A Russian Mi-8 helicopter came under attack while conducting a search and rescue operation, searching for the crew of the downed Su-24 in Syria. One naval infantry soldier was reported killed, the helicopter destroyed by mortar fire.
The Russian General Staff said that two Mi-8s were involved in the operation to save the crew of the downed Su-24.
One helicopter has been shot down, its crew evacuated to the Russian base at Hmeymim.
“A search and rescue operation involving two Mi-8 helicopters was carried out, charged with evacuating the pilots from the landing site. During the operation, as a result of small-arms fire, one of the helicopters was damaged, and forced to make a landing on neutral territory. One naval infantry soldier was killed,” Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoi, the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told reporters on Tuesday.
The officer noted that the “personnel from the search and rescue team and the helicopter’s crew have been evacuated and are now located at the Hmeymim air base. The downed helicopter was destroyed by mortar fire from territory controlled by armed gangs.”
“The search and rescue operation tasked with finding the crew of the downed Russian bomber continues,” Rudskoi added, emphasizing that the territories in which the operation was conducted is believed to be controlled by radical rebel groups.
A Russian Su-24 Fencer jet crashed in Syria earlier in the day with two people aboard. Ankara claims that its F-16s shot down the plane because it violated the country’s airspace. Russia has countered Turkey’s accusations, President Vladimir Putin saying that the aircraft was 0.6 miles away from the Turkish border when it was shot down.
According to the Russian leader, the crashed aircraft was not posing any threat to Turkey when it was struck by an air-to-air missile from the Turkish jet.
The Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, has released a grateful video, where they openly thank the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which the US has touted as a “moderate opposition group”, for supplying them with US-made anti-tank TOW missiles (“Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided”).
A recently released video shows an Al-Nusra Front field commander thanking the FSA commanders for giving his forces TOW missiles, according to a report released by the Iranian news agency FARS.
The agency reminds readers that the two groups, the Al-Nusra and the FSA, formed an alliance in March, the Army of Conquest, or Jaish al-Fatah in Arabic, to fight against the forces of President Assad.
Since then, they have fought together “at almost every single battle in Aleppo, Lattakia, Hama, and Idlib Governorates of Syria.”
Through this alliance several militant groups like the Al-Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham movement have been given access to FSA’s US-made heavy weaponry, which has been supplied to the militant group by the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
According to the agency’s estimates, Saudi Arabia sent 500 TOW missiles to Al-Nusra directly last month.
The US, however, claims that it is just supplying aid and weapons to FSA or the so-called moderate militant groups in Syria.
The BGM-71 TOW is one of the most widely-used guided anti-tank missiles. The weapon is used in anti-armor, anti-bunker, anti-fortification and anti-amphibious landing roles.
TOW missiles are used by the armed forces of more than 40 countries and are integrated in over 15,000 ground, vehicle and helicopter platforms worldwide.
A week now after the attacks in Paris that news broadcasters keep telling us has “changed the world forever”, it looks less and less likely that this was a straightforward ISIL terrorist attack and more likely that something much more sinister may have gone on.
And not just a staged, false-flag operation, but a pre-fabricated, mass Psy-Op designed to bring about radical changes and to shape or re-configure public perception and psychology.
It has become evident to me *why* it was Paris and why it was Friday 13th; the answers are unsettling. I will get to the significant occult symbolism shortly.
But any time we’re told over and over again that something “has changed the world forever”, we’re best served to be suspicious. In regard to terror attacks, the only other time this mass psychological conditioning has occurred was with 9/11, which probably did change the world forever and which we were repeatedly *told* would change the world forever. Other terror attacks have simply been treated as precisely that: as terror attacks – 7/7, Boston, and others weren’t sold to us as ‘world changing’ or historic, but just as terrorism.
The 13/11 Paris attack seemed pre-packaged from the start as something much more important. This is mass psychological programming we’re witnessing right now; and everyone should pay attention so they can observe how it works.
The mainstream media all over the Western world was on virtual 24-hour Paris coverage for days. In the UK, BBC News 24 reported on virtually nothing else. On Sunday, I watched even the UK’s Channel 4 news do a one-hour news special from Paris, forsaking all other world news. It didn’t show or report on anything new that hadn’t already been reported on the Saturday, but seemed to exist purely to amplify the mass hysteria and sense of historic, world-changing drama.
This weekend, the English Premier League was to play the French anthem before all football matches.
Facebook asking all its billions of users whether they wanted to change their icon to incorporate the French flag?
On the one hand, it’s a nice sentiment to show solidarity with the Paris victims. On the other hand, where was this sentiment in previous tragedies or losses of life? The Houla massacre in Syria? The relentless Saudi-led decimation of Yemen? The downing of a Russian passenger plane in the Sina? Five years of civilian casualties in Syria? ISIL massacres in Iraq last year? Or even natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis? Why is it only for Paris that Facebook tries to guilt-trip its scores of users into showing solidarity? To be fair, I was surprised by how many people seemed to react badly to this and ask the same question; but maybe that’s just the circles I tend to roll in, because I did see lots of users changing their icons like they were told to. You Tube, Amazon and others got in on the symbolism too.
This psychological operation was best exemplified by the lighting-up of various landmarks across the world in French colors, again to show solidarity. This actually seemed to happen suspiciously quickly in some cases, particularly the World Trade Center site.
Again, this was never done for the quarter-of-a-million dead in Syria or for the children of Yemen, or for the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip last year, etc. And I don’t believe it’s just because ‘white lives matter’ or anything like that, but more specifically because we are all *meant* to have focused deeply on Paris and what we’re told was happening.
These aren’t just friendly gestures. These images and gestures are designed to imprint themselves onto our minds, to shape our psychology.
We’re supposed to believe and always remember that Friday 13th 2015 ‘changed the world forever’, just as 9/11 changed the world forever. And we’re supposed to understand that the whole civilised world (including Qatar, which hilariously also lit up a landmark in French colors, despite being a primary funder of ISIL and terrorism) has united against this terrible, demonic ‘threat’ to civilisation and that we’re all together in both accepting the official narrative of what happened and in regarding ourselves and our societies as somehow the great ‘victim’ of the entire narrative.
It’s this mass identification with victimhood that is the main part of the Psy-Op. Never mind the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria on account of Western-funded terrorism. Never mind the million-plus Iraqis dead from Western, US-led aggression or the permanent erasing of the nation of Libya from existence by a French-led, illegal military operation. And most of all, never mind the fact that ‘ISIS’ is largely our creation.
No, the West is the victim; wealthy and eternal Paris, just like wealthy, eternal New York, is the victim.
Everyone is told, both overtly and subliminally, ‘focus all of your grief and sympathy here’ in Paris or New York and not in Aleppo or Mosul, Tripoli or Gaza.
That’s the Psy-Op. People are so mass-media reliant that they’ll only mourn who they’re told to mourn, while they’ll vilify who they’re told to vilify, and they’ll come together in their masses to mark one tragedy, while entirely ignoring another tragedy going on elsewhere. Now this mass-media manipulation goes on all the time, of course, and not just in terms of the CIA’s famous ‘Operation Mockinbird’ program; but every now and then major events like Paris or 9/11 are created to more aggressively, more overtly, focus everyone’s attention and emotion, so that the great masses of people can all be hypnotically, subliminally and overtly conditioned by the same event and the same symbols and at the same moment in time.
That shared, collective trauma is a shared, collective psychological conditioning that can inform our world-view on an emotional and subliminal level, even if our *intellect* thinks there’s something not right about the narrative.
Wikepdia defines Psy-Ops as ‘planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals’. That’s as good a description as you could get of what appears to have happened in Paris.
This has looked more and more like a planned psy-op, a scripted drama, a trauma-based collective hypnosis, as the days have passed; all perfectly designed to draw everyone in and create a permanently resonating ‘moment in time’ that everyone will look back to as a justification for whatever is going to happen now or later. 9/11 served the same purpose, so that no matter what happened in Iraq or in the War on Terror, people – especially Americans – could look back to 9/11 and their collective emotional trauma, with all its accompanying images, as justification for anything the American military-industrial complex and Neo-Con regime subsequently did. That’s partly why George W. Bush was able to win a second term (even though he hadn’t actually won his first term), and why the American State Department is able to continue peddling nonsensical, insane ideas and statements with a straight face and why mainstream media is able to play out ludicrously fake narratives. Because ‘Never Forget 9/11’.
It’s a way of shutting down debate by forcing everyone to focus on symbols, catchphrases and emotions (and permanent association of specific emotions with those symbols). ‘Pray For Paris’, ‘Je Suis Charlie’, ‘Never Forget’, etc, are all designed to be emotional triggers or ‘trigger-words’.
Hypnosis often works a similar way; by what are known as ‘key words’ or ‘triggers’. A simple trigger word or trigger phrase can be employed by a hypnotist to evoke specific associated feelings or perceptions in their subject.
All that’s necessary is for the trigger word, phrase or symbol to be firmly planted in the subject’s emotional memory and psychology first. Events like 9/11 and 13/11 can be therefore be seen in many ways as a mass hypnosis almost on a par with the Nuremberg Rallies.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not comparing the modern French or American states with Nazism in any moral or ideological terms; I’m simply talking about the power of imagery and dramatic moments as psychological conditioning. The power of mass hypnosis centering around ideas or symbols was something masterfully used by the Nazis. At Hitler’s personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl filmed an entire week-long rally, producing an extraordinary film record, utilising many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects. Riefenstahl’s finished masterpiece was called Triumph of the Will.
It was a similar business after the Charlie Hebdo attack, which involved mass gatherings, a popular catchphrase, and mass solidarity events in different parts of the world. I wrote back then that the ’emotionally-charged issue is serving to engulf the masses in the fog of a trauma-based emotional reaction (further amplified by the experience and imagery of the marches in Paris and elsewhere) and is preventing people from looking beyond that fog’.
That is even more the case now in the wake of this latest attack, where it isn’t only the large gatherings and vigils or the minute’s silence, but the evocative visual stimuli of world landmarks and the social conditioning of Facebook icons. The message all of this instills isn’t just about fearing terrorists, but it is designed to also instill the idea that Western societies – in this instance the great symbolic city of Paris – are the innocent victims in everything that’s happening in the world and that anything Western states do in response is merely justified retaliation. ‘Pray For Paris’, because Paris is the victim; don’t pray for Syrians, because that’s where the Bad Guys came from.
Even children who’ve been seeing all this coverage are going to be conditioned by it to view the world a certain way, just as lots of children on 9/11 were conditioned for life.
Another interesting thing about hypnosis is that it can be induced via crippling fear. In human terms, it’s a much more psychologically complex version of the trance-like state you can induce in certain animals, like a mouse, by startling it with sudden movement or noise. Fear and anxiety can also make people more docile, more susceptible to things they might otherwise not be. This is particularly relevant in France, a society that, in normal circumstances, cherishes liberty above all else.
Fear and trauma also don’t allow you to think straight or reason properly. Many of the people who were attacked in Paris on Friday 13th probably have even had their suspicions about the emerging narrative. But when you’re abruptly caught up in terrifying or horrific events like that and you’re shaken and traumatised, all you want is to be safe and to be assured of your safety. In all the confusion and panic of Friday 13th, it is impossible to tell how many people caught up in the events of that night were crisis actors and how many were complete innocents with no idea what was going on; certainly some of them, especially some of those we’ve seen on film, were actors (in the same vein as in the Boston Marathon bombing), but the majority probably had no idea what was happening and might not have thought they were under attack by ‘ISIS’ until they got home and turned on the TV and were told.
Had they not been told they’d been attacked by ISIL, they might’ve been telling a very different story about what happened. This is already evident in some of the eyewitness testimony we’ve had that contradicts the official narrative.
The celebrity involvement is also tediously employed to further glamorise the drama and make it all the more relatable for a dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed TV audience, particularly in America. This is seen in scripted dramas like an American TV personality claiming his daughter was at the Stade de France and then later saying she was at the Bataclan. It all seems to be part of a real-world ‘movie’ production being played out. What I have observed, disturbingly (and reluctantly), in the past week is that masses of people, not just in France but everywhere, are being psychologically programmed.
You, your children, your grandmother, even your little kitty-kat, are all being majorly mind-fucked. I was too; but only for about an hour. As soon as it became obvious they had no footage whatsoever of any explosions at the Stade de France, I was thankfully snapped out of any mass-induced trance immediately.
Furthermore, ‘ISIS’ itself is a massive Psy-Op designed to create fear and anxiety in the West and exacerbate racial and cultural tension and mistrust, all the while being used to achieve Geo-political objectives in Libya (already accomplished), Syria (pending), and the rest of the Middle East (as per the Zionist/Yinon Plan and US/Neo-Con agenda). Lebanon will be next, but no one cares because we’re all too busy watching Paris.
‘ISIS’ is in fact the ultimate Psy-Op. Even the name ‘ISIS‘ was invented by Western media, probably following directions from intelligence agencies. The jihadists in Iraq and Syria call themselves ‘ISIL’, and the Arabs call them by the derogatory name ‘Daesh’; ‘ISIS’ is a Psy-Op name the media continues to use because it has occult connotations and ancient connotations of the Egyptian Goddess, and – I suspect – because it phonetically sounds very similar to ‘SS’ when you say it, bringing to mind associations with the Nazi Stormtroopers. Things like this work on a subliminal level, but help to convince the broader population that ‘ISIS’ is the new ‘SS’ and that a Third World War may be necessary, just as the Second World War was.
And the idea is frequently put across now that this is a grave threat to Western society on a par with the Nazis and that this attack in Paris was the worst since World War II.
‘ISIS’ also has its menacing black-flag symbol that terrifies peace-loving people in the West, just as the Nazi swatsika became a symbol of evil decades ago; even though the swastika itself, prior to the Nazis, wasn’t a negative symbol at all – just as the Koranic script on the ‘ISIS’ flag doesn’t represent anything remotely ‘evil’, but is made to seem so. It is intended to terrify and program people on multiple levels, some of it overt, some of it subliminal. Daily ‘ISIS’ stories in mainstream newspapers are part of the long-playing Psy-Op, designed to condition people to be afraid of this terrible, inhuman threat from the East.
And in actual fact, the emergence of ISIL in the Middle East in many ways was also a Psy-Op conducted against populations in parts of Iraq and Syria (and Libya subsequently), with populations being – certainly in the early stages – terrified by what they were seeing and the stories they were hearing. This was something I touched upon when writing about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Last summer, when I first heard that a mysterious figure named ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ was being declared “the leader of all Muslims everywhere” by ‘Islamic State’ propagandists, it was one of the most disturbing things I had heard in a while; but I also clearly recognised it as a major, major piece of psychological warfare being conducted against Muslims in part of Iraq, Syria and beyond, and that it was cleverly rooted in Islamic prophecy concerning the End of the World. It was all designed to confuse, terrify and even bewitch some people, particularly young men, in those places; because here comes an ultra-violent group, spouting prophecy, massively funded, armed with Western weapons and vehicles, clearly supported from the outside by powerful backers, and declaring a holy, puritan Caliphate – that in itself is a big-time Psy-Op. According to a Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, a chief American military spokesman of the Iraq campaign, Baghdadi never even existed and was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor.
Even the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is designed to be divisive and inflammatory; as the original ‘Abu Bakr’ was the first Caliph of the first Caliphate and is also seen as a symbol of the schism between Sunni and Shia Islam.
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So it can be seen that a major psychological conditioning has been going on right across the board, engulfing minds and collective mind-sets in different parts of the world, most of it regarded as ‘post-9/11’. But the Friday 13th attacks in Paris and the subsequent outpouring of emotion, fear and anxiety, coupled with the heavy symbolism and focus is all designed to be a massive hypnotic/brainwashing amplifier that works at different levels of consciousness, some subtle, some overt.
And some of it occult in nature; which is the level at which the symbolism speaks to those ‘in the know’, but is missed by the majority of us plebeians.
Some non-linear thinking exposes possibilities that might explain why Paris was the site of the attacks, why Friday 13th was the chosen date, what is invoked or signified in the locations chosen, and what it may all be about.
It may be worth noting, as some others have, that Friday 13th is a date of occult significance, partly because it was the date the Knights Templar were betrayed and massacred in Paris in 1307, from which point – according to the legends – the Order’s occult or secret knowledge went underground to be preserved only by secret societies. It is believed by some – and possibly incorrectly – that the Templars were Satanists. That may be more a case of politically-motivated demonisation from the era (the authorities wanted a reason to steal the Templars’ immense wealth), but what certainly is accepted is that they were an Order of great occult significance.
These curiosities are in addition to the broader fact that Paris itself is historically a city of great occult or esoteric significance, a capital city for secret societies, and, like Washington DC and the City of London, believed by many to be laid out according to esoteric symbolism. In fact, Washington DC’s unique design was the work of Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The esoteric city-plan of Paris and its national monuments was the subject of a book by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock called Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith.
Even aside from that, however, the Knights Templar are particularly significant because they were the first international banking elite/cartel and were a model not only for subsequent and current secret societies but also for subsequent banking elites. The Templars also financed European Crusades and wars of aggression in the Middle East and oversaw the theft of wealth from the Muslim world, so they have great significance right across the board. It is also thought by many that these Crusades, conducted by barbaric religious fanatics from Europe (the ‘Daesh’ of their day, if you like), were what provoked Islamic societies into becoming more aggressive. This was at a time when the Islamic world was still quite close in time to its ‘Golden Age’, in which science, philosophy, medicine and astronomy had flourished and cities like Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were great seats of learning while most of Europe was still mired in religious intolerance and persecution, with brutal inquisitions going on and people being burnt or tortured left, right and centre.
The date Friday 13th – especially in regard to the city of Paris – is highly symbolically significant. But the Templars aren’t the only factor. The Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre (pictured above) is the oldest surviving church in Paris and was held to be the location at which the vows were taken that led to the founding of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuit Order. Jesuit conspiracy theories, particularly the earliest ones, often focused on the personality of Adam Weishaupt, a Professor of Canon Law at a Jesuit school who went on to found the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati.
I’ve usually kept a distance from modern fascination with ‘the Illuminati’ or the occult in general; I don’t particularly regard ‘the occult’ with any kind of disapproval or see it through any religious lens, so conspiracy-lore ‘Illuminati’ obsession isn’t something that has particularly interested me. However, there are times – and this Paris business is one of those times – where the symbolism and connection is so obvious that it becomes difficult to ignore it, even for someone who prefers to steer clear of it.
Wikipedia further highlights that Weishaupt was accused of being ‘the secret leader of the New World Order, and even of being the Devil himself’.
Now, let me just state this: the issue is not whether people like you or I believe in these religious or even occult concepts or realities, but it’s about understanding that *other people* and organisations *do* believe in these things. And in their world, all these things are symbolically significant and have symbolic/esoteric power. It’s the same reason that it is significant that Princess Diana was killed close to the site of the ancient Temple of Diana in Paris. I don’t demonise the ‘occult’ any more than I would demonise Christianity or Islam; in all three cases, my problem is with what specific organisations, networks and people are doing, and not about what belief system or mythology they happen to be co-opting or abusing in order to do it.
What’s fascinating is that both the Knights Templar and the Jesuit Order are claimed by contrary theorists to be both the source of Freemasonry and of the modern banking elite; and in regard to the city of Paris, both the Templars and Jesuits are historically significant.
But get this: getting back to the Jesuit Order and the Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre; according to its traditional history, the church was founded by Saint Denis in the third century, and moreover, Théodore Vacquier, the first municipal archaeologist of Paris, identified remains on the site belonging to the ancient Temple of Mars, from which Montmartre took its name. Mars was of course the God of War; and if there was one immediate thing these Paris attacks brought about it was Francois Hollande’s declaration that this was “an act of war” and France now would wage war in Syria. Hollande is known to be a high-ranking Masonic figure, and indeed French politics and high office are known to be riddled with masons; and to such men, symbols, invocations and reenactments are hugely important.
In that context, we can also note that the band playing at the Bataclan theatre on Friday 13th – the Eagles of Death Metal – are led by a musician who calls himself ‘the Devil’ (and who, like a lot of famous musicians, has been seen in recent years making occult signals and symbols – it’s only certain musicians and celebrities who seem to do this, probably because they’re very low-level initiates or fodder in secret fraternities), and more remarkably that the song they were reported to have been playing at the moment the unknown gunmen came in and began the massacre was titled ‘Kiss the Devil’, which begins with the lyrics ‘Who’ll love the Devil/Who’ll sing his song?’
Both the date of the attack and the nature of the performers at the Bataclan have led some to suggest the massacre was an occult or Satanic ‘blood sacrifice’ carried out as a symbolic sacrifice by those ‘in the know’; this could’ve therefore been, in part, a sacrifice to Mars, the God of War – and moreover as the event with which to literally *declare war*, as Hollande of course immediately did.
If you think I’m going off on one here, please note that the illegal operation to invade Iraq (2003) and the illegal operation to destroy Gaddafi and Libya (2011) both occurred on March 19th, and March 19th is the traditional date that celebrates the Roman goddess of war, Minerva; and Minerva is thought by some to be a particularly revered mythical figure in Masonic societies. According to John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (published in 1798), the third degree of the Bavarian Illuminati was called ‘Minerval’ or ‘Brother of Minerva’, in honour of the goddess. Later, this title was also adopted as the first level of initiation for the world-famous, notorious occultist/Satanist Aleister Crowley’s OTO rituals.
Robison was a renowned and accomplished Scottish physicist and mathematician and professor of philosophy. Following the French Revolution, Robison was suspicious about what had really been behind it and he had become disenchanted with elements of the Enlightenment; his 1798 book accused Freemasonry of having been infiltrated by Weishaupt’s ‘Order of the Illuminati’.
The full, original title of his work was Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe.
And further, ‘Saint Denis’ (which, as explained above, is symbolic of the Jesuit church in Paris) is where the Stade de France is located and was also the location the alleged ISIL terrorists were holed up in and the site of the subsequent deadly raid that saw the remaining ‘perpetrators’ killed a few days ago.
So, as I said, even when – like me – you’re someone who usually resists this kind of area of discussion, there comes a point where the symbolism is so pronounced that you can’t really ignore it anymore.
What’s even more fascinating than all of that, however, is the pre-existing connection between the city of Paris and the goddess Isis. Paris was thought to be a center for the worship of Isis and the location of a major Temple of Isis.
As early as the 15th century AD, Parisian historians believed that the city of Paris owed its very name to Isis.
In 1512, the French historian Lemaire de Belge reported that an idol of the goddess Isis had been worshipped in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris. The same belief was reported by Gilles Corrozet, the first historian to produce a comprehensive guide of the city. In 1550 Corrozet wrote, ‘… coming to the imposition of the name (of Paris), it is said that there, where stands St. Germain-des-Pres was a temple of Isis of whom it is said was the wife of the great Osiris or Jupiter the Just. The statue (of Isis) having come in our times, of which we recall… This place is called the Temple of Isis and, for the nearby city, this was called Parisis… meaning near the Temple of Isis‘.
New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty, for that matter, is regarded a statue of Isis that was gifted by French Freemasons to the American Freemasons who were the Founding Fathers.
So the manufactured ‘ISIS‘ coming to literally the city of Isis (Paris) to allegedly carry out attacks is just ridiculously rich in occult symbolism. The goddess Isis is, by all accounts, a favorite of occult or Masonic societies (and remember the jihadists don’t call themselves ‘ISIS’, but ISIL, and before that they were called simply ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’). For the record, I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with the worshipping of the Egyptian goddess; it would seem as valid a religious belief as any.
But with all of that as context, the Paris attacks of Friday 13th look very different to what they’re portrayed as.
Whether or not there were any actual ‘jihadists’ on the ground (and there may well have been), when one examines the symbolism and its historic context, what we are looking at might well have been a symbolic false-flag massacre designed not only to pave the way for war, but to signal and announce an occult-inspired push towards what John Robison cited centuries ago as Weishaupt’s and the Bavarian Illuminati’s ‘New World Order’ model. The attack invoked all the necessary symbolic markers – the Templars, the Jesuits, the Bavarian Illuminati and the ‘New World Order’ concept, the God of War, the literal ‘sacrifice’ to the symbolic ‘Devil’ at the Bataclan, and so on.
And that would be why all the deliberate symbolism was invoked – to deliberately signal that fact to all ‘those in the know’, while letting the rest of us think this was simply the work of those terrible, disaffected and stupid, radicalised teenagers.
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Before I sound like a clichéd conspiracy theorist, however, I’d like to clarify that I don’t necessarily view ‘Masons’ as inherently a negative force, nor do I think a demonisation of the original, eighteenth century Bavarian Illuminati is necessarily historically accurate. The original movement, which was quickly suppressed, seemed to be an intellectual movement to oppose state abuses of power and the excessive influence of religion on public life; and excessive demonisation of Adam Weishaupt may have simply been a case of religious extremists objecting to the Enlightenment and the growth of reason and intellect.
A society or fellowship being secretive isn’t a reason to demonise it; sometimes the secrecy and secret handshakes and signals are necessary for safety purposes; in pre-Enlightenment Europe the church and the enforcers of religious orthodoxy were entirely intolerant of intellectuals and free-thinkers and intelligent people were therefore forced to conduct their gatherings and pursuits in secrecy. It would be comparable to if a ‘guild of liberals’ or a ‘fellowship of reformists’ were to form in modern-day Saudi Arabia – they’d have to meet in secret and develop secret language and vetting procedures to avoid being arrested and even executed.
The question, however, in my view is whether later offshoots or societies simply adopted or co-opted the ‘Illuminati’ ideology (just like co-opting ancient esoteric imagery like Isis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman gods, etc) and developed it in a different, sinister direction. In essence, all ideals or movements, no matter how noble in the first instance, are eventually hijacked or subverted – that is simply the way of the world. This can be seen in all religions, in most political movements, and classically in numerous states or governments that have been based on a high ideal or system only to later become corrupt, oppressive institutions that no longer resemble their original purpose or character.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to consider that although the original thinkers and individuals behind the early ‘Illuminati’ or secret societies may have been entirely of noble intent and looking to the good of all society, subsequent perversions or subversions of those societies may well be a more sinister force, with collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen’s clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission), all being movements of darker intent in the typical conspiracy-lore sense and trying to bring about a ‘New World Order’ based not on the original ideas or ideals but on something altogether more corrupt and sinister; as I said, all movements are eventually corrupted or degraded from within and all high-minded principles co-opted by ambitious men.
I also, for the record, don’t wish to sound like an anti-occult, right-wing religious fundamentalist, as nothing could be further from the truth; I actually have great interest in the ‘occult’, as well as in old mythologies and mystery traditions, including the Isis mythology. And I have no religious or other type of bias and consider myself always a neutral, objective observer.
But in the context of all the symbolism highlighted above, it is more than interesting to note what has happened since last week’s attacks. Rarely has a move towards the classic ‘New World Order’ model seemed so blatant as it seems right now in France.
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Vanessa Beeley, on the Wall Will Fall, has just also put up a very good analysis, which also focuses on controversies over Facebook employing its ‘Safety Check App’ during the Paris operation and an explanation of why this probably wasn’t the friendly or sympathetic act that Facebook wants Parisians to think it was. She also makes the crucial point that ‘The 13/11 Paris attacks with all the accompanying media frenzy will surely lead us further down the path to the implementation of Patriot Act equivalents in Europe’.
In the United States, September 11th 2001 – the Neo-Cons’ predicted and desired “Pearl Harbour” – established a “permanent state of emergency” (the Patriot Act), allowing it to make radical changes domestically and also to launch several imperialist wars of aggression. France’s state of emergency could be paving the way for France and Europe to follow/adopt, or perhaps more accurately to come into line with, the American model.
Francois Hollande gave an historic speech at Versailles on Monday before the upper and lower houses of parliament – only the third time this has happened since 1848 – to declare “France is at war”. The bombing of Syria, on the surface of it, may be an assault on the ‘ISIL’ strongholds, but ultimately this renewed French military operation, in concert with American operations, is aimed at the removal of the Syrian state and the reconfiguration of the country.
France has not only sent out hundreds of its own troops again into the streets, but EU troops, we’re now told, could be sent to France. The EU has opened the door to even Britain sending troops or other specialists to France as part of this ‘state of emergency’. The French state has cited ‘Article 42’, which compels other EU states to send support, including military support.
All of this being to combat a rag-tag group of teenage terrorists that France, NATO, the United States and its allies created in the first place.
Meanwhile the deployment of army soldiers and possible Special Forces could also pave the way for more militarization to come, not limited to France. Earlier this year when the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred, it wasn’t just France that deployed armed soldiers into the streets, but Belgium followed suit. If further terrorist attacks are to occur in Europe, this all may multiply and spread, drawing us towards the deployment of an ‘EU Army’. The elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) are reported to be backing up undercover armed police officers to protect the UK in the wake of the Paris attacks. More than 60 soldiers, including SAS and SRR personnel were deployed after a high-level security meeting was held at MI5.
Moreover, Francois Holland has said the French constitution may need to be altered in order to deal with this terrorist threat, as the country is being prepared for potentially draconian policies, including the possibility of expelling foreigners considered a threat. With the state of emergency stated to extend over three months, the president seeks to expand his own powers and the powers of the state. This is comparable to what is happening in once-secular Turkey, where the ruling AKP government has stated intentions to alter Turkey’s secular constitution, partly in order to combat the very terrorist threat that the Turkish state itself has been enabling against Syria.
Some, even in France, see the dangers of this. “If you give the president powers that have been reserved practically for civil war, that is extremely serious,” said Adrienne Charmet, campaign director for a French digital-rights group, la Quadrature du Net.
These attacks have also occurred only a few months after legislators passed sweeping new surveillance laws affording the government expanded powers to closely monitor the mobile phone and Internet communications of its citizens, including monitoring phone calls and emails without the authorization of a judge. The same law requires Internet service providers to retain and provide mass data on the Web-browsing and general Internet habits of millions of people to intelligence agencies. All of this might be a very effective way of fighting terrorism and thwarting future attacks; but that’s assuming of course that there have been any genuine terrorist attacks.
France has essentially been maneuvering to go the US/NSA route and establish a surveillance super-state based on the American model; a route it can now follow with virtually unanimous public support thanks to the Friday 13th attacks. And where France leads, the EU might follow; and in that scenario, we’ll end up with a NSA-style surveillance super-state that spans the entire Western world, backed up on the ground by armed troops with expanded powers to arrest, confine or eliminate people.
In France, the talk is already of people being legally arrested without trial or charges and about law-enforcement agencies being allowed to break into people’s houses at any time of night and without any search or arrest warrants. This essentially turns parts of France into a situation comparable to occupation-era Iraq.
These are Orwellian ideas, to say the least – and in a society that is traditionally seen as the bastion of libertarian principles.
This isn’t a joke; these powers and the intention behind them allows the state to legally act as ‘thought police’ and to go after anyone it wants at any time it wants, without needing a justification. And the main vehicle for this expansion of control is the Internet. In his 1928 book, The Open Conspiracy, H. G. Wells offered blueprints for a world revolution and ‘world brain’ to establish a technocratic world state and planned economy.
Further to this, as France moves further towards inevitable thought-policing and curtailing of freedom of speech, Hollande has equated “conspiracy theories” to Nazism and is calling for government regulations to prevent the sharing or publishing of any views deemed as ‘dangerous thought’ by the state. Hollande isn’t alone in this implicated maneuver; British Prime Minster David Cameron has already publicly stated that so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ (for ‘conspiracy theories’, read anything that challenged the official narratives) should be deemed as “extremist” and equivalent to “terrorist” and should be stopped/policed on the basis of ‘national security’.
Thierry Meyssan covers that subject more fully on the Voltaire Network. But this is serious, serious territory we’re now in. The alternative media and independent journalism has been a major problem for geo-political and psy-op conspirators for some time, having played a substantial role in exposing the corporate-media misinformation and the various agendas, from the fraud of 9/11 to the false narratives of the War in Syria. Eliminating as much of this alternative media as possible is a major part of the agenda.
It seems therefore that every element of progression needed to move us into the ‘new world order’ paradigm has been serviced by the Friday 13th attacks in Paris.
And the idea that France, and Paris particularly, would be at the centre of this push is in keeping with all the symbolic significance I highlighted earlier, and also in keeping with the historical precedents in regard to the Templars, the Jesuits, the Masonic traditions, and the banking system. Again, for the record, I’m not saying the original Templars, Jesuits or Masons were dark conspirators, but that they are evoked by modern conspirators as powerful symbols and markers.
Also, further ‘terror attacks’, as we’re being constantly told, are imminent. There is almost certainly going to be a major attack in either the UK or the United States very soon, which will serve to reinforce everything evoked or accomplished in the Paris attacks and will therefore hasten any such agenda further.
Moreover, if we are now being pushed towards a changing world order, people in general are now so scared and unsettled that they’re more likely to embrace it than to resist it. As previously suggested, people are currently in the grip of a trauma-based collective conditioning that Friday 13th was probably designed to create and which the mass media has been excessively working to cement.
This entire paradigm was in fact very lucidly laid out by George Lucas in his Star Wars saga, which is easily viewed as a story about false-flag wars in which one source is controlling both sides of the conflict, the ultimate purpose being to end a democratic Republic and turn it into an imperial dictatorship. In the Star Wars saga, it is via a carefully arranged false-flag war that the republic is placed into a ‘state of emergency’ and the political conspirator is granted ’emergency powers’, setting him up as a dictator and paving the way for a totalitarian regime that lasts decades.
This is a particularly good video on Star Wars as a parable for false-flag terrorism and the New World Order, which is really worth a watch. And for anyone who’s never seen the Star Wars prequels, I’d highly recommend you look past the Jar Jar Binks problem and do so. George Lucas in fact clearly had a vision of Star Wars as not just a fantasy or even just a morality play, but as a warning. In fact even in his early notes for early drafts for the first movie in 1977, he wrote that the Empire was “America ten years from now”.
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The actual reality is that ‘ISIS’ *isn’t* any kind of existential threat to ‘the West’, to Europe, to France or to civilisation, certainly nothing like on the level of 1930s fascism or the dangers of the Cold War.
‘ISIS’ is in fact simply a manufactured bogeyman, its rank-and-file consisting mostly of teenagers or disenfranchised young men who’ve been overly influenced by a mixture of Salafist indoctrination, violent, war-based computer gaming and intelligence-agency manipulation.
‘ISIS’ could be completely eliminated with little more than a sustained police-style investigation to identify and arrest recruiters, identify and cut off the sources of financing, identify the people buying oil from them, and identify the source of the arms supplies and put a stop to it. The air-strikes wouldn’t even be necessary. Of course, there’s probably a reason such investigations aren’t conducted; because no government wants to conduct an investigation in which they’d have to implicate or prosecute elements of its own state or call into question the activities of many of its allies. And any genuine investigation of the ISIL nightmare would lead any genuine investigator ultimately not to simply Baghdad or Syria, but to Qatar, Riyadh, Washington, Brussels and other problematic sources.
‘ISIS’ is an existential threat only in one part of the world and that’s the Middle East. It is an existential threat to the people and the nation of Syria and to Iraq and to post-Gaddafi Libya, even to parts of Egypt and possibly Lebanon. In those places, it is a matter of life and death; and not the life and death of just people, but of entire nations, national identities and cultures. But of course ISIL wouldn’t *be* there at all but for the US-led invasion of Iraq, US-led covert ops in Syria and the French-led NATO decimation of Libya.
But in terms of Europe or Western civilisation, ISIL is only a ‘threat’ to whatever extent it is enabled or allowed to be by the real orchestrators of the entire conspiracy. What now appears to be being played out is a very bloody, very disgusting pantomime for various purposes; we may in fact be approaching a Rubicon from which it might be very difficult to turn back.
Georgia’s infamous ‘School of Assassins’ was besieged by hundreds of activists from across the country, calling for the closure of the military training center and a halt to the militarization of Latin America by the US.
The 25th anniversary protest march was held over the weekend in the town of Lumpkin in northern Georgia, and at the gates of Fort Benning army base, where the former US Army School of the Americas (SOA), hidden now under the name of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is located, along with the nearby Stewart Immigrant Detention Center, the country’s largest for-profit immigration prison.
Dozens of nonprofit organizations and some 1,400 activists joined the rally, which aimed to protest against the notorious “School of Assassins,” as SOA is referred to, for its production of “death squads” that commit mass murders, torture and other human rights’ violations and military crimes across the globe, activists claim. Watchdogs maintain several Latin Americans dictators and many more security officials, who have perpetrated such crimes, graduated from SOA.
“Despite a shocking human rights abuse record, the School of the Americas continues to operate with US taxpayer money. Closing the SOA would send a strong human rights message to Latin America and the world,” SOA Watch founder and organizer of the event, Father Roy Bourgeois, said in a statement.
Hundreds held vigil in front of Fort Benning, while others marched to protest to the immigrant prison, where some 1,800 migrants await repatriation. Eleven people were arrested after crossing onto the grounds of the prison, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.
The event was attended, among others, by members of Veterans for Peace.
“From Ferguson to Ayotzinapa, we must continue to denounce the militarization of police across the Americas and call for an end of state-sponsored terrorism and violence against our communities. Our clamor for justice must be heard!” the pacifist NGO’s online statement reads.
Newly released documents, obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, suggest the FBI has been monitoring the activities of SOA Watch and infiltrating the NGO, using confidential informants and counterterrorism units.
In shooting down a Russian jet operating over Syria, Turkey’s nefarious role in the Syrian conflict has intensified. It also presents a damning indictment of the West’s seriousness in confronting extremism and terrorism.
In the aftermath of the spate of ISIS atrocities – first the downing of the Russian passenger plane, Metrojet Flight 7K9268 over the Sinai at the end of October, killing all 224 on board, followed by the killing of 43 civilians in Beirut in a suicide bomb attack, and most recently the slaughter of 130 people in Paris in multiple suicide bombings and shootings – we now know who is serious about confronting this medieval death cult and who is not.
More, we are starting to uncover those who speak the language of anti-terrorism while in practice working to facilitate and support it.
Turkey is a key culprit in this regard. A murky relationship has long existed between Ankara, ISIS, al Nusra, and other jihadi groups operating in Syria. Indeed, on the most basic level, without their ability to pass back and forth across the Turkish border at will, those groups could not have operated as easily and effectively as they had until Russia intervened.
However, according to a report by David L Phillips of Columbia University, Turkey’s support for extremist groups operating in Syria, including ISIS has been even more extensive than previously thought. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Phillips reveals that the Turkish government, a member of NATO and a key Western ally, has been involved in helping ISIS with recruitment, training, and has provided it with intelligence and safe havens and sanctuary. Most recently it has been exposed as a major customer for stolen Syrian oil, supplied by the terrorist group.
Perhaps the most damning evidence contained in the report when it comes to Turkey’s role, is in relation to its actions and inaction when it came to the siege of the Kurdish town of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border in September and October of 2014.
As Phillips reveals: “Anwar Moslem, Mayor of Kobani, said on September 19, 2014: ‘Based on the intelligence we got two days before the breakout of the current war, trains full of forces and ammunition, which were passing by north of Kobani, had an-hour-and-ten-to-twenty-minute-long stops in these villages: Salib Qaran, Gire Sor, Moshrefat Ezzo. There is evidence, witnesses, and videos about this. Why is ISIS strong only in Kobani’s east? Why is it not strong either in its south or west? Since these trains stopped in villages located in the east of Kobani, we guess they had brought ammunition and additional force for the ISIS.’ In the second article on September 30, 2014, a CHP delegation visited Kobani, where locals claimed that everything from the clothes ISIS militants wear to their guns comes from Turkey.”
The world will never forget how, during the siege of Kobani, as its Kurdish defenders mounted a heroic defense of the town against thousands of ISIS fighters, armed with tanks and artillery, Turkish tanks and troops sat just over the border and did nothing to intervene.
Likewise, no one will forget that earlier this year Turkey carried out airstrikes against those same Kurdish volunteers of the PKK/YPG within Syria, while depicting them as terrorists. Turkey’s oppression of its Kurdish minority going back many years is of course a matter of record.
President Erdogan and his government has undeniably been a key in the destabilization of Syria, doing its utmost to foment regime change. As with the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies, before Russia’s intervention Turkey was hovering over Syria as a vulture hovers over a dying animal, waiting for it to perish before descending to feed on its carcass.
The fact that Turkey remains a key Western ally exposes the moral high ground from which Washington and its allies have lectured Russia over its role in Syria as nothing more than a dung-heap of hypocrisy.
If the West was serious about confronting terrorism, was serious about returning stability to a region it has helped to set on fire, it would reconsider its close ties to both Turkey and the Saudis, whose governments between them have been wading in the river of blood they have helped shed these past four years. Turkey’s claim that the Russian military aircraft it shot down had encroached on its airspace and ignored multiple warnings should be treated with the credibility it deserves, especially when we recall that prior to Russia’s participation in the conflict, Turkey’s violation of Syrian airspace and the Syrian border was happening on a regular basis.
With Russia’s presence in Syria having put paid to Erdogan’s objective of toppling the Syrian government, we begin to discern its efforts to enlist the support of NATO in putting pressure on Russia to desist. It also helps to explain why the West continues to refuse President Putin’s call for cooperation and unity in the effort to eradicate ISIS and other extremist groups massacring and slaughtering their way across the country, with the intention of turning it into a mass grave.
In the wake of the recent spate of ISIS atrocities unleashed against Russian, Lebanese, and French civilians, the grounds for refusing to enter such an alliance are as indefensible as Turkey’s role in the conflict and its most recent action in shooting down a Russian aircraft.
As the man said: “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. He wrote a memoir of the five years he spent in Hollywood, where he worked in the movie industry prior to becoming a full time and activist and organizer with the US antiwar movement post-9/11. The book is titled “Dreams That Die” and is published by Zero Books. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1
An American scholar and journalist in Wisconsin says not only was the Zionist regime the primary force behind the 9/11 attacks, it was Israeli spies working for Mossad – not Arab Muslims – who celebrated the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday, a day after an international Jewish organization based in the US denounced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claim that dozens of Arab Muslims cheered as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11 as unsubstantiated.
“It is unfortunate that Donald Trump is giving new life to long-debunked conspiracy theories about 9/11,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement on Sunday, after Trump said in an interview with ABC News that there were “people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down.”
The ADL statement said there is no basis for Trump’s claim, calling it irresponsible and factually challenged. “This seems to be a variation of the anti-Semitic myth that a group of Israelis were seen celebrating as the Twin Towers fell.”
Commenting to Press TV, Dr. Barrett said the Anti-Defamation League is “correct that Trump is factually challenged when he talks about the Arabs celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11th.”
“But he in fact is referring to a true story, which is that Israeli spies working for the intelligence agency Mossad were in fact arrested after they were caught celebrating the September 11th attacks,” he added.
Sivan Kurzberg led Israeli spies
“They were set up to film the World Trade Center attacks before the first plane hit. They wildly celebrated the flaming and then exploding Twin Towers. They photographed themselves flicking cigarette lighters in front of the burning and exploding buildings,” he stated.
“And then they were arrested. They were held for forty or so days. They failed lie detector tests, and they then returned to Israel. They went on television and admitted that they were there to ‘document the event’, that is Israeli spies led by Sivan Kurzberg are on record in the Israeli mainstream media, bragging that they were sent to New York to document the event,” he said.
“And that means that the people they were working for, namely the Israeli government, were complicit in the event. Apparently the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t know that, because they are saying that Trump’s comment blaming the Arabs appears to be a mixed up version of what they are calling the ‘myth’ of the dancing Israelis celebrating their success on 9/11. But that’s not a myth,” Dr. Barrett emphasized.
“It’s been reported reliably in all kinds of mainstream media, including the Bergen New Jersey Record, which first exposed the story. The leading Jewish newspaper in the United States, The Forward, and Israeli media – including the television show in which Kurzberg brags about being sent to New York to document the event, that was coming up on September 11th,” he pointed out.
“So, the Anti-Defamation League, which is actually an Israeli propaganda outfit, is essentially running a misdirection ploy. They are trying to discredit ‘conspiracy theories’ about 9/11, because they know full well that the government of Israel was the prime force behind the attacks on September 11th,” the analyst explained.
Jewish group lying about 9/11
“The Anti-Defamation League is lying when they are calling it a myth. It isn’t a myth. And every place from the Jewish newspaper The Forward to the Israeli media, even to Fox News, which ran an investigative series by Carl Cameron, admits that this actually happened. Mossad agents were caught red-handed celebrating the success of their destruction of their World Trade Center by controlled demolition on September 11th, 2001,” Dr. Barrett concluded.
The September, 11, 2001 attacks, also known as the 9/11 attacks, were a series of strikes in the US which killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.
US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.
They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, and foreign intelligence agencies orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.
Dr. Barrett and other eminent scholars have argued that the 9/11 attacks were carried out through a “controlled demolition” technique by placing explosive material inside the twin towers, causing the structures to collapse on themselves in a matter of seconds.
The problem with America’s “anti-ISIS coalition” is not a matter of poor planning or a lack of resources. It is not a matter of lacking leadership or military might. The problem with America’s “anti-ISIS coalition” is that it never existed in the first place. There is no US-led war on ISIS, and what’s worse, it appears that the US, through all of its allies, from across the Persian Gulf to Eastern Europe and even within Washington itself, are involved in feeding ISIS, not fighting it.
Going from Syria itself, outward according to geographical proximity, we can trace ISIS’ support all the way back to Washington itself. And as we do, efforts like the “talks” in Vienna, and all the non-solutions proposed by the US and its allies, appear ever more absurd while the US itself is revealed not as a stabilizing force in a chaotic world, but rather the very source of that chaos.
In Syria
Within Syria itself, it is no secret that the US CIA is arming, training, funding and equipping militant groups, groups the US now claims Russia is bombing instead of “ISIS.” However, upon reading carefully any report out of newspapers in the US or its allies it becomes clear that these “rebels” always seem to be within arms reach of listed terrorist organizations, including Jabhat al Nusra.
Al Nusra is literally Al Qaeda in Syria. Not only that, it is the terrorist organization from which ISIS allegedly split from. And while the US has tried to add in a layer of extra plausible deniability to its story by claiming Nusra and ISIS are at odds with one another, the fact is Nusra and ISIS still fight together on the same battlefield toward the same objectives.
And while we’ll get to who is propping up these two terrorist groups beyond Syria’s borders, it should be noted that the US and European media itself has reported a steady flow of weapons and fighters out from its own backed “rebel” groups and into the ranks of Nusra and ISIS.
Syrian rebels trained by the United States gave some of their equipment to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday, the latest blow to a troubled U.S. effort to train local partners to fight Islamic State militants.
The rebels surrendered six pick-up trucks and some ammunition, or about one-quarter of their issued equipment, to a suspected Nusra intermediary on Sept. 21-22 in exchange for safe passage, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, in a statement.
Abu Ahmed and others say the FSA has lost fighters to al-Nusra in Aleppo, Hama, Idlib and Deir al-Zor and the Damascus region. Ala’a al-Basha, commander of the Sayyida Aisha brigade, warned the FSA chief of staff, General Salim Idriss, about the issue last month. Basha said 3,000 FSA men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition. FSA fighters in the Banias area were threatening to leave because they did not have the firepower to stop the massacre in Bayda, he said. Advertisement
The FSA’s Ahrar al-Shimal brigade joined al-Nusra en masse while the Sufiyan al-Thawri brigade in Idlib lost 65 of its fighters to al-Nusra a few months ago for lack of weapons. According to one estimate the FSA has lost a quarter of all its fighters.
Al-Nusra has members serving undercover with FSA units so they can spot potential recruits, according to Abu Hassan of the FSA’s al-Tawhid Lions brigade.
Taken together, it is clear to anyone that even at face value the US strategy of arming “moderate rebels” is a complete failure and that to continue proposing such a failed strategy is basically an admission that (in fact) the US seeks to put weapons and trained fighters directly into the ranks of Al Nusra and other hardcore terrorist groups. Of course, in reality, that was the plan all along. So even before our journey leaves Syria, we see how the US is feeding, not fighting terrorism, completely and intentionally.
Turkey
And of course, before many of the fighters even reach the battlefield in Syria, they have spent time training, arming up and staging in Turkey and Jordan. There has been a lot of talk in Washington, London and Brussels about establishing safe havens in Syria itself for this army of rebel-terrorists, but in reality, Turkey and Jordan have served this purpose since the war began in 2011. All the US and its allies want to do now is extend these safe havens deeper into Syrian territory.
But before that, a steady stream of supplies, weapons and fighters have been pouring over the border, provided by the Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular) and with the explicit complicity of the Turkish government.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle videotaped hundreds of trucks pouring over the Turkish border, bound for ISIS in Syria as part of its story, “ISIS and Turkey’s porous borders” (video here). It was not a scene one would describe as “smuggling” behind the back of Turkish authorities, but rather a scene reminiscent of the Iraq War where fleets of trucks openly supported the full-scale invasion of Iraq by America’s military.
Turkey’s borders aren’t merely porous, they are wide open, with the Turkish government itself clearly involved in filling up the fleets of supply trucks bound for ISIS on a daily basis.
In recent days, as Russia has begun decimating fleets of these trucks, and in particular, oil tankers that, instead of bringing supplies into Syria, are stealing oil for export beyond Syria’s borders, there has been talk about just who this oil is being sold to. Turkey’s name comes up yet again.
Most of the oil is bought by local traders and covers the domestic needs of rebel-held areas in northern Syria. But some low-quality crude has been smuggled to Turkey where prices of over $350 a barrel, three times the local rate, have nurtured a lucrative cross-border trade.
And if some readers don’t find the argument that ISIS sustains itself from within Turkish territory entirely convincing, perhaps a direct admission from the US State Department itself might help. Its Voice of America media network recently reported in an article titled “US, Turkey Poised for Joint Anti-ISIS Operation, Despite Differences” that:
Some have even suspected the Turkish government of cooperating with IS, making allegations that range from weapons transfers to logistical support to financial assistance and the provision of medical services. The Cumhuriyet daily this week published stories that alleged Turkish Intelligence was working hand-in-hand with IS. A former IS spy chief told the paper that during the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani last year, Turkish Intelligence served McDonald’s hamburgers to IS fighters brought in from Turkey.
Some analysts say the pending border operation could help silence some of the criticism.
That the US is still working openly with Turkey despite increasing evidence that Turkey itself is sustaining ISIS in Syria, indicates that the US itself is also interested in perpetuating the terrorist group’s activities for as long as possible/plausible.Eastern Europe
Those nations in Eastern Europe who have either joined NATO or now aspire to, also appear to be directly involved. The large torrent of weapons needed to sustain ISIS’ terrorism within Syria cannot, as a matter of managing public perception, appear to be coming entirely from US arsenals themselves (though hundreds of TOW missile systems and M16s do regularly show up in the hands of Nusra, ISIS and other terrorists organizations). Instead, Soviet bloc weapons are needed and to get them, the US has tapped NATO members like Croatia and aspiring NATO member Ukraine to help arm its ISIS legions.
Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of air shipments to accelerate, officials said.
Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating from there, several officials said.
One wonders how many of these weapons “coincidentally” ended up in Nusra or ISIS’ hands.
More recently, the NATO-installed junta in Ukraine has been implicated not in supplying weapons to ISIS by proxy, but supplying them to ISIS much more directly after a high-profile bust was made in Kuwait implicating Kiev.
The Ukrainian military has denied knowledge of how its weapons made it into the hands of Islamic State group terrorists. Lebanese citizen Osama Khayat, who was arrested this week in Kuwait with other suspects, said he purchased arms in Ukraine that were meant to be delivered to the militant group in Syria via smuggling routes in Turkey.
Perhaps readers notice a pattern. Washington is using its vast global network and allies to arm and fund terrorists in Syria, supported by massive logistical networks flowing through Turkey and to a lesser extent, Jordan. Everyone from America’s allies in Kiev and Zagreb, to Riyad and Doha, to Ankara and Amman are involved which goes far in explaining just how ISIS got so powerful, and why it still remains so powerful despite its widening war on what appears to be the entire world.
The United States
And all of this brings us back to Washington itself. Surely Washington notices that each and every single one of its allies is involved in feeding, not fighting ISIS. When each and every one of its allies from Kiev to Ankara are involved in arming and supplying ISIS, Washington not only knows, it is likely orchestrating it all to begin with.
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
If, at this point, one is unclear on just who these “supporting powers to the opposition” are, the DIA report itself reveals it is the West, NATO (including Turkey) and its allies in the Persian Gulf.
This Salafist (Islamic) principality (state), or ISIS for short, was not an indirect consequence of US foreign policy, it was (and still very much is) a concerted conspiracy involving multiple states spanning North America, Europe, and the Middle East. It could not exist otherwise.
While Russia attempts to reach westward to piece together an inclusive coalition to finally put an end to ISIS, it is clear that it does so in vain. Washington, Brussels and their regional allies in the Middle East have no intention of putting an end to ISIS. Even today, this very moment, the US and its allies are doing everything within their power to ensure the survival of their terrorist armies inside of Syria for as long as possible before any ceasefire is agreed to. And even if a peace settlement of some sort is struck, all it will do is buy Syria time. No matter how much damage Russia and its genuine coalition consisting of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon deal ISIS within Syria, the networks that fed it from Turkey, Jordan, the Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe and Washington itself remain intact.
One hopes that these networks can be diminished through the principles of multipolarism within the time being bought for Syria through the blood, sacrifice and efforts of Syrian soldiers and Russian airmen.
Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged “faster” and broader American military and political intervention in Syria to fight against Daesh (ISIL).
“The key is to destroy Daesh rapidly in Syria and in Iraq,” Kerry told reporters on Monday. “The president would like to see us go faster.”
Prior to the Daesh attacks in Paris that killed 132 people, President Barack Obama had taken notable steps towards a military escalation in Syria by sending 50 Special Operations forces to Syria, Kerry said.
However, he did not outline any post-Paris additions to those policies.
Kerry made the comments after meeting Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in the UAE’s Abu Dhabi.
The top US diplomat ruled out the notion of a no-fly zone in Syria, recently reiterated by his predecessor Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying it was “not a new idea.”
He also hinted at possible cooperation with Russia against Daesh, providing that Russia stops supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He said that new cooperation “has to be done in a way that manages the passions and the disappointment” of US-backed militants fighting Assad.
The US is escalating its involvement in Syria amid Russia’s intensifying campaign in the country to assist Assad in fighting against ISIL terrorists.
Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now have parts of Syria and Iraq under control.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is determined to end its reliance on Russian technology for space travel, paying billions of dollars to Boeing and SpaceX to come up with an alternative to Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.
The organization, which risks losing its reputation for reliability over a series of failed launches, is hiring Boeing and the private aerospace manufacturer and commercial space transport company, SpaceX, to carry out manned missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the ABC News reported Monday.
Boeing received a $4.2 billion order for sending a crewed flight to space in May, and SpaceX was assigned a $2.4 billion order this Friday.
“It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from US companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Kathy Lueders said in a statement.
NASA expects to blast off its first commercial crew mission in late 2017.
If successful, the new plan will put an end to NASA’s long-standing reliance on Russian technology for such purposes.
This will also allow NASA to save money as it has been paying more than $70 million per astronaut to the Russian Federal Space Agency to reserve seats on board the three-seated Soyuz spacecraft.
However, it is not yet clear if the new alternatives boast the same reliability as Russians’ space technology, since this will be the first time that a private company will take on the task.
SpaceX is developing a capsule design for the mission known as the Crew Dragon, or Dragon V2, which is based on the company’s Dragon cargo capsules.
The commercial company has been already working with NASA on cargo resupply missions to the ISS.
SpaceX uses its own Falcon 9 launch vehicles to deliver the capsule. Despite having an impressive streak of 18 successful launches, the Falcon 9 received much criticism after disintegrating mid-air in July, destroying a 5200 lbs (2359kg) cargo which included a cutting-edge docking port for the space station, a new spacesuit and hours of research.
The incident marked NASA’s third launch failure in 8 months.
Boeing’s spacecraft is under development in collaboration with Bigelow Aerospace. It is also a capsule design, known as the Starliner.
Interestingly enough, the Starliner is designed to be launched by multiple vehicles, with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 among them.
NASA’s own manned vehicle, the Space Shuttle Program, met its end in 2011, after several unfortunate missions that killed all of the astronauts on-board.
A Russian Su-24 fighter has been shot down in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding the plane hadn’t violated Turkish airspace and was flying at an altitude of 6,000 meters.
“During the flight, the aircraft was flying within the borders of Syria, which was registered by objective monitoring data,” the ministry said, adding that the aircraft was “supposedly shot down from the ground.”
The pilots managed to eject, the ministry said, adding their fate is as yet unknown.
The downing of the Russian plane is “a very serious incident,” said Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He added, however, that it is too early to draw conclusions until the whole situation is clear.
Reports of a downed plane emerged earlier in Turkish media. A Habertürk TV reporter on the scene said the aircraft “turned into a fireball.” Numerous witnesses wrote on social media, saying thick plumes of smoke have been rising from the jet crash site.
Turkish military added the plane had been warned at least 10 times over a period of five minutes before being shot down by two Turkish F-16 fighter jets. He said the plane had violated Turkish airspace.
The plane reportedly crashed in a village mostly populated by Syrian Turkmen. The place has been a hotspot between the opposition and the Syrian Army.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has met with officials from the Foreign Ministry. He instructed them to consult with NATO and the UN on the latest developments on the Syrian border, Davutoglu’s office said in a statement.
The Russian Su24 military jet was shot down by a Turkish F-16 over Syrian territory while returning to Khmeimim airbase, the Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed.
The Ministry’s Twitter says that “analysis of the objective monitoring data” showed the downed SU-24 jet did not violate Turkish air space.
Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he regards the downing of the SU-24 as “a stab in the back” by “terrorist accomplices,” adding that Turkey gets the flow of oil from Islamic State-controlled territories.
President Putin said the SU-24 pilots “were conducting an operation to fight ISIS in northern Latakia which is a mountainous area where the rebels – mostly from the Russian Federation – are stationed. In this sense they were carrying out their duty to make preventive strikes on terrorists who could return to Russia at any time.”
The president said Russia had always treated Turkey as a friendly state, but concluded: “This tragic event will cause serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations. […] I don’t know who was in need of what was done today, at any rate, it wasn’t us.”
The SU-24 tactical bomber jet was downed on Tuesday morning after being hit by an air-to-air missile fired from a Turkish F-16 fighter jet.
Both pilots managed to eject, but were reportedly shot while parachuting by rebels from the ground. Video footage released by the rebels shortly afterwards shows the dead body of a Russian pilot being inspected by armed men. A Russian air rescue team from Latakia airbase is still airborne searching for the other pilot.
Thousands of American military personnel are expected to arrive in the Mariana Islands over the next several years, as part of the US strategic “pivot” to East Asia. Many will come from Okinawa, Japan, where many local residents want US bases closed.
Military facilities in Guam, the archipelago’s largest island and a US possession since 1898, have been reinforced and updated in anticipation of almost 5,000 Marines, as well as new aircraft, submarines and patrol boats. The infrastructure upgrades will “elevate the tiny Pacific island into a maritime strategic hub, a key element laid out by the Pentagon in the Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy,” according to the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes.
“We have two 11,000-foot concrete runways, both rebuilt within the last 10 years,” Steven Wolborsky, director of plans, program and readiness at the Andersen Air Force Base told Stars and Stripes, adding that roughly 19 million pounds of explosives are now stored across the facility’s 4,400 acres.
“We have enough parking for more than 155 aircraft, with a robust in-ground refueling infrastructure,” Wolborsky added. “We have the largest capacity of jet fuel in the Air Force at 66 million gallons ‒ coupled with an equal amount down south with the Navy.”
The construction has been driven primarily by the plan to move thousands of Marines to Guam from Okinawa, Captain Alfred Anderson, the base commander, said. The redeployment is expected by 2023 or so.
More than a third of the estimated $8.7 billion cost of building the new facilities for the Marines is being funded by Japan, according to McClatchy reporter Adam Ashton. The Japanese residents of Okinawa have complained for years about the impact of US military presence, ranging from drugs, alcoholism, and sexual abuse to environmental damage.
Originally the Pentagon envisioned a shift of 8,600 Marines and some 9,000 dependents from Okinawa, raising alarm among some residents of Guam that their island, with an area of only 212 square miles (549 km sq.) and a population of 160,000, would be overwhelmed.
Pressure from the activists representing the native Chamorro people, organized in a group called We Are Guahan, compelled the Pentagon to trim that number down to 4,800. Two thirds of that number would be there on rotation, without their families, reducing the pressure on the island even further.
The activists are not resting on their laurels, however, and are pressing on against the Pentagon’s plans to install firing ranges on the islands of Tinian and Pagan. The new facilities are supposed to integrate with the US Navy’s underwater training range in the nearby Mariana Trench.
While Guam is an unincorporated US territory, Pagan and Tinian belong to the Northern Mariana Islands Commonwealth, a US possession with the same status as Puerto Rico.
The island of Pagan is uninhabited at the moment, although the island’s inhabitants still make claims to the land after they were forced to evacuate due to volcanic eruptions in 1981. Tinian has an area of 39 square miles (101 km sq.) and just over 3,000 residents. US Marines seized the island from a Japanese garrison after a weeklong battle in July 1944. A year later, the massive airbase built on the island was used to launch the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Joining the residents in opposition to the Marine firing range plan is Alter City Group, a Chinese company based in Macau that wanted to invest $500 million to build a casino complex on Tinian. The firing range would “significantly alter the island as we know it in dramatically irreparable ways,” and impose burdens on the island both “significant and unsustainable,” the ACG said in a statement, as quoted by McClatchy.
Some political and business leaders in Guam, however, fear the military may drop its plans altogether if the Marines are barred from using Tinian and Pagan for live-fire exercises. They have established the Guam-US Security Alliance to push for the military buildup.
“This is so big that people are going to have to learn to get along,” John Thomas Brown, director of the Alliance, told McClatchy. “It can be done. It should be done. Time is wasting.”
Most of Guam’s income comes from Japanese tourism, followed by US military spending.
Over the past few decades, insurgent mass movements reflecting political discontent with the domestic economy and imperialist foreign policy have emerged to challenge the leadership and policies of the Democratic Party (DP). There are good reasons for this: The Democratic Party in power in Congress and the White House presided over (1) the deepening of inequality between labor and capital; (2) the decline of real wages; (3) the approval of repressive legislation; (4) the reduction of trade union membership by two-thirds; (5) deepening inequality between the races, (6) a trillion dollar (and counting) bailout of the banks and Wall Street; (7) mortgage foreclosure against millions of homeowners; (8) endless ‘police state’ abuses by federal and local police; (9) deregulation of the financial system and (10) the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and service employment.
Over the same period, the Democratic Party has supported wars and invasions against Indo-China, Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and scores of ‘clandestine’ military operations – including the recent and current proxy-wars in Georgia and Ukraine.
Popular movements have emerged and mass public opinion has expressed hostility toward both major parties. Hence, the third parties struck a responsive note among the electorate to which the Democratic Party leadership felt threatened by a possible defection by wage and salaried voters, especially to supporting Ralph Nader.
Yet in the end, nothing came of the discontent. Despite large-scale and deeply felt anger and popular outbursts of protests, including the million-strong street demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, the Democratic Party continued to dominate the ‘progressive’ electorate or relegated it to demoralized abstention.
This essay addresses the following questions:
(1) Why have mass movements and genuinely disaffected progressive voters and activists been unable to break with the Democratic Party, despite its consistently abominable record on foreign and domestic policy.
(2) How was the pro-Wall Street, pro-imperialist Democratic Party able to retain the support of an electorate, which overwhelmingly polls in favor of health care reform via a national, single-payer health plan, a living minimum wage, the end to police-state surveillance and against serial wars and invasions?
From Protest to Political Hostages
American mass movements have been successful in mobilizing hundreds of thousands in opposition to Washington’s support of the South African apartheid regime, Central American dictators, wars in the Middle East and racist legislation. Progressives have educated and organized millions to oppose Wall Street and the Democratic Party’s more recent bailout of banks.
Without fail every time mass movements and the popular electorate have opted for independent social action outside of the Democratic Party, a ‘dissident’ politician has emerged from within the Party mouthing many of the criticisms and demands of the social movements and the critical electorate.
These Democrat ‘dissidents’ organize ‘grass roots’ campaigns in popular venues, soliciting small scale contributions and making promises to put an end to ‘Big Money and Big Business’ domination of the electoral process.
Such Democrat ‘dissidents’ round up millions of votes and hundreds of delegates to the Democratic Convention and then…they inevitably lose to the Party machine and meekly submit…reasserting their loyalty to the ‘greater good’ against the ‘greater evil’.
The radical rhetoric used during the campaign is consciously designed to obscure the ‘dissidents’ fundamental loyalty to the Democratic Party, its military machine, its billionaire fundraisers and its Wall Street economic policy strategists.
The pre-ordained primary campaign defeat of the Democrat ‘dissidents’ is not the real issue here: The essential political consequence is that the “dissidents” channel mass social disaffection back into the Democratic Party thereby undermining any independent political initiative capable of breaking the duopoly stranglehold. In animal husbandry, they are like the handsome goat who tricks the flock into entering the big slaughter-pen of their social and political aspirations.
By endorsing the crowned Party nominee, these ‘dissidents’ discredit the very critical ideas and social programs they claimed to promote. They demoralize and depoliticize important segments of the electorate. They demobilize and disorient the social activists who had worked for the social transformation promised by their campaign program.
Most important, by reorienting the peace and justice movements and the neighborhood and anti-racism community organizations into Democratic Party electoral politics, they empty the streets, neighborhoods and workplaces of effective activists.
A brief survey of presidential campaigns over the past thirty-five years confirms this analysis.
Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Hustle: 1984 and 1988
Jesse Jackson was an important leader-activist in the civil rights movement. Based in Chicago, he helped organize tens of thousands of Afro-Americans and develop ties with other minorities, white progressives and trade unions.
Jackson opposed President Reagan’s assault on the trade unions, especially the firing of thousands of air controllers. Jackson’s opposition to Apartheid South Africa and Reagan’s invasion of Grenada and the escalation of military spending gained him credibility in the peace movement.
Millions looked to Jesse Jackson for political leadership and a new political direction. He negotiated with the bosses of the Democratic Party for his entry into the primaries. The deal was that he would compete with the traditional politicians, but immediately submit to the leadership if he lost the nomination.
Jackson mobilized hundreds of thousands of activists from the northern ghettos to the Ivy League college campuses and from the textile factories of North Carolina to the cotton fields of Mississippi. He rolled out the rhetoric about social justice, raising the minimum wage, a single payer (Medicare for All) national health plan and a massive transfer of public funds from the Pentagon to domestic social programs.
He secured an impressive 18% of the vote in the 1984 Democratic primaries. Upon defeat, he immediately capitulated and endorsed the Wall Street Cold Warrior Walter Mondale. He campaigned for Mondale with the promise that the ‘Rainbow Coalition’ would influence the campaign and subsequent Mondale presidency. Nothing of the sort happened. Mondale lost. Reagan was re-elected. The ‘rainbow coalition’ was as ephemeral as its namesake.
Four years later, a recycled Jesse Jackson trotted out the same rhetoric, the ‘grass roots’ organizing, the ghetto gab, the poverty hustle and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow coalition with white and black togetherness… to the amusement of the party bosses and corporate funders.
It was ‘All hands on deck’: The street movements shifted from concrete local struggles to door-to-door voter registration for the Democrats. Trade union locals were attracted to Jackson’s ‘save American jobs’ rhetoric. Middle class progressives were attracted to Jackson’s promise to cut the military budget.
Jackson received a substantial 29% of the Democratic primary vote. Michael Dukakis won the nomination and, as promised, Jesse Jackson endorsed the party’s choice and instructed all the civil rights, social justice and peace activists and anti-Wall Streeters to work for his election. Dukakis was resoundingly defeated by George Bush Sr. in the 1988 election.
At the end of the ‘rainbow’ and over a demoralized and de-politicized peace movement, the Bush Administration led the US into the First Gulf War. The wreckage from the popular movements- turned- electoral machines offered little resistance.
Confused by Jackson’s double discourse, the disaffected masses fractured. Four years later, the few pieces were picked up by Wall Street flunky “Bill” Clinton. Once in office and after tooting his victorious saxophone, President ‘Slick Willy’ proceeded to decimate welfare programs, roll back the Glass-Steagell Laws and deregulate the banks, launch a merciless ninety day war to break up Yugoslavia and maintain ten years of bombs and starvation sanctions against Iraq – causing the deaths of 500,000 children and many more adults.
Cowboy Dennis Kucinich and the 2004 Primaries: Keeping Progressive Livestock in the Democratic Party Corral
Just when disgust at the consequences of Clinton’s rotten policies and peccadilloes and George Bush, Jr’s grotesque wars were beginning to unite the disaffected, Dennis Kucinich popped up ‘from nowhere’ to launch a white working class version of the Jesse Jackson ‘Rainbow Coalition’ in the Democratic Party primaries of 2004. Saving a lot of money on placards, he re-cycled the same slogans about a national health system, minimum wage boost, higher taxes for the rich, anti-Wall Street rhetoric and public ownership of utilities – from the Jacksonites.
Since there was still a substantial strong anti-war movement, he called for the impeachment of President Bush (Jr.) for lying to the American people about Iraq. He criticized Congressional Democrats for supporting the fabricated pretexts to invade Iraq and called for the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East.
His presidential primary campaign within the Democratic Party attracted a small army of disaffected voters and contributors who otherwise would have bolted from the party for the Greens and their candidate, Ralph Nader. In the Democratic Party Convention, Dennis (looking more like ‘Alfred E. Newman’ than any righteous working class leader) petered out with nary a mumble. He lost the nomination to the uber-militarist and upper class hero, John Kerry, without even a floor-fight or speech. He endorsed the obnoxious crown prince of the Democratic bosses, Kerry, an ardent pro-war, member of the billionaire class and defender of the US Constitution-shredding Patriot Act.
Kucinich managed to corral the anti-war and anti-Wall Street Democrats into submission, seriously undermining the anti-Bush mass movements, especially the anti-war activists, and the rising tide of Americans who openly favored the Single Payer National Health program – an extension of Medicare for All.
Kucinich ran again in 2008 but he was already damaged goods. His ‘belly crawl’ performance at the 2004 Democratic Convention had alienated most of his backers. But even more important in relegating Dennis to the dustbin was the emergence of a new, slicker and infinitely more persuasive con-man: Barack Obama, the Hawaii-raised, Ivy-league polished and Chicago-crowned chameleon of many colors, cadences and clichés, who burst on the scene playing every instrument in the band!
Barack Obama: The Ultimate Progressive Rabble Rouser and Master of Deceit
Barack Obama’s con-job far surpassed any previous effort by Jackson or Kucinich. His mind-boggling ascension on rhetorical bubbles left rival Hillary Clinton, long used to the cant of ‘Slick Willie’, literally pop-eyed and slack jawed. During the 2008 primary he embraced the progressive demands of the anti-war movement, promising to end the Iraq war, bring home the troops from Afghanistan and close the US torture camp at Guantanamo Bay. He promised to finally develop a national health plan (hinting broadly at a Medicare-for-All model) and regulate Wall Street’s unbridled swindles and speculation.
Easily seeing through his fluffy rhetoric, the Democratic Party’s Wall Street backers secured hundreds of millions from billionaires with which to finance a real ‘grass roots movement in style’ defeating an astonished Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and swamping the mega-millionaire Republican candidate ‘Mitt’ Romney in the general election.
The Zelig-like Obama adopted the Baptist minister’s deep and musical cadences in front of black audiences while savaging and disowning his militant black religious mentor from his Chicago ‘community-organizing’ days, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had condemned the war in Iraq in frank Biblical terms and alienated his Chicago Zionist financial backers and Israel-centric inner council. No longer useful, the good Reverend was effectively ‘thrown under the bus’ – an object lesson on introducing Ivy League graduates into mass community struggles and enabling their ambitions.
In office, Obama allocated a trillion dollars to bailout Wall Street while letting two million American householders sink under mortgage debt and foreclosures.
He expanded on-going wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and went on to launch new wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. He supported the violent coups against popularly elected governments (‘regime changes’) in Honduras, Ukraine and Egypt.
The re-cycled and bamboozled anti-war leaders, who backed his candidacy and lies, were discredited, the remaining “movement” fractured.
Initially upward of 80% of US public opinion expressed support for the anti-Wall Street ‘Occupy Movement’ but they had no mass-based political organization to sustain the struggle after many of their leaders swam and ultimately sank, tied to the lies of Obama.
Under Obama more American blacks have been murdered by police with complete impunity; more abortion providers assassinated and clinics bombed than under any white Republican president. As for ‘humanitarian intervention’: In Libya, tens of thousands of ethnic sub-Saharan Africans (contract workers and Libyan citizens) died in the post-Kaddafi ethnic cleansing of Libya by the racist warlords unleashed by Obama’s air assault.
The bewitched progressives were befuddled by the Ivy League’s ‘black’ president and didn’t notice that social inequalities had deepened at an alarming rate. As for access to health care, the American people were forced to ‘buy private insurance plans’ (many of which were worthless), meanwhile deductibles and co-pays skyrocketed forcing all but the well-salaried to forego necessary medical care. The notion that ‘access to health insurance’ was equivalent to having effective health care has been one of the biggest shams of the Obama era: Life expectancy for large segments of the low income rural and small town Americans has dropped – an unimaginable development in previous eras.
During Obama’s Presidency, the political climate turned rabid right-wing and the progressives turned tail and ran. Right wing extremists swept the Republican Party and then seized control of the Congress and the Senate.
After seven years of failures, frustration and futility under Obama, progressives found themselves without a movement or prospects. Over 92% of US private sector workers were unorganized and faced continued decline in their standard of living. Black, Chicano and Asian neighborhoods were subject to large-scale, brutal police raids and the extra-judicial killing of minority youth, the homeless, mentally ill and the poor continued with impunity. Over 2 million immigrant workers were incarcerated and expelled. Tens of thousands of young immigrant and refugee mothers and their children were held in private prison camps.
The Republicans promised to extend Obama’s reactionary agenda without the smiling blackface mask. They assured greater tax handouts to Wall Street, with none of the embarrassing rhetorical flourishes, and more wars, without the sanctimonious ‘humanitarian’ cant.
Against this expanding panorama of social deterioration and war-weariness, (a backdrop, which would normally open up the possibility for alternative politics…), Bernie appeared. Bernie Sanders was to incarnate the Fourth Coming of the progressive Democratic primary campaigner-messiah and scupper any real movement to the left.
Bernie Sanders: After the Black Con-Artist Bring out the Jewish House Radical!
By 2015, US society was deeply polarized. After seven years of Wall Street pillage, under Democratic President Obama, the mass of working people were looking for an alternative. On the horizon there was only more of the same promised from the rabid right which ran the Republican Party. Massive voter abstention had propelled the Republicans to power in ‘both Houses’ in the elections of 2010, 2012 and 2014. Terror-mongering, the so-called Global War on Terror, no longer cut any ice with a population terrified of losing their miserable jobs or getting bankrupted by an illness in the family. The Pentagon resorted to paying unemployed actors to stage ‘spontaneous’ displays of patriotism at huge sporting events – dressing up as veterans and running about on the fields with huge flags. There has been a big drop in healthy young Americans willing to ‘sign up’ and fight in overseas wars despite the continued prospect of being mired in poverty-wage jobs in the so-called ‘recovered domestic economy’. The mass of disaffected working people were not flocking to the Democratic Party’s plutocrat-of-choice, Hilary Clinton, the war monger, Wall Street favorite and pro-Israel candidate par excellence. The stage was now set for mass voter abstention and a resounding electoral defeat for a deflated Democratic Party with a disgusted electorate. As a presidential candidate Hillary would have to fight tooth and nail to meet the challenge of even the most marginal lunatic candidate from the increasingly bizarre Republican Party – because the Democrat’s disaffected voter base would stay home.
Behold! A raspy rabble rouser, a ‘democratic socialist’, floated in on a cloud of self-righteousness, conjuring up the illusion of a movement with promises of ‘profound (and even profounder) changes’.
Like Jackson and Kucinich before him, Sanders launched right into The Rant: Against Wall Street, for a National Health Plan and a reduction of military spending (but not too much…). He added a few new planks about cancelling student debt, lowering tuition, ending the cap on the social security tax and greater regulation of Wall Street.
Early polls have given Sanders 25% of the Democratic preferences.
Bernie assured his worried Democratic Party handlers that should Madame Clinton win the primaries, Bernie (and his followers) would immediately and unconditionally support the Party’s war mongering, Wall Street candidate of choice.
What are we to make of his promises and his radical program, if from one day to the other he can easily make a 180 degree turn to support the most discredited dregs of the Democratic Party – those largely responsible for the country’s social and economic decline?
Conclusion
The whole history of Democratic Party ‘progressives’ is one of deceit, hypocrisy and betrayal of millions of workers, minorities and other oppressed and excluded groups.
They rant and rave, till the votes are counted and then they dissolve their electoral organization and push their supporters into the Party electoral campaign!
They do not continue the struggle outside of the corrupt party – they simply go belly up, ‘graciously conceding defeat’ and wagging their tails hoping for a reward (like some inconsequential, toothless position within the administration) if the Democrats win.
After every one of the ‘radicals’ defeats, their supporters are left adrift. Indeed, they are worse off than before because their movements had been diverted into the Democratic primaries and away from the communities. The historical record is clear: After Jesse Jackson lost, the Rainbow Coalition fell apart; civil rights movements were weakened; police violence against blacks continued and even worsened.
After Kucinich ran and lost, his grassroots supporters within the trade unions had no mechanism to block the relocation of auto, steel and textile plants overseas.
After Obama conned progressive Americans, the peace and justice movement virtually disappeared. The church, trade union, neighborhood alliances who celebrated Barack Obama’s ‘historic victory’ have in reality experienced historical retreats. The only things “historic” about Obama’s terms in office have been (1) the trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street, (2) the number of simultaneous wars waged by the Pentagon, (3) the millions of people of color slaughtered in Libya, Syria, and Yemen (4) the thousands of minorities killed in cities, big and small of the USA (5) and the tens of thousands lost to premature deaths in economically devastated rural and small town America.
The current “Bernie” Sanders road-show is just recycling the past, right down to the same rhetorical and inconsequential promises of his predecessors.
Some of his gullible followers claim that he is important for “raising issues” – when in fact he will just raise them and then demoralize their advocates.
Other pundits claim he is ‘challenging’ the Democratic Party ‘from the Left’ when in fact he is doing everything possible to prevent millions of disaffected ex-Democratic voters, mostly workers and minorities, from rejecting the Democrats and joining or forming alternative political movements.
The key to understanding why millions of Americans, fed up with 30 years of declining living and health standards, deepening inequalities and perpetual wars, do not form an ‘alternative party’ is that they have been repeatedly conned and corralled in the Democratic Party by the “house radicals”.
Jackson, Kucinich, Obama, and Sanders promised radical changes in the primaries and then have gone on to hand their supporters, mostly disaffected workers, over to the Party oligarchs, abandoning them without their past social movements or future hope: like cast-off condoms. Is there any wonder why so many abstain!
The delivery of Russian S-300 anti-missile rocket systems to Iran has started, Iran’s ambassador to Moscow said in an interview. Iran is getting one of the latest versions of the air defence complex.
The delivery is underway, ambassador Mehdi Sanaei told Persian-language daily, Etemaad, as cited by Tasnim news agency.
The news was not welcome in Washington, with US State Department spokesman Mark Toner reiterating the US stance on the issue in a briefing on Monday.
“We made clear time and again our objections to any sale of the S-300 missile system to Iran,” Toner told reporters.
Earlier this month Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan announced Tehran is going to get Russian air defence systems by the end of the year, which in Iran ends on March 20, 2016.
Brigadier General Dehghan stressed that a major batch of the hardware is going to be delivered in less than two months’ time.
“Iran has bought as many S-300 air defense systems as it needs,” Dehghan said, adding that Iranian operators of S-300 system are being trained in Russia.
The initial S-300 contract between Moscow and Tehran was signed in 2007 and implied the delivery of five S-300 squadrons worth $US 800 million.
In 2010 the contract was put on hold by then-President Dmitry Medvedev due to the UN imposing sanctions on Iran. In return, Iran lodged a $4 billion lawsuit at an international court in Geneva against Russia’s arms export agency Rosoboronexport.
In April 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin repealed the ban. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the decision, saying Moscow’s voluntary embargo on S-300 deliveries was no longer necessary due to the progress in talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
In October, Iran’s Defense Ministry confirmed Moscow’s readiness to deliver the S-300 system under an agreement signed between the two countries.
Sergey Chemezov, the head of the Russian state-owned high-tech giant Rostec, said that the new contract came into force on November 9.
Iran has bought Russia’s most well-known air defense systems in one of its latest versions S-300PMU-2 Favorite, TASS reported earlier this month during the Dubai Airshow 2015.
The last time Russia supplied S-300 systems abroad was in 2010, when 15 squadrons were delivered to China.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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The Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, has released a grateful video, where they openly thank the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which the US has touted as a “moderate opposition group”, for supplying them with US-made anti-tank TOW missiles (“Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided”).
Aletho News 