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Needed: The Third Continential Congress
March 1, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
As much as we liberty-loving, Constitution-loving, America-loving patriots hate to admit it, the government in Washington, D.C., is NOT fixable. The elitist power structure in D.C. is too ensconced and too powerful. They will never cede power to folks, such as Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, etc., who truly believe in limited government. Nor will they permit the states to reclaim ANY of their constitutionally recognized powers. And neither party in D.C. has enough Ron Paul-types to thwart the evil machinations of the power-drunk leviathan that is Washington, D.C.
Furthermore, the same forces of darkness that control the political establishment in Washington, D.C., also control the media and financial establishments in New York City. The voters of America have too often rejected the presidential and congressional candidates who had the potential to help lead our ship of state to safer waters (if we even have untainted elections). The warnings of the prophets and porters have fallen on deaf ears. For the most part, Americans refuse to dislodge themselves from their addiction to government handouts. In addition, America's pastors have largely abandoned their calling to be watchmen on the wall, which has left our ship of state without a moral compass or a spiritual rudder.
As much as I hate to say it, it is becoming more and more clear that Washington, D.C., may not be fixable. If that's the case, it is only a matter of time before freedomists will be forced to do what freedomists have always been forced to do when facing a tyrannical juggernaut: declare independence.
The closest thing America has had in modern times to Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson is former Congressman Ron Paul. In late January, Dr. Paul brought a speech before the Mises Institute. The theme of the event was "Breaking Away: The Case For Secession."
In his address, Ron said, "'And it's [secession] not gonna be because there will be enough people in the U.S. Congress to legislate it. It won't happen. It will be de facto. You know, you'll have a gold standard when the paper standard fails, and we're getting awfully close to that. And people will have to resort to taking care of themselves. So when conditions break down, you know, there's gonna be an alternative. And I think that's what we're witnessing.'
"Later, Paul said the Federal Reserve would end and the states would stop listening to federal laws they didn't agree with.
"'The Fed is gonna end. There is going to be a de facto secession movement going on. The states are going to refuse to listen to some of the laws. We've seen tremendous success already with states saying to the federal government, "We're not gonna listen to you anymore about the drug laws." And they're getting out of it, and I think the American people are waking up to that, and as far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier.'"
See the report here:
Ron Paul: "Good News" That Secession Is Happening
I believe Dr. Paul is right. Secession ("de facto" or otherwise) is inevitable. How it will come and when it will come is debatable. That it will come is not. The only question is, do we wait for a national or international crisis of apocalyptical proportions or do we begin the debate now in the relative tranquility of peace and order? I say we should begin the debate NOW.
The assaults against our liberties are rooted and grounded inside The Beltway. The federal government in Washington, D.C., has been attacking our Natural rights for decades, to the point that it is almost insufferable. It is fomenting war and aggression all over the world; it is turning people around the globe into the enemies of the American people; it is training its own officers to enslave the American citizenry; it has set up a domestic military command that is nothing less than an occupation force; it has passed laws and policies stripping the American people of virtually every freedom protected in our Bill of Rights; it has set the world's most sophisticated spy system against its own citizens; it has freely allowed violent criminals and gang members from foreign nations to have unfettered access to America's heartland; it has dictated policies to the sovereign states to the point that our states more resemble national provinces; it has taken liberty to the precipice of destruction.
The powers of darkness manipulating the politicians in Washington, D.C., are leading us to financial collapse and global war. They are manipulating the east and west against each other; they are facilitating the military build-up of China; they are goading Russia into war; they are manipulating the collapse of the U.S. dollar; and they are declaring patriotic, God-fearing Americans as "homegrown terrorists," while creating real terrorists abroad.
I propose that the People of the several states begin calling for The Third Continental Congress to the intent that this Congress proposes, debates, and eventually votes on the decision to declare independence from the government in Washington, D.C.
Delegates to such a Congress would by necessity be sent by the People of the states, not by the State legislatures. The focus of the Congress would be singular in purpose: to debate and eventually vote on a resolution of independence. I think the resolution of The Third Continental Congress should mirror Richard Henry Lee's resolution during The Second Continental Congress in 1776:
"Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
I am fully aware that this is a bitter thought to contemplate. It is for me, too. But, ladies and gentlemen, there may be no other way to preserve liberty in our land.
Granted, if Ron Paul (or perhaps his son, Rand) could obtain the White House–and providing he could stay alive–substantial victories could probably be wrought over the Beast. We should NOT stop fighting for the principles of liberty. No one is more engaged in the liberty fight than I. And I will continue to be engaged.
Furthermore, I continue to believe if America's pastors and churches would collectively awaken to the principles of liberty, see "the man behind the curtain," and aggressively preach and teach the principles of Natural Law regarding government, a certain amount of time might be able to be purchased. That's what I'm trying to accomplish with my Liberty Church Project. It's yet to be seen how quickly we will be able to restore patriot pulpits to America.
Yet, many patriotic folks mistakenly believe that we must preserve the Union at all costs. This is NOT the case. We must preserve LIBERTY at all costs. Our loyalty to the Union should only be up and unto the point that it "becomes destructive" to the security of our liberties. Our original Declaration says it plainly:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The mood for such a declaration is already growing. I believe if such a Congress were convened, several of our sovereign states would vote in the affirmative. I think states such as Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, Virginia, Alaska, and even Hawaii, would seriously entertain such a resolution. The actual number of states who might be inclined to vote in the affirmative could potentially number at least half (or more) of the total states in the Union.
The idea that we will be able to maintain the Union under the growing tentacles of Washington, D.C., while maintaining liberty at the same time is now an utterly irreconcilable notion. As did our Founding Fathers before us, we have made–and continue to make–repeated redresses, we have convened conferences, we have repeatedly petitioned, and we have "voted the bums out" over and over again. No matter! The Beast in Washington, D.C., only gets more and more insatiable in its hunger to eat away our liberties. At some point, the American people must take their principles of liberty to The Third Continental Congress and vote on a Twenty-First Century declaration of independence.
And, no, a modern declaration of independence does not have to be bloody. Had Scotland voted for independence a few months ago, would London have sent troops to stop them? Absolutely not. World opinion would not tolerate it. Plus, the need for peaceful trade, commerce, and mutual self-defense would demand cooperation between neighboring governments. This would equally apply in North America.
What separation would likely accomplish is to take the teeth out of a ravenous Beast. It would accomplish what our separation from Great Britain accomplished two hundred years ago. The Beast would not be able to subjugate the free people of a new nation. No longer would it be able to play the world's policeman. No longer would it be able to freely foment hatred and war between nations. Plus, it would give the new republic that would likely form the opportunity to export the ideas of liberty, free enterprise, peaceful trade and diplomacy, etc., around the world. You know, the ideas and principles that the United States USED to export. Separation might actually save, not just the liberties of the American people, but the lives of people around the world from a global catastrophe.
The worst scenario is that the American people wait until the powers of darkness controlling Washington, D.C., bring about a global apocalypse before they realize what they must inevitably do. That is the scenario that Dr. Paul alluded to in his remarks referenced above. The better scenario is that the American people have the sagacity and foresight to see the storm clouds on the horizon and put in motion NOW the remedy for their–and their children's–survival.
Unfortunately, the established track record of the American electorate seems to favor Ron Paul's scenario. I much prefer that liberty-loving patriots begin broaching this subject NOW, before times are desperate.
Either way, sooner or later, in my lifetime or not, in a time of relative peace or extreme chaos, separation is inevitable, because unless the patriot pulpit quickly returns to America, or a Ron Paul-type leader be elected President, the government in Washington, D.C., is not fixable. And as such, we desperately need The Third Continental Congress. It just might be liberty's last chance.
Chuck Baldwin is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
You can reach him at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Please visit Chuck's web site at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com
HSBC Corporate Governance Corruption
February 23, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
When the Negotium essay, Long History of HSBC Money Laundering was written over two years ago, one might think that the Banksters would look to take a lower profile. Forget about it, when you are part of a made criminal syndicate you never have to serve time, just say you are sorry. Bloomberg reports, the "HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver offered "sincerest apologies" following fresh details of how the bank's Swiss unit helped customers evade taxes."
The Forbes column, 'Corporate Governance Is The Very Essence Of A Business' presents a half hearted public relations spin from the notorious bank for Drug, Inc.
"As part of its response to the revelations HSBC said: "We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC's Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today. At the same time, HSBC was run in a more federated way than it is today and decisions were frequently taken at a country level."
The most chilling feature of the laborious research into the HSBC files is the documentation of the knowing wrong-doing perpetrated by managers at various levels throughout the bank – and the flippancy with which it was undertaken. From 'code names' for clients to widespread collusion, it is clear there is complete contempt for the law."
Arrogance in spades is how the world's number two bank operates. Another example provided by Tom Heneghan, who professes to be an International Intelligence Expert, cites the following.
"Alibaba previously was de-listed on the Hong Kong Exchange for dealing in fraud with the Hong Kong branch of noted bank HSBC.
Alibaba is then simultaneously operating a foreign currency money laundry and ponzi scheme tied once again to HSBC."
The bigger the money the greater the chance you have for just minor pin pricks and fines that are all part of the pay off cycle of international banking.
When it comes to inventing clandestine methods for money laundering, look to the masters in the City of London to perfect the art of double talk. The BBC account, HSBC whistleblower's email to HMRC uncovered, states:
"An email which the whistleblower at the centre of an HSBC tax scandal says he sent to HM Revenue and Customs in 2008 has been uncovered by a French newspaper.
The UK tax authority has been under fire from MPs on the Public Accounts Committee, who accused tax officials of failing to deal with the matter adequately and ignoring Mr Falciani's 2008 email."
No surprise that a years old complaint gets pushed under the rug. HSBC is too big to fail and pays for protections in all the right places.
Reuters adds more accelerants to the firestorm, but the odds that this scandal will suck up all the oxygen to build into an inferno are slim.
"Other countries are already taking action against HSBC based on data leaked by Falciani and previously obtained by tax authorities. In November Argentina charged the bank with helping more than 4,000 clients evade taxes. HSBC Argentina rejected the charge, saying it respected Argentine law."
Hey, the motive to avoid paying taxes is well understood. However, facilitating criminal enterprises under the banner of a fiduciary banking institution crosses the line. The Guardian provides the following in HSBC files: Swiss bank hid money for suspected criminals.
"HSBC also held assets for bankers accused of looting funds from former Soviet states, while alleged crimes by other account holders include bribery at Malta's state oil company, cocaine smuggling from the Dominican Republic and the doping of professional cyclists in Spain.
The Swiss bank also held accounts for "politically exposed people" – defined as senior political figures or their relatives at heightened risk of involvement in corruption, money laundering, or avoiding international sanctions – with little evidence of any extra scrutiny of their activities."
OK, what is the point of citing more horror stories, by now you get the drill that the Globalist interdependent financial extortion system needs a mechanism to keep all the pay offs and ill-gotten gains circulating. The history of HSBC is a case study of all that global corporatists has wrought on the planet.
Governments won't even investigate credible complaints, enact necessary structural oversight and accountability processes, and certainly will not jail the kingpins who flaunt their untouchable status.
Repeating this saga using different circumstances never gets down to the level of approaching solutions. Without a universal outcry against the transnational banking model and the creation of regional and local alternative banking, the big banks will just keep getting larger and more autonomous and above national sovereignty.
What governments these banking house monopolies do not control, matter little in the larger scheme of finance. HSBC along with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan may be the posters boys of the Banksters cabal, but you will never see their executive faces on a most wanted poster.
Last year Hang the Bankers published 48 suspicious banking deaths asks.
"With the global financial system heading towards a major crash in the near future are these people buckling under the pressure of what they see coming or are they being silenced because of what they know?"
Attempting to answer this question will take insider information of scores of Falciani whistleblowers. Or more probably, those who are considering joining the ranks of informers may well become part of the growing list of the deceased.
For those who doubt the shadow history of debt created banking, watch the video The Rothschild Family – Puppet Masters – World's Only Trillionaires – Full Documentary on the BREAKING ALL THE RULES You Tube Channel, subscribe for future updates.
What people must come to understand is that banking is not really about making money. It uses the fractional reserve and current zero interest rates to further their political influence over nations to achieve global governance. They are the true outlaws, in Armani suits. HSBC just happens to have a longer experience with global thievery than most
Sartre is the publisher, editor, and writer for Breaking All The Rules. He can be reached at: BATR
Sartre is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
My Thoughts On The Movie "American Sniper"
February 1, 2015 by Administrator · 66 Comments
As did millions of other Americans, I went to see the hugely popular Clint Eastwood-directed movie, "American Sniper." Here are some of my thoughts:
No one, at least not me, doubts the patriotism, courage, and sacrifice of our nation's military personnel–especially our combat forces. I certainly do not share Michael Moore's opinion that Chris Kyle (and the rest of our military snipers) was a coward. Snipers have been effective in helping to wage America's wars since our War for Independence. In lawful combat, snipers are as needful as any other specialized fighting man.
My issue is not with Chris Kyle–or with any other American fighting man. My issue is with the justness of the war Chris Kyle was ordered to fight. Yes, I realize that we have an all-volunteer army; but let's be honest enough to admit that the vast majority of our young people joining the U.S. military sincerely believe that they are doing their patriotic duty by volunteering to conduct war against America's "enemies." They learn nothing else from family, school, movies and television, and church. The singular message they hear is that everything the U.S. military does is right and righteous and that every military engagement is just and justified. I'm sure Chris Kyle was no different.
However, at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, after watching the real-life military exploits of Chris Kyle on the Big Screen, I left the theater extremely angry.
In the first place, Saddam Hussein and the country of Iraq had absolutely NOTHING to do with 9/11, and virtually everyone on the planet now knows it. G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney unabashedly lied to the American people about the necessity of America invading Iraq. We invaded Iraq under false pretenses; we occupied Iraq under false pretenses; and we took (and lost) thousands of lives under false pretenses.
If those miscreants in Washington, D.C., want to invade countries that truly have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), why don't they invade Russia, or China, or Great Britain, or North Korea, or India, or Pakistan, or Israel? We haven't heard the first word about the need to invade and occupy any of those countries. Why not? Each of those countries has known stockpiles of nuclear weapons. And when it comes to abusing human rights, most of the countries listed above have miserable records. But, no one from either party in Washington, D.C., even broaches the idea of invading and occupying (or even bombing) any of these nations. But we were told that the little country of Iraq posed such a severe and imminent threat against the United States that a military invasion was required. Everyone in the world now knows that was poppycock.
And for the benefit of my Christian readers, Saddam Hussein was one of the most tolerant and accommodating Muslim leaders in the entire region. Christian churches thrived under Hussein. For the most part, Hussein happily accommodated the exercise of the Christian religion in Iraq. He even had at least one Christian in his cabinet.
What has happened to Christianity in Iraq since the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein? Several recent reports have documented the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Christianity has been totally expunged from the country of Iraq. Christians have fled the country in terror due to intense persecution. There are no churches left in Iraq. This is AFTER the "liberation" of Iraq and the installation of a puppet government by the United States.
Secondly, as I watched the depiction of U.S. Marines going house-to-house kicking down doors and manhandling old men, women, and children, it occurred to me that these exact same tactics are now being employed by American police agencies against the people of the United States. Our so-called SWAT teams are nothing more than occupying military units on American soil. The strategies, philosophies, mindset, and tactics are exactly the same as soldiers in a war zone.
Thirdly, ask yourself these questions: what if, instead of the place being Fallujah, Iraq, the place was Kansas City, Missouri? Instead of the invasion force being the U.S. military, it was military troops from China, Russia, or North Korea? What if the occupying military snipers were killing American women and children instead of Iraqi women and children? Would we still consider them "heroes?" And would we act any differently from the Iraqi people who were simply trying to defend their homes and communities against an occupying foreign power?
When I left the theater, I was not angry with Chris Kyle because he happened to apparently be the best at what he was trained to do; I was angry with the politicians in Washington, D.C., who sent Chris Kyle into an unjust and undeclared war against people who posed NO imminent threat to the United States.
I am also angry with an American culture that seems to lack the discernment to recognize the difference between just and unjust war. I am further angered by ubiquitous U.S. propaganda against the Muslim people in general (especially by my Christian brethren).
It seems that hardly anyone recognizes that the power-elite are engaged in a global conspiracy to pit the Muslim nations of the Middle East against the West, and vice-versa. Our own CIA has manipulated the internal affairs of Middle Eastern states for decades. The CIA put Saddam Hussein in power. Where do you think those brand new hundred-dollar bills (in the amount of millions of dollars) stored between the walls of Hussein's house, all wrapped in Bank of America wrappers, came from?
The CIA put Osama bin Laden in power. The CIA created Al Qaeda. The CIA created ISIS. And dare we even talk about the illegal drug-running operations that have been conducted by the CIA in both Middle Eastern and Far Eastern nations (not to mention Central and South America) for at least a half-century?
It might make modern Christian leaders feel morally righteous as they constantly stir hatred in the hearts of their followers against the Muslim people, but what it really does is demonstrate their utter ignorance as to who the real enemy is.
The global elite are using radical Islamists, Jews, and Christians alike to stir fear and hatred among nations. No religion has a monopoly on hatred and violence. I remind readers that it wasn't Muslims who killed our brave patriot forebears at Bunker Hill, Lexington Green, and Concord Bridge. It was Christians. It wasn't Muslims who invaded the newly formed United States in 1812. It was Christians. It wasn't Muslims who were beating, imprisoning, and murdering non-traditional believers in early America. It was Christians.
And for all of you who are scared silly about the threat of Sharia Law, I can tell you for a fact that there are numerous Christian preachers today who openly promote bringing America under the civil laws of Old Testament Israel. Yes, that means legalizing capital punishment for adulteresses, children who curse their parents, people who break the Sabbath (Who would define that?), people who are guilty of blasphemy (Who would define that?) homosexuals and lesbians, etc. If these preachers had anything to do with it, we Americans would suffer as much under their brand of "Christianity" as did the people of Israel under the Pharisees and as many who are currently suffering under the heavy hand of Islamic militants today.
And if you think there is religious liberty for the Jewish people in the modern state of Israel, you haven't been there. Let a Jew in Israel convert to Christianity and try to publicly witness for his faith (in much the same manner as did the Apostles in the New Testament) and see what happens. The persecution is intense.
When I was in Israel, I preached in the two Baptist churches in that country. One was in Jerusalem; the other was in Bethlehem. What I discovered surprised me: over ninety percent of the Christians in those churches were not converted Jews; they were converted Muslims. And most of them were Palestinians. In fact, Christianity is growing exponentially among the Palestinian people, even as we speak.
Christians who are constantly fear-mongering against Muslim people are playing right into the hands of the globalists who are using people of different faiths and cultures to inflame hatred and violence, thus creating the conditions for globalists to come to the rescue with their plans for world government. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The American people have far more to fear from Washington, D.C., than they do from Baghdad, Damascus, or Tehran.
As I left the theater, I was angry with a federal government that cares absolutely nothing about our brave U.S. military personnel. They send them to fight unjust wars only then to treat them like second-class citizens in our VA hospitals. If D.C. truly cared about our military personnel, they would never ask them to risk life and limb except for those times that are truly necessary for the safety and security of the United States.
America has NO RIGHT to take upon itself the role of the world's policeman. It has NO RIGHT to send U.S. fighting men to vindicate the policies and prejudices of the United Nations. The President of the United States has NO RIGHT to invade and occupy foreign countries without a Declaration of War by Congress.
And in the case of rogue militants who pose an imminent danger to the people of the United States, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison handled it constitutionally by asking Congress for a letter of marque and reprisal. Congressman Ron Paul introduced just such a bill following the 9/11 attacks. Had Congress followed the Constitution and passed Dr. Paul's bill, much of the turmoil and unrest that currently exists in the Middle East today would have been completely circumvented. But, then again, the globalists would not have been able to inflame the world against each other like they have.
I am angry because, in the name of fighting the War on Terror around the world, the American people are quickly losing the liberties guaranteed in our Constitution's Bill of Rights. And out of a misguided spirit of patriotism, the majority of the American people seem fine with it.
I am angry because our brave military troops are being asked to give their arms and legs and families and lives for the selfish, political, and economic interests of the ruling elite–and are also asked to take the lives of thousands of innocents in the process.
If you ask me, Chris Kyle was the victim of a sadistic and out-of-control federal leviathan that respects NOTHING. Not the rule of law. Not liberty–at home or abroad. Not family–our own or the families of other nations. Not constitutional government. Not national borders–our own or anyone else's. And certainly not the sacredness of life.
Yes, I watched the movie "American Sniper." And I left the theater angry.
Chuck Baldwin is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
You can reach him at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Please visit Chuck's web site at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com
Murdering Journalists … Them and Us
January 20, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
After Paris, condemnation of religious fanaticism is at its height. I'd guess that even many progressives fantasize about wringing the necks of jihadists, bashing into their heads some thoughts about the intellect, about satire, humor, freedom of speech. We're talking here, after all, about young men raised in France, not Saudi Arabia.
Where has all this Islamic fundamentalism come from in this modern age? Most of it comes – trained, armed, financed, indoctrinated – from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. During various periods from the 1970s to the present, these four countries had been the most secular, modern, educated, welfare states in the Middle East region. And what had happened to these secular, modern, educated, welfare states?
In the 1980s, the United States overthrew the Afghan government that was progressive, with full rights for women, believe it or not , leading to the creation of the Taliban and their taking power.
In the 2000s, the United States overthrew the Iraqi government, destroying not only the secular state, but the civilized state as well, leaving a failed state.
In 2011, the United States and its NATO military machine overthrew the secular Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi, leaving behind a lawless state and unleashing many hundreds of jihadists and tons of weaponry across the Middle East.
And for the past few years the United States has been engaged in overthrowing the secular Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. This, along with the US occupation of Iraq having triggered widespread Sunni-Shia warfare, led to the creation of The Islamic State with all its beheadings and other charming practices.
However, despite it all, the world was made safe for capitalism, imperialism, anti-communism, oil, Israel, and jihadists. God is Great!
Starting with the Cold War, and with the above interventions building upon that, we have 70 years of American foreign policy, without which – as Russian/American writer Andre Vltchek has observed – "almost all Muslim countries, including Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, would now most likely be socialist, under a group of very moderate and mostly secular leaders". Even the ultra-oppressive Saudi Arabia – without Washington's protection – would probably be a very different place.
On January 11, Paris was the site of a March of National Unity in honor of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose journalists had been assassinated by terrorists. The march was rather touching, but it was also an orgy of Western hypocrisy, with the French TV broadcasters and the assembled crowd extolling without end the NATO world's reverence for journalists and freedom of speech; an ocean of signs declaring Je suis Charlie … Nous Sommes Tous Charlie; and flaunting giant pencils, as if pencils – not bombs, invasions, overthrows, torture, and drone attacks – have been the West's weapons of choice in the Middle East during the past century.
No reference was made to the fact that the American military, in the course of its wars in recent decades in the Middle East and elsewhere, had been responsible for the deliberate deaths of dozens of journalists. In Iraq, among other incidents, see Wikileaks' 2007 video of the cold-blooded murder of two Reuters journalists; the 2003 US air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded; and the American firing on Baghdad's Hotel Palestine the same year that killed two foreign cameramen.
Moreover, on October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government's Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: "Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists."
And in Yugoslavia, in 1999, during the infamous 78-day bombing of a country which posed no threat at all to the United States or any other country, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station's staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage.
I present here some views on Charlie Hebdo sent to me by a friend in Paris who has long had a close familiarity with the publication and its staff:
"On international politics Charlie Hebdo was neoconservative. It supported every single NATO intervention from Yugoslavia to the present. They were anti-Muslim, anti-Hamas (or any Palestinian organization), anti-Russian, anti-Cuban (with the exception of one cartoonist), anti-Hugo Chávez, anti-Iran, anti-Syria, pro-Pussy Riot, pro-Kiev … Do I need to continue?
"Strangely enough, the magazine was considered to be 'leftist'. It's difficult for me to criticize them now because they weren't 'bad people', just a bunch of funny cartoonists, yes, but intellectual freewheelers without any particular agenda and who actually didn't give a fuck about any form of 'correctness' – political, religious, or whatever; just having fun and trying to sell a 'subversive' magazine (with the notable exception of the former editor, Philippe Val, who is, I think, a true-blooded neocon)."
Dumb and Dumber
Remember Arseniy Yatsenuk? The Ukrainian whom US State Department officials adopted as one of their own in early 2014 and guided into the position of Prime Minister so he could lead the Ukrainian Forces of Good against Russia in the new Cold War?
In an interview on German television on January 7, 2015 Yatsenuk allowed the following words to cross his lips: "We all remember well the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. We will not allow that, and nobody has the right to rewrite the results of World War Two".
The Ukrainian Forces of Good, it should be kept in mind, also include several neo-Nazis in high government positions and many more partaking in the fight against Ukrainian pro-Russians in the south-east of the country. Last June, Yatsenuk referred to these pro-Russians as "sub-humans" , directly equivalent to the Nazi term "untermenschen".
So the next time you shake your head at some stupid remark made by a member of the US government, try to find some consolation in the thought that high American officials are not necessarily the dumbest, except of course in their choice of who is worthy of being one of the empire's partners.
The type of rally held in Paris this month to condemn an act of terror by jihadists could as well have been held for the victims of Odessa in Ukraine last May. The same neo-Nazi types referred to above took time off from parading around with their swastika-like symbols and calling for the death of Russians, Communists and Jews, and burned down a trade-union building in Odessa, killing scores of people and sending hundreds to hospital; many of the victims were beaten or shot when they tried to flee the flames and smoke; ambulances were blocked from reaching the wounded … Try and find a single American mainstream media entity that has made even a slightly serious attempt to capture the horror. You would have to go to the Russian station in Washington, DC, RT.com, search "Odessa fire" for many stories, images and videos. Also see the Wikipedia entry on the 2 May 2014 Odessa clashes.
If the American people were forced to watch, listen, and read all the stories of neo-Nazi behavior in Ukraine the past few years, I think they – yes, even the American people and their less-than-intellectual Congressional representatives – would start to wonder why their government was so closely allied with such people. The United States may even go to war with Russia on the side of such people.
L'Occident n'est pas Charlie pour Odessa. Il n'y a pas de défilé à Paris pour Odessa.
Some thoughts about this thing called ideology
Norman Finkelstein, the fiery American critic of Israel, was interviewed recently by Paul Jay on The Real News Network. Finkelstein related how he had been a Maoist in his youth and had been devastated by the exposure and downfall of the Gang of Four in 1976 in China. "It came out there was just an awful lot of corruption. The people who we thought were absolutely selfless were very self-absorbed. And it was clear. The overthrow of the Gang of Four had huge popular support."
Many other Maoists were torn apart by the event. "Everything was overthrown overnight, the whole Maoist system, which we thought [were] new socialist men, they all believed in putting self second, fighting self. And then overnight the whole thing was reversed."
"You know, many people think it was McCarthy that destroyed the Communist Party," Finkelstein continued. "That's absolutely not true. You know, when you were a communist back then, you had the inner strength to withstand McCarthyism, because it was the cause. What destroyed the Communist Party was Khrushchev's speech," a reference to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 exposure of the crimes of Joseph Stalin and his dictatorial rule.
Although I was old enough, and interested enough, to be influenced by the Chinese and Russian revolutions, I was not. I remained an admirer of capitalism and a good loyal anti-communist. It was the war in Vietnam that was my Gang of Four and my Nikita Khrushchev. Day after day during 1964 and early 1965 I followed the news carefully, catching up on the day's statistics of American firepower, bombing sorties, and body counts. I was filled with patriotic pride at our massive power to shape history. Words like those of Winston Churchill, upon America's entry into the Second World War, came easily to mind again – "England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations would live." Then, one day – a day like any other day – it suddenly and inexplicably hit me. In those villages with the strange names there were people under those falling bombs, people running in total desperation from that god-awful machine-gun strafing.
This pattern took hold. The news reports would stir in me a self-righteous satisfaction that we were teaching those damn commies that they couldn't get away with whatever it was they were trying to get away with. The very next moment I would be struck by a wave of repulsion at the horror of it all. Eventually, the repulsion won out over the patriotic pride, never to go back to where I had been; but dooming me to experience the despair of American foreign policy again and again, decade after decade.
The human brain is an amazing organ. It keeps working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 52 weeks a year, from before you leave the womb, right up until the day you find nationalism. And that day can come very early. Here's a recent headline from the Washington Post: "In the United States the brainwashing starts in kindergarten."
Oh, my mistake. It actually said "In N. Korea the brainwashing starts in kindergarten."
Let Cuba Live! The Devil's List of what the United States has done to Cuba
On May 31, 1999, a lawsuit for $181 billion in wrongful death, personal injury, and economic damages was filed in a Havana court against the government of the United States. It was subsequently filed with the United Nations. Since that time its fate is somewhat of a mystery.
The lawsuit covered the 40 years since the country's 1959 revolution and described, in considerable detail taken from personal testimony of victims, US acts of aggression against Cuba; specifying, often by name, date, and particular circumstances, each person known to have been killed or seriously wounded. In all, 3,478 people were killed and an additional 2,099 seriously injured. (These figures do not include the many indirect victims of Washington's economic pressures and blockade, which caused difficulties in obtaining medicine and food, in addition to creating other hardships.)
The case was, in legal terms, very narrowly drawn. It was for the wrongful death of individuals, on behalf of their survivors, and for personal injuries to those who survived serious wounds, on their own behalf. No unsuccessful American attacks were deemed relevant, and consequently there was no testimony regarding the many hundreds of unsuccessful assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro and other high officials, or even of bombings in which no one was killed or injured. Damages to crops, livestock, or the Cuban economy in general were also excluded, so there was no testimony about the introduction into the island of swine fever or tobacco mold.
However, those aspects of Washington's chemical and biological warfare waged against Cuba that involved human victims were described in detail, most significantly the creation of an epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue fever in 1981, during which some 340,000 people were infected and 116,000 hospitalized; this in a country which had never before experienced a single case of the disease. In the end, 158 people, including 101 children, died. That only 158 people died, out of some 116,000 who were hospitalized, was an eloquent testimony to the remarkable Cuban public health sector.
The complaint describes the campaign of air and naval attacks against Cuba that commenced in October 1959, when US president Dwight Eisenhower approved a program that included bombings of sugar mills, the burning of sugar fields, machine-gun attacks on Havana, even on passenger trains.
Another section of the complaint described the armed terrorist groups, los banditos, who ravaged the island for five years, from 1960 to 1965, when the last group was located and defeated. These bands terrorized small farmers, torturing and killing those considered (often erroneously) active supporters of the Revolution; men, women, and children. Several young volunteer literacy-campaign teachers were among the victims of the bandits.
There was also of course the notorious Bay of Pigs invasion, in April 1961. Although the entire incident lasted less than 72 hours, 176 Cubans were killed and 300 more wounded, 50 of them permanently disabled.
The complaint also described the unending campaign of major acts of sabotage and terrorism that included the bombing of ships and planes as well as stores and offices. The most horrific example of sabotage was of course the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner off Barbados in which all 73 people on board were killed. There were as well as the murder of Cuban diplomats and officials around the world, including one such murder on the streets of New York City in 1980. This campaign continued to the 1990s, with the murders of Cuban policemen, soldiers, and sailors in 1992 and 1994, and the 1997 hotel bombing campaign, which took the life of a foreigner; the bombing campaign was aimed at discouraging tourism and led to the sending of Cuban intelligence officers to the US in an attempt to put an end to the bombings; from their ranks rose the Cuban Five.
To the above can be added the many acts of financial extortion, violence and sabotage carried out by the United States and its agents in the 16 years since the lawsuit was filed. In sum total, the deep-seated injury and trauma inflicted upon on the Cuban people can be regarded as the island's own 9-11.
- US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232
- Counterpunch, January 10, 2015
- Index on Censorship, the UK's leading organization promoting freedom of expression, October 18, 2001
- The Independent (London), April 24, 1999
- "Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk talking to Pinar Atalay", Tagesschau (Germany), January 7, 2015 (in Ukrainian with German voice-over)
- CNN, June 15, 2014
- See William Blum, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, chapter 3
- Washington Post, January 17, 2015, page A6
- William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, chapter 30, for a capsule summary of Washington's chemical and biological warfare against Havana.
- For further information, see William Schaap, Covert Action Quarterly magazine (Washington, DC), Fall/Winter 1999, pp.26-29
William Blum is the author of:
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
Email to email@example.com
Website: WilliamBlum.org
William Blum is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Oil Price Blowback
January 10, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Is Putin Creating A New World Order?
"If undercharging for energy products occurs deliberately, it also effects those who introduce these limitations. Problems will arise and grow, worsening the situation not only for Russia but also for our partners." – Russian President Vladimir Putin
It's hard to know which country is going to suffer the most from falling oil prices. Up to now, of course, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have taken the biggest hit, but that will probably change as time goes on. What the Obama administration should be worried about is the second-order effects that will eventually show up in terms of higher unemployment, market volatility, and wobbly bank balance sheets. That's where the real damage is going to crop up because that's where red ink and bad loans can metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis. Check out this blurb from Nick Cunningham at Oilprice.com and you'll see what I mean:
"According to an assessment from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, an estimated 250,000 jobs across eight U.S. states could be lost in 2015 if oil prices don't rise. More than 50 percent of those job losses would occur in Texas, which leads the nation in oil production.
There are some early signs that a slowdown in drilling could spread to the manufacturing sector in Texas… One executive at a metal manufacturing company said in the survey, "the drop in crude oil prices is going to make things ugly… quickly." Another company that manufactures machinery told the Dallas Fed, "Low oil prices will drive reductions in U.S. drilling rigs, which will in turn reduce the market for our products."
The sentiment was similar for a chemical manufacturer, who said "lower oil prices will adversely impact margins. Energy volatility will cause our customers to keep inventories tight."
States like Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have seen their economies boom over the last few years as oil production surged. But the sector is now deflating, leaving gashes in employment rolls and state budgets." (Low Prices Lead To Layoffs In The Oil Patch, Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com)
Of course industries lay-off workers all the time and it doesn't always lead to a financial crisis. But unemployment is just one part of the picture, lower personal consumption is another. Take a look:
"Falling oil prices are a bigger drag on economic growth than the incremental "savings" received by the consumer…..Another way to show this graphically is to look at the annual changes in Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) in aggregate as compared to the subsection of PCE spent on energy and related products. This is shown in the chart below.
Lower Energy Prices To Lower PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures):
(The Gasoline Price Myth, Lance Roberts, oilprice.com)
See? So despite what you might have read in the MSM, lower gas prices do not translate into greater personal consumption or more robust growth. Quiet the contrary, they tend to intensify deflationary pressures and reduce activity which is a damper on growth.
Then there's the knock-on effects that crashing prices and layoffs have on other industries like mining, manufacturing and chemical production. Here's more from Oil Price:
"Oil and gas production makeup a hefty chunk of the "mining and manufacturing" component of the employment rolls. Since 2000, when the oil price boom gained traction, Texas has comprised more than 40% of all jobs in the country according to first quarter data from the Dallas Federal Reserve…
The majority of the jobs "created" since the financial crisis have been lower wage paying jobs in retail, healthcare and other service sectors of the economy. Conversely, the jobs created within the energy space are some of the highest wage paying opportunities available in engineering, technology, accounting, legal, etc. In fact, each job created in energy related areas has had a "ripple effect" of creating 2.8 jobs elsewhere in the economy from piping to coatings, trucking and transportation, restaurants and retail….
The obvious ramification of the plunge in oil prices is that eventually the loss of revenue will lead to cuts in production, declines in capital expenditure plans (which comprise almost 1/4th of all capex expenditures in the S&P 500), freezes and/or reductions in employment, and declines in revenue and profitability…
Simply put, lower oil and gasoline prices may have a bigger detraction on the economy than the "savings" provided to consumers." (The Gasoline Price Myth, Lance Roberts, oilprice.com)
None of this sounds very reassuring, does it? And yet, all we hear from the media is how the economy is going to reach "escape velocity" on the back of cheap oil. Nonsense. This is just more "green shoots" baloney wrapped in public relations hype. The fact is, the economy needs the good-paying jobs more than it needs low-priced energy. But now that prices are tumbling, those jobs are going to disappear which is going to be a drag on growth. Now check out these headlines I picked up on Google News that help to show what's going on off the radar:
"Texas is in danger of a recession", CNN Money.
"Texas Could Be Headed for an Oil-Fueled Recession, JP Morgan Economist Says", Wall Street Journal "Good Times From Texas to North Dakota May Turn Bad on Oil-Price Drop", Bloomberg
"Low Oil Prices in the New Year Are Screwing Petrostates", Vice News
"Top US Oil States Are Taking A Hit From Plunging Crude Prices", Business Insider
Get the picture? If oil prices continue to fall, unemployment is going to spike, activity is going to slow, and the economy is going tank. And the damage won't be limited to the US either. Get a load of this from the UK Telegraph:
"A third of Britain's listed oil and gas companies are in danger of running out of working capital and even going bankrupt amid a slump in the value of crude, according to new research.
Financial risk management group Company Watch believes that 70pc of the UK's publicly listed oil exploration and production companies are now unprofitable, racking up significant losses in the region of £1.8bn.
Such is the extent of the financial pressure now bearing down on highly leveraged drillers in the UK that Company Watch estimates that a third of the 126 quoted oil and gas companies on AIM and the London Stock Exchange are generating no revenues.
The findings are the latest warning to hit the oil and gas industry since a slump in the price of crude accelerated in November when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decided to keep its output levels unchanged. The decision has caused carnage in oil markets with a barrel of Brent crude falling 45pc since June to around $60 per barrel." (Third of listed UK oil and gas drillers face bankruptcy, Telegraph)
"Carnage in oil markets," you say?
Indeed. Many of the oil-drilling newcomers set up shop to take advantage of the low rates and easy money available in the bond market. Now that prices have crashed, investors are avoiding energy-related junk bonds like the plague which is making it impossible for the smaller companies to roll over their debt or attract fresh capital. When these companies start to default en masse, as they certainly will if prices don't rebound, the blowback will be felt on bank balance sheets across the country creating the possibility of another financial meltdown. (Now we ARE talking about a financial crisis.)
The basic problem is that the banks have bundled a lot of their dodgy debt into financially-engineered products like Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that will inevitably fail when borrowers are no longer able to service the loans. The rot can be concealed for a while, but eventually, if prices don't recover, a significant number of these companies are going to go under which will push the perennially-undercapitalized banking system to the brink once again. That's why Washington's plan to push down oil prices (to hurt the Russian economy) might have made sense on a short-term basis (to shock Putin into submission) but as a long-term strategy, it's nuts. And what's even crazier, is that Obama has decided to double-down on the same wacky plan even though Putin hasn't given an inch. Check this out from Reuters on Monday:
"The Obama administration has opened a new front in the global battle for oil market share, effectively clearing the way for the shipment of as much as a million barrels per day of ultra-light U.S. crude to the rest of the world…
The Department of Commerce on Tuesday ended a year-long silence on a contentious, four-decade ban on oil exports, saying it had begun approving a backlog of requests to sell processed light oil abroad.
The action comes at a critical juncture for the global oil market. World prices have halved to less than $60 a barrel since the summer as top exporter Saudi Arabia, once a staunch defender of $100 oil, refused to cut production in the face of surging U.S. shale output and tempered global demand…
With global oil markets in flux, it is far from clear how much U.S. condensate will find a market overseas."
(Analysis – U.S. opening of oil export tap widens battle for global market, Reuters)
Does that make sense to you, dear reader? Why would Obama suddenly opt to change the rules of the game when he knows it will increase supply and push prices down even further? Why would he do that? Certainly, he doesn't want to inflict more pain on domestic producers, does he?
Let's let Obama answer the question for himself. Here's a clip from an NPR interview with the president just last week. About halfway through the interview, NPR's Steve Inskeep asks Obama: "Are you just lucky that the price of oil went down and therefore their currency collapsed or …is it something that you did?
Barack Obama: If you'll recall, their (Russia) economy was already contracting and capital was fleeing even before oil collapsed. And part of our rationale in this process was that the only thing keeping that economy afloat was the price of oil. And if, in fact, we were steady in applying sanction pressure, which we have been, that over time it would make the economy of Russia sufficiently vulnerable that if and when there were disruptions with respect to the price of oil — which, inevitably, there are going to be sometime, if not this year then next year or the year after — that they'd have enormous difficulty managing it." (Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview)
Am I mistaken or did Obama just admit that he wanted "disruptions" in the "price of oil" because he figured Putin would have "enormous difficulty managing it"?
Isn't that the same as saying that it was all part of Washington's plan; that plunging prices were just the icing on the cake for their asymmetrical attack on the Russian economy? It sure sounds like it. And that would also explain why Obama decided to allow domestic producers to dump more oil on the market even though it's going to send prices lower. Apparently, none of that matters as long as the policy hurts Russia.
So maybe the US-Saudi oil collusion theory isn't so far fetched after all. Maybe Salon's Patrick L. Smith was right when he said:
"Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry's campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.
Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington's unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.
Shortly after Kerry's visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come…
Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry's unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: "There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now," this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day." ("What Really Happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi And The Back Story The Media Won't Tell You", Patrick L. Smith, Salon)
Vladimir Putin: Public Enemy Number 1
Let's cut to the chase: All these oil shenanigans are really aimed at just one man: Vladimir Putin. There are a number of reasons why Washington wants to get rid of Putin, the first of which is that the Russian president has become an obstacle to US plans to pivot to Asia. That's the main issue. As long as Putin is calling the shots, there's going to be growing resistance to NATO's push eastward and Washington's military expansion across Central Asia which could undermine US plans to encircle China and remain the world's only superpower. Here's an excerpt from Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard which helps to explain the importance Eurasia is in terms of Washington's global ambitions:
"..how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi's Seminal Book)
Get it? Prevailing in Asia is the administration's top priority, which is why the US is rapidly moving its military assets into place. Check this out from the World Socialist Web Site:
"Under Obama's "pivot to Asia," the Pacific Command will account for more than 60 percent of all US military forces, up from 50 percent under the Bush administration. This includes new US basing arrangements in the Philippines, Singapore and Australia, as well as renewed close military ties to New Zealand, and ongoing US military exercises in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan….(as well as) large troop deployments in Japan and South Korea, including nuclear-armed units." (The global scale of US militarism, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site)
The "Big Shift" is already underway, which is why obstacles have to be removed and Putin's got to go.
Second, Putin has made himself a general nuisance vis a vis US strategic objectives in Syria, Iran and Ukraine. In Syria, Putin has thrown his support behind Assad who the US wants to topple in order to redraw the map of the Middle East and build gas pipelines from Qatar to Turkey to access the lucrative EU market.
Third, Putin has strengthened a number of coalitions and alliances –the BRICS bank, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization–all of which pose a challenge to US dominance in the region as well as a viable alternative to neoliberal financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Going back to Brzezinski's "chessboard" once again, we see that the US should not feel threatened by any one nation, but should be constantly on-the-lookout for "regional coalitions" which could derail its plans to rule the world. Here's Brzezinski again:
"…the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)
"Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi's Seminal Book)
As a founding member and primary backer of these organizations, (and initiator of giant energy deals with China, India and Turkey) Putin has become Washington's biggest headache and a logical target for regime change.
Finally, Putin is doing whatever he can to circumvent dollar-denominated business and financial transactions. The move away from the buck is a direct attack on the US's greatest source of power, the ability to control the de facto international currency and to require that other nation's stockpile dollars for their energy purchases which are then recycled into US financial assets, stocks bonds and US Treasuries. This petrodollar-recycling scam allows the US to run gigantic current account deficits without raising interest rates or reducing government spending. Putin's anti-dollar policies could diminish the greenback's role as reserve currency and put an end to a system that institutionalizes looting.
This is why Putin is Public Enemy Number 1. It's because he's blocking the US pivot to Asia, strengthening anti-Washington coalitions, sabotaging US foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, creating institutions that rival the IMF and World Bank, transacting massive energy deals with critical US allies, increasing membership in an integrated, single-market Eurasian Economic Union, and attacking the structural foundation upon which the entire US empire rests, the dollar.
Naturally, Washington's powerbrokers are worried about these developments, just as they are worried about the new world order which is gradually taking shape under Putin's guidance. But, so far, they haven't been able to do anything about it. The administration's regime change schemers and fantasists have shown time-and-again that they're no match for Bad Vlad who has beaten them at every turn.
Bravo, Putin.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: email@example.com
When Liberal Preferences Meet Islamic Principles
December 14, 2014 by Administrator · 13 Comments
There was a recent scandal that, as much as anything else, illustrates the intellectual emptiness and moral ennui of the modern liberal man. It occurred in Britain but reflects a wider phenomenon; what can be said about it can be said about happenings in Sweden, France, Holland, Canada or Belgium — or the United States.
It was discovered recently that Muslims in seven London schools were indoctrinating children with Islamic propaganda, ignoring Western culture and refusing to inculcate the "British values" of the moment. The situation was such that all of one school's library books were in Arabic and many students couldn't tell investigators whether they should follow British or Sharia law or which was more important. And one of these schools, mind you, was a state-run Church of England institution — that happens to now be upwards of 80 percent Muslim.
When hearing about the subordination of British law to Sharia and other such Islamic cultural inroads, one of my instincts is to say "So what?" Cry me a river of multiculturalist tears.
Multiculturalism, we've been told, dictates that all cultures are morally equal and deserve the same respect and footing within "Western" civilization. Never mind that the ideology is self-defeating. After all, since different cultures espouse different values, not all cultures can be "morally" equal unless all values are so. This makes multiculturalism not only a corollary of, but also a Trojan horse for, moral relativism. And consider the implications. If all values are equal, how can showing cultures equal respect be superior to cultural chauvinism? And what if another culture does prescribe the latter? It then follows that the people within it cannot both have their own culture, unaltered, and accept multiculturalism.
Nonetheless, since multiculturalism is considered enlightened by Western pseudo-intellectuals, it's time for some personal petard hoisting. A Daily Mail piece on the Londonistan school situation tells us that some students told inspectors "it would be wrong to learn about other religions" and that "it was a woman's job to cook and clean." The paper furthermore reported that schools were criticized for "failure to give girls equal opportunities," narrow curricula, not preparing students "for life in a diverse British society," not encouraging students "to respect other people's opinions" and for creating a situation in which students' "understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance, is underdeveloped."
And the problem is…?
What if these Muslims' faith and culture dictate that women should be steered toward domesticity and shouldn't have equal opportunity; that there should be not diversity but Islamic homogeneity; that not all opinions should be respected and that it is wrong to learn about other religions; and that Islamic theocracy is preferable to democracy? And the matter of "tolerance" is an interesting one. Since the term implies a perceived negative — you wouldn't tolerate a delectable meal or fine car, but would have to tolerate a stubborn cold or bad weather — the reality is that tolerance is only admirable under two circumstances:
- When something you dislike isn't objectively bad, such as when you tolerate a vegetable you're not partial to for health reasons.
- When you're powerless to change something that is objectively bad, such as an irremediable crippling condition.
But if something is objectively wrong and can be eliminated, it is an abdication of moral responsibility to refuse to do so. And has it occurred to anyone that pious Muslims may instinctively realize this and, considering Western culture a misbegotten force (their perspective), view changing it a divine mission?
Be that as it may, given that multiculturalism espouses cultural equivalence and its correlative moral relativism, by its lights none of the bemoaned Islamic curricula standards and outcomes can be any worse than what secularists prefer. So what gives? Are you liberals denying these Muslim immigrants their culture and creed?
You certainly are. But this hypocrisy is nothing new. Multiculturalism has been used for decades, at every turn, as a pretext for denuding Western traditions and Christian symbols and messages from our cultural landscape, using "tolerance" and "diversity" as rallying cries. Even as I write this, a Washington state high-school senior faces expulsion from school for sharing his Christian faith, the idea being that such expression is "offensive." Multiculturalism was always nonsense. "Anything goes" — as long as it's branded "culture" — could never be a recipe for organizing anything because it doesn't allow for distinguishing between anything and any other thing. A standard of some kind must be applied when devising laws, regulations and social codes; and standards, by definition, involve the upholding and imposition of values.
This is why G.K. Chesterton once noted, "In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it." Except for leftists possessed of evil genius, most are in the latter camp. Multiculturalism certainly felt right when useful for purging an element of tradition contrary to the liberal agenda; it doesn't quite have the same glitter, however, when it would allow the institution of such an element. Multiculturalism is for use on other people's dogmas; it's not for use on the Left's own.
Now, one pitfall of being a slave to one's age who unknowingly embraces its dogmas is that you generally make the mistake of mirroring. This is when you project your priorities, feelings and basic suppositions onto others; in a nutshell, you assume that they take for granted the things you do.
Consider, for instance, Muslims' subordination of host-country law to Sharia law. Outrageous? Impudent? Perhaps.
In reality, you should expect nothing less — or more.
When pondering this, realize that devout Christians (of which I'm one) are very similar to Muslims in this regard. This statement may raise eyebrows and even some dander, but just consider the recent cases in which Christians have accepted career destruction and punishment rather than be party to same-sex "weddings" or homosexual activism. Why are these Christians opposing the "law of the land"? And what standard informs them man's law is wrong? What standard are they subordinating the law of the land to?
What they see as the only law that could be, and must be, above it: God's law.
This isn't to say Christians and Muslims are the same. They certainly have different conceptions of God's law. And in keeping with this, Christian law generally didn't clash with Western "secular" law — until secularists started holding sway — because our secular law reflected Christian morality; it was authored by Christian men, such as the Founding Fathers, who naturally imbued their system of law with their world view. As an example, the Declaration of Independence enunciates the basis for our constitutional rights, stating that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
The situation with Sharia is far different. Since the tree of Western secular law wasn't germinated from the seed of Islam, it was traditionally and remains today largely incongruent with Muslim principles; thus is a clash, in which Islam will ever try to burn that tree root and branch, inevitable.
Some moderns will now say that this is why no "religious" law should influence society. But not only is this a philosophically unsound position that fails to recognize the basis of just law (Absolute Truth), it also places a person in bad company: The Marxists and Nazis also aimed to neuter the Church and squelch belief in religious law. After all, a devout statist wants the state's law to be pre-eminent; "Thou shalt have no gods before thy government." And this won't happen if people recognize a higher law.
And this recognition is what believing Christians, Muslims and Jews all have in common. It is also why it is silly, in the extreme, to expect Muslims to subordinate Sharia to Western secular law. You are literally asking them to place government ahead of what they see as God. This simply isn't going to happen, and no amount of blather about "tolerance," "diversity" and multiculturalism — which is just another way of saying "Accept our liberal dogmas" — is going to change that. And when the population of believing Muslims becomes great enough in a Western land, they will succeed in Islamizing governmental law.
German chancellor Angela Merkel announced in 2010, finally, that multiculturalism in her country had "utterly failed." Talk about being a biblical day late and a budget deficit short. And she and other Western leaders still don't get it. One can't understand ideologies such as multiculturalism if he views them as disconnected social mistakes; they are all part of a deep philosophical/spiritual malaise. It isn't just that the multiculturalist branch needs to be pruned or even cut off. It's that the devout Muslims are right: the liberal-secularist tree, that Gramscian mutation, must be pulled up and incinerated in the Hell fires whence it came. And it will be. The only question is whether we will return to our roots or allow the complete erasure of Western civilization.
Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a regular guest on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan's magazine The American Conservative and he writes regularly for The New American and Christian Music Perspective.
He can be reached at: email@example.com
Selwyn Duke is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Ebola: Don't Blame The Bats!
November 22, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Something almost universally omitted from the discussion about the Ebola crisis in West Africa is the question how the outbreak started. The Establishment speculates that it started with infected bats but admit they have no evidence to support the contention [1] (somehow the bat took off on its northerly trek out of its terre natal, the Congo, skipped over the five or six countries between there and West Africa, and alighted in eastern Guinea, where it's deadly hemorrhagic hitchhiker got off and caught another ride!). In the alternative media, the bat theory is echoed briefly in a Counterpunch article entitled "The Origins of the Ebola Crisis" before the article veers off to harp on the many shortcomings of capitalism which have aggravated the situation.[2]
The wayward turn taken in the Counterpunch article is indicative of the silence of the alternative media in general on the subject of how the Ebola outbreak started. Only a few – most notably the curmudgeons at the Canadian site, Global Research – have pursued the issue with any diligence.[3] This is especially surprising as there are plenty of buffs out there who can see a conspiracy in the fact the sun rises in the East every morning and the evidence that the United States war machine is behind the outbreak, while circumstantial, is more substantive than things like pegmatite bits in the Twin Towers' debris or the starless night sky in photos taken by astronauts supposedly on the moon.
Two months before Ebola appeared in West Africa a Canadian company, Tekmira, began clinical trials on humans of their Ebola vaccine, TKM-Ebola, which they had previously tested on animals. Their self-congratulatory press release announcing the start of the trials, issued on January 14, 2014, failed to mention where the human guinea pigs resided.[4] Nor is it stated in the National Institutes of Health description of the clinical trial (Curiously, the NIH suspended the trials in July, just when the push to come up with a vaccine went viral, so to speak).[5] If the trials were conducted in West Africa anywhere near the place where the virus first appeared, I'd say we have a smoking gun, or, more apropos, a squirting hypodermic needle. Yet I have not heard of anyone in the media – alternative or corporate – who has asked Tekmira where they were performing the tests, which in itself is circumstantial evidence of a sort.
Further evidence lies in the almost total lack of mention of Tekmira and its human trials in the hubbub over the urgency to come up with a treatment for Ebola, including a vaccine. Even such supposedly well informed experts as William Schaffner, a specialist in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt's School of Medicine, seems never to have heard of Tekmira, as he told the Voice of America in October there had not been a way to conduct human clinical trials until the current crisis.[6] This despite Reuter's having reported on Tekmira's initiation of trials on humans in March.[7] Do fewer people read Reuter's dispatches than watch my public access TV show, i.e., a handful of fitful insomniacs who fell asleep with the channel on?
The fact that Tekmira was developing its vaccine under a $140 million contract with the Department of Defense does nothing to weaken the case for occult DoD shenanigans. And the contract wasn't with the Department's Office of Community Relations and World Peace. It was with the BioDefense Therapeutics (BDTX) Product Manager within the Medical Countermeasure Systems (JPM-MCS) branch of the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense. Can you spell "biological warfare"? Are we trying to weaponize Ebola? Have we succeeded? That the West African outbreak is qualitatively different from all previous outbreaks suggests we have.
Prior to the West African case, the greatest number killed in an Ebola epidemic had been 280 (while all eyes have been on West Africa, the Congo suffered an outbreak – now contained – in which 49 people died). The total number of cases in the current outbreak exceeds by far all the cases from 1977 to the present.[8] Remember that we denied weaponizing anthrax until someone sent some through the mail post-9/11. Also consider that the grandfather of the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus, first appeared in the labs of the German pharmaceutical company, Hoechst, an offshoot of the Nazi-era conglomerate, IG Farben, whose managers were prosecuted at Nuremberg for testing drugs on concentration camp inmates.
There are reports (which I have been unable to confirm) that we have biological weapons labs in West Africa, including a biosecurity level 2 bioweapons research lab at the hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone at the center of the outbreak.[9] Is this why we sent troops to West Africa instead of doctors – to protect, or remove all trace of, our bio-warfare labs? Is this why angry mobs attacked a clinic in Guinea? Do the Guineans know better what's going on than we Americans? Does this explain why the World Health Organization's had a delayed response to the crisis, hoping it could be contained quietly before too many people knew about it?
More telling evidence: when the outbreak became public knowledge in March, Tekmira's stock, which had been rising steadily, took a tumble. It plummeted from $30.94 a share in mid-March to $10.59 in mid-May.[10] Why would Tekmira's stock go down right when the need for their product took on the aspect of a Big Pharmacist's wet-dream? Is this as much a sign of insiders in the know as those put options placed on American and United Airlines stock immediately prior to 9/11? Were those savvy traders afraid the truth would get out, making Tekmira's stock worthless?
If we are responsible for the appearance of Ebola in West Africa, we owe the West Africans a lot more than the $6.2 billion Obama has committed to the fight. The blood money (literally) would total in the hundreds of billions, not tens. But the cost to the bio-warriors would, hopefully, be even greater. It might mean the end of their mad science if it provoked the all-too-trusting, kept-in-the-dark, non-bellicose public to demand a real end to all mucking around with biological weapons. The anthrax case and now, perhaps, the Ebola outbreak have made clear that existing conventions and treaties meant to accomplish this end have failed (mimicking the Great Powers ban on the use of poison gas… agreed to a decade before they all used it in World War I).
Speaking of the First World War, during the war and immediately thereafter the Spanish flu killed 3-5% of the world's population. If Ebola was unleashed on the world by us and it killed a similar number, say, 300 million worldwide including 15 million in the USA, would we 'fess up to it? History is not reassuring. There have been a number of instances where military-related biologic tests have gone awry without the public being any the wiser for decades. e.g, the army's spraying of a supposedly harmless aerosol into the San Francisco sky in 1950, which resulted in at least one death and which did not become public knowledge until it was revealed in Senate hearings in 1977.[11]
How the "Spanish" flu got its name is also instructive. The flu appeared in Great Britain, France, and the United States while World War I raged on, but fearful of the impact on public morale, the censors kept a lid on it (national security trumps everything, even the public's health!). The flu also struck in Spain, which was neutral, so nobody worried about public morale there and the outbreak was freely reported on, forever linking Spain with one of the deadliest epidemics in history.
Whether the current Ebola outbreak can be attributed to the US military or not, so long as our Frankenstein wannabes continue to concoct, in the name of national security, scourges more biblical than anything God ever dreamed up, the possibility of an inadvertent global pandemic horrific in scale exists. That it will happen someday is as great a surety as the certainty that all those nuclear weapons the world has accumulated will someday be used, unless we get rid of them. We're not making much progress toward nuclear disarmament but can't we at least get the facts on what our military is up to in West Africa – especially the facts surrounding that curiously-timed human testing by Tekmira. Otherwise, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, loosed upon the world not by God but by ourselves, may someday ride roughshod over us on his way to Armageddon.
(By the way, I do believe Copernican theory is sufficient to explain the sun's rising in the East, but if you have a more sinister explanation, do run it by me.)
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/
[3] http://www.globalresearch.ca/
[4] http://investor.tekmirapharm.
[5] http://clinicaltrials.gov/
[6] http://www.voanews.com/
[7] http://www.reuters.com/
[8] http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/Ebola/
[9] http://beforeitsnews.com/
[10] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/
[11] http://rudy2.wordpress.com/
Ken Meyercord is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice.
Ken Meyercord produces a public access TV show called Worlddocs which "brings the world to the people of the Washington, DC area through documentaries you won't see broadcast on corporate TV." He has a Master's in Middle East History from the American University of Beirut. He can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Gloves Come Off In Lebanon
November 8, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Sunni-Shia Bellum Sacrum Fault Lines Deepen…
Historically, the term "religious war" (Bellum Sacrum) was used to describe various European wars among Christian denominations spanning mainly the 16th to the 18th century such as the Seven Year's War (1756-1763) which spread widely throughout Europe and on to North America, Central America, the also to the West African coast, India, and the Philippines. There were dozens of other intra-Christian religious wars the seeds of which began to sprout shortly after the death of Jesus Christ.
The Encyclopedia of Wars, by authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, estimate that only 7% of the 1,783 wars they chronicled involve religion. Lebanon is one of these and is still mired in a cold war phase of its 15 year (1975-90) Civil War, from which Lebanon yet to recover. Religious differences are one of the major causes on Lebanon's many problems today and it is within this context that the mushrooming intra-Muslim war between Sunni and Shia is spreading and intensifying. Sunni comprise approximately 90% percent of the followers of Islam and their increasingly vilified coreligionists, Shia Muslims, 10%. This month Lebanon's Shia are commemorating Ashoura and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein Ibn Ali at the battle of Karbala in 680 under increased security with additional checkpoints manned by the Lebanese army and Hezbollah forces because Da'ish and al Nursa have announced their intent to target the Shia worshipers.
Many among Lebanon's older Sunni and Shia generation, report that as youngsters they were not aware of Shia-Sunni antagonisms nor did they harbor animosity with their neighbors. Sometimes inter-marrying, sharing holidays and developing strong friendships with each other. "That is all changed now, perhaps until End Times" according to an employee at Beirut's Dar al Fatwa in the mixed neighborhood of Aisha Bikar near the American University of Beirut.
The gentleman and his colleague elaborated:
"Everyone alive today in Lebanon and for many generations to come will have their family's lives negatively affected by the rapidly spreading sectarian hostility. The Sunni-Shia hatred is poisonous—it's the new political Ebola virus! Can it be eradicated? How can we stop it from engulfing the Middle East or has it already done so?" Another added, "And forget about the Christians! In a few years' time there will probably not be enough of them left in the Middle East to matter."
To this observer, the spiraling sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia in Lebanon appears to be coming mainly from Sunni groups and militia who vent a laundry list of complaints against their fellow Muslims. Many but not all stemming from Hezbollah's involvement in the civil war still raging across the anti-Lebanon mountain range to the east.
Members of the two Muslim sects have co-existed for centuries and share many fundamental beliefs and practices. But there are Sunni-Shia differences in doctrine, ritual, law, theology and religious organization and are based in part over a political dispute soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad over who should lead the Muslim community. Sunni Muslims regard themselves as the orthodox and traditionalist branch of Islam and adhere to traditions and practices based on precedent or reports of the actions of the Prophet Muhammad and those close to him. Sunnis venerate all the prophets mentioned in the Koran, but particularly Muhammad as the final prophet. In early Islamic history the Shia were a political faction – literally "Shiat Ali" or the party of Ali and they claimed the right of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and his descendants to lead the Islamic community.
In Sunni ruled countries, for hundreds of years Shias made up the poorest sections of society and today many view themselves as victims of discrimination and oppression as some extremist Sunni doctrines continue to preach hatred of Shia. Some argue that the Shia-Sunni Bellum Sacrum is more political than religious. If true, the mutually destructive conflict now intensifying in Lebanon would share much in common with other religious wars which were basically political conflicts justified in the name of religion. Iran which supports some Shia militias beyond its borders is in conflict with some Sunni countries, especially regional neighbors who support Sunni militia. Lebanon's hemmed population-Sunni and Shia has been put in a difficult situation caught up also in spill-over from the Syrian civil war. Teheran's policy of supporting Shia militias and parties beyond its borders is essentially matched by the Sunni Gulf states with Shia and Sunni leaders often seem to be in competition as the latter continue to strengthen their links to Sunni governments and movements abroad.
Lebanon is paying a big price. Lawmakers failed on 10/29/2014 for the fifteenth time to elect a new president over a lack of quorum at parliament they will "try again" on 11/19/2014 with likely the same result because those holding power want a deadlock. Only 54 members out the 128 in Parliament showed up, well short of a quorum. The others were instructed to boycott by their parties, including the pro-Hezbollah Change and Reform and Loyalty to the Resistance blocs of the March 8 alliance. Their motive, their opponents the pro-Saudi March 14 alliance claim are purely political. The latest failed session was also boycotted by Speaker Nabih Berri, the Shia leader of the pro- Bashar Assad, Amal militia with Berri insisting he is simply trying to encourage 'dialogue".
"It has never been this bad" explains the proprietor of a neighborhood grocery store, agreeing with ever more of his fellow countrymen, as now opening curses both sides in public.
A few brief examples from the past week illustrate the rapidly intensifying Sunni-Shia clash.
As the Hezbollah continues boycotting Parliamentary electoral sessions due to disagreements with the mainly Sunni March 14 camp over a compromise presidential candidate. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, himself a presidential candidate, this week accused Hezbollah of "blocking Parliament in to order to blackmail political blocs into electing, their puppet, Michel Aoun." Aoun who is as anti-Palestinian as Geagea is, denies media speculation " that the ongoing obstruction is no longer a political maneuver, but an attempt to target Lebanon's political system,"
Hezbollah is also being accused of joining the Syrian war and sacrificing Lebanese young men while killing many innocent Syrians solely on orders from Tehran. According to one March 14th Member of Parliament, "No one believes, not even the Hezbollah leadership that Hezbollah is fighting in Syria to protect Lebanon whose people are paying a big price for their adventure. " Sunni opponents of Shia Hezbollah, including the spokesman for the March 14th alliance claim that "terrorists" or the so-called 'Takfiries" would never have come to Lebanon if Hezbollah had not invaded Syria and started killing Sunni."
The largely Sunni families of the 27 captive troops and policemen being held for ransom by the al-Nursa front are blaming Hezbollah and the Shia leader of Lebanon's Internal Security Force, (ISF) Major-General Abbas Ibrahim, for not acting seriously to negotiate their loved ones release from captivity for purely sectarian reasons. On 10/30/14 the families threatened again to escalate their protests and have been burning tires at the Riad al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut while their relatives captors, al-Nusra Front, in increasingly setting up sleeper cells and advocating for the Sunni community in Lebanon is also accusing the ISF director of not being serious are obtaining the release of Sunni captives.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame University – Louaize and Saint Joseph University decided this week to suspend student elections for the current academic year as sectarianism spreads. "The political and security situation in Lebanon, which could impact the campus, will not allow the students to practice their democratic role positively," USJ board of members said in a statement. Religion is a factor in this conflict also according to campus security guards on the scene trying to maintain order.
The United Nations has warned again this week that foreign religiously motivated jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on "an unprecedented scale and some with religious motives and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism". More than 1,500 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has increased since US airstrikes against Da'ish (Isis) began last month (9/23/14). The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights just announced that 560 people have been killed in airstrikes since they began. That group counted 32 civilian deaths, including six children and five women.
The Pentagon estimates that each of the more than 600 US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq costs the American taxpayer approximately $ 9 million which given the claimed "kill count" means each death costs roughly $ 1.4 million each, militiamen or civilians. The rate of jihadists arriving just in Syria, again according to the Pentagon, were 12,000 in July, and 7,000 in March. But other US government's estimates for just Syria put the jihadist arrival figures at currently 1,500 each month with the numbers accelerating and increasing coming to Lebanon. There are higher estimates according to U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights who rank "Democracy Success Story and Arab Spring Winner" Tunisia as the country contributing the most jihadists currently arriving in the Levant.
As noted above, many of the religiously motivated jihadists are coming to Lebanon, especially up north near Tripoli which has seen heavy fighting between Sunni and Shia backed militia. If one credits their social media, several want to fight Hezbollah which they often label the "Party of Satan" and "Iran's militia."
On 10/30/13 Saudi National Guard Minister Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, directing his comments to the KSA's arch foe Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nassrallah proclaimed that "The parties embracing terrorism in the region have become well-known." Within minutes Saudi media outlets open with commentary and statements like those currently appearing in Lebanese media outlets such as Naharnet: "Yes those supporting terrorism they are the same who killed Rafik el Hariri and the remaining M14 leaders. They are the same who refuse to abide by Lebanese justice and deliver the accused/witness for investigations, they are the same who in order to remain in power, decide to destroy their country and kill their people and allow a huge inflow of terrorist into their land to show a worse alternative."
Sentiments shared by some in the Sunni community who, unlike during the years following the 2006 July war, and Hezbollah's widely acknowledged success against the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine, are no longer reluctant to criticize openly Shia Muslims generally and Hezbollah specifically.
Where this all ends is anyone's guess but a ceasefire in the Syrian conflict, even limited area by area as Washington, Tehran and Moscow are discussing would perhaps help—or, as various analysts and some serious scholars postulate, the latest Sunni-Shia manifestation of Bellum Sacrum may take a long time to control if not resolve. Tens of years or centuries they advise only time will tell.
Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com
Dr. Franklin Lamb is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
ISIS, Scotland, And The Politics of Mimicry
September 21, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Is the fact that half of the Scots want to split from Britain and the news that hundreds of young Muslim Brits are fighting with Jihadi militant groups in Syria connected?
Of course they are. These two social phenomena are intrinsically linked, yet in the intellectual desert in which we live, no one dares to address the subject. The boundaries of our curiosity are limited by our deference to political correctness and Zionist sensitivities.
From a political perspective, Jihadi enthusiasm amongst young Western Muslims is an outcome of the emergence of tribalism in the West; but isn't the call for Scottish independence driven by a similar tribal urge? From both a philosophical and dialectic perspective, Jihadi identification and the Scottish call for independence are the antithesis of the New Left and its corrosive Identity (ID) politics that have been spread in our midst for too long.
In the last five decades we have witnessed a relentless attack on nationalism and patriotic values. These attacks are commonly associated with the 'New Left' and have been led in large part by the Jewish intelligencia. It was the Frankfurt School's thesis on Authoritarian Personality (Adorno & co) and Wilhelm Reich's take on 'Mass Conservatism' that suggested that there was something wrong, dangerous and even vile to be found among the masses and their 'reactionist' political orientation. Contemporary Left cosmopolitan icon Noam Chomsky has been calling for the abolishment of borders and states (except, of course, the Jewish State* for many years. Chomsky is proudly hostile to patriotism and nationalism. Yet we must examine the alternative offered by Chomsky, The Frankfurt School, The New Left and The Guardian – the media outlet that enthusiastically disseminates these ideas.
For reasons that I have discussed numerous times, the New 'Left' and the Jewish intelligencia have vigorously advocated the replacement of the national patriotic discourse with ID politics. In practice, this was intended to break the cohesiveness of the working class and the national bond and replace it with a score of marginal and sectarian discourses. The Left that once claimed to be a universal voice for the working people was hijacked. It became the mouthpiece of ID groups, most of them defined by biology (gender, skin color and race), sexual preferences (LGBT) and even religion (Jews only).
The outcome has been devastating. ID politics that initially purported to promote authentic thinking ended up promoting the opposite. It dismantled authenticity and replaced it with 'Identification.' Instead of being who we really are (John, Sue, Nahida or Abraham) we've been trained to identify with group ideology. We adopted a new manner of speech. We convey our thoughts 'as a'; 'as a Jew,' 'as a woman,' 'as a gay,' 'as a black,' instead of expressing our own and very personal authentic feelings and beliefs as we experience them in an unmediated existential mode.
In practice, we have replaced authenticity with detachment, alienation and mimicry. Instead of celebrating Being in the most existential manner we learned to pre-mediate what being a 'woman', 'Jew', 'black', 'gay' should sound like. We learned to envisage what our identification 'may entail' and to react as our identification demands. What I describe above is the practical result of the 'forgetfulness of Being,' a term coined by the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger. But it is at this point that tribal awareness; nationalism and patriotism are reinvigorated and seem to be gaining ground.
In order to explain this shift, l would like first to examine the case presented by Zionism, Israel and Jewish progressive politics.
Those who attend progressive meetings become accustomed to the righteous Jewish manner of speech. Many Jews launch their speeches with the 'as a Jew' cliché. Needless to mention, neither I nor any other scholar of Jewish ID politics have ever managed to figure out what this cliché means. The reason is that it doesn't mean a thing.
For years I have asked many Jews to address this question and haven't received a sound reply. The 'as a Jew' seems to convey a meaningful logos, but in practice it is used to block critical discussion of the emptiness of the notion of Jewish progressive ID. In truth, there is no Jewish value system and as the great Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz observed in the 1970s, there is no such a thing as 'Jewish ethics.' The Jew is expected to follow Mitzvoth and laws (halakha) instead of acting upon his ethical judgment. The conclusion is devastating – 'as a Jew' is an empty expression. It is a deceptive mode used to convey an image of a Jewish ethical heritage that doesn't exist.
This is where Zionism and Israel intervene. They offer the Jew an opportunity to rid himself of the sham of clichés and offer a glimpse of authentic redemption. Zionism and Israel say to the young Diaspora Jew – instead of speaking 'as a Jew' why don't you just 'Be a Jew?' – take the first El Al flight, come to Israel, join the IDF, learn how to drive a tank. By the time your transformation is complete you will be able 'to pour your wrath on the Goyim' in the name of the Jewish people and in accordance with Jewish heritage (as the Zionist interpret this heritage).
Whether we like it or not, Israel and Zionism give meaning to Jewishness.
The Zionist call is very appealing to young Diaspora Jews (American, British, French, Australian). The IDF is saturated with lone soldiers who arrived in the 'promised land' just to wear the uniform and serve their people.
Israel and Zionism provide an authentic patriotic answer to the anti-patriotic mode that has become the voice of the New Left.
ISIS and other Jihadi groups offer the young Muslim a similar product. Instead of talking 'as a Muslim,' a statement that means very little within a consumerist, materialist, multi cultural society, the Islamic State and other Jihadi organizations offer their young Western followers the opportunity to Be a proper Muslim. Instead of participating in the inauthentic 'as a' game, ISIS calls on its followers to participate in a holy war, the ultimate form of true spiritual fulfillment.
It would be foolish to tag ISIS Western combatants as "bad Muslims" or 'evil fundamentalists' while turning a blind eye to the rising popularity of Jihadi culture within Muslim communities in the region and in the West. I recommend that we examine the popularity of ISIS amongst young Muslims in the light of the popularity of the Zionist cause within Western Jewish communities. I can't see why a young British Muslim fighting in Iraq is worse than a Jewish British citizen serving in the IDF and ruining the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The rise of nationalism and tribalism is prevalent throughout Europe and much of the world. This week Britain is on the verge of breaking up. Half of the Scots prefer to split from the Kingdom. What is going on in Scotland is a repetition of the same pattern. Instead of subscribing to a watery meaningless British 'collectivism;' Scotland, as a unifying symbolic bond has much more to offer its people.
To sum up, it seems that the attempt by the New Left to weaken the Nation state by promoting ID politics has backfired. It has led toward a sharp rise of tribal orientation and local patriotism. This reading may also help us to grasp the historical failures of the New Left and its mentors at the Frankfurt School. As we know, the masses never joined the Left. The promised revolution never occurred either. And the reason is plain: real working people didn't have cause to impersonate working people – they were the working people.
The Left's advocacy of mimicry was not without its benefits. It brought itself some popularity amongst middle class Guardian readers and progressive Jews. But the current outburst of tribalism suggests that our society is changing direction. Society may never be the same, and this may be a very positive occurrence.
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). As a multi-instrumentalist he plays Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet and Flutes. His album Exile was the BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. He has been described by John Lewis on the Guardian as the "hardest-gigging man in British jazz". His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore political themes and the music of the Middle East.
Until 1994 he was a producer-arranger for various Israeli Dance & Rock Projects, performing in Europe and the USA playing ethnic music as well as R&R and Jazz.
Coming to the UK in 1994, Atzmon recovered an interest in playing the music of the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe that had been in the back of his mind for years. In 2000 he founded the Orient House Ensemble in London and started re-defining his own roots in the light of his emerging political awareness. Since then the Orient House Ensemble has toured all over the world. The Ensemble includes Eddie Hick on Drums, Yaron Stavi on Bass and Frank Harrison on piano & electronics.
Also, being a prolific writer, Atzmon's essays are widely published. His novels 'Guide to the perplexed' and 'My One And Only Love' have been translated into 24 languages.
Gilad Atzmon is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Visit his web site at http://www.gilad.co.uk
Obama's "Strategy" And The Ensuing Non-Coalition
September 21, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"French aircraft were due to begin their first reconnaissance flights over Iraq," France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced on September 15. Britain is already flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq. Several other countries – Arab ones included – say they are willing to support the air campaign. None seem interested in pledging any ground troops, however.
"Well, you will hear from Secretary Kerry on this over the coming days. And what he has said is that others have suggested that they're willing to do that. But we're not looking for that right now," Chief of Staff Denis McDonough waffled on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, September 14. "We're trying to put together the specifics of what we expect from each of the members," he added, which is one way of saying the United States is finding it hard to persuade other countries to provide ground forces – something the self-designed leader of the "coalition" is unwilling to do. Also on "Meet the Press" James Baker noted that the biggest problem "of course, is who are our, quote, 'partners on the ground' that the president referred to in his speech. And I don't know where they come from." Let it be noted that Baker put forth an ad-hoc strategic plan that was, in fact, far better than the one outlined by Obama. He suggested joining forces with China, Russia, Iran, Syria and others, following a non-UN-sponsored international conference of genuine international leaders.
There are no "partners on the ground" for now, and those that the Administration wants to groom for the role are worse than none: McDonough conceded that ground troops are needed, "that's why we want this program to train the [Syrian] opposition that's currently pending in Congress." In my curtain-raiser on President Obama's much-heralded speech of September 10, posted two days before he delivered it ("Obama's Non-Strategy"), I warned that he – disastrously – still counts on the non-existent "moderate rebels" in Syria to come on board, and still refuses to talk to Bashar al-Assad, whose army is the only viable force capable of confronting the IS now and for many years to come. In short, "he has no plan to systematically degrade the IS capabilities, no means to shrink the territory that they control, and certainly no strategy to defeat them."
Obama's address to the nation on September 10 confirmed all of the above, but it also contained numerous non sequiturs, falsehoods, and delusional assertions that need to be addressed one by one. (The President's words are in italics.)
I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.
This is an audacious statement of intent: not what the U.S. and America's unnamed "friends and allies" will try to do, but what they will do to destroy an effective fighting force of some 30,000 fanatical jihadists at the time of this writing, and rapidly rising – an army, in fact, which is well armed and equipped, solvent, and highly motivated. Regardless of the coherence of Obama's proposed methods – more of that later – what he announced is the beginning of yet another open-ended Middle Eastern war in which the United States will be fully committed and in which the "job" will not be considered "done" until and unless the IS is "destroyed." Newt Gingrich is already salivating at the prospect of America spending "half of a century or more hunting down radicals, growing reliable self-governing allies, and convincing friends and neutrals to be anti-radical." This nightmare is good news – at home – only for the military-industrial complex, and abroad for the jihadists of all color and hue. "Half a century or more" of such idiocy can only accelerate this country's road to bankruptcy, financial as well as moral.
Over the last several years, we have consistently taken the fight to terrorists who threaten our country. We took out Osama bin Laden and much of al Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden's death did not make one scintilla of difference. Al Qaeda's (AQ) leadership is not a snake but a hydra: you can "take out" a hundred of its leaders today, and another hundred will take their place tomorrow. Successfully killing scores or thousandsof jihadists should not be confused with winning against jihad. More importantly – and Obama seems to be oblivious to the fact – al Qaeda is not a hierarchical organization, but a state of mind and a blueprint for action. Its non-affiliates, too – in Nigeria, Libya, Syria, the Philippines, Kashmir etc. – follow the same guiding principles and seek the same millenarian objectives. As any counterterrorism expert can tell you, "targeted" drone killings are doing more damage than good by angering local populations – which suffer "collateral damage" – thus providing an inexhaustible pool of fresh recruits for the jihadists (quite apart from legal and moral considerations).
We've targeted al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, and recently eliminated the top commander of its affiliate in Somalia.
It is breathtaking that Obama should imply that Yemen and Somalia are his administration's success stories that should be emulated in the campaign against the IS. As Nicholas Kristof noted in The New York Times, "Obama may be the only person in the world who would cite conflict-torn Yemen and Somalia as triumphs."
Yemen is an ever-growing hotbed of terrorist activity regardless of (and more likely partly due to) more than 100 American airstrikes since 2002, which killed some 500 militants and over a hundred civilians. (When Yemeni kids are disobedient, their parents have a new tool of enforcing discipline: "A big American drone will come and get you!") The Department of state admitted in its most recent worldwide terrorism report that "of the AQ affiliates, AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) continues to pose the most significant threat to the United States and U.S. citizens and interests in Yemen." Its success, according to the report, is "due to an ongoing political and security restructuring within the government itself" [i.e. no effective government and no reliable security forces]. "AQAP continued to exhibit its capability by targeting government installations and security and intelligence officials, but also struck at soft targets, such as hospitals," and it continues to expand territory under its control. Somalia is an utterly failed state with no functioning government, and al-Shabaab's terrorist base from which complex operations are launched against soft targets in neighboring countries (notably last year's attack on Nairobi's Westgate mall, which killed at least 67 people).
If this is the model for the anti-IS campaign, then even a century of Newt's "hunting down radicals, growing reliable self-governing allies, and convincing friends and neutrals to be anti-radical" will be a fiasco – albeit on an infinitely grander scale.
We've done so while bringing more than 140,000 American troops home from Iraq, and drawing down our forces in Afghanistan, where our combat mission will end later this year. Thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer.
The fruits of the war in Iraq are all too visible. It cannot be stated often enough that America's war against Saddam – who never threatened the United States, and opposed Islamic terrorism – produced the IS, which is now treated as an existential threat which requires another American war to eliminate.
In Afghanistan the Taliban is well poised to make a comeback one, two, at most three years after the end of the American combat mission. It is able to carry out attacks in the center of the capital, Kabul, the latest of which – on September 16 – killed three members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Safer, indeed.
Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim.
This is surreal. Obama may have been born and raised a Muslim, but he claims not to be a Muslim now; it is therefore as preposterous for him to pass judgments on the Islamic bona fides of Muslim entities as it would be for the Saudi king to decide whether the Orange Order of Ulster or the Episcopal Church are "Christian" (a purely technical parallel, of course). In any event, Obama's theological credentials were established with clarity in the aftermath of James Foley's beheading by the IS, when he declared (also in the context of absolving Islam of any connection with the IS) that "no just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day." Since they did what they did, this unambiguous statement means that – in Obama's opinion – either there is no God, or God is not just.
Contrary to Obama's assurances, Islam does condone the killing of infidels (non-Muslims) and apostates (Shiites) – they are not "innocents" by definition. And of course Muslims have been killing other Muslims – often on a massive scale – ever since three of the four early caliphs, Muhammad's immediate successors, were murdered by their Muslim foes. It is immaterial whether ISIS is true to "Islam" as Obama chooses to define it. It is undeniable that it is true to the principles and practices of historical Islam.
Obama either does not know what he is talking about, or he is practicing a variety of taqiyya. As Nonie Darwish put it bluntly in the American Thinker on September 12, Obama does not want to go down in history as the one who destroyed and extinguished the dream of resurrecting the Islamic State. Under his watch Islam was placed on a pedestal and that helped revive the Islamic dream of the Caliphate:
Muslims felt that Obama was their man, under whom they had a chance to achieve their powerful Islamic state. Obama himself was not happy with the military takeover and destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Jihadist ambition had to move away from Egypt to war-torn Syria and Iraq. For more than two years, Islamists have carried out flagrant and barbaric mass terrorism – beheadings, torture, kidnapping, and sexual slavery of women, men, and children. Obama ignored the problem until it blew up in our faces with the beheading of two Americans.
Even if he could defeat ISIS, Darwish argues, that would turn him into an infidel enemy number one of Islam – one who supported Muslims in their dream of the Caliphate by looking the other way, only to later crush it. Obama therefore cannot be honest about this dilemma regarding ISIS; "a dilemma between his duty to the USA, the country he chose to lead, and his dream of becoming the hero of the Muslim World who taught the West a lesson on how to treat Muslims. Obama will not obliterate ISIS but will contain it, as he said. He will eventually kick the can to the next administration, not only because he hates wars as he claims, but because he does not want to be enemy number one of Islam and the Muslims." That is Obama's dirty little secret that explains his paralysis before ISIS, Darwish concludes: "Ironically, the man who claimed to have healed the relationship between the West and the Muslim world will go down in history as the one who helped the rise and the bloody fall of the Islamic State and perhaps America itself."
And ISIL is certainly not a state… It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates.
Obama does not know the feelings of some ten million people under IS control. Many of those who did not cherish life under its black banner have already fled to Damascus, Baghdad, or Erbil. There is no doubt that it is successful in attracting thousands upon thousands of new recruits every month. And as I wrote in the current issue of Chronicles, the Caliphate is a "state" whether we like it or not:
Traditional international law postulates the possession of population, of territory, and the existence of a government that exercises effective control over that population and territory: a state exists if it enjoys a monopoly on coercive mechanisms within its domain, which the caliphate does. After all, unrecognized state entities such as Transnistria, Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh command their denizens' overwhelming loyalty and exercise effectively undisputed control over their entire territory. Some international jurists may cite the ability of the self-proclaimed state's authority to engage in international discourse, but that is a moot point. The capacity to control a putative state's territory and population almost invariably leads to such ability, regardless of the circumstances of that state's inception: South Sudan is a recent case in point, and the creation of Israel in 1947 also comes to mind.
ISIS controls an area the size of Montana in northeastern Syria and western and northwestern Iraq. It has substantial funds at its disposal, initially given it by the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Turks, Qataris, Bahrainis, UAE donors, et al., and augmented to the tune of half a billion dollars looted from the Iraqi government vaults in Mosul and Tikrit. It is effective in collecting taxes, tolls, and excise duties. With no debts or liabilities, the existing stash and ongoing cash flow makes the emerging Caliphate more solvent than dozens of states currently represented in the UN. It has enough oil and derivatives not only for its own needs, but also to earn the foreign exchange needed to buy all the food and other goods it needs from abroad.
ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple.
It is not that (see above). This statement reflects a conceptual delusion which ab initio cannot provide the basis for a sound strategy. Obama's own State Department declared as far back as July 23 that "ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization" – or at least that is what Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran, told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on that day. "It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigris and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq."
And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.
It does have a vision. That vision is eminently Islamic in its millenarian strategic objectives, in its tactics, and in its methods. It is no more utopian than Obama's vision of an "indispensable" America, which – as he put it at the very end of his speech – stands for "freedom, justice and dignity," an America which defends those "timeless ideals that will endure long after those who offer only hate and destruction have been vanquished from the Earth."
In its self-proclaimed status as a caliphate, the IS claims – in principle – religious authority over all Muslims in the world, and ultimately aspires to bring all Muslim-inhabited lands of the world under its political control. Last June ISIS published a document which announced that "the legality of all emirates, groups, states and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the khilafah's authority and arrival of its troops to their areas." It rejects the political divisions established by Western powers in the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1917. Its self-declared immediate-to-medium-term goal is to conquer Iraq, Syria and other parts of al-Sham – the loosely-defined Levant region – including Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and southeastern Turkey. It is a bold, even audacious vision, but a vision it most certainly is.
In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide.
There is absolutely nothing "unique" in the IS fighters' brutality. They are only following the example of their prophet. Muhammad executed Meccan prisoners after the battle of Badr in 624AD. He condoned the killing of women and children besieged in Ta'if in 630. He and his followers enslaved, raped and forced into marriage Jewish women after he massacred the men of the Jewish tribes of Banu Qurayzain 627 and Banu Nadir in 629. He even "married" one of the captured Banu Nadir women, Safiyya bint Huyayy captured after the men Banu Nadir were massacred. He did not "threaten" the Jews of the Arabian peninsula with genocide, he carried that genocide so thoroughly that not a trace of them remains to this day. Christians living in the IS who want to remain in the "caliphate" face three options according to IS officials: converting to Islam, paying a religious tax (jizya), or "the sword." This choice is as conventionally Islamic as it gets, having been stipulated many times in the Quran and hadith.
But this is not our fight alone. American power can make a decisive difference, but we cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for themselves, nor can we take the place of Arab partners in securing their region. That's why I've insisted that additional U.S. action depended upon Iraqis forming an inclusive government, which they have now done in recent days… I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.
The would-be coalition of Sunni Muslim "partners" includes those who had been aiding and abetting ISIS for years, and who have neither the will nor the resources to fight it. As I wrote here last week, those countries' military forces are unable to confront an enemy which consists of highly motivated light infantry, knows the terrain, enjoys considerable popular support, and operates in small motorized formations:
On the basis of its poor showing in Yemen it is clear that the Saudis in particular are no better than the Iraqi army which performed so miserably last June. Even when united in their overall strategic objectives, Arab armies are notoriously unable to develop integrated command and control systems – as was manifested in 1947-48, in the Seven-Day War of 1967, and in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Their junior officers are discouraged from making independent tactical decisions by their inept superiors who hate delegating authority. Both are, inevitably, products of a culture steeped in strictly hierarchical modes of thought and action. Furthermore, their expensive hardware integrated into hard to maneuver brigade-sized units is likely to be useless against an elusive enemy who will avoid pitched battles.
An additional unresolved problem is Turkey, which is staying aloof and will not allow even U.S. facilities in its territory to be used for the air campaign. Erdogan is definitely not a "partner," and Turkey continues to tolerate steady recruiting of ISIS volunteers in its territory as well as the passage of foreign jihadists across the 550-mile borderit shares with Syria and Iraq.
The most important problem in creating a coalition with Obama's "Arab partners" is religious, however. The leaders of all Sunni Arab countries and Turkey are well aware that, contrary to Obama's claims, ISIS is a Muslim group firmly rooted in the teachings and practices of orthodox Sunni Islam. They are loath to ally themselves with the kuffar in fighting those who want to fulfill the divine commandment to strive to create the Sharia-based universal caliphate. Those leaders are for the most part serious believers, and they do not want to go to hell.
Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy. First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts … so that we're hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense.
The Shia-dominated Iraqi army is not to be counted upon, as attested by its flight from Mosul, and it cannot be counted upon to cooperate with the armed forces of the overtly anti-Shia regimes, even if in the fullness of time they provided ground troops. The Kurdish pershmerga also would be loath to treat Saudis or Qataris as brothers-in-arms. Even if they were capable of major operations, which they are not, both the Iraqi army and the peshmerga would be perceived by the Sunni Arab majority in northwestern Iraq as an occupying force with the predictable result that the "caliphate" could count on thousands of fresh volunteers. Obama's "regional allies" could end up helping their Sunni coreligionists fight the Shia "apostates." They regard the IS in western Iraq and northeastern Syria as a welcome buffer against the putative Shia crescent extending from Iran to the Lebanese coast. As for the "Iraqi forces," they are devoid of any offensive potential now and that will not change for years to come.
Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition… In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria's crisis once and for all.
"The Syrian opposition" is ideologically indistinguishable from the IS, militarily ineffective, internally divided, and far keener to renew its stalled fight against Bashar al-Assad than to fight the Caliphate. America's would-be "coalition" partners have indirectly indicated that they are aware of this fact: several mentioned Iraq when announcing the proposed military measures last Monday, but none made any mention of the challenge next door.
Obama's present heavy reliance on the "Syrian opposition" is at odds with his own doubts about its viability, which were openly expressed in an interview with New York Times's Tom Friedman only a month earlier:
"With 'respect to Syria,' said the president, the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has 'always been a fantasy. This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.'"
Now, however, Obama is rejecting cooperation with Damascus – the only realist course with any chance of success – and is relying on a "fantasy" scenario to create some boots on the ground. No lessons have been drawn from Libya's collapse into bloody anarchy, or from the failure of America's decade-long effort to train and equip the Iraqi army, which disintegrated when faced with the IS three months ago. Such fiascos notwithstanding, Obama wants to build up a Syrian rebel force as one of the pillars of his strategy – that same force of which he said to Friedman on August 8 that "there's not as much capacity as you would hope."
We will continue providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this terrorist organization. This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities. We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands.
"Tens of thousands of Christians" is a hundred-fold reduction of the magnitude of the problem that long-suffering community has faced in the region since the start of the Iraqi war in 2003. Obama's statement is the exact numerical and moral equivalent to saying that "hundreds of thousands of European Jews" were at grave risk at the time of the Wannsee conference. As Peggy Noonan wrote the other day in the Wall Street Journal, "genocide" is the right word to describe the plight of the region's Christians, noting that "for all his crimes and failings, Syria's justly maligned Assad was not attempting to crush his country's Christians. His enemies were – the jihadists, including those who became the Islamic State." As well as those, let us add, who are now being groomed by the President of the United States to fight the Islamic State. No wonder he is deliberately and cynically minimizing the plight of his protégés' Christian victims.
This is our strategy.
Lord have mercy!
This is American leadership at its best: we stand with people who fight for their own freedom; and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.
My Administration has also secured bipartisan support for this approach here at home. I have the authority to address the threat from ISIL.
This is disputable. Obama refers to the authorization originally concerning action against al-Qaeda, treating as a blank check for starting a new war of unknown magnitude and duration.
This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.
Deja-vu all over again. On the grimly positive note, more Yemeni and Somali-like "successes" may be needed to accelerate America's eventual return home.
America is better positioned today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth.
It would be a cliché to state that Obama is either deluded or stunningly cynical. He is both, of course, I'd say roughly 60:40.
Our technology companies and universities are unmatched; our manufacturing and auto industries are thriving. Energy independence is closer than it's been in decades. For all the work that remains, our businesses are in the longest uninterrupted stretch of job creation in our history.
Cringe again: tasteless, self-serving inanities that have nothing to do with ISIS or strategy. Obama's psychopatic narcissism trumps that of the Clintons, impossible as it may have seemed.
Abroad, American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorists.
"The world," indeed, minus Russia, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, South Africa, and scores of lesser powers on all continents (save Australia) which have the capacity and the will to reject Obama's audacious and increasingly absurd notions of global leadership.
It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian peoples' right to determine their own destiny. It is America – our scientists, our doctors, our know-how – that can help contain and cure the outbreak of Ebola. It is America that helped remove and destroy Syria's declared chemical weapons so they cannot pose a threat to the Syrian people – or the world – again.
There is no "Russian aggression," and "the Ukrainian peoples' right to determine their own destiny" was brazenly undermined by the State Department/CIA-engineered coup d'etat in Kiev last February. It is preposterous for Obama to take credit for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons – it was Vladimir Putin's diplomatic coup which got Obama off the hook when Congress and the public at large expressed their opposition to the intended bombing of Syria. But yes, American scientists and doctors definitely "can help contain and cure the outbreak of Ebola." That was the only true statement in Obama's address. Its relevance to his anti-IS strategy is unclear.
And it is America that is helping Muslim communities around the world not just in the fight against terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity, tolerance, and a more hopeful future.
… especially in places like Marseilles, Antwerp, Malmo, Dortmund, and Dearborn, Michigan.
America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia – from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East – we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.
Obama wouldn't know the founding values if they hit him in the head. He is the worst president of the United States in history after all. That is no mean feat, considering the competition.
Srdja (Serge) Trifkovic, author, historian, foreign affairs analyst, and foreign affairs editor of "Chronicles." He has a BA (Hon) in international relations from the University of Sussex (UK), a BA in political science from the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and a PhD in history from the University of Southampton (UK).
Dr. Srdja Trifkovic is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
The Downing of Malaysia Flight 17 Sinister Pretext For War With Russia
September 7, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"There is no innocent explanation for the sudden disappearance of MH17 from the media and political spotlight. The plane's black box has been held in Britain for examination for weeks, and US and Russian spy satellites and military radar were intensively scanning east Ukraine at the time of the crash. The claim that Washington does not have detailed knowledge of the circumstances of the crash and the various forces involved is not credible."
– Niles Williamson, "Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?", WSWS – http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/18/ukmh-a18.html
See: 11 minute you tube "MH17 – We know with 99% certainty who shot down MH17"
The Obama administration has failed to produce any hard evidence that pro-Russia separatists were responsible for the downing of Malaysia Flight 17. The administration's theory– that the jetliner was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel territory in east Ukraine– is not supported by radar data, satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony or forensic evidence. In fact, there is no factual basis for the hypothesis at all. It's merely politically-motivated speculation that's been repeated endlessly in the media to shape public opinion. The preponderance of evidence suggests a different scenario altogether, that is, that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighters in an effort to frame the pro-Russia separatists and demonize Russia by implication. This is precisely why the MH17 story has vanished from all the major media for the last three weeks. It's because the bloody fingerprints point to Obama's puppet-government in Kiev.
So what are the facts?
Fact Number 1: There were eyewitnesses.
According to the Oxford dictionary, an eyewitness is "A person who has personally seen something happen and can give a first-hand description of it." This is why eyewitness testimony is so important in criminal investigations, because what people actually see matters. In a capital case, eyewitness testimony can be just as damning as the bloody fingerprints on a murder weapon. In contrast, theories are of little or no importance at all. The administration's missile theory is just obfuscating blabber intended to pacify the public with a soothing explanation that is entirely divorced from the facts. Eyewitness accounts help to cut through government bullsh** and uncover what really happened.
So, what did happen to MH17? Check out this blurb from a report by the BBC:
"The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly before the catastrophe. According to them, it was actually the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.
Eyewitness number one: "There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart, (Waves her hands to show the plane exploding) And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everyone saw it….
Yes, yes, It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was flying underneath…below the civilian plane."
Many people saw what happened. Many people saw the Ukrainian fighter rise in a shark-on-seal type motion. Many people saw the explosion. Are these credible witnesses? Are they lying? Do they have a political agenda?
We don't know, but we do know what they said. They said they saw a fighter (probably a Ukrainian SU 25) stalking MH17 just before it blew up. That's significant and it should have a bearing on the investigation.
Fact Number 2: Russia picked up the Ukrainian fighters on their radar.
According to Russian military analysts:
"Russian monitoring systems registered Ukrainian airforce jet, probably an SU 25 fighter, climbing and approaching the Malaysia aircraft. The SU 25 was between 3 to 5 kilometers away from the Malaysian plane. The fighter is capable of reaching an altitude of 10,000 meters for short periods of time. It's standard armaments include R-60 air-to-air missiles which are capable of locking and destroying targets within a range of 12 kilometers and which are guaranteed to hit their target from a distance of 5 kilometers.
What was a military aircraft doing on a route intended for civilian planes flying at the same time and same altitude of a passenger plane? We would like an answer to this question? …
To corroborate this evidence we have a picture taken at the regional air traffic control center at Rostov….Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true" ("MH17 Fully Exposed", The Corbett report; Check minute 34:17 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWlAARb0fN4video
Repeat: "Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true."
Kiev lied. Not only was one of their fighters in the vicinity, but the warplane also had the capacity to take down a jetliner.
Let's be clear about how important this information is: We now have hard evidence (Russian radar data and eyewitness testimony) that a Ukrainian fighter was in the vicinity of Malaysia Flight 17 when it was shot down. Thus, the Ukrainian fighter very well may have played a role in the downing of MH17. This is a possibility that cannot be excluded if one is basing their judgments on the facts alone.
Then there the story of Carlos who worked at Kiev's Air Traffic Control at Borispol but who mysteriously vanished immediately after the crash. Carlos's twitter feeds on the day of the incident have become something of a legend on the internet, so we would like to narrow our focus to just a few of his communiques.
Carlos tweets on day of MH17 crash:
"Kiev Authorities, trying to make looks like an attack by pro-Russian"…
"warning! It can be a downing, Malaysia Airlines B777 in ukraine, 280 passengers"…
(Military?) "has taken control of ATC in Kiev"….
"The Malaysia Airlines B777 plane disappeared from the radar, there was no communication of any anomaly, confirmed"….
"Plane shot down, shot down, shot down, no accident"….
"Before They remove my phone or they break my head, shot down by Kiev"…
"The B777 plane flew escorted by Ukraine jet fighter until 2 minutes before disappearing from the radar"…
"If Kiev authorities want to tell the truth, It´s gathered, 2 jet fighters flew very close minutes before, wasn't downed by a fighter"….
"Malaysia Airlines B777 plane just disappeared and Kiev military authority informed us of the downing, How they knew?"…
"all this is gathered in radars, to the unbelieving, shot down by kiev, here we know it and military air traffic control also"…
"military control now officially [say] the plane was shot down by missile"….("FINAL – Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing #MH17", Rebel's Blog)
Shortly after posting the news on Twitter, the Military took over the tower, the SBU seized the Air traffic Control recordings, and Carlos disappeared never to be seen again. At the very least, Carlos's postings lend support to our thesis that one or two SU 25 fighters were in the vicinity of the Boeing 777 at the time of the incident, which is to say they were in a position to shoot it down.
So why have Obama, Kerry and the entire western media excluded the SU 25s from their analysis? And why are they withholding the satellite and radar data (that everyone knows they have) of the area at the time of the crash? According to the World Socialist Web Site: "The US Air Force's Defense Support Program utilizes satellites with infrared sensors to detect missile launches anywhere on the planet, and US radar posts in Europe would have tracked the missile as it shot through the sky."
Indeed, the US does have the capability to track missiles launches anywhere on the planet, so where is the data to support their theory that a missile took down MH17? Where is the satellite imagery? Where is the radar data? What is it Obama doesn't want the American people to know?
German pilot and airlines expert, Peter Haisenko, thinks that Malaysia Flight 17 was not blown up by a missile, but shot down by the type of double-barreled 30-mm guns used on Ukrainian SU-25 fighter planes. Haisenko presented his theory in an article which appeared on the Global Research website titled "Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the "Shooting Down" of Malaysian MH17. "Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile". Here's an excerpt from the article:
"The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile…." ("Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the "Shooting Down" of Malaysian MH17. "Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile"", Global Research)
Haisenko notes that the munitions used on Ukrainian fighters–anti-tank incendiary and splinter-explosive shells–are capable of taking down a jetliner and that the dense pattern of metal penetrated by multiple projectiles is consistent with the firing pattern of a 30-mm gun.
Also, Michael Bociurkiw, who was one of the first international inspectors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to reach the crash site and who spent more than a week examining the ruins– appears to be convinced that MH17 was downed by machinegun fire consistent with the myriad bullet-holes visible on the fuselage. Here's what he told on CBC World News:
"There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pock-marked. It almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire that has left these unique marks that we haven't seen anywhere else.
We've also been asked if we've seen any signs of a missile?
Well, no we haven't. That's the answer."
("Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site," CBC News. Note: The above quote is from the video)
Now, admittedly, the observations of Haisenko and Bociurkiw could mean nothing, after all, they are just opinions. But for the sake of argument, let's compare what they have to say to the comments made by Obama and Kerry.
Here's Obama on the day after the crash:
"Here is what we know so far. Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.
We also know that this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern Ukraine. Over the last several weeks Russian- backed separatists have shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian helicopter, and they claimed responsibility for shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet.
Moreover, we know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia.
This includes arms and training. It includes heavy weapons. And it includes anti-aircraft weapons.
Now, here's what's happened now. This was a global tragedy. An Asian airliner was destroyed in European skies, filled with citizens from many countries. So there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. The U.N. Security Council has endorsed this investigation, and we will hold all its members, including Russia, to their word…
Now, the United States stands ready to provide any assistance that is necessary…..
Let's summarize Obama's allegations:
1–MH17 was shot down in east Ukraine.
2–The separatists have shot down planes in east Ukraine before.
3–Therefore the separatists shot down MH17
Do you find that argument persuasive, dear reader? Keep in mind, Obama has never veered from his original position on the issue nor has he ever addressed the eyewitness reports or the technical data provided by Moscow. When all the media repeat the government's version of events word-for-word, the facts don't matter. In other words, Obama hasn't changed his story, because he doesn't have to. He knows the dissembling media will assist him in the cover up. Which it has.
Now let's take a look at what Kerry had to say two days after the crash when he visited all five Sunday talk shows to blast Putin and blame the rebels for downing MH17. According to the Guardian:
"Kerry said all the evidence surrounding the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 points towards pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine…..
"We have enormous input about this that points fingers," Kerry told CNN's State of the Union. "It is pretty clear that this was a system from Russia, transferred to separatists. We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point of time."…
Kerry said social media reports and US surveillance put the missile system in question in the vicinity of the crash before the tragedy.
"We know because we observed it by imagery that at the moment of the shootdown we detected a launch from that area," he said. "Our trajectory shows that it went to the aircraft." ("MH17 crash: Kerry lays out evidence of pro-Russia separatists' responsibility", Guardian)
Needless to say, Kerry has never provided any proof of the satellite "imagery" he referred to on the day of the interview. The administration's case still depends on the discredited information it picked up on social media and on its own politically-motivated theory. It's worth noting, that the administration used its shaky claims to great effect by convincing leaders of the European Union to impose more economic sanctions on Russia before any of the facts were known and without any legal process in place for Russia to defend itself. The sanctions, of course, are still in effect today even though the administrations hysterical accusations have come under increasing scrutiny.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly called for a transparent and thorough international investigation, but Washington seems more eager to sweep the whole matter under the rug. Moscow is particularly interested in recovering the Air Traffic Control tapes which were seized by Kiev's security services immediately following the crash. It's imperative that these tapes be handed over to international inspectors to analyze communications between the cockpit and the tower. There's no doubt that Kiev would hand over the recordings if Washington simply demanded that they do so. But Obama has issued no such order. Why is that?
Keep in mind, that the ATC recordings could be much more valuable than the black boxes because they record both sides of every communication on every frequency used by that facility (including frequencies used for communication with other ground facilities and/or agencies), and also on every land line in use at that facility."
What does that mean? It means that ATC recorders also include communications between ATC operators and, lets say, government or military authorities. They would also have recorded the communications between ATC and any fighters that may have been in the vicinity of Flight 17. In other words, if MH17 was in fact shot down by a SU 25, there's a good chance the communications would show up in the ATC tapes.
Is this why Obama hasn't demanded that Kiev surrender the recordings, because he doesn't really want the truth to come out? Now take a look at this out from the WSWS:
"After a month during which Washington has failed to release evidence to support its charges against Putin, it is clear that the political offensive of the NATO governments and the media frenzy against Putin were based on lies.
If pro-Russian separatists had fired a ground-to-air missile, as the US government claims, the Air Force would have imagery in their possession confirming it beyond a shadow of a doubt…..
On August 9, the Malaysian New Straits Times published an article charging the Kiev regime with shooting down MH17. It stated that evidence from the crash site indicated that the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter with a missile followed by heavy machine gun fire.
While it is too early to say conclusively how MH17 was shot down, the preponderance of the evidence points directly at the Ukrainian regime and, behind them, the American government and the European powers. They created the conditions for the destruction of MH17, backing the fascist-led coup in Kiev this February that brought the current pro-Western regime to power."
("Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?", Niles Williamson, WSWS)
The media has played a pivotal role in this tragedy, deliberately misleading the American people on critical details related to the case in order to shape their coverage in a way that best serves the interests of the government. The MSM doesn't care about identifying the criminals who killed 298 passengers. Their job is to demonize Putin and create a pretext for waging war on Russia. And that's exactly what they're doing.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: email@example.com
Wall Street & War Street Need To Keep Their Pants Zipped
August 30, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
In almost every country in the world where America's notorious "Wall Street and War Street" gang of thugs have tampered and interfered with its internal workings, things have always turned out badly for each country involved. Almost every country that this infamous WSx2 gang has tampered with so far has pretty much seen their way of life turn to dookie. http://truth-out.org/opinion/
You want some examples? I've got them!
Take the Spanish-American War for instance. Wall Street and War Street drummed our country into that war with their torrid yellow journalism, and as a result both Cuba and the Philippines were so devastated and destroyed that they are still trying to recover from it — and from being muscled around afterwards by WSx2's mob bosses Batista and the shoe lady.
During World War I, Britain, France and the Kaiser were all sick of fighting and pretty much ready to throw in the towel and make nice. But then Woodrow Wilson got a bee in his bonnet over the forged Zimmerman telegram (the Wall Street and War Street gang at work again?) and forced America to join in the fight by suspending freedom of speech, curbing civil liberties, muzzling the press and sending even mild dissenters to jail for years. http://www.amazon.com/The-
In Congo, Wall Street and War Street destabilized that country completely when they overthrew Patrice Lumumba. Over ten million dead since then. Ten million.
Iran used to be a democracy until the CIA, aka Wall Street and War Street's dread enforcer, tampered and interfered.
In Haiti, Papa Doc and his dread Tonton Macoute invited the Marines to come join the party and Wall Street and War Street immediately sent their RSVP to this gala zombie jamboree, giving ordinary Haitians nightmares for decades. Then WS&WS hung around for the after-party, the bloody and illegal ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
I swear, I'm not making this stuff up! Don't believe me? Go Google it yourself.
Iraq used to be a democracy too — until the WSWS gang installed Saddam Hussein. And then they deposed him too, scoring themselves a trillion dollars worth of "vig" in the process.
Vietnam? We all know what happened there. "3.1 million violent war deaths."
Cambodia? Millions dead in what used to be a sweet and lovely country. A whole country suffering from PTSD, thanks to tampering by the US military-industrial complex, who just couldn't keep their bombers and bombs in their jeans.
The Arab nations of the Middle East used to be friends with America before Wall Street and War Street started using Israel as a wedge. Now nobody over there likes us — not even the Israelis. http://www.blackagendareport.
"Humanitarian intervention" in Libya by WSx2 was yet another disaster, even worse than when Al Capone took over Chicago. Libya today is officially a "Failed State".
And now the WSWS gang that can't shoot straight is using its buddies in ISIS as an excuse to interfere and overthrow Syria's legitimate government under Bashar Assad. And despite all the New York Times' incredibly false lies that Assad and ISIS are buddies, the real truth is that Assad is the only obstacle standing in the way of Syria becoming just yet another WSx2 Failed State. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Does Turkey really want to have a failed state overrun by crazies right across its border? I think not.
Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan? The label of "Failed State" is hovering over their heads too, thanks to WS&WS.
And let's not forget Latin America. Chile was almost destroyed after the CIA and Kissinger interfered. Honduras today is a killing field, with men. women and children being butchered like cattle by Wall Street and War Street's government of choice. And the terms "Death Squad" and "The Disappeared" came into popular use in Central America under Reagan's watch.
Ah, Ronald Reagan, the WSx2's best friend. And the dread John Negroponte was its chief henchman and capo. He still is. Just check out his current efforts to interfere in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. He just loves him some snipers — firing at both peaceful protestors and police until war erupts. It's a wonder he hasn't tried that in Ferguson too. Or maybe he has.
Tiny Grenada was ruthlessly (and illegally) invaded in 1983 — even Margaret Thatcher and the Queen were pissed off! And today Grenada's foreign debts equal 35 percent of its GDP and Red China is paying for its cricket pitches. Yet another WSx2 interference failure. Yawn.
And Mexico, another victim of becoming close compadres with WS/WS, has now become the drug-lord capital of the world. Er, maybe not. Perhaps Columbia holds that title. Or is it Afghanistan? I'm confused. Burma? Wall Street and War Street would know for sure. http://www.telesurtv.net/
Panama's democratic leader was assassinated https://www.youtube.com/watch?
In central Asia, Charlie Wilson viciously fought to support WS-WS's right to tamper with Afghanistan's fate — and look how badly that interference turned out, handing Afghanistan to Al Qaeda and the Taliban on a platter.
And Europe wasn't spared any WSWS gang-related action either. Take Ukraine for instance. Do Americans even know what horrors are being perpetrated there in our name by WS&WS even at this very moment? Gangland-style murders, extortion, turf wars, goons, thugs, the works. You don't even want to know.
Wall Street and War Street happily tampered with Yugoslavia. Years of killing resulted. http://original.antiwar.com/
And even Ronald Reagan's greatest tampering triumph on behalf of the Wall & War Boys, the fall of the USSR, resulted in dookie. With Gorbachev gone, the poor Russians were stuck with heartless oligarchs and drunken Yeltsin — and they died by the thousands from cold and starvation as a result. But, fortunately, Putin today is much better than that. And so WSx2 hates him.
I started out trying to write all these horrors down in chronological order, but now I'm just writing them all down willy-nilly because there are so many examples floating around in my brain right now of WSx2 tampering that has turned into dog poop for the countries involved, that I am totally overwhelmed.
Let's look at Egypt next. It's gone from Nasser, the people's choice, to military despots like Mubarak and Sisi, thanks to WSx2. Yuck. Please give me a moment here to hold my nose.
And the Wall Street and War Street gang also propped up that brutal fascist apartheid regime in South Africa and Angola — just as they are currently propping up that brutal fascist apartheid regime in Israel now. For example, when Americans picketed the Port of Oakland the other day, to prevent an Israeli ship from unloading its cargo there, in protest of Netanyahu's brutal slaughter of women and children in Gaza, over a hundred police showed up to help protect the Israeli ship — not the protesters. http://www.mercurynews.com/
And speaking of fascists, there is always Saudi Arabia to consider. http://www.lewrockwell.com/
But the most disastrous tampering of all has occurred when Wall Street and War Street turned its deadly sights on interfering back home, right here in America. The result for us? Just look around you. At your jobs, your infrastructure, your schools, your healthcare, your militarized police, your disappearing freedom of speech, your rigged elections, your lying media, your hate. https://www.facebook.com/
The Wall Street & War Street Gang needs to stop screwing with our world and zip up its pants. And we true patriotic Americans need to make them.
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
She can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Latest In The New Cold War
August 13, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
My Money's On Putin…
"History shows that the United States has benefited politically and economically from wars in Europe. The huge outflow of capital from Europe following the First and Second World Wars, transformed the U.S. into a superpower … Today, faced with economic decline, the US is trying to precipitate another European war to achieve the same objective."… Sergey Glazyev, Russian politician and economist
"The discovery of the world's largest, known gas reserves in the Persian Gulf, shared by Qatar and Iran, and new assessments which found 70 percent more gas in the Levantine in 2007, are key to understanding the dynamics of the conflicts we see today. After a completion of the PARS pipeline, from Iran, through Iraq and Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean coast, the European Union would receive more than an estimated 45 percent of the gas it consumes over the next 100 – 120 years from Russian and Iranian sources. Under non-conflict circumstances, this would warrant an increased integration of the European, Russian and Iranian energy sectors and national economies." Christof Lehmann,Interview with Route Magazine
The United States failed operation in Syria, has led to an intensification of Washington's proxy war in Ukraine. What the Obama administration hoped to achieve in Syria through its support of so called "moderate" Islamic militants was to topple the regime of Bashar al Assad, replace him with a US-backed puppet, and prevent the construction of the critical Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline. That plan hasn't succeeded nor will it in the near future, which means that the plan for the prospective pipeline will eventually go forward.
Why is that a problem?
It's a problem because–according to Dr. Lehmann–"Together with the Russian gas… the EU would be able to cover some 50 percent of its requirements for natural gas via Iranian and Russian sources." As the primary suppliers of critical resources to Europe, Moscow and Tehran would grow stronger both economically and politically which would significantly undermine the influence of the US and its allies in the region, particularly Qatar and Israel. This is why opponents of the pipeline developed a plan to sabotage the project by fomenting a civil war in Syria. Here's Lehmann again:
"In 2007, Qatar sent USD 10 billion to Turkey´s Foreign Minister Davotoglu to prepare Turkey´s and Syria´s Muslim Brotherhood for the subversion of Syria. As we recently learned from former French Foreign Minister Dumas, it was also about that time, that actors in the United Kingdom began planning the subversion of Syria with the help of "rebels"' (Christof Lehmann, Interview with Route Magazine)
In other words, the idea to arm, train and fund an army of jihadi militants, to oust al Assad and open up Syria to western interests, had its origins in an evolving energy picture that clearly tilted in the favor of US rivals in the region. (Note: We're not sure why Lehmann leaves out Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the other Gulf States that have also been implicated.)
Lehmann's thesis is supported by other analysts including the Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed who explains what was going on behind the scenes of the fake civil uprising in Syria. Here's a clip from an article by Ahmed titled "Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern":
"In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria"…
According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:
"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."
… Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."
So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources."
("Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern", The Guardian)
Apparently, Assad was approached by Qatar on the pipeline issue in 2009, but he refused to cooperate in order "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally." Had Assad fallen in line and agreed to Qatar's offer, then the effort to remove him from office probably would have been called off. In any event, it was the developments in Syria that triggered the frenzied reaction in Ukraine. According to Lehmann:
"The war in Ukraine became predictable (unavoidable?) when the great Muslim Brotherhood Project in Syria failed during the summer of 2012. …In June and July 2012 some 20,000 NATO mercenaries who had been recruited and trained in Libya and then staged in the Jordanian border town Al-Mafraq, launched two massive campaigns aimed at seizing the Syrian city of Aleppo. Both campaigns failed and the "Libyan Brigade" was literally wiped out by the Syrian Arab Army.
It was after this decisive defeat that Saudi Arabia began a massive campaign for the recruitment of jihadi fighters via the network of the Muslim Brotherhoods evil twin sister Al-Qaeda.
The International Crisis Group responded by publishing its report "Tentative Jihad". Washington had to make an attempt to distance itself "politically" from the "extremists". Plan B, the chemical weapons plan was hedged but it became obvious that the war on Syria was not winnable anymore." ("The Atlantic Axis and the Making of a War in Ukraine", New eastern Outlook)
There were other factors that pushed the US towards a conflagration with Moscow in Ukraine, but the driving force was the fact that US rivals (Russia and Iran) stood to be the dominant players in an energy war that would increasingly erode Washington's power. Further economic integration between Europe and Russia poses a direct threat to US plans to pivot to Asia, deploy NATO to Russia's borders, and to continue to denominate global energy supplies in US dollars.
Lehmann notes that he had a conversation with "a top-NATO admiral from a northern European country" who clarified the situation in a terse, two-sentence summary of US foreign policy. He said:
"American colleagues at the Pentagon told me, unequivocally, that the US and UK never would allow European – Soviet relations to develop to such a degree that they would challenge the US/UK's political, economic or military primacy and hegemony on the European continent. Such a development will be prevented by all necessary means, if necessary by provoking a war in central Europe".
This is the crux of the issue. The United States is not going to allow any state or combination of states to challenge its dominance. Washington doesn't want rivals. It wants to be the undisputed, global superpower, which is the point that Paul Wolfowitz articulated in an early draft of the US National Defense Strategy:
"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."
So the Obama administration is going to do whatever it thinks is necessary to stop further EU-Russia economic integration and to preserve the petrodollar system. That system originated in 1974 when President Richard Nixon persuaded OPEC members to denominate their oil exclusively in dollars, and to recycle their surplus oil proceeds into U.S. Treasuries. The arrangement turned out to be a huge windfall for the US, which rakes in more than $1 billion per day via the process. This, in turn, allows the US to over-consume and run hefty deficits. Other nations must stockpile dollars to purchase the energy that runs their machinery, heats their homes and fuels their vehicles. Meanwhile, the US can breezily exchange paper currency, which it can print at no-expense to itself, for valuable imported goods that cost dearly in terms of labor and materials. These dollars then go into purchasing oil or natural gas, the profits of which are then recycled back into USTs or other dollar-denominated assets such as U.S. stocks, bonds, real estate, or ETFs. This is the virtuous circle that keeps the US in the top spot.
As one critic put it: "World trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy."
The petrodollar system helps to maintain the dollar's monopoly pricing which, in turn, sustains the dollar as the world's reserve currency. It creates excessive demand for dollars which allows the Fed to expand the nation's credit by dramatically reducing the cost of financing. If oil and natural gas were no longer denominated in USDs, the value of the dollar would fall sharply, the bond market would collapse, and the US economy would slip into a long-term slump.
This is one of the reasons why the US invaded Iraq shortly after Saddam had switched over to the euro; because it considers any challenge to the petrodollar looting scam as a direct threat to US national security.
Moscow is aware of Washington's Achilles's heel and is making every effort to exploit that weakness by reducing its use of the dollar in its trade agreements. So far, Moscow has persuaded China and Iran to drop the dollar in their bilateral dealings, and they have found that other trading partners are eager to do the same. Recently, Russian economic ministers conducted a "de-dollarization" meeting in which a "currency switch executive order" was issued stating that "the government has the legal power to force Russian companies to trade a percentage of certain goods in rubles."
Last week, according to RT:
"The Russian and Chinese central banks have agreed a draft currency swap agreement, which will allow them to increase trade in domestic currencies and cut the dependence on the US dollar in bilateral payments. "The draft document between the Central Bank of Russia and the People's Bank of China on national currency swaps has been agreed by the parties…..The agreement will stimulate further development of direct trade in yuan and rubles on the domestic foreign exchange markets of Russia and China," the Russian regulator said.
Currently, over 75 percent of payments in Russia-China trade settlements are made in US dollars, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper." ("De-Dollarization Accelerates – China/Russia Complete Currency Swap Agreement", Zero Hedge)
The attack on the petrodollar recycling system is one of many asymmetrical strategies Moscow is presently employing to discourage US aggression, to defend its sovereignty, and to promote a multi-polar world order where the rule of law prevails. The Kremlin is also pushing for institutional changes that will help to level the playing field instead of creating an unfair advantage for the richer countries like the US. Naturally, replacing the IMF, whose exploitative loans and punitive policies, topped the list for most of the emerging market nations, particularly the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) who, in July, agreed to create a $100 billion Development Bank that will "will counter the influence of Western-based lending institutions and the dollar. The new bank will provide money for infrastructure and development projects in BRICS countries, and unlike the IMF or World Bank, each nation has equal say, regardless of GDP size.
According to RT:
"The big launch of the BRICS bank is seen as a first step to break the dominance of the US dollar in global trade, as well as dollar-backed institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, both US-based institutions BRICS countries have little influence within…
"This mechanism creates the foundation for an effective protection of our national economies from a crisis in financial markets," Russian President Vladimir Putin said."
("BRICS establish $100bn bank and currency pool to cut out Western dominance", RT)
It's clear that Washington's aggression in Ukraine has focused Moscow's attention on retaliation. But rather than confront the US militarily, as Obama and Co. would prefer, Putin is taking aim at the vulnerabilities within the system. A BRICS Development Bank challenges the IMF's dominant role as lender of last resort, a role that has enhanced the power of the wealthy countries and their industries. The new bank creates the basis for real institutional change, albeit, still within the pervasive capitalist framework.
Russian politician and economist, Sergei Glazyev, summarized Moscow's approach to the US-Russia conflagration in an essay titled "US is militarizing Ukraine to invade Russia." Here's an excerpt:
"To stop the war, you need to terminate its driving forces. At this stage, the war unfolds mainly in the planes of economic, public relations and politics. All the power of US economic superiority is based on the financial pyramid of debt, and this has gone long beyond sustainability. Its major lenders are collapsing enough to deprive the US market of accumulated US dollars and Treasury bonds. Of course, the collapse of the US financial system will cause serious losses to all holders of US currency and securities. But first, these losses for Russia, Europe and China will be less than the losses caused by American geopolitics unleashing another world war. Secondly, the sooner the exit from the financial obligations of this American pyramid, the less will be the losses. Third, the collapse of the dollar Ponzi scheme gives an opportunity, finally, to reform the global financial system on the basis of equity and mutual benefit."
Washington thinks "modern warfare" involves covert support for proxy armies comprised of Neo Nazis and Islamic extremists. Moscow thinks modern warfare means undermining the enemy's ability to wage war through sustained attacks on it's currency, its institutions, its bond market, and its ability to convince its allies that it is a responsible steward of the global economic system.
I'll put my money on Russia.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Cause and Consequences of World War I
July 29, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
With the centurial commemoration of the Great War, the Timeline of World War I provides a chronological list of facts and occurrences. Contrast such details with a wholly inadequate and sanitized version of the Top 5 Causes of World War 1:
1. Mutual Defense Alliances
2. Imperialism
3. Militarism
4. Nationalism
5. Immediate Cause: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
None of these simplistic categories or labels has any veritable bearing on the underlying political, social, economic and evil forces that conspired to drive Western Civilizations into a self-induced suicidal slaughter. The true history of World War I is rooted in the permanent struggle against satanic powers that seek the destruction of Christendom, the financial enslavement of humanity and the death of gentile society.
Understand the real history of The Rothschild 1901 – 1919: The secret creators of World War 1.
"In this war, the German Rothschild's loan money to the Germans, the British Rothschilds loan money to the British, and the French Rothschilds loan money to the French. Furthermore, the Rothschilds have control of the three European news agencies, Wolff (est. 1849) in Germany, Reuters (est. 1851) in England, and Havas (est. 1835) in France. The Rothschilds use Wolff to manipulate the German people into a fervor for war. From around this time, the Rothschilds are rarely reported in the media, because they own the media."
The video, World War 1, What Happened?, explains in the most fundamental manner, The Role of the Jews in WWI summarized by Benjamin H. Freedman. "The Balfour Declaration was merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as a consideration for getting the United States into the war."
Now read the essay, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America, for the account of America betrayal.
"In America, J.P. Morgan was the sales agent for war materials to both the British and the French.
In fact, six months into the war, Morgan became the largest consumer on earth, spending $10 million a day.
Other Rothschild allies in the United States made out as well from the war. President Wilson appointed Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board. According to historian James Perloff, both Baruch and the Rockefellers profited by some $200 million during the war."
The more that things change the further they remain the same. The essay, International Bankers and WW I references, the book, A Century of War by William Engdahl.
"By 1920, Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont noted with obvious satisfaction that, as a result of four years of war and global devastation, 'the national debts of the world have increased by $210,000,000,000 or about 475% in the last six years, and as a natural consequence, the variety of government bonds and the number of investors in them have been greatly multiplied.' These results have made themselves manifest in all the investment markets of the world but nowhere, perhaps, in greater measure than in the United States."
"It may be noted that in 1913 the US government budget was a mere $714,000,000 (714 million dollars) while the Rockefeller empire was worth 950 million dollars in 1913. The Rockefeller and Morgan empires were built through financing by the Rothschild banking family."
Such financial manipulation deserves an honest evaluation, as Brother Nathaniel offers, in his summary of the Benjamin H. Freedman viewpoint in the article, Jews Blackmailed Wilson Into WW I.
"Not a shot had been fired on German soil yet Germany was offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis, which means: "Let's call the war off and let everything be as it was before the war started."
England, in the summer of 1916, was considering Germany's peace terms. They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was offering them or going on with the war and being totally defeated.
While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, led by the Jew, Chaim Weitzman, who later became the 1st President of Israel, went to the British War Cabinet and said: "Don't capitulate to Germany. You can win this war if the United States comes in as your ally. We can arrange this. But in return, you must promise us Palestine once the tide turns in your favor."
In this war, 115,516 American soldiers were killed and 202,002 were maimed for life.
That is what the Anti-Christian Jews of the world conspired to achieve in their crooked diplomatic underworld."
Harsh words, but what was the actual outcome? Mujahid Kamran in the essay, International bankers and WW I, provides an insight into the true reason behind waging World War I.
"Historian Alan Brugar has pointed out that for every soldier who died in battle, the international bankers made a profit of $10,000 dollars! It was the bankers who manipulated the horrific World War I. This bloodletting was not just to make profits – this was also carried out to exhaust countries by bleeding them and enhance the control of bankers over governments with the objective of setting up the New World Order (NWO)."
"The penetration of the banking families into the power fabric of nations can be gauged from the astonishing fact that during WWI German intelligence was headed by the banker Max Warburg, brother of a naturalized US citizen Paul Warburg. Paul Warburg authored the diabolical Federal Reserve scheme. The Warburg's were among the owners of the Federal Reserve. Both represented their respective "countries" in the "delegations" that met at the "peace" negotiations at Versailles after WWI in which Germany was ripped off completely."
Remember that after World War I, Henry Ford published the Dearborn Independent and accounts on The Jewish Hand in the World War.
"As Henry Ford saw it, "Mr. Wilson, while President, was very close to the Jews. His administration, as everyone knows, was predominantly Jewish."22 Wilson seems to have been the first president to have the full backing of the Jewish Lobby, including multiple major financial donors. And he was the first to fully reward their support."
Today, such writings often criticized as anti-Semitic, present a viewpoint that is acknowledged by the Jewish Writer, Oscar Levy, The World Significance of the Russian Revolution; The International Jew, Vol. III, 1921, p. 184-87. The site, The Evil of Zionism Exposed by Jews, quotes Mr. Levy.
"There is scarcely an event in modern history that cannot be traced to the Jews. Take the Great War (World War I)…the Jews have made this war! … We (Jews) who have posed as the saviors of the world…we Jews, today, are nothing else but the world's seducers, its destroyer's, its incendiaries, its executioners … We have finally succeeded in landing you into a new hell."
Henry Makow Ph.D. comments on the Webster Tarpley version of history (EVIL DEMIURGE OF THE TRIPLE ENTENTE AND WORLD WAR I) in the essay, Illuminati Bankers Instigated World War One, by saying that Dr. Tarpley "eschews mention of Jewish bankers in favor of euphemisms like "Venetians." Therefore it is unusual for him to state bluntly that King Edward VII was in the pay of the Rothschilds and was responsible for World War One."
In a "TC" environment, the modern genteelism, international finance has even more dire consequences facing the world today. The T. Hunt Tooley account, Merchants of Death Revisited: Armaments, Bankers, and the First World War references Professor Carroll Quigley and his books, Tragedy and Hope (1966) and The Anglo-American Establishment (written in 1949).
"In these works, Quigley described explicitly a kind of secret, benevolent "network consisting of international bankers and connected elites in business, education, the media, and government which had existed since the nineteenth century:
The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.
In Quigley's telling, the role of this elite and its banking connections in World War I was that of financing the "Anglo-American" cause against the Central Powers, whose victory might have threatened what he viewed as the existing Anglo-American Pax Romana."
Contrast these with the banksters inspired and executed system of the pre World War I reality as described by David A, Stockman in If Only The U.S. Had Stayed Out Of World War I. "Between 1870 and 1914, there was a 45-year span of rising living standards, stable prices, massive capital investment and prolific technological progress. In terms of overall progress, these four-plus decades have never been equaled — either before or since."A century ago, the term Jew had negative connotations associated with a long history as shylock moneychangers. In the present day, polite and accepted conversation pressures discourse to strike the idiom from the vocabulary. Purging future history from the scourge of debt created finance requires the courage of Henry Ford to strip international finance from its economic dominance and political power. Any ethnic, religious or tribal identity that bears the responsibility of inciting anti-Christian demise is the avowed enemy of all humanity.
International banksters thrive on war. World War I proved that no political regime is immune from satanic belligerence. The last century is an anthology of fabricated conflicts designed to foster Quigley's NWO financial and coercive control vision. The Rothschild Dynasty vastly extends beyond family and tribe, as it is a matrix for the eradication of the sacred tenants and sanctity of individual life that is a bedrock principle of Western Civilization.
World War I was not about national disputes, but was a planned destruction of Christendom. This defining struggle gave rise to the temple of Totalitarian Collectivism. The only GREAT WAR is the battle to defeat the demon forces that want to impose a Luciferian rule upon the planet. Wars kill citizens, while usury destroys societies.Few people know, much less, understand the essential lesson of World War I. The entire last century needs interpreting and evaluation through the lenses of the eternal struggle. Ignorance is bliss for most people, but faulty history is much more dangerous.
Sartre is the publisher, editor, and writer for Breaking All The Rules. He can be reached at: BATR
Sartre is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
How American Propaganda Works: Guilt By Insinuation
July 22, 2014 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Why hasn't Washington joined Russian President Putin in calling for an objective, non-politicized international investigation by experts of the case of the Malaysian jetliner?
The Russian government continues to release facts, including satellite photos showing the presence of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missiles in locations from which the airliner could have been brought down by the missile system and documentation that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet rapidly approached the Malaysian airliner prior to its downing. The head of the Operations Directorate of Russian military headquarters said at a Moscow press conference today (July 21) that the presence of the Ukrainian military jet is confirmed by the Rostov monitoring center.
The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that, at the moment of destruction of MH-17, an American satellite was flying over the area. The Russian government urges Washington to make available the photos and data captured by the satellite.
President Putin has repeatedly stressed that the investigation of MH-17 requires "a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)." Putin's call for an independent expert examination by ICAO does not sound like a person with anything to hide.
Turning to Washington, Putin stated, "In the meantime, no one [not even the "exceptional nation"] has the right to use this tragedy to achieve their narrowly selfish political goals."
Putin reminded Washington, "We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and to sit down at the negotiating table. I can say with confidence that if military operations were not resumed [by Kiev] on June 28 in eastern Ukraine, this tragedy wouldn't have happened."
What is the American response?
Lies and insinuations.
Yesterday (July 20) US Secretary of State John Kerry said that pro-Russian separatists were involved in the downing of the Malaysian airliner and said that it was "pretty clear" that Russia was involved. Here are Kerry's words: "It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia into the hands of separatists. We know with confidence, with confidence, that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point and time, so it obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists."
Kerry's statement is just another of the endless lies told by US secretaries of state in the 21st century. Who can forget Colin Powell's package of lies delivered to the UN about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" or Kerry's lie repeated endlessly that Assad "used chemical weapons against his own people" or the endless lies about "Iranian nukes"?
Remember that Kerry, on a number of occasions, stated that the US had proof that Assad crossed the "red line" by using chemical weapons. However, Kerry was never able to back up his statements with evidence. The US had no evidence to give the British prime minister, whose effort to have parliament approve Britain's participation with Washington in a military attack on Syria was voted down. Parliament told the prime minister, "no evidence, no war."
Again, here is Kerry declaring "confidence" in statements that are directly contradicted by the Russian satellite photos and endless eye witnesses on the ground.
Why doesn't Washington release its photos from its satellite?
The answer is for the same reason that Washington will not release all the videos it confiscated and that it claims prove that a hijacked 9/11 airliner hit the Pentagon. The videos do not support Washington's claim, and the US satellite photos do not support Kerry's claim.
The UN weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq reported that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. However, the fact did not support Washington's propaganda and was ignored. Washington started a highly destructive war based on nothing but Washington's intentional lie.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors on the ground in Iran and all 16 US intelligence agencies reported that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. However, the fact was inconsistent with Washington's agenda and was ignored by both the US government and the presstitute media.
We are witnessing the same thing right now with the assertions in the absence of evidence that Russia is responsible for the downing of the Malaysian airliner.
Not every member of the US government is as reckless as Kerry and John McCain. In place of direct lies, many US officials use insinuations.
US Senator Diane Feinstein is the perfect example. Interviewed on the presstitute TV station CNN, Feinstein said, "The issue is where is Putin? I would say, 'Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.'"
Putin has been talking to the world nonstop calling for an expert non-politicized investigation, and Feinstein is asking Putin why he is hiding behind silence. We know you did it, Feinstein insinuates, so just tell us whether you meant to or whether it was an accident.
The way the entire Western news cycle was orchestrated with blame instantly being placed on Russia long in advance of real information suggests that the downing of the airliner was a Washington operation. It is, of course, possible that the well-trained presstitute media needed no orchestration from Washington in order to lay the blame on Russia. On the other hand, some of the news performances seem too scripted not to have been prepared in advance.
We also have the advanced preparation of the youtube video that purports to show a Russian general and Ukrainian separatists discussing having mistakenly downed a civilian airliner. As I pointed out earlier, this video is twice damned. It was ready in advance and by implicating the Russian military, it overlooked that the Russian military can tell the difference between a civilian airliner and a military airplane. The existence of the video itself implies that there was a plot to down the airliner and blame Russia.
I have seen reports that the Russian anti-aircraft missile system, as a safety device, is capable of contacting aircraft transponders in order to verify the type of aircraft. If the reports are correct and if the transponders from MH-17 are found, they might record the contact.
I have seen reports that Ukrainian air control changed the route of MH-17 and directed it to fly over the conflict area. The transponders should also indicate whether this is correct. If so, there clearly is at least circumstantial evidence that this was an intentional act on the part of Kiev, an act which would have required Washington's blessing.
There are other reports that there is a divergence between the Ukrainian military and the unofficial militias formed by the right-wing Ukrainian extremists who apparently were the first to attack the separatists. It is possible that Washington used the extremists to plot the airliner's destruction in order to blame Russia and use the accusations to pressure the EU to go along with Washington's unilateral sanctions against Russia. We do know that Washington is desperate to break up the growing economic and political ties between Russia and Europe.
If it was a plot to down an airliner, any safety device on the missile system could have been turned off so as to give no warning or leave any telltale sign. That could be the reason a Ukrainian fighter was sent to inspect the airliner. Possibly the real target was Putin's airliner and incompetence in implementing the plot resulted in the destruction of a civilian airliner.
As there are a number of possible explanations, let's keep open minds and resist Washington's propaganda until facts and evidence are in. In the very least, Washington is guilty of using the incident to blame Russia in advance of the evidence. All Washington has shown us so far are accusations and insinuations. If that is all Washington continues to show us, we will know where the blame resides.
In the meantime, remember the story of the boy who cried "wolf!" He lied so many times that when the wolf did come, no one believed him. Will this be Washington's ultimate fate?
Instead of declaring war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Syria, why did Washington hide behind lies? If Washington wants war with Iran, Russia, and China, why not simply declare war? The reason that the US Constitution requires war to begin with a declaration of war by Congress is to prevent the executive branch from orchestrating wars in order to further hidden agendas. By abdicating its constitutional responsibility, the US Congress is complicit in the executive branch's war crimes. By approving Israel's premeditated murder of Palestinians, the US government is complicit in Israel's war crimes.
Ask yourself this question: Would the world be a safer place with less death, destruction and displaced peoples and more truth and justice if the United States and Israel did not exist?
Dr Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
The War Against Our Natural Right of Self-Defense Continues
July 12, 2014 by Administrator · 3 Comments
Culprits Include The City Of Chicago, Big Retailers, The Media, And Churches…
Proponents of the Nanny State have been trying to take away man's Natural right of self-defense ever since the United Nations was created back in 1945. Of course, the Natural right of self-defense is totally unknown in communist and socialist countries; and big-government toadies in several so-called "democratic" countries have also succeeded in turning citizens into subjects by removing or severely restricting the Natural right of self-defense. Obviously, I'm talking about countries such as Great Britain, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
By self-defense, I am talking about a man's right to carry a Personal Defense Weapon (PDW)–which, in modern times, mostly requires a firearm–anywhere and everywhere he goes. A state that does not allow a man to be personally armed in his day-to-day activities is literally stripping him of his right of self-defense. To require a citizen to keep his or her PDW in their home or vehicle is to deny the citizen's Natural right of self-defense. To say a citizen may lawfully protect himself in only limited and duly-prescribed locations is to make the citizen a subject of the state. Furthermore, it removes from him the most fundamental of all the Natural rights that were granted to him by his Creator: the right of self-defense.
Four-legged predators are constantly on the prowl for animals that are defenseless. Two-legged predators do the same thing. These human predators do not respect "gun-free" zones. Like all predators, they are opportunistic beasts. They prey on the weak and vulnerable. When the state takes away a person's right to be always armed, it makes the entire citizenry weak and vulnerable. As I have said many times, guns don't kill people; gun-free zones kill people.
Gun control laws are among the most egregious violations of Natural Law. Men and women who are truly free are allowed to carry a PDW everywhere they go. Banks, schools, government buildings, churches, etc., should be no exceptions. It is no coincidence that just about every single mass-shooting in recent memory has taken place in a so-called "gun-free" zone, where the only people who were armed were the perpetrators. Gun-free zones turn free men into human prey.
For all intents and purposes, several states and major cities within the United States have become "gun-free" zones, in that they mostly deny their citizens the right to carry a PDW on their person. Whether the people of these cities and states realize it or not, they have lost the right to be called free men and have been turned into human prey by their own State and municipal governments. There is no greater example of this tyranny than the city of Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago has some of the strictest and most stringent gun-control laws in the entire nation. The government of Chicago has, in effect, turned the town into a giant killing-field where ravenous two-legged beasts are allowed to feast on the millions of defenseless prey that inhabit our country's third largest city. For example, over the past Independence Day weekend, 82 people were shot and 14 people were killed in Chicago violence. Breitbart.com covered the story:
"Breitbart reported that the violence was high on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, but when Thursday, the final hours of Sunday, and the first few hours of Monday morning were added to the accounting, the rate of violence proved to be even more appalling.
"On Monday morning, July 7, the Chicago Tribune shocked the city with the list of weekend violence reporting that between Thursday, as the holiday weekend began, to the early hours of Monday morning, Chicago experienced 82 shootings with 14 killed."
Included in the Breitbart report is the fact that one man's life was actually saved by virtue of the fact that he had a concealed carry permit (no small feat in the City of Chicago) and used his PDW to protect himself against three violent miscreants. In this case, one of the dead was a violent predator. Had the innocent citizen not been armed, he would have been the statistic. In addition, the report states that eight of the dead were at the hands of Chicago police officers in the line of duty, proving, once again, that policemen carry guns, not for the protection of the citizenry, but for their own protection.
Predictably, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blamed the increased violence on "weak" gun laws in the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin.
See the Breitbart.com report here:
Between Thursday And Monday 82 Shot, 14 Killed In Chicago Violence
Of course, what Emanuel won't tell you is that the violent crime rates of those states where the right to keep AND BEAR arms is less infringed are far less–far less! For example, there are 11 states in the country that allow their citizens to carry firearms freely and openly with no permit or license required. Those states are Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Vermont, Kentucky, and Virginia. So, using Emanuel's logic, one could expect that there should have been hundreds of shootings in those states last weekend–what with their "weak" gun laws and all, right? You know that's not true.
Check the incidents of shootings in the above-listed states and we might even discover that the City of Chicago may have had more shootings over this past Independence Day weekend than those 11 states COMBINED. Think of it: the City of Chicago (with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country) may have had more shootings than the combined shootings of the 11 states that recognize their citizens' Natural right of self-defense by allowing them to freely and openly carry a PDW.
Of course, it's not only various and sundry governments (though they are the most egregious usurpers of the Natural right of self-defense) that want to deny people the right to bear arms; many large retailers are adding their weight to the anti-self-defense hysteria.
Just a few days ago, the giant retailer, Target, announced a corporate policy that asks its patrons to leave their firearms at home. Once again, Breitbart.com covers the story.
"On July 2nd, Target 'respectfully' asked law-abiding citizens to 'not bring firearms' in their stores.
"The department store chain did this via an announcement posted on its website and shared by interim CEO John Mulligan.
"The announcement says:
"'As you've likely seen in the media, there's been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit "open carry" should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target–even in communities where it is permitted by law.'
"By taking this step, Target joins Chipotle, Jack in the Box, Sonic, and Chili's in asking law-abiding citizens not to carry guns in their businesses."
The author of the report, AWR Hawkins, notes, "Within two weeks of asking law-abiding customers to come unarmed, two Jack in the Box stores were robbed, and a shooting took place at a third. Patrons were robbed at gunpoint in one of the robberies, as well."
See the report at:
Target 'Respectfully' Asks Law-Abiding Citizens To Leave Guns At Home
But the war against your Natural right to self-defense doesn't stop with the City of Chicago or the Target chain-stores. The mainstream media seem absolutely determined to take away your right to defend yourself and your loved ones.
After CNN sacked Piers Morgan due to his immense unpopularity, which was mostly due to his arrogant attacks against America's Second Amendment, the cable network recently announced that it was replacing Morgan with former America's Most Wanted host, John Walsh, who immediately proclaimed that his show would continue Morgan's attacks against the Second Amendment.
Once more, Breitbart.com covers the story:
"Former America's Most Wanted host John Walsh is hosting a new show on CNN on which he vows to keep the push for gun control and the war on the NRA alive.
"According to The Wrap, Walsh said:
"'I'm the father of a murdered child. I've done nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered. We have a serious problem with guns in this country… and the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous.'
"He claims the NRA has gotten so big and financially powerful through relationships with gun manufacturers that 'they're not a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, they're a gun manufacturer rep.'
"Walsh's new show, The Hunt, premieres July 13. Walsh says he did not initially realize 'how much his gun control efforts would be a part of his new show.'"
See the report at:
New CNN Host John Walsh Vows To Continue Piers Morgan's War On The NRA
Obviously, CNN is hoping that it's continued anti-Second Amendment agenda will be more palatable to the American people if it comes from a fellow American–especially one with whom everyone can truly sympathize with by virtue of his losing a child to an act of violence (although Adam Walsh's murder did not involve the use of a firearm)–than from the arrogant and pompous British elitist, Piers Morgan. But make no mistake about it: the anti-Second Amendment message is the same. Only the messenger has changed.
And most sadly, churches, too, are often at the forefront of the anti-self-defense fanaticism. Christian leaders from denominations across the board are often the ones who promote gun control (even gun confiscation) among their congregations and who deny their parishioners the right to be armed on church property.
For example, back in 2004, the president of the LDS church issued a declaration to all Mormon churches in Utah that gave "public notice that firearms are prohibited in the church's houses of worship, including temples, meetinghouses, the Assembly Hall, the Salt Lake Tabernacle, and the Conference Center."
The declaration went on to say, "Once such public notice is given, persons who bring firearms into a church house of worship should be informed of the church's position and politely asked to take their firearms to another safe location. Persons who refuse to take their firearms from the house of worship or repeatedly ignore the church's prohibition should be referred to local law enforcement officers for possible criminal prosecution."
See the church statement here:
Text Of Letter From First Presidency On Guns
But if you think the LDS church is the only church in the country that has taken such a position, you are sadly misinformed. My educated guess is that the vast majority of denominations and churches in America have a very similar position.
But instead of denying the Christian people of America from exercising their God-given right of self-defense on church property, church leaders should be boldly teaching the Biblical Natural Law principles of self-defense and encouraging their people to jealously guard this most fundamental liberty. By demanding that Christian people not be armed on church property, church leaders are no better than Rahm Emanuel–who insists that Chicago's residents not be allowed to protect themselves–and are opening up their churches to those two-legged wolves who would seek to devour the sheep.
There are only a small handful of countries today that recognize the Natural right of self-defense. The advent of the United Nations has facilitated the demise of this right in country after country. The United States is the last major power that yet somewhat protects this most precious Natural right.
Obviously, several State and local governments within the United States (not to mention the worst offender of all: the federal government in Washington, D.C.) have themselves assisted the dismantlement of the right of self-defense. Several giant retailers are assisting the attacks against our Natural right of self-defense. The mainstream media is incessant in its attacks against the Second Amendment. And even many of America's churches have set themselves against the right to BEAR arms. The war against our Natural right of self-defense continues.
However, I need to point out that the architects of the Nanny State have been trying to disarm the American people since even before the United Nations was created. And while the right to keep and bear arms has been severely restricted by myriads of federal, State, and local laws, the American people continue to be the most heavily armed people in the world. Not only is the American citizenry an armed citizenry, it is an absolutely determined citizenry. The message to any and all potential tyrants who would attempt to remove our Natural right of self-defense is the same–whether they are from King George's London, Mao's Beijing, Stalin's Moscow, Emanuel's Chicago, Obama's Washington, D.C., or the U.N.'s New York City: MOLON LABE, COME AND TAKE THEM!
Chuck Baldwin is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
You can reach him at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Please visit Chuck's web site at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com