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Is The United States Foreign Policy As Barbaric And Depraved As The Islamic State?
May 30, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Their precious young minds and our precious young minds…
She was a redheaded rebel, the singer in the family, a trash-talking, tattooed 21-year-old wrapped up in a hip-hop dream of becoming Holland's Eminem. Then Betsy found Allah. After her sudden conversion to Islam last summer, Betsy began dressing in full Muslim robes. By January, the once-agnostic Dutch woman, raised in a home where the only sign of religion was a dusty Bible on a shelf, began defending homegrown terrorists. … Denis Cuspert, a German hip-hop artist known as Deso Dogg who converted in 2010 and later joined The Islamic State [ISIS], delivers a rap-like chant portraying the path to jihad as a chance for empowerment, spiritual fulfillment, vengeance and adventure. … 'The door to jihad is standing there waiting for you,' says a Swedish convert to Islam in a video. 'It is the fastest way to paradise.' (1)
Tales told many times in recent years, all over Europe, at times in the United States. Parents and authorities are deeply distressed and perplexed. How can young people raised in the West – the freedom-obsessed, democratic, peace-loving, humanitarian, fun-filled West – join the Islamic State and support the public cutting off of the heads of breathing, living human beings? Each of us in our own way are lost souls searching for answers to the awful mysteries of life. But THIS? What life-quest does The Islamic State satisfy that our beloved West can't satisfy? ISIS is unique in the world in making US foreign policy look good. The Defense Department and the State Department have special task forces studying the new enemy; the latter regularly puts out videos to counteract the many Islamic State videos.
I hope those researching the question look inwardly as well as at ISIS. How do young people raised in the West – the same West we know and love – coldly machine-gun to death more than a dozen Iraqis, men, women, children, reporters, absolutely in cold blood, in the video made famous by Chelsea Manning; but this of course is nothing compared to Fallujah with its two-headed babies, even three-headed, an eye in the middle of the forehead. The Islamic State has done nothing compared to what the United States did to the people of Fallujah. Can anyone name a horror in all of history more gruesome? Yes, there are some, but not many; and much of Fallujah was personally executed by nice, clean-cut, freedom-obsessed, democratic, peace-loving, humanitarian, fun-filled made-in America young men.
Here's US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, in his memoir, April 6, 2004, the time of Fallujah, in video teleconference with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "We've got to smash somebody's ass quickly," said Powell. "There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power." Then Bush spoke: "At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone. At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out. Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. … There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!" (2)
"Years from now when America looks out on a democratic Middle East, growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima" in World War II. – George W. Bush, 2006 (3)
Well, George, it's either that or Fallujah was one of the key reasons for the rise of ISIS.
My point here is not that United States foreign policy is as barbaric and depraved as The Islamic State. It's not. Most of the time. I simply hope to make it a bit easier to understand the enemy by seeing ourselves without the stars in our eyes. And I haven't even mentioned what the United States has led the world in for over a century – torture.
The ever-fascinating and ever-revealing subject of ideology
Jeb Bush has gotten himself into trouble because, like all politicians running for office, he is unable to give simple honest answers to simple straightforward questions, for fear of offending one or another segment of the population. How refreshing it would be to have a politician say only what s/he actually believes, even if it's as stupid as usual.
The brother of the previous president has been asked repeatedly: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?" At first his answer was "yes", then at times "I don't know", even "no" at least once, or he's refused to answer at all. Clearly he's been guessing about which reply would win him points with the most people, or which would lose him the least.
This caused a minor uproar, even among conservatives. Right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham was moved to make a rare rational remark: "You can't still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to. If you do, there has to be something wrong with you."
Such discussions always leave out a critical point. Why did millions of Americans, and even more millions abroad, march against the war in the fall of 2002 and early 2003, before it began? What did they know that the Bush brothers and countless other politicians didn't know? It was clear to the protesters that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were habitual liars, that they couldn't care less about the people of Iraq, that the defenseless people of that ancient civilization were going to be bombed to hell; most of the protesters knew something about the bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan; and they knew about napalm, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, etc. Those who marched knew that the impending war was something a moral person could not support; and that it was totally illegal, a textbook case of a "war of aggression"; one didn't have to be an expert in international law to know this.
Didn't the Brothers Bush, Hillary Clinton (who voted for the war in the Senate), et al know about any of these things? Of course they did. They just didn't care enough; supporting the empire's domination and expansion was a given, and remains so; no US politician gets very far – certainly not to the White House – questioning the right of American Exceptionalism to impose itself upon humanity (for humanity's sake of course).
Consider the darlings du jour of the American Left, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. They very seldom speak out critically about US foreign policy or even the military budget. The anti-war/anti-imperialist segment of the American left need to put proper pressure on the two senators.
Mr. Sanders should also be asked why he routinely refers to himself as a "democratic socialist". Why not just "socialist"? It's likely a legacy of the Cold War. I think that he and other political figures who use the term are, consciously or unconsciously, trying to disassociate themselves from communism, the Soviet Union, Marxism, etc., all those things that are not good for you. (The word "socialist" once connoted furtive men with European accents, sinister facial hair, and bombs.)
It would be delightful to hear Sanders openly declare that he is simply a "socialist". Socialism can be democratic; indeed, a lot more so than capitalism, particularly concerning the distribution of wealth and all the ramifications of that. Presented here are some relevant thoughts on these issues, from myself and others:
It's only the socialists who maintain as a bedrock principle: People before Profit, which can serve as a very concise definition of socialism, an ideology anathema to the Right and libertarians, who fervently believe, against all evidence, in the rationality of a free market. I personally favor the idea of a centralized, planned economy. (Oh my God, a damn Commie!) Modern society is much too complex and technical to leave its operation in the hands of libertarians, communitarians, or anarchists seeking to return to a "community" or "village" level.
"Washington has always regarded democratic socialism as a greater challenge than totalitarian Communism, which was easy to vilify and made for a handy enemy. In the 1960s and '70s, the favored tactic for dealing with the inconvenient popularity of economic nationalism and democratic socialism was to try to equate them with Stalinism, deliberately blurring the clear differences between the world views." – Naomi Klein
"If it is true, as often said, that most socialist regimes turn out to be dictatorships, that is largely because a dictatorship is much harder to overthrow or subvert than a democracy." – Jean Bricmont, Belgian author of "Humanitarian Imperialism" (2006)
Without a proclaimed socialist vision, radical change becomes too many different things for too many different individuals and groups.
"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children." – Martin Luther King
The United States is so fearful of the word "socialism" that it changed the "social sciences" to the "behavioral sciences".
If for no other reason than to save the environment, the world needs to abandon the capitalist system. Every day, in every spot on earth, in a multitude of ways, corporations are faced with a choice: to optimize profits or to do what's best for the planet.
The great majority of people in any society work for a salary. They don't need to be motivated by the profit motive. It's not in anyone's genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations are to help others, improve the quality of life of society, and provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work. It's not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal "customers" from other people, no holds barred, survival of the fittest or the least honest.
And what about this thing called "democracy", or "majority rule"? Many millions marched against the invasion of Iraq before it began. I don't know of a single soul who marched in favor of it, although I'm sure there must have been someone somewhere. That lucky soul was the one they listened to.
Finally, the question being asked of Jeb Bush and others is not the best one. They're asked: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?" A more important question would be: "Knowing what we knew then, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?" And the answer should be "no", because we knew that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction. This is very well documented, from diverse sources, international and Iraqi, including Saddam himself and his chief lieutenants.
The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale Of Propaganda
"When an American warplane accidentally struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign …"
These words appeared in the Washington Post on April 24, 2015 as part of a story about US drone warfare and how an American drone attack in Pakistan in January had accidentally killed two Western aid workers. The Post felt no need to document the Belgrade incident, or explain it any further. Almost anyone who follows international news halfway seriously knows about this famous "accident" of May 7, 1999. The only problem is that the story is pure propaganda.
Three people inside the Chinese embassy were killed and Washington apologized profusely to Beijing, blaming outdated maps among other problems. However, two well-documented and very convincing reports in The Observer of London in October and November of that year, based on NATO and US military and intelligence sources, revealed that the embassy had been purposely targeted after NATO discovered that it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. The Chinese were doing this after NATO planes had successfully silenced the Yugoslav government's own transmitters. (5) The story of how the US mainstream media covered up the real story behind the embassy bombing is absolutely embarrassing. (6)
Over and above the military need, there may have been a political purpose served. China, then as now, was clearly the principal barrier to US hegemony in Asia, if not elsewhere. The bombing of the embassy was perhaps Washington's charming way of telling Beijing that this is only a small sample of what can happen to you if you have any ideas of resisting or competing with the American juggernaut. Since an American bombing campaign over Belgrade was already being carried out, Washington was able to have a much better than usual "plausible denial" for the embassy bombing. The opportunity may have been irresistible to American leaders. The chance might never come again.
All of US/NATO's other bombing "mistakes" in Yugoslavia were typically followed by their spokesman telling the world: "We regret the loss of life." These same words were used by the IRA in Northern Ireland on a number of occasions over the years following one of their bombings which appeared to have struck the wrong target. But their actions were invariably called "terrorist".
Undoubtedly, the US media will be writing of the "accidental" American bombing of the Chinese embassy as long as the empire exists and China does not become a member of NATO.
1) Washington Post, May 7, 2015
2) Ricardo Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story (2008), pages 349-350
3) Associated Press, November 11, 2006
4) William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, pp. 61-2
5) The Observer (London), October 17, 1999 ("Nato bombed Chinese deliberately"), and November 28, 1999 ("Truth behind America's raid on Belgrade")
6) Extra! Update (magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR], New York), December 1999; appeared first as solitary article October 22, 1999 ("U.S. Media Overlook Expose on Chinese Embassy Bombing")
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 firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: WilliamBlum.org
William Blum is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
A Design Evinced
May 16, 2015 by Administrator · 2 Comments
Can one imagine how difficult it was for America's founders to actually make the decision to separate from Great Britain? England was the Motherland. The Crown was the central government. For all of their lives, the government of Great Britain was the only government they had ever known. The history of England was their history. Not only that, these men had never experienced any other system of government. Neither was there history to guide them. A monarchical form of government was all they knew. The "divine right of kings" was inculcated into their hearts and minds via virtually every established institution, including the Church, from the time they were born.
The Magna Carta had paved the highway of philosophy for the acceptance of self-government and individual liberty, but it was hardly practiced. King John signed the charter under extreme duress and then spent the rest of his reign in bloody retaliation against those who had pressed him to accept it. For over five hundred years, the Magna Carta lay as a noble idea but with little practical application. The Enlightenment philosophers wrote and theorized much about the principles contained in the Great Charter, but, again, until America's founding generation came on the scene, nothing much of substance had been achieved. It was America's Founding Fathers and founding generation that took the principles of the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment philosophers and actually used those principles to birth a new nation.
But how did they come to such a decision? Imagine the consternation. Imagine the inner conflicts. Communities were divided. Friends were divided. Families were divided. Brothers were divided. Parents and children and husbands and wives were divided. Yet, make the decision, they did. They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause. They obtained liberty and independence for their posterity–at great cost.
Granted, the decision to separate from the British Crown was not made overnight. Thomas Jefferson explained the process of reasoning behind the separation in the Declaration of Independence. Hear him:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."
How could Jefferson have been any clearer? He and the rest of America's founders were convinced of "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."
Noah Webster's Dictionary Of The English Language (1828) defines "design" as verb: "To project; to form in idea, as a scheme." And as noun: "A scheme or plan in the mind." And, "Purpose; intention; aim; implying a scheme or plan in the mind."
Hence, America's founders were convinced of a scheme, a plan, and an intention in the minds of those within the British Crown to "reduce them under absolute Despotism." Yes, friends, America's founders were convinced there was a CONSPIRACY within the hearts and minds of the British government to enslave them. Hear Jefferson again:
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design…"
When abuses and usurpations which pursue invariably the "same Object" continue unabated over a long period of time, this is NOT an act of happenstance; it is by "design." Somewhere along the line, the eyes of America's founders were opened to the conspiracy within the British government to enslave them. Once their eyes were opened to the conspiracy, the rest, as we say, is history.
I submit that what we have in America today are basically two groups of people: those whose eyes are opened to conspiracy, and those who eyes are blind to conspiracy. This is exactly as it was in 1775 and 1776. Christian or unchurched, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, if one is blind to the conspiracy to "reduce [us] under absolute Despotism," one cannot truly comprehend the real danger or the real war.
And, sadly, it appears that most people today do NOT see the CONSPIRACY. All they see is Republican and Democrat; conservative and liberal; right and left; Christian and Muslim; religious and secular; FOX News and CNN, etc. Until Americans awaken to the same "design" that our founders awakened to, they will not be able to obtain a solution to our country's malaise, as they are blind to the real enemy.
Mind you, not everyone in the British government in 1775 had it in mind to enslave the Colonists. Not every British soldier, not every British magistrate, not every British agent had a personal goal to enslave the colonies. They were just following orders; their eyes were blind to the plans and objects of those who were orchestrating the conspiracy. And, of course, those within the colonies who supported the British Crown were, likewise, blind to the conspiracy. Thank God, enough of our forebears were enlightened to the design of the Crown to be willing to cast it off.
I will say it plainly: there is a design (conspiracy) within Washington, D.C., and its allies to reduce us under absolute despotism.
Come on, folks, think: when has it mattered to a tinker's dam which party controlled the White House or Congress? No matter which party is in charge, the central government in D.C. continues to get bigger and bigger and more and more oppressive. Regardless of whether the President is a Democrat or Republican, NOTHING changes in regards to America's foreign policies or our economic policies. Regardless of party, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) dominates our foreign policies and the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) dominates our economic policies. Regardless of party, an American Police State and surveillance society continue to mushroom, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continue to exert more and more control over the American citizenry, and states and communities continue to fall under the heel of federal overreach.
Both parties in Washington, D.C., are led by warmongering zealots who use war, not only to enrich themselves, but also to carry out their preconceived plans of perpetual war for the purpose of paving the way for international bankers to control the world's economies and for the purpose of subjecting the American citizenry to greater and greater infringements of their liberties.
In this regard, militant Islam is but a tool of the globalists. As long as Americans think that Islam is our enemy, they are blind to who the real enemy is. Our enemy is NOT Islam; our enemy is the cabal of globalists who are manipulating militant Islamists. The same people (the CFR and their fellow travelers) who took one of our strongest allies in the Middle East (Iran) and turned it into one our (supposed) greatest enemies are the same ones who are manipulating all of the wars of the Middle East, as well as bringing Russia and China to the brink of global conflict.
I submit the conspiracy of the British Crown has returned; and what used to be an indefatigable, recalcitrant, and vigilant independent republic (the United States) has become little more than a puppet of the old European monarchy. What the Crown could not accomplish through military force, it has accomplished through international banking.
The Federal Reserve wields absolute control over U.S. economic policy, and yet, no one really knows exactly who all of the members of the FRB even are. One thing is known, many (if not most) of them are NOT even U.S. citizens. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, foreign bankers have been controlling U.S. financial policy for the better part of a century.
In like fashion, the CFR virtually controls U.S. foreign policy. And the goal of the CFR is the reduction of national sovereignty and the rise of global government. Listen to Admiral Chester Ward.
Rear Admiral Chester Ward, who was the Judge Advocate General of the Navy from 1956-1960 and a former member of the CFR, but withdrew from the organization after realizing what they were all about, warned the American people about the dangers of this and similar organizations (such as the Trilateral Commission). He said, "The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common–they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR . . . comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government."
Admiral Ward also said, "The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all-powerful, one world government."
Now, observe that the administrations of both Republican and Democrat presidents are littered with CFR members. Under President George H.W. Bush, CFR members comprised 20% of his cabinet; under President Bill Clinton, CFR members comprised 34% of his cabinet; under President G.W. Bush, CFR members comprised 22% of his cabinet; and under President Barack Obama, CFR members comprise 36% of his cabinet. And these figures do not take into account how many CFR members are scattered throughout the national news media.
Can one imagine how people would react if twenty or thirty percent of a given presidential administration's cabinet members were from, say, the Christian Coalition–or, even the ACLU. If the Christian Coalition had that many members in a presidential administration, people on the left would be screaming bloody murder. And if the ACLU had that many members in a presidential administration, people on the right would be screaming bloody murder. As it is, the CFR DOES have that many members in EVERY presidential administration and no one from the right or the left even says "boo." It's because they (from both left and right) are blind to the conspiracy.
These international conspirators can be found in London, Brussels, Washington, D.C., New York City, Tel Aviv, etc. In terms of U.S. foreign policy, these conspirators completely control the neocon agenda. That doesn't mean that every politician who embraces the neocon foreign policy agenda is him or herself aware of the conspiracy. In the same way, not every federal officer within the DHS is aware of the conspiracy. Not every soldier who is fighting these perpetual wars of aggression is aware of the conspiracy. But as with many in the old British monarchy, they are the pawns of the conspirators.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, et al., were only able to declare and fight for independence and liberty after they understood that they were dealing with "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."
Until the American people, including our State legislators, governors, city mayors, councilmen, county sheriffs, district attorneys, congressmen, senators, pastors, educators, journalists, etc., awaken to the conspiracy that seeks to enslave us, we will never have the sagacity and strength of will to properly resist it. This means that many of the current battles in which good people are engaged merely play into the designs of those who seek our enslavement. We can't win the war until we know who the real enemy is.
P.S. On Sunday, April 19 of this year, I delivered the famous sermon of Pastor Jonas Clark that was originally delivered on April 19, 1776, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Battle of Lexington. Pastor Clark was the pastor of the men who fought that historic battle, which began America's War for Independence. Obviously, this message was delivered just a couple of months before our Declaration of Independence was signed. I preached this message word-for-word. And I tried to deliver it with the same zeal and passion in which it was originally preached.
The vast majority of today's Christians NEVER hear a message that remotely resembles the kind of sermons that the pastors of Colonial America delivered. And since April 19 fell on Sunday this year, I delivered Jonas Clark's powerful message regarding the Battle of Lexington and American liberty so people could listen to the kind of preaching that Christians in Colonial America heard routinely. Pastor Clark entitled his message, "The Fate of Blood-Thirsty Oppressors and God's Tender Care of His Distressed People."
My delivery of this awesome message is on DVD. I offer this DVD to my readers in the hope that many of you will purchase copies of the DVD and let your friends, relatives, fellow Christians, pastor, etc., hear true Colonial American preaching. Again, this is word-for-word the message of Jonas Clark delivered on April 19, 1776, concerning the Battle of Lexington Green and America's fight for liberty.
I have never heard anyone deliver Rev. Clark's famous message. As far as I know, this is the only verbatim recording of this historic message in existence–preached with the same kind of passion and fervor as it was said Pastor Clark delivered it.
To order my delivery of Jonas Clark's message, go here:
Jonas Clark's Famous Message Of April 19, 1776
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
Syrian War Set To Re-Explode
May 16, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia In Alliance with Al Qaeda…
The Syrian war stalemate appears to be over. The regional powers surrounding Syria — especially Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan — have re-ignited their war against the Syrian government. After over 200,000 dead and millions of refugees, the U.S. allies in the region recently re-committed to deepening the war, with incalculable consequences.
The new war pact was made between Obama's regional darlings, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who agreed to step up deeper military cooperation and establish a joint command in the occupied Syrian region of Idlib.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now openly backing Islamic extremists under the newly rebranded "Conquest Army" The on-the-ground leadership of this "new" coalition consists of Jabhat al-Nusra — the "official" al-Qaeda affiliate — and Ahrar al-Sham, whose leader previously stated that his group was the "real al-Qaeda."
The Huffington Post reports:
"The Turkish-Saudi agreement has led to a new joint command center in the northeastern Syrian province of Idlib. There, a coalition of groups — including Nusra and other Islamist brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham that Washington views as extremist — are progressively eroding Assad's front. The rebel coalition also includes more moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army that have received U.S. support in the past."
The article admits that the Free Syrian Army — that Obama previously labeled as "moderates" and gave cash and guns to — has been swallowed up by the extremist groups.
This dynamic has the potential to re-engulf the region in violence; deep Saudi pocketbooks combined with reports of looming Turkish ground forces are a catastrophe in the making.
Interestingly, the Saudi-Turkish alliance barely raised eyebrows in the U.S. media. President Obama didn't think to comment on the subject, let alone condemn it.
The media was focused on an odd narrative of Obama reportedly being "concerned" about the alliance, but "disengaged" from what two of his close allies were doing in a region that the U.S. has micromanaged for decades.
It seems especially odd for the media to accept that Obama has a "hands off" approach in Syria when at the same time the media is reporting about a new U.S. program training Syrian rebels in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
It's inconceivable that Obama would coordinate deeply with Turkey to set up a Syrian rebel training camp on Turkish soil, while at the same time be "disengaged" from the Turkish-Saudi war coalition in Syria.
One possible motive behind the fake narrative of "non-cooperation" between Obama and his Turkish-Saudi allies is that the U.S. is supposed to be fighting a "war on terrorism."
So when Turkey and Saudi Arabia announce that they're closely coordinating with terrorists in Syria — like al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham — Obama needs an alibi to avoid being caught at the crime scene. He's not an accomplice, simply "disengaged."
This is likely the reason why Obama has insisted that his new "moderate" rebels being trained in Turkey will fight ISIS, not the Syrian government. But this claim too is ridiculous.
Is Obama really going to throw a couple hundred newly-trained "moderate" Syrian rebels at ISIS while his Turkish-Saudi allies focus all their fire on the Syrian Government? The question answers itself.
The media has made mention of this obvious conundrum, but never bothers to follow up, leaving Obama's lame narrative unchallenged. For example, the LA Times reports:
"The White House wants the [U.S. trained rebel] proxy force to target Islamic State militants, while many of the Syrian rebels — and the four host nations [where Syrian rebels are being trained] — want to focus on ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad."
The article simply shrugs its shoulders at the irreconcilable. The article also fails to mention that Obama's "new" training camps aren't new at all; he's been arming and training Syrian rebels since at least 2012, the only difference being that the "new" training camps are supposedly meant to target ISIS, compared to the training camps that were openly used to target the Syrian government.
Here's the LA Times in 2013:
"The covert U.S. training [of Syrian rebels] at bases in Jordan and Turkey began months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders."
This is media amnesia at its worse. Recent events can't be understood if the media doesn't place events in context. In practice this "forgetfulness" provides political cover to the Obama administration, shielding his longstanding direct role in the Syrian war, allowing him to pretend to a "passive," "hands off" approach.
When it was reported in 2012 that the Obama administration was funneling weapons to the Syrian rebels, the few media outlets that mentioned the story didn't bother to do any follow up. It simply fell into the media memory hole. After the weapons funneling report came out, Obama incredulously stated that he was only supplying "non lethal" support to the rebels, and the media printed his words unchallenged.
Consequently, there was no public discussion about the consequences of the U.S. partaking in a multi-nation proxy war against Syria, a country that borders war ravaged Iraq.
In 2013 when Obama announced that he would be bombing the Syrian government in response to a supposed gas attack, the U.S. media asked for no evidence of the allegation, and strove to buttress Obama's argument for aggression.
And when Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh wrote an article exposing Obama's lies over the aborted bombing mission, the article didn't see the light of day in the U.S. media. Critically thoughtful voices were not welcome. They remain unwelcome.
In 2015 direct U.S. military intervention in Syria remains a real possibility. All the conditions that led to Obama's decision to bomb Syria in 2013 remain in place.
In fact, a U.S. intervention is even more likely now that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are fighting openly against the Syrian government, since the Saudi-Turkish alliance might find itself in a key battle that demands the special assistance that only the U.S. air force can offer.
Unsurprisingly, there has been renewed discussion of a U.S. enforced "no fly zone" in Syria. ISIS doesn't have an air force, so a no fly zone would be undeniably aimed at the Syrian government to destroy its air force. The new debate over a "no fly zone" is happening at the same time as a barrage of new allegations of "chemical weapons" use are being made against the Syrian government.
If a no fly zone is eventually declared by the Obama Administration it will be promoted as a "humanitarian intervention, that strives to create a "humanitarian corridor" to "protect civilians" — the same rhetoric that was used for a massive U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in Libya that destroyed the country and continues to create a massive refugee crisis.
As the Syrian war creates fresh atrocities the Obama administration will be pressured to openly support his Saudi-Turkish allies, just as he came out into the open in 2013 when he nearly bombed the Syrian government.
History is repeating itself. But this time the stakes are higher: the region has already been destabilized with the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the regional conflicts have sharpened between U.S. allies on one hand, and Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia on the other.
Such a volatile dynamic demands a media willing to explain the significance of these events. The truth is that Obama has been a proxy war president that has torn apart the Middle East as badly as his predecessor did, and if the U.S. public remains uninformed about developing events, an even larger regional war is inevitable.
Shamus Cooke is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com
The Middle East: Best Soap-Opera Wannabe Ev-ah!
May 9, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Several people have asked me recently why I always seem to be writing about the Middle East. "Why don't you ever write about anything else?"
Of course I write about other stuff — but the Middle East is so much more interesting and entertaining than anything else! The Middle East is definitely more interesting, entertaining and even weirder than any soap opera, reality show or action flick that Hollywood could ever produce. Fascinating stuff.
I'm always amazed that so few other Americans aren't just totally fascinated by the Middle East too. Or even that there isn't at least one daytime soap opera devoted solely to the subject — if for no other reason than that the Middle East has some of the greatest villains of all time!
Take America, for instance. Our very own Wall Street and War Street are currently starring as top-billing major actors in the Middle East, playing in prime-time roles — as the biggest villains in the script so far too. America practically invented ISIS, for goodness sakes! You can't get more villainous than that.
Or can you?
According to journalist Daniel Lazare, "After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria. In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda." War Street, you've been busted as the Bad Guy — and on national television too!
Or take Saudi Arabia another shining example of epic villain-a-lishious-ness at its best. That country has been playing the villain since way back in 1930 — when it invaded the Republic of Yemen for the first time after Yemen actually dared to become a democracy. Then the Saudi regime went on to help America create Osama bin Ladin, finance the Taliban and dirty their hands with 9-11. And now the Saudi regime is financing and training ISIS. Doesn't get more juicy than that.
No, wait, yes it does. The Saudi regime is now using American-supplied cluster bombs on Yemen. Juicy soap opera at its best, better even than TMZ — unless of course you are living in Yemen.
And then there is Syria. What is going on there right now is even better than "One Life to Live". How many Americans even know who Bashar Assad is? The poor guy has a couple of corrupt, sleazy relatives that the Saudi, American, Turkish and Israeli regimes have spent the last four years trying to put into power. Why? Because power corrupts — so Assad's relatives are already trained to be as corrupt as their sponsors. How "Dallas" can you get?
And of course Turkey is now in the mix too — just can't keep its hands off of ISIS, the designated "fem fatale" in this reality show. But Turkey had better watch out. ISIS is a psychopath and Turkish citizens do not like President Erdogan cheating on them and messing around with her instead.
Or take Iraq — the ultimate reality show. Outwit, outlast and outplay. Plus all the principle soap opera characters are there in Iraq too. You got the lying bitch (mostly America), the BFF (mostly Britain and France), the scheming scoundrel who will stop at nothing to get rich (mostly Bibi Netanyahu) and the struggling anti-hero (mostly Syrians trying to chase ISIS out of Syria) trying to thwart the Bad Guys (mostly ISIS, but with ISIS's secret suppliers Saudi Arabia, Israel, America and Turkey thrown in).
You just gotta love all that plotting, counter-plotting and backstabbing now taking place in the Middle East — such as when General Sisi in Egypt overthrew a democratically-elected government in order to be America's date to the prom. Or when the Saudi Arabian regime, source of 9-11 and Osama bin Ladin, comes out smelling like a rose and being America's BFF. Or not.
You want action and drama? No problem there either. The Middle East has it all! America, NATO, Britain and France get together and bomb the crap out of Libya (for her own good), put Al Qaeda in charge of Libya for even more raping and pillaging fun (she asked for it) — but then deserts fair Libya in her darkest hour of need. And even though Libya is not technically actually in the Middle East, you can still just sit back and watch the fun.
And ditto for Afghanistan. Lots of action, drama, lies and skullduggery there too — even though it also is not technically located in the Middle East.
And now apparently ISIS (that tramp!) is also off having a hot illicit affair with the American-sponsored neo-Nazi Ukraine regime, also not in the Middle East — but this new daytime drama may soon to be playing on European TV instead — as ISIS slips off to gay Paree after dumping her thug boyfriend in Kiev.
Plus who wouldn't want to hear the exciting story about brave and heroic Palestinians fighting for their freedom — only to be called angry sluts by the American media. Or how the brave and heroic Yemenis, fighting for their freedom, get bombed back to the Stone Age by the despotic Saudis who still somehow manage to come out as the Good Guys — even after training and financing ISIS. How do they do that? How do they just keep getting away with that again and again? Will they ever get their comeuppance? Apparently not. But stay tuned.
And then there is the Israeli regime, staring as the "scheming patriarch" character, forcing America to do its dirty work so it can take over the Middle East. Bibi Netanyahu is like a Mafia don or the villain on "The Bold and the Beautiful" or "Dark Shadows" — always scheming behind the scenes. He's like Angelique Bouchard or Sheila Carter. What's not to love about him?
Why would anybody who loves soap operas and/or reality shows, action movies or even murder-mysteries and thrillers even think of ever not keeping up with events in the Middle East? Entertainment at its best!
Too bad, however, that more than a million lives have been lost so far in these productions — but, for Wall Street and War Street, that's just one of the costs of being in show business.
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
She can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
America's Greatest Threat
May 3, 2015 by Administrator · 2 Comments
What is America's greatest threat? Some would say it is illegal immigration. Some would say the Muslim people. Some would say homosexual marriage. Some would say ISIS. But none of these are America's greatest threat.
At the expense of sounding preachy, America's greatest threat is GOD. Rightly did Benjamin Franklin say, "God governs in the affairs of men." And, rightly did Thomas Jefferson say, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." Amen.
But the understanding of the Natural Law principles by which God governs in the affairs of men and upon which His justice and judgment are predicated is mostly lost to this generation of Americans–including America's pastors and Christians.
The life of Old Testament Israel's King David affords many illustrations of the principles that God has ordained for nations and governments. As a personal note, King David is my very favorite Bible character. My appetite for studying his life is insatiable. Unquestionably, he is one of the three greatest men of the Old Testament (Abraham and Moses are the other two). I can even say that David is my hero. With all of his faults and failures, God yet inspired the New Testament writer to say that David was "a man after mine own heart." He is a man after my heart, as well.
As with others in the Bible, Holy Writ is not shy about recording the misdeeds of God's servants, including King David. This is intended for our own "learning." We should earnestly seek to mimic the goodness of these men and avoid their sins. Perhaps no man of antiquity demonstrates the polar extremes of success and failure more so than David.
To my non-Christian friends, please bear with me: this column has an extremely relevant message to what is happening in our country.
When almost everybody broaches the subject of King David's failures, they almost always go immediately to the story of Bathsheba and Uriah. But, at the risk of inducing the ire of my fellow Christians, that was NOT David's greatest failure. It might have been his greatest personal failure as a MAN, but it was not his greatest failure as a KING. In fact, the vast majority of pastors and Christians have completely overlooked David's greatest failure. I dare say that the vast majority of you Christian folks who are reading this column right now have NEVER heard a message from the life of David regarding this tragic failure in David's life and the implication it has for our country today.
I preached a message last Sunday on this very subject to the people of Liberty Fellowship. You can find it here:
The Crime Of Aggression: The Curse Of A Nation And Collapse Of The Church
The failure to which I speak resulted in the deaths of 70,000 men in the nation of Israel. (That is at least seven times more than were killed in the judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah.) This was the single greatest plague that God inflicted upon Old Testament Israel. Think about the inference of that fact for a few minutes.
Again, Jefferson rightly said, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." God's justice didn't sleep in David's time; and it is not sleeping in our time, either.
The story is recorded in II Samuel 24. The chapter begins with these words, "And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel."
As a result of God's anger toward the people of Israel, he allowed their leader's heart to be overcome with an awful motivation. And, remember, this leader was King David: the man after God's own heart.
Ladies and gentlemen, America's problem is NOT Barack Obama, Muslims, liberals, etc. Our problem is US. WE are the problem. God's anger against the people (especially the Christian people) of this country has caused Him to give us evil leaders such as George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Harry Reid (and Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, should either of them be elected).
The evil motivation to which King David succumbed is the same evil motivation that America's leaders are succumbing to today; and it portends America's GREATEST threat.
The above-referenced chapter records how David unlawfully numbered the people of Israel, the prophet's warning against it, King David's repentance, and God's judgment upon the nation. But, again, most pastors and Christians have completely overlooked this episode in David's life–and the significance of this crime to our nation today. As a result, America is teetering on the precipice of the same plague.
To help readers understand the terrible significance of David's sin, I here quote the famous scholars Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset, and David Brown commentary on the Bible published in 1871. This is the commentary that famed English pastor Charles Spurgeon said is the one commentary a minister should possess, if he could possess but one. They write:
"The act of numbering the people was not in itself sinful; for Moses did it by the express authority of God. But David acted not only independently of such order or sanction, but from motives unworthy of the delegated king of Israel; from pride and vainglory; from self-confidence and distrust of God; and, above all, from ambitious designs of conquest, in furtherance of which he was determined to force the people into military service, and to ascertain whether he could muster an army sufficient for the magnitude of the enterprises he contemplated. It was a breach of the constitution, an infringement of the liberties of the people, and opposed to that divine policy which required that Israel should continue a separate people."
Notice, this great sin of David included "ambitious designs of conquest." The legal name for this sin is "The Crime of Aggression." It is so grievous a sin, that God plagued Israel with the deaths of 70,000 men. And only David's awakening to this crime, and his humility in repenting of it, saved the nation from the deaths of untold more. Plus, this is David's last recorded act; he died soon after.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Crime of Aggression is currently America's greatest threat. Many of the lesser threats against our country (ISIS, for example) are the result of this great crime. And since it is extremely doubtful that any U.S. presidential candidate (with the exception of maybe Rand Paul) would issue a national "repentance" of the neocons' wars of aggression around the world, the same Death Angel that stood with sword drawn above Israel is doubtless standing above the United States as we speak.
Make no mistake about it: the neocons are governing America's foreign policy regardless of which political party is in control of the White House and Congress. And they have been in complete control ever since George H.W. Bush was President. And the vast majority of our congressmen and senators, as well as those who will be running for POTUS in 2016, are in lock-step, I mean LOCK-STEP, with the neocon agenda regarding foreign policy. And, sadly, so are most Christians and conservatives. It is also no hyperbole to say that FOX News is totally and absolutely nothing more than a propaganda ministry for the neocon foreign policy agenda.
To help put this issue in perspective, and to try and further help readers to understand the seriousness of what I am saying, I want to quote some excerpts from an attorney who is attempting to stop the neocons' Crime of Aggression via legal action and restore justice (GOD'S justice, I might add) to American government. I'm sure almost no one has heard anything about this case. The propaganda media is even more expert at NOT reporting news as they are propagandizing the news they do report.
Listen to attorney Inder Comar. He titles these remarks, "Saleh V Bush And Precedent For The Crime Of Aggression":
"First, some brief background about the case. In 2013, my client [Sundus Shaker Saleh], who is an Iraqi refugee, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco, California, in the Northern District of California, which is a federal court, alleging the crime of aggression. The defendants in that case are the six highest ranking Bush administration officials: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz. So she is suing them in a civil case for her damages as a victim of the war, in much the same way that she would sue anybody for any cause of action.
"To make it very simple, if George Bush had hit her in a car, for example, there would be no controversy that she could sue him if she were injured. It's a similar type of claim that we're making: his conduct and his actions caused her monetary damage and under the American system, she has a right to seek her tort damages, her tort relief.
"The basis of the lawsuit in the United States is a very old law dating from 1789, the first year of our republic, known as the Alien Tort Claims Act. The first Congress in the United States passed this law to permit non-U.S. citizens–non-Americans–the ability to go to the United States courthouse and file claims against anybody for violations of international law. So you have to allege violations of international law in order to use this law.
"For about 200 years, people have used this law for piracy cases, for example. More recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, people started to use the Alien Tort Claims Act for claims of torture or for claims of crimes against humanity.
"In this case, we've alleged the 'supreme crime,' the crime of aggression, as Ms. Saleh's international law claim. What this suggests is that just as you could pursue a pirate under this law, or just as you could pursue a torturer under this law, you must be able to pursue those who commit the 'supreme crime'–the crime of aggression. In this case, she's pursuing the six people who caused the Iraq War. As we know from Nuremberg, you don't get to sue the soldiers who committed the aggression: they're not responsible. The people who are responsible are the leaders who caused the aggression. And those are the people who are giving the orders, who are planning and executing these crimes.
"We filed the lawsuit. The United States Department of Justice headed by President Obama moved to immunize these defendants soon thereafter. They requested that the federal court immunize them under domestic law, on the basis that these defendants were acting under the scope of their valid employment when they planned and waged the Iraq War.
"We fought that certification for more than a year and a half. But unfortunately, in December of last year, the District Court agreed that they were immune and immunized these defendants from further proceedings. We've since appealed that order, and right now that case is on appeal in the Federal Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
"At the end of next month, we're due to submit a brief arguing a very specific point of law on appeal: whether or not a domestic immunity applies to allegations of aggression.
"Now for those of you who are familiar with Nuremberg, you may recall that this was the exact defense–or one of the defenses–raised by the German defendants. They argued that everything they had done was valid under German law and, as a result, they couldn't be held guilty for something like aggression.
"One of the things that we'll be raising in our brief next month is that that issue was decided already at Nuremberg: domestic defendants do not get to raise that as a defense.
"What I'd like to offer are some thoughts as to how we can take this battle now on the offensive and go into courthouses, go find venues where we can try and do our best. Ultimately, I think, we can convince judges that this is the law—and to not follow it would not only upset Nuremberg, it would validate the defenses made by the Nazi defendants, who argued that this type of law could never exist, that everything they did was completely legitimate, that they were simply following orders.
"If those things don't give you a chill, they ought to, because these are the exact defenses that the government is making in my case: that everything these defendants did was valid, that the court shouldn't scrutinize war making, because war making is outside the scope of what the sovereign can be liable for."
See the complete address here:
Historic: California District Court Lawsuit Against George W. Bush, Et Al For "Crime of Aggression"
Folks, I hope you understand the significance of this case. For all intents and purposes, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, et al., are behaving EXACTLY as did Germany's National Socialists (Nazis). If the U.S. government prevails in this case, it will mean that the Nazis' defense at Nuremberg was RIGHT, and that the allied courts were WRONG to indict them.
Ask yourself, why would Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain viciously attack Rand Paul's foreign policy like they have? Graham and McCain went on national television last week and said that Rand's foreign policy was WORSE than Barack Obama's. Why would Republicans laud a liberal Democrat above a fellow Republican, not once, but over and over? Why? Because these men are governed by the same neocon (Nazi-like) agenda. Rand Paul is not. Democrat and Republican mean NOTHING. As long as he or she allows him or herself to be controlled by the neocon foreign policy, he or she will receive the approbation and support of the governing establishment. And, while what I am about to say is NOT an official endorsement, the ONLY candidate for President who, so far, is not willing to grovel before the neocon foreign policy agenda is Rand Paul. You can bet that the political and media establishments will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to keep Rand from obtaining the Republican nomination, because, to them, IT'S ALL ABOUT MAINTAINING NEOCON CONTROL OF AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY.
(The pressure on Rand Paul to capitulate his policy of non-aggression is massive. It will be a miracle if he can maintain his convictions on this matter. His dad, Ron Paul, was able to do it. I hope Rand can. I am earnestly praying for him.)
The Crime of Aggression was the crime that King David was guilty of planning in his heart in II Samuel 24. It was the crime that caused a divine plague of 70,000 deaths and the end of David's reign. It is the same crime that the vast majority of America's leaders are currently guilty of. And it is the same sin that a seeming majority of America's pastors and Christians are willing to tolerate and support.
Someone must see the Angel with sword drawn standing above America. Someone must be willing to call out our leaders for these crimes–as King David's personal chaplain was willing to do to him. This is one reason why King David was such a great man: not because he never failed, but, because the times when he did fail, he was willing to repent and take personal responsibility for his failure. And, remember, David's failure upon which we are currently focused was predicated upon the fact that God was angry with THE PEOPLE.
You can bet we are going to see NO REPENTANCE from the vast majority of America's political leaders or from the vast majority of those who want to be our next President. If the pastors of America don't call out the crimes of our nation's leaders, who will?
Right now, there is an attorney in the Ninth Circuit who is trying to do it. For the most part, he is a voice in the wilderness. And, no, I know nothing of his personal faith. It doesn't matter. This is a matter of Natural Law. This is a matter of national justice. And law and justice apply equally to ALL PEOPLE.
No wonder that King David's last words were: "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." (II Sam. 23:3)
People who love justice and who have the fear of God in their hearts are the kinds of people spiritually qualified to be a nation's leaders. Right now, the vast majority of our leaders have neither. And their almost universal endorsement of The Crime of Aggression proves it.
But, be not deceived: this national crime is bringing America to the brink of divine judgment, the likes of which this country has never seen. It happened to David's Israel; it happened to Caesar's Rome; it happened to Hitler's Germany; and it will happen to Bush/Clinton/Obama/Boehner/
Chuck Baldwin is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
You can reach him at: email@example.com
Please visit Chuck's web site at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com
Hitting The BRICS
April 25, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Be careful of what you wish for…
Despite appearing to have a few slightly-differing opinions on just a handful of petty foreign-policy details such as how many meaningless negotiation-bones they should throw at Iran, or how many meaningless knock-off hand-slappings they should throw at Zionist neo-colonials, the routinely cooperative, agreeable and in-sync actual actions of President Obama, Congress, Wall Street and War Street clearly speak for themselves.
Judging by their actions alone, we can immediately tell that Obama, Congress, Wall Street and War Street are clearly in strong, almost-total agreement regarding their basic foreign-policy vision for America. Hey, goodie for them.
However, unfortunately for the rest of us Americans who are actually having to pay for these actions, Obama & Company's strong vision for America also includes doing everything that they possibly can to start World War III. Ouch!
When it comes to his domestic policy, President Obama has occasionally actually tried to be helpful to his fellow Americans — as compared to John McCain's domestic policy, for instance. Had McCain been elected in 2008 instead of Obama, he would have tried to financially eviscerate almost every single American in our middle class — if said evisceration would have given even just one more penny of our tax dollars to Wall Street and War Street instead of to us.
However, compared to Obama & Company's current (both overt and covert) foreign policies, McCain's 2008 foreign-policy platform appears to have been almost a walk in the park.
Right now, Obama & Company's actual, action-based foreign policies seem to include:
- Supporting anyone and everyone who can create chaos in the Middle East — including but not limited to Israel, the Saudis and even ISIS and Al Qaeda.
- Hitting the BRICS (especially Russia and China) every chance they can get — including spinning outright lies, spreading false propaganda, using false flags, supplying massive amounts of weaponry to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and even shooting down civilian aircraft.
- Supporting almost every single despot in the world today and alienating almost every single non-despotic government and/or democratically-elected in the Middle East, South America, Africa and the EU too.
- Preemptive nuclear strikes? Those don't seem to be off the table at all. Those boys in DC and NATO have been reading far too much Herman Kahn!
But none of these things are cool things to do and all of them can rapidly lead to circumstances far beyond Obama & Company's (and our) control — up to and including World War III, to be fought both abroad and at home!
Not since 1864 has America known war on its shores. Except for 9-11, the occasional violent suppression of civil rights marches and a few gun battles here and there involving bad guys and/or police, it's been pretty calm around here for the last one hundred years.
If Obama & Company keeps on pushing their current foreign-policy agendas as hard in the future as they are doing right now in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, Afghanistan, Mexico, Honduras, Africa, Iraq, etc., and rattling their sabres like they were McCain, GWB and Dick Cheney combined, then we may start to know war on our own native soil a whole lot better than we would ever want to.
But perhaps at this point you might be asking yourself, "What is the problem with you, Jane? First, there's never going to be another war here in America. And, second, even if the denizens of War Street do make a huge profit and even if 50% of American children do go without schools or shoes as a result, won't it all still be worth it — to see America continue to be the world's top dog?"
You just keep on telling yourself that — but only if you don't really mind butchering a few million (or billion) innocent women and children (and subsequently rot in Hell) to get to the top.
Plus not only do we now have to worry about military wars coming to our shores, apparently we now have to worry about economic wars arriving here too! My friend Judy just e-mailed me a whole laundry-list of stuff that is also wrong with Obama & Company's foreign-policy vision — from a financial perspective. Here is just one small item on that list:
"I myself believe," wrote Judy, "that the new multinational corporations don't care about the US any more than they care about any other country. They have proved again and again to us that, for them, it is always and only about making money. And, bearing that reality in mind, consider that on the one hand China's new banking initiatives could shut down the US empire if or when — and I would say when — the balance of resources shifts away from the dollar. That is what a lot of these military attacks on Russia and China have been about. But on the other hand, however, most likely it will be no problem at all for the multinationals to pivot their markets and financial bases to Asia — leaving America financially high and dry."
But with the above-described humungous financial calamity also lapping at our shores, it probably won't even matter whether America wins World War III — or not.
America's current domestic and foreign policies clearly suck eggs. But why? Because these policies far-too-closely resemble my own definition of fascism/corporatism/ despotism, which is: "Instead of a country spending its government's money to better the lives of all of its citizens equally, said government's money is only poured into the coffers of an 'elite' few."
And speaking of false flags, here are the five signs to look for:
- Horrific images are over-used to shock the public
- Drills for a similar attack appear on the same day in the same area.
- Eyewitness accounts do not match the official story
- Conflicting evidence is not repeated by the media
- Used as an excuse to curtail rights or to start a war
And while we're still on the subject of false flags, excuse me for stating the obvious here — but with so many false flags in the American spy-craft industry having come to light again and again recently, how come 9-11 alone has become the sacrosanct hands-off Lady Madonna that can never ever be properly investigated or even mentioned in the same breath as the words "false" and "flag"?
Also with regard to false flags, let us now paraphrase philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt. "How can we ever truly gauge what dangers we are in — if we are lied to about their existence, their causes and their effects?" For this reason alone, truth is vital to every society — and history has demonstrated again and again that societies based on lies are basically doomed.
How can we Americans use good judgment in order to keep ourselves safe when we are constantly bombarded with lies about Iraq, Syria, Ebola, voting-machine data, Ukraine, weapons lobbies, our post offices, Big Pharma, GMO crops, net neutrality, nuclear safety, what really happened in Palestine, that banks are too big to fail, that Jesus hated poor people — and goodness knows what all else! We can't even get a clear story about whether or not there is still gold in Fort Knox. And the New York Times, our most vital "newspaper of record," is constantly getting caught out for their lies.
According to Frankfurt, unless we can reinvent ourselves as a more truthful society ASAP, then we are doomed.
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
She can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Ghosts of Sigmaringen
April 11, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
On a recent trip to Germany I took a day off to visit Sigmaringen, on the upper Danube some 20 miles north of Lake Constance. This town of ten thousand with a massive castle towering over it – or, more precisely, this castle with a town attached – interested me as the site of a little known, eight-month long melodrama at the end of Second World War.
It was here that Marshal Philippe Pétain, Chef de l'État Français, and several hundred Vichy government officials and prominent German sympathizers and collaborators of different hues, were brought by the Wehrmacht on 8 September 1944, as the Allies advanced across France. The leaders were installed in the castle, other ranks in the town below. They were followed by their wives, hangers-on, and mistresses. By the end of September a veritable French enclave was in place, some two thousand strong, which survived until the long-dreaded arrival of de Gaulle's First French Army on 24 April 1945.
The initial impression is operetic: pure Leharian pastiche, an unreal world in which France's prominent collabos are but a parody of their former selves. There is also a more sinister image, however: Sigmaringen as a trap, an open prison in which the principals go on with their performance, but at the same time watch helplessly as the end of the show – and for many the end of their lives – is approaching steadily, relentlessly.
This town and those bizarre eight months are erased from France's collective memory. They belong to the past which many older Frenchmen would rather forget, while the young neither know that past nor care for it. "Fench Sigmaringen" is relegated to the margins of memory. The Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family are back home. The castle's magnificent halls and about a tenth of its 300 rooms are open to guided tours, but there are no Petainist mementos of any kind. A richly appointed color book about the castle disposes of the French episode matter-of-factly in a single sentence.
That episode started on the night of 17-18 August 1944, when the Germans evacuated Vichy. The first stop was Belfort, in French Alsace, but after only two weeks the Allies' rapid advance made the move to Germany necessary. The 88-year-old "Lion of Verdun," Marshal Pétain, did not want to go. He claimed he'd rather stay on France's soil and defend his record, come what may; but the Germans decided otherwise. From that moment he declared that he regarded himself as a German prisoner, and cut off all formal contacts with German officials. He communicated with the outside world through Dr. Bernard Ménétrel, his personal physician and confidant, the widely detested "Cerberus of the Seventh Floor."
Sigmaringen was a far cry from the summer of 1940, when Pétain offered France "the gift of his person" in the aftermath of the military collapse of the French army – and the political and moral collapse of the Third Republic. The old soldier embarked on a "national revolution," a belated attempt to purge the defeated country not only of its party-political intrigues, leftist radicalism, masonry and corruption, but also – more ambitiously – of the legacy of 1789 and the subsequent "anti-France" (in the memorable phrase of Charles Maurras). He became part-monrach, part-father of the nation. His image was everywhere. Maréchal, nous voilà! became the de facto anthem of the French State (no longer la République). Liberté, égalité, fraternité were replaced by the distinctly anti-Jacobin sloganTravail, Famille, Patrie. Marianne was gone, replaced (informally) by the saintly image of the Maid of Orleans. The countryside was celebrated as the source of national strength, and the Catholic Church was brought back into public life. The ancient Francisca became the official coat of arms.
Pétain's problem was that the proponents of outright collaboration with Germany had no time for such romantic pursuits. They accused Pétain of attentisme which could deny France her rightful place in the New European Order. They were divided into two camps: the more moderate collaborateurs – embodied in the opportunistic figure of Pierre Laval, who was appointed prime minister in early 1942 – and an array of fanatical collaborationistes, based in Paris, who wanted a clean break with Pétain's "reactionary paternalism" and an outright alliance with Hitler. With the Wehrmacht occupying France'szone libre in November 1942 they became more powerful. The Germans – ever mistrustful of the French – were nevertheless careful to keep all three groups evenly balanced in an elaborate cadrille, conducted by the Reich's ambassador in Paris (and self-avowed Francophile) Leo Abetz.
The members of these three factions, Pétainists, collaborateurs and collaborationistes, hated each others' guts. Suddenly, at Sigmaringen, they found themselves sharing the same quarters and facing a similar, unpleasant future. The maréchal, occupying the palatial seventh floor of the castle, would pretend not to see Laval (the sixth floor occupant) if he passed him in the courtyard on the way to his car which was taking him out of town, every day after lunch, for walks in the countryside.
Those walks were elaborate affairs. Alone among the exiles Pétain had a Citroen and a driver, but he was not allowed far from town. Followed by his Gestapo detail in two black Opels, he would stop 5-6 miles outside Sigmaringen and start a brisk walk through the woods accompanied by one of his military orderlies. The Germans would follow at a respectful distance. After an hour and a half he'd be back, in time to return to the castle for the afternoon radio news.
Laval, "L'Auvergnat," suddenly forced into inactivity, busied himself preparing his defense for the trial in Paris which he knew awaited him sooner or later. The former Socialist practiced speeches to the imaginary jury in front of his wife Jeanne and a young private secretary. (All his documents and notes were taken away when he was eventually arrested, as he repeatedly complained at the trial.) He had created too many enemies during his long political career, and especially during the 28 months as prime minister at Vichy. Hardly anyone talked to him.
On the third floor are the quarters of the Government Commission, the five-member cabinet in exile formally known as the Commission gouvernementale française pour la défense des intérêts nationaux. It can do little and does even less, but its members are jealous of their theoretical turfs and prerogatives. Like in earlier years back home they continue to denounce their political and personal enemies to the Germans, less to score some points, more out of pure spite.
The Commission's chairman, the devious Marquis de Brinon, succeeds in having Dr. Ménétrel arrested by the Gestapo in November 1944 on the false accusation of contact with the Allied intelligence services. (Ménétrel survived the war, but was promptly arrested on his return to France in May 1945.) Brinon cracks jokes about Pétain, refers to him as "notre poster girl" (in English). "France is a country of disasters and lunches," he quips one day after a less than satisfactory meal ofKartofels. "There are no more lunches now, only the disasters remain…"
Joseph Darnand, an ultracollabo, is the Commission's Secretary of Interior Affairs ("except there's no interior and no affairs," Brinon comments). Decorated World War I hero, far right activist in the 1930's (Action Française, then Croix-de-feu, and a Cagoulard to boot), and an SS Sturmbannführer, in 1942 he founded the volunteer Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL). It became the dreaded Milice française– directly subordinated to him – in January 1943. He has brought some 10,000 faithful Milice members to the barracks in nearby Ulm, and plans to use them for a last stand. "Brave but obtuse," according to Brinon.
Marcel Déat, the "minister of labor," is for some reason the only member of the Commission with the rank of ministre. A Great War veteran and officer of the Légion d'honneur, a socialist until 1933 and a far right activist thereafter, he founded the pro-Nazi Rassemblement national populaire (RNP) in occupied Paris in 1941, and the French Legion of Volunteers (Légion des volontaires français, LVF) a year later. In 1944 it was incorporated into the French SS division Charlemagne.
Journalist Jean Luchaire, commissar for propaganda and information, is more polished than these two gentlemen but ideologically close to them. He starts a local radio station (somewhat ironically called Ici la France!), and a daily newspaper, predictably called La France, which was published until April 1945.
Freiherr Cécil von Renthe-Fink, Ribbentrop's envoy to Vichy, was also there, with little to do. The Ambassador is no longer welcome at Pétain's table. M-me Laval, an open Germanophobe, does not allow him to the sixth floor either. He nevertheless soldiers on, busying himself with the procurement of provisions for the enclave amidst the looming collapse of the Reich.
In the town below there are several well known names from the world of French arts and letters. Actor Robert Le Vigan, openly homosexual and a drug addict, is the chief announcer for Ici la France. Poet Abel Bonnard, with similar proclivities (hence his nickname, "la Gestapette") and the only member of the Academie to be expelled from its ranks, is a famous wit. On the account of frequent moves, he calls the Germans "notre agence Thomas Cook." Laval is for him l'Auvergnat de Danube, Pétain "our dethroned monarch."
Famous writer and virulent antisemite Louis-Ferdinand Céline is also there. After the war he wrote a hallucinatory novel about Sigmaringen, Castle to Castle (D'un château l'autre). Céline's Sigmaringen is a dramatic stage and a paranoid anteroom for De Gaulle's épuration légale trials which are already under way. The atmosphere of quiet desperation was briefly interrupted by a week of hope at Christmas 1944, during the initial stage of the German offensive in the Ardennes. Only Pétain maintains calm dignity in his self-imposed isolation, eating well and sleeping soundly. For Céline, Sigmaringen was the perfect backdrop for a romantic German tragedy or a Wagnerian musical drama, with a touch of Hollywood.
Commission officials and their wives eat together in the sumptuous dining hall. The fare is mediocre, even though they have menus based on four ration cards each. The atmosphere is morbid. In the evening they gather at the salon des dammes, not because they cherish each other's company (quite the contrary) but because it is warm. Their cavernous rooms are not. Déat obsessively plays the lexicon, a version of scrabble, for hours on end. Darnand smokes his pipe in silence and reads papers. The ladies play cards. In the evening they listen to Radio Paris, and the news is grim. On 9 November they learn that journalist and Pétain's biographer Georges Suarez was executed. On 6 February it was the turn of Robert Brasillach, whose last, sarcastic words were "Long live France, anyway!" (Vive la France, quand meme!) They had no command responsibility and no official functions. If they were shot on the account of their writing, the denizens of the castle could expect no mercy.
And so their lives went on, for eight long months, until a few days before the arrival of de Gaulle's First Army on 24 April 1945. Only Pétain returns to France voluntarily, where a trial and a death sentence await him, commuted to life in view of his extreme old age and Great War record. Céline, his wife and cat manage to reach Denmark, where he lays low for some years after the war. No such luck for Brinon, who fails to get a Swiss visa and ends up before a firing squad in 1947. Laval managed to reach Spain on the very last German plane out, but Franco – pressured by de Gaulle – sends him back for a quick, brutal trial and execution on 7 October 1945. Darnand is captured in northern Italy in June, tried, and executed three days after Laval. Luchaire is recognized quite by accident in Innsbruck on 18 May 1945 by a French officer who had been a Gestapo agent in Paris until July 1944. "Haven't you been shot?" asks Luchaire. "No, but you will be!" is the answer. Of the leading castle denizens only Déat and Bonnard, both sentenced to death in absentia, evade the firing squad. The former lived under an assumed name in Italy, the latter under his own in Spain.
Schloss Sigmaringen, like the Alcazar of Toledo, is one of those places which have a physical presence and a metaphysical quality. The French enclave of Sigmaringen was no longer life, not yet death. As such it is an apt metaphor for all of us, here, today.
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
Cold War 2.0
April 4, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
In last month's Anti-Empire Report I brought you the latest adventure of US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki trying to defend the indefensible. She said then: "As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means," which prompted me to inform my readers: "If you know how to contact Ms. Psaki, tell her to have a look at my list of more than 50 governments the United States has attempted to overthrow since the end of the Second World War."
On March 13 her regular attack on all things Russian included this exchange with Associated Presswriter Matthew Lee:
Lee: On this issue, did you get any more about this request to the Vietnamese on Cam Ranh Bay and not allowing the Russians to – and not wanting them to allow – you not wanting them to refuel Russian planes there?
Psaki: Well, just to be clear – and maybe I wasn't as clear yesterday, so let me try to do this again – it's – our concern is about activities they might conduct in the region, and the question is: Why are they in the region? It's not about specifically refueling or telling the Vietnamese not to allow them to refuel. [emphasis added]
Lee: So there hasn't been a request to stop refueling them, or there has?
Psaki: It's more about concerns. It's not as much about Vietnam as much as it – as it is about concerns about what activities they would be in the region for.
Lee: Okay. Well, you – I mean, there are U.S. planes flying over there all the time.
Psaki: Sure, there are.
Lee: So you don't want Russian planes flying there, but it's okay for U.S. planes to fly there? I mean, I just – it gets to the point where you – the suggestion is that everything the Russians are doing all the time everywhere is somehow nefarious and designed to provoke. But you can't – but you don't seem to be able to understand or accept that American planes flying all over the place, including in that area, is annoying to the Chinese, for one, but also for the Russians. But the suggestion is always that the American flights are good and beneficial and don't cause tension, and that other people's flights do cause tension. So can you explain what the basis is for your concern that the Russian flights there in the Southeast Asia area are – raise tensions?
Psaki: There just aren't more details I can go into.
Cold War 2.0, part II
On Saturday, the Obama administration released a series of satellite images that it said showed the Russian army had joined the rebels in a full-scale assault to surround troops in the area around the city. Russia has denied that it is a party to the conflict, and it was impossible to verify the three grainy black-and-white satellite images posted to Twitter by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
According to the United States, the images, commissioned from the private Digital Globe satellite company, showed artillery systems and multiple-rocket launchers Thursday in the area near Debaltseve.
"We are confident these are Russian military, not separatist, systems," Pyatt tweeted. (Washington Post, February 15, 2015)
When the time comes to list the ways in which the United States gradually sunk into the quicksand, slowly metamorphosing into a Third-World state, Washington's campaign of 2014-15 to convince the world that Russia had repeatedly invaded Ukraine will deserve to be near the top of the list. Numerous examples like the above can be given. If I were still the jingoistic nationalist I was raised to be I think I would feel somewhat embarrassed now by the blatant obviousness of it all.
For a short visual history of the decline and fall of the American Empire, see the video "Imperial Decay" by Class War Films (8:50 minutes).
During Cold War 1.0 the American media loved to poke fun at the Soviet media for failing to match the glorious standards of the Western press. One of the most common putdowns was about the two main Russian newspapers – Pravda (meaning "truth" in Russian) and Izvestia (meaning "news"). We were told, endlessly, that there was "no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia."
As cynical as I've been for years about the American mainstream media's treatment of ODE (Officially Designated Enemies), current news coverage of Russia exceeds my worst expectations. I'm astonished every day at the obvious disregard of any kind of objectivity or fairness concerning Russia. Perhaps the most important example of this bias is the failure to remind their audience that the US and NATO have surrounded Russia – with Washington's coup in Ukraine as the latest example – and that Moscow, for some odd reason, feels threatened by this. (Look for the map online of NATO bases and Russia, with a caption like: "Why did you place your country in the middle of our bases?")
Cold War 2.0, part III
Following the murder of Russian opposition leader, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on February 27, the West had a field day. Ranging from strong innuendo to outright accusation of murder, the Western media and politicians did not miss an opportunity to treat Vladimir Putin as a football practice dummy.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution urging an international investigation into Nemtsov's death and suggested that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Council, and the United Nations could play a role in the probe.
US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham introduced a Senate Resolution condemning the Nemtsov murder. The Resolution also called on President Obama and the international community to pursue an independent investigation into the murder and redouble efforts to advance free speech, human rights, and the rule of law in Russia. In addition, it urged Obama to continue to sanction human rights violators in the Russian Federation and to increase US support to human rights activists in Russia.
So it went … all over the West.
Meanwhile, in the same time period in Ukraine, outside of the pro-Russian area in the southeast, the following was reported:
- January 29: Former Chairman of the local government of the Kharkov region, Alexey Kolesnik, hanged himself.
- February 24: Stanislav Melnik, a member of the opposition party (Partia Regionov), shot himself.
- February 25: The Mayor of Melitopol, Sergey Valter, hanged himself a few hours before his trial.
- February 26: Alexander Bordiuga, deputy director of the Melitopol police, was found dead in his garage.
- February 26: Alexander Peklushenko, former member of the Ukrainian parliament, and former mayor of Zaporizhi, was found shot to death.
- February 28: Mikhail Chechetov, former member of parliament, member of the opposition party (Partia Regionov), "fell" from the window of his 17th floor apartment in Kiev.
- March 14: The 32-year-old prosecutor in Odessa, Sergey Melnichuk, "fell" to his death from the 9th floor.
The Partia Regionov directly accused the Ukrainian government in the deaths of their party members and appealed to the West to react to these events. "We appeal to the European Union, PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe], and European and international human rights organizations to immediately react to the situation in Ukraine, and give a legal assessment of the criminal actions of the Ukrainian government, which cynically murders its political opponents."
We cannot conclude from the above that the Ukrainian government was responsible for all, or even any, of these deaths. But neither can we conclude that the Russian government was responsible for the death of Boris Nemtsov, the American media and politicians notwithstanding. A search of the mammoth Nexus news database found no mention of any of the Ukrainian deceased except for the last one above, Sergey Melnichuk, but this clearly is not the same person. It thus appears that none of the deaths on the above list was ascribed to the Western-allied Ukrainian government.
Where are the demands for international investigations of any of the deaths? In the United States or in Europe? Where is Senator McCain?
Torture via sanctions
Discussions on constraining Iran's nuclear program have been going on for well over a year between Iran and the P5+1 (the five nuclear powers of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany), led by the United States. Throughout this period a significant stumbling block to reaching an agreement has been the pronouncements of Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA is the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, and its inspections are considered a key safeguard against countries using civilian nuclear energy technology to produce weapons. Amano has consistently accused Iran of failing to reply fully and substantially to queries about "possible military dimensions" of present and past nuclear activities, or failing to provide sufficient access to nuclear facilities.
Failure by Iran to comply fully with IAEA demands undermine Tehran's efforts to win the lifting of crippling UN, US and other sanctions, which currently prohibit foreign companies from doing business with Iran and deny access to the global financial system. Media coverage of the negotiations regularly emphasize Amano's claims of Iran's insufficient responses to IAEA's demands. It is thus worth inquiring just who is this man Amano.
In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the head of the IAEA. What the Western media routinely fail to remind its audience is that a US embassy cable of October 2009 (released by Wikileaks in 2010) said Amano "took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded the [American] ambassador on several occasions that … he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."
Even if Iran makes a superior effort to satisfy IAEA and Washington's demands on all issues, it would remain questionable to what extent and how rapidly the sanctions would be removed, particularly under a Republican-controlled Congress. Iran specialist and author Gareth Porter recently wrote that "the United States and its allies have made no effort to hide the fact that they intend to maintain the 'sanctions architecture' in place for many years after the implementation of the agreement has begun. Last November, administration officials explained that US sanctions would only be removed after the International Atomic Energy Agency had verified that 'Tehran is abiding by the terms of a deal over an extended period of time' in order to 'maintain leverage on Iran to honour the accord'."
To appreciate the extraordinary degree of pressure and extortion the United States can impose upon another country we should consider the case of Libya in the decade-plus following the destruction of PanAm Flight 103 in 1988 over Scotland. To force Libya to "accept responsibility" for the crime, Washington imposed heavy sanctions on the Gaddafi regime, including a ban on international flights to Libya and payment of billions of dollars to the families of the victims. Libya eventually did "accept responsibility" for the crime, although it was innocent. As difficult as this may be to believe, it's true. Read my account of it here.
Even after Libya accepted responsibility it still took years for the US to wipe out the sanctions, and it's not clear that at the time of Gaddafi's death in 2011 all of them had been removed. Once a nation becomes an Officially Designated Enemy of the empire the methods of torture can be exquisite and endless. Cuba is presently negotiating the end of US sanctions against Havana. They will need to be extremely careful.
"Like others of his ilk – such as David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens – he learned too much in college and too little since." Sam Smith
I've never been too impressed by what college a person went to, or even if they attended college at all. Gore Vidal did not attend any college; neither did H. L. Mencken; nor did Edward Snowden, who has demonstrated a highly articulate and educated mind. Among the many other notables who skipped a college education are George Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Then we have graduates from Ivy League colleges like George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Tom Cotton. I don't have to present the case for Bush's less-than educated mind; we're all only too familiar with its beauty. But Obama has matched Georgie Boy for stupidity and inanity time and time again. My favorite, which he's used on at least five occasions, is his reply to questions about why his administration has not prosecuted Bush, Cheney, et al for torture and other war crimes: "I prefer to look forward rather than backwards". Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent on such grounds. It simply makes laws, law enforcement, crime, justice, and facts irrelevant. Picture Chelsea Manning and other whistle blowers using this argument. Picture the reaction to this by Barack Obama, who has become the leading persecutor of whistleblowers in American history.
Is there anyone left who still thinks that Barack Obama is some kind of improvement intellectually over George W. Bush? Probably two types still think so: (1) Those to whom color matters a lot; (2) Those who are very impressed by the ability to put together grammatically correct sentences.
And now we have Mr. Cotton, Senator from Arkansas and graduate of Harvard undergraduate and law schools. He'll be entertaining us for years to come with gems like his remark on "Face the Nation" (March 15): "Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran's attempts to drive for regional dominance. They already control Tehran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana'a as well."
Heavens, Iran controls Tehran! Who knew? Next thing we'll hear is that Russia controls Moscow! Sarah Palin, move over. Our boy Cotton is ready for Saturday Night Live.
- Washington Post, February 15, 2015, "Amid doubts, truce in Ukraine appears to take hold"
- RT, March 12, 2015, "EU lawmakers demand international investigation into Nemtsov's death"
- John McCain website, Press Release, "Senators John Mccain And Lindsey Graham Introduce Resolution Condemning Murder Of Russian Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov"
- Research for this section was done by a person who was raised in the Soviet Union and now lives in the United States.
- Middle East Eye, March 27, 2015, "Sanctions and the fate of the nuclear talks"
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 firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: WilliamBlum.org
William Blum is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Washington's War On Russia
March 21, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"In order to survive and preserve its leading role on the international stage, the US desperately needs to plunge Eurasia into chaos, (and) to cut economic ties between Europe and Asia-Pacific Region … Russia is the only (country) within this potential zone of instability that is capable of resistance. It is the only state that is ready to confront the Americans. Undermining Russia's political will for resistance… is a vitally important task for America."
-Nikolai Starikov, Western Financial System Is Driving It to War, Russia Insider
"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."
-The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the original version of the Defense Planning Guidance, authored by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992
The United States does not want a war with Russia, it simply feels that it has no choice. If the State Department hadn't initiated a coup in Ukraine to topple the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, then the US could not have inserted itself between Russia and the EU, thus, disrupting vital trade routes which were strengthening nations on both continents. The economic integration of Asia and Europe–including plans for high-speed rail from China ("The New Silk Road") to the EU–poses a clear and present danger for the US whose share of global GDP continues to shrink and whose significance in the world economy continues to decline. For the United States to ignore this new rival (EU-Russia) would be the equivalent of throwing in the towel and accepting a future in which the US would face a gradual but persistent erosion of its power and influence in world affairs. No one in Washington is prepared to let that happen, which is why the US launched its proxy-war in Ukraine.
The US wants to separate the continents, "prevent the emergence of a new rival", install a tollbooth between Europe and Asia, and establish itself as the guarantor of regional security. To that end, the US is rebuilding the Iron Curtain along a thousand mile stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Tanks, armored vehicles and artillery are being sent to the region to reinforce a buffer zone around Europe in order to isolate Russia and to create a staging ground for future US aggression. Reports of heavy equipment and weapons deployment appear in the media on nearly a daily basis although the news is typically omitted in the US press. A quick review of some of the recent headlines will help readers to grasp the scale of the conflict that is cropping up below the radar:
"US, Bulgaria to hold Balkans military drills", "NATO Begins Exercises In Black Sea", "Army to send even more troops, tanks to Europe", "Poland requests greater US military presence", "U.S. Army sending armored convoy 1,100 miles through Europe", "Over 120 US tanks, armored vehicles arrive in Latvia", "US, Poland to Conduct Missile Exercise in March – Pentagon"
Get the picture? There's a war going on, a war between the United States and Russia.
Notice how most of the headlines emphasize US involvement, not NATO. In other words, the provocations against Russia originate from Washington not Europe. This is an important point. The EU has supported US-led economic sanctions, but it's not nearly as supportive of the military build up along the perimeter. That's Washington's idea and the cost is borne by the US alone. Naturally, moving tanks, armored vehicles and artillery around the world is an expensive project, but the US is more than willing to make the sacrifice if it helps to achieve its objectives.
And what are Washington's objectives?
Interestingly, even political analysts on the far right seem to agree about that point. For example, check out this quote from STRATFOR CEO George Friedman who summed it up in a recent presentation he delivered at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs. He said:
"The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars–the First, the Second and Cold Wars–has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they're the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn't happen." … George Friedman at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, Time 1:40 to 1:57)
Bingo. Ukraine has nothing to do with sovereignty, democracy or (alleged) Russian aggression. That's all propaganda. It's about power. It's about imperial expansion. It's about spheres of influence. It's about staving off irreversible economic decline. It's all part of the smash-mouth, scorched earth, take-no-prisoners geopolitical world in which we live, not the fake Disneyworld created by the western media. The US State Department and CIA toppled the elected-government in Ukraine and ordered the new junta regime to launch a desperate war of annihilation against its own people in the East, because, well, because they felt they had no other option. Had Putin's ambitious plan to create a free trade zone between Lisbon to Vladivostok gone forward, then where would that leave the United States? Out in the cold, that's where. The US would become an isolated island of dwindling significance whose massive account deficits and ballooning national debt would pave the way for years of brutal restructuring, declining standards of living, runaway inflation and burgeoning social unrest. Does anyone really believe that Washington would let that to happen when it has a "brand-spanking" trillion dollar war machine at its disposal?
Heck, no. Besides, Washington believes it has a historic right to rule the world, which is what one would expect when the sense of entitlement and hubris reach their terminal phase. Now check out this clip from an article by economist Jack Rasmus at CounterPunch:
"Behind the sanctions is the USA objective of driving Russia out of the European economy. Europe was becoming too integrated and dependent on Russia. Not only its gas and raw materials, but trade relations and money capital flows were deepening on many fronts between Russia and Europe in general prior to the Ukraine crisis that has provided the cover for the introduction of the sanctions. Russia's growing economic integration with Europe threatened the long term economic interests of US capitalists. Strategically, the US precipitated coup in the Ukraine can be viewed, therefore as a means by which to provoke Russian military intervention, i.e. a necessary event in order to deepen and expand economic sanctions that would ultimately sever the growing economic ties between Europe and Russia long term. That severance in turn would not only ensure US economic interests remain dominant in Europe, but would also open up new opportunities for profit making for US interests in Europe and Ukraine as well…
When the rules of the competition game between capitalists break down altogether, the result is war—i.e. the ultimate form of inter-capitalist competition." (The Global Currency Wars, Jack Rasmus, CounterPunch)
See? Analysts on the right and left agree. Ukraine has nothing to do with sovereignty, democracy or Russian aggression. It's plain-old cutthroat geopolitics, where the last man left standing, wins.
The United States cannot allow Russia reap the benefits of its own vast resources. Oh, no. It has to be chastised, it has to be bullied, it has to be sanctioned, isolated, threatened and intimidated. That's how the system really works. The free market stuff is just horsecrap for the sheeple.
Russia is going to have to deal with chaotic, fratricidal wars on its borders and color-coded regime change turbulence in its capital. It will have to withstand reprisals from its trading partners, attacks on its currency and plots to eviscerate its (oil) revenues. The US will do everything in its power to poison the well, to demonize Putin, to turn Brussels against Moscow, and to sabotage the Russian economy.
Divide and conquer, that's the ticket. Keep them at each others throats at all times. Sunni vs Shia, one ethnic Ukrainian vs the other, Russians vs Europeans. That's Washington's plan, and it's a plan that never fails.
US powerbrokers are convinced that America's economic slide can only be arrested by staking a claim in Central Asia, dismembering Russia, encircling China, and quashing all plans for an economically-integrated EU-Asia. Washington is determined to prevail in this existential conflict, to assert its hegemonic control over the two continents, and to preserve its position as the world's only superpower.
Only Russia can stop the United States and we believe it will.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Lies, Kerry's Lies, and Color Revolution Statistics
March 15, 2015 by Administrator · 1 Comment
Even a seasoned cynic sometimes gasps in disbelief. "President Putin misinterprets much of what the U.S. is doing or trying to do," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a press conference in Geneva on March 2. "We are not involved in 'numerous color revolutions' as he asserts. In the case of Ukraine, such assumptions are also wrong. The United States support international law with respect to the sovereignty and integrity of other people."
This is akin to Count Dracula asserting his strict adherence to a vegan diet and his principled respect for the integrity of blood banks worldwide.
Various quasi-NGOs funded by American taxpayers and funneled through organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and the National Democratic Institute, not to mention George Soros's Open Society Foundations (partly funded by U.S. and other Western governments), have been actively engaged in dozens of "regime-change" operations for a decade and a half. Their work is conducted in disregard of international law and in violation of the sovereignty and integrity of the people whose governments are thus targeted.
The overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade (October 2000) provided the blueprint, in strict accordance with Gene Sharp's manual. Widespread popular discontent was manipulated by the U.S./Soros funded and trained Otpor! network to bring to power a government subservient to Western political and economic interests. The moderately patriotic yet hapless new president, constitutional lawyer Vojislav Kostunica, was used as a battering ram to bring Milosevic down. Once that goal was achieved, Kostunica was promptly marginalized by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and his successors – Serbia's two-term president Boris Tadic in particular – who turned the country into a pliant tool of foreign interests. Wholesale robbery of Serbia's state and public assets promptly followed the 2000 coup, resulting in the Balkan country's comprehensive de-industrialization. Official Belgrade was forced to accept Kosovo's de facto "independence" in the name of the elusive goal of joining the European Union.
Georgia's 2003 "Rose Revolution" was carried out by the Kmara ("Enough") network, a carbon copy of Serbia's "Otpor," including the clenched fist logo. Its activists were trained and advised by the U.S.-affiliated Liberty Institute and funded by the Open Society Institute. It brought to power Mikhel Saakashvili, a corrupt "pro-Western" politician currently wanted by Georgia's government on multiple criminal charges. The coup was largely financed by Soros's network, which spent $42 million in the three months before the coup preparing the overthrow of the government of Eduard Shevardnadze. The most important geopolitical result was Georgia's NATO candidacy, supported by Washington, which is currently stalled but which has the potential to be as perniciously destabilizing as the crisis in Ukraine.
Speaking in Tblisi in June 2005, Soros said: "I am very pleased and proud of the work of the Foundation in preparing Georgian society for what became a Rose Revolution, but the role of the Foundation and me personally has been greatly exaggerated." The new government, as it happens, included Alexander Lomaia, former Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and minister of education and science, who at the time of the coup was Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. David Darchiashvili, ex-chairman of the Committee for European Integration in the Georgian parliament, was also an executive director of the Foundation. As former Georgian foreign minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote in 2008, "all the NGO's which gravitate around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution… [A]fterwards, the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power." Interestingly, the U.S. Ambassador in Georgia at the time of the 2003 regime-change operation, Richard Miles, was the Ambassador in Belgrade at the time of Milosevic's downfall three years earlier.
The march of history continued with the 2004 "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine – that grand rehearsal for the Maidan coup a decade later – and the 2005 "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, which was given its name by then-U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula J. Dobriansky. Also in 2005 the "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan had as its chief foreign advisor Givi Targamadze, an official of Georgia's aforementioned Liberty Institute, who at the time chaired Saakashvili's parliamentary committee on defense and security.
In 2006 Congress passed the Iran Freedom and Support Act which provided taxpayer funding for groups opposed to the Iranian government, and then-Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns said the administration was "taking a page from the playbook" on Ukraine and Georgia. A year later the George W. Bush administration authorized a $400 million covert operation budget to foment unrest in Iran. In 2012 Seymor M. Hersh wrote that the U.S. has provided funding and training to the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, a militant group which had been listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization,
In 2012 President Obama authorized U.S. government agencies to support violent regime change in Syria. By early 2013 the Administration was helping the "moderate" rebels – i.e. jihadists with no overt links to al-Qaeda – to the tune of $250 million, and that figure has been at least doubled since. The result has been disastrous for the Syrian people (Christians in particular), and hugely detrimental to U.S. security interests in the region. The insurgency against Bashar al-Assad has directly contributed to the rise of ISIS, with no end to the latest war in sight.
Last month Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave a televised speech in which he alleged systematic U.S. involvement in destabilization attempts against his government. The U.S. Department of State called his claims "baseless" and "false." "The United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means," read the statement from Department spokesperson, Jen Psaki. Indeed. One of the leaders of the failed anti-Chavez coup d'etat in 2002, Rear Admiral Carlos Molina, has stated that he was acting with US support. Ditto the CIA-supported regime-change operation in Nicaragua in 2009.
As for the Maidan Revolution, crowned by "political transition by non-constitutional means" par excellence, Victoria Nuland readily admitted that its preparation cost the U.S. taxpayers some $5 billion over the preceding decade. The result is the most dangerous geopolitical crisis of the post-Cold War era, systematically engineered and conducted by the regime-changing exceptionalists in Washington D.C. who believe that they are exempt from historical forces and legal restraints that apply to merely mortal countries.
Former U.S. Ambassador in Moscow Michael McFaul boasted to The New York Times a week after taking duty in January 2012 that he would make his "pro-democracy" mark in Moscow "in a very, very aggressive way." Some months earlier, McFaul declared that "even while working closely with Putin on matters of mutual interest, Western leaders must recommit to the objective of creating the conditions for a democratic leader to emerge in the long term." This was a regime-change agenda expressed with brutal bluntness: we need to "de-Putinize" Russia, he declared. It would be interesting to see the U.S. reaction if a similar statement ("We need to to de-Obamanize America!") were to be made by an incoming Russian ambassador in Washington.
In Russia the regime-change program did not work, however. First and foremost, there was no popular support: hundreds of "activists" demonstrating against Putin in 2012 could be turned into "thousands" in Western post-election media reports, but that was still far below the tens, let alone hundreds, of thousands needed to kick-start a regime-change op. Infuriatingly for the planners, Russia simultaneously enacted a law regulating foreign "NGO" activities which was patterned directly on the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which regulates activities of the agents of foreign governments in the United States. Enacted in the 1930's to require disclosure of Americans working on behalf of Nazi Germany, and used to control Soviet agents thereafter, FARA requires full public disclosure of those same activities that the U.S. government had tried to fund in Russia. The Federal Election Campaign Act flatly prohibits foreign involvement in American elections – yet it was touted as legitimate when conducted in Russia by Washington's protégés under the guise of promoting democracy.
The regime-change mania will go on and on. It is inseparable from the psychotic belief in one's indispensability and exceptionalism. It is a form of self-defeating grandomania that can only stop with America's long-overdue abandonment of the global hegemony experiment.
And yes, John Kerry is a liar.
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
Perpetual War to Justify the Permanent War of Terror
March 15, 2015 by Administrator · 1 Comment
The saga of continuous deployment and a garrison empire is a long and sad state of affairs. Using the trumped up fright that America's enemies are geared up to bomb malls and sporting venues, builds a phony fear that the only response to combat the threat is to wage continuous foreign campaigns. What put such sophistry to rest are the facts that such uninterrupted carnage just feeds the fields of growing hostility towards America. If the War on Terror was winnable, why not start by stopping the War of Terror that is the center piece of aggressive projection of bellicose power.
The militarist over at Red States warns that Obama is gumming up the works. In the article, Obama's AUMF is Actually a DUMF the horror that placing a limit on the use of expansionist support deeply offends the warmongers. Folks, their positions are not a fair or representative reflection of true and traditional conservative foreign policy.
"The AUMF proposed by Obama, on the other hand, explicitly repeals the 2002 AUMF and furthermore explicitly states that ground troops cannot be used, as they can be used (and have been used by Obama) under the 2002 AUMF. It furthermore contains an automatic three year expiration, which is not contained in the currently active AUMF.
In other words, this is not even fairly called an Authorization for the Use of Military Force. It's actually a Deauthorization for the Use of Military Force. Republicans in Congress should start referring to it as the DUMF (pronounced DUMB-f) so that people will be reminded what sort of person would be convinced that Obama takes confronting the threat of ISIS seriously."
In order to have a sound and constitutional approach to safeguarding the Republic, the first step is to be honest with ourselves. The preservation of the sole superpower mantra is far more dangerous than any suicide bomber. Yet, the internationalists will never be content until they manufacture or invent a new advocacy to keep the full spectrum dominance machine rolling along. Such a mind-set and way of thinking is psychotic.
For those who hope the Obama administration is actually operating on a more balanced level; don't believe that spin for a minute. The essential reality is that there are only two positions in gauging foreign policy. The first is the bipartisan establishment agreement that "Politics Stops at the Water's Edge". Even the Council on Foreign Relations admits in the essay, American Foreign Policy Is Already Post-Partisan the following.
"Yet how deep is the partisan divide over the place of multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy? To explore this question, in the past year we sent a survey to foreign policy professionals: 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, who had served in a mid-level or higher foreign policy position in the Clinton, Bush, or Obama administrations, or on Capitol Hill. The respondents included 23 Democrats and 20 Republicans.
The results of our study reveal that the parties are not as divided about multilateralism as the conventional wisdom suggests. First, strong majorities of both Republican and Democratic respondents said they believed that working closely with other nations serves U.S. interests and makes the country's foreign policy more effective. Second, foreign policy leaders from both parties agreed that international economic institutions and free trade agreements are valuable, and that working with regional and global multilateral organizations such as NATO and the UN is important."
Such a response is expected from the echo chamber for the New World Order.
The second perspective accepts the wisdom of the historic and guarded non-interventionism approach to foreign affairs. Based upon power politics exponents, who are in control of government agencies and influence institutions, their defiance for a reason and true national security, attacks such advocates for halting the unending cycle as domestic terrorists. The recent BATR RealPolitik Newsletter, Israel Owns Congress, illustrates a significant factor behind the driving pressure that exports violence from the Nefarious Warrior Organism. Yes this fitting description for the New World Order characterizes the essence of the establishment.
Daniel Larison writes in the American Conservative, Paul and the Right's Ideological Enforcers.
"Michael Brendan Dougherty comments on the silly reaction of some "pro-Israel" hard-liners to Rand Paul's insufficiently zealous applause for Netanyahu:
"And I understand the suspicion. If I ever exerted myself so frantically on behalf of a cause, if lobbying for it required investing so many millions of dollars, and if maintaining party discipline on it required "brutal" ad drops on congressional obscurities, I would worry that some of the response I sought was perfunctory and insincere. The sonnets you receive don't sound as sweet. The applause seems forced. Almost like they are faking it."
Unfortunately, this ludicrous ideological policing seems to work only too well. Paul's response in the last two days has been to reaffirm how enthusiastically "pro-Israel" he really is. Even though the fixation on the intensity of his clapping at Tuesday's disgraceful spectacle ought to have made clear that he will never be able to do or say (or clap) enough to satisfy his party's hard-liners, he made sure to emphasize his "pro-Israel" bona fides by talking up his co-sponsorship of Corker's Iran bill and the number of times (50) he has joined in standing ovations for Netanyahu. We can already hear the hard-liners' response: "He gave only 50 standing ovations? He should have given at least 70."
This goes to the heart of the establishment's primacy principle, American adventurism benefits Israel First interests. The reason the United States is engulfed in perpetual war is to keep the power elites in control. The permanent war of terror has the domestic public as the target. Why is this so? Plainly speaking, the globalists who have completed their takeover of the apparatus of governance have eliminated even the semblance of the rule by law.
In the Ron Paul video from a GOP Presidential debate, Let Iran Have Nukes. No Sanctions, No War, you heard for the last time a common sense and prudent approach to counter the NeoCon and NewLib mantra of continual threat of war or actual combat.
Stopping the interventionism of the foreign policy establishment like in their Ukrainian coup d'état, would require a total repudiation of the entire power structure that perverts the body politic. The lawlessness, that is the staple of the Obama administration, just made a pivot in rhetoric from the "Mission Accomplished" absurdity under Bush.
All the time the same drum beat to a truly global conflict marches on because the fundamental axioms upon which, rest the internationalist system, is based has proven beyond any reasonable doubt, to be false and deadly.
We live under a reign of terror from our own illegitimate authorities. The domestic police state is a reflection of tactics used and perfected in Iraq. The creation of ISIL was achieved by western intelligence. The need for a new enemy becomes obvious when the old one turns out to be a phony menace.
If Obama would really sunset the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, it might be the only worthwhile initiative of his years in office. However, in order to judge the feasibility and sincerity of his intentions, one might need to access the private emails of the former Secretary of State. Fat chance! Dragging out the goods from the heroine of culture concealment brings back all the memories of the former Klinton era.
That's the way the guardians of the establishment work. Brew up mind numbing scandals, while the existential global tragedies of designed world domination, are ignored. The ease upon whom the war of terror is sold to the public is dreadful.
Listing all the transgressions upon lawful restrains, imposed on the country since the 911 Wag the Dog scenarios, would take a book. How long will repeating the same strategy of failure continue to get favorable support? As long as confused conservatives accept that the bogyman is overseas and are not able to focus on the architects of treason at home, the NWO will just waltz its way to the symphony they compose.
The absence of the formerly vocal anti-war movement in the way the Viet Nam war galvanized is a great regret. Adopting a non-interventionist doctrine should not be a left-right dichotomy. It needs to become a unified and committed cause that each citizen will actively adopt.
The pathetic peer pressure used on a Rand Paul to become an Israel-First supporter needs to be condemned. If it was not for the internationalist and globalist lobby, our troops could and should be stationed on our own borders.
Perpetual war to justify a permanent war of terror will destroy all that was once unique about America. The fifth column and systemic treason that passes as "PC" policy, is the enemy. Waking up is not enough. The blowback coming must be against the establishment. In order for the nation to rise from the ashes of destruction, the public needs to defeat the reign of terror conducted in our name.
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
Splitting The Atlantic Alliance
March 14, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
NATO Lies and Provocations…
"The war has been provoked to destroy the Russian World, to draw Europe into it, and to surround Russia with hostile countries. Unleashing this world war, America is trying to deal with its own internal problems."
– Sergei Glazyev, Advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin
The fabrications of NATO's top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, have driven a wedge between Germany and the United States that could lead to a collapse of the Atlantic Alliance. According to the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, Breedlove has repeatedly sabotaged Chancellor Angela Merkel's attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine by spreading "dangerous propaganda" that is misleading the public about Russian "troop advances on the border, (and) the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks." But while the unusually critical article singles out Breedlove for his hyperbolic exaggerations of so-called Russian aggression, the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow.
Before we explain what's going on, we need to look at an excerpt from the article. According to Spiegel:
"…for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements … it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.
There are plenty of examples….At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning." But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.
The experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.
Breedlove, though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements."…
On Nov. 12, during a visit to Sofia, Bulgaria, Breedlove reported that "we have seen columns of Russian equipment — primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops — entering into Ukraine." It was, he noted, "the same thing that OSCE is reporting." But the OSCE had only observed military convoys within eastern Ukraine. OSCE observers had said nothing about troops marching in from Russia.
Breedlove sees no reason to revise his approach. "I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis," he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims."
(Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine, Der Spiegel)
While it's easy to get swept up in the Spiegel's narrative of a rabid militarist dragging Europe closer to World War 3, the storyline is intentionally misleading. As anyone who's been following the Ukraine fiasco for the last year knows, there's nothing particularly unusual about Breedlove's distortions. Secretary of State John Kerry has made similar claims numerous times as have many others in the major media. The lies about "Russian aggression" are the rule, not the exception. So why has the Spiegel decided to selectively target Breedlove who is no more deceitful than anyone else? What's really going on here?
Clearly, the Spiegel is doing Merkel's work, that is, undermining the credibility of Washington's chief commander in Europe in order to discourage further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. But while Merkel wants to humiliate Breedlove to show that Germany will not sit on its hands while Washington plunges the region into the abyss; she has also shown considerable restraint in limiting her attack to the General while sparing Kerry and Obama any embarrassment. This is quite an accomplishment given that –as we said earlier–virtually everyone in the political establishment and the media have been lying nonstop about every aspect of the conflict. Merkel doesn't want to discredit these others just yet, although the Spiegel piece infers that she has the power to do so if the "bad behavior" persists.
The Spiegel article is part of a one-two punch designed to force Washington to change its confrontational approach. The second jab appeared late Sunday afternoon when EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced that Europe needed to field its own army. Here's the story from Reuters:
"The European Union needs its own army to face up to Russia and other threats as well as restore the bloc's foreign policy standing around the world, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a German newspaper on Sunday…
"With its own army, Europe could react more credibly to the threat to peace in a member state or in a neighboring state.
"One wouldn't have a European army to deploy it immediately. But a common European army would convey a clear message to Russia that we are serious about defending our European values." (Juncker calls for EU army, says would deter Russia, Reuters)
Can you see what's going on? On the one hand, the Spiegel delivers a hammer-blow to the credibility of NATO's top officer and on the other, the President of the EU Commission blindsides US powerbrokers by announcing a plan to create an independent EU fighting force that will render NATO redundant. These are big developments that have undoubtedly left the Obama troupe reeling. This is a full-blown assault on NATO's role as the primary guarantor of EU regional security. Maybe the European people are gullible enough to accept Junker's absurd claim that an EU army will "send an important message to the world", but you can be damn sure that no one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue believes that nonsense. The move is clearly designed to send a message to Washington that Europe is fed up with NATO and wants a change. That means it's "shape up or ship out time" for Breedlove and his ilk.
Ironically, these developments align Merkel with Putin's view of things as stated in his famous Munich speech in 2007 when he said:
"I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue … The United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way … And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this — no one feels safe." (Russian President Vladimir Putin, 43rd Munich Security Conference, 2007)
How can the US possibly cast itself as "steward of the global security system", when its interventions have left a trail of decimated failed states from the southernmost border of Somalia to the northern tip of Ukraine, a chaotic swathe of smoldering ruin and agonizing human suffering that rivals the depredations of the Third Reich.
Europe's security requirements cannot be met by a belligerent, warmongering US-controlled entity that acts solely in Washington's interests. At present, NATO gets 75% of its funding from the US, which is why the alliance is less interested in peacemaking and security than it is in internationalizing its imperial war of aggression across the planet. Prior to the crisis in Ukraine, European leaders didn't see the danger of this idiotic arrangement (even though interventions in Serbia, Libya and Afghanistan should have brought them to their senses) But now that NATO's recklessness could vaporize Europe in a nuclear firestorm, leaders like Merkel and Hollande are starting to change their tune. Keep in mind, the ideal scenario for the US would be a limited war that levels large parts of the European and Asian continents, thus restoring the US to its post WW2 heyday when the "rubblized" world was Washington's oyster. That would be just fine for genocidal maniacs and armchair warriors who rule the globe from the safety of their well-stocked DC bunkers. But for Europe, this is definitely not a winning strategy. Europe doesn't want a war, and it certainly doesn't want to be used as cannon fodder for the greater glory of the dystopian NWO.
Putin advisor, Sergei Glazyev, figured out what Washington was up to long before Kiev launched its wretched "anti terrorism" campaign against federalist rebels in the East. Here's how he summed it up:
"The main task the American puppet masters have set for the (Kiev) junta is to draw Russia into a full-scale war with Ukraine. It is for this purpose that all of these heinous crimes are committed – to force Russia to send troops to Ukraine to protect the civilian population…
The bankruptcy of the US financial system, which is unable to service its foreign debt, the lack of investments to finance a breakthrough to a new technological order and to maintain America's competitiveness, and the potential defeat in the geopolitical competition with China. To resolve these problems, Americans need a new world war." (Sergei Glazyev)
Bingo. The steadily-declining empire, whose share of global GDP continues to shrivel with every passing year, has wanted a war from the get go. That's the only way that the US can reverse its precipitous economic slide and preserve its lofty spot as the world's only superpower. Fortunately, EU leaders are beginning to pull their heads out of the sand long enough to grasp what's going on and change their behavior accordingly.
It's worth noting, that no one in the Merkel administration or anyone else for that matter, has publicly challenged the allegations in the Spiegel article. Why is that, do you think?
Doesn't their silence suggest that they knew all along that all the anti-Putin propaganda hullabaloo was pure bunkum; that "evil" Putin didn't send tanks and soldiers across the border into Ukraine, that Putin didn't shoot down Malaysian Airline 17, that Putin didn't have a political opponent gunned down gangland style just a few hundred yards from the Kremlin? Isn't that what their silence really says?
Of course, it does. The reason no one in power has spoken out is because –as the Spiegel cynically admits–"A mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is necessary."
"Propaganda is necessary"?
Whoa. Now there's an admission you're not going to see in the media too often. But it's the truth, isn't it? The Euro-leaders have been going along with the lies to keep the public in line. In other words, it's a healthy dose of perception management for the sheeple, but the unvarnished truth for our revered overlords. Sounds about right. Only now these ame elites have decided to share the facts with the lumpen masses. But, why? Why this sudden willingness to share the truth?
It's because they no longer support Washington's policy, that's why. No one in Europe wants the US to arm and train the Ukrainian army. No one wants them to deploy 600 paratroopers to Kiev and increase US logistical support. No one wants further escalation, because no one wants a war with Russia. It's that simple.
For the first time, EU leaders, particularly Merkel, understand that the United States' strategic objectives (the pivot to Asia) do not align with those of the EU, in fact, Washington's geopolitical ambitions pose a serious threat to Europe's security. Regrettably, it's not enough for Merkel to simply understand what is going on. She needs to huddle with her EU colleagues and take positive steps to derail Washington's plan now, otherwise the US will continue its incitements and false flags until Putin is forced to respond. Once that happens, a broader and, perhaps, catastrophic conflagration will be unavoidable.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
How Putin Blocked The U.S. Pivot To Asia
March 7, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint on Washington's power to act unilaterally abroad…. Suddenly the United States found itself to be the Uni-power, the 'world's only superpower.' Neoconservatives proclaimed 'the end of history.'"
— Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury
"Don't blame the mirror if your face is crooked."
— Russian proverb
Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the 43rd Munich Security Conference that created a rift between Washington and Moscow that has only deepened over time. The Russian President's blistering hour-long critique of US foreign policy provided a rational, point-by-point indictment of US interventions around the world and their devastating effect on global security. Putin probably didn't realize the impact his candid observations would have on the assembly in Munich or the reaction of powerbrokers in the US who saw the presentation as a turning point in US-Russian relations. But, the fact is, Washington's hostility towards Russia can be traced back to this particular incident, a speech in which Putin publicly committed himself to a multipolar global system, thus, repudiating the NWO pretensions of US elites. Here's what he said:
"I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue."
With that one formulation, Putin rejected the United States assumed role as the world's only superpower and steward of global security, a privileged position which Washington feels it earned by prevailing in the Cold War and which entitles the US to unilaterally intervene whenever it sees fit. Putin's announcement ended years of bickering and deliberation among think tank analysts as to whether Russia could be integrated into the US-led system or not. Now they knew that Putin would never dance to Washington's tune.
In the early years of his presidency, it was believed that Putin would learn to comply with western demands and accept a subordinate role in the Washington-centric system. But it hasn't worked out that way. The speech in Munich merely underscored what many US hawks and Cold Warriors had been saying from the beginning, that Putin would not relinquish Russian sovereignty without a fight. The declaration challenging US aspirations to rule the world, left no doubt that Putin was going to be a problem that had to be dealt with by any means necessary including harsh economic sanctions, a State Department-led coup in neighboring Ukraine, a conspiracy to crash oil prices, a speculative attack of the ruble, a proxy war in the Donbass using neo-Nazis as the empire's shock troops, and myriad false flag operations used to discredit Putin personally while driving a wedge between Moscow and its primary business partners in Europe. Now the Pentagon is planning to send 600 paratroopers to Ukraine ostensibly to "train the Ukrainian National Guard", a serious escalation that violates the spirit of Minsk 2 and which calls for a proportionate response from the Kremlin. Bottom line: The US is using all the weapons in its arsenal to prosecute its war on Putin.
Last week's gangland-style murder of Russian opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, has to be considered in terms of the larger geopolitical game that is currently underway. While we may never know who perpetrated the crime, we can say with certainly that the lack of evidence hasn't deterred the media or US politicians from using the tragedy to advance an anti-Putin agenda aimed at destabilizing the government and triggering regime change in Moscow. Putin himself suggested that the killing may have been a set-up designed to put more pressure on the Kremlin. The World Socialist Web Site summed up the political implications like this:
"The assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov is a significant political event that arises out of the US-Russia confrontation and the intense struggle that is now underway within the highest levels of the Russian state. The Obama administration and the CIA are playing a major role in the escalation of this conflict, with the aim of producing an outcome that serves the global geo-political and financial interests of US imperialism….
It is all but obvious that the Obama administration is hoping a faction will emerge within the Russian elite, backed by elements in the military and secret police, capable of staging a "palace coup" and getting rid of Putin….
The United States is not seeking to trigger a widespread popular revolt. (But) are directed entirely at convincing a section of the oligarchy and emerging capitalist class that their business interests and personal wealth depend upon US support. That is why the Obama administration has used economic sanctions targeting individuals as a means of exerting pressure on the oligarchs as well as broader sections of the entrepreneurial elite….
It is in the context of this international power struggle that one must evaluate Nemtsov's murder. Of course, it is possible that his death was the outcome of his private dealings. But it is more likely that he was killed for political reasons. Certainly, the timing of the killing—on the eve of the opposition's anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow—strongly indicates that the killing was a political assassination, not a private settling of accounts." ("Murder in Moscow: Why was Boris Nemtsov assassinated?", David North, World Socialist Web Site)
Just hours after Nemtsov was gunned down in Moscow, the western media swung into action releasing a barrage of articles suggesting Kremlin involvement without a shred of evidence to support their claims. The campaign of innuendo has steadily gained momentum as more Russia "experts" and politicians offer their opinions about who might be responsible. Naturally, none of the interviewees veer from the official storyline that someone in Putin's charge must have carried out the attack. An article in the Washington Post is a good example of the tactics used in the latest PR campaign to discredit Putin. According to Vladimir Gel'man, Political Scientists European University at St. Petersburg and the University of Helsinki:
"Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of political opposition, was shot dead nearby the Kremlin. In my opinion, it has all the hallmarks of a political assassination provoked by an aggressive Kremlin-induced campaign against the "fifth column of national traitors", who opposed the annexation of Crimea, war with the West over Ukraine, and further decline of political and civil freedoms in the country. We may never know whether the Kremlin ordered this killing, but given the fact that Nemtsov was one of the most consistent critics not only of the Russian regime as such but also of Putin in person, his dissenting voice will never upset Putin and his inner circle anymore." ("What does Boris Nemtsov's murder mean for Russia?", Washington Post)
The article in the Washington Post is fairly typical of others published in the MSM. The coverage is invariably long on finger-pointing and insinuation and short on facts. Traditional journalistic standards of objectivity and fact-gathering have been jettisoned to advance a political agenda that reflects the objectives of ownership. The Nemtsov assassination is just the latest illustration of the abysmal state of western media.
The idea that Putin's agents would "whack" an opposition candidate just a stone's throw from the Kremlin is far fetched to say the least. As one commenter at the Moon of Alabama blog noted:
"Isn't the image of a dead political opponent lying on a bridge overlooked by the Kremlin a bit rich? I mean, short of a dagger lodged between his shoulder blades with the inscription "if found, please return to Mr Putin", I can't think of a more over-egged attempt at trying to implicate the Government. And on the night before an opposition rally Nemtsov hoped to lead. I mean, come on."
While there's no denying that Moscow could be involved, it seems unlikely. The more probable explanation is that the incident is part of a larger regime change scheme to ignite social unrest and destabilize the government. The US has used these tactics so many times before in various color-coded revolutions, that we won't reiterate the details here. Even so, it's worth noting that the US has no red lines when it comes to achieving its strategic goals. It will do whatever it feels is necessary to prevail in its clash with Putin.
The question is why? Why is Washington so determined to remove Putin?
Putin answered this question himself recently at a celebration of Russia's diplomatic workers' day. He said Russia would pursue an independent foreign policy despite pressure in what he called "today's challenging international environment."
"No matter how much pressure is put on us, the Russian Federation will continue to pursue an independent foreign policy, to support the fundamental interests of our people and in line with global security and stability." (Reuters)
This is Putin's unforgivable crime, the same crime as Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and countless other nations that refuse to march in lockstep to Washington's directives.
Putin has also resisted NATO encirclement and attempts by the US to loot Russia's vast natural resources. And while Putin has made every effort to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, he has not backed down on issues that are vital to Russia's national security, in fact, he has pointed out numerous times not only the threat that encroaching NATO poses to Moscow, but also the lies that preceded its eastward expansion. Here's Putin at Munich again:
"I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: "the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee….
Where are these guarantees?"
Where, indeed. Apparently, they were all lies. As political analyst Pat Buchanan said in his article "Doesn't Putin Have a Point?":
"Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin….
… though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.
… through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations, and "human rights" institutes such as Freedom House,… we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia herself….
These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small point?" "(Doesn't Putin Have a Point?", Pat Buchanan, antiwar.com)
Now the US wants to deploy its missile defense system to Eastern Europe, a system which–according to Putin "will work automatically with and be an integral part of the US nuclear capability. For the first time in history, and I want to emphasize this, there are elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of course, we have to respond to that."
How can Putin allow this to happen? How can he allow the US to situate nuclear weapons in a location that would increase its first-strike capability and undermine the balance of deterrents allowing the US to force Russia to follow its orders or face certain annihilation. Putin has no choice but to resist this outcome, just as has no choice but to oppose the principle upon which US expansion is based, the notion that the Cold War was won by the US, therefore the US has the right to reshape the world in a way that best suits its own economic and geopolitical interests. Here's Putin again:
"What is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, it refers to a type of situation where there is one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. At the end of the day, this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within…..
I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world…. the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization…." (Munich, 2007)
What sort of man talks like this? What sort of man talks about "the moral foundations for modern civilization" or invokes FDR in his address?
Putin: "'Security for one is security for all'. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: 'When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.' These words remain topical today."
I urge everyone to watch at least the first 10 minutes of Putin's speech and decide for themselves whether they think the characterization (and demonization) of Putin in the media is fair or not. And pay special attention to Minute 6 where Putin says this:
"We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?" ("Vladimir Putin's legendary speech at Munich Security Conference")
While Putin is making this statement, the camera pans to John McCain and Joe Lieberman who are sitting stone-faced in the front row seething at every word uttered by the Russian president. If you look close enough, you can see the steam emerging from McCain's ears.
This is why Washington wants regime change in Moscow. It's because Putin refuses to be pushed around by the United States. It's because he wants a world that is governed by international laws that are impartially administered by the United Nations. It's because he rejects a "unipolar" world order where one nation dictates policy to everyone else and where military confrontation becomes the preferred way for the powerful to impose their will on the weak.
Putin: "Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts…The United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way….And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this — no one feels safe." Vladimir Putin, Munich 2007
Putin isn't a perfect man. He has his shortcomings and flaws like everyone else. But he appears to be a decent person who has made great strides in restoring Russia's economy after it was looted by agents of the US following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He has lifted living standards, increased pensions, reduced poverty, and improved education and health care which is why his public approval ratings are currently hovering at an eye-watering 86 percent. Even so, Putin is most admired for standing up to the United States and blocking its strategy to pivot to Asia. The proxy war in Ukraine is actually a struggle to thwart Washington's plan to break up the Russian Federation, encircle China, control the flow of resources from Asia to Europe, and rule the world. Vladimir Putin is at the forefront of that conflagration which is why he has gained the respect and admiration of people around the world.
As for "democracy", Putin said it best himself:
"Am I a 'pure democrat'? (laughs) Of course I am. Absolutely. The problem is that I'm all alone, the only one of my kind in the whole world. Just look at what's happening in America, it's terrible—torture, homeless people, Guantanamo, people detained without trial or investigation. And look at Europe—harsh treatment of demonstrators, rubber bullets and tear gas used in one capital after another, demonstrators killed on the streets….. I have no one to talk to since Gandhi died."
Well said, Vladimir.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Hillary Express Hits A Wall
February 28, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
What can be written about Hillary Clinton that has not already been said? HilLIARy fatigue is natural, but ignoring all the lies and sleaze becomes the first goal of her 2016 presidential campaign. What is clear during the preliminary posturing is that hubby "Big Dog" Bill's practice of trolling for bitches in heat will dominate the coverage. Poor old Hillary, a pureblood victim among mix breeds. The pretense that she continues in a loving marriage is about as insulting to the voters as the perverse behavior of either of the Clintons.
OK, forget the sex allegations no one cares, right? But what about continuing in a relationship with a certified criminal? Oh yes, that is the easy part, since being married to a crook is the part that Bill loves, and "Big Mama" takes no back seat to her partner outlaw in political offense.
From the ancient history files, the article Proof Hillary isn't fit to be president by Larry Klayman reminds such past hits.
- Whitewater scandal
- Travelgate
- Filegate
- Chinagate
You can hear the cat calls now, "that's old news, "we need to move forward", but the best one comes from Hillary herself", what difference at this point does it make"?
Well, maybe the monarch of deceit is correct. Who even remembers the scandal years under the "get two for the price of one" regime? Bygone days need to let sleeping dogs lie, but the past is screaming out as a warning for exactly what citizens should fairly expect if she was coroneted as Mister President.
Yet in the instant social media climate that will dominate the next Presidential campaign, both in the primaries and in the general election, 2016 will be all hyped up to report on the next Bill's libido threatens to derail Hillary — again. A sample like this only forecasts the disclosures that will come out of the secretive cabinet recordings.
"And that is to say nothing of Bill's solicitation of mystery donors, the concerns about financial malfeasance at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, Bill's racially charged verbal gaffes during Hillary's 2008 bid and the alleged longtime, serious mistress who diverted Hillary's presidential campaign from larger problems."
Further background from Hillary Clinton's Skeleton Closet claims that "she has some significant and troubling scandals that get overlooked with all the foo-farah over crazy conspiracy theories."
Now that this ugly aspect is out of the way, what "exactly are the compelling reasons for Hillary to become President? The answer is reducible to one simple motive; she wants to be the Big Kahuna.
Eric Golub on Communities Digital News responds accordingly. "Can anyone name a single significant thing she has ever done that qualifies her to be president? The presidency is too important to be given to another celebrity heavy on cultish devotees but light on substantive successful accomplishments."
Her qualifications as a superstar luminary and passed over by the Democratic power brokers in favor of Barack Obama in 2008, seems to be the basic argument why 2016 is now her turn. Such inevitability out of the GOP playbook just does not play well with the most fanatical of the loony left.
The NYT reveals that Hillary Clinton, Privately, Seeks the Favor of Elizabeth Warren. Their description of some lesson learned from the 2008 campaign seems to point that defusing the competition is her primary platform concern.
"Some of Mrs. Clinton's supporters, frustrated by the attention and adulation generated by Ms. Warren, noted Tuesday that the two actually hold similar positions on a range of economic issues, though Ms. Warren's rhetoric has been more fiery. Mrs. Clinton, hoping to delay formally starting her candidacy for as long as possible, has refrained from detailed discussions of economic policy. In recent weeks, though, she has become more vocal, using Twitter to offer support for the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, for instance."
Hit the ground running with a splash. ARE YOU READY? So asks to take the Pledge to Support Hillary for President Site. Before you register, a little investigation is in order.
3 Problems Standing in the Way of a Hillary Clinton Presidency starts with the following:
Politics and Experience
Hillary definitely has a legacy problem to overcome. More importantly, she has to talk up her record as Secretary of State. A sizable share of Democrats polled by YouGov, 79%, said earlier this year that they approved of her performance, but only 21% of Republicans and 45% of independents shared that assessment. And public opinion split along the same ideological lines when respondents were asked about her qualifications for office. More to the point, most Republicans are not as concerned with her experience as they are with her politics; although Republicans and independent voters cite her role in the Benghazi terrorist attack as one of her major errors in the State Department.
The Competition
Hillary Clinton could be too establishment. Of course, possible contenders who would fit this progressive and insurgent role do not have the same weight as the former Secretary of State. But they are worth examining, if for nothing else than the fresh perspective and debate they will bring to the presidential primaries.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street has provided the largest source of campaign funds for the Clintons since 1992, with Goldman Sachs as the largest single contributor, giving close to $5 million. "Clinton Inc. is going to be the most formidable fundraising operation for the Democrats in the history of the country. Period. Exclamation point," Rick Hohlt, a lobbyist and fundraiser for Republican Party presidential candidates, told the Journal, "It sure causes concern." Plus, both Clintons earn massive speaking fees.
How does the public react with something positive about a Hillary Presidency? A Gallop poll reveals that 49% answers nothing or has no opinion.
So much for grassroots popular enthusiasm . . .
With any run-up to the primary season and supporting media barrage of electing the first woman President, a viewpoint that Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Be President: A Feminist Perspective is insightful. "Any woman can become president. It feels like a slap to the face of America that so many of our politicians stem from the same family, or that our first female president appears to require a husband who came before her. It reminds us just how limited access is."
Hillary's retort to such an argument reeks of elitist privilege. Politico reports that Hillary Clinton: Other women qualified for White House.
"A lot of the women senators, we have a couple of women governors — I'm talking on the Democratic side — we have a good bench, so to speak," Clinton says in a video clip posted Monday. "But they haven't gone through the fire. Part of the reason why there's a big drumbeat for me to run is because I've done it."
And in 2008 the Wall Street king makers decided on Obama. In the flip flop composition of Tweedledum and Tweedledee politics, a Republican establishment candidate may well get the nod as the safer capitalist tool.
The real wall that Hillary faces is to massage the Occupy Wall Street wing of the progressive primary activities, while keeping and confirming her true symbiotic identification to the money wing of influence Banksters, who actually decide the direction of the government.
For in the end, the only qualifications that Hillary Clinton has for holding the office of the Presidency is that her hubby will occupy the distractions of a Clinton II kingdom. What a great country that elevates a Hill Billy couple to the highest pinnacle of the scandal sheets, while conducting diplomatic relations with the Davos set.
Can Hillary win in 2016? Hermene Hartman in the Huffington Post thinks so in the article, 10 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President. Read her list and consider just how far this nation has fallen.
1) The Republicans don't have a viable candidate and probably won't.
2) The Hillary Papers have been released.
3) Hillary should not and cannot take blame for Bill's poor judgments.
4) The Clintons are the ultimate Power Couple.
5) Hillary is ruthless.
6) Hillary learned valuable lessons from the 2008 election.
7) She is not a quitter or a loser.
8) The health bill has passed.
9) Hillary is a smart politician.
10) America is ready for the leadership of a Hillary Clinton.
If this list of excited imbecility does not give you pause, you must be part of the Hildebeest groupie crowd and better sign-up for, ARE YOU READY? alerts.
Hillary Klinton has all the worst attributes and moral depravity of her more infamous partner in corruption. Moreover, she lacks the political skills and rogue charm of her flimflam significant other. The brick wall in front of the electorate is that a vote for Hillary is a ballot cast for continuation of the decent into enslavement of the last 25 + years. Knowing the way the selection system for Presidents works, the next guests in the Lincoln bedroom may well be friends of the late Marc Rich.
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
The Greek Tragedy
February 28, 2015 by Administrator · 1 Comment
Some things not to forget, which the new Greek leaders have not…
American historian D.F. Fleming, writing of the post-World War II period in his eminent history of the Cold War, stated that "Greece was the first of the liberated states to be openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying Great Power. It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example, in Bulgaria and then in Rumania, though with less bloodshed."
The British intervened in Greece while World War II was still raging. His Majesty's Army waged war against ELAS, the left-wing guerrillas who had played a major role in forcing the Nazi occupiers to flee. Shortly after the war ended, the United States joined the Brits in this great anti-communist crusade, intervening in what was now a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a suitably repressive internal security agency (KYP in Greek).
In 1964, the liberal George Papandreou came to power, but in April 1967 a military coup took place, just before elections which appeared certain to bring Papandreou back as prime minister. The coup had been a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, the KYP, the CIA, and the American military stationed in Greece, and was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "communist takeover". Torture, inflicted in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States, became routine.
George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father, had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.
Andreas Papandreou was arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited the American ambassador, Phillips Talbot, in Athens. Papandreou later related the following:
I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup.
Another charming chapter in US-Greek relations occurred in 2001, when Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street Goliath Lowlife, secretly helped Greece keep billions of dollars of debt off their balance sheet through the use of complex financial instruments like credit default swaps. This allowed Greece to meet the baseline requirements to enter the Eurozone in the first place. But it also helped create a debt bubble that would later explode and bring about the current economic crisis that's drowning the entire continent. Goldman Sachs, however, using its insider knowledge of its Greek client, protected itself from this debt bubble by betting against Greek bonds, expecting that they would eventually fail.
Will the United States, Germany, the rest of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund – collectively constituting the International Mafia – allow the new Greek leaders of the Syriza party to dictate the conditions of Greece's rescue and salvation? The answer at the moment is a decided "No". The fact that Syriza leaders, for some time, have made no secret of their affinity for Russia is reason enough to seal their fate. They should have known how the Cold War works.
I believe Syriza is sincere, and I'm rooting for them, but they may have overestimated their own strength, while forgetting how the Mafia came to occupy its position; it didn't derive from a lot of compromise with left-wing upstarts. Greece may have no choice, eventually, but to default on its debts and leave the Eurozone. The hunger and unemployment of the Greek people may leave them no alternative.
The Twilight Zone of the US State Department
"You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop … the Twilight Zone." (American Television series, 1959-1965)
State Department Daily Press Briefing, February 13, 2015. Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki, questioned by Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.
Lee: President Maduro [of Venezuela] last night went on the air and said that they had arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the United States. What is your response?
Psaki: These latest accusations, like all previous such accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful, and legal. We have seen many times that the Venezuelan Government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan Government to deal with the grave situation it faces.
Lee: Sorry. The US has – whoa, whoa, whoa – the US has a longstanding practice of not promoting – What did you say? How longstanding is that? I would – in particular in South and Latin America, that is not a longstanding practice.
Psaki: Well, my point here, Matt, without getting into history –
Lee: Not in this case.
Psaki: – is that we do not support, we have no involvement with, and these are ludicrous accusations.
Lee: In this specific case.
Psaki: Correct.
Lee: But if you go back not that long ago, during your lifetime, even – (laughter)
Psaki: The last 21 years. (Laughter.)
Lee: Well done. Touché. But I mean, does "longstanding" mean 10 years in this case? I mean, what is –
Psaki: Matt, my intention was to speak to the specific reports.
Lee: I understand, but you said it's a longstanding US practice, and I'm not so sure – it depends on what your definition of "longstanding" is.
Psaki: We will – okay.
Lee: Recently in Kyiv, whatever we say about Ukraine, whatever, the change of government at the beginning of last year was unconstitutional, and you supported it. The constitution was –
Psaki: That is also ludicrous, I would say.
Lee: – not observed.
Psaki: That is not accurate, nor is it with the history of the facts that happened at the time.
Lee: The history of the facts. How was it constitutional?
Psaki: Well, I don't think I need to go through the history here, but since you gave me the opportunity –- as you know, the former leader of Ukraine left of his own accord.
Leaving the Twilight Zone … The former Ukrainian leader ran for his life from those who had staged the coup, including a mob of vicious US-supported neo-Nazis.
If you know how to contact Ms. Psaki, tell her to have a look at my list of more than 50 governments the United States has attempted to overthrow since the end of the Second World War. None of the attempts were democratic, constitutional, peaceful, or legal; well, a few were non-violent.
The ideology of the American media is that it believes that it doesn't have any ideology
So NBC's evening news anchor, Brian Williams, has been caught telling untruths about various events in recent years. What could be worse for a reporter? How about not knowing what's going on in the world? In your own country? At your own employer? As a case in point I give you Williams' rival, Scott Pelley, evening news anchor at CBS.
In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: "We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons."
In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: "The fact is that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry."
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein himself told CBS's Rather in February 2003: "These missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there."
Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world, before the 2003 American invasion, that the WMD were non-existent.
Enter Scott Pelley. In January 2008, as a CBS reporter, Pelley interviewed FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed:
PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?
PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.
PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?
PIRO: Yes.
PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?
For a journalist there might actually be something as bad as not knowing what's going on in his area of news coverage, even on his own station. After Brian Williams' fall from grace, his former boss at NBC, Bob Wright, defended Williams by pointing to his favorable coverage of the military, saying: "He has been the strongest supporter of the military of any of the news players. He never comes back with negative stories, he wouldn't question if we're spending too much."
I think it's safe to say that members of the American mainstream media are not embarrassed by such a "compliment".
In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter made the following observation:
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
Cuba made simple
"The trade embargo can be fully lifted only through legislation – unless Cuba forms a democracy, in which case the president can lift it."
Aha! So that's the problem, according to a Washington Post columnist – Cuba is not a democracy! That would explain why the United States does not maintain an embargo against Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Guatemala, Egypt and other distinguished pillars of freedom. The mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship. Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for blindly following Moscow's party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship?
No "free press"? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that's to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money – secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba – would own or control almost all the media worth owning or controlling?
Is it "free elections" that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal, regional and national levels. (They do not have direct election of the president, but neither do Germany or the United Kingdom and many other countries). Money plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run as individuals. Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Is it that they don't have the Koch Brothers to pour in a billion dollars? Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I think he'd probably win; which is why it's not the case.
Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous "electoral college" system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the winner. If we really think this system is a good example of democracy why don't we use it for local and state elections as well?
Is Cuba not a democracy because it arrests dissidents? Many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. During the Occupy Movement two years ago more than 7,000 people were arrested, many beaten by police and mistreated while in custody. And remember: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer; virtually without exception, Cuban dissidents have been financed by and aided in other ways by the United States.
Would Washington ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and engaging in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In recent years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents. While others may call Cuba's security policies dictatorship, I call it self-defense.
The Ministry of Propaganda has a new Commissar
Last month Andrew Lack became chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees US government-supported international news media such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Asia. In a New York Times interview, Mr. Lack was moved to allow the following to escape his mouth: "We are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram."
So … this former president of NBC News conflates Russia Today (RT) with the two most despicable groups of "human beings" on the planet. Do mainstream media executives sometimes wonder why so many of their audience has drifted to alternative media, like, for example, RT?
Those of you who have not yet discovered RT, I suggest you go to RT.com to see whether it's available in your city. And there are no commercials.
It should be noted that the Times interviewer, Ron Nixon, expressed no surprise at Lack's remark.
- William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, chapters 3 and 35
- "Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt", Spiegel Online (Germany), February 8, 2010. Google "Goldman Sachs" Greece for other references.
- U.S. Department of State Daily Press Briefing, February 13, 2015
- Overthrowing other people's governments: The Master List
- CBS Evening News, August 20, 2002
- ABC Nightline, December 4, 2002
- "60 Minutes II", February 26, 2003
- Washington Post, March 1, 2003
- "60 Minutes", January 27, 2008
- Democracy Now!, February 12, 2015, Wright statement made February 10
- Al Kamen, Washington Post, February 18, 2015
- Huffington Post, May 3, 2012
- New York Times, January 21, 2015
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 firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: WilliamBlum.org
William Blum is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
What Would Happen If The US Became Isolationist Again?
February 23, 2015 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
What would happen if we Americans suddenly decided to withdraw all of our troops currently scattered all over the world and to actually bring them back to within our own US borders where they belong? What would happen if we actually closed down all of America's extensive and pricy (over one thousand and counting) military bases and black-site operations all around the globe? We may never know. "Why?" you might ask. Because it is never gonna happen, that's why.
Despite all of the incredibly huge amounts of money, energy, pain and grief that all these bases and black-site operations are costing us American taxpayers daily right now, the subject of closing even a few of these bases and black-site operations (or at least to stop opening up new ones!) isn't even up for debate.
There are so many other topics that we are happily debating in America right now — but not this one.
Americans are currently debating such crap topics as how best to save rich people from having to pay taxes; whether cops should be allowed to kill minority and/or poor people at will; why torture is a good thing; how we can most easily give large corporations our life savings and pensions; whether or not our kids should get measles vaccines; and exactly how soon "we" can bomb the crap out of Russia. But one of the most important subjects for debate in America today is not even on the menu right now.
A raging debate on how to return America to its grand old isolationist tradition should be the major topic in every newspaper headline and TV news show in America right now. But, sadly, it is not.
And there are many other life-threatening topics for debate here in America that we should be discussing too (but are not) such as, "Is it really in our best interest to support chaos in the Middle East or be Israeli neo-colonialists' catspaws?" Or whether corporations really are people, or "Why is election-malfeasance in America is still running amuck?" Or if we really want to be committing climate-change suicide? Or why America now has the same distribution of wealth between the upper classes and the rest of us that it had back in 1910 and that the difference in income between America's top 1% and the rest of us is further apart now than any other time in history including the Roman Empire, Charles Dickens' London and Marie Antoinette's France.
According to economist Thomas Piketty, "Income inequality has exploded in the United States."
And why the freak is America a member of NATO, the most war-mongering organization in the entire world outside of the US Department of "Defense"?
And — really? Here's a headline that will warm all those Scrooge-like corporate hearts: "Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown"Social science is being militarized to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and non-violent protest movements. Should we not be discussing that too?
And then there's that good old "New World Order" thingie popping up again, and it no longer even includes America on the list of those giving the New Orders — because the global overlord dudes who are currently drawing up the list to re-order our world seem to have us Americans in mind only to play the minor roles of vassals and serfs.
But none of these other topics are up for debate in America either.
According to journalist Juan Cole, the top five favorite planks for the Republican party platform in 2016 are gonna be torture, war-mongering, bank corruption, tax evasion for the uber-rich and how best to steal elections. Why aren't we discussing that either?
Frankly, there seems to be no debate in America today on almost any topic that should be of primary concern to We the People who are paying for all this crap. But I digress. Let's get back on topic, the topic of closing over a thousand US military bases and black-site operations all across the globe.
Of course I myself am obviously an advocate for closing all U.S. bases and black-site operations on foreign soil and bringing all of our troops home where they belong. So. Let's debate.
Debaters in favor of keeping America's foreign empire strong and all these bases and black-site operations open might come up with a list of arguments such as:
1. "They" will come here and terrorize us if we let down our guard.
2. We will then have little or no access to raw materials and natural resources. Our economy will shrink.
3. We need the war industry because it produces jobs.
4. We must bring freedom and democracy to the world and stop tyrannies.
These four points are all laughably easy to refute — except for perhaps point number three. Here are my counter-arguments:
1. In the many decades since the end of WW II, America has systematically created more enemies than one can shake a stick at due to its brutal policy of foreign military interference abroad. People all over the world used to love America. But this is no longer true. Obviously. These foreign bases and black-site operations are not keeping America safe. Just look at 9/11. Just look at the Great Recession of 2008. I rest my case.
2. Hey, we can always get access to foreign natural resources by actually paying for them. Now there's a unique idea. It's called Capitalism!
Right now, our military mainly serves the purpose of acting as thugs and extortionists for corporations, allowing corporations to go into foreign countries at will and steal their natural resources. Our nation's finest young men and women are being forced to serve as mega-corporations' personal security forces and Mafia crews. Hell, let these corporations pay for their own damn security thugs. Why should we taxpayers do the job? We are never the ones who make money off of this deal. Au contraire. We get to pay through the nose for it.
Why should we American taxpayers keep paying out trillions of dollars so that the best and brightest of our young generation can die violent and lonely deaths and leave widows and orphans behind them — in order to "Keep Corporations Strong"? It's like Vietnam all over again.
3. Yes, the war industry does produce jobs. But working for the Yankee Dollar is a high-risk employment, is morally repugnant and the benefits are few. How about, instead, that we hire all those soldiers to work in the solar industry or to repair our shabby infrastructure? Or train them to become doctors or teachers. Just think of the money we'd save!
4. America doesn't bring democracy to the world. "We" mostly bring dictators and ruffians and torturers and election fraud. And "we" are currently supporting monsters like ISIS and those neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It's all about the money. The American dream has become a nightmare if you live overseas (and will probably become more of a nightmare here too if we continue to keep the same vampires and doofuses in charge).
That's my argument and I'm sticking with it.
Hey, I may be wrong here about proposing that we immediately bring all of "our" weapons and troops home. Or I may be right. Who knows. But shouldn't we at least be having this debate?
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
She can be reached at: email@example.com