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Does Congress Represent American Citizens or Israeli Settlers?

By Anthony Bellchambers – Global Research – March 15, 2016

1. Congress comprises the House of Representatives with 435 members plus 100 members in the Senate. So altogether Congress has 535 voting members. The US Constitution provides that in the majority of foreign policy decisions, and also in domestic legislation, any decision or proposal by the elected president, or the White House, must be ratified by Congress otherwise it cannot proceed. The foregoing is not in dispute.

2. AIPAC the American Israel lobby, aka the American Zionist Committee, has a reported 100,000 members across the United States plus the support of some 50 million, or so, Evangelicals, otherwise known as Christian Zionists, in the Bible Belt of Middle America. They represent between 16 to ­20% of the US electorate. Put another way, about 80% of Americans are not members of AIPAC or any other Zionist organisation.

3. The Israel lobby has but one agenda, which is to support with military and civil aid the 5 or 6 million inhabitants of a foreign state in the Middle East. That aid is currently estimated to be in the region of US$6 billion every 12 months, sourced from taxpayers’ funds.

4. Who funds and controls AIPAC? The short answer is: the Lobby is funded by individual American Zionists and business enterprises. These financiers are closely allied to the Israeli government currently headed by the Likud Party leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. They control AIPAC through their paid executives whose brief is to ensure that the majority in Congress support the Likud Political Zionist agenda.

5. Correctly, AIPAC and the entire Israel lobby should legally be designated, as a ‘Foreign Agent’ representing a foreign state. It remains a matter for conjecture why this provision within the law has never been implemented in this case. AIPAC was not established and is not in existence to support, or for the benefit of, the government or people of the United States.

6. AIPAC’s influence over Congress is achieved by ensuring that wherever possible no candidate for the House or Senate will be elected, or re­elected, unless that candidate specifically confirms his/her support for AIPAC’s agenda of Political Zionism.

7. The result is that the Israeli government effectively controls AIPAC the Israel lobby, which then has an undue influence over Congress that, in turn, either empowers or dis­empowers the elected President in the White House.

8. It’s known as ‘DAS’ (Democracy American Style) but, in reality is the political and economic control of the state by an unelected oligarchy. It is certainly not ‘democracy’ in any meaningful sense in that in America today, the elected representatives of the people apparently seek to serve the interests of a foreign state before the interests of their own constituents

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 2 Comments

The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street: a Catastrophe for Working Families, African-Americans, and Latinos

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By Richard W. Behan | CounterPunch | March 16, 2016

For 24 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have courted Wall Street money with notable success. During that time the New York banks contributed:

* $11.17 million to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.

*$28.37 million for his re-election in 1996.

*$2.13 million to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaign in 2002.

*$6.02 million for her re-election in 2006.

*$14.61 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008.

*$21.42 million to her 2016 campaign.

The total here is $83.72 million for the six campaigns,i ii disbursed from eleven congenial banks: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Barclay’s, JP Morgan Chase, CIBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley.iii iv

Then there were the speeches. Sixteen days after leaving the White House in 2001, Mr. Clinton delivered a speech to Morgan Stanley, for which he was paid $125,000. That was the first of many speeches to the New York banks. Over the next fourteen years, Mr. Clinton’s Wall Street speaking engagements earned him a total of $5,910,000:v

*$1,550,000 from Goldman Sachs.

*$1,690,000 from UBS.

*$1,075,000 from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

*$770,000 from Deutsche Bank.

*$700,000 from Citigroup

After she resigned as Secretary of State in 2012 Hillary Clinton took to the lecture circuit as well. Some of her income has come to light during the current presidential campaign—the infamous $675,000 she was paid for three speeches to Goldman Sachs. That disclosure, however, belittles her financial achievement and the scope of her audiences. She also addressed the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Ameriprise, Apollo Management Holdings, CIBC, Fidelity Investments, and Golden Tree Asset Management. In doing so she earned another $2,265,000.vi

No other political couple in modern history has enjoyed so much money flowing to them from Wall Street for such a long time—$92.57 million over a quarter century.

During a CNN forum on February 3, Anderson Cooper wondered if Goldman Sachs’ $675,000 might impact her prospective presidential decisions. Defending her integrity with undisguised indignation, she described her independence from the banks:

Anybody who knows me, who thinks that they can influence me, name anything they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing. I’m out here every day saying I’m going to shut them down, I’m going after them. I’m going to jail them if they should be jailed. I’m going to break them up.vii

Her campaign website confirms her fierce determination to oversee the banks and hold them strictly to account. “Wall Street must work for Main Street,” the website claims, outlining her program for “Wall Street Reform:”

Veto Republican efforts to repeal or weaken Dodd-Frank

Tackle dangerous risks in the big banks and elsewhere in the financial system.

Hold both individuals and corporations accountable when they break the law.viii

$675,000 might be insufficient to elicit Ms. Clinton’s sympathetic ear, but a quarter century of accepting tens of millions of dollars is not so easily dismissed. It would likely have some impact on the Clintons’ sense of gratitude and certainly on their social, cultural, and political environments.

Over that period of time, while one of them or the other held public office almost continuously, the couple accumulated a net worth of $125 million.ix x Measured by family wealth, this inserted the couple into the top 1% of American families by a factor of 16 ($7.88 million is the threshold).

The Clintons found that stratum of society agreeable. In New York, their home upon leaving the White House, they moved easily among other multimillionaires, the celebrated, wealthy, and accomplished people of the city. Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Rubin, and Henry Paulson are examples, CEOs of the benefactor Wall Street banks. The couple could scarcely avoid adopting the mindset, language, values, and political perspectives of the people who now constituted their peer group.

Breaking up banks, jailing the lawless executives, forcing Wall Street to work for Main Street: Hillary Clinton’s stern proclamations of impartial law enforcement and strict regulation are difficult to take seriously.

Wall Street doesn’t. One bank executive assured his clients, “We continue to believe Clinton would be one of the better candidates for financial firms.” He was quoted in a CNN Money article, “Wall Street Isn’t Worried about Hillary Clinton’s Plan,” which stated,

Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street’s excesses…. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief.xi

There is good reason for the banks’ sanguine view. Over the 24 years of the romance, the Clintons first reoriented their political party, gave it a new name, the New Democratic Party, and put it at Wall Street’s service. Then they engineered financial opportunities for the New York banks of immense value—running into the hundreds of billions. And through the years as President, Senator, and Secretary of State the Clintons supported Wall Street’s interests at every necessary turn and without fail.

In the early 1990s, chairing the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill Clinton ushered in the centrist, triangulating New Democratic Party, explicitly to be more business-friendly—and to attract the financial support of corporate America. Wall Street supported his 1992 campaign handsomely, and Bill Clinton became the first president under the new banner. Hillary Clinton was at his side, a de facto minister-without-portfolio.

When he appointed Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs as Secretary of the Treasury Department, Clinton established a precedent. For the next 24 years every Administration would find Wall Street executives to serve in the position. The New York banks became the primal clients of the New Democratic Party.

But the working families of America and the African-American and Hispanic communities—the party’s historic constituencies—were betrayed and abandoned, deprived of effective representation in Washington. The Clintons’ political campaigns over the next decades became monumental hypocrisies, Bill donning sunglasses to play his saxophone for Arsenio Hall, Hillary visiting black churches to hug the parishioners. They speak warmly to the traditional constituencies with carefully scripted political rhetoric, currying their favor, depending on them for electoral victory, but effectively obscuring the truth of their betrayal.

The traditional constituencies were not only betrayed, but targeted. On taking office Mr. Clinton announced, “The era of big government is over.” On that cue he co-opted two issues long

used by Republicans to mask their party’s racism: “welfare” and “crime.” To address the issues two laws were passed in Clinton’s first term that savaged the betrayed constituencies.

The first was The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It fulfilled Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it,” and the punishing effects it set in motion have yet to abate. Since the end of the Clinton Administration, poverty in the U.S. has nearly doubled: “… the number of Americans living in high-poverty areas rose to 13.8 million in 2013 from 7.2 million in 2000, with African-Americans and Latinos driving most of the gains.”xii

To show how tough on crime he could be, Clinton next guided The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 through Congress. A flurry of prison construction quickly followed, an industry of private for-profit prisons took hold and flourished, and a skyrocketing population mostly of young black males soon filled them, most frequently charged with drug offenses, non-violent and victim-free.

Sixteen years later the effects of the law were described in a searing book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

The author of the book is a distinguished legal scholar and human rights activist, Michelle Alexander.

Ms. Alexander well understands how the Clintons and their creation, the New Democratic Party, left working families and communities of color without a political voice. And no one addresses the tragedy more forcefully. Her latest work is an article, “Black Lives Shattered,” in the February 29, 2016 issue of The Nation. She details how the two Clinton laws have devastated African-American families and sent millions—particularly those young black males—to prison. In the article’s caption, she asks, The Clinton’s legacy has been the impoverishment of black America—so why are we still voting for them?

The online version of her article carries a different title, Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote . Her compelling case is abbreviated in the subtitle:

From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.

When pressed, and with limited enthusiasm Hillary Clinton now apologizes for the laws, suggesting they are no longer quite so appropriate.

But she has not, cannot, and unquestionably will not mention two other laws passed at the bidding of President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin.

These laws enriched the Wall Street banks by hundreds of billions of dollars, but they too devastated working families, African-Americans, and Latinos.

The first was The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealing the Glass-Steagall legislation of 1933. Now it was legal once more for financial institutions to mix commercial and investment banking. Goldman Sachs et al. could now use depositor’s funds, insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to buy up “subprime” mortgages, the high-interest debt obligations of typically low-income, black, and Latino families.

The next law was The Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Now Goldman Sachs et al. could transform packages of those “subprime” mortgages into complicated derivatives called “mortgage-backed-obligations,” have them fraudulently rated as AAA investments, and sell them around the world, without limit, without restriction, without regulation, at immense profit.

For eight years the bubble inflated, and then it collapsed in the last year of George Bush’s Administration. Real estate values plummeted. The stock market was hammered. So was the U.S. economy. And so tragically were many low-income, African-American, and Latino families. $13 trillion in household wealth vaporized. Nine million workers lost their jobs. Five million families were evicted from their homes.xiii

This is what the Clinton Administration, and the New Democratic Party, had wrought.

The banks were caught with hundreds of billions in mortgage-backed derivatives still in the pipeline, the market values of which were dropping like stones. Wall Street’s prospective losses were horrific; bankruptcies loomed. But George Bush’s Treasury Secretary was the obligatory Wall Streeter: Mr. Hank Paulson, recently CEO of Goldman Sachs. In a heartbeat Mr. Paulson rammed through Congress The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It was known as the “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” and it handed Mr. Paulson $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy the near-worthless securities from the banks.

Hillary Clinton, now the U.S. Senator from New York, voted for the bill, telling a New York radio station the next day, “I think the banks of New York..are probably the biggest winners in this.”xiv

Eagerly, Mr. Paulson started buying, typically paying the banks half again the market value of the “troubled assets.”xv But a presidential campaign was underway, and soon he would have to stop.

Barack Obama, overcoming Hillary Clinton in the primaries, was elected as the second president from the New Democratic Party. Mr. Obama’s campaign contributions from Wall Street:

*Goldman Sachs: $1,034,615

*JP Morgan Chase: $847,855

*Citigroup: $755,057

*Morgan Stanley: $528,182

The total here is $3.7 million.xvi (Hillary Clinton’s campaign, apparently thought more likely to succeed, was supported with $14.6 million from the banks.xvii)

President Obama’s choice of Wall Street bankers to head his Treasury Department was Mr. Timothy Geithner, lately the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Geithner wasted no time in resuming the “troubled asset” purchases, and his execution of the program was no less profitable for the banks than Mr. Paulson’s.xviii

Wall Street’s grip on the New Democratic Party, however, and its influence in the Obama Administration, appeared in the Department of Justice as well. Mr. Eric Holder joined the Administration from the law firm of Covington Burling, which represents in Washington most of the Wall Street banks. Charged with prosecuting their criminal behavior, Mr. Holder found the banks “too big to fail.” Instead of criminal indictments and lawsuits, then, Mr. Holder negotiated with each of the banks a financial penalty to be paid from corporate funds. No corporate executives were jailed, no personal fines levied, no records of criminal conduct filed, no salaries reduced, no bonuses denied.

Today the Wall Street banks are larger and more powerful than ever, and Mr. Holder has returned to Covington Burling. President Obama, however—of the New Democratic Party—has provided no similar relief to the brutalized working families and communities of color. Their struggles continue, the crime and welfare laws have not been repealed, and the title of a recent study tells the tragic truth: During Obama’s Presidency Wealth Inequality has Increased and Poverty Levels are Higher.xix

Because of the Clintons’ romance with Wall Street and their corrupt New Democratic Party, the New York bankers and the Clintons are richer today. Others—betrayed, abandoned, savaged—are not.

Notes

i“Two Clintons. 41 years. $3 Billion,” Washington Post, November 19, 2015

ii“Occupy Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches,” Huffpost Politics, February 28, 2016

iii“Hillary Clinton. Top 20 Contributors, 1999-2002,” http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php/type==C&cid..

iv“Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush Still Favorites of Wall Street Banks,” Huffpost Politics, October 22, 2015

v“$153 Million in Bill and Hillary Speaking Fees, Documented,” Robert Yoon, CNN, Updated February 6, 2016.

vi“Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks That Most of Us Earn in a Lifetime,” https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-speeches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/

vii“Clinton Defends Wall Street Speeches at CNN Town Hall,” Time, February 4, 2016

viiiFrom Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, under “Wall Street Reform,” http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street

ix“Hillary Clinton net worth: $45 Million,” http://www.celebritynetworth.com/

x“Bill Clinton net worth: $80 Million,” http://www.celebritynetworth.com/

xi“Wall Street Isn’t Worried about Hillary Clinton’s Plan,” CNN Money, October 8, 2015.

xii“Poverty Has Nearly Doubled Since 2000 in America,” International Business Times, August 9, 2015

xiii“Wall Street Reform: Wall Street must work for Main Street,” http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street

xiv“Hillary Clinton’s Tough Talk on Wall Street,” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/hillary-clinton..

xv“Troubled Asset Relief Program,” Wikipedia

xvi“Barack Obama. Top Contributors, 2008 Cycle,” http;//www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php/cid=…

xviiWashington Post, “Two Clintons. 41 Years. $3 Billion”

xviiiSee Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, by Neil Barofsky, passim.

xixhttp://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-inequality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/

Richard W. Behan lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He can be reached at: rwbehan@comcast.net.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

US State Dept Pledges to Retain Sanctions Until Russia Returns Crimea

Sputnik — 16.03.2016

48c581ed-2d60-4ab7-aa80-6075262893e4Washington will not lift the sanctions imposed after the reunification of Crimea with Russia until Moscow decides to “return Crimea to Ukraine,” the spokesman for the US State Department said.

Crimea, which has a predominately ethnically-Russian population, seceded from Ukraine to rejoin Russia two years ago following a referendum on March 16 in which over 96 percent of voters supported the move.

“We will not accept the redrawing of borders by force in the 21st century. Sanctions related to Crimea will remain in place as long as the occupation continues. We again call on Russia to end that occupation and return Crimea to Ukraine,” John Kirby said in a statement Wednesday.

He added that Washington remains committed to “a united, sovereign Ukraine.”

In 2014, the United States, the European Union and some of their allies imposed a series of economic sanctions targeting key Russian sectors as well as a number of individuals and entities over Russia’s reunification with Crimea and its alleged interference in the conflict between Kiev and independence supporters in eastern Ukraine, denied by Moscow.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | 7 Comments

Activist and Author Arrested by NYPD Following Book Launch Event

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | Solitary Watch | March 16, 2016

Five Mualimm-ak, an activist, survivor of solitary, and contributor to our book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, was arrested Tuesday night moments after leaving a book launch event where he was a speaker, held at the Open Society Foundations in Midtown Manhattan.

Mualimm-ak had read from his essay in Hell Is a Very Small Place to a packed house at OSF, and spoken about his five years in solitary confinement in New York State prisons. Released from prison in 2012, he has gone on to become an activist against solitary and mass incarceration and founder of the Incarcerated Nation Corporation, which aids and organizes formerly incarcerated individuals.

Eyewitnesses say that Mualimm-ak and veteran activist Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, who had attended the event, were leaving the OSF building on West 57th Street when they saw police officers confronting a homeless man. Hayden began filming the encounter and was arrested. Mualimm-ak protested Hayden’s arrest, and was arrested as well.

The two men were taken to the nearby Midtown North Precinct and placed in the cells. Five individuals who had attended the launch event walked to the precinct to inquire after their welfare. Shortly after arriving, they were arrested as well, handcuffed, detained, and finally released after being charged with “refusal to disperse.”

In the early hours of the morning, Mualimm-ak and Hayden were sent from the precinct to Central Booking in Lower Manhattan. They have been charged with Obstruction of Government Administration and are expected to be arraigned today at approximately 2 pm, in New York County Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street. They have legal representation.

More details will be provided as they emerge, here and on Solitary Watch’s social media feeds.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 1 Comment

Larry Silverstein designed NEW WTC-7 in April of 2000

“Lucky Larry” STILL bragging about his crimes of 9/11/2001

By Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today | March 15, 2016

Larry had the new WTC-7 designed and ready-to-go 17 months before he “pulled” the old one

He may just be a Silver-stein. But “Lucky Larry” sets the gold standard for chutzpah.

Latest example: In the above video, Silverstein says of the new WTC-7, which replaced the one he famously confessed to demolishing on 9/11/01:

We got the designs. And the first design meeting was in April of 2000. And construction began shortly thereafter, in 2002.

One slight problem: If he hadn’t been planning the illegal, un-permitted, homicidal demolitions of WTC-7 and the entire World Trade Center complex that took place on September 11th, 2001, there would have been no point to any such design meeting back in April, 2000 … and no opportunity for beginning construction of a new WTC-7 in 2002.

With the supreme chutzpah that has become his trademark, Silverstein breezes over the demolitions of 9/11/2001 as if they were not even worth remarking on, instead going straight from his new-WTC-7 design meeting in April 2000 to the beginning of construction in 2002.

Memo to Donald Trump: If you’re looking for people who were wildly celebrating the murder of 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001, that would include not only the famous dancing Israelis, but also Larry “Pull It” Silverstein.

In 2001, “Lucky Larry,” who had previously owned only WTC-7, orchestrated a deal with his fellow-ultra-Zionist Lewis Eisenberg, Chairman of the mobbed-up NY Port Authority, and another Zionist extremist billionaire, Frank Lowy, to sell the entire WTC complex to Silverstein and backers on a 100-year lease. The deal was finalized in July, 2001, and Larry took possession of the buildings … and security arrangements. But first, he hard-balled his insurers into doubling the terror insurance coverage and changing the terms to “instant cash payout.”

David_Dees_Larry_Silverstein_and_Giuliani_demolition

On September 11th, Larry hit the jackpot. The condemned-for-asbestos and largely vacant Twin Towers, with their obsolete communications infrastructure and money-hemorrhaging balance sheet, were both demolished for free – with 3,000 people inside.

Larry should have been at the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower, just like every other day. Fortunately, he tells us, his wife reminded him of a dermatologist appointment. His daughter, who always took breakfast with him, made a similarly lame excuse. Both survived … and prospered … while everyone above the 91st floor, including everyone who showed up to have breakfast at Windows on the  World, died miserable deaths.

Lucky Larry indeed.

Larry’s luck held out when he demanded double indemnity – on the basis that he had been “victimized” by two completely separate and unrelated terrorist attacks, namely the two planes – and got it, to the tune of 4. 5 billion dollars. That’s a hefty cash-payout return on a relatively minor investment. (Silverstein put up less than 15 million of his own money to buy the WTC, and his backers had added a little over 100 million.)

Even after video proof emerged that he had confessed to “pulling” (i.e. demolishing) WTC-7, he still somehow evaded the hangman’s noose.

Then he went back to court to ask for more than $10 billion more – this time not from his own insurers, but from those of the airlines he falsely blamed for the demolitions that he himself had conducted.

But even the mobbed-up 9/11-complicit Zionist judge, Alvin Hellerstein, had had enough. For the full (satirical) story, check out my article:

Hellerstein to Silverstein: No more money for you, schmuck!

But that didn’t stop not-quite-so-Lucky Larry from trying to steal another 500 million from the federal government through an EB-5 visa scam.

Then last month, Larry’s inimitable chutzpah resurfaced when he said that his first thought on looking at the plans for the new South Tower was “it looks like it’s going to topple, it’s going to fall over.” At least if you “pull” on it hard enough, it might. Right, Larry?

Larry’s chutzpah is so monumental that it became the basis of an annual award. See:

Netanyahu Wins Larry Silverstein Award for Chutzpah

Whatever will this unbelievable character do next?

Will someone finally arrest him?

Will we ever see him swing from the gallows?

Or will Lucky Larry’s luck hold out until he finally dies of natural causes, leaving his heirs billions of blood-stained dollars with which to conduct more outrageous Zionist mischief?

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 4 Comments

Syria: The Guardian View on… Things they Just Made Up

OffGuardian | March 16, 2016

The Western MSM are all a flutter: Russia are pulling out of Syria (sort of). They can’t quite decide if it’s a victory, or a defeat. They don’t know if it’s because they ran out of money, are giving up, or it’s all a big lie – but they all agree on two things: 1) Russia has not achieved anything and 2) This is a massive a surprise.

Such a surprise that Putin announced the plan five months ago, in a story printed in the Telegraph. This is what the Western world has come to, I suppose, if a politician SAYS he’s going to do something and then actually DOES IT, this is… surprising. How sad.

The Guardian are firmly of the belief that this is “A Bad Thing” – in fact they are so against Russia leaving Syria, that one almost forgets they were just as strongly against Russia entering Syria in the first place. Because Russia and reasons.

Whether in the petulant and childish summation “written” by Shaun Walker, or this one of their ridiculous “Guardian view” editorials (written anonymously, of course), the battle lines are being drawn: The fight is with reality.

The Walker piece is standard Walker-fare. Long on snide one-liners, short on content. Long on narrative, short on evidence. He describes the withdrawal as a move “analysts never saw coming” – presumably because none of them read the Telegraph. It’s threaded throughout with dishonest and inappropriate things:

… the end forever of the burgeoning bromance between the Turkish and Russian presidents…”

A less creative reporter, one with a sense of shame perhaps, would have used the phrase “worsening of Russia-Turkish relations.” Walker is above such things – there is nothing so serious it can’t be livened up with mockery and snarkiness. Not even war. He continues:

Not to mention the repeated insistence that the Syria bombing has not resulted in any civilian casualties, despite ever-mounting evidence to the contrary.”

The link to this “mounting evidence”? It’s a Guardian aticle from 4 months ago – about a family who got bombed. The rebel commanders and American “experts” (the only sources quoted) know it was the Russians because “it happened at night”.

Oh and then this:

But if there is indeed now a withdrawal, it will prevent the Syria mission from turning into a long, drawn-out affair with rising Russian casualties.

Rising… from three. Who were all killed by Turkey.

For while it is true the mission of defeating Isis has not been accomplished…

And here, here we come to the most insidious and important lie. It’s a theme that is repeated in “The Guardian View..”. The headline proclaims:

Russia’s Syria U-turn: no kind of victory”

Which is, literally, as factually incorrect as a statement can be. It is not a U-Turn, observe the Telegraph link above, and it is certainly a kind of victory.

If there is one thing that Mr Putin’s announcement makes plain, it is that Russia’s claim that it was moving into Syria to combat Islamic State”

This has been a favorite line in the press since the Russian operation began – it is a lie. Russia never made such a claim. Sergey Lavrov, on fighting terrorism in Syria, famously said:

If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist… it’s a terrorist”

The stated aim of the Russian intervention was assisting their ally in combating terrorism and bringing a negotiated settlement to the region – as they have been trying to do since 2012. Additionally, the Russian air force is continuing to bomb ISIS and provide air support for the SAA advance on Palmyra, and then Raqqa. To deny this – when evidence abounds – is to be insane.

More and more we see the Western, neocon narrative is being propped up with utterly baseless statements. From Obama’s foolish description of a Syrian “quagmire”, to the ridiculous idea Russia is trying to unseat Merkel by flooding Europe with refugees. The collapse of analysis and rhetoric into hysteria betrays the inherent dishonesty of the position. As a friend of mine is fond of saying: If they honestly believed the truth to be on their side, they would not feel the need to lie.

Maybe, with Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, western journalists have forgotten that wars are not meant to last – maybe years of reporting on American interventions, designed to prolong conflict for the sake of profit margins, have scrubbed out of our collective mind the idea that an action can be brief, decisive and efficient.

The following are a list of facts totally omitted from the Guardian articles on Syria the last few days:

Huge gains on the ground, destruction of the enemy supply lines, destruction of enemy materiel, extended peace talks, refugees returning home and a ceasefire agreement. This, in the Guardian view, is “no kind of victory”. Which makes you wonder whose side they are on.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces raid Tulkarem-area university twice in 18 hours

Ma’an – March 15, 2016

TULKAREM – Israeli forces on Tuesday raided al-Khadouri University in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tulkarem for the second consecutive day, the university’s administration said in a statement.

The administration said Israeli forces raided the university on Monday, forcing staff to open the main doors of the university’s engineering department. During the raid forces reportedly ransacked the building and seized posters and brochures from the campus.

Eighteen hours later, on Tuesday, the administration said Israeli forces returned, and ransacked more of the campus.

The university administration condemned the “Israeli violations against the university.”

The administration urged that international organizations take action against Israel’s disregard for education facilities.

Israeli forces have regularly stormed university campuses across the occupied Palestinian territory in recent months.

Since a wave of unrest swept the occupied Palestinian territory in October, Abu Dis’ Al-Quds University in particular has found itself a focal point of violent clashes between Palestinian students and Israeli soldiers.

On January 29, Hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed Abu Dis’ al-Quds Open University and confiscated equipment and documents belonging to its student union.

Earlier in January, Birzeit University in Ramallah condemned an Israeli army raid into its campus, during which Israeli forces confiscated and damaged university equipment.

“Birzeit University condemns this attack and the direct violation of the sanctity of the university campus,” the university said. “This is a belligerent military attack on the university and our right to education and all the principles involved in the freedom of education.”

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Zionism and Campaigns of Delegitimization: a Very Rich History Indeed

You don’t think Israel should be permitted to perpetuate its present modes of existence, do you?

By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | March 16, 2016

Demonstrating once again the sniveling and shameless fealty to the wealthy that she and her husband have elevated to a high art over the last 30 years, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban last July 6th in which she said that:

I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority. I am seeking your advice on how we can work together across party lines and with a diverse array of voices to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.

One of the key reasons for the extraordinary success of the Zionist lobby in America over the last six decades or so has been its ability to generate and repeat sound bites whose discursive purpose is not to enrich the breadth and texture of a debate on the Middle East, but rather to impoverish and attenuate it.

Long before GOP operative Frank Luntz began trawling focus groups for emotionally-charged terms capable of crippling the public’s rational faculties during political campaigns, the people at AIPAC and the many pundits in the mainstream media who faithfully carry their water (e.g. ex-AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer) were already experts at this game.

Perhaps the most well-known of the tropes employed by Israel’s more fervent advocates is to challenge someone who is criticizing its policies if they support that state’s “right to exist”.

The beauty of the query, at least from the point of view of those that deploy it, is its seeming innocuousness. We all, especially Americans, have an instinctively positive relationship to the idea of “rights”.

And who would want to go on record as being against the idea of some one’s or some country’s “existence”?

So, when our interlocutor says, “Don’t you support Israel’s right to exist,?” most of us freeze and then retreat.

And that is exactly the effect desired by those posing the question.

But of course criticizing someone’s or some thing’s comportment is not the same as seeking their death and destruction. To portray these two activities as being one in the same is nothing short of absurd.

It is similarly absurd to speak—here again I am referring to the above-mentioned question/rejoinder—of a “right” existing in isolation from other values and concerns.

Every social or political “right” is necessarily constructed upon a matrix of tradeoffs. My “right to live” and my “right to pursue happiness” are necessarily and without exception mediated by a need to be cognizant of, and responsive to, the rights and needs of others around me.

So the real question when it comes to Israel (and every other national polity for that matter) is under what specific legal and moral conditions— both in relation to its geographical neighbors and all those subject to its forms of organized power—can and should be permitted and/or encouraged perpetuate its present modes of existence?

And this, of course, is the very this conversation that the ridiculously unspecific and often smugly issued challenge regarding Israel’s “right to exist” is specifically designed to head off.

Those issuing it understand all too well that, should such a detailed discussion ensue, Israel, with its ongoing record of ethnic-cleansing and deeply institutionalized racism, would not fare very well among most fair-minded people.

We are now witnessing the widespread and seemingly concerted re-deployment of yet another trope: one that holds that the central goal of the BDS movement is to cruelly effect the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel.

According to the Collins on-line dictionary, to delegitimize means “to make invalid, illegal, or unacceptable”.

On one level, then, the use of the term by Israel’s defenders is fairly accurate. Those in favor of BDS do indeed seek to invalidate and eventually render illegal and unacceptable the racist and expansionist practices of the Israeli government.

On another level, however, they are clearly exaggerating when, as they often do, they simplistically equate drive to dismantle odious racist practices with the destruction of the state itself (What does it say about a society when the abolishment of blood-based schemes of citizenship and legalized ethnic supremacy are widely viewed by its members as tantamount to annihilation?), something that all BDS statements of purpose explicitly disavow.

For anyone who has followed the Israel lobby’s actions over the years, such exaggerations and cynically purposeful conflations are, of course old—very old—hat.

What is much more interesting to me is the righteous indignation that almost inevitably accompanies Zionists’ mention of the carefully circumscribed “delegitimizing” efforts of the BDS movement.

After all, it is not as if delegitmization as a tactic is new to Zionism.

Indeed, a strong case could be made that it has been perhaps the single most ubiquitous and effective tool of the movement in the US and elsewhere over much of the last century.

And, generally speaking, its use in Zionist circles has not been marked with any of the thoughtful circumscription employed by the BDS movement in its campaign to modify Israeli behavior toward the captive Palestinians under its control.

Rather, it has usually conformed to the behavior implicit in a second, much more harsh, definition of the term found on Wikipedia which speaks of delegitimization as the process of classifying “groups into extreme social categories which are ultimately excluded from society” and an activity that provides “the moral and the discursive basis to harm the delegitimized group, even in the most inhumane ways”.

What am I talking about?

For example, how, back in the first decade of the 20th century, the influential British Zionist Israel Zangwill famously wrote “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country”.

Could there be any more direct and forceful delegitmization of a people than to have them ontologically disappeared by another group covetous of their land?

When, after the fledgling Israeli government engaged (despite all you might have read or been told about spontaneously fleeing Arabs) in a well-orchestrated plan to terrorize Palestinians into leaving their houses and lands in the new state in 1948, a number of the same refugees came back and sought to reclaim their properties, the Ben-Gurion government quickly labeled these people as “infiltrators”.

Could there be any more eloquent case of delegitimization than describing people returning to their lawfully titled homes after being driven out of them at the point of gun and/or the demonstrable threat of summary assassination   as “infiltrators”?

When, after capturing the so-called West Bank thanks to a war in 1967 that—again, despite all you might have read or been told—Israel clearly initiated, some of the occupied Palestinians, seeing absolutely no attempts on the part of the Israeli government to begin the process of territorial devolution, or to abide by international conventions governing the behavior occupying armies, began to pursue their UN-sanctioned right to engage in armed resistance to that occupation, they were quickly and universally tarred by Israel as “terrorists”, a term designed to morally delegitimize them and their struggle in the eyes of the world.

When a non-Jew criticizes Israeli political and military behavior in exactly the same manner and tone that he or she might use to criticize analogous Russian, Spanish, French or American comportments, many Zionists have little or no compunction about quickly labeling such a person an Anti-Semite, which is to say a person possessed by a malign moral sickness, rooted in a wholly irrational hatred, for which there is therefore no cure.

The goal in quickly slapping this toxic label on a person is to effectively remove him or her from the field of “respectable” debate, that is, to delegitimize them and the set of often quite valid and universally-grounded critiques they might be trying to bring to the public square.

Similarly, when a Jew decides (judging from the cases I have known, almost always after a period of gruelingly careful consideration), to reject the political ideology of Zionism, many of those still working within the fold of this school of thought will show little hesitancy in delegitimizing this person, and with it, his or her freely-arrived-at moral choice, by labeling them with the implicitly pathological label of “self-hating Jew”.

Even former US Presidents are not immune from organized Zionist campaigns of delegitimization.

In 2006, former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter published a book in which he described the obvious: that in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, Israel runs a confiscatory colonial enterprise wherein Jews and non-Jews enjoy vastly disparate privileges and legal protections.

What did Carter get for this simple and irrefutable statement fact?

An organized Zionist campaign of delegitimization that culminated in his being, at least to my knowledge, the first living ex-president to be forcibly barred from speaking to the assembled delegates of his own party’s presidential nominating convention.

In October of 1988 the comic actor and writer John Cleese donated $140,000 to the University of Sussex in England to finance a study on psychological projection and denial, describing those phenomena to be “frightfully important” to understanding many life conflicts, especially those that play out in realm of politics.

Looking at irony-free use of delegitimization in certain Zionist reactions to BDS, it seems safe to say that the famous jester’s intuitions about the importance of these phenomena in public life were spot on.

Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of the recently released  Livin’ la Vida Barroca: American Culture in a Time of Imperial Orthodoxies.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why does mainstream media keep repeating lies about Lester Pearson?

By Yves Engler | March 15, 2016

While coverage of Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to Washington was embarrassingly banal in its emphasis on “bromance” between Obama and the Canadian PM, at least it was accurate (in the limited sense valued by the dominant media), except for the 60 Minutes feature that comically confused a photo of Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall for Margaret Trudeau. However, one aspect of the reporting did stand out as both a lie and dangerous nationalist mythology.

A number of media outlets discussed Lester Pearson visiting Lyndon Johnson the day after he reportedly gave a “scathing speech on American involvement in Vietnam.” The Canadian Press described the former prime minister’s speech and meeting with the US president this way: “Pearson never visited again, after a famous 1965 dust-up. He’d spoken out against the Vietnam War, and Johnson grabbed him by the lapels and snarled: ‘Don’t you come into my living room and piss on my rug.’”

Pearson’s speech at Temple University in Philadelphia the night before he met Johnson is probably the most cited example of a Canadian leader (supposedly) opposing US militarism. Even generally sensible authors such as Linda McQuaig point to it as having “contributed to ending the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.”

But here’s what Pearson really said in Philadelphia:

The government and great majority of people of my country have supported wholeheartedly the US peacekeeping and peacemaking policies in Vietnam.

In Quiet Complicity: Canadian involvement in the Vietnam War, Victor Levant puts Pearson’s talk in proper context:

In his Temple speech, the Prime Minister did accept all the premises and almost all the conclusions of US policy. The chief cause of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, in Pearson’s view, was North Vietnamese aggression. ‘This situation cannot be expected to improve,’ he said, ‘until North Vietnam becomes convinced that aggression, in whatever guise, for whatever reason, is inadmissible and will not succeed.’ This had wider implications, since ‘no nation… could ever feel secure if capitulation in Vietnam led to the sanctification of aggression through subversion and spurious wars of national liberation.’ If peace was to be achieved, the first condition was a cease-fire, and this could happen only if Hanoi recognizes the error of its ways: ‘aggressive action by North Vietnam to bring about a Communist liberation (which means Communist rule) of the South must end. Only then can there be negotiations.’ Since US military action was aimed at resisting Hanoi’s aggression, the measures taken so far, including the bombing of the North, were entirely justified: ‘the retaliatory strikes against North Vietnamese military targets, for which there has been great provocation, aim at making it clear that the maintenance of aggressive policies toward the south will become increasingly costly to the northern regime. After about two months of airstrikes, the message should now have been received loud and clear.

Levant continues:

On the other hand, Pearson argued that continued bombing, instead of weakening Hanoi’s will to resist, might have the effect of driving it into an even more intransigent position. He therefore suggested, as a tactical move, that the United States consider a carefully timed ‘pause’ in the bombing: ‘there are many factors which I am not in a position to weigh. But there does appear to be at least a possibility that a suspension of such airstrikes against North Vietnam, at the right time, might provide the Hanoi authorities with an opportunity, if they wish to take it, to inject some flexibility into their policy without appearing to do so as the direct result of military pressure. If such a suspension took place for a limited time, then the rate of incidents in South Vietnam would provide a fairly accurate way of measuring its usefulness and the desirability of continuing. I am not, of course, proposing any compromise on points of principle, nor any weakening of resistance to aggression in South Vietnam. Indeed, resistance may require increased military strength to be used against the armed and attacking Communists. I merely suggest that a measured and announced pause in one field of military action at the right time might facilitate the development of diplomatic resources which cannot easily be applied to the problem under the existing circumstances. It could, at the least, expose the intransigence of the North Vietnam government.

Let’s further dissect Pearson’s “anti-war” position. Approximately three million Vietnamese died during the US war in Indochina, with about 100,000 killed during the US bombing of the North. To put Pearson’s Temple speech in the crassest terms possible, opposing the bombing of the North was a call to end 3.3% of the death toll.

When Pearson met Johnson the next day the president was mad because senior US foreign-policy planners were debating a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam (which would take place months later and when Washington restarted their bombing campaign Pearson publicly justified it). By speaking out Pearson effectively sided with Johnson’s opponents in the US administration after he enabled the bombing campaign. According to the leaked internal government documents known as the Pentagon Papers, in May 1964 Pearson agreed to Johnson’s request to have the Canadian Commissioner on the International Control Commission, which was supposed to enforce the implementation of the Geneva Accords and the peaceful reunification of Vietnam, deliver US bombing threats to the North Vietnamese leadership. In so doing Canada’s Nobel peace laureate actually enabled a serious war crime.

The story about Johnson challenging Pearson the next day only came to light a decade later, once US actions in Vietnam were widely discredited. In 1974 former Canadian Ambassador in Washington Charles Ritchie wrote: “The President strode up to him and seized him by the lapel of his coat, at the same time as raising his other arm to the heavens.” Ritchie reported Johnson saying, “you don’t come here and piss on my rug.”

While the ambassador’s description is almost certainly an exaggeration, subsequent commentators have further embellished Richie’s account. In one telling Johnson “grabbed Pearson by the lapels of his coat and violently shook him.”

An entertaining story perhaps, but simply not true, just as saying Lester Pearson opposed the war against Vietnam is a lie.

While logic and facts are irrelevant to nationalist myth-makers, it is critical that we understand the reality of our past if we wish to build a better future.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Release of Tsarnaev’s Interrogation Notes Leads to More Questions

Redacted document, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with backpack

Photo credit: FBI
By James Henry – WhoWhatWhy – March 15, 2016

Heavily redacted notes from the hospital bed interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were released at the end of February. Most media reports about the documents focus on portions that portray Dzhokhar as having played an active role in building and detonating the bombs that exploded on Boylston St.

But a closer read of the FBI’s summary of Tsarnaev’s statements to his interrogators raises questions about key details of the bombing and its execution.

First off, it is important to note that the interview notes are heavily redacted and therefore incomplete. But some of the things the FBI says Dzhokhar told his interrogators indicate a level of confusion or ignorance, or both, about important facts. They also raise questions about why the FBI has been selectively vague about key details of the case.

Black/Brown/White Backpack?

According to the interrogation notes, “Jahar carried a brown backpack [emphasis added] while his brother’s backpack was black. After parking, they walked…”

Now the backpack is brown?

The indictment, which was written a month and a half after the bombing, states that both bombs were concealed in black backpacks.

In a photograph of the shredded backpack lying in Boylston Street released by the FBI, it does indeed look black.

Boston Bombing Shredded Backpack

Boston Bombing black shredded backpack – Photo credit: FBI

However, many observers have pointed out that, in surveillance photos, the backpack Dzhokhar can be seen carrying does not look black — or brown for that matter — but mostly white or light gray.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev walking with backpack

Photo credit: FBI

Why the discrepancy? Did the interviewing agent challenge him on this detail? Why is there so much ambiguity around such an important detail?

And there’s another problem: The “smoking gun” video that supposedly proves Tsarnaev placed an explosive laden backpack on Boylston Street. It actually shows very little. His actions are obscured by the crowd of people.

Shouldn’t the government be obliged to prove unequivocally that the exploded backpack found at the scene was at least the same color as the one Dzhokhar was carrying that day?

Strange Redaction Regarding Explosive Powder

Also according to the FBI agent’s notes, Tsarnaev ”stated that he and his brother Tamerlan built two explosive devices in his brother’s home at 410 Norfolk…”

This implies that Dzhokhar took a more active role in constructing the bombs than has been previously described.

But, Dzhokhar’s lawyers showed at trial that none of his fingerprints were found on any of the bomb or bomb-making materials. Tamerlan’s fingerprints were, however.

Dzhokhar also told agents, apparently, that the powder came from $200 worth of fireworks that he and Tamerlan had purchased in New Hampshire about a year prior. But that’s when Tamerlan was in Russia — January to July 2012. Considering Tsarnaev was being interrogated April 21 and 22 , 2013, the time-line can’t be accurate.

Fireworks found in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s room

Fireworks found in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory room – Photo credit: FBI

At which store, or exactly when these particular fireworks were purchased, is not clear.  But since the bombing, law-enforcement and media reports have consistently referenced a $200 purchase made by Tamerlan at Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, New Hampshire two months before the bombing. Nothing about Dzhokhar buying fireworks was ever made public.

Most notably, that particular purchase would only constitute a small fraction of the amount of explosive powder needed to produce all the bombs the Tsarnaevs are accused of making and detonating.

According to the owner of Phantom Fireworks, the brothers would have been able to harvest, at most, 1.5 pounds of explosive powder from the $200 purchase.

On the other hand, each pressure cooker bomb that exploded on Boylston Street probably contained anywhere from 8 to 16 pounds of explosive powder, according to testimony from Special Agent Edward Knapp.

The pressure cooker that exploded in Watertown probably contained another 4 to 8 pounds. And in Watertown, three more pounds of powder were found in a Tupperware container, along with a number of pipe bombs each containing yet more powder. That means the Tsarnaevs would have had to collect between 23 and 43 pounds of explosive powder — or more.

Either they made numerous purchases of fireworks or they got explosive powder from another source.

At the very least, Tsarnaev’s statement that they got the explosive powder from $200 worth of fireworks shows his ignorance regarding what it actually took to make them. Either that or he did discuss the provenance of the rest of the explosive powder with his interrogators — was that information in a redacted part?

Why does the FBI continue to withhold information on where the explosives came from?

All of this reveals either a marked level of ignorance or confusion by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev about details of the bombs’ construction — even the color of the backpack. Or, it reveals that the government is still withholding key details about how the bombs came to be. Why is anyone’s guess.

But why do any of these small details matter? Because, as we all know, the devil can be found in the details. And the outcome of a life-and-death prosecution can sometimes hinge almost entirely on such seemingly small details.

Painting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the planning, preparation and execution of the violence that erupted in Boston was critical to the government’s goal of winning the death penalty against the sole surviving brother.

But when close scrutiny has been applied to the government’s case, we continually find troubling inconsistencies that hint at a prosecution hell-bent on winning the case — damn the specifics of who did exactly what and when.

Why Details Matter: See for Yourself with One Click

For instance: in our past reporting we showed how the government claimed Tamerlan drove as Dzhokhar was sitting menacingly behind Dun Meng, the carjacking victim, as they circled around greater Boston in Meng’s stolen Mercedes SUV. But when we see the Mercedes pull up to the gas pump where Meng ultimately gets away, Dzhokhar appears to get out of the front seat — not the back.

As we reported previously:

Officially, by the time the Mercedes SUV can be seen pulling into the Shell station on the video in question, Tamerlan was driving, Danny was in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar was sitting in the backseat.

In the video, we see the SUV pull up to one of the gas pumps and stop. Strangely, we see Dzhokhar emerge from behind the gas pump, obscuring the front passenger door before he makes his way into the store.

Strange because we were told he was sitting in the backseat. Yet we don’t see Dzhokhar get out of the rear door. Neither do we see him walk from the other side of the SUV.

Did they edit that out? Why?

Was the “escape” story embellished? After all, what cold-blooded criminals would allow a carjacking victim to sit in the back seat to make an easy escape? Or did they let him go? In fact, the carjacking victim’s account changed significantly early on until it finally solidified into what sounded most damning.

Other Little “Details”

And the government’s glossing over of its pre-bombing relationship with the Tsarnaevs, who hail from a geopolitical hotspot on Russia’s southern flank, strongly hints that Tamerlan in particular may have been a pawn in some tangled international intrigue with Russia.

We still don’t know why the family was granted asylum and yet freely returned to the Caucasus region — a reality that has experts scratching their heads.

Instead, what we witnessed was a theatrical effort on the part of the government to portray Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a cartoonish fanatical monster — the enemy of you and me and our way of life. Whipped up into a vengeful frenzy, the public is far less likely to ask questions.

Notably, the caricature of Dzhokhar as a crazed Jihadi fell apart under a mild cross-examination of his twitter feed. The government’s examples of Islamic religious fanaticism turned out to be run-of-the-mill song lyrics that any 19-year-old would be familiar with.

The no-holds-barred prosecution of Tsarnaev looked more like an effort to disguise the backstory of how and why this happened, than an effort to find the truth.

For an intriguing, sinister, and even likely explanation for what that backstory was really about — please go here.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

America Keeps Moving Towards War

By Brian CLOUGHLEY – Strategic Culture Foundation – 15.03.2016

Very few US official figures are known for their sense of irony, least of all the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, and it is unfortunate that he and others lacking appreciation of unintentional absurdity would be unable to find dark amusement in the contrast between two recent parallel events.

On February 25 the Defence Secretary and his uniformed glove puppet, Air Force General Breedlove, appeared in front of the House Appropriations Committee to provide justification for spending as much on military affairs as the next eight nations in the world. It is likely he chose Breedlove to accompany him rather than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking Pentagon officer, because Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe – the man responsible for carrying out the policy of confrontation with Russia.

Carter is the man who declared last year that «the US military has helped to maintain peace and stability in [Asia] for 70 years», having had a slight lapse of memory about the US war in Vietnam from 1955 to 1973 in which 58,220 members of its military forces lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam and its unfortunate neighbours died in merciless US bombing onslaughts. Countless thousands of children were sentenced to infirmity and grotesque deformity by Washington’s use of hideous poisons intended to destroy trees other vegetation.

As for the glove puppet, Germany’s Der Spiegel recorded a year ago that «General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington [and said] that Putin had once again ‘upped the ante’ in eastern Ukraine – with ‘well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery’ having been sent to Donbass. ‘What is clear,’ Breedlove said, ‘is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.’ German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander…»

This was not surprising – because there was not a word of truth in any of his wild assertions.

At the very time Carter and Breedlove were speaking to the ever-receptive «support our troops» Congressional Committee («under your leadership, the men and women who serve in the US military answer the call time and again to leave their loved ones, put themselves in harm’s way, and execute challenging missions abroad») the count-down to test-firing a US Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was under way.

The defence secretary told the American public that «It’s a competitive world out there. We compete with China, we compete with Russia, we compete with terrorists. And we have to win». 

Minuteman missiles have nuclear warheads and are manufactured by the Boeing Company which is proud that «the Minuteman program established Boeing as a leader in large-scale system integration. Today, the combined heritage of the Minuteman programs of Boeing and Autonetics continues as Boeing Strategic Missile Systems (SMS), supporting the Air Force with system evaluation, testing, training and modernization».

The US arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons includes 450 Boeing ICBMs, each having an explosive power of 475 kilotons (Kt). The US bombs that totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 Kt.

On February 25 Boeing’s shares opened at 116.35 and went to a high of 117.60. Next day they reached 119.45. In early March they had increased to 123.49. It seems they’re taking off with comparable velocity to their Minuteman missiles, boosted by statements on the part of the military and their legions of supportive politicians that China and Russia are threatening the United States.

Washington fails to realise – simply refuses to understand – that the only thing wanted by Russia and China is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of other nations’ affairs that do not concern it. Secretary Carter states that militarily «We compete with China, we compete with Russia» – but Russia and China don’t want to compete with the United States. They just want to progress and develop economically and socially and stay in their own backyards, with secure borders, while trading with as many countries as possible.

Neither Russia nor China has 700 military bases in over 40 countries round the world. Neither Russia not China attempts to vastly expand military alliances specifically designed to threaten the United States. Neither Russia nor China possess nuclear-armed Carrier Strike Groups or Amphibious Ready Groups of the type and strength that the US deploys threateningly around the coasts of sovereign nations who prefer to mind their own business.

The latest US move to threaten China is deployment to the South China Sea of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. They and their many escort vessels arrived off China on 4 March to join the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and its fleet of ancillary ships.

In another wonderfully ironic episode, just as this mighty US attack fleet was arriving to menace China, Defence Secretary Carter announced to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that «China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea». Mystically, he observed that «Specific actions will have specific consequences» and when asked what these might be, he «told reporters the US military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were affected by China’s actions».

With good historical justification, China maintains that most of the islet chains and groups in the South China Sea are its sovereign territory, although some areas are claimed by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United States has got nothing to do with these disputes. Washington has no treaties with any of these nations that would require military intervention in the event of one of them having a disagreement with another country.

The United States has no territory of its own closer than the Pacific island of Guam, where, according to the US Congressional Research Service, «Since 2000, the US military has been building up forward-deployed forces… to increase US operational presence, deterrence, and power projection». In other words, the US build-up is intended to confront China, which is now, understandably, being forced to increase its own military forces to be prepared for what might happen as a result of US «power projection».

Complementing the US muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, the indefatigable Breedlove explained why Washington is indulging in similar antics in Europe. Ignoring the fact that the insurgency against Syria’s government was energetically supported by the US, in training and equipping what it absurdly called «moderate rebel forces», thus contributing to massive destruction and creating a dire refugee problem, Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the refugee crisis in Europe is all the fault of Russia. «Together», he declared, «Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration… to break European resolve».

In a fit of fantasy Breedlove announced that Russia has «chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat» to the United States and its allies, and emphasised that the Supreme Allied Command Europe, «is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary».

The US is deliberately and most aggressively threatening China and Russia. Its military representatives are making belligerent statements that are intended to implant fear in Moscow and Beijing.

But the immature bluster and bravado of such as Breedlove and Carter do not create fear in those they seek to intimidate. They create determination in such countries – the resolve to stand up to the menace presented by the incessant deployment of military force against them.

This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and the US may be in for some nasty surprises.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment