:28 am GMT
@iffen Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable
elements.
Who gets to define "least desirable"?
I know that you are not talking about IAM members.
A good defense industry is vital. In a capitalist economy, what other model for the MIC do
you have in mind?
One that focuses on the defence of the nation?
The Alarmist, April 19, 2017 at 2:51 am GMT
@Sam Shama
Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
Hi Kiza,
I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting
categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to
deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion
based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.
Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at
the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what
Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending
has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close
to your Fed buddies.
"Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond
yields have been doing the opposite.
I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually
raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?
Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet
another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of
doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else
in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the
least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?
Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock
has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.
Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?
CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international
use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower),
the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.
The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to
aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows
out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.
Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's
decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value
during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings
imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEXCHUS
The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give
the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status?
I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance
of such status requires a far more diversified economy.
When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then
the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.
Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll have
far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously
since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know
with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".
Best
""Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and
long bond yields have been doing the opposite."
US inflation as officially reported is significantly understated. Do a little shopping from
time to time and tell me what kind of inflation you actually experience. I come back to the US
every few months, and it is hard to not notice how expensive many things have become over the
past couple of decades.
As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the
borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad,
which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury
bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.
Kiza, April 19, 2017 at 4:12 am GMT
@The Alarmist
""Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long
bond yields have been doing the opposite."
US inflation as officially reported is significantly understated. Do a little shopping from time
to time and tell me what kind of inflation you actually experience. I come back to the US every
few months, and it is hard to not notice how expensive many things have become over the past couple
of decades.
As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the
borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad,
which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury
bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ... ad nauseum.
As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the
borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression
abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow
into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse,
repeat ad nauseum.
"Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that
most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The
number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks"
which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official
statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and
all.
I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at
government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality
moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .
Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date
when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously
good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that
Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear
war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly
because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now
imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so
called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after
for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just
needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they
are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment
of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.
Ondrej, April 19, 2017 at 5:19 am GMT
@Kiza
learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view
I do not know if this has been scientifically established but I can certainly vouch for it personally
because learning every new language gives you a different perspective on existing things. After
starting to learn a new language I would think - I had no idea that lego could be arranged this
way as well! Therefore, learning new languages broadens one's view of the world but whether it
also helps recognize other points of view probably depends on the tolerance of the person.
Maybe the key word in your statement is "helps". One could say that to certain degree it is disadvantage
for English to be lingua-franca.
In many ways it is also most abused language in world. All speakers bring to English their
language frameworks.
One could conclude that English native speakers became more accustomed – to be more tolerant
for non-precise meanings or statements of others to certain degree – due to many non-native English
speakers. Therefore it is not that obvious for them.
I think, speakers of other languages would often not accept such improper usage of words or
grammar in their language – (thinking) because by language we think.
Combine that with euphemisms and political correctness and you have recepy for disaster in
communication.
Ondrej, April 19, 2017 at 7:40 am GMT
@inertial Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned
my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I
can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct
sets.)
And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well
come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are
working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless
cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an
investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the
"real" economy like GM.
Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally
don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or
"fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have
to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems?
Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big?
Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest
of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy,
which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.
Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then
I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid
point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen
to cranks.
The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it.
Obviously false statement. You would need to at least some adjective such as mostly, probably,
usually into sentence. Frame it in current prevailing socio-economical system.
Just ask Soviets if they won ww2 due to strong financial system, or put Sputnik into space
for that matter.
So there is not at all any correlation in between financial sector and real economy;-)
Kiza, April 19, 2017 at 9:04 am GMT
@Ondrej
The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it.
Obviously false statement. You would need to at least some adjective such as mostly, probably,
usually into sentence. Frame it in current prevailing socio-economical system.
Just ask Soviets if they won ww2 due to strong financial system, or put Sputnik into space
for that matter.
So there is not at all any correlation in between financial sector and real economy;-) In theory,
the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient allocation of investments, as opposed
to central planning. This is how it us supposed to support the real economy. In reality, the Western
financial system, and possibly the Chinese one, have turned into a leach draining blood out of
the real economy, much worse than central planning. •
Frederic Bastiat , April 19, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT
@inertial Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned
my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I
can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct
sets.)
And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well
come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are
working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless
cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an
investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the
"real" economy like GM.
Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally
don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or
"fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have
to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems?
Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big?
Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest
of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy,
which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.
Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then
I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid
point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen
to cranks.
Just because you personally don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that
it's "useless," or "virtual," or "fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before
you slam the FIRE sector you have to understand what services it provides, who needs these
services, and why.
The financial sector is a fraud. It is a parasitic industry that only sucks tax payers money
in the long run.
Nassim Taleb is spot on regarding the financial industry:
@Kiza In theory, the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient
allocation of investments, as opposed to central planning. This is how it us supposed to support
the real economy. In reality, the Western financial system, and possibly the Chinese one, have
turned into a leach draining blood out of the real economy, much worse than central planning.
In theory , the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient allocation of
investments, as opposed to central planning.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
I know theory, but there is empirical evidence that it does not, see Taleb for that matter,
or Schumpeter in my comment 165.
Schumpeter is worth to read , as he argues, logically, in case of market equilibrium = fair
prices interest would approach to zero, and it ceases to be incentive for financing innovation.
And this leads us back to Marx`s theory of simple reproduction as his main argument in Kapital
Volume I. which create a problem for system.
As for Central economy, you would be probably surprised – at least I was surprised,
that it was in fact J.V. Stalin who critiqued too much of Central planning. He was warning in
50. that it would block next development of system. in his book Economical problems of socialism.
You mention your experience with socialistic system, in case you want to refresh your memory
or get better than propagandistic (from right or left) view of Marx . I advise David Harwey lectures
on youtube.
Kiza , April 19, 2017 at 12:13 pm GMT
@Kiza
As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the
borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression
abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow
into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse,
repeat ad nauseum.
"Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that
most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The
number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks"
which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official
statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and
all.
I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at
government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality
moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .
Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date
when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously
good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that
Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear
war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly
because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now
imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so
called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after
for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just
needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they
are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment
of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.
Here I quote a funny comment from a guy on zerohedge. This is how the Western economies have been
operating:
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your
brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so
that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company
secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your
listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow
to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided
with the release. The public then buys your bull.
AP, April 19, 2017 at 1:14 pm GMT
@Seraphim Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It
declared war against Russia on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg. The
declaration of war against France followed on the 3d of August, followed by the violation of Belgium
neutrality.
Russia was far from being defeated in 1916-17.
Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It declared war against Russia
on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg.
It declared war first, after Russia had mobilized and refused to turn back its mobilization.
Germany would not and should not have waited until huge masses of Russian troops had actually
crossed its border before declaring war.
The sad events of the 20th century in some ways can be seen as a tragic, Old Testament style
story of sin and brutal retribution. Serbia committed regicide, and lost 25% of its population
in the ensuing war. Nicholas II, a decent but foolish man, supported the regicidal regime and
was himself murdered, along with his family. The peoples of the Russian Empire didn't stop that
crime, and suffered the millions dead under Bolshevism. Wilhelm sent Lenin to Russia and lost
his own throne. The peoples of Central Europe abandoned the Habsburgs and suffered decades of
Nazism, Communism and war. Such was the sad fate of the former Holy Alliance.
ANOSPH , April 19, 2017 at 2:26 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov There were many cases of Russian SU-24, TU-142, Tu-22s flying
over one of the US carriers. Here is one such case:
There is nothing secret really about it, except for reputational losses. Cases of breaking
through US Carrier Battle Groups air defense and ASW screens are very numerous. As per this USS
Donald Cook "affair", which continues to dominate many "military" forums--a complete baloney,
of course, SU-24 are simply not equipped for alleged "burning of circuits" and "shutting down
radars". Here I discuss a little bit the issue.
Off-topic, but what do you think about Igor Strelkov's opinion that the entire current Russian
system is due for a collapse?
Part 1: Part 2:
I realize that he's been saying essentially the same thing for three years, but surely his
words are worth at least some consideration given his "contacts in the elites."
Andrei Martyanov, •
Website April 19, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT
@Seminumerical Sure the Aircraft carriers are vulnerable. But the US have
a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with a missile or torpedo.
So the carriers get to project power despite their vulnerability.
But the US have a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with
a missile or torpedo
Not against peer. Dynamics there is very different than it would have been with some adversary
as Iran. Unless the "disproportionate" response becomes nuclear, what is a definition of "disproportionate".
I can tell you what may happen if one of the CVNs sunk and this is not my idea but of former Chief
Of Naval Operations late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt: the psychological demoralizing impact will be overwhelming
and that is what may push a political (and suicidal) decision on nuclear response. In purely conventional
framework–the game may become very different. To have some (however disagreeable from purely tactical
point of view) primer on one of very many scenarios, you may try Naval War College Newport Papers,
especially #20.
I realize that he's been saying essentially the same thing for three years, but surely his
words are worth at least some consideration given his "contacts in the elites."
Off-topic, but what do you think about Igor Strelkov's opinion that the entire current Russian
system is due for a collapse?
My attitude to Strelkov is similar to my attitude to clowns or not-adequate people. Having
said all that, Russia does face some serious economic challenges which are of purely domestic
origins and I never hid my reserved attitude to Putin (despite all his achievements) because of
the fact him being an economic "liberal" and surrounding himself in economic block with a bunch
of Gaidar-worshipping hacks. Medvedev's government is an affront to overwhelming majority of Russian
people.
Sam Shama, April 19, 2017 at 4:29 pm GMT
@Kiza
As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the
borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression
abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow
into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse,
repeat ad nauseum.
"Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that
most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The
number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks"
which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official
statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and
all.
I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at
government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality
moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .
Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date
when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously
good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that
Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear
war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly
because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now
imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so
called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after
for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just
needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they
are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment
of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.
Hey Kiza,
I base my views on data and economic theory generally accepted in the West. If one summarily
dismisses these instruments of analyses then, of course, all conclusions derived are rejectable.
Which is what you are doing. Fine.
Simply deeming our system fraudulent and built on myth amounts to a meaningless unfalsifiable
assertion. Unfalsifiable, since the collapse event dangles always in the undefined "future".
His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously good predictor of the future,
that discrete events do not exist.
I thought you were using past experience to assert with high confidence that the West is headed
for a repeat of Weimar Has there been a total destruction of productive capacity which eluded
my reverie?
Data for prediction [at least parameter estimation of any system] is always from the past.
I am not aware of any data from the future, is anyone? I don't claim a system superior without
subjecting it to out-of-sample and live outcomes. Some Western models have failed recently [pure
Rational Expectations models, e.g.]while others have succeeded with flying colours [New Keynesian
Models]. What good is any theory or claim without corroborating empirical evidence? To me, claims
of our economies headed to a collapse, because because well BIG DEBT! WEIMAR! FALSE STATISTICS!
etc are just emotional outbursts devoid of any internally consistent theory, let alone the utter
absence of evidence since the whole trope started in 2008.
Alarmist: you stated earlier that inflation stats are misleading. I am perfectly willing to
accept that statement if it were supported by facts. If during your visits to supermarkets, shops,
online purchases you found your favourite items costing more, that in itself is no reason to conclude
inflation is at hand. I do shop, and a great deal in point of fact :-), and I've noticed that
prices of computers, e.g. have fallen continuously and dramatically. What about rent inflation?
Or transportation? Rent inflation stands at levels much lower than averages from the past 70 years
and transportation costs have fallen greatly as well [Air travel as a percentage of median per
capita income]. Do you deny these? Trouble arises when people take these things for granted, and
only complain about (mostly) food items that have gone up in price ["I hate these prices for eggs!
Back in my childhood, a dozen cost only a penny!"]
If you don't believe in official CPI/Core PCE, look at the MIT Billion Prices Index, which
provides one with real-time inflation from literally a billion prices from online markets which
operate globally. Those indices substantially tell the same story: inflation has been heading
down!
Sam, imagine for a moment that Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China
(without causing a global nuclear war).
How is he going to regime change Russia? It's a pipe dream. Putin is immensely popular and
in my reckoning, he is simply negotiating spheres of influence with USA.
China, well they are joined to the US at the hip!. The U.S. is only looking for China to wean
away from its mercantilist stance and start buying our goods and services.
Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly
because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land).
Now imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under
the so called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily
ever after for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick
system just needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer.
Russia is a vastly endowed nation with a gifted population. The climate isn't all that balmy,
shall we say. Her natural resources are the assets of her citizens to do with them as they deem
optimal.
I'll go along with your hypothetical scenario in which Putin is unseated and a new Yeltsin
is installed. I would consider that outcome both undesirable and approaching a vanishingly low
probability. You'll need to convince me of its plausibility and DT's desire to bring about such
an outcome.
This four seasons theory looks to me like some king of amateur dialectics...
80 years is close to Kondratiev cycles length.
Notable quotes:
"... Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years. ..."
"... This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians, makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary as spring, summer, fall and winter. ..."
"... In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control. ..."
"... We should shed and simplify the federal government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling its core infrastructure. ..."
"... One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture - has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies into decline. ..."
"... The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand. ..."
Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues
that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the
most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years.
This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians,
makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be
divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies
have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary
as spring, summer, fall and winter.
Few books have been as central to the worldview of Mr. Bannon, a voracious reader who tends to
see politics and policy in terms of their place in the broader arc of history.
But what does the book tell us about how Mr. Bannon is approaching his job as President Trump's
chief strategist and what he sees in the country's future? Here are some excerpts from the book,
with explanations from The New York Times.
'Winter Is Coming,' and We'd Better Be Prepared
History is seasonal, and winter is coming. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake.
Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, one commensurate
with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World
War II. The risk of catastrophe will be high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil
violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.
The "Fourth Turning" authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, started using that phrase before
it became a pop culture buzzword courtesy of HBO's "Game of Thrones." But, as the authors point out,
some winters are mild. And sometimes they arrive late. The best thing to do, they say, is to prepare
for what they wrote will be "America's next rendezvous with destiny."
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of
it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who
is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage.
This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border
control.
The 'Deconstruction of the Administrative State,' and Much More, Is Inevitable
The Fourth Turning will trigger a political upheaval beyond anything Americans could today imagine.
New civic authority will have to take root, quickly and firmly - which won't be easy if the discredited
rules and rituals of the old regime remain fully in place. We should shed and simplify the federal
government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling
its core infrastructure.
The rhythmic, seasonal nature of history that the authors identify foresees an inevitable period
of decay and destruction that will tear down existing social and political institutions. Mr. Bannon
has famously argued that the overreaching and ineffective federal government - "the administrative
state," as he calls it - needs to be dismantled. And Mr. Trump, he said, has just begun the process.
As Mr. Howe said in an interview with The Times: "There has to be a period in which we tear down
everything that is no longer functional. And if we don't do that, it's hard to ever renew anything.
Forests need fires, and rivers need floods. These happen for a reason."
'The American Dream Is Dead'
James Truslow Adams (wrote) of an 'American Dream' to refer to this civic faith in linear advancement.
Time, they suggested, was the natural ally of each successive generation. Thus arose the dogma of
an American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from
any risk of cyclical regress . Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time's
recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal - whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves.
One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture -
has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving
belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss
over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies
into decline.
Though he probably did not intentionally invoke Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, Mr. Trump was channeling
their thesis when he often said during his campaign, "The American dream is dead." One of the scenarios
the book puts forward is one in which leaders who emerge during a crisis can revive and rebuild dead
institutions. Mr. Trump clearly saw himself as one of these when he said his goal would be to bring
back the American dream.
Conform, or Else
In a Fourth Turning, the nation's core will matter more than its diversity. Team, brand, and standard
will be new catchwords. Anyone and anything not describable in those terms could be shunted aside
- or worse. Do not isolate yourself from community affairs . If you don't want to be misjudged,
don't act in a way that might provoke Crisis-era authority to deem you guilty. If you belong to a
racial or ethnic minority, brace for a nativist backlash from an assertive (and possibly authoritarian)
majority.
The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome
of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or
refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude
raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty
his administration might demand.
So thundered President Donald Trump last week. Unfortunately, neither China nor North Korea appeared
intimidated by this presidential bombast or Trump's Tweets.
What would 'we will' actually entail? This clear threat makes us think seriously about what a
second Korean War would be like. Memory of the bloody, indecisive first Koran War, 1950-53, which
killed close to 3 million people, has faded. Few Americans have any idea how ferocious a conventional
second Korean War could be. They are used to seeing Uncle Sam beat up small, nearly defenseless nations
like Iraq, Libya or Syria that dare defy the Pax Americana.
The US could literally blow North Korea off the map using tactical nuclear weapons based in Japan,
South Korea and at sea with the 7th Fleet. Or delivered by B-52 and B-1 bombers and cruise missiles.
But this would cause clouds of lethal radiation and radioactive dust to blanket Japan, South Korea
and heavily industrialized northeast China, including the capital, Beijing.
China would be expected to threaten retaliation against the United States, Japan and South Korea
to deter a nuclear war in next door Korea. At the same time, if heavily attacked, a fight-to-the-end
North Korea may fire off a number of nuclear-armed medium-range missiles at Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa
and South Korea. These missiles are hidden in caves in the mountains on wheeled transporters and
hard to identify and knock out.
This is a huge risk. Such a nuclear exchange would expose about a third of the world's economy
to nuclear contamination, not to mention spreading nuclear winter around the globe.
A conventional US attack on North Korea would be far more difficult. The North is a small nation
of only 24.8 million. Its air and sea forces are obsolete and ineffective. They would be vaporized
on the first day of a war. But North Korea's million-man army has been training and digging in for
decades to resist a US invasion. Pyongyang's 88,000-man Special Forces are poised for suicide attacks
on South Korea's political and military command and control and to cripple key US and South Korean
air bases, notably Osan and Kunsan.
North Korea may use chemical weapons such as VX and Sarin to knock out the US/South Korean and
Japanese airbases, military depots, ports and communications hubs. Missile attacks would be launched
against US bases in Guam and Okinawa.
Short of using nuclear weapons, the US would be faced with mounting a major invasion of mountainous
North Korea, something for which it is today unprepared. It took the US six months to assemble a
land force in Saudi Arabia just to attack feeble Iraq. Taking on the tough North Korean army and
militia in their mountain redoubts will prove a daunting challenge.
US analysts have in the past estimated a US invasion of North Korea would cost some 250,000 American
casualties and at least $10 billion, though I believe such a war would cost four times that much
today. The Army, Air Force and Marines would have to mobilize reserves to wage a war in Korea. Already
overstretched US forces would have to be withdrawn from Europe and the Mideast. Military conscription
might have to be re-introduced.
US war planners believe that an attempt to assassinate or isolate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un
– known in the military as 'decapitation'- would cause the North Korean armed forces to scatter and
give up. I don't think so.
My visits to South and North Korea have shown me that soldiers of both nations are amazingly tough,
patriotic and ready to fight. I've also been under the Demilitarized Zone in some of the warren of
secret tunnels built by North Korea under South Korean fortifications. Hundreds of North Korean long-range
170mm guns and rocket batteries are buried into the hills facing the DMZ, all within range of the
northern half of South Korea's capital, Seoul.
North Korea is unlikely to be a pushover in a war. Even after US/South Korean forces occupy Pyongyang,
the North has prepared for a long guerilla war in the mountains that could last for decades. They
have been practicing for 30 years. Chaos in North Korea will invite Chinese military intervention,
but not necessarily to the advantage of the US and its allies.
Is Commander-in-Chief Trump, who somehow managed to avoid military service during the Vietnam
War, really ready to launch a big war in Asia? Most Americans still can't locate Korea on a map.
Will Congress tax every American taxpayer $20,000 to pay for a new Korean war? Will Russia sit by
quietly while the US blows apart North Korea? Does anyone in the White House know that North Korea
borders on Russia and is less than 200km from the key Russian port of Vladivostok?
All this craziness would be ended if the US signed a peace treaty with North Korea ending the
first Korean War and opened up diplomatic and commercial relations. No need for war or missile threats.
North Korea is a horrid, brutal regime. But so is Egypt, whose tin pot dictator was wined and dined
by Trump last week.
But pounding the rostrum with your shoe is always much more fun than boring peace talks.
100 Words Exactly what has North Korea done to move front and center to America's list of
villains? The regime has had nuclear weapons and some ballistic missile capacity for some time.
But they seem to me to be mostly oriented towards a garrison state. The Norks seem no nuttier
now than any time I remember. If the U.S. simply left this regional actor to be managed by other
regional powers (e.g., South Korea, Japan and China) a lot of the incentive on the part of North
Korea to make threats and attract attention would diminish significantly.
100 Words Turns out Trump is just another lying murdering piece of shit. At 72 I have seen
a number of these ass holes come and go. But it took Trump to finally convince me that only a
crushing and humiliating military defeat will stop Imperial aggression. Unless the dollar goes
to zero before that happens. The FED's ability to counterfeit dollars in the trillions is the
only source of Imperial power. When the dollar's reign has ended the U.S. will be just another
big country in the Americas.
400 Words Any discussion of a new Korean War that does not emphasize China is asinine, like
this one. China is the central, most important actor on the peninsula, and China controls whatever
happens there.
China will not permit an American ally on the Yalu River. Any state bordering China on the
Yalu must be explicitly pro-Chinese. If a war does break out on the peninsula, China will intervene
on the side of the North Koreans.
To call the first Korean War inconclusive is tendentious: China decisively defeated the US/NATO
forces, and did so with with a primitive WW I style army and no navy or air force to speak of.
Human wave assaults sufficed then. They did not occupy the whole peninsula because their primitive
army lacked the logistical capacity to do so.
Today China has a large modern military with a full spectrum of capabilities, including tactical
and strategic nuclear weapons and a large amphibious force. China would crush the US, Japanese
and South Korean militaries, even assuming Russia stands aside. It didn't in Korea I and Vietnam.
And China's strategic nuclear forces would prevent the US from using nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
Anyway, the antique nuclear weapons we have today may not even work.
America's main weakness is its utterly delusional political and military leadership. The military
that invaded Iraq no longer exists, and it was smaller than the one that liberated Kuwait. The
US military has been downsized to the point that it cannot meet our treaty commitments. Sequestration
has stripped the remaining military of funds needed for training and maintenance. Only a third
of our fighter/bombers are available for war, and the pilots get only half the hours needed to
maintain their skills. We do not practice combined arms warfare any more.
We have not fought a peer since 1945, and since 1945 we have a long record of failure. At present,
we are fighting and losing to lightly armed Third World militias. The use of the MOAB against
ISIS in Afghanistan was an indicator of panic in our military command there and at home. It is
an open question as to whether we can defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and we certainly cannot unless
we ally ourselves with Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Assad.
What we are watching today is the collapse of the American military and empire.
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
100 Words
@dearieme
"Funny patriotism where they're most revved up to kill other Koreans". You
could say that of the American "patriots" of 1776 who were revved up to kill
fellow Britons.
{You could say that of the American "patriots" of 1776 who were revved up
to kill fellow Britons.}
You could also say that about the 4 year long
US Civil War.
Both sides considered themselves very patriotic Americans, yet were revved
up to kill each other to a total of about 785,000-1,000,000 KIA. Considering
US population was about 20-25 million around then, that was huge number of
dead.
"... What has happened is one of two things as far is Trump is concerned. Either he walked into a trap prepared for him by the Deep state, willingly or unwillingly. If willingly he knew he was set up and accepted it because he has no choice. He could not disobey the military. They have their own agenda in Syria which they had been pursuing for a while, that is carving out American zone of occupation in eastern Syria with the help of Sunny states. ..."
"... Or Trump simply capitulated to the deep state as Obama did before him. ..."
"... Did people like McMaster think it was real and report it to Trump as such? Did Trump believe it? Or did they know it was fake but pretended otherwise? Were they in on it from the beginning or were they forced to play along? ..."
"... Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. Next up, N Korea and then Iran? ..."
100 Words
This whole chemical weapon attack by Assad sounds fishy from the beginning.
From what I read Assad is winning the civil war and things are turning for
the better for him. What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical
attack on the civilian populations? Things just doesn't add up. Check out
this video:
Am I the only person who remembers news from a month ago? Trump ordered
hundreds of regular American combat troops into Syria BEFORE this event,
with no explanation. This was covered on all major networks, including CNN.
100 Words
I am forced to conclude that the neoconservatives and indeed all of
Washington DC are eager to go to war. They are just itching for any excuse
to start yet another war in a nation of their choosing.
If there is no good reason, they will make one up. There is an eerie
resemblance to what is happening now with Syria and what happened leading up
to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
I think the paleoconservative community also needs to come to terms with
the fact that Trump has sold them out and is increasingly acting like a
Washington insider neocon. Trump did to the paleoconservatives what Obama
did to the left.
It seems Trump will not put "America First" nor make any attempts to
restore the American Middle Class nor American manufacturing to truly "Make
American Great Again".
Tulsi Gabbard seems to be one of the few principled politicians in this
case and for that she is marginalized for saying what few others have the
moral courage to say. Many on the left are hoping she will run in 2020 for
President.
Coming from the left, I'd say that the Sanders and Trump base have a lot
more in common than we admit. We are both deeply unhappy with the way that
Washington has handled things. They basically betrayed the American people
and enriched themselves at public expense.
The real question is, can the US be saved for the people or will it
continue on its path to terminal decline?
utu
,
April 18, 2017 at 6:16 am GMT
100 Words
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad?
Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and
names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources,
intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead
Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his
whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media.
Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being
propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
Wizard of Oz
,
April 18, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT
100 Words
What is your view of David Kilcullen, what he knows about, and what his
views are worth? No doubt "modified" or " qualified" respect but it is the
qualifications and the reasons for them that I am interested in. When I've
got round tobfinishing his article saying Assad is desperate and losing I'll
probably be back.
Anon
,
April 18, 2017 at 6:34 am GMT
Get a load of this a
**
hole who was responsible for disaster
in Russia.
He thinks he has the right to judge the mental health of others.
But as long as super-rich globalists fund think-tanks and invite lunatics
like him, he can posture as a 'voice of reason'.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit
institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then had those guys
serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and
objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
600 Words
Proof of the false-flag nature of the 'chemical attack' in Syria absurdly
ascribed to Assad's forces -
Above all because of a very-censored
explosive story – a distinguished group of Swedish doctors showed that the
George Clooney & Western-backed 'White Helmets' in fact made a snuff film
actually murdering children of this 'chemical attack' anyone can invite
medical physicians they know to view this, to see the Swedish Doctors for
Human Rights are absolutely correct in their accusations:
(1) Anti-Assad "reporter" Feras Karam tweeted about the gas attack in
Syria 24 hours before it happened – Tweet , "Tomorrow a media campaign
will begin to cover intense air raids on the Hama countryside & use of
chlorine against civilians"
(2) Gas masks were distributed 2 days before the attack
(3) Rescue workers are not wearing protective gear as they would if
severely-toxic gas attack had occurred
(4) Pakistani British doctor promoting Syria gas attack story, "who at
the time of attack was taking interview requests instead of helping injured
flooding in" is Dr Shajul Islam, "used as source by US & UK media, despite
facing terror charges for kidnapping & torturing two British journalists in
Syria & being struck off the medical register"
(5) The USA & CIA were previously documented as having approved a "plan
to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria & blame it on Assad's regime' A
2013 article on this is deleted from the UK Daily Mail website, but is saved
at Web Archive, a screenshot at Aangirfan's page above
(6) Videos previously exposed as fraudulent are being recycled "A
chemical weapons shipment run by Saudi mercenaries [is blown up] before it
can be offloaded & used to attack the Syrian army in Hama [this story] has
turned into Syrian aircraft dropping sarin gas on orphanages videos shot
in Egypt with the smoke machines are dragged out again."
(7) Gas attack story is supported by known Soros-funded frauds 'White
Helmets' who had previously celebrated alongside Israeli-Saudi backed 'Al
Qaeda' extremists after seizing Idlib from Syrian Army forces. White Helmets
"have been caught filming their fake videos in places like Egypt & Morocco,
using actors, smoke machines & fake blood".
(8) The 2013 gas attack in Syria killing over 1000 people, was also
proven to be an operation by USA & allies, with admissions to this effect by
Turkish Members of Parliament The operation even involved the CIA's Google
Inc monopoly search control internet domination tool, via their subsidiary
Google Idea Groups & Jared Cohen:
In 2014, the later-murdered journalist Serena Shim "stumbled upon a
safehouse run by Jared Cohen & Google Idea Groups, a short distance from a
border crossing into Syria between Hatay, Turkey & Aleppo province in Syria.
In the safehouse were three Ukrainian secret service who had just buried a
load of sarin gas shells from the Republic of Georgia. Chemical weapons used
in the Ghouta war crime were trucked through Turkey to Gaziantep then taken
from there to Aleppo by NGOs, hidden in ambulances or in trucks supposedly
carrying relief aid. After Shim broke this story on PressTV the
clumsily-staged 'accident' leading to her death only a few days later."
By way of motive – Destruction of Syria & Assad serves the
long-being-implemented 1980s Israeli Oded Yinon Plan to destroy & dismember
all major countries surrounding mafia state Israel, in general service to
the world oligarchs. Plus, there are major US-backed economics behind the
campaign to destroy Syria – Assad's fall is sought for changing from the
Russia-supported pipeline from Iran thru Iraq & Syria, to the USA-supported
pipeline from Qatar thru Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Syria.
Vlad
,
April 18, 2017 at 9:45 am GMT
What has happened is one of two things as far is Trump is concerned. Either
he walked into a trap prepared for him by the Deep state, willingly or
unwillingly. If willingly he knew he was set up and accepted it because he
has no choice. He could not disobey the military. They have their own agenda
in Syria which they had been pursuing for a while, that is carving out
American zone of occupation in eastern Syria with the help of Sunny states.
Or Trump simply capitulated to the deep state as Obama did before him. If
that is the case we know now how American is governed, by the military
industrial complex that dictates its policy. The sad part is that the
Constitution is disregarded once again, that the Liberals who used to be
peaceniks, are now cheering for war, that the UN is marginalized, that Trump
uses it just as Bush did to justify an illegal war.
Sounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August
2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is
likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a
chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in
Idlib province on April 4th.
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a
overwhelming need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit
when they were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost
their big gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone
. So the motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are
even more puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had
ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez,
who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits
argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control
over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring
undisturbed. ]
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with
the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood
the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the
civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate
from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C.
That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime,
whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is
that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability,
its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's
chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had
served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced
sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an
administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the
country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to
control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral
souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building.
This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more
vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best
early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but
in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely
effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and
earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic
events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and
financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential.
For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it,
and a more sophisticated approach is required.
[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile
do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events,
which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example,
will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and
predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is
why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile
respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the
harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from
a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price
of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as
a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated
decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks,
such as disastrous national-level reforms.
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration
of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not
"Syria"
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and are
already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this position–
he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic commodities and
the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is scared to get
involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly but he and
his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements . Bringing
in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence
it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing
"evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear
balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying
for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned
the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is
the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar
al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the
White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many
before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave
of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an
extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a
rebellion it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's
a zero sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I
think it is more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took
advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the
US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but
really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for
what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to
Europe.
@Carlton Meyer
Am I the only person who remembers news from a month ago? Trump ordered
hundreds of regular American combat troops into Syria BEFORE this event,
with no explanation. This was covered on all major networks, including CNN.
Jewish AIPAC Israel firster Jared Kushner and his fellow Jewish AIPAC Israel
first friends (like Reed Cordish who worked for Israel Lobby lackey Dick
Cheney as well) whom he brought into the White House more than likely
influenced Trump to push the Israel Lobby agenda vs Syria for regime change
to weaken Iran:
More on Kushner and his fellow AIPAC Israel firster at the White House
obviously influencing Trump to push the Israel Lobby agenda like he did with
Syria as I heard Netanyahu praised the Syriaattack and Pence personally
telephoned to thank him:
@Sean
Russia was having too much success, they needed to understand that the US is
not going to stand by any longer and wait to see.
INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders
of NATO.
It certainly appears to have been a manufactured event. The media was ready
and swung into action immediately with pictures and a noisy campaign that
the usual war-hawk politicians joined in with. The timing was just too good
and seems to have been coordinated. Syria was bombed without bothering to
investigate based on Trump's claim that the evidence was ironclad.
Did
people like McMaster think it was real and report it to Trump as such? Did
Trump believe it? Or did they know it was fake but pretended otherwise? Were
they in on it from the beginning or were they forced to play along?
Trump
has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric
has been bellicose and reckless. Next up, N Korea and then Iran?
No matter how one votes they end up getting the same thing. It's very
disheartening.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit
institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then had those guys
serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and
objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
So many of these journos and academics are really Mob Publicists and Mob
Advocates.
They serve the globalist mafia. Glob is their Mob.
Sachs is a total shark. He's been a Glob Advocate forever. A real weasel.
Putin is the real weasel, and problem in Russia. He's corrupt to his core
and has his own vision for Russia which is quite destructive. His Soviet
revanchism is a serious problem for Russia and has set the country up for a
serious fall.
Read More
LOL:
geokat62
Troll:
L.K
,
Rurik
Quartermaster
,
April 18, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT
@Brabantian
Proof of the false-flag nature of the 'chemical attack' in Syria absurdly
ascribed to Assad's forces -
Above all because of a very-censored explosive story - a distinguished group
of Swedish doctors showed that the George Clooney & Western-backed 'White
Helmets' in fact made a snuff film actually murdering children of this
'chemical attack' ... anyone can invite medical physicians they know to view
this, to see the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights are absolutely correct in
their accusations:
(1) Anti-Assad "reporter" Feras Karam tweeted about the gas attack in Syria
24 hours before it happened - Tweet , "Tomorrow a media campaign will
begin to cover intense air raids on the Hama countryside & use of chlorine
against civilians"
(2) Gas masks were distributed 2 days before the attack
(3) Rescue workers are not wearing protective gear as they would if
severely-toxic gas attack had occurred
(4) Pakistani British doctor promoting Syria gas attack story, "who at the
time of attack was taking interview requests instead of helping injured
flooding in" is Dr Shajul Islam, "used as source by US & UK media, despite
facing terror charges for kidnapping & torturing two British journalists in
Syria & being struck off the medical register"
(5) The USA & CIA were previously documented as having approved a "plan to
launch chemical weapon attack on Syria & blame it on Assad's regime' ... A
2013 article on this is deleted from the UK Daily Mail website, but is saved
at Web Archive, a screenshot at Aangirfan's page above
(6) Videos previously exposed as fraudulent are being recycled "A chemical
weapons shipment run by Saudi mercenaries [is blown up] before it can be
offloaded & used to attack the Syrian army in Hama ... [this story] has
turned into Syrian aircraft dropping sarin gas on orphanages ... videos shot
in Egypt with the smoke machines are dragged out again."
(7) Gas attack story is supported by known Soros-funded frauds 'White
Helmets' who had previously celebrated alongside Israeli-Saudi backed 'Al
Qaeda' extremists after seizing Idlib from Syrian Army forces. White Helmets
"have been caught filming their fake videos in places like Egypt & Morocco,
using actors, smoke machines & fake blood".
(8) The 2013 gas attack in Syria killing over 1000 people, was also proven
to be an operation by USA & allies, with admissions to this effect by
Turkish Members of Parliament ... The operation even involved the CIA's
Google Inc monopoly search control internet domination tool, via their
subsidiary Google Idea Groups & Jared Cohen:
In 2014, the later-murdered journalist Serena Shim "stumbled upon a
safehouse run by Jared Cohen & Google Idea Groups, a short distance from a
border crossing into Syria between Hatay, Turkey & Aleppo province in Syria.
In the safehouse were three Ukrainian secret service who had just buried a
load of sarin gas shells from the Republic of Georgia. Chemical weapons used
in the Ghouta war crime were trucked through Turkey to Gaziantep then taken
from there to Aleppo by NGOs, hidden in ambulances or in trucks supposedly
carrying relief aid. After Shim broke this story on PressTV ... the
clumsily-staged 'accident' leading to her death only a few days later."
By way of motive - Destruction of Syria & Assad serves the
long-being-implemented 1980s Israeli Oded Yinon Plan to destroy & dismember
all major countries surrounding mafia state Israel, in general service to
the world oligarchs. Plus, there are major US-backed economics behind the
campaign to destroy Syria - Assad's fall is sought for changing from the
Russia-supported pipeline from Iran thru Iraq & Syria, to the USA-supported
pipeline from Qatar thru Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Syria.
Sarin is a nerve agent and if that is what was used, gas masks are far less
than what is needed to protect anyone.
Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of
it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden
agenda:
There is no reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge
of what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be
an even more important division over the security of the Syrian government
under attack from the Al Qaeda affiliate by whatever name it is now called in
Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately
lacking manpower.
Does PG subscribe to the popular contrary view that Assad is so close to
winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make
the gss atttack?
Clark Westwood
,
April 18, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT
Is it possible that Trump and Putin cooked up this little show simply to
give Trump more credibility in his approaching confrontation with North
Korea?
Z-man
,
April 18, 2017 at 2:53 pm GMT
@Anon
Get a load of this a**hole who was responsible for disaster in Russia.
He thinks he has the right to judge the mental health of others.
But as long as super-rich globalists fund think-tanks and invite lunatics
like him, he can posture as a 'voice of reason'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhyD-fPS0vs
And there is the other esteemed 'voice of reason', Thomas Friedman, who
wants war in Syria to go on, even if ISIS kills more innocents.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit
institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then had those guys
serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and
objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ragano
So many of these journos and academics are really Mob Publicists and Mob
Advocates.
They serve the globalist mafia. Glob is their Mob.
Sachs is a total shark. He's been a Glob Advocate forever. A real weasel.
What's the common denominator to these two
??????
Z-man
,
April 18, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT
"Democratic Party liberal interventionists have also joined with Senators
John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio to celebrate the cruise missile
strike and hardening rhetoric."
@utu
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad?
Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and
names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources,
intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead
Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his
whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media.
Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being
propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
" picture he found somewhere on social media."
If you check closely, I
think you will find that Postol took that photo from the White House issued
document presenting the "evidence"(not!) of Syrian responsibility(not!) for
the sarin(?) gas attack. Thus that photo represents the on-the-record
official story w/official "evidence".
Far from being some randomly acquired photo taken from social media and
originating who knows where. And to take it one discrediting step further,
it turns out the photo was provided by the al Qaeda terrorists - the CIA's
client anti-Assad terrorists - who control that area.
Bottom line: From the first, this was an
***OBVIOUS***
false flag. The only question remaining is whether the CIA coordinated with
al Qaeda in planning this event.
Sean
,
April 18, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT
@Hunsdon
INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders
of NATO.
100 Words
Remember WMD and Saddam? What did the top papers say after Colin Powell's
speech to the UN "proving" that Iraq had WMD?
New York Times: "[Powell's
speech] may not have produced a 'smoking gun," but it left little question
that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal one."
Wall Street Journal: "The Powell evidence will be persuasive to anyone
who is still persuadable. The only question remaining is whether the U.N.
is going to have the courage of Mr. Powell's convictions."
Washington Post: "To continue to say that the Bush administration has not
made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most
serious statement he will ever make "
200 Words
@Wizard of Oz
Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of
it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden
agenda:
Thete is mo reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge of
what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be an
even more important division over the security of the Syrian government
under attack from the Al Qaeda afiliate by whatever name it is now called in
Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately
lacking manpower.
Does PG subscrtobe to the populsr contrary view that Assad is so close to
winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make
the gss atttack?
Hi Wiz,
I think it is quite clear, that with the assistance of the Russian
military, the Syrian army has mounted multiple strategic victories against
ISIS over the past year and a half.
The entry of Russia into the fray, at the request of Syria, provided a
very deep reservoir of enhanced military power which has shown to be highly
effective in degraded both Al Qaeda and ISIS on multiple fronts.
It seems as absurd now , as it did in 2013, that Assad would do the ONE
THING that would force the hand of the US military to enter the fray against
him.
I also doubt the notion of the Syrian regimes "desperation" given the
complete cooperation of Russia in providing any assistance the Syrian army
might need , to achieve victory against ISIS.
One could argue, however ,that Assad is truly "bonehead" stupid.
Sounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August
2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is
likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a
chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in
Idlib province on April 4th.
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a overwhelming
need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit when they
were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost their big
gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone . So the
motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are even more
puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Purchase Article
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had
ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez,
who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits
argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control
over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring
undisturbed. ]...
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with
the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood
the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the
civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate
from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C.
That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime,
whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is
that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability,
its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's
chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had
served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced
sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an
administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the
country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to
control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral
souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building.
This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more
vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early
warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in
underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely
effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and
earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic
events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and
financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential.
For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it,
and a more sophisticated approach is required.
[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile
do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events,
which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example,
will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and
predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is
why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile
respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the
harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from
a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price
of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as
a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated
decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks,
such as disastrous national-level reforms.
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of
the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not
"Syria"
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and
are already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this
position-- he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic
commodities and the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is
scared to get involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly
but he and his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements .
Bringing in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence
it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing
"evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear
balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying
for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned
the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is
the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar
al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the
White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many
before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave
of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an
extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a rebellion
it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's a zero
sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I think it is
more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took advantage of US
passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and
watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they
couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would
have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe.
"The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they
were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all
the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have
it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be
assumed to have been frightening to Europe."
Wow, we must have been observing two different worlds, because Russian
actions in several theatres (Syria, Ukraine, Korea, ROW) have been
relatively restrained to non-existent despite clear threats to their
national interests, while the US has ratcheted up it military intervention
pretty much globally over the same period. Then again, I live outside the US
and am not blanketed with the propaganda that spills out of its MSM house
organs, so we have indeed observed two different worlds.
Read More
Wally
,
April 18, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT
@Hunsdon
INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders
of NATO.
@utu
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad?
Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and
names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources,
intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead
Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his
whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media.
Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being
propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
You won't find it by looking at CNN / ZNN.
100 Words
NEW!
@Wizard of Oz
Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of
it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden
agenda:
Thete is mo reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge of
what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be an
even more important division over the security of the Syrian government
under attack from the Al Qaeda afiliate by whatever name it is now called in
Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately
lacking manpower.
Does PG subscrtobe to the populsr contrary view that Assad is so close to
winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make
the gss atttack?
Kilcullen is well compensated by those who support the Establishment
narrative on Syria and everywhere else in the Middle East so he does indeed
have an agenda. Most intel and military types that I have spoken to agree
that after the retaking of Aleppo al-Assad is winning and will eventually
win. Did he nevertheless stage the chemical attack on Idbil? I don't know.
Let's see the evidence. Somebody obviously knows that happened.
Read More
Wally
,
April 18, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT
@Quartermaster
Putin is the real weasel, and problem in Russia. He's corrupt to his core
and has his own vision for Russia which is quite destructive. His Soviet
revanchism is a serious problem for Russia and has set the country up for a
serious fall.
Putin is so bad for Russia that the Russians overwhelmingly support him.
600 Words
@Jeff Davis
"...picture he found somewhere on social media."
If you check closely, I
think you will find that Postol took that photo from the White House issued
document presenting the "evidence"(not!) of Syrian responsibility(not!) for
the sarin(?) gas attack. Thus that photo represents the on-the-record
official story w/official "evidence".
Far from being some randomly acquired photo taken from social media and
originating who knows where. And to take it one discrediting step further,
it turns out the photo was provided by the al Qaeda terrorists -- the CIA's
client anti-Assad terrorists -- who control that area.
After
Pompeo's prepared remarks, Juan Zarate queried the director on the Syria
attack/s, starting his questions with comment on the rapidity with which
"assessments were made."
(Zarate is now at CSIS after proving his neoconservative
bona fides
as a charter member of Stuart Levey's Treasury Department "guerrillas in
grey suits" - the gang that deploys financial blackmail to coerce
international banks and corporations to join the US in constraining their
commerce with states the USA does not like.)
Pompeo responded to Zarate's request for "behind the scenes" description
of how the assessments were made:
"We were in short order able to deliver a high confidence assessment
that it was the Syrian regime that had launched chemical attacks against
its own people. Not me, Our Team, not just the CIA, the entire
intelligence community was good and fast and we challenged ourselves. I
can assure you we were challenged by the President and his team. We
wanted to make sure we had it right. There's not much like when the
president looks at you and says, Are you sure? When you know he's
contemplating an action based on the analysis your organization has
provided, and we got it right and I'm proud of the work that get to have
the president have the opportunity to make a good decision about what he
ought to do in the face of the atrocity that took place. "
Zarate did not register dissatisfaction with this non-response; instead,
he accepted the assessment as conclusive. Then he escalated the discussion:
"What do you make of the Russian disputation of those conclusions?
Bashar Al-Assad calling this a fabrication, the entire event. It's a
battle of legitimacy and proof. How do you deal with that?"
To which Pompeo delivered the money-quote:
They're challenges. There are things we were able to use to form the
basis of our conclusion that
we cannot reveal.
That is always
tricky, but we've done our best and I think
over time we can reveal a
bit more.
Everyone saw the open source photos, so we had
reality on our side.
"
So apparently Pompeo and the "entire intelligence community" used the
same photos that Dr. Postol examined exhaustively, but reached a different
conclusion; they believe that the photos reflect "reality" and support their
interpretation of events as fingering the Syrian government as perpetrators
of the "red-line" "atrocity."
Pompeo spent the next few minutes derogating Russia and Putin, stating
that "Russia is on its sixth or seventh version of the story," and that
"Putin is not a credible man . . . a man for whom veracity does not
translate into English." (I think he meant "into
Russian . . .
.")
Sounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August
2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is
likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a
chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in
Idlib province on April 4th.
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a overwhelming
need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit when they
were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost their big
gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone . So the
motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are even more
puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Purchase Article
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had
ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez,
who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits
argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control
over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring
undisturbed. ]...
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with
the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood
the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the
civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate
from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C.
That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime,
whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is
that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability,
its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's
chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had
served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced
sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an
administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the
country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to
control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral
souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building.
This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more
vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early
warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in
underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely
effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and
earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic
events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and
financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential.
For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it,
and a more sophisticated approach is required.
[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile
do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events,
which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example,
will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and
predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is
why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile
respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the
harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from
a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price
of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as
a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated
decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks,
such as disastrous national-level reforms.
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of
the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not
"Syria"
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and
are already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this
position-- he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic
commodities and the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is
scared to get involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly
but he and his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements .
Bringing in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence
it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing
"evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear
balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying
for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned
the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is
the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar
al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the
White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many
before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave
of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an
extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a rebellion
it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's a zero
sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I think it is
more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took advantage of US
passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and
watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they
couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would
have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't source your quotes,
and you're ideologically driven by a form of crypto anti-socialism revealed
in you're basic premise that centralized planning created the vulnerability
that brought down Saddam and now threatens Assad.
Nonsense. What threatens all of the Mideast - what brought down Saddam,
Gaddafi, and now threatens Assad - is US/Zionist covert and overt political
and military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon
subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its
conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation of
the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
@utu
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad?
Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and
names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources,
intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead
Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his
whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media.
Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being
propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
How do we know it wasn't YOU? Prove it. I want pictures, names.
Read More
utu
,
April 18, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT
200 Words
@The Anti-Gnostic
How do we know it wasn't YOU? Prove it. I want pictures, names.
It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you
look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by
retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't
change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik
are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would
think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's
intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications
between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a
good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's
going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept
and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make
belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad
guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right?
Read More
Sean
,
April 18, 2017 at 6:49 pm GMT
"The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were
exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the
successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it
their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be
assumed to have been frightening to Europe."
Wow, we must have been observing two different worlds, because Russian
actions in several theatres (Syria, Ukraine, Korea, ROW) have been
relatively restrained to non-existent despite clear threats to their
national interests, while the US has ratcheted up it military intervention
pretty much globally over the same period. Then again, I live outside the US
and am not blanketed with the propaganda that spills out of its MSM house
organs, so we have indeed observed two different worlds.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/marines-raqqa-assault-syria/
Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that
Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan
Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
So far it's been a Big Media claim, too. To the point of at least one
piece (in
The Atlantic
, IIRC) poo-pooing the idea that the Big Media
Narrative could be wrong.
even though Damascus had no motive to stage such an attack
I'm tired of reading this and seeing no explanation. I'd like to see that
assertion supported. I'd like it to come from you, Phil, because so far, in
my experience, you seem to be the most reasonable US-skeptic writer at TUR.
It isn't self-explanatory. Chemical weapons have their uses, like
clearing out heavily fortified urban areas that would be costly to clear the
old fashioned way. Weighed against Trump's ostensible goal to stay out of
Syria and drop the insane "Assad must go" rhetoric of the previous
administration, it might've been tempting. Which is why I would like to know
more about the target area and circumstances. But nobody seems to give a
shit. I suppose it might have a lot to do with the fact that there are (or
were, last I heard) no journalists in Syria. But if we simply don't know
much about the target area, maybe we should stop assuming hitting it with
chemical weapons had no utility.
Principled and eminently sensible Democratic Congressman Tulsi Gabbard
Those principles being "don't invade the world, invite the world," I
presume?
There have been two central documents relating to the alleged Syrian
chemical weapon incidents in 2013 and 2017, both of which read like press
releases. Both refer to a consensus within the U.S. intelligence
community (IC)and express "confidence" and even "high confidence"
regarding their conclusions but neither is actually a product of the
office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would be
appropriate if the IC had actually come to a consensus. Neither the
Director of National Intelligence nor the Director of CIA were present in
a photo showing the White House team deliberating over what to do about
Syria. Both documents supporting the U.S. cruise missile attack were, in
fact, uncharacteristically put out by the White House, suggesting that
the arguments were stitched together in haste to support a political
decision to use force that had already been made.
The American Security Apparatus can shove their consensus up their asses
anyway. Why should the American public take their word for anything?
Generally reliable journalist Robert Parry is reporting that the
intelligence behind the White House claims comes largely from satellite
surveillance, though nothing has been released to back-up the conclusion
that the Syrian government was behind the attack, an odd omission as
everyone knows about satellite capabilities and they are not generally
considered to be a classified source or method.
And there are huge, consistent gaps in satellite coverage (and always
have been, last I heard) that everyone and their mother knows about,
meaning, it would be trivial for anyone to plan an attack when the
satellites can't see. If Parry is right, then it sounds like the
administration has jack shit. "Satellite surveillance" is the last source
I'd find persuasive or conclusive in this context.
Parry also cites the fact that there are alternative theories on what
took place and why, some of which appear to originate with the
intelligence and national security community, which was in part concerned
over the rush to judgment by the White House.
So this really is shaping up to all be a bunch of "Wag The Dog/I bombed
Serbia to distract from my kosher blowjob scandal" bullshit. Great.
The al-Ansar terrorist group (affiliated with al-Qaeda) is in control
of the area
@utu
It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you
look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by
retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't
change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik
are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would
think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's
intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications
between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a
good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's
going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept
and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make
belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad
guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right?
Your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with a fence post. At least
I found the the fence post truthful, unlike you. I can't imagine you to be
able to make humanitarian decisions based on your impatience and impudence.
Read More
Z-man
,
April 18, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT
100 Words
@Jeff Davis
You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't source your quotes,
and you're ideologically driven by a form of crypto anti-socialism revealed
in you're basic premise that centralized planning created the vulnerability
that brought down Saddam and now threatens Assad.
Nonsense. What threatens all of the Mideast -- what brought down Saddam,
Gaddafi, and now threatens Assad -- is US/Zionist covert and overt political
and military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon
subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its
conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation of
the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
The US has been turned into Israel's bjtch, its treasury looted, the
lives of US miltary personnel sacrificed to benefit the Zionist criminal
project. And you,... are either a fool or an Israeli propagandist.
What threatens all of the Mideast - what brought down Saddam, Gaddafi,
and now threatens Assad - is US/Zionist covert and overt political and
military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon
subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its
conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation
of the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
The US has been turned into Israel's bjtch, its treasury looted, the
lives of US miltary personnel sacrificed to benefit the Zionist criminal
project.
400 Words
I think the take-home point for anyone who does his own thinking is that
Trump acted so quickly (36 hours) that the evidence should be overwhelming
and incontrovertible. The evidence forthcoming has been shit. Ergo, it seems
very clear that Trump had no valid reason to act as he did.
What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical attack on the
civilian populations?
Either the area is full of innocent civilians, or it's an al-Qaeda
stronghold.
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and
Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by
pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have
their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting
nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor
Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found
somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs
of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
The Russians are going to need a lot more than counter-propaganda. I
trust them even less than I trust western Big Media. Hard evidence or go
home.
Agent76, nobody who will trust globalresearch.ca needs to have their link
cited, they'll know about it already, being Konspiracy Kooks. Nobody else is
gonna buy that junk.
Not only that they recently illegally annexed a prized warm water
port.
Illegal, schmellegal. It's perfectly legit realpolitik. If Ukraine didn't
want Russia taking back what was hers, she shouldn't have jumped into bed
with hostile powers. Seriously, if you'd asked a Ukrainian on independence
day what would happen in the current circumstances, they could have painted
you an accurate picture.
"We were in short order able to deliver a high confidence assessment
that it was the Syrian regime that had launched chemical attacks against
its own people. Not me, Our Team, not just the CIA, the entire
intelligence community was good and fast and we challenged ourselves. I
can assure you we were challenged by the President and his team. We
wanted to make sure we had it right. There's not much like when the
president looks at you and says, Are you sure? When you know he's
contemplating an action based on the analysis your organization has
provided, and we got it right and I'm proud of the work that get to have
the president have the opportunity to make a good decision about what he
ought to do in the face of the atrocity that took place. "
Not withstanding our Presidents "rush to judgement"
tomahawk strike against the Assad regime last week, there should be very
strong indications to our main stream media, that they are being abandoned
by tens of millions of Americans across our country who no longer accept the
medias willingness to defraud us ,at nearly every turn.
I was an avid reader of the the NY Times, for over 25 years, and I
watched the nightly news all the time.
When we were all told by these media outlets in the run up to the Iraq
war, that Saddam had launched an anthrax attack against our news rooms and
our capitol I believed it completely 100%..without any reason in my own mind
why I shouldn't .
Once the war began, and the attribution to Saddam of the anthrax attack
quickly collapsed , I felt defrauded by those who I had always trusted to be
honest, most especially on issues of war and peace.
In 2013,when the Ghouta Sarin attack was attributed to Assad by these
very same pundits, the memory of the phony Saddam anthrax attribution reared
its ugly head, and with good reason.
If they were lying then why aren't they lying now ?
I think our media has proven itself, scores of times, over the last
fifteen years, to be, at best, disingenuous and at worst complicit in acts
of war fraud and terror fraud which have taken the lives of millions of
innocent people and cost our country tens of trillions of dollars.
There is no reason why I , nor any American, should be happy about this.
Whats worse is they have displayed such enormous contempt for all the
tens of millions of innocent families who have suffered on account of their
deceits that they have lost an overwhelming amount of respect from me,as
well as, I imagine, countless others.
Our Big Media can only cry "wolf" so many times before they are greeted
by everyone with the middle finger.
100 Words
President KUSHNER and his faithful toady Trump sure are busy these days. In
between bites of chocolate cake, they are arming the terrorists and bombing
Syrian civilians.
Over 50 Civilians Killed, Injured in US-Led Coalition
Airstrikes in Eastern Syria
There's one reason the USA is stuck in endless ME wars, with no end in
sight. American troops are fighting and dying for Apartheid Israel, and our
wealth is being spent on the same.
"iffen," the eff'n Israeli disinfo troll, is always trying to slip one in.
always trying to slip one in
Thanks to you RobinG I get a White
House propaganda blurb "slipped" into my email every day or so. The decent
thing for you to have done would have been to warn me not to use my actual
email address.
There are three basic configurations in which these agents are stored.
The first are self-contained munitions like projectiles, cartridges,
mines, and rockets; these can contain propellant and/or explosive
components. The next form are aircraft-delivered munitions. This form
never has an explosive component.[41] Together they comprise the two
forms that have been weaponized and are ready for their intended use. The
U.S. stockpile consisted of 39% of these weapon ready munitions. The
final of the three forms are raw agent housed in one-ton containers. The
remaining 61%[41] of the stockpile was in this form.[56] Whereas these
chemicals exist in liquid form at normal room temperature,[41][57] the
sulfur mustards H, and HD freeze in temperatures below 55 °F (12.8 °C).
Mixing lewisite with distilled mustard lowers the freezing point to −13
°F (−25.0 °C).[48]
Higher temperatures are a bigger concern because the possibility of an
explosion increases as the temperatures rise. A fire at one of these
facilities would endanger the surrounding community as well as the
personnel at the installations.[58] Perhaps more so for the community
having much less access to protective equipment and specialized
training.[59] The Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted a study to
assess capabilities and costs for protecting civilian populations during
related emergencies,[60] and the effectiveness of expedient, in-place
shelters.[61]
Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that
Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan
Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
So far it's been a Big Media claim, too. To the point of at least one piece
(in
The Atlantic
, IIRC) poo-pooing the idea that the Big Media
Narrative could be wrong.
even though Damascus had no motive to stage such an attack
I'm tired of reading this and seeing no explanation. I'd like to see that
assertion supported. I'd like it to come from you, Phil, because so far, in
my experience, you seem to be the most reasonable US-skeptic writer at TUR.
It isn't self-explanatory. Chemical weapons have their uses, like clearing
out heavily fortified urban areas that would be costly to clear the old
fashioned way. Weighed against Trump's ostensible goal to stay out of Syria
and drop the insane "Assad must go" rhetoric of the previous administration,
it might've been tempting. Which is why I would like to know more about the
target area and circumstances. But nobody seems to give a shit. I suppose it
might have a lot to do with the fact that there are (or were, last I heard)
no journalists in Syria. But if we simply don't know much about the target
area, maybe we should stop assuming hitting it with chemical weapons had no
utility.
Principled and eminently sensible Democratic Congressman Tulsi Gabbard
Those principles being "don't invade the world, invite the world," I
presume?
There have been two central documents relating to the alleged Syrian
chemical weapon incidents in 2013 and 2017, both of which read like press
releases. Both refer to a consensus within the U.S. intelligence
community (IC)and express "confidence" and even "high confidence"
regarding their conclusions but neither is actually a product of the
office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would be
appropriate if the IC had actually come to a consensus. Neither the
Director of National Intelligence nor the Director of CIA were present in
a photo showing the White House team deliberating over what to do about
Syria. Both documents supporting the U.S. cruise missile attack were, in
fact, uncharacteristically put out by the White House, suggesting that
the arguments were stitched together in haste to support a political
decision to use force that had already been made.
The American Security Apparatus can shove their consensus up their asses
anyway. Why should the American public take their word for anything?
Generally reliable journalist Robert Parry is reporting that the
intelligence behind the White House claims comes largely from satellite
surveillance, though nothing has been released to back-up the conclusion
that the Syrian government was behind the attack, an odd omission as
everyone knows about satellite capabilities and they are not generally
considered to be a classified source or method.
And there are huge, consistent gaps in satellite coverage (and always have
been, last I heard) that everyone and their mother knows about, meaning, it
would be trivial for anyone to plan an attack when the satellites can't see.
If Parry is right, then it sounds like the administration has jack shit.
"Satellite surveillance" is the last source I'd find persuasive or
conclusive in this context.
Parry also cites the fact that there are alternative theories on what
took place and why, some of which appear to originate with the
intelligence and national security community, which was in part concerned
over the rush to judgment by the White House.
So this really is shaping up to all be a bunch of "Wag The Dog/I bombed
Serbia to distract from my kosher blowjob scandal" bullshit. Great.
The al-Ansar terrorist group (affiliated with al-Qaeda) is in control of
the area
Meaning, this "innocent civilians" mantra we've been hearing from Big Media
is bullshit.
" like clearing out heavily fortified urban areas.."
100 Words
@DB Cooper
This whole chemical weapon attack by Assad sounds fishy from the beginning.
From what I read Assad is winning the civil war and things are turning for
the better for him. What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical
attack on the civilian populations? Things just doesn't add up. Check out
this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VNQGsiP8M&t=22s
It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera
before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which
occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the
elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made
before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was
done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked.
Read More
RobinG
,
April 18, 2017 at 8:32 pm GMT
200 Words
@Anon
None of this would be an issue if the media did its job.
But it doesn't.
There is free media in the US, but Big Media is not free media. It is Bought
Media and should be called as such.
Right you are! The Big, Bought and Biased Media must be RELENTLESSLY
exposed and discredited.
Trump's airstrike was triggered by the latest
Assad-Did-It-Again, "gassing his own people" story, that we first heard in
2013. Once again evidence is lacking, and worse, there is a total lack of
interest in finding evidence, or in asking the obvious questions of motive,
cui bono? In a replay of "Gulf of Tonkin," "WMDs in Iraq," and numerous
other false provocations, the
mainstream media has once again rushed to
judgment with no penetrating questions asked.
100 Words
@anonymous
It certainly appears to have been a manufactured event. The media was ready
and swung into action immediately with pictures and a noisy campaign that
the usual war-hawk politicians joined in with. The timing was just too good
and seems to have been coordinated. Syria was bombed without bothering to
investigate based on Trump's claim that the evidence was ironclad. Did
people like McMaster think it was real and report it to Trump as such? Did
Trump believe it? Or did they know it was fake but pretended otherwise? Were
they in on it from the beginning or were they forced to play along? Trump
has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric
has been bellicose and reckless. Next up, N Korea and then Iran?
No matter how one votes they end up getting the same thing. It's very
disheartening.
" . . . Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician
whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. . . ."
Yeah, it looks like
it.
I voted for Trump mainly for foreign policy reasons. I assumed–I
hoped!–that Trump would be better than Our Lady of the Pantsuits, that
Israel-controlled, neocon hack. Maybe the difference is this: With Clinton,
the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump, it'll take a bit
longer. . . .
Read More
anon
,
April 18, 2017 at 8:59 pm GMT
200 Words
How does the lie work? It survives . It always survives . King is dead! Long
live the king! It come back. People ignore when they find it out . Same
propel tweak the margins and support the new version to build another lie.
That's why we hear that "Saddam did not have nukes but they found weapons
they found this they found that they found gas chemical"
I tell them " that is none of your and this Gov's Freaking business"
Now these guys are busy saying "Assad sent refugees he doesn't want this
or that or he poured chem s or make attack it possible"
@Philip Giraldi
Kilcullen is well compensated by those who support the Establishment
narrative on Syria and everywhere else in the Middle East so he does indeed
have an agenda. Most intel and military types that I have spoken to agree
that after the retaking of Aleppo al-Assad is winning and will eventually
win. Did he nevertheless stage the chemical attack on Idbil? I don't know.
Let's see the evidence. Somebody obviously knows that happened.
I assume that someone called "Wizard of Oz" might, like myself, be a
resident of Australia.
What is surprising, then, is that he/she gives any credibility to a Murdoch
rag and the Australian at that. Its political positions with respect to the
Middle East in particular are well known.
Read More
SolontoCroesus
,
April 18, 2017 at 9:19 pm GMT
100 Words
@utu
It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you
look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by
retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't
change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik
are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would
think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's
intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications
between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a
good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's
going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept
and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make
belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad
guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right?
One amateurish report by retired professor from MIT that bases his
finding on just one picture won't change it. Still it is this report that
Russia's media like RT and Sputnik are citing instead of coming up with
their own genuine stuff.
According to newly minted director of CIA, that organization and the
entire "intelligence community" relied on the "reality" of those photos, in
addition to other things that "can't be revealed right now, maybe later."
100 Words
@Brewer
It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera
before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which
occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the
elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made
before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was
done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked.
Hi Brewer,
Is there a link to the video ?
Moreover, if what you are saying is true, then it would seem to indicate
the White Helmets, as well as ISIS were leaked information as to the time of
the Syrian strike so as to stage the chemical event well beforehand.
This means there is a big leak in the shared information between the
White House and Moscow.
My understanding is Moscow shared advanced warning of the Syrian strike
with D.C., as part of their non confrontation agreement.
Somebody leaked that information to ISIS and Al Qaeda .I wonder who ?
300 Words
It should surprise none that Syria is simply a redux of Iraq 2002-03, minus
Ahmed Chalabi or a reasonable facsimile. A "slam dunk." It worked then. The
media loved it. All the players got to write memoirs and collect royalties
on the same bogus narrative. OK, it was widened a bit to include how
everyone, absolutely everyone had no doubt about the 'intelligence' and
WMDs. Honest.
GW Bush even did a clever PowerPoint mime for the Radio &
Television Correspondent's Association Dinner 24 March 2004 in which he said
"Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere! Nope, no weapons over
there! Maybe under here?" while pretending to look for WMD under his desk.
Few (if any) objected. That's when it was pretty clear the soul of the
press, if not the Republic, was dead.
The media loves it now. Easy stories – sensational, complete with dead
infant/kiddy pics. Second only to porn. Better in a way, because you can
inject moral indignation into the byline. Remember the Sabah's hawking 312
dead babies removed from incubators by Saddam in Kuwait in '90? Worked then
too. No need to look further.
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what
will follow. It champions 'moderate rebels', despite their kinship to the
most extreme barbarism. If Iraq 2003 was bad, this is even worse. We don't
even bother to suggest reasonable succession or a viable alternative future.
Too much effort?
True corruption. There are no excuses.
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47, which
codified the CIA and changed the "Department of War' to the 'Department of
Defense'?. We've waged war (clandestine and overt) ever since. If only for
honesty, it should be changed back to' Department of War.'
Read More
utu
,
April 18, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT
100 Words
@Brewer
It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera
before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which
occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the
elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made
before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was
done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked.
It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al
Jazeera before 8am.
200 Words
@Orville H. Larson
" . . . Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician
whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. . . ."
Yeah, it looks like it.
I voted for Trump mainly for foreign policy reasons. I assumed--I
hoped!--that Trump would be better than Our Lady of the Pantsuits, that
Israel-controlled, neocon hack. Maybe the difference is this: With Clinton,
the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump, it'll take a bit
longer. . . .
With Clinton, the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump,
it'll take a bit longer. .
Israel has a well known deterrent referred to as the 'Samson option'.
I think it would be prudent, and I hope that the sane world has already
made those in a position to force a major war between the zio-West vs.
Russia (for instance)..
.. that the first place to get glassed will be that shitty little
country- as a kind of reverse Samson option
I would like to hope that even now, all sane nations.. (Russia, China,
India, Pakistan, et al) who have nukes, have them all trained at ground zero
(T.A.) for the strife in the world.
and I suppose to be effective, they'd have to be aimed at some of the
snake pits in the Western world as well- I really don't think Rothschild,
(Soros, Kristol, etc..) would care too much if most of Israel proper were
glowing, so long as they and the diaspora would be able to take control of
what ever was left after the fallout dispersed.
the Fiend needs to know that he'd get it first, and there would be the
peace
100 Words
@Incitatus
It should surprise none that Syria is simply a redux of Iraq 2002-03, minus
Ahmed Chalabi or a reasonable facsimile. A "slam dunk." It worked then. The
media loved it. All the players got to write memoirs and collect royalties
on the same bogus narrative. OK, it was widened a bit to include how
everyone, absolutely everyone had no doubt about the 'intelligence' and
WMDs. Honest.
GW Bush even did a clever PowerPoint mime for the Radio &
Television Correspondent's Association Dinner 24 March 2004 in which he said
"Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!...Nope, no weapons
over there!...Maybe under here?" while pretending to look for WMD under his
desk. Few (if any) objected. That's when it was pretty clear the soul of the
press, if not the Republic, was dead.
The media loves it now. Easy stories - sensational, complete with dead
infant/kiddy pics. Second only to porn. Better in a way, because you can
inject moral indignation into the byline. Remember the Sabah's hawking 312
dead babies removed from incubators by Saddam in Kuwait in '90? Worked then
too. No need to look further.
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what
will follow. It champions 'moderate rebels', despite their kinship to the
most extreme barbarism. If Iraq 2003 was bad, this is even worse. We don't
even bother to suggest reasonable succession or a viable alternative future.
Too much effort?
True corruption. There are no excuses.
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47, which
codified the CIA and changed the "Department of War' to the 'Department of
Defense'?. We've waged war (clandestine and overt) ever since. If only for
honesty, it should be changed back to' Department of War.'
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what
will follow.
that's not specifically true. They've come right out and said they prefer
Al Nursa and the cannibals and crucifying head slicers to a stable
government with a viable middle class.
"We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys
who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,"
Israel wants in Syria what it got in Iraq and Libya.. a complete
dystopian hell on earth. Old Testament vengeance and unimaginable suffering.
It is written.
They literally thrive on that shit
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47
nope
it started in earnest with the Balfour Declaration and Wilson's war. A
hundred years ago exactly to the day from Trump's attack on Syria.
Thanks to you RobinG I get a White
House propaganda blurb "slipped" into my email every day or so. The decent
thing for you to have done would have been to warn me not to use my actual
email address.
BTW. the commies have been trying to get a warm water port since the
beginning of the Cold War.
Pretty sure the Commies had Sevastopol at the start of the Cold War and all
the way through it. Sevastopol doesn't really count as a warm water port in
the way you mean since you have to go through two straits controlled by NATO
before you are in the real ocean.
Interesting but very controversial. Jewish people do possess business acumen and are more oriented toward money success. Just
look what happened in the USSR after its dissolution and Yeltsin privatization. Most "oligarchs" turn to be Jewish ;-)
Also the achievement of Jewish people in science should be be underestimated. This nation gave world a lot of top
physicists mathematicians and philosophers.
Notable quotes:
"... Even the Saudi Monarchy's occasional outbursts against Israel do not inhibit it from engaging in large-scale financial transactions with the Jewish banking elite on Wall Street and City of London and from forming covert alliances with Israeli intelligence in order to overthrow secular pro-Palestinian Arab regimes – as has happened in Libya, Iraq and Syria. They have both benefited from the massive ethnic cleansing of the highly educated minority Christian populations of secular Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Fake anti-Semitism is most recently seen in the launching of series of anti-Semitic 'threats' by ethno-centric Jews to create hysteria, serves many purposes following the recent rise of populism in Europe and the election of the American President Donald Trump who had promised to withdraw the US from wars in the Middle East. First, it secures widespread support from North American and European regimes, especially when Israel is criticized throughout the world and at the United Nations for its war crimes in occupied Palestine. ..."
"... It is almost certain that the US FBI had identified the perpetrator of these acts as they uncovered the sophisticated operation based in Israel. The FBI would have demanded Israeli police arrest 'the culprit' and shut down the operation. Israeli police staged their own 'fake' investigation and concluded that the complex cloaked cyber operations 'were the work of a shy nineteen year old with dyslexia' – clearly another example of the Jewish genius. ..."
"... A review of the top 10 US multi-billionaires finds four who are identified as 'Jews': Mark Zuckerberg with $56 billion, Larry Ellison with $52.2 billion, Michael Bloomberg with $47.5 billion and Sergey Brin $39.4 billion. In other words 40% of the super-richest Americans are 'Jews' while 60% are non-Jews. Among the top ten in the US, billionaire Jews with a total of $195.1 billion are collectively less rich than the top billionaire Gentiles who own $282.7 billion. ..."
"... All the high-tech computer and financial billionaires are just assumed by the tribalists to view themselves as 'Jewish geniuses' even though they may have learned and borrowed ideas and knowledge from their non-Jewish partners and mentors in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. ..."
Ethno-religious (ER) beliefs and practices have been harmless when individuals or
groups linked to those practices have limited influence over the state and economy. In contrast,
when such groups exercise a disproportionately powerful influence over the state and economy, they
dominate and exploit majorities while forming closed self-replicating networks.
Examples of powerful ethno-centric regimes in the 1930's are well known for their brutality and
devastating consequences. These include the white Christians in the US, Germany and the European
colonial settlement regimes in Rhodesia, South Africa, India and Indonesia, as well as the Japanese
imperialists in Asia.
In the post-colonial or neo-colonial era, ethno-centrism has taken the form of virulent anti-Islamic
hysteria resulting in predatory Western regimes embarking on wars and military occupations in the
Middle East.
The rise of Judeo-centrism, as an economic and political force, occurred in the last half of
the 20th century. The Jewish-Zionist seizure, occupation and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine
and their rising economic and political influence within the United States has created a formidable
power bloc with significant implications for world peace.
The rise of Jewish ethnocentrism (JE) has confounded its proponents as well as its adversaries;
Zionists and anti-Semites alike are surprised by the scope and depth of JE.
Advocates and adversaries, of all persuasions, conflate the power of what they call 'the Jews',
for their own purposes. Advocates find proof of 'Jewish genius' in every prestigious position and
attribute it to their own unique culture, heredity and scholarship, rather than the result of a greater
social-cultural context. The anti-Semites, for their part, attribute all the world's nefarious dealings
and diabolic plots to 'the Jews'. This creates a strange duality of illusions about the exceptionalism
of a minority group.
In this paper I will focus on demystifying the myths buttressing the power of contemporary Judeo-centric
ideology, belief and organizational influence. There is little point in focusing on anti-Semitism,
which has no impact on the economy and the exercise of state power with the possible exception of
Saudi Arabia. Even the Saudi Monarchy's occasional outbursts against Israel do not inhibit it from
engaging in large-scale financial transactions with the Jewish banking elite on Wall Street and City
of London and from forming covert alliances with Israeli intelligence in order to overthrow secular
pro-Palestinian Arab regimes – as has happened in Libya, Iraq and Syria. They have both benefited
from the massive ethnic cleansing of the highly educated minority Christian populations of secular
Iraq and Syria.
Fake Anti-Semitism: Operational Weapon of the Ethno-Centric Jews
Fake anti-Semitism is most recently seen in the launching of series of anti-Semitic 'threats'
by ethno-centric Jews to create hysteria, serves many purposes following the recent rise of populism
in Europe and the election of the American President Donald Trump who had promised to withdraw the
US from wars in the Middle East. First, it secures widespread support from North American and European
regimes, especially when Israel is criticized throughout the world and at the United Nations for
its war crimes in occupied Palestine. Widespread fake anti-Semitic attacks divert attention to Judeo-ethno
centrists and validate their claims to be the first among the history's victims. Second, widely publicized
'fake' acts of anti-Semitism arouse the ethnocentric foot soldiers and increase rich donor contributions
to the illegal Jewish settlements and the Israeli military. Third, 'fake anti-Semitism' is used to
threaten, repress and outlaw any organizations and individuals who criticize Israel and the influence
of Jewish ethnocentric organizations in their home countries.
How many 'anti-Semitic' acts are staged is uncertain: On March 23, 2017, an Israeli-American
man was arrested in Israel for sending hundreds of fake anti-Semitic threats to Jewish institutions
and schools in four European countries and nine US states. Such threats led to the emergency grounding
of two US airlines and the panicked evacuation of countless schools and cultural centers. This man
used a sophisticated system of cloaking accounts to appear to originate in other countries. Despite
his high skills at cyber-terrorism, Israeli authorities preposterously described him as a 'teenager
with a learning disability'. The Israeli-American cyber-terrorist's arrest made the 'back-pages'
news in the US for one day while his (and others') fake threats continued to make international headlines
for weeks.
These scores of fake anti-Semitic bomb threats were cited by the major ethnocentric leaders in
the US to pressure the US President and hundreds of Congressional leaders, University Presidents,
etc. to mindlessly echo their clamor for greater police state investigations against critics of Israel
and to offer special 'protection' for potential 'Jewish victims'. Moves to outlaw criticism of Israel
as 'anti-Semitism' and a 'hate crime' increased.
Not surprisingly the leading Jewish organizations never backed down or called on the US government
to investigate the source of the fake anti-Semitic threats: that is Israeli-American Zionists, who
carry both nations' passports and can enter and exit with total ease and enjoy immunity from extradition.
It is almost certain that the US FBI had identified the perpetrator of these acts as they uncovered
the sophisticated operation based in Israel. The FBI would have demanded Israeli police arrest 'the
culprit' and shut down the operation. Israeli police staged their own 'fake' investigation and concluded
that the complex cloaked cyber operations 'were the work of a shy nineteen year old with dyslexia'
– clearly another example of the Jewish genius.
It is more likely that the hundreds of false-anti-Semitic
threats were part of an Israeli state operation identified by the FBI who 'diplomatically' pressured
Tel Aviv to cut out the monkey business. The news report of the lone-wolf teenager in Israel allowed
the Israeli intelligence to cover-up their role. Once the Israelis passed off the unbelievable tale
of a brilliant, if troubled, young 'lone wolf', the entire US mass media buried the story forever.
In due time the so-called perpetrator will be released, amply rewarded and his identity re-cycled.
In the meantime the US government, as well as several European governments, was forced to allocate
tens of millions of dollars to provide extra security to Jewish institutions in the wake of these
fake threats.
Jewish Power: The Top 25 American Multi-Billionaires
In February 2017, Forbes magazine compiled a list of the world's billionaires, including a country-by-country
account. The top five countries with multi-billionaires among its citizens are: the US with 565,
China with 319, Germany with 114, India with 101, and Russia with 96. Moreover, since 2016 the net
worth of the multi-billionaires grew 18% to $7.67 trillion dollars.
While the US has the greatest number of billionaires, China is fast catching up.
Despite China's advances, the US remains the center of world capitalism with the greatest concentration
of wealth, as well as the greatest and growing inequalities. One reasonably can argue that who controls
US wealth controls the world.
'Jews' among the Top 25 Multi-Billionaires in the US
A review of the top 10 US multi-billionaires finds four who are identified as 'Jews': Mark Zuckerberg
with $56 billion, Larry Ellison with $52.2 billion, Michael Bloomberg with $47.5 billion and Sergey
Brin $39.4 billion. In other words 40% of the super-richest Americans are 'Jews' while 60% are non-Jews.
Among the top ten in the US, billionaire Jews with a total of $195.1 billion are collectively less
rich than the top billionaire Gentiles who own $282.7 billion.
Of the top 25 multi-billionaires in the US, 11 of the 25 are Jews. In other words 'the Jews'
represent 44% of the top 25 biggest billionaires – outnumbered by Gentiles but catching up.
Analysis of the 'Richest Jews'
We place 'Jews' in quotation marks because this is a doubtful signifier – more useful to both
Zionist fanatics and anti-Semitic polemicists. Most are not 'practicing' or are completely disinterested
in tribal religions. Nevertheless, half of secular Jews in the US are active supporters of Israel
or involved in Fifth Column Israeli 'front groups'.
In other words, about half of the richest 'Jews' do not consider themselves to be religiously
or ethnically 'Jewish'. Super rich Jews are divided regarding their ethnic loyalties between the
US and Israel.
Moreover what is murkier, many of the richest so-called 'Jews' were born to 'mixed marriages'.
Strictly religious Jews do not recognize the children of such marriages as Jews because their mothers
are not Jewish. The omnivorous Zionists, on the other hand, classify all of them as Jews on the basis
of their actual or potential contribution to the State of Israel. In other words, the Zionist classification
of 'Jews' becomes arbitrary, politicized and dependent on organizational affiliation. Religious practice
and ethno-cultural purity are less important.
Judeo-Centrism and the Intrinsic Superiority Fallacy
Among the many zealous advocates of the Judeo-centric world, the most tiresome are those who
claim they represent the product of superior genetics, culture and heritage – unique and intrinsic
to Jews.
For many centuries most Jews were illiterate believers of religious tribal myths, taught by anti-scientific
rabbis, who closed off the ghettos from the accomplishments of higher culture and forbade integration
or mixed marriages. The high priests punished and expelled any Jews who were influenced by the surrounding
Hellenistic, Romanized, Arabic, Renaissance and Rationalists cultures, like the great Spinoza.
In other words, Jews who had rejected Jewish law, the Scriptures and the Torah were expelled
as apostates. But these 'apostates' were most open to the modern ideas of science. Jews greatly benefited
from the emancipatory laws and opportunities following the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, Jews
became citizens and were free to advance in science, the arts and finance by attending secular universities
away from the primitive, superstitious Rabbi-controlled ghetto 'schools'.
The dramatic growth of intellectual excellence among Jews in the 19th century was a result of
their ceasing to be Jews in the traditional closed religious sense. Did they suddenly switch on their
'genius genes' or invent a fake history or religion, as the ethno-centrist would have us believe?
It seems far more likely that they took great advantage of the opportunities opened to them with
major social and political developments in the greater society. As they assimilated and integrated
in secular traditions, they ceased to be Jews in the tribal religious sense. Their scientific, medical
and financial success came from learning, absorbing and exchanging scientific ideas, high culture
and conservative, liberal and socialist ideas with the larger progressive non-Jewish society.
It is no coincidence that 'great Jewish achievers' like the totally secular Albert Einstein were
educated in German universities by German professors and drew on scientific knowledge by German and
non-Jewish scholars. His intellectual development was due to his free association with the great
scientists and scholars of Germany and Europe, not closeted away in some ethno-tribal commune.
The Jews who remained embedded in the Polish, Lithuanian and Russian ghettos, under the reign
of the leading Rabbis, remained illiterate, poor and backward. Most of the claims of 'superior' cultural
heritage or traditions are the creation of a mythical folk history serving ethno-national supremacists.
The Myth of the Contemporary Genius
The modern ethnocentric ideologues ignore the 'dilution of Jewishness' in their celebratory identification
with successful 'Jews'.
Many of the best thinkers, writers, scientists and political leaders were conversos (Christian
converts), or integrated European secular nationalists, socialists, monarchists, bankers and professionals.
Some remained 'reformed Jews' or later transformed into secular Zionists: nationalists who despised
non-Europeans as inferior and couldn't even conceive of Arab Palestine as their 'homeland'. It wasn't
until the 20th century that Zionism was in part 'Judacized'. Early Zionists looked at various locations
for a homeland, including Argentina and parts of Africa and Russia.
These ethno-chauvinist ideologues lay claim to all brilliant individuals, no matter how tenuous
as examples of 'Jewish genius'. Even those personally opposed Jewish ethno-religious beliefs and
indifferent to tribal loyalties end up being claimed as examples of the 'Jewish genius'. Once some
'matrilineal link' could be found, their success and brilliance was tied to the mystical lineage,
no matter how tenuous.
This bizarre practice became even more commonplace following the Jewish military conquest and
brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with the military, political and financial backing of non-Jewish
Europe and the United States. With myths and inflated ideas of unique virtue and brilliance, Israel
was established as a racist apartheid state. A new militant, ethnocentric Judaism converted Israel and its overseas backers into an ethno-ideological
international power with religious trappings, based on the myth of its 'exceptionalism'. To maintain this myth, the personal histories of all prominent 'Israel Firsters' were sanitized
and scrubbed of anti-social and destructive behavior.
All Jewish billionaires were to be portrayed as uniquely philanthropic, while the exploits of
Jewish billionaire swindlers (Bernie Madoff, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky) were not to be mentioned
in polite company. The conquests of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, rapist-procurer head of
the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Governor Elliot Spitzer, Congressman Anthony Weiner and other similar
perverts quietly slithered off the edge of the planet although all had once been hailed as examples
of 'ethnocentric genius'.
Major Jewish political donors to US-UK-French electoral parties were hailed while their work
on behalf of Israel was naturally assumed but not discussed. The dizzying shifts between open adulation
and selective whitewash served to reinforce the illusion of superiority. Anyone, Jew or Gentile,
bold enough to point out the obvious hypocrisy would be immediately censored as 'self-hating' (Jew)
or 'anti-Semite' (Gentile).
Return to the Beginning: Judeo-Centric Power
As mentioned above, Jews represent a substantial minority among the top multi-billionaires, but
they are still a minority. Below the top level of wealth are the single digit billionaires and triple
and double digit multi-millionaires; here the proportion of 'Jews' increases. These 'less-than-super-billionaires'
are among the most active and the biggest financial and political supporters of the ethno centric
ideology and tribal cohesion.
Los Angeles-based Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban contributed tens of millions of dollars
to support of the Jewish state's occupation of Palestine and brutal colonial land grabbing 'settlers'.
His wealth is largely based on his 'genius' in pushing culturally vacuous Japanese cartoons (Mighty
Morphing Power Rangers) on the nation's children. He is the primary donor to the Democratic Party
pushing Israel's agenda – his number one priority as an American citizen.
The lesser 'foot soldiers' of the Zionist power structure are the millionaires and affluent professionals,
dentists, stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors and impresarios. The middle and lower levels of wealth and
power are a diverse group – mostly ethno-religious and secular, but very self-identified ethno-Jews.
A minority is totally secular or converted to non-Jewish religions (especially Buddhism, Christianity)
Despite the constant drumbeat of ethnocentric identity, an increasing number of young US 'Jews'
do not identify with Judaism or Israel. Their influence however is minimal.
The wealthy ethno-religious and secular ethnic Jews may or may not constitute a numerical majority
but they are the best organized, most political and most adamant in their claims to 'speak for and
represent the Jewish community' as a whole, especially during waves of (fake) 'anti-Semitism'!
The many former-Jews, anti-tribal Jews and 'non-Jewish' Jews are no match for the ethnocentric
political apparatus controlled by the chauvinists.
When the tribalists appropriate the glory of a secular non-Jewish Jewish scientist or major 'prize
winner' they claim his or her tribal affiliation in order to impress the 'goys' and to seduce younger
more skeptical Jews about the advantages of ethno-chauvinism.
All the high-tech computer and financial billionaires are just assumed by the tribalists to view
themselves as 'Jewish geniuses' even though they may have learned and borrowed ideas and knowledge
from their non-Jewish partners and mentors in Silicon Valley or Wall Street.
Upward mobility within academia, government and business circles is automatically assumed by
the tribalists to be a reward for superior merit – 'Jewish genius' – rather than nepotism or connections.
Tribal networks and 'understandings' play a powerful unspoken role in career success and immunity
from the consequences of failure, incompetence or dishonesty.
Multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires prospered because they entered establish lucrative
fields or made their career choices highly profitable.
Early on, many powerful Gentile bankers provided entry for talented Jews to succeed. This is
despite revisionist history bemoaning the exclusion of US Jews on Wall Street and their degrading
denial of membership in select WASP country clubs. These myths of brutal oppression on Wall Street
or Long Island yacht clubs have empowered generations of American Jews to assume the role of spokespersons
for the oppressed everywhere. The expression 'crying all the way to the bank' comes to mind.
By the last quarter of the 20th century and especially in the 21st century, deindustrialization
and the shift to financialization in the US economy increased the power and privilege of a disproportionate
number of multi-billionaire/millionaire Jews. This seismic shift has coincided with the pervasive
impoverishment of the marginalized working class in the former 'rust belt' and central parts of the
country and the incredible concentration of national wealth at the top 1%. This is a demographic
shift and ethno-class apartheid of huge, but unstudied, significance.
The most important political question is not how many Jews are super-wealthy but what proportion
of them are influential political donors and active in the Democratic or Republican Parties in order
to intervene on behalf of clan, tribe and motherland (Israel). Majorities among Jews are not crucial
– most are not politically active. What is decisive is the percentage of all the super-wealthy who
are politically active, organized and contribute substantially to influence and control the mass
media to promote their ethno-centric ideology and punish critics.
Conclusion
Overt and covert Jewish supremacists have embroidered a fake history and legacy of exceptional
intelligence ignoring the context of advanced non-Jewish science and cultures, which preceded and
later provided Jews with opportunities for education and wealth.
The danger inherent in all ethno-centric tribes is that they work to dominate majority populations
by creating systems of assigning superiority and inferiority. They then use these to justify growing
inequalities of wealth, education and political power!
Historically favored minorities tend to overreach and, like the eyeless Sampson, bring down the
Temple on everyone. Power corrupts and absolute ethno-chauvinist power corrupts absolutely. Intelligent
Jews of principle are abandoning
October 18, 1994 Remarks on the Nuclear Agreement With North Korea William J. Clinton
Good afternoon. I am pleased that the United States and North Korea yesterday reached agreement
on the text of a framework document on North Korea's nuclear program.
If there were ever a Just Cause for the Yanks to invade and bring
democracy somewhere, it would be North Korea.
The horrors that generations of North Koreans in concentration camps are
enduring, would even make the holo-jews cringe.
Then again, is Israel ready to take a second row seat on the holocaust
narrative and let the North Koreans take the gold medal of international
victimhood?
And what do you do with millions of people coping with culture shock,
paranoia, etc.?
And, last but not least, who would make our clothing for 5 cents a piece?
All in all. I do not think the Israeli's would let the USA attack North
Korea.
Zero chance of any attack on Korea beyond a prearranged choreographed
pinprick. The explanation is simple: nothing in it for the Jooies and Izzies
who worked overtime to install a US government of the jooies, by the jooies,
for the jooies. Why would they waste their satrap's assets when they could
be used on Iran?
I
am responding to your distribution of what I understand is a White House
statement claiming intelligence findings about the nerve agent attack on
April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria. My understanding from your note is
that this White House intelligence summary was released to you sometime on
April 11, 2017.
I have reviewed the document carefully,
and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not
provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete
knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack
in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.
In fact, a main piece of evidence that is
cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals
on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.
This conclusion is based on an assumption
made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and
the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was
very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made
from the photographs cited by the White House.
However, if one assumes, as does the White
House, that the source of the sarin was from this location and that the
location was not tampered with, the most plausible conclusion is that the
sarin was dispensed by an improvised dispersal device made from a 122 mm
section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on both sides.
The only undisputable facts stated in the
White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent
occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning. Although the White House
statement repeats this point in many places within its report, the report
contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a
munition being dropped from an aircraft. In fact, the report contains
absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this
atrocity.
The report instead repeats observations of
physical effects suffered by victims that with very little doubt indicate
nerve agent poisoning.
The only source the document cites as
evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government is the crater it
claims to have identified on a road in the North of Khan Shaykhun.
I have located this crater using Google
Earth and there is absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a
munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft.
The Google Earth map shown in
Figure 1
at the end of this text section shows the location of that
crater on the road in the north of Khan Shaykhun, as described in the White
House statement.
The data cited by the White House is more
consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground
rather than dropped from a plane. This conclusion assumes that the crater
was not tampered with prior to the photographs. However, by referring to the
munition in this crater, the White House is indicating that this is the
erroneous source of the data it used to conclude that the munition came from
a Syrian aircraft.
Analysis of the debris as shown in the
photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was
almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive
on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load
of sarin.
Since time appears to be of the essence
here, I have put together the summary of the evidence I have that the White
House report contains false and misleading conclusions in a series of
figures that follow this discussion. Each of the figures has a description
below it, but I will summarize these figures next and wait for further
inquiries about the basis of the conclusions I am putting forward herein.
Figure 1
shows a Google
Earth image of the northeast corner of Khan Shaykhun where the crater
identified as the source of the sarin attack and referred to in the White
House intelligence report is located.
Also shown in the Google Earth image is
the direction of the wind from the crater. At 3 AM the wind was going
directly to the south at a speed of roughly 1.5 to 2.5 m/s. By 6 AM the wind
was moving to the southeast at 1 to 2 m/s. The temperature was also low, 50
to 55°F near the ground. These conditions are absolutely ideal for a nerve
agent attack.
When the temperature near the ground is
low, and there is no sun and very slow winds, the dense cool air stays close
to the ground and there is almost no upward motion of the air. This
condition causes any particles, droplets, or clouds of dispersed gas to stay
close to the ground as the surrounding air moves over the ground. We
perceive this motion as a gentle breeze on a calm morning before sunrise.
One can think of a cloud of sarin as much
like a cloud of ink generated by an escaping octopus. The ink cloud sits in
the water and as the water slowly moves, so does the cloud. As the cloud is
moved along by the water, it will slowly spread in all directions as it
moves. If the layer of water where the ink is embedded moves so as to stay
close to the ocean floor, the cloud will cover objects as it moves with the
water.
This is the situation that occurs on a
cool night before sunrise when the winds move only gently.
Figures 5 and 6
show
tables that summarize the weather at 3 hour intervals in Khan Shaykun on the
day of the attack, April 4, the day before the attack, April 3, and the day
after the attack, April 5. The striking feature of the weather is that there
were relatively high winds in the morning hours on both April 3 and April 5.
If the gas attack were executed either the day before or the day after in
the early morning, the attack would have been highly ineffective. The much
higher winds would have dispersed the cloud of nerve agent and the mixing of
winds from higher altitudes would have caused the nerve agent to be carried
aloft from the ground. It is therefore absolutely clear that the time and
day of the attack was carefully chosen and was no accident.
Figure 2
shows a high
quality photograph of the crater identified in the White House report as the
source of the sarin attack. Assuming that there was no tampering of evidence
at the crater, one can see what the White House is claiming as a dispenser
of the nerve agent.
The dispenser looks like a 122 mm pipe
like that used in the manufacture of artillery rockets.
As shown in the close-up of the pipe in
the crater in
Figure 3
, the pipe looks like it was
originally sealed at the front end and the back end. Also of note is that
the pipe is flattened into the crater, and also has a fractured seam that
was created by the brittle failure of the metal skin when the pipe was
suddenly crushed inward from above.
Figure 4
shows the
possible configuration of an improvised sarin dispersal device that could
have been used to create the crater and the crushed carcass of what was
originally a cylindrical pipe. A good guess of how this dispersal mechanism
worked (again, assuming that the crater and carcass were not staged, as
assumed in the White House report) was that a slab of high explosive was
placed over one end of the sarin-filled pipe and detonated.
The explosive acted on the pipe as a blunt
crushing mallet. It drove the pipe into the ground while at the same time
creating the crater. Since the pipe was filled with sarin, which is an
incompressible fluid, as the pipe was flattened the sarin acted on the walls
and ends of the pipe causing a crack along the length of the pipe and also
the failure of the cap on the back end. This mechanism of dispersal is
essentially the same as hitting a toothpaste tube with a large mallet, which
then results in the tube failing and the toothpaste being blown in many
directions depending on the exact way the toothpaste skin ruptures.
If this is in fact the mechanism used to
disperse the sarin, this indicates that the sarin tube was placed on the
ground by individuals on the ground and not dropped from an airplane.
Figure 8
shows the
improvised sarin dispenser along with a typical 122 mm artillery rocket and
the modified artillery rocket used in the sarin attack of August 21, 2013 in
Damascus.
At that time (August 30, 2013) the Obama
White House also issued an intelligence report containing obvious
inaccuracies. For example, that report stated without equivocation that the
sarin carrying artillery rocket used in Damascus had been fired from Syrian
government controlled areas. As it turned out, the particular munition used
in that attack could not go further than roughly 2 km, very far short of any
boundary controlled by the Syrian government at that time. The White House
report at that time also contained other critical and important errors that
might properly be described as amateurish. For example, the report claimed
that the locations of the launch and impact of points of the artillery
rockets were observed by US satellites. This claim was absolutely false and
any competent intelligence analyst would have known that. The rockets could
be seen from the Space-Based Infrared Satellite (SBIRS) but the satellite
could absolutely not see the impact locations because the impact locations
were not accompanied by explosions. These errors were clear indicators that
the White House intelligence report had in part been fabricated and had not
been vetted by competent intelligence experts.
This same situation appears to be the case
with the current White House intelligence report. No competent analyst would
assume that the crater cited as the source of the sarin attack was
unambiguously an indication that the munition came from an aircraft. No
competent analyst would assume that the photograph of the carcass of the
sarin canister was in fact a sarin canister. Any competent analyst would
have had questions about whether the debris in the crater was staged or
real. No competent analyst would miss the fact that the alleged sarin
canister was forcefully crushed from above, rather than exploded by a
munition within it. All of these highly amateurish mistakes indicate that
this White House report, like the earlier Obama White House Report, was not
properly vetted by the intelligence community as claimed.
I have worked with the intelligence
community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of
intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times
– but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in
it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the
White House document they would have not approved the document going
forward.
I am available to expand on these comments
substantially. I have only had a few hours to quickly review the alleged
White House intelligence report. But a quick perusal shows without a lot of
analysis that this report cannot be correct, and it also appears that this
report was not properly vetted by the intelligence community.
This is a very serious matter.
President Obama was initially misinformed
about supposed intelligence evidence that Syria was the perpetrator of the
August 21, 2013 nerve agent attack in Damascus. This is a matter of public
record. President Obama stated that his initially false understanding was
that the intelligence clearly showed that Syria was the source of the nerve
agent attack. This false information was corrected when the then Director of
National Intelligence, James Clapper, interrupted the President while he was
in an intelligence briefing. According to President Obama, Mr. Clapper told
the President that the intelligence that Syria was the perpetrator of the
attack was "not a slamdunk."
The question that needs to be answered by
our nation is how was the president initially misled about such a profoundly
important intelligence finding? A second equally important question is how
did the White House produce an intelligence report that was obviously flawed
and amateurish that was then released to the public and never corrected? The
same false information in the intelligence report issued by the White House
on August 30, 2013 was emphatically provided by Secretary of State John
Kerry in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee!
We again have a situation where the White
House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence
report.
The Congress and the public have been
given reports in the name of the intelligence community about weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, technical evidence supposedly collected by
satellite systems that any competent scientists would know is false, and now
from photographs of the crater that any analyst who has any competent at all
would not trust as evidence.
It is late in the evening for me, so I
will end my discussion here.
I stand ready to provide the country with
any analysis and help that is within my power to supply. What I can say for
sure herein is that what the country is now being told by the White House
cannot be true
and the fact that this information has been
provided in this format raises the most serious questions about the handling
of our national security.
Sincerely yours,
Theodore A. Postol
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology,
and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: [email protected]
Cell Phone: 617 543-7646
... ... ... ...
A lot of interesting and detailed information omitted
200 Words
I was really hoping that Prof. Postol would share his thoughts about the
attack in Khan Sheikhoun. If you are interested, I wrote a very detailed
blog post
, in which I examine the evidence about the recent chemical
attack and compare the situation with what happened after the chemical
attack in Ghouta in August 2013. I argue that, in the case of the attack
in Ghouta, the media narrative had rapidly unravelled and that, for that
reason, we should be extremely prudent about the recent attack and not
jump to conclusions. Among other things, I discuss the ballistic analysis
produced by Postol and Lloyd at the time, which showed that both the
much-touted NYT/HRW analysis and the US intelligence were mistaken. I
also show that, despite the fact that a lot of evidence came out that
undermined the official narrative, the media never changed their stance
and continued to talk as if there was no doubt that Assad's regime was
responsible for the attack. It's more than 5,000 words long and I provide
a source for every single factual claim I make. The post has already been
widely shared and some people have criticized it, so I will soon post a
follow-up where I reply to critics and say more about the evidence that
bears on the attack in Khan Sheikhoun.
100 Words
This just gets weirder and weirder. Is the position of the Trump
Administration and the intelligence community that the Syrian Air Force
went through all the trouble to launch an aerial attack and drop
one
bomb? Handling chemical munitions is inherently dangerous. Syrian Air
Force personnel loading the nerve agent into the bomb and then fitting it
on the plane would have to wear protective clothing and receive special
training, and might even then suffer some exposure casualties. And my
recollection is that chemical weapons, even nerve gas, generally have to
be used in massive quantities to achieve any military result.
The
chances that the gassing was as a result of a Syrian Air Force attack are
vanishingly small. Other forces are in play here. The American people are
being deceived.
Read
More
100 Words
Technical stuff is interesting, but from the layman's perspective it's
really straightforward: means, motive, opportunity.
Opportunity: yes.
Means: seems doubtful, due to the 2013-14 OPCW cleanup of the
government-controlled territory.
Motive: not just absent, but manifestly counterproductive, under the
circumstances.
There's also ample evidence of the government desperately trying to
avoid antagonizing the population. In the territories they they liberate,
they routinely – and that's a fact – transport anti-government militants
and their families, and even with their light weapons, into
rebel-controlled territories, that same Idlib province. In
government-supplied buses. Even though they could easily kill them all,
right on the spot. How does it square with with the supposed
indiscriminate gassing?
Read
More
Anon
,
April 13, 2017 at 8:39 am GMT \n
100 Words
Much "evidence" can be faked. This is just an example of that fact.
Looking at that tube, it is obvious that it did not explode. If it is
very difficult to determine if evidence is real or faked, then one must
be very careful reaching conclusions based on said evidence. At that
point, motives must be taken into consideration.
The argument that the Syrian government had any motive whatsoever to
carry out this attack is very,very weak. Also, I have heard the claim
that the US government believes only one chemical weapon was used.
Assuming that the Syrian government carried out the attack, which I do
not believe, why would they use just one chemical weapon?
So what we have here is very weak evidence, very weak motive, and an
illogical and inefficient proposed mechanism. This does not pass the
smell test at all.
Avery
,
April 13, 2017 at 12:37 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Mao Cheng Ji
Technical stuff is interesting, but from the layman's perspective it's
really straightforward: means, motive, opportunity.
Opportunity: yes.
Means: seems doubtful, due to the 2013-14 OPCW cleanup of the
government-controlled territory.
Motive: not just absent, but manifestly counterproductive, under the
circumstances.
There's also ample evidence of the government desperately trying to avoid
antagonizing the population. In the territories they they liberate, they
routinely - and that's a fact - transport anti-government militants and
their families, and even with their light weapons, into rebel-controlled
territories, that same Idlib province. In government-supplied buses. Even
though they could easily kill them all, right on the spot. How does it
square with with the supposed indiscriminate gassing?
You make good points.
{How does it square with with the supposed indiscriminate gassing?}
It doesn't.
Particularly a chemical attack, to kill, what, 100 people?
Assad knows very well what that would mean: even Russia would not let it
slide.
As you said, SAA could easily kill hundreds of terrorists and their
sympathizers with conventional bombs if they wanted to kill
indiscriminately.
On the other hand it squares 100% with enemies of Syria.
SAA is winning, albeit at a very slow pace, and Neocons clearly are
panicking and desperate to prevent the breakout of peace in Syria at any
cost.
200 Words
I was a demo guy in the Marine Corps, so I am
familiar with the effect of explosive charges.
There is no question that the photo, if accurate,
is consistent with a charge placed above rather
than within. There may be other explanations for
the compression but definitely not an internal
charge. I would note that the diagram in the
article suggests some sort of "pipe bomb" type
charge on top, but I do not see any sort of
fragments from that type of device. If it was a
charge on top it would have needed to be a simple
explosive charge, probably tamped with dirt or
sand. In any case, there would be explosive
residue on the outside of the pipe which could
easily be identified. Obviously, if this pipe was
source of the agent someone should have preserved
this evidence and turned it over to the UN or
whoever.
Ivan
,
April 13, 2017 at 2:04 pm GMT \n
@Diversity Heretic
This just gets weirder and weirder. Is the position of the Trump
Administration and the intelligence community that the Syrian Air Force
went through all the trouble to launch an aerial attack and drop
one
bomb? Handling chemical munitions is inherently dangerous. Syrian Air
Force personnel loading the nerve agent into the bomb and then fitting it
on the plane would have to wear protective clothing and receive special
training, and might even then suffer some exposure casualties. And my
recollection is that chemical weapons, even nerve gas, generally have to
be used in massive quantities to achieve any military result.
The chances that the gassing was as a result of a Syrian Air Force attack
are vanishingly small. Other forces are in play here. The American people
are being deceived.
Gilad Atzmon had another question: if the US really did believe that air
force base had chemical weapons stores then launching a Tomahawk strike
would in all likelihood release those same gases . Duh.
El Dato
,
April 13, 2017 at 3:07 pm GMT \n
@Ivan
Gilad Atzmon had another question: if the US really did believe that air
force base had chemical weapons stores then launching a Tomahawk strike
would in all likelihood release those same gases . Duh.
Which is why
Does this mean that Abe Lincoln was a ruthless thug responsible for
the deaths of a half a million Americans during our civil war?
Yes
Who is worse, Assad or Lincoln?
Lincoln wins that race in a blowout. Lincoln was one of the most evil
monsters to ever walk the earth.
Well, President Asad is trying to prevent the destruction of his nation,
the probable partitioning of it, the crushing of any institutions
reflecting the Arab consensus that has always bound the nation together
and made its institutions work, as well as preventing openly genocidal
barbarians from achieving victory, erasing Earth's oldest Christian
communities and other religious minorities. President Lincoln was facing
a foe that just wanted slavery and separatism. The Confederates were not
genocidal, although the cruelties of the slave trade and the plantation
system often reached the same level of inhumanity. So, overall, from the
perspective of a CNN/MSNBC believer, or a Trumpian nouveau-neocon, Asad
is much worse worse than Hitler, in fact, as Sean Spicer was trying to
say. Here's a tip: Keep it simple, Sean. Don't bring up the Holocaust,
just say he's worse than Hitler. Some will question that, but those who
matter will let it slide.
Agent76
,
April 13, 2017 at 3:29 pm GMT \n
April 07, 2017 Pentagon Trained Syria's Al Qaeda "Rebels" in the Use of
Chemical Weapons
500 Words
Where is Russia's propaganda machine? 71 years old, retired American
professors does amateurish analysis using one pict obtained from social
media and Sputnik and Russia Today will publish it, right? But where are
the Russians? What did they do to support the belief that the gas attack
was a false flag? Apparently nothing. Lavrov calls of UN investigation.
That's about all. But what about the assets they have in Syria? Couldn't
they release some information pointing to the real culprits?
Inept,
indolent losers!
Why Russia's media are so pathetically weak?
For some years
already I follow some Russian media outfits and I am amazed why they
are so inept and indolent. Their approach is totally inadequate when
targeted with Anglo-Zio media aggressive anti-Russia narratives.
This time when Russia and Putin were smacked in the face in Syria
the best Russia came up with was to claim that it did not hurt that
much, that only 23 out of 59 missiles reached the target and that the
damage to the airport was minimal. And next day they doubled down on
it by having planes taking off from the airport. Whether the claims
are factual or not it does not matter. The opposite approach should
have be used: exaggerate the pain and loss you have suffered. Keep
showing dead bodies and damage even if invented. Do not pretend that
it rains when they are spitting in your face. Show your hurt, your
weakness. Be more like Anglo-Zio propaganda that will accuse every
drop a real rain of aggressive intent or even of being anti-semitic.
Be proactive not reactive.
So why Russia's propaganda machine is so weak? Is it because
Russians are proud people or that their journalists and propagandists
have moral scruples and won't engage in lies and manipulations?
Obviously not. They just do not know because they are conditioned by
the working of propaganda in the authoritarian regime just like during
Tsars and Bolsheviks. In the authoritarian regime the chief objective
of propaganda is to convince the subjects of the regime that the
regime knows what it is doing and that it is strong. The propaganda is
not really directed for the foreign enemies but for the domestic
friends. For this reason any setbacks or losses will be hidden from
the populace or minimized. No disasters and no catastrophes ever
happened in the Soviet Union if you just read Pravda or Izvestia.
Towards the end of WWII Goebbels was disappointed with inability of
German propaganda to produce sympathy around the world for Germans
suffering due to American and British bombing of German civilian
population that was killing children women, and elders. But this was a
consequence of years of hiding these losses from German population
because the regime wanted to project its strengths. And that was a
mistake. So if Russia wants to confront Anglo-Zio media they must
shape up and change the approach. So far they are failing though I am
sure they are doing a wonderful job for people like Smoothie (if you
ask him) and other clumsy and ineffective agents of influence on
behalf of Russia.
100 Words
@reiner Tor
Thanks, that's useful to know.
Are you sure it's true of sarin? I read that about sarin specifically.
It seems creating the sarin generates either hydrochloric acid or
hydrofluoric acid as byproduct (especially the latter is Very Not Good),
so keeping sarin even in glass bottles is bound to be fraught with
difficulties over the long run (instant expert via
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin
)
100 Words
What was the date of the image from Google Earth showing the supposed
bomb crater? Google Earth is not a real time satellite reconnaissance
system. You can get the date of the image from the display options, and
they are usually months or years old.
Is it possible that this crater was already there prior to the gas
attack?
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MarkinLA
,
April 13, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT \n
100 Words
And on CNN this morning there was a claim that the US intercepted Syrian
military people interacting with chemical weapons specialists or some
garbage like that. Just when the story is about to explode in the US's
face, out comes a convenient claim that doesn't make any sense to people
with IQs above room level. I am sure if there was such a dubious
communication it was created by Mossad or Saudi secret services.
@Carlton Meyer
Let me add that Jimmy Dore made a great point in that video. Many blame
Assad for the half million Syrians who have died in this civil war; yet
it was mostly caused by an invasion of outside Islamic mercs paid for by
the Saudis and Qatar.
Does this mean that Abe Lincoln was a ruthless thug responsible for the
deaths of a half a million Americans during our civil war? The
confederate rebels weren't even trying to conquer the north, they just
wanted to be left to run their own affairs.
100 Words
Everybody has Sarin Fever, soon there will be Sarin Pokemons, Sarin with
your ice cream, Sarin pillows, a George Lucas movie called "Sarin!" and
voucher for Sarin holidays I'm sure:
"North Korea may be able to arm missiles with sarin, Japan PM says
Abe did not provide any evidence why he felt North Korea had the
capability to equip missiles with chemical weapons. "
100 Words
@Alfa158
What was the date of the image from Google Earth showing the supposed
bomb crater? Google Earth is not a real time satellite reconnaissance
system. You can get the date of the image from the display options, and
they are usually months or years old.
Is it possible that this crater was already there prior to the gas
attack?
It's just to show the location:
The Google Earth map shown in Figure 1 at the end of this text
section shows the location of that crater on the road in the north of
Khan Shaykhun, as described in the White House statement.
100 Words
Sadly, the way these things work, the evidence as it stands will
henceforth be irrelevant. Now that the Trump administration has staked
its reputation on a cruise missile attack to punish Assad for using
chemical warfare, they will NEVER admit they were wrong. Just like Obama
will never admit he royally screwed up Libya and his amateurish
machinations got a U.S. ambassador dragged through the streets like a
dead cat. We seem to live in a world where truth no longer matters. What
matters is whether you can get the idiots in the media to buy your
version of events rather than your political enemy's version of events.
Personally, I never thought Assad was responsible for this atrocity. Why
risk something like that when everybody agreed he was finally winning
this thing?
El Dato
,
April 13, 2017 at 6:32 pm GMT \n
300 Words
Olive branch extension and face-saving in progress?
Russia 'horrified at chemical attacks' in Syria, says former UK
ambassador to Moscow
Russia has been badly mishandled by Western powers, which fail to
realize the Kremlin is not fond of the Syrian leadership and is
horrified at recent chemical attacks, former British diplomat Tony
Brenton has told the BBC.
Speaking to the BBC 'Today' program on Thursday, Brenton, who
served as ambassador to Moscow from 2004 to 2008, said it is important
to understand Syria from the Russian perspective.
"The Russian view of the situation in Syria is very clear. They
don't much like [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and they must be
horrified at the chemical weapons attack last week.
But the question they ask themselves is, 'if we get rid of Assad,
what comes after?'" Brenton said.
"Their answer to that question is that 'we get some of Islamic
fundamentalism which is worse for us than Assad' so we put up with
the nasty dictator that we've got rather than admitting fundamentalism
which is a direct threat to us."
Asked if the Russians need "help" to move away from Assad, Brenton
said: "I think that is exactly it. I think if we can get together with
the Russians they have a real interest in moving away from Assad as
well."
Understanding the domestic political situation in Russia is also
vital in order to grapple with the question of how the country
operates in the world, he said.
"They are dealing with a population which doesn't really understand
why they are in Syria at all.
"If we could move towards an after-Assad regime in Syria which
guaranteed the non-intervention of Islamic fundamentalism, [Russia]
would be delighted to work in that direction."
100 Words
@Carlton Meyer
A Congressman and Iraq war vet suggests an investigation and the Dems
denounce her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1oECQ6r6do
This is what the Bankster puppet's do when they have been outed!
Dec 8, 2016 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Introduces Bill to Stop Arming
Terrorists
December 08, 2016 Bipartisan Bill Would Forbid US Funding ISIS,
al-Qaeda Affiliates
Gabbert-Rohrabacher Bill Would Effectively End CIA Program Arming
Syrian Rebels. The Stop Arming Terrorists Act (SATA) has been introduced
today in the House of Representatives by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D – HI).
100 Words
The Jew keep their eye on the price – a busted up Syria. They have the
Kushner White House, all the rest of Stockholm DC, and their MSM all
pumping out the "Assad did it" lie.
The world's two major nuke powers are at loggerheads – but what the
hell – Israel is happy and getting its way.
You Stockholmers must never forget what the Jew terrorists tell you –
"Jews are the eternal victims" – so suck it up you 7,000,000,000 fools –
you must always defer to us!
100 Words
@Ivan
Gilad Atzmon had another question: if the US really did believe that air
force base had chemical weapons stores then launching a Tomahawk strike
would in all likelihood release those same gases . Duh.
Gilad's whole argument is flawed. The US has not said that chem. weapons
were stored there. [If anyone has official statement to contrary, please
correct me.] The US only claimed that chem. attacks were launched from
there.
Then, as to targeting, US said it was targeting below-ground
fuel storage, perhaps munitions also, but not chem. Again, anyone have
better info? Official, not MSM who will say anything.
anon
,
April 13, 2017 at 8:33 pm GMT \n
100 Words
the Wall Street Journal's right wing neocon-in-residence Brett Stephens
loudly called for "regime change" in North Korea two weeks ago.
And
then there's Iran, which the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol is once again
saying is the ultimate "prize" for regime change, now that Trump is
directly bombing Assad's forces.
100 Words
@Carlton Meyer
Let me add that Jimmy Dore made a great point in that video. Many blame
Assad for the half million Syrians who have died in this civil war; yet
it was mostly caused by an invasion of outside Islamic mercs paid for by
the Saudis and Qatar.
Does this mean that Abe Lincoln was a ruthless thug responsible for the
deaths of a half a million Americans during our civil war? The
confederate rebels weren't even trying to conquer the north, they just
wanted to be left to run their own affairs.
Who is worse, Assad or Lincoln?
I like Dore, but if he said that he's almost surely wrong.
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much of
a factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria from
2011 to 2014. For all of that time his bombing was the primary driver of
the refugee crisis. It is impossible to say how many refugees Assad is
responsible for, but it's likely he has caused the lion's share.
Read
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anon
,
April 13, 2017 at 8:45 pm GMT \n
100 Words
do not ignore these guys -
"Susannah Sirkin from the Soros-funded
Physicians for Human Rights claimed, "We know that sarin has been used
before by the Assad regime." But that has NOT been confirmed by any
credible organization. On the contrary, the most thorough investigations
point to sarin being used by the armed opposition, NOT the Syrian
government.
The other guest was Andrew Tabler from the neoconservative
Israeli-associated Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His
editorial from last fall makes clear what he wants: "The case for
(finally) bombing Assad." So, the viewers of the publicly funded network
got one of their usual doses of "Assad must go" propaganda"
100 Words
Higher intelligence individuals, moral integrity, ethical overview,
physical courage.
Since even the detailed and easy language above analysis leaves the
world at large clueless, the few with necessary perception within the
public, having no trouble understanding as outsiders what is meant, speak
about what is the quality of the Washington power structures.
The harnessed 'elites', including universities, are corrupted, cater
to superficial riches, the short term, in equivalents of family and clan.
Washington is a dump, where high quality individuals that by definition
need less structure have no place.
100 Words
@Steve Rendall
I like Dore, but if he said that he's almost surely wrong.
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much of a
factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria from 2011
to 2014. For all of that time his bombing was the primary driver of the
refugee crisis. It is impossible to say how many refugees Assad is
responsible for, but it's likely he has caused the lion's share.
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much
of a factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria
from 2011 to 2014.
You have a rather unrealistically late idea of when foreign groups
started backing the terrorists in Syria.
Qatar, to name just one, is on the record as having actively supported
the rebels militarily since at least April 2012, and the FT reported in
May 2013 it had already spent $1-3 billion backing the rebels:
Turkey started providing support to the "Free Syria Army" in 2011, and
jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda were openly calling for volunteers to
fight in Syria by February 2012.
100 Words
@RobinG
Gilad's whole argument is flawed. The US has not said that chem. weapons
were stored there. [If anyone has official statement to contrary, please
correct me.] The US only claimed that chem. attacks were launched from
there.
Then, as to targeting, US said it was targeting below-ground fuel
storage, perhaps munitions also, but not chem. Again, anyone have better
info? Official, not MSM who will say anything.
I think you are right about US claims but they really don't make any
sense if the aim was to punish someone using chemical weapons. At least
Bush pretended to be looking for the WMD even though he likely knew they
didn't exist.
Where else would they be stored unless you think Assad
has a secret stash someplace and pulls them out, now and then, to do some
gassing. If that was the case, wouldn't it make more sense to bomb the
stash and prove to the rest of the world Assad had them rather than just
bomb an airfield and leave yourself open to the kind of criticism Trump
is getting? The idea that we can track everything the Syrian military
does but they have a secret chemical weapons store that Mossad, Turkey,
the CIA, FSB, and Saudi intelligence agencies don't know about seems
incredible.
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D Trump
,
April 13, 2017 at 10:33 pm GMT \n
@Steve Rendall
I like Dore, but if he said that he's almost surely wrong.
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much of a
factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria from 2011
to 2014. For all of that time his bombing was the primary driver of the
refugee crisis. It is impossible to say how many refugees Assad is
responsible for, but it's likely he has caused the lion's share.
"It's likely covert interference started long before that." Yes, Randal.
About 2006.
300 Words
Considering everything that's been happening recently, I think there is a
strong possibility that this was either a false flag or they were simply
waiting for an excuse to attack Syria – anything would do. In fact,
Mattis had cooked up a plan to illegally board Iranian ships in
international waters as a kind of Gulf of Tonkin provocation. The plan
was only scrapped because it was leaked. Now, these maniacs are sending
more troops to Afghanistan, concealing the numbers of troops they are
deploying to the Middle East, dropping MOABs to scare other nations into
submission, and threatening to attack North Korea.
"Weeks ago, Trump's
defense secretary James Mattis was reportedly planning a brazen and
incredibly dangerous operation to board Iranian ships in international
waters. This would have effectively been an act of war. Apparently, the
only reason the Trump administration didn't carry it out was because the
plan leaked and they were forced to scuttle it – at least temporarily.
But that hasn't stopped the ratcheting up of tensions towards Iran ever
since he took office
On top of all this madness, 16 years after America's longest war in
history started, a top general has already testified to Congress that the
military wants more troops in Afghanistan to break the "stalemate" there.
Well before the end of the Trump administration, there will be troops
fighting and dying in Afghanistan who weren't even born when the 9/11
attacks occurred.
To further shield the public from these decisions, the Trump
administration indicated a couple weeks ago they have stopped disclosing
even the amount of additional troops that they are sending overseas to
fight. The numbers were already being downplayed by the Obama
administration and received little attention as the numbers continually
creeped up over the last two years. Now, the public will have virtually
no insight into what its military is doing in those countries."
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much of
a factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria from
2011 to 2014.
You have a rather unrealistically late idea of when foreign groups
started backing the terrorists in Syria.
Qatar, to name just one, is on the record as having actively supported
the rebels militarily since at least April 2012, and the FT reported in
May 2013 it had already spent $1-3 billion backing the rebels:
Turkey started providing support to the "Free Syria Army" in 2011, and
jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda were openly calling for volunteers to
fight in Syria by February 2012.
This is all information in the public domain. It's likely covert
interference started long before that.
Anon does not reposed to my argument. Early on, Jihadi fighters were not
much of a factor in driving the flight of refugees. And long term covert
machinations, which I agree there was plenty of, don't matter if those it
supports are not terrorizing people to leave the country. See how that
works?
See how Assad sacked major parts of Homs, with artillery, tanks, and
an Air Force, while opposition had little more than mortars to fight back
with.
100 Words
Dear Mr.Postol,
What I did miss in your excellent analysis are comments on White Helmets
and other rescuers handling sarin contaminated victims with bare hands
and no protective clothing. As you know sarin is a highly toxis chemical,
targeting the muscles and nervous system. Rescuers would have been
contaminated themselves and died probably within hours.
It's my take that these images were staged and filmed already before the
"attack". Could you please comment on this aspect?
Also listening to a chemical expert on Rt he stated that delivering sarin
or chlorine from the air would be totally ineffective. Could you possibly
elaborate on this as well?
Tom Van Meurs
New Zealand
I will pubish your article on my Facebook
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anon
,
April 14, 2017 at 12:09 am GMT \n
200 Words
@Steve Rendall
Anon does not reposed to my argument. Early on, Jihadi fighters were not
much of a factor in driving the flight of refugees. And long term covert
machinations, which I agree there was plenty of, don't matter if those it
supports are not terrorizing people to leave the country. See how that
works?
See how Assad sacked major parts of Homs, with artillery, tanks, and an
Air Force, while opposition had little more than mortars to fight back
with.
I dare you to find me an independent Syria expert who says the rebels are
responsible for most of the refugee problem.
Refugees s been pouring in Jordan and Turkey before moving to EU.
Refugees eas expected by saudi They put barbed wire I think to stop.
Syria initially saw a peaceful demonstration and before government
started using arms or ammunition , demonstration got violent with
assassination and killing of government forces Soon UK and USA were
demanding that Assad needed to surrender. Assad started using air force
to stem the tide of the violence .Assad offered amnesty and
reconciliation s All were discarded at the behest of Western ad Saudi and
Turkey Before that the 'Rat line" from Libya flooded the country with
weapons Long before that French FM exposed the plans of destabilizing
Syria . in 2007 Cheney was planning with Rice to start a civil war in
Syria and western Iraq. Arms were in plenty already
Assad had no choice but use all powers he had .
Why did refugees go to EU?
100 Words
@Alfa158
What was the date of the image from Google Earth showing the supposed
bomb crater? Google Earth is not a real time satellite reconnaissance
system. You can get the date of the image from the display options, and
they are usually months or years old.
Is it possible that this crater was already there prior to the gas
attack?
There is a glaring anomaly in that there appears to be a 5-hour time
difference between the gas release and the Syrian air attack – the former
at around 6am, the latter at 11am. This should be easy enough to
ascertain if one has the proper resources. If so it clears the SAA of
responsibility.
Xander USMC
,
April 14, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT \n
200 Words
White House Explanation of Alleged Syrian Strategy is Utter Nonsense.
I
have not really seen much comment on the White House explanation for why
the Syrians supposedly did this. The Paper discussed claims that the
Syrian government did this attack in "southern Idlib province" in
response to a threat "in response to an opposition offensive in northern
Hamah province that threatened key infrastructure." This explanation is
utterly nonsensical. If key infrastructure is being threatened in one
part of the country why did the government have an airstrike in another
area of the country–much less an entirely insignificant single rocket
attack that does not appear to have accomplished anything militarily. If
they were going to use gas why didn't they use it in Hamah where the "key
infrastructure" was allegedly being threatened?
Of course, there may be times when you can strike your enemies' supply
lines, (like MacArthur wanted to take out the bridge over the Yalu River)
but in any event I wish someone would ask the White House to explain this
statement. No one has yet to offer any coherent explanation for the
alleged actions of the Syrian government.
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Xander USMC
,
April 14, 2017 at 1:29 pm GMT \n
200 Words
@Brewer
There is a glaring anomaly in that there appears to be a 5-hour time
difference between the gas release and the Syrian air attack - the former
at around 6am, the latter at 11am. This should be easy enough to
ascertain if one has the proper resources. If so it clears the SAA of
responsibility.
If there is a time gap that merely is evidence that it was someone on the
ground. The U.S. claims a Syrian Sukoi-22 (an airplane so old the
Russians don't use it anymore) dropped ordinance (the alleged chemicals)
at the time of the attack. So if there was an airstrike by an Su-22 using
high explosives that could well have damaged chemicals on the ground.
There are also many possible explanations for a delay–we don't really
know very much so its is pure speculation, but for example, if a
warehouse storing chemical weapons by the rebels was damaged they may
have tried to remove the chemicals from the warehouse hours after the
attack and it was the attempt to move the damaged containers that
resulted in an "accident." It is also consistent with a set-up as it
would take time for rebels after the airstrike to engineer a chemical
attack.
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alexander
,
April 14, 2017 at 3:00 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Xander USMC
White House Explanation of Alleged Syrian Strategy is Utter Nonsense.
I have not really seen much comment on the White House explanation for
why the Syrians supposedly did this. The Paper discussed claims that the
Syrian government did this attack in "southern Idlib province" in
response to a threat "in response to an opposition offensive in northern
Hamah province that threatened key infrastructure." This explanation is
utterly nonsensical. If key infrastructure is being threatened in one
part of the country why did the government have an airstrike in another
area of the country--much less an entirely insignificant single rocket
attack that does not appear to have accomplished anything militarily. If
they were going to use gas why didn't they use it in Hamah where the "key
infrastructure" was allegedly being threatened?
Of course, there may be times when you can strike your enemies' supply
lines, (like MacArthur wanted to take out the bridge over the Yalu River)
but in any event I wish someone would ask the White House to explain this
statement. No one has yet to offer any coherent explanation for the
alleged actions of the Syrian government.
Xander,
Let us assume, for arguments sake, you are President Assad.
Over the past year, with the assistance of Russian forces, you have
been able to mount decisive, significant victories against ISIS using
conventional weapons, and you are on the verge of reclaiming your country
from the assorted Jihadist's who are fragmenting it and destroying it.
If you are well aware the ONE action you could take, which might force
the hand of the most powerful military on the planet to descend upon
you Wouldn't you avoid it like the plague ?
Is there any strategic or tactical value for you to attempt it ?
200 Words
@Steve Rendall
Anon does not reposed to my argument. Early on, Jihadi fighters were not
much of a factor in driving the flight of refugees. And long term covert
machinations, which I agree there was plenty of, don't matter if those it
supports are not terrorizing people to leave the country. See how that
works?
See how Assad sacked major parts of Homs, with artillery, tanks, and an
Air Force, while opposition had little more than mortars to fight back
with.
I dare you to find me an independent Syria expert who says the rebels are
responsible for most of the refugee problem.
Anon does not reposed to my argument. Early on, Jihadi fighters
were not much of a factor in driving the flight of refugees.
The comment to which you responded referred to deaths, not refugees.
But with regard to refugees, the UNHCR figures show that the number of
registered Syrian refugees was still below 1m at the end of March 2013
(it's now over 5 million), whereas as I pointed out above, the external
backing for the rebels that prevented the government restoring order and
really ratcheted up the fighting had markedly increased during 2012.
The blame for the devastation in Syria belongs with those who have
perpetuated the rebellion and prevented the Syrian government restoring
order, as Assad's father restored order following the uprising in 1982.
Primarily with the US as the global hegemon, and with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey and Israel who have directly or indirectly interfered to
seek regime change in Syria regardless of the human cost.
Those who have a genuine humanitarian concern and are not motivated by
ulterior strategic or political interests, should direct their criticism
and their pressure appropriately.
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bluedog
,
April 14, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT \n
@Steve Rendall
Anon does not reposed to my argument. Early on, Jihadi fighters were not
much of a factor in driving the flight of refugees. And long term covert
machinations, which I agree there was plenty of, don't matter if those it
supports are not terrorizing people to leave the country. See how that
works?
See how Assad sacked major parts of Homs, with artillery, tanks, and an
Air Force, while opposition had little more than mortars to fight back
with.
I dare you to find me an independent Syria expert who says the rebels are
responsible for most of the refugee problem.
Well one would think it would be who ever started the dance not what
happened after the lights went out..
Xander USMC
,
April 14, 2017 at 8:48 pm GMT \n
Let us assume, for arguments sake, you are
President Assad.
Over the past year, with the assistance of
Russian forces, you have been able to mount
decisive, significant victories against ISIS
using conventional weapons, and you are on the
verge of reclaiming your country from the
assorted Jihadist's who are fragmenting it and
destroying it.
If you are well aware the ONE action you could
take, which might force the hand of the most
powerful military on the planet to descend upon
you...Wouldn't you avoid it like the plague ?
Is there any strategic or tactical value for you
to attempt it ?
If there is....What is it ?
Right, but that is the strategic lack of sense,
but I'm pointing out the strike would make no
sense tactically either. If something was being
threatened arguably it would make tactical sense
to gas the area under attack–but not a minor
attack 50 miles away that does not appear to have
any relation to the alleged threat elsewhere. I
haven't even seen any confirmation of any threat
to "key infrastructure." Not to mention Syria
retook Aleppo without the need for
chemicals–wasn't that a lot more key than this
unidentified "key infrastructure"?
alexander
,
April 14, 2017 at 10:28 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Xander USMC
Right, but that is the strategic lack of sense, but I'm pointing out the
strike would make no sense tactically either. If something was being
threatened arguably it would make tactical sense to gas the area under
attack--but not a minor attack 50 miles away that does not appear to have
any relation to the alleged threat elsewhere. I haven't even seen any
confirmation of any threat to "key infrastructure." Not to mention Syria
retook Aleppo without the need for chemicals--wasn't that a lot more key
than this unidentified "key infrastructure"?
Yes ,
It would make the most sense were one to use chemical weapons as
a TACTIC, to use them in areas and situations where (as you suggest) one
would get the most "bang for their buck".
It is very clear to you,based on its location, this chemical attack
was almost meaningless tactically.
Right ?
So if this chemical assault was tactically absurd and strategically
suicidal, then what would be Assad's thinking by attempting it ?
200 Words
@Steve Rendall
I like Dore, but if he said that he's almost surely wrong.
Assad was bombing Syria for quite a while before Jihadis were much of a
factor. He had the only Air Force and mechanized army in Syria from 2011
to 2014. For all of that time his bombing was the primary driver of the
refugee crisis. It is impossible to say how many refugees Assad is
responsible for, but it's likely he has caused the lion's share.
Everything you wrote is pure BS. But I guess that is your purpose here.
Even Robert Fisk admitted there were Salafi jihadis involved from day
one. Al-Ciada in Iraq was involved from day one, etc.
There were and there are NO moderate 'rebels'. This ain't fucking star
wars.
Since early 2012, the Al-Nusra Front & co have been the main fighting
force trying to topple the Syrian government
. They are actually a
more serious threat to Syria than Daesh/is.
Increasingly from 2012 the Jihadis have been ever more heavily armed.
The key Jihadi groups all have armored forces, artillery, ATGMs, the only
thing they don't have is an air-force. Robert Fisk reported from the
front lines in 2013/14/15 re how oftentimes the Syrian army faced
militants that were as well armed and, in some cases, even better armed.
Armored Assault by Al-Nusra in Aleppo, Caught on Nusra Drone Camera
L.K
,
April 14, 2017 at 11:05 pm GMT \n
200 Words
@El Dato
Syria may be an autocratic shithole where women must know their place and
you better kowtow to the friendly state employee (or face a guided tour
of a dungeon) with the Assad family in power (indeed we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
under daddy already) but
I dare you to find me an independent Syria expert who says the rebels
are responsible for most of the refugee problem.
This is just jumping the shark.
People just don't like to stay in warzones and flattened cities, yes.
Your view of Syria is a grotesque caricature. Here's what former US
marine, Brad Hoff, found in Syria before the war:
DURING MY FIRST WEEKS in Damascus, I was pleasantly shocked. My
preconceived notions were shattered: I expected to find a society full
of veiled women, mosques on every street corner, religious police
looking over shoulders, rabid anti-American sentiment preached to
angry crowds, persecuted Christians and crumbling hidden churches,
prudish separation of the sexes, and so on. I quickly realized during
my first few days and nights in Damascus, that Syria was a far cry
from my previous imaginings, which were probably more reflective of
Saudi Arabian life and culture. What I actually encountered were
mostly unveiled women wearing European fashions and sporting bright
makeup - many of them wearing blue jeans and tight fitting clothes
that would be commonplace in American shopping malls on a summer day.
I saw groups of teenage boys and girls mingling in trendy cafes late
into the night, displaying expensive cell phones. There were plenty of
mosques, but almost every neighborhood had a large church or two with
crosses figured prominently in the Damascus skyline.
"... 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] . ..."
contacts in the area have told us this is not
what happened. There was no Syrian 'chemical weapons attack.' Instead, a
Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned
out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the
chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently
died ..This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more
important –what they appear to believe happened."
- Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity, 20 former members of the US Intelligence Community (names
below)
You don't have to be a genius to figure
out that the case against Syrian President Bashar al Assad is extremely
weak. The chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, has produced no smoking
gun, no damning evidence, in fact, no evidence at all. Similar to the Russia
hacking fiasco, (not a shred of evidence so far) the western media and the
entire political class has made the case for attacking a sovereign country
on the thin gruel of a few videos of an incident that took place in a
location that is currently under the control of militant groups connected to
al Qaida. That's pretty shaky grounds for a conviction, don't you think?
And it's not up to Assad to prove his
innocence either. That's baloney. The burden of proof rests with the
prosecution. If Trump and his lieutenants have evidence that the Syrian
President used chemical weapons, then– by all means– let's see it and be
done with it. If not, we have to assume that Assad is innocent, not because
we like Assad, but because these are the legal precedents that one follows
to establish the truth. And that's what we want, we want to know what really
happened.
Neither Trump nor the media care about the
truth, what they care about is regime change, which is the driving force
behind Washington's six year-long war on Syria. The fact that Washington has
concealed its support by secretly arming-and-training Sunni militias, does
not absolve it from responsibility. The US is totally responsible for the
mess in Syria. Without Washington's support none of this would have
happened. 7 million Syrians wouldn't have fled their homes, 400,000 Syrians
wouldn't have been killed, and the country would not be the anarchic
wastelands it is today. The United States is entirely is responsible for the
death and destruction of Syria. These are Washington's killing fields.
As we said earlier, there is no evidence
that Assad used chemical weapons against his people nor has there been any
investigation to substantiate the claims. The Trump administration launched
its Tomahawk missile barrage before consulting with the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which essentially preempted the organization
from doing its job. The administration's rejection of the normal
investigative procedures and rush to judgement reinforces the belief that
they know they have no case and are just peddling pro-war BS in the mad
pursuit of their geopolitical objectives.
Since we don't have an organization like
the OPCW to conduct an investigation, we should at least consider the
informed opinions of professionals who have some background in intelligence.
This doesn't provide us with iron-clad proof one way or another, but at
least it gives us an idea of some probable scenarios. Here's a quote from
former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest,
Philip Giraldi, who stated last week on the Scott Horton show:
"I am hearing from sources on the
ground, in the Middle East, the people who are intimately familiar with
the intelligence available are saying that the essential narrative we are
all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical
weapons on innocent civilians is a sham. The intelligence confirms pretty
much the account the Russians have been giving since last night which is
that they hit a warehouse where al Qaida rebels were storing chemicals of
their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the
casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear, and people
both in the Agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence
are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely
misrepresented what he should already have known - but maybe didn't–and
they're afraid this is moving towards a situation that could easily turn
into an armed conflict." (The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and
Russia, Counterpunch)
We hear a very similar account from
retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was former chief of Staff to General
Colin Powell. Here's what he said in a recent interview on the Real News
Network:
"I personally think the provocation was
a Tonkin Gulf incident .. Most of my sources are telling me, including
members of the team that monitors global chemical weapons –including
people in Syria, including people in the US Intelligence Community–that
what most likely happened was that they hit a warehouse that they had
intended to hit and this warehouse was alleged to have to ISIS supplies
in it, and some of those supplies were precursors for chemicals ..
conventional bombs hit the warehouse, and due to a strong wind, and the
explosive power of the bombs, they dispersed these ingredients and killed
some people." ("
Lawrence
Wilkerson: Trump Attack on Syria Driven by Domestic Politics
", Real
News Network)
Finally, we have the collective judgement
of 20 former members of the US Intelligence Community (names below) the
so-called Steering Group of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity. Here's what they say:
"Our U.S. Army contacts in the area
have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian "chemical
weapons attack." Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria
ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a
strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where
many consequently died ..This is what the Russians and Syrians have been
saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened."
So, why is the administration so eager to
jump to conclusions? Why do they want to use such a sketchy incident to
justify an attack on sovereign nation that poses no threat to US national
security? What's really going on here?
ORDER IT NOW
To answer tha, we need to review an
interview with President Trump's new National Security Advisor, Lt. General
H.R. McMaster, that took on place on Sunday on Fox News. McMaster– you may
recall– recently replaced General Michael Flynn at the same position.
Flynn's failing was that he wanted to "normalize" relations with Russia
which the behind-the-scenes powerbrokers rejected out-of-hand and worked to
have him replaced with far-right wing militarist-neocon McMaster. Now,
McMaster is part of the one-two combo that decides US foreign policy around
the world. Trump has essentially dumped Syria in the laps of his two
favorite generals, McMaster and James "Mad Dog" Mattis who have decided to
deepen Washington's military commitment in Syria and intensify the conflict
even if it means a direct confrontation with Russia.
In the Fox interview, McMaster was asked a
number of questions about Trump's missile attack. Here's part of what he
said:
"The objective (of the strikes) was to
send a very strong political message to Assad. And this is very
significant because . this is the first time the United States has acted
directly against the Assad regime, and that should be a strong message to
Assad and to his sponsors .
He added,
"Russia should ask themselves, what are
we doing here? Why are we supporting this murderous regime that is
committing mass murder of its own population and using the most heinous
weapons available .Right now, I think everyone in the world sees Russia
as part of the problem." (Fox News with Chris Wallace)
Can you see what's going on? Trump's
missile attack was not retaliatory, not really. It was a message to Putin.
McMaster was saying as clearly as possible, that 'the US military is coming
for Assad, and you'd better stay out of the way if you know what's good for
you.' That's the message. It has nothing to do with chemical weapons or the
suffering of innocent people. McMaster was delivering a threat. He was
putting Putin 'on notice'.
Like McMaster said, "this is the first
time the United States has acted directly against the Assad regime, and that
should be a strong message to Assad and to his sponsors ."
In other words, McMaster wants Putin to
know that he's prepared to attack the Syrian government and its assets
directly and, that, if Putin continues to defend Assad, Russian forces will
be targeted as well.
There was some confusion about this in the
media because UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
got their talking-points mixed up and botched their interviews. But the
Washington Post clarified the policy the next day by stating bluntly:
"Officials in the Trump administration
on Sunday demanded that Russia stop supporting the Syrian government or
face a further deterioration in its relations with the United States."
Bingo. That's the policy in a nutshell.
The issue isn't chemical weapons. The issue is Russia's support for Assad,
the leader who remains the target of US regime change plans. We are seeing a
fundamental shift in the policy from mainly covert support for CIA-backed
Sunni militias to overt military intervention. This is just the first volley
in that new war.
The media wants the American people to
believe that President Trump impulsively ordered the missile attacks in
response to the use of chemical weapons. But there's reason to suspect that
the attacks had been planned for some time in advance. As one blogger
pointed out:
"In the weeks before the missile
strikes, Trump met with the Saudis, the president of Egypt, and the King
of Jordan, while Secretary of State met with Turkish President Erdogan.
In other words, the administration met with the entire Middle East 'Sunni
alliance' just days before ordering the missile strikes. Coincidence?
Probably not. They were probably tipped
off and asked for their continued support.
Also, Trump waited until the evening that
he was having dinner with President Xi Jinping to launch the attacks. How's
that for timing?
Do you think that the announcement that
Trump just attacked Syria would have an impact on the two leaders'
conversation about North Korea? Do you think Xi might have seen the
announcement as a not-so-subtle threat of violence against the North unless
China forces its ally to make concessions?
Of course, he did. The man wasn't born
yesterday.
It seems unlikely that Trump's attack was
a snap decision made by an impulsive man. Instead, it looks like there was a
significant amount of planning that went on beforehand, including the
deploying of 400 additional Special Ops to Syria and 2,500 combat troops to
nearby Kuwait. It appears as though Washington had been building up its
troop-strength for some time before it settled on the right pretext for
taking things to the next level. As journalist Bill Van Auken noted at the
World Socialist Web Site:
"We have been here so many times before
that it is hardly worth wasting the time required to refute the official
story. It is now 14 years since the US launched its invasion of Iraq over
similar lies about weapons of mass destruction, setting into motion a
vast slaughter that has claimed the lives of over one million people and
turned millions more into refugees ..
Once again, as in the air war against
Serbia in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and
the attack on Libya in 2011, the United States has concocted a pretext to
justify the violation of another country's sovereignty " ("The Bombing of
Syria, Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site)
I have no way of knowing whether Assad
used chemical weapons or not, but I found Russian President Vladimir Putin's
analysis particularly interesting. Reporters asked Putin - "What is your
view about the use of chemical weapons in Syria?"
Putin answered-:
"You all know that the Syrian
government has repeatedly asked the international community to come and
inspect the sites where the rebels used chemical weapons. But they always
ignored those requests. The only time the international community has
responded, was to this last incident. So, what do I think?
I think we can figure out what's going
on by just using a little common sense. The Syrian army was winning the
war, in some places they had the rebels completely surrounded. For them
to throw it all away and give their trump card to the people who have
been calling for regime change is, frankly, a crock of shit.". (
Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
)
Putin's response to Trump's missile attack
has been subdued to say the least. He did issue a perfunctory presidential
press statement on the incident, but the tone of the statement was neither
incendiary or belligerent. If anything, it sounded like he found the whole
matter irritating, like the man who sits down to a picnic lunch and finds he
has to deal with pesky mosquito before he can eat. But, of course, this is
the way that Putin handles most matters. He's a master of understatement who
is not easily given to emotional outbursts or displays of rage. He's more
apt to scratch himself, roll his eyes and give a shrug of the shoulders,
than wave his fist and issue threats.
But from a strategic point of view,
Putin's measured response makes perfect sense, after all, the real battle
isn't going to be won or lost in Syria. It's much bigger than that. Putin is
challenging the present world order in which a disproportionate amount of
political and economic power has accrued to one unipolar center of
authority, a global hegemon that imposes its economic model wherever it goes
and topples sovereign states with a wave of the hand. Putin's task is to
build resistance among the vassals, form new alliances, and strengthen the
collective resolve for a different world where national sovereignty and
borders are guaranteed under an impartial set of international laws that
protect the weak as well as the strong.
That's Putin's real objective, to rebuild
the system of global security based on a solid foundation of respect for the
vital interests of each and every country. To accomplish that, Putin must
seem like a reasonable and trustworthy ally who honors his commitments and
stands by his friends even when they are under attack. That's why Putin
won't abandon Assad. It's because he can't.
Syria is the battlefield where competing
visions of the future meet head on. It's where the rubber meets the road.
Can you see what's going on? Trump's missile attack was not
retaliatory, not really. It was a message to Putin. McMaster was saying
as clearly as possible, that 'the US military is coming for Assad, and
you'd better stay out of the way if you know what's good for you.' That's
the message.
It's not only that. He adds that
everyone else in the world
sees
it that way.
That's an essential element to bully speak, and it's never missing from it.
They love to receive validation from their serfs (you could consider this
the "alpha's dessert", from a certain anthropological perspective, to be
tasted after every meal).
After the missile barrage, European "leaders" all took part in a bowing
down competition. The good general's expectations about them didn't go
unrealized.
Trump attacked Syria because he wants to rule the world by force of arms. He
pretended to prefer peace to war in order to get elected. He is not Hitler.
He is Dubya and Kushner is his Cheney.
FKA Max
,
April 13, 2017 at 4:06 am GMT \n
You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the case against
Syrian President Bashar al Assad is extremely weak.
Probably not. [Sunni/Wahabbi/Army of Conquest actors] were probably
tipped off and asked for their continued support.
In which case the "accidental release of warehoused chemicals" makes only
sense if it was a "lucky strike". Seeing how this went down, so totally
perfectly, I would say "fully engineered 'incident' with actors on the
ground" is the likely explanation. See also
http://www.unz.com/author/theodore-a-postol/
of course.
It's just a matter of degree but the US went from
not-too-deadly-to-civilians false flags (some 60′s CIA "communist bombings"
in South Vietnam notwithstanding) to do-not-care-about-civilians false
flags, and I would say that happened under Obama.
> The US is totally responsible for the mess in Syria
darn, those jolly
peaceful people in Syria got pushed off-course of a history of thousands of
years without a single internal conflict . by the Americans. Everything by
the Americans.
> waited until the evening that he was having dinner with President Xi
Jinping to launch the attacks. How's that for timing?
200 Words
I saw a red flag when Trump & the Pentagon inserted troops into Syria
without asking for permission from Bashar Al Assad. It seemed to me that the
regime change writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of time
before they found the right pretext or created a false flag (or fell for one
staged by the "rebels"). And lo and behold they found one straight out of a
Hollywood movie script where a real life Dr. Evil type dictator "gasses"
innocent women and children.
Then it was the usual faux outrage by the president, his cabinet members,
Congress and the fake, lapdog media while repeating unfounded allegations
24/7 as established truths.
"In the weeks before the missile strikes, Trump met with the Saudis,
the president of Egypt, and the King of Jordan, while Secretary of State
met with Turkish President Erdogan.
Those are all the wrong people to consult with since they are Sunni and
Assad is a member of the Alawite sect of Shia Islam. Of course they'd like
to see Assad deposed and a pliant Sunni stooge in his stead.
As for Israel, they prefer the bad guys not backed by Iran which would be
ISIS and other Wahabi cutthroats and who we now seem to be supporting given
Trump's radical shift on Syria.
100 Words
Really a very good article putting beyond doubt that Syria is being set up
for "Regime Change" and the Russians are being warned to keep out.
.. To accomplish that, Putin must seem like a reasonable and
trustworthy ally who honors his commitments and stands by his friends
even when they are under attack. That's why Putin won't abandon Assad.
It's because he can't.
Well, maybe he could, rather than risk was WWIII. And at least the US
public would know for sure that their "No More ME Wars" candidate had
defected to the Neo-cons, with the American Establishment being the War
Party rather than the Russians.
Read More
Robert Magill
,
April 13, 2017 at 1:48 pm GMT \n
100 Words
My scenario is a little different. I cannot believe that Donald Trump who
has demonstrated such spot on political instincts has suddenly lost his
touch. Consider: Premier Xi comes to visit. Deals are done. Russia and Syria
are notified during lunch the number of missiles and their intended
destination. This is all a show for Xi and Putin. After lunch the missiles
go off and about half reach the target.
Main runway undamaged, Syrian
planes resume flights next day. Mission accomplished! Target practice for
the Russians. Now we know and they know how many missiles they can scratch
in a cluster.
War hawks salivate. Everybody else has the vapors. Xi goes to Alaska for the
next big thing. Train service from the old world to the new.
200 Words
The world must attack the criminal China by serving the interest of the
imperialism/Zionism and the Trump regime for few petty bones.
China
abstained from the UN vote on Syria, where Trump regime bombed Syrian people
and frame Assad for the chemical attack where CIA trained terrorists in
Syria staged.
{President Donald Trump has praised China for its decision to abstain
from voting on a UN Security Council resolution condemning last week's
chemical attack on civilians in Syria, terming it an honour for the US.}
China is a criminal state a petty colony. Its leaders are cowards and
cannot be trusted. They are traitors to humanity. Everyone and every country
must BOYCOTT anything Chinese.
You don't want to help petty people.
Long live Russia for time being. China and Russia SOLD Libya and open the
road for the criminal West into Syria. China bears very big responsibility
for the survival of evil for
petty concessions.
Down with China, Down with its petty 'leaders' with mafia hear style. Shame
on China.
100 Words
@Karl
> The US is totally responsible for the mess in Syria
darn, those jolly
peaceful people in Syria got pushed off-course of a history of thousands of
years without a single internal conflict.... by the Americans. Everything by
the Americans.
> waited until the evening that he was having dinner with President Xi
Jinping to launch the attacks. How's that for timing?
whatever it takes to make sure that Arabella gets good reviews in the
Beijing papers
darn, those jolly peaceful people in Syria got pushed off-course of a
history of thousands of years without a single internal conflict . by the
Americans. Everything by the Americans.
@Miro23
Really a very good article putting beyond doubt that Syria is being set up
for "Regime Change" and the Russians are being warned to keep out.
..... To accomplish that, Putin must seem like a reasonable and
trustworthy ally who honors his commitments and stands by his friends
even when they are under attack. That's why Putin won't abandon Assad.
It's because he can't.
100 Words
If the Americans intend to attack Syria, and attack the Russians if they
defend Syria, the Americans are going to get a bloody nose (and perhaps a
broken jaw).
What really annoys me is that the fatuous stuffed shirts in
Washington get off scot-free every time their ludicrous adventures go
haywire.
Wouldn't it be nice if Congress could pass a law requiring that, whenever
an American military aggression fails, all those responsible must commit
seppuku in the traditional Japanese way?
Read More
Agent76
,
April 13, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Tom Welsh
If the Americans intend to attack Syria, and attack the Russians if they
defend Syria, the Americans are going to get a bloody nose (and perhaps a
broken jaw).
What really annoys me is that the fatuous stuffed shirts in Washington get
off scot-free every time their ludicrous adventures go haywire.
Wouldn't it be nice if Congress could pass a law requiring that, whenever an
American military aggression fails, all those responsible must commit
seppuku in the traditional Japanese way?
It would be better if most of the world knew this instead. *All Wars Are
Bankers' Wars*
I know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how
many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central
banks onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand
why the US Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign
nations. There is ample precedent for this.
Can you see what's going on? Trump's missile attack was not
retaliatory, not really. It was a message to Putin. McMaster was saying
as clearly as possible, that 'the US military is coming for Assad, and
you'd better stay out of the way if you know what's good for you.' That's
the message. It has nothing to do with chemical weapons or the suffering
of innocent people. McMaster was delivering a threat. He was putting
Putin 'on notice'.
100 Words
@Eustace Tilley (not)
How he yearns for Imperial Dawn,
Our doubleplusgood-speaking Sean!
He bleats
and
he chatters
Of "kindly" cruel matters
While playing the Government pawn.
You are much too high minded for this world of filth and worms and lies. But
never mind–
[MORE]
Evil wings in ether beating;
Vultures at the spirit eating;
Things unseen forever fleeting
Black against the leering sky.
Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,
Clawing fiends of future sadness,
Mingle in a cloud of madness
Ever on the soul to lie.
Thus the living, lone and sobbing,
In the throes of anguish throbbing,
With the loathsome Furies robbing
Night and noon of peace and rest.
But beyond the groans and grating
Of abhorrent Life, is waiting
Sweet Oblivion, culminating
All the years of fruitless quest.
Probably not. [Sunni/Wahabbi/Army of Conquest actors] were probably
tipped off and asked for their continued support.
In which case the "accidental release of warehoused chemicals" makes only
sense if it was a "lucky strike". Seeing how this went down, so totally
perfectly, I would say "fully engineered 'incident' with actors on the
ground" is the likely explanation. See also
http://www.unz.com/author/theodore-a-postol/ of course.
It's just a matter of degree but the US went from
not-too-deadly-to-civilians false flags (some 60's CIA "communist bombings"
in South Vietnam notwithstanding) to do-not-care-about-civilians false
flags, and I would say that happened under Obama.
In the long run. these people are all dead of course, but it's still a
hardening of the veins.
EXACTLY. From Postol:
"This mechanism of dispersal is essentially the same
as hitting a toothpaste tube with a large mallet, which then results in the
tube failing and the toothpaste being blown in many directions depending on
the exact way the toothpaste skin ruptures.
If this is in fact the mechanism used to disperse the sarin,
this
indicates that the sarin tube was placed on the ground by individuals on the
ground and not dropped from an airplane
."
Read More
utu
,
April 13, 2017 at 8:39 pm GMT \n
"This mechanism of dispersal is essentially the same as hitting a toothpaste
tube with a large mallet, which then results in the tube failing and the
toothpaste being blown in many directions depending on the exact way the
toothpaste skin ruptures.
If this is in fact the mechanism used to disperse the sarin,
this
indicates that the sarin tube was placed on the ground by individuals on the
ground and not dropped from an airplane
."
Publishing Postol's article may serves a disinfo purpose that people will
start endless discussion how sarin was dispersed and start arguing about
wind direction and humidity on that day. The picture of the alleged shell on
which Postol's bases his whole analysis has no credibility whatsoever. Is he
that naive and stupid not too think about it or is he a tool of those who do
not want us think of other alternatives?
Shouldn't we ask ourselves what
the head choppers and their sponsors (CIA, MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) are
really capable of? Can they kill some civilians they rounded up somewhere by
gas or whatever? Sure they can? Do they have priors? Sure they have. Are
they media savvy and know how to create the event and report it? Sure they
do.
200 Words
Syria is the battlefield where competing visions of the future meet head on.
It's where the rubber meets the road.
actually syria is now the
battlefield where the american neocon vision of the future is dying for all
to see irrespective what trump wants or doesn't want.
the war there is, strategically speaking, over, all that remains are the
tactical battles needed to finish off whatever the rebels calls themselves
this week.
washington/israels neocon vision of the middle east is finished.
the russians do not want a war with the usa but i wager they are
preparing for one at all levels as i write this. washington likes to fight
but mostly against those who can not fight back and is wholly unprepared to
battle a russian enemy every bit as technically advanced as the us military.
the 'real' us military knows fighting russia is suicide and a fools
errand and is surely counseling trump on this fact. if he doesn't listen he
potentially ends most life on earth or if he stops short of that the us
military suffers a humiliating defeat for all the world to see.
his presidency ends forthwith and the integrity of the nation is at risk.
@paraglider
Syria is the battlefield where competing visions of the future meet head on.
It's where the rubber meets the road.
actually syria is now the
battlefield where the american neocon vision of the future is dying for all
to see irrespective what trump wants or doesn't want.
the war there is, strategically speaking, over, all that remains are the
tactical battles needed to finish off whatever the rebels calls themselves
this week.
washington/israels neocon vision of the middle east is finished.
the russians do not want a war with the usa but i wager they are
preparing for one at all levels as i write this. washington likes to fight
but mostly against those who can not fight back and is wholly unprepared to
battle a russian enemy every bit as technically advanced as the us military.
the 'real' us military knows fighting russia is suicide and a fools
errand and is surely counseling trump on this fact. if he doesn't listen he
potentially ends most life on earth or if he stops short of that the us
military suffers a humiliating defeat for all the world to see.
his presidency ends forthwith and the integrity of the nation is at risk.
700 Words
So funny, as Israeli ass licking as Bannon was, it wasn't even an
afterthought to have this nuisance removed from Trump's inner circle by
Kushner. I feel bad for those of you Americans who thought that your Savior
was gonna really pursue some sort of populist agenda once he was elected to
the White House. I know the Breitbart types figured that achieving something
akin to what Israel has achieved for Jews could happen here for white
Americans but the reality is that the Jews who run your country end up not
respecting you for letting them do it, and hoping that they might let you
have a seat at what should be your table is pathetic lol, these people are
your enemies .
"Also, of interest was the ouster of controversial Trump
strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council (NSC), taking
place only days before the administration's dramatic reversal on Syria.
Incidentally, Bannon's fall from grace – which has only accelerated in the
week since his removal from the NSC – was due to his in-fighting with
Kushner, proving that Kushner's influence in his father-in-law's
administration is much more powerful than previously thought. While it
remains unknown exactly why Kushner and Bannon were fighting, the drastic
policy change in "national security" days later seems to speak volumes.
While Bannon is hardly anti-war or anti-Israel, it seems that Kushner's
commitment to radical Zionism and neo-conservative ideas put him at odds
with Bannon – who considers himself a "populist" and is a long-time
conservative, unlike Kushner. Indeed, Kushner – until 2012 – was a key
supporter of Democrats, much like his father, the notoriously corrupt
Charles Kushner, and donated thousands to Democrats like Hillary Clinton and
Charles Schumer.
Israel First
White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, takes his seat to watch Vice
President Mike Pence administer the oath of office to U.S. Ambassador to
Israel David M. Friedman, March 29, 2017. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
However, Kushner had no problem changing parties as his political leanings
have been shown to only change in regard to one issue – Israel. In 2012, it
was Kushner's stalwart support for Israel, particularly Israel's far-right,
that ultimately led him to reject the Democrat Party and support Mitt
Romney's candidacy. "Rather than strengthen the nation's relationship with
Israel as the Arab world imploded, Mr. Obama treated Jerusalem as less a
friend than a burden," said the Kushner-owned New York Observer's
endorsement, summing up Kushner's view on the matter in language that Trump
would later echo.
Kushner's unwavering support for Israel is obvious as any cursory
examination of his background reveals. Kushner was raised in a wealthy
Zionist family and met powerful Israeli politicians including now Israeli PM
Benjamin Netanyahu in his teenage years. As an adult, Kushner has overseen
the finances of his family's "charitable" foundation which has donated
thousands to illegal Israeli settlements as well as thousands more to the
Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
This Oct. 24, 2016 photo, shows part of the Israeli settlement of Beit
El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Tax records show the family of U.S.
president-elect Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has donated tens
of thousands of dollars to Israeli settlement institutions in the West Bank
in recent years. (AP/Nasser Nasser)
Of particular interest among these donations was the $20,000 donation in
2013 to American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva, which supports one of the more
extremist illegal settlements in the West Bank. The chairman of this
organization, David Friedman, has been Trump's real estate lawyer for the
past 15 years and was selected by the Trump administration to serve as the
U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman is noticeable for being against the
two-state solution, a position that Kushner also shares according to
journalist Robert Parry and others.
With Kushner's "Israel first" mentality clear and his commitment to Zionism
obvious, it is hardly surprising that Kushner, and his wife Ivanka, would
push for a different approach to Syria than that promised by Trump during
the 2016 election."
200 Words
@paraglider
Syria is the battlefield where competing visions of the future meet head on.
It's where the rubber meets the road.
actually syria is now the
battlefield where the american neocon vision of the future is dying for all
to see irrespective what trump wants or doesn't want.
the war there is, strategically speaking, over, all that remains are the
tactical battles needed to finish off whatever the rebels calls themselves
this week.
washington/israels neocon vision of the middle east is finished.
the russians do not want a war with the usa but i wager they are
preparing for one at all levels as i write this. washington likes to fight
but mostly against those who can not fight back and is wholly unprepared to
battle a russian enemy every bit as technically advanced as the us military.
the 'real' us military knows fighting russia is suicide and a fools
errand and is surely counseling trump on this fact. if he doesn't listen he
potentially ends most life on earth or if he stops short of that the us
military suffers a humiliating defeat for all the world to see.
his presidency ends forthwith and the integrity of the nation is at risk.
i will wager the syrian showdown between dc and russia goes no further.
Some really good points here, paraglider.
I believe a nations army will
always fight hardest to defend itself against an aggressive invasion An
entire nation (every man ,woman and child) will rally to the call when an
existential threat is upon them
They will make every sacrifice to survive ..
When its balls to the walls do or die .Ordinary people have shown a
mountain of courage where none would expect it.
When an aggressor army enter the fray, under false or dubious claims, no
matter how well disciplined its soldiers are, the integrity of rationale, or
lack there of, impinges on the hearts and minds of its warriors.
How can it not ?
We are human beings, after all ?
Cannot any of us imagine how potent and deadly a warrior Pat Tillman
might have been, defending OUR country..from an attacking invader ?
One deadly , vicious , Motherf#cker I can tell you that now .God rest his
soul.
There is nothing WORSE for a nation than to engage in aggressive war
under false or bogus pretenses..
Nothing WORSE --
It undermines the fighting spirit.. because deep down, every soldier
doesn't REALLY believe they have the RIGHT to win ..
ANN COULTER FULL ONE-ON-ONE EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW WITH TUCKER CARLSON
(4/12/2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45c408-s58A
It would be so nice if Ann Coulter stopped tossing her hair around and
bobbing her head generally, and Smiling all the time .of course, girlie
behavior can be forgiven since she is a girl, but
arguably she could be
more effective if the skin factor was reduced not necessarily eliminated and
she was better prepared with a few facts, numbers, etc. Carlson is great
given the need to keep his job, not for his money, but for Fox viewers who
are subject to Hannity and O'Reilly emotionalism. The other guy, is not as
bad, but he too starts to dance a bit Lou Dobbs.
Thank god for Tucker, his brilliance, his limits-pushing, his skepticism
right now about Syria Story per the Usuals. Evidence! he keeps on
saying .Yup.
400 Words
Eric Bolling is filling in for the great O'Reilly and interviewing the wise
Sebastian Gorka on the Syrian and N. Korea situation. Based on this and
other interviews and coverage over the last week by the neocon smart set
I've learned the following:
1) Assad is evil, almost indescribably so, and he periodically uses
chemical weapons against innocent people for pure sport. Don't challenge
this or you are condoning evil, stupid, a liberal pussy, or not a true
patriot. Besides, our intelligence agencies are second to none and wouldn't
lie or mislead us and how dare you question the narrative.
2) Assad and his allies are quaking in their boots. Iran and Russia
better think long and hard about supporting Assad. We may use additional
force. We may not. We like to keep people guessing and our options open.
It's all part of Trump's unpredictability and brilliance.
3) The use of WMD's will not be tolerated by this administration unless
we're the ones using them since we are exceptional. If we use them then we
have a right to and are killing really evil people who threaten innocent
people, Israel and the change of seasons on earth.
4) The Chinese premier thought the tomahawk missile strike before dessert
was cool and scary at the same time. Xi Jinpeng was so impressed by Trump's
"resolve" and the dessert was so delectable that he will probably invade or
nuke N. Korea for us. That's the art of the deal!
5) Our actions are legal and moral even though nobody can say where we
derive the power to bomb nations we are not at war with or who don't pose an
imminent threat. Trump, Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Israel, CNN, FOX and Rush
Limbaugh think we have this power and that's all that matters. If you
disagree then you are a traitor or phony patriot and should leave the
exceptional American nation NOW (yes, you alt-right, Tulsi Gabbard and Rand
Paul).
6) The only thing preventing John McCainiac's permanent man crush on
Trump is the latter's unwillingness to commit 500,000 troops for a ground
invasion. He should also consider invading Iran while we're in the
neighborhood since Assad's evil is only matched by the mullahs. Of course,
if Trump follows through with McCain's wish then Lindsay Graham will fall in
love, too and have a hard on for the ages.
Read More
Ivy
,
April 14, 2017 at 2:02 am GMT \n
"This mechanism of dispersal is essentially the same as hitting a toothpaste
tube with a large mallet, which then results in the tube failing and the
toothpaste being blown in many directions depending on the exact way the
toothpaste skin ruptures.
@KenH
Eric Bolling is filling in for the great O'Reilly and interviewing the wise
Sebastian Gorka on the Syrian and N. Korea situation. Based on this and
other interviews and coverage over the last week by the neocon smart set
I've learned the following:
1) Assad is evil, almost indescribably so, and he periodically uses
chemical weapons against innocent people for pure sport. Don't challenge
this or you are condoning evil, stupid, a liberal pussy, or not a true
patriot. Besides, our intelligence agencies are second to none and wouldn't
lie or mislead us and how dare you question the narrative.
2) Assad and his allies are quaking in their boots. Iran and Russia
better think long and hard about supporting Assad. We may use additional
force. We may not. We like to keep people guessing and our options open.
It's all part of Trump's unpredictability and brilliance.
3) The use of WMD's will not be tolerated by this administration unless
we're the ones using them since we are exceptional. If we use them then we
have a right to and are killing really evil people who threaten innocent
people, Israel and the change of seasons on earth.
4) The Chinese premier thought the tomahawk missile strike before dessert
was cool and scary at the same time. Xi Jinpeng was so impressed by Trump's
"resolve" and the dessert was so delectable that he will probably invade or
nuke N. Korea for us. That's the art of the deal!
5) Our actions are legal and moral even though nobody can say where we
derive the power to bomb nations we are not at war with or who don't pose an
imminent threat. Trump, Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Israel, CNN, FOX and Rush
Limbaugh think we have this power and that's all that matters. If you
disagree then you are a traitor or phony patriot and should leave the
exceptional American nation NOW (yes, you alt-right, Tulsi Gabbard and Rand
Paul).
@KenH
Eric Bolling is filling in for the great O'Reilly and interviewing the wise
Sebastian Gorka on the Syrian and N. Korea situation. Based on this and
other interviews and coverage over the last week by the neocon smart set
I've learned the following:
1) Assad is evil, almost indescribably so, and he periodically uses
chemical weapons against innocent people for pure sport. Don't challenge
this or you are condoning evil, stupid, a liberal pussy, or not a true
patriot. Besides, our intelligence agencies are second to none and wouldn't
lie or mislead us and how dare you question the narrative.
2) Assad and his allies are quaking in their boots. Iran and Russia
better think long and hard about supporting Assad. We may use additional
force. We may not. We like to keep people guessing and our options open.
It's all part of Trump's unpredictability and brilliance.
3) The use of WMD's will not be tolerated by this administration unless
we're the ones using them since we are exceptional. If we use them then we
have a right to and are killing really evil people who threaten innocent
people, Israel and the change of seasons on earth.
4) The Chinese premier thought the tomahawk missile strike before dessert
was cool and scary at the same time. Xi Jinpeng was so impressed by Trump's
"resolve" and the dessert was so delectable that he will probably invade or
nuke N. Korea for us. That's the art of the deal!
5) Our actions are legal and moral even though nobody can say where we
derive the power to bomb nations we are not at war with or who don't pose an
imminent threat. Trump, Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Israel, CNN, FOX and Rush
Limbaugh think we have this power and that's all that matters. If you
disagree then you are a traitor or phony patriot and should leave the
exceptional American nation NOW (yes, you alt-right, Tulsi Gabbard and Rand
Paul).
6) The only thing preventing John McCainiac's permanent man crush on
Trump is the latter's unwillingness to commit 500,000 troops for a ground
invasion. He should also consider invading Iran while we're in the
neighborhood since Assad's evil is only matched by the mullahs. Of course,
if Trump follows through with McCain's wish then Lindsay Graham will fall in
love, too and have a hard on for the ages.
Eric Bolling called Assad "the butcher of Damascus"
100 Words
April 14, 2017 The Trump/Syria conundrum Will Trump deliver Deep State's
world war?
In appearance, Trump's April 6, 2017, missile attack on Syria
is the first step towards a regime change, a massive regional conquest, and
World War 3. In appearance, the event marked a point of no return for
Trump's presidency.
@KenH
Eric Bolling is filling in for the great O'Reilly and interviewing the wise
Sebastian Gorka on the Syrian and N. Korea situation. Based on this and
other interviews and coverage over the last week by the neocon smart set
I've learned the following:
1) Assad is evil, almost indescribably so, and he periodically uses
chemical weapons against innocent people for pure sport. Don't challenge
this or you are condoning evil, stupid, a liberal pussy, or not a true
patriot. Besides, our intelligence agencies are second to none and wouldn't
lie or mislead us and how dare you question the narrative.
2) Assad and his allies are quaking in their boots. Iran and Russia
better think long and hard about supporting Assad. We may use additional
force. We may not. We like to keep people guessing and our options open.
It's all part of Trump's unpredictability and brilliance.
3) The use of WMD's will not be tolerated by this administration unless
we're the ones using them since we are exceptional. If we use them then we
have a right to and are killing really evil people who threaten innocent
people, Israel and the change of seasons on earth.
4) The Chinese premier thought the tomahawk missile strike before dessert
was cool and scary at the same time. Xi Jinpeng was so impressed by Trump's
"resolve" and the dessert was so delectable that he will probably invade or
nuke N. Korea for us. That's the art of the deal!
5) Our actions are legal and moral even though nobody can say where we
derive the power to bomb nations we are not at war with or who don't pose an
imminent threat. Trump, Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Israel, CNN, FOX and Rush
Limbaugh think we have this power and that's all that matters. If you
disagree then you are a traitor or phony patriot and should leave the
exceptional American nation NOW (yes, you alt-right, Tulsi Gabbard and Rand
Paul).
@Rurik
Eric Bolling called Assad "the butcher of Damascus"
can't get more 'Hitler of the month' than that
Well, Assad Jr. used to run a halal meat shop when he was not busy learning
the basics of totalitarian governance. It was rather famous throughout
Damascus.
Read More
MEexpert
,
April 14, 2017 at 7:00 pm GMT \n
100 Words
Since the neocons are so interested in partitioning every other country, we
should give them a partitioned country right here. We should break up the
United States into several countries. California and Texas already want to
secede. We should make New York as a separate country for the neocons and
the MSM. They can run it to ground anyway they like.
Read More
Miro23
,
April 14, 2017 at 10:01 pm GMT \n
@MEexpert
Since the neocons are so interested in partitioning every other country, we
should give them a partitioned country right here. We should break up the
United States into several countries. California and Texas already want to
secede. We should make New York as a separate country for the neocons and
the MSM. They can run it to ground anyway they like.
Wait a second I live in N.Y. AND WE DON'T WANT THE BASTARDS HERE EITHER.
Read More
MEexpert
,
April 15, 2017 at 12:21 am GMT \n
@bluedog
Wait a second I live in N.Y. AND WE DON'T WANT THE BASTARDS HERE EITHER.
I feel sorry for you. You are going to have hard time getting rid of those
cockroaches.
There are so many problems with the propaganda campaign against
Assad getting unrolled now.
(1)
You can't treat exposure to sarin with your bare hands without falling ill/dead
yourself, as the White Helmets
were apparently doing
in the aftermath of the Idlib attack.
(2) As Syrian war reporter @Partisangirl noticed, some journalists
were apparently discussing
a chlorine sarin attack before it actually
happened.
(3) It is eerily reminescent of the aftermath of the 2013 Gouta
attacks, in which the Western media and neocon and neocon-in-all-but-name
politicians and punditry parroted the official line that Assad's troops were
responsible even though consequent journalistic work by
Sermour Hersh
and
MIT
raised serious doubts over the veracity of that allegation.
(5) Unlike in 2013, Assad is now winning. Why on Earth now, of all
times, would he resort to poison gas – one of the few things he can do to that
is capable of provoking a strong Western reaction –
just to kill all of 75 civilians
?
It just makes no sense.
So one can't help but treat Nikky Haley's
melodramatic performance
at the UN with skepticism. The idea that the
poisoning was due to a bomb hitting a chemical weapons manufactory seems more
plausible.
Trump's initial non-interventionist rhetoric on assuming the
Presidency was encouraging, as was his promotion of other anti-war figures such
as
Tulsi Gabbard
. However, the latest response of the US administration,
including Trump himself, is not giving any cause for optimism:
I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big
impact on me, big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I've been
watching it, and seeing it, and it doesn't get any worse than that And I
will tell you it's already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad
has changed very much.
To be sure, one might view this as a merely ritualistic expression
of outrage, but also coming on as it does on the eve of Steve Bannon's
dismissal from the National Security Council one can't help but start having
dark thoughts on whether the deep state might be triumphing after all.
On Trump – the less he intends to do, the more strongly he positions
himself.
So one way to interpret his remarks is that he is occupying a position that
fully takes advantage of anti-Assad sentiment, but with no intent to act on
it at all.
100 Words
NEW!
@Chuck
So Trump the hard-headed America Firster morphs into weepy bleeding heart
interventionist?
The Empire needs better writers.
I've been
pretty
solid
in my Trump support, despite occasional "zradas"
(defeats/betrayals).
This is the first time however that I am genuinely
questioning his intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
El Dato
,
April 6, 2017 at 12:57 am GMT \n
100 Words
Gee, I wonder who could be behind this offensively low-brow and loud theater
performance to give a "casus belli" and a "reason for responsibility to
protect".
100% repeat of Obama's "redline" performance. Maybe it will go through
now, it depends on the levels of sellout.
The always-reliable yuropeans are onboard, same as with the Lybian
"Ghadaffi is distributing Viagra to rape his own people" somewhat-liberating
free-for-all. Clearly the cheques have arrived.
Meanwhile, the bombing of Yemen on behalf of the Saudis, which in a sane
world would result in US military personnel and politicians getting
acquainted with the wrong end of firing squads, is merrily ongoing.
Felix Keverich
,
April 6, 2017 at 1:02 am GMT \n
100 Words
Well, let's see: Tillerson makes a statement that overthrowing Assad is no
longer a priority. Neocons disagree. And within days this "chemical attack"
happens, the biggest chemical attack in Syria – we are told – since 2013.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
I think it's possible that chemical attack did happen, and it was the CIA
or its terrorist buddies that arranged to poison these children. Unlike
Assad, these actually have a plausible motive – manipulating Trump and
influencing his policy.
Backwoods Bob
,
April 6, 2017 at 1:34 am GMT \n
This is the first time however that I am genuinely questioning his
intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
I have become disheartened.
Hillary was the end of America as we knew it. But Trump is far too much
of an Empire First, not America First president at the moment.
El Dato
,
April 6, 2017 at 1:44 am GMT \n
200 Words
It's WMD and false flag attacks all over again. How short is the public's
memory? I suppose Trump is caught in a pincer movement here, false flag or
provocation carried out by the 'deep state' or parts of the so-called
'intelligence community' on the one hand, coordinated with the mass media on
the other who publicize it and beat the drums demanding that something must
be done, it's a crisis, etc. They're trying to force his hand. It'll be
interesting to see how he handles this. On the face of it, for a person
who's shown a healthy level of skepticism he's coming across as a bit too
credulous. The UN ambassador Haley is a really embarrassing idiot who is
undermining the very person that gave her this wonderful platform for her to
be a star of. People gave her adulating coverage in the past as an
up-and-coming talent but has been revealed to be merely a blabbering
airhead. The pool of talent for Trump to pick from is apparently quite thin
so finding some good people is looking to shape up as a major challenge.
Yevardian
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:01 am GMT \n
This is the first time however that I am genuinely questioning his
intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
As I thought at the time, and Ron Unz also noted here, Trump was either an
utter moron or completely indifferent to actual policy to promote a
facelesss POS like Mike Pence to VP.
I think it should be increasingly obvious that he's a gauche blowhard who's
merely a weathervein for whomever advised him last.
jimbojones
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:30 am GMT \n
100 Words
Trump should watch out. He was voted in exactly because people were
profoundly disgusted by the Obama/Clinton Libyan monstrosity, and because
people wanted Washington to stop funding terrorists to topple the legitimate
government of Syria.
Assad didn't gas civilians. The very idea is moronic.
He has won the war. Trump can use Assad as an ally in the fight against
everybody's common enemy ISIS. Or Trump can betray his electorate and ruin
his presidency by doing something stupid in Syria.
This is the first time however that I am genuinely questioning his
intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
This betrayal is for real and final. Stop projecting your wishful thinking
on Trump. He never was the man many of us were imagining. This were just our
projections. Projections of people who wanted to have some hope. The most
important is that Bannon is out or on his way out. W/o Bannon there is
nobody else. Just your usual dumb and vile republicans are all what is left
plus some soft hearted libs in Ivanka faction. That's all. It's over!
Besides what a great opportunity for Trump. Just do the Syria and everything
will be forgiven and forgotten. Including Susan Rice, OK? We will not have
to impeach you and replace with Pence.
Not sure about this guy but he claimed 2 days ago:
Published on Apr 3, 2017
Is the US Preparing to Invade Damascus?
As absurd as this may sound the evidence seems to stack up in favor of
this scenario of a US led invasion of Damascus, Syria. The movement of US
desert Camo military equipment was done in a way to avoid detection by
Russia. First to Germany to make it appear as a buildup on Russia's
border, then to Poland final to a port in Romania, then reloaded at set
sail to Beirut Lebanon where Damascus comes into view. All the while
Israeli US Italian and UAE military work in Greece to overcome Russia
s300 air defense system. Israel moves their forces into the Golan for
supposed drills. All troops in position Damascus to be hit next.
If so, the staged gas attack is just a part of a much bigger scheme that was planned months
ago with Trump knowledge. No more talking about hat the Deep Sate is boxing Trump in. No, Trump
is on it.
200 Words
If there were 3 million parallel universes out there, then I guess maybe
in one of them Assad would have been responsible for the chemical attack
on the Syrian civilians, but even then I doubt it. For the sake of
argument, let's say he did it and as a result almost a hundred people
died. So then I guess it's justifiable to go in and kill thousands and
thousands of civilians to punish Assad for killing less than a hundred of
them.
When "dictator" like Assad kills people, he does it in an undemocratic
way – with chemical weapons, which is inhumane. When the greatest
democracy does it – it's ok, because it's for a just cause and with
weapons approved by the Geneva Convention. And if at the end of the
carnage awaits the prospect of democracy – then no price in civilian
lives is too high. Something that Madeleine Albright would call a price
worth paying.
When a democracy kills people – it doesn't use chemical weapons, it
uses bombs, bullets and rockets and that's what really makes a
difference. I think most people would find it very objectionable to be
killed by chemical weapons, but with bullets – it's almost a breeze, and
then when you factor in that you are possibly dying in order to bring
democracy to your country, I am surprised that they actually don't
volunteer for such an honor.
Seraphim
,
April 6, 2017 at 5:20 am GMT \n
This is the first time however that I am genuinely questioning his
intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
Not everyone was fooled by the supposed intentions and goodwill of Trump.
F. William Engdahl, "The Dangerous Deception Called The Trump Presidency"
The exact repetition of Colin Powell's vial of anthrax performance
shows that nobody gives a hoot about 'making sense'. Assad must go! Nah,
hang. And those who 'back' him and 'would not escape responsibility for
this'. Be concerned, very concerned. The Petersburg attack just missed
the 'real culprit'.
Seamus Padraig
,
April 6, 2017 at 5:21 am GMT \n
Well, people, it's all over. I had a bad feeling back when Trump let go
of Gen. Flynn. Now my worst suspicions have been confirmed: the deep
state has won. The Trump we elected is no more ..
Seraphim
,
April 6, 2017 at 7:09 am GMT \n
300 Words
It is known that the apparition of Haley's Comet presage wars. Do we have
it? No, but we have Nikki Haley.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Feb. 16, 2017:
""I just put out to the members of the Seucrity Council to help me
understand: When we have so much going on in the world, why is it that
every single month we're going to sit down and have a hearing where all
they do is obsess over Israel?
The Security Council is supposed to discuss how to maintain international
peace and security. But at our meeting on the Middle East, the discussion
was not about Hizballah's illegal build-up of rockets in Lebanon. It was
not about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists. It was not
about how we defeat ISIS. It was not about how we hold Bashar al-Assad
accountable for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians. No,
instead, the meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true
democracy in the Middle East. I am new around here, but I understand
that's how the Council has operated, month after month, for decades.
I'm here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this
anymore. I am here to underscore the ironclad support of the United
States for Israel. I'm here to emphasize the United States is determined
to stand up to the UN's anti-Israel bias. We will never repeat the
terrible mistake of Resolution 2334 and allow one-sided Security Council
resolutions to condemn Israel. Instead, we will push for action on the
real threats we face in the Middle East
It is the UN's anti-Israel bias that is long overdue for change. The
United States will not hesitate to speak out against these biases in
defense of our friend and ally, Israel".
100 Words
Always check the timing. Now Globalists did realize that they cannot
impeach Trump.
So?????????????????
They decided with this false flag to reeducate him.
Some people claim that US wars in Levant are for israel.
I am not sure of anything.
But I do think that real power is hiding behind of the curtain.
Dana Thompson
,
April 6, 2017 at 7:25 am GMT \n
100 Words
On every occasion like this when a chemical weapons atrocity causes a
stir, discussion always neglects the question I find most interesting,
which is: we all know that traditional methods, like bullets that make
heads explode like overripe melons, and shrapnel that flings entrails
into picturesque sausage-like festoons are licit and acceptable to
enlightened humanity, but use of chemicals is outside the pale of
decency. But why is that? I think this article contains clues to the
answer, but I can't seem to follow the exact line of reasoning:
J.B.S. Haldane on chemical warfare
German_reader
,
April 6, 2017 at 7:38 am GMT \n
100 Words
I don't know, maybe Assad/his government felt they could now get away
with it and could use chemical weapons to terrorize and punish the
opposition. But even if Assad's military is responsible, how does this
incident really change anything? Tbh I don't care if Assad's military
gasses a few dozen children, and no remotely sane person would regard
this as legitimate reason for intervention. And the outrage is absurdly
hypocritical given what's going on in Yemen with direct US support.
Really disappointing how Trump seems to be preparing an intervention,
total madness.
Sergey Krieger
,
April 6, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT \n
This is the first time however that I am genuinely questioning his
intentions and goodwill.
If Trump in the end does goes down the path of corporatist neocon
warmongering, he will lose and the vision he outlined at his inauguration
speech will die as well. Very sad!
He had vision? Doubtfully. Just wanted to win elections and thus was
pressing all right buttons.
I had no doubt for a second it was all for show.
American history starting with Indian treaties is one of broken promises
and lies.
karl1haushofer
,
April 6, 2017 at 9:55 am GMT \n
100 Words
@JL
The difference between now and 2013 is that Russia is in Syria. So,
attacking the Assad regime now would be tantamount to war with Russia.
Similarly, going after North Korea, where the US has also been saber
rattling recently, would be very bloody and could very well go nuclear. I
think the first comment on this thread maybe had it right, this is the
opposite of "talk soft and carry a big stick". If I'm wrong, well, it's
been a good run for humanity and sorry to everyone with children and
hopes and plans for the future.
AK, maybe it's time to dust off and update your nuclear war post?
"The difference between now and 2013 is that Russia is in Syria. So,
attacking the Assad regime now would be tantamount to war with Russia. "
The problem is that there have been too many cases where Russia has not
responded accordingly to an aggression against it. Many people think –
whether justified or unjustified – that if Russian military, or a close
Russian ally, is attacked Russia will not respond.
Hopefully there are people in deciding roles in the Russian military
and political circles who have the guts to act if it ever gets to this. I
mean, those US bases in the Middle East are within the distance of
Russian cruise missiles from Caspian and Black Sea
animalogic
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:00 am GMT \n
100 Words
@jimbojones
Trump should watch out. He was voted in exactly because people were
profoundly disgusted by the Obama/Clinton Libyan monstrosity, and because
people wanted Washington to stop funding terrorists to topple the
legitimate government of Syria.
Assad didn't gas civilians. The very idea is moronic. He has won the war.
Trump can use Assad as an ally in the fight against everybody's common
enemy ISIS. Or Trump can betray his electorate and ruin his presidency by
doing something stupid in Syria.
The choice is his.
Will this be the final test of trump. ? If he follows the neo-con's into
this minefield can anyone doubt - WHATEVER the EXACT reasons why - that
his independence from the deep state is basically neglible ?
I feel sorry for those who "believed" (they did have good reason to
believe, given the putrid alternative .)
If my fears are realized, I just hope that the millions who supported him
reject BOTH of the major (sides of the same business) party.
SOMETHING has to push Americans out of the unholy rut they have been in
for decades now .
animalogic
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:08 am GMT \n
@Cyrano
If there were 3 million parallel universes out there, then I guess
maybe in one of them Assad would have been responsible for the
chemical attack on the Syrian civilians, but even then I doubt it. For
the sake of argument, let's say he did it and as a result almost a
hundred people died. So then I guess it's justifiable to go in and
kill thousands and thousands of civilians to punish Assad for killing
less than a hundred of them.
When "dictator" like Assad kills people, he does it in an undemocratic
way – with chemical weapons, which is inhumane. When the greatest
democracy does it – it's ok, because it's for a just cause and with
weapons approved by the Geneva Convention. And if at the end of the
carnage awaits the prospect of democracy – then no price in civilian
lives is too high. Something that Madeleine Albright would call a
price worth paying.
When a democracy kills people – it doesn't use chemical weapons, it
uses bombs, bullets and rockets and that's what really makes a
difference. I think most people would find it very objectionable to be
killed by chemical weapons, but with bullets – it's almost a breeze,
and then when you factor in that you are possibly dying in order to
bring democracy to your country, I am surprised that they actually
don't volunteer for such an honor.
Excellent response. Don't forget though, depleted uranium, cluster bombs,
napham & Daisy cutters are also symbols of our humanity & love of
democracy.
It just makes you feel so warm, even gooey, inside, doesn't it ?
Diversity Heretic
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:31 am GMT \n
100 Words
Whether or not the attack was a false flag, that picture of Nikki Haley
with the photo of the dead child ought to be very high on the list of
"Why Women Should Not Be Allowed Anywhere Near Diplomacy." First, Angela
Merkel consents to the massive invasion of her country because of a dead
Syrian child. Now Nikki Haley wants Americans to be put at risk to kill
more Syrians because of another dead Syrian child. Otto von Bismarck was
right, women's roles should be confined to children (their own), the
church and the kitchen.
annamaria
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:31 am GMT \n
100 Words
@Ram
Reminiscent of the bombing of Deir Az Zohr by the US in support of ISIS
when Kerry stepped out of the path laid out for him by the NeoCons.
" the path laid out for him by the NeoCons."
Agree.
Paul Craig Roberts' invective against ziocons: "The entire
history of the 21st century is the history of Washington's wars
instigated by Zionist neoconservatives and the state of Israel against
Muslim countries. So far Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and
parts of Syria and Pakistan, have been destroyed by gratuitous military
attacks that are, without any doubt, war crimes under the Nuremberg
Standard established by the United States. The hoax "war on terror" has
not only murdered and dislocated millions of peoples, producing waves of
Muslim immigration over the Western World, but also destroyed Western
civil liberty."
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/04/05/germany-rip/
Mrs. Haley and other non-Jewish warriors like McCain and Lindsey
Graham are indeed the whores in service of the "chosen" and mega war
profiteers, from weaponry peddlers to the financial "great vampire squid
wrapped around the face of humanity:"
annamaria
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:37 am GMT \n
@karl1haushofer
"The difference between now and 2013 is that Russia is in Syria. So,
attacking the Assad regime now would be tantamount to war with Russia. "
The problem is that there have been too many cases where Russia has not
responded accordingly to an aggression against it. Many people think -
whether justified or unjustified - that if Russian military, or a close
Russian ally, is attacked Russia will not respond.
Hopefully there are people in deciding roles in the Russian military and
political circles who have the guts to act if it ever gets to this. I
mean, those US bases in the Middle East are within the distance of
Russian cruise missiles from Caspian and Black Sea...
Russian federation has been trying to avoid a full-blown military
conflict that the ziocons have been provoking with the vicious audacity.
The lying, thieving, criminal congress, run by the CIA /Mossad, is not an
honest partner. Russia is cornered.
Joe Wong
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:46 am GMT \n
100 Words
@michael dr
On Trump - the less he intends to do, the more strongly he positions
himself.
So one way to interpret his remarks is that he is occupying a position
that fully takes advantage of anti-Assad sentiment, but with no intent to
act on it at all.
The only guy used chemical weapons in wars against civilians on record is
the USA during the Vietnam War; Agent Orange, Agent White and Agent
Rainbow are still wrecking havoc in Vietnam. The only guy conduct false
flag ops to blame the victims for violating human rights via its NED
sponsored NGOs then wage reckless wars against the victims on the moral
high ground is the USA and its NATO partners.
This poisonous gas attack on Syria civilians bears too many
similarities to the past records of the USA and its NATO partners'
behaviour.
JL
,
April 6, 2017 at 10:48 am GMT \n
100 Words
@karl1haushofer
"The difference between now and 2013 is that Russia is in Syria. So,
attacking the Assad regime now would be tantamount to war with Russia. "
The problem is that there have been too many cases where Russia has not
responded accordingly to an aggression against it. Many people think -
whether justified or unjustified - that if Russian military, or a close
Russian ally, is attacked Russia will not respond.
Hopefully there are people in deciding roles in the Russian military and
political circles who have the guts to act if it ever gets to this. I
mean, those US bases in the Middle East are within the distance of
Russian cruise missiles from Caspian and Black Sea...
You realize you're talking about nuclear war, right? Why any rational
person would hope for that truly escapes me. No, the only thing we can
hope for is that there are people in deciding roles in the American
military and political circles who still remember about the concept of
MAD.
100 Words
NEW!
@JL
The difference between now and 2013 is that Russia is in Syria. So,
attacking the Assad regime now would be tantamount to war with Russia.
Similarly, going after North Korea, where the US has also been saber
rattling recently, would be very bloody and could very well go nuclear. I
think the first comment on this thread maybe had it right, this is the
opposite of "talk soft and carry a big stick". If I'm wrong, well, it's been
a good run for humanity and sorry to everyone with children and hopes and
plans for the future.
AK, maybe it's time to dust off and update your nuclear war post?
Heh.
I had an outline of a post in my drafts on how a US-Russian clash in
Syria might escalate, which I expected to write if HRC won. I might brush
that
off.
I disagree that attacking Syria automatically means war, at least so long
as the Russian military isn't directly targetted. Russia doesn't have any
formal military alliances with Syria, so a lack of retaliation in Syria
proper will be justifiable – and well-advised, considering massive American
aeronaval dominance in the region.
400 Words
Key items showing false-flag nature of the Syrian gas attack absurdly
attributed to Assad
(1) Anti-Assad "reporter" Feras Karam tweeted about
the gas attack in Syria 24 hours before it happened – Tweet , "Tomorrow
a media campaign will begin to cover intense air raids on the Hama
countryside & use of chlorine against civilians"
(2) Gas masks were distributed 2 days before the attack
(3) Rescue workers are not wearing protective gear as they would if
severely-toxic gas attack had occurred, as Anatoly Karlin notes above
(4) Pakistani British doctor promoting Syria gas attack story, "who at
the time of attack was taking interview requests instead of helping injured
flooding in" is Dr Shajul Islam, "used as source by US & UK media, despite
facing terror charges for kidnapping & torturing two British journalists in
Syria & being struck off the medical register"
(5) Videos previously exposed as fraudulent are being recycled "A
chemical weapons shipment run by Saudi mercenaries [is blown up] before it
can be offloaded & used to attack the Syrian army in Hama [this story] has
turned into Syrian aircraft dropping sarin gas on orphanages videos shot
in Egypt with the smoke machines are dragged out again."
(6) Gas attack story is supported by known Soros-funded frauds 'White
Helmets' who had previously celebrated alongside Israeli-Saudi backed 'Al
Qaeda' extremists after seizing Idlib from Syrian Army forces. White Helmets
"have been caught filming their fake videos in places like Egypt & Morocco,
using actors, smoke machines & fake blood".
–
Very regrettably, Russia & its potentially powerful media, are playing
their traditional Israeli-serving role of being inexcusably timid in
denouncing blatant false-flag deception & fraud Just as Russia signed off
on killing Qaddafi & hurling Libya into mass death & chaos
Destruction of Syria & Assad serves long-being-implemented 1980s Israeli
Oded Yinon Plan to destroy & dismember all major countries surrounding mafia
state Israel
Also, major US-backed economics behind the campaign to destroy Syria -
Map of pipeline alternatives thru Syria:
(a) Russia-supported pipeline from Iran thru Iraq & Syria
(b) US-supported pipeline from Qatar thru Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Syria
I had an outline of a post in my drafts on how a US-Russian clash in Syria
might escalate, which I expected to write if HRC won. I might brush
that
off.
I disagree that attacking Syria automatically means war, at least so long as
the Russian military isn't directly targetted. Russia doesn't have any
formal military alliances with Syria, so a lack of retaliation in Syria
proper will be justifiable - and well-advised, considering massive American
aeronaval dominance in the region.
Of course this would be a humiliation for Putin on at least the order of
Euromaidan if not greater, so he will probably be forced to respond somehow,
somewhere.
Please bear in mind, O our host, that Gen. Dunford, chairman of the JCS,
said (in October?) that for the US to set up no fly zones in Syria would
mean that we are at war with Syria and Russia. The next day in a NBC radio
interview Lady MacBeth once more advocated for such no fly zones.
Unlike
the Obama administration, I somehow think the Trump administration will
actually listen to military men like Dunford, Kelly and Mattis. For the last
generation, the US has stalked more or less unopposed on the world stage,
throwing its weight around as it pleases. No one, we think, can oppose us!
Well, that's nice and all, but I haven't forgotten the Cold War and the
threat of nuclear confrontation with the USSR/Russia, and I'll bet you a
meal of shashlik, lepeshki and vodka that Mattis, Dunford and Kelly haven't
either.
400 Words
Gordian Knot time. I don't know for sure what it is about politics that
turns knowledgeable people of different stripes into Revusky's Hi IQ Idiots.
They have done controlled tests on this phenomena with brain wiring and
visual stimuli to show that an emotional element interferes with (or
dominates) logical thinking when political themes or visuals are invoked.
The big boys must have known this through other wisdom when they allowed for
universal suffrage but that is an argument for another day.
Just as the
leftist intellectuals were urinating with glee onto their Birkenstocks when
Buckwheat won in 2008, so did the intellectual right over their Red Wings
when Drumpf prevailed. Emotions.
I hold ALL politicians in extreme contempt and thereby reflexively limit
my exposure to the reality show charade of elections. Needless to say, no
emotions invoked. Then inevitably I get to roll my eyes when real and honest
intellectuals on the left gnashed their teeth when the Nobel Peace prize
laureate doubled up on foreign wars and reneged on domestic issues and
likewise get do so when otherwise intelligent writers such as Mr. Karlin
reveal surprise and disappointment with Trump.
It is all so painfully obvious that a system which has been hijacked and
has steadily degenerated for over 200 years cannot be fixed through the same
(but negatively expanded) rules by simply producing new personality.
Einstein's definition of insanity fully displayed.
When asked what I think of Trump from election day +1 until the present,
my answer remains the same. The upside is that his success did a monumental
job in exposing 'professional' politicians of all stripes as being corrupt
and worthless beyond words and that he exposed the media as being bought and
paid for whores who walk in lockstep from the highest perch of the 'gray
lady'
right down to the local community papers even in foreign countries.
The downside is that he will inevitably deflate and disappoint those
people who arguably might have made a difference. Apathy and cynicism will
ensue, resulting in a reversion to the status quo. It has always been the
mob's destiny when the mob supposedly gets to decide. So after some possibly
honest Trumpian burps it will be business as usual (Syria as just one
example).
@JL
You realize you're talking about nuclear war, right? Why any rational person
would hope for that truly escapes me. No, the only thing we can hope for is
that there are people in deciding roles in the American military and
political circles who still remember about the concept of MAD.
Are you saying that Russia should allow its forces in Syria to be attacked
or bombed without retribution?
Read More
The Scalpel
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 11:51 am GMT \n
100 Words
@The Scalpel
Trump is losing the plot
It is quite possible that this ENTIRE incident is a staged production. Film
and special effects people are certainly capable of it. Assuming any of this
is credible before seeing objective evidence only reinforces the narrative.
On the surface of things, it seems illogical and obviously self-defeating
and unnecessary for the Syrian government to have done this. One should
withold any judgement until the facts are in
Jim Christian
,
April 6, 2017 at 11:51 am GMT \n
300 Words
@Seamus Padraig
Well, people, it's all over. I had a bad feeling back when Trump let go of
Gen. Flynn. Now my worst suspicions have been confirmed: the deep state has
won. The Trump we elected is no more ..
Either that, or there's "real estate" at Arlington Trump has been offered,
say a 6′LX4′WX6′D up there on that hill above the Shining City in Arlington
Cemetery. Up there next to Jack and Bob Kennedy who, whatever ELSE you think
of them were the last two to say No to a bullshit war.
Real estate in Arlington is what those who oppose wars earn for
themselves. You may have silver and gold or you may have lead. Pick one. And
so he has.
Rule #1 is, war for profit goes on. Or else.
Rule #2 is, Presidents (or candidates as we saw with RFK) will never change
Rule #1 and survive the attempt. This is our country for the past century
and a half. I'm sure the armorers made themselves a pretty penny during the
civil war. Ok, ok, so half a million died, millions maimed, all White
Americans (don't want to hear about the Black squads, sorry). but cannon
balls and black powder makes good money. Nothing has changed since. And
they'll risk lots of casualties toying with a nuclear confrontation without
blinking an eye. Lots of money in rebuilding cities, too.
I really hate our ruling classes these days. If they do this with Syria,
start in on Russia with skirmishes and outright war, we'll know we're ruled
by evil. There's no need for any of it. We "won". We leveled the Middle East
in response to 9/11. You'd think it's enough from looking at the carnage and
destruction we've wrought on them. But it's never enough, not anymore.
JL
,
April 6, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@karl1haushofer
Are you saying that Russia should allow its forces in Syria to be attacked
or bombed without retribution?
What I'm saying is that I can't envision a scenario whereby an American
attack on Russian forces in Syria doesn't lead to all out nuclear war and I
sincerely hope it doesn't come to that. Otherwise, we can continue this
discussion in the afterlife. Mr. Karlin seems to have different ideas and I
would very much like to read the post on various escalation scenarios that
he had worked up in case of a Clinton victory. As it is and even before any
escalations, US and Russian forces operating in such close vicinity seems to
me extremely dangerous.
karl1haushofer
,
April 6, 2017 at 12:34 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@JL
What I'm saying is that I can't envision a scenario whereby an American
attack on Russian forces in Syria doesn't lead to all out nuclear war and I
sincerely hope it doesn't come to that. Otherwise, we can continue this
discussion in the afterlife. Mr. Karlin seems to have different ideas and I
would very much like to read the post on various escalation scenarios that
he had worked up in case of a Clinton victory. As it is and even before any
escalations, US and Russian forces operating in such close vicinity seems to
me extremely dangerous.
But don't you realize that this type of thinking gives America a leeway to
attack Russia whenever it pleases?
Your way of thinking goes something
like this: "America can attack Russia because it knows that Russia cannot
retaliate because it would start WW3″.
You could write a book about deception based on those four words alone.
"Persons with knowledge" is a phrase calculated to inspire envy and respect
in the great unwashed, who of course have no knowledge. But wait a moment!
Who are those "persons with knowledge"? They seem to be unnamed and
undefined – could that be deliberate?
And then we learn that those "persons with knowledge"
*believe*
something. But wait a moment! If they have knowledge, why would they be
reduced to "believing"? Wouldn't they actually, well,
*know*
?
So the tweet tells us that some undefined people, who may or may not
exist, know something and believe presumably, something else that they
don't know about.
100 Words
When ignoramuses like Morell (a pampered villain) get power over resources
of an empire like the US, the whole humanity becomes endangered. The
greatest danger is a rule of the opportunistic incompetent. It is doubtful
that the all-powerful CIA has any knowledgeable and principled persons left
among its rank anymore, after the years of careful selection for
opportunists/profiteers. At least there is no way the ziocons, war
profiteers and their families will be able to survive the next world war.
Psychopaths are anti-life by definition.
JL
,
April 6, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT \n
300 Words
@karl1haushofer
But don't you realize that this type of thinking gives America a leeway to
attack Russia whenever it pleases?
Your way of thinking goes something
like this: "America can attack Russia because it knows that Russia cannot
retaliate because it would start WW3".
May I ask that why shouldn't America worry about starting WW3 if it
attacks Russia?
Ah, I see the misunderstanding here. My point was simply that any discussion
of how Russia would respond to an attack on its forces by the US is moot
because it will respond in kind, and the whole thing will go nuclear in
3,2,1. Specifically, it very much is the US that should be worrying about
starting WW3 in this case, not Russia.
During the Cold War, both sides realized the ramifications of direct
military conflict and acted accordingly. The US is behaving as if something
has changed in that respect and I find it terrifying. What is different now
is that there is a huge asymmetry in forces that perhaps has instilled
unwarranted confidence in the Americans that they can win a war with Russia.
I think you maybe overestimate Russia's strength, in somewhat the same
way as the US may be underestimating it. I noticed in another conversation
you thought that Russia should have vetoed the UN resolution allowing the US
to go into Afghanistan. To me, this is a complete misjudgment of Russia's
situation at that moment in time, while ignoring, or forgetting, the resolve
of the US immediately following September 11. Not to mention, there was
probably a geopolitical calculation that having the US bogged down in
Afghanistan, something the Russians could envision all too well, would allow
Russia some breathing room to get back on its feet and claw back some
influence in the near abroad.
100 Words
@annamaria
Russian federation has been trying to avoid a full-blown military conflict
that the ziocons have been provoking with the vicious audacity. The lying,
thieving, criminal congress, run by the CIA /Mossad, is not an honest
partner. Russia is cornered.
Russia is cornered.
I think it is exactly the other way around. Russia has options, US
doesn't, apart from the fact that it lost all international subjectivity and
is now nothing more than Israel's "subsidiary". Russia is not desperate, US
establishment is and that is why it is so desperate to start "war" with
Russia, whatever that means. Russia will always avoid war–it is her MO for
decades. US desperation for this "war" with Russia has very logical
explanations, granted that some of the factors in all this US insanity are,
indeed, irrational (and hysterical) and metaphysical in nature.
DanFromCt
,
April 6, 2017 at 1:55 pm GMT \n
200 Words
@Felix Keverich
Well, let's see: Tillerson makes a statement that overthrowing Assad is no
longer a priority. Neocons disagree. And within days this "chemical attack"
happens, the biggest chemical attack in Syria - we are told - since 2013.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
I think it's possible that chemical attack did happen, and it was the CIA or
its terrorist buddies that arranged to poison these children. Unlike Assad,
these actually have a plausible motive - manipulating Trump and influencing
his policy.
The timing is more than suspicious so I tuned in Fox News for straight up
false flag narrative, and sure enough there was Sen. Bob Corker saying Assad
was a monster gassing his people and cutting off their genitals, with Corker
calling for Putin to repudiate Assad to the thanks of Bill Hemmer–end of
script. Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that Corker more resembles
that stuttering, court-appointed lawyer in My Cousin Vinny than any
statesman?
The entire history of the development of the rules of evidence in law,
science, and politics, a signature achievement of Western Civilization, is
being thrown away and hardly anyone notices or cares. Today a canned,
identical, and obviously pre-scripted narrative available within minutes of
these events goes unquestioned, even when, as in this latest theater, at
least one announcement was made before the event.
I'm also sickened by the concurrent Wounded Warriors theater at the White
House because this empty jingoistic stunt may signal that our military may
become active on the ground over there and therefore Trump's neo handlers
are already selling the inevitable loss of limbs as a sign of our
righteousness instead of the reality, which is that our soldiers lose their
lives and limbs so good Isrseli boys need not.
cali
,
April 6, 2017 at 2:03 pm GMT \n
600 Words
Clearly the false flag committed by none other than the Deep State not only
against Assad but also against the boogeyman for all that is wrong – the
Putin government – continues.
Here are a couple of facts unknown to many since the US Pravda the outlet
for the Deep State to report only approved 'news' is hard at work to frame
Assad.
During HRC term as SOS she licensed Marc Turi the arms dealer to funnel
weapons into Syria via Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Marc Turi also stated that
she funneled Sarin gas from the Ghaddafi arsenal after his assassination to
the US sponsored rebels Al Nusra and others making up ISIS into Syria as a
means to overthrow, accuse and frame Assad as the culprit using Sarin gas
against his own people to stay in power.
HRC and Obama et al attempted to railroad Marc Turi after his services ended
as a means to silence him. The out-of-the-blue charges against him via the
Loretta Lynch DOJ accusing him of being an arms smuggler without license
nearly put him in prison ergo Turi threaten Hillary and Obama to expose
their treacherous actions in Benghazi that was used to set up the overthrow
of Assad in Syria. His threats of exposure of the arming of ISIS in Syria as
well as the Sarin gas provided to ISIS murdering Syrian civilians while
plasing the blame on Assad ended the prosecution and charges against him by
the DOJ who suddenly and without explanation dropped all charges against
him.
The saber rattling against Assad and Putin continues unabated as we see
here.
Nicki Haley – member of the #NeverTrump 'performs' her role as planned
namely to continue the anti-Assad and anti-Putin agenda. I'm sure traitor
McCain the Soros and CFR stooge is whispering into her ear.
Trump made a big mistake when appointing her into this position simply
because her agenda as part of Trump's republican enemies within while
placing trust in her she has not earned and is contrary to the DT agenda.
On a sidenote: In October 2016 the UK Parliament published their final
investigative report of Hillary and her actions in Libya/Benghazi accusing
her of war crimes. The US Pravda did not inform American voters about this
investigation.
Shortly after that the Syrian president Assad and Vladimir Putin submitted a
dossier to the ICC that described the Deep State and its agents Obama and
HRC about their war crimes in Syria detailing all the findings including the
use of Sarin gas provided to ISIS to be used on innocent civilians while
blaming it on Assad. The ICC studied this dossier and accepted said dossier
for a future trial against HRC and Obama et al among others having
participated in the attempt to overthrow his government and the slaughter of
over 250,000+ Syrians as a means to justify their coup.
Lastly – the recent report of the Russian government spokesperson with
reporters in regard to Tillerson's planned visit to Russia included this
statement: "If the disinformation, accusations and lies in the US via the
Deep State propaganda media continues accusing Russia having hacked the
election etc the Russian president may expose Obama about various issues and
actions that her begged Vladimir Putin to keep secret. All bets are off!"
Assad was not the one ordering the use of Sarin gas to attack his own
citizens but the Deep State and it's agents like Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
McCain, HRC and Obama et al using Ghaddafi's chemical weapons after his
assassination.
Anatoly Karlin
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 2:06 pm GMT \n
What is different now is that there is a huge asymmetry in forces that
perhaps has instilled unwarranted confidence in the Americans that they
can win a war with Russia.
It is not as huge as you might think. In fact, one of the reasons for a
hysteria is precisely a sense (and very rarely--a rational understanding) of
the fact of a complete failure in forecasting what Russia is both
economically and militarily. Considering an atrocious incompetence of
American so called "Russia expertdom" there is nothing surprising here.
I think you maybe overestimate Russia's strength, in somewhat the same
way as the US may be underestimating it. I noticed in another
conversation you thought that Russia should have vetoed the UN resolution
allowing the US to go into Afghanistan.
1. Russia of early 2000s and Russia of 2017 are two very different countries
in every single respect.
2. Some people in US military are beginning to understand that US can not
win conventional conflict with Russia in Russia's immediate vicinity, it
will be defeated and will sustain casualties which will make Vietnam look
like a week at the spa.
My view on things is informed by two key assumptions/observations:
(1) The
US can wipe the floor with Russia in Syria or anywhere in the Middle East.
(2) Russia can wipe the floor with NATO east and north of the Suwalki
gap.
If things really go south in Syria – as in, actual Russian forces coming
under sustained attack from the USAF – I would expect either:
(a) If they decide on a military response –> it will be either in Ukraine
(e.g. ranging from recognition of the LDNR to resurrection of the
Novorossiya project) or even the Baltics;
(b) If they decide on a negotiated surrender-in-all-but-name in Syria
with the US allowing Russia its forces intact in exchange for abandoning
Assad –> a domestic clampdown to contain the mass outrage that this
humiliation will doubtless elicit.
annamaria
,
April 6, 2017 at 2:13 pm GMT \n
I think it is exactly the other way around. Russia has options, US doesn't,
apart from the fact that it lost all international subjectivity and is now
nothing more than Israel's "subsidiary". Russia is not desperate, US
establishment is and that is why it is so desperate to start "war" with
Russia, whatever that means. Russia will always avoid war--it is her MO for
decades. US desperation for this "war" with Russia has very logical
explanations, granted that some of the factors in all this US insanity are,
indeed, irrational (and hysterical) and metaphysical in nature.
"Russia is not desperate, US establishment is and that is why it is so
desperate to start "war" with Russia, whatever that means. Russia will
always avoid war–it is her MO for decades. "
Agree. You are right. Russia
will always try to avoid the war. But the US needs desperately a war, both
to patch the enormous holes in economy (the $20 trillion debt and counting,
crumbling welfare system, loss of manufacture and such), and create new
sources of mineral riches from newly subdued countries. Instead of revamping
the internal system (a painful and highly strenuous process for a society),
the US wants to solve the problem by the old ways, externally. Since the US
is unable to reform (do you see any signs, any hope for the internal
reforms? – I do not), the deciders will go, most likely, for the jugular
against Russia. Only in this respect Russia is cornered.
The RF government has a task of politely (but painfully) reminding the
"deciders" that Russia will not capitulate to the "chosen," fed reserve, and
mega-war profiteers (all of them are most likely under a total surveillance
and "guidance" by the CIA). In the absence of the painful aspect of
reminding, the deciders are not able to come to their senses. Barring an
internal coup d'etat led by American patriots, the US is rolling towards
US-made global catastrophe.
Randal
,
April 6, 2017 at 2:13 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Hunsdon
Please bear in mind, O our host, that Gen. Dunford, chairman of the JCS,
said (in October?) that for the US to set up no fly zones in Syria would
mean that we are at war with Syria and Russia. The next day in a NBC radio
interview Lady MacBeth once more advocated for such no fly zones.
Unlike the Obama administration, I somehow think the Trump administration
will actually listen to military men like Dunford, Kelly and Mattis. For the
last generation, the US has stalked more or less unopposed on the world
stage, throwing its weight around as it pleases. No one, we think, can
oppose us! Well, that's nice and all, but I haven't forgotten the Cold War
and the threat of nuclear confrontation with the USSR/Russia, and I'll bet
you a meal of shashlik, lepeshki and vodka that Mattis, Dunford and Kelly
haven't either.
Maybe my faith is naive, we'll have to wait and see.
Unlike the Obama administration, I somehow think the Trump
administration will actually listen to military men like Dunford, Kelly
and Mattis.
Being military is certainly no guarantee against making misjudgements of
this kind.
"
Some of the retired military people whom McMaster inherited on the
NSC staff think that of the US intervenes against the Syrian government,
Russia will back away from, us. I do not agree with this.
"
100 Words
Tell me how this works , how it happens. Carl Bidt says same thing NYT says
before any investigation . So does Hailey at UN . Max Boot on MSNBC ,and GOP
Representative from Oklhaoma on FOX . Is there an universal subsonic dog
whistle that brings the howling out of the rabid mad poisonous vipers from
the hidden pit ? How do they start slithering out of the rock together?
I
guess I should include Bob Corker as well .
How does the other wailing from Israel that Iran is more dangerous than ISIS
synch with this dog whistle ?
Randal
,
April 6, 2017 at 2:43 pm GMT \n
200 Words
@JL
Ah, I see the misunderstanding here. My point was simply that any discussion
of how Russia would respond to an attack on its forces by the US is moot
because it will respond in kind, and the whole thing will go nuclear in
3,2,1. Specifically, it very much is the US that should be worrying about
starting WW3 in this case, not Russia.
During the Cold War, both sides realized the ramifications of direct
military conflict and acted accordingly. The US is behaving as if something
has changed in that respect and I find it terrifying. What is different now
is that there is a huge asymmetry in forces that perhaps has instilled
unwarranted confidence in the Americans that they can win a war with Russia.
I think you maybe overestimate Russia's strength, in somewhat the same way
as the US may be underestimating it. I noticed in another conversation you
thought that Russia should have vetoed the UN resolution allowing the US to
go into Afghanistan. To me, this is a complete misjudgment of Russia's
situation at that moment in time, while ignoring, or forgetting, the resolve
of the US immediately following September 11. Not to mention, there was
probably a geopolitical calculation that having the US bogged down in
Afghanistan, something the Russians could envision all too well, would allow
Russia some breathing room to get back on its feet and claw back some
influence in the near abroad.
Look, I'm all for Russia's resistance to the empire, I'd just like it to
happen without WW3.
I noticed in another conversation you thought that Russia should have
vetoed the UN resolution allowing the US to go into Afghanistan.
There was no UN resolution allowing the US attack on Afghanistan, which
was another deliberately lawless act by the US regime.
The Bush regime probably could have got one if it had felt it needed it,
given the almost universally supportive climate immediately after 9/11.
Instead it chose to rely on a shamelessly spurious and wilfully dishonest
mis-application of the supposed right of self defence after 9/11, knowing
that nobody important was going to question it. That produced a much more
useful precedent for the US regime than meekly complying with the law and
the US's treaty obligations would have.
Likewise, the Bush regime probably could have had Bin laden produced for
trial somewhere by the Taliban if it had wanted that, but the political and
brute power needs of the moment required the US regime to be seen to be
kicking some foreign butt aggressively and promptly.
Verymuchalive
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:22 pm GMT \n
200 Words
@Anatoly Karlin
My view on things is informed by two key assumptions/observations:
(1) The US can wipe the floor with Russia in Syria or anywhere in the Middle
East.
(2) Russia can wipe the floor with NATO east and north of the Suwalki gap.
If things really go south in Syria - as in, actual Russian forces coming
under sustained attack from the USAF - I would expect either:
(a) If they decide on a military response --> it will be either in Ukraine
(e.g. ranging from recognition of the LDNR to resurrection of the
Novorossiya project) or even the Baltics;
(b) If they decide on a negotiated surrender-in-all-but-name in Syria with
the US allowing Russia its forces intact in exchange for abandoning Assad
--> a domestic clampdown to contain the mass outrage that this humiliation
will doubtless elicit.
The safest way to defang America lies in any future economic collapse. Faced
with an imploding economy and a choice between minimal social welfare
measures or a grotesquely expanded military, the choice is obvious. I still
think it will happen later this decade, if there is any humanity left to
witness it.
The Neocons and the other warmongers seem to realise this, too, hence their
increasing recklessness in seeking ever more dangerous wars. As if one more
country to loot will somehow stave off the inevitable.
I have felt for some years now that other major powers ( Russia, China )
should have precipitated this collapse, since the longer they remain in
power – and both Houses are still overwhelmingly Neocon – the more dangerous
they become.
Philip Giraldi occasionally mentions a choke point near Dhahran where over
60% of Saudi Arabia's oil is processed. He regards it as the World's biggest
engineering weak spot. I suggest Mr Putin arranges a nasty accident there
ASAP, thereby preventing production for months and months. The panic alone
should be enough to trigger the collapse.
Anonymous
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:23 pm GMT \n
300 Words
Does anyone know if parathion (E-605) and other similar organophosphate
pesticides are still being used in Syrian agriculture or are still present
in some form there? This class of chemicals are typically incredibly toxic
to people and they used to be widespread in Africa and the Middle East up
until very recently, and there were reports of tons of annual deaths from
accidental exposure in for example Syria.
The reason I'm asking is because
according to some of the geolocation efforts, the alleged bomb impacts
occured in and around an old agricultural facility with large buildings and
rows of silos, and several of the reported properties of the alleged
chemical match those of parathion and similar pesticides.
Parathion smells horrible, like steaming sewage slush, and it causes
acute respiratory difficulties, constricted pupils, horrifying convulsions
and ultimately death. Many symptoms are somewhat similar to those of
weaponized nerve agents such as Sarin and VX (they're also organophosphates)
but unlike the pesticides these lack any noticeable odor and they don't form
visible clouds.
Now, from what I can see Damascus decided to get rid of these things
after a parliamentary decision in 1999. This basically meant just burying it
in the ground or in some locked basement somewhere. Later on, the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set off to help Syria
actually destroy these giant stashes and a program to this end was initiated
about ten years ago. They dug up close to a thousand tons of it from all
over the country, but it seems like the civil war got in the way before they
were finished, and who knows what the jihadist "authorities" are up to in
regards to that.
Just one possible theory among many, I suppose. I do think it's a tad far
fetched myself, but it was just something that popped into my head
immediately upon reading about this.
SmoothieX12
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 3:34 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@annamaria
"Russia is not desperate, US establishment is and that is why it is so
desperate to start "war" with Russia, whatever that means. Russia will
always avoid war–it is her MO for decades. "
Agree. You are right. Russia
will always try to avoid the war. But the US needs desperately a war, both
to patch the enormous holes in economy (the $20 trillion debt and counting,
crumbling welfare system, loss of manufacture and such), and create new
sources of mineral riches from newly subdued countries. Instead of revamping
the internal system (a painful and highly strenuous process for a society),
the US wants to solve the problem by the old ways, externally. Since the US
is unable to reform (do you see any signs, any hope for the internal
reforms? - I do not), the deciders will go, most likely, for the jugular
against Russia. Only in this respect Russia is cornered.
The RF government has a task of politely (but painfully) reminding the
"deciders" that Russia will not capitulate to the "chosen," fed reserve, and
mega-war profiteers (all of them are most likely under a total surveillance
and "guidance" by the CIA). In the absence of the painful aspect of
reminding, the deciders are not able to come to their senses. Barring an
internal coup d'etat led by American patriots, the US is rolling towards
US-made global catastrophe.
Instead of revamping the internal system (a painful and highly
strenuous process for a society), the US wants to solve the problem by
the old ways, externally. Since the US is unable to reform (do you see
any signs, any hope for the internal reforms? – I do not), the deciders
will go, most likely, for the jugular against Russia. Only in this
respect Russia is cornered.
Current US "elites" across the whole spectrum of state's activity–from
economic, to military, to intelligence, to diplomacy are simply not
competent to deal with global realities. In terms of statesmen–US does not
produce statesmen anymore, times of FDR, Ike or even Nixon are long gone. US
"elite" production are mostly Ivy League boys and girls who are only
conditioned for navigating system, which gets out only politicians who only
know how to get elected.
AP
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:42 pm GMT \n
300 Words
@JL
Ah, I see the misunderstanding here. My point was simply that any discussion
of how Russia would respond to an attack on its forces by the US is moot
because it will respond in kind, and the whole thing will go nuclear in
3,2,1. Specifically, it very much is the US that should be worrying about
starting WW3 in this case, not Russia.
During the Cold War, both sides realized the ramifications of direct
military conflict and acted accordingly. The US is behaving as if something
has changed in that respect and I find it terrifying. What is different now
is that there is a huge asymmetry in forces that perhaps has instilled
unwarranted confidence in the Americans that they can win a war with Russia.
I think you maybe overestimate Russia's strength, in somewhat the same way
as the US may be underestimating it. I noticed in another conversation you
thought that Russia should have vetoed the UN resolution allowing the US to
go into Afghanistan. To me, this is a complete misjudgment of Russia's
situation at that moment in time, while ignoring, or forgetting, the resolve
of the US immediately following September 11. Not to mention, there was
probably a geopolitical calculation that having the US bogged down in
Afghanistan, something the Russians could envision all too well, would allow
Russia some breathing room to get back on its feet and claw back some
influence in the near abroad.
Look, I'm all for Russia's resistance to the empire, I'd just like it to
happen without WW3.
My point was simply that any discussion of how Russia would respond to
an attack on its forces by the US is moot because it will respond in
kind, and the whole thing will go nuclear in 3,2,1.
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the extremely
unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would be even more
unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both civilizations and
annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that it's even possible.
Let's look at (remotely) plausible scenarios. Would Russia want to wipe
its own civilization off the face of the Earth over getting its troops
killed in Syria? Would America do the same because a few thousand of its
troops were killed in the Baltics, or Poland? Not going to happen. In fact,
I would put the odds of a nuclear response to American troops installing a
puppet government and occupying Moscow at below 50%. Because as in the case
of Napoleon's or the Polish occupation, Russia can come back from that. It's
never coming back from a nuclear war.
I agree with Karlin that the USA taking out Russian troops in Syria
(really doubt this would happen) will result in a high likelihood of Russia
occupying the Baltics (taking out American troops in the process) and parts
of Ukraine. Russia likes to reciprocate. That's not going to lead to nuclear
war, though I imagine Russia would be out of swift and total sanctions would
be imposed.
AP
,
April 6, 2017 at 3:53 pm GMT \n
100 Words
If we are going to make wild speculations, perhaps it's a Russian operation
designed to get America sucked into a Syrian quagmire as Russia exits, so
Russia can do more in its backyard while the USA is preoccupied in the
Middle East. Georgia happened while the USA was in Iraq.
I think there is
basically a zero chance of Assad having ordered this. It may be a US
false-flag operation, Which would be stupid and unlikely. Given how heavily
Russia is involved there, this could be probably uncovered rather easily
given the competence of Russian intelligence.
Most likely – some local commander acting for who knows what reason or
local resistence doing a false flag operation withot American orders.
Assad's forces are apparently not very centralized. Incompetence by Assad's
forces or desperation by resistence makes more sense than does a conspiracy.
SmoothieX12
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 3:58 pm GMT \n
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the
extremely unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would
be even more unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both
civilizations and annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that
it's even possible.
US "needs" any kind of military success after de facto lost wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. US military record of the last 70 years is rather
unimpressive–not a single war with first rate opponent, only extolled ad
nauseam "victory" over third rate Saddam forces. A lot of psychology comes
into this. Not only many US generals sleep and dream how to fight Russia,
they desperately crave it. In conventional war with Russia this will be US,
not Russia, who will initiate nuclear exchange. The reasons for that are
numerous, including massive reputational military losses – from losing one
or two aircraft carriers, to sustaining (which is highly likely) massive
casualties which will lead to impossibility of attaining any political
objectives.
Russia is also completely capable of conventionally striking US proper.
By about 2021-2023 this capability will grow exponentially, including the
ability (which US currently doesn't have and most likely will not have) to
field missile and other technologies which completely zero-down US military
potential. Pentagon knows this.
utu
,
April 6, 2017 at 4:04 pm GMT \n
Just few years ago:
BBC News Caught Staging FAKE Chemical Attack In Syria
300 Words
Maybe all this is about putting Obama and Trump through exactly the same "do
as we say or else" deep state scenario? Remember that Obama knew that the
case for blaming Assad for Ghouta was at best not certain.
Seymour M. Hersh · Whose sarin? · LRB 19 December 2013
. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies
produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal
Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion –
citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with
al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of
manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should
have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to
justify a strike against Assad .
There was a lot of very loud rhetoric from Obama, but no direct attack in
response. One might almost say that Obama and Putin "cooperated" to allow
the situation to defuse. That was heavily criticized by the strongest
ZionCon fanatics in the US government and media.
Now we have an almost identical repeat of the very same scenario and
Trump must know that real intelligence suggests the same situation Obama
faced. Trump´s choices seem to be three-fold: (1) denounce the deep state
treason in the US government, (2) kowtow to the deep state and have the US
military directly attack Syria, or (3) do the same as Obama and let the
situation defuse with time (w/wo help from Putin).
I would guess Trump will choose option (3) just like Obama. The real
question is whether the ZionCon control of the US government includes both
the Pentagon and the CIA or whether the US military still resists the
country being ruled by a foreign sect. The media is clearly 100% ZionCon and
this restricts Trump's freedom to choose option (1).
utu
,
April 6, 2017 at 4:19 pm GMT \n
The movement of US desert Camo military equipment was done in a way to
avoid detection by Russia. First to Germany to make it appear as a
buildup on Russia's border, then to Poland final to a port in Romania,
then reloaded at set sail to Beirut Lebanon where Damascus comes into
view.
Yeah, sure--you know, those stupid Russians who are still using spyglasses
and arithmometers in their intelligence efforts, how can they possibly
notice the movement of a brigade size units.
"Yeah, sure–you know, those stupid Russians who are still using
spyglasses and arithmometers in their intelligence efforts, how can they
possibly notice the movement of a brigade size units."
I do not know how is the mighty Russia military intelligence after the
major shakeups by Putin and Shoygu in 2010/11 doing? Where is your mighty
all knowing GRU? They did not not know that something is being cooked up and
the chemical weapon provocation was being prepared? Just few years in proper
places few days ago could avert it. But nothing happened. Did bombing in St.
Petersburg divert their attention?
At least in 2013 there was a leak that apparently stopped Obama from
going all the way:
Remember WHY Obama Didn't Act on the Red Line Violation? Leaked Document
Suggested Obama Greenlighted Chemical Weapon False Flag Attack
My point was simply that any discussion of how Russia would respond to an
attack on its forces by the US is moot because it will respond in kind,
and the whole thing will go nuclear in 3,2,1.
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the extremely
unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would be even more
unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both civilizations and
annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that it's even possible.
Let's look at (remotely) plausible scenarios. Would Russia want to wipe its
own civilization off the face of the Earth over getting its troops killed in
Syria? Would America do the same because a few thousand of its troops were
killed in the Baltics, or Poland? Not going to happen. In fact, I would put
the odds of a nuclear response to American troops installing a puppet
government and occupying Moscow at below 50%. Because as in the case of
Napoleon's or the Polish occupation, Russia can come back from that. It's
never coming back from a nuclear war.
I agree with Karlin that the USA taking out Russian troops in Syria (really
doubt this would happen) will result in a high likelihood of Russia
occupying the Baltics (taking out American troops in the process) and parts
of Ukraine. Russia likes to reciprocate. That's not going to lead to nuclear
war, though I imagine Russia would be out of swift and total sanctions would
be imposed.
I agree with Karlin that the USA taking out Russian troops in Syria
(really doubt this would happen) will result in a high likelihood of
Russia occupying the Baltics (taking out American troops in the process)
and parts of Ukraine.
I could definitely foresee more involvement in Ukrainian affairs, but
Baltic aggression seems over the top to me. By invading any of the Baltic
countries, Russia will provoke the ire of European countries, especially
those within NATO, and a likely counterattack. A war against the US in Syria
and one against NATO in the Balts is way too much to envision. Things in
Ukraine would undoubtedly unwind too. Wars on three fronts for Russia would
be suicide. I think that what Karlin states here makes sense, and would
preempt this sort of a scenario from occuring:
I disagree that attacking Syria automatically means war, at least so
long as the Russian military isn't directly targetted. Russia doesn't
have any formal military alliances with Syria, so a lack of retaliation
in Syria proper will be justifiable – and well-advised, considering
massive American aeronaval dominance in the region
"Yeah, sure–you know, those stupid Russians who are still using
spyglasses and arithmometers in their intelligence efforts, how can they
possibly notice the movement of a brigade size units."
I do not know how is the mighty Russia military intelligence after the major
shakeups by Putin and Shoygu in 2010/11 doing? Where is your mighty all
knowing GRU? They did not not know that something is being cooked up and the
chemical weapon provocation was being prepared? Just few years in proper
places few days ago could avert it. But nothing happened. Did bombing in St.
Petersburg divert their attention?
At least in 2013 there was a leak that apparently stopped Obama from going
all the way:
Remember WHY Obama Didn't Act on the Red Line Violation? Leaked Document
Suggested Obama Greenlighted Chemical Weapon False Flag Attack
https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/remember-why-obama-didnt-act-on-the-red-line-violation-leaked-document-suggested-obama-greenlighted-chemical-weapon-false-flag-attack/
However you spin it does not look good. Russia is outplayed on every turn.
However you spin it does not look good.
My spin on it is for you to take some kind of calming medicine (try
Valerian Root) and start learning about real world outside. Stopping
projecting your (very wrong) perceptions of how complex
military-intelligence machines work onto something which needs more than
just reading a bunch of media outlets, may also help.
US most enjoyable hobby always was to beat up small South American
countries.
Jooz only redirected this valuable US passion to Middle East.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Randal
,
April 6, 2017 at 4:46 pm GMT \n
My point was simply that any discussion of how Russia would respond to an
attack on its forces by the US is moot because it will respond in kind,
and the whole thing will go nuclear in 3,2,1.
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the extremely
unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would be even more
unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both civilizations and
annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that it's even possible.
Let's look at (remotely) plausible scenarios. Would Russia want to wipe its
own civilization off the face of the Earth over getting its troops killed in
Syria? Would America do the same because a few thousand of its troops were
killed in the Baltics, or Poland? Not going to happen. In fact, I would put
the odds of a nuclear response to American troops installing a puppet
government and occupying Moscow at below 50%. Because as in the case of
Napoleon's or the Polish occupation, Russia can come back from that. It's
never coming back from a nuclear war.
I agree with Karlin that the USA taking out Russian troops in Syria (really
doubt this would happen) will result in a high likelihood of Russia
occupying the Baltics (taking out American troops in the process) and parts
of Ukraine. Russia likes to reciprocate. That's not going to lead to nuclear
war, though I imagine Russia would be out of swift and total sanctions would
be imposed.
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the
extremely unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would
be even more unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both
civilizations and annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that
it's even possible ..In fact, I would put the odds of a nuclear response
to American troops installing a puppet government and occupying Moscow at
below 50%. Because as in the case of Napoleon's or the Polish occupation,
Russia can come back from that. It's never coming back from a nuclear
war.
That's not how anybody really expects a superpower confrontation to lead
to nuclear war, though.
Most escalation scenarios since mutually assured destruction became
generally accepted involve a repeated series of escalations, each assuming
the other side will step back from the brink in response, or a loss of
command and control giving rise to uncontrolled or mistaken releases, until
at some point one side is faced, or thinks it is faced, with a stark "use it
or lose it" choice with only a few minutes to decide.
It's not that likely that even open war would lead to an uncontrolled
nuclear exchange. but how much risk are you prepared to accept when the
consequences are that serious?
The real concern today, though, is that there might be American
politicians and military men who actually believe that their first strike
counterforce capabilities combined with missile defences to mop up surviving
attacks actually could limit damage to the continental US to acceptable
levels.
Anatoly Karlin
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 4:47 pm GMT \n
200 Words
NEW!
@AP
If we are going to make wild speculations, perhaps it's a Russian operation
designed to get America sucked into a Syrian quagmire as Russia exits, so
Russia can do more in its backyard while the USA is preoccupied in the
Middle East. Georgia happened while the USA was in Iraq.
I think there is
basically a zero chance of Assad having ordered this. It may be a US
false-flag operation, Which would be stupid and unlikely. Given how heavily
Russia is involved there, this could be probably uncovered rather easily
given the competence of Russian intelligence.
Most likely - some local commander acting for who knows what reason or
local resistence doing a false flag operation withot American orders.
Assad's forces are apparently not very centralized. Incompetence by Assad's
forces or desperation by resistence makes more sense than does a conspiracy.
Incompetence by Assad's forces or desperation by resistence makes more
sense than does a conspiracy.
>implying Arabs are competent enough to keep strict tabs on all their
chemical warfare agents
> implying they can tell the difference between a regular bomb and a gas
bomb when they load them up in their planes
> implying Arabs haven't used nerve agents as recently as 1988 in warfare
> implying there is a strategic ammo dump full of sarin that they bombed
despite literally no evidence pointing to any such thing
> implying even if they did bomb this imaginary depot full of sarin
agents that the agents don't dissipate quickly enough due to sarin's high
evaporation rate which is sped up intensely by the dry Syrian desert
It certainly could have also been a rogue element within the Syrian
military. It's not exactly a secret there are too many Islamist sympathizers
within it, which partly explains why it has such low effectiveness.
I agree that one or the other of these is probably likelier than a
specifically American inspired false flag, which in turn is likelier than
Assad having ordered it directly.
Anonymous
,
April 6, 2017 at 5:10 pm GMT \n
200 Words
The purpose of this False Flag chemical attack by the CIA trained terrorists
who are called 'rebel' by the illiterate zionist salesman, is to create No
Fly Zone, modified a 'save zone' by the illiterate 'president' to partition
Syria and Iraq to erect kurdistan. Kurds are trained CIA terrorists spying
for Israel and US. The axis of evil US – Israel- Britain CANNOT topple
Assad, so the illiterate 'president' is trying the false flag operation to
establish NFZ, the US/Hillary project with the help of the YOUNG zionist
Kushner in the business of illegal settlements.
The illiterate zionist
salesman in the business of escort and hotel with a help of his escort at
the UN is trying to fool the ignorant American people AGAIN to commit more
crimes against humanity to help his son in law. Shame on America that goes
sooooooooooo low to implement Zionist policy.
The people of the region NEVER allow a second Israel in Syria or Iraq.
YOU, the criminal mass murderers must get lost from Syria and the region
NOW.
Down with China and Russia if they sell another country to mass
murderers, like Libya, for two bones called concessions. Shame on China if
betrays humanity AGAIN.
bjondo
,
April 6, 2017 at 5:31 pm GMT \n
300 Words
@reiner Tor
To be honest, I can't even imagine how this apparent complete U-turn could
happen without him being blackmailed.
"without him being blackmailed" – One resorts to blackmail with people who
have integrity and stand for some higher principles. Trump is an
opportunist. He will do whatever. He is not the man of your own projections
that you casted on him. This commenter I think got him right
Trump has balls but he's no political philosopher. He's not coherent
on anything.
"I love Wikileaks! I'm being surveilled!/Edward Snowden is a traitor!"
"Iraq was a mistake. Libya was a mistake. America First!/We're gonna
get rid of Isis! Assad's gas attack changes things."
"Drain the swamp!/ Get behind the establishment's healthcare bill!"
"Build the wall and have Mexico pay for it/Mitt Romney lost because
his self deportation comment was mean and it lost him the Latino vote"
The guy watches Fox and Friends and Judge Jeanine-two of the most mind
numbingly stupid shows on cable news and seems to genuinely enjoy them.
The guy has a few good instincts but he doesn't have a coherent worldview
and you can bet the people whispering in his ear who can actually get
stuff done in Washington do. Problem is, they tend to be Bill Kristol.
Rand "hey let's actually talk about this before we commit ourselves to
more wars" Paul is a lonely "wacko bird." Trump is beyond ideology. He
wants results. He want accomplishments. He wants his ego flattered. And
there are plenty of rats ready to exploit that situation and play Iago to
his Othello.
Who has access to his ear now counts. It ain't Bannon anymore who helped
to save his campaign by doubling down on the original Trump message that
Trump was ready to dilute or even discard. It will be Ivanka, Kushner and
many Iagos. Art at #114 above put it really well in terms of Steve the
Baptist metaphor. W/o Bannon it's over.
utu
,
April 6, 2017 at 6:13 pm GMT \n
"I agree with Karlin that the USA taking out Russian troops in Syria
(really doubt this would happen) will result in a high likelihood of
Russia occupying the Baltics (taking out American troops in the process)
and parts of Ukraine. "
I could definitely foresee more involvement in Ukrainian affairs, but
Baltic aggression seems over the top to me. By invading any of the Baltic
countries, Russia will provoke the ire of European countries, especially
those within NATO, and a likely counterattack.
In my comment I assumed not some Russians killed as collateral damage by the
USA assaulting Assad, but a US direct attack on and destruction of Russian
military forces in Syria such as the naval base at Tartus. I think the odds
of this happening are basically zero, but if the USA did this I suspect
Russia would retaliate by taking out the nearest and most convenient
American bases, which would be in the Baltics (Russia couldn't really
retaliate in the Middle East). This would save face at home, demonstrate to
the world that Russia does retaliate and that attacks on Russia have
consequences, and perhaps end NATO, because the Western powers, as in 1939,
would probably not want to really fight for the sake of some eastern
European countries.
"I suspect Russia would retaliate by taking out the nearest and most
convenient American bases, which would be in the Baltics (Russia couldn't
really retaliate in the Middle East). "
Russia has no conventional means of retaliating in the Middle East. All
Russian forces in Middle East can be swarmed and overwhelmed by USA, Turkey
and Israel within few hours. Russia will not go nuclear for the sake of
Syria. In the end it is all about saving face. Funny, isn't it? There is
nothing tangible there. Saving face for Russian people sake only because
beyond Russia nobody really cares about Russia's face which in the West they
think is beyond salvaging anyway. The end of it will be a coup d'etat in
Russia by those who think that Russia's face was not saved enough or by
those who think that saving Russia's face may lead to Russia's destruction.
It will be the latter who pretend to be the former for the people's sake.
SmoothieX12
,
Website
April 6, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMT \n
500 Words
@AP
I agree with most of what you say, and can't dispute your military
assessment because it is beyond my expertise. But -
In conventional war with Russia this will be US, not Russia, who will
initiate nuclear exchange. The reasons for that are numerous, including
massive reputational military losses–from losing one or two aircraft
carriers, to sustaining (which is highly likely) massive casualties which
will lead to impossibility of attaining any political objectives.
I find the idea of America's military/political leaders choosing to commit
national suicide under such a scenario (Russia destroying America's military
capability and ability to project power outside the USA through conventional
means) to be extremely unlikely. Leader may be foolish or short-sighted, but
I really doubt they have a Nazi-like or Islamic-like mentality of preferring
total national destruction if they don't have their way. I doubt even the
fanatic neocons would feel this way.
I find the idea of America's military/political leaders choosing to
commit national suicide under such a scenario (Russia destroying
America's military capability and ability to project power outside the
USA through conventional means) to be extremely unlikely.
I don't. Without going deep into, now firmly established,
dysfunctionality of the US State, which is horrendously dangerous in itself,
the war, and I am not being original here, has the mind of its own once it
starts. The war with Russia, if it happens either in Syria or, let alone, in
and around Ukraine, will have a very different military and political logic.
1. Casualties sustained will be massive in a very short period of time.
2. US will have a major political crisis at home.
3. Reputational losses will be huge.
4. Geopolitical dynamics will change drastically and in a very short time
5. This point is for US further internal US contingencies and here one can
only imagine what it may be and what political forces may emerge.
Military-intelligence coup? Easily.
6.
So,
Leader may be foolish or short-sighted, but I really doubt they have a
Nazi-like or Islamic-like mentality of preferring total national
destruction if they don't have their way.
But this is a defining feature of, at least, most neocon cabal. But let's
forget about Korea, where MacArthur was forced by Truman out of his position
because he wanted to use nukes, same goes for Vietnam, where nuking it was
considered. US is a no stranger to this kind of military thinking. What
happens if Russia destroys a single Carrier Battle Group, and probability of
this is not a zero at all? Do you know what the loss of even single carrier
means for US as a whole, forget US Navy. Do not listen to me, read what
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt thought about it during and after his tenure as CNO. We
can only imagine what pressures will arise. While it is true that neocons
are cowards, it is also true that we really do not know what is their
threshold of rationality. You have to understand, for decades now US
political and military "elite" was formed by this ad nauseam mantra of
American exceptionalism in everything. Are you ready to predict the results
of this "parting syndrome"? I am not. I can only discuss contingencies and
one of them, and I guarantee you–it is being considered in Russia, is
precisely of US "top" going completely rogue and insane, not that it is not
happening as I type this. This contingency can not and must not be excluded
from serious elaborations.
P.S. Lowlife Albright's desire to sacrifice 500,000 Iraqi children for
"democracy" was not an accidental misspeak–this is how many in D.C. think
and live. In the end, if not for courageous British General Sir. Jackson,
Wesley Clark would start killing Russian paratroopers at Slatina airfield.
He issued the orders. Since then things only got worse.
El Dato
,
April 6, 2017 at 6:39 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@anon
Trump got burned on the Yemen raid.
Why is the military going along with
this one? The last one didn't happen because no one wanted to sign off on
it. That is, Obama drew the line (stupidly). But then decided to make
Congress vote for it. Everyone wanted someone else to be the designated
'leader'.
Syria is no less a loser today. Does Congress want to vote for this? The
only thing that is utterly predictable about Trump is he doesn't want to
lose. But even more so, he doesn't want to be blamed.
He was quite convincing today as the sucker.
But really?
The military and public mostly seem OK with bombing. So maybe we bomb
some stuff. It's disgusting but its just killing military on one side or
another along with a lot of collateral damage, dead women and children, etc.
But no boots on the ground.
I'd like to think that he won't do it. Like how could he be so stupid?
But it hasn't stopped anyone sine the 2000 election.
So maybe we bomb some stuff.
That's going to be quite interesting.
- Nusra Front will rebound.
- ISIS will be back (remember them?)
- USA will lose a few planes to S-300 anti-air.
- There will be dead Russians. This won't go down well.
- There will be dead Iranian cleaner teams, and thus angry Iranians.
Hardcore Mullahs will be happy (sounds like feature because a War on Iran is
exactly what the satanic union of Saudi-Arabia and you-know-who wants.)
- Turkey will flow into the "bombed stuff" area to attack Kurds.
I doubt either country will directly attack the other. In the extremely
unlikelihood of such an attack, an escalation to nuclear would be even
more unlikely, given that this will result in the end of both
civilizations and annihilation of both peoples. It is silly to think that
it's even possible.
US "needs" any kind of military success after de facto lost wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. US military record of the last 70 years is rather
unimpressive--not a single war with first rate opponent, only extolled ad
nauseam "victory" over third rate Saddam forces. A lot of psychology comes
into this. Not only many US generals sleep and dream how to fight Russia,
they desperately crave it. In conventional war with Russia this will be US,
not Russia, who will initiate nuclear exchange. The reasons for that are
numerous, including massive reputational military losses--from losing one or
two aircraft carriers, to sustaining (which is highly likely) massive
casualties which will lead to impossibility of attaining any political
objectives. Russia is also completely capable of conventionally striking US
proper. By about 2021-2023 this capability will grow exponentially,
including the ability (which US currently doesn't have and most likely will
not have) to field missile and other technologies which completely zero-down
US military potential. Pentagon knows this.
US military record of the last 70 years is rather unimpressive
Right, no way that they match Soviet/Russia's impressive list of successes
like ripping those Afghans a new one for example.
Art
,
April 6, 2017 at 6:55 pm GMT \n
100 Words
Just cannot believe that Assad is that stupid as to do a gas attack at this
time. It is beyond comprehension, after staying in power for five years of
vicious civil war, and about ready to declare victory, he would never
knowingly do this.
This was either a tragic unintended error or a false
flag by another party – most likely Israel.
Whatever, the globalist Jews are going to use this tragedy to achieve
their long-held goal of breaking up Syria.
200 Words
@iffen
US military record of the last 70 years is rather unimpressive
Right, no way that they match Soviet/Russia's impressive list of successes
like ripping those Afghans a new one for example.
"There is a literature and a common perception that the Soviets were
defeated and driven from Afghanistan. This is not true. When the Soviets
left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate,
professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved
military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued
viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated
diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw
in good order and the Afghan government to survive. The Democratic Republic
of Afghanistan (DRA)managed to hold on despite the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. Only then, with the loss of Soviet support and the increased
efforts by the Mujahideen (holy warriors) and Pakistan, did the DRA slide
toward defeat in April 1992. The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was
well executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar
nations."
100 Words
@iffen
US military record of the last 70 years is rather unimpressive
Right, no way that they match Soviet/Russia's impressive list of successes
like ripping those Afghans a new one for example.
Compared to Vietnam, the Soviet record in Afghanistan wasn't really that bad
(and at least the Soviets realized early on that they needed to get out and
left behind a friendly regime that lasted some time, and might have lasted
longer if not for the dissolution of the Soviet Union – what has NATO
achieved so far in Afghanistan, after 15 years?).
And I'd actually go farther than Smoothie, US triumphalism is way overdone
even in regard to the 2nd world war, at least concerning the European
theatre.
jconsley
,
April 6, 2017 at 7:40 pm GMT \n
100 Words
@Seraphim
It is known that the apparition of Haley's Comet presage wars. Do we have
it? No, but we have Nikki Haley.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Feb. 16, 2017:
""I just put out to the members of the Seucrity Council to help me
understand: When we have so much going on in the world, why is it that every
single month we're going to sit down and have a hearing where all they do is
obsess over Israel?...
The Security Council is supposed to discuss how to maintain international
peace and security. But at our meeting on the Middle East, the discussion
was not about Hizballah's illegal build-up of rockets in Lebanon. It was not
about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists. It was not about
how we defeat ISIS. It was not about how we hold Bashar al-Assad accountable
for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians. No, instead, the
meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle
East. I am new around here, but I understand that's how the Council has
operated, month after month, for decades.
I'm here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore.
I am here to underscore the ironclad support of the United States for
Israel. I'm here to emphasize the United States is determined to stand up to
the UN's anti-Israel bias. We will never repeat the terrible mistake of
Resolution 2334 and allow one-sided Security Council resolutions to condemn
Israel. Instead, we will push for action on the real threats we face in the
Middle East...
It is the UN's anti-Israel bias that is long overdue for change. The United
States will not hesitate to speak out against these biases in defense of our
friend and ally, Israel".
What are the 'real threats'? Assad, Russia, Iran, Sarin gas. Understood?
Poor Nikki - what about Resolution 242? Is it now 69 U.N. Resolutions that
Israel has ignored along with all international law? Does the United States
recognize international law Nikki?
Thus far, your comments and
representation display you total lack of knowledge. At least consider the
pros and cons of situations before forming an opinion. It seems you are
regurgitating whatever lies you are told.
Perhaps Trump selected you because you only watch TV and never read
books, magazines, etc. You no doubt make Trump feel comfortable with your TV
knowledge. It may help to read some State Department cables and emails to
learn about United States' policies. Try not to be discouraged by the fact
that most policies are hypocritical where Israel is involved.
John Gruskos
,
April 6, 2017 at 7:48 pm GMT \n
@Tulip
Why would Assad do it, assuming he is winning the civil war?
First, Assad
requires political backers to stay in power, and if his backers dessert, he
will fall.
Second, during the civil war, his political backers have no choice but to
back Assad, or otherwise their faction could fall from power.
Third, after the civil war, his political backers could very well
consider new leadership.
Fourth, by using poison gas, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions,
Assad and his backers are now international war criminals.
Fifth, if his backers move against Assad, they could all end up in front
of the Hague.
Sixth, its a nice FU to Donald Trump and America, as Assad doesn't need
their support.
Seventh, it either brings the Donald into an unwinnable quagmire,
weakening America, or Donald looks more like Ronald (McDonald).
If it looks like he is going to win the war, and Russia and Iran have his
back (in terms of money and arms), gassing these people helps cement the
support of his backers, at the expense of pissing off some nations he
neither needs nor likes.
This theory doesn't hold up. Assad and his backers
already
have blood
on their hands. He doesn't need a new atrocity to cement their loyalty.
"... you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected. ..."
"... now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much. ..."
"... torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil ..."
This turn of events is the biggest challenge ever to my support of Trump. If he really goes
the way he is indicating, he will lose the support of people like me -- and there may be millions
like me. We have no alternative candidate, but we will never again be led down this road.
If Trump turns, that is the end of everything.
" we will never again be led down this road." You will, you will because you like most losers
are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and
it worked perfectly for him. He got elected.
But now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of
your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much.
The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing
their oil. Did you vote for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it:
"... you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected. ..."
"... now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much. ..."
"... torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil ..."
This turn of events is the biggest challenge ever to my support of Trump. If he really goes
the way he is indicating, he will lose the support of people like me -- and there may be millions
like me. We have no alternative candidate, but we will never again be led down this road.
If Trump turns, that is the end of everything.
" we will never again be led down this road." You will, you will because you like most losers
are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and
it worked perfectly for him. He got elected.
But now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of
your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much.
The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing
their oil. Did you vote for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it:
In
the meantime, Trump has been busy giving speeches. Which sounds pretty bad until you realize that these are good speeches, very
good ones even. For one thing, he still is holding very firmly to the line that the "fake news" (which in "Trumpese" means CNN
& Co. + BBC) are the enemies of the people. The other good thing is that twice in a row now he has addressed himself directly
to the people. Sounds like nothing, but I think that this is huge because the Neocons have now nicely boxed Trump in with advisors
and aides who range from the mediocre to bad to outright evil. The firing of Flynn was a self-defeating disaster for Trump who
now is more or less alone, with only one loyal ally left, Bannon. I am not sure how much Bannon can do or, for that matter, how
long until the Neocons get to him too, but besides Bannon I see nobody loyal to Trump and his campaign promises. Nobody except
those who put him in power of course, the millions of Americans who voted for him. And that is why Trump is doing the right thing
speaking directly to them: they might well turn out to be his biggest weapon against the "DC swamp".
Furthermore,
by beating on the media, especially CNN and the rest of the main US TV channels, Trump is pushing the US public to turn to other
information sources, including those sympathetic to him, primarily on the Internet. Good move – that is how he won the first time
around and that is how he might win again.
The
Neocons and the US 'Deep State' have to carefully weigh the risks of continuing their vendetta against Trump. Right now, they
appear to be preparing to go after Bannon. But what will they do if Trump, instead of ditching Bannon like he ditched Flynn, decides
to dig in and fight with everything he has got? Then what? If there is one thing the Neocons and the deep state hate is to have
a powerful light pointed directly at them. They like to play in the dark, away from an always potentially hostile public eye.
If Trump decides to fight back, really fight back, and if he appeals directly to the people for support, there is no saying what
could happen next.
I
strongly believe that the American general public is deeply frustrated and angry. Obama's betrayal of all his campaign promises
only made these feelings worse. But when Obama had just made it to the White House I remember thinking that if he really tried
to take on the War Machine and if he came to the conclusion that the 'deep state' was not going to let him take action or threaten
him he could simply make a public appeal for help and that millions of Americans would flood the streets of Washington DC in support
of "their guy" against the "bastards in DC". Obama was a fake. But Trump might not be. What if the Three Letter Agencies or Congress
suddenly tried to, say, impeach Trump and what if he decided ask for the support of the people – would millions not flood the
streets of DC? I bet you that Florida alone would send more than a million. Ditto for Texas. And I don't exactly imagine the cops
going out of their way to stop them. The bottom line is this: in any confrontation between Congress and Trump most of the people
will back Trump. And, if it ever came to that, and for whatever it is worth, in any confrontation between Trump-haters and Trump-supporters
the latter will easily defeat the former. The "basket of deplorables" are still, thank God, the majority in this country and they
have a lot more power than the various minorities who backed the Clinton gang.
There
are other, less dramatic but even more likely scenarios to consider. Say Congress tries to impeach Trump and he appeals to the
people and declares that the "DC swamp" is trying to sabotage the outcome of the elections and impose its will upon the American
people. Governors in states like Florida or Texas, pushed by their public opinion, might simply decide not to recognize the legitimacy
of what would be an attempted coup by Congress against the Executive branch of government. Now you tell me – does Congress really
have the means to impose its will against states like Florida or Texas? I don't mean legally, I mean practically. Let me put it
this way: if the states revolt against the federal government does the latter have the means to impose its authority? Are the
creation of USNORTHCOM and the
statutory exceptions
from the Posse Comitatus Act (which makes it possible to use the National Guard to suppress insurrections, unlawful obstructions,
assemblages, or rebellions) sufficient to guarantee that the "DC swamp" can impose its will on the rest of the country? I would
remind any "DC swamp" members reading these lines that the KGB special forces refused not once, but twice, to open fire against
the demonstrators in Moscow (in 1991 and 1993) even though they had received a direct order by the President to do just that.
Is there any reason to believe that US cops and soldiers would be more willing than the KGB special forces to massacre their own
people?
Donald
Trump has probably lost most of his power in Washington DC, but that does not entail that this is the case in the rest of the
USA. The Neocons can feel like the big guy on the block inside the Beltway, but beyond that they are mostly in "enemy territory"
controlled by the "deplorables", something to keep in mind before triggering a major crisis.
This
week I got the feeling that Trump was reaching out and directly seeking for the support to the American people. I think he will
get it if needed. If this is so, then the focus of his Presidency will be less on foreign affairs, where the US will be mostly
paralyzed, than on internal US politics were he still might make a difference. On Russia the Neocons have basically beaten Trump
– he won't have the means to engage in any big negotiating with Vladimir Putin. But, at least, neither will he constantly be trying
to make things worse. The more the US elites fight each other, the less venom they will have left for the rest of mankind. Thank
God for small favors
I
can only hope that Trump will continue to appeal directly the people and try to bypass the immense machine which is currently
trying to isolate him. Of course, I would much prefer that Trump take some strong and meaningful action against the deep state,
but I am not holding my breath.
Tonight
I spoke with a friend who knows a great deal more about Trump than I do and he told me that I have been too quick in judging Trump
and that while the Flynn episode was definitely a setback, the struggle is far from over and that we are in for a very long war.
I hope that my friend is right, but I will only breathe a sigh of relief if and when I see Trump hitting back and hitting hard.
Only time will tell.
Mike Moore's flabby mug always looks indecently exposed, like middle-aged
female genitalia. The fat slob could lead the old hags' march without the pink
pussyhat. Just his own visage would suffice. He is actually similar to George
Soros: the same obscene pussyface. For me, his appearance would doom him: like
Oscar Wilde, I believe that ugly creatures are immoral as well. It's enough to
look at Madeleine Albright, another pussyface, for a proof. But if you need
more, his
Stupid White Men
has been the most execrable book produced
in the US in this century: there he claimed that were 9/11 passengers black,
the hijack would never have succeeded. Now the Pussyface bared the hidden plans
of Putin and
called for enthroninge Clinton because Trump is a Russian spy
. Years ago he
spoke against the Iraq War; now he calls for the nuclear Armageddon. With such
enemies, we should not give up on Trump.
Trump is down, cry the fans and haters alike. He's been defeated, broken,
never to rise again. He is a lame duck soon to be impeached. He will crawl back
to his golden lair leaving the White House to his betters, or even better, he
will run to his pal Vlad Putin.
No, my friends and readers, Trump is fighting, not running, but things take
time. It is not easy to change the paradigm, and the odds were heavily slanted
against Trump from step one. Still, he got this far, and he will go on.
Stubborn guy, and he perseveres. The corrupt judges chain his hands; the CIA
and NSA reveal his moves to the
NYT, CNN, NBC
; but he stands up, ready
to carry the fight to his – and American people's – enemy, the hydra of so many
triple-letter heads.
There are sprinters who want to see victory right away, and they despair at
the first setback. A power-intoxicated judge opens America's gates for the ISIS
advance troops, voiding a very moderate and sensible executive order, and they
wring their hands. Terrible, but what could Trump do? To do nothing because his
order would be overturned? He had to try, so the people will see and judge the
judges. Line the judges up against the (Mexican border) wall at sunrise? He
can't do it yet, though it would make sense.
Flynn had to leave, and they exclaim:
all is lost
. It would be bad indeed, if Trump were to take it lying down,
but he did not. At a very public and well-covered press-conference with Prime
Minister Netanyahu, Trump
said
: "Michael Flynn, General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he's been
treated very, very unfairly by the media - as I call it, the fake media. It's
very, very unfair what's happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and
the documents and papers that were illegally - I stress that - illegally
leaked. Very, very unfair." These are fighting words, of a man who lost a
battle, or a skirmish, but he still fights the war.
Perhaps it would be better to keep Flynn, but politics is an art of
possible. Trump's words of support for the dismissed general were already out
of line.
Trump had met with Netanyahu, and the faint-of-heart bewailed the US
President's surrender to the nefarious lobby. The other way round. The ADL, the
Jewish assault crew,
attacked him
for refusing to mouth their favourite word "antisemitism",
Haaretz
declared
"Yes, Trump is an antisemite", the
NY Times
editorialised
why he did not condemn the a-s word as demanded; Rabbis
called
his remarks "terrifying" and "anti-Zionist" for Trump refused to
tromp the well-trodden impasse called "two-states solution". By the way,
Palestinians do support one-state-solution mentioned by Trump and do not
believe in the mythic two-states-solution, the Middle-Eastern equivalent of
squaring the circle. Trump deftly applied his weapon of choice, Bibi
Netanyahu's support; with this weapon a-blazing, Trump was able to beat off the
bouts of a-s hunters without doing what they wanted.
It would be better to forget about Jews altogether, but it can't be done
while they own all the fake-news media and the hearts of ordinary Americans.
Refusing to condemn a-s is as far as an American politician can walk without
falling of the earth's disc altogether.
After this explaining-away, let us admit that the first month of Trump's
first term was an uphill one. We hoped the defeated forces would be reasonable
and allow the new president to implement his agenda, but they carried on their
arrière-garde battle. His task is huge: Trump endeavours to bury globalising
capitalism before it buries European and American workers. Without Trump,
America and Europe would be invaded by millions made homeless by R2P wars.
Without Trump, the American and European workers would work in hamburger
joints, while the financiers would bloat off their blood and sweat. Such a
U-turn couldn't pass unopposed.
Look back at people who achieved radical changes of such magnitude. I will
not mention names so you won't be scared. None of them had a specially nice
personality, but they had charisma, iron will, good memory, vision and
perseverance; they were master tacticians, i.e. they felt when it was the right
time to retreat and when to advance. Perhaps Trump has these qualities. But
besides, they usually had a loyal and supportive party, or at least an army or
secret services at their disposal. Trump has none.
These additional tools are necessary to overcome the undemocratic and
unelected elements of the government. In the US, the judiciary and media, two
"powers" out of four, are profoundly un- or even anti-democratic. The media is
owned by the media lords, usually rich Jews, and it promotes their agenda.
Judges are instinctively anti-democratic; they despise democracy and popular
opinion.
ORDER IT NOW
The judiciary is also heavily Judaised: three out of nine (or four out of
nine) Supreme Court judges are Jewish. President Obama had tried to install an
additional Jewish judge, and pro-Jewish elements will fight to prevent a
non-Jew
"stealing"
his place. There are so many Jewish lawyers and Jewish teachers
of law that this puts its imprimatur upon the whole profession. No radical
change can be entertained and implemented unless these powers are limited.
Trump has no loyal party, no reliable and loyal secret services. The US
intel is against him, spies on him and delivers the goods to his political
enemies. The Republican Party is suspicious of Trump. There are too many
Republicans sharpening knives for his back, beginning with the old
traitor, John McCain
. Republican Senators and Representatives owe a huge
debt to (a large extent Jewish) donors; they need the support of the media in
order to get re-elected.
Trump should establish control over his party, by placing his loyalists and
weeding out his adversaries in the party apparatus, in the Senate and Congress.
I'd advise him to break, humiliate and unseat a prominent hostile Republican
Senator, even if the seat would go to a Democrat. It is not an impossible task.
This would instill some fear in the meek hearts.
Bringing the secret services under control is relatively easy: begin a
witch-hunt after the traitors who leaked the contents of classified phone
conversations to the media. This is high treason; a lot of people of dubious
loyalty can be dismissed just in case of suspicion. A one-way ticket to
Guantanamo will help to focus minds of potential traitors. They should be
treated as harshly as poor Bradley Manning was. And anyway, the secret services
are overblown; the US can't support one million spies. Eighty per cent should
go. They should enter the labour market and be useful. The remainder will be
loyal.
The media can be subjugated by various means. Usually media holdings are
not highly profitable and are susceptible to hostile takeovers; some holdings
can be broken using anti-trust legislation. Hostile media lords can be brought
to heel by checking their tax returns. In case of the
NY Times
, their
system of multi-tier shares is plainly unjust and can be attacked by
shareholders. The best and most radical measure would separate advertising and
content by banning political content in ad-carrying publications, as I argued
elsewhere
, but it would need the approval of Congress.
The judges are human; hostile judges who think they are above the president
and congress can be subjected to thorough inspection with some prejudice. Life
tenure should be abolished in the courts and in the universities.
So the task of President Trump is formidable but not impossible. Cut the
security services down to size of, say, British or French services (it is also
a lot). Remember that after WWI, the US had no secret services at all, and
prospered. Terrorise a media lord and a Republican senator. Discover the
corruption of District judges. Open a can of worms in the Clinton Foundation.
Try some neocons for lying to the Congress. Mend bridges with Bernie Sanders.
Call your supporters to enlist in the Republican party and achieve your
dominance in primaries. And yes, it will take time.
Now you understand why the pessimistic assessments of our colleagues Paul
Craig Roberts and The Saker are at least premature. In the face of the ancient
regime's hostility, Trump will need at least six months merely to settle
properly in the White House. Just for comparison: Putin had spent five years
consolidating his power, and another five years solidifying it, though he had
full support of Russian security services and a most authoritarian constitution
written by the Americans for their stooge Mr Yeltsin.
President Putin remembers that it takes time. For this reason, he is not
unduly upset by President Trump's delay with normalising US-Russia relations.
The fake news of Russian disenchantment with Trump are exactly that, fake news.
Russians believe in positive developments for US-Russia relations, and they do
not hold their breath.
But why I do believe that Trump will win, at the end? The US is not an
island; it is a part of the West, and the West is going through a paradigm
change. Cuntfaces lost, Deplorables won, and not as a fluke. Remember, Trump
was not the first victory; the Brexit preceded him. Between the Brexit vote and
the Trump election, the British government hesitated and postponed acting upon.
The Brits weren't sure whether that vote was a sign of change, or a fluke.
After Trump's victory, the Brits marched on.
The British judges – every bit as evil as the American ones – tried to stop
Brexit by insisting that the case be sent to Parliament. They believed that the
Parliament would throw the case out, and leave England in the EU, as their
media demanded. But they were mistaken. Though the British public voted for
Brexit 52:48, the British parliamentarians approved it 83:17. The Deplorables
won hands down.
Now let us cross the English Channel. The French Establishment preferred
François Fillon (centre-right, a moderate Republican, in American terms) to
inherit the chair of pussyfaced President Hollande. His victory appeared
assured. But as he readied himself for the move to the Palais de l'Élysée, an
unpleasant fact has been revealed. This modest member of parliament
misappropriated
(stole, in plain English) a cool million dollars of French
taxpayers' best by claiming his wife worked as his parliamentary assistant.
Now nobody wants to touch him with a barge pole, and the chances of the
Queen of Deplorables, Marine Le Pen winning the May elections in the first
round became highly plausible. She will be opposed by a soft socialist Emmanuel
Macron, and he is not very impressive. His rhetoric of calling her "bitter" and
"enemy of liberte-egalite-fraternite" as she is not keen on Arab immigration,
probably will fall on deaf ears. People are bitter, and they aren't sure that
more Arabs means more equality. So Marine may win, and France will become an
ally of Trump's America.
ORDER IT NOW
Fillon accused "shadowy" forces of seeking to crush him, and probably he is
right. This revelation took air out of his sails, and it came in the right
moment, just like in the case of DNC emails. In both cases, the crime, or at
least dishonest dealing of the culprit was real, and he (or she) deserved
defeat. In both cases, only a real powerful and "shadowy" force could make it
stick. This is not Russia: Russia is not in this league yet. It is a "shadowy"
Western force standing for nationalist capitalism, against globalist liberal
"invade-invite" force. This force helped Trump reach White House, this force
caused Brexit, this force removed Fillon from Le Pen's way. It is probable Frau
Merkel will lose the forthcoming elections, ruining Obama's preposterous plan
to install Germany as the liberal globalised world's cornerstone.
The Masters of Discourse are being defeated in all the West. Temporary
setbacks of Donald Trump can't change this tendency. Nationalist productive
capitalism is set to inherit from the financiers, the media lords, the minority
promoters, the transgender toilets and women studies. The battle is not over
yet, but meanwhile it seems the Deplorables are winning, and Pussyfaces are
losing.
We do not know who stands for the Deplorables. When Brexit won, the Masters
of Discourse said the pensioners, lumpens, chavs did it. But then, the
Parliament approved it. Mme Clinton despised the deplorables, but now Trump
sits in the White House. With France and Germany in the queue, a new force is
coming to the fore. It is supported by native majorities. Who leads it from
behind? Industrialists, people of spirit, or just the Spirit of Time, the
Zeitgeist? Whatever it is, this force will help Trump, if he will persist.
"... A growing impasse between the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, Greece's two main lenders, is threatening to push Greece into default, and pull out of the euro. Meanwhile, the Greece government told its lenders, that we now call "Troika" today, that it will not agree to any more austerity measures. Joining us today, to take a closer look at the Greek situation is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished Professor of Economics, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He's the author of many books, and the latest among them is, J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in the Age of Deception ..."
"... What do you do in a case where you make a loan to a country, and the entire staff says that there is no way this country can repay the loan? That is what the IMF staff said in 2015. It made the loan anyway – not to Greece, but to pay French banks, German banks and a few other bondholders – not a penny actually went to Greece. The junk economics they used claimed to have a program to make sure the IMF would help manage the Greek economy to enable it to repay. Unfortunately, their secret ingredient was austerity. ..."
"... Sharmini, for the last 50 years, every austerity program that the IMF has made has shrunk the victim economy. No austerity program has ever helped an economy grow. No budget surplus has ever helped an economy grow, because a budget surplus sucks money out of the economy. As for the conditionalities, the so-called reforms, they are an Orwellian term for anti-reform, for cutting back pensions and rolling back the progress that the labor movement has made in the last half century. So, the lenders knew very well that Greece would not grow, and that it would shrink. ..."
"... If you lend money to a country that your statistics show cannot pay the debt, is there really a moral obligation to pay the debt? ..."
SHARMINI PERIES: The latest economic indicator showed that the Greek economy shrank by 0.4% in the last three months of 2016.
This poses a real problem for Greece, because its lenders are expecting it to grow by 3.5% annually, to enable it to pay back on
its bailout loan. Greece is scheduled to make a 10.5 billion euro payment on its debt next summer, but is expected to be unable to
make that payment, without another installment from its $86 billion bailout.
A growing impasse between the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, Greece's two main lenders, is threatening
to push Greece into default, and pull out of the euro. Meanwhile, the Greece government told its lenders, that we now call "Troika"
today, that it will not agree to any more austerity measures. Joining us today, to take a closer look at the Greek situation is Michael
Hudson. Michael is a distinguished Professor of Economics, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He's the author of many books,
and the latest among them is, J
is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in the Age of Deception .
Thank you so much for joining us today, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's good to be here. But I take issue with one thing that you said. You said the lenders expect Greece
to grow. That is not so. There is no way in which the lenders expected Greece to grow. In fact, the IMF was the main lender. It said
that Greece cannot grow, under the circumstances that it has now.
What do you do in a case where you make a loan to a country, and the entire staff says that there is no way this country can
repay the loan? That is what the IMF staff said in 2015. It made the loan anyway – not to Greece, but to pay French banks, German
banks and a few other bondholders – not a penny actually went to Greece. The junk economics they used claimed to have a program to
make sure the IMF would help manage the Greek economy to enable it to repay. Unfortunately, their secret ingredient was austerity.
Sharmini, for the last 50 years, every austerity program that the IMF has made has shrunk the victim economy. No
austerity program has ever helped
an economy grow. No budget surplus has ever helped an economy grow, because a budget surplus sucks money out of the economy. As for
the conditionalities, the so-called reforms, they are an Orwellian term for anti-reform, for cutting back pensions and rolling back
the progress that the labor movement has made in the last half century. So, the lenders knew very well that Greece would not grow,
and that it would shrink.
So, the question is, why does this junk economics continue, decade after decade? The reason is that the loans are made to Greece
precisely because Greece couldn't pay. When a country can't pay, the rules at the IMF and EU and the German bankers behind
it say, don't worry, we will simply insist that you sell off your public domain. Sell off your land, your transportation, your ports,
your electric utilities. This is by now a program that has gone on and on, decade after decade.
Now, surprisingly enough, America's ambassador to the EU, Ted Malloch, has gone on Bloomberg and also on Greek TV telling the
Greeks to leave the euro and go it alone. You have Trump's nominee for the ambassador to the EU saying that the EU zone is dead zone.
It's going to shrink. If Greece continues to repay the loan, if it does not withdraw from the euro, then it is going to be in a permanent
depression, as far as the eye can see.
Greece is suffering the result of these bad loans. It is already in a longer depression today, a deeper depression, than it was
in the 1930s.
SHARMINI PERIES: Yeah, that's an important at the very beginning of your answer here, you were making this very important point,
is that although the lenders – this is the Eurozone lenders – had set a target of 3.5% surplus as a condition on Greece in order
to make that first bailout loan. The IMF is saying, well, that's not quite doable, 1.5% should be the target.
But you're saying, neither of these are real, or is achievable, or desired, for that matter, because they actually want Greece
to fail. Why are you saying that?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Because when Greece fails, that's a success for the foreign investors that want to buy the Greek railroads. They
want to take over the ports. They want to take over the land. They want the tourist sites. But most of all, they want to set an example
of Greece, to show that France, the Netherlands or other countries that may think of withdrawing from the euro – withdraw and decide
they would rather grow than be impoverished – that the IMF and EU will do to them just what they're doing to Greece.
So they're making an example of Greece. They're going to show that finance rules, and in fact that is why both Trump and Ted
Malloch have come up in support of the separatist movement in France. They're supporting Marine Le Pen, just as Putin is supporting
Marine Le Pen. There's a perception throughout the world that finance really is a mode of warfare.
If they can convince countries somehow to adopt junk economics and pursue policies that will destroy themselves, then they'll
be easy pickings for foreign investors, and for the globalists to take over other economies. So, it's a form of war.
SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Michael, you were saying that the newly appointed ambassador, Ted Malloch of the Trump administration
to the European Union has suggested that Greece should consider leaving the European Union, or the euro in particular.
What do you make of this, and will this be then consistent with what Greece is suggesting? Because Greece has now said, no more
austerity measures. We're not going to agree to them. So, this is going to amount to an impasse that is not going to be resolvable.
Should Greece exit the euro?
ORDER IT NOW
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, it should, but the question is how should it do it, and on what terms? The problem is not only
leaving the euro. The problem really is the foreign debt that was bad debt that it was loaded onto by the Eurozone. If you leave
the euro and still pay the foreign debt, then you're still in a permanent depression from which you can never exit.
There's a broad moral principle here: If you lend money to a country that your statistics show cannot pay the debt, is there
really a moral obligation to pay the debt? Greece did have a commission two years ago saying that this debt is odious. But it's
not enough just to say there's an odious debt. You have to have something more positive.
I've been talking to Greek politicians and Syriza leaders about what's needed, and what is needed is a Declaration of Rights.
Just as the Westphalia rules in 1648, a Universal Declaration that countries should not be attacked in war, that countries should
not be overthrown by other countries. I think, the Declaration of International Law has to realize that no country should be obliged
to impose poverty on its population, and sell off the public domain in order to pay its foreign creditors.
The Declaration would say that if creditors make a debt that cannot be repaid, the debt is by definition odious, so there is
no need to pay it. Every country has the right not to pay debts that are unpayable except by bankrupting the country, and forcing
it to sell off their public domain to foreign countries. That's the very definition of sovereignty.
So, I'm hoping to work with politicians of a number of countries to draw up this Declaration of Debtor Rights. That's what's
been missing. There's an idea that if you withdraw from the euro, you can devalue your currency and can lower labor standards even
further, wipe out the pensions, and somehow squeeze out enough to pay the debt.
So, the problem isn't only the Eurozone. True, joining the euro meant that you're not allowed to run a budget deficit to pump
money into the economy to recover – like America has done. But the looming problem is that you have to pay debts that are so far
beyond your ability to pay that you'll end up like Haiti did after it rebelled after the French Revolution.
France said, sure, we'll give you your independence, but you'll have to reimburse us, for the fact that we no longer hold you
as slaves. You have to buy your freedom. You can't say slavery is wrong. You have to make us, the slaveholders, whole. So Haiti took
this huge foreign debt to France after it got its independence, and ended up not being able to develop.
A few years after that, in 1824, Greece had a revolution and found the same problem. It borrowed from the Ricardo brothers, the
brothers of David Ricardo, the economist and lobbyist for the bankers in London. Just like the IMF, he said that any country can
afford to repay its debts, because of automatic stabilization. Ricardo came out with a junk economics theory that is still held by
the IMF and the European Union today, saying that indebted countries can automatically pay.
Well, Greece ended up taking on an enormous debt, paying interest but still defaulting again and again. Each time it had to give
up more sovereignty. The result was basically a constant depression. Slow growth is what retarded Greece and much of the rest of
southern Europe.
So unless they tackle the debt problem, membership in the Eurozone or the European Union is really secondary.
An article by Robert Berke in oilprice.com, which describes itself as "The No.
1 Source for Oil & Energy News," illustrates how interest groups control outcomes
by how they shape policy choices.
Berke's article reveals how the US intends to maintain and extend its hegemony
by breaking up the alliance between Russia, Iran, and China, and by oil
privatizations that result in countries losing control over their sovereignty to
private oil companies that work closely with the US government. As Trump has
neutered his presidency by gratuitously accepting Gen. Flynn's resignation as
National Security Advisor, this scheme is likely to be Trump's approach to "better
relations" with Russia.
Berke reports that Henry Kissinger has sold President Trump on a scheme to use
the removal of Russian sanctions to pry President Putin away from the Russian
alliance with Iran and China. Should Putin fall for such a scheme, it would be a
fatal strategic blunder from which Russia could not recover. Yet, Putin will be
pressured to make this blunder.
One pressure on Putin comes from the Atlanticist Integrationists who have a
material stake in their connections to the West and who want Russia to be
integrated into the Western world. Another pressure comes from the affront that
sanctions represent to Russians. Removing this insult has become important to
Russians even though the sanctions do Russia no material harm.
We agree with President Putin that the sanctions are in fact a benefit to
Russia as they have moved Russia in self-sufficient directions and toward
developing relationships with China and Asia. Moreover, the West with its
hegemonic impulses uses economic relationships for control purposes. Trade with
China and Asia does not pose the same threat to Russian independence.
Berke says that part of the deal being offered to Putin is "increased access
to the huge European energy market, restored western financial credit, access to
Western technology, and a seat at the global decision-making table, all of which
Russia badly needs and wants." Sweetening the honey trap is official recognization
of "Crimea as part of Russia."
Russia might want all of this, but it is nonsense that Russia needs any of it.
Crimea is part of Russia, as it has been for 300 years, and no one can do
anything about it. What would it mean if Mexico did not recognize that Texas and
California were part of the US? Nothing.
Europe has scant alternatives to Russian energy.
Russia does not need Western technology. Indeed, its military technology is
superior to that in the West.
And Russia most certainly does not need Western loans. Indeed, it would be an
act of insanity to accept them.
It is a self-serving Western myth that Russia needs foreign loans. This myth
is enshrined in neoliberal economics, which is a device for Western exploitation
and control of other countries. Russia's most dangerous threat is the country's
neoliberal economists.
The Russian central bank has convinced the Russian government that it would be
inflationary to finance Russian development projects with the issuance of central
bank credit. Foreign loans are essential, claims the central bank.
Someone needs to teach the Russian central bank basic economics before Russia
is turned into another Western vassal. Here is the lesson: When central bank
credit is used to finance development projects, the supply of rubles increases but
so does output from the projects. Thus, goods and services rise with the supply of
rubles. When Russia borrows foreign currencies from abroad, the money supply also
increases, but so does the foreign debt. Russia does not spend the foreign
currencies on the project but puts them into its foreign exchange reserves. The
central bank issues the same amount of rubles to pay the project's bills as it
would in the absence of the foreign loan. All the foreign loan does is to present
Russia with an interest payment to a foreign creditor.
Foreign capital is not important to countries such as Russia and China. Both
countries are perfectly capable of financing their own development. Indeed, China
is the world's largest creditor nation. Foreign loans are only important to
countries that lack the internal resources for development and have to purchase
the business know-how, techlology, and resources abroad with foreign currencies
that their exports are insufficient to bring in.
This is not the case with Russia, which has large endowments of resources and
a trade surplus. China's development was given a boost by US corporations that
moved their production for the US market offshore in order to pocket the
difference in labor and regulatory costs.
Neoliberals argue that Russia needs privatization in order
to cover its budget deficit. Russia's government debt is only 17
percent of Russian GDP. According to official measures, US
federal debt is 104 percent of GDP, 6.1 times higher than in
Russia. If US federal debt is measured in real corrected terms,
US federal debt is 185 percent of US GDP.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/08/deteriorating-economic-outlook/
Clearly, if the massive debt of the US government is not a
problem, the tiny debt of Russia is not a problem.
Berke's article is part of the effort to scam Russia by
convincing the Russian government that its prosperity depends on
unfavorable deals with the West. As Russia's neoliberal
economists believe this, the scam has a chance of success.
Another delusion affecting the Russian government is the
belief that privatization brings in capital. This delusion
caused the Russian government to turn over 20 percent of its oil
company to foreign ownership. The only thing Russia achieved by
this strategic blunder was to deliver 20 percent of its oil
profits into foreign hands. For a one-time payment, Russia gave
away 20 percent of its oil profits in perpetuity.
To repeat outselves, the greatest threat that Russia faces
is not sanctions but the incompetence of its neoliberal
economists who have been throughly brainwashed to serve US
interests.
When Russia borrows foreign currencies from abroad, the money supply also
increases, but so does the foreign debt. Russia does not spend the foreign
currencies on the project but puts them into its foreign exchange reserves.
The central bank issues the same amount of rubles to pay the project's bills
as it would in the absence of the foreign loan. All the foreign loan does is
to present Russia with an interest payment to a foreign creditor.
Yes, correct. But this is an IMF rule, and Russia is an IMF member. To
control its monetary policy it would have to get out.
Another pressure comes from the affront that sanctions represent to
Russians. Removing this insult has become important to Russians even though
the sanctions do Russia no material harm.
Oh dear, neolibs at their "finest"!
This "theory" is simply not true. If anything, Russians don't want the
sanctions to be lifted, because this will also force us to scrap our
counter-sanctions against the EU. The agro-business in Russia had been
expanding by leaps and bounds for the last two years. This persistent myth that
"the Russians" (who exactly, I wonder – 2-3% of the pro-Western urbanites in
Moscow and St. Pete?) are desperate to have the sanctons lifted is a
self-deception of the West, who IS desparate of the fact that the sanctions
didn't work.
Russia's most dangerous threat is the country's neoliberal economists.
Yes! Ulyukayev is, probably, feeling lonely in his prison. I say – why not
send Chubais, Siluanov and Nabiulina to cheer him up?
Berke reports that Henry Kissinger has sold President Trump on a scheme
to use the removal of Russian sanctions to pry President Putin away from the
Russian alliance with Iran and China.
Berke reports that Henry Kissinger has sold President Trump on a scheme
to use the removal of Russian sanctions to pry President Putin away from
the Russian alliance with Iran and China.
Kissinger, like Dick Cheney or George Soros, will probably never be
completely dead.
Another pressure comes from the affront that sanctions represent to
Russians. Removing this insult has become important to Russians even
though the sanctions do Russia no material harm.
Oh dear, neolibs at their "finest"!
This "theory" is simply not true. If anything, Russians don't want the
sanctions to be lifted, because this will also force us to scrap our
counter-sanctions against the EU. The agro-business in Russia had been
expanding by leaps and bounds for the last two years. This persistent myth
that "the Russians" (who exactly, I wonder - 2-3% of the pro-Western
urbanites in Moscow and St. Pete?) are desperate to have the sanctons lifted
is a self-deception of the West, who IS desparate of the fact that the
sanctions didn't work.
Russia's most dangerous threat is the country's neoliberal economists.
Yes! Ulyukayev is, probably, feeling lonely in his prison. I say - why not
send Chubais, Siluanov and Nabiulina to cheer him up? ;)
I say – why not send Chubais, Siluanov and Nabiulina to cheer him up?
Most of Russia's economic block has to be literally purged from their
sinecures, some, indeed, have to be "re-educated" near Magadan or Tyumen, or
Saransk. Too bad, two of these places are actually not too bad. Others deserved
to be executed. Too bad this jackass Gaidar (actually no blood relation to
Arkady whatsoever) died before he could be tried for crimes against humanity
and genocide. Albeit, some say he died because of his consciousness couldn't
take the burden. Looking at his swine face I, somehow, doubt it.
Priss Factor
,
February 14, 2017 at 10:38 pm GMT \n
100 Words
A silver-lining to this.
If the US continues to antagonize Russia, Russia will have to grow even more
independent, nationalist, and sovereign.
At any rate, this issue cannot be addressed until we face that the fact that
globalism is essentially Jewish Supremacism that fears gentile nationalism as a
barrier to its penetration and domination.
This is not a US vs Russia issue. The real conflict is Jewish Globalism vs
Russian nationalism and American nationalism. But since Jews control the media,
they've spread the impression that it's about US vs Russia.
Same thing with this crap about 'white privilege'. It is a misleading
concept to fool Americans into thinking that the main conflict is between
'privileged whites' and 'people of color'. It is really to hide the fact that
Jewish power and privilege really rules the US. It is a means to hoodwink
people from noticing that the real divide is between Jews and Gentiles, not
between 'privileged whites' and 'non-white victims'. After all, too many whites
lack privilege, and too many non-whites do very well in America.
Seamus Padraig
,
February 14, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT \n
I say – why not send Chubais, Siluanov and Nabiulina to cheer him up?
Most of Russia's economic block has to be literally purged from their
sinecures, some, indeed, have to be "re-educated" near Magadan or Tyumen, or
Saransk. Too bad, two of these places are actually not too bad. Others
deserved to be executed. Too bad this jackass Gaidar (actually no blood
relation to Arkady whatsoever) died before he could be tried for crimes
against humanity and genocide. Albeit, some say he died because of his
consciousness couldn't take the burden. Looking at his swine face I,
somehow, doubt it.
I'm generally a big fan and admirer of Putin, but this is definitely one
criticism of him that I have a lot of sympathy for. It is long past time for
Putin to purge the neoliberals from the Kremlin and nationalize the Russian
Central Bank. I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this already.
Seamus Padraig
,
February 14, 2017 at 11:34 pm GMT \n
Does PCR really think that Putin is stupid enough to fall for Kissinger's
hair-brained scheme? I mean, give Putin a little bit of credit. He has so far
completely outmaneuvered Washington on virtually ever subject. I'm sure he's
clever enough to see through such a crude divide-and-rule strategy.
anonymous
,
February 15, 2017 at 4:17 am GMT \n
100 Words
The Russians can't be flummoxed, they aren't children. Russia and China
border each other so they have a natural mutual interest in having their
east-west areas be stable and safe, particularly when the US threatens both of
them. This geography isn't going to change. Abandoning clients such as Syria
and Iran would irreversibly damage the Russian brand as being unreliable
therefore they'd find it impossible to attract any others in the future. They
know this so it's unlikely they would be so rash as to snap at any bait dangled
in front of them. And, as pointed out, the bait really isn't all that
irresistible. It's always best to negotiate from a position of strength and
they realize that. American policy deep thinkers are often fantasists who bank
upon their chess opponents making hoped-for predictable moves. That doesn't
happen in real life.
SmoothieX12
,
Website
February 15, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMT \n
400 Words
@Seamus Padraig
I'm generally a big fan and admirer of Putin, but this is definitely one
criticism of him that I have a lot of sympathy for. It is long past time for
Putin to purge the neoliberals from the Kremlin and nationalize the Russian
Central Bank. I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this already.
I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this already.
Partially, because Putin himself is an economic liberal and, to a degree,
monetarist, albeit less rigid than his economic block. The good choices he made
often were opposite to his views. As he himself admitted that Russia's
geopolitical vector changed with NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia–a
strengthening of Russia has become an imperative. This comeback was impossible
within the largely "Western" monetarist economic model. Russia's comeback
happened not thanks but despite Putin's economic views, Putin adjusted his
views in the process, his economic block didn't. But many of them still remain
his friends, despite the fact that many of them are de facto fifth column and
work against Russia, intentionally and other wise. Eventually Putin will be
forced to get down from his fence and take the position of industrialists and
siloviki. Putin's present for Medvedev's birthday was a good hint on where he
is standing economically today and I am beginning to like that but still–I
personally am not convinced yet. We'll see. In many respects Putin was lucky
and specifically because of the namely Soviet military and industry captains
still being around–people who, unlike Putin, knew exactly what constituted
Russia's strength. Enough to mention late Evgeny Primakov. Let's not forget
that despite Putin's meteoric rise through the top levels of Russia's state
bureaucracy, including his tenure as a Director of FSB, Putin's background is
not really military-industrial. He is a lawyer, even if uniformed (KGB) part of
his career. I know for a fact that initially (early 2000s) he was overwhelmed
with the complexity of Russia's military and industry. Enough to mention his
creature Serdyukov who almost destroyed Command and Control structure of
Russia's Armed Forces and main ideologue behind Russia's military "reform",
late Vitaly Shlykov who might have been a great GRU spy (and economist by
trade) but who never served a day in combat units. Thankfully, the "reforms"
have been stopped and Russian Armed Forces are still dealing with the
consequences. This whole clusterfvck was of Putin's own creation–hardly a good
record on his resume. Hopefully, he learned.
Vlad
,
February 17, 2017 at 8:44 am GMT \n
100 Words
@Seamus Padraig
I'm generally a big fan and admirer of Putin, but this is definitely one
criticism of him that I have a lot of sympathy for. It is long past time for
Putin to purge the neoliberals from the Kremlin and nationalize the Russian
Central Bank. I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this already.
He has not done it already because he just cannot let go of his dream to
have it as he did in 2003, when Russia Germany and France together blocked
legality of US war in Iraq. Putin still hopes for a good working relationship
with major West European powers. Italy France and even Germany. He still hopes
to draw them away from the US. However the obvious gains from Import
substitution campaign make it apparent that Russia does benefit from sanctions,
that Russia can get anything it wants in technology from the East rather than
the West. So the break with Western orientation is in the making. Hopefully.
annamaria
,
February 17, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT \n
If the US continues to antagonize Russia, Russia will have to grow even
more independent, nationalist, and sovereign.
At any rate, this issue cannot be addressed until we face that the fact
that globalism is essentially Jewish Supremacism that fears gentile
nationalism as a barrier to its penetration and domination.
This is not a US vs Russia issue. The real conflict is Jewish Globalism
vs Russian nationalism and American nationalism. But since Jews control the
media, they've spread the impression that it's about US vs Russia.
Same thing with this crap about 'white privilege'. It is a misleading
concept to fool Americans into thinking that the main conflict is between
'privileged whites' and 'people of color'. It is really to hide the fact
that Jewish power and privilege really rules the US. It is a means to
hoodwink people from noticing that the real divide is between Jews and
Gentiles, not between 'privileged whites' and 'non-white victims'. After
all, too many whites lack privilege, and too many non-whites do very well in
America.
On the power and privilege that really rule the US:
"Sanctions – economic sanctions, as most of them are, can only stand and
'succeed', as long as countries, who oppose Washington's dictate remain bound
into the western, dollar-based, fraudulent monetary scheme. The system is
entirely privatized by a small Zionist-led elite. FED, Wall Street, Bank for
International Settlement (BIS), are all private institutions, largely
controlled by the Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan et al clans. They are also
supported by the Breton Woods Organizations, IMF and World Bank, conveniently
created under the Charter of the UN.
Few progressive economists understand how this debt-based pyramid scam is
manipulating the entire western economic system. When in a just world, it
should be just the contrary, the economy that shapes, designs and decides the
functioning of the monetary system and policy.
Even Russia, with Atlantists still largely commanding the central bank and much
of the financial system, isn't fully detached from the dollar dominion – yet."
"I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this (nationalize the "central bank)
already".
I read about a rumor a few years ago that Putin has been warned that
nationalizing the now private Russian central bank will bring absolutely dire
consequences to both him and Russia. It is simply a step he cannot take.
How dire are the potential consequences? Consider that the refusal of the
American government to reauthorize the private central bank in the US brought
about the War of 1812. The Americans learned their lesson and quickly
reauthorized the private bank after the war had ended.
Numerous attempts were made to assassinate President Andrew Jacksons
specifically because of his refusal to reauthorize the private central bank.
Here it is in audio form so you can just relax and just listen at your
leisure.
*ALL WARS ARE BANKERS' WARS* By Michael Rivero https://youtu.be/WN0Y3HRiuxo
I know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how
many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks
onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US
Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign nations. There is
ample precedent for this.
Priss Factor
,
February 17, 2017 at 7:31 pm GMT \n
1,000 Words
Here is proof that there is no real Leftist power anymore.
Voltaire once said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you
are not allowed to criticize."
If the Left really rules America, how come it is fair game to criticize,
condemn, mock, and vilify Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman &
anarchists, Castro, Che(even though he is revered by many, one's career isn't
damaged by attacking him), Tito, Ceucescu, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gramsci, Eurgene
Debs, Pete Seeger, Abbie Hoffman, Bill Ayers, and etc.
You can say whatever you want about such people. Some will agree, some will
disagree, but you will not be fired, blacklisted, or destroyed.
If the Left really rules, why would this be?
Now, what would happen if you name the Jewish Capitalists as the real
holders of power?
What would happen if you name the Jewish oligarchic corporatists who control
most of media?
What would happen if you said Jews are prominent in the vice industry of
gambling?
What would happen if you named the Jewish capitalists in music industry that
made so much money by spreading garbage?
What would happen if you said Jewish warhawks were largely responsible for the
disasters in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine?
And what would happen if you were question the MLK mythology and cult?
What would happen if you were to make fun of homos and trannies?
Now, keep in mind that blacks and homos are favored by Jews as their main
allies.
(Some say the US is not a pro-minority nation, but it's still permissible to
criticize, impugn, and vilify Chinese, Iranians, Muslims, Mexicans, Hindus, and
etc. Trump was hard on China, Iran, Muslims, and Mexicans, and he got some flak
over it but not enough to destroy him. Now, imagine what would have happened if
he'd said such things about blacks, Africa, homos, Jews, and Israel? American
politics isn't necessarily pro-minority. If it is, it should favor
Palestinian-Americans just as much as Jewish-Americans. Actually, since there
are fewer Palestinian-Americans than Jewish-Americans, the US, being
pro-minority, should favor Palestinians over Jews in America. In reality, it is
AIPAC that draws all the politicians. America is about Pro-Power, and since
Jews have the Power and since Jews are a minority, it creates the false
impression that the US is a minority-supremacist nation. But WHICH minority?
Jews would like for us think that all minorities are represented equally in the
US, but do Eskimos, Hawaiians, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, and etc. have the kind
of power & protection that the Jewish minority has? Do we see politicians and
powerbrokers flock to such minorities for funds and favors?)
So, what does it about the real power in America? So many 'conservatives'
say the Left controls America. But in fact, an American can badmouth all true
bonafide leftist leaders and thinkers(everyone from Lenin to Sartre). However,
if an American were to badmouth Sheldon Adelson as a sick demented Zionist
capitalist oligarch who wants to nuke Iran, he would be blacklisted by the most
of the media. (If one must criticize Adelson, it has to be in generic terms of
him a top donor to the likes of Romney. One mustn't discuss his zealous and
maniacal views rooted in Zionist-supremacism. You can criticize his money but
not the mentality that determines the use of that money.) Isn't it rather
amusing how the so-called Liberals denounce the GOP for being 'extreme' but
overlook the main reason for such extremism? It's because the GOP relies on
Zionist lunatics like Adelson who thinks Iran should be nuked to be taught a
lesson. Even Liberal Media overlook this fact. Also, it's interesting that the
Liberal Media are more outraged by Trump's peace offer to Russia than Trump's
hawkish rhetoric toward Iran. I thought Liberals were the Doves.
We know why politics and media work like this. It's not about 'left' vs
'right' or 'liberal' vs 'conservative'. It is really about Jewish Globalist
Dominance. Jews, neocon 'right' or globo-'left', hate Russia because its brand
of white gentile nationalism is an obstacle to Jewish supremacist domination.
Now, Current Russia is nice to Jews, and Jews can make all the money they want.
But that isn't enough for Jews. Jews want total control of media, government,
narrative, everything. If Jews say Russia must have homo parades and 'gay
marriage', Russia better bend over because its saying NO means that it is
defiant to the Jewish supremacist agenda of using homomania as proxy to
undermine and destroy all gentile nationalism rooted in identity and moral
righteousness.
Russia doesn't allow that, and that is what pisses off Jews. For Jews, the New
Antisemitism is defined as denying them the supremacist 'right' to control
other nations. Classic antisemitism used to mean denying Jews equal rights
under the law. The New Antisemitism means Jews are denied the right to gain
dominance over others and dictate terms.
So, that is why Jews hate any idea of good relations with Russia. But Jews
don't mind Trump's irresponsible anti-Iran rhetoric since it serves Zionist
interest. So, if Trump were to say, "We shouldn't go to war with Russia; we
should be friends" and "We should get ready to bomb, destroy, and even nuke
Iran", the 'liberal' media would be more alarmed by the Peace-with-Russia
statement. Which groups controls the media? 'Liberals', really? Do Muslim
'liberals' agree with Jewish 'liberals'?
Anyway, we need to do away with the fiction that Left rules anything. They
don't. We have Jewish Supremacist rule hiding behind the label of the 'Left'.
But the US is a nation where it's totally permissible to attack real leftist
ideas and leaders but suicidal if anyone dares to discuss the power of
super-capitalist Jewish oligarchs. Some 'leftism'!
300 Words
@Quartermaster
Trump has not been neutered. Buchanan has the right on this and Flynn's
actions.
Sorry, but Crimea is Ukraine. Russia is in serious economic decline and is
rapidly burning through its reserves. Putin is almost down to the welfare
fund from which pensions are paid, and only about a third of pensions are
being paid now.
If Sanctions are of benefit to Russia, then the sanctions against Imperial
Japan were just ducky and no war was fought.
Roberts is the next best thing to insane.
This is rich from a Ukrainian nationalist ruled by Groysman/Kagans.
First, figure out who is your saint, a collaborationist Bandera (Babiy Yar and
such) or a triple-sitizenship Kolomojski (auto-da-fe of civilians in Odessa).
If you still want to bring Holodomor to a discussion, then you need to be
reminded that 80% of Ukrainian Cheka at that time were Jewish. If you still
think that Russians are the root of all evil, then try to ask the US for more
money for pensions, education, and healthcare – instead of weaponry. Here are
the glorious results of the US-approved governance from Kiev:
http://gnnliberia.com/2017/02/17/liberia-ahead-ukraine-index-economic-freedom-2017/
"Liberia, Chad, Afghanistan, Sudan and Angola are ahead of Ukraine. All these
countries are in the group of repressed economies (49.9-40 scores). Ukraine's
economy has contracted deeply and remains very fragile."
Here are your relationships with your neighbors on the other side – Poland
and Romania:
"The right-winged conservative orientation of Warsaw makes it remember old
Polish-Ukrainian arguments and scores, and claim its rights on the historically
Polish lands of Western Ukraine"
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/01/17/poland-will-begin-dividing-ukraine/
" the "Assembly of Bukovina Romanians" has recently applied to Petro Poroshenko
demanding a territorial autonomy to the Chernivtsi region densely populated by
Romanians. The "Assembly" motivated its demand with the Ukrainian president's
abovementioned statement urging territorial autonomy for the Crimean Tatars."
https://eadaily.com/en/news/2016/06/30/what-is-behind-romanias-activity-in-ukraine
And please read some history books about Crimea. Or at least Wikipedia:
"In 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1954, the Crimean Oblast
was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Nikita Khrushchev
(a Soviet dictator). In 2014, a 96.77 percent of Crimeans voted for integration
of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout."
You see, the Crimeans do not like Nuland-Kagan and Pravyj Sector. Do you know
why?
100 Words
@Seamus Padraig
Does PCR really think that Putin is stupid enough to fall for Kissinger's
hair-brained scheme? I mean, give Putin a little bit of credit. He has so
far completely outmaneuvered Washington on virtually ever subject. I'm sure
he's clever enough to see through such a crude divide-and-rule strategy.
well it depends. if putin is just out for himself, I can see him getting in
bed with kissinger and co. if he is about russia, he would not. that is how I
see it. it isn't about if putin is smart or stupid. just a choice and where his
royalty lies.
100 Words
@Quartermaster
Trump has not been neutered. Buchanan has the right on this and Flynn's
actions.
Sorry, but Crimea is Ukraine. Russia is in serious economic decline and is
rapidly burning through its reserves. Putin is almost down to the welfare
fund from which pensions are paid, and only about a third of pensions are
being paid now.
If Sanctions are of benefit to Russia, then the sanctions against Imperial
Japan were just ducky and no war was fought.
Roberts is the next best thing to insane.
Sorry, but Crimea is Ukraine.
How so? #Krymnash
Russia is in serious economic decline and is rapidly burning through its
reserves.
If by "decline" you mean "expects this year a modest growth as opposed to
previous years" then you might be right.
I've been reading about Russia's imminent collapse and the annihilation of
the economy since forever. Some no-names like you (or some Big Names with
agenda) had been predicting it every year. Still didn't happen.
Putin is almost down to the welfare fund from which pensions are paid,
and only about a third of pensions are being paid now.
Can I see a source for that?
If Sanctions are of benefit to Russia, then the sanctions against
Imperial Japan were just ducky and no war was fought.
False equivalence.
P.S. Hey, Quart – how is Bezviz? Also – are you not cold here? Or are you
one of the most racally pure Ukrs, currently residing in Ontario province
(Canada), from whence you teach your less lucky raguls in Nizalezhnaya how to
be more racially pure? Well, SUGS to be you!
@Quartermaster
Trump has not been neutered. Buchanan has the right on this and Flynn's
actions.
Sorry, but Crimea is Ukraine. Russia is in serious economic decline and is
rapidly burning through its reserves. Putin is almost down to the welfare
fund from which pensions are paid, and only about a third of pensions are
being paid now.
If Sanctions are of benefit to Russia, then the sanctions against Imperial
Japan were just ducky and no war was fought.
Roberts is the next best thing to insane.
Do you have any links to verify this that Russia is down to bedrock,from
everything I read and have read Russia's do pretty damn good, or is this just
some more of your endless antiRussian propaganda,,
A scandal of a EU member Poland:
http://thesaker.is/zmiana-piskorski-and-the-case-for-polish-liberation/
Two days after he [Piskorski] publicly warned that US-NATO troops now have a
mandate to suppress Polish dissent on the grounds of combatting "Russian hybrid
war," he was snatched up by armed agents of Poland's Internal Security Agency
while taking his children to school on May 18th, 2016. He was promptly
imprisoned in Warsaw, where he remains with no formal charges to this day."
With the Poland's entry into EU, "Poland did not "regain" sovereignty, much
less justice, but forfeited such to the Atlanticist project Poland has been
de-industrialized, and thus deprived of the capacity to pursue independent and
effective social and economic policies Now, with the deployment of thousands
of US-NATO troops, tanks, and missile systems on its soil and the Polish
government's relinquishment of jurisdiction over foreign armed forces on its
territory, Poland is de facto under occupation. This occupation is not a mere
taxation on Poland's national budget – it is an undeniable liquidation of
sovereignty and inevitably turns the country into a direct target and
battlefield in the US' provocative war on Russia."
" it's not the Russians who are going to occupy us now – they left here
voluntarily 24 years ago. It's not the Russians that have ravaged Polish
industry since 1989. It's not the Russians that have stifled Poles with
usurious debt. Finally, it's not the Russians that are responsible for the fact
that we have become the easternmost aircraft carrier of the United States
anchored in Europe. We ourselves, who failed by allowing such traitors into
power, are to blame for this."
More from a comment section: "Donald Tusk, who is now President of the
European Council, whose grandfather, Josef Tusk, served in Hitler's Wehrmacht,
has consistently demanded that the Kiev regime imposed by the US and EU deal
with the Donbass people brutally, "as with terrorists". While the Polish
special services were training the future participants of the Maidan operations
and the ethnic cleansing of the Donbass, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
made this official statement (02-02-2014): "We support the hard line taken by
the Right Sector The radical actions of the Right Sector and other militant
groups of demonstrators and the use of force by protesters are justified The
Right Sector has taken full responsibility for all the acts of violence during
the recent protests. This is an honest position, and we respect it. The
politicians have failed at their peacekeeping function. This means that the
only acceptable option is the radical actions of the Right Sector. There is no
other alternative".
In short, the US has been the most active enabler of the neo-Nazi movement
in Europe. Mrs. Clinton seemingly did not get a memo about who is "new Hitler."
Do you happen to know anything about western financial giants' influence
upon Russia's "Atlanticist Integrationists"?
It's low hanging fruit for me to take a pick, but I am thinking The Goldman
Sachs Group is well ensconced among Russian "Atlanticist Integrationists."
You guys are top seeded pros at uncovering Deep State-banker secrets. In
contrast, I drive school bus and I struggle to even balance the family Wells
Fargo debit card!
However, since our US Congress has anointed a seasoned G.S.G. veteran, Steve
Mnuchin, as the administration's Treasury Secretary, he has become my favorite
"Person of Interest" who I suspect spouts a Ural Mountain-level say as to how
"Atlanticist Integrationists" operate.
Speaking very respectfully, I hope my question does not get "flummoxed" into
resource rich Siberia.
Berke reports that Henry Kissinger has sold President Trump on a scheme
to use the removal of Russian sanctions to pry President Putin away from
the Russian alliance with Iran and China.
Kissinger, like Dick Cheney or George Soros, will probably never be
completely dead.
Kissinger, like Dick Cheney or George Soros, will probably never be
completely dead
.
Most likely the Spirit of Anti-Christ keeping them alive to do his bidding.
@Priss Factor
Here is proof that there is no real Leftist power anymore.
Voltaire once said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you
are not allowed to criticize."
If the Left really rules America, how come it is fair game to criticize,
condemn, mock, and vilify Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bakunin, Emma
Goldman & anarchists, Castro, Che(even though he is revered by many, one's
career isn't damaged by attacking him), Tito, Ceucescu, Mao, Ho Chi Minh,
Gramsci, Eurgene Debs, Pete Seeger, Abbie Hoffman, Bill Ayers, and etc.
You can say whatever you want about such people. Some will agree, some will
disagree, but you will not be fired, blacklisted, or destroyed.
If the Left really rules, why would this be?
Now, what would happen if you name the Jewish Capitalists as the real
holders of power?
What would happen if you name the Jewish oligarchic corporatists who control
most of media?
What would happen if you said Jews are prominent in the vice industry of
gambling?
What would happen if you named the Jewish capitalists in music industry that
made so much money by spreading garbage?
What would happen if you said Jewish warhawks were largely responsible for
the disasters in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine?
And what would happen if you were question the MLK mythology and cult?
What would happen if you were to make fun of homos and trannies?
Now, keep in mind that blacks and homos are favored by Jews as their main
allies.
(Some say the US is not a pro-minority nation, but it's still permissible to
criticize, impugn, and vilify Chinese, Iranians, Muslims, Mexicans, Hindus,
and etc. Trump was hard on China, Iran, Muslims, and Mexicans, and he got
some flak over it but not enough to destroy him. Now, imagine what would
have happened if he'd said such things about blacks, Africa, homos, Jews,
and Israel? American politics isn't necessarily pro-minority. If it is, it
should favor Palestinian-Americans just as much as Jewish-Americans.
Actually, since there are fewer Palestinian-Americans than Jewish-Americans,
the US, being pro-minority, should favor Palestinians over Jews in America.
In reality, it is AIPAC that draws all the politicians. America is about
Pro-Power, and since Jews have the Power and since Jews are a minority, it
creates the false impression that the US is a minority-supremacist nation.
But WHICH minority? Jews would like for us think that all minorities are
represented equally in the US, but do Eskimos, Hawaiians, Guatemalans,
Vietnamese, and etc. have the kind of power & protection that the Jewish
minority has? Do we see politicians and powerbrokers flock to such
minorities for funds and favors?)
So, what does it about the real power in America? So many 'conservatives'
say the Left controls America. But in fact, an American can badmouth all
true bonafide leftist leaders and thinkers(everyone from Lenin to Sartre).
However, if an American were to badmouth Sheldon Adelson as a sick demented
Zionist capitalist oligarch who wants to nuke Iran, he would be blacklisted
by the most of the media. (If one must criticize Adelson, it has to be in
generic terms of him a top donor to the likes of Romney. One mustn't discuss
his zealous and maniacal views rooted in Zionist-supremacism. You can
criticize his money but not the mentality that determines the use of that
money.) Isn't it rather amusing how the so-called Liberals denounce the GOP
for being 'extreme' but overlook the main reason for such extremism? It's
because the GOP relies on Zionist lunatics like Adelson who thinks Iran
should be nuked to be taught a lesson. Even Liberal Media overlook this
fact. Also, it's interesting that the Liberal Media are more outraged by
Trump's peace offer to Russia than Trump's hawkish rhetoric toward Iran. I
thought Liberals were the Doves.
We know why politics and media work like this. It's not about 'left' vs
'right' or 'liberal' vs 'conservative'. It is really about Jewish Globalist
Dominance. Jews, neocon 'right' or globo-'left', hate Russia because its
brand of white gentile nationalism is an obstacle to Jewish supremacist
domination. Now, Current Russia is nice to Jews, and Jews can make all the
money they want. But that isn't enough for Jews. Jews want total control of
media, government, narrative, everything. If Jews say Russia must have homo
parades and 'gay marriage', Russia better bend over because its saying NO
means that it is defiant to the Jewish supremacist agenda of using homomania
as proxy to undermine and destroy all gentile nationalism rooted in identity
and moral righteousness.
Russia doesn't allow that, and that is what pisses off Jews. For Jews, the
New Antisemitism is defined as denying them the supremacist 'right' to
control other nations. Classic antisemitism used to mean denying Jews equal
rights under the law. The New Antisemitism means Jews are denied the right
to gain dominance over others and dictate terms.
So, that is why Jews hate any idea of good relations with Russia. But Jews
don't mind Trump's irresponsible anti-Iran rhetoric since it serves Zionist
interest. So, if Trump were to say, "We shouldn't go to war with Russia; we
should be friends" and "We should get ready to bomb, destroy, and even nuke
Iran", the 'liberal' media would be more alarmed by the Peace-with-Russia
statement. Which groups controls the media? 'Liberals', really? Do Muslim
'liberals' agree with Jewish 'liberals'?
Anyway, we need to do away with the fiction that Left rules anything. They
don't. We have Jewish Supremacist rule hiding behind the label of the
'Left'. But the US is a nation where it's totally permissible to attack real
leftist ideas and leaders but suicidal if anyone dares to discuss the power
of super-capitalist Jewish oligarchs. Some 'leftism'!
What an amazing whoring performance for the war-manufacturers! And here is
an interesting morsel of information about the belligerent Frau der Leyen:
http://www.dw.com/en/stanford-accuses-von-der-leyen-of-misrepresentation/a-18775432
"Stanford university has said Ursula von der Leyen is misrepresenting her
affiliation with the school. The German defense minister's academic career is
already under scrutiny after accusations of plagiarism." No kidding. Some
"Ursula von der Leyen' values" indeed.
I doubt we'll see little change from the Trump administration toward Russia.
From SOTT:
Predictable news coming out of Yemen: Saudi-backed "Southern Resistance"
forces and Hadi loyalists, alongside al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP), launched a new offensive against the Houthis in western Yemen on
Wednesday.
This is not the first time Saudi-backed (and by extension,
Washington-backed) forces have teamed up with al-Qaeda in Yemen .
Yemen is quickly becoming the "spark that lights the powder keg". The
conflict has already killed, maimed and displaced countless thousands
(thanks to the stellar lack of reporting from trustworthy western news
sources, we can only estimate the scale of Saudi/U.S. crimes in Yemen), but
now it seems that elements of the Trump administration are keen on
escalation, likely in hopes of giving Washington an excuse to carpet bomb
Tehran.
Apparently, we feel satisfied fighting with our old allies, al-Qaeda and
Saudis.
I think that the authors may be underestimating Putin in his determination
to keep Russia and the Russian economy independent. For example, I find this
rumoured offer of "increased access to the huge European energy market" very
funny, for at least two reasons:
1) US wants to sell hydrocarbons (LPG) to the European market at significantly
higher prices than the Russian prices, and
2) the current dependence of EU countries on the Russian energy would have
never happened if there were better alternatives.
In other words, any detente offer that the West would make to Russia would
last, as usual, not even until the signature ink dries on the new cooperation
agreements. Putin does not look to me like someone who suffers much from
wishful thinking.
The Russian relationship with China is not a bed of roses, but it is not
China which is increasing military activity all around Russia, it is the West.
Also, so far China has shown no interest in regime-changing Russia and dividing
it into pieces. Would you rather believe in the reform capability of an addict
in violence or someone who does not need to reform? Would the West self-reform
and sincerely renounce violence just by signing a new agreement with Russia?
The new faux detente will never happen, as long as Putin is alive.
Trump is an ultra-zionist for Sheldon Adelson and prolongs & creates wars
for the Goldman banking crimesyndicat.
The only one stopping Trump is Putin or Russia's missile defenses.
Indeed, Putin's main inside ennemy is Russia's central bank, or the Jewish
oligarchs in Russia (Atlanticists). Also Russia needs to foster and encourage
small&medium enterprises, that need cheap credit, to create competitive
markets, where no prices are fixed and market shares change. These are most
efficient resource users.
In the US, Wallstreet controlls government = fascism = the IG Farben-
Auschwitz concentration camps to maximize profits. This is the direction for
the US economy.
Meanwhile in the EU, the former Auschwitz owners IG Farben (Bayer(Monsanto),
Hoechst, BASF) the EU chemical giants, who have patented all natures molecules,
are in controll again over EU. Deutsche bank et allies is eating Greece, Italy,
Spain's working classes, using AUSTERITY as their creed.
So what is new? Nothing, the supercorporate-fascist elites are the same
families, who 's morality is unchanged in a 100 years.
@Quartermaster
Trump has not been neutered. Buchanan has the right on this and Flynn's
actions.
Sorry, but Crimea is Ukraine. Russia is in serious economic decline and is
rapidly burning through its reserves. Putin is almost down to the welfare
fund from which pensions are paid, and only about a third of pensions are
being paid now.
If Sanctions are of benefit to Russia, then the sanctions against Imperial
Japan were just ducky and no war was fought.
Roberts is the next best thing to insane.
Do you have any economic degree or are you a shouter?
100 Words
@Priss Factor
Here is proof that there is no real Leftist power anymore.
Voltaire once said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you
are not allowed to criticize."
If the Left really rules America, how come it is fair game to criticize,
condemn, mock, and vilify Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bakunin, Emma
Goldman & anarchists, Castro, Che(even though he is revered by many, one's
career isn't damaged by attacking him), Tito, Ceucescu, Mao, Ho Chi Minh,
Gramsci, Eurgene Debs, Pete Seeger, Abbie Hoffman, Bill Ayers, and etc.
You can say whatever you want about such people. Some will agree, some will
disagree, but you will not be fired, blacklisted, or destroyed.
If the Left really rules, why would this be?
Now, what would happen if you name the Jewish Capitalists as the real
holders of power?
What would happen if you name the Jewish oligarchic corporatists who control
most of media?
What would happen if you said Jews are prominent in the vice industry of
gambling?
What would happen if you named the Jewish capitalists in music industry that
made so much money by spreading garbage?
What would happen if you said Jewish warhawks were largely responsible for
the disasters in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine?
And what would happen if you were question the MLK mythology and cult?
What would happen if you were to make fun of homos and trannies?
Now, keep in mind that blacks and homos are favored by Jews as their main
allies.
(Some say the US is not a pro-minority nation, but it's still permissible to
criticize, impugn, and vilify Chinese, Iranians, Muslims, Mexicans, Hindus,
and etc. Trump was hard on China, Iran, Muslims, and Mexicans, and he got
some flak over it but not enough to destroy him. Now, imagine what would
have happened if he'd said such things about blacks, Africa, homos, Jews,
and Israel? American politics isn't necessarily pro-minority. If it is, it
should favor Palestinian-Americans just as much as Jewish-Americans.
Actually, since there are fewer Palestinian-Americans than Jewish-Americans,
the US, being pro-minority, should favor Palestinians over Jews in America.
In reality, it is AIPAC that draws all the politicians. America is about
Pro-Power, and since Jews have the Power and since Jews are a minority, it
creates the false impression that the US is a minority-supremacist nation.
But WHICH minority? Jews would like for us think that all minorities are
represented equally in the US, but do Eskimos, Hawaiians, Guatemalans,
Vietnamese, and etc. have the kind of power & protection that the Jewish
minority has? Do we see politicians and powerbrokers flock to such
minorities for funds and favors?)
So, what does it about the real power in America? So many 'conservatives'
say the Left controls America. But in fact, an American can badmouth all
true bonafide leftist leaders and thinkers(everyone from Lenin to Sartre).
However, if an American were to badmouth Sheldon Adelson as a sick demented
Zionist capitalist oligarch who wants to nuke Iran, he would be blacklisted
by the most of the media. (If one must criticize Adelson, it has to be in
generic terms of him a top donor to the likes of Romney. One mustn't discuss
his zealous and maniacal views rooted in Zionist-supremacism. You can
criticize his money but not the mentality that determines the use of that
money.) Isn't it rather amusing how the so-called Liberals denounce the GOP
for being 'extreme' but overlook the main reason for such extremism? It's
because the GOP relies on Zionist lunatics like Adelson who thinks Iran
should be nuked to be taught a lesson. Even Liberal Media overlook this
fact. Also, it's interesting that the Liberal Media are more outraged by
Trump's peace offer to Russia than Trump's hawkish rhetoric toward Iran. I
thought Liberals were the Doves.
We know why politics and media work like this. It's not about 'left' vs
'right' or 'liberal' vs 'conservative'. It is really about Jewish Globalist
Dominance. Jews, neocon 'right' or globo-'left', hate Russia because its
brand of white gentile nationalism is an obstacle to Jewish supremacist
domination. Now, Current Russia is nice to Jews, and Jews can make all the
money they want. But that isn't enough for Jews. Jews want total control of
media, government, narrative, everything. If Jews say Russia must have homo
parades and 'gay marriage', Russia better bend over because its saying NO
means that it is defiant to the Jewish supremacist agenda of using homomania
as proxy to undermine and destroy all gentile nationalism rooted in identity
and moral righteousness.
Russia doesn't allow that, and that is what pisses off Jews. For Jews, the
New Antisemitism is defined as denying them the supremacist 'right' to
control other nations. Classic antisemitism used to mean denying Jews equal
rights under the law. The New Antisemitism means Jews are denied the right
to gain dominance over others and dictate terms.
So, that is why Jews hate any idea of good relations with Russia. But Jews
don't mind Trump's irresponsible anti-Iran rhetoric since it serves Zionist
interest. So, if Trump were to say, "We shouldn't go to war with Russia; we
should be friends" and "We should get ready to bomb, destroy, and even nuke
Iran", the 'liberal' media would be more alarmed by the Peace-with-Russia
statement. Which groups controls the media? 'Liberals', really? Do Muslim
'liberals' agree with Jewish 'liberals'?
Anyway, we need to do away with the fiction that Left rules anything. They
don't. We have Jewish Supremacist rule hiding behind the label of the
'Left'. But the US is a nation where it's totally permissible to attack real
leftist ideas and leaders but suicidal if anyone dares to discuss the power
of super-capitalist Jewish oligarchs. Some 'leftism'!
We need to discuss the power of the Glob.
Voltaire once said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you
are not allowed to criticize."
No. Voltaire neither said that nor wrote that.
Kevin Alfred Strom wrote "To determine the true rulers of any society, all
you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to
criticize?"
Someone paraphrased him and attributed the paraphrase to Voltaire.
100 Words
@Max Havelaar
Do you have any economic degree or are you a shouter?
Quartermaster is a hack comedian with only one tool in his toolkit, that of
reversal. That everything he says is true only when one understands he means
the opposite of what he says does it make sense but alas, not in a way that
makes for good humour. Comedic tragedy indeed!
100 Words
@Seamus Padraig
I'm generally a big fan and admirer of Putin, but this is definitely one
criticism of him that I have a lot of sympathy for. It is long past time for
Putin to purge the neoliberals from the Kremlin and nationalize the Russian
Central Bank. I cannot fathom why he hasn't done this already.
I would really love to like Putin and I am trying but him protecting all
those criminals and not reversing the history greatest heist of 90′s makes it
impossible. While I am behind all his moves to restore Russian military and
foreign policy, I am still waiting for more on home front. Note, not only the
Bank must be nationalized. Everything, all industries, factories and other
assets privatized by now must be returned to rightful owner. Public which over
70 years through great sacrifice built all of it.
Partially, because Putin himself is an economic liberal and, to a degree,
monetarist, albeit less rigid than his economic block. The good choices he
made often were opposite to his views. As he himself admitted that Russia's
geopolitical vector changed with NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia--a
strengthening of Russia has become an imperative. This comeback was
impossible within the largely "Western" monetarist economic model. Russia's
comeback happened not thanks but despite Putin's economic views, Putin
adjusted his views in the process, his economic block didn't. But many of
them still remain his friends, despite the fact that many of them are de
facto fifth column and work against Russia, intentionally and other wise.
Eventually Putin will be forced to get down from his fence and take the
position of industrialists and siloviki. Putin's present for Medvedev's
birthday was a good hint on where he is standing economically today and I am
beginning to like that but still--I personally am not convinced yet. We'll
see. In many respects Putin was lucky and specifically because of the namely
Soviet military and industry captains still being around--people who, unlike
Putin, knew exactly what constituted Russia's strength. Enough to mention
late Evgeny Primakov. Let's not forget that despite Putin's meteoric rise
through the top levels of Russia's state bureaucracy, including his tenure
as a Director of FSB, Putin's background is not really military-industrial.
He is a lawyer, even if uniformed (KGB) part of his career. I know for a
fact that initially (early 2000s) he was overwhelmed with the complexity of
Russia's military and industry. Enough to mention his creature Serdyukov who
almost destroyed Command and Control structure of Russia's Armed Forces and
main ideologue behind Russia's military "reform", late Vitaly Shlykov who
might have been a great GRU spy (and economist by trade) but who never
served a day in combat units. Thankfully, the "reforms" have been stopped
and Russian Armed Forces are still dealing with the consequences. This whole
clusterfvck was of Putin's own creation--hardly a good record on his resume.
Hopefully, he learned.
Smoothie, you seem to have natural aversion towards lawyers
Albeit, the first Vladimir, I mean Lenin also was a lawyers by education still
he was a rather quick study. Remember that military communism and Lenin after
one year after Bolsheviks took power telling that state capitalism would be
great step forward for Russia whcih obviously was backward and ruined by wars
at the time and he proceeded with New Economic Policy and Lenin despite not
being industry captain realized pretty well what constituted state power hence
GOELRO plans and electrification of all Russia plans and so forth which was
later turned by Stalin and his team into reality.
Now, Lenin was ideologically motivated and so is Putin. But he clearly has been
trying to achieve different results by keeping same people around him and doing
same things. Hopefully it is changing now, but it is so much wasted time when
old Vladimir was always repeating that time is of essence and delay is like
death knell. Putin imho is away too relax and even vain in some way, hence
those shirtless pictures and those on the bike. And the way he walks a la "Я
Московский озорной гуляка". As you said it looks like he is protecting those
criminals who must be prosecuted and yes, many executed for what they caused.
I suspect in cases when it comes to economical development he is not picking
right people for those jobs and it is his major responsibility to assign right
people and delegate power properly, not to be forgotten to reverse what
constitutes the history greatest heist and crime so called "privatization".
Basically returning to more communal society minus Politburo.
There is a huge elephant in the room too. Russia demographic situation which I
doubt can be addressed under current liberal order. all states which are in
liberal state of affairs fail to basically procreate hence these waves of
immigrants brought into all Western Nations. Russia cannot do it. It would be
suicide which is what all Western countries are doing right now.
Boris N
,
February 20, 2017 at 8:58 pm GMT \n
100 Words
Russia does not need Western technology. Indeed, its military technology
is superior to that in the West.
You write about Russia but have not done your homework. Russia is very
dependent on Western technology and its entire high-tech industry depends on
the import of Western machinery. Without such machinery many Russian factories,
including military ones, would stall. Very important oil industry is
particularly vulnerable.
Some home reading (sorry, they are in Russian, but one ought to know the
language if one writes about the country).
The Nostalgia of Trump: Remembering the days when birds fell from the sky from the polluted air in L.A., When the Cuyahoga
River caught fire in Cleveland, death from black lung desease, death from white lung desease, death by crushing, ...
I don't ever see nostalgia for Trump. I wish to see him expunged from the Nation's as quickly as possible.
I'm not sure what any of that has to do with nostalgia for Trump.
Quite a while back Paine (who seems to be back here) characterized contemporary Republicans as "the party of a better
yesterday". This refers to many people's impression that when they were younger, at least looking back things were more
hopeful and remembered quality of life better. This is independent from the things you mentioned. In my own observation
the same phenomenon could be observed in prior generations of family and their acquaintances that experienced in various
degrees WW1 and WW2 and the postwar fallouts. Life had always been better when they were young, war or not.
As by most other generations apparently - I don't think this is anything specific to the boomers. By credible accounts
the Greeks were already complaining about "kids these days" a few millenia ago. "They are so not like 'we' used to be
- no merit and all depravity." How could society possibly continue to exist with this unfit generation having responsibility?
The difference between now and the pre-internet era is that now anybody and everybody can take a dump on current and
previous generations, and things in general, at the cost of next to nothing.
"... Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least. ..."
"... America's Bitter Pill ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... - John Fund is NRO's national-affairs correspondent ..."
Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics.
When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media
outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them.
The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the
New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut
and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration.
To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words.
Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CNN that "this kind of speech not [only]
undermines the work of the media in this country, it emboldens autocratic leaders around the world."
Jacob Weisberg, the head of the Slate Group, tweeted that Bannon's comment was terrifying and "tyrannical."
Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White
House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House.
She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage
over that remark was restrained, to say the least.
Ever since Bannon's outburst, you can hear the media gears meshing in the effort to undermine
him. In TV green rooms and at Washington parties, I've heard journalists say outright that it's time
to get him. Time magazine put a sinister-looking Bannon on its cover, describing him as
"The Great Manipulator." Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time , boasted to
MSNBC that the image was in keeping with a tradition of controversial covers that put leaders in
their place. "Likewise, putting [former White House aide] Mike Deaver on the cover, the brains behind
Ronald Reagan, that ended up bringing down Reagan," he told the hosts of Morning Joe . "So
you've got to have these checks and balances, whether it's the judiciary or the press."
Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in
the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate
media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially,
and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be
"investigated."
I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw
precious little interest in that during the Obama administration.
I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious
little interest in that during the Obama administration.
It wasn't until four years after the passage of Obamacare that a journalist reported on just how
powerful White House counselor Valerie Jarrett had been in its flawed implementation. Liberal writer
Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence
in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of
people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him
about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration
who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of
staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. .
. . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration."
How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the
struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in
Monday-morning quarterbacking the past."
Brill then bluntly told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told
him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she
wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never
gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of
Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer.
Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as
Bannon has in less than four weeks.
I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald
Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally,
not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment.
But the media's effort to turn Bannon into an enemy of the people is veering into hysterical character
assassination. The Sunday print edition of the New York Times ran an astonishing 1,500-word
story headlined: "Fascists Too Lax for a Philosopher Cited by Bannon." (The online headline now reads,
"Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists.") The Times based this headline
on what it admits was "a passing reference" in
a speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in 2014 . In that speech, Bannon made a single mention
of Julius Evola, an obscure Italian philosopher who opposed modernity and cozied up to Mussolini's
Italian Fascists.
"... Question: why can there be no color revolution in the United States? Answer: because there are no US Embassies in the United States. ..."
"... US intelligence agencies are now investigating their own boss! Yes, according to recent reports , the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Treasury Department are now investigating the telephone conversations between General Flynn and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyk. ..."
"... In other words, his security clearance is stratospherically high and he will soon become the boss of all the US intelligence services. And yet, these very same intelligence services are investigating him for his contacts with the Russian Ambassador. That is absolutely amazing. ..."
"... Even in the bad old Soviet Union, the putatively almighty KGB did not have the right to investigate a member of the Communist Party Central Committee without a special authorization of the Politburo (a big mistake, in my opinion, but never mind that). ..."
"... But in the case of Flynn, several US security agencies can decide to investigate a man who by all standards ought to be considered at least in the top 5 US officials and who clearly has the trust of the new President. And that does not elicit any outrage, apparently. ..."
"... By the same logic, the three letter agencies might as well investigate Trump for his telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... This is all absolutely crazy because this is evidence that the US intelligence community has gone rogue and is now taking its orders from the Neocons and their deep state and not from the President and that these agencies are now acting against the interests of the new President. ..."
"... pussyhat revolution ..."
"... pussyhat revolution ..."
"... Make no mistake, such protests are no more spontaneous than the ones in the Ukraine. Somebody is paying for all this, somebody is organizing it all. And they are using their full bag of tricks. One more example: ..."
"... Remember the pretty face of Nayirah , the Kuwaiti nurse who told Congress that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers tossing our babies from Kuwaiti incubators (and who later turned out to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States)? Do you remember the pretty face of Neda , who " died on TV " in Iran? Well, let me introduce you to Bana Alabe, who wrote a letter to President Trump and, of course, the media got hold of the latter and now she is the "face of the Syrian children". ..."
"... Okay, click here and take a look at a sampling of anti-Trump caricatures and cartoons compiled by the excellent Colonel Cassad. Some of them are quite remarkable ..."
"... My purpose in listing all the examples above is to suggest the following: far from having accepted defeat, the Neocons and the US deep state have decided, as they always do, to double-down and they are now embarking on a full-scale "color revolution" which will only end with the impeachment, overthrowal or death of Donald Trump. ..."
"... One of the most amazing features of this color revolution against Trump is the fact that those behind it don't give a damn about the damage that their war against Trump does to the institution of the President of the United States and, really, to the United States as a whole. That damage is, indeed, immense and the bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown and his only hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast. ..."
"... The other amazing thing is the ugly role Britain plays in this process: all the worst filth against Trump is always eventually traced back right to the UK. How come? Simple. Do you recall how, formally at least, the CIA and NSA did not have the right to spy on US nationals and the British MI6 and GCHQ had no right to spy on British nationals. Both sides found an easy way out: they simply traded services: the CIA and NSA spied on Brits, the MI6 and GCHQ spied on Americans, and then they simply traded the data between "partners" (it appears that since Obama came to power all these measures have now become outdated and everybody is free to spy on whomever the hell they want, including their own nationals). The US Neocons and the US deep state are now using the British special services to produce a stream of filth against Trump which they then report as "intelligence" and which then can be used by Congress as a basis for an investigation. Nice, simple and effective. ..."
"... 9/11 was a collective crime par excellence . A few men actually executed it, but then thousands, possibly tens of thousands, have used their position to execute the cover-up and to prevent any real investigation. They are ALL guilty of obstruction of justice. By opening a new investigation into 911, but one run by the Justice Department and NOT by Congress, Trump could literally place a "political handgun" next to the head of each politician and threaten to pull the trigger if he does not immediately give up on trying to overthrow Trump. What Trump needs for that is a 100% trusted and 100% faithful man as the director of the FBI, a man with " clean hands, a cool head and a burning heart " (to use the expression of the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky). This man will immediately find himself in physical danger so he will have to be a man of great personal courage and determination. And, of course, this "man" could be a woman (a US equivalent of the Russian prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaia). ..."
"... First, at the very least, the Trump Presidency itself: the Neocons and the US deep state will not let Trump implement his campaign promises and program. Instead they will sabotage, ridicule and misrepresent everything he does, even if this is a big success. ..."
"... Second, it appears that Congress now has the pretext to open several different congressional investigations into Donald Trump. If that is the case, it will be easy for Congress to blackmail Trump and constantly threaten him with political retaliation if he does not "get with the program". ..."
"... Third, the rabid persecution of Trump by the Neocons and the deep state is weakening the institution of the Presidency. For example, the latest crazy notion floated by some politicians is to " prohibit the President of the United States from using nuclear weapons without congressional authorization except when the United States is under nuclear attack ." From a technical point of view, this is nonsense, but what it does is send the following signal to the rest of the planet: "we, in Congress, believe that our Commander in Chief cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons." Never mind that they would trust Hillary with the same nukes and never mind that Trump could use only conventional weapons to trigger a global nuclear war anyway (by, for example, a conventional attack on the Kremlin), what they are saying is that the US President is a lunatic that cannot be trusted. How can they then expect him to be take seriously on any topic? ..."
"... Fourth, can you just imagine what will happen if the anti-Trump forces are successful?! Not only will democracy be totally and terminally crushed inside the USA, but the risks of war, including nuclear, will simply go through the roof. ..."
"... will Trump have the intelligence to realize the fact that he is under attack and will he have the courage to strike back hard enough ..."
A Russian joke goes like this: " Question: why can there be no color revolution in the United
States? Answer: because there are no US Embassies in the United States. "
Funny, maybe, but factually wrong: I believe that a color revolution is being attempted in the
USA right now.
US intelligence agencies are now investigating their own boss! Yes,
according to recent reports , the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Treasury Department
are now investigating the telephone conversations between General Flynn and the Russian ambassador
Sergey Kislyk.
According to Wikipedia, General Flynn is the former
Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance Chair of the Military Intelligence Board Assistant Director of
National Intelligence Senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command.
He is also Trump's National Security Advisor. In other words, his security clearance is stratospherically
high and he will soon become the boss of all the US intelligence services. And yet, these very same
intelligence services are investigating him for his contacts with the Russian Ambassador. That is
absolutely amazing.
Even in the bad old Soviet Union, the putatively almighty KGB did not have the right to investigate
a member of the Communist Party Central Committee without a special authorization of the Politburo
(a big mistake, in my opinion, but never mind that).
That roughly means that the top 500 members of the Soviet state could not be investigated by the
KGB at all. Furthermore, such was the subordination of the KGB to the Party that for common criminal
matters the KGB was barred from investigating any member of the entire Soviet
Nomenklatura , roughly 3
million people (and even bigger mistake!).
But in the case of Flynn, several US security agencies can decide to investigate a man who
by all standards ought to be considered at least in the top 5 US officials and who clearly has the
trust of the new President. And that does not elicit any outrage, apparently.
By the same logic, the three letter agencies might as well investigate Trump for his telephone
conversations with Vladimir Putin.
Which, come to think of it, they might well do it soon
This is all absolutely crazy because this is evidence that the US intelligence community has
gone rogue and is now taking its orders from the Neocons and their deep state and not from the President
and that these agencies are now acting against the interests of the new President.
In the meantime, the Soros crowd has already chosen a color: pink. We now are witnessing the "
pussyhat revolution " as
explained on this website. And if you think that this is just a small fringe of lunatic feminists,
you would be quite wrong. For the truly lunatic feminists the "subtle" hint about their " pussyhat
revolution " is too subtle, so they prefer making their statement less ambiguous as the image
on the right shows.
This would all be rather funny, in a nauseating way I suppose, if it wasn't for the fact that
the media, Congress and Hollywood are fully behind this "100 days of Resistance to Trump" which began
by a, quote, "queer dance party" at Mike Pence's house.
This would be rather hilarious, if it was not for all gravitas with which the corporate media
is treating these otherwise rather pathetic "protests".
Watch how MCNBS's talking head blissfully reporting this event:
Listen carefully to what Moore says at 2:00. He says that they will "celebrate the fact that Obama
is still the President of the United States" and the presstitute replies to him, "yes he is" not
once, but twice.
What are they talking about?! The fact that Obama is still the President?!
How is it that Homeland Security and the FBI are not investigating MCNBC and Moore for
rebellion and
sedition ?
So far, the protests have not been too large, but they did occur in various US cities and they
were well covered by the media:
Make no mistake, such protests are no more spontaneous than the ones in the Ukraine. Somebody
is paying for all this, somebody is organizing it all. And they are using their full bag of tricks.
One more example:
Remember the pretty face of
Nayirah , the
Kuwaiti nurse who told Congress that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers tossing our babies from Kuwaiti
incubators (and who later turned out to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador
to the United States)? Do you remember the pretty face of
Neda , who
" died on TV " in Iran?
Well, let me introduce you to Bana Alabe, who
wrote a letter to President
Trump and, of course, the media got hold of the latter and now she is the "face of the Syrian
children".
Want even more proof?
Okay, click here
and take a look at a sampling of anti-Trump caricatures and cartoons compiled by the excellent
Colonel Cassad. Some of them are quite remarkable. From this nauseating collection, I will select
just two:
The first one clearly accuses Trump of being in the hands of Putin. The second one make Trump
the heir to Adolf Hitler and strongly suggests that Trump might want to restart Auschwitz. Translated
into plain English this sends a double message: Trump is not the legitimate President of the USA
and Trump is the ultimate Evil.
This goes far beyond the kind of satire previous Presidents have ever been subjected to.
My purpose in listing all the examples above is to suggest the following: far from having
accepted defeat, the Neocons and the US deep state have decided, as they always do, to double-down
and they are now embarking on a full-scale "color revolution" which will only end with the impeachment,
overthrowal or death of Donald Trump.
One of the most amazing features of this color revolution against Trump is the fact that those
behind it don't give a damn about the damage that their war against Trump does to the institution
of the President of the United States and, really, to the United States as a whole. That damage is,
indeed, immense and the bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown
and his only hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast.
The other amazing thing is the ugly role Britain plays in this process: all the worst filth
against Trump is always eventually traced back right to the UK. How come? Simple. Do you recall how,
formally at least, the CIA and NSA did not have the right to spy on US nationals and the British
MI6 and GCHQ had no right to spy on British nationals. Both sides found an easy way out: they simply
traded services: the CIA and NSA spied on Brits, the MI6 and GCHQ spied on Americans, and then they
simply traded the data between "partners" (it appears that since Obama came to power all these measures
have now become outdated and everybody is free to spy on whomever the hell they want, including their
own nationals). The US Neocons and the US deep state are now using the British special services to
produce a stream of filth against Trump which they then report as "intelligence" and which then can
be used by Congress as a basis for an investigation. Nice, simple and effective.
The bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown and his only
hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast.
Can he do that?
Until now I have suggested several times that Trump deal with the US Neocons the way Putin dealt
with the oligarchs in Russia: get them on charges of tax evasion, corruption, conspiracy, obstruction
of justice, etc. All that good stuff which the US deep state has been doing for years. The Pentagon
and the Three Letter Agencies are probably the most corrupt entities on the planet and since they
have never been challenged, never mind punished, for their corruption, they must have become fantastically
complacent about how they were doing things, essentially counting on the White House to bail them
out in case of problems. The main weapons used by these circles are the numerous secrecy laws which
protect them from public and Congressional scrutiny. But here Trump can use his most powerful card:
General Flynn who, as former director of the DIA and current National Security Advisor to the President
will have total access. And if he doesn't – he can create it, if needed by sending special forces
to ensure "collaboration".
However, I am now beginning to think that this might not be enough. Trump has a much more powerful
weapon he can unleash against the Neocon: 9/11.
Whether Trump knew about it before or not, he is now advised by people like Flynn who must have
known for years that 9/11 was in inside job. And if the actual number of people directly implicated
in the 9/11 operation itself was relatively small, the number of people which put their full moral
and political credibility behind the 9/11 official narrative is immense. Let me put it this way:
while 9/11 was a US "deep state" operation (probably subcontracted for execution to the Israelis),
the entire Washington "swamp" has been since "9/11 accomplice after the fact" by helping to maintain
the cover-up. If this is brought into light, then thousands of political careers are going to crash
and burn into the scandal.
9/11 was a collective crime par excellence . A few men actually executed it, but then thousands,
possibly tens of thousands, have used their position to execute the cover-up and to prevent any real
investigation. They are ALL guilty of obstruction of justice. By opening a new investigation into
911, but one run by the Justice Department and NOT by Congress, Trump could literally place a "political
handgun" next to the head of each politician and threaten to pull the trigger if he does not immediately
give up on trying to overthrow Trump. What Trump needs for that is a 100% trusted and 100% faithful
man as the director of the FBI, a man with " clean hands, a cool head and a burning heart " (to use
the expression of the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky). This man will immediately
find himself in physical danger so he will have to be a man of great personal courage and determination.
And, of course, this "man" could be a woman (a US equivalent of the Russian prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaia).
I fully understand that danger of what I am suggesting as any use of the "9/11 weapon" will, of
course, result in an immense counter-attack by the Neocons and the deep state. But here is the deal:
the latter are already dead set in impeaching, overthrowing or murdering Donald Trump. And, as Putin
once said in an interview, "if you know that a fight is inevitable, then strike first!".
You think that all is this over the top? Consider what is at stake.
First, at the very least, the Trump Presidency itself: the Neocons and the US deep state
will not let Trump implement his campaign promises and program. Instead they will sabotage, ridicule
and misrepresent everything he does, even if this is a big success.
Second, it appears that Congress now has the pretext to open several different congressional
investigations into Donald Trump. If that is the case, it will be easy for Congress to blackmail
Trump and constantly threaten him with political retaliation if he does not "get with the program".
Third, the rabid persecution of Trump by the Neocons and the deep state is weakening the
institution of the Presidency. For example, the latest crazy notion
floated by some politicians is to " prohibit the President of the United States from using
nuclear weapons without congressional authorization except when the United States is under nuclear
attack ." From a technical point of view, this is nonsense, but what it does is send the following
signal to the rest of the planet: "we, in Congress, believe that our Commander in Chief cannot
be trusted with nuclear weapons." Never mind that they would trust Hillary with the same nukes
and never mind that Trump could use only conventional weapons to trigger a global nuclear war
anyway (by, for example, a conventional attack on the Kremlin), what they are saying is that the
US President is a lunatic that cannot be trusted. How can they then expect him to be take seriously
on any topic?
Fourth, can you just imagine what will happen if the anti-Trump forces are successful?!
Not only will democracy be totally and terminally crushed inside the USA, but the risks of war,
including nuclear, will simply go through the roof.
There is much more at stake here than just petty US politics.
Every time I think of Trump and every time I look at the news I always come back to the same anguished
thought: will Trump have the intelligence to realize the fact that he is under attack and will
he have the courage to strike back hard enough ?
I don't know.
I have a great deal of hopes for General Flynn. I am confident that he understands the picture
perfectly and knows exactly what is going on. But I am not sure that he has enough pull with the
rest of the armed forces to keep them on the right side should a crisis happen. Generally, "regular"
military types don't like intelligence people. My hope is that Flynn has loyal allies at SOCOM and
JSOC as, at the end of the day, they will have the last say as to who occupies the White House. The
good news here is that unlike regular military types, special forces and intelligence people are
usually very close and used to work together (regular military types also dislike special forces).
SOCOM and JSOC will also know how to make sure that the CIA doesn't go rogue.
Last but not least, my biggest hope is that Trump will use the same weapon Putin used against
the Russian elites: the support of the people. But for that task, Twitter is simply not good enough.
Trump needs to go the "RT route" and open his own TV channel. Of course, this will be very hard and
time consuming, and he might have to begin with an Internet-based only channel, but as long as there
is enough money there, he can make it happen. And, just like RT, it needs to be multi-national, politically
diverse (including anti-Empire figures who do not support Trump) and include celebrities.
One of the many mistakes made by Yanukovich in the Ukraine was that he did not dare to fully use
the legal instruments of power to stop the neo-Nazis. And to the degree that he used them, it was
a disaster (like when the riot cops beat up student demonstrators). After listening to a few interviews
of Yanukovich and of people near him during those crucial hours, it appears that Yanukovich simply
did not feel that he had a moral right to use violence to suppress the street. We will never now
if what truly held him back are moral principles of basic cowardice, but what is certain is that
he betrayed his people and his country when he refused to defend real democracy and let the "street"
take over replacing democracy with ochlocracy (mob rule). Of course, real ochlocracy does not exists,
all mobs are always controlled by behind-the-scenes forces who unleash them just long enough to achieve
their goals.
The forces which are currently trying to impeach, overthrow or murder President Trump are a clear
and present danger to the United States as a country and to the US Federal Republic. They are, to
use a Russian word, a type of "non-system" opposition which does not want to accept the outcome of
the elections and which by rejecting this outcome essentially oppose the entire political system.
I am not a US citizen (I could, but I refuse that citizenship on principle because I refuse to
take the required oath of allegiance) and the only loyalty I owe the USA is the one of a guest: never
to deliberately harm it in any way and to obey its laws. And yet it turns my stomach to see how easy
it has been to turn millions of Americans against their own country. I write a lot about russophobia
on this blog, but I also see a deep-seated "Americanophobia" or "USophobia" in the words and actions
who today say that Trump is not their President. To them, they micro-identity as a "liberal" or as
a "gay" or as "African-American" means more than the very basic fundamental principles upon which
this country has been built. When I see these crowds of Trump-bashers I see pure, seething hatred
not of the AngloZionist Empire, or of a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy, but a hatred of what
I would call the "simple America" or the "daily America" – the simple people amongst whom I have
now lived for many years and learned to respect and appreciate and whom the Clinton-bots only think
of as "deplorables
It amazes me to see that the US pseudo-elites have as much hatred, contempt and fear of the American
masses as the Russian pseudo-elites have hatred, contempt and fear of the Russian masses (the Russian
equivalent or Hillary's "deplorables" would be a hard to pronounce for English speakers word "
быдло ", roughly "cattle", "lumpen"
or "rabble"). It amazes me to see that the very same people which have demonized Putin for years
are now demonizing Trump using exactly the same methods. And if their own country has to go down
in their struggle against the common people – so be it! These self-declared elites will have no compunction
whatsoever to destroy the nation their have been parasitizing and exploiting for their own class
interest. They did just that to Russia exactly 100 years ago, in 1917. I sure hope that they will
not get away with that again in 2017.
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!
"... The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first "broke" in the far-right blogosphere.
The accusation they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone
was too afraid of "appearing racist" to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right
bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of "appearing racist" if they gave any
credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on bloggers
..."
"... the far-right blogosphere turned out to be right. ..."
"... those people ..."
"... The Podesta Emails ..."
"... The evidence is of wildly varying levels of quality, ranging from the pareidolia of "Jesus
is appearing to me in my toast" to "wait, that's actually pretty damn creepy." The mountain of claims
and observations and speculations being compiled in places like Voat and Steemit are too overwhelming
for any one person to hope to wade through sorting wheat from chaff, and while I don't intend to try,
I will summarize some just a little bit of it here. ..."
"... While many of these claims are wild speculation over coincidences (though by no means all of
them are), at some point I think a bunch of weird coincidences involving pedophilia and kids becomes
sort of damning in and of itself. In one email , Podesta is among those being invited to a farm and
the host says, "Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and
almost 7) so you'll have some further entertainment, and they will be in [the] pool for sure ." ..."
"... Could that have an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But inviting a group of adult men to
a gathering and calling young children "further entertainment" while listing their ages is ..."
"... All the Children ..."
"... Here are just a few of the more "institutional" coincidences involved in the story: one of
the men on the small list of people found "liking" photos like this one on these individuals' Instagram
accounts is Arun Rao , the U.S. Attorney Chief, charged with prosecuting cases of child pornography.
..."
"... Besta Pizza, the business whose logo so closely resembled the "little boy lover" logo, is owned
by Andrew Kline , who was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the Department
of Justice. Isn't it just a little ..."
"... The disturbing bit is that the photo uses the tag "#chickenlovers," and "chicken lover" is
in fact ..."
"... Chicken Hawk ..."
"... Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite ..."
"... In addition to Jeffrey Epstein, the Podesta brothers are also friends with convicted sex offender
Clement Freud as well as convicted serial child molester Dennis Hastert . ..."
"... And we do know that this has happened before. ..."
"... The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal ..."
"... how we should respond to the possibility. ..."
Beginning in 1997, in an English town of more than 100,000 people, eight Pakistani men stood at
the core of a group involving as many as three hundred suspects who abused, gang-raped, pimped and
trafficked, by the most conservative estimate, well over a thousand of the town's young girls for
years.
The police were eventually accused of not just turning a blind eye, but of
participating in the abuse - even supplying the Pakistani gangs with drugs and tipping them off
when they heard of colleagues searching for children they knew to be in the gangs' possession.
Others were afraid of investigating the gangs or calling attention to their behavior because it
would have been politically incorrect to accuse the town's ethnic community of such a rampant and
heinous crime - in the words of one English writer, "
Fears of appearing racist trumped fears of more children being abused ."
But when this story first broke, guess where it appeared?
Here's how a blogger writing under the name Mehrdad Amanpour tells the story of how the story first started reaching people:
Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were
being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up.
I've never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those
in the article. So I checked the links and sources in the piece. I found an American racist-far-right
website and from there, saw the original source was a similarly unpleasant website in the UK.
I did a brief search for corroboration from reputable mainstream sources. I found none. So
I wrote a curt reply to my friend: "I'd appreciate it if you didn't send me made-up crap from
neo–Nazi websites."
Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang
phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times .
I was stunned and horrified - not just that these vile crimes were indeed happening and endemic,
but that they really were being ignored and "covered-up" by public authorities and the mainstream
media.
The
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first "broke" in the far-right blogosphere. The accusation
they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone was too
afraid of "appearing racist" to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right
bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of "appearing racist" if they gave
any credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on
bloggers to report truths like these when the allegations were so wide-reaching, involving
a literal conspiracy within the police force.
And yet, years after no one was willing to take them seriously, the far-right blogosphere
turned out to be right.
Well over a thousand (mostly) white young girls were being abused by (mostly) Pakistani
gangs.
And the authorities were covering it up.
We are now, once again, in the stage of an evolving scandal that Mehrdad Amanpour described his
experience with above. Just to be clear, I'm not going to commit myself to the idea that this is
going to be as huge as Rotherham was. We should be careful: we don't know what would or wouldn't
be confirmed with a proper investigation. The question here is not whether we've gotten to the bottom
of this online. The question is whether there is enough here to justify thinking there should be
a proper investigation.
And the parallel with Rotherham is that the relatively small number of people asking for that
are mostly the loathsome kinds of people who run "racist far-right websites." So, since the claims
are inherently conspiratorial, and the mainstream doesn't want to be associated with those people
who are talking about it, it is once again all too easy to just dismiss the claims out of hand
as paranoia run wild.
Again, the evolution of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was an extremely
painful lesson that the mainstream can be wrong and the "paranoid racist far-right"
can be right. And that lesson was far too expensive to simply let go to waste.
The name of this scandal is Pizzagate.
It gets the name for two reasons: first, because at the center of the scandal are high-level Washington
insiders who own a handful of businesses in the DC area, including a couple pizzerias (Comet Ping
Pong and Besta Pizza), who have fallen under suspicion for involvement in a child sex abuse ring.
Second, because the first questions arose in peoples' minds as a result of some very bizarre emails
revealed by Wikileaks in The
Podesta Emails that, quite simply, just sound strange (and usually involve weird
references to pizza). One of the strangest emails involves Joe Podesta being asked this question:
"The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related). Is it yours?"
The evidence is of wildly varying levels of quality, ranging from the pareidolia of "Jesus
is appearing to me in my toast" to "wait, that's actually pretty damn creepy." The mountain of claims
and observations and speculations being compiled in places like
Voat and
Steemit are too overwhelming
for any one person to hope to wade through sorting wheat from chaff, and while I don't intend to
try, I will summarize some just a little bit of it here.
While many of these claims are wild speculation over coincidences (though by no means all
of them are), at some point I think a bunch of weird coincidences involving pedophilia and kids becomes
sort of damning in and of itself. In
one email , Podesta
is among those being invited to a farm and the host says, "Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport
Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you'll have some further entertainment,
and they will be in [the] pool for sure ."
Could that have an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But inviting a group of adult men to
a gathering and calling young children "further entertainment" while listing their ages is
weird , whether it ends up having an explanation or not.
If I was getting messages that listed the ages of young children that would be in a pool
And it turned out that the logo for my business contained a symbol strikingly close to
the "little boy lover" logo used by pedophiles to signify that their interest is in young boys rather
than girls . . .
And the bands that showed up at my restaurant had albums called All the Children
with images on the cover
of a child putting phallic-shaped objects into his mouth . . .
. . . and were found making creepy jokes about pedophilia (in reference to Jared Fogle: "
we all have our preferences
. . . ") . . . and there were instagram photos coming out of kids ("jokingly?") taped
to the tables in my restaurant . . .
. . . frankly, I would start asking questions about myself.
Here are just a few of the more "institutional" coincidences involved in the story: one of
the men on the small list of people found "liking" photos like this one on these individuals' Instagram
accounts is
Arun Rao , the U.S. Attorney Chief, charged with prosecuting cases of child pornography.
Besta Pizza, the business whose logo so closely resembled the "little boy lover" logo, is
owned by
Andrew Kline , who was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the
Department of Justice. Isn't it just a little unusual that someone that high up in a human
trafficking division would fail to notice the symbolism?
For yet another coincidence,
Lauren Silsby-Gayler is the former director of The New Life Children's Refuge in Haiti. It is
a matter of public record that she was caught, prosecuted, and sent to jail while in that role for
trying to abduct dozens of children, most of whom had homes and families. The
main lawyer paid
to represent Silsby-Gayler, "President of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,"
was himself suspected of involvement in human trafficking.
When the Clintons gained influence in the region, one of their first acts was to work to
get Silsby-Gayler
off the hook . Among the Podesta Wikileaks are
State Department emails
discussing their case. Meanwhile, she now works on the executive board of
AlertSense . . .
which collaborates with IPAWS to send out nation-wide Amber Alerts.
While some of the supposed "codewords" people have claimed to have identified in Pizzagate appear
to be made up, there is at least one unambiguous instance: here is an Instagrammed photo posted by
James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong that appears innocent enough: a man carrying a young
child with a beaded necklace draped around both of their necks.
The disturbing bit is that the photo uses the tag "#chickenlovers," and "chicken lover" is
in fact an established term to refer to a pedophile - someone who loves "chicken," which
is also unambiguously an established term to refer to underage children (you can see this in the
gay slang dictionary subset of the
Online Dictionary
of Playground Slang ).
Complain all you want about the "speculative" and "paranoid" online discussions of Pizzagate,
but when you have clearer-cut cases like this one where James Alefantis absolutely, unquestionably
did in fact post a photo of a man holding an infant and the one and only hashtag he used for the
photo involved a term that unquestionably is a reference to pedophilia, in a context where it is
clear that there is nothing else here that "chicken" could possibly have been referring to, the likelihood
that more speculative claims might have truth to them is increased.
There is a 1994 documentary expose on NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association) called
Chicken
Hawk .
Here is yet another reference from a watchdog group from 2006, proving that this one existed
well before Pizzagate surfaced. Another confirmed fact dug up by the paranoid right-wing conspiracy
nuts on the Internet?
So here are a few more things we do know. We know that Bill Clinton has taken dozens
of international flights on a plane colloquially known as the "
Lolita Express " with Jeffrey Epstein, a man who spent 13 months in jail after being convicted
of soliciting a 13-year-old
prostitute . We know that Hillary Clinton's staff knew that
Anthony Weiner was sexting underage girls all the way back in 2011 - and covered it up. Guess
whose laptop revealed evidence that Hillary Clinton went on flights on Jeffrey Epstein's "
Lolita Express " along with Bill? That's right: Anthony Weiner's.
Now do you understand why the mainstream media was so eager to spin these emails as just a "distraction"
during the election?
The staff that ignored Weiner's sexting of young children included John Podesta himself, whose
brother Tony is one of the very men at the center of Pizzagate. Tony Podesta has rather warped tastes
in art. For instance, he owns a bronze statue of a decapitated man in a contorted position identical
to a well-known photograph of one of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's victims:
(See
here for the disturbing photo of the real victim.)
The same news story that features the image above also mentions the fact that John Podesta's
bedroom contains multiple images from a photographer "known for documentary-style pictures
of naked teenagers in their parents' suburban homes.")
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily
features images of children in BDSM-esque positions in large showers. Here's one with a row of young
girls in a shower with their hands behind their backs in a position that suggests bondage:
Here's one with a young boy in a shower tied up in the air with his hands over his head:
In addition to Jeffrey Epstein, the Podesta brothers are also friends with convicted sex offender
Clement Freud as well as convicted serial child molester
Dennis Hastert .
We do know that the New York Times , which is now dismissing Pizzagate in its
entirety as a hoax, is run by Mark Thompson - who was credibly accused a few years back of lying
to help cover up a scandal involving another high-profile public figure involved in child sex abuse,
Jimmy Savile
, during his time as
head of the BBC .
And we do know that this has happened before.
Lawrence King , the
leader of the Black Republican Caucus, who sang the national anthem at the Republican convention
in 1984, was accused by multiple claimed victims of trafficking and abusing boys out of the Boys
Town charity for years. You can
hear the chilling testimony
from three people who claim to have been victimized by King in a documentary produced shortly
after the events transpired.
You can hear the FBI, even after they received extensive testimony from victims, explain in their
own words that they weren't going to prosecute King because if anything were wrong with him, he would
have been prosecuted by a lower authority already. Eventually, King was found "O. J. guilty" of abusing
Paul Bonacci - convicted in civil court, acquitted in criminal court.
But that's not the question here. The question is how we should respond to the possibility.
Do we take the possibility seriously? History clearly indicates that we should. Even if it did
turn out to be nothing at all, I would still be more proud to belong to a community willing
to take the possibility seriously and call for investigation than I would to belong to a community
that dismissed the possibility far too hastily and luckily turned out to be right - even as it did
this and turned out to be wrong in so many cases like Rotherham before.
The real horror here would be to live in a society that responded as Reddit has - by shutting
down the whole conversation entirely, banning
r/pizzagate even while keeping subreddits like r/pedofriends, "a place for (non-offending) pedophiles
and allies to make friends with each other!" alive.
Over on his blog,
Scott Adams
asks us to keep in mind cases where confirmation bias did lead to false allegations of institutional
pedophilia, to caution against excessive confidence. (He hastens to add: "I want to be totally clear
here that I'm not saying Pizzagate is false. I see the mountain of evidence too. And collectively
it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true. I'm not debating the underlying truth of
it. That part I don't know.")
But which is worse? If all the evidence coming out of Pizzagate is entirely
false, what have we lost by spending time on it? On the other hand, if even five percent of the allegations
that have been made surrounding the topic are true, what have we lost by ignoring them? Which is
worse: spending too much time pursuing and thoroughly vetting false leads, or looking the other way
while any amount of child abuse goes on?
According to the FBI's National Crime Information
Center (NCIC) database, nearly 470,000 children disappear in the United States alone each year.
This number is dubious for a number of reasons. It
looks like some number of runaways
end up in the NCIC count, and to make matters worse, repeat offenders can make it into the data multiple
times. So that would suggest that the real number must be lower than this tally; but on the other
hand, we also know that many missing children are never reported in the first place, so it's possible
that that could boost the number back up. The bottom line, however, seems to be that there is no
reliable way to determine how many total children are actually missing in the U.S.
Either way, though, even if correcting for these errors took out 90% of the disappearances in
the NCIC database, and there were no unreported disappearances to account for at all, I think even
the resulting 50,000 per year would still be enough to call the problem systematic and justify suspicion
that these disappearances could well involve organized efforts-given that we already know of so many
pedophile rings in so many powerful institutions.
In 2013, Canada busted a ring involving
more than 300 adults , who had teachers, doctors, and nurses heavily represented among them.
A pedophile ring has just been identified in the
highest levels of UK football (Americans
know the sport as soccer). Norwegian police also just uncovered a ring of 50 organized pedophiles
mostly
working in the tech sector , once again including elected officials, teachers, and lawyers. The
Vatican scandals can practically go without mention - institutional involvement in child sex exploitation
is nearly an a priori given.
And the children that are being raped and murdered in the photos passed around by these
child porn rings are coming from somewhere . And when figures like politicians, teachers,
and lawyers are involved in the rings, it's hardly inconceivable that they could be involved in disappearances.
Have we identified one here?
Only time will tell. But we deserve to be paid attention. We deserve to have the matter taken
(Reprinted from Counter-Currents
Publishing by permission of author or representative)
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily features
images of children in BDSM-esque positions in large showers.
Psychopathy in the Pedophile (From Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior, P 304-320,
1998, Theodore Millon, Erik Simonsen, et al, eds.–See NCJ-179236)
This paper argues that pedophilia may represent a special case or subcase of psychopathy and
that the main aims of both the psychopath and the pedophile are to dominate, to use, and to subjugate
another person in service of the grandiose self. [...] It notes that the major differences between
psychopaths and pedophiles are that the object of the predation for the pedophile is a child and
that the overt behavioral manifestation of the pathology is sexual.
"... That a person with the stature of being a former president would hang around with a low-life like Epstein is really telling. He flew perhaps twenty-seven times on Epstein's plane which makes him more than just a passing acquaintance. Birds of a feather flock together. ..."
"... If a country next to us, so similar to ours in many ways but with a fraction of our population, has so many that can be exposed at one time then how many could the US have? ..."
"... The Burning Platform has featured a series of posts over the last few weeks that provide a volume of evidence that is impossible to discount. ..."
"... I have no doubt whatsoever that child sex abuse, trafficking and even sex-related murder may well be hung around the necks of very, very famous persons, and the horrors so bad that those persons (if still alive) will not even make it to trial before they're hung from a street lamp. ..."
"... What is clear is that the contention that there is "no evidence", a contention that is asserted or implied in seemingly every mainstream media discussion, is flatly false. There is a vast array of pertinent evidence, much of it circumstantial, but much of it also suggesting something of the mindset of some of the central figures. Anyone who denies this is utterly oblivious, or a liar, or a fool. ..."
"... As to what the evidence establishes, that is a different question. If skilled and intelligent investigators fail to take it up, then motivated and fervent - if not entirely competent - inquirers will surely rise up in their stead. ..."
"... Watch for the "fake news" sources' standard method for dealing with a large set of serious allegations like these from the internet's "real news" sources. They will take the most absurd/least likely allegations and dispose of them. They will then unobtrusively fail to address harder to dismiss allegations. Instead they will argue to the effect that, some of these allegations are false so obviously all must be. ..."
"... The "truther" site Snopes once had a perfect example, since taken down, I suspect because it made the technique so obvious ..."
The children in some of these poor third-world 'orphanages' aren't really orphans as we understand
the term but are just from poor families who can't take care of them. These international adoptions
are a business where everyone along the line gets paid with the child being the commodity being
sold to the end purchaser, people in the west seeking to adopt a child to make themselves feel
good. As in the mentioned case, the agencies move around from country to country where people
are poor and desperate and legal safeguards are weak. Although the end receivers seem to be mostly
naive and well-meaning people there's no telling how many aren't.
That a person with the stature of being a former president would hang around with a low-life
like Epstein is really telling. He flew perhaps twenty-seven times on Epstein's plane which makes
him more than just a passing acquaintance. Birds of a feather flock together.
The Canadians pulled in over three hundred people. If a country next to us, so similar
to ours in many ways but with a fraction of our population, has so many that can be exposed at
one time then how many could the US have? Yet we hardly ever hear much, just of a few lone wolves
here and there. Look at how Sandusky got away with it for so many years. People didn't want to
know, turned a blind eye to it, because he was too valuable.
This entire bunch who hobnob with each other have a very creepy vibe. There's all these 'coincidences'
that seem to gather together in one place.
This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media
accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined
to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the
word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.
Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering
space.
Do some of your own research on this topic and you will come to a different conclusion if you
can get beyond your massive bias. The Burning Platform has featured a series of posts over the
last few weeks that provide a volume of evidence that is impossible to discount.
Most people cannot accept something like this would be real because they cannot fathom the
depths of evil that exist in this world ..why, I don't know. You'd think the fact that many of
the people implicated have also been the ones fully on board with unprovoked wars that have killed,
maimed and displaced millions of people, including children, would be evidence enough.
Kudos to Ron Unz for exposing more people to this tragic, disgusting, horrendous story.
Socionomic Theory documents that the public's appetite for scandals is low when stocks and
high and high when stocks are low.
Case in point: The "news" about Enron was favorable all the way down, until the stock had lost
way over 90%. Only then did "news" about criminality and malfeasance gain traction.
This being the case, with stocks at All Time Highs after an astonishing 7 year vertical rally,
pizzagate's very existence here tells us that when the next bear market (in social mood,
as revealed by stock prices) is in full swing, the level of sociopathic, demonic behaviors emerging into public consciousness will be unimaginable.
I have no doubt whatsoever that child sex abuse, trafficking and even sex-related murder may
well be hung around the necks of very, very famous persons, and the horrors so bad that those
persons (if still alive) will not even make it to trial before they're hung from a street lamp.
Public disgust with those who ran (and run) the Federal Government will in all likelihood be
so pervasive that it will undermine the very political cohesion of the United States.
This is by far the best survey of this topic that I've read.
What is clear is that the contention that there is "no evidence", a contention that is asserted
or implied in seemingly every mainstream media discussion, is flatly false. There is a vast array
of pertinent evidence, much of it circumstantial, but much of it also suggesting something of
the mindset of some of the central figures. Anyone who denies this is utterly oblivious, or a
liar, or a fool.
As to what the evidence establishes, that is a different question. If skilled and intelligent
investigators fail to take it up, then motivated and fervent - if not entirely competent - inquirers
will surely rise up in their stead.
Watch for the "fake news" sources' standard method for dealing with a large set of serious
allegations like these from the internet's "real news" sources. They will take the most absurd/least
likely allegations and dispose of them. They will then unobtrusively fail to address harder to
dismiss allegations. Instead they will argue to the effect that, some of these allegations are
false so obviously all must be.
The "truther" site Snopes once had a perfect example, since taken down, I suspect because it
made the technique so obvious. One popular right-wing internet site claimed to link 100 or so
suspicious deaths to the Clintons. Snopes attacked the obviously absurd linkages and was left
with about twenty cases of persons who (1) were involved or rumored to be involved with nefarious
activities involving the Clintons; (2) were scheduled to testify against the Clintons or rumored
to be brokering plea deals; and (3) died under suspicious circumstances soon after. Snopes dismissed
these with a comment to the effect that all public figures had numbers of known associates die
like this; let's just move on, folks; nothing to see here.
200 Words
@MQ This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media
accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined
to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the
word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.
Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering
space.
In one of my many different careers I worked for a couple of years as an outside consultant
to the FBI's ViCAP (now VICAP) program. About the time I was thus delving the depths of human
depravity - and they are far deeper than the more fortunate readers of this are ever likely to
learn - a scandal similar to this broke in Belgium, involving the highest levels of society, politics,
and the EU bureaucracy in criminal conspiracies to kidnap children, sexually violate them, torture
them, and even use them in the production of snuff films. A full investigation dead-ended after
many suicides and suspicious deaths and disappearances. IMHO, based on some experience with criminal
conspiracies of this type, the mass of material presented here is a pretty overwhelming indication
that something very bad is happening. That the MSM ("fake new") sources are not paying more attentionto
this is scandalous.
I'm not going to commit myself to the idea that this is going to be as huge as Rotherham
was.
Sorry, but you are deluded if you believe Rotherham was "huge" in the media - even after the
story broke, the English media did its best to downplay and underreport it - when they did report
it, especially the BBC, it was always in a professional monotone, with no hint of outrage, or
how disgusting and appalling all of it was, including/especially the behavior of the authorities
- however let the BNP or EDL protest in front of the court where some of the Paki scum were being
tried, and there you saw and felt media outrage - at this point, Rotherham has practically disappeared
from the news - which is pretty sad because as everyone knows, it was just the tip of the iceberg.
And as currently being framed and investigatively fleshed out, if Rotherham was "huge", then
Pizzagate will be a scandal of positively galactic dimension.
People will not let this go the way they did with the Jeffrey Epstein sleaze.
Thank you for this article. It is well written and makes the point I have been trying to make.
That the Wikileaks taken together with the Instagram photos warrant an investigation. A person
with a predilection to pedophilia (based on the Instagram photos, choice of music, and music recordings
at the Pizza Parlor premises) at the least, should not be running a "child-friendly" pizza parlor
without some kind of societal due diligence to ensure the safety of our children.
On the one hand, what is lost if an investigation occurs and it turns out there is no wrong
doing? We would have wasted some tax dollars and time of the law enforcement teams, but James
Alefantis would in fact benefit from being exonerated. If however, there is ANY
truth and any harm has and is occurring to children, then the greater good resulting from the
investigation would be without price.
@Jus' Sayin'...
In one of my many different careers I worked for a couple of years as an outside consultant
to the FBI's ViCAP (now VICAP) program. About the time I was thus delving the depths of human
depravity -- and they are far deeper than the more fortunate readers of this are ever likely to
learn -- a scandal similar to this broke in Belgium, involving the highest levels of society,
politics, and the EU bureaucracy in criminal conspiracies to kidnap children, sexually violate
them, torture them, and even use them in the production of snuff films. A full investigation dead-ended
after many suicides and suspicious deaths and disappearances. IMHO, based on some experience with
criminal conspiracies of this type, the mass of material presented here is a pretty overwhelming
indication that something very bad is happening. That the MSM ("fake new") sources are not paying
more attentionto this is scandalous.
The Belgian case, among other high-profile quashed investigations, is summarized here:
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily features
images of children in BDSM -esque positions in large showers.
Psychopathy in the Pedophile (From Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior, P
304-320, 1998, Theodore Millon, Erik Simonsen, et al, eds.--See NCJ-179236)
This paper argues that pedophilia may represent a special case or subcase of psychopathy
and that the main aims of both the psychopath and the pedophile are to dominate, to use, and
to subjugate another person in service of the grandiose self. [...] It notes that the major
differences between psychopaths and pedophiles are that the object of the predation for the
pedophile is a child and that the overt behavioral manifestation of the pathology is sexual.
I just wanted to reemphasize Scott Adams' statement about the scandal:
Over on his blog, Scott Adams asks us to keep in mind cases where confirmation bias did
lead to false allegations of institutional pedophilia, to caution against excessive confidence.
These types of investigations and scandals can easily lead to 'witch hunts' and 'panics' and
need to be handled with the greatest care, prudence, and levelheadedness possible.
----
I wanted to add the following study/information, because as the study states ' These
results provide further evidence of the importance of distinguishing between these groups of offenders.
'
This might just be an irrelevant distinction for most people appalled by this potential/alleged
abuse of power and authority of 'our' elites; but I believe we might mostly be looking at
and dealing with psychopathy and not necessarily 'just' pedophilia in this Pizzagate scandal.
This has several different implications for how this scandal might be handled or be covered
up, etc., because psychopaths are master liars, deflectors, charmers, etc., i.e. 'pillars of the
community,' 'movers and shakers,' etc.
There is another curious connection here; Professor Robert Hare – the father of psychopathy
research – said this:
Hare considers newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell to have been a strong candidate as a corporate
psychopath.[10]
Robert Maxwell is the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is close friends with Jeffery Epstein:
In an American court case that was made public in January 2015, a woman identified as 'Jane
Doe 3′ said she was approached by Maxwell in 1999, and claimed that Maxwell procured under-age
girls to have sex with Epstein. Maxwell has always denied any involvement in Epstein's crimes.[10]
She said: "She [Ghislaine] said she'd hit hard times. Jeffrey offered her a job and then,
I guess, because of her ability to procure girls, she became a vital asset to him.
Abstract OBJECTIVE :
Among men who commit sexual offenses against children, at least 2 distinct groups can be identified
on the basis of the age of the primary targets of their sexual interest; pedophiles and nonpedophiles.
METHOD :
In the present report, across 2 independent samples of both types of child molesters as well
as controls, a total of 104 men (53 pedophilic and 51 nonpedophilic) who had sexually offended
against a child age 13 or younger were compared to each other (and to 49 non-sex offender controls)
on psychopathy as assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI). RESULTS :
In both samples of child molesters, the nonpedophiles scored as significantly more psychopathic
than the pedophiles. CONCLUSIONS :
These results provide further evidence of the importance of distinguishing between these groups
of offenders.
500 Words
@MQ This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media
accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined
to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the
word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.
Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering
space.
Your comment sounds familiar to me. Are you writing from the UK perchance?
Back in the mid-Aughts I was surprised by how often I saw commenters at MSM news sites talking
about the grooming and abduction of white girls in cities in England. At the time I was regularly
reading BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, and Times. The stories where these comments appeared were diverse
in topic.
Sometimes other comments would share similar experiences. Some would say they talked to someone
who claimed similar experience. Others would say they'd heard murmurs of such things.
These voices repeatedly called on the MSM outlet to investigate, or they wondered why
no response was forthcoming from elected officials or policymakers.
This was after–I later learned–Ann Cryer (MP for Keighley) had bravely stepped forward on behalf
of girls whose parents had approached her for help. IOW, the cat was emerging from the bag, but
the MSM were trying to stuff it back in.
Dismissive responses to these comments frequently were framed as yours is here: nothing to
see here, move along, it's confirmation bias, you people are nuts, mods, step in and censor them!
In the Rotherham/etc. case, racism, Islamophobia, etc., were trotted out to inflict silence.
What was most noteworthy to me, and creepy, was how these comments would be removed from
the comment streams of these outlets.
Sometimes the comments would be deleted but the response calling them racists or Islamophobes
allowed to stand.
By the late Aughts I was convinced some sort of coverup was underway of something terrible
indeed.
We now know that the MSM were key players in that.
Similar murmurings were afoot in Pennsylvania for many years prior to the revelations of the
sexual abuse of children by Penn State coach Sandusky. I knew men who steered their sons away
from football in general, guiding them instead to hockey or lacrosse, because the word on the
street was that football camp was not a safe place for boys anymore. (Nor, increasingly, Boy Scouts
or church camps.)
The gig is up for the MSM acting as panderers and pimps in the Cathedragogue of their own degenerate
Narrative-religion.
They won't go down without a fight. They have more power and money to lose than any of the
kids victimized by pedocidal perverts.
But what those kids have to lose is a treasure of vastly more importance than power and money.
Thing is, truth and goodness of spirit will win. This is part of why these degenerates fight
back as they do. They can put truth and goodness on the run for only so long. They fight back
not because they are losing, but because, by nature, they can never join the winning side of
truth and goodness. It's just not in them.
All the more reason they need to be found out and reined in hard.
One last thing, regarding some people's assertion that these symbols, in-jokes, etc., are all
"just a game." Or, worse, "art." (Which implies getting money and power by representing degeneracy
to decorate rich people's businesses, homes and bedrooms.)
If pedophilia, grooming, and child rape are now matters to take lightly as shibboleths of entrance
to circles of power, then those circles of power need to be napalmed.
"In the beginning there were the swamp, the hoe, and Jussi."
I think the crux of the problem is that most people find two different things equally plausible.
1) That the people who are talking about this (pizzagate) are lunatics.
or
2) That Podesta and the rest actually are involved in things like this.
Personally I think a nation that has reached this point, that it is totally believable that
our leaders and elites are a bunch of monsters well that's a real problem.
Another problem is that the UK article a poster above linked to is two years old. Has anyone
heard anything about that since? Expect to?
How many members of the media political class, that are dismissing this as fake news have enjoyed
"pizza" at Besta or at a similar place?
What if criminal deviancy rather than disqualifying a person, is not instead some weird prerequisite
for elite status? Don't have to worry about rock throwers if they're inside the same glass house.
Blackmail seems as good an explanation as any for things like John Roberts sudden change of
heart on the constitutionality of the Obama care mandate.
This is a very good summary; thank you for publishing it.
The speed with which the old media have declared the entire thing false, far sooner than they
possibly could have explored all the latest information and come to that conclusion, is astonishing.
In other cases of conspiracy theories they think are false, they are willing to stand back and
ridicule the theorists. Obama Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, Boston Bombing hoax, Sandy Hook . all certainly
called false and ridiculed, but that's all. I don't think I've ever seen them try to squelch an
entire line of discussion from the start like this before, even threatening lawsuits and prosecution.
There may be something to pizzagate but I'm very skeptical of accusations of widespread institutional
pedophilia. I initially fell for the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s; I learned my lesson.
I see that this case relies a lot on cryptic symbols. Reminds me of the people who see swastikas
and white supremacy runes wherever they look and try to make a case for a vast neo-Nazi underground.
But the author states that 470,000 children "disappear" each year in the US alone. Really? The
link goes to "reported missing" which is a whole different thing. I once reported one of my kids
missing; he turned up shortly afterwards at a friend's house. He hadn't even run away, just overstayed
and not informed us where he was. That sort of thing happens all the time, but genuine disappearances?
I don't know of a single case and I know plenty of people with kids. In some third world country
in a war, tens of thousands of missing kids might be believable, but even in most such countries
(Syria for example) 470,000 disappearances per year would be a stretch.
In the U.K., all the abuse took place by people in power. Catholic clergy over choirboys. Celebs
over their fans. Pakistanis targeted girls from broken homes. The wealthy and 'noble' preyed on
the lesser born.
The worst though are the politicians, who have maximum power. I'm not sure I believe the pizzagate
thing – the evidence is not conclusive (show me a victim or witness). But I certainly believe
it is possible.
The reliably excellent John Helmer provides an oblique reference to Pizzagate in the following
linked piece about Propornot and its marvellous 200 Putin Stoogesites:
200 Words
@utu "What 'relatively obscure charge'?" - Making payments in a manner hiding the detection
of payments. Payments were not illegal but he was doing it in amounts below the amounts that automatically
would require reporting. In my opinion he did nothing illegal. The crimes he allegedly committed
were beyond the statute of limitation and paying hush money is not illegal either.
I kinda thought that's what you were referring to, but wanted to make sure.
His real crime was something else.
He was a high school coach years ago and was raping underage boys in his charge. The cash he
was withdrawing was for payments to one of the boys to keep him quiet. If memory serves, another
one of his victims had committed suicide (not sure though). But the one Hastert was paying off
wanted to burn him.
In addition, Sibel Edwards, when she was working for the FBI and translating foreign language
intercepts, picked up some conversations by Turkish officials, who were bribing Hastert, and claimed
they "owned him". He reportedly got $500K, but not sure for what. FBI had courts put a gag order
on Sibel, so she could not reveal any more details. The story was buried: probably because too
many high ranking swine were involved.
Hastert pleaded guilty to a Mickey Mouse charge so that there would no public child-rape trial,
where the public might learn all the lurid details of what the filthy swine did to those underage
boys.
Hastert got away with destroying the lives of many boys.
Hopefully he will be savagely beaten and crippled in prison – but not killed – so he can suffer
for years.
Like a lot of people I have gone from completely ignoring this story, thinking it was Alex
Jones type fantasy to starting to wonder if there might not be some truth to it after all. So
far I haven't seen any definitive evidence that kids are actually being molested, or worse. And
because the accusations are so damning I would want to be very cautious about casually tossing
them around.
That being said, a lot of the stuff that's surfaced; the artwork, the cryptic messages, Spirit
cooking, the odd choices of entertainment for a family friendly pizza restaurant and the Instagram
pictures are just flat out creepy .
Even with a presumption of innocence I wouldn't allow anyone under the age of 18 anywhere near
the Podesta brothers, Alefantis and everyone else involved without adult supervision.
I'm glad Unz has decided to publish this. I'm interested to see if anything more will come
of it. It certainly warrants further investigation.
@DanC
Rotate the old logo for Besta Pizza 180 degrees. It is the pedophile BLogo symbol.
That's why when it got publicised, Besta's management immediately deleted the old one and converted
to a new, BLogo-free symbol on all their website and printed materials.
What is interesting to note in mainstream media "debunkings" of PizzaGate is that they focus
on the doubtful evidence, things that could be "interpreted either way" and they leave out the
glaringly obvious pedophilia links, like the Besta Pizza logo.
Just look at all the "debunking articles." Do any of them mention the old Besta logo? I haven't
seen any.
It seems to me this is the way to wean the public off the mainstream media. Hammer on the fact
that the MSM insists on leaving out the clear, obvious evidence and tries to imply that everything
is doubtful and open to interpretation. Then people will start to associate them with coverup
and BS. The MSM can't recover from that.
Actually the logo issue is a prominent part of this Washington Post article (and a tweet
by the fairly well-known Dave Weigel highlighted that part in particular):
100 Words
@Johnny Smoggins Like a lot of people I have gone from completely ignoring this story, thinking
it was Alex Jones type fantasy to starting to wonder if there might not be some truth to it after
all. So far I haven't seen any definitive evidence that kids are actually being molested, or worse.
And because the accusations are so damning I would want to be very cautious about casually tossing
them around.
That being said, a lot of the stuff that's surfaced; the artwork, the cryptic messages, Spirit
cooking, the odd choices of entertainment for a family friendly pizza restaurant and the Instagram
pictures are just flat out creepy .
Even with a presumption of innocence I wouldn't allow anyone under the age of 18 anywhere near
the Podesta brothers, Alefantis and everyone else involved without adult supervision.
I'm glad Unz has decided to publish this. I'm interested to see if anything more will come of
it. It certainly warrants further investigation.
pepperinmono
, December
7, 2016 at 3:48 am GMT \n
Podesta is a creepy fuck period.
How did such a dweeb get to be such a big person in our national conversation?
He is an obvious hack , but not a particular clever one. He just comes off so "are you fucking
kidding me?". Where do they get these dudes? James Carville. Paul Begala. Bill Burton. Robby Mook.
Even right has George Will, Buckley. Strange unnormal people.
I confess I don't get it. I can understand pizzagate as a brutal and nasty last minute campaign
tactic, but the election is over, drop it. A mighty tissue of "coincidences" woven together in
a manner that would make Glenn Beck envious. I guess I need to fashion a tin foil hat and then
re-read the article. I think it just discredits the source more than the target.
If someone is actually raping children, then where are the children? The kids related to the
socialite that she is bringing to a pool party? Come on, that is what plebes are for. How are
the children procured? Where do they live? There is necessarily logistics to this kind of activity,
and zero evidence of logistics, just some weird emails and weird art. Its like saying someone
is a coke head because they had a runny nose. tweet at early hours in the morning, and behave
very alpha.
500 Words
@Anonymous "Every aspect of British society seems to have ties to pedophilia, from Parliament,
to the elites, the City of London, the government, public schools, Oxbridge, the universities,
all the way down to Paki immigrant communities and even British soccer."
Why do pedos gain such power? Same reason why homos do? Since many of them don't have families
and since they resent the Normal World(from which they must hide their deviance or sickness),
do they have extra time/energy for gaining power? Are they fueled by resentment toward Normal
Society? It seems like homos had a kind of revenge streak, and it all came out with New Normal.
Homos really want to rub our faces in their feces. They want to force us to accept the New Normal
or be totally destroyed. They want to turn us into their bitches. They are into Bitch-Hunting.
Working in the shadows, homos and pedos seemed to gained considerable power. And since they
are associated with Vice Industry, they have the dirt on everyone else and can blackmail them.
Bill Clinton prolly never had sex with a minor, but surely homos and pedos have a lot of dirt
on him about his many affairs and orgies. And since they have many connections, they serve as
essential middlemen for those who seek power.
Also, there is a code of silence among the powerful. They watch out for one another. And homos
and pedos are both pushy and gushy. They are very demanding but also accommodating and supportive
of the powerful and ambitious. They go all out to serve the powerful and those on the up-and-up,
but they also demand a cut of the pie.
The ambitious care most about power and privilege than about right and wrong. If their power
depends on a coterie of people committed to them 24/7, they will look the other way even when
they know something is up. Also, there is the human factor. People who work together closely develop
an emotional bond. It's team politics, us vs them. And loyalty must be favored.
Since homos and pedos have more time on their hands and more energy(fueled by resentment), they
might be more available to the powerful or those who seek power.
Hollywood made the media the hero in the movie SPOTLIGHT. But the media seem eager to bury
this as fast as possible.
Why did it take so long for the Hastert and Sandusky cases to come to light?
Homos seem to be closely allied with pedos, and the trajectory of our culture is to normalize
pedophilia by sexualizing young girls and boys. If young ones are sexualized, it means they can
be objects of sexual desire. And then what?
And the scientific community is arguing pedophilia should be treated as a condition than a
crime. This may be legit as long as pedos didn't act on their impulses. But if they did, how can
it not be a crime?
Rape is 'natural' too given that sexual feelings are natural. But we can't treat rape itself
as a condition and not a crime.
Regrettably, though one may have grown old without ever feeling the wish to have sexual contact
with a pre-adolescent or of anyone of the same sex it hasn't been possible for a long time to
deny the prevalence of socially disapproved sex drives and behaviours. So one finds that the nice
young presenter on the antique show has been arrested for downloading and keeping pedophile images.
And so on But isn't the idea of a large network, and what is needed to keep it covered up, a
bit much to swallow? Nasty minds? Conspiracy theories?
Well I suppose not. Sex as a drive and the perverse varieties of expression that we know to
manifest themselves are enough to make one accept the pedophile reality. Then the network and
the cover up? The cover up, however difficult to make it reliable, is just a consequence of the
danger their behaviour exposes them to. And the network? Easy enough to explain once you are in
it – like knowing that you could attend mass in a number of aristocratic Elizabethan households.
But the detail of why and how it should grow from a very small group is obviously more complex.
I guess that there are organisers and facilitators who seek various rewards, some financial, some
in young flesh, some in the obtaining of blackmailing power.
It's the age difference and the power equation that matters. If a fifteen year old is sexting
a thirteen year old it's quite different than a grown man like Anthony Wiener. I couldn't blame
any father who administered a sound beating to an adult creep who was sexting a minor. What kind
of a society doesn't protect children?
"IMO this is yet another Jimmy Savile case: i.e. literally Satanic pedophilia on a vast
scale, with the active collusion of our political and media elites"
Savile case wasn't that at all – more like famous DJ/charity fundraiser with great PR taking
advantage of his status with teenage girls. How many of the post-death allegations are true, who
knows, but we know some definitely aren't true – we know because long-time blogger Anna Raccoon
was a resident of a small children's home where Savile was claimed to have abused girls. She has
a whole series of seven posts called "Past Lives and Present Misgivings" on the allegations.
More "active collusion" is likely in the cases of Cyril Smith and Greville Janner, two pretty
high-profile and connected MPs, who seem to have managed to go to their graves scot free.
Flynn's tweet regarding this story was perfectly reasonable.
The story has been stamped "bogus" without any kind of investigation.
No response to questions about the weird content of emails by Podesta and others.
Stonewalling.
Makes one think the shotgun blast at Comet might even have been a false flag!!
For those wondering about the authenticity of the FBI document, here is the wikileaks page
where it was revealed in 2007 and they say "Wikileaks has verified the document":
I remember watching an excellent Australian film years ago that covered this very topic. It
portrayed in a very realistic way the whole homo/ pedo underground in the upper rungs of society,
from posh public schools to university, where grooming of youngsters occurred, to Parliament and
Finance, where the powerful pederasts/homosexuals ruled. In this world, the shortest way to power
and riches for a young man was to seek out the protection and guidance of an older and powerful
homo/pederast lover. It was shot in Australia and in Australian settings and institutions, but
it's all so British you'd think the film makers really intended the story to reflect British society
and were using Australia as a legal cover.
Sorry, I can't remember the title of the movie or the director. It was quite disturbing to watch
but very interesting.
Perhaps Pat Hannagan or some other knowledgeable Australian reader can help.
Let's say there was no pedo-ring. I'm rather skeptical of it myself.
But just look at that pizzeria. What kind of freako place is that?
And why are some of the 'most powerful' people in DC such downright perverts and degenerates?
The fish rots from the head. Degenerates run government, institutions, and culture.
Government and judges push homo agenda. College push porn and 50 genders. Hollywood pushes
drugs and tattoos. Disney turns girls into whores.
And this isn't just a 'left' vs 'right' problem. A lot of Trump voters were ass-tattoo freaks.
The working class grew up on Jerry Springer, WWE, mentally deranged metal music, or Goth freakery.
And middle class kids grew up on the nerdy black magic of Harry Potter whose teacher is a happy
ass-man.
Whether it's elites and their Pervert Pizza or the underclass with their degeneracy, it's ugly
all around.
I'm not sold on the pedo-ring. Too much risk, though I think those 'elites' are a bunch of
pervs.
If anything, this pedo-issue takes our eyes off the ball.
The real issue should be that the governing elites of this nation in government, colleges,
cultural institutions, media and even military(look at those tranny freaks) are a bunch of decadents,
even degenerates. We are seeing the normalization of freakery and grossness.
The fact that it is considered NORMAL for Hillary to invite Lena Dunham to the DNC speaks for
itself. The fact that Newsweek celebrated Obama with a gay 'halo' speaks for itself. The fact
that churches hang 'homo flags' speaks for itself.
It is a sick nation.
A tolerant nation has room for decadence and even degeneracy. It belongs in the underground.
They always existed.
But now, this underground stuff is the bobo cultural fixation of the elites who consider themselves
'hip' and 'edgy'.
And they even introduce their kids to this stuff from a young age.
Indeed, even without overt pedophilia, introducing sexuality to kids at a very young age is a
kind of indirect pedophilia.
When homo-ness is promoted among kids, what is being done? Kids will ask 'what is homo stuff?'
And an honest answer will have to be, "some guys wanna stick pee pee into poo poo". But then,
the kids will have to be told THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, and if anything, WE SHOULD BLESS
THE HOMOS. But why? What is so great about pee pee in poo poo?
We really need Culturegate. The whole culture is a rotten scandal, and the fact that US globo-imperialism
spreads this filth around the world speaks volumes about how sick America has become. We don't
need real pedo-rings of 'pizzagate' to accuse the elites of filth and vileness. Their cultural
life is garbage.
Just look at this: 'mainstream' culture has no problem with it. If anything, it is promoted
as the New Norm.
As John Helmer points out, the new digital news business model doesn't provide any funds for
investigative journalism.
So who is going to pay for a serious journalist to do the legwork and paperwork and FOIA requests,
etc.?
Re "And why are some of the 'most powerful' people in DC such downright perverts and degenerates?
"
I thought you were going to say:
What are the most powerful people in DC doing hanging out at this creepy pizza parlor and doing
fundraising events there?
We all know where Hillary goes for "real" money: The Saudis, Goldman Sachs, billionaires' glitzy
summer compounds in the Hamptons, places like that-you know, where the money is.
So WTF is she doing in one of these pizza joints? Why would there be any real money there?
With creepy, tawdry "artwork" on the walls?
Something here does not pass the smell test.
I'm intrigued by the Anna Racoon stuff, but I found it completely incoherent. Could you explain
what these claims are, and why they should be taken seriously?
Re Sir Savile and Satanic child sex abuse, at least two victims gave entirely credible and
consistent accounts. Here's a mainstream source:
Agreed. Often one wonders why such outrageous decisions are made in politics that clearly contradict
the public good and one wonders, why? This topic goes a long way to explaining the why. I'm not
so sure if the investigating of it is the hard part or the broad exposure, but it needs to happen.
I am probably more tolerant of 'deviates' than most on here. Queers don't bother me much, though
I would recommend that they be more discreet and stop the promotion of their peccadilloes as normal.
When it comes to children, even teenagers, I am very strict about them not being able to give
consent and should be treated with respect, if not revered, by all adults with no exceptions.
There is enough smoke here for a thorough investigation to be demanded and carried out. I hope
nothing less ensues.
The fact that it is considered NORMAL for Hillary to invite Lena Dunham to the DNC speaks
for itself. The fact that Newsweek celebrated Obama with a gay 'halo' speaks for itself. The
fact that churches hang 'homo flags' speaks for itself.
It is a sick nation.
Yep. I don't have to look any further then this perv Alefantis. This is what you get when sodomy
is legal. Of course this craven bastard makes all kinds of snarky degenerate comments about children
on his instagram
Society has been desensitized to homosexuality- so they have moved on to the "prize".
You have hit it out of the park as usual, I enjoy and concur with your assesments.
I believe I saw the instagram account of Alefantis before it came down. The girl pictured in
several images seems to be the child of a family friend. I thought the taped to the table image
and the other pic with #chickenlover tag were at a minimum indicators of a dark humor or innuendo.
Who finds this sort of thing funny?
There were more pics of infants and a doll with creepy tags like #hoetard and suggestive comments,
again, indicating a level of casual comfort with making implied references to pedophilia. ..wink
wink.
Gross, at a minimum. But evidence of a ring? I don't understand why Alefantis doesn't just
acknowledge that there is an "appearance" of sick humor.
Regarding the use of supposedly known pedo symbols- I'm skeptical. These are shapes and motifs
we see everywhere. It could be that the pedo symbol inventors purposely chose designs that would
easily coincide with innocent use so as to hide in plain sight. Or hmm ?
Podesta is definitely using code in his emails but my read was that he's talking about drugs
and partying. Didn't we all use "pizza" at one time or another as a reference to party favors
back in the day?
The Podestas have bad taste in art. Not a crime, just a general indicator of regular degenerately
"hip" tastes so as to impress the cool kids?
And yet no one clears the air. And this is disturbing. I have yet to read one Wapo or nyt article
denouncing the "witch hunt" but acknowledging that, yes, it looks bad. Because it really does.
Incidentally, if they haven't been faked, one of Alefantis' instagram commenters is the maker
of child sized coffin coffee tables. Nice.
"What if criminal deviancy rather than disqualifying a person, is not instead some weird prerequisite
for elite status? Don't have to worry about rock throwers if they're inside the same glass house.Blackmail
seems as good an explanation as any for things like John Roberts sudden change of heart on the
constitutionality of the Obama care mandate."
This fits Occam's Razor. I would go so far as to say that pedophilia blackmail appears to have
been a method of political control since the days of the British Empire. Much like gang membership,
participation is required for entrance into the inner circles of political power, then used as
blackmail to enforce conformity and secrecy.
Interestingly, there is a recent episode of "The Black Mirror," a Netflix show, that addresses
this very psychology.
There is a rather informative article in the WaPo about Pizzagate and its potential
(mass-)psychological origins. It actually indirectly and temporarily "blames" over-zealous feminists
with being the originators of the this moral panic. Quite interesting, but of course the article/author
reverts back to Trump-bashing, etc. in the end.
What the Pizzagate conspiracy theory borrows from a bogus satanic sex panic of the 1980s
Second, in both cases, social movements were involved in the weaponization of suspicion,
although the political center of gravity has shifted from one episode to the next. In the
late 1970s, social workers and feminist activists had focused on combating child sexual abuse;
they sometimes developed extremely broad definitions of abuse or floated exaggerated estimates
of its occurrence in this quest. Such efforts have left deep cultural residues, and these include
the acceptance of exaggerated claims about the number of child trafficking victims, and the
incidence and forms of organized child sexual abuse. Pizzagate relies on these inflated
fears to seem plausible, and it similarly relies on a viewpoint marked by extreme suspicion
(of the media, Washington "elites," politicians and the Clinton camp specifically) to decode
ordinary events and statements into extraordinary claims.
A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil
threatens the well-being of society.[1][2] A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as
"the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs
and the mass media."[3] –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
We know all about "Hysteria", but why did the artist use a decapitated male if not to
possibly conflate this in the viewers mind with the atrocities of Dalmer?
What about the other degenerate art, such as the child bondage spankees posing in the easy-
to -clean tiled torture chambers?
Some of us will never accept homosexuality as an "alternative" lifestyle.
The fact that Alefantis is a homo; who by dint of his perverse sexuality- has achieved some
level of notoriety prior to pizzagate- is certainly part of the underlying rancor towards him.
Incredibly generous of you to quote WaPo as a credible source. I would have done the same at
one time but that was ages ago.
BB753 asks why haven't the Posdestas sued? I would ask why haven't they at the very least stepped
forward to offer a simple explanation for what most agree is code in the emails?
I would suggest a possibility that blowing the lid off on this exposes exactly how certain
"lobby" groups maintain control of the wheelhouse of the US ship of state, and have consistently
steered it into troubled waters against the national interest.
Wiz, a simple typo that my computer ran with (very observant of you).
Pizzagate is not "fake news" at all. It needs to be investigated.
The MSM says it does not disseminate "fake news". However, the MSM will often simply not cover
events that ARE real news.
Thus, the MSM is disseminating the opposite of "fake news", namely NO NEWS. The MSM keeps people
in the dark because there things that it does not want people to know about. For example, the
MSM will often not cover stories about how the LGBTQ movement is brainwashing kids in even the
lowest grade in public elementary schools. That's because the MSM does not want people to become
upset at the penetration (no pun intended) of the LGBTQ agenda.
In reality, there is relatively little "fake news" out there. Most alternative websites that
people visit, such as Unz, simply provide a different perspective on issues that the MSM won't
cover at all, or cover in a cursory manner.
Classic disinfo technique, to seed the truth with a few lies that are provably false so that
then the whole thing can be claimed to be false and written off.
I don't know about the Podestas but as others here have rightly stated, there's enough smoke
for a thorough, open investigation.
Coincidently, the anti-Russian rhetoric has escalated to an even more absurd degree alongside
the Pizzagate news. I wonder if the result will be even less people believing the blatant lies
of mass media or if people will just demonstrate that there are no limits to gullibility.
I saw a headline on CNN.com claiming Russia was attempting to smear people by 'planting' child
pornography on their computers.
I didn't bother reading it, as CNN is a Gawker level news source these days, but it seems like
they may attempt to blame this stuff on Russia – along with everything else.
Here's another sex scandal (and a certifiably real one) involving a prominent Canadian who
turned out to be a pedaphile. There's a lot in this story that's revealing and fascinating.
Such a disturbing story. But instructive. In particular the information, or perhaps it is a
speculation, that the pedophiliac sexual drive develops early on. This drive must be incredibly
strong-stronger than what would be considered normal sexual desire? I don't know. But I have read
that it is so strong that pedophiles make major life choices in terms of finding a way to get
access to children to use sexually. Such as marrying: so they can father their own children and
have them handy for abuse. Or entering a profession, such as the priesthood, or pediatrics, or
education, etc. so that they have access to children. Or becoming sports coaches, where they spend
a lot of time in locker rooms and also have blandishments to offer young boys such as sports career
advances. Etc.
I think this point-the power of the drive-should be taken into account when people such as
some commenters on this thread say: "These people [such as Podesta} are too intelligent to risk
their careers blah blah." If the pedophilia drive is as strong as, say, a heroin addiction, then
the addiction is in the driver's seat, not "intelligence." The more you feed an addiction, the
stronger it gets, and the more stimulation it takes to get the charge.
As for the sprinkling of a few lies in with a story that is targeted for debunking: In a normal
police investigation the police solicit leads from the public. (It is true that in this case there
is not an obvious victim, so that must also be taken into account; but this was also the situation
with the Ben Levin [Toronto] case; nevertheless what he did was criminal and dangerous.) They
examine the leads and follow them up. This is detectives' job.
Often an obscure lead does lead to further useful information needed to build a hypothesis
of the motive-means-opportunity for the crime and widen the scope of an investigation. Every American
with a TV set has seen hundred of such police procedurals showing how crimes have been solved,
often cold cases. Bona fide detectives who get leads from the public don't immediately start to
smear the source of leads as looney-tunes. In this case the public, in the face of apparent inaction
by law enforcement to follow up on this case, is responding by posting ideas and hypotheses and
possible leads.
An honest law enforcement agency would be conducting an aggressive investigation and checking
out any useful info and ideas that members of the public come up with, whether online or off.
Honest news outlets should either be calling for a thorough investigation, or staying mum if they
have been informed that an investigation is ongoing. The fact that the MSM, absent any sign of
an investigation, are blaring out the "nothing here; move on; blogger are rabid fools" message
is in itself suspicious and suggests that someone is being protected. The MSM have put out just
enough info to warn the possible wrongdoers to get their act together, change their signage, and
run for cover.
The fact that the MSM, absent any sign of an investigation, are blaring out the "nothing
here; move on; blogger are rabid fools" message is in itself suspicious and suggests that someone
is being protected. The MSM have put out just enough info to warn the possible wrongdoers to
get their act together, change their signage, and run for cover.
My feeling exactly. Too much volume, no doubts, too orchestrated and nothing being investigated,
in fact just like WMD, and 9/11.
I believe that Pizzagate is a Trojan Horse being pushed into Alt-Right internet circles by
Hillary/Soros' former CTR trolls in order to help the Democrats and the MSM continue to flog the
"fake news" narrative. The idea behind it is to enable them to say, "Look, you see what kind of
crazy conspiracies those Alt-Righters consume and repeat amongst themselves? This is the kind
of fake news believing nutjobs we're up against." If you think back upon the history of the meme
(I hate that word, but I have no other to use in its place), you'll find that its original and
most vocal proponents were exhibiting clear trolling behavior. Given their flaky commenting histories,
their pretended expertise on this then-obscure topic, their ostentatious expressions of optimism
that this breaking news would ensure a Trump victory (itself a rather obsequious and scarcely
believable attempt to paint themselves as one of our number), and their single-minded determination
to talk about (and to get us talking about) nothing else, one can only suspect the presence of
some sort of agenda behind their sudden exuberance over Pizzagate.
I believe we are up against a new and rather sophisticated sort of Concern Troll here-a veritable
Stuxnet of concern trolling. A perfect example here at the Unz Review is the poster "anonguy".
Look at his commenting history. Look at the sudden acceleration of his offerings as Election Day
neared. And then look at his militant megaphoning of the Pizzagate narrative all over Sailer's
blog in the days immediately preceding the election. Furthermore, pay attention to his unusual
style, i.e. how he structures his comments as detached musings about the goings-on in the
"infosphere" (his word), how he jejunely assures us the "the narrative is forming" (yes, he actually
said that, and at a time when there was no narrative to speak of), and his links to literally
fake news sites (the Denver Guardian? Give me a break). Now tell me that this is the behavior
of someone who actually has the health of the body politic as his primary objective.
Now, after having sifted all that, do try to remember that the larger general public really
doesn't know or care anything at all about Pizzagate, and that the leaked Podesta emails (all
37,000 of them, or whatever the final tally was) influenced the vote of precisely no one who did
not have the time or inclination to read through them all, which is practically every one of us.
Remember that the only people talking about this in the first place are the Alt-Right bloggers
and their followers, the very venues of "fake news" whom the Left is attempting to discredit and
sully. Remember that the Clintons and Soros specialize in public deception and that they employ
all sorts of people for that very purpose. Now consider who is rendered vulnerable by all of this.
It isn't going to be the Clintons or Podesta. If Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted for trafficking
in state secrets from her private server-a crime for which she should have been executed- then
Podesta is not going to be investigated for this. But you all, on the other hand, have been tainted
with it. You have been successfully associated in the public mind with a "conspiracy theory,"
with the "fake news."
My conclusion: Pizzagate is a "thought worm" designed to infect, distract, and destroy the
Alt-Right, and most of you have been infected with it. This is not to say that there is no pedophilia
going on in Podesta's circle. There may be or there may not be, I really don't know. The point
is that there isn't anything you can do about it. The accusations will be turned against
the accusers instead-classic Clinton behavior. It would be better not to take the bait anymore.
Recent history has demonstrated over and over again that the public is not going to rise up with
one voice and clamor for the punishment even of credibly accused child molesters unless there
is something more to be gained from doing so, and in this case there clearly isn't. What this
says about the spiritual state of the modern West or the psychology of fallen mankind are subjects
I will leave for another discussion. For now it is simply a fact of life with which we have to
account. The only way to beat these people is the Chicago Way: hit them harder than they hit you.
We dealt them a stunning blow by electing Donald Trump, but now we are in danger of losing our
advantage by immersing ourselves in a mire of toothless recriminations, and this is exactly what
they want. Let's not fall for this again; let us rather rekindle the spirit that got us this far,
and take these vile people down once and for all.
The Washington Post found the funds to assign 27 investigative reporters for over a year to
dig dirt on Trump, and bragged about it. Judging by what they came up with, it wasn't too fruitful.
First you say the entire pizzagate meme is fake and it's fakery will undo the alt-right. Then
you say that you can't do anything about pedophilia anyway, pizzagate or otherwise.
Which is it? Is the story fake and thereby discrediting to those who support it, or is it real
but pointless to cover because you can't do anything about it?
Then you suggest we do this "the Chicago way" which is hitting harder than them whatever that
means. If you are not going to open investigations against these people, then what does "hitting
harder" entail?
There is no way that Soros or anyone else is going to construct an elaborate criminal conspiracy
out of whole cloth and tag one of his own loyal operatives.
I agree.
Intelligent's comment looks to me like an elaborate misdirection.
All such blah blah gets no one any closer to an answer as to what is behind the coded language
in the Wikileaks emails.
It is a classic example of throwing up a convolution of dust to obscure the smoking emails.
Stick to the evidence.
Ignore irrelevant baroque musings.
You make some good points but have missed the real issue entirely. Whilst I and many others
here DO care about pedos and want them locked away from society, what makes this matter much more
important is that it involves many top level power brokers in politics.
Pedophilia is more of a compulsion rather than addiction, why matters less than the fact that
recidivism is the norm and society deserves protection both from the crime itself and from the
crimes of blackmail that can result from knowledge of it..
Blackmail is a very powerful tool in the work of pure evil and is the reason why even Marines
and Embassy guards have restrictions on who they may or may not consort with whilst on active
foreign postings. I would estimate that there is no greater threat of exposure than one of sexually
exploiting children. Even hardened criminals have contempt for such perverts who are usually granted
special protection when incarcerated.
I would venture the suggestion that people with a compulsion towards sexual contact with children
are identified early in their careers and consequently put forward for rapid progress within government
institutions by those working behind the scene to exercise control over others with decision making
capacity in the highest levels of government.
This is not a matter to be swept away if the swamp is to be drained, rather, this may well
be where the "plughole" to the swamp itself is to be uncovered. It will require a special investigation
team but not one like the Warren Commission or 9/11 "Investigation", a real investigation. Americans
should settle for nothing less and it is incumbent of them to demand it.
This is not a matter to be swept away if the swamp is to be drained, rather, this may well
be where the "plughole" to the swamp itself is to be uncovered.
I'm willing to believe something pretty sordid is required to keep the bung hole as tightly
plugged as it is and I can't imagine anything else creating a more tightly woven, impenetrable
web of mutual blackmail. Imagine what they have on each other, and imagine what foreign intelligence
services could do with same if they got hold of it. Come to think of it, maybe they have
America must get to the bung, dislodge it and deal with the stench that will cover the country
for a generation. Until then, America can't hope to be great again.
This makes a lot of sense.
That string pullers are on the lookout for rising political stars who can be compromised along
the way.
Hmmmmm . . .
Seems like a lot of political families have dynastic aspirations. That would mean that such offspring
might be natural targets for monitoring for any "quirks."
Craig Spence's call boy business in Washington clearly involved high civilian and military
officials. And Spence was able to take friends on midnight tours of the White House.
Spence's house was provided by the Japanese ruling party. The house they provided him had at
least one bedroom wired for audio and video. I'm sure the Japanese didn't know that.
The Washington Times covered it for two or three weeks and it was never mentioned again.
Kids from Boys Town in Nebraska were allegedly used.
Unpack that and hope your hair doesn't turn white.
"Nobody is suggesting a rush to judgement here but clearly a prompt and thorough investigation
is called for especially given the supporting evidence, as other commenters have pointed out."
Really.
If the putative "circumstantial evidence" that Russia-no! Putin himself!!-interfered in the American
election suffices to launch the CIA on a nutty investigation whose purpose is, obviously, to "prove"
that this is the case to the satisfaction of enough electors for them to become "faithless," then
I think the Pizzagate emails plus "circumstantial" Pizzagate evidence are by comparison much more
compelling and really scream for an investigation. In the Pizzagate case the investigating agency
would presumably be the FBI. Which *might* be grounds to expect a genuine investigation.
No reasonable person would think that the emails really are about Podesta's playing dominos
and having cheese for dinner. quite apart from the fact that cheese is usually mixed in with pasta!!
Come on. I bet Podesta doesn't know how to play the game of dominos. What are these people really
emailing about?
For U.S. readers to gauge whether something like this COULD be happening in an advanced country,
look to other countries where such incidents ARE known to have happened.
In Belgium, the Marc DUTROUX scandal led to political consequences and appears to be ongoing.
In the UK, the claims against Ted Heath and Cyril Smith (see picture of both in article linked
below) are broadly seen as having at least some factual basis, and were reported in a number of
newspapers including the Independent, the Guardian and the Daily Mail (see link below). Other
names were rumored about.
There were also years of investigations and cover-ups involving various orphanages such as
KINCORA (in Northern Ireland) and HAUTE GARENNE (on the Isle of Jersey). Both were conveniently
located in somewhat remote locations outside the direct reach of English law.
There were also extensive rumors regarding several locations in London. Investigations were
accompanied by the usual fortuitous deaths of potential witnesses, mysterious disappearance of
documents, etc.
To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series
(part 1, part 2) has not been to defend "Pizzagate" as such. My goal has been to defend the
people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people
who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all-for a specific reason, which
I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.
Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the world is divided
between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of "fake news" and level-headed people who follow
trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has
been to show that-whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself-this framing of the
issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. [...]
And if the media is telling you only about the most bizarre, reaching accusations without
telling you any of the more interesting points that have been uncovered (which it is), it is
not doing its proper job."
If in fact making all the "elite" blackmailable is the object of the exercise and at the same
time being blackmailable is the requisite entry ticket to the elite, then not all the people taking
part in all this sinister deviancy need be actual pedophiles! Some of them could be "merely" psychopaths
furthering their careers. (Not that that makes them any better.)
If this story is what it appears to be – the tip of a very nasty and very large iceberg, then
it could be the mechanism by which the "Deep State" keeps its control of the US government. That
would make getting an investigation by official investigators going, very difficlt indeed.
If in fact making all the "elite" blackmailable is the object of the exercise and at the
same time being blackmailable is the requisite entry ticket to the elite, then not all the
people taking part in all this sinister deviancy need be actual pedophiles! Some of them could
be "merely" psychopaths furthering their careers.
Well, I don't really have anything to contribute to the "Pizzagate" discussion myself, except
to say that some of the supposed evidence plus the behavior of the media makes me very, *very*
suspicious.
However, here's a somewhat related paragraph from one of the articles I published a year or
two ago:
An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut
their strings, much like Putin soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.
One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who are so deeply compromised that they
can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within their
pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence.
I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best career move for an ambitious
young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the
hard evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring
his rapid political rise.
This is ALL about the child trafficing that the Clinton-Bush Foundation was doing in Haiti.
It is the weakpoint in a global child trafficing network and it is why the Clinton-Bush Foundation
has taken down their website and are attempting to cover up any traces of it as we speak. Trump
knows.
Anyone who believes that it is ludicrous to think that pizzerias could be used for such nefarious
operations, I 'd like to point out to you the case of "The French Connection" which later became
known as "The Pizza Connection" in which a huge global network of pizzerias were being used to
distribute drugs in the 1980′s.
Anyone who believes that the pedophile code is purely circumstantial needs to take a look at
the Katy Perry video "This Is How We Do" which appears to be an homage to Comet Pizza. It is absolutely
rife with the code words from the Podesta emails revealed by Pizzagate. They prance around with
convicted sex offender, who plea bargained out of a child porn charge, Pee-Wee Herman(
http://people.com/celebrity/pee-wee-actor-settles-kiddie-porn-case/ ) singing about "this
is how they do" and "it's no big deal".
Here is a video "Kids" by the group MGMT. The quote at the beginning of the video is from the
quintessential Satanist Nietzsche("Free spirits", by contrast to the philosophers of the past,
are "investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth
and stomach for the most indigestible"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil
). The video shows them bragging about how prevalent they are through our community. The "do
as thou wilt" bastards are laughing at us about how they control positions of authority like policemen(3:36
of video) and how childrens TV programs are filled with their garbage of wolves in sheeps clothing(4:24
of video). And of course the Pizza and Hot Dog symbology throughout the end which culminates with
them eating the child. This trash has 77 million views on Youtube.
Here is the video "Criminal" by Fiona Apple. It is all about placing the blame on the victim,
by saying that the victim enticed the pedo scum, instead of the perpetrator. This homage to Child
Porn makes great pains to highlight Pizza(:21 and :38 of the video) and tiled kill rooms with
easy clean-up(:45 of the video and blood stains on carpet at :48 and :54).
The lyrics from "In Bloom":
Sell the kids for food. Weather changes moods. Spring is here again. Reproductive Glands. We
can have some more. Nature is a whore. Bruises on the fruit. Tender age in bloom . But he don't
know what it means when I say "Yummmmmm"
It should be noted that there are two versions of this song. The original one has the Yummmmm
heard at the end at 4:15 in this version.
Some potential victims of James Alefantis have been identified and one gave an anonymous testimony.
What James Alefantis allegedly did here is not illegal, but speaks volumes about his character,
in my opinion, if the story indeed is true:
[...]
It turns out that Carole's son, who is +/-18 at this time, is also working at the restaurant.
I think his name is Dylan/Dillon. He grew up without a father and turned to James Alefantis
often for advice.
One night Carole walked into the comet pizza kitchen, and saw James Alefantis fucking her son
in the kitchen. She was furious because she immediately knew how completely James had taken
advantage of her son. She quit immediately and denounced James viciously in private, unwilling
to do so publicly for professional reasons.
The story checks out, so far: Carole Greenwood is a single mom and has a son named Dylan,
who was 13 years old/young in 2003. [...] [–] daj 16 points (+16|-0) 11 hours ago (edited 10
hours ago)
Disclaimer : I have absolutely no idea if this person is authentic, but since many
Pizzagate critics argue that the scandal has not a leg to stand on, because no victims
have come forward so far, I believe this testimony is important to share.
[...]
This is how he answered one of the questions on a voat comment thread. He seems to know/be
aware of Dylan Greenwood
[...]
Here is one of the email exchanges between he and James Alefantis, that he did not delete:
http://archive.is/8423t
[...]
After a little while when it was nearing the final exams, I was stressed out, exhausted and
let my guard down and went out for some drinks with James a few times after work to get stuff
off my chest. James would drug me up and then take advantage of me. When I threatened to go
to the police he implied that he would harm me physically and said he would sue me. He had
so many friends around DC that I believed him, I really was afraid, and just kept it all bottled
up. I ended up getting PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, from what were effectively rapes,
and later I began to realize that I likely had Stockholm Syndrome. I eventually quit the job,
but James would send me lewd photos and texts for another 2 or three years at the rate of once
about every 2 to 3 months, I think 6 months was the longest in that period. I had to kick him
out of the place I worked when he came in every other month or so for about a year. Let this
be a lesson: do not trust sociopaths and pathological liars.
Note: I have personally verified this person's identity and backstory. I obviously cannot
verify his accusations. He wishes to remain anonymous.
By now, most people are at least vaguely familiar with the so-called "fake news" story known
as Pizzagate. For those that aren't, the brief version is that self described "internet investigators"
caught wind of some strange wording in the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks, and went
down the largest internet rabbit hole in recent history.
The story was quickly written off as mass hysteria, a conspiracy theory, and fake news by
nearly all of mainstream media, and censored from the internet forum site Reddit. The theory,
which has a plethora of circumstantial evidence, lacked one key factor: a victim. [...]
The anonymous nature of internet forums leads to skeptics demanding proof of any seemingly
outrageous claim. The publication of these emails adds credibility to his story.
In 2006, the DHS's Department of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ran an
internationally cooperative investigation
into the purchase of subscriptions of child
pornography online. Code-named Project Flicker, the investigation uncovered the identities of
30,000 child porn subscribers in 132 different nations. Some 250 of these identities belonged to
civilian and military employees of the U.S. Defense Department, who gave their real names and
purchased the porn with government .mil email addresses-some with the highest security clearances
available. In response, the Pentagon's Department of Criminal Investigative Services (DCIS)
cross-referenced ICE's list with current employment roles and began a series of prosecutions.
A
DCIS report
from July 2010 shows that 30 of these individuals were investigated, despite
uncovering a new total of
264 Defense employees
and contractors who had purchased child pornography online. 13 had Top
Secret security clearance. 8 had NATO Secret security clearance. 42 had Secret security
clearance. 4 had Interim Secret security clearance. A total of 76 individuals had Secret security
clearance or higher.
Yet, the investigations were halted entirely after only some 50 total names were investigated
at all, and
just 10 were prosecuted
.
A full 212
of the individuals on ICE's list were never even given the most cursory
investigation at all. (Note: The number 5200 keeps popping up in sources covering this-for
instance,
see here
-and I'm not sure what that number is for: American subscribers? Pentagon email
addresses that weren't confirmed to have actually been used by Pentagon employees, but still may
have been? I'll leave it to anyone interested enough to pursue these individual leads to see if
they can figure that out and get back to us.)
In 2011, the story resurfaced when
Anderson Cooper covered it
with (again) Senator Chuck Grassley on CNN. After this, the story
appears to have sunk straight back down into the memory hole yet again. Neither Anderson Cooper
nor CNN appear to have given a follow–up in the five years since the story of the failed
investigation first aired-why not? And why wasn't the first airing enough to lead to mass outrage
and calls for action anyway? See
here
for another summary of the squashed investigation from 2014.
Well I would certainly like him to stay, but for some reason
he's decided to start making things really hard for himself.
Having remained silent on Obama, the guy most responsible for
sending him into exile, Snowden has chosen this moment of all
moments to make good with the very Lügenpresse that once smeared
him as a Russian chekist and support the Soros-funded #WomensMarch
against Trump.
Russia provided asylum on the condition that he refrain from excessive political activism
against the US, and this was under Obama. Why would this policy
change under Trump of all people? There are several hypotheses:
(1) Attacking Trump is the cool thing to do now, and doing so might give Snowden a chance
of claiming asylum in a European state. It is
clear that Snowden has always felt unease
about his Russia asylum and has ceaselessly –
and all things considered, rather rudely –
been trying to exchange it for asylum in some
European or Latin American state.
(2) Snowden has good reason to believe that he will be part of an eventual pro
quid pro deal with Trump, so anything he does now is irrelevant anyway. So he
might as well give vent to his true feelings. I certainly don't blame him for
this. He has no reason to like Trump personally, who
has implied
he would like to see Snowden executed. More importantly, neither
Putin nor Trump – authoritarian personalities with no time for "social justice"
and who view the surveillance apparatus as a useful tool of the state – sync in
the least with his liberal cypherpunk ideals.
And Snowden is an idealist above all else. And that is to his credit.
But unfortunately, the people who run Russia and the US (from both aisles) are
not idealists, but hard-nosed realists. Getting Snowden back would be a diplomatic
coup for Trump. And I'm sorry, Eddie, but much as Russians might like you – not,
of course, for your principled idealism, but for dragging Obama through the dirt –
but a deal that would guarantee the safety and security of their compatriots in
the Donbass are worth more than one person.
That said, there's one major disadvantage to Russia of extraditing Snowden:
Whereas it previously had a good record of looking out for defectors – even the
Yeltsin regime never extradited Western spies for the Soviet Union – future
defectors would think twice about going to Russia if they believe they would be
used as a bargaining chip whenever the political winds change.
As such, perhaps it would be best for everyone involved, including Snowden
himself, to attempt to strike a deal in which he goes back to the US of his "own
volition," but Trump gets to show off his magnanimity by pardoning him soon after
and stumping the more principled of his liberal critics, the ones who are
genuinely committed to civil rights instead of thinking whatever Soros and the CIA
tell them to.
The alternative would be Snowden becoming a cause celebre to the globalists,
with their previous smearing of him as a Russian spy and (bipartisan) calls for
his imprisonment and even execution being quietly swept under the carpet.
Regardless of your own position on whether Snowden is a traitor or not, that is
certainly not a scenario we would want.
← Dugin, Putin's
39th Brain
Category:
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Recently from author
[Attacking Trump is the cool thing to do now, and doing so might give
Snowden a chance of claiming asylum in a European state.]
Pity Euros are all so cowardly that they wouldn't give him refuge even to
spite Trump. I suppose he might have some chance of avoiding extradition in
France as a cinema personality, or in Britain as an autist.
He would surely have to do five years of twenty in gaol, meaning a gamble
that Trump would still be there to pardon him. He is probably having the time
of his life in Russia, like Lee Harvey Oswald did.
Trump does not want Snowden back; Snowden is irrelevant and would only be a
distraction at this point.
The situation would be "lose-lose" in a different sense.
If Trump has Snowden prosecuted, he will needlessly anger many good
Americans (and I don't mean the whiny special snowflakes, although many of
those would be angered. but right-wing conservative constitutionalists opposed
to the police state who view Snowden as a hero).
If Trump does not prosecute, it would look
extremely bad
that a
government employee sworn to secrecy does not do hard time. A very bad
precedent considering the United States has 100,000 employees in its
intelligence agencies.
Thus , Trump probably prefers that Snowden stay where he is.
As ever, you fail to mention that Snowden might be a deep state agent, not a
true leaker. This might be why Russia only gave him "temporary asylum."
His Wikileaks appeared via the Guardian, Der Spiegel, NYT, WAPO and other MSM
outlets. Other outlets included Zionist pornographer, Glenn Greenwald.
A genuine leaker would keep away from such outlets.
Was I the only one who noticed that RT's coverage of the inauguration was
snarky? Pretty down to the left as I saw it. So what game is Putin playing
here?
200 Words
NEW!
@spandrell
Was I the only one who noticed that RT's coverage of the inauguration
was... snarky? Pretty down to the left as I saw it. So what game is Putin
playing here?
The only game here is that you are buying into the meme that Putin controls
everything in Russia.
The more banal reality is that RT is disproportionately staffed by leftists.
I mean, of its Anglo employees, people who to the extent they had a strong
ideology was one that was in strong opposition to the dominant Western
narrative at that time (Bush neoconism, Obama surveillance state), who exactly
do you think was being selected for during 2005-2014?
And the Anglo office is ideologically diverse relative to the German one,
which as I have heard is basically a branch of Die Linke.
On the other hand, its worth bearing in mind that the "Alt Right" only
became big allies of Russia c.2015 and to be quite frank it is not even very
clear that they will be reliable ones. There are both Russophiles there
(Spencer, Anglin, etc) but no shortage of Russophobes either (Johnson, Colin
Liddell, the really old school Nazis, etc) and its not clear who will win out,
especially if it were to get stronger and no longer need Russia as a foil to
the forces of Poz. "You Have Outlived Your Usefulness," etc.
I find the characterisations of Snowden as a cypherpunk and an idealist
rather surprising. No cypherpunk whom I know would work for the NSA in the
first place, and wouldn't someone who underwent a conversion to cypherpunkery
while working at the NSA simply dump the information publicly rather than give
it to curators? As for idealism, it seems to me that Snowden has argued rather
for principled realism with respect to the balance of personal privacy and
state security. Many serious people who have worked for the NSA have argued
that mass surveillance is an enormous drain on resources and that if
surveillance were targeted and regulated, there would be both more privacy and
more state security. But maybe they are wrong and there will always be a
ruthless arms race between those who want privacy and those who want authority.
In that sense perhaps Snowden's position is idealistic, but it is a rather
moderate kind of idealism.
@Chris Brav
I find the characterisations of Snowden as a cypherpunk and an idealist
rather surprising. No cypherpunk whom I know would work for the NSA in
the first place, and wouldn't someone who underwent a conversion to
cypherpunkery while working at the NSA simply dump the information
publicly rather than give it to curators? As for idealism, it seems to me
that Snowden has argued rather for principled realism with respect to the
balance of personal privacy and state security. Many serious people who
have worked for the NSA have argued that mass surveillance is an enormous
drain on resources and that if surveillance were targeted and regulated,
there would be both more privacy and more state security. But maybe they
are wrong and there will always be a ruthless arms race between those who
want privacy and those who want authority. In that sense perhaps
Snowden's position is idealistic, but it is a rather moderate kind of
idealism.
I agree.
It's hard for me to see Snowden as a simple-hearted fellow after taking
cursory look on the facts available about him, let alone a more detailed one
like this:
100 Words
NEW!
@Chris Brav
I find the characterisations of Snowden as a cypherpunk and an idealist
rather surprising. No cypherpunk whom I know would work for the NSA in
the first place, and wouldn't someone who underwent a conversion to
cypherpunkery while working at the NSA simply dump the information
publicly rather than give it to curators? As for idealism, it seems to me
that Snowden has argued rather for principled realism with respect to the
balance of personal privacy and state security. Many serious people who
have worked for the NSA have argued that mass surveillance is an enormous
drain on resources and that if surveillance were targeted and regulated,
there would be both more privacy and more state security. But maybe they
are wrong and there will always be a ruthless arms race between those who
want privacy and those who want authority. In that sense perhaps
Snowden's position is idealistic, but it is a rather moderate kind of
idealism.
Well you're right, to some extent, Snowden is far far less advanced on the
cypherpunk spectrum than, say, Assange/Wikileaks.
I think it's pretty clear that at the outset Snowden was a 'Murica patriot.
He then got disillusioned, and instead of going up the chain of command (what a
fully conventional person would have done), or even leaking to the NYT, he
instead leaked to people very strongly associated with Wikileaks (Greenwald,
Poitras), whose antagonistic relationship with the US elites was already well
established.
In that sense perhaps Snowden's position is idealistic, but it is a
rather moderate kind of idealism.
It's hard for me to see Snowden as a simple-hearted fellow after taking
cursory look on the facts available about him, let alone a more detailed
one like this:
While questioning Snowden's story is a perfectly reasonable thing to do
(some of it is indeed questionable), I'm rather wary of the kinds of
speculations that are made in the above links, since I can imagine plenty of
reasons that Snowden might not be completely straightforward about his work
with the CIA
But I meant that on the hypothesis that whatever he has said in public about
mass surveillance has been said in good faith, then it seems that he is trying
to occupy some middle ground (or to sit on the fence, depending where you are
coming from).
From amazon review of his book
In the Jaws of the Dragon "Anyone who has read "The World is Flat" should also read "In The
Jaws Of The Dragon" to understand both sides of the issues involved in offshoring. Eamon Fingleton clearly
defines the differences between the economic systems in play in China and Japan and the United States
and how those differences have damaged the United States economy. The naive position taken by both the
Republicans and the Democrats that offshoring is good for America is shown to be wrong because of a
fundamental lack of knowledge about who we are dealing with. Every member of Congress and the executive
branch should read this book before ratifying any more trade agreements. The old saying of the marketplace
applies: Take advantage of me once, shame on you. Take advantage of me twice, shame on me."
Notable quotes:
"... Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed their views to be shaped largely by the American press. ..."
"... That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003. ..."
"... Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism. ..."
"... In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. ..."
"... As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than the press makes out. ..."
"... So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability. ..."
"... In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." ..."
"... other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes from fed-up middle Americans. ..."
"... In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital evidence in the Kovaleski affair. ..."
Battlefield communications in World War I sometimes left something to be desired. Hence a famous
British anecdote of a garbled word-of-mouth message. As transmitted, the message ran, "Send reinforcements,
we are going to advance." Superior officers at the other end, however, were puzzled to be told: "Send
three and four-pence [three shillings and four-pence], we are going to a dance!"
Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for
Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed
their views to be shaped largely by the American press.
That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and
reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies
even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's
almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003.
Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are
viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that
he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone
remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades
in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter
Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism.
Now as Trump embarks on office, his true attitudes are becoming obvious – and they hardly lean
towards neo-Nazism.
In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's
husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken
partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's
highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. Trump even wants to move the American embassy
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This position is a favourite of the most ardently pro-Israel
section of the American Jewish community but is otherwise disavowed as insensitive to Palestinians
by most American policy analysts.
Many other examples could be cited of how the press has distorted the truth. It is interesting
to revisit in particular the allegation that Trump mocked a disabled man's disability. It is an allegation
which has received particular prominence in the press in Europe. But is Trump really such a heartless
ogre? Hardly.
As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than
the press makes out. The disabled-man episode began when, in defending an erstwhile widely ridiculed
contention that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed
a 2001 newspaper account broadly backed him up. But the report's author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred.
Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he wrote, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had succumbed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no
ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are
malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York
real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they
could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability.
Trump's plea that he hadn't known that Kovaleski was handicapped was undermined when it emerged
that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower.
That is an experience I know something about. I, like Kovaleski, once interviewed Trump in Trump
Tower. The occasion was an article I wrote for Forbes magazine in 1982. If Trump saw my by-line today,
would he remember that occasion 35 years ago? Probably not. The truth is that Trump, who has been
a celebrity since his early twenties, has been interviewed by thousands of journalists over the years.
A journalist would have to be seriously conceited – or be driven by a hidden agenda – to assume that
a VIP as busy as Trump would remember an occasion half a lifetime ago.
In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump
offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to the press's chagrin, many
of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable private generosity underlies
his tough-guy exterior), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. In effect Trump is
saying he had a strong self-interest in not offending the disabled lobby let alone their millions
of sympathisers.
After all it was not as if there were votes in dissing the disabled. This stands in marked contrast
to other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans
and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central
pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes
from fed-up middle Americans.
In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital
evidence in the Kovaleski affair.
For a start Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to arthrogryposis. Far from frantically
flailing their arms, arthrogryposis victims are uncommonly motionlessness. This is because relevant
bones are fused together. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the media should have been expected to
have been chomping at the bit to interview Kovaleski and thus clinch the point about how ruthlessly
Trump had ridiculed a disabled man's disability.
The website added: "If the media had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have
done and we all know it. But the media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have
no story."
Catholics 4 Trump added that, in the same speech in which Trump did his Kovaleski impression,
he offered an almost identical performance to illustrate the embarrassment of a U.S. general with
whom he had clashed. In particular Trump had the general wildly flailing his arms. It goes without
saying that this general does not suffer from arthogryposis or any other disability. The common thread
in each case was merely an embarrassed, backtracking person. To say the least, commentators in Europe
who have portrayed Trump as having mocked Kovaleski's disability stand accused of superficial, slanted
reporting.
All this is not to suggest that Trump does not come to the presidency unencumbered with baggage.
He is exceptionally crude – at least he is in his latter-day reality TV manifestation (the Trump
I remember from my interview in 1982 was a model of restraint by comparison and in particular never
used any expletives). Moreover the latter-day Trump habit of picking Twitter fights with those who
criticize him tends merely to confirm a widespread belief that he is petty and thin-skinned.
Many of his pronouncements moreover have been disturbing and his abrasive manner will clearly
prove on balance a liability in the White House. That said, the press has never worked harder or
more dishonestly to destroy a modern American leader.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, therefore, as he sets out to make America great again.
The truth is that American decline has gone much further than almost anyone outside American industry
understands. Trump's task is a daunting one.
Eamonn
Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries:
Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
America's fate looks dicey in the showdown with the Chinese juggernaut, warns this vigorous jeremiad.
Fingleton (In Praise of Hard Industries) argues that China's "East Asian" development model of aggressive
mercantilism and a state-directed economy "effortlessly outperforms" America's fecklessly individualistic
capitalism
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?
"... In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass
immigration and military intervention abroad. ..."
"... Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance
of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors
rather than potential voters, never appreciated. ..."
"... The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. ..."
"... Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. ..."
"... It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on
Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the
symptom than the cause of division. ..."
"... Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American
Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and
alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible
and may no longer exist. ..."
"... Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia ..."
"... But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the
terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained.
They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them
real contenders for power. ..."
"... One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars,
something that is now at last becoming feasible. ..."
In the US, Europe and the Middle East there were many who saw themselves as the losers from globalisation,
but the ideological vehicle for protest differed markedly from region to region. In Europe and
the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military
intervention abroad. The latter theme is much more resonant in the US than in Europe because
of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three
buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking
their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated.
The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. This is a big change from 50 years ago when revolutionaries in the
region were usually nationalists or socialists, but both beliefs were discredited by corrupt and
authoritarian nationalist dictators and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. When Isis
forces were advancing on Baghdad after taking Mosul in June 2014, it was a fatwa from the Iraqi Shia
religious leader Ali al-Sistani that rallied the resistance. No non-religious Iraqi leader could
have successfully appealed to hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer to fight to the death
against Isis. The Middle East differs also from Europe and the US because states are more fragile
than they look and once destroyed prove impossible to recreate. This was a lesson that the foreign
policy establishments in Washington, London and Paris failed to take on board after the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, though the disastrous outcome of successful or attempted regime change has been
bloodily demonstrated again and again. It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the
troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian
leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division.
But it is not only in the Middle East that divisions are deepening. Whatever happens in Britain
because of the Brexit vote or in the US because of the election of Trump as president, both countries
will be more divided and therefore weaker than before. Political divisions in the US are probably
greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity
in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the
dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist.
The mainline mass media is finding it difficult to make sense of a new world order which may or
may not be emerging. Journalists are generally more rooted in the established order of things than
they pretend and are shocked by radical change. Only two big newspapers – the Florida Times-Union
and the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Trump before the election and few of the American
commentariat expected him to win, though this has not dented their confidence in their own judgement.
Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia, but there is also genuine uncertainty
about whether he will be a real force for change, be it good or ill.
Crises in different parts of the world are beginning to cross-infect and exacerbate each other.
Prior to 2014 European leaders, whatever their humanitarian protestations, did not care much what
happened in Iraq and Syria. But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading
for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle
East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian
nationalist right and made them real contenders for power.
The Middle East is always a source of instability in the world and never more so than over the
last six years. But winners and losers are emerging in Syria where Assad is succeeding with Russian
and Iranian help, while in Iraq the Baghdad government backed by US airpower is slowly fighting its
way into Mosul. Isis probably has more fight in it than its many enemies want to believe, but is
surely on the road to ultimate defeat. One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far
he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible.
"... A farce wherein a capitalist aristocracy is dressed in the torn and soiled fabric of democracy, proclaiming its will to represent the people. ..."
"... I don't like farce. It's pointlessly cruel to the characters; that's not stuff I usually find amusing. ..."
"... For the first time in the lives of just about all of you we are all less likely to see the most powerful nation on earth overthrow another government in the Middle East. From 1991 to 2016 the United States has been bombing nations in the Middle East as part of US foreign policy. Americans love bombing other countries – dropping bombs on people in the Middle East is one of America's favorite methods of bringing peace to the world. ..."
"... I reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary Clinton will not be taking office this weekend. Had Hillary been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary wants to overthrow the Assad government by threatening to shoot down airplanes over Syria. Putin supports Assad. The only airplanes flying over Syria are Russian, or Syrian. Do any of you want a war with Russia? Does shooting down Russian airplanes sound like a good plan to you? ..."
"... Americans helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine. Americans have been bombing countries in the Middle East for decades. Under Obama the US has been at war for his entire presidency. We don't know what will happen, but for the first time in a very long time Americans elected a president who wants to trade with everyone. He wants to do deals with Kim, with Putin, with China. ..."
Nah, Reagan was tragedy, this one is farce.
A farce wherein a capitalist aristocracy is dressed in the torn and soiled fabric of democracy,
proclaiming its will to represent the people.
Has anyone noticed the creepy banner CNN is using for their coverage? Two general's stars on
a red ribbon? I was struck by it, so I went to CNN's archive to see what they did for the last
two inaugurations. I couldn't find anything like it.
And of course there is the story that his
team wanted a military vehicle parade, e.g. Tanks, mobile missile launchers, etc. How long before
the Don dons a uniform?
I don't like farce. It's pointlessly cruel to the characters; that's not stuff I usually find
amusing.
kidneystones 01.21.17 at 12:23 am
What I told my own first-year students yesterday:
For the first time in the lives of just about all of you we are all less likely to see
the most powerful nation on earth overthrow another government in the Middle East. From 1991 to
2016 the United States has been bombing nations in the Middle East as part of US foreign policy.
Americans love bombing other countries – dropping bombs on people in the Middle East is one of
America's favorite methods of bringing peace to the world.
I reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary Clinton will not be taking
office this weekend. Had Hillary been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary
wants to overthrow the Assad government by threatening to shoot down airplanes over Syria. Putin
supports Assad. The only airplanes flying over Syria are Russian, or Syrian. Do any of you want
a war with Russia? Does shooting down Russian airplanes sound like a good plan to you?
Americans helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine. Americans have been bombing
countries in the Middle East for decades. Under Obama the US has been at war for his entire presidency.
We don't know what will happen, but for the first time in a very long time Americans elected a
president who wants to trade with everyone. He wants to do deals with Kim, with Putin, with China.
He's not interested in what goes on in other people's countries. He wants to mind his own business.
He wants to get rich and become as famous as possible. We don't know what will happen, but for
the first time in a very long time Americans have elected a president who does not want to attack
other countries.
We are not looking at a new US war in the Middle East for the first time in a very long time.
That doesn't mean the war won't happen. Americans love bombing people. But I'm immensely pleased
Hillary Clinton is not fighting more wars in the Middle East, and that for the first time in a
very long time Americans seem to have decided to leave the rest of us live our lives in peace.
"... Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course. ..."
"... Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria. ..."
"... Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it. ..."
What I found most impressive this time was the reaffirmation of America's dedication to the peaceful
transfer of political power. This was the 45th time this miracle has happened. Saying this is perhaps
banal, but the handover of power never fails to make me proud to be an American and thankful we had
such brilliant founding fathers.
This peaceful transfer sets the United States apart from many of the world's nations, even Britain
and Canada, where leaders under the parliamentary system are chosen in a process resembling a knife
fight in a dark room. The US has somehow managed to retain its three branches of government in spite
of the best efforts of self-serving politicians to wreck it.
Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy
headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse
by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on
a collision course.
Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass
drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria.
This week US B-2 heavy bombers attacked Libya. US forces are fighting in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan
and parts of Africa. For what? No one is quite sure. America's foreign wars, fueled by its $1 trillion
military budget, have assumed a life of their own. Once a great power goes to war, its proponents
insist, 'we can't be seen to back down or our credibility will suffer.'
Trump will struggle to find a face-saving retreat from these unnecessary conflicts and shut his
ears to the siren songs of the war party and deep state which just failed to stage a 'soft' coup
to block his inauguration. Waging little wars against weak nations is a multi-billion dollar national
industry in the US. America has become as addicted to war as it has to debt.
If President Trump truly wants to bring some sort of peace to the explosive Mideast, he will have
to reject the advice of the hardline Zionists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Their
primary interest is Greater Israel, free of Arabs, not in a Greater America. Trump is too smart not
to know this. But he may also listen to his blood and guts former generals who lost the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Trump appears to have been gulled into believing the canard that Mideast-origin violence is caused
by what he called in his inaugural speech, radical Islamic terrorism. This is a favorite device promoted
by the hard right and Israel to de-legitimize any resistance to Israel's expansion and ethnic cleansing.
The label of 'terrorism' serves the same purpose.
Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation
of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on
western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions
in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it.
Unfortunately, President Trump is unlikely to get this useful advice from the men who now surround
him, with the possibly exception of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Let's hope that Tillerson and
not Goldman Sachs bank ends up steering US foreign policy.
(Reprinted from
EricMargolis.com
by permission of author or representative)
"... Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course. ..."
"... Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria. ..."
"... Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it. ..."
What I found most impressive this time was the reaffirmation of America's dedication to the peaceful
transfer of political power. This was the 45th time this miracle has happened. Saying this is perhaps
banal, but the handover of power never fails to make me proud to be an American and thankful we had
such brilliant founding fathers.
This peaceful transfer sets the United States apart from many of the world's nations, even Britain
and Canada, where leaders under the parliamentary system are chosen in a process resembling a knife
fight in a dark room. The US has somehow managed to retain its three branches of government in spite
of the best efforts of self-serving politicians to wreck it.
Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy
headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse
by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on
a collision course.
Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass
drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria.
This week US B-2 heavy bombers attacked Libya. US forces are fighting in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan
and parts of Africa. For what? No one is quite sure. America's foreign wars, fueled by its $1 trillion
military budget, have assumed a life of their own. Once a great power goes to war, its proponents
insist, 'we can't be seen to back down or our credibility will suffer.'
Trump will struggle to find a face-saving retreat from these unnecessary conflicts and shut his
ears to the siren songs of the war party and deep state which just failed to stage a 'soft' coup
to block his inauguration. Waging little wars against weak nations is a multi-billion dollar national
industry in the US. America has become as addicted to war as it has to debt.
If President Trump truly wants to bring some sort of peace to the explosive Mideast, he will have
to reject the advice of the hardline Zionists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Their
primary interest is Greater Israel, free of Arabs, not in a Greater America. Trump is too smart not
to know this. But he may also listen to his blood and guts former generals who lost the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Trump appears to have been gulled into believing the canard that Mideast-origin violence is caused
by what he called in his inaugural speech, radical Islamic terrorism. This is a favorite device promoted
by the hard right and Israel to de-legitimize any resistance to Israel's expansion and ethnic cleansing.
The label of 'terrorism' serves the same purpose.
Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation
of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on
western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions
in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it.
Unfortunately, President Trump is unlikely to get this useful advice from the men who now surround
him, with the possibly exception of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Let's hope that Tillerson and
not Goldman Sachs bank ends up steering US foreign policy.
(Reprinted from
EricMargolis.com
by permission of author or representative)
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).
"... Trump may end their expert preparedness for unending war. ..."
"... Neolib/neocon conartists call their truthful detractors unready or ignorant of unpatriotic or Russian tools. Sore
losers. Does not make war mongers right! ..."
Let me try. First of all, it is properly called non-interventionism and as such it is the opposing theory to neoconservatism,
especially its Allbright-Kagan-Nuland troika flavor, which actually does not deviate much from so called liberal interventionists
(Vishy left) such as Hillary-Samantha Power-Susan Rice troika.
It would be nice to put them on trial, because all of then fall under Nuremberg statute for war crimes. But this is
a pipe dream in the current USA political climate with it unhinged militarism and jingoism.
Here is something that more or less resembles the definition
Americans have grown understandably weary of foreign entanglements over the last 12 years of open-ended warfare, and
they are now more receptive to a noninterventionist message than they have been in decades. According to a recent Pew
survey, 52 percent of Americans now prefer that the U.S. "mind its own business in international affairs," which represents
the most support for a restrained and modest foreign policy in the last 50 years. That presents a challenge and an opportunity
for noninterventionists to articulate a coherent and positive case for what a foreign policy of peace and prudence would
mean in practice. As useful and necessary as critiquing dangerous ideas may be, noninterventionism will remain a marginal,
dissenting position in policymaking unless its advocates explain in detail how their alternative foreign policy would
be conducted.
A noninterventionist foreign policy would first of all require a moratorium on new foreign entanglements and commitments
for the foreseeable future. A careful reevaluation of where the U.S. has vital interests at stake would follow. There
are relatively few places where the U.S. has truly vital concerns that directly affect our security and prosperity, and
the ambition and scale of our foreign policy should reflect that.
A noninterventionist U.S. would conduct itself like a normal country without pretensions to global "leadership" or
the temptation of a proselytizing mission. This is a foreign policy more in line with what the American people will accept
and less likely to provoke violent resentment from overseas, and it is therefore more sustainable and affordable over
the long term.
When a conflict or dispute erupts somewhere, unless it directly threatens the security of America or our treaty allies,
the assumption should be that it is not the business of the U.S. government to take a leading role in resolving it.
If a government requests aid in the event of a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis (e.g., famine, disease), as
Haiti did following its devastating earthquake in 2010, the U.S. can and should lend assistance - but as a general rule
the U.S. should not seek to interfere in other nations' domestic circumstances.
Note the female chickenhawks are the most bloodthirsty, overdoing even such chauvinists as McCain.
That actually has its analogy in animal kingdom were female predators are more vicious killers then male, hunting
the prey even if they do not feel the hunger (noted especially for lions)
"So there you have it: ... completely unprepared to govern."
Paul means to imply the Obama boys and girls were better prepared? Judging by how well they did, maneuvering us into
Larry's secular stagnation, for instance, some may be forgiven to think perhaps that kind of expertise we could do without.
Lost in all the discourse is that this government of ours was designed to be operated by amateurs.
Neolib/neocon conartists call their truthful detractors unready or ignorant of unpatriotic or Russian tools. Sore
losers. Does not make war mongers right!
"... 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
"... Our model for funding infrastructure is broken. Federal funding means project that are most needed by cities can be overlooked while projects that would destroy cities are funded. ..."
"... The neo in neoliberalism, however, establishes these principles on a significantly different analytic basis from those set forth by Adam Smith, as will become clear below. Moreover, neoliberalism is not simply a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate profits, and challenging welfarism. ..."
"... But in so doing, it carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally calculating individual bears full responsibility for the consequences of his or her action no matter how severe the constraints on this action-for example, lack of skills, education, and child care in a period of high unemployment and limited welfare benefits. ..."
"... A fully realized neoliberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded; indeed, it would barely exist as a public. The body politic ceases to be a body but is rather a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers . . . ..."
"... consider the market rationality permeating universities today, from admissions and recruiting to the relentless consumer mentality of students as they consider university brand names, courses, and services, from faculty raiding and pay scales to promotion criteria. ..."
"... The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the market. ..."
There is nothing common between articles of Zingales and Schiller.
My impression is that Schiller might lost his calling: he might achieve even greater success
as a diplomat, if he took this career. He managed to tell something important about incompatibility
of [the slogan] "Make America Great Again" with neoliberalism without offending anybody. Which
is a pretty difficult thing to do.
Zingalles is just another Friedman-style market fundamentalist. Nothing new and nothing interesting.
Noah Smith is wrong here: "This idea is important because it meant that we shouldn't expect fiscal
stimulus to have much of an effect. Government checks are a temporary form of income, so Friedman's
theory predicts that it won't change spending patterns, as advocates such as John Maynard Keynes
believed."
Friedman's view about consumption demand is the same as the Life Cycle Model (Ando and Modligiani).
OK - these models do predict that tax rebates should not affect consumption. And yes there are
households who are borrower constrained so these rebates do impact their consumption.
But this is not the only form of fiscal stimulus. Infrastructure investment would increase
aggregate demand even under the Friedman view of consumption. This would hold even under the Barro-Ricardian
version of this theory. OK - John Cochrane is too stupid to know this. And I see Noah in his rush
to bash Milton Friedman has made the same mistake as Cochrane.
What Friedman got wrong is not including current income. People with high income spend a fraction
of that income and save the rest. Their demand is met, so the additional income mostly goes to
savings.
People with low income spend everything and still have unmet demands. Additional income for
them will go to meet those unmet demands (like fixing a toothache or replacing bald tires).
Friedman was biased against fiscal intervention in an economy and sought evidence to argue
against such policies
Our model for funding infrastructure is broken. Federal funding means project that are
most needed by cities can be overlooked while projects that would destroy cities are funded.
Federal infrastructure funding destroyed city neighborhoods leaving the neighboring areas degraded.
Meanwhile, necessary projects such as a new subway tunnel from NJ to Manhattan are blocked by
States who are ok if the city fails and growth moves to their side of the river.
Money should go directly to the cities. Infrastructure should be build to serve the people
who live, walk and work there, not to allow cars to drive through at high speeds as the engineers
propose. This infrastructure harms cities and becomes a future tax liability that cannot be met
if the built infrastructure it encourages is not valuable enough to support maintenance.
We are discovering that unlike our cities where structures can increase in value, strip malls
decline in value, often to worthlessness. Road building is increasingly mechanized and provides
less employment per project than in the past. Projects such as replacing leaking water pipes require
more labor.
Simon Wren Lewis leaves open the possibility that an increase in aggregate demand can increase
real GDP as we may not be at full employment (I'd change that from "may not be" to "are not")
but still comes out against tax cuts for the rich with this:
"There is a very strong case for more public sector investment on numerous grounds. But that
investment should go to where it is most needed and where it will be of most social benefit"
Re: Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest - Bloomberg View
Friedman was not simply wrong. The key for understanding Friedman is that he was a political
hack, not a scientist.
His main achievement was creation (partially for money invested in him and Mont Pelerin Society
by financial oligarchy) of what is now called "neoliberal rationality": a pervert view of the
world, economics and social processes that now still dominates in the USA and most of Western
Europe. It is also a new mode of "govermentability".
Governmentality is distinguished from earlier forms of rule, in which national wealth is measured
as the size of territory or the personal fortune of the sovereign, by the recognition that national
economic well-being is tied to the rational management of the national population. Foucault defined
governmentality as:
"the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations
and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which
has as its target population, as its principle form of knowledge political economy and as its
technical means, apparatuses of security"
A liberal political order may harbor either liberal or Keynesian economic policies -- it
may lean in the direction of maximizing liberty (its politically "conservative" tilt) or of
maximizing equality (its politically "liberal" tilt), but in contemporary political parlance,
it is no more or less a liberal democracy because of one leaning or the other.
Indeed, the American convention of referring to advocates of the welfare state as political
liberals is especially peculiar, given that American conservatives generally hew more closely
to both the classical economic and the political doctrines of liberalism -- it turns the meaning
of liberalism in the direction of liberality rather than liberty.
For our purposes, what is crucial is that the liberalism in what has come to be called neoliberalism
refers to liberalism's economic variant, recuperating selected pre-Keynesian assumptions about
the generation of wealth and its distribution, rather than to liberalism as a political doctrine,
as a set of political institutions, or as political practices. The neo in neoliberalism,
however, establishes these principles on a significantly different analytic basis from those
set forth by Adam Smith, as will become clear below. Moreover, neoliberalism is not simply
a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate
profits, and challenging welfarism.
Rather, neoliberalism carries a social analysis that, when deployed as a form of
governmentality, reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices
of empire. Neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily
focused on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions
and social action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player.
... ... ...
1. The political sphere, along with every other dimension of contemporary existence,
is submitted to an economic rationality; or, put the other way around, not only is the human
being configured exhaustively as homo economicus, but all dimensions of human life are cast
in terms of a market rationality. While this entails submitting every action and policy
to considerations of profitability, equally important is the production of all human and institutional
action as rational entrepreneurial action, conducted according to a calculus of utility, benefit,
or satisfaction against a microeconomic grid of scarcity, supply and demand, and moral value-neutrality.
Neoliberalism does not simply assume that all aspects of social, cultural, and political life
can be reduced to such a calculus; rather, it develops institutional practices and rewards
for enacting this vision. That is, through discourse and policy promulgating its criteria,
neoliberalism produces rational actors and imposes a market rationale for decision making in
all spheres.
Importantly, then, neoliberalism involves a normative rather than ontological claim about
the pervasiveness of economic rationality and it advocates the institution building, policies,
and discourse development appropriate to such a claim. Neoliberalism is a constructivist project:
it does not presume the ontological givenness of a thoroughgoing economic rationality for all
domains of society but rather takes as its task the development, dissemination, and institutionalization
of such a rationality. This point is further developed in (2) below.
2. In contrast with the notorious laissez-faire and human propensity to "truck and barter"
stressed by classical economic liberalism, neoliberalism does not conceive of either the market
itself or rational economic behavior as purely natural. Both are constructed-organized
by law and political institutions, and requiring political intervention and orchestration.
Far from flourishing when left alone, the economy must be directed, buttressed, and protected
by law and policy as well as by the dissemination of social norms designed to facilitate competition,
free trade, and rational economic action on the part of every member and institution of society.
In Lemke's account, "In the Ordo-liberal scheme, the market does not amount to a natural
economic reality, with intrinsic laws that the art of government must bear in mind and respect;
instead, the market can be constituted and kept alive only by dint of political interventions.
. . . [C]ompetition, too, is not a natural fact. . . . [T]his fundamental economic mechanism
can function only if support is forthcoming to bolster a series of conditions, and adherence
to the latter must consistently be guaranteed by legal measures" (193).
The neoliberal formulation of the state and especially of specific legal arrangements and decisions
as the precondition and ongoing condition of the market does not mean that the market is controlled
by the state but precisely the opposite. The market is the organizing and regulative principle
of the state and society, along three different lines:
The state openly responds to needs of the market, whether through monetary and fiscal
policy, immigration policy, the treatment of criminals, or the structure of public education.
In so doing, the state is no longer encumbered by the danger of incurring the legitimation
deficits predicted by 1970s social theorists and political economists such as Nicos Poulantzas,
Jürgen Habermas, and James O'Connor.6 Rather, neoliberal rationality extended to the state
itself indexes the state's success according to its ability to sustain and foster the market
and ties state legitimacy to such success. This is a new form of legitimation, one that
"founds a state," according to Lemke, and contrasts with the Hegelian and French revolutionary
notion of the constitutional state as the emergent universal representative of the people.
As Lemke describes Foucault's account of Ordo-liberal thinking, "economic liberty produces
the legitimacy for a form of sovereignty limited to guaranteeing economic activity . . .
a state that was no longer defined in terms of an historical mission but legitimated itself
with reference to economic growth" (196).
The state itself is enfolded and animated by market rationality: that is, not simply
profitability but a generalized calculation of cost and benefit becomes the measure of all
state practices. Political discourse on all matters is framed in entrepreneurial terms;
the state must not simply concern itself with the market but think and behave like a market
actor across all of its functions, including law. 7
Putting (a) and (b) together, the health and growth of the economy is the basis of
state legitimacy, both because the state is forthrightly responsible for the health of the
economy and because of the economic rationality to which state practices have been submitted.
Thus, "It's the economy, stupid" becomes more than a campaign slogan; rather, it expresses
the principle of the state's legitimacy and the basis for state action-from constitutional
adjudication and campaign finance reform to welfare and education policy to foreign policy,
including warfare and the organization of "homeland security."
3. The extension of economic rationality to formerly noneconomic domains and institutions
reaches individual conduct, or, more precisely, prescribes the citizen-subject of a neoliberal
order. Whereas classical liberalism articulated a distinction, and at times even a tension,
among the criteria for individual moral, associational, and economic actions (hence the striking
differences in tone, subject matter, and even prescriptions between Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations and his Theory of Moral Sentiments), neoliberalism normatively constructs and interpellates
individuals as entrepreneurial actors in every sphere of life.
It figures individuals as rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured
by their capacity for "self-care"-the ability to provide for their own needs and service their
own ambitions. In making the individual fully responsible for her- or himself, neoliberalism
equates moral responsibility with rational action; it erases the discrepancy between economic
and moral behavior by configuring morality entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about
costs, benefits, and consequences.
But in so doing, it carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally
calculating individual bears full responsibility for the consequences of his or her action
no matter how severe the constraints on this action-for example, lack of skills, education,
and child care in a period of high unemployment and limited welfare benefits.
Correspondingly, a "mismanaged life," the neoliberal appellation for failure to navigate
impediments to prosperity, becomes a new mode of depoliticizing social and economic powers
and at the same time reduces political citizenship to an unprecedented degree of passivity
and political complacency.
The model neoliberal citizen is one who strategizes for her- or himself among various social,
political, and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these
options. A fully realized neoliberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded;
indeed, it would barely exist as a public. The body politic ceases to be a body but is rather
a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers . . . which is, of course, exactly how
voters are addressed in most American campaign discourse.8
Other evidence for progress in the development of such a citizenry is not far from hand:
consider the market rationality permeating universities today, from admissions and recruiting
to the relentless consumer mentality of students as they consider university brand names, courses,
and services, from faculty raiding and pay scales to promotion criteria. 9
Or consider the way in which consequential moral lapses (of a sexual or criminal nature)
by politicians, business executives, or church and university administrators are so often apologized
for as "mistakes in judgment," implying that it was the calculation that was wrong, not the
act, actor, or rationale.
The state is not without a project in the making of the neoliberal subject. It attempts
to construct prudent subjects through policies that organize such prudence: this is the basis
of a range of welfare reforms such as workfare and single-parent penalties, changes in the
criminal code such as the "three strikes law," and educational voucher schemes.
Because neoliberalism casts rational action as a norm rather than an ontology, social policy
is the means by which the state produces subjects whose compass is set entirely by their rational
assessment of the costs and benefits of certain acts, whether those acts pertain to teen pregnancy,
tax fraud, or retirement planning. The neoliberal citizen is calculating rather than rule abiding,
a Benthamite rather than a Hobbesian.
The state is one of many sites framing the calculations leading to social behaviors that
keep costs low and productivity high. This mode of governmentality (techniques of governing
that exceed express state action and orchestrate the subject's conduct toward himor herself)
convenes a "free" subject who rationally deliberates about alternative courses of action, makes
choices, and bears responsibility for the consequences of these choices. In this way, Lemke
argues, "the state leads and controls subjects without being responsible for them"; as individual
"entrepreneurs" in every aspect of life, subjects become wholly responsible for their well-being
and citizenship is reduced to success in this entrepreneurship (201).
Neoliberal subjects are controlled through their freedom-not simply, as thinkers from the
Frankfurt School through Foucault have argued, because freedom within an order of domination
can be an instrument of that domination, but because of neoliberalism's moralization of the
consequences of this freedom. Such control also means that the withdrawal of the state from
certain domains, followed by the privatization of certain state functions, does not amount
to a dismantling of government but rather constitutes a technique of governing; indeed, it
is the signature technique of neoliberal governance, in which rational economic action suffused
throughout society replaces express state rule or provision.
Neoliberalism shifts "the regulatory competence of the state onto 'responsible,' 'rational'
individuals [with the aim of] encourag[ing] individuals to give their lives a specific entrepreneurial
form" (Lemke, 202).
4. Finally, the suffusion of both the state and the subject with economic rationality
has the effect of radically transforming and narrowing the criteria for good social policy
vis-à-vis classical liberal democracy. Not only must social policy meet profitability tests,
incite and unblock competition, and produce rational subjects, it obeys the entrepreneurial
principle of "equal inequality for all" as it "multiples and expands entrepreneurial forms
with the body social" (Lemke, 195). This is the principle that links the neoliberal governmentalization
of the state with that of the social and the subject.
Taken together, the extension of economic rationality to all aspects of thought and activity,
the placement of the state in forthright and direct service to the economy, the rendering of
the state tout court as an enterprise organized by market rationality, the production of the
moral subject as an entrepreneurial subject, and the construction of social policy according
to these criteria might appear as a more intensive rather than fundamentally new form of the
saturation of social and political realms by capital. That is, the political rationality of
neoliberalism might be read as issuing from a stage of capitalism that simply underscores Marx's
argument that capital penetrates and transforms every aspect of life-remaking everything in
its image and reducing every value and activity to its cold rationale.
All that would be new here is the flagrant and relentless submission of the state and the
individual, the church and the university, morality, sex, marriage, and leisure practices to
this rationale. Or better, the only novelty would be the recently achieved hegemony of rational
choice theory in the human sciences, self-represented as an independent and objective branch
of knowledge rather than an expression of the dominance of capital. Another reading that would
figure neoliberalism as continuous with the past would theorize it through Weber's rationalization
thesis rather than Marx's argument about capital.
The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of
moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration
of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted
world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night
of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the
market.
Julio -> Libezkova...
I agree with this. But I think it's extraordinarily wordy, and fails to emphasize the deification
of private property which is at the root of it.
Brown - who I haven't read much of but like what I have - sounds a lot like Lasch.
Brown:
"The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of
moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration
of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted
world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night
of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the
market."
Lasch in Revolt of the Elites:
"... Individuals cannot learn to speak for themselves at all, much less come to an intelligent
understanding of their happiness and well-being, in a world in which there are no values except
those of the market.... The market tends to universalize itself. It does not easily coexist
with institutions that operate according to principles that are antithetical to itself: schools
and universities, newspapers and magazines, charities, families. Sooner or later the market
tends to absorb them all. It puts an almost irresistible pressure on every activity to justify
itself in the only terms it recognizes: to become a business proposition, to pay its own way,
to show black ink on the bottom line. It turns news into entertainment, scholarship into professional
careerism, social work into the scientific management of poverty. Inexorably it remodels every
institution in its own image."
This unadmitted ignorance was previously displayed for those with eyes to see it in the Libya debacle,
perhaps not coincidentally Clinton's pet war. Cast by the Obama White House as a surgical display
of "smart power" that would defend human rights and foster democracy in the Muslim world, the 2011
Libyan intervention did precisely the opposite. There is
credible evidence that the U.S.-led NATO campaign prolonged and exacerbated the humanitarian
crisis, and far from creating a flourishing democracy, the ouster of strongman Muammar Qaddafi led
to a power vacuum into which ISIS and other rival unsavories surged.
The 2011 intervention and the follow-up escalation in which we are presently entangled were both
fundamentally informed by "the underlying belief that military force will produce stability and that
the U.S. can reasonably predict the result of such a campaign," as Christopher Preble has argued
in a must-read Libya analysis
at Politico . Both have proven resoundingly wrong.
Before Libya, Washington espoused the same false certainty in advance of intervention and nation-building
Iraq and Afghanistan. The rhetoric around the former was particularly telling: we would find nuclear
weapons and "be greeted as liberators,"
said Vice President
Dick Cheney. The whole thing would take five months or less,
said Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld. It would be a
"cakewalk." As months dragged into years of nation-building stagnation, the ignored truth became
increasingly evident: the United States cannot reshape entire countries without obscene risk and
investment, and even when those costly commitments are made, success cannot be predicted with certainty.
Nearly 14 years later, with Iraq demonstrably more violent and less stable than it was before
U.S. intervention, wisdom demands we reject Washington's recycled snake oil.
Recent polls (let alone the anti-elite backlash Trump's
win represents ) suggest Americans are ready to do precisely that. But a lack of public enthusiasm
has never stopped Washington from hawking its fraudulent wares-this time in the form of yet-again
unfounded certainty that escalating American intervention in Syria is a sure-fire solution to that
beleaguered nation's woes.
We must not let ourselves be fooled. Rather, we "should understand that we don't need to overthrow
distant governments and roll the dice on what comes after in order to keep America safe," as Preble,
reflecting on Libya,
contends . "On the contrary, our track record over the last quarter-century shows that such interventions
often have the opposite effect."
And as for the political establishment, let Trump's triumph be a constant reminder of the necessity
of expecting the unexpected and proceeding with due (indeed, much overdue) prudence and restraint
abroad. If Washington so grossly misunderstood the direction of its own heartland-without the muddling,
as in foreign policy, of massive geographic and cultural differences-how naïve it is to believe that
our government can successfully play armed puppet-master over an entire region of the world?
Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities. She is a weekend editor at The Week
and a columnist at Rare , and her writing has also appeared at Time , Politico
, Relevant , The Hill , and other outlets.
"... Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism? Is
it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts. ..."
"... The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of
the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way
to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3) ..."
"... What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy
of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of
state. (5) ..."
"... At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
..."
"... Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard to
the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the United
States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they fail
to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied key
functions in his administration. ..."
"... Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and one
of the architects of the wars in the Middle East. ..."
"... it is more realistic to suppose that as long as the United States has interests in the countries of the South and
the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate to intervene. ..."
"... In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. ..."
"... (Translated from the French by Luciana Bohne) ..."
If the discourse of humanitarianism seduced the North, it has not been so in the South, even less in the Near and Middle
East, which no longer believe in it. The patent humanitarian disasters in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have disillusioned
them.
It is in this sense that Trump's victory is felt as a release, a hope for change, and a rupture from the policy of Clinton,
Bush, and Obama. This policy, in the name of edifying nations ("nation building"), has destroyed some of the oldest nations
and civilizations on earth; in the name of delivering well-being, it has delivered misery; in the name of liberal values,
it has galvanized religious zeal; in the name of democracy and human rights, it has installed autocracies and Sharia law.
Who is to blame?
Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism?
Is it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts.
Can the United States not learn from history, or does it just doom itself to repeat it? Does it not pose itself the
question of how al-Qaeda and Daesh originated? How did they organize themselves? Who trained them? What is their mobilizing
discourse? (1) Why is the US their target? None of this seems to matter to the US: all it cares about is
projecting its own idealism. (2)
The death of thousands of people in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria, has it contributed to the well being of these
peoples? Or does the United States perhaps respond to this question in the manner of Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's
Secretary of State, who regretted the death of five-hundred-thousand Iraqi children, deprived of medications by the American
embargo, to conclude with the infamous sentence, "[But] it was worth it "?
Was it worth it that people came to perceive humanitarian intervention as the new crusades? Was it worth it that they
now perceive democracy as a pagan, pre-Islamic model, abjured by their belief? Was it worth it that they now perceive modernity
as deviating believers from the "true" path? Was it worth that they now perceive human rights as human standards as contrary
to the divine will? Was it worth it that people now perceive secularism as atheism whose defenders are punishable by beheading?
Have universal values become a problem rather than a solution? What then to think of making war in their name? Has humanitarian
intervention become punishment rather than help?
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions
of the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are
a way to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign
policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary
of state. (5)
The end of interventionism?
But are Clinton's defeat and Trump's accession to power sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism?
Donald Trump is a nationalist, whose rise has been the result of a coalition of anti-interventionists within the Republican
Party. They professe a foreign policy that Trump has summarized in these words: "We will use military force only in cases
of vital necessity to the national security of the United States. We will put an end to attempts of imposing democracy
and overthrowing regimes abroad, as well as involving ourselves in situations in which we have no right to intervene."
(6)
But drawing conclusions about the foreign policy of the United States from unofficial statements seems simplistic.
At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
One can't predict his policy with regard to the Near and Middle East, since he has not yet even formed his cabinet.
Moreover, presidents in office can change their tune in the course of their tenure. The case of George W. Bush provides
an excellent example.
Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard
to the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the
United States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they
fail to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied
key functions in his administration. (8)
Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and
one of the architects of the wars in the Middle East.
These indices show that nothing seems to have been gained by the South, still less by the Near and Middle East. There
appears to be no guarantee that the situation will improve.
The non-interventionism promised by Trump may not necessarily equate to a policy of isolationism. A non-interventionist
policy does not automatically mean that the United States will stop protecting their interests abroad, strategic or otherwise.
Rather, it could mean that the United States will not intervene abroad except to defend their own interests,
unilaterally -- and perhaps even more aggressively. Such a potential is implied in Trump's promise to increase
the budget for the army and the military-industrial complex. Thus, it is more realistic to suppose that as long as
the United States has interests in the countries of the South and the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate
to intervene.
In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. The political reality is too complex to be reduced to statements
by a presidential candidate campaigning for election, by an elected president, or even by a president in the course of
performing his office.
No one knows what the future will bring.
Marwen Bouassida is a researcher in international law at North African-European relations, University of Carthage,
Tunisia. He regularly contributes to the online magazine Kapitalis.
"... But he has simultaneously opposed the agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme and criticised Barack Obama for pulling the last US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (though in fact this was under an agreement signed by George W Bush). ..."
"... The US army and air force is today heavily engaged in Iraq and Syria and that is not going to end with Obama's departure. In contradiction to Trump's non-interventionism, leading members of his foreign policy team such as John Bolton, the belligerent former US ambassador to the UN, has been advocating a war with Iran since 2003. Bolton proposes carving out a Sunni state in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, a plan in which every sentence betrays ignorance and misjudgements about the forces in play on the ground. As a recipe for deepening the conflict in the region, it could scarcely be bettered. ..."
"... There have always been crackpots in Washington, sometimes in high office, but the number of dangerous people who have attached themselves to the incoming administration may be higher today than at any time in American history. ..."
"... Optimists have been saying this week that Trump is less ideological than he sounds and, in any case, the US ship of state is more like an ocean liner than a speedboat making it difficult to turn round. They add privately that not all the crooks and crazies will get the jobs they want. ..."
In theory, Trump is a non-interventionist; opposed to US military involvement in the Middle East
and North Africa, he wants to bring the war in
Syria to an end. But he has simultaneously opposed the agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme
and criticised Barack Obama for pulling the last US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (though in fact this
was under an agreement signed by George W Bush).
But Bush and
Obama were both non-interventionists when first elected – until the course of events, and the
enthusiasm of the Washington foreign policy establishment for foreign military ventures, changed
all that.
The US army and air force is today heavily engaged in Iraq and Syria and that is not going to
end with Obama's departure. In contradiction to Trump's non-interventionism, leading members of his
foreign policy team such as John Bolton, the belligerent former US ambassador to the UN, has been
advocating a war with Iran since 2003. Bolton proposes carving out a Sunni state in northern Iraq
and eastern Syria, a plan in which every sentence betrays ignorance and misjudgements about the forces
in play on the ground. As a recipe for deepening the conflict in the region, it could scarcely be
bettered.
There have always been crackpots in Washington, sometimes in high office, but the number of dangerous
people who have attached themselves to the incoming administration may be higher today than at any
time in American history.
Optimists have been saying this week that Trump is less ideological than he sounds and, in any
case, the US ship of state is more like an ocean liner than a speedboat making it difficult to turn
round. They add privately that not all the crooks and crazies will get the jobs they want.
Unfortunately, much the same could have been said of George W Bush when he came into office before
9/11. It is precisely such arrogant but ill-informed opportunists who can most easily be provoked
by terrorism into a self-destructive overreaction. Isis is having a good week.
"... To do so would be madness. President-Elect Donald Trump appears to recognize that Syria is not America's responsibility. Unfortunately, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, as well as some of those mentioned for top administration positions, take a more militaristic perspective. Trump should announce that his administration will not get involved in Syria's civil war in any way. ..."
"... President Barack Obama spent five years resisting pressure for direct military intervention. But he appointed war supporters John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to manage his foreign policy. Kerry acknowledged to a group of Syrian refugees in Beirut that he and other officials had advocated use of force but "lost the argument." ..."
"... However, rather than clearly set a policy of non-involvement, President Obama attempted intervention-lite. The administration failed in both its major objectives: oust Bashar al-Assad as president and empower "moderate" opponents. ..."
"... Republican warrior wannabes claim that Washington could have provided just the right form of aid to just the right groups at just the right time and thereby created a liberal, democratic, united Syria allied with America. ..."
"... In Syria the Obama administration has pursued incompatible objectives and combatants. Washington remains committed to ousting the Assad regime, which remains the most important barrier to a triumph by the Islamic State. NATO ally Turkey spent the civil war's early years accommodating so-called Daesh, and now is battling Kurdish fighters, who have been America's staunchest allies against ISIS. ..."
"... America's Gulf allies led by Saudi Arabia largely abandoned the campaign against the Islamic State in favor of a brutal attack on Yemen, dragging the U.S. into a dangerous proxy war with Iran. ..."
"... Washington must set priorities. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl argued that Russia "has proved that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs." However, that's because Moscow has one objective: keep Assad in power. Washington has a half dozen or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force. ..."
"... Nor could the conflict be settled without using extraordinary force. Merely fudging the balance of military power won't end the killing. If jihadist groups took control after Assad's collapse and his allies' withdrawal, Washington would face pressure to "do something" to protect Alawites, Christians and perhaps even "moderate" insurgents and their supporters. The U.S. has neither the responsibility nor the resources to police the globe. ..."
"... Finally, the administration has unfinished business involving anti-American radicals, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra/al-Sham. But Assad's ouster would empower both groups. They remain primarily insurgents which can be dealt with on the ground by the surrounding nations which they most threaten. ..."
"... Donald Trump had only just been declared president-elect when those controlled U.S. foreign policy began urging him to conform to their disastrous designs in the Middle East. However, Trump appears to have learned from the past. He told the Wall Street Journal: "I've had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria." ..."
"... I agree, Trump should stay out of the Middle East and start building the infrastructure for this third world country called the United States. As for John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton, they are so over and yesterday's news in the fast pace of social media. ..."
"... But their war mongering attitudes will carry a heavy burden when it comes to political history; this foursome was responsible for many civilian deaths are they responsible for the use of drones and every other killing machine that make the USA, as Eisenhower said the Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... now it is time for the USA to cut all IRS tax benefits for the religion business and use that for new airports and railroads. If someone wants to worship a God in an untaxed temple, make them pay an admission tax like when you go to the movies. ..."
The U.S. presidential election mercifully has ended. But global conflict continues. And American
politicians are still attempting to drag America into another tragic, bloody Middle Eastern conflict.
To do so would be madness. President-Elect Donald Trump appears to recognize that Syria is
not America's responsibility. Unfortunately, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, as well as some of
those mentioned for top administration positions, take a more militaristic perspective. Trump should
announce that his administration will not get involved in Syria's civil war in any way.
President Barack Obama spent five years resisting pressure for direct military intervention.
But he appointed war supporters John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to manage
his foreign policy. Kerry acknowledged to a group of Syrian refugees in Beirut that he and other
officials had advocated use of force but "lost the argument."
However, rather than clearly set a policy of non-involvement, President Obama attempted intervention-lite.
The administration failed in both its major objectives: oust Bashar al-Assad as president and empower
"moderate" opponents. However, administration officials still have not given up. Even as the
American people were voting on Obama's successor his appointees were pushing "kinetic actions against
the regime," reported anonymous sources. The president remains at odds with his own appointees.
Republican warrior wannabes claim that Washington could have provided just the right form
of aid to just the right groups at just the right time and thereby created a liberal, democratic,
united Syria allied with America. Even today Thanassis Cambanis of the Century Foundation argues
the U.S. should "use its resources to manage conflicts like Syria's." That sounds good, but when
was the last time Washington "managed" anything well in the Middle East?
Even with a quick military victory Washington got Iraq disastrously wrong, empowering Iran while
triggering the very sectarian conflict which spawned the Islamic State. U.S. intervention in Libya
left chaos and conflict in its wake. American policymakers demonstrate no facility for global social
engineering.
In Syria the Obama administration has pursued incompatible objectives and combatants. Washington
remains committed to ousting the Assad regime, which remains the most important barrier to a triumph
by the Islamic State. NATO ally Turkey spent the civil war's early years accommodating so-called
Daesh, and now is battling Kurdish fighters, who have been America's staunchest allies against ISIS.
The U.S. has trained and armed so-called moderate insurgents, who have had only limited combat
success, often surrendering, along with their U.S.-supplied equipment, to radical forces. One half
billion dollar training program generated barely three score insurgents, most of whom were promptly
killed or captured.
Former Obama official Derek Chollet said the administration hoped its aid to insurgents would
give Washington "leverage" in dealing with its Sunni "allies." Yet the latter have manipulated America
to serve their interests, pressing Washington to oust the Assad regime while supporting radical insurgent
groups opposed by the U.S. After providing symbolic aid in the early days, America's Gulf allies
led by Saudi Arabia largely abandoned the campaign against the Islamic State in favor of a brutal
attack on Yemen, dragging the U.S. into a dangerous proxy war with Iran.
Extremist forces have threatened U.S. military personnel embedded with Syrian fighters. Arab and
Kurdish insurgents trained and armed by Washington recently battled each other. Shia militias fighting
with the Baghdad government against ISIS in Iraq are opposing U.S.-backed Sunni insurgents in Syria.
Baghdad and Ankara neared war over Turkey's intervention in northern Iraq. Any attacks on Assad's
forces threaten Russian military personnel and hardware.
... ... ...
Washington must set priorities. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl argued that Russia
"has proved that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs."
However, that's because Moscow has one objective: keep Assad in power. Washington has a half dozen
or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force.
Syria's civil war does not implicate any of Washington's traditional Middle Eastern interests,
most importantly Israel and oil. America's chief concern should be the Islamic State, not Assad regime.
Candidate Trump correctly opined: "our far greater problem is not Assad, it's ISIS."
Advocates of regime change claim that only through Assad's ouster can Daesh be defeated. However,
the existing government remains the biggest military barrier to the radicals. Moreover, the group
grew out of Iraq's sectarian war and would continue to promote its "caliphate" in a post-Assad Syria.
Alas, history is full of examples-Soviet Union, Nicaragua and Iran, among others-in which brutal
radicals defeat decent liberals after they together depose a hated dictator. Unless the U.S. is willing
to occupy the country, impose a new government, and remain until the state is rebuilt, the worst
Syrians are likely to control a post-Assad future. And the results could be ugly even if Washington
stuck around, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Retired Gen. John Allen and author Charles R. Lister argued that "the credibility of the United
States as the leader and defender of the free world must be salvaged." But the Syrian tragedy has
little to do with "the free world": brutal civil wars have occurred since the dawn of mankind. And
Washington's chief duty is to defend America, not referee other nations' conflicts.
Yet ivory tower warriors continue to urge greater U.S. military involvement. Some propose targeting
Russia with additional sanctions, which would not likely dissuade Moscow from acting on behalf of
what it perceives as its important interests. However, further penalties would discourage cooperation
even where the two nations' interests coincided.
Another option is more training and better weapons for so-called moderates. Yet even President
Obama admitted that there were few past cases when support for insurgents "actually worked out well."
In a recent interview President-Elect Trump contended that "we have no idea who these people are"
and as a candidate complained that "they end up being worse" than the regime.
The reality is nuanced-Syria's insurgents span the spectrum-but the administration's experience
has been a cruel disappointment. An anonymous American official admitted to the Washington Post:
U.S.-backed forces are "not doing any better on the battlefield, they're up against a more formidable
adversary, and they're increasingly dominated by extremists." There's no reason to expect better
under the new administration.
Indeed, noted the BBC, "many of the more moderate rebel groups that the U.S. backs have formed
a strategic alliance with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham [formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra] and now fight
alongside it." Weapons previously provided to the moderates often ended up in the hands of more radical
forces. Greater aid might prolong the fighting but would be unlikely to give the "good guys" victory.
Providing anti-aircraft missiles would threaten Russian as well as Syrian aircraft, risking a significant
escalation if Moscow responded with greater force. And any leakage to radical jihadists could result
in attacks on Western airliners.
Establishing a "no-fly" and/or "safe" zone has become a panacea for many U.S. policymakers, including
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is an obvious way to appear to do something. However,
protecting civilians in this way would simultaneously immunize combatants-attracting insurgents who
would use such areas as a sanctuary, encouraging further regime and Russian attacks.
Moreover, Washington would have to do more than simply declare such a zone to exist. Enforcing
it would be an act of war requiring continuous military action. U.S. officials have estimated that
the effort would take hundreds of aircraft, thousands of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars
or more a month. Washington would have to destroy the Syrian anti-air defense system, no simple task.
Indeed, in one of her conversations revealed by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton acknowledged that imposing
a no fly zone would "kill a lot of Syrians" and "a lot of civilians."
A true "no-fly" zone also would require preventing Russian air operations as well. Trump complained
to the Wall Street Journal that by attacking Assad "we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria." Moscow
officials have warned against strikes that would threaten Russian military personnel; Moscow already
has introduced its advanced S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems. Nevertheless, several
GOP presidential candidates advocated downing Russian aircraft, if necessary. Yet it would be mad
to commit an unprovoked act of war against a nuclear-armed power over a third nation's conflict in
which the U.S. has no substantial interest. Moscow would not likely yield peacefully.
Why let this declining power "push around the United States, which has the world's biggest economy"
and "greatest military," asked Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen? Because Moscow has far more
at stake and as a result is willing to accept greater costs and take greater risks than is America.
Worse, Moscow would feel pressure to maintain its credibility and preserve its international status
against an overbearing United States.
The result could be the very conflict America and the Soviet Union avoided during the entire Cold
War. One anonymous U.S. official told the Washington Post: "You can't pretend you can go to war against
Assad and not go to war against Russia." During the campaign Trump warned: "you're going to end up
in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton," since fighting Syria would mean "fighting
Syria, Russia and Iran."
Direct military intervention also would be possible, but would raise the stakes dramatically.
Special operations forces, drones, airstrikes, and even an Iraq-style invasion all are possible.
But none would enjoy sustained public or allied support or end the ongoing murder and mayhem. Victory,
whatever that meant, would simply trigger a new round of fighting for dominance in a post-Assad Syria,
as occurred in Iraq. And conflict with Moscow could not easily be avoided.
How would any of this serve U.S. interests? The American people have no meaningful stake in the
outcome. The Assad regime's fate is largely irrelevant to Washington. For nearly a half century under
both Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who ruled previously, Damascus was hostile to the U.S.
But Syria lost more than it won and never posed a threat to America or impeded Washington's dominance
in the Middle East. Once the country dissolved into civil war the Assad regime's ability to harm
others essentially disappeared. Even if the government survives, its influence will be much diminished
for years.
Washington worries about instability, but the U.S. has created greater chaos through its foolish
war-making in the Mideast. Obviously, ending the Syrian civil war would be best for everyone, but
a jihadist victory, likely if Assad is defeated, would threaten American interests more than continuing
instability. Sen. John McCain, among others, claims that Assad's survival guarantees continuation
of the war, but Washington cannot halt the conflict and is best served by staying out of the bloody
imbroglio.
"Moderate" insurgents would be angered by Washington's withdrawal, but they are unlikely ever
to gain power. America might lose its "leverage" over such nominal allies as Riyadh and Ankara, but
there is little evidence that Washington has gained anything from its supposed influence. Indeed,
Saudi Arabia has essentially abandoned the fight against the Islamic State and Turkey is more often
attacking Kurds than Daesh.
Even if Assad fell, Washington would have no control over what followed. Without ongoing American
support, the so-called "moderates" would do no better against the radical forces than they have done
against the Syrian army. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died after the Bush administration
blew up the country demonstrate that good intentions are an insufficient basis for U.S. policy.
Clinton criticized "the ambitions and the aggressiveness of Russia" in Syria. But Moscow's objectives
there do not threaten America. Russia's alliance with Syria goes back decades. Washington should
do what is in America's interest, not what is against Russia's interest.
Of course, Syria is a humanitarian horror. But the civil war is not as bad as other conflicts
largely ignored by the U.S., such as the mass slaughter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during
the late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, Syria is not genocide, a la Rwanda or Cambodia, but a civil
war, in which a most of the dead are combatants, and from all sides. The bombing of civilian areas
is horrific, but hardly a new military tactic, and one which Washington has only recently come to
reject.
Nor could the conflict be settled without using extraordinary force. Merely fudging the balance
of military power won't end the killing. If jihadist groups took control after Assad's collapse and
his allies' withdrawal, Washington would face pressure to "do something" to protect Alawites, Christians
and perhaps even "moderate" insurgents and their supporters. The U.S. has neither the responsibility
nor the resources to police the globe.
Finally, the administration has unfinished business involving anti-American radicals, the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra/al-Sham. But Assad's ouster would empower both groups.
They remain primarily insurgents which can be dealt with on the ground by the surrounding nations
which they most threaten.
Donald Trump had only just been declared president-elect when those controlled U.S. foreign
policy began urging him to conform to their disastrous designs in the Middle East. However, Trump
appears to have learned from the past. He told the Wall Street Journal: "I've had an opposite view
of many people regarding Syria."
The incoming administration should announce that the U.S. is staying out. Syria is a tragedy beyond
America's control. Only the battling local factions and regional parties can reach a stable settlement.
Washington should seek to make the best of a bad situation and encourage negotiations to end the
killing and limit the activities of Islamic radicals.
Michael Grace 2 days ago
I agree, Trump should stay out of the Middle East and start building the infrastructure
for this third world country called the United States. As for John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan
Rice, and Hillary Clinton, they are so over and yesterday's news in the fast pace of social media.
But their war mongering attitudes will carry a heavy burden when it comes to political
history; this foursome was responsible for many civilian deaths are they responsible for the use
of drones and every other killing machine that make the USA, as Eisenhower said the Military Industrial
Complex.
Syria was a beautiful country, safe to visit, and it is the victim of greed and religion. The
latter probably being the worst thing man has ever created. The Christian, Judaic, and Muslim
malarky about a judgemental "God in the sky." has brought 2000 years of wrath, now it is time
for the USA to cut all IRS tax benefits for the religion business and use that for new airports
and railroads. If someone wants to worship a God in an untaxed temple, make them pay an admission
tax like when you go to the movies.
waky wake 2 days ago
@ Doug Bandow [:-{) I agree with your suggestion to the President-Elect Donald Trump and will
put additional emphasizes on it !!!STAY OUT OF SYRIA AT ALL COST!!! I think Pence was probably
the best choice Trump could have made for his VP, but maybe he needs to put him and one or two
of his other "have to have" team members in a box and keep them there.
I voted for "The Donald"
to do three things he said he was going to do. 1} Regain control of our southern borders {BUILD
THE WALL}, to include repatriating recent illegal intruders. 2} Renegotiate, resend, or cancel
NAFTA, TPP and TTIP. 3} To totally transform our Foreign Policy objectives and focus, including
but not limited to removing our military forces from the ME and non-NATO eastern European theaters
and requiring our NATO and Asian-pacific partners to more consistently cover their portion of
the tab, for providing their protection.
After that, I'm willing to cut him some slack. That being
said, adding the infrastructure rebuild efforts he mentioned being initiated, would guarantee
my vote for a second Trump term.
Darren Bruin 2 days ago
BRAVO, the author has it 1,000% correct. It is asinine for the USA to get involved in Syria
while wasting taxpayer's dollars as well as risking war with Russia. All for absolutely nothing
to do with America's interests. While I did not vote for him I have high hope that Trump will
keep to his promise and keep the USA out of Syria.
Trung Jen 2 days ago
Agree. Cant destroy something then leave what chaos that was created in our wake. If in the
name of humanitarian goals, there are countless other missions to intervene. Politics/power shouldn't
be hiding behind any veil
Parham Noori-Esfandiari a day ago
The problem is that U.S think-tanks that advise concessive U.S administration for long turn
planning for U.S dominance do not have good intentions for the world. If some country claims leadership
for the world it has to look what is good for the world but not what is good for bunch of criminal
special interest. How many Islamic countries have been destroyed? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,
and Yemen and .. How could the rulers in U.S and Western countries be Angels toward their own
people when they are demons toward other nations? It seems like Trump wants to build up his nation
and avoiding damage to the others. We have to wait how successful he will be against special interest
groups to achieve his goals.
wootendw 2 hours ago
Bashar Assad is a secular Alawite married to a British born/raised Sunni. Both the husband
and wife are highly intelligent. Bashar is an ophthalmologist; his wife, Asmi, has a degree in
computer science and French literature and has worked as an investment banker. Bashar Assad is
not his father (who sent troops to fight against Saddam during Iraq I). He accepted the Syrian
Presidency because his older brother, groomed to replace Hafez, was killed. Compared to other
ME leaders like Qatar's and Saudi Arabia's (whom the USG arms) the Assads are a decent couple.
Yet, for 10 years, our deceitful, murderous foreign policy establishment has been vilifying them
and trained terrorists to overthrow them. Yes, ISIS is a creation of the USG through its proxies,
Turkey and the Gulf States. Please, Mr Trump, leave Syria alone and let its people choose their
own leader even if it's Assad. This is the Russian position and the morally correct one.
Both Republican Party and Democratic party degenerated into the racket. Neoliberal racket. It really goes back to
what Eric Hoffer
said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into
a
racket ." It's a racket.
Notable quotes:
"... That's because I assumed that everybody realized that America standing up to the Soviet Union was, in some sense, a nationalist resistance. Americans just didn't want to be conquered by Russians. ..."
"... In contrast to all that, Donald Trump said: ..."
"... I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word conserve. We want to converse our money. We want to conserve our wealth We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. ..."
"... it turned out that American Conservatism was just a transitional phase. And now it's over. ..."
"... terrified of the neoconservatives who didn't like the emphasis on immigration because of their own ethnic agenda, and he was very inclined to listen to the Congressional Republicans, who didn't want to talk about immigration because they are terrified too-because they are cowards, basically-and also because they have big corporate donors . And, I think that is part of the explanation. ..."
"... I think that goes to what happened to the American Conservative Movement. It wasn't tortured; it was bought . It was simply bought . I think the dominance of the Donorist class and the Donorist Party is one of the things that has emerged analytically within the past 10 years. ..."
"... So I think that is the reason for the end of the American Conservative Movement. It really goes back to what Eric Hoffer said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket ." It's a racket. ..."
"... But the good news is, as John Derbyshire said a few minutes ago, that ultimately Conservatism -- or Rightism -- is a personality type. It underlies politics and it will crop up again-just as, to our astonishment, Donald Trump has cropped up. ..."
The core of conservatism, it seems to me, is this recognition and acceptance of the elemental emotions.
Conservatism understands that it is futile to debate the feelings of the
mother for her child-or such human instincts as the bonds of
tribe
,
nation , even
race . Of course, all are painfully vulnerable to deconstruction by rationalistic intellectuals-but
not, ultimately, to destruction. These commitments are Jungian rather than Freudian, not irrational
but a-rational-beyond the reach of reason.
This is one of the problems, by the way, with the American Conservative Movement. I was completely
astonished when it fell apart at the end of the Cold War -- I never thought it would. That's
because I assumed that everybody realized that America standing up to the Soviet Union was, in some
sense, a nationalist resistance. Americans just didn't want to be
conquered by Russians.
But, it turned out that there were people who had joined the anti-Communist coalition who
harbored messianic fantasies about
"global democracy" and and America as the first
"universal nation" (i.e. polity. Nation-states must have a specific ethnic core.) They also had
uses for the American military which hadn't occurred to me. But they didn't care about America-about
America as a nation-state, the political expression of a particular people, the Historic American
Nation. In fact, in some cases, it made them feel uneasy.
I thought about this this spring when Trump was debating in New Hampshire. ABC's John Muir asked
three candidates: "What does it mean to be Conservative?"
I'm going to quote from John Kasich:
blah, blah, blah, blah. Balanced budgets-tax cuts-jobs-"but once we have economic growth I believe
we have to reach out to people who live in the shadows." By this he meant, not illegal aliens, although
he did
favor Amnesty , but "the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the working poor [and] our friends
in the minority community."
That's because the Republican Party has lots of friends in the minority community.
Marco Rubio said:
it's about three things. The first is conservatism is about limited government, especially
at the federal level It's about free enterprise And it's about a strong national defense. It's
about believing, unlike Barack Obama, that the world is a safer and a better place when America
is the strongest military and the strongest nation on this planet. That's conservatism.
Kasich and Rubio's answers, of course, are not remotely "conservative" but utilitarian, economistic,
classical liberal. Note that Rubio even felt obliged to justify "strong national defense" in universalistic,
Wilsonian terms: it will make the world "a safer and a better place."
In contrast to all that, Donald Trump said:
I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word conserve. We want to converse
our money. We want to conserve our wealth We want to conserve our country. We want to save our
country.
Now, this caused a considerable amount of harrumphing among Conservative Inc. intellectuals and
various Republican politicians. Somebody called
John Hart , who writes a
thing called Opportunity Lives -has anybody heard of it? It's a very well-funded
Libertarianism Inc. website in Washington. Nobody has heard of it? Good. Hart said:
Trump's answer may have been how conservatives described themselves once: in 1957. But today's
modern conservative movement isn't a hoarding or protectionist philosophy. Conservatism isn't
about conserving; it's about growth.
"Growth"? Well, I don't think so. And not just because I remember
1957 . As I said,I think it turned out that American Conservatism was just a transitional
phase. And now it's over.
Why did it end? After
Buckley purged John O'Sullivan and all of us
immigration patriots from
National
Review in 1997, we spent a lot of time thinking about why he had done this. And there were
a lot of complicated psychological explanations: Bill was getting old, he was
jealous of his successor, the new Editor, John O'Sullivan, he was terrified of the
neoconservatives who didn't like the emphasis on immigration because of their
own ethnic
agenda, and he was very inclined to listen to the Congressional Republicans, who didn't want
to talk about immigration because they are terrified too-because they are cowards, basically-and
also because they have
big corporate donors . And, I think that is part of the explanation.
But
there was a similar discussion in the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm old enough to remember, about why
the Old Bolsheviks all
testified against themselves in the treason trials during
Stalin's Great
Purge . They all admitted to the most fantastic things-that they had been spies for the Americans
and the British and the capitalist imperialists all along, that they'd plotted to assassinate Comrade
Stalin. And there were all kinds of discussions as to why this was, and in fact a wonderful novel,
Darkness At Noon [
PDF
] by
Arthur Koestler , one of the
most remarkable novels in the last century, describing the exquisite psychological process by
which an old Bolshevik in prison came to the conclusion that he was going to have to say all these
things in the long-term interest of the Revolution.
Do you agree about Darkness At Noon , Paul? [ Paul Gottfried indicates assent
]
In other words, there is no complex
psychological explanation : they were just tortured. I think that goes to what happened to the
American Conservative Movement. It wasn't tortured; it was
bought . It was simply
bought . I think the dominance of the
Donorist class and the
Donorist Party is one of the things that has
emerged analytically within the past 10 years.
When I was first writing about American politics and got involved in American politics–and
I started by working for John Ashbrook (not
Ashcroft , Ash brook
) against
Nixon in 1972 –nobody thought about donors. We have only gradually become conscious of them.
And their absolute dominant role, and their ability to prohibit policy discussions, has really only
become clear in the last five to ten years.
I think, in retrospect, with
Buckley
, who
subsidized his lifestyle out of the National Review to a scandalous extent, that there
was some financial transaction. I think that now.
It's an open secret that
Rich Lowry did not want to come out and with
this anti-Trump issue that they published earlier this year, but he was
compelled to do it. That's not the type of thing that Lowry would normally do. He wouldn't take
that kind of risk, he's a courtier, he would never take the risk of not being invited to ride in
Trump's limousine in the case that Trump won. But, apparently, someone forced him to do it. And I
think that someone was a
donor and I think I know who it was.
So I think that is the reason for the end of the American Conservative Movement. It really
goes back to what
Eric Hoffer
said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates
into a
racket ." It's a racket.
But the good news is, as
John Derbyshire said a few
minutes ago, that ultimately Conservatism -- or Rightism -- is a personality type. It underlies politics
and it will crop up again-just as, to our astonishment, Donald Trump has cropped up.
"... Trump, to a degree previously matched only by such outlier presidential candidates as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, is challenging Washington's conventional wisdom that America must dominate the globe. ..."
"... He also criticized nation-building. "We have a country that's in bad shape," he reasonably allowed: "I just think we have to rebuild our country." ..."
"... Fifth, foreign policy is ultimately about domestic policy. "War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne presciently declared a century ago. There is no bigger big government program war, no graver threat to civil liberties than perpetual conflict with the homeland the battlefield, no greater danger to daily life than blowback from military overreach. ..."
Still, Trump, to a degree previously matched only by such outlier presidential candidates as Ron
Paul and Dennis Kucinich, is challenging Washington's conventional wisdom that America must dominate
the globe. The "usual suspects" who manage foreign policy in every administration, Republican and
Democrat, believe that the U.S. must cow every adversary, fight every war, defend every ally, enforce
every peace, settle every conflict, pay every bill, and otherwise ensure that the lion lies down
with the lamb at the end of time, if not before.
Not Donald Trump. He recently shocked polite war-making society in the nation's capital when he
criticized NATO, essentially a welfare agency for Europeans determined to safeguard their generous
social benefits. Before the Washington Post editorial board he made the obvious point that "NATO
was set up at a different time." Moreover, Ukraine "affects us far less than it affects other countries
in NATO, and yet we're doing all of the lifting." Why, he wondered? It's a good question.
His view that foreign policy should change along with the world scandalized Washington policymakers,
who embody Public Choice economics, which teaches that government officials and agencies are self-interested
and dedicated to self-preservation. In foreign policy that means what has ever been must ever be
and everything is more important today than in the past, no matter how much circumstances have changed.
Trump expressed skepticism about American defense subsidies for other wealthy allies, such as
South Korea and Saudi Arabia as well as military deployments in Asia. "We spent billions of dollars
on Saudi Arabia and they have nothing but money," he observed. Similarly, he contended, "South Korea
is very rich, great industrial country, and yet we're not reimbursed fairly for what we do."
He also criticized nation-building. "We have a country that's in bad shape," he reasonably allowed:
"I just think we have to rebuild our country."
Unlike presidents dating back at least to George H.W. Bush, Trump appears reluctant to go to war.
He opposed sending tens of thousands of troops to fight the Islamic State: "I would put tremendous
pressure on other countries that are over there to use their troops." Equally sensibly, he warned
against starting World War III over Crimea or useless rocks in East Asian seas. He made a point that
should be obvious at a time of budget crisis: "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore."
... ... ...
Fifth, foreign policy is ultimately about domestic policy. "War is the health of the state,"
Randolph Bourne presciently declared a century ago. There is no bigger big government program war,
no graver threat to civil liberties than perpetual conflict with the homeland the battlefield, no
greater danger to daily life than blowback from military overreach.
"... We know those in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining a US empire overseas will fight to the end to keep the financial gravy train flowing. The neocons and the liberal interventionists will continue to preach that we must run the world or everything will fall to ruin. But this election and many recent polls demonstrate that their time has passed. They may not know it yet, but their failures are too obvious and Americans are sick of paying for them. ..."
Regardless of How America Votes, Americans Want a Different Foreign Policy
,
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I have said throughout this presidential campaign that it doesn't matter much which candidate
wins. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are authoritarians and neither can be expected to roll
back the leviathan state that destroys our civil liberties at home while destroying our economy and
security with endless wars overseas. Candidates do not matter all that much, despite what the media
would have us believe. Ideas do matter, however. And regardless of which of these candidates is elected,
the battle of ideas now becomes critical.
The day after the election is our time to really focus our efforts on making the case for a peaceful
foreign policy and the prosperity it will bring. While we may not have much to cheer in Tuesday's
successful candidate, we have learned a good deal about the state of the nation from the campaigns.
From the surprising success of the insurgent Bernie Sanders to a Donald Trump campaign that broke
all the mainstream Republican Party rules – and may have broken the Republican Party itself – what
we now understand more clearly than ever is that the American people are fed up with politics as
usual. And more importantly they are fed up with the same tired old policies.
Last month a fascinating poll was conducted by the Center for the National Interest and the Charles
Koch Institute. A broad ranging 1,000 Americans were asked a series of questions about US foreign
policy and the 15 year "war on terror." You might think that after a decade and a half, trillions
of dollars, and thousands of lives lost, Americans might take a more positive view of this massive
effort to "rid the world of evildoers," as then-president George W. Bush promised. But the poll found
that only 14 percent of Americans believe US foreign policy has made them more safe! More than 50
percent of those polled said the next US president should use less force overseas, and 80 percent
said the president must get authorization from Congress before taking the country to war.
These results should make us very optimistic about our movement, as it shows that we are rapidly
approaching the "critical mass" where new ideas will triumph over the armies of the status quo.
We know those in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining a US empire overseas will fight
to the end to keep the financial gravy train flowing. The neocons and the liberal interventionists
will continue to preach that we must run the world or everything will fall to ruin. But this election
and many recent polls demonstrate that their time has passed. They may not know it yet, but their
failures are too obvious and Americans are sick of paying for them.
What is to be done? We must continue to educate ourselves and others. We must resist those who
are preaching "interventionism-lite" and calling it a real alternative. Claiming we must protect
our "interests" overseas really means using the US military to benefit special interests. That is
not what the military is for. We must stick to our noninterventionist guns. No more regime change.
No more covert destabilization programs overseas. A solid defense budget, not an imperial military
budget. US troops home now. End US military action in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and so on.
Just come home.
Americans want change, no matter who wins. We need to be ready to provide that alternative.
"... The American people don't know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon's invention of embedded journalists, which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young girls screaming while racing down the street in flames. ..."
"... Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable level of detachment. ..."
"... They both share to an extent the dominant New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody, but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary's top advisers, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. led sanctions were "worth it." ..."
"... Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington's leadership role globally and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what they would do to employ our military power. ..."
"... She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus directed against Russia. ..."
"... Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president, recently warned of "the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. ..."
"... Hillary believes that Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in that country and must be removed as the first priority. . It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power vacuum that will benefit the latter. ..."
"... Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran, which has been fighting ISIS. ..."
"... One of Hillary's advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the U.S. begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. ..."
"... Hillary's dislike for Russia's Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed that received curiously little additional coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington's foreign-policy establishment. NED has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do. ..."
"... She would increase U.S. military presence in the South China Sea to deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also "ring China with defensive missiles," ostensibly as "protection" against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles. ..."
The American people don't know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on
multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile
military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely
of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon's invention of embedded journalists,
which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the
rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of
Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young
girls screaming while racing down the street in flames.
Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither
of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable
level of detachment. Hillary is notorious for her assessment of the brutal killing of Libya's
Moammar Gaddafi, saying "We came, we saw, he died." They both share to an extent the dominant
New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody,
but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary's top advisers,
former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi
children due to U.S. led sanctions were "worth it."
In the election campaign there has, in fact, been little discussion of the issue of war and peace
or even of America's place in the world, though Trump did at one point note correctly that implementation
of Hillary's suggested foreign policy could escalate into World War III. It has been my contention
that the issue of war should be more front and center in the minds of Americans when they cast their
ballots as the prospect of an armed conflict in which little is actually at stake escalating and
going nuclear could conceivably end life on this planet as we know it.
With that in mind, it is useful to consider what the two candidates have been promising. First,
Hillary, who might reasonably be designated the Establishment's war candidate though she carefully
wraps it in humanitarian "liberal interventionism." As Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton
has always viewed a foreign crisis as an opportunity to use aggressive measures to seek a resolution.
She can always be relied upon to "do something," a reflection of the neocon driven Washington foreign
policy consensus.
Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington's leadership role globally
and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what
they would do to employ our military power.
She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus
directed against Russia. And, unfortunately, there would be little or no pushback against the
exercise of her admittedly poor instincts regarding what to do, as was demonstrated regarding Libya
and also with Benghazi. She would find little opposition in Congress and the media for an extremely
risky foreign policy, and would benefit from the Washington groupthink that prevails over the alleged
threats emanating from Russia, Iran, and China.
Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly
Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric
Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president,
recently warned of "the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. I think it's coming.
It's going to be maritime confrontation and if it doesn't happen immediately, I'll bet you a dollar
it's going to be happening after the presidential election, whoever is elected."
Hillary believes that Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in
that country and must be removed as the first priority. . It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no
way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power
vacuum that will benefit the latter. She has also called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect
the local population as well as the insurgent groups that the U.S. supports, some of which had been
labeled as terrorists before they were renamed by current Secretary of State John Kerry. Such a zone
would dramatically raise the prospect of armed conflict with Russia and it puts Washington in an
odd position vis-à-vis what is occurring in Syria. The U.S. is not at war with the Syrian government,
which, like it or not, is under international law sovereign within its own recognized borders. Damascus
has invited the Russians in to help against the rebels and objects to any other foreign presence
on Syrian territory. In spite of all that, Washington is asserting some kind of authority to intervene
and to confront the Russians as both a humanitarian mission and as an "inherent right of self-defense."
Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which
have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran,
which has been fighting ISIS. As a Senator, she threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran but
she has more recently reluctantly supported the recent nuclear agreement with that country negotiated
by President Barack Obama. But she has nevertheless warned that she will monitor the situation closely
for possible violations and will otherwise pushback against activity by the Islamic Republic. As
one of her key financial supporters is Israeli Haim Saban, who has said he is a one issue guy and
that issue is Israel, she is likely to pursue aggressive policies in the Persian Gulf. She has also
promised to move America's relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a "new level" and
has repeatedly declared that her support for Israel is unconditional.
One of Hillary's advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions
on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the U.S. begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed
to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is not at war with either Iran or Yemen
and the Houthis are not on the State Department terrorist list but our good friends the Saudis have
been assiduously bombing them for reasons that seem obscure. Stopping ships in international waters
without any legal pretext would be considered by many an act of piracy. Morell has also called for
covertly assassinating Iranians and Russians to express our displeasure with the foreign policies
of their respective governments.
Hillary's dislike for Russia's Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated
arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO,
which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views
expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed that received curiously little additional
coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington's foreign-policy establishment. NED
has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do.
After making a number of bumper-sticker claims about Russia and Putin that are either partially
true, unproven or even ridiculous, Gershman concluded that "the United States has the power to contain
and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so." It is basically a
call for the next administration to remove Putin from power-as foolish a suggestion as has ever been
seen in a leading newspaper, as it implies that the risk of nuclear war is completely acceptable
to bring about regime change in a country whose very popular, democratically elected leadership we
disapprove of. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the kind of thinking that goes on inside the
beltway and is quite possibly a position that Hillary Clinton will embrace. She also benefits from
having the perfect implementer of such a policy in Robert Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland, her extremely
dangerous protégé who is currently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
and who might wind up as Secretary of State in a Clinton Administration.
Shifting to East Asia, Hillary sees the admittedly genuine threat from North Korea but her response
is focused more on China. She would increase U.S. military presence in the South China Sea to
deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also "ring China with
defensive missiles," ostensibly as "protection" against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure
North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think
about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles.
Trump's foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy and he has not always been consistent. He has
been appropriately enough slammed for being simple minded in saying that he would "bomb the crap
out of ISIS," but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically condemning the
George W. Bush invasion of Iraq and has more than once indicated that he is not interested in either
being the world's policeman or in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly stated that he supports
NATO but it should not be construed as hostile to Russia. He would work with Putin to address concerns
over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries spend more for their own defense
and also help pay for the maintenance of U.S. bases.
Trump's controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned but it contains
a kernel of truth in that the current process for vetting new arrivals in this country is far from
transparent and apparently not very effective. The Obama Administration has not been very forthcoming
on what might be done to fix the entire immigration process but Trump is promising to shake things
up, which is overdue, though what exactly a Trump Administration would try to accomplish is far from
clear.
Continuing on the negative side, Trump, who is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders,
has relied on a mixed bag of advisors. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael
Flynn appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch neocon Michael Ledeen and both
are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should
be laid at Tehran's door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran
in his sights. The advice of Ledeen and Flynn may have been instrumental in Trump's vehement denunciation
of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he has called a "disgrace," which he has said he would "tear
up." It is vintage dumb-think. The agreement cannot be canceled because there are five other signatories
to it and the denial of a nuclear weapons program to Tehran benefits everyone in the region, including
Israel. It is far better to have the agreement than to scrap it, if that were even possible.
Trump has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians
but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem,
which is a bad idea, not in America's interest, even if Netanyahu would like it. It would produce
serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave of terrorism directed against the
U.S.
Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Trump would prefer strong leaders, i.e. autocrats, who
are friendly rather than chaotic reformers. He rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know
little about whom we are dealing with and find that we cannot control what develops. He is against
foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the U.S. is strongly disliked.
In East Asia, Trump would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals
to deter North Korea. It is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare. Like Hillary, he would prefer
that China intervene in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un "step down." He would put pressure on China
to devalue its currency because it is "bilking us of billions of dollars" and would also increase
U.S. military presence in the region to limit Beijing's expansion in the South China Sea.
So there you have it as you enter the voting booth. President Obama is going around warning that
"the fate of the world is teetering" over the electoral verdict, which he intends to be a ringing
endorsement of Hillary even though the choice is not nearly that clear cut. Part of the problem with
Trump is that he has some very bad ideas mixed in with a few good ones and no one knows what he would
actually do if he were president. Unfortunately, it is all too clear what Hillary would do.
"... Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee. ..."
"... How could the Republican establishment advance anew the trade and immigration policies that their base has so thunderously rejected? ..."
"... Do mainstream Republicans think that should Trump lose a Bush Restoration lies ahead? The dynasty is as dead as the Romanovs. ..."
"... The media, whose reputation has sunk to Congressional depths, has also suffered a blow to its credibility. ..."
"... Its hatred of Trump has been almost manic, and WikiLeaks revelations of the collusion between major media and Clintonites have convinced skeptics that the system is rigged and the referees of democracy are in the tank. ..."
"... But it is the national establishment that has suffered most. The Trump candidacy exposed what seems an unbridgeable gulf between this political class and the nation in whose name it purports to speak. ..."
"... Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power. ..."
"... Moreover, they see the establishment as the quintessence of hypocrisy. Trump is instructed to stop using such toxic phrases as "America First" and "Make America Great Again" by elites... ..."
"... While a Trump victory would create the possibility of a coalition of conservatives, populists, patriots and nationalists governing America, should he lose, America's future appears disunited and grim. ..."
Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Trump has made history and has forever changed American
politics.
Though a novice in politics, he captured the Party of Lincoln with the largest turnout
of primary voters ever, and he has inflicted wounds on the nation's ruling class from which it may
not soon recover.
Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally
and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the
largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee.
Not only did he rout the Republican elites, he ash-canned their agenda and repudiated the wars
into which they plunged the country.
Trump did not create the forces that propelled his candidacy. But he recognized them, tapped into
them, and unleashed a gusher of nationalism and populism that will not soon dissipate.
Whatever happens Tuesday, there is no going back now.
How could the Republican establishment advance anew the trade and immigration policies that
their base has so thunderously rejected?
How can the GOP establishment credibly claim to speak for a party that spent the last year cheering
a candidate who repudiated the last two Republican presidents and the last two Republican nominees?
Do mainstream Republicans think that should Trump lose a Bush Restoration lies ahead? The
dynasty is as dead as the Romanovs.
The media, whose reputation has sunk to Congressional depths, has also suffered a blow to
its credibility.
Its hatred of Trump has been almost manic, and WikiLeaks revelations of the collusion between
major media and Clintonites have convinced skeptics that the system is rigged and the referees of
democracy are in the tank.
But it is the national establishment that has suffered most. The Trump candidacy exposed what
seems an unbridgeable gulf between this political class and the nation in whose name it purports
to speak.
Consider the litany of horrors it has charged Trump with.
He said John McCain was no hero, that some Mexican illegals are "rapists." He mocked a handicapped
reporter. He called some women "pigs." He wants a temporary ban to Muslim immigration. He fought
with a Gold Star mother and father. He once engaged in "fat-shaming" a Miss Universe, calling her
"Miss Piggy," and telling her to stay out of Burger King. He allegedly made crude advances on a dozen
women and starred in the "Access Hollywood" tape with Billy Bush.
While such "gaffes" are normally fatal for candidates, Trump's followers stood by him through
them all.
Why? asks an alarmed establishment. Why, in spite of all this, did Trump's support endure? Why
did the American people not react as they once would have? Why do these accusations not have the
bite they once did?
Answer. We are another country now, an us-or-them country.
Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention
of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking
to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power.
Trump's followers see an American Spring as crucial, and they are not going to let past boorish
behavior cause them to abandon the last best chance to preserve the country they grew up in.
These are the Middle American Radicals, the MARs of whom my late friend Sam Francis wrote.
They recoil from the future the elites have mapped out for them and, realizing the stakes, will
overlook the faults and failings of a candidate who holds out the real promise of avoiding that future.
They believe Trump alone will secure the borders and rid us of a trade regime that has led to
the loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. They believe Trump is
the best hope for keeping us out of the wars the Beltway think tanks are already planning for the
sons of the "deplorables" to fight.
Moreover, they see the establishment as the quintessence of hypocrisy. Trump is instructed
to stop using such toxic phrases as "America First" and "Make America Great Again" by elites...
... ... ...
While a Trump victory would create the possibility of a coalition of conservatives, populists,
patriots and nationalists governing America, should he lose, America's future appears disunited and
grim.
But, would the followers of Donald Trump, whom Hillary Clinton has called "racist, sexist, homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic … bigots," to the cheers of her media retainers, unite behind her should
she win?
No. Win or lose, as Sen. Edward Kennedy said at the Democratic Convention of 1980, "The work goes
on, the cause endures."
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority."
What I do not get is how one can call himself/herself a democrat and be jingoistic monster.
That's the problem with Democratic Party and its supporters. Such people for me are DINO ("Democrats
only in name"). Closet neocons, if you wish. The level of militarism in the current US society
and MSM is really staggering. anti-war forces are completely destroyed (with the abandonment of
draft) and are limited for libertarians (such as Ron Paul) and paleoconservatives. There is almost
completely empty space on the left. Dennis Kucinich is one of the few exceptions
(see
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/10/27/must-read-of-the-day-dennis-kucinich-issues-extraordinary-warning-on-d-c-s-think-tank-warmongers/
)
I think that people like Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney can now proudly join
Democratic Party and feel themselves quite at home.
BTW Hillary is actually very pleasant with people of the same level. It's only subordinates,
close relatives and Security Service agents, who are on the receiving end of her wrath. A typical
"kiss up, kick down personality".
The right word probably would not "nasty", but "duplicitous".
Or "treacherous" as this involves breaking of previous agreements (with a smile) as the USA
diplomacy essentially involves positioning the country above the international law. As in "I am
the law".
Obama is not that different. I think he even more sleazy then Hillary and as such is more difficult
to deal with. He also is at his prime, while she is definitely past hers:
== quote ==
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was hard for him to work with the current
U.S. administration because it did not stick to any agreements, including on Syria.
Putin said he was ready to engage with a new president however, whoever the American people
chose, and to discuss any problem.
== end of quote ==
Syria is an "Obama-approved" adventure, is not it ? The same is true for Libya. So formally
he is no less jingoistic then Hillary, Nobel Peace price notwithstanding.
Other things equal, it might be easier for Putin to deal with Hillary then Obama, as she
has so many skeletons in the closet and might soon be impeached by House.
"... Moreover, thousands of emails were erased from her server, even after she had reportedly been sent a subpoena from Congress to retain them. During her first two years as secretary of state, half of her outside visitors were contributors to the Clinton Foundation. Yet there was not a single quid pro quo, Clinton tells us. ..."
"... Pat is oh-so right: "This election is not over." In fact it's likely that Donald Trump will continue to surge and will win on November 8th. ..."
"... Remember: Many of the polls claiming to show statistically significant Clinton leads were commissioned by the same corrupt news organizations that have worked for months to bias their news coverage in an attempt to throw the election to Clinton. ..."
"... The problem facing the donor class and the party elites is that Trump supporters are not swayed by the media bias. A recent Gallup poll shows Americans trust in journalists to be at its lowest level since Gallup began asking the question. ..."
"... Americans are savvy to the media's rigging of election reporting. Election Day, Nov. 8th, will show that the dishonest reporting of the mainstream media and the cooked samplings of their polls were all for naught. ..."
"... More years of bank favoritism, corporate socialism, political corruption, failed social programs, deindustrialization, open borders lawlessness, erosion of liberties, interventionism and wage stagnation is all adding more steam to the pressure cooker. ..."
"... A Trump presidency would back the pressure off, a Clinton presidency would be a disaster. ..."
"... Why does PJB, of all people, cling to the abhorrent notion that presidential "greatness" is defined by territorial aggrandizement through war? ..."
"... Unfortunately, that new evidence of the Clinton Criminal Enterprise (CCE) caused nary a ripple in the MSM. It was merely noted in the Crony lapdog Washington Post and then quickly submerged into the bottom of the content swamp. The Clinton WikiLeaks documents and the James O'Keefe corruption videos are marginalized or not even acknowledged to exist by the various MSM outlets. ..."
"... Hillary is probably guilty of a lot of things. However, evidence from the counter-media and/or Congress means nothing to the MSM. In fact the MSM will actually conjure up a multitude of baseless red herrings to protect Hillary. E.g., the Trump as Putin puppet meme as a diversion away from documented Clinton corruption. ..."
"... The anti-Hillary elements can only mutually reinforce in their internet ghettos. Those ghettos do not provide enough political leverage to move against a President Hillary no matter how compelling the evidence of the Clinton's collective criminality. In that context, Hillary will be politically inoculated by the protective MSM against Republican congressional inquiries and attacks. ..."
"... Hillary's presidency will almost certainly be a catastrophe because it will manifest the haggard, corrupt, cronied-up, parasitic and mediocre qualities of the hack sitting in the Oval Office. Expect a one term fiasco and then Hillary will stumble out of the White House as even more of a political and personal wreck. ..."
Moreover, thousands of emails were erased from her server, even after she had reportedly been
sent a subpoena from Congress to retain them. During her first two years as secretary of state, half
of her outside visitors were contributors to the Clinton Foundation. Yet there was not a single quid
pro quo, Clinton tells us.
Yesterday's newspapers exploded with reports of how Bill Clinton aide Doug Band raised money for
the Clinton Foundation, and then hit up the same corporate contributors to pay huge fees for Bill's
speeches.
What were the corporations buying if not influence? What were the foreign contributors buying,
if not influence with an ex-president, and a secretary of state and possible future president?
Did none of the big donors receive any official favors?
"There's a lot of smoke and there's no fire," says Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps, but there seems to be more smoke every day.
If once or twice in her hours of testimony to the FBI, to a grand jury, or before Congress, Clinton
were proven to have lied, her Justice Department would be obligated to name a special prosecutor,
as was Nixon's.
And, with the election over, the investigative reporters of the adversary press, Pulitzers beckoning,
would be cut loose to go after her.
The Republican House is already gearing up for investigations that could last deep into Clinton's
first term.
There is a vast trove of public and sworn testimony from Hillary, about the server, the emails,
the erasures, the Clinton Foundation. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, there are tens of thousands of emails
to sift through, and perhaps tens of thousands more to come.
What are the odds that not one contains information that contradicts her sworn testimony? Rep.
Jim Jordan contends that Clinton may already have perjured herself.
And as the full-court press would begin with her inauguration, Clinton would have to deal with
the Syrians, the Russians, the Taliban, the North Koreans, and Xi Jinping in the South China Sea-and
with Bill Clinton wandering around the White House with nothing to do.
This election is not over. But if Hillary Clinton wins, a truly hellish presidency could await
her, and us.
Pat is oh-so right: "This election is not over." In fact it's likely that Donald Trump will continue
to surge and will win on November 8th.
Remember: Many of the polls claiming to show statistically significant Clinton leads were commissioned
by the same corrupt news organizations that have worked for months to bias their news coverage
in an attempt to throw the election to Clinton.
On the other hand, several polls with a history of accuracy have consistently shown either
a Trump lead or a statistical dead-heat.
The problem facing the donor class and the party elites is that Trump supporters are not swayed
by the media bias. A recent Gallup poll shows Americans trust in journalists to be at its lowest
level since Gallup began asking the question.
Americans are savvy to the media's rigging of election reporting. Election Day, Nov. 8th, will
show that the dishonest reporting of the mainstream media and the cooked samplings of their polls
were all for naught.
Thus, fortunately, the American people will avoid the spectacle of a "truly hellish" Clinton
presidency.
More years of bank favoritism, corporate socialism, political corruption, failed social programs,
deindustrialization, open borders lawlessness, erosion of liberties, interventionism and wage
stagnation is all adding more steam to the pressure cooker.
A Trump presidency would back the pressure off, a Clinton presidency would be a disaster.
James Polk, no charmer, was a one-term president, but a great one, victorious in the Mexican
War, annexing California and the Southwest, negotiating a fair division of the Oregon territory
with the British.
Why does PJB, of all people, cling to the abhorrent notion that presidential "greatness" is
defined by territorial aggrandizement through war?
The only people responsible for that "cloud" are conservatives. If you wish to prevent the horrid
fate that you're describing, Pat, you need to apologize and concede that these investigations
are groundless. You can't say "where there's smoke, there's fire" if we can all see your smoke
machine.
The Visigoths will continue their advance on Rome by the millions. The Supreme Court and Fed will
shy away from diversity in their numbers. The alternative media will go bonkers, but to no avail.
The military will provide employment (endless wars) to those displaced by a permissive immigration
policy. Elizabeth I – will look down (up) in envy.
Re: "Yesterday's newspapers exploded with reports of how Bill Clinton aide Doug Band raised
money for the Clinton Foundation, and then hit up the same corporate contributors to pay huge
fees for Bill's speeches."
Unfortunately, that new evidence of the Clinton Criminal Enterprise (CCE) caused nary a ripple
in the MSM. It was merely noted in the Crony lapdog Washington Post and then quickly submerged
into the bottom of the content swamp. The Clinton WikiLeaks documents and the James O'Keefe corruption
videos are marginalized or not even acknowledged to exist by the various MSM outlets.
Hillary is probably guilty of a lot of things. However, evidence from the counter-media and/or
Congress means nothing to the MSM. In fact the MSM will actually conjure up a multitude of baseless
red herrings to protect Hillary. E.g., the Trump as Putin puppet meme as a diversion away from
documented Clinton corruption.
The anti-Hillary elements can only mutually reinforce in their internet ghettos. Those ghettos
do not provide enough political leverage to move against a President Hillary no matter how compelling
the evidence of the Clinton's collective criminality. In that context, Hillary will be politically
inoculated by the protective MSM against Republican congressional inquiries and attacks.
Hillary's presidency will almost certainly be a catastrophe because it will manifest the haggard,
corrupt, cronied-up, parasitic and mediocre qualities of the hack sitting in the Oval Office.
Expect a one term fiasco and then Hillary will stumble out of the White House as even more of
a political and personal wreck.
Agree with Pat though that it's going to be a wild ride for the rest of us – straight down.
P.S. A Republican Congress does have the power of the purse and could shave away Clinton's
Imperial use of the executive branch. But the feckless Congress has never been intelligent enough
to utilize that power effectively.
SteveM makes excellent points about the mainstream media cover-up of the Wikileaks revelations:
"Unfortunately, that new evidence of the Clinton Criminal Enterprise (CCE) caused nary a ripple
in the MSM. It was merely noted in the Crony lapdog Washington Post and then quickly submerged
into the bottom of the content swamp. The Clinton WikiLeaks documents and the James O'Keefe corruption
videos are marginalized or not even acknowledged to exist by the various MSM outlets."
Alex Pfeiffer (The Daily Caller) expands upon SteveM's critique in "The Anatomy Of A Press
Cover-Up." Great stuff:
@William N. Grigg: "Why does PJB, of all people, cling to the abhorrent notion that presidential
"greatness" is defined by territorial aggrandizement through war?"
Yes, that's one aspect of PJB's thought that has long disturbed me. Granted, PJB is a nationalist,
and I can see why an old-fashioned nationalist would admire Polk. But PJB also advocates an "enlightened
nationalism." There's nothing enlightened about stealing someone else's land. Frankly, I fail
to see how Polk's actions are any different from Hitler's actions a century later. I don't want
to offend anyone but, I'm sorry… this needs to be said.
I greatly admire Pat Buchanan, but this article is rather ridiculous.
"If once or twice in her hours of testimony to the FBI, to a grand jury, or before Congress,
Clinton were proven to have lied, her Justice Department would be obligated to name a special
prosecutor, as was Nixon's."
Translation: "I want revenge for Watergate."
Look, I admire Nixon. I think he was one of our greatest Presidents. I really mean that. I
also think that he was unfairly subjected to a witch hunt and that there was no valid reason for
him to have faced the prospect of impeachment (and the same is true, in my view, for both of the
Presidents who were actually impeached, interestingly enough). Nixon should have been allowed
to finish his second term.
I think Hillary Clinton is also facing a witch hunt. I don't agree with her foreign policy
views or with many of her domestic policy views, but this vicious attempt by the GOP to take her
down needs to stop. There is no evidence that she is any more corrupt than anybody else.
And, in any case, if she gets elected, she will be entitled to serve as President. To deliberately
try to sabotage her Presidency by hounding her with these investigations would be to show profound
contempt for democratic norms.
Enough already. I don't support Clinton or Trump. Jill Stein is my gal now. But I hope that
whoever wins does a great job and that all goes well for them. Nothing else would be in the best
interests of the country or the world.
"Remember: Many of the polls claiming to show statistically significant Clinton leads were commissioned
by the same corrupt news organizations that have worked for months to bias their news coverage
in an attempt to throw the election to Clinton.
On the other hand, several polls with a history of accuracy have consistently shown either a Trump
lead or a statistical dead-heat."
We heard this in 2012. Go back and read the Free Republic election night thread to see how
such comforting thoughts came crashing down as the night went on. Then read the posts today…all
the exact same people saying all the exact same things.
For a society to work well and to succeed, the good-will (trust and support) of it's productive,
tax-paying citizens is of paramount importance. The corrupt politics in DC for the last 25 years
has used up this good-will. Only few trust these elitists , as evidenced by the success of
the socialist, Sanders, and Trump.
With the election of the corrupt, lying, unaccomplished politician, the legitimacy of the
D.C. "Leaders" will be gone. It would be a disaster!
" She would enter office as the least-admired president in history, without a vision or a mandate.
She would take office with two-thirds of the nation believing she is untruthful and untrustworthy.
"
Funny you should go there. Sure, HRC has historically high unfavorability ratings. Fact: DJT's
unfavorability ratings are even higher. Check any reasonably non-partisan site such as RCP or
538.
Pretty much all the negatives about HRC are trumped by Trump. His flip-flopping makes hers
look amateur: he used to be a pro-choice Democrat; has publicly espoused admiration for HRC and
declared that WJC was unfairly criticized for his transgressions. Integrity: he's stiffed countless
businesses, small and large; he's been sued by his own lawyers for non-payment. Character: he
behaves like a child, 'nuff said.
Corruption: his daddy illegally bailed him out of a financial jam; Trump's foundation makes
the Clintons' look legit by comparison.
With HRC, the GOP had a huge chance to take back the WH: she has plenty of genuine baggage
to go along with the made-up stuff. However the GOP managed to nominate the one candidate who
makes her transgressions appear tolerable. The end result is that a significant number of moderate
Republicans are supporting no one, Johnson, or even HRC. Trump is so toxic that very few progressive
Dems will stray from HRC, despite being horrified by her corporate connections.
Re today: The FBI is not investigating her server. Servers don't send emails on their own. They
are investigating Hillary Clinton. They just don't like to say that. I wonder if it's in order
to – once again – announce Hillary's "innocence," just before the end of early voting and voting
day. We'll see.
For those interested in a functional government, note that this is three straight elections
– over twelve years – where the incoming president is a priori deemed illegitimate, regardless
of the scale of the victory, and the opposing political party has no interest in working with
that president.
In fact, some senators and representatives (Cruz, Gowdy, Issa, etc.) seem to take joy and pride
in noting the extent and length of these investigations, regardless of what they find. It is the
very process of governmental obstruction they seek, not necessarily justice or truth.
Could we have a new historic first if Hillary wins, the First Woman President to be impeached
by Congress? And the first couple in the history of the Republic to both be impeached?
At some point the Republicans have to be for something. I suppose they will be tempted to go after
Ms. Clinton for what she has elided or attempted to, but I think that is a major mistake. You
wrote: "Yet the hostility Clinton would face the day she takes office would almost seem to ensure
four years of pure hell.
The reason: her credibility, or rather her transparent lack of it."
There are a few assumptions in this – first, that any investigations into her past behavior
will be impartial. True or not, the impression will be hard to pull off – I expect they will easily
be framed as misogynist. And some most likely will be, so it takes a bit of thought and study
to determine which are motivated by misogyny and which are not. News cycles are too fast for that
sort of reflection, and in any event more or less all the major papers and television networks
are in her camp, so can't really expect journalism out of them anymore. It will be a called a
misogynist, partisan investigation and that will be the end of it.
Second, it assumes that the people doing the investigation have credibility. That's a big if
– the GOP went from Bush 43's two terms of military adventurism, increasing income inequality
and economic catastrophe to no introspection or admission of error in the ensuing 8 years of apparently
mindless, vindictive opposition. That is a long time of being kind of – well – less than thoughtful.
And it's had tremendous costs. Mr. Obama presents as a decent man in his profiles, but he was
very inexperienced when elected and in my opinion has more or less been bumbling around for almost
8 years now, kind of like Clouseau in those old Pink Panther movies. Only a lot of people of died,
lost their homes or have seen their communities consumed by despair. Government has been very
ineffective for many Americans, and the Republicans have a lot to answer for with the way they've
chosen to spend their time and direct their energy over the last 8 years. It's been a waste going
after Obama, and going after Clinton will just be more of the same.
And the last assumption is that with all that might be going on in the next few years, this
is important. Ms. Clinton has made some statements, some good, some bad. The bad, though, are
remarkably bad – she's for invading a Middle Eastern country and establishing control over their
airspace, as an example. In 2017. It's pure crazy. She has Democratic support. Hate to think if
she is elected the Republicans will be focusing on email.
"... US-Russia-China cooperation will eliminate for the US the threat of war with the only two powers whose nuclear capabilities could pose existential threats to the US. ..."
"... Simultaneously, Trump will put an end to "the prevailing view that the U.S. is, and always must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its allies, satellites-and even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits, and knowhow…a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over the well-being of the larger U.S. population…Instead of sacrificing American economic interests on the altar of U.S. 'leadership,' [Trump] will view the strengthening of the American economy as central to American greatness." ..."
"... President Trump will rebuild the decimated US manufacturing sector and return to Americans those tens of millions of jobs that America's globalist elites were allowed to ship overseas. Rebuilding the US economy – and jobs! – will be the centerpiece of a Donald Trump presidency. ..."
"... The problem is that everyone wants to call themselves a Realist, even the Neocons. The Neocons proclaim that promoting Democracy, nation building, and being the world's policeman is 'realism' because if you withdraw from the world the problems follow you home. Tom Rogan bellowed that we needed to destroy Syria in the name of realism. They are totally wrong but the point is that everyone wants to claim this mantle which is why I tend to avoid this term. ..."
"... I think we should embrace the Putin Doctrine but that name is toxic. Basically, he eschews destroying standing govts because it is highly destabilizing. This is common sense. ..."
"... Oh, when I hear 'Bush kept us safe' it tears my heart out when I see guys in their 20/30's walking around with those titanium prosthetics. Do the 4,000+ men who died in Iraq and 10,000+ severely wounded count? And this does not even start to count the chaos and death in the M.E. ..."
"... Mainstream media are besides themselves at the prospect of their masters having to relinquish their special entitlements; namely, designer wars, selection of the few to govern the many (Supreme Court and the Fed), and putting foreign dictates over American interests at an incredible cost to the U.S. in human and non-human resources. ..."
Donald Trump played a wily capitalistic trick on his Republican opponents in the primary fights
this year-he served an underserved market.
By now it's a cliché that Trump, while on his way to the GOP nomination, tapped into an unnoticed
reservoir of right-of-center opinion on domestic and economic concerns-namely, the populist-nationalists
who felt left out of the reigning market-libertarianism of the last few decades.
Indeed, of the 17 Republicans who ran this year, Trump had mostly to himself the populist issues:
that is, opposition to open borders, to free trade, and to earned-entitlement cutting. When the other
candidates were zigging toward the familiar-and unpopular-Chamber of Commerce-approved orthodoxy,
Trump was zagging toward the voters.
Moreover, the same sort of populist-nationalist reservoir-tapping was evident in the realm of
foreign affairs. To put it in bluntly Trumpian terms, the New Yorker hit 'em where they weren't.
The fact that Trump was doing something dramatically different became clear in the make-or-break
Republican debate in Greenville, S.C., on February 13. Back in those early days of the campaign,
Trump had lost one contest (Iowa) and won one (New Hampshire), and it was still anybody's guess who
would emerge victorious.
During that debate, Trump took what seemed to be an extraordinary gamble: he ripped into George
W. Bush's national-security record-in a state where the 43rd president was still popular. Speaking
of the Iraq War, Trump said, "George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was
a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East."
And then Trump went further, aiming indirectly at the former president, while slugging his brother
Jeb directly: "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that."
In response, Jeb intoned the usual Republican line, "He kept us safe." And others on the stage
in Greenville that night rushed to associate themselves with Bush 43.
In the aftermath of this verbal melee, many thought that Trump had doomed himself. As one unnamed
Republican "strategist" chortled to Politico , "Trump's attack on President George W. Bush
was galactic-level stupid in South Carolina."
Well, not quite: Trump triumphed in the Palmetto State primary a week later, winning by a 10-point
margin.
Thus, as we can see in retrospect, something had changed within the GOP. After 9/11, in the early
years of this century, South Carolinians had been eager to fight. Yet by the middle of the second
decade, they-or at least a plurality of them-had grown weary of endless foreign war.
Trump's victory in the Palmetto State was decisive, yet it was nevertheless only a plurality,
32.5 percent. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio, running as an unabashed neocon hawk, finished second.
So we can see that the Republican foreign-policy "market" is now segmented. And while Trump proved
effective at targeting crucial segments, they weren't the only segments-because, in actuality, there
are four easily identifiable blocs on the foreign-policy right. And as we delineate these four segments,
we can see that while some are highly organized and tightly articulate, others are loose and inchoate:
First, the libertarians. That is, the Cato Institute and other free-market think tanks, Reason
magazine, and so on. Libertarians are not so numerous around the country, but they are strong
among the intelligentsia.
Second, the old-right "isolationists." These folks, also known as "paleocons," often find common
ground with libertarians, yet their origins are different, and so is their outlook. Whereas the libertarians
typically have issued a blanket anathema to all foreign entanglements, the isolationists have been
more selective. During World War I, for example, their intellectual forbears were hostile to U.S.
involvement on the side of the Allies, but that was often because of specifically anti-English or
pro-German sentiments, not because they felt guided by an overall principle of non-intervention.
Indeed, the same isolationists were often eager to intervene in Latin America and in the Far East.
More recently, the temperamentally isolationist bloc has joined with the libertarians in opposition
to deeper U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
Third, the traditional hawks. On the proverbial Main Street, USA, plenty of people-not limited
to the active-duty military, veterans, and law-enforcers-believe that America's national honor is
worth fighting for.
Fourth, the neoconservatives. This group, which takes hawkishness to an avant-garde extreme, is
so praised, and so criticized, that there's little that needs be added here. Yet we can say this:
as with the libertarians, they are concentrated in Washington, DC; by contrast, out beyond the Beltway,
they are relatively scarce. Because of their connections to big donors to both parties, however,
they have been powerful, even preeminent, in foreign-policy circles over the last quarter-century.
Yet today, it's the neocons who feel most threatened by, and most hostile to, the Trump phenomenon.
We can pause to offer a contextual point: floating somewhere among the first three categories-libertarians,
isolationists, hawks-are the foreign-policy realists. These, of course, are the people, following
in the tradition of the great scholar Hans Morgenthau, who pride themselves on seeing the world as
it is, regarding foreign policy as just another application of Bismarckian wisdom-"the art of the
possible."
The realists, disproportionately academics and think-tankers, are a savvy and well-credentialed
group-or, according to critics, cynical and world-weary. Yet either way, they have made many alliances
with the aforementioned trio of groups, even as they have usually maintained their ideological flexibility.
To borrow the celebrated wisdom of the 19th-century realpolitiker Lord Palmerston, realists don't
have permanent attachments; they have permanent interests. And so it seems likely that if Trump wins-or
anyone like Trump in the future-many realists will be willing to emerge from their wood-paneled precincts
to engage in the hurly-burly of public service.
Returning to our basic quartet of blocs, we can quickly see that two of them, the libertarians
and the neocons, have been loudly successful in the "battle of ideas." That is, almost everyone knows
where the libertarians and the neocons stand on the controversies of the moment. Meanwhile, the other
two groups-the isolationists and the traditional hawks-have failed to make themselves heard. That
is, until Trump.
For the most part, the isolationists and hawks have not been organized; they've just been clusters
of veterans, cops, gun owners, and like-minded souls gathering here and there, feeling strongly about
the issues but never finding a national megaphone. Indeed, even organized groups, such as the American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, sizable as they might be, have had little impact, of late,
on foreign affairs.
This paradoxical reality-that even big groups can be voiceless, allowing smaller groups to carry
the day-is well understood. Back in 1839, the historian Thomas Carlyle observed of his Britain, "The
speaking classes speak and debate," while the "deep-buried [working] class lies like an Enceladus"-a
mythological giant imprisoned under a volcano. Yet, Carlyle continued, the giant under the volcano
will not stay silent forever; one day it will erupt, and the inevitable eruption "has to produce
earthquakes!"
In our time, Trump has provoked the Enceladus-like earthquake. Over the past year, while the mainstream
media has continued to lavish attention on the fine points of libertarianism and neoconservatism,
the Peoples of the Volcano have blown up American politics.
Trump has spoken loudly to both of his groups. To the isolationists, he has highlighted his past
opposition to the Iraq and Libya misadventures, as well as his suspicions about NATO and other alliances.
(Here the libertarians, too, are on board.) At the same time, he has also talked the language of
the hawks, as when he has said, "Take the oil" and "Bomb the [bleep] out of them." Trump has also
attacked the Iran nuclear agreement, deriding it as "one of the worst deals ever made."
Thus earlier this year Trump mobilized the isolationists and the hawks, leaving the libertarians
to Rand Paul and the neocons to Rubio.
Now as we move to the general election, it appears that Trump has kept the loyalty of his core
groups. Many libertarians, meanwhile, are voting for Gary Johnson-the former Republican governor
at the top of the Libertarian Party's ticket-and they are being joined, most likely as a one-off,
by disaffected Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile, the neocons, most of them, have become the objective
allies, if not the overt supporters, of Hillary Clinton.
Even if Trump loses, his energized supporters, having found their voice, will be a new and important
force within the GOP-a force that could make it significantly harder for a future president to, say,
"liberate" and "democratize" Syria.
♦♦♦
Yet now we must skip past the unknown unknowns of the election and ask: what might we expect if
Trump becomes president?
One immediate point to be borne in mind is that it will be a challenge to fill the cabinet and
the sub-cabinet-to say nothing of the thousands of "Schedule C" positions across the administration-with
true Trump loyalists. Yes, of course, if Trump wins that means he will have garnered 50 million or
more votes, but still, the number of people who have the right credentials and can pass all the background
checks-including, for most of the top jobs, Senate confirmation-is minuscule.
So here we might single out the foreign-policy realists as likely having a bright future in a
Trump administration: after all, they are often well-credentialed and, by their nature, have prudently
tended to keep their anti-Trump commentary to a minimum. (There's a piece of inside-the-Beltway realist
wisdom that seems relevant here: "You're for what happens.")
Yet the path to realist dominion in a Trump administration is not smooth. As a group, they have
been in eclipse since the Bush 41 era, so an entire generation of their cadres is missing. The realists
do not have long lists of age-appropriate alumni ready for another spin through the revolving door.
By contrast, the libertarians have lots of young staffers on some think-tank payroll or another.
And of course, the neocons have lots of experience and contacts-yes, they screwed up the last time
they were in power, but at least they know the jargon.
Thus, unless president-elect Trump makes a genuinely heroic effort to infuse his administration
with new blood, he will end up hiring a lot of folks who might not really agree with him-and who
perhaps even have strongly, if quietly, opposed him. That means that the path of a Trump presidency
could be channeled in an unexpected direction, as the adherents of other foreign-policy schools-including,
conceivably, schools from the left-clamber aboard. As they say in DC, "personnel is policy."
Still, Trump has a strong personality, and it's entirely possible that, as president, he will
succeed in imprinting his unique will on his appointees. (On the other hand, the career government,
starting with the State Department's foreign service officers, might well prove to be a different
story.)
Looking further ahead, as a hypothetical President Trump surveys the situation from the Sit Room,
here are nine things that will be in view:
1.
Trump will recall, always, that the Bush 43 presidency drove itself into a ditch on Iraq. So he
will surely see the supreme value of not sending U.S. ground troops-beyond a few advisors-into Middle
Eastern war zones.
2.
Trump will also realize that Barack Obama, for all his talk about hope and change, ended up preserving
the bulk of Bush 43's policies. The only difference is that Obama did it on the cheap, reducing defense
spending as he went along.
Obama similar to Bush-really? Yes. To be sure, Obama dropped all of Bush's democratic messianism,
but even with his cool detachment he kept all of Bush's alliances and commitments, including those
in Afghanistan and Iraq. And then he added a new international commitment: "climate change."
In other words, America now has a policy of "quintuple containment": Russia, China, Iran, ISIS/al-Qaeda,
and, of course, the carbon-dioxide molecule. Many would argue that today we aren't managing any of
these containments well; others insist that the Obama administration, perversely, seems most dedicated
to the containment of climate change: everything else can fall apart, but if the Obamans can maintain
the illusion of their international CO2 deals, as far as they are concerned all will be well.
In addition, Uncle Sam has another hundred or so minor commitments-including bilateral defense
treaties with countries most Americans have never heard of, along with special commitments to champion
the rights of children, women, dissidents, endangered species, etc. On a one-by-one basis, it's possible
to admire many of these efforts; on a cumulative basis, it's impossible to imagine how we can sustain
all of them.
3. A populist president like Trump will further realize that if the U.S. has just 4 percent of the
world's population and barely more than a fifth of world GDP, it's not possible that we can continue
to police the planet. Yes, we have many allies-on paper. Yet Trump's critique of many of them as
feckless, even faithless, resonated for one big reason: it was true.
So Trump will likely begin the process of rethinking U.S. commitments around the world. Do we
really want to risk nuclear war over the Spratly Islands? Or the eastern marches of Ukraine? Here,
Trump might well default to the wisdom of the realists: big powers are just that-big powers-and so
one must deal with them in all their authoritarian essentiality. And as for all the other countries
of the world-some we like and some we don't-we're not going to change them, either. (Although in
some cases, notably Iraq and Syria, partition, supervised by the great powers, may be the only solution.)
4.
Trump will surely see world diplomacy as an extension of what he has done best all his life-making
deals. This instinct will serve him well in two ways: first, he will be sharply separating himself
from his predecessors, Bush the hot-blooded unilateralist war-of-choicer and Obama the cool and detached
multilateralist leader-from-behind. Second, his deal-making desire will inspire him do what needs
to be done: build rapport with world leaders as a prelude to making things happen.
To cite one immediate example: there's no way that we will ever achieve anything resembling "peace
with honor" in Afghanistan without the full cooperation of the Taliban's masters in Pakistan. Ergo,
the needed deal must be struck in Islamabad, not Kabul.
Almost certainly, a President Trump will treat China and Russia as legitimate powers, not as rogue
states that must be single-handedly tamed by America.
Moreover, Trump's deal-making trope also suggests that instead of sacrificing American economic
interests on the altar of U.S. "leadership," he will view the strengthening of the American economy
as central to American greatness.
5.
Trump will further realize that his friends the realists have had a blind spot of late when it
comes to eco nomic matters. Once upon a time-that is, in the 19th century-economic nationalism was
at the forefront of American foreign-policy making. In the old days, as America's Manifest Destiny
stretched beyond the continental U.S., expansionism and Hamiltonianism went together: as they used
to say, trade follows the flag. Theodore Roosevelt's digging of the Panama Canal surely ranks as
one of the most successful fusions of foreign and economic policy in American history.
Yet in the past few decades, the economic nationalists and the foreign-policy realists have drifted
apart. For example, a Reagan official, Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute, has been
mostly ignored by the realists, who have instead embraced the conventional elite view of free trade
and globalization.
So a President Trump will have the opportunity to reunite realism and economic nationalism; he
can once again put manufacturing exports, for example, at the top of the U.S. agenda. Indeed, Trump
might consider other economic-nationalist gambits: for example, if we are currently defending such
wealthy countries as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Norway, why aren't they investing some of the trillions
of dollars in their sovereign-wealth funds into, say, American infrastructure?
6.
Trump will also come into power realizing that he has few friends in the foreign-policy establishment;
after all, most establishmentarians opposed him vehemently. Yet that could turn out to be a real
plus for the 45th president because it could enable him to discard the stodgy and outworn thinking
of the "experts." In particular, he could refute the prevailing view that the U.S. is, and always
must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its allies, satellites-and
even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits, and knowhow. That was
always, of course, a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over
the well-being of the larger U.S. population-and maybe Trump can come up with a better and fairer
vision.
7.
As an instinctive deal-maker, Trump will have the capacity to clear away the underbrush of accumulated
obsolete doctrines and dogmas. To cite just one small but tragic example, there's the dopey chain
of thinking that has guided U.S. policy toward South Sudan. Today, we officially condemn both sides
in that country's ongoing civil war. Yet we might ask, how can that work out well for American interests?
After all, one side or the other is going to win, and we presumably want a friend in Juba, not a
Chinese-affiliated foe.
On the larger canvas, Trump will observe that if the U.S., China, and Russia are the three countries
capable of destroying the world, then it's smart to figure out a modus vivendi among this
threesome. Such practical deal-making, of course, would undermine the moralistic narrative that Xi
Jinping and Vladimir Putin are the potentates of new evil empires.
8.
Whether or not he's currently familiar with the terminology, Trump seems likely to recapitulate
the "multipolar" system envisioned by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Back then,
the multipolar vision included the U.S., the USSR, Western Europe, China, and Japan.
Yet multipolarity was lost in the '80s, as the American economy was Reaganized, the Cold War grew
colder, and the Soviet Union staggered to its self-implosion. Then in the '90s we had the "unipolar
moment," when the U.S. enjoyed "hyper-power" primacy.
Yet as with all moments, unipolarity soon passed, undone by the Iraq quagmire, America's economic
stagnation, and the rise of other powers. So today, multipolarity seems destined to re-emerge with
a slightly upgraded cast of players: the U.S., China, Russia, the European Union, and perhaps India.
9.
And, of course, Trump will have to build that wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
♦♦♦
Some might object that I am reading too much into Trump. Indeed, the conventional wisdom, even
today, maintains that Trump is visceral, not intellectual, that he is buffoonish, not Kissingerian.
To such critics, this Trump supporter feels compelled to respond: when has the conventional wisdom
about the New Yorker been proven correct?
It's not easy to become president. In all of U.S. history, just 42 individuals have been elected
to the presidency-or to the vice presidency and succeeded a fallen president. That is, indeed, an
exclusive club. Or as Trump himself might say, it's not a club for dummies.
If Trump does, in fact, become the 45th president, then by definition, he will have proven himself
to be pretty darn strategic. And that's a portent that bodes well for his foreign policy.
James P. Pinkerton is a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
Among James Pinkerton's most compelling reasons to hope for a Trump presidency are these two:
[1] "Almost certainly, a President Trump will treat China and Russia as legitimate powers, not
as rogue states that must be single-handedly tamed by America…Trump will observe that if the U.S.,
China, and Russia are the three countries capable of destroying the world, then it's smart to
figure out amodus vivendi among this threesome…"
US-Russia-China cooperation will eliminate for the US the threat of war with the only two
powers whose nuclear capabilities could pose existential threats to the US.
[2] Simultaneously, Trump will put an end to "the prevailing view that the U.S. is,
and always must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its
allies, satellites-and even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits,
and knowhow…a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over the
well-being of the larger U.S. population…Instead of sacrificing American economic interests on
the altar of U.S. 'leadership,' [Trump] will view the strengthening of the American economy as
central to American greatness."
President Trump will rebuild the decimated US manufacturing sector and return to Americans
those tens of millions of jobs that America's globalist elites were allowed to ship overseas.
Rebuilding the US economy – and jobs! – will be the centerpiece of a Donald Trump presidency.<
The problem is that everyone wants to call themselves a Realist, even the Neocons. The Neocons
proclaim that promoting Democracy, nation building, and being the world's policeman is 'realism'
because if you withdraw from the world the problems follow you home. Tom Rogan bellowed that we
needed to destroy Syria in the name of realism. They are totally wrong but the point is that everyone
wants to claim this mantle which is why I tend to avoid this term.
I think we should
embrace the Putin Doctrine but that name is toxic. Basically, he eschews destroying standing govts
because it is highly destabilizing. This is common sense.
Oh, when I hear 'Bush kept us safe' it tears my heart out when I see guys in their 20/30's
walking around with those titanium prosthetics. Do the 4,000+ men who died in Iraq and 10,000+
severely wounded count? And this does not even start to count the chaos and death in the M.E.
Trump just came across as different while maintaining conservative, albeit middle-American values.
Mainstream media are besides themselves at the prospect of their masters having to relinquish
their special entitlements; namely, designer wars, selection of the few to govern the many (Supreme
Court and the Fed), and putting foreign dictates over American interests at an incredible cost
to the U.S. in human and non-human resources.
The song goes on. Trump hit a real nerve. Even if he loses, the American people have had a
small but important victory. We are frustrated with the ruling cabal. A sleeping giant has been
awoken. This election could be the political Perl Harbor….
Pinkerton has spent thousands of words writing about someone who is not the Donald Trump anyone
has ever seen.
In this, he joins every other member of the Right, who wait in hopeful anticipation
to see a Champion for their cause in Donald Trump, and are willing to turn a blind eye to his
ignorance, outright stupidity, lack of self-discipline, and lack of serious intent.
Pinkerton, he will only follow your lead here if he sees what's in it for HIM, not for the
Right and certainly not for the benefit of the American people.
Flawed premise. This opine works its way through the rabbit hole pretzel of current methodologies
in D.C. The ones that don't work. The city of NY had a similar outcome building a certain ice
skating facility within the confines of a system designed to fail.
What Trump does is implode those failed systems, implements a methodology that has proven to
succeed, and then does it. Under budget and before the deadline. Finding the *right* bodies to
make it all work isn't as difficult as is surmised. What that shows is how difficult that task
would be for the author. Whenever I hear some pundit claim that Trump can't possibly do all that
means is the pundit couldn't possibly do it.
The current system is full of youcan'tdoits, what have you got to lose, more of the same?
"... If Mr Pat Buchanan were running, he would be in good stead save or his speaking style which is far more formal. Mr. Trump's carefree (of sorts) delivery punches through and gives the impression that he's an everyman. His boundless energy has that sense earnest sincerity. His "imperfections" tend to work in his favor. But if his message was counter to where most people are already at - he would not be the nominee. ..."
"... We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables." ..."
"Conservative" Christians aren't going to stop voting
Republican. They're just going to offer a different
reason for doing it, when asked.
I will bet all the
money in my pockets against all the money in Rod's
pockets that there will NEVER, in either of our
lifetimes, be a time when he feels compelled by his
principles to vote for a Democratic candidate for
federal office over a Republican one.
And finally, I note that someone above asked a
version of the same question I've periodically had: What
does Dreherdom look like? If orthodox Christians
controlled the levers of power, what do you propose to
DO with your (cultural AND legal) authority? And what
will be the status of the "other" in that brave new
world?
[NFR: They will be captured and enslaved and sent
to work in the
boudin
mines. And I will spend whatever percentage
of the Gross National Product it takes to hire the
Rolling Stones to play "Exile On Main Street" live, from
start to finish, in a national broadcast that I will
require every citizen to watch, on pain of being
assigned to hard labor in the boudin mines. Also, I will
eat boudin. - RD]
[Connor: While I can't speak for Rod, I can speak for
many traditional Catholics. The end goal is the
re-establishment of the social reign of Christ, which
means a majority Christian nation, Christian culture,
and a state which governs according to Christian
principles (read Quas Primas). In that situation, and in
that situation alone, would the Ben Op no longer be
necessary.]
That's interesting. Well, I think you're
right that about 3/4 of the readers would lose their
minds if that was stated as an explicit political goal.
It would confirm in the minds of many the suspicion that
the primary strategy of the religious right is the
establishment of an anti-democratic, theocracy or
Caesaropapist regime. I would consider that the extreme
"utopian" or some would even say "totalitarian" position
of religious conservatives and not "conservative" in any
sense that I understand "Conservatism".
Saltlick's minimal requirement seems to moderate that
goal to "a national reaffirmation that our rights, as
partially defined in the Constitution and Bill of
Rights, come from God the Creator, that life is valuable
from the moment of conception, and that the traditional
family is the best promoter of sound moral, cultural and
economic health.", but even in that he regards it as
only a half-measure for Saltlick. Needless to say, what
a "traditional" family is would need some definition.
If nothing short of establishing the City of God on
earth would secure the comfort of some Christians then
that is a pretty high bar and you have every right to
feel insecure… as do the rest of us.
I would be curious to know how many of your
co-religionists on these boards share your view? And how
many would reject it?
Mr Dreher, I always read your articles with great
interest, although I often disagree with you. For
example, I don't think anybody of any political
persuasion is going to try to stamp out Christianity or
those who espouse it. Indeed, I think many people will
be delighted if all Christians would exercise the
Benedict Option. A lot of people are tired of the
Religious Right's attempt to gain political power in
order to impose Christian views of morality. A lot of
people believe that there should be a separation of
church and state, not only in the Constitutional sense
of having no state-established religion, but also in the
general sense that morality should be a private matter,
not the subject of politics.
[NFR: That's
incredibly naive. Aside from procedural laws, all laws
are nothing but legislated morality. Somebody's morality
is going to be reflected in law. It is unavoidable. -
RD]
Michelle: Obama advisor Al Sharpton has been
responsible for stirring up more Jew hatred than Trump.
Have you ever given a care about that? Do you care that
Hillary's Mexican and Muslim immigrants are sure to be
more antisemitic than the native whites of the US that
you fret about over and over?
Sharpton isn't
running for president and I didn't vote for him when he
was. Same for Jesse Jackson. I'm well aware of
antisemitism within the black community but doubt it
comes anywhere close to that of the alt-right and
nationalist groups, who foment hate against both blacks
and Jews. And duh, of course there's plenty of
anti-semitism among Muslims. Who's pretending otherwise.
It also appears that you didn't read what I wrote.
I
favor strong borders but think you can do so without
demagoguery and appealing to people's baser instincts
and hatreds, which is what Trump does. I realize all you Trump apologists aren't about to
recognize the danger the man poses. I don't care as long
as there are enough people who do to keep him out of the
presidency.
Rod, you clearly have unresolved cognitive dissonance,
because if your vote is based on which candidate is best
with religious liberty and the right of Christians to
live as Christians, the answer is clear and unambiguous:
Trump. Yet you refuse to vote for him.
The author of
this piece actually has you nailed perfectly, which is
why it makes you so uncomfortable. He sees that you are
absolving yourself from the consequences of political
engagement by acting like you can stay firm on your
principles, while refusing to choose from the only two
real sides on offer. That choice is the messy business
of politics, and inevitably imperfect because politics
is a human practice and humans are fallen. Because you
are unwilling to make that choice, you are out of the
politics business whether you realize it or not.
What you have not abandoned, but I believe should
when it comes to the topics of politics, is the public
square.
You recognize that your generation failed to fight.
You very clearly have no intention of fighting even now.
You have decided to build a Benedict Option because you
think that's the only viable option. That's fine. In
fact, I heartily approve.
But other people have chosen differently. They have
chosen to fight. Donald Trump for one. You might not
like his methods. But he's not willing to see his
country destroyed without doing everything he can to
stop it. He's not alone. Many people are standing up and
recognizing that though the odds are long, they owe it
to their children and grandchildren to stand up and be
counted. That choice deserves respect too, Rod.
The problem with you is not the BenOp, but your
active demonization of those who actually have the
temerity to fight for their country instead of
surrendering it to go hide in your BenOp bunker with
you.
Trump, the alt-right, etc. may be wrong
metaphysically and they may be wrong ethically, but they
are right about some very important things – things that
you, Rod Dreher, and your entire generation of
conservatives were very, very wrong on. Rather than
admit that, you want to stand back from the fight,
pretending you're too gosh darned principled to soil
your hands voting for one of the two candidates who have
a shot to be our president, and acting like you're a
morally superior person for doing so.
You should focus on the important work of building
and evangelizing for BenOp, and leave the field of
political discourse to those who are actually willing to
engage in the business of politics.
"I realize all you Trump apologists aren't about to
recognize the danger the man poses. I don't care as long
as there are enough people who do to keep him out of the
presidency."
So basically this boils down to you
asking us to trust that your gut is right in spite of
what we can see with our lying eyes?
Yeah, no thanks.
So many colorful descriptions of how Trump lies from so
many commenters… Could y'all give at least one that
doesn't fit his opponent perfectly and even with double
intensity?
Michelle: Obama advisor Al Sharpton has been responsible
for stirring up more Jew hatred than Trump. Have you
ever given a care about that? Do you care that Hillary's
Mexican and Muslim immigrants are sure to be more
antisemitic than the native whites of the US that you
fret about over and over?
Rod, when you say the following, you articulate exactly
why I have reluctantly become a libertarian:
-"On a
practical level, that means that I will no longer vote
primarily on the social issues that have dictated my
vote in the past, but I will vote primarily for
candidates who will be better at protecting my
community's right to be left alone."-
Last year after listening to the same-sex marriage
oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court, I
concluded that libertarianism and either the current
Libertarian Party or some spinoff offers the best that
those of us with traditional religious and moral
convictions can hope for in a decidedly post-Christian
America. I wrote about why I believe this to be so at
http://www.skiprigney.com/2015/04/29/how-the-ssm-debate-made-me-a-libertarian/
I don't believe for a minute that the majority of
elected officials in the Republican Party have the
backbone to stand up for religious liberty in the face
of corporate pressure. You need look no farther than how
the Republicans caved last year in Indiana on the
protection of religious liberty.
There are many libertarians who are going to work to
protect the rights of people to do things that undermine
the common good. But, I have more faith that they'll
protect the rights of a cultural minority such as
traditionalist Christians than I have in either the
Republicans or the Democrats.
It isn't true that Trump and his supporters are against
identity politics. It's just that they have a far
simpler view of identity politics. There are white
people, and there are blah people. White people will be
in charge, and blah people can have a piece of the pie
to the extent they agree to pretend to be white people.
Cecelia wonders: "Are we as a people really capable of
being citizens of a Republic or are we simply fools to
be manipulated by people like Trump?"
My two cents: We're capable of being citizens of a
Republic if our government creates the conditions for a
thriving middle class: the most important condition
being good, high-paying jobs that allow people to live
an independent existence. The vast majority of
manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and even
higher-skilled jobs (such as research and development)
are increasingly being outsourced as well.
If you look at the monthly payroll jobs reports put
out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will see that
the vast majority of new jobs are in retail trade,
health care and social assistance, waitresses and
bartenders, and government. Most of these jobs are
part-time jobs. None of these jobs produce any goods
than can be exported. Aside from government jobs, these
are not jobs that pay well enough for people to thrive
independently. This is why more Americans aged 25-34
live with their parents than independently with spouses
and children of their own. It is also why many people
now must work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.
As for government jobs, they are tax-supported, and thus
a drain on the economy. I'm not a libertarian. I
recognize that government provides many crucial
services. But it is unproductive to have too many
bureaucrats living off of tax revenues.
Basically, the middle class is disappearing. Without
a thriving middle class, democracy is unsustainable.
Struggling people filled with hate and resentment are
ripe for manipulation by nefarious forces.
Spain's Francisco Franco understood this very well.
His goal was to make it unthinkable for his country to
descend into civil war ever again. He achieved this.
Before Franco, Spain was a Third World h*llhole plagued
by radical ideologies like communism, regional
separatism, and anarchism. [Fascism had its following as
well, but it was never too popular. The Falange (which
was the closest thing to a fascist movement in Spain,
though it was not really fascist, as it was profoundly
Christian and rejected Nietzschean neo-paganism) was
irrelevant before Francoism. Under Francoism, it was one
of the three pillars that supported the regime (the
other two being monarchists and Catholics), but it was
never the most influential pillar.] When Franco died,
Spain was the ninth-largest economy in the world, and
the second-fastest growing economy in the world (behind
only Japan). It became a liberal democracy almost
overnight. When Franco was on his deathbed, he was asked
what he thought his most important legacy was. He
replied, "The middle class." Franco was not a democrat,
but he'd created the conditions for liberal democracy in
Spain.
To get back to the US, we now have a Third World
economy. We can't too surprised that our politics also
look increasingly like those of a Third World country.
Thus, the rise of Trump, Sanders, the alt-right, the
SJW's, Black Lives Matter, etc.
The evolution of the MSM into an
American version of Pravda/Izvestia has been a lengthy
process and dates back at least to the days of Walter
Lippmann (ostensibly a journalist but upon whom
Roosevelt, Truman and JFK had no qualms about calling
for advice).
With the emergence of the Internet and the phenomenon
of the blogosphere, the MSM has no choice but to cast
off whatever pretensions to objectivity they may have
had and, instead, now preach to the choir so they can
keep themselves viable in an increasingly competitive
market where more people get their news from such as
Matt Drudge than from the NY-LA Times or the WaPo
Suppose a more composed candidate stood up against the
PC police, and generally stood for these same 6
principles, and did so in a much more coherent and
rational manner. I propose that he would be demolished
within no time at all. Take a Pat Buchanan…how do you
think he would be doing in this election? Trumps three
ring show prevents the charges against him from finding
any fertile soil to grow in. If he ran on principle
instead of capturing an undefined spirit, if he tried to
answer the charges against him in a rational manner, all
it would do it produce more fertile soil for the PC
charges to stick. Trump may have stumbled upon the model
for future conservative candidates when running in a
nation where the mainstream press is so thoroughly
against you. Just make a lot of noise and ignore them.
If you engage in the argument with them, they'll destroy
you.
@Cecelia: The issue is not Trump – it is those who
support him. Are we as a people really capable of being
citizens of a Republic or are we simply fools to be
manipulated by people like Trump ?
Yes. Tell me,
during the Great Depression, as Nazi Germany and
Imperial Japan began their march to what would bring
this world to war and state-sponsored genocide, why did
my grandparents and my parents who were teenagers in the
30s not succumb to all this doom, gloom, and anger at
the supposed lack of prospects for improvement in their
lives that Trump's followers whine about? By any
standard, conditions then were worse for the white
working class than is the case today, and yes, my
grandparents were working class: one grandfather worked
for the railroad, the other for a lumber mill. And yes,
there was alcoholism, and domestic abuse, and crime, and
suicide amongst the populace in the 1930s. The role of
religion was more pervasive then, but to tell the truth,
I expect Rod would describe my grandparents on both side
as Moral Therapeutic Deists; by Rod's standard I believe
that is true for most Christians throughout history.
Just what is different about today, that brings all
this rage and resentment? Could it be that racial and
ethnic and religious minorities, and women now have a
piece of the pie and a good part of the white working
class cannot stand it?
And Trump doesn't scare me nearly as much as does the
fact that so very many Americans support him, whether
wholeheartedly swallowing his poison, or because they
close their eyes and minds and hearts to just what kind
of a man he is.
The promotion of an increasingly interconnected world in
and of itself isnt necessarily bad. However, the
annihilation of culture, religion, and autonomy at the
hands of multinational corporations and a Gramscian
elite certainly is – and that is what is happening under
what is referred to as globalization. The revolt against
the evil being pushed out of Brussels and Washington has
now spread into the West itself. May the victory of the
rebels be swift and complete.
"You're misdefining "grievance industry;" the central
tenet of the grievance industry is that whatever
happens, white people are to blame and should continue
paying for it."
If we all accept your definition then
we can't argue with you. Whatever you want to call it,
there is an entire industry (most conservative media)
that feeds a victimization mentality among whites,
conservatives, evangelicals etc (all those labels apply
to me by the way) that closely resembles the grievance
outlook. The only difference is in what circles it is
taken seriously. Why else do so many of us get so bent
out of shape when employees have the audacity to say
"happy holidays" at the department store. As made
apparent on this blog we do need to be realistic and
vigilant about the real threats and the direction the
culture is going, but by whining about every perceived
slight and insisting everyone buy into our version of
"Christian America" (while anointing a vile figure like
Trump as our strongman) we are undercutting the
legitimate grievances we do have.
Everyone has heard how far is moving small car
production to Mexico and forwarded saying no one in
America will lose their jobs because the production will
be shifted to SUVs and other vehicles.
That's not the
problem the problem is instead of creating more jobs in
America the jobs are being created in Mexico and not
helping Americans.
"BenOp is fascinating, but most cultural conservative
now active in the game will not drop out. They may not
like the adrenalin rush politics gives them more than
they like Jesus–but they ain't going to give it up."
Exactly. This is why Christian boycotts never succeed.
They claim that they hate Disneyworld because of their
pro-gay policies, but when they have to choose between
Jesus and a Fun Family Vacation, Jesus always loses.
What happens when the status quo media turns a
presidential election into a referendum regarding the
media's ability to shape public opinion and direct
"purchasing" choices?
The Corporate Media is corrupt and Americans are
waking up to it.
This will almost always mean voting for the
Republicans in national elections, but in a primary
situation, I will vote for the Republican who can
best be counted on to defend religious liberty, even
if he's not 100 percent on board with what I
consider to be promoting the Good. If it means
voting for a Republican that the defense hawks or
the Chamber of Commerce disdain, I have no problem
at all with that.
How is this different than cultural conservatives
voted before Trump?
We have had three decades of culture wars and everyone
can pretty much agree that the traditionalists lost. Now
whether Dreher et all lost because the broader culture
refused to listen or because they simply couldn't make a
convincing argument is a question that surrounds a very
particular program pursued by conservatives,
traditionalists and the religious right. It is certain
that the Republican Party as a vehicle for those values
has been taken out and been beat like a rented mule. It
seems to that Josh Stuart has pulled a rabbit out of the
hat. Trump is, if anything, pretty incoherent and
whatever "principles" he represents were discovered in
the breach; a little like bad gunnery practice, one shot
low, one shot lower and then a hit. If Trump represents
anything it is the fact that the base of the party was
not who many of us thought they were. Whatever Christian
values we thought they were representing are hardly
recognizable now.
What truly puzzles me more and
increasingly so is Rod's vision of what America is
supposed to be under a Dreher regime. I'm not sure what
that regime looks like? Behind all the theological
underpinning and high-sounding abstractions what does a
ground-level political and legislative program for
achieving a society he is willing to whole-heartedly
participate in look like?
Politics is a reflection of culture but culture is
responsive to politics. What political order does the
Ben Op crowd wish to install in place of the one we have
now – short of the parousia – and how does that affect
our life and autonomy as citizens and individuals? He
says Christians just want to be left alone but they seem
to have made and are still making a lot of noise for
people who want to be left alone so I have to assume
they want something over and above being left alone.
I guess the question I want to zero in on is; What
minimal, concrete programmatic or cultural change or
changes would necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or
equally, what is the post-Ben Op vision of America that
allows Rod and company to relax?
a couple "ideas" come to mind. re: deplorable. SOME (no
value in speculating or establishing a number) are
deplorable. it's funny (actually, quite sad) Trump's we
don't have time to be politically correct mantra is
ignored when his opponent (a politician who helped
establish the concept of politically correctness) steals
a page from his playbook. on a certain level, perhaps
the eastern elite, intellectual liberal grabbed the
"irony" hammer from the toolbox? ever the shrewd,
calculating (narcissistic and insecure) carny barker,
Trump has not offered any "new" ideas. he's merely (like
any politician) put his finger in the air and decided to
"run" from the "nationalist, racist, nativist, side of
the politically correct/incorrect betting line. at the
end of the day, there are likely as many deplorable
folks on the Clinton bandwagon; it's just (obviously)
not in her interests to expose these "boosters" at HER
rallies/fundraising events. in many ways it speaks to
the lesser of two evils is still evil "idea". politics –
especially national campaigns are not so much about
which party/candidate has the better ideas, but rather
which is less deplorable.
"Instead, it has everything to do with his
wink/nod attitude toward the alt-right and white
nationalist groups and with his willingness to
appropriate their anti-semitic, racist memes for his own
advancement. He's dangerous. Period. Dangerous and scary
to anyone familiar with lynchings, pogroms, and mob
violence. To anyone familiar with history. Trump has
unleashed dark forces that will not easily be quelled
even if, and probably especially if, he loses. The
possibility that he might win has left me wondering
whether I even belong in this country any more, no
matter how much sympathy I might feel for the folks
globalism has left behind."
One can just as easily make the point that the
globalists have unleashed dark forces against white
people and Western civilization that are nor easily
quelled.
The most interesting part of the essay is near the end,
where he briefly discusses how non-whites might react to
our political realignment.
After all, will the white
liberal be able to manipulate these groups forever?
For example, we are seeing the 'official black
leaders' who represent them on TV shift from being
activist clergymen to being (white paid and hosed) gay
activists and mulattoes from outside the mainstream of
black culture. How long can this continue?
"Call it anti-Semitic if
you want but all my Jewish cousins and the several other
Jewish business associates I know feel uncontrollable
hate for Trump.
"thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter;
(2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests,
not so-called universal interests, matter; (4)
entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters;
(6) PC speech-without which identity politics is
inconceivable-must be repudiated."
They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd
world immigration, stop pc thought police, or up hold
Christian-ish values are a direct threat to them."
The Jews, having lived as strangers among foreign
peoples for the better part of 2 millennia, have always
been on the receiving end of racial hatred. As a result
many Western Jews have an instinctive mistrust of
nationalist movements and have a natural tendency towards
globalism.
The media has done a splendid job of portraying Trump
as the next Hitler, so, understandably, there's a lot of
fear. My Jewish grandparents are terrified of the man.
I am not a globalist, and (due to the SCOTUS issue)
will probably vote for Trump, even though I have no love
for the man himself. I think the "Trump the racist" meme
is based on confirmation bias, not reality, but I
understand where the fear comes from.
"I think that many casual hearers of Ben Op ideas
assume that Ben Op is a one-dimensional, cultural
dropping-out of cultural/religious conservatives into
irrelevant enclaves.
To me, Ben-Op is more returning to the Tocquevillean
idea that the best American ways of living work their
way up from organic, formative local communities that
have largely disappeared from our socio-cultural
experience. Without independent formative local
communities, we human beings are mere products rolling
off the assembly line that serves the interests of the
elites of our big government-big business-big education
conglomerate.
If these formative communities hold to authentic,
compassionate Judeo-Christian values and practices, all
the better–for everybody! Ben Op will offer an
alternative to the assembly-line politically correct
cultural warriors being produced by many of our elite
cultural institutions."
Bingo.
If you want to fundamentally transform the culture,
you have to withdraw from it, at least partially. But
there's no need to wall yourself off. A Benedict Option
community can and should be politically active,
primarily at the local level, where the most good can be
done.
The Benedictine monks from whom Rod draws inspiration
didn't just shut themselves up and refuse to have
anything to do with the crumbling world around them.
They retreated into their monasteries to strengthen
their souls, and then went out into the world and
rebuilt it for Christ.
"Clinton assassination fantasies"? I call bullsh*t on
that notion. Trump merely pointed our the absolute
hypocrisy of elites like Clinton and her ilk, the guns
for me but not for thee crowd. He was not fantasizing
about her assassination. Far from it. To suggest he was
is to engage in the same sort of dishonesty for which
Clinton is so well known.
I never cared much for Trump
but he has all the right enemies and is growing on me.
"It isn't true that Trump and his supporters are against
identity politics. It's just that they have a far
simpler view of identity politics. There are white
people, and there are blah people. "
They love Ben
Carson and Allan West, last time I checked neither men
were white.
"Yes. Tell me, during the Great Depression, as Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan began their march to what
would bring this world to war and state-sponsored
genocide, why did my grandparents and my parents who
were teenagers in the 30s not succumb to all this doom,
gloom, and anger at the supposed lack of prospects for
improvement in their lives that Trump's followers whine
about?"
Well, back then, the government was doing
stuff for the common people. A lot of stuff. WPA, NRA,
Social Security, FDIC, FHA, AAA, etc. FDR remembered the
"forgotten man." Today, the government is subservient to
multinationals and Rothschilds. The forgotten men and
women that make up the backbone of our economy have been
forgotten once again, and nobody seems to remember them
- with the *possible,* partial exception of Trump.
The Globalist clap-trap that has so enamoured both
parties reminds me of this quote from C.S.
Lewis'"Screwtape Proposes a Toast":
"…They ever be allowed to raise Aristotle's question:
whether "democratic behavior" means the behavior that
democracies like or the behavior that will preserve a
democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to
occur to them that these need not be the same."
Globalism is just swell for the multinational
corporation, but it is nothing more or less than
Lawlessness writ large. The Corporation is given
legal/fictional life by the state…the trouble is it,
like Frankenstein, will turns on its creator and
imagines it can enjoy Absolute Independence.
One can just as easily make the point that the
globalists have unleashed dark forces against white
people and Western civilization that are nor easily
quelled.
And you would have the benefit of evidence (or, well,
evidence that is not stale by nearly a century). It
wasn't Trump supporters beating up people in San Jose.
And if you look to Europe as a guide to what can happen
in America, things start looking far, far worse.
"I guess the question I
want to zero in on is; What minimal, concrete
programmatic or cultural change or changes would
necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or equally, what is
the post-Ben Op vision of America that allows Rod and
company to relax?"
While I can't speak for Rod, I can speak for many
traditional Catholics. The end goal is the
re-establishment of the social reign of Christ, which
means a majority Christian nation, Christian culture,
and a state which governs according to Christian
principles (read Quas Primas). In that situation, and in
that situation alone, would the Ben Op no longer be
necessary.
I am guessing that Rod has not said this explicitly,
or laid out a concrete plan, because he is writing a
book for Christians in general. And if you get into too
many specifics, you are going to run right into the
enormous theological and philosophical differences
between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Also, if Rod were to start talking about "The Social
Reign of Christ the King", 3/4 of you would lose your
minds.
Of course, the current prospect for a Christian
culture and state look bleak, to say the least. But we
can play the long game, the Catholic Church is good at
that. It took over 300 years to convert the Roman
Empire. It was 700 years from the founding of the first
Benedictine monastery until St. Thomas Aquinas and the
High Middle Ages. We can wait that long, at least.
I rather think, in concurrence with Prof. Cole, that
Trump is a simulacrum within a simulacrum with a
simulacrum: there is no "extra-mediatic" Trump
candidate, ergo there is no "extra-mediatic"
presidential electoral race (if limited to the two
"mainstreamed" candidates), ergo there is no
presidential election tout court, ergo there is no
democracy at the presidential election level in the
U.S–just simulacra deceptively reflecting simulacra, in
any case, the resulting effect is a mirage, a
distortion, but above all an ILLUSION.
All this is, it seems to me, is a transition to a
different favorite deadly sin. We've had pride, avarice,
and the current favorite is lust; the new favorite
appears to be wrath. Gluttony, sloth, and envy have not
been absent, but they have not been the driving force in
politics recently.
Also important was the fact that FDR did not stoke
the fires of class conflict. A patrician himself, FDR's
goal was not to overturn the existing social order but
rather to preserve it by correcting its injustices. FDR
was the moderate leader the country needed at the time.
Without him, we might well have succumbed to a demagogic
or perhaps even dictatorial government under Charles
Coughlin, Huey Long, or Norman Thomas. In contrast,
Hillary and Trump seek to use fringe groups (BLM,
alt-right) for their own agendas. Let's hope whoever
wins can keep her or his pets mollified and contained,
but courting extremists is always a risky business.
Indeed, Hillary may be worse than Trump in this respect,
since there appears to be no daylight between her and
the SJW's.
To me, Ben-Op is more returning to the Tocquevillean
idea that the best American ways of living work their
way up from organic, formative local communities that
have largely disappeared from our socio-cultural
experience. Without independent formative local
communities, we human beings are mere products rolling
off the assembly line that serves the interests of the
elites of our big government-big business-big education
conglomerate.
Ben Op or not, its always a great
notion. And you don't have to withdraw from the culture,
THIS IS American culture (traditionally speaking). We
just need to reaffirm it.
So many colorful descriptions of how Trump lies
from so many commenters… Could y'all give at least one
that doesn't fit his opponent perfectly and even with
double intensity?
Hillary Clinton doesn't have a long list of unpaid
contractors suing her… of course that's because she
never built hotels, and I don't think she ever declared
bankruptcy either. We have a batch of slumlords in
Milwaukee who are little Trumps… they run up hundreds of
thousands of dollars in fines for building violations,
declare bankruptcy or plead poverty and make occasional
payments of $50, and meantime they spend tends of
thousands of dollars buying up distressed property at
sheriff's auctions. All of them are black, all of them
have beautiful homes in mostly "white" suburbs, and I
wouldn't vote for any of them for dogcatcher, much less
president.
That said, Hillary is an ego-bloated lying sleaze,
and I wouldn't vote for her if she were running against
almost anyone but Trump.
Nonetheless I am still tired of the ominous
warnings about right-wing white mobs that are about to
rememerge any day. It's been decades since there was a
white riot in this country.
There hasn't been a real riot of any nature in quite
a while. And no, that little fracas in Milwaukee doesn't
count. A few dozen thugs burning four black-owned
businesses while everyone living in the neighborhood
denounces then falls short of a riot.
I agree that we are not likely to see right-wing
"white" mobs posing much of a threat to anyone… they're
mostly couch potatoes anyway. But it is true that until
the 1940s, a "race riot" meant a white mob rampaging
through a black neighborhood. And there have been very
few black riots that went deep into a "white"
neighborhood … they stayed in black neighborhoods too.
This is an election about feeling under siege.
But we're not, and most of the adults in the room
know it.
Trump continues to be a walking, talking Rorschach
test for pundits peddling a point of view.
I think that explains a lot of Trump's support. Its
not who he is, what he says, or what he does or will do,
its what they think they SEE in him. I have to admit, I
did a bit of that over Barack Obama in 2008, and he did
disappoint. Obama has been one of our best presidents in
a long time, but that's a rather low bar.
"There are, then, two developments we are likely to see
going forward. First, cultural conservatives will
seriously consider a political "Benedict Option,"
dropping out of the Republican Party and forming a
like-minded Book Group, unconcerned with winning
elections and very concerned with maintaining their
"principles." Their fidelity is to Aristotle rather than
to winning the battle for the political soul of America.
…"
You know, people spout this stuff as if the
Republican party is conservative. It started drifting
from conservative frame more than forty years ago. By
the time we get to the 2000 elections, it;s been home an
entrenched band of strategics concerned primarily with
winning to advance policies tat have little to do with
conservative thought.
I doubt that I will become a member of a book club.
And I doubt that I will stop voting according to my
conservative view points.
I generally think any idea that Christians are going
to be left to their own devices doubtful or that they
would want to design communities not already defined by
scripture and a life in Christ.
_______________
"If the Ben Op doesn't call on Christians to abandon
politics altogether, it does call on them to recalibrate
their (our) understanding of what politics is and what
it can do. Politics, rightly understood, is more than
statecraft. Ben Op politics are Christian politics for a
post-Christian culture - that is, a culture that no
longer shares some key basic Christian values . . ."
I am just at a loss to comprehend this. A person who
claims to live in Christ already calibrates their lives
in the frame of Christ and led by some extent by the
Spirit of Christ. Nothing about a world destined to
become more worldly will change that. What may happen is
that a kind of christian spiritual revival and renewal
will occur.
" . . . orthodox Christians will come to be seen as
threats to the common good, simply because of the views
we hold and the practices we live by out of fidelity to
our religion. . ."
If this accurate, that christians are deemed a threat
to the state, unless that threat is just to their
participation, the idea "safe spaces" wheres christians
hang out and do their own thing hardly seems a
realistic. If christians are considered a threat – then
most likely the ultimate goal will be to get rid of them
altogether. You outlaw faith and practice. Or you do
what HS and colleges have done to students who arrive on
the campuses. You inundate them with how backward their
thinking until the student and then proceed to tell them
they are just like everyone else.
Believers are expected to be in the world and not of
it. And by in it, I think Christ intended them to be
active participants.
"Rod, I don't know if you've seen this already, but
National Review has a small piece about Archbishop
Charles Chaput, who calls for Christians to become more
engaged in the public square, not less. Your name and
the Benedict Option are referenced in the piece as
well."
Let me answer it for him. Perhaps just like not
everyone is called to the contemplative life in a
monastery but are called to the secular world, so is the
church as a whole these days individually called to
different arenas. That said, the basic principles of the
Ben Op are hardly opposed to being active in the broader
community. It just means there has to be some
intentionality in maintaining a Christian worldview in a
hostile larger culture.
"The Benedictine monks from whom Rod draws inspiration
didn't just shut themselves up and refuse to have
anything to do with the crumbling world around them.
They retreated into their monasteries to strengthen
their souls, and then went out into the world and
rebuilt it for Christ."
Just a technical comment. You
have to pay attention to which orders you are referring
to, because many of them were indeed founded to retreat
from the world. At one time, the idea of a monk
wandering outside of the monastery, or a nun
particularly, was considered scandalous. I read alot of
monastic history about 20 years ago, and I seem to
recall the Benedictines were actually focused on prayer
and manual labor/work within the monastery area. It was
later with orders like the Dominicans that were sent out
into the community, and they caused the bishops a lot of
headaches because they competed with priests and bishops
in preaching publicly. It took awhile to sort out who
was allowed to do what. Modern religious orders founded
since the 18th century are quite different from the old
orders.
Another area of interest you could check out, besides
reading some of the religious rules of life of many of
these old orders just for the sake of comparison, is the
differences between the cenobitic and eremitic monastic
communities of the very early church. The original
founding of religious orders even back then was also
considered a direct challenge to the church hierarchy
and took a lot of time sorting out that they weren't
some kind of troublemakers, too. Modern Catholics have
entirely too little knowledge of the development and
maybe too pious a view of it.
The question is this: what do you do when the policies
or ideas you stand for or at least, agree with, are
advanced by someone with as appalling a character as
Trump? What I observe in practice is that friends and
acquaintances of mine who agree with Trump on the issues
find it necessary to defend his utterly indefensible and
vile character – which makes them less than honest as
well.
I'd be more impressed if, after Edwin Edwards,
Trump's fans said "Vote for the swindler, it's
important" – rather than use lies or their own credulity
to defend him.
I read this on Friday and have thought much about it
since. I came by earlier this evening and had about half
of a long post written in response, but got too caught
up in the Georgia/Missouri game to finish it. I also
determined that it wouldn't matter what I said. The
conservatives would continue to harp about the evils of
identity politics, refusing to acknowledge the long
history of conservatives engaging in identity politics
in both Europe and America from roughly the high Middle
Ages to the present. It seemed more rational to delete
what I had written rather than save it and come back to
finish it.
It just so happened that as the game ended,
I clicked on Huffingtonpost to check the headlines. Lo
and behold, the top story was this one about Jane
Goodall's latest statement regarding identity politics
in the animal kingdom:
"What I observe in practice is that friends and
acquaintances of mine who agree with Trump on the issues
find it necessary to defend his utterly indefensible and
vile character – which makes them less than honest as
well."
I don't defend his vile character. I
readily admit it. So do most of those I know who intend
to vote for him.
It's too bad that Clinton is at least equally vile.
For Hillary that's a big problem – the "character"
issue is at best a wash, so the choice boils down to
other things.
The most highly motivated voters in this election
cycle seem to be insurgents pushing back against corrupt
and incompetent elites and the Establishment. That does
not bode well for Clinton.
"I guess the question I
want to zero in on is; What minimal, concrete
programmatic or cultural change or changes would
necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or equally, what is
the post-Ben Op vision of America that allows Rod and
company to relax?"
------
I think those are good questions, and read in the best
light possible, might be interpreted as being asked by
someone honestly seeking to understand the concerns of
traditional Christians today.
I can't answer for Rod, but for me the short answers
are,
"1) In present America, I don't think there are any
"cultural change" possible which might reassure
Christians, because we are in a downward spiral which
has not yet run its course. The articles and commentary
posted here by Rod show we've not yet reached the peak
of what government and technology will do to the lives
of believing Christians.
2) The post-BenOp - perhaps decades in the future -
vision that would allow me to relax would be a national
reaffirmation that our rights, as partially defined in
the Constitution and Bill of Rights, come from God the
Creator, that life is valuable from the moment of
conception, and that the traditional family is the best
promoter of sound moral, cultural and economic health.
I'd relax a bit, though not entirely, if that happened.
In a September 2015 interview with NBC, Clinton
defended partial-birth abortions again and voiced her
support for late-term abortions up until birth, too.
She also openly supports forcing taxpayers to fund
these abortions by repealing the Hyde Amendment. The
amendment prohibits direct taxpayer funding of abortion
in Medicaid. If repealed, researchers estimate that
33,000 more babies will be aborted every year in the
U.S.
Yes, We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of
Deplorables.
"Take a Pat Buchanan…how do you think he would be doing
in this election? Trumps three ring show prevents the
charges against him from finding any fertile soil to
grow in."
I think far too much credit is being given
to Mr. Trump. The reason he can stand is because the
people he represents have been fed up with the some of
what he stands for long before he entered the fray.
If Mr Pat Buchanan were running, he would be in good
stead save or his speaking style which is far more
formal. Mr. Trump's carefree (of sorts) delivery punches
through and gives the impression that he's an everyman.
His boundless energy has that sense earnest sincerity.
His "imperfections" tend to work in his favor. But if
his message was counter to where most people are already
at - he would not be the nominee.
There's a difference in being a .Mr. Trump fan and a
supporter. As a supporter, I would be curious to know
what lies I have used to support him. We have some
serious differences, but I think my support has been
fairly above board. In fact, i think the support of most
have been fairly straight up I am not sure there is much
hidden about Mr. Trump.
The only new issue that has been brought up is the issue
of staff accountability. Has he neglected to pay his
staff, is this just an organizational natter or complete
nonsense.
The other factor that has played out to his
advantage are the news stories that repeatedly turn out
false, distorted or nonexistent.
The media already in the credibility hole seems very
content to dig themselves in deeper.
I didn't see the post where you disavowed
liberals as well, so I was too hasty with the "your
side"
Nonetheless I am still tired of the ominous warnings
about right-wing white mobs that are about to rememerge
any day. It's been decades since there was a white riot
in this country.
fwiw, my sense is that the Benedict Option (from the
snippets that you have shared with usm particularly in
the posts on Norcia and other communities already
pursuing some sort of "option") represents a return of
conservative Christians to a more healthy, hands-off
relationship with national politics. Conservative
Christians danced with the Republican Party for a
long-time, but past a certain point had to stop
pretending that the Republican Party cared more about
them than about their slice of Mammon (big business and
the MIC mainly). Liberal Christians, some of them,
danced with the other side of Mammon (big government and
social programs, etc) and perhaps just got absorbed. But
the point is I think you are returning to a better
place, reverting to some sort of norm, the alliance with
the GOP was a strange infatuation that wasn't going to
sustain anyway.
So many colorful descriptions of how Trump lies from so
many commenters… Could y'all give at least one that
doesn't fit his opponent perfectly and even with double
intensity?
Michelle: Obama advisor Al Sharpton has been responsible
for stirring up more Jew hatred than Trump. Have you
ever given a care about that? Do you care that Hillary's
Mexican and Muslim immigrants are sure to be more
antisemitic than the native whites of the US that you
fret about over and over?
Rod, when you say the following, you articulate exactly
why I have reluctantly become a libertarian:
-"On a
practical level, that means that I will no longer vote
primarily on the social issues that have dictated my
vote in the past, but I will vote primarily for
candidates who will be better at protecting my
community's right to be left alone."-
Last year after listening to the same-sex marriage
oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court, I
concluded that libertarianism and either the current
Libertarian Party or some spinoff offers the best that
those of us with traditional religious and moral
convictions can hope for in a decidedly post-Christian
America. I wrote about why I believe this to be so at
http://www.skiprigney.com/2015/04/29/how-the-ssm-debate-made-me-a-libertarian/
I don't believe for a minute that the majority of
elected officials in the Republican Party have the
backbone to stand up for religious liberty in the face
of corporate pressure. You need look no farther than how
the Republicans caved last year in Indiana on the
protection of religious liberty.
There are many libertarians who are going to work to
protect the rights of people to do things that undermine
the common good. But, I have more faith that they'll
protect the rights of a cultural minority such as
traditionalist Christians than I have in either the
Republicans or the Democrats.
It isn't true that Trump and his supporters are against
identity politics. It's just that they have a far
simpler view of identity politics. There are white
people, and there are blah people. White people will be
in charge, and blah people can have a piece of the pie
to the extent they agree to pretend to be white people.
Cecelia wonders: "Are we as a people really capable of
being citizens of a Republic or are we simply fools to
be manipulated by people like Trump?"
My two cents: We're capable of being citizens of a
Republic if our government creates the conditions for a
thriving middle class: the most important condition
being good, high-paying jobs that allow people to live
an independent existence. The vast majority of
manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and even
higher-skilled jobs (such as research and development)
are increasingly being outsourced as well.
If you look at the monthly payroll jobs reports put
out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will see that
the vast majority of new jobs are in retail trade,
health care and social assistance, waitresses and
bartenders, and government. Most of these jobs are
part-time jobs. None of these jobs produce any goods
than can be exported. Aside from government jobs, these
are not jobs that pay well enough for people to thrive
independently. This is why more Americans aged 25-34
live with their parents than independently with spouses
and children of their own. It is also why many people
now must work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.
As for government jobs, they are tax-supported, and thus
a drain on the economy. I'm not a libertarian. I
recognize that government provides many crucial
services. But it is unproductive to have too many
bureaucrats living off of tax revenues.
Basically, the middle class is disappearing. Without
a thriving middle class, democracy is unsustainable.
Struggling people filled with hate and resentment are
ripe for manipulation by nefarious forces.
Spain's Francisco Franco understood this very well.
His goal was to make it unthinkable for his country to
descend into civil war ever again. He achieved this.
Before Franco, Spain was a Third World h*llhole plagued
by radical ideologies like communism, regional
separatism, and anarchism. [Fascism had its following as
well, but it was never too popular. The Falange (which
was the closest thing to a fascist movement in Spain,
though it was not really fascist, as it was profoundly
Christian and rejected Nietzschean neo-paganism) was
irrelevant before Francoism. Under Francoism, it was one
of the three pillars that supported the regime (the
other two being monarchists and Catholics), but it was
never the most influential pillar.] When Franco died,
Spain was the ninth-largest economy in the world, and
the second-fastest growing economy in the world (behind
only Japan). It became a liberal democracy almost
overnight. When Franco was on his deathbed, he was asked
what he thought his most important legacy was. He
replied, "The middle class." Franco was not a democrat,
but he'd created the conditions for liberal democracy in
Spain.
To get back to the US, we now have a Third World
economy. We can't too surprised that our politics also
look increasingly like those of a Third World country.
Thus, the rise of Trump, Sanders, the alt-right, the
SJW's, Black Lives Matter, etc.
The evolution of the MSM into an
American version of Pravda/Izvestia has been a lengthy
process and dates back at least to the days of Walter
Lippmann (ostensibly a journalist but upon whom
Roosevelt, Truman and JFK had no qualms about calling
for advice).
With the emergence of the Internet and the phenomenon
of the blogosphere, the MSM has no choice but to cast
off whatever pretensions to objectivity they may have
had and, instead, now preach to the choir so they can
keep themselves viable in an increasingly competitive
market where more people get their news from such as
Matt Drudge than from the NY-LA Times or the WaPo
Suppose a more composed candidate stood up against the
PC police, and generally stood for these same 6
principles, and did so in a much more coherent and
rational manner. I propose that he would be demolished
within no time at all. Take a Pat Buchanan…how do you
think he would be doing in this election? Trumps three
ring show prevents the charges against him from finding
any fertile soil to grow in. If he ran on principle
instead of capturing an undefined spirit, if he tried to
answer the charges against him in a rational manner, all
it would do it produce more fertile soil for the PC
charges to stick. Trump may have stumbled upon the model
for future conservative candidates when running in a
nation where the mainstream press is so thoroughly
against you. Just make a lot of noise and ignore them.
If you engage in the argument with them, they'll destroy
you.
@Cecelia: The issue is not Trump – it is those who
support him. Are we as a people really capable of being
citizens of a Republic or are we simply fools to be
manipulated by people like Trump ?
Yes. Tell me,
during the Great Depression, as Nazi Germany and
Imperial Japan began their march to what would bring
this world to war and state-sponsored genocide, why did
my grandparents and my parents who were teenagers in the
30s not succumb to all this doom, gloom, and anger at
the supposed lack of prospects for improvement in their
lives that Trump's followers whine about? By any
standard, conditions then were worse for the white
working class than is the case today, and yes, my
grandparents were working class: one grandfather worked
for the railroad, the other for a lumber mill. And yes,
there was alcoholism, and domestic abuse, and crime, and
suicide amongst the populace in the 1930s. The role of
religion was more pervasive then, but to tell the truth,
I expect Rod would describe my grandparents on both side
as Moral Therapeutic Deists; by Rod's standard I believe
that is true for most Christians throughout history.
Just what is different about today, that brings all
this rage and resentment? Could it be that racial and
ethnic and religious minorities, and women now have a
piece of the pie and a good part of the white working
class cannot stand it?
And Trump doesn't scare me nearly as much as does the
fact that so very many Americans support him, whether
wholeheartedly swallowing his poison, or because they
close their eyes and minds and hearts to just what kind
of a man he is.
The promotion of an increasingly interconnected world in
and of itself isnt necessarily bad. However, the
annihilation of culture,religion, and autonomy at the
hands of multinational corporations and a Gramscian
elite certainly is – and that is what is happening under
what is referred to as globalization. The revolt against
the evil being pushed out of Brussels and Washington has
now spread into the West itself. May the victory of the
rebels be swift and complete.
"You're misdefining "grievance industry;" the central
tenet of the grievance industry is that whatever
happens, white people are to blame and should continue
paying for it."
If we all accept your definition then
we can't argue with you. Whatever you want to call it,
there is an entire industry (most conservative media)
that feeds a victimization mentality among whites,
conservatives, evangelicals etc (all those labels apply
to me by the way) that closely resembles the grievance
outlook. The only difference is in what circles it is
taken seriously. Why else do so many of us get so bent
out of shape when employees have the audacity to say
"happy holidays" at the department store. As made
apparent on this blog we do need to be realistic and
vigilant about the real threats and the direction the
culture is going, but by whining about every perceived
slight and insisting everyone buy into our version of
"Christian America" (while anointing a vile figure like
Trump as our strongman) we are undercutting the
legitimate grievances we do have.
Everyone has heard how far is moving small car
production to Mexico and forwarded saying no one in
America will lose their jobs because the production will
be shifted to SUVs and other vehicles.
That's not the
problem the problem is instead of creating more jobs in
America the jobs are being created in Mexico and not
helping Americans.
"BenOp is fascinating, but most cultural conservative
now active in the game will not drop out. They may not
like the adrenalin rush politics gives them more than
they like Jesus–but they ain't going to give it up."
Exactly. This is why Christian boycotts never succeed.
They claim that they hate Disneyworld because of their
pro-gay policies, but when they have to choose between
Jesus and a Fun Family Vacation, Jesus always loses.
What happens when the status quo media turns a
presidential election into a referendum regarding the
media's ability to shape public opinion and direct
"purchasing" choices?
The Corporate Media is corrupt and Americans are
waking up to it.
This will almost always mean voting for the
Republicans in national elections, but in a primary
situation, I will vote for the Republican who can
best be counted on to defend religious liberty, even
if he's not 100 percent on board with what I
consider to be promoting the Good. If it means
voting for a Republican that the defense hawks or
the Chamber of Commerce disdain, I have no problem
at all with that.
How is this different than cultural conservatives
voted before Trump?
If we elect Trump as POTUS, we deserve everything that
happens to us.
Don't blame the progressives when Trump says
something about defaulting on the US debt and the stock
market crashes.
Don't blame the progressives when China moves ahead
us by leaps and bound in science and technology because
we pull a Kansas and cut taxes left right and center,
then decide to get rid of all government-funded
research.
Don't blame the progressives when The Wall doesn't
get built, Trump says "who, me? I never promised
anything!" Ditto for the lack of return of well-paid
coal-mining jobs.
And don't blame the progressives when you discover
Trump has sold you down the river for a song, refuses to
appoint "conservatives" as SCOTUS judges, and throws the
First Amendment out the window.
We have had three decades of culture wars and everyone
can pretty much agree that the traditionalists lost. Now
whether Dreher et all lost because the broader culture
refused to listen or because they simply couldn't make a
convincing argument is a question that surrounds a very
particular program pursued by conservatives,
traditionalists and the religious right. It is certain
that the Republican Party as a vehicle for those values
has been taken out and been beat like a rented mule. It
seems to that Josh Stuart has pulled a rabbit out of the
hat. Trump is, if anything, pretty incoherent and
whatever "principles" he represents were discovered in
the breach; a little like bad gunnery practice, one shot
low, one shot lower and then a hit. If Trump represents
anything it is the fact that the base of the party was
not who many of us thought they were. Whatever Christian
values we thought they were representing are hardly
recognizable now.
What truly puzzles me more and
increasingly so is Rod's vision of what America is
supposed to be under a Dreher regime. I'm not sure what
that regime looks like? Behind all the theological
underpinning and high-sounding abstractions what does a
ground-level political and legislative program for
achieving a society he is willing to whole-heartedly
participate in look like?
Politics is a reflection of culture but culture is
responsive to politics. What political order does the
Ben Op crowd wish to install in place of the one we have
now – short of the parousia – and how does that affect
our life and autonomy as citizens and individuals? He
says Christians just want to be left alone but they seem
to have made and are still making a lot of noise for
people who want to be left alone so I have to assume
they want something over and above being left alone.
I guess the question I want to zero in on is; What
minimal, concrete programmatic or cultural change or
changes would necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or
equally, what is the post-Ben Op vision of America that
allows Rod and company to relax?
a couple "ideas" come to mind. re: deplorable. SOME (no
value in speculating or establishing a number) are
deplorable. it's funny (actually, quite sad) Trump's we
don't have time to be politically correct mantra is
ignored when his opponent (a politician who helped
establish the concept of politically correctness) steals
a page from his playbook. on a certain level, perhaps
the eastern elite, intellectual liberal grabbed the
"irony" hammer from the toolbox? ever the shrewd,
calculating (narcissistic and insecure) carny barker,
Trump has not offered any "new" ideas. he's merely (like
any politician) put his finger in the air and decided to
"run" from the "nationalist, racist, nativist, side of
the politically correct/incorrect betting line. at the
end of the day, there are likely as many deplorable
folks on the Clinton bandwagon; it's just (obviously)
not in her interests to expose these "boosters" at HER
rallies/fundraising events. in many ways it speaks to
the lesser of two evils is still evil "idea". politics –
especially national campaigns are not so much about
which party/candidate has the better ideas, but rather
which is less deplorable.
"Instead, it has everything to do with his
wink/nod attitude toward the alt-right and white
nationalist groups and with his willingness to
appropriate their anti-semitic, racist memes for his own
advancement. He's dangerous. Period. Dangerous and scary
to anyone familiar with lynchings, pogroms, and mob
violence. To anyone familiar with history. Trump has
unleashed dark forces that will not easily be quelled
even if, and probably especially if, he loses. The
possibility that he might win has left me wondering
whether I even belong in this country any more, no
matter how much sympathy I might feel for the folks
globalism has left behind."
One can just as easily make the point that the
globalists have unleashed dark forces against white
people and Western civilization that are nor easily
quelled.
The most interesting part of the essay is near the end,
where he briefly discusses how non-whites might react to
our political realignment.
After all, will the white
liberal be able to manipulate these groups forever?
For example, we are seeing the 'official black
leaders' who represent them on TV shift from being
activist clergymen to being (white paid and hosed) gay
activists and mulattoes from outside the mainstream of
black culture. How long can this continue?
"Call it anti-Semitic if
you want but all my Jewish cousins and the several other
Jewish business associates I know feel uncontrollable
hate for Trump.
"thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter;
(2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests,
not so-called universal interests, matter; (4)
entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters;
(6) PC speech-without which identity politics is
inconceivable-must be repudiated."
They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd
world immigration, stop pc thought police, or up hold
Christian-ish values are a direct threat to them."
The Jews, having lived as strangers among foreign
peoples for the better part of 2 millennia, have always
been on the receiving end of racial hatred. As a result
many Western Jews have an instinctive mistrust of
nationalist movements and a natural tendency towards
globalism.
The media has done a splendid job of portraying Trump
as the next Hitler, so, understandably, there's a lot of
fear. My Jewish grandparents are terrified of the man.
I am not a globalist, and (due to the SCOTUS issue)
will probably vote for Trump, even though I have no love
for the man himself. I think the "Trump the racist" meme
is based on confirmation bias, not reality, but I
understand where the fear comes from.
"I think that many casual hearers of Ben Op ideas
assume that Ben Op is a one-dimensional, cultural
dropping-out of cultural/religious conservatives into
irrelevant enclaves.
To me, Ben-Op is more returning to the Tocquevillean
idea that the best American ways of living work their
way up from organic, formative local communities that
have largely disappeared from our socio-cultural
experience. Without independent formative local
communities, we human beings are mere products rolling
off the assembly line that serves the interests of the
elites of our big government-big business-big education
conglomerate.
If these formative communities hold to authentic,
compassionate Judeo-Christian values and practices, all
the better–for everybody! Ben Op will offer an
alternative to the assembly-line politically correct
cultural warriors being produced by many of our elite
cultural institutions."
Bingo.
If you want to fundamentally transform the culture,
you have to withdraw from it, at least partially. But
there's no need to wall yourself off. A Benedict Option
community can and should be politically active,
primarily at the local level, where the most good can be
done.
The Benedictine monks from whom Rod draws inspiration
didn't just shut themselves up and refuse to have
anything to do with the crumbling world around them.
They retreated into their monasteries to strengthen
their souls, and then went out into the world and
rebuilt it for Christ.
"Clinton assassination fantasies"? I call bullsh*t on
that notion. Trump merely pointed our the absolute
hypocrisy of elites like Clinton and her ilk, the guns
for me but not for thee crowd. He was not fantasizing
about her assassination. Far from it. To suggest he was
is to engage in the same sort of dishonesty for which
Clinton is so well known.
I never cared much for Trump
but he has all the right enemies and is growing on me.
"It isn't true that Trump and his supporters are against
identity politics. It's just that they have a far
simpler view of identity politics. There are white
people, and there are blah people. "
They love Ben
Carson and Allan West, last time I checked neither men
were white.
"Yes. Tell me, during the Great Depression, as Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan began their march to what
would bring this world to war and state-sponsored
genocide, why did my grandparents and my parents who
were teenagers in the 30s not succumb to all this doom,
gloom, and anger at the supposed lack of prospects for
improvement in their lives that Trump's followers whine
about?"
Well, back then, the government was doing
stuff for the common people. A lot of stuff. WPA, NRA,
Social Security, FDIC, FHA, AAA, etc. FDR remembered the
"forgotten man." Today, the government is subservient to
multinationals and Rothschilds. The forgotten men and
women that make up the backbone of our economy have been
forgotten once again, and nobody seems to remember them
- with the *possible,* partial exception of Trump.
The Globalist clap-trap that has so enamoured both
parties reminds me of this quote from C.S.
Lewis'"Screwtape Proposes a Toast":
"…They ever be allowed to raise Aristotle's question:
whether "democratic behavior" means the behavior that
democracies like or the behavior that will preserve a
democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to
occur to them that these need not be the same."
Globalism is just swell for the multinational
corporation, but it is nothing more or less than
Lawlessness writ large. The Corporation is given
legal/fictional life by the state…the trouble is it,
like Frankenstein, will turns on its creator and
imagines it can enjoy Absolute Independence.
One can just as easily make the point that the
globalists have unleashed dark forces against white
people and Western civilization that are nor easily
quelled.
And you would have the benefit of evidence (or, well,
evidence that is not stale by nearly a century). It
wasn't Trump supporters beating up people in San Jose.
And if you look to Europe as a guide to what can happen
in America, things start looking far, far worse.
"I guess the question I
want to zero in on is; What minimal, concrete
programmatic or cultural change or changes would
necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or equally, what is
the post-Ben Op vision of America that allows Rod and
company to relax?"
While I can't speak for Rod, I can speak for many
traditional Catholics. The end goal is the
re-establishment of the social reign of Christ, which
means a majority Christian nation, Christian culture,
and a state which governs according to Christian
principles (read Quas Primas). In that situation, and in
that situation alone, would the Ben Op no longer be
necessary.
I am guessing that Rod has not said this explicitly,
or laid out a concrete plan, because he is writing a
book for Christians in general. And if you get into too
many specifics, you are going to run right into the
enormous theological and philosophical differences
between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Also, if Rod were to start talking about "The Social
Reign of Christ the King", 3/4 of you would lose your
minds.
Of course, the current prospect for a Christian
culture and state look bleak, to say the least. But we
can play the long game, the Catholic Church is good at
that. It took over 300 years to convert the Roman
Empire. It was 700 years from the founding of the first
Benedictine monastery until St. Thomas Aquinas and the
High Middle Ages. We can wait that long, at least.
I rather think, in concurrence with Prof. Cole, that
Trump is a simulacrum within a simulacrum with a
simulacrum: there is no "extra-mediatic" Trump
candidate, ergo there is no "extra-mediatic"
presidential electoral race (if limited to the two
"mainstreamed" candidates), ergo there is no
presidential election tout court, ergo there is no
democracy at the presidential election level in the
U.S–just simulacra deceptively reflecting simulacra, in
any case, the resulting effect is a mirage, a
distortion, but above all an ILLUSION.
All this is, it seems to me, is a transition to a
different favorite deadly sin. We've had pride, avarice,
and the current favorite is lust; the new favorite
appears to be wrath. Gluttony, sloth, and envy have not
been absent, but they have not been the driving force in
politics recently.
Also important was the fact that FDR did not stoke
the fires of class conflict. A patrician himself, FDR's
goal was not to overturn the existing social order but
rather to preserve it by correcting its injustices. FDR
was the moderate leader the country needed at the time.
Without him, we might well have succumbed to a demagogic
or perhaps even dictatorial government under Charles
Coughlin, Huey Long, or Norman Thomas. In contrast,
Hillary and Trump seek to use fringe groups (BLM,
alt-right) for their own agendas. Let's hope whoever
wins can keep her or his pets mollified and contained,
but courting extremists is always a risky business.
Indeed, Hillary may be worse than Trump in this respect,
since there appears to be no daylight between her and
the SJW's.
To me, Ben-Op is more returning to the Tocquevillean
idea that the best American ways of living work their
way up from organic, formative local communities that
have largely disappeared from our socio-cultural
experience. Without independent formative local
communities, we human beings are mere products rolling
off the assembly line that serves the interests of the
elites of our big government-big business-big education
conglomerate.
Ben Op or not, its always a great
notion. And you don't have to withdraw from the culture,
THIS IS American culture (traditionally speaking). We
just need to reaffirm it.
So many colorful descriptions of how Trump lies
from so many commenters… Could y'all give at least one
that doesn't fit his opponent perfectly and even with
double intensity?
Hillary Clinton doesn't have a long list of unpaid
contractors suing her… of course that's because she
never built hotels, and I don't think she ever declared
bankruptcy either. We have a batch of slumlords in
Milwaukee who are little Trumps… they run up hundreds of
thousands of dollars in fines for building violations,
declare bankruptcy or plead poverty and make occasional
payments of $50, and meantime they spend tends of
thousands of dollars buying up distressed property at
sheriff's auctions. All of them are black, all of them
have beautiful homes in mostly "white" suburbs, and I
wouldn't vote for any of them for dogcatcher, much less
president.
That said, Hillary is an ego-bloated lying sleaze,
and I wouldn't vote for her if she were running against
almost anyone but Trump.
Nonetheless I am still tired of the ominous
warnings about right-wing white mobs that are about to
rememerge any day. It's been decades since there was a
white riot in this country.
There hasn't been a real riot of any nature in quite
a while. And no, that little fracas in Milwaukee doesn't
count. A few dozen thugs burning four black-owned
businesses while everyone living in the neighborhood
denounces then falls short of a riot.
I agree that we are not likely to see right-wing
"white" mobs posing much of a threat to anyone… they're
mostly couch potatoes anyway. But it is true that until
the 1940s, a "race riot" meant a white mob rampaging
through a black neighborhood. And there have been very
few black riots that went deep into a "white"
neighborhood … they stayed in black neighborhoods too.
This is an election about feeling under siege.
But we're not, and most of the adults in the room
know it.
Trump continues to be a walking, talking Rorschach
test for pundits peddling a point of view.
I think that explains a lot of Trump's support. Its
not who he is, what he says, or what he does or will do,
its what they think they SEE in him. I have to admit, I
did a bit of that over Barack Obama in 2008, and he did
disappoint. Obama has been one of our best presidents in
a long time, but that's a rather low bar.
"There are, then, two developments we are likely to see
going forward. First, cultural conservatives will
seriously consider a political "Benedict Option,"
dropping out of the Republican Party and forming a
like-minded Book Group, unconcerned with winning
elections and very concerned with maintaining their
"principles." Their fidelity is to Aristotle rather than
to winning the battle for the political soul of America.
…"
You know, people spout this stuff as if the
Republican party is conservative. It started drifting
from conservative frame more than forty years ago. By
the time we get to the 2000 elections, it;s been home an
entrenched band of strategics concerned primarily with
winning to advance policies tat have little to do with
conservative thought.
I doubt that I will become a member of a book club.
And I doubt that I will stop voting according to my
conservative view points.
I generally think any idea that Christians are going
to be left to their own devices doubtful or that they
would want to design communities not already defined by
scripture and a life in Christ.
_______________
"If the Ben Op doesn't call on Christians to abandon
politics altogether, it does call on them to recalibrate
their (our) understanding of what politics is and what
it can do. Politics, rightly understood, is more than
statecraft. Ben Op politics are Christian politics for a
post-Christian culture - that is, a culture that no
longer shares some key basic Christian values . . ."
I am just at a loss to comprehend this. A person who
claims to live in Christ already calibrates their lives
in the frame of Christ and led by some extent by the
Spirit of Christ. Nothing about a world destined to
become more worldly will change that. What may happen is
that a kind of christian spiritual revival and renewal
will occur.
" . . . orthodox Christians will come to be seen as
threats to the common good, simply because of the views
we hold and the practices we live by out of fidelity to
our religion. . ."
If this accurate, that christians are deemed a threat
to the state, unless that threat is just to their
participation, the idea "safe spaces" wheres christians
hang out and do their own thing hardly seems a
realistic. If christians are considered a threat – then
most likely the ultimate goal will be to get rid of them
altogether. You outlaw faith and practice. Or you do
what HS and colleges have done to students who arrive on
the campuses. You inundate them with how backward their
thinking until the student and then proceed to tell them
they are just like everyone else.
Believers are expected to be in the world and not of
it. And by in it, I think Christ intended them to be
active participants.
"Rod, I don't know if you've seen this already, but
National Review has a small piece about Archbishop
Charles Chaput, who calls for Christians to become more
engaged in the public square, not less. Your name and
the Benedict Option are referenced in the piece as
well."
Let me answer it for him. Perhaps just like not
everyone is called to the contemplative life in a
monastery but are called to the secular world, so is the
church as a whole these days individually called to
different arenas. That said, the basic principles of the
Ben Op are hardly opposed to being active in the broader
community. It just means there has to be some
intentionality in maintaining a Christian worldview in a
hostile larger culture.
"The Benedictine monks from whom Rod draws inspiration
didn't just shut themselves up and refuse to have
anything to do with the crumbling world around them.
They retreated into their monasteries to strengthen
their souls, and then went out into the world and
rebuilt it for Christ."
Just a technical comment. You
have to pay attention to which orders you are referring
to, because many of them were indeed founded to retreat
from the world. At one time, the idea of a monk
wandering outside of the monastery, or a nun
particularly, was considered scandalous. I read alot of
monastic history about 20 years ago, and I seem to
recall the Benedictines were actually focused on prayer
and manual labor/work within the monastery area. It was
later with orders like the Dominicans that were sent out
into the community, and they caused the bishops a lot of
headaches because they competed with priests and bishops
in preaching publicly. It took awhile to sort out who
was allowed to do what. Modern religious orders founded
since the 18th century are quite different from the old
orders.
Another area of interest you could check out, besides
reading some of the religious rules of life of many of
these old orders just for the sake of comparison, is the
differences between the cenobitic and eremitic monastic
communities of the very early church. The original
founding of religious orders even back then was also
considered a direct challenge to the church hierarchy
and took a lot of time sorting out that they weren't
some kind of troublemakers, too. Modern Catholics have
entirely too little knowledge of the development and
maybe too pious a view of it.
The question is this: what do you do when the policies
or ideas you stand for or at least, agree with, are
advanced by someone with as appalling a character as
Trump? What I observe in practice is that friends and
acquaintances of mine who agree with Trump on the issues
find it necessary to defend his utterly indefensible and
vile character – which makes them less than honest as
well.
I'd be more impressed if, after Edwin Edwards,
Trump's fans said "Vote for the swindler, it's
important" – rather than use lies or their own credulity
to defend him.
I read this on Friday and have thought much about it
since. I came by earlier this evening and had about half
of a long post written in response, but got too caught
up in the Georgia/Missouri game to finish it. I also
determined that it wouldn't matter what I said. The
conservatives would continue to harp about the evils of
identity politics, refusing to acknowledge the long
history of conservatives engaging in identity politics
in both Europe and America from roughly the high Middle
Ages to the present. It seemed more rational to delete
what I had written rather than save it and come back to
finish it.
It just so happened that as the game ended,
I clicked on Huffingtonpost to check the headlines. Lo
and behold, the top story was this one about Jane
Goodall's latest statement regarding identity politics
in the animal kingdom:
"What I observe in practice is that friends and
acquaintances of mine who agree with Trump on the issues
find it necessary to defend his utterly indefensible and
vile character – which makes them less than honest as
well."
I don't defend his vile character. I
readily admit it. So do most of those I know who intend
to vote for him.
It's too bad that Clinton is at least equally vile.
For Hillary that's a big problem – the "character"
issue is at best a wash, so the choice boils down to
other things.
The most highly motivated voters in this election
cycle seem to be insurgents pushing back against corrupt
and incompetent elites and the Establishment. That does
not bode well for Clinton.
"I guess the question I
want to zero in on is; What minimal, concrete
programmatic or cultural change or changes would
necessitate abandoning the Ben Op? Or equally, what is
the post-Ben Op vision of America that allows Rod and
company to relax?"
------
I think those are good questions, and read in the best
light possible, might be interpreted as being asked by
someone honestly seeking to understand the concerns of
traditional Christians today.
I can't answer for Rod, but for me the short answers
are,
"1) In present America, I don't think there are any
"cultural change" possible which might reassure
Christians, because we are in a downward spiral which
has not yet run its course. The articles and commentary
posted here by Rod show we've not yet reached the peak
of what government and technology will do to the lives
of believing Christians.
2) The post-BenOp - perhaps decades in the future -
vision that would allow me to relax would be a national
reaffirmation that our rights, as partially defined in
the Constitution and Bill of Rights, come from God the
Creator, that life is valuable from the moment of
conception, and that the traditional family is the best
promoter of sound moral, cultural and economic health.
I'd relax a bit, though not entirely, if that happened.
In a September 2015 interview with NBC, Clinton
defended partial-birth abortions again and voiced her
support for late-term abortions up until birth, too.
She also openly supports forcing taxpayers to fund
these abortions by repealing the Hyde Amendment. The
amendment prohibits direct taxpayer funding of abortion
in Medicaid. If repealed, researchers estimate that
33,000 more babies will be aborted every year in the
U.S.
Yes, We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of
Deplorables.
"Take a Pat Buchanan…how do you think he would be doing
in this election? Trumps three ring show prevents the
charges against him from finding any fertile soil to
grow in."
I think far too much credit is being given
to Mr. Trump. The reason he can stand is because the
people he represents have been fed up with the some of
what he stands for long before he entered the fray.
If Mr Pat Buchanan were running, he would be in
good stead save or his speaking style which is far more
formal. Mr. Trump's carefree (of sorts) delivery punches
through and gives the impression that he's an everyman.
His boundless energy has that sense earnest sincerity.
His "imperfections" tend to work in his favor. But if
his message was counter to where most people are already
at - he would not be the nominee.
There's a difference in being a .Mr. Trump fan and a
supporter. As a supporter, I would be curious to know
what lies I have used to support him. We have some
serious differences, but I think my support has been
fairly above board. In fact, i think the support of most
have been fairly straight up I am not sure there is much
hidden about Mr. Trump.
Hillary Clinton,
"Laws have to be backed up with resources and
political will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious
beliefs and structural biases have to be changed."
Uh Oh -- We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of
Deplorables.
That's a shame RD, because I was looking forward to
joining a like-minded Book Group, unconcerned with
winning elections and very concerned with maintaining
our "principles." With fidelity is to Aristotle rather
than to winning the battle for the political soul of
America.
[NFR: You can still have your Ben Op book
group. - RD]
I'm going to start and end with globalization by
referring to G.K.Chesterton in Orthodoxy(pg 101).
"This is what makes Christendom at once so perplexing
and so much more interesting than the Pagan empires;…If
anyone wants a modern proof of all this, let him
consider the curious fact that, under Christianity,
Europe has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism
is a perfect example of this deliberate balance of one
emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the
Pagan empire would have said, 'You shall all be Roman
citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow
and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and
swift.' But the instinct of Christian Europe says, 'Let
the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman
may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will
make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity
called Germany shall correct the insanity called
France."
Isn't it interesting that has Christianity has left the
northern hemisphere for the southern, that Europe has
tried union, the USA has been into interventionism, and
globalization has become so mainstream. You shall all be
one world citizens doesn't have a balancing instinct.
And Chesterton was deliberating about the balancing
instinct.
I think Mitchell is basically right. Aside from his jab
at the Benedict Option, I have just one quibble with his
analysis: "And Trump is the first American candidate to
bring some coherence to them, however raucous his
formulations have been."
Wrong. Trump is definitely
not the first candidate to do this. He was preceded by
Pat Buchanan, who also brought (and still brings) much
more coherence to the six ideas than Trump. Clearly,
Buchanan ran at a time when the post-1989 order was in
its infancy, and so few saw any fundamental problem with
it. He was ahead of his time. But he was a candidate
that presented the six ideas and attracted a
non-negligible amount of support. Trump is not a pioneer
in this regard. People should give Buchanan his due.
I hope Trump wins; he's rather bizarre and not very
likable as a person, but the last 25 years have been
disastrous politically in Western nations and it's time
to repudiate the ruling orthodoxy. The US still is the
Western hegemon and exports its ideas across the
Atlantic (most unfortunate in cases like "critical
whiteness studies"); if there's change in the US towards
a (soft, civic) nationalism, it might open up new
options in Europe as well.
In any case these are exciting times…however it turns
out, we may well be living through years which will be
seen as decisive in retrospect.
This comment on the Politico article stood out to me:
"It is its very existence, and mantra, for a religion
the advertise itself, something that is frowned upon as
being Incredibly un-American under the Constitution, and
contrary to our core beliefs. Yes Republicans not only
embrace this, they help their religion advertise."
In other words, this commenter admits that he
believes it "incredibly un-American" for religions to
"advertise," and, by extension, to even exist (he says
advertising is religion's "very existence.")
The comment has a high number of "thumbs-up."
We really are in trouble. America has become Jacobin
country.
Red brick
September 16, 2016 at 6:36 pm
Call it anti-Semitic if you want but all my Jewish
cousins and the several other Jewish business associates
I know feel uncontrollable hate for Trump.'
Perhaps
due to very recent memories that herrenvolk regimes are
not good for the Jews. The online troll army of out and
proud anti-semites can't help but contribute to this.
Re "the DC elites are clueless" what ABOUT John Kasich
up there on the podium advocating for the latest free
trade deal? Yessir, that'll get us in our "states that
begin with a vowel" to totally change our minds on that,
you betcha!
Trump continues to be a walking, talking Rorschach test
for pundits peddling a point of view. Funny how he
proves so many intellectuals right about so many
contradictory things, all without having to take
responsibility for any particular idea.
Nobody has remained more adamant than the writer of this
blog that there is something sacred about sex between
one woman and one man, and them married. God bless him
for staying true.
So I am going to try to say( G.K Chesterton please
forgive me)…..Let the LBGTQIA remain true to their
identity, that the married male/female may be more
safely true to their identity. We can make an equipoise
out of these excesses( despite those who want us to be
all the same). The absurdity called LBGTQIA shall
correct the insanity called one man/one woman.
Trump is certainly not unraveling
identity politics. He's adding another identity to the
grievance industry, that of (downscale) whites.
You're misdefining "grievance industry;" the central
tenet of the grievance industry is that whatever
happens, white people are to blame and should continue
paying for it. Whether you agree with white identity
politics or not, its proponents are obviously not
adding
to the grievance industry, but attempting to
defend against it, i.e. stating that white people are
not
to blame for everything, and no, they
shouldn't
continue to pay for it. To merely maintain
that position is sufficient to be labeled as a white
supremacist by the grievance industry hacks.
Rod, I don't know if you've seen this already, but
National Review has a small piece about Archbishop
Charles Chaput, who calls for Christians to become
more
engaged in the public square, not less. Your
name and the Benedict Option are referenced in the piece
as well.
Dear mainstream media: you have lost your
credibility because you are incapable of skeptical
inquiry into your chosen candidate or official
statistics/ pronouncements.
Your dismissal of
skeptical inquiries as "conspiracies" or "hoaxes" is
nothing but a crass repackaging of the propaganda
techniques of totalitarian state media.
Dear MSM: You have forsaken your duty in a
democracy and are a disgrace to investigative,
unbiased journalism.
You have substituted
Orwellian-level propaganda for honest, skeptical
journalism. We can only hope viewers and advertisers
respond appropriately, i.e. turn you off.
Here's the mainstream media's new mantra:
"skepticism is always a conspiracy or a hoax."
The Ministry of Propaganda and the MSM are now one
agency.
The curtain is being pulled back on the Wizard of Oz.
How soon before the Wicked Witch starts to melt?
Do people who are willing to accept characterization as
"angry, provincial bigots" still have any right to
political self-expression? Believe it or not, it's an
important question.
Identity politics definition: a tendency for people of a
particular religion, race, social background, etc., to
form exclusive political alliances, moving away from
traditional broad-based party politics.
I find it odd
that the party of older white straight Christian men
accuses the party of everyone else to be guilty of
"identity politics". It just doesn't make any sense.
(1) borders matter; Ok, but they're not all that.
(2) immigration policy matters; Ditto. We should have a
policy.
(3) national interests, not so-called universal
interests, matter; Depends. National interests matter,
but if they are all that matters… I think you just
stepped outside the Gospels.
(4) entrepreneurship matters; It can, for good OR for
evil.
(5) decentralization matters; Another thorny one… SOME
things need to be more decentralized, some don't, and we
need to have an honest conversation about which is
which.
(6) PC speech-without which identity politics is
inconceivable-must be repudiated. ABSOLUTELY!
All in
all, I think this Georgetown prof has done the usual
short list of The Latest Attempt To Reduce Reality To a
Nice Short Checklist.
Not much of a guide to the future. We could all write
our own lists.
You can largely agree with Mitchell's six points (and,
for the most part I do) and nonetheless recognize that
an unprincipled, ruthless charlatan like Trump–a
pathological liar and narcissist interested in nothing
but his own self-promotion–will do nothing meaningful to
advance them. His latest birther charade shows him for
the lying, unprincipled scum bucket he is.
The
cultural ground is shifting as the emptiness of advanced
consumer capitalism and globalism becomes ever more
apparent. Large scale organizations are, by their very
nature, dehumanizing, demoralizing, and corrupt. I've
believed so for the better part of my life now. It's
that belief that lead me to the University of Rochester
and Christopher Lasch in the 1980s and, subsequently to
MacIntyre, Rieff, and Berry. It's also a belief that has
lead me to distrust both the corporate order and
politics as a means to salvation. I certainly don't
consider myself a conservative, at least not in the
shallow American sense of the term, and the chances that
I will ever vote for a Republican again are nil. But I'm
not a liberal in the American sense of the term either
because agreeing with Mitchell's six points pretty much
pretty much rules me out of that tribe. I have, for a
long time, felt pretty homeless in the American
wilderness.
I suppose that's one reason I keep reading your blog,
Rod, though I disagree deeply with many of your views.
As a Jew, I'm not much interested in the Benedict
Option, but I do agree that our society suffers from a
certain soul sickness that politics, consumption, and
technology can't cure.
Call it anti-Semitic if you want but all my Jewish
cousins and the several other Jewish business associates
I know feel uncontrollable hate for Trump.
As one
of those American Jews who feels a deep hatred for
Trump, perhaps I can shed some light on the reasons. It
has nothing to do with his alleged desire to enforce
borders. Nations require them. Nor does it have anything
to do with his lip service to Christianist values. He's
no Christian. He's pure heathen.
Instead, it has everything to do with his wink/nod
attitude toward the alt-right and white nationalist
groups and with his willingness to appropriate their
anti-semitic, racist memes for his own advancement. He's
dangerous. Period. Dangerous and scary to anyone
familiar with lynchings, pogroms, and mob violence. To
anyone familiar with history. Trump has unleashed dark
forces that will not easily be quelled even if, and
probably especially if, he loses. The possibility that
he might win has left me wondering whether I even belong
in this country any more, no matter how much sympathy I
might feel for the folks globalism has left behind.
Call it anti-Semitic if you want but all my Jewish
cousins and the several other Jewish business associates
I know feel uncontrollable hate for Trump…They seem to
think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd world
immigration, stop pc thought police, or up hold
Christian-ish values are a direct threat to them.
Or it could be that Trump reminds them of some
historical figure who was rather bad for the Jews. I
wonder who that could be?
And saying all the Jews that the commenter knows feel
an "uncontrollable" emotion
is
a touch
anti-Semitic.
But to talk about the OP: Joshua Mitchell gives the
game away by consistently referring to 1989 as the state
of a "new order," which he thinks is a combination of
globalization and identity politics. Of course neither
was new. Admittedly globalization received a boost by
the end of the Cold War, but it's been well underway for
a century or so. Mitchell wants to return to Reagan's
"morning in America." But there was no such morning.
"Identity politics" is what the suffragettes and
abolitionists would have been accused of, if the term
had been invented back in their day. Are there stupid
things done and said under the umbrella of "identity
politics"? Of course. That doesn't make the
discrimination and mistreatment that led to such
politics any less real.
The fundamental flaw in Mitchell's argument, though,
is that the Trump he describes (or, more accurately,
wishes for) simply doesn't exist. The Trump he describes
has ideas and beliefs. It's a little ironic that
Mitchell thinks that Trump "expressly opposes" the ideas
of Marx and Nietzsche, because the real-world Trump has
no beliefs other than he is an ubermensch.
I read an entire article on Trump in which Hitler
wasn't mentioned once.
It wasn't even smug, and there was no list of liberal
cliches and denunciations of heretics so between
drooling I never knew whether shout "Boo!" or "Hurah!"
Couldn't they throw in one "racist, sexist,
homophobic" so I could feel morally superior to stupid
white people in fly-over country?
Having now read Mitchell's article, all I can say is
that while I agree with his six points, his hope that
Trump is some kind of pragmatist is deeply misguided.
Like most political scientists, he knows little about
history.
For thise who think Trump is harmless, here
he is, tonight, riffing on his
Clinton assassination fantasies.
Where is Leni
Reifenstahl when you need her? Trump is no pragmatist.
He's no Christian. And he's no leader.
If Mitchell is correct–and I believe that he is–how does
this bode poorly for conservative Christians? If the
BenOp is primarily a reaction to the post-1989 culture,
shouldn't the crumbling of that culture obviate the need
for a BenOp?
[NFR: Well, if there were a candidate
advocating these positions who WASN'T Donald Trump, I
would eagerly vote for him or her. I think Trump is
thoroughly untrustworthy and demagogic. But I would not
be under any illusion that casting a vote for that
person - again, even if he or she was a saint - would
mean any kind of Christian restoration. The Ben Op is
premised on the idea that we are living in
post-Christian times. The Ben Op is a religious movement
with political implications, not a political movement.
Liquid modernity will not suddenly solidify depending on
a change of government in Washington. - RD]
This is an election about feeling under siege. Once that
is understood all else makes sense. It is also a
manifestation about what happens when a word is
overused, in this case racism. It creates a reaction of,
"Ask us if we care," which becomes, "Yeah, we are, and
we like it."
It backfires.
The Ben Op may prove to be in better position that it
looks.
I think populists who haven't gotten much attention from
either party are projecting an awful lot onto a
seriously flawed candidate who doesn't have firm
convictions on anything, beyond making the sale. This
objective he pursues by being willing to say whatever he
thinks will get him the sale, with no regard for decency
or truth or consistency. If he gets himself elected, who
knows what he will do to retain his popularity with what
he perceives to be the majority view. Those hoping for a
sea change are engaged in some pretty serious wishful
thinking, I think.
@T.S.Gay, You are correct that this election is a battle
of Nationalism vs Globalism. But, Nationalism is
Identity Politics in its purest form and that is why the
Globalist oppose it.
Globalists use identity politics,
that is true. However, they bear no love for the
identities they publicly promote. Rather, they
dehumanize them, using them as nothing more than weapons
against Nationalism.
As a Nationalist I will support and promote my
Nation(People), but I also recognize the inherent right
of other Nations(Peoples) to support and promote
themselves.
I'm absolutely sure Donald Trump isn't going to do to
us, what that other person has planned for us
deplorables:
"Laws have to be backed up with resources
and political will and deep-seated cultural codes,
religious beliefs and structural biases have to be
changed."
After her shot across the bow promises to marginalize
us in society, complete with cheers from those at her
back, that is just about all that counts.
Mitchell's description echoes Oliver Stone's comments
from Oct. 2001: "There's been conglomeration under six
principal princes-they're kings, they're barons!-and
these six companies have control of the world! … That's
what the new world order is. They control culture, they
control ideas. And I think the revolt of September 11
was about 'F- you! F- your order!'"
It is quite amusing to contemplate how it works. An
average progressive (I mean average progressive with
brains, not SJW) comes with a genuine desire to
criticize Trump for his ideas. But he faces something
"deplorable" almost at once. "Deplorable" things are
known to immediately trigger the incessant spouting of
words like "bigot", "racist", logically impossible
"white nationalist", "chovinist", fascist and on, and
on, and on. No way to control it, completely automatic.
A deep-seated emotional reaction all the way long from
uncle Freud's works. And, as a result, Trump's actual
ideas remain largely uncriticized. And the ideas that
are often mentioned but seldom confronted with a
coherent critical response are almost impossible to
defeat. So yes, his ideas are thinly buried in his
rhetoric. There are simply too many of them for being
suddenly blurted out even without all of the above,
especially when similar ideas simultaneously blossom all
around Europe. French Revolution, Russian Revolution,
American Progressivism – the West is simply tired of two
centuries of modernist and postmodernist experiments.
And now the giant starts awakening. Though, instead of
"thinly buried", I would rather prefer "subtly woven"
metaphor.
sure the ground is moving – it was inevitable.
Everything changes.
But is Trump a harbinger of the change? Or is he – or
rather his supporters – simply hoping to stop change –
to bring back some nostalgic notion of 1950's America?
Trump is a con man who seeks only his own
aggrandizement. He is not really committed to any
refutation of the existing order. He lies constantly and
when one set of lies stops working he switches to a new
set of lies. He was forced to back down on birtherism –
which is what propelled him to the attention of the Fox
News conspiracy folks. And let us be clear – birtherism
is fundamentally racist. Now he has to give up his
birther position so he can get the votes of a few soccer
Moms. So he creates new lies – Hilary started
birtherism. It becomes impossible to keep up with his
lies. And as he bounces from one new set of realities to
another – he takes his supporters along with him. He is
playing a con – making a sale.
Now he suggests that the Secret Service detail give
up their guns and then "Let's see what happens to her".
There is no great movement with him – just a demented
man who thrives on the adoration of the crowds and will
say anything however obscene to get those cheers.
The issue is not Trump – it is those who support him.
Are we as a people really capable of being citizens of a
Republic or are we simply fools to be manipulated by
people like Trump ?
Very interesting piece, and I had not really connected
the Brexit and EU jitters to what's going on in the US –
and I think Mitchell is right about that. When we were
still in primary season and Trump was ahead, I recall
one author – probably on The Corner – wondered how a
Trump presidency might look. He figured Trump would be
very pragmatic, perhaps actually fixing Obamacare, and
focusing on our interests here at home.
"I will vote primarily for candidates who will be
better at protecting my community's right to be left
alone."
I've been voting that way for years; mostly
Republicans, but a good sprinkling of Democrats as well.
Good article. I think Mitchell identifies the right
ideas buried within Trump's rhetoric. But even if it
were true that Trump had no ideas, I would still vote
for him. After all, where have politic ideas gotten us
lately?
"Conservative principles" espoused by wonks
and political scientists culminated in the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Ideology told us that democracy was a
divine right, transferable across time and culture.
Moreover, do we really want our politicians playing
with ideas? Think back to George W. Bush's speech at the
2004 Republican convention, perhaps the most idea-driven
speech in recent history. The sight of W. spinning a
neo-Hegelian apocalyptic narrative was like watching a
gorilla perform opera.
I think that many casual hearers of Ben Op ideas assume
that Ben Op is a one-dimensional, cultural dropping-out
of cultural/religious conservatives into irrelevant
enclaves.
To me, Ben-Op is more returning to the Tocquevillean
idea that the best American ways of living work their
way up from organic, formative local communities that
have largely disappeared from our socio-cultural
experience. Without independent formative local
communities, we human beings are mere products rolling
off the assembly line that serves the interests of the
elites of our big government-big business-big education
conglomerate.
If these formative communities hold to authentic,
compassionate Judeo-Christian values and practices, all
the better–for everybody! Ben Op will offer an
alternative to the assembly-line politically correct
cultural warriors being produced by many of our elite
cultural institutions.
A recently heard description of Trump – a fat, orange,
poorly educated, intellectually shallow pathologic liar,
bigot, and narcissistic jerk.
Well, I don't know that
much about the guy, but some of that description seems
correct. He rarely reads, he says, gets his information
from "the shows", so if there are intellectual
preparations which we should expect in a presidential
candidate he falls short, but those preparations usually
create some intellectual bias, which he doesn't seem to
have on any important matter. So maybe just "muddling
through" problems as they arise will work. One has to
hope so, because whatever ability to do that he has is
all he's got.
"cavalierly undermining decades worth of social and
political certainties"
Sorry, that is just silly. Only
political junkies and culture warriors even care about
stuff like this. In my life… in my experience of living
in the USA every day, none of this matters. It just
doesn't.
People don't live their lives thinking about any of
those things cited. What would it mean to you or me to
have "borders matter"? Ford just announced they were
moving some more production to Mexico. That decision
WILL affect the lives of those who lose their jobs. Does
anyone honestly think that anyone… even a President
Trump, would lift a finger to stop them? Of course not.
It is silly to assert otherwise.
Very good essay and commentary, but I caution against
the notion that you are looking at permanent change.
JonF's two 20th century ideas (Free Trade benefits
everyone and Supply Side economics) are not going away.
In fact, Larry Kudlow, the crassest exponent of both
those ideas is one of Trump's economic advisors.
BenOp
is fascinating, but most cultural conservative now
active in the game will not drop out. They may not like
the adrenalin rush politics gives them more than they
like Jesus–but they ain't going to give it up.
Great. He's got six ideas. Six ideas with either no
detailed policy or approach attached to them, policies
or approaches that seemingly change on a whim (evidence
that at best he hasn't given much thought to any of
them), or has no realistic political path for making
those ideas a reality.
"That is what the Trump campaign, ghastly though it may
at times be, leads us toward: A future where states
matter."
With that sentence, I think Mitchell stumbles
into a truth he might not have intended - The "state" -
as in "administrative state" - is going to continue
growing even under Trump.
Given the increasing intolerance of our society for
traditional values, that's all Christians need to know.
Clint writes:
"Hillary Clinton,
'L;aws have to be backed up with resources and political
will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious bel:efs
and structural biases have to be changed.
Uh Oh --
We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of
Deplorables."
"He's dangerous. Period. Dangerous and scary to anyone
familiar with lynchings, pogroms, and mob violence. To
anyone familiar with history. Trump has unleashed dark
forces that will not easily be quelled even if, and
probably especially if, he loses."
Given the amount
violence and disruption your side has caused this year
this accusation really should be laughable. Trump
supporters aren't out beating up Clinton supporters and
making sure they can't have a rally in the wrong
neighborhood. Members of the alt-right aren't
threatening student journalists with violence on their
own campuses, or getting on stage with speakers they
dislike and slapping them.
It's your own side that has been perpetuating the mob
violence while the liberal establishment denies it or
excuses it.
This post is spot-on; thank you for sharing the
preliminary BenOp talking points.
We need Thomas Paine's
Common Sense
for our
age, for these are times that try men's souls. Problem
is this: Paine's citizenry were 90% literate, unified by
culture, and cognitively engaged … today we're 70%
literate (at 4th grade reading level), multicultural,
and amused to death.
Joseph R.
Murray II
Guest
columnist
Political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to
Popeye: Columnist.
When the term paleo-conservative is floated in conversation,
most folks imagine a creature out of Jurassic World. But paleo-conservatism
- a near extinct brand of conservatism that heralds limited
government, nonintervention, economic nationalism and Western
traditions - is finding a comeback in an unlikely spokesperson.
The history-making campaign of
Donald Trump
is turning the clock of U.S. politics back to a
time when hubris was heroic and the truth, no matter how blunt,
was king. It is resurrecting a political thought that does not
play by the rules of modern politics.
And as the nation saw the top-tier
GOP
candidates take the stage for the first time, they saw
Trump, unapologetic and confident, alongside eight candidates
clueless on how to contain him and a tongue-lashed Rand Paul.
The debate itself highlighted the fear a Trump candidacy is
creating throughout the political establishment. The very first
question asked the candidates to pledge unconditional support to
the eventual GOP nominee and refrain from a third-party run.
Trump refused.
But why should he blindly accept the party's unknown nominee?
If Jeb Bush receives the nomination, the GOP will put forth a
candidate who favors amnesty and is weak on trade, supportive of
Common Core and unable, if not unwilling, to come out from under
his brother's failed foreign policy.
In refusing to take the pledge, Trump was honest, and it is
his honesty that has made his campaign endearing. Trump has no
secrets and turns what many consider mistakes into triumphs.
The incident with
Megyn Kelly
is a prime example. When moderator Kelly
confronted Trump about his past comments about women, Trump
refused to apologize and told Kelly there is no time for
political correctness.
In the aftermath, Trump blasted Kelly's performance and
landed in hot water. In an interview with CNN's Don Lemon, Trump
said that "[y]ou could see there was blood coming out of her
eyes. Blood coming out of her - wherever."
The "wherever" part created a firestorm. Though vague, Trump
detractors claimed that the "wherever" part meant Trump was
implying Kelly was menstruating, while Trump claimed he was
referring to her nose. Trump's version made more sense, but to a
political class desperate to derail him, the headlines went with
the former.
Those in the Beltway resumed drafting Trump's political
obituary. But while they were busy scribbling, post-debate polls
showed Trump jumped in the polls. Republicans are ignoring their
orders from headquarters and deflecting to the Donald.
Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically
correct system has tanked, failed to understand that political
incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye.
"So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump
tweeted. "We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time
and energy on nonsense!"
Is he not correct? Days before the nation started debating
Kelly's metaphorical blood, an unauthorized immigrant in New
Jersey pleaded guilty to actually spilling the blood of
30-year-old Sviatlana Dranko and setting her body on fire. In
the media, Dranko's blood is second fiddle. This contrast is not
lost on the silent majority flocking to Trump.
Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality.
Once the media are forced to report Trump's positions, instead
of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the
sole Republican who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the
keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war. He is the
type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party
establishments are too afraid to provide.
The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was
Pat Buchanan
in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused
Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire
Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment
in Arizona and, in terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he
was the Last of the Mohicans.
Trump's campaign is Buchananesque with one difference: Trump
has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and
self-finance his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite.
This reality is what makes him the new face of
paleo-conservativism. It might also make him president.
Joseph R. Murray II is a civil-rights attorney, a
conservative commentator and a former official with Pat
Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
"... the Benghazi attack, for all its shock and tragedy, is but one detail in a panorama of misadventure, an in many ways unsurprising consequence of the hubris of liberal interventionism's false conviction that the American military can casually pop in and out of the whole world's problems without suffering cost or consequence ..."
"... as Tim Carney rightly argues at The Washington Examiner , and the "useful lesson from Benghazi isn't about a White House lying (shocking!), but about the inherent messiness of regime change and the impossibility of a quick, clean war." ..."
"... And the foreign policy establishment on the other side of the aisle must not be left without its due share of blame should that possibility come to pass. Though Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was right to attempt to widen the report's focus past Clinton specifically, neoconservatives' all-too-convenient attention to the errors of Benghazi make it all easy for them to gloss over the bigger issue at hand: that none of this would have happened had America stuck to a foreign policy of realism and restraint, minding our own business and defending our own interests instead of gallivanting off to play revolutionary in one more country with no vital connection to our own. ..."
"... Benghazi is a symptom-a serious one, at that-but the disease is interventionism. ..."
And the Benghazi attack, for all its shock and tragedy, is but one detail
in a panorama of misadventure, an in many ways unsurprising consequence of the
hubris of liberal interventionism's false conviction that the American military
can casually pop in and out of the whole world's problems without suffering
cost or consequence.
Indeed, the "2012 attack that killed four Americans was a consequence of
the disorder and violence the administration left in the wake of its drive-by
war," as Tim Carney
rightly argues at The Washington Examiner, and the "useful lesson
from Benghazi isn't about a White House lying (shocking!), but about the inherent
messiness of regime change and the impossibility of a quick, clean war."
Unfortunately, that is a lesson too few in Washington are willing to learn.
Clinton herself maintains in the face of overwhelming evidence that
her handiwork in Libya is an
example of "smart power at its best"-a phrase whose
blatant inaccuracy should haunt her for the rest of her political career.
With arguments in favor of Libya, round two already
swirling and Clinton's poll numbers holding strong, it is not difficult
to imagine a Clinton White House dragging America back to fiddle with a country
it was
never particularly interested in fixing by this time next year.
And the foreign policy establishment on the other side of the aisle must
not be left without its due share of blame should that possibility come to pass.
Though Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was right
to attempt to widen the report's focus past Clinton specifically, neoconservatives'
all-too-convenient attention to the errors of Benghazi make it all
easy for them to gloss over the bigger issue at hand: that none of this would
have happened had America stuck to a foreign policy of realism and restraint,
minding our own business and defending our own interests instead of gallivanting
off to play revolutionary in one more country with no vital connection to our
own.
Benghazi is a symptom-a serious one, at that-but the disease is interventionism.
That's the real story here, and it's a bipartisan failure of judgment which
shows all the signs of running on repeat.
"... The fact that interventionists "want to believe" what they're told by opposition figures in other countries reflects their general naivete about the politics of the countries where they want to intervene and their absurd overconfidence in the efficacy of U.S. action in general. ..."
"... Interventionists usually can't imagine any "far-reaching" consequences that aren't good, and they are predisposed to ignore all the many ways that a country and an entire region can be harmed by destabilizing military action. That failure of imagination repeatedly produces poor decisions that result in ghastly policies that wreck the lives of millions of people. ..."
"... This captures exactly what's wrong with Clinton on foreign policy, and why she so often ends up on the wrong, hawkish side of foreign policy debates. First, she is biased in favor of action and meddling, and second she often identifies action with military intervention or some other aggressive, militarized measures. Clinton doesn't need to be argued into an interventionist policy, because she already "wants to believe" that is the proper course of action. That guarantees that she frequently backs reckless and unnecessary U.S. actions that cause far more misery and suffering than they remedy. ..."
"... This is revealing in a few ways. First, it shows how resistant the administration initially was and how important Clinton's support for the war was in getting the U.S. involved. ..."
"... It was already well-known that Clinton owns the Libyan intervention more than any U.S. official besides the president, and this week we're being reminded once more just how crucial her support for the war was in making it happen. ..."
The New York Times
reports on
Hillary Clinton's role in the Libyan war. This passage sums up much of what's wrong with how
Clinton and her supporters think about how the U.S. should respond to foreign conflicts:
Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders "said all the right things about supporting democracy
and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to
pull this off," said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. "They gave us
what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe." [bold mine-DL]
It's not surprising that rebels seeking outside support against their government tell representatives
of that government things they want to hear, but it is deeply disturbing that our officials are frequently
so eager to believe that what they are being told was true. Our officials shouldn't "want to believe"
the self-serving propaganda of spokesmen for a foreign insurgency, especially when that leads to
U.S. military intervention on their behalf. They should be more cautious than normal when they are
hearing "all the right things." Not only should our officials know from previous episodes that the
people saying "all the right things" are typically conning Washington in the hopes of receiving support,
but they should assume that anyone saying "all the right things" either doesn't represent the forces
on the ground that the U.S. will be called on to support or is deliberately misrepresenting the conditions
on the ground to make U.S. involvement more attractive.
"Wanting to believe" in dubious or obviously bad causes in other countries is one of the biggest
problems with ideologically-driven interventionists from both parties. They aren't just willing to
take sides in foreign conflicts, but they are looking for an excuse to join them. As long as they
can get representatives of the opposition to repeat the required phrases and pay lip service to the
"right things," they will do their best to drag the U.S. into a conflict in which it has nothing
at stake. If that means pretending that terrorist groups are democrats and liberals, that is what
they'll do. If it means whitewashing the records of fanatics, that is what they'll do. Even if it
means inventing a "moderate" opposition out of thin air, they'll do it. This satisfies their desire
to meddle in other countries' affairs, it provides intervention with a superficial justification
that credulous pundits and talking heads will be only too happy to repeat, and it frees them from
having to come up with plans for what comes after the intervention on the grounds that the locals
will take care of it for them later on.
The fact that interventionists "want to believe" what they're told by opposition figures in
other countries reflects their general naivete about the politics of the countries where they want
to intervene and their absurd overconfidence in the efficacy of U.S. action in general. If one
takes for granted that there must be sympathetic liberals-in-waiting in another country that will
take over once a regime is toppled, one isn't going to worry about the negative and unintended consequences
of regime change. Because interventionists have difficulty imagining how U.S. intervention can go
awry or make things worse, they are also unlikely to be suspicious of the motives or goals of the
"good guys" they want the U.S. to support. They tend to assume the best about their would-be proxies
and allies, and they assume that the country will be in good hands once they are empowered. The fact
that this frequently backfires doesn't trouble these interventionists, who will have already moved
on to the next country in "need" of their special attentions.
The article continues:
The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving
Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton's
questions have come to pass.
If the article is referring to anyone in the administration, this might be true, but as a general
statement it couldn't be more wrong. Many skeptics and opponents of the intervention in Libya warned
about many of the things that the Libyan war and regime change have produced, and they issued these
warnings before and during the beginning of U.S. and allied bombing. Interventionists usually
can't imagine any "far-reaching" consequences that aren't good, and they are predisposed to ignore
all the many ways that a country and an entire region can be harmed by destabilizing military action.
That failure of imagination repeatedly produces poor decisions that result in ghastly policies that
wreck the lives of millions of people.
The report goes on to quote Anne-Marie Slaughter referring to Clinton's foreign policy inclinations:
"But when the choice is between action and inaction, and you've got risks in either direction,
which you often do, she'd rather be caught trying."
This captures exactly what's wrong with Clinton on foreign policy, and why she so often ends
up on the wrong, hawkish side of foreign policy debates. First, she is biased in favor of action
and meddling, and second she often identifies action with military intervention or some other aggressive,
militarized measures. Clinton doesn't need to be argued into an interventionist policy, because she
already "wants to believe" that is the proper course of action. That guarantees that she frequently
backs reckless and unnecessary U.S. actions that cause far more misery and suffering than they remedy.
Maybe the most striking section of the report was the description of the administration's initial
reluctance to intervene, which Clinton then successfully overcame:
France and Britain were pushing hard for a Security Council vote on a resolution supporting
a no-fly zone in Libya to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from slaughtering his opponents. Ms. Rice was
calling to push back, in characteristically salty language.
"She says, and I quote, 'You are not going to drag us into your shitty war,'" said Mr. Araud,
now France's ambassador in Washington. "She said, 'We'll be obliged to follow and support you,
and we don't want to.'
This is revealing in a few ways. First, it shows how resistant the administration initially
was and how important Clinton's support for the war was in getting the U.S. involved. It also
shows how confused everyone in the administration was about the obligations the U.S. owed to its
allies. The U.S. isn't obliged to indulge its allies' wars of choice, and it certainly doesn't have
to join them, but the administration was already conceding that the U.S. would "follow and support"
France and Britain in what they chose to do. As we know, in the end France and Britain definitely
could and did drag the U.S. into their "shitty war," and in that effort they received a huge assist
from Clinton.
It was already well-known that Clinton owns the Libyan intervention more than any U.S. official
besides the president, and this week we're being reminded once more just how crucial her support
for the war was in making it happen.
"... Applebaum's column title refers to "disastrous nonintervention," but the U.S. has been meddling in Syria's conflict to some degree for many years. Indeed, Syria is in such a miserable state because multiple outside states have been interfering and taking sides in the war. There may be no better example of how outside intervention prolongs and intensifies a civil war than Syria, and yet Syria hawks always conclude that the real problem is that Western governments haven't done more to add to the misery. The "consequences of nonintervention" are not, in fact, the consequences of the U.S. decision not to bomb in 2013, but rather they are the consequences of the actions that many actors (including the U.S.) have taken in Syria in their destructive efforts to "shape" the conflict. ..."
"... The backlash against proposed military action in Syria in 2013 was a remarkable moment in the U.S. and Britain. It was the first time that the U.S. and U.K. governments had their plan to attack another country effectively overruled by the people's elected representatives. As it turns out, it was a fleeting moment, and it doesn't seem likely to be repeated anytime soon. Popular resistance to the next war was virtually non-existent, and both the U.S. and British governments have returned to their old ways of starting and backing unnecessary wars. Obama has unfortunately learned the lesson that he should avoid consulting those representatives on these matters in the future, and so he has gone back to starting and waging wars without authorization. The foreign policy elite in the U.S. have similarly learned all the wrong things from this episode. Instead of recognizing how unpopular their preferred policies were/are and respecting what the public wanted, most have concluded that public opinion should simply be ignored from now on. ..."
"... The U.S. could have been more deeply involved in the conflict than it is for many years, but all that would have meant was that the U.S. was doing more to inflict death and destruction on a suffering country. When interventionists "mourn" a decision not to bomb, they are regretting the decision not to kill people in another country that posed no threat to the U.S. or any of our allies. That's a horrible position, and it's no wonder that most Americans still recoil from it. ..."
Anne Applebaum
bemoans the decision not to bomb Syria three years ago:
I repeat: Maybe a U.S.-British-French intervention would have ended in
disaster. If so, we would today be mourning the consequences. But sometimes
it's important to mourn the consequences of nonintervention too. Three years
on, we do know, after all, exactly what nonintervention has produced.
One of the more frustrating things about the debate over Syria policy is
the widely-circulated idea that refraining from military action makes a government
responsible for any or all of the things that happen in a foreign conflict later
on. Somehow our government is responsible for the effects of a war when it
isn't directly contributing to the conflict by dropping bombs, but
doesn't receive any blame when it is helping to stoke the same conflict by other
means. Many pundits lament the failure to bomb Syria, but far fewer object to
the harm done by sending weapons to rebels that have contributed to the overall
mayhem in Syria.
Applebaum's column title refers to "disastrous nonintervention," but
the U.S. has been meddling in Syria's conflict to some degree for many years.
Indeed, Syria is in such a miserable state because multiple outside states have
been interfering and taking sides in the war. There may be no better example
of how outside intervention prolongs and intensifies a civil war than Syria,
and yet Syria hawks always conclude that the real problem is that Western governments
haven't done more to add to the misery. The "consequences of nonintervention"
are not, in fact, the consequences of the U.S. decision not to bomb in 2013,
but rather they are the consequences of the actions that many actors (including
the U.S.) have taken in Syria in their destructive efforts to "shape" the conflict.
Let's remember what the Obama administration proposed doing in August 2013.
Obama was going to order attacks on the Syrian government to punish it for the
use of chemical weapons, but his officials insisted this would be an "unbelievably
small" action in order to placate skeptics worried about an open-ended war.
If the attack had been as "unbelievably small" as promised, it would have weakened
the Syrian government's forces but likely wouldn't have changed anything about
the overall conflict. Even judged solely by how much of the Syrian government's
chemical weapons arsenal it eliminated, it would have been less successful than
the disarmament agreement that was reached.
If the intervention had expanded and turned into a much more ambitious campaign,
as opponents of the proposed bombing feared it could, it would have almost certainly
redounded to the benefit of jihadist groups because it was attacking their enemies.
It seems fair to assume that a "successful" bombing campaign in 2013 would have
exposed more of Syria to the depredations of ISIS and other jihadists. It would
not have hurt ISIS or other jihadists in the least since they were not going
to be targeted by it, so it is particularly absurd to try to blame ISIS's later
actions on the decision not to attack. If the bombing campaign was perceived
to be "not working" quickly enough, that would have prompted demands for an
even larger U.S. military role in Syria in the months and years that followed.
Bombing Syria in 2013 would not have ended the war earlier, but would have made
the U.S. a more involved party to it than it is today. I fail to see how that
would have been a better outcome for the U.S. or the people of Syria. It is
doubtful that fewer Syrians overall would have been killed and displaced in
the wake of such a bombing campaign. It is tendentious in the extreme to assert
that the decision not to bomb is responsible for the war's later victims and
effects.
The backlash against proposed military action in Syria in 2013 was a remarkable
moment in the U.S. and Britain. It was the first time that the U.S. and U.K.
governments had their plan to attack another country effectively overruled by
the people's elected representatives. As it turns out, it was a fleeting moment,
and it doesn't seem likely to be repeated anytime soon. Popular resistance to
the next war was virtually non-existent, and both the U.S. and British governments
have returned to their old ways of starting and backing unnecessary wars. Obama
has unfortunately learned the lesson that he should avoid consulting those representatives
on these matters in the future, and so he has gone back to starting and waging
wars without authorization. The foreign policy elite in the U.S. have similarly
learned all the wrong things from this episode. Instead of recognizing how unpopular
their preferred policies were/are and respecting what the public wanted, most
have concluded that public opinion should simply be ignored from now on.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in the Applebaum's interventionist lament is the
complete failure to acknowledge that other states and groups have their own
agency and would have continued to do harm in Syria regardless of what the U.S.
did or didn't do. Bombing Syria in 2013 wouldn't have made the conflict any
easier to resolve, nor would it have altered the interests of the warring parties.
It would have been an exercise in blowing things up and killing people to show
that we were taking "action." It would have been the most senseless sort of
intervening for the sake of being seen to intervene.
The U.S. could have been
more deeply involved in the conflict than it is for many years, but all that
would have meant was that the U.S. was doing more to inflict death and destruction
on a suffering country. When interventionists "mourn" a decision not to bomb,
they are regretting the decision not to kill people in another country that
posed no threat to the U.S. or any of our allies. That's a horrible position,
and it's no wonder that most Americans still recoil from it.
Gage Skidmore / Flickr
In accepting the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto to fly to Mexico City, the
Donald was taking a major risk.
Yet it was a bold and decisive move, and it paid off in
what was the best day of Donald Trump's campaign.
Standing beside Nieto, graciously complimenting him and speaking warmly of Mexico and
its people, Trump looked like a president. And the Mexican president treated him like one,
even as Trump restated the basic elements of his immigration policy, including the border
wall.
The gnashing of teeth up at the
New York Times
testifies to Trump's triumph:
"Mr. Trump has spent his entire campaign painting Mexico as a nation of rapists, drug
smugglers, and trade hustlers. … But instead of chastising Mr. Trump, Mr. Pena Nieto
treated him like a visiting head of state … with side-by-side lecterns and words of
deferential mush."
As I wrote in August, Trump "must convince the nation … he is an acceptable, indeed, a
preferable alternative" to Hillary Clinton, whom the nation does not want.
In Mexico City, Trump did that.
He reassured
voters who are leaning toward him that he can be president. As for those who are
apprehensive about his temperament, they saw reassurance.
For validation, one need not rely on supporters of Trump. Even Mexicans who loathe Trump
are conceding his diplomatic coup.
"Trump achieved his purpose," said journalism professor Carlos Bravo Regidor. "He looked
serene, firm, presidential." Our "humiliation is now complete," tweeted an anchorman at
Televisa.
President Nieto's invitation to Trump "was the biggest stupidity in the history of the
Mexican presidency," said academic Jesus Silva-Herzog.
Not since Gen. Winfield Scott arrived for a visit in 1847 have Mexican elites been this
upset with an American.
Jorge Ramos of Univision almost required sedation.
When Trump got back to the States, he affirmed that Mexico will be paying for the wall,
even if "they don't know it yet."
Indeed, back on American soil, in Phoenix, the Donald doubled down. Deportations will
accelerate when he takes office, beginning with felons. Sanctuary cities for illegal
immigrants will face U.S. sanctions. There will be no amnesty, no legalization, no path to
citizenship for those who have broken into our country. All laws will be enforced.
Trump's stance in Mexico City and Phoenix reveals that there is no turning back. The die
is cast. He is betting the election on his belief that the American people prefer his
stands to Clinton's call for amnesty.
A core principle enunciated by Trump in Phoenix appears to be a guiding light behind his
immigration policy.
"Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally
has simply spent too much time Washington. … There is only one core issue in the
immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people. … Nothing even
comes a close second."
The "well-being of the American people" may be the yardstick by which U.S. policies will
be measured in a Trump presidency. This is also applicable to Trump's stand on trade and
foreign policy.
Do NAFTA, the WTO, MFN for China, the South Korea deal, and TPP advance the "well-being
of the American people"? Or do they serve more the interests of foreign regimes and
corporate elites?
Some $12 trillion in trade deficits since George H.W. Bush gives you the answer.
Which of the military interventions and foreign wars from Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq
to Libya to Yemen to Syria served the "well-being of the American people"?
Are the American people well-served by commitments in perpetuity to 60- and 65-year-old
treaties to wage war on Russia and China on behalf of scores of nations across Eurasia,
most of which have been free riders on U.S. defense for decades?
Trump's "core issue" might be called
Americanism.
Whatever the outcome of this election, these concerns are not going away. For they have
arisen out of a deeply dissatisfied and angry electorate that is alienated from the elites
both parties.
Indeed, alienation explains the endurance of Trump, despite his recent difficulties.
Americans want change, and he alone offers it.
In the last two weeks, Trump has seen a slow rise in the polls, matched by a perceptible
decline in support for Clinton. The latest Rasmussen poll now has Trump at 40, with Clinton
slipping to 39.
This race is now Trump's to win or lose. For he alone brings a fresh perspective to
policies that have stood stagnant under both parties.
And Hillary Clinton? Whatever her attributes, she is uncharismatic, unexciting, greedy,
wonkish, scripted, and devious, an individual you can neither fully believe nor fully
trust.
Which is why the country seems to be looking, again, to Trump, to show them that they
will not be making a big mistake if they elect him.
If Donald Trump can continue to show America what he did in Mexico City, that he can be
presidential, he may just become president.
"... Buchanan: "The Czechs had their Prague Spring. The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring. When do we have our American Spring? The Brits had their 'Brexit' and declared independence of an arrogant superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate that is more powerful and resistant to democratic change? Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for 'regime change' in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect 'regime change' here at home?" ..."
"... He goes on to quote John F. Kennedy saying, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," and closes with a reference to Credence Clearwater, "But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising." ..."
"... though both stood against the conservative mainstream to champion economic nationalism, the two men couldn't be further apart in their intellectual sophistication and their sense of poetry ..."
"... "Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm," Buchanan wrote. He also reassured readers that "Putin says his mother had him secretly baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian." ..."
Straining for relevance, Buchanan attaches himself to Trump, expresses admiration for Vladimir
Putin.
... Buchanan, a senior advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and who was
once considered the go-to guy for paleoconservatives, seemed to have faded in importance from those
heady days when he co-hosted CNN's Crossfire, and gave the rousing and incendiary culture war speech
at the 1992 Republican Party convention.
As The Australian's Nikki Savva recently wrote, Buchanan "ran against the first George Bush for
the Republican nomination, promising to build a wall or dig a giant ditch along the border between
the US and Mexico. So it's not a new idea. The same people cheering Trump now applauded Buchanan
then - it's just their numbers have grown." Now, thanks to Donald Trump's candidacy, and the band
of white nationalists supporting him, Buchanan is in full pundefocating mode.
According to People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch, Buchanan, the author of the new book
"The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority," is all in
with Trump's claim that if he loses it will be because the election is rigged. And, furthermore,
according to Buchanan, Trump's loss could signal the beginning of a revolution in America.
In a WND column headlined "Yes, The System Is Rigged," Buchanan – whose column is syndicated in
a number of mainstream newspapers -- maintains that if the election "ends with a Clintonite restoration
and a ratification of the same old Beltway policies, would that not suggest there is something fraudulent
about American democracy, something rotten in the state?"
Buchanan: "The Czechs had their Prague Spring. The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring.
When do we have our American Spring? The Brits had their 'Brexit' and declared independence of an
arrogant superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate that is more
powerful and resistant to democratic change? Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all
beaver away for 'regime change' in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect 'regime
change' here at home?"
He goes on to quote John F. Kennedy saying, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable," and closes with a reference to Credence Clearwater, "But
if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of
Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising."
... ... ...
Interestingly, in a post-GOP convention column, Slate's Reihan Salam argued that Trump missed
a golden opportunity to soften his image: "He should have taken a page from Pat Buchanan, a man who
is in many ways Trump's spiritual predecessor. Though both Buchanan and Trump have indulged in inflammatory
racial rhetoric, and though both stood against the conservative mainstream to champion economic
nationalism, the two men couldn't be further apart in their intellectual sophistication and their
sense of poetry. And while Buchanan came to his blend of traditionalism and nationalism honestly,
one still gets the sense that Trump simply saw an opportunity to exploit the GOP's working-class
primary electorate and went for it."
In addition to his "inflammatory racial rhetoric," in recent years, Buchanan has not been shy
in expressing his admiration for Russia's Vladimir Putin. As Boulder Weekly's Dave Anderson recently
pointed out, in a 2013 column titled "Is Putin One of Us?" Buchanan "noted that while a 'de-Christianized'
United States has been embracing 'homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply
of Hollywood values,' the Russian president has stood up for traditional values. He praised Putin's
disparaging of homosexuals, feminists and immigrants."
"Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold
War paradigm," Buchanan wrote. He also reassured readers that "Putin says his mother had him secretly
baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian."
"... As prospects for peace appear dim in places like the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan and now with a renewed bombing of Libya, the President of the United States (and his heiress apparent) continue to display an alarming lack of understanding of the responsibilities as the nation's highest elected officer. As has been unsuccessfully litigated, Article II of the Constitution does not give the President right to start war; only Congress is granted that authority (See Article I, Section 8). ..."
"... Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. ..."
As prospects for peace appear dim in places like the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen,
Iraq and Afghanistan and now with a renewed bombing of Libya, the President
of the United States (and his heiress apparent) continue to display an alarming
lack of understanding of the responsibilities as the nation's highest elected
officer. As has been unsuccessfully litigated, Article II of the Constitution
does not give the President right to start war; only Congress is granted
that authority (See Article I, Section 8).
So for the nation's Chief
Executive Officer to willy-nilly arbitrarily decide to bomb here and bomb there
and bomb everywhere in violation of the Constitution might be sufficient standard
for that CEO to be regarded as a war criminal.
Surely, consistently upping
the stakes with a strong US/NATO military presence in the Baltics with the US
Navy regularly cruising the Black and Baltic Seas, accompanied by a steady stream
of confrontational language and picking a fight with a nuclear-armed Russia
may not be the best way to achieve peace.
In 1980, there was strong opinion among liberals that Ronald Reagan was close
to, if not a direct descendant of the Neanderthals and that he stood for everything
that Democrats opposed – and his eight years in office confirmed much of that
sentiment. In those days, many lefties believed that the Democrats were still
the party of FDR and JFK but today, the undeniable illusion is that the Dems
are now the party of war and big money and not the political party some of us
signed up for as new voters.
Ronald Reagan (R) was elected President as an ardent anti-communist who routinely
referred to Russia as the 'evil empire', a fierce free market proponent of balanced
budgets who in two terms in office never balanced a budget, a President who
dramatically slashed domestic social programs even though his family benefited
from FDR's New Deal and whose foreign policy strategy was to 'build-up to
build-down' (a $44 billion.20% increase in one year , 1982-1983) so as to
force the Russians to the table. Reagan, who was ready to engage in extensive
personal diplomacy, was an unlikely peacemaker yet he achieved an historic accomplishment
in the nuclear arms race that is especially relevant today as NATO/US are reintroducing
nuclear weapons into eastern Europe.
After having ascended to the USSR's top leadership position in March, 1985,
an intelligent and assertive Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was
eager to improve relations with the United States but thought Reagan a "political
dinosaur" who was regarded by much of the American public as a 'trigger-happy
cowboy".
Even before the American President and Russian leader met, NATO ministers
in 1979 had unanimously adopted a strategy that included arms control
negotiations and a modernization of its current missile system as Russia deployed
its updated, most lethal generation of the
SS 20 Saber missiles. With an improved maximum range, an increased area
covered by multiple warheads and a more improved accuracy than earlier versions,
it was a missile that could easily reach western Europe with terrifying results.
As formal talks began between the US, Russia and NATO in 1981, massive anti
nuclear weapon demonstrations were taking place in the US and Europe adding
a political urgency for both countries to initiate discussions.
At that time, Reagan announced a proposal to abandon the Pershing I missiles
in exchange for elimination of the SS 20 which Gorbachev rejected.
By 1983,
the Soviets walked out and there were no talks in 1984 until a resumption in
March, 1985. US Secretary of State George Shultz had continued to meet with
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin since 1983. Shultz suggested that the
President meet with Dobrynin who had expressed his frustration to Shultz that
they were not dealing with the 'big
issues" and was rumored to be leaving his diplomatic post due to the Americans
unwillingness to negotiate. Two weeks earlier Russian Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko had publicly suggested a summit between the two nuclear power countries.
According to published reports at the time, while most of the White House
staff opposed the Dobrynin meeting, Reagan gave Shultz the green light.
By the time Reagan first met Gorbachev in
1985 in Geneva, the President was already driven by a deep instinctive fear
that modern civilization was on the brink of a biblical nuclear Armageddon that
could end the human race.
According to Jack Matlock who served as Reagan's senior policy coordinator
for Russia and later US Ambassador to Russia in his book, "Reagan
and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended,"one of Reagan's pre-meeting
notes to himself read "avoid any demand for regime change." From the beginning,
one of Reagan's goals was to establish a relationship that would be able to
overcome whatever obstacles or conflicts may arise with the goal of preventing
a thermonuclear war.
The meeting began with a traditional oval table diplomatic dialogue with
Reagan, who had no foreign policy experience, lecturing on the failings of the
"despised" Russian system and support for the SDI (Star Wars) program. Gorbachev,
who arrived looking like a spy complete with KGB-issue hat and overcoat, responded
by standing up to Reagan ("you are not a prosecutor and I am not the accused")
and was visibly irritated "why do you repeat the same thing (on the SDI); stop
this rubbish."
After a lengthy personal, private conversation, it became obvious that the
two men had struck a
cord of mutual respect with Reagan recognizing that the youthful articulate
Gorbachev was not the out- moded Politburo politician of his predecessors. At
the conclusion of Geneva, a shared trust necessary to begin sober negotiations
to ban nuclear weapons had been established. Both were well aware that the consequences
of nuclear war would be a devastation to mankind, the world's greatest environmental
disaster. At the end of their Geneva meeting, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that
"nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."
During their October, 1986
Reykjavik meeting, the real possibility of a permanent, forever ban on all
nuclear weapons appeared possible until Gorbachev insisted on the elimination
of SDI's (Star Wars) from the final agreement and Reagan walked away. Gorbachev
relented; saving the potential long range treaty from failure and ultimately,
the SDI sunk under the weight of its own impossibility. While the summit ended
with measured progress, Reagan's stubbornness on SDI represented a significant
lost opportunity that would never come again.
In April, 1987 with Secretary Shultz in Moscow, Gorbachev proposed the elimination
of U.S. and Soviet shorter-range missiles and by June, NATO foreign ministers
announced support for the global elimination of all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range
and shorter-range missile systems. In June, all the participating parties were
in agreement as Reagan agreed to eliminate all U.S. and Soviet shorter-range
missile systems.
As high level negotiations continued, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl added
icing to the cake, in August, 1987 by announcing that Germany, on its own, would
dismantle all of its 72
Pershing I missiles that Reagan-Gorbachev had earlier been unable to eliminate.
In December of 1987, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in
Washington DC to sign the bilateral
Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (including Short Range Missiles) known as the INF Treaty.
The Treaty eliminated 2,611 ground launched ballistic and cruise missile systems
with a range of between 500 and 5500 kilometers (310 -3,400 miles). Paris is
2,837 (1,762 miles) kilometers from Moscow.
In May 1988, the INF Treaty was
ratified by the US Senate in a surprising vote of 93 – 5 (four Republicans
and one Democrat opposed) and by May, 1991, all Pershing I missiles in Europe
had been dismantled. Verification of Compliance of the INF Treaty, delayed because
of the USSR breakup, was completed in December, 2001.
At an outdoor press briefing during their last meeting together and after
the INF was implemented, Reagan put his arm around Gorbachev. A reporter asked
if he still believed in the 'evil empire' and Reagan answered 'no." When asked
why, he replied "I was talking about another time, another era."
After the INF Treaty was implemented,
right wing opponents and columnists like George Will attacked Reagan as
a pawn for "Soviet propaganda" and being an "apologist for Gorbachev."
Some things never change.
Whether the Treaty could have been more far-reaching is questionable given
what we now know of Reagan's mental deterioration and yet despite their differences,
there is no indication that during the six year effort the two men treated each
other with anything other than esteem and courtesy.
In 1990, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize while
President Reagan, largely credited with ending the Cold War and bringing nuclear
stability to the world and back from a nuclear confrontation, was not nominated.
As the current US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner prepares to leave
office with a record of a Tuesday morning kill list, unconscionable drone attacks
on civilians, initiating bombing campaigns where there were none prior to his
election and, of course, taunting Russian President Vladimir Putin with unsubstantiated
allegations, the US-backed NATO has scheduled
AEGIS
anti ballistic missile shields to be constructed in Romania and Poland, challenging
the integrity of
INF Treaty for the first time in almost thirty years.
In what may shed new light on NATO/US build-up in eastern Europe, Russian
Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov
denied US charges in June, 2015 that Russia had violated the Treaty and
that the US had "failed to provide evidence of Russian breaches." Commenting
on US plans to deploy land-based missiles in Europe as a possible response to
the alleged "Russian aggression" in the Ukraine, Lavrov warned that ''building
up militarist rhetoric is absolutely counterproductive and harmful.' Russian
Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov suggested the United States was leveling
accusations against Russia in order to justify its own military plans.
In early August, the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration authorized the final development phase (prior to actual production
in 2020) of the
B61-21 nuclear bomb at a cost of $350 – $450 billion. A
thermonuclear weapon with the capability of reaching Europe and Moscow,
the B61-21 is part of President Obama's
$1 trillion request for modernizing the US aging and outdated nuclear weapon
arsenal.
Renee Parsons has been a
member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU
Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado,
an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives
in Washington DC.
"... Russia is aware of the United States' plans for nuclear hegemony ..."
"... The Russian president also highlighted the fact that although the United States missile system is referred to as an "anti-missile defense system," the systems are just as offensive as they are defensive: ..."
"... Putin further explained the implications of this missile defense system's implementation without any response from Russia. The ability of the missile defense system to render Russia's nuclear capabilities useless would cause an upset in what Putin refers to as the "strategic balance" of the world. Without this balance of power, the U.S. would be free to pursue their policies throughout the world without any tangible threat from Russia. Therefore, this "strategic balance," according to Putin, is what has kept the world safe from large-scale wars and military conflicts. ..."
(ANTIMEDIA)
As the United States continues to
develop and upgrade their nuclear weapons capabilities at an alarming rate,
America's ruling class refuses to heed warnings from President Vladimir Putin
that Russia will respond as necessary.
In his most
recent
attempt to warn his Western counterparts about the impending danger of a
new nuclear arms race, Putin told the heads of large foreign companies and business
associations that Russia is aware of the United States' plans for nuclear
hegemony. He was speaking at the 20th St. Petersburg International Economic
Forum.
"We know year by year what will happen, and they know that we know,"
he said.
Putin argued that the rationale the U.S. previously gave for maintaining
and developing its nuclear weapons system is directed at the so-called "Iranian
threat." But that threat has been drastically reduced since the U.S. proved
instrumental in reaching an
agreement with Iran that should
put to rest any possible Iranian nuclear potential.
The Russian president also highlighted the fact that although the United
States missile system is referred to as an "anti-missile defense system," the
systems are just as offensive as they are defensive:
"They say [the missile systems] are part of their defense capability,
and are not offensive, that these systems are aimed at protecting them from
aggression. It's not true the strategic ballistic missile defense is part
of an offensive strategic capability, [and] functions in conjunction with
an aggressive missile strike system."
This missile system has been launched throughout Europe, and despite
American promises at the end of the Cold War that NATO's expansion would
not move "as much as a thumb's width further to the East," the missile system
has been implemented in many of Russia's neighboring countries, most recently
in Romania.
Russia views this as a direct attack on their security.
"How do we know what's inside those launchers? All one needs to do
is reprogram [the system], which is an absolutely inconspicuous task,"
Putin stated.
Putin further explained the implications of this missile defense system's
implementation without any response from Russia. The ability of the missile
defense system to render Russia's nuclear capabilities useless would cause an
upset in what Putin refers to as the "strategic balance" of the world. Without
this balance of power, the U.S. would be free to pursue their policies throughout
the world without any tangible threat from Russia. Therefore, this "strategic
balance," according to Putin, is what has kept the world safe from large-scale
wars and military conflicts.
Following
George W. Bush's 2001 decision to unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from the
1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Russia was, according to Putin, left with
no choice but to upgrade their capabilities in response.
Putin warned:
"Today Russia has reached significant achievements in this field.
We have modernized our missile systems and successfully developed new generations.
Not to mention missile defense systems We must provide security not only
for ourselves. It's important to provide strategic balance in the world,
which guarantees peace on the planet.
Neutralizing Russia's nuclear potential will undo, according to Putin,
"the mutual threat that has provided [mankind] with global security for decades."
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that NASA scientists want to
colonize the moon by 2022 - we may have to if we don't drastically alter
the path we are on. As Albert Einstein
famously stated:
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"... Whatever the character of America's involvement in the Middle East before 1980, when Bacevich's account begins, it was not a war, at least not in terms of American casualties. "From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region," he notes. "Within a decade," however, "a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East." ..."
"... The sequence of events, lucidly related by Bacevich, would be a dark absurdist comedy if it weren't tragically real. To check Iran, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–88, whose final phase, the so-called "Tanker War," involved direct U.S. military engagement with Iranian naval forces. (Bacevich calls this the real first Persian Gulf War.) ..."
"... Finally, George W. Bush decided to risk what his father had dared not: invading Iraq with the objective of "regime change," he launched a third Gulf War in 2003. The notion his neoconservative advisers put into Bush's head was that, with only a little help from American occupation and reconstruction, the void left by Saddam Hussein's removal would be filled by a model democracy. ..."
"... Yet the first Bush had been right: Iran, as well as ISIS, reaped the rewards of regime change in Baghdad. And so America is now being drawn into a fourth Gulf War, reintroducing troops-styled as advisors-into Iraq to counter the effects of the previous Gulf War, which was itself an answer to the unfinished business of the wars of 1991 and the late 1980s. Our military interventions in the Persian Gulf have been a self-perpetuating chain reaction for over three decades. ..."
"... "Wolfowitz adhered to an expansive definition of the Persian Gulf," notes Bacevich, which in that young defense intellectual's words extended from "the region between Pakistan and Iran in the northeast to the Yemens in the southwest." Wolfowitz identified two prospective menaces to U.S. interests in the region: the Soviet Union-this was still the Cold War era, after all-and "the emerging Iraqi threat"; to counter these Wolfowitz called for "advisors and counterinsurgency specialists, token combat forces, or a major commitment" of U.S. forces to the Middle East. ..."
"... The military bureaucracy took advantage of the removal of one enemy from the map-Soviet Communism-to redirect resources toward a new region and new threats. As Bacevich observes, "What some at the time were calling a 'peace dividend' offered CENTCOM a way of expanding its portfolio of assets." Operation Desert Storm, and all that came afterward, became possible. ..."
"... The final lesson of this one is simple: "Perpetuating the War for the Greater Middle East is not enhancing American freedom, abundance, and security. If anything, it is having the opposite effect." ..."
Bacevich's latest book, America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History,
is a bookend of sorts to American Empire. The earlier work was heavy on theory and institutional
development, the groundwork for the wars of the early 21st century. The new book covers the history
itself-and argues persuasively that the Afghanistan, Iraq, and other, smaller wars since 9/11 are
parts of a larger conflict that began much earlier, back in the Carter administration.
Whatever the character of America's involvement in the Middle East before 1980, when Bacevich's
account begins, it was not a war, at least not in terms of American casualties. "From the end of
World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that
region," he notes. "Within a decade," however, "a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no
American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East."
Operation Eagle Claw, Carter's ill-fated mission to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran, was
the first combat engagement in the war. Iran would continue to tempt Washington to military action
throughout the next 36 years-though paradoxically, attempts to contain Iran more often brought the
U.S. into war with the Islamic Republic's hostile neighbor, Iraq.
The sequence of events, lucidly related by Bacevich, would be a dark absurdist comedy if it
weren't tragically real. To check Iran, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq
War of 1980–88, whose final phase, the so-called "Tanker War," involved direct U.S. military engagement
with Iranian naval forces. (Bacevich calls this the real first Persian Gulf War.)
Weakened and indebted by that war, and thinking the U.S. tolerant of his ambitions, Saddam then
invaded Kuwait, leading to full-scale U.S. military intervention against him: Operation Desert Storm
in 1991. (By Bacevich's count, the second Gulf War.) President George H.W. Bush stopped American
forces from pushing on to Baghdad after liberating Kuwait, however, because-among other things-toppling
Saddam would have created a dangerous vacuum that Iran might fill.
A decade of sanctions, no-fly zones, and intermittent bombing then ensued, as Washington, under
Bush and Clinton, would neither depose Saddam Hussein nor permit him to reassert himself. Finally,
George W. Bush decided to risk what his father had dared not: invading Iraq with the objective of
"regime change," he launched a third Gulf War in 2003. The notion his neoconservative advisers put
into Bush's head was that, with only a little help from American occupation and reconstruction, the
void left by Saddam Hussein's removal would be filled by a model democracy. This would set a
precedent for America to democratize every trouble-making state in the region, including Iran.
Yet the first Bush had been right: Iran, as well as ISIS, reaped the rewards of regime change
in Baghdad. And so America is now being drawn into a fourth Gulf War, reintroducing troops-styled
as advisors-into Iraq to counter the effects of the previous Gulf War, which was itself an answer
to the unfinished business of the wars of 1991 and the late 1980s. Our military interventions in
the Persian Gulf have been a self-perpetuating chain reaction for over three decades.
Iran released its American hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president: January 20,
1981. So what accounts for another 35 years of conflict with Iran and Iraq? The answer begins with
oil.
Bacevich takes us back to the Carter years. "By June 1979, a just-completed study by a then-obscure
Defense Department official named Paul Wolfowitz was attracting notice throughout the national security
bureaucracy." This "Limited Contingency Study" described America's "vital and growing stake in the
Persian Gulf," arising from "our need for Persian-Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf
affect the Arab-Israeli conflict."
"Wolfowitz adhered to an expansive definition of the Persian Gulf," notes Bacevich, which
in that young defense intellectual's words extended from "the region between Pakistan and Iran in
the northeast to the Yemens in the southwest." Wolfowitz identified two prospective menaces to U.S.
interests in the region: the Soviet Union-this was still the Cold War era, after all-and "the emerging
Iraqi threat"; to counter these Wolfowitz called for "advisors and counterinsurgency specialists,
token combat forces, or a major commitment" of U.S. forces to the Middle East.
(Bacevich is fair to Wolfowitz, acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was indeed an expansionist,
as the Iraqi dictator would demonstrate by invading Iran in 1980 and seizing Kuwait a decade later.
Whether this meant that Iraq was ever a threat to U.S. interests is, of course, a different question-as
is whether the Soviet Union could really have cut America off from Gulf oil.)
Wolfowitz was not alone in calling for the U.S. to become the guarantor of Middle East security-and
Saudi Arabia's security in particular-and President Carter heeded the advice. In March 1980 he created
the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), predecessor to what we now know as the U.S. Central
Command (CENTCOM), which has military oversight for the region. The RDJTF's second head, Lt. Gen.
Robert Kingston, described its mission, in admirably frank language, as simply "to ensure the unimpeded
flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf."
Iraq and Iran both posed dangers to the flow of oil and its control by Saudi Arabia and other
Arab allies-to use the term loosely-of the United States. And just as the U.S. was drawn into wars
with Iran and Iraq when it tried to play one against the other, America's defense of Saudi Arabia
would have grave unintended consequences-such as the creation of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was outraged
when, in 1990, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd declined his offer to wage holy war against Saddam Hussein
and instead turned to American protection, even permitting the stationing of American military personnel
in Islam's sacred lands. "To liberate Kuwait," writes Bacevich, bin Laden had "offered to raise an
army of mujahedin. Rejecting his offer and his protest, Saudi authorities sought to silence the impertinent
bin Laden. Not long thereafter, he fled into exile, determined to lead a holy war that would overthrow
the corrupt Saudi royals." The instrument bin Laden forged to accomplish that task, al-Qaeda, would
target Americans as well, seeking to push the U.S. out of Muslim lands.
Bin Laden had reason to hope for success: in the 1980s he had helped mujahedin defeat another
superpower, the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan. That struggle, of course, was supported by the U.S.,
through the CIA's "Operation Cyclone," which funneled arms and money to the Soviets' Muslim opponents.
Bacevich offers a verdict on this program:
Operation Cyclone illustrates one of the central ironies of America's War for the Greater Middle
East-the unwitting tendency, while intently focusing on solving one problem, to exacerbate a second
and plant the seeds of a third. In Afghanistan, this meant fostering the rise of Islamic radicalism
and underwriting Pakistan's transformation into a nuclear-armed quasi-rogue state while attempting
to subvert the Soviet Union.
America's support for the mujahedin succeeded in inflicting defeat on the USSR-but left Afghanistan
a haven and magnet for Islamist radicals, including bin Laden.
Another irony of Bacevich's tale is the way in which the end of the Cold War made escalation of
the War for the Greater Middle East possible. The Carter and Reagan administrations never considered
the Middle East the centerpiece of their foreign policy: Western Europe and the Cold War took precedence.
Carter and Reagan were unsystematic about their engagement with the Middle East and, even as they
expanded America's military presence, remained wary of strategic overcommitment. Operation Eagle
Claw, Reagan's deployment of troops to Lebanon in 1983 and bombing of Libya in 1986, and even the
meddling in Iran and Iraq were all small-scale projects compared to what would be unleashed after
the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The military bureaucracy took advantage of the removal of one enemy from the map-Soviet Communism-to
redirect resources toward a new region and new threats. As Bacevich observes, "What some at the time
were calling a 'peace dividend' offered CENTCOM a way of expanding its portfolio of assets." Operation
Desert Storm, and all that came afterward, became possible.
The
Greater Middle East of Bacevich's title centers strategically, if not geographically, upon Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. But its strategic implications and cultural reach are wide, encompassing
Libya, Somalia, and other African states with significant Muslim populations; Afghanistan and Pakistan
(or "AfPak," in the Obama administration's parlance); and even, on the periphery, the Balkans, where
the U.S. intervened militarily in support of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. That Clinton-era
intervention is examined in detail by Bacevich: "Today, years after NATO came to their rescue," he
writes, "a steady stream of Bosnians and Kosovars leave their homeland and head off toward Syria
and Iraq, where they enlist as fighters in the ongoing anti-American, anti-Western jihad."
Much as George W. Bush believed that liberal democracy would spring up in Saddam Hussein's wake,
the humanitarian interventionists who demanded that Bill Clinton send peacekeepers to Bosnia and
bomb Serbia on behalf of the Kosovars thought that they were making the world safe for their own
liberal, multicultural values. But as Bacevich notes, the Balkan Muslims joining ISIS today are "waging
war on behalf of an entirely different set of universal values."
Bacevich's many books confront readers with painful but necessary truths. The final lesson
of this one is simple: "Perpetuating the War for the Greater Middle East is not enhancing American
freedom, abundance, and security. If anything, it is having the opposite effect."
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative.
The Us intervention were dictate by needs of global corporation that control the US foreigh
policy. And they need to open market, press geopolitical rivals (Ukraine, Georgia) and grab
resources (Iraq, Libya). The American people are now hostages in their own country and can do
nothing against the establishement militaristic stance. They will fight and die in unnecessary wars
of neoliberal globalization.
Notable quotes:
"... With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response ..."
"... Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime. The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well? ..."
"... The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question 55 years ago? ..."
"... In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic Russian response. Was Kennan not right? ..."
With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails
to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost
emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York
Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response.
Even more shocking. By suggesting the U.S. might not honor its NATO commitment, under Article
5, to fight Russia for Estonia, our foreign policy elites declaimed, Trump has undermined the security
architecture that has kept the peace for 65 years. More interesting, however, was the reaction of
Middle America. Or, to be more exact, the nonreaction. Americans seem neither shocked nor horrified.
What does this suggest?
Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and
Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We
got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in
Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime.
The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And
as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands
dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well?
On bringing Estonia into NATO, no Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing so insane a
war guarantee. Eisenhower refused to intervene to save the Hungarian rebels. JFK refused to halt
the building of the Berlin Wall. LBJ did nothing to impede the Warsaw Pact's crushing of the Prague
Spring. Reagan never considered moving militarily to halt the smashing of Solidarity.
Were all these presidents cringing isolationists? Rather, they were realists who recognized that,
though we prayed the captive nations would one day be free, we were not going to risk a world war,
or a nuclear war, to achieve it. Period. In 1991, President Bush told Ukrainians that any declaration
of independence from Moscow would be an act of "suicidal nationalism."
Today, Beltway hawks want to bring Ukraine into NATO. This would mean that America would go to
war with Russia, if necessary, to preserve an independence Bush I regarded as "suicidal."
Have we lost our minds?
The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still
in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops
out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack
Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump
to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript
the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question
55 years ago?
In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be
the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic
Russian response. Was Kennan not right? NATO and Russia are today building up forces in the
eastern Baltic where no vital U.S. interests exist, and where we have never fought before - for that
very reason. There is no evidence Russia intends to march into Estonia, and no reason for her to
do so. But if she did, how would NATO expel Russian troops without air and missile strikes that would
devastate that tiny country? And if we killed Russians inside Russia, are we confident Moscow would
not resort to tactical atomic weapons to prevail? After all, Russia cannot back up any further. We
are right in her face.
On this issue Trump seems to be speaking for the silent majority and certainly raising issues
that need to be debated.
How long are we to be committed to go to war to defend the tiny Baltic republics against a
Russia that could overrun them in 72 hours?
When, if ever, does our obligation end? If it is eternal, is not a clash with a revanchist
and anti-American Russia inevitable?
Are U.S. war guarantees in the Baltic republics even credible?
If the Cold War generations of Americans were unwilling to go to war with a nuclear-armed
Soviet Union over Hungary and Czechoslovakia, are the millennials ready to fight a war with Russia
over Estonia?
Needed now is diplomacy. The trade-off: Russia ensures the independence of the Baltic republics
that she let go. And NATO gets out of Russia's face. Should Russia dishonor its commitment, economic
sanctions are the answer, not another European war.
"... Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that. Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons. ..."
"... But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear, roll back military spending. ..."
"... Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would, quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex. But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate, referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump. ..."
"... In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows. ..."
"... And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks. ..."
"... When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean? ..."
"... I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war, and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians. Just the opposite. ..."
"... All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not the Reepublicans. ..."
"... So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people, maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in a positive way. ..."
Trump's divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry
from neocons and neoliberals alike
SHARMINI PERIES, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRNN: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming
to you from Baltimore.
On Friday, just after the Republican National Congress wrapped up with its presidential candidate,
Donald Trump, Paul Krugman of the New York Times penned an article titled "Donald Trump: The Siberian
Candidate." He said in it, if elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?
Krugman himself is worried as ludicrous and outrageous as the question sounds, the Trump campaign's
recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering, he says, just what kind of hold
Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.
Well, let's unravel that statement with Michael Hudson. He's joining us from New York. Michael
is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His
latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroyed the Global Economy.
Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON:
It's good to be here, Sharmini. It's been an exciting week.
PERIES:
So let's take a look at this article by Paul Krugman. Where is he going with this analysis
about the Siberian candidate?
HUDSON:
Well,
Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and
they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century
the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that.
Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons.
Until his speech, the whole Republican Convention, every speaker had avoided dealing with economic
policy issues. No one referred to the party platform, which isn't very good. And it was mostly an
attack on Hillary. Chants of "lock her up." And Trump children, aimed to try to humanize him and
make him look like a loving man.
But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's
making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major
policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing
stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying
the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that
otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders.
So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear,
roll back military spending.
We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing
American labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don't need foreign military bases and foreign
spending to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today's world,
the only kind of war we're going to have is atomic war. Nobody's going to invade another country.
We're not going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody's even
talking about that. So let's be realistic.
Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would,
quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring
to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex.
But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate,
referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty
because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump.
In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and
corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank
of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows.
The corporatist wings of both
the Republican and the Democratic Parties fear that Trump's opposition to NAFTA and TPP will lead
the Republicans not to push through in the lame duck session after November. The whole plan has been
that once the election's over, Obama will then get all the Republicans together and will pass the
Republican platform that he's been pushing for the last eight years. The Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade agreement with Europe, and the other neoliberal policies.
And now that Trump is trying to rebuild the Republican Party, all of that is threatened. And so
on the Republican side of the New York Times page you had David Brooks writing "The death of the
Republican Party." So what Trump calls the rebirth of the Republican Party, it means the death of
the reactionary, conservative, corporatist, anti-labor Republican Party.
And when he wrote this, quote, Trump is decimating the things Republicans stood for: NATO, entitlement
reform, in other words winding back Social Security, and support of the corporatist Trans-Pacific
Partnership. So it's almost hilarious to see what happens. And Trump also has reversed the traditional
Republican fiscal responsibility austerity policy, that not a word about balanced budgets anymore.
And he said he was going to run at policy to employ American labor and put it back to work on infrastructure.
Again, he's made a left runaround Hillary. He says he wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, whereas
the Clintons were the people that got rid of it.
And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems
to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on
him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is
why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print
by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall
Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight
for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks.
So it's sort of hilarious. On the one hand, leading up to him you had Republicans saying throw
Hillary in jail. And Hillary saying throw Trump in the [inaud.]. And so you have the whole election
coming up with-.
PERIES:
Maybe we should take the lead and lock them all up. Michael, what is becoming very clear
is that there's a great deal of inconsistencies on the part of the Republican Party. Various people
are talking different things, like if you hear Mike Pence, the vice presidential candidate, speak,
and then you heard Donald Trump, and then you heard Ivanka Trump speak yesterday, they're all saying
different things. It's like different strokes for different folks. And I guess in marketing and marketeering,
which Trump is the master of, that makes perfect sense. Just tap on everybody's shoulder so they
feel like they're the ones being represented as spoken about, and they're going to have their issues
addressed in some way.
When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he
talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas
that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these
trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean?
HUDSON:
Well, you're right when you say there's a policy confusion within the Republican Party.
And I guess if this were marketing, it's the idea that everybody hears what they want to hear. And
if they can hear right-wing gay bashing from the Indiana governor, and they can hear Trump talking
about hte LGBTQ, everybody will sort of be on the side.
But I listened to what Governor Pence said about defending Trump's views on NATO. And he's so
smooth. So slick, that he translated what Trump said in a way that no Republican conservative could
really disagree with it. I think he was a very good pick for vice president, because he can, obviously
he's agreed to follow what Trump's saying, and he's so smooth, being a lawyer, that he can make it
all appear much more reasonable than it would.
I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began
with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war,
and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in
to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole
thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians.
Just the opposite.
And it's obvious that the Republicans have fallen into line behind them. And no wonder the Democrats
want them to lose.
All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to
Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because
Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not
the Reepublicans.
So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector
of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means
what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back
to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people,
maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in
a positive way.
And the interesting thing is that all he gets from the Democrats is denunciations. So I can't
wait to see how Bernie Sanders is going to handle all this at the Democratic Convention next week.
"... Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He denounced the Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo on the neocon right. ..."
"... "It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy," he said , pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace. ..."
"... This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault on Trump's views on the Middle East was designed to win Florida . If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear Politics ..."
"... In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative funders, ranging from pro-Israel billionaire Paul Singer to Norman Braman , a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His list of advisers is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol. ..."
"... Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those countries worse off. ..."
"... The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for us? ..."
"... The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but let's not get taken in. ..."
"... isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets. ..."
"... If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and own the candidates of both parties. ..."
"... TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve. ..."
"... All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts, to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters' choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans! ..."
"... The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities. Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos. TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday. ..."
"... This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign. ..."
"... Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars. ..."
"... I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates. He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and similar crap. Now this. ..."
"... Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention the money and power behind Clinton). ..."
"... Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines. ..."
"... And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain? ..."
"... I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit from that sort of discipline. ..."
"... It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again in amongst the Republicans. ..."
"... Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency. ..."
"... The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden". ..."
"... … just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'. ..."
"... "And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR. And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State) are definitely crazy enough to push it. ..."
"... In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term, it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat of Socialism. ..."
"... The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing that might come out of a Trump presidency. ..."
"... You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people. ..."
"... Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton… ..."
"... Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction in the middle east. ..."
"... Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary. ..."
"... It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives. Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the corporatists. ..."
"... Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early on for the fascist she has always been. ..."
"... Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland. ..."
Donald Trump's runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives
who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican
thinking for decades.
Max Boot, an
unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote
in
the Weekly Standard that a "Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America
as a great power," citing, among other things, Trump's objection to a large American troop presence
in South Korea.
Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He
denounced the
Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a
sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential
debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly
taboo on the neocon right.
"It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy,"
he said, pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace.
This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel
position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of
the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault
on Trump's views on the Middle East was
designed to win Florida. If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear
Politics averaging of GOP primary polls in the state, Trump is
polling higher than he ever has.
In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative
funders, ranging from
pro-Israel billionaire
Paul Singer to
Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His
list of advisers
is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and
Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol.
Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group
that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad
this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein,
and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those
countries worse off.
John D, Mar. 3 2016, 6:31 a.m.
I love what Trump's saying from time to time and don't believe it for a second. How short are
our memories? The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran
on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for
us? Trump is a demagogue, and this is what they do: say whatever gets them support, just
like other politicians, but on steroids. Huey Long is an example of this, and he also took some
positions that we would all have supported over that of the two major parties of the time.
The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but
let's not get taken in. The man's a monster, and the only good that might come of his election
would be his impeachment. I know, that leaves us with horrible choices, and what else is new.
But don't be suckered by Trump. The degree really is worthless.
vidimi, Mar. 2 2016, 8:55 a.m.
isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria
nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets.
M Hobbs -> vidimi, Mar. 3 2016, 2:25 p.m.
Robert Kagan told the NYT last June that he "feels comfortable" with Hillary on foreign policy–and
that she's a neocon. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added, "it's
something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call
it that; they are going to call it something else."
The people behind this ad don't get it- this video could easily have been issued and approved
by the Trump campaign. To a lot of people, what this video accuses Trump of saying is the absolute,
utter truth. The world would be a far, far better place, Iraq would be better off, Libya would
be better off, and the United States would have a lot more money, and a lot less dead soldiers,
if Saddam and Khadaffi were still alive.
They should have focus grouped this. Because it likely increases Trump's numbers.
Joe F -> Duglarri, Mar. 1 2016, 1:53 p.m.
If Khadaffi were still alive Ambassdor Stevens and several more Americans would still be alive
also. But then the press would have one less thing to whinge about and the MIC would have one
less hotzone to expliot.
Carroll Price, Mar. 1 2016, 11:10 a.m.
If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against
him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and
own the candidates of both parties.
Which leads me to believe that if history serves as a guide, and I think it does, the Establishment
will have him assassinated, while the resources are still available and in place to cover it up
and have it white-washed by an official inquiry similar to the fake 9/11 Commission & Warren Commission
Report.
Clark, Mar. 1 2016, 10:28 a.m.
Trump worries/offends the neo-cons in his perversity, but the neo-cons know they can rely on
Hillary Clinton.
M Hobbs -> Clark, Mar. 3 2016, 2:30 p.m.
So if HRC gets the nomination, all the neocon Rs will vote for her and lots of the lefty Ds
and independents will vote for Trump. This is getting confusing.
Gene Poole -> M Hobbs, Mar. 4 2016, 4:32 a.m.
Yep. And ain't it sweet!?
SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 9:57 a.m.
TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the
voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter
politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges
and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about
personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust
in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers
voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve.
All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent
candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of
All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who
discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting
process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts,
to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice
for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must
always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters'
choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is
the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption
goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering
informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans!
The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities.
Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos.
TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and
a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday.
Carroll Price -> SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 11:15 a.m.
Very well stated. I agree whole-heartedly.
john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 2:28 a.m.
This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted
war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting
the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the
fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely
as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans
who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American
ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign.
dahoit -> john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 8:22 a.m.
Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars.
Jeff, Mar. 1 2016, 2:05 a.m.
I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates.
He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and
similar crap. Now this.
Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would
be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates
rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention
the money and power behind Clinton). I don't support Trump in any way, but I also find it
laughable how some so-called progressives are wetting their pants over him. Yes he's racist, but
so are the Republicans in general. At least Trump has a few good positions, making him about the
same as Clinton.
Winston, Feb 29, 2016, 7:48 p.m.
Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid
enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines.
Donald, unlike poor Bernie, has the advantage of being able to avoid the oligarchy's mega-cash-fueled
vetting process intended to weed out true boat rockers by funding his own campaign.
When Reps threaten to vote for Dems and I see headlines like "Democratic National Committee
Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post on Sunday to endorse Democratic presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders, following months of rising tensions within the group," I have hope that both party
machines will, deservedly, become increasingly irrelevant. The facade has come off and we finally
see the truth, which is there is no loyalty within the establishment of either political party
to anything but the continued power of the oligarchy they BOTH defend.
Election 2016 is turning out to be a rare popcorn worthy event because voters are now TOTALLY
fed up with THIS:, From the 2014 Princeton University study:, Testing Theories of American Politics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Excerpts:, A great deal of empirical research speaks
to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible
to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical
model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the
key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business
interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens
and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial
support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not
for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule-at least not in the
causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with
economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong
status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans
favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
…the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of "affluent"
citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average
citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly
often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred
by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.
-–, From "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-America Century" by Dmitry Orlov, someone who experienced
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the various effects of that collapse on life there:, People
in the United States have a broadly similar attitude toward politics with people of the Soviet
Union. In the U.S. this is often referred to as "voter apathy", but it might be more accurately
described as non-voter indifference. The Soviet Union had a single, entrenched, systemically corrupt
political party, which held a monopoly on power. The U.S. has two entrenched, systemically corrupt
political parties, whose positions are often indistinguishable, and which together hold a monopoly
on power. In either case, there is, or was, a single governing elite, but in the United States
it organized itself into opposing teams to make its stranglehold on power seem more sportsmanlike.
Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to
me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in
a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power? In Soviet-era
Russia, intelligent people did their best to ignore the Communists: paying attention to them,
whether through criticism or praise, would only serve to give them comfort and encouragement,
making them feel as if they mattered. Why should Americans want to act any differently with regard
to the Republicans and the Democrats? For love of donkeys and elephants?, -–, "Now [the United
States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the
nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and
U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political
system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves
after the election's over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited
money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot more to
sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a challenger. – - Jimmy Carter, former president,
in 2015.
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 6:58 p.m.
So one of the principal founding members of PNAC, or the Project for a New American Century (and
Victoria Nuland's husband), R. Kagan, says vote for Hillary?
And this just weeks after Hillary is bragging about receiving complements from Henry Kissinger,
mass murderer?
Are there still fools in America who believe HRC is some kind of liberal?
And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family
relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert
Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain?
Benito Mussolini, Feb 29, 2016, 6:46 p.m.
I don't think the neoconservatives should purchase a one way ticket into the Hillary camp. Trump
could be quite amenable to the 'Ledeen Doctrine' that: "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". My understanding is that Trump has no objections in principle, but
as a prudent businessman, questions whether it's worth shelling out 1 trillion dollars just to
show you mean business.
I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended
to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative
roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign
will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where
are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit
from that sort of discipline.
However, if the neoconservatives decide to return to the party they abandoned in the 1960s,
then I wish them well. They had a good run with the Republicans and certainly left their mark
on foreign policy. Sometimes a change of scenery is good; it may be all they need to rekindle
their enthusiasm for the third (or is the fourth?) Iraq war.
Lawrence, Feb 29, 2016, 6:05 p.m.
It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back
home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again
in amongst the Republicans.
eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 5:21 p.m.
Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency.
So they've never exactly had a set ideological compass, they're happy to back anyone who'll
do their bidding on Israel and the Middle East. With Trump, I can't imagine they (or anyone else)
knows what they're getting; Hillary meanwhile is a known quantity, and hawkish enough for their
tastes.
craigsummers -> eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 6:47 p.m.
"……..Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency….."
True, but they lost favor in the Bush White House after the invasion of Iraq turned south.
dahoit -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:38 a.m.
Somewhat true, but how does that explain the demoncrats embracing them in Obombas administration?
Craigsummers -> dahoit, Mar. 1 2016, 7:21 p.m.
I don't believe that Obama has embraced the neocons.. Obama has alienated our allies in the ME
including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His large disagreements with Netanyahu flag Obama as
anything but a neocon.
Duglarri -> eddie-g, Mar. 1 2016, 11:37 a.m.
The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they
move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden".
owen, Feb 29, 2016, 4:53 p.m.
… just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we
see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all
thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'.
Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 4:38 p.m.
"Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan announced that if Trump secures the nomination "the only
choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", i hope Sanders runs with that, uses it in his ads,
cites that quote during the debates, makes the electorate aware of the fox (weasel?) in the chicken
coop…
Balthazar, Feb 29, 2016, 3:58 p.m.
The US has become the laughing stock of the world. Oh wait, we've been that for decades.
star, Feb 29, 2016, 3:52 p.m.
"worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy"
No, he will pursue a different
bellicose foreign policy relying on banning Muslims from the US, torture, filling up Guantanamo,
threatening Mexico and 'hitting' the families of 'terrorists'. The Intercept is actually starting
to scare me.
Robert -> star, Feb 29, 2016, 6:01 p.m.
So drone warfare killing thousand+ innocent people isn't "starting to scare" you? Overthrowing
governments in Iraq, Libya, and Syria isn't "starting to scare" you? ISIS forming out of those
overthrows isn't "starting to scare" you?
dahoit -> star, Mar. 1 2016, 8:42 a.m.
Wow, the only guy to critique the Iraq war, Libya, trade steals, getting along with Russia and
stop being the policeman of the world gets critiqued by alleged liberals as the bad choice in
a world of crazy Ziomonsters.
Hang it up children, you've lost your minds.
nfjtakfa -> Roy David, Feb 29, 2016, 5:49 p.m.
Um, I think Vivek Jain's assertion is the destruction of Iraq and destabalization of the region
was 100% intentional, i.e. "wasn't a mistake."
Roy David -> nfjtakfa, Mar. 1 2016, 5:25 p.m.
Thanks nfjtakfa. Sometimes the written word can be misinterpreted.
Christopher -> Vivek Jain, Feb 29, 2016, 5:47 p.m.
Remind me just where and when we found the nukes Iraq was supposed to have, then. Or the mobile
bioweapons labs. Or Hussein's al-Qaeda collaborators.
coram nobis -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:13 p.m.
As you see, the Iraq war wasn't a mistake, but a deliberate fake.
reflections, Feb 29, 2016, 3:40 p.m.
They created Donald Trump and thanks to the Supreme Court any rich ass-- can run for office they
don't need to fund a particular political republican bigot.
Bob, Feb 29, 2016, 3:25 p.m.
Trump is a professional actor as are all the cons but he is better at it. Read his book, TAoTD
and you may change your mind a lot on him as POTUS. He certainly is no conbot and IMHO would make
a much better POTUS than any of the dwarf wall st. sucking varlets competing against him. I'm
still hoping Senator Bernie Sanders will take the gloves off and start attacking the war mongering,
wall st. courtier Clinton before it's too late but, if my choice was Clinton vs. Trump I would
hold my nose and vote Trump. Rubio is so hollow he is unqualified for his present job. Good luck
USA.
coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:31 p.m.
It's an interesting shift of perspective in this crazy year, although the question with the Donald
is (1) whether he has a coherent ideology from one speech to the next and (2) whether the GOP
would become more dovish (or less neocon) under a Trump administration, or whether the GOP would
simply abandon him.
As for Hillary, sir, your coda begs another article: " … and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war.", With whom?, Okay, Iran is a definite possibility, given her pro-Israel
stance. But what about China? That situation in the South China Sea is ratcheting up. And what
about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.
Doug Salzmann -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 3:19 p.m.
"And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east
coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR.
And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State)
are definitely crazy enough to push it.
On the list of Big Dumb Mistakes, this would be very close to the top.
Dave Fisher -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 4:26 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?
Si1ver1ock -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 5:26 p.m.
Ask the Syrians or the the Libyans, or the Iraqis or the Sundanese, or the Yemenis or … or ….
Doug Salzmann -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 8:18 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?, It means exactly what I said, Dave. Surrounding,
weakening and (ultimately, hopefully) dismantling and absorbing the pieces of the Russian Federation
has been at the core of American foreign policy aims since the collapse of the USSR.
See, for instance, the pre-revised version of the 2/18/1992 Wolfowitz (and Scooter Libby) Memo:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory
of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly
by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy
and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources
would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.
And then, refer to Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard:
Given the enormous size and diversity of the country, a decentralized political system, based
on the free market, would be more likely to unleash the creative potential of both the Russian
people and the country's vast natural resources. In turn, such a more decentralized Russia
would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.
. . . and . . .
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 Europe,
with the new states of Central Asia, and with the Orient, which would thereby accelerate Russia's
own development. Each of the three confederated entities would also be more able to tap local
creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand.
Hope this helps. ;^)
Gene Poole -> Dave Fisher, Mar. 4 2016, 5:13 a.m.
In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term,
it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat
of Socialism.
Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 2:30 p.m.
Great article. I wrote something similar in my blog post last week titled, NATO, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia's Worst Nightmare President Donald Trump.
Excerpt:, The beneficiaries of Bush and Obama's Evil American Empire invading and destroying
nations throughout the world have been Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Along with their NATO allies,
America has spent trillions of dollars on the military industrial complex while our roads and
bridges fail and jobs have been shipped to third world countries.
The unparalleled destruction of Syria as well as all of the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa
will come to an end under President Donald Trump and the world is taking note.
My greatest fear is that a full hot war against Russia and China will commence before the election.
Love your writing, thanks.
Patricia
Bob -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:29 p.m.
I hope you meant NOT commence. I really don't want to die and these things have a habit of escalating.
dahoit -> Bob, Mar. 1 2016, 9:00 a.m.
She is intimating the Zionists will start war with Russia before Trump takes office, a quite possible
scenario when dealing with the insane Zionists.
Jose -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:32 p.m.
The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing
that might come out of a Trump presidency.
The Shame Chamber -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 7:19 p.m.
Trump said he would declassify the 28 pages on foreign government ties to 9/11. Why hasn't that
happened yet?, http://28pages.org/
dahoit -> The Shame Chamber, Mar. 1 2016, 9:02 a.m.
Uh, he's not in government? sheesh.
dahoit -> Patricia Baeten, Mar. 1 2016, 8:58 a.m.
Good comment, don't mind the idiots stuck in their false narrative.
craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 2:22 p.m.
Mr. Jilani, "……Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers
of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last
week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton."…..",
The Intercept is clearly confused on quite a few issues. First, the Republican Party generally
supports a strong leadership role for the US in foreign policy (as do the Democrats). Both parties
will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests. Of course, this is not limited just
to the Neocons. Second, the entire Republican establishment opposes Trump for obvious reasons.
Again, this is not limited to the Neocons, and it is not too surprising that Republicans may cross
party lines to vote for Hillary who more closely mirrors some of their foreign policies. She is
a hawk. Third, the Republican and Democratic Parties are strong supporters of Israel – not just
the Neocons. In general, Republicans support Israel even to a greater degree than the Democrats
– and again, this is not limited to the Neoconservatives.
Finally, how important is the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Intercept? Obviously very
important since the Intercept seems willing to forget that Trump has been called a xenophobe and
an anti-Muslim bigot by many on the left. Have you ever heard the saying: the enemy of my enemy
is my friend?
sgt_doom -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 4:20 p.m.
I fully agree with Jilani and this Summers is an obvious neocon sycophant of Wall Street.
craigsummers -> sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 5:03 p.m.
sgt_doom, What is extraordinary to me is that Jilani seems to value the Israel-neutral stance
of Trump over Hillary (and her obvious support for Israel) despite Trump (initially) not even
being able to disavow support from the KKK. Maybe that is not so remarkable considering that Jilani
tweeted the term "Israel firsters".
Christopher -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 5:50 p.m.
"Both parties will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests.", Jesus. Have you been
in a coma since 2003? Or I guess maybe since the 1980's, cough Iran-Contra cough cough.
craigsummers -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:44 p.m.
I'm not saying there aren't differences, but generally speaking both the Democrats and the Republicans
have maintained strong policies which favor US interests. Obama had some confusing policies which
alienated long term allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
Carroll Price -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:30 p.m.
You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both
parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people.
Gene Poole -> Carroll Price, Mar. 4 2016, 5:31 a.m.
Bravo. I was going to reply to his first post, in which he said " Both parties will ensure that
the US pursues our geopolitical interests", and ask just who "we" are.
Boaz Bismuth: Mr. Trump, yesterday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tried to question your support
for Israel. How is his commitment to Israel stronger than yours?, Donald Trump: "My friendship
with Israel is stronger than any other candidate's. I want to make one thing clear: I want
to strike a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It is what I aspire to
do. Peace is possible, even if it is the most difficult agreement to achieve. As far as
I understand, Israel is also interested in a peace deal. I'm not saying I'll succeed, or
even that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is within reach, but I want to
try. But in order for an agreement to happen, the Palestinians need to show interest. It's
a little difficult to reach an agreement when the other side doesn't really want to talk
to you.
"Don't get confused there in Israel: I am currently your biggest friend. My daughter
is married to a Jew who is an enthusiastic Israel supporter, and I have taken part in many
Israel Day Parades. My friendship with Israel is very strong."
Yes, an especially bitter sop to those who harbor the manufactured illusion that trump is concerned
with the sovereign rights of the individual.
avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 1:45 p.m.
Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq
war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that
if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly,
this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…
Doug Salzmann -> avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 3:24 p.m.
"Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…", Well, that and the fact that
Killary and Obama named Kagan's wife, Victoria Jane "Cookie" Nuland to the post of Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, where she led the sponsorship and underwriting of
a coup against the elected leadership of Ukraine.
avelna2001 -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 3:51 p.m.
Well yeah, true enough.
Kathleen, Feb 29, 2016, 1:43 p.m.
Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their
rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees
are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction
in the middle east.
This is no bs…know some multi millionaire Republicans here in Colorado who are going with
Hillary if Trump gets nomination. They know their capital gains are safe with her. Yes indeed...
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 1:33 p.m.
Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended
at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street
Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary.
BTW, isn't Robert Kagan the hubby of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs appointed by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton?, I believe so
. . .
Of course, we haven't had a legitimate government in the USA since the Coup of 1963 (the JFK
assassination, reinforced by the murders of Rev. King and Bobby Kennedy), so evidently Trump represents
the first break in a long line of illegitimate administrations.
Trump really appears to be giving the nervous willies to the oligarchs – – – glad to see those
swine who gave us - and profited from - the global economic meltdown being shaken up for a change!,
With Hillary they have nothing to fear, she's the perfect Wall Street running dog lackey, but
with Trump they could end up in jail - or worse . . . .
24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 1:20 p.m.
It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives.
Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She
is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the
corporatists.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the New York Times has chosen now to start a series on
her role in the overthrow of Qaddafi and the subsequent conversion of Libya into a failed state?
Had the articles started appearing a couple of weeks ago, it might have helped Sanders in Iowa
and Nevada. No, it would not have helped Sanders in South Carolina, and he is foredoomed in the
rest of the deep south as well, not only because of his being a social democrat (on domestic issues)
but also because he is a Jew.
Doug Salzmann -> 24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 4:15 p.m.
Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early
on for the fascist she has always been. I've not caught up with the Times series; does each
installment open with this video clip?
ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 1:16 p.m.
"With Trump's ascendancy, it's possible that the parties will re-orient their views on war and
peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war."
Right because "bomb the shit out of them" is a well known rallying
cry of pacifists.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 2:37 p.m.
You've got a point; the Donald isn't exactly another Gandhi. The diff between him and Hillary
is that she would act according to longstanding neocon policy, concerted war. The Donald would
attack impulsively. Picture him as the Groucho Marx character in "Duck Soup" and there's a possible
simile, but not funny.
ghostyghost -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:49 p.m.
What scares me the most about President Trump is him taking a look at the nuclear arsenal and
thinking "we have these awesome weapons and they are just sitting here collecting dust. Well lets
show everyone that a real leader isn't afraid to use his best tools!" and then wiping Mosul and
and Raqqa off the map.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 4:36 p.m.
Glad Robert Kagan's neoconservative re-branding attempts have started to garner headlines.
Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State
Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of
state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland.
Or, Victoria "let's spend $5 billion to overthrow the democratically elected administration in
the Urkaine" Nuland.
Lin Ming, Feb 29, 2016, 1:13 p.m.
These people will do anything to further their cause – just as they always have – up to and including
eliminating an opponent in the most forceful permanent manner…
"... While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence, it would seem, based on Trump's electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not very interested in what they have to offer. ..."
"... The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017 is Hillary Clinton. ..."
2016It is now official: the neoconservatives are united against Donald Trump. A new open letter organized
by Project for the New American Century (PNAC) co-founder Eliot Cohen states the signatories
oppose a Trump presidency and have committed to "working energetically" to see that he is not
elected.
PNAC
was, notoriously, the neoconservative group that called for increased US imperialism in the Middle
East, especially Iraq. Many of those who signed PNAC's statement of principles and various letters
went on to serve in the Bush Administration.
The letter comes after Trump's ferocious attacks on neocon policies and narratives,
such as the Iraq War and the idea that President George W. Bush kept the country safe despite being
in office on 9/11. Those attacks were most pronounced just prior to the South Carolina primary when
former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Bush Administration was the focus of Trump's fire.
Trumps' foreign policy has long been in the neocon cross-hairs. It already appeared as though
many of the neocons were against Trump; now it's impossible to deny.
Journalist Josh Rogin, after talking to Trump advisors,
lamented that "The practical application of that doctrine plays out in several ways. Trump's
narrow definition of 'national interest' does not include things like democracy promotion, humanitarian
intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human rights
abroad. Trump believes that economic engagement will lead to political opening in the long run. He
doesn't think the U.S. government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries'
systems."
The other co-founder of PNAC, Robert Kagan, went even further, comparing Trump to a monster
and
claiming that, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to
vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
Military historian Max Boot, also a signatory to the letter, has denounced Trump,
saying,
"A Trump presidency threatens the post-World War II liberal international order that American presidents
of both parties have so laboriously built up." He claimed that "A Trump presidency would represent
the death knell of America as a great power."
Many of those who signed the latest letter were also among those that signed PNAC communications
including; Kagan, Boot, Cohen, Robert Zoellick, Daniel Blumenthal, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Thomas Donnelly,
Aaron Friedberg, Randy Scheunemann, Jeffrey Gedmin, Gary Schmitt, and Dov Zakheim.
While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence,
it would seem, based on Trump's electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not
very interested in what they have to offer.
The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017
is Hillary Clinton.
"... Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless" boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. ..."
"... Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's message is in line with the public mood. ..."
"... Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... "The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge Hillary Clinton Hillary with never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official. ..."
"... Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer said. ..."
"... Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, most prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ..."
"... Julian Hattem contributed to this story. ..."
The rise of
Donald Trump
is threatening the power of neoconservatives, who find themselves at risk of being marginalized
in the Republican Party. Neoconservatism was at its height during the presidency of George W. Bush, helping to shape
the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But now the ideology is under attack, with Trump systematically rejecting each of its core
principles. Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force,
Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint. In what Trump calls an "America First" approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don't
work, trade deals that don't deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much. He has said he would get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and sit down with North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un - a throwback to the "realist" foreign policy of President Nixon.
As if to underscore that point, the presumptive GOP nominee met with Nixon's Secretary of
State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, earlier this week, and delivered his first
major foreign policy speech at an event last month hosted by the Center for National Interest,
which Nixon founded.
Leading neoconservative figures like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have assailed Trump's
foreign policy views. Kagan even called Trump a "fascist" in a recent Washington Post
op-ed. "This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have
been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a
textbook egomaniac 'tapping into' popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire
national political party - out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear -
falling into line behind him," wrote Kagan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq
war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless"
boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to
hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice
president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
... ... ...
"[Neoconservatives] are concerned for good reason," said O'Hanlon, a Democratic defense hawk
"These people don't think that Trump is prepared intellectually to be president." "It's not just that their stance of foreign policy would be losing .. .all foreign policy
schools would be losing influence under Trump with very unpredictable consequences," he added.
Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's
message is in line with the public mood. A
recent Pew poll found that nearly six in 10 Americans said the U.S. should "deal with its own
problems and let other countries deal with their own problems as best they can," a more
isolationist approach at odds with neoconservative thought.
John Mearsheimer, a preeminent scholar in realist theory, says there's a parallel in history
to the way America turned inward after the Vietnam War. "There's no question that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went a considerable ways to pursue
a less ambitious foreign policy, and they talked about allies doing more to help themselves, and
they began to pursue detente with the Soviet Union." "And this was all a reaction to Vietnam. Vietnam of course was a colossal failure. The body
politic here in the United States was deeply disenchanted with American foreign policy,
especially in its most ambitious forms and the end result is we ended up backing off for awhile,"
he said. "We have a similar situation here."
Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well.
"The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge
Hillary ClintonHillary with
never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a
leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this
century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official.
"This is the principle reason that Hillary Clinton is having so much trouble putting
Bernie Sanders away," said Mearsheimer, who supports the Vermont senator. "Sanders is
capitalizing on all that disenchantment in the public, and Hillary Clinton represents the old
order."
But the ideological battle over foreign policy is playing out more forcefully in the GOP. While some members of the Republican foreign policy establishment are coming to terms with
Trump becoming their party's nominee, including lawmakers like Sens.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) and
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), neoconservatives remain staunch holdouts.
Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to
lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have
definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer
said.
Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton, most
prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
With Republican foreign policy figures split, influential Republican donors such as
Charles and David Koch are trying to shape the GOP's new direction.
The Charles Koch Institute recently launched a daylong conference that featured Mearsheimer
and another prominent realist Stephen Walt that questioned U.S. foreign policy since the end of
the Cold War.
"This has meant the frequent use of force, a military budget the size of the next seven to
eight countries combined, and an active policy of spreading American power and values," said
William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute.
"After a quarter century of this approach, it's time to ask: Has our foreign policy been
working? Is it making America safe? Should we continue on this path? And if not, what do
alternative approaches look like?"
"... Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping 1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will, regardless of what any other body had to say about it. ..."
"... We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact, Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern by consensus. ..."
"... Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." ..."
"... Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell for president. ..."
"... And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended? Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts? Keynesian stimulus? ..."
"... Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush? ..."
"... The alleged reasons for disliking Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons. ..."
"... They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot richer if none of it had been done. ..."
"... They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought. The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them. ..."
"... If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying. ..."
Now before I tell you how I figured that out - apart from the fact that their
lips are moving - I need to begin by parrying any manifestations of Trump
Derangement Syndrome.
I do not support or endorse Donald Trump, who is not a libertarian and who
appears to have no clear philosophy of any kind. He would no doubt do countless
things that I would deplore.
Just like all the other candidates, in other words.
My point is not to cheer for him. My point is that the neocons' stated reasons
for opposing him so hysterically don't add up.
(1) Max Boot worries that Trump will rule like a "strongman." Right - quite
unlike the restrained, humble executors of the law whom Max has endorsed over the
years. In fact, Max has spent his career calling for a strong executive. Now he's
worried about a "strongman." I'd say that horse has already left the stable, Max.
You might want to look in the mirror to figure out how that happened.
Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping
1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and
treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique
representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will,
regardless of what any other body had to say about it.
We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact,
Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern
by consensus.
Now maybe he doesn't mean that, and maybe he'd use executive orders
anyway. But what if he'd said what their hero Teddy said?
Remember the last time Max, or any neocon, or anyone in the GOP establishment,
warned us that Teddy wasn't a good role model?
Me neither.
(2) Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined
candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
(3) Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To
the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative
values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the
betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell
for president.
(4) And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist
project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund
Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended?
Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts?
Keynesian stimulus?
Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people
who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of
conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush?
Sure, we'd get the wringing of hands and the occasional anguished newspaper
column, but then we'd get the stern lecture that if we don't vote for Bush,
civilization comes to an end.
See what I mean? Something is fishy here. The alleged reasons for disliking
Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons.
Know what I think the real reasons are?
(a) They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their
interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot
richer if none of it had been done.
Now it's true, here as elsewhere, that Trump is not consistent. He's now
calling for ground troops against ISIS, for instance. But his primary message is:
we have too many problems at home to be traipsing around the world destroying
countries. This is not music to a neocon ear.
(b) They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought.
The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control
freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them.
If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest
about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from
orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying.
As usual.
Tom Woods, Jr. [send him mail; visit his website], hosts the Tom Woods Show, a libertarian
podcast, Monday through Friday, and co-hosts Contra Krugman every week. He is the New York Times
bestselling author of 12 books, a course creator for the Ron Paul homeschool curriculum, and
founder of Liberty Classroom, a libertarian education site for adult enrichment.
"... The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US public. ..."
"... The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. ..."
Donald Trump's recent speech on foreign policy
has been roundly condemned by the US foreign establishment.
It has also been ridiculed as confusing and contradictory.
This is a
misrepresentation. Whilst Trump did not provide a detailed programme - to have done so in the
middle of
an election would have been unwise - his underlying message is clear enough.
Instead of a foreign policy based on an ideology centered on US world hegemony, "exceptionalism"
and "democracy promotion" Trump promises a foreign policy straightforwardly based on the pursuit
of US national interests.
To understand what that would mean in practice consider the contrast between what the US public
wants and what the US has actually done under successive US administrations.
Whereas the US public since 9/11 has been overwhelmingly focused on jihadi terrorism as the greatest
threat to the US, the US foreign policy establishment is only minimally interested in that question.
Its priority is to secure US world hegemony by reshaping the world geopolitical map.
First and foremost that has meant confronting the two great powers -
Russia and China - the US sees as the primary obstacle to its hegemony. It has also meant
a series of geopolitical adventures in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, a protracted
confrontation with Iran, and head on collisions with Russia and China in Ukraine and the South China
Sea. The US public for its part has shown little or no enthusiasm for any of these projects. By contrast
the US foreign policy establishment has show little enthusiasm for confronting the Islamic State/Daesh.
The military campaign it is purporting to wage against the Islamic State is essentially a "going
through the motions" public relations exercise. The real fight against the Islamic State is being
fought by Iran and Russia. Elsewhere - in Chechnya, Libya and Syria - the US has willingly collaborated
with jihadi terrorists to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Trump threatens to turn all this on its head. In place of confrontation with Russia and China
he says he wants to cut deals with them calculating - rightly - that they are no threat to the US.
In place of collaboration with jihadi terrorism he promises a single-minded focus on its destruction.
Other pillars of current US foreign policy are also challenged.
Whereas the ideologues
currently in charge of US foreign policy treat US allies as ideological soulmates in a quest to spread
"Western values" (ie. US hegemony), Trump sees the US's relationship with its allies as transactional:
the US will help them if they help themselves, with no sense of this being part of some ideological
common cause.
Having dumped the ideology and the foreign policy that goes with it Trump,
promises to focus on sorting out the US's internal problems, which is where the US public's priorities
also lie. Trump expresses himself in often crude language eg. threatening to "carpet
bomb" the Islamic State. He is not coherent. He continues to talk of Iran as an enemy - ignoring the fact that it is as
much a potential partner of the US as Russia and China are. Some of the things Trump says - for example his talk of embracing torture
- are frankly disturbing. It remains to be seen whether a President
Trump if elected would be either willing or able - as he promises - to change the entire foreign
policy direction of the US.
The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign
policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US
public.
That is why the US political establishment is so alarmed by him.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect
the official position of Sputnik.
Trump seems less willing than his opponent to engage in adventurous missions abroad under
neoconservative "world domination" banner
Notable quotes:
"... As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in chief. ..."
"... In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump. ..."
"Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order." Thus did page one of Thursday's New
York Times tee up Hillary Clinton's big San Diego speech on foreign policy.
Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point: "Clinton to Portray Trump as
Risk to the World." The Times promoted the speech as "scorching," a "sweeping and fearsome
portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in
the coming months."
What is happening here?
As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken
borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off
independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in
chief.
Clinton contends that a Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment, that his ideas are
outside the bipartisan mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, and that he is as contemptuous of our
democratic allies as he is solicitous of our antidemocratic adversaries.
In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP
establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open
letter rejecting Trump.
William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line
to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton.
Robert Kagan contributed an op-ed to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is
"how fascism comes to America."
Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid.
For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures. As
senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had
not attacked us and did not want war with us. Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, another
way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country,
costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars.
That invasion was the worst blunder in U.S. history and a contributing factor to the deepening
disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate
ourselves.
As secretary of state, Clinton supported the unprovoked U.S.-NATO attack on Libya and joked of
the lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, "We came. We saw. He died." Yet, even Barack Obama now agrees
the Libyan war was started without advance planning for what would happen when Gadhafi fell. And
that lack of planning, that failure in which Clinton was directly involved, Obama now calls the
worst mistake of his presidency.
Is Clinton's role in pushing for two wars, both of which resulted in disasters for her country
and the entire Middle East, something to commend her for the presidency of the United States? Is
the slogan to be, "Let Hillary clean up the mess she helped to make?"
Whether or not Clinton was complicit in the debacle in Benghazi, can anyone defend her
deceiving the families of the fallen by talking about finding the evildoer who supposedly made
the videotape that caused it all? Even then, she knew better. How many other secretaries of state
have been condemned by their own inspector general for violating the rules for handling state
secrets, for deceiving investigators, and for engaging, along with that cabal she brought into
her secretary's office, in a systematic stonewall to keep the department from learning the truth?
Where in all of this is there the slightest qualification, other than a honed instinct for
political survival, for Clinton to lead America out of the morass into which she, and the failed
foreign policy elite nesting around her, plunged the United States?
If Trump will stay true to his message, he can win the foreign policy debate, and the election,
because what he is arguing for is what Americans want.
They do not want any more Middle East wars. They do not want to fight Russians in the Baltic or
Ukraine, or the Chinese over some rocks in the South China Sea.
They understand that, as Truman had to deal with Stalin, and Ike with Khrushchev, and Nixon with
Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev, a U.S. president should sit down with a Vladimir Putin to
avoid a clash neither country wants, and from which neither country would benefit.
The coming Clinton-neocon nuptials have long been predicted in this space. They have so much in
common. They belong with each other.
But this country will not survive as the last superpower if we do not shed this self-anointed
role as the "indispensable nation" that makes and enforces the rules for the "rules-based world
order," and that acts as first responder in every major firefight on earth. What Trump has
hit upon, what the country wants, is a foreign policy designed to protect the vital interests of
the United States, and a president who will - ever and always - put America first.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
This is one of the few articles when you can see anger at neocons from rank-and-file
republicans. Especially in comments.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump's steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy. ..."
"... The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular. ..."
"... The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump. ..."
"... CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering.... ..."
"... The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the light. ..."
"... The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. ..."
"... Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ... ..."
"... "Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote. I'm an elite and know better than you!" ..."
"... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets. ..."
"... Latter Day Republicans.. LOL ..."
"... fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc. ..."
"... Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United States. ..."
"... Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people. ..."
"... One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken quite seriously. ..."
Kristol recently met with #NeverTrump champion
Mitt Romney to discuss a third-party campaign, but Kristol has hinted that Romney will not be
the independent "White Knight." Kristol
tweeted Saturday,
"If Mitt decides he can't, someone will step forward to run" then quoted William Gladstone to declare,
"The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted."
This is not the first time Trump and Kristol
have sparred on Twitter. When Trump asked last week why networks continue to employ Kristol's punditry
services, Kristol admitted that he had been wrong to have underestimated Trump's political appeal:
Kristol's neoconservative inner circle has reason to fear the threat posed by a populist outsider,
especially one who could gain anti-Establishment traction by attacking the legacy of the Kristol-supported
Iraq War. Kristol's "Weekly Standard" magazine and his son-in-law Matt Continetti's blog "Free Beacon"
hammered Trump throughout the Republican primaries to little avail. The "Beacon" blog's writers and
editors flogged the "small hands" insult that infamously made it into Marco Rubio's campaign stump
speech in Rubio's desperate final days.
Trump's
steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified
the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million
votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy.
Tryle N Error
It's time for an intervention. Get him into rehab and off the Kristol Meth, or whatever
that deluded lunatic is injecting.
dtom2 > Tryle N Error
Kristol has become unhinged faced with the reality that he has lost what little influence
he had on the republic electorate. His all out promotion of Jeb Bush failed and this is
nothing more than sour grapes. So, instead of conceding defeat, he launches all out war on our
nominee. My question is this... if he wants Hillary instead of Trump, which will be the
eventual outcome if he follows through with his plan, why not just come out of the closet and
support her. La Raza and the Chamber of Commerce both get their wish, more hordes of criminal
illegals to undermine American workers, and an increased democrat parasitic voter
base...see...so much simpler than a third candidate launch...same outcome. America slides
closer to the third world cesspool of their dreams. Trump 2016!
Ann > dtom2
The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to
derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular.
bucketnutz > Tryle N Error
The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now
on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump.
FauxScienceSlayer
CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New
Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering....
Be Still
The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the
light.
Bill the Cat > Robert Tulloch
The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of
Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. Their next stop is the HuffPo and motherjones.
Patriot
Kristol needs to be brought down from his perch. He thinks he is smarter than the voters.
If he pushes this nonsense and the GOP does not censor him, it will be the time for the
millions of sane Americans to join the GOP and then destroy it from within. It is time for
average Americans to control their destiny as opposed to the elites.
darwin
Kristol is an anti-American traitor. He's actively engaged in fighting the will of the
people to keep himself and the people he works for in power and wealth.
Archimedes
Bill Kristol is destroying the Republican party ... he is a globalist who believes in
spending trillions while deploying AMERICANs in the Middle East ... he believes in open
borders ... he believes in unfettered "free trade" ...
Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ...
#NeverHillary
ljm4
Billy, work on your Cruise ship offerings. As you are failing in journalism are you also
trying to take down the GOP party yourself?
Doctor Evil
"Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity
of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote.
I'm an elite and know better than you!"
Lee Ashton > Doctor Evil
On the other hand...
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -
George Carlin US comedian and actor (1937 - 2008)
Douglas Rowland > Lee Ashton
Those would be the ones voting for Hillary.
WaylonII
Splitting the Republican vote would be a sure way to get Hillary elected. What is wrong with these people?
Avatar
timdb > WaylonII
Maybe Kristol expects President Hillary Clinton will appoint him as ambassador to Israel.
Lee Ashton > TheLastPlainsman
Neocon - deficit spending via the warfare state
Leftist - deficit spending via the welfare state.
The right and left wings of the same vulture.
MrnPol725
... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets.
SPQR_US
Another turd exposed...Kristol Meth...time to arrest and jail the neocons...
Pitbulls LiL Brother
Kristol has been wrong so many times for so many years how does he get a voice in the
process?
Amberteka > Pitbulls LiL Brother
MONEY. His relatives Own USA Media.
Roadchaser
Latter Day Republicans.. LOL
James > Roadchaser
fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc.
gladzkravtz
The founding publisher of the Weekly Standard is News Corp!! Just found it on wiki! I
didn't know that and now it makes sense that Kristol gets to mug on FNC so much. I have stock
in News Corp, bought it back long before there was a Megyn Kelly, but now it's time to go
ahead, sell and take the loss.
Those creeps.
PreacherPatriot1776
Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because
of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several
amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance
Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United
States.
That clause states, "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person
holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress,
accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State."
Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as
defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By
removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people.
Since the government is not self-policing itself like it should then it's time for the Fourth
Branch of the government to step up and exercise their power to hold these individuals
accountable. A Vigilance Committee would be comprised of citizens of a single state and
oversee everything their elected/appointed representatives adhere to their oaths of office.
Failure to adhere to the oath would be an automatic charge of treason and a trial of said
individual for violating their oath. Once enough of these traitors are executed the rest of
them will behave and follow their oaths plus the Constitution of the United States.
Another amendment could be the requirement that every child must learn the Declaration of
Independence, Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights, and their state
constitutions. This way we as a people can stop dangerous ideologies that are antithetical to
liberty, like Marxism and communism, can never be used in the United States.
jackschil
Its about time the real conservative Republicans took a stand. They could start by ignoring
the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party and start paying attention to the
Goldwater/Reagan wing. The Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, Bill Kristol, Carl
Rove, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer do not represent conservative values, but pretend
establishment values. They would be better served joining with the Democrats. Trump has these
establishment jackals, along with the K Street lobbyists, scared to death. For the first time
since 1984, the people aren't stuck voting for a Republicrat candidate.
SpeedMaster
The Globalists have been exposed for what they really are. Thank You Mr. Trump.
Ohiolad
One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the
Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken
quite seriously.
Gene Schwimmer
If Kristol does, indeed, produce an independent candidate and if "President Hillary" is a
real problem for Trumpists, we of #NeverTrump invite them to abandon Trump and join us in
supporting the independent candidate. If you choose not to, blame yourselves if Trump loses. #NeverTrump
warned you well before you voted for Trump that we would never vote for him and it's still not
too late to nominate someone else at the convention. Not our problem if you thought you could
win without us and nominated Trump, anyway.
PrinceLH > Gene Schwimmer
Are you for real? Why would we turn our backs on the candidate that has garnered the most
votes, in Republican Primary history? You people don't get it! It's not the Republicans vs the
Democrats. It's the people vs the Establishment. We don't want any more of your ruling class
garbage. We don't want any more of stagnant wages and job loses to other countries, so you can
expand your Globalist agenda. You people need to be stopped. Bill Kristol, George Will, Glenn
Beck, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros, the Bush family, the Koch Brothers and
the list goes on, are our enemies.
You will be soundly defeated, this fall, and you can hand in your membership to the Human
Race, on the way out the door to your European Liberal Utopia.
Zolt
No more THIRD-WORLD IMMIGRATION
No more GLOBAL TRADE
No more ENDLESS WARS FOR ISRAEL AND THE NWO
God bless ASSAD, protector of Syrian Christians!
Get on board with the #PALEOCONS!
billsv
You just don't get it. Middle class jobs have been given to foreigners through H2B
programs, globalist policies, etc. why is this conservatism? Why do illegal aliens get more
benefits than US citizens? Is this conservatism? We just don't like Bill Kristol's view of
conservatism that de stories the Middle Class, let' s those in the bottom percentiles languish
and caves to the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce.
Please back off and give what many if
Americans want. We have suffered enough.
"... Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye. ..."
"... "So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!" ..."
"... Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war. He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to provide. ..."
"... The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite. ..."
"... This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him president. ..."
Political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye: Columnist. When the term paleo-conservative
is floated in conversation, most folks imagine a creature out of Jurassic World. But paleo-conservatism
- a near extinct brand of conservatism that heralds limited government, nonintervention, economic
nationalism and Western traditions - is finding a comeback in an unlikely spokesperson.
The history-making campaign of
Donald Trump is turning the clock of U.S. politics back to a time when hubris was heroic and
the truth, no matter how blunt, was king. It is resurrecting a political thought that does not play
by the rules of modern politics.
And as the nation saw the top-tier
GOP candidates take the stage for the first time, they saw Trump, unapologetic and confident,
alongside eight candidates clueless on how to contain him and a tongue-lashed Rand Paul.
The debate itself highlighted the fear a Trump candidacy is creating throughout the political
establishment. The very first question asked the candidates to pledge unconditional support to the
eventual GOP nominee and refrain from a third-party run. Trump refused.
Those in the Beltway resumed drafting Trump's political obituary. But while they were busy scribbling,
post-debate polls showed Trump jumped in the polls. Republicans are ignoring their orders from headquarters
and deflecting to the Donald.
Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed
to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye.
"So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back
to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!"
Is he not correct? Days before the nation started debating Kelly's metaphorical blood, an unauthorized
immigrant in New Jersey pleaded guilty to actually spilling the blood of 30-year-old Sviatlana Dranko
and setting her body on fire. In the media, Dranko's blood is second fiddle. This contrast is not
lost on the silent majority flocking to Trump.
Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report
Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican
who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war.
He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to
provide.
The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was
Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first
in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in
terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque
with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance
his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite.
This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him
president.
Joseph R. Murray II is a civil-rights attorney, a conservative commentator and a former official
with Pat Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
"... "[W]hat is most astonishing is the rising level of rage among Trump's political enemies from inside the Republican establishment," said Scarborough . "Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years." ..."
"... Trump, who does hold some positions at odds with traditional conservatism, such as strengthening entitlement programs, has fought back against that criticism, calling commentators like Will "eggheads." ..."
MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough is hitting back at some conservatives in the media who
he says are taking an elitist attitude toward Donald Trump and his supporters.
In a Sunday column for the Washington Post, Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said
that some conservative commentators "are sounding as cocooned from their own political party as any
liberal writing social commentary for the New Yorker or providing political analysis for ABC News."
"[W]hat is most astonishing is the rising level of rage among Trump's political enemies from
inside the Republican establishment,"
said Scarborough. "Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing
pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years."
Scarborough took criticism earlier this year from some of the same commentators, and many others,
for what critics
call
his
fawning
treatment of Trump in interviews.
Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News
Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.
Some venerable
right-leaning publications and commentators, like National Review and George Will of the Washington
Post, have
denounced Trump for, they say, his insufficient conservatism and his apparent lack of knowledge
about conservative thinking and policy.
Trump, who does hold some positions at odds with traditional conservatism, such as strengthening
entitlement programs, has fought back against that criticism, calling commentators like Will
"eggheads."
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions." ..."
"... "I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake." ..."
"... "Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for free trade is "almost a religious belief." ..."
"... The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities when Bill got into the White House. ..."
"... They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering. It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice. ..."
Buchanan ran in 1992 for the Republican party nomination on a platform opposing globalization,
unfettered immigration, and the move away from social conservatism. He has been harping on these
views ever since.
"What we've gotten is proof that we were right," Buchanan told The Daily Caller Tuesday. While
he said, "I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative," and, "I don't think [Trump's]
a social conservative."
Buchanan told TheDC, "I was just astonished to see him raise the precise issues on which we ran
in the 1990s… Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and
traditional conservatives like myself."
These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic
nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions."
"I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He
added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake."
Buchanan is not only opposed to immigration and trade, he is also a staunch social conservative.
Trump has had two divorces and has previously held pro-choice views, making it tough for some to
support him. Buchanan though said, "I think Trump respects the position of the social conservatives."
"I do think he would appoint the type of justices that would unite the Republican Party," he said.
The conservative commentator continued on to say, "I think the great emperor Constantine converted
to Christianity but he may have killed one of his sons as well."
Buchanan told TheDC, "we don't have any perfect candidates," but the other options besides Trump
are more frightening.
"Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for
free trade is "almost a religious belief."
Richard
The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say
it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas
are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities
when Bill got into the White House.
They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering.
It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths
are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice.
Why is it that every time a Grand Jury was to be convened and people were subpoenaed to testify
against the Clinton's, it never happened and some of those people ended up in prison, dead or
disappeared. Anyone who has ever had files implicating the Clinton's of illegal activities either
commits suicide or was murdered, and the files have disappeared. People if your voting for or
have voted for Hillary - do your homework and learn about who you vote for?
"... Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say, Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take Trump seriously. ..."
"... Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment. ..."
"... The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began. ..."
"... What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to deal with it. ..."
"... Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in the Republican primaries. ..."
Since Trump's presidential
announcement last month including controversial comments about illegal immigrants from Mexico,
Buchanan has written two editorials on his website lauding Trump's efforts.
Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say,
Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take
Trump seriously.
They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent
a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press.
Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole and entire, and dump it onto the
ash heap of history.
Votes for Trump will be votes to reject a regime run by Bushes and Clintons that plunged us
into unnecessary wars, cannot secure our borders, and negotiates trade deals that produced the
largest trade deficits known to man and gutted a manufacturing base that was once "the great arsenal
of democracy" and envy of mankind.
A vote for Trump is a vote to say that both parties have failed America and none of the current
crop of candidates offers real hope of a better future.
Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade
deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment.
By now the whole world has heard Trump's declaration:
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're sending people that
have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems to us. They're bringing drugs. They're
bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Politically incorrect? You betcha.
Yet, is Trump not raising a valid issue? Is there not truth in what he said? Is not illegal
immigration, and criminals crossing our Southern border, an issue of national import, indeed,
of national security?
. . .
The reaction to Trump's comments has been instructive. NBC and Univision dropped his Miss USA
and Miss Universe contests.
Macy's has dropped the Trump clothing line. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is talking of terminating
city contracts with Trump.
The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it
was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come
under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began.
. . .
What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration
issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to
deal with it.
Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities
of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in
the Republican primaries.
In the coming debates, look for Trump to take the populist and popular side of them both. And
for Cruz to stand by him on illegal immigration.
Americans are fed up with words; they want action. Trump is moving in the polls because, whatever
else he may be, he is a man of action.
Trump later
retweeted
and thanked a follower who cited to Buchanan's labeling of Trump as "a man of action."
"... From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically, but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction. As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get a stone." ..."
There are several attributes of Donald Trump's bid for the U.S. Presidency that this Paleo-Conservative
finds to be interesting. To follow is an adumbration of the more salient.
His campaign style is refreshing. The absence of teleprompters, which results in spontaneity,
which in turn reveals the unvarnished candidate in contradistinction to the coached, stale, and
unconvincing political hacks, is refreshing. Trump's campaign speeches and debate performance
have actually juiced up political discourse, making politics interesting not simply for the political
class but also for Middle American.
The engagement of Middle American into this presidential election cycle have the political
class spooked. It is this same political class responsible for the removal of all things Confederate
from the public square, not Middle American. It is Middle America that has catapulted Trump into
the lead. In other words, Middle America may actually have some meaningful input into the election
of the next POTUS.
The spooking of the political class has exposed what it thinks of Middle America. Its
charge against Trump is that the bulk of his support rests upon the inherent racism, national
jingoism and stupidity of average Americans. Some have even claimed that Trump is a closet fascist
and that his supporters are inherently supportive of fascism. This is nonsense. Middle America's
detestation of ruling elites is not fascist, but it is an acknowledgment that it will take a strongman,
statesman if you prefer, to knock out the ruling elites.
Trump's detractors may be his best campaign weapon. Without knowing much about Trump's
policy positions, immigration notwithstanding, there is logic in supporting Trump based upon knowing
who his political enemies are. This may be the best voting cue Middle America has. The enemy (Trump)
of my enemy (the ruling class) is my friend. In other words, the more Trump agitates the ruling
class the more he endears himself to Middle America.
Trump appears to be more the pragmatist than ideologue, and that's a good thing. The
American federative republic's original blueprint is nomocratic (a Southern characteristic), but
has been replaced with a teleocratic (New England Puritanism) one. It is the latter that has resulted
in the unitary US of A, nation-building abroad and the welfare state domestically.
For any Southern patriot the status quo in American politics is totally unacceptable.
One thing is fairly certain; if Trump were to be the next POTUS, the status quo would be in for
quite a shock. At this point it matters little how the status quo might be changed. Middle America
wants change and it wants it now. Moreover, if Trump were to succeed in his bid to be the next
POTUS, he would be much more likely to expose the fraud and corruption inside the beltway than
any of his presidential campaign competitors. Unlike the latter, he would not be held captive
to the interests that funnel money and votes to sustain the status quo, but to the average American
voter, i.e., Middle America.
The disruptions, if not chaos, Trump might affect in Washington may result in preoccupying
the ruling class to the extent that the focus on things Southern, e.g., the Battle Flag, may dissipate.
This might just provide Southern patriots with the space to regroup and be better prepared for
the next assault on their culture.
Trump's campaign slogan is Make America Great Again. As an intelligent man he must know that to
achieve that goal he must remove the government shackles, e.g., taxation, regulations, and centralization,
holding Americans and America down, both domestically and internationally.
From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence
of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically,
but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President
Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction.
As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom
of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem
to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get
a stone."
Marshall DeRosa received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Houston and his B. A. from
West Virginia University, Magna Cum Laude. He has taught at Davis and Elkins College (1985-1988),
Louisiana State University (1988-1990), and Florida Atlantic University (1990-Present). He is a Salvatori
Fellow with the Heritage Foundation and full professor in the Department of Political Science. He
has published articles and reviews in professional journals, book chapters, and three books. He resides
in Wellington, FL, with his wife and four children. More from Marshall DeRosa
"... Build the wall to block the gangsters and their heroin shipments. "We have situations right now where we have the migration. And we're accepting people in. And we're accepting them in by the thousands ..."
"... Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a private system with more options and no state-specific boundaries, lower deductibles, take on the drug companies and install competitive bidding for medicine, and save enough money to take care of the poor. ..."
"... He wants to strengthen the armed forces but cut waste out of the budget and re-focus it. "We're buying equipment and we're buying things that our generals don't even want. We're buying planes they don't want instead of other ones because that company has better lobbyists… ..."
"... This is the politics of putting America First. It echoes the politics of Ross Perot's Reform Party, which once almost became Trump's party and which once housed Trump friend and paleoconservative firebrand Pat Buchanan. ..."
Trump has turned the Republican primary into a reality show. It's an effective tactic, one that
resonates with a country weaned on the TV genre that he helped to create. The sweating, bumbling
politicians have all become boardroom wannabes or castaways on an island where their flaws are exposed,
picked apart, and analyzed. And they all come off dishonest compared to him. This is the politics
of Richard Pryor as Montgomery Brewster and Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener. This was never
supposed to happen. But it did.
And scarier still for the suits trying so hard to shut it down: Trump has substance.
On the border:Build the wall to block the gangsters and their heroin
shipments. "We have situations right now where we have the migration. And we're accepting people
in. And we're accepting them in by the thousands…Look at New Hampshire, the problems you
have with the drugs. We are letting people into this country and we have absolutely no idea who
they are, where they come from, are they ISIS? Maybe, maybe not."
On health care:Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a
private system with more options and no state-specific boundaries, lower deductibles, take on
the drug companies and install competitive bidding for medicine, and save enough money to take
care of the poor. And he brushed off those who say it's not the Republican Way. "There's
a small group of people on the bottom who are not going to be able to be taken care of [under
Obamacare]. And I say, as Republicans, is there anybody who doesn't want to take care of them?
We are not going to have people dying on the streets. We're going to get them into a hospital
to take care of them…Let me tell you, the Republican way is, People CAN take care of themselves.
We have to help them. We're not going to let them die."
On the military:He wants to strengthen the armed forces but cut waste
out of the budget and re-focus it. "We're buying equipment and we're buying things that our generals
don't even want. We're buying planes they don't want instead of other ones because that company
has better lobbyists…We're going to get them the equipment they want. We're going to save
a lot of money." He wants to build a military so strong we'll never have to use it. After we take
care of ISIS, that is. And no more nation-building experiments that de-stabilize the Middle East
and embolden Iran. "Nobody, I'm telling you, nobody, is going to want to play with us."
This is the politics of putting America First. It echoes the politics of Ross Perot's Reform
Party, which once almost became Trump's party and which once housed Trump friend and paleoconservative
firebrand Pat Buchanan.
When Trump explains his views, it all sounds self-evident. It sounds like common sense. It wouldn't
sound so controversial if we didn't live in a media climate controlled by globalist corporate interests.
It's the kind of politics - tough, protectionist, and nationally self-interested - that Trump has
been thinking about for a very long time.
And now, like the last American tycoon, he's the only one fighting for it.
"... "In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered." ..."
"... "They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil." ..."
"... President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world." President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century. ..."
"... Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values. ..."
"... Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. ..."
"... America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian. ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of " Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? " Copyright 2013 Creators.com . ..."
Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind's future, is he one of us?
While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian
president's state of the nation address.
With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, "In
many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered."
"They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political
views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil."
Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to
equate traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with evil.
No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.
President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world."
President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century.
Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand,
homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.
Our grandparents would not recognize the America in which we live.
Moreover, Putin asserts, the new immorality has been imposed undemocratically.
The "destruction of traditional values" in these countries, he said, comes "from the top" and
is "inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of
the majority of people."
Does he not have a point?
Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected
rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General
Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.
America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over
the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian.
And same-sex marriage is indeed an "abstract" idea unrooted in the history or tradition of the
West. Where did it come from?
Peoples all over the world, claims Putin, are supporting Russia's "defense of traditional values"
against a "so-called tolerance" that is "genderless and infertile."
While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and
cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind.
Same-sex marriage is supported by America's young, but most states still resist it, with black
pastors visible in the vanguard of the counterrevolution. In France, a million people took to the
streets of Paris to denounce the Socialists' imposition of homosexual marriage.
Only 15 nations out of more than 190 have recognized it.
In India, the world's largest democracy, the Supreme Court has struck down a lower court ruling
that made same-sex marriage a right. And the parliament in this socially conservative nation of more
than a billion people is unlikely soon to reverse the high court.
In the four dozen nations that are predominantly Muslim, which make up a fourth of the U.N. General
Assembly and a fifth of mankind, same-sex marriage is not even on the table. And Pope Francis has
reaffirmed Catholic doctrine on the issue for over a billion Catholics.
While much of American and Western media dismiss him as an authoritarian and reactionary, a throwback,
Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.
As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East vs. West, the
21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country
arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.
And though America's elite may be found at the epicenter of anti-conservatism and anti-traditionalism,
the American people have never been more alienated or more divided culturally, socially and morally.
We are two countries now.
Putin says his mother had him secretly baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian. And
what he is talking about here is ambitious, even audacious.
He is seeking to redefine the "Us vs. Them" world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives,
traditionalists, and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and
ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.
"We do not infringe on anyone's interests," said Putin, "or try to teach anyone how to live."
The adversary he has identified is not the America we grew up in, but the America we live in, which
Putin sees as pagan and wildly progressive.
Without naming any country, Putin attacked "attempts to enforce more progressive development models"
on other nations, which have led to "decline, barbarity, and big blood," a straight shot at the U.S.
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt.
In his speech, Putin cited Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev whom Solzhenitsyn had hailed
for his courage in defying his Bolshevik inquisitors. Though no household word, Berdyaev is favorably
known at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
Which raises this question: Who is writing Putin's stuff?
"... "The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic, not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states," Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers, and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries. Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible, either." ..."
"... If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained, forever spoil a distinct American civilization. ..."
"... The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives, and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition," or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving now, for all the glint and glitter of empire. ..."
Joseph Scotchie's Revolt from the Heartland is not, as some readers might guess from the title,
about the terrorism of right-wing militias in the Midwestern United States, although some readers
might also say that guess was close enough. In fact, Revolt from the Heartland deals with the emergence
of "paleoconservatism," a species of conservative thought that despite its name ("paleo" is a Greek
prefix meaning "old") is a fairly recent twist in the cunningly knotted mind of the American Right.
While paleos sometimes like to characterize their beliefs as merely the continuation of the conservative
thought of the 1950s and '60s, and while in fact many of them do have their personal and intellectual
roots in the conservatism of that era, the truth is that what is now called paleoconservatism is
at least as new as the neoconservatism at which many paleos like to sniff as a newcomer.
Paleoconservatism is largely the invention of a single magazine, the Rockford Institute's Chronicles,
as it has been edited since the mid-1980s by Thomas Fleming, and Scotchie's book is essentially an
account of what Fleming and his major colleagues at Chronicles mainly, historian Paul Gottfried,
book review editor Chilton Williamson Jr., professor Clyde Wilson, and I believe, and what the differences
are between our brand of conservatism and others.
Scotchie's first three chapters are a survey of the history of American conservatism up until
the advent of Chronicles, including an account of the "Old Right" of the pre-World-War-II, pre-Depression
eras (for once, an account not confined to the libertarian "isolationists" but encompassing also
the Southern Agrarians), as well as the emergence of the "Cold War conservatism" of National Review
and the neoconservatism of the Reagan era and after. Scotchie's overview of these different shades
of the Right is useful in itself and necessary to clarify the differences between these colorations
and the paleos who constitute his main subject, though he may underestimate the differentiation between
the current, paleo "Old Right" and earlier "Old Rights."
Although Scotchie does not put it quite this way, contemporary paleoconservatism developed as
a reaction against three trends in the American Right during the Reagan administration. First, it
reacted against the bid for dominance by the neoconservatives, former liberals who insisted not only
that their version of conservative ideology and rhetoric prevail over those of older conservatives,
but also that their team should get the rewards of office and patronage and that the other team of
the older Right receive virtually nothing.
... ... ...
Paleos and those who soon identified with them almost spontaneously rejected U.S. military intervention
against Iraq. It was a moment, falling only a year after the neoconservative onslaught on the Rockford
Institute, that solidified the paleoconservative identity.
"The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic,
not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states,"
Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers,
and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries.
Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects
alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible,
either."
If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction
constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined
one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood
the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration
of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent
defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration
and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended
by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.
Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained,
forever spoil a distinct American civilization.
The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives,
and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition,"
or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical
experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular
ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving
now, for all the glint and glitter of empire.
"... the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. ..."
"... Trump's platform combines positions that are shared by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party," Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories. ..."
"... Buchanan, in a recent interview , characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for the presidential nomination. T he year was 2000 , and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota, was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right." Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto The America We Deserve , Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent tax on the rich that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security. ..."
"... Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family. ..."
"... On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending and an assertive global foreign policy. ..."
"... Many of the rank-and-file members of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business ..."
"... But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in 2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. ..."
"... There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism" of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. ..."
Trump, in fact, has more appeal to the center than the conservative populists of the last half century.
Before Trump's rise in this year's Republican primary elections, the best-known populist presidential
candidates were Alabama Governor Wallace and tycoon Ross Perot, along with Buchanan. Yet none of
these past figures had broad enough appeal to hope to win the White House. Despite his folksy demeanor,
Perot was more of a technocrat than a populist and did poorly in traditionally populist areas of
the South and Midwest, where Trump is doing well. Wallace was an outspoken white supremacist, while
Trump tends to speak in a kind of code, starting with his "birther" campaign against President Obama,
and his criticism of illegal immigrants and proposed ban on Muslims may appeal to fringe white nationalists
even if it has offended many if not most Latinos. Nor has Trump alienated large sections of the electorate
by casting his lot with Old Right isolationism, as Buchanan did, or by adopting the religious right
social agenda of Robertson.
Indeed, the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has
mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. What conservative
apparatchiks hate about Trump-his insufficient conservatism-may be his greatest strength in the general
election. His populism cuts across party lines like few others before him. Like his fans, Trump is
indifferent to the issues of sexual orientation that animate the declining religious right, even
to the point of defending Planned Parenthood. Trump's platform combines positions that are shared
by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee
of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party,"
Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories.
He may well be right, though it's not clear what that Republican Party will look like in the end.
... ... ...
Buchanan, a former Nixon aide and conservative journalist, ran unsuccessfully for
the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and was awarded with a prime-time speech at the Republican
National Convention that nominated George Herbert Walker Bush for a second term in the White House.
Buchanan's speech focused almost entirely on the "religious war" and "culture war" to save America
from feminism, legal abortion, gay rights, and "the raw sewage of pornography."
In his 1996 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and in his 2000 campaign as the
Reform Party nominee, Buchanan emphasized populist themes of economic nationalism and immigration
restriction. But he was too much of a member of the Old Right that despised FDR and sought a return
to the isolationism of Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh to have much appeal to former New Deal Democrats.
Buchanan's history of borderline anti-Semitic remarks led William F. Buckley Jr. to criticize him
in "In Search of Anti-Semitism," (1992) and some of his associates like Samuel Francis were overt
white racial nationalists.
For Reagan Democrats and their children and grandchildren, World War II showed America at its
best. But Buchanan concluded a long career of eccentric World War II revisionism in 2009 with "Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World," arguing
that Hitler should have been appeased by Britain and the U.S.
Buchanan,
in a recent interview, characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive
evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But
the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for
the presidential nomination. The
year was 2000, and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota,
was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that
the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right."
Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom
Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't
like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto
The America We Deserve, Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based
health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent
tax on the rich
that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security.
In his press release announcing
his withdrawal from the race for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, Trump wrote: "Now
I understand that David Duke has decided to join the Reform Party to support the candidacy of Pat
Buchanan. So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman-Mr. Duke, a Neo-Nazi-Mr. Buchanan, and a Communist-Ms.
[Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."
Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic
white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder
of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson
and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious
right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened
the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his
neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending
and an assertive global foreign policy.
Unlike Buchanan, Robertson and other religious right leaders did not deviate from the Republican
Party line on trade, immigration, or tax cuts for the rich. Many of the rank-and-file members
of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business.
But in the 1990s there was a tacit understanding that religious right activists would focus on issues
of sex and reproduction and school prayer, leaving economics to free-marketers. In foreign policy,
the Christian Zionism of many Protestant evangelicals made them reliable allies of neoconservatives
with close ties to Israel and supportive of the Iraq War and other U.S. interventions in the Middle
East.
From the 1980s until this decade, the religious right was the toothless, domesticated "designated
populist" wing of the Republican coalition, and mainstream conservative politicians took it for granted
that as long as they said they opposed abortion and gay marriage, evangelical voters would support
free-market conservative economics and interventionist neoconservative foreign policy.
But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in
2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal
immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had
fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. The opposition
of populist conservatives killed comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush in 2007 and
also killed the Gang of Eight immigration reform effort led in part by Senator Marco Rubio in 2013.
The defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary for the 7th District
of Virginia by an unknown conservative academic, David Brat, was attributed largely to Cantor's support
for the immigration reform effort.
There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for
those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives
than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism"
of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize
Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress
did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. And a Republican-controlled Congress passed Medicare
Part D in 2003-the biggest expansion of a universal middle-class entitlement between the creation
of Medicare in 1965 and the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Blue collar Republican voters
applauded, as libertarian think-tankers raged.
Conservative populists cannot be accused of inconsistency. Like New Deal Democrats before them,
they tend to favor universal benefits for which the middle class is eligible like Social Security,
Medicare and Medicare Part D, and to oppose welfare programs like Medicaid and the ACA which feature
means tests that make the working class and middle class ineligible. The true inconsistency is on
the part of the mainstream conservative movement, which has yoked together left-inspired crusades
for global democratic revolution abroad with minimal-state libertarianism at home.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can win the Republican nomination, much less the White House.
But whatever becomes of his candidacy, it seems likely that his campaign will prove to be just one
of many episodes in the gradual replacement of Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservatism by something
more like European national populist movements, such as the National Front in France and the United
Kingdom Independence Party in Britain. Unlike Goldwater, who spearheaded an already-existing alliance
consisting of National Review, Modern Age, and Young Americans for Freedom, Trump has followers but
no supportive structure of policy experts and journalists. But it seems likely that some Republican
experts and editors, seeking to appeal to his voters in the future, will promote a Trump-like national
populist synthesis of middle-class social insurance plus immigration restriction and foreign policy
realpolitik,through conventional policy papers and op-eds rather than blustering speeches and tweets.
That's looking ahead. Glancing backward, it is unclear that there has ever been any significant
number of voters who share the worldview of the policy elites in conservative think tanks and journals.
In hindsight, the various right-wing movements-the fusionist conservatism of Buckley, Goldwater and
Reagan, neoconservatism, libertarianism, the religious right-appear to have been so many barnacles
hitching free rides on the whale of the Jacksonian populist electorate. The whale is awakening beneath
them, and now the barnacles don't know what to do.
"... Trump advances core paleoconservative positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism. ..."
"... I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again. ..."
"... He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars (such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power. ..."
"... As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government, interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack. ..."
The corporate media haven't been able to make much sense of Donald Trump. One thing they've said
is that he's non-ideological, or at least at odds with "true conservatives." But you've pointed he
has strong affinities for paleoconservative ideas, particularly as laid out in the 2009 book, "The
Next Conservatism" by Paul Weyrich and William Lind - a copy of which Lind recently gave to
Trump. You wrote, "Trump could have derived most of his 2016 primary positions from a two-hour session
with Lind's and Weyrich's book." Could you elaborate?
Trump advances core paleoconservative
positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing
borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism.
For example, an eleven-minute pro-Trump infomercial from August 2015, "'On
Point' With Sarah Palin and Donald Trump" - which now has over 3,800,000 views - begins with
a mini-Trump speech that could have been ghostwritten by William Lind:
I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock
all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible
thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our
Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again.
... ... ...
Lind says they're intellectually vacuous, and that the current conservatism is "rubbish" and filled
with "'I've got mine' smugness." He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization
of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars
(such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power.
... ... ...
As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some
of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism
with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government,
interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the
years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted
that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP
primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon
program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack.
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News,
and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg.
"... The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day it was often referred to as the "Old Right." ..."
"... Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War. ..."
"... The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital. ..."
"... The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist, America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers in the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the Balkans. ..."
"... "We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's edge." That's pure paleocon. ..."
"... Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign policy address of Wednesday. ..."
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other. ..."
One of the strangest allegations leveled against Donald Trump by his Republican critics is that
he's not a conservative - or even, in the most extreme version of this critique, that he's actually
a liberal.
"People can support Donald Trump, but they cannot support him on conservative grounds," former
George W. Bush aide
Peter Wehner writes at Commentary. "The case for constitutional limited government is the case
against Donald Trump," declares Federalist founder
Ben Domenech. "Instead of converting voters to conservatism, Trump is succeeding at converting
conservatives to statism on everything from health care and entitlements to trade," complained
National Review's Jonah Goldberg.
Insofar as these commentators are criticizing the recency of Trump's conservative convictions,
well, fair enough. In an earlier life he was indeed a big fan of
universal
health care,
wealth taxation,
and legal
abortion - and if his general election
pivoting on taxes and the minimum wage is any indication, conservative fears that he would return
to his more liberal roots in the general election may yet be vindicated.
But the ideological vision Trump put forward during the Republican primary campaign was deeply
conservative, and, more specifically, deeply paleoconservative.
The paleoconservatives were a major voice in the Republican Party for many years, with Pat Buchanan
as their most recent leader, and pushed a line that is very reminiscent of Trump_vs_deep_state.
They adhere to the normal conservative triad of nationalism, free markets, and moral traditionalism,
but they put greater weight on the nationalist leg of the stool - leading to a more strident form
of anti-immigrant politics that often veers into racism, an isolationist foreign policy rather than
a hawkish or dovish one, and a deep skepticism of economic globalization that puts them at odds with
an important element of the business agenda.
Trump is an odd standard-bearer for paleocons, many of whom are conservative Catholics and whose
passionate social conservatism doesn't jibe well with Trump's philandering. His foreign policy ideas
are also more interventionist than those of most paleocons. But the ideas that have made him such
a controversial candidate aren't ones he got from liberals. They have a serious conservative pedigree.
A brief history of paleoconservatism
The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of
conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator
and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day
it was often referred to as the "Old Right."
There was a time when these positions were normal for the Republican party. Leaders like William
McKinley supported tariffs as a way of supporting domestic industries and raising revenue outside
of an income tax. Smoot and Hawley, of the infamous Great Depression tariff, were both Republicans.
Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely
non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman
Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War.
But starting in the first decade of the 1900s and continuing gradually through the '50s, this
balance began to be upset, especially on trade but also on issues of war and peace. Progressives
within the Republican Party began to challenge support for trade protection and argue for a more
hawkish approach to foreign affairs. The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad
made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital.
The two defining moments that led to paleocon decline were Taft's defeat and the suppressing of
the John Birch Society by William F. Buckley and National Review in the early 1960s. The Birch Society
differed strongly from the most isolationist of paleocons on foreign affairs; it was named after
an American missionary killed by Chinese communists in 1945, whom the group claimed as the first
casualty of the Cold War.
The organization advocated an aggressive, paranoid approach to the Soviet Union. But on other
issues they were right in sync: extremely anti-immigration, hostile to foreign trade, supportive
of limited government (except where trade, immigration, and anti-communism are concerned).
Buckley, along with Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and others, issued a series of attacks on the
society, which were successful in marginalizing it, and establishing Buckley and National Review's
brand of conservatism as the ideology's public face in America. "The attack established them as the
'responsible Right,'" according to
Buckley biographer John Judis, "and moved them out of the crackpot far Right and toward the great
center of American politics." It was a key victory for the New Right, and a key loss for the Old
Right.
The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist,
America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers
in the neoconservative movement. While not everyone in the paleoconservative movement was an
anti-Semite, it certainly had an anti-Semitism problem, which its attacks on the neocons revealed
frequently.
From the Sobran purge to Pat Buchanan
The saga of Joseph Sobran is a case in point. A longtime columnist at National Review, he was
fired by William F. Buckley in 1993 following years of open clashes about his attitude toward Israel
and Jewish people in general. In 1991, Buckley had dedicated an entire issue of the magazine to a
40,000-word essay he wrote,
"In Search of Anti-Semitism," in which he condemned Buchanan (then challenging President George
H.W. Bush in the GOP primaries) and his employee Sobran for anti-Jewish prejudice.
Buckley had a point. Sobran really was a world-class anti-Semite, writing in one National Review
column, "If Christians were sometimes hostile to Jews, that worked two ways. Some rabbinical authorities
held that it was permissible to cheat and even kill Gentiles."
After leaving NR, Sobran's writing, in the words of fellow paleocon and
American Conservative editor Scott McConnell, "deteriorated into the indefensible." He started
speaking at conferences organized by famed Holocaust denier David Irving and the denial group
Institute for Historical Review,
asking at the latter, "Why on earth is it 'anti-Jewish' to conclude from the evidence that the standard
numbers of Jews murdered are inaccurate, or that the Hitler regime, bad as it was in many ways, was
not, in fact, intent on racial extermination?"
While Sobran was purged, Buchanan continued his rise. His ability to distinguish himself from
the non-paleoconservatives was enhanced by the end of the Cold War. Many paleocons made an exception
to their isolationism for the unique evil of the Soviet Union. With that boogeyman gone, they retreated
to a stricter non-interventionism. They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on
terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the
Balkans.
The '90s anti-immigrant panic, and the era's high-profile trade deals, made Buchanan and the paleocons'
views on those issues appealing to base Republicans tired of pro-trade, pro-migration GOPers.
... ... ...
Paleocons love Trump
Trump fits into this tradition quite well. He's less stridently anti–welfare state, and less socially
conservative than most paleoconservatives. But he is a great exemplar of the movement's core belief:
America should come first, and trade and migration from abroad are direct threats to its way of life.
"We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability
in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's
edge." That's pure paleocon.
Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution
going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing
a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination
in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign
policy address of Wednesday.
…Whether the issue is trade, immigration or foreign policy, says Trump, "we are putting the
American people first again." U.S. policy will be dictated by U.S. national interests.
"I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative. … I don't think [Trump's] a social
conservative,"
he elaborated in an interview with the Daily Caller. But he added, "I was just astonished to
see him raise the precise issues on which we ran in the 1990s. … Donald Trump has raised three
issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself."
It's not just Buchanan, either.
Derbyshire
has said that Trump is "doing the Lord's work shaking up the GOP side of the 2016 campaign," and
in another column
volunteered
his services as a speechwriter.
Virgil Goode, a former Congress member who was the paleocon Constitution Party's 2012 nominee,
has endorsed Trump as the only candidate serious about immigration. Taki has featured reams of pro-Trump
coverage, like
this piece praising his economic nationalism.
Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative
as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other.
"... Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him. ..."
"... Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq, but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders. ..."
Published in Le Devoir (Canada) on 14 March 2016 by Charles Benjamin
[link to original]
After having shaken up the American establishment, Donald Trump's unexpected success is sowing
panic in the neoconservative camp. Known for the failed crusade they led against Iraq, the neoconservatives
are looking for a new icon to bring their ideals back to life. The announced defeat of their favorite,
Marco Rubio, has not convinced them to join forces with the lead candidate, whose populism goes against
their political convictions.
The controversial candidate's nomination could thus lead to a neoconservative exodus to the Hillary
Clinton clan, who is embodying their ideological stance more and more. This break-off would reveal
the cleavage that separates the presidential candidates. Besides the personalities, the primary elections
are the setting for a showdown between the deeply engrained political traditions of American history.
Marco Rubio: The Neoconservative Hope
Neoconservatives stem from former Democrats who were opposed to the nomination of George McGovern,
who advocated détente with the Soviet Union during the 1972 primary election. They were seduced by
the ideological zeal with which Ronald Reagan was fighting "the evil empire." The Sept. 11 attacks
sealed their grip on George W. Bush's presidency. Taken over by the missionary spirit bequeathed
by Woodrow Wilson, they wanted to free the Middle East at gunpoint and export democracy there as
a remedy to terrorism. They had a nearly blind faith in the moral superiority and military capabilities
of their country. Iraq was like a laboratory for them, where they played wizards-in-training without
accepting defeat.
In a hurry to undo Barack Obama's legacy, neoconservatives are advising Marco Rubio in regaining
the White House. They are thrilled with the belligerent speech by the candidate, who is reminiscent
of Reagan. Settled on re-affirming the dominance of the U.S., Rubio has committed to increasing the
defense budget, toughening the sanctions against Moscow, providing weapons to Ukraine, and expanding
NATO to the Russian border. He intends to increase troops to fight the Islamic State group, revive
the alliance with Israel, and end the nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. The son of Cuban immigrants,
he also promises to end all dialogue with the Castro regime and to tighten the embargo against the
island.
Donald Trump: The Paleoconservative
Donald Trump's detractors describe him as an impostor who has a serious lack of understanding
of international affairs. Yet, he has set himself apart by cultivating a noninterventionist tradition
that goes back to the interwar period. Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction
of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America
First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert
Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning
of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him.
Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances
do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq,
but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his
admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military
bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating
a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of
regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders.
Hillary Clinton: The Democratic Hawk
Will Donald Trump's noninterventionist temptation and unpredictable character lead the neoconservatives
to make up with their former political group? Two figures of the movement have already repudiated
the Republican lead and announced their future support of Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic candidate boasts a much more robust and interventionist position than Obama. Annoyed
with her boss's caution while she was secretary of state, Clinton was pleading early on to send massive
reinforcements in Afghanistan. She believes in U.S. humanitarian imperialism and persuaded the president
to use force against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Her call to help Syrian rebels at the dawn of the
Arab Spring was ignored. Now, she is giving faint support to the agreement negotiated with Iran and
supports the creation of a military exclusion zone over Syria. Her platform offers a new base for
neoconservatives, who will have to decide if they will stay loyal to their ideals or to their party.
"... Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically voting against it when it no longer mattered ..."
"... Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security while Cruz supports it ..."
"... Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug" and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia ..."
"... Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism ..."
But Donald Trump has changed everything. He has created the potential for a different movement
altogether. Not only is immigration at the center of his campaign, it's part of a larger agenda
that is genuinely different from the "movement conservatism" of Ted Cruz:
Trade.Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter
of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically
voting against it when it no longer mattered [Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill,
blasts GOP leaders, by Manu Raju, Politico, June 23, 2015]
Safety Net. Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security
while Cruz supports it [Where the presidential candidates stand on Social Security, by
Steve Vernon, MoneyWatch, November 23, 2015] Trump is also placing the protection of Medicare
at the center of his campaign, defying conservative movement dogma [Debate over Medicare, Social
Security, other federal benefits divides GOP, by Robert Costa and Ed O'Keefe,Washington Post,
November 4, 2015]
Russia.Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised
Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks
to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug"
and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia
[Ted Cruz: Russia-US tensions increasing over weak foreign policy, by Sandy Fitzgerald,Newsmax,
October 7, 2015]
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians
"consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern
Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism [Trump: Absolutely
An Assault on Christianity, by Joe Kovacs, WND, August 25, 2015]. At the same time, while Trump
has been quick to defend American Christians from cultural assaults, he is also probably the
Republican "most friendly" to gay rights, as homosexual columnist Mark Stern has mischievously
noted [Of course Donald Trump is the Most Pro-Gay Republican Presidential Candidate, Slate,
December 18, 2015]
http://www.unz.com/article/whither-the-american-right/
Military coup sounds awfully good to me right about now!
xxx
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with
hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians
as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism
Maybe, I'm misunderstanding something; maybe I'm just not sure what "insufficiently pro-Israeli"
means, but Ted Cruz didn't condemn the group of Middle Eastern Christians for being "pro-Israel".
He condemned them for being anti-Israel, and said he wouldn't stand with them if they didn't stand
with Israel.
"... Admitting that the Iraq war was a grievous, horrible error is necessary but not sufficient to reform Republican foreign policy. ..."
"... The trouble with the rest of the 2016 field wasn't just that many of the candidates were Iraq war dead-enders, but that they were so obsessed with the idea of American "leadership" that almost all of them thought that the U.S. needed to be involved in multiple conflicts in different parts of the world in one way or another. ..."
"... Almost none of the declared 2016 candidates opposed the Libyan war at the time, and very few concluded that the problem with intervening in Libya was the intervention itself. The standard hawkish line on Libya for years has been that the U.S. should have committed itself to another open-ended exercise in stabilizing a country we helped to destabilize. ..."
"... Until Republican politicians and their advisers start to understand that reflexive support for "action" (and some kind of military action at that) is normally the wrong response, we can't expect much to change. Most Republican foreign policy professionals seem to hold the same shoddy assumptions that led them to endorse all of the interventions of the last 15 years without exception, and nothing that has happened during that time has caused most of them to reexamine those assumptions. ..."
"... Until they stop fetishizing American "leadership" and invoking "American exceptionalism" as an excuse to meddle in every new crisis, Republicans will end up in the same cul-de-sac of self-defeating belligerence. ..."
"... Opposition to the deal reflects so many of the flaws in current Republican foreign policy views: automatic opposition to any diplomatic compromise that might actually work, grossly exaggerating the potential threat from another state, conflating U.S. interests with those of unreliable client states, continually moving goalposts to judge a negotiated deal by unreasonable standards, insisting on maximalist concessions from the other side while refusing to agree to minimal concessions from ours, and making spurious and unfounded allegations of "appeasement" at every turn to score points against political adversaries at home. ..."
It would be a good start if all future presidential candidates could acknowledge the disastrous
and costly folly of the Iraq war, but it would only be a start. Admitting that the Iraq war was a
grievous, horrible error is necessary but not sufficient to reform Republican foreign policy.
The
trouble with the rest of the 2016 field wasn't just that many of the candidates were Iraq war dead-enders,
but that they were so obsessed with the idea of American "leadership" that almost all of them thought
that the U.S. needed to be involved in multiple conflicts in different parts of the world in one
way or another.
Almost none of the declared 2016 candidates opposed the Libyan war at the time, and
very few concluded that the problem with intervening in Libya was the intervention itself. The standard
hawkish line on Libya for years has been that the U.S. should have committed itself to another open-ended
exercise in stabilizing a country we helped to destabilize. Most Republican politicians are so wedded
to a belief in the efficacy of using hard power that they refuse to admit that there are many problems
that the U.S. can't and shouldn't try to solve with it.
Until Republican politicians and their advisers start to understand that reflexive support
for "action" (and some kind of military action at that) is normally the wrong response, we can't
expect much to change. Most Republican foreign policy professionals seem to hold the same shoddy
assumptions that led them to endorse all of the interventions of the last 15 years without exception,
and nothing that has happened during that time has caused most of them to reexamine those assumptions.
Until they stop fetishizing American "leadership" and invoking "American exceptionalism" as
an excuse to meddle in every new crisis, Republicans will end up in the same cul-de-sac of self-defeating
belligerence. Unless Republicans adopt a much less expansive definition of "vital interests,"
they will routinely end up on the wrong side of most major foreign policy debates.
Finally, unless most Republican politicians and their advisers overcome their aversion to diplomatic
engagement they will end up supporting costlier, less effective, and more destructive policies for
lack of practical alternatives. The virtually unanimous opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran
is a good example of the sort of thing that a reformed Republican Party wouldn't do.
Opposition to
the deal reflects so many of the flaws in current Republican foreign policy views: automatic opposition
to any diplomatic compromise that might actually work, grossly exaggerating the potential threat
from another state, conflating U.S. interests with those of unreliable client states, continually
moving goalposts to judge a negotiated deal by unreasonable standards, insisting on maximalist concessions
from the other side while refusing to agree to minimal concessions from ours, and making spurious
and unfounded allegations of "appeasement" at every turn to score points against political adversaries
at home.
Obviously these are habits cultivated over decades and are not going to be fixed quickly
or easily, but if the next Republican administration (whenever that may be) doesn't want to conduct
foreign policy as disastrously as the last one did they are habits that need to be broken.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been
published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch
Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter.
This thread is interesting by presence of complete lunatics like
Brett Dunbar , who claims tha capitalism leads to peace.
Notable quotes:
"... Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively [^1] to defend or promote national interests ..."
"... Bringing Bush, Blair, and Aznar to justice would be the greatest deterrent for further war. I like the part about economic crimes. Justice brings peace. ..."
"... War is a tool of competition for resources. Think Iraq. ..."
"... the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal hanged Nazis for doing exactly what Bush 2 and company did ..."
"... The Labour leader said last year Blair could face trial if the report found he was guilty of launching an illegal war. ..."
"... John Quiggin, I think your definition of militarism is flawed. I think that cultural attitudes and the social status of the military are very important as well. To paraphrase Andrew Bacevich, Militarism is the idea that military solutions to a country's problems are more effective than they really are. Militarism assumes that the military's way of running things is inherently correct. A militaristic society glorifies violence and the people who carry it out in the name of the state. ..."
"... They chose force first and dealt with the consequences later. So militarism can exist and flourish on a tight budget. Its all about mentality. ..."
"... The notion that capitalism is peaceful is preposterous, even if you accept the bizarre notion that only wars between the capitalist Great Powers really count as wars. It's true that it's tacitly presumed by many, perhaps most, learned authorities. But that is an indictment of the authorities, not a justification for the claim. The closely related claim that capitalism is responsible for technological advancement on inspection suggests that the real story is that technological progress enabled the European states to begin empires that funded capitalist development. ..."
"... Russia and China had achieved success in Central Asia, unlike the United States, by pursuing a respectful [sic] foreign policy based on mutual interest. ..."
"... Although the term 'global policeman' (or 'cops of the world') is mostly used ironically (in my experience), 'policeman' does have a straight meaning, denoting a person who operates under the authority of law, whereas the supreme Mafia capo is a law and authority unto himself, at least until someone assassinates him. I think this second metaphor more closely approximates the position and behavior of the present United States. ..."
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from the
catastrophe of the Great War and the decades of slaughter that followed it. Rather than get bogged
down (yet again) in specifics that invariably decline into arguments about who know more of the historical
detail, I'm going to try a different approach, looking at the militarist ideology that gave us the
War, and trying to articulate an anti-militarist alternative.
Wikipedia offers a definition
of militarism which, with the deletion of a single weasel word, seems to be entirely satisfactory
and also seems to describe the dominant view of the political class, and much of the population in
nearly every country in the world.
Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain
a strong military capability and be prepared to use it
aggressively[^1] to defend or promote national
interests
Wikipedia isn't as satisfactory (to me) on
anti-militarism, so I'll
essentially reverse the definition above, and offer the following provisional definition
Anti-militarism is the belief or desire that a military expenditure should held to the minimum
required to protect a country against armed attack and that, with the exception of self-defense,
military power should not be used to promote national interests
I'd want to qualify this a bit, but it seems like a good starting point.
... ... ...
My case for anti-militarism has two main elements.
First, the consequentialist case against the discretionary use of military force is overwhelming.
Wars cause huge damage and destruction and preparation for war is immensely costly. Yet it is
just about impossible to find examples where a discretionary decision to go to war has produced
a clear benefit for the country concerned, or even for its ruling class. Even in cases where war
is initially defensive, attempts to secure war aims beyond the status quo ante have commonly led
to disaster.
Second, war is (almost) inevitably criminal since it involves killing and maiming people who
have done nothing personally to justify this; not only civilians, but soldiers (commonly including
conscripts) obeying the lawful orders of their governments.
Having made the strong case, I'll admit a couple of exceptions. First, although most of the above
has been posed in terms of national military power, there's nothing special in the argument that
requires this. Collective self-defense by a group of nations is justified (or not) on the same grounds
as national self-defense.
... ... ...
[^1]: The deleted word "aggressive" is doing a lot of work here. Almost no government ever admits
to being aggressive. Territorial expansion is invariable represented as the restoration of historically
justified borders while the overthrow of a rival government is the liberation of its oppressed people.
So, no one ever has to admit to being a militarist.
Is it obvious that limiting use of military force to self-defense entails a minimal capability
for force projection?
If the cost of entirely securing a nation's territory (Prof Q, you will
recognise the phrase "Fortress Australia") is very high relative to the cost of being able to
threaten an adversary's territorial interests in a way that is credible and meaningful – would
it not then be unavoidably tempting to appeal to an expanded notion of self-defence and buy a
force-projection capability, even if your intent is genuinely peaceful?
To speculate a little further – I would worry that so many people would need to be committed
to "national defence" on a purely defensive model that it would have the unintended side effect
of promoting a martial culture that normalises the use of armed force.
Of course, none of this applies if everyone abandons their force-projection capability – but
is that a stable equilibrium, even if it could be achieved?
Well, you'll be pleased to know that they're working hard on WWI's perception [1]. Many of us
working against militarism. Not easy. And the linked NYtimes piece is worth reading.
I think it'd make sense to talk about imperialism, rather than militarism. Military is just a
tool. One could, for example, bribe another country's military leaders, or finance a paramilitary
force in the targeted state, or just organize a violence-inciting mass-media campaign to produce
the same result.
We'd need an alternative history of the Cold War to work through the ramifications of a less aggressive
Western military. Russia would have developed nuclear weapons even if there hadn't been an army
at its borders, and the borders of the Eastern bloc were arguably more the result of opportunity
than necessity. The colonial wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan and everywhere else could be similarly
described.
After World War I, the chastened combatants sheepishly disarmed, cognizant of their
insanity. World War II taught a different lesson, perhaps because, in contrast to the previous
kerfuffle, both the Russian and American behemoths became fully engaged and unleashed their full
industrial and demographic might, sweeping their common foes from the field, and found themselves
confronting each other in dubious peace.
Both sides armed for the apocalypse with as many ways to bring about the end of civilization
as they could devise, all the while mindlessly meddling with each other around the globe. Eventually
the Russians gave up; their system really was as bad as we thought, and Moore's law is pitiless:
the gap expands exponentially. They've shrunk, and so has their military.
So why is America such a pre-eminent bully, able to defeat the rest of the world combined in
combat? Habit, pride, domestic politics, sure; but blame our allies as well. Britain and France
asked us to to kick ass in Libya, and Syria is not that different. We've got this huge death-dealing
machine and everyone tells us how to use it.
Ridiculous as it is, it's not nearly as bad as it was a hundred years ago, or seventy, or forty.
We may still be on course to extinguish human civilization, but warfare no longer looks like its
likely cause.
david 07.04.16 at 8:14 am
As you point out in fn1, nobody seems to ever fight "aggressive" wars. By the same token, there's
no agreed status quo ante. For France in 1913, the status quo ante bellum has Lorraine restored
to France. Also, Germany fractures into Prussia and everyone else, and the Germans should go back
to putting out local regionalist fires (as Austria-Hungary is busy doing) rather than challenging
French supremacy in Europe and Africa please.
The position advanced in the essay is one for
an era where ships do not hop from coaling station to coaling station, where the supremacy of
the Most Favoured Nation system means that powerful countries do not find their domestic politics
held hostage for access to raw materials controlled by other countries, where shipping lanes are
neutral as a matter of course, and where the Green Revolution has let rival countries be content
to bid, not kill, for limited resources. We can argue over whether this state of affairs is contingent
on the tiger-repelling rock or actual, angry tigers, but I don't think we disagree that this is
the state of affairs, at least for the countries powerful enough to matter.
But, you know, that's not advice that 1913 would find appealing, which is a little odd given
the conceit that this is about the Somme. The Concert of Europe bounced from war to war to war.
Every flag that permits war in this 'anti-militarist' position is met and then some. It was unending
crisis after crisis that miraculously never escalated to total war, but no country today would
regard crises of those nature as acceptable today – hundreds of thousands of Germans were besieging
Paris in 1870! Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen were dead! If Napoleon III had the Bomb he would
have used it. But he did not. There was no three score years of postwar consumer economy under
the peaceful shadow of nuclear armageddon.
Anderson 07.04.16 at 9:07 am
3: "After World War I, the chastened combatants sheepishly disarmed, cognizant of their insanity."
One could only wish this were true. Germany was disarmed by force and promptly schemed for the
day it would rearm; Russia's civil war continued for some years; France and Britain disarmed because
they were broke, not because they'd recognized any folly.
… Quiggin, I don't know if you read Daniel Larison at The American Conservative; his domestic
politics would likely horrify us both, but happily
jake the antisoshul sohulist 07.04.16 at 1:32 pm
Other than the reference to "the redempive power of war", the mythification of the military
is not mentioned in the definition of militarism. I don't think a definition of militarism can
focus only on the political/policy aspects and ignore the cultural aspects.
Militarism is as much cultural as it is political, and likely even more so.
Theophylact 07.04.16 at 2:17 pm
Tacitus:
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt,
pacem appellant (To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a
desolation and they call it peace).
LFC 07.04.16 at 4:55 pm
from the OP:
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from
the catastrophe of the Great War
The counterargument to this statement is that the world's 'great powers' did indeed learn
something from the Great War: namely, they learned that great-power war is a pointless
endeavor. Hitler of course didn't learn that, which is, basically, why WW2 happened. But there
hasn't been a great-power war - i.e., a sustained conflict directly between two or more
'great' or major powers - since WW2 (or some wd say the Korean War qualifies as a great-power
war, in which case 1953 wd be the date of the end of the last great-power war).
The next step is to extend the learned lesson about great-power war to other kinds of war.
That extension has proven difficult, but there's no reason to assume it's forever impossible.
-–
p.s. There are various extant definitions of 'great power', some of which emphasize factors
other than military power. For purposes of this comment, though, one can go with Mearsheimer's
definition: "To qualify as a great power, a state [i.e., country] must have sufficient
military assets to put up a serious fight in an all-out conventional war against the most
[militarily] powerful state in the world" (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), p.5).
Using this definition of 'great power', the last war in which two or more great powers
directly fought each other in any kind of sustained fashion (i.e. more than a short conflict
of roughly a week or two [or less]) was, as stated above, either WW2 or Korea (depending on
one's view of whether China qualified as a great power at the time of the Korean War).
Lupita 07.04.16 at 7:06 pm
ZM @ 7 quoting Mary Kaldor:
An emphasis on justice and accountability for war crimes, human rights violations and economic
crimes, is something that is demanded by civil society in all these conflicts. Justice is
probably the most significant policy that makes a human security approach different from
current stabilisation approaches.
Bringing Bush, Blair, and Aznar to justice would be the greatest deterrent for further
war. I like the part about economic crimes. Justice brings peace.
Kevin Cox 07.04.16 at 9:19 pm
The place to start is with the Efficient Market Hypothesis as the mechanism to allocate
resources. This hypothesis says that entities compete for markets. War is a tool of
competition for resources. Think Iraq.
Instead of allocating resources via markets let us allocate resources cooperatively via the
ideas of the Commons. Start with "Think like a Commoner: A short introduction to the Life of
the Commons" by David Bollier.
A country that uses this approach to the allocation of resources will not want to go to war
and will try to persuade other countries to use the same approach.
The place to start is with renewable energy. Find a way to "distribute renewable energy" based
on the commons and anti militarism will likely follow.
Anarcissie 07.05.16 at 12:31 am
Lupita 07.04.16 at 10:22 pm @ 46 -
While the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal hanged Nazis for doing exactly what Bush 2 and
company did, I doubt if starting a war of aggression is against U.S. law in an
enforceable way. However, since the war was completely unjustified, I suppose Bush could be
charged with murder (and many other crimes). This sort of question is now rising in the UK
with regard to Blair because of the Chilcot inquiry.
Ze K 07.05.16 at 1:29 pm
Not in internal national politics, but in international law. There's something called
'crimes againt peace', for example. Obviously it's not there to prosecute leaders of
boss-countries, but theoretically it could. And, in fact, the fact that it's accepted that the
leaders of powerful countries are not to be procesuted is exactly a case of perversion of
justice you are talking about… no?
Anarcissie 07.05.16 at 1:56 pm
Watson Ladd 07.05.16 at 3:57 am @ 56 -
According to what I read at the time the US, or at least some of its leadership, encouraged
the Georgian leadership to believe that if they tried to knock off a few pieces of Russia, the
US would somehow back them up if the project didn't turn out as well as hoped. Now, I get this
from the same media that called the Georgian invasion of Russia 'Russian aggression' so it may
not be very reliable, but that's what was said, and the invasion of a state the size of Russia
by a state the size of Georgia doesn't make much sense unless the latter thought they were
going to get some kind of help if things turned out badly. I guess the model was supposed to
be the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, but bombing the hell out of Serbia is one thing and
bombing the hell out of Russia quite another.
It is interesting in regard to Georgia 2008 to trace the related career of Mr. Saakashvili,
who was then the president of Georgia, having replaced Mr. Shevardnadze in one of those color
revolutions, and was reported to have said that he wanted Georgia to become America's Israel
in central Asia. The Georgians apparently did not relish this proposed role once they found
out what it entailed and kicked him out. He subsequently popped up in Ukraine, where according
to Wikipedia he is the governor of the Odessa Oblast, whatever that means. Again, I get this
from our media, so it may all be lies; but it does seem to make a kind of sense which I
probably don't need to spell out.
Ze K 07.05.16 at 2:10 pm
No, south Ossetia was a part of Georgia. They were fighting for autonomy (Georgia is a bit
of an empire itself), and Russian peacekeeping troops were placed there to prevent farther
infighting. One day, Georgian military, encouraged by US neocons, started shelling South
Ossetian capital, killing, among other people, some of the Russian peacekeeprs, and this is
how the 2008 war started.
Ze K 07.05.16 at 2:31 pm
…a lot of these ethnic issues in Georgia are really the legacy of stalinism, when in many
places (Abkhazia, for sure) local populations suffered mass-repressions with ethnic Georgians
migrating there and becaming majorities (not to mention, bosses). Fasil Iskander, great Abkhaz
writer, described that. Once the USSR collapsed, it all started to unwind, and Georgia got
screwed. Oh well.
Anarcissie 07.05.16 at 4:34 pm
Ze K 07.05.16 at 2:38 pm @ 80 -
The Russian ruling class experimented with being the US ruling class's buddy in the 1990s,
sort of. It didn't work well for them. The destruction of Yugoslavia, the business in Abkhazia
and Ossetia, the coup in Ukraine, the American intervention in Syria which must seem (heh) as
if aimed at the Russian naval base at Tartus, the extensions of NATO, the ABMs, and so on,
these cannot have been reassuring. Reassurance then had to come from taking up bordering
territory, building weapons, and the like. Let us hope the Russian leadership do not also come
to the conclusion that the best defense is a good offense.
Lupita 07.05.16 at 5:52 pm
We're a nation of killers.
Justice can ameliorate that problem. For example, Pinochet being indicted, charged, and
placed under house arrest until his death (though never convicted) for crimes against
humanity, murder, torture, embezzlement, arms trafficking, drugs trafficking, tax fraud, and
passport forgery and, in Argentina, Videla getting a life sentence plus another 500 being
convicted with many cases still in progress, at the very least may give pause to those who
would kill and torture as a career enhancement move in these countries and, hopefully,
throughout Latin America. Maybe one of these countries can at least indict Kissinger for
Operación Cóndor and give American presidents something extra to plan for when planning their
covert operations.
For heads of state to stop behaving as if they were untouchable and people believing that they
are, we need more convictions, more accountability, more laws, more justice.
Asteele 07.05.16 at 7:42 pm
In a capitalist system if you can make money by impoverishing others you do it. There are
individual capitalists and firms that make money off of war, the fact that the public at large
sees no aggregate benefit in not a problem for them.
Anarcissie 07.05.16 at 8:35 pm
LFC 07.05.16 at 5:28 pm @ 85 -
I think that, on the evidence, one must doubt (to put it mildly) that either the Russian or
the American leadership care whether Mr. Assad is a nice person or not. They have not worried
much about a lot of other not-nice people over recent decades as long as the not-nice people
seemed to serve their purposes. Hence I can only conclude that the business in Syria, which
goes back well before the appearance of the Islamic State, is dependent on some other
variable, like maybe the existence of a Russian naval base in mare nostrum. I'm just guessing,
of course; more advanced conspiratists see Israeli, Iranian, Saudi, and Turkish connections.
Note as well that the business in Ukraine involved a big Russian naval base. And I used to
heard it said that navies were obsolete!
ZM 07.06.16 at 7:06 am
There has been coverage in The Guardian about the Chilcot report into the UK military
interventions in Iraq.
"The former civil servant promised that the report would answer some of the questions raised
by families of the dead British soldiers. "The conversations we've had with the families were
invaluable in shaping some of the report," Chilcot said.
Some of the families will be at the launch of the report at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, at
Westminster. Others will join anti-war protesters outside who are calling for Blair to be
prosecuted for alleged war crimes at the international criminal court in The Hague.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday, Karen Thornton, whose son Lee was
killed in Iraq in 2006, said she was convinced that Blair had exaggerated intelligence about
Iraq's capabilities.
"If it is proved that he lied then obviously he should be held accountable for it," she said,
adding that meant a trial for war crimes. "He shouldn't be allowed to just get away with it,"
she said. But she did not express confidence that Chilcot's report would provide the
accountability that she was hoping for. "Nobody's going to be held to account and that's so
wrong," she said. "We just want the truth."
Chilcot insisted that any criticism would be supported by careful examination of the evidence.
"We are not a court – not a judge or jury at work – but we've tried to apply the highest
possible standards of rigorous analysis to the evidence where we make a criticism."
…
Jeremy Corbyn, who will respond to the report in parliament on Wednesday, is understood to
have concluded that international laws are neither strong nor clear enough to make any war
crimes prosecution a reality. The Labour leader said last year Blair could face trial if
the report found he was guilty of launching an illegal war.
Corbyn is expected to fulfil a promise he made during his leadership campaign to apologise on
behalf of Labour for the war. He will speak in the House of Commons after David Cameron, who
is scheduled to make a statement shortly after 12.30pm. "
Only Tony Blair could read the Chilcot report and claim it vindicates his conduct.
LFC 07.06.16 at 5:48 pm
B. Dunbar @123
Interstate wars have declined, and the 'logic' you identify might be one of various reasons
for that.
The wars dominating the headlines today - e.g. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Ukraine/Donetsk/Russia - are not, however, classic interstate wars. They are either civil wars
or 'internationalized' civil wars or have a civil-war aspect. Thus the 'logic' of
business-wants-peace-and-trade doesn't really apply there. Apple doesn't want war w China but
Apple doesn't care that much whether there is a prolonged civil war in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan,
etc.
So even if one accepted the argument that 'capitalism' leads to peace, we'd be left w a set of
wars to which the argument doesn't apply. I don't have, obvs., the answer to the current
conflicts. I think (as already mentioned) that there are some steps that might prove helpful
in general if not nec. w.r.t. specific conflict x or y.
The Kaldor remark about reversing the predatory economy - by which I take it she means, inter
alia, black-market-driven, underground, in some cases criminal commerce connected to war - is
suggestive. Easier said than done, I'm sure. Plus strengthening peacekeeping. And one cd come
up w other things, no doubt.
Ze K 07.06.16 at 6:35 pm
@120, 121, yes, Georgians living in minority areas did suffer. But ethnic
cleansing/genocides that would've most likely taken place should the Georgian government have
had its way were prevented. Same as Crimea and Eastern Ukraine two years ago. This is not too
difficult to understand – if you try – is it? Similarly (to Georgians in Abkhasia) millions of
ethnic Russians suffered in the new central Asian republics, in Chechnya (all 100% were
cleansed, many killed), and, in a slightly softer manner, in the Baltic republics… But that's
okay with you, right? Well deserved? It's only when Abkhazs attack Georgians, then it's the
outrage, and only because Russia was defending the Abkhazs, correct?
Lupita 07.07.16 at 3:23 pm
My impression since yesterday is that, while Brits are making a very big deal out of the
Chilcot report, with much commentary about how momentous it is and the huge impact it will
have, coverage of this event by the US media is notoriously subdued, particularly compared
with the hysterical coverage Brexit got just some days ago. This leads me to believe that it
is indeed justice that is feared the most by western imperialists such as Bush, Blair, Howard,
Aznar, and Kwaśniewski and the elites that supported them and continue to cover up for them. I
take this cowardly and creepy silence in the US media as an indicator that Pax Americana is so
weakened that it cannot withstand the light of justice being shined upon it and that the end
is near.
Anarcissie 07.07.16 at 3:46 pm
Lupita 07.07.16 at 3:23 pm @ 147 - For the kind of people in the US who pay attention to
such things, the Chilcot Report is not really news. And the majority don't care, as witness
the fortunes of the Clintons.
Anarcissie 07.08.16 at 12:25 am
Brett Dunbar 07.07.16 at 11:47 pm @ 160 -
If capitalist types are so totally against war, it's hard to understand why the grand
poster child of capitalism, the plutocratic United States, is so addicted to war. It is hard
to consider it an aberration when the US has attacked dozens of countries not threatening it
over the last fifty or sixty years, killed or injured or beggared or terrorized millions of
noncombatants, and maintains hundreds of overseas bases and a world-destroying nuclear
stockpile. What could the explanation possibly be?
As human powers of production increase, at least in potential, existing scarcities of basic
goods such as food, medicine, and housing are overcome. If people now become satisfied with
their standard of living - not totally satisfied, but satisfied enough not to sweat and strain
all the time for more - sales, profits, and employment will fall, and capitalists will become
less important. In order to retain their ruling-class role, there needs to be a constant
crisis of production-consumption which only the capitalist masters of industry can solve.
Hence new scarcities must be produced. The major traditional methods of doing this have been
imperialism, war, waste, and consumerism (including advertising). Conceded, major processes of
environmental destruction such as climate change and the vitiating of antibiotics may lead to
powerful new self-reinforcing scarcities which will take their place next to their traditional
relatives, so that producing new scarcities would be less of a problem.
Anarcissie 07.08.16 at 2:30 am
LFC 07.08.16 at 1:30 am @ 163:
'OTOH, I don't think capitalism esp. needs war to create this kind of scarcity….'
But then one must explain why the major capitalist powers have engaged in so much of it, since
it is so dirty and risky. I suppose one possible explanation is that whoever has the power to
do so engages in it, capitalist or not; it is hardly a recent invention. However, I am mindful
of the position of the US at the end of World War 2, with 50% of the worlds total productive
capacity. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive! So war turned out to be pretty handy for some
people. And now we have lots of them.
Matt_L 07.08.16 at 3:32 am
John Quiggin, I think your definition of militarism is flawed. I think that cultural
attitudes and the social status of the military are very important as well. To paraphrase
Andrew Bacevich, Militarism is the idea that military solutions to a country's problems are
more effective than they really are. Militarism assumes that the military's way of running
things is inherently correct. A militaristic society glorifies violence and the people who
carry it out in the name of the state.
I also think that just reducing military spending or the capacity for military action is
not enough to counter serious militarism. Austria-Hungary was a very militaristic society, but
it spent the less on armaments than the other European Powers in the years leading up to 1914.
The leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy caused World War One by invading Serbia for
a crime committed by a Bosnian Serb subject of the Monarchy. They had some good guesses that
the Serbian military intelligence was involved, but not a lot of proof.
Franz Joseph and the other leaders chose to solve a foreign policy problem by placing armed
force before diplomacy and a complete criminal investigation. Their capacity to wage war
relative to the other great powers of Europe did not enter into their calculations. They
chose force first and dealt with the consequences later. So militarism can exist and flourish
on a tight budget. Its all about mentality.
stevenjohnson 07.08.16 at 9:29 pm
"Great Power warfare became a lot less common after 1815, at the same point that the most
advanced of the great powers developed capitalism."
In Europe, locus of the alleged Long Peace, there were the Greek Rebellion; the First and
Second Italian Wars of Independence; the First and Second Schleswig Wars; the Seven Weeks War;
the Crimean War; the Franco-Prussian War; the First and Second Balkan Wars. Wars between a
major capitalist state and another well established modern state included the Opium Wars; the
Mexican War; the French invasion of Mexico; the War of the Triple Alliance; the War of the
Pacific; the Spanish-American War; the Russo-Japanese War. Assaults by the allegedly peaceful
capitalist nations against non-state societies or weak traditional states are too numerous to
remember, but the death toll was enormous, on a scale matching the slaughter of the World
Wars.
Further the tensions between the Great Powers threatened war on numerous occasions, such as
conflict over the Oregon territory; the Aroostook "war;" the Trent Affair; two Moroccan
crises; the Fashoda Incident…again, these are too numerous to remember.
The notion that capitalism is peaceful is preposterous, even if you accept the bizarre
notion that only wars between the capitalist Great Powers really count as wars. It's true that
it's tacitly presumed by many, perhaps most, learned authorities. But that is an indictment of
the authorities, not a justification for the claim. The closely related claim that capitalism
is responsible for technological advancement on inspection suggests that the real story is
that technological progress enabled the European states to begin empires that funded
capitalist development.
Hidari 07.09.16 at 11:13 am
' Capitalist states tend to avoid war with their trading partners.'
This has an element of truth in it, but it can be parsed in a number of ways. For example,
'Rich, powerful countries tend to avoid war with other rich, powerful countries'. After all,
in the 2nd half of the 20th century, the US avoided going to war with Russia, despite having
clear economic interests in doing so (access to natural resources, markets) mainly because
Russia was strong (not least militarily) and the cost-benefit matrix never made sense (i.e.
from the Americans' point of view).
A much stronger case can be made that self-proclaimed Socialist states tend not to go to war
with each other. After all, there were big fallings out between the socialist (or 'socialist',
depending on your point of view) countries in the 20th century but they rarely turned to war,
and when they did (Vietnam-Cambodia, Vietnam-China) they were short term and relatively
limited in scope. The Sino-Soviet split was a split, not a war.
But again this is probably not the best way to look at it. A much stronger case can be made
that the basic reason for the non-appearance of a Chinese-Russian war was simply the size and
population of those countries. The risks outweighed any potential benefits.
Of course, between 1914 and 1945, lots of capitalist states went to war with each other.
Anarcissie 07.09.16 at 3:22 pm
Layman 07.09.16 at 2:59 pm @ 188 -
One explanation, I think already given, is that the capitalist powers were too busy with
imperial seizures in what we now call the Third World to fight one another. In the New World,
the United States and some South American states were busy annihilating the natives, speaking
of ethnic cleansing. If capitalism is a pacific influence, the behavior of the British and
American ruling classes since 1815 seems incomprehensible, right down to the present: the
plutocrat Clinton ought to be the peace candidate, not the scary war freak.
Hidari 07.09.16 at 5:44 pm
Surely (assuming that it's real) the decline in wars in some parts of the world since 1945
is because of the Pax Americana?
Most countries are too frightened to attack (at least directly) the United States. There is a
sense in which the US really is the 'Global Policeman'.
…WaPo continues that Trump is "broadly noninterventionist, questioning the need for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and calling for Europe to play a larger role in ensuring its
security." Page, too, "has regularly criticized U.S. intervention":
In one article for Global Policy Journal, he wrote, "From U.S. policies toward Russia to Iran
to China, sanctimonious expressions of moral superiority stand at the root of many problems
seen worldwide today."
Page wrote that the war in eastern Ukraine was "precipitated by U.S. meddling in the Maidan
revolution…
And so, here we are: Trump is the lesser evil in this cycle. Vote Trump, save the world.
LFC 07.10.16 at 2:40 pm
Hidari @192
Surely (assuming that it's real) the decline in wars in some parts of the world since 1945
is because of the Pax Americana?
Started to write a long reply but decided no point. Shorter version: reasons for no
WW2-style-war in Europe from '45 to '90 are multiple; 'pax Americana' only one factor of many.
End of CW was destabilizing in various ways (e.g., wars in ex-Yugoslavia) but so far not
enough to reverse the overall trend in Europe. Decline in destructiveness of conflict in some
(not all) other parts of the world has to do in large part w change in nature/type of conflict
(sustained interstate wars have traditionally been the most destructive and they don't happen
much or at all anymore, for reasons that are somewhat debatable, but, again, pax Americana wd
be only one of multiple reasons, if that).
LFC 07.10.16 at 2:54 pm
Re Carter Page (see Ze K @194)
Page refused [speaking in Moscow] refused to comment specifically on the U.S. presidential
election, his relationship with Trump or U.S. sanctions against Russia, saying he was in
Russia as a "private citizen." He gave a lecture, titled "The Evolution of the World Economy:
Trends and Potential," in which he noted that Russia and China had achieved success in
Central Asia, unlike the United States, by pursuing a respectful [sic] foreign policy based on
mutual interest.
He generally avoided questions on U.S. foreign policy, but when one attendee asked him
whether he really believed the United States was a "liberal, democratic society," Page told
him to "read between the lines."
"If I'm understanding the direction you're coming from, I tend to agree with you that it's
not always as liberal as it may seem," he said. "I'm with you."
In a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board in March, Trump named Page, a former
Merrill Lynch executive in Moscow who later advised the Russian state energy giant Gazprom on
major oil and gas deals, as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page refused to say whether
his Moscow trip included a meeting with Russian officials. He is scheduled to deliver a
graduation address Friday at the New Economic School, a speech that some officials are
expected to attend.
Above quote is from the Stars & Stripes piece, evidently republished from WaPo, linked at the
'Washington's Blog' that Ze K linked to.
If you want to put for. policy in the hands of the likes of Carter Page (former Merrill Lynch
exec., Gazprom adviser), vote Trump all right.
HRC's for. policy advisers may not be great, but I don't think this guy Page is better. He
does have connections to the Russian govt as a past consultant, apparently, which is no doubt
why Ze K is so high on him.
Ze K 07.10.16 at 3:16 pm
You bet this guy Page is better. Anyone is better.
And why would I care at all (let alone "no doubt") if he was a Gazprom consultant? What the
fuck was that supposed to mean? Asshole much?
LFC 07.10.16 at 5:25 pm
And why would I care at all (let alone "no doubt") if he was a Gazprom consultant?
B.c Gazprom is a Russian state-owned company and a fair inference from your many comments on
this blog (not just this thread but others) is that you are, in general, favorably disposed to
the present Russian govt. and its activities. Not Gazprom in particular necessarily, but the
govt in general. You make all these comments and then get upset when they are read to say what
they say.
You consistently attack HRC as a war-monger, as corrupt etc. You consistently say anyone wd
be better. "Vote Trump save the world." You said there was no Poland in existence in '39 when
the USSR invaded it. Your comments and exchanges in this thread are here for anyone to read,
so I don't have to continue.
Ze K 07.10.16 at 5:44 pm
"You make all these comments and then get upset when they are read to say what they
say. "
You're right; come to think of it, you've been into slimeball-style slur for a while now,
and I should've gotten used to it already, and just ignored you. Fine, carry on.
Anarcissie 07.11.16 at 2:19 am
@Hidari 07.10.16 at 2:57 pm @ 197 -
Although the term 'global policeman' (or 'cops of the world') is mostly used ironically
(in my experience), 'policeman' does have a straight meaning, denoting a person who operates
under the authority of law, whereas the supreme Mafia capo is a law and authority unto
himself, at least until someone assassinates him. I think this second metaphor more closely
approximates the position and behavior of the present United States.
War tends to perpetuate itself. As soon as one brute gets killed, another takes his place; when the
new guy falls, another materializes.
Consider Richard Nixon's intensification of the American war on Cambodia. In hopes of maintaining
an advantage over the Communists as he withdrew American troops from Southeast Asia, Nixon ravaged
Vietnam's western neighbor with approximately
500,000 tons
of bombs between 1969 and 1973. But instead of destroying the Communist menace, these attempts
to buttress Nguyen Van Thieu's South Vietnamese government and then Lon Nol's Cambodian government
only transformed it. The bombings led many of Nixon's early targets to desert the eastern
region of the country in favor of Cambodia's interior where they organized with the Khmer Rouge.
As a CIA official noted in 1973, the Khmer Rouge started to
"us[e] damage
caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda." By appealing to Cambodians who were
affected by the bombing raids, this brutal Communist organization, a peripheral batch of 10,000 fighters
in 1969, had expanded by 1973 into a formidable army with 20 times as many members. Two years later,
they seized control of Phnom Penh and murdered more than
one million of their compatriots in a grisly
genocide.
The following decade, when war erupted between the forces of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the United States hedged its bets by providing military assistance to
both
governments as they slaughtered
hundreds of thousands
of people. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, ousted the emir, and ultimately assassinated about
1,000 Kuwaitis, the
United States turned on its former ally with an incursion that directly killed
3,500 innocent Iraqis and suffocated
100,000
others through the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. The US also maintained an embargo against
Iraq throughout the 1990s, a program that contributed to the deaths of
500,000
Iraqis and that UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Dennis Halliday deemed "genocidal"
when he explained his 1998 resignation.
The newly restored Kuwaiti government, for its part, retaliated against minority groups for their
suspected "collaboration" with the Iraqi occupiers. The government threw Palestinians out of schools,
fired its Palestinian employees, and threatened thousands with "arbitrary
arrest, torture, rape, and murder." Beyond that, Kuwait interdicted the reentry of more than
150,000 Palestinians and tens of thousands of
Bedoons who had evacuatedKuwait when the tyrant Saddam took over. Thus, years of American maneuvering to achieve peace
and security – by playing Iran and Iraq off of each other, by privileging Kuwaiti authoritarians
over Iraqi authoritarians, by killing tens of thousands of innocent people who got in the way – failed.
The chase continues today as the United States targets the savage "Islamic State," another monster
that the West inadvertently
helped create by assisting foreign militants. History suggests that this war against Islamism,
if taken to its logical extreme, will prove to be an endless game of whack-a-mole. Yes, our government
can assassinate some terrorists; what it cannot do is stop aggrieved
civilian victims of Western bombings from replacing the dead by
becoming terrorists
themselves. Furthermore, even if ISIS disappeared tomorrow, there would still exist soldiers – in
Al-Qaeda, for instance – prepared to fill the void. That will remain true no matter how many bombs
the West drops, no matter how many weapons it tenders to foreign militias, no matter how many authoritarian
governments it buttresses in pursuit of "national security."
So, what are we to do when foreign antagonists, whatever the source of their discontent, urge
people to attack us? We should abandon the Sisyphean task of eradicating anti-American sentiments
abroad and invest in security at home. Gathering foreign intelligence is important when it allows
us to strengthen our defenses here, but bombing people in Iraq and Syria, enabling the Saudi
murder of
Yemenis, and deploying troops to
Cameroon are futile steps when enemy organizations can constantly replenish their supply of fighters
by propagandizing among natives who deplore Western intervention.
This understanding, though underappreciated in contemporary American government, reflects a noble
American tradition. John Quincy Adams, for his part, loved an America that "goes not abroad in
search of monsters to destroy." Decades later, Jeannette Rankin doubted the benefits of American
interventionism, contending that "you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem:
it merely creates new and more complicated ones." These leaders adamantly rejected an American politics
of unending aggressive war. It is time for us to do the same.
Tommy Raskin is a contributor to the Good Men Project and Foreign Policy in Focus.
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by
Andrew Bacevich
Oxford, 270 pp, £16.99, August 2005, ISBN 0 19 517338 4
A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the Middle
East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore eventually
settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. Yet, as Andrew Bacevich points out in
one of the most acute analyses of America to have appeared in recent years, the United States itself
is in many ways a militaristic country, and becoming more so:
at the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The scepticism about arms
and armies that informed the original Wilsonian vision, indeed, that pervaded the American experiment
from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamoured
with military might.
The ensuing affair had, and continues to have, a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued
in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue.
The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest,
in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted kaiser,
that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and
the country. Compared to German and other past militarisms, however, the contemporary American variant
is extremely complex, and the forces that have generated it have very diverse origins and widely
differing motives:
The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little
in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military
officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence
at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed
by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of
a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors
of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent
answer to any number of problems.
Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring
American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary
success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US. And
let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and what Dwight
Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'.
The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global military
power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. Jobs and patronage also ensure the
support of much of the Congress, which often authorises defence spending on weapons systems the Pentagon
doesn't want and hasn't asked for, in order to help some group of senators and congressmen in whose
home states these systems are manufactured. To achieve wider support in the media and among the public,
it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign nations constitute a threat to
the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension.
That's not the same, however, as having an actual desire for war, least of all for a major conflict
which might ruin the international economy. US ground forces have bitter memories of Vietnam, and
no wish to wage an aggressive war: Rumsfeld and his political appointees had to override the objections
of the senior generals, in particular those of the army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, before
the attack on Iraq. The navy and air force do not have to fight insurgents in hell-holes like Fallujah,
and so naturally have a more relaxed attitude.
To understand how the Bush administration was able to manipulate the public into supporting the
Iraq war one has to look for deeper explanations. They would include the element of messianism embodied
in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity
of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the
world. This leads to a genuine belief that American soldiers can do no real wrong because they are
spreading 'freedom'. Also of great importance – at least until the Iraqi insurgency rubbed American
noses in the horrors of war – has been the development of an aesthetic that sees war as waged by
the US as technological, clean and antiseptic; and thanks to its supremacy in weaponry, painlessly
victorious. Victory over the Iraqi army in 2003 led to a new flowering of megalomania in militarist
quarters. The amazing Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal – an armchair commentator, not
a frontline journalist – declared that the US victory had made 'fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel
and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison'. Nor was this kind of talk restricted
to Republicans. More than two years into the Iraq quagmire, strategic thinkers from the Democratic
establishment were still declaring that 'American military power in today's world is practically
unlimited.'
Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism.
Take Bacevich on the popular novelist Tom Clancy:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans
have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America's
uniformed military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats.
The typical Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honour, extraordinary technological
aptitude and sheer decency of the nation's defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to
enter a world of 'virtuous men and perfect weapons', as one reviewer noted. 'All the Americans
are paragons of courage, endurance and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly
competent and occasionally inspired. Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.'
Indeed, in the contract that he signed for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated
that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad light.
Such attitudes go beyond simply glorying in violence, military might and technological prowess.
They reflect a belief – genuine or assumed – in what the Germans used to call Soldatentum:
the pre-eminent value of the military virtues of courage, discipline and sacrifice, and explicitly
or implicitly the superiority of these virtues to those of a hedonistic, contemptible and untrustworthy
civilian society and political class. In the words of Thomas Friedman, the ostensibly liberal foreign
affairs commentator of the ostensibly liberal New York Times, 'we do not deserve these people.
They are so much better than the country … they are fighting for.' Such sentiments have a sinister
pedigree in modern history.
In the run-up to the last election, even a general as undistinguished as Wesley Clark could see
his past generalship alone as qualifying him for the presidency – and gain the support of leading
liberal intellectuals. Not that this was new: the first president was a general and throughout the
19th and 20th centuries both generals and more junior officers ran for the presidency on the strength
of their military records. And yet, as Bacevich points out, this does not mean that the uniformed
military have real power over policy-making, even in matters of war. General Tommy Franks may have
regarded Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, as 'the stupidest fucking guy on the planet',
but he took Feith's orders, and those of the civilians standing behind him: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and the president himself. Their combination of militarism and contempt for military advice recalls
Clemenceau and Churchill – or Hitler and Stalin.
Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring
contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and
the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many
American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich
brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous
with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point
of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to
Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus.
Its symbols may be often childish and its methods brutish, but American belief in 'freedom' is
a real and living force. This cuts two ways. On the one hand, the adherence of many leading intellectuals
in the Democratic Party to a belief in muscular democratisation has had a disastrous effect on the
party's ability to put up a strong resistance to the policies of the administration. Bush's messianic
language of 'freedom' – supported by the specifically Israeli agenda of Natan Sharansky and his allies
in the US – has been all too successful in winning over much of the opposition. On the other hand,
the fact that a belief in freedom and democracy lies at the heart of civic nationalism places certain
limits on American imperialism – weak no doubt, but nonetheless real. It is not possible for the
US, unlike previous empires, to pursue a strategy of absolutely unconstrained Machtpolitik.
This has been demonstrated recently in the breach between the Bush administration and the Karimov
tyranny in Uzbekistan.
The most important contradiction, however, is between the near worship of the military in much
of American culture and the equally widespread unwillingness of most Americans – elites and masses
alike – to serve in the armed forces. If people like Friedman accompanied their stated admiration
for the military with a real desire to abandon their contemptible civilian lives and join the armed
services, then American power in the world really might be practically unlimited. But as Bacevich
notes,
having thus made plain his personal disdain for crass vulgarity and support for moral rectitude,
Friedman in the course of a single paragraph drops the military and moves on to other pursuits.
His many readers, meanwhile, having availed themselves of the opportunity to indulge, ever so
briefly, in self-loathing, put down their newspapers and themselves move on to other things. Nothing
has changed, but columnist and readers alike feel better for the cathartic effect of this oblique,
reassuring encounter with an alien world.
Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to serve,
Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves in many
respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society.
This combination of a theoretical adulation with a profound desire not to serve is not of course
new. It characterised most of British society in the 19th century, when, just as with the US today,
the overwhelming rejection of conscription – until 1916 – meant that, appearances to the contrary,
British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority,
small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries
in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North
America.
Despite spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and despite enjoying
overwhelming technological superiority, American military power is actually quite limited. As Iraq
– and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it cannot
suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population as the
Sunni Arabs of Iraq. As for invading and occupying a country the size of Iran, this is coming to
seem as unlikely as an invasion of mainland China.
In other words, when it comes to actually applying military power the US is pretty much where
it has been for several decades. Another war of occupation like Iraq would necessitate the restoration
of conscription: an idea which, with Vietnam in mind, the military detests, and which politicians
are well aware would probably make them unelectable. It is just possible that another terrorist attack
on the scale of 9/11 might lead to a new draft, but that would bring the end of the US military empire
several steps closer. Recognising this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering
citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot
approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years
to do so.
Facing these dangers squarely, Bacevich proposes refocusing American strategy away from empire
and towards genuine national security. It is a measure of the degree to which imperial thinking now
dominates US politics that these moderate and commonsensical proposals would seem nothing short of
revolutionary to the average member of the Washington establishment.
They include a renunciation of messianic dreams of improving the world through military force,
except where a solid international consensus exists in support of US action; a recovery by Congress
of its power over peace and war, as laid down in the constitution but shamefully surrendered in recent
years; the adoption of a strategic doctrine explicitly making war a matter of last resort; and a
decision that the military should focus on the defence of the nation, not the projection of US power.
As a means of keeping military expenditure in some relationship to actual needs, Bacevich suggests
pegging it to the combined annual expenditure of the next ten countries, just as in the 19th century
the size of the British navy was pegged to that of the next two largest fleets – it is an index of
the budgetary elephantiasis of recent years that this would lead to very considerable spending reductions.
This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity
of its author. Colonel Bacevich's views on the military, on US strategy and on world affairs were
profoundly shaped by his service in Vietnam. His year there 'fell in the conflict's bleak latter
stages … long after an odour of failure had begun to envelop the entire enterprise'. The book is
dedicated to his brother-in-law, 'a casualty of a misbegotten war'.
Just as Vietnam shaped his view of how the US and the US military should not intervene in the
outside world, so the Cold War in Europe helped define his beliefs about the proper role of the military.
For Bacevich and his fellow officers in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, defending the West from possible
Soviet aggression, 'not conquest, regime change, preventive war or imperial policing', was 'the American
soldier's true and honourable calling'.
In terms of cultural and political background, this former soldier remains a self-described Catholic
conservative, and intensely patriotic. During the 1990s Bacevich wrote for right-wing journals, and
still situates himself culturally on the right:
As long as we shared in the common cause of denouncing the foolishness and hypocrisies of the
Clinton years, my relationship with modern American conservatism remained a mutually agreeable
one … But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the Bush
administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering
foreign policy, a disregard for the constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound
moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical
left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives,
who define the problem … The Republican and Democratic Parties may not be identical,
but they produce nearly identical results.
Bacevich, in other words, is sceptical of the naive belief that replacing the present administration
with a Democrat one would lead to serious changes in the US approach to the world. Formal party allegiances
are becoming increasingly irrelevant as far as thinking about foreign and security policy is concerned.
Bacevich also makes plain the private anger of much of the US uniformed military at the way in
which it has been sacrificed, and its institutions damaged, by chickenhawk civilian chauvinists who
have taken good care never to see action themselves; and the deep private concern of senior officers
that they might be ordered into further wars that would wreck the army altogether. Now, as never
before, American progressives have the chance to overcome the knee-jerk hostility to the uniformed
military that has characterised the left since Vietnam, and to reach out not only to the soldiers
in uniform but also to the social, cultural and regional worlds from which they are drawn. For if
the American left is once again to become an effective political force, it must return to some of
its own military traditions, founded on the distinguished service of men like George McGovern, on
the old idea of the citizen soldier, and on a real identification with that soldier's interests and
values. With this in mind, Bacevich calls for moves to bind the military more closely into American
society, including compulsory education for all officers at a civilian university, not only at the
start of their careers but at intervals throughout them.
Or to put it another way, the left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a
revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that
wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defence of the country.
The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents,
and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened
the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative.
It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture.
The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats
facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed
by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military
ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
In the terrible story of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, one of the most morally disgusting
moments took place at a Senate Committee hearing on 29 April 2004, when Paul Wolfowitz – another
warmonger who has never served himself – mistook, by a margin of hundreds, how many US soldiers had
died in a war for which he was largely responsible. If an official in a Democratic administration
had made a public mistake like that, the Republican opposition would have exploited it ruthlessly,
unceasingly, to win the next election. The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this says
a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused strategy.
Because they are the ones who pay the price for reckless warmongering and geopolitical megalomania,
soldiers and veterans of the army and marine corps could become valuable allies in the struggle to
curb American imperialism, and return America's relationship with its military to the old limited,
rational form. For this to happen, however, the soldiers have to believe that campaigns against the
Iraq war, and against current US strategy, are anti-militarist, but not anti-military. We have needed
the military desperately on occasions in the past; we will definitely need them again.
You might have thought that a serious book on the Ukraine crisis, written by a distinguished academic
in good clear English, and published by a reputable house, might have gained quite a bit of attention
at a time when that country is at the centre of many people's concerns.
But some readers here now understand that publishing, and especially the reviewing of books, are
not the simple marketplaces of ideas which we would all wish them to be.
And so, as far as I can discover, this book :
'Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands , by Richard Sakwa. Published by I.B.Tauris
…though it came out some months ago, has only been reviewed in one place in Britain, the Guardian
newspaper, by Jonathan Steele, the first-rate foreign correspondent whose rigour and enterprise (when
we were both stationed in Moscow) quite persuaded me to overlook his former sympathy for the left-wing
cause (most notably expressed in a 1977 book 'Socialism with a German Face' about the old East Germany,
which seemed to me at the time to be ah, excessively kind).
I have said elsewhere that I would myself be happier if the book were more hostile to my position
on this conflict. Sometimes I feel that it is almost too good to be true, to have my own conclusions
confirmed so powerfully, and I would certainly like to see the book reviewed by a knowledgeable
proponent of the NATO neo-conservative position. Why hasn't it been?
But even so I recommend it to any reader of mine who is remotely interested in disentangling the
reality from the knotted nets of propaganda in which it is currently shrouded.
Like George Friedman's interesting interview in the Moscow newspaper 'Kommersant' ( you can read
it here http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/20/2561
) , the book has shifted my own view.
I have tended to see the *basic* dispute in Ukraine as being yet another outbreak
of the old German push into the east, carried out under the new, nice flag of the EU, a liberal, federative
empire in which the vassal states are tactfully allowed limited sovereignty as long as they don't challenge
the fundamental politico-economic dominance of Germany. I still think this is a strong element
in the EU's thrust in this direction.
But I have tended to neglect another feature of the new Europe, also set out in Adam Tooze's brilliant
'The Deluge' – the firm determination of the USA to mould Europe in its own image (a determination
these days expressed mainly through the EU and NATO).
I should have paid more attention to the famous words 'F*** the EU!' spoken by
the USA's Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, in a phone call publicised to the world
by (presumably) Russian intelligence. The EU isn't half as enthusiastic about following the old
eastern road as is the USA. Indeed, it's a bit of a foot-dragger.
The driving force in this crisis is the USA, with the EU being reluctantly tugged along behind.
And if Mr Friedman is right (and I think he is), the roots of it lie in Russia's decision to obstruct
the West's intervention in Syria.
Perhaps the key to the whole thing (rather dispiriting in that it shows the USA really hasn't
learned anything important from the Iraq debacle) is the so-called 'Wolfowitz Doctrine' of 1992, named
after the neo-con's neo-con, Paul Wolfowitz, and summed up by Professor Sakwa (p.211) thus: 'The doctrine
asserted that the US should prevent "any country from dominating any region of the world that might
be a springboard to threaten unipolar and exclusive US dominance"'.
Note how neatly this meshes with what George Friedman says in his interview.
Now, there are dozens of fascinating things in Professor Sakwa's book, and my copy is scored with
annotations and references. I could spend a week summarising it for you. (By the way, the Professor
himself is very familiar with this complex region, and might be expected, thanks to his Polish ancestry,
to take a different line. His father was in the Polish Army in 1939, escaped to Hungary in the chaos
of defeat, and ended up serving in Anders's Second Corps, fighting with the British Army at El
Alamein, Benghazi, Tobruk and then through Italy via Monte Cassino. Then he was in exile during the
years of Polish Communism. Like Vaclav Klaus, another critic of current western policy, Professor Sakwa
can hardly be dismissed as a naif who doesn't understand about Russia, or accused of being a
'fellow-traveler' or 'useful idiot'.
He is now concerned at 'how we created yet another crisis' (p xiii) .
But I would much prefer that you read it for yourself, and so will have to limit my references quite
sternly.
There are good explanations of the undoubted anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies of some strands in
Ukrainian politics. Similar nastiness, by the way, is to be found loose in some of the Baltic States.
I mention this n because it justified classifying the whole movement as 'Neo-Nazi', which is obviously
false, but because it tells us something very interesting about the nature of nationalism and Russophobia
in this part of the world. No serious or fair description of the crisis can ignore it. Yet, in
the portrayal of Russia as Mordor, and the Ukraine as Utopia, western media simply leave out almost
everything about Ukraine that doesn't appeal to their audiences, the economic near collapse, the Judophobia
and Russophobia (the derogatory word 'Moskal', for instance, in common use), the worship of the
dubious (this word is very generous, I think) Stepan Bandera by many of the Western ultra-nationalists,
the violence against dissenters from the Maidan view ( see
http://rt.com/news/ukraine-presidential-candidates-attacked-516/).
The survival and continued power of Ukraine's oligarchs after a revolution supposedly aimed at cleaning
up the country is also never mentioned. We all know about Viktor Yanukovych;s tasteless mansion, but
the book provides some interesting details on President Poroshenko's residence (it looks rather
like the White House) , which I have not seen elsewhere.
The detailed description of how and why the Association Agreement led to such trouble is excellent.
I had not realised that, since the Lisbon Treaty, alignment with NATO is an essential part of EU membership
(and association) – hence the unavoidable political and military clauses in the agreement.
So is the filleting of the excuse-making and apologetics of those who still pretend that Yanukovych
was lawfully removed from office: the explicit threat of violence from the Maidan, the
failure to muster the requisite vote, the presence of armed men during the vote, the failure
to follow the constitutional rules (set beside the available lawful deal, overridden by the Maidan,
under which Yanukovych would have faced early elections and been forced to make constitutional changes)
.
Then here we have Ms Nuland again, boasting of the $5 billion (eat your heart out, the EU,
with your paltry £300 million) http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2013/dec/218804.htm
which the USA has 'invested in Ukraine. 'Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States
has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation
and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations.
We've invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure
and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.
It's worth noting that in this speech, in December 2013, she still envisages the supposedly intolerable
Yanukovych as a possible partner.
Other points well made are the strange effect of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which has created
the very tension against which it now seeks to reassure border nations, by encouraging them, too, to
join, the non-binding nature of the much-trumpeted Budapest memorandum, the lack of coverage of the
ghastly events in Odessa, the continuing lack of a proper independent investigation into the Kiev mass
shootings in February 2014 .
Also examined is the Russian fear of losing Sevastopol, an entirely justified fear given that President
Yushchenko had chosen to say in Georgia, during the war of August 2008, that Russia's basing
rights in the city would end in 2017. The 'disappearance; of the 'Right Sector' and 'Svoboda' vote
in recent elections is explained by their transfer to the radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko.
Professor Sakwa also explores Russia's behaviour in other border disputes , with Norway and China,
in which it has been far from aggressive. And he points out that Ukraine's nationalists have made their
country's life far more difficult by their rigid nationalist approach to the many citizens of that
country who, while viewing themselves as Ukrainian, do not share the history or passions of the ultra-nationalists
in the West.
Likewise he warns simple-minded analysts that the conflict in the East of Ukraine is not desired
by Russia's elite, which does not wish to be drawn into another foreign entanglement (all Russian strategists
recall the disastrous result of the Afghan intervention). But it may be desired by Russian ultra-nationalists,
not necessarily controllable.
He points out that Russia has not, as it did in Crimea, intervened decisively in Eastern Ukraine
to ensure secession. And he suggests that those Russian nationalists are acting in many cases
independently of Moscow in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Putin seeks to control them and limit
them, but fears them as well.
In general, the book is an intelligent, well-researched and thoughtful attempt to explain the major
crisis of our time. Anybody, whatever he or she might think of the issue, would benefit from
reading it. It is shocking that it is not better known, and I can only assume that its obscurity,
so far is caused by the fact that it does not fit the crude propaganda narrative of the 'Putin is Hitler'
viewpoint.
How odd that we should all have learned so little from the Iraq debacle. This time the 'WMD' are
non-existent Russian plans to expand and/or attack the Baltic states. And of course the misrepresentation
of both sides in the Ukrainian controversy is necessary for the portrayal of Putin as Hitler and his
supporters as Nazis, and opponents of belligerence as Nazi fellow-travellers. The inconvenient fact
, that if there are Nazis in this story , they tend to be on the 'good' side must be ignored. Let us
hope the hysteria subsides before it carries us into another stupid war.
There should be a proper inquiry into who really started this conflict I recall watching on TV
as the boxer who was leading the Kiev mob came out of lengthy negotiations with the 3 EU ministers
and the crowds booing and erupting The infamous Julia also appeared on the scene. this was of course
after only a few hours previously that Obama announced that he had agreement with Putin to have a
peaceful resolution and elections in 3 months.
As I watched the eruption of the mob I Thought this will end badly and at that point the EU should
have withdrawn. However the subsequent violence and the removal of the elected leader followed. All
interviews with the people in the East and Crimea showed their distrust of the Kiev crowd and it was
clear that the oligarchs on the East who had many workers and controlled the manufacturing would not
support the East. Putin is a nasty man but to suggest that he deliberately caused this situation is
a travesty.Russia with refugees pouring over the border reacted to the situation and who can blame
them.? Now a less belligerent and frankly dishonest approach needs to be taken by the EU I can not
see that the Kiev regime can ever win the loyalty of the East after this bitter war.the only solution
is some sort of autonomous regios that allows the Esst of Ukraine to rule themselves.
"I haven't responded to your comments on McCain and Nuland because I thought that I had made it
clear that I thought external interference from any quarter was undesirable and I accept that there
has been such interference from both sides."
Oh really? You do not remember writing this then?
"It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych. They should be allowed to deal with their
internal disputes and decide their future alliances and associations."
or this?
"However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU) did not organise
his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter and, whatever
the faults on either side, should have been left at that."
And on this thread you had not even mentioned the USA involvement. You have been consistently dishonest
by omission. Well, at least you're consistent.
And now you manage the immortal words
"I do maintain, though, that the interference of the EU and USA" [well done for mentioning them
at last],"which cannot be denied" [but can, it seems, be ignored...] "and which was reflected in Russia's
own behaviour cannot be compared with Russia's subsequent blatant military involvement in a sovereign
country's internal conflict."
So on the one hand the EU and the USA have interfered, but on the other it is an "internal conflict".
@Alan Thomas By my reading of certain facts I deduce there is a de facto alliance between Russia
and China. These facts being that Russia trades arms to China but the USA will not trade arms to either.
On May 8th Xi Jingping will attend the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow accompanied by his junk
yard dog Kim Jong Un of North Korea. No Western leaders as far as I know will be in attendance. De
facto alliances such as the one Britain had with France in 1914 are always hard to call because unlike
formal ones such as Nato there is nothing in writing. I also suspect that one reason China has not
tried to match America in nuclear weapons so far is because Russia already does so. North Korea is
also very useful in that it can be used to threaten Japan without China appearing to be the aggressor.
I see you have ignored my request to answer the questions I posed to Hector (who has also yet to
respond) about the US presence at the Maidan. Perhaps you needed to ignore my request in order to
write this drivel with a straight face:
Re Yanukovych: "However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU)
did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal
matter and, whatever the faults on either side, should have been left at that."
Some Ukrainians carried out the WW2 massacre at Khatyn (not Katyn) - does that mean that all Ukrainians
are responsible for it, approved of it, or that it was carried out on behalf of Ukrainians? Of course
not.
You have also studiously avoided mention of the presence at the Maidan of US Senator McCain and
US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, and the latter's meetings with the Maidan leaders, co-ordinated
with US Ambassador Pyatt.
You have also somehow omitted to mention Yatseniuk's ("Yats") lightning visit to Washington days
after the overthrow of Yanukovych, or the visit of CIA Director Brennan to Kiev.
And just for the record, I have first-hand oral evidence of people in Minsk, Belarus, being offered
money to go to the Maidan - so even that the Maidan crowd was completely Ukrainian is probably untrue.
You accuse Mr Klimenko of bias, and yet you yourself give and repeat a dishonest account of what
is known to have happened at the Maidan.
It's all very well to agonize about what Ukrainians may or may not want. We could all weep huge
quantities of crocodile tears over Ukraine's thwarted "self determination", but the essential fact
is that Ukrainians are not agreed about what they want. Some appear to want closer ties with the EU,
some appear to want to maintain the status quo and some appear to want closer ties with the Russian
Federation.
All of which is "interesting" until different factions within Ukraine start calling on their preferred
partners to back them up. It seems to me that the US and the EU have contributed more than one would
reasonably expect to the discord in Ukraine and silly expectations in a great many Ukrainians. To
describe this as "irresponsible" is something of an understatement.
We are now in a situation where the "preferred partners" might come to blows over the confused
and discordant expectations of Ukraine. In such a situation. it would be hard for me to care less
about what Ukrainians want especially when some of Ukraine's politicians sound as though they would
happily see the world burn if only it ensures "territorial Integrity" for Ukraine.
It's a very old trick for which "socialists" should be famous. Describe a group as deserving, noble
and disadvantaged... and use this supposed circumstance to justify the most ridiculous, regressive
and destructive policy the human mind can invent. Of course, with our own "socialists", the all important
thing is that they are not only well rewarded with a reputation for being "caring sharing human beings"...
but also very well paid for the disasters they inflict on us.
'did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an
internal matter'
What the EU did was the equivalent of persuading one party in a Mexican stand-off to lower his weapon
so that the other can shoot him safely. Yes, the EU most certainly organized Yanukovich's removal
- the EU normally takes a dim view of governments established by putsch, but recognized this particular
band of putschists almost immediately.
And why was it not an internal matter when Ukrainian police
were attempting to clear Maidan of the lawless occupying mob, but instead a human rights crisis demanding
sanctions against everyone from the Prosecutor-General to Yanukovich's barber?
'You should note, however, that he fled his country on the same day that he announced an agreement
with his opponents.'
You are mistaken, he did not flee the country the day the agreement was made. He left the city of
Kiev for Kharkov, his motorcade coming under fire as he did so. As the putsch developed, he called
a conference in Kharkov of regional governors still loyal to the rightful president, the participants
agreeing to administer their own regions until lawful authority could be reestablished in the rest
of the country.
Two factors brought about the failure of this effort: the first was the success of Valentin Nalivaichenko's
takeover of the SBU, and the second was the cowardly betrayal by Kharkov regional governor Mikhail
Dobkin and Kharkov city mayor Gennady Kernes, who panicked and fled when they heard that the SBU was
after them (both would later cut deals with the Maidan regime for their own survival). Fearing capture
by the SBU and feeling unable to trust anybody, Yanukovich then departed for the Crimea.
You might think this would be safe place for him to make his stand. You would be wrong - the mood
in Crimea at the time was one of utter disgust for Yanukovich and the Regions Party on account of
their utter failure to defend the state and the people, which only grew after it came to light that
the scum Yanukovich had appointed as mayor of Sevastopol had been conspiring to surrender the city
to the Right Sector. Crimea wanted out of the Ukraine, and had no interest in helping Yanukovich get
his seat back. Out of options, he finally fled to the Russian mainland on or about February 26.
As for the rest, I'll say it again: the 'Holodomor' is a fiction, an attempt to portray a famine that
affected a vast swathe of the USSR as campaign against Ukrainians specifically, when in truth it most
heavily affected the non-Ukrainian Donbass region. It is invoked by western Ukrainians whose ancestors
did not experience it to justify their racial hatred for eastern Ukrainians whose ancestors did. You
ought to be ashamed of spreading such rot, and you should stop trying to frame your own biases as
'objectivity'.
Everything Peter said was spot on. That other bloke who was challenging you is a dangerous idiot.
You pointed out to him that we do not call Chinese regime tyrants, or the Saudis, yet he immediately
replies calling Putin a vile tyrant. Totally obvious to what you just told him like he is a brainwashed
stuck record.
NATO is now the armed wing of EU expansion. They intentionally sent Russia that message
during the Kosovo war by including the Luftwaffe bombing in previous Russia spheres of influence.
If nothing else I like your style . Many contributors here think they know. And a few think you
know more than them. I think on this subject you certainly know more than I . Whether your correct
is unknown at least by me . But.
Oh that our snot brained, could have need for the dentistry they so deserve.
No matter whose in the right here , and I suspect neither are. Its their business and that of the
federation they once belonged . Just as northern Island was our business . But Clinton poked his snout
in .
The compromise, killers and bombers running the country might well be repeated with a split country just like the many created since the chaos following WWII.
@Alan Thomas The Eurasian hard men such as Putin, Erdogan , Modi and XI Jinping all seem to understand
one another and are doing business together.
They all lead countries which have been on the receiving
of Western aggression over the last few centuries Modern Westerners with their naive PC outlook like
to overlook this but the people in those countries have not forgotten from which direction the threat
to them has usually come from and the past losses and humiliations which resulted.
When someone sees
themselves as a benefactor to mankind but others see as a thief with a violent history there is always
going to be room for a big understanding.
Perhaps, when it comes to China, the 'west' cannot see a solution, in which case hurling - or even
simply registering - criticism might be seen as a waste of time and effort. In any case, since when
did it make sense to ignore lesser villains simply because one can't take on the bigger ones?
I suspect the neocons are now looking at the General Patton play of outsourcing a war against Russia
to Germany.
Germany should leave the EU together with France and the PIGS using the euro as an excuse. Their
departure might shake out a few others like Croatia, Hungary and Austria plus a few more. Let the
banks fail then go in with Russia and the other BRICS.
' Are you so sure that Ukrainians wanted their now ex-president?'
Almost twelve and a half million Ukrainians voted for him in 2010, and that is a far better indicator
of what Ukrainians wanted than the actions of around ten thousand Nazi terrorists in February 2014.
' It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych'
What a nonsensical and disingenuous remark. Yanukovich was the democratically -elected president(most
likely the last that the Ukraine will ever have). EuroMaidan was an assembly of Nazi terrorists and
their apologists. Europe used threats and blackmail to prevent Yanukovich from doing his duty and
protecting the country from this violent mob. Europe then tricked him into signing a 'peace agreement'
and pulling back the police from their positions, allowing the terrorist mob and its sponsors to rampage
freely through Kiev and seize the institutions of the state.
You will probably cite the lack of an immediate militant response to the putsch as proof that Ukrainians
wanted this abomination of a government. Well, there we have democracy according to Mike! No need
for elections, might makes right and proves the existence of an underlying consensus! Brilliant.
Let's take your logic a bit further. The rebellion now rules in Donbass, and no armed movement
has arisen there to demand the return of the region to Ukrainian rule. Do you accept this as evidence
of the people's wish not to be ruled by the Maidan regime? If the rebels break the Ukrainian lines,
and take control of the rest of the country, will you shrug and conclude that Ukrainians wanted to
be with Russia after all?
' , I would prefer people to be aggressive with me by throwing money in my direction, rather than
launching rockets,
Throwing money at the Ukraine enables the Maidan regime to throw rockets at Ukrainian citizens. Poroshenko
and Yatsenyuk have no legal authority to rule over anybody, yet your beloved EU insists that these
putsch-installed thugs are the government of the Ukraine, and that all Ukrainians must obey them or
die.
' Nothing the EU has done, though, justifies Russian military intervention in Ukraine'
Everything the EU has done justifies everything Russia has done, and would justify a good deal more.
The European officials who formulated European policy toward the Ukraine in the past year are responsible
for the war and for all the crimes of the Maidan regime, and they should all face the death penalty
- starting with Ashton.
Think on this: if not for the Crimea operation, all the depravity that the Ukraine has heaped upon
Donetsk would have been visited upon Crimea. You think that Crimeans would have been better off being
shelled, shot, raped and tortured by the Ukrainian military? Go and tell them so!
Just make sure that your health insurance covers reconstructive dentistry first.
Hector. You clearly have no idea about Hitler and Germany in the late 1930s.Germany was just taking
back land that was stolen in June 1919. Hitler had mass support from the Germanic people in those parts
and in some areas such as parts of Austria he was even more popular than he was in Germany itself.
It was madness that we went to war against Germany,we should have remained neutral like Spain or Switzerland
and let Hitler defeat Stalin on his own.
"Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why
they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from
view remain constant. But that's just my opinion."
It all depends on whether the facts/evidence supports the hypothesis. If they don't then no matter
how erudite it appears - it's wrong. What our media don't want you to question or look at is who started
this conflict. From day one, I've never been in doubt that Washington is the main driver and the EU
the junior partner. The Nato alliance acts as a bind and a figleaf. Time and again the facts sindicates
that the "west" is an aggressor bloc which tramples over sovereignty and makes a mockery of supposed
international law.
I think you'll find that, in circumstances such as those you describe, PH tends to quote the famous
retort attributed to Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" I'm just
surprised that he hasn't done so (yet) in this instance.
Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why
they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from
view remain constant. But that's just my opinion.
In December 2011 The U.S Federal Reserve bailed out European banks to the
tune of Billions of Dollars.
It is reported that they tried to keep this bailout a secret at the time.
Do you think that this , and the latest E.U initiative to have The Ukraine
are linked ? i.e that it was a condition of the U.S bailout or expected of The
E.U that they continue to expand into The Ukraine in return for these U.S Dollars?
Yours N.Belcher.
While the West obsesses about the supposed threat from Putin it seems totally oblivious to the rise
of Xi Jinping a Chinese leader who looks like being of the magnitude of Mao.
He has described himself
as the leader of a party wedded to the ideology of Lenin, Stalin and Mao and is concentrating all the
power in his own hands.
There is no Western propaganda campaign against him yet although think about
it, ten years ago there wasn't one against Putin.
Xi has stated that he gets on well with Putin as they
have similar personalities.
'Might there be the slightest chance of Ukrainians' wishes being given some consideration?'
Capital idea. But you know what the Ukrainians wanted? They wanted Viktor Yanukovich as President
and they wanted the Parliament they elected in 2012. What scant regard America and Europe gave their
wishes!
Ronnie that purported paper was presented in early Feb 2014 well after Maidan was underway, not
exactly planned from day one. It was also Kiev at the behest of the US who started the ATO, resorting
to violence away from the Franco-German and Russian negotiations.
I might add the anti Russian propaganda in the media had started well before Sochi started. This was
all planned a while back and not by Russia.
It does not seem to me there is a "change of mind" or any inconsistency implied in Mr Hitchens's
recommendation of Richard Sakwa's book. There may be a slight change of emphasis but it was always
understood and mentioned that the US of A was an additional driving force to events in eastern Europe.
It does not alter the validity of the view that the EU is "Germany by other means" and that the EU/Germany
covets "lebensraum" in the east. So far as I can see, it can only be of academic interest whether the
developing crisis is primarily EU or US led.
Nor has Mr Hitchens ever attempted to exonerate President Putin or Russia, giving more than sufficient
emphasis to "Russian interests" and "Russia's perceived sphere of influence" ... to crudely paraphrase.
It does not matter if Russia is or is not entitled to these perceptions. That the perceptions exist
should be a major consideration in the policy of any other "player" who would prefer a continued, peaceful
existence.
What is important is whether either side can afford to "back down" and which side is "most guilty"
with regards creating this crisis. It seems fairly obvious that it is the US and the EU who can best
afford to "back off"... and it is the US and the EU whose posturing and behavior have contributed most
to the current situation.
For those who adhere to the "bad Putin"/"Naughty Russia" model, rest assured that the US and the
EU are unlikely to give up on this one. They are determined to give the big bad bear a spanking.
I
fear that they have got it badly wrong, seriously misjudged Russia's president and relied to heavily
on dated intelligence about Russian capabilities.
I think it's an oversight on PH's part (we're all human, right?) to have placed so much emphasis
on Germany in his analysis of the the crisis, and, in so doing to have tacitly downplayed the role
of the US. Plainly put Germany-although it is the de facto seat of power in the EU- doesn't have the
brass to so flagrantly antagonise Russia without back-up.
Moreover, if anyone doesn't think the EU
is 'briefed' on foreign policy by the US state department, they are living in an alternate reality.
America is a continuation of the British Empire by other means.
Pat Davers "Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were
genuinely dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine"
I do wish people would study the comments made by the EU leaders when initial proposals for third
way consultations with the Russians was proposed, they said things like "the last people we would speak
to over this would be the Russians".
The EU leaders detest everything Russia stands for, as they are enlightened supra nationalists.
It was precisely their arrogant and dismissive attitude that led to armed conflict and only after thousands
had died did they come to meet Putin in Russia to seek a peace.
I think we are seeing a shift of opinion as to who has the been the main driver behind the Ukraine
conflict; it was not so much EU (ie German-led) expansionism as NATO (ie US-led) imperialism that brought
us where we are now, as of course many people have been saying all along.
Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were genuinely
dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine, and are probably now regretting
their actions. The fact that is was Merkel and Hollande who brokered the Minsk agreement without US
involvement would seem to support this.
Ronnie you have clearly have never done any scenario planning or read position papers, obviously
the Kremlin would have several plans of action for the breakdown of the Ukraine. Regardless of the
document's validity, the title is invalid. "Direct interstate relations" cannot exist between Moscow
and regions annexed to Russia, the plan is obviously talking about a political breakup of Ukraine,
not annexation. Even then though, i dont entirely believe it.
If Russia's plan was to break up Ukraine into statelets, I see no reason why it still hasn't recognized
the independence of LPR and DPR and instead continues to treat them, in both language and action, as
regions of Ukraine seeking federalization. A federal and perhaps confederate Ukraine would obviously
be to Russia's interest. Complete breakup of Ukraine -maybe but it's difficult to see how.
Thank you for another thought-provoking article. It's nice to have some measured thinking amongst
the media-mob's clamour.
A little off the current topic but I was expecting to see a comment on the recent ACMD report in
which the scientist's covering letter states: 'international evidence suggests many popular types of
prevention activity are ineffective at changing behaviour, and a small number may even increase the
risks for drug use' . Paradoxically, thought not unexpectedly, the report ends up stating the that
the solution is more drugs education in schools.. Just thought it may be worth flagging as it reminded
me of your previous posts regarding sex education and its supposed 'benefits'.
I would not be alone here in welcoming PH's recognition of the importance of the role of the US.
I think Brian Meredith also expressed this view.
Michael Hudson (the American economist) expresses it up pithily: the US is saying to Europe, 'Let's
you and Russia fight' and Europe in going along with this invitation is damaging her own vital interests.
The Ukrainian Parliament has already moved 'Defender of the Fatherland Day' to October 14th - the
official founding date of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. If anybody thinks that this is a coincidence,
they haven't been paying attention.
This very Thursday the Parliament of Ukraine reached a milestone - honoring with a minute's silence
the memory of UPA genocidaire Roman Shukhevich. I won't bother listing in detail the depravities that
Shukhevich organised in his capacity as a UPA commander - suffice it to say that women and children
were favourite targets, and blades were generally preferred to bullets - but those not familiar with
the subject are encouraged to look it up. In particular, search the name 'Zygmunt Rumel' to find out
what comes of trying to negotiate with Ukrainian nationalists.
The only consolation is that the Maidan project is less a political movement than organised mental
illness, and that failure is written in its DNA.
In response to each terrorist attack or foreign provocation, the depressingly familiar tone of the
loudest voices in government and media has noninterventionist activists in despair, wondering just
what they are doing wrong when making their case against the rush to war. That tone, the reflexive
pro-interventionist agitation for counterattacks and broad military campaigns, is a continuous background
hum in times of relative calm, and bursts forth when a threat or attack, no matter how insignificant,
appears. Each time as well, there is no shortage of sane voices countering the drum beat for retaliation.
By all accounts, their case is airtight. No one, after the momentary hysteria has passed, denies
the irrationality of war and intervention. The horrifying costs of war, in blood and treasure, provide
ample evidence that this favorite pastime of all governments is a mindless exercise in mass slaughter.
Yet after each fresh attack, the chorus rises in support of the next great war, the next great legislative
endeavor. Looking deeper into the origins of the current crisis just doesn't happen in a government
that's fueling the chainsaw and sharpening the cleaver.
Why does foreign interventionism retain such a firm grip on US political discourse? The flood of
editorials advocating "DO SOMETHING" is unending, with almost everyone holding "something is better
than nothing" as an implicit axiom. Every talking head has a plan, some surefire positive government
intervention that can improve something at home and overseas. How often do any of them say that there
is nothing to be done? That the only thing to do is withdraw and keep an eye on the horizon for roosting
chickens?
Interventionism is able to hold sway in political circles because it has on its side the general
inability to conceive of anything good coming from doing nothing. This is the same logic that drives
advocates of government intervention in the economy. And they are just as afraid of the unplanned
and undesigned in that arena as well. Thinking beyond the first stage of an act is alien to this
crowd. Besides, they can't afford to do nothing. What if something good comes of it? They need some
way to justify themselves, after all. We can't have foreign conflicts resolving themselves without
our help. Bad PR.
Interventionists depend on the natural inclination of the population to never look beyond stage one,
to never think through what could possibly be the consequences of this or that bombing campaign,
or rebel-arming enterprise or avalanche of legislation.
Henry Hazlitt's simple lesson in his classic work, Economics in One Lesson, can and should be applied
to intervention in foreign affairs: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate
but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy
not merely for one group but for all groups." This, however, is asking too much of most people.
Antiwar activists have their work cut out for them. Similar to advocates of nonintervention in domestic
affairs, they have to make the case against the as-yet-unseen consequences of the proposed foreign
intervention. And they are making the case to people that, when they care at all, they instinctively
support positive action on the part of government. Each successive foreign adventure is unhampered
by historical insight and critical thinking. Each campaign is undertaken in the belief that it will
be all cakewalk, no blowback.
The mistake is made, the lesson isn't learned, the consequences come home, and retaliation is vowed.
Rinse and repeat.
Thankfully, no major terrorist attack has occurred on American soil since 9/11. Every antiwar activist
cringes though at the thought of the potential political aftermath if another attack did happen.
Where would we be if even just two or three Charlie Hebdo-style attacks had happened on US soil in
the last thirteen years? Would we be a full-throttle Garrison State?
Neoconservatism, that chimerical faith in the efficacy of military might to remake the world
in the image of Western democracy, will always be with us because the primal inclination to see only
what is immediately visible, and therefore act on what is immediately visible will always be with
us. Our emotional hardware is wired to react in this way, and to reject the unseen benefits of government
inaction. Of course, inaction on the part of government means allowing peace to genuinely heal real
and perceived crises.
Interventionism will always be the default position because a large number of Americans seem to have
an unwavering faith in it, and politicians are more than happy to answer their demand. No amount
of evidence will ever convince those that pull the levers of power that the current crisis is the
fruit of previous intervention, or that the seeds of future crises are being planted by the choices
that are made today. They are political opportunists, and they realize the fundamental truth of all
political opportunists: people rarely ever think beyond stage one. And peace is boring; war is a
spectacle. Government action is flashy and loud; the benefits of peace operate slowly and indirectly.
"Without principles we drift", wrote Friedrich Hayek in his essay, Individualism: True and False.
Principle allows us to judge our actions by a standard, and principle should be used as a prism through
which we view the actions of our government. Instead of this, an illusion of principle permeates
political discourse. A sappy fealty is paid to an abstract concept of "Freedom", a hazy mental diorama
of sentimental quotes by the Founding generation jumbled up with images of flags, troops, and patriotic
songs, and we drift toward the fate of all empires. With our emotional well-being tied firmly to
this a-historical, eminently malleable mental picture, we become drones for whatever the welfare/warfare
state demands next.
Events of the past two weeks have demonstrated once again that the Atlantic Empire regards humanity
as nothing more than pieces on the game board. Wars in the Ukraine, Iraq and Syria, the ongoing meltdown
of "liberated" Libya, the barbarous actions of ISIS – all consequences of imperial meddling, to greater
or lesser extent – have all been invoked as excuses for more Empire: the "perpetual war for
perpetual peace", as Charles A Beard put it.
That, at least, was the message of the speech by the Emperor Himself, given in Talinn, Estonia
on the eve of the NATO summit in Wales. It is an instructive case study in the
insidious power of propaganda.
C-SPAN has the video,
while the White House has
provided the transcript; you can compare the actual remarks, in context, with what the mainstream
media have chosen to feature.
Dreams of Freedom
Emperor Obama began by praising the Estonians' "dream of freedom," which "endured through centuries
of occupation and oppression" and was fought for by poets, protesters and "Forest Brothers" – a phrase
that means nothing to most Americans, but in Estonia denotes the WW2 guerrillas who fought against
the Soviets.
Some might object that praising the Baltic "freedom fighting" in WW2 is awkward because it involved
the SS – except those SS are okay, because the Empire said so:
The Baltic Waffen SS Units (Baltic Legions) are to be considered as separate and distinct in
purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore
the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States. (U.S.
Displaced Persons Commission, 1950, cited here.)
Considering this isn't the first time the Emperor
re-imagined history,
such disregard of inconvenient facts in favor of the preferred fantasy narrative ought not to come
as a surprise. But the talk of "freedom" and "independence" in a country that has neither – Estonia
is part of NATO and the EU, and thus effectively run from Washington and Brussels – represents rank
hypocrisy.
In fact, the entire speech is one big exercise in pointing out motes in the eyes of others, while
ignoring a beam in the Emperor's own.
Duh-mock-risy
If repression of language and culture is so deplorable – as Emperor Obama implies by praising
the Estonian resistance thereto – then why does Washington back the regime in Kiev doing just
that to the Russian-speaking population of the Ukraine? And how was it proper for the Baltic
States to separate from Russia (and later from the USSR), but not for Crimea to separate from Kiev?
To hear the Emperor say it, it's because some people are "democratic" (i.e. backed by the Empire)
and thus get a free pass to do no wrong, while others are not, and can therefore do no right. Estonia,
averred Emperor Obama, is an inspiration to "people working to build their own democracies – from
Kyiv to Tunis." But whatever you do, don't actually look into how "democracy" is
working out in North Africa! Everything is fine in "liberated Libya", nothing to see here, move
along, what difference does it make?
And "Kyiv"… well, more on that in a moment.
"Facts" of Aggression
The reason Barack Obama picked Estonia for this speech was not the
Laulupidu song-and-dance festival
he name-checked in the opening remarks, but the country's position as NATO's forward outpost on Russia's
border. There Mr. Obama delivered a resounding condemnation of aggression:
It is a brazen assault on the territorial integrity of [Serbia] – a sovereign and independent
European nation. It challenges that most basic of principles of our international system – that borders
cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun; that nations have the right to determine their own future.
It undermines an international order where the rights of peoples and nations are upheld and can't
simply be taken away by brute force.
Except he didn't say "Serbia", but "Ukraine" – yet everything described here is what the United
States and NATO have actually
done – to Serbia (or rather, Yugoslavia), Iraq, Libya, and even Ukraine itself, where
the supposedly sacrosanct right of Ukrainians to make their own choices was usurped by the February
coup and the Maidan revolution "midwifed"
by Washington.
No problem – according to Mr. Obama, none of this happened. The Maidan protests were "not led
by neo-Nazis or fascists" – Lyashko,
Kolomoisky, the Right Sector thugs such as
Sashko Bily were but "ordinary Ukrainians."
The
February 22 coup was not an "armed seizure of power," he avers, but the result of an "agreement…
for constitutional reform" (!), after which President Yanukovich "abandoned his office." (!!) He
then goes on to blame the crisis on "pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed
by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia," and shockingly concludes:
Now, these are the facts. They are provable. They're not subject to dispute.
No. They are not facts. They are not proven. And they are not merely "subject to dispute", they
have been conclusively disputed. Notice he said "provable" not "proven" – because he knows
all too well both his State Department and its subservient media have "zero
proof" for their claims.
Fortress Europe
This was followed by more lies: that NATO was a purely defensive alliance of democracies that
never meant anyone any harm – ask the Serbs, Libyans or Afghans how true that is – and that the West
is not hostile towards Russia. "Over the past two decades, the United States has gone to great lengths
to welcome Russia into the community of nations and to encourage its economic success," Mr. Obama
claimed.
This is
simply
not true. Not to mention that the "encouragement of economic success" was rightly
described as "the Rape of Russia", which only ended after Mr. Putin came to power. This is not
the first time the Emperor has lied
about Russia, and probably won't be the last.
But the lie of "Russian aggression" and NATO's innocence is necessary to maintain the US control
of Europe. On the eve of a major NATO meeting in Wales, Emperor Obama announced plans to "further
increase America's military presence in Europe," including "American boots on the ground", but also
"intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance and missile defense."
Better yet, it's the Europeans who are expected to pay the cost of their own occupation – their
"full share," in Mr. Obama's words – even though the US-imposed trade war with Russia is destroying
their economy, already mired in welfare-statism and austerity.
Zero Self-Awareness
It is simply amazing to observe the utter lack of self-awareness in a man who says that "lies
and misinformation are no match for the truth" after just having lied; who rejects a world "where
the big are allowed to bully the small" though his own country is the biggest bully on the planet;
and who can say with a straight face that "might does not make right" after just boasting about "the
strongest military alliance the world has ever known."
If he rejects "any talk of spheres of influence today", it's because the Imperial government believes
the
entire planet to be theirs.
By the time one reaches the claim that the "currents of history" that "flow towards freedom,"
one simply must shake one's head in bewilderment, and wonder whether the Emperor's speechwriter is
channeling the Simpsons' Citizen Kang.
Former US Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an RPI Board Member, is interviewed on Democracy Now from the
Almedalen political festival in Sweden. Mr. Kucinich, who opposed the 2003 Iraq war along with Ron
Paul, draws some excellent conclusions as the promised outbreak of democracy has turned to disaster.
Said Kucinich:
If we learn one thing from our experience in Iraq it should be that interventionism is not the
wave of the future. We need to reassess this whole idea that we have the right to intervene in
the affairs of other nations and we have to put away this pretense that we do it for some higher
principle.
Can the Republican Party's foreign policy be saved? Or, at the very least, can the conservative
foreign-policy establishment be reformed? As the question was
debated
last
week, violence intensified in Gaza, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in Ukraine, and
Iraq smoldered.
The welcome fact that a growing number of conservative thinkers and writers-along with a not insubstantial
slice of the Republican base-judges George W. Bush's foreign policy a failure may be a prerequisite
for reform. But it is not sufficient for reform by itself.
For an aging conservative movement that has lacked a unified sense of purpose since the end of
the Cold War, with the brief exception of a few years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the terror
unfolding throughout the world can be massaged to fit a familiar, almost comforting script.
Israel is being attacked by her enemies. The Russian bear is on the loose. After the sectarian
fighting in Iraq finally subsided toward the end of the Bush administration, the troubled country
seems to be flying apart under his Democratic successor.
The narrative that the world is ablaze due to Barack Obama's retrenchment, retreat, and penchant
for leading from behind has a certain appeal. This is what happens, the argument goes, when the United
States is governed by someone who is ashamed of American power.
All of this is a vast oversimplification, obviously, but busy voters don't pore over Stratfor
global intelligence reports when trying to make sense of the news. To many conservatives, this description
of an often violent and seemingly chaotic world does the job as well as any competing explanation.
It is true that many big Republican donors are more hawkish-and less chastened by Bush-era failures-than
the Republican rank-and-file. As Justin Logan
put it in The Federalist, "the portion of the GOP donor class that cares about foreign policy
is wedded to a militaristic foreign policy, particularly in but not limited to the Middle East."
But it is equally true that even today the arguments marshaled by reflexive hawks hit the right
emotional buttons for the Republican grassroots in a way that more dovish conservatives' appeals
for caution, prudence, and restraint frequently do not. They easily position themselves on the side
of America-freedom
conservatives!-while those who disagree are apologists for Vladimir Putin and Iranian mullahs,
perhaps even "friends
of Hamas."
Glenn Beck has
conceded the Iraq invasion was a mistake. Fox News's Megyn Kelly
aggressively challenged Dick Cheney on the war-"Time and time again, history has proven that
you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir"-and literally laughed at Dinesh D'Souza, who has tended to
blame our foreign-policy problems on Kenyan anti-colonialism.
When it comes to people taken seriously by mainstream conservatives arguing that what went wrong
in Iraq should guide U.S. foreign policy today, however, Rand Paul is practically by himself. (His
father doesn't have as broad an appeal among Republicans and most other Paul-aligned lawmakers are
either more muddled on foreign policy or much less well known.)
Paul is doing the right thing by pointing out that our mistakes in Iraq are more Cheney's than
Obama's, but he is taking a big political risk. As Ben Domenech
points out, "the real danger for Paul" is not the dog-eared isolationism card but "to be tagged
as no different from an Obama-Kerry liberal."
The charge is absurd, even in the most literal sense. Obama initiated a war in Libya with even
less congressional input than Bush had on Iraq and which was, on a much smaller scale, a comparable
fiasco. John Kerry, famously for it before he was against it, of course voted for the Iraq war.
But partisanship is what makes the world of politics go round, and for most Republicans it makes
sense to pretend the surge retroactively saved the Iraq war and everything was fine until Obama pulled
out the troops. (To the extent the surge actually did succeed-by creating conditions that allowed
the U.S. to withdraw without humiliation and giving the Iraqi government a chance, however small-it
wasn't the success its supporters envisioned.)
Paul has worked hard to make anti-interventionist arguments accessible to the Republican base
while also differentiating himself from the neoconservative caricature of a functional pacifist (even
if the latter sometimes annoys his foreign-policy allies).
Paul has also joined the debate over Ronald Reagan's legacy, not because Reagan was a noninterventionist
but because Republican presidents like him-from Eisenhower to Bush 41-received advice from a more
diverse set of foreign-policy voices than dominate GOP circles today and did not always listen to
the most hawkish among them.
It's a winnable debate, but Rand Paul like the United States cannot go it alone.
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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But
there was a similar discussion in the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm old enough to remember, about why
the 
