It’s Wrong to Take Clinton’s Claim of Possible US-Russia ‘Reset’ Seriously
Sputnik – January 18, 2016
MOSCOW – A possibility of “a reset” in the Russian-US ties voiced by US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cannot be taken seriously, experts told Sputnik Monday, stressing that the statement was a tactical ploy by an “opportunistic” politician.
Earlier in the day, former US Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said a hypothetical “reset” of Russia-US relations is possible, but would depend on what Washington obtained from it.
“It would be a mistake to place any hope in Hilary Clinton,” John Laughland, the director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, said, adding that she is “a very opportunistic woman who will say anything without thinking about it very much.”
Under Clinton, the idea of “a reset” was inconsistent, Laughland highlighted, citing as an example the appointment of Michael McFaul as US Ambassador to Russia, who in fact was “one of the most catastrophic ambassadors that America has ever sent anywhere I would say.”
“Clinton’s comment clearly is an electoral gimmick meant to present her as a realist ready to constructively re-engage with Russia. But after the failure of Obama’s earlier reset, and given Clinton’s record as a hardliner, Moscow is not going to be in the least impressed,” Vlad Sobell, a professor of politics at New York University in Prague, told Sputnik.
He also reminded of the failure of a previous “reset,” in which Clinton even pressed “a reset button” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and which resulted in Washington’s “multifaceted aggressive campaign against the Russian Federation.” A new “reset” would require almost impossible conditions and circumstances, and the essential thing for Washington to revise and renew contacts with Moscow is dropping its exceptional idea, a political analyst on Russia outlined.
“A fundamental reset would be possible only when the US elite gives up on its quest to establish absolute world hegemony,” Jon Hellevig noted.
Meanwhile, Laughland called the process “a reality check,” which envisaged the need for Washington to understand that the world was composed of other states with different and sometimes conflicting interests, and those interests could not be overruled by US exceptionalism.
The United States needs to stop thinking that its power and leadership are the necessary ingredients for the world peace, he noted, adding, nevertheless, that those passages have been an integral element of all the US strategic documents.
Looking at the future of Russian-US ties, the experts appear to be quite pessimistic regardless of who is elected the US president.”It is now beyond doubt that US policy is not driven by the White House but by the military-industrial complex, or the so called deep state. And this uncontrollable monster is demonstrably hell-bent on deepening the US-Russia confrontation,” Sobell suggested.
Hellevig pointed at Donald Trump as “the one that offers a hope for a real change in America and its relations to the rest of the world.”
If Trump stands for what he has said during his campaign, he could pose a threat to the present US elite, the political analyst said.
“But it is difficult to see how a mere president of the United States could in reality stand against those interest groups,” Hellevig admitted.
Russia-US ties have been strained since 2014, when Washington, as well as the European Union and their allies, introduced several rounds of sanctions against Moscow over its alleged involvement into an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, and what the Western officials and media described as “annexation” of Crimea.
The Black Sea peninsula reunified with Russia in March 2014 following a political referendum in the region, in which 96 percent of the population voted in favor of joining Russia.
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that the vote was held in full compliance with democratic procedure and international rule of law.
US State Department Has ‘No Comment’ on Legality of New Iran Sanctions
Sputnik – 18.01.2016
The US Department of State has no comment on the recent accusation of Tehran on the “illegal” nature of the new US sanctions against entities involved in ballistic missile procurement for Iran, the Office of Press Relations told Sputnik on Monday.
Earlier on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Hossein Jaberi Ansari stated the US sanctions have “no legal or moral legitimacy.” Moreover, the country’s foreign ministry said that Tehran will reply on the sanctions by a more robust approach to the national ballistic missile program and its national defense and security capabilities.
“We have no comment on this,” the press relations office said, highlighting the country’s President Barack Obama’s Sunday statement on Iran.
On Sunday, Obama stated that the nuclear agreement reached by Iran and world powers in July proved possibilities of US diplomacy.
On the same day, the US Treasury Department sanctioned 11 entities and individuals, including six Iranians and one Chinese citizen, over their involvement in procurement on behalf of Iran’s ballistic missile program.
In November, media reported that Iran allegedly tested a surface-to-surface Emad (Pillar) missile in violation of a UN Security Council resolution.
The United States has earlier weakened sanctions targeting Iran as global nuclear watchdog IAEA verified on Saturday Tehran’s compliance with a nuclear agreement reached last July.
US Treasury imposes new ballistic missile sanctions on Iran
RT | January 17, 2016
The US Treasury says it is imposing new ballistic missile sanctions on Iran after Tehran released five American prisoners. The move also comes less than a day after some of the sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program were removed by the US and EU.
Washington has imposed sanctions on 11 companies and individuals for helping to supply Iran’s ballistic missile program, the Treasury Department stated.
“Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions,” Adam J. Szubin, acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a press release.
“We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program.”
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says it will also block the assets of Mabrooka Trading, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, for providing Iran with parts used in their ballistic missiles. Others sanctioned include companies and individuals involved in the program, which supervised testing of two ballistic missiles in 2015.
President Barack Obama’s administration delayed implementing the sanctions for more than two weeks, while negotiations to release two US prisoners being held in Iran were taking place, Reuters reported, citing its sources.
Obama is also expected to make a statement later on Sunday, regarding the Iran deal and the release of five prisoners.
Is Obama the Biggest Puppet in History?
By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 16.01.2016
Out of all the political prostitutes in the Western world, one man stands out as the perfect illustration of a politician who works solely to serve his puppet masters. Even though the majority of politicians are controlled by economic and corporate elites, the current US President, Barack Obama, is the epitome of a man who is bought and paid for by special interests.
Obama was elected President in November 2008, and inaugurated in January 2009. From the very beginning of his Presidency, it was clear who the “lord and saviour” was beholden to. According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama’s top campaign donors in 2008 included: Goldman Sachs; JPMorgan Chase; Citigroup; Morgan Stanley; Microsoft; Google; and IBM. Considering Obama’s donors, it’s no wonder that (unlike Iceland) the US has not prosecuted the plethora of bankers and financial institutions that have engaged in fraud for years, and subsequently played a pivotal role in causing the financial crisis of 2007/08.
“I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go”
In a bizarre speech in 2008, Obama said: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve travelled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to visit.” Did he simply make a mistake? Was he joking? Or was this just another slip from a person who is really just hypnotically going through the motions anytime he speaks, with no real interest in what he is saying. This bizarre statement is not an isolated one from the US President, as just a few months ago, Obama tried to argue that Russia bombing ISIL is only “strengthening ISIL.”
The Narcissist
In Greek mythology, Narcissus, the son of a river god, fell in love with his own reflection. Judging from his actions in office, Obama also appears to care more about himself than anything else. In a recent 33-minute speech, Obama referred to himself a whopping 76 times; a true mark of a narcissistic, arrogant and egocentric person. Perhaps he was trying to challenge Julius Caesar’s record, as the former Roman general penned the majority of the ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War,’ in which the word “Caesar” is used 775 times, according to the historian Robin Lane Fox.
Tears of Deceit
Emotive propaganda 101; cry and weep during a highly controversial and political speech on gun control, pulling at the heartstrings of the American public to push a political agenda. In this piece, I’m not trying to underplay the death of innocent people, but merely point out the way in which Obama is emotively trying to manipulate the opinions of the American public in order to push through legislation. Whatever your personal views are on gun control in the US, Obama’s tactics should be denounced as deceitful and staged.
Remember, the man who stood up and gave an Oscar winning performance recently, is the same man who is the head of the country that is carrying out more drone strikes around the world than ever before; has been funding and arming terrorists to overthrow the secular Syrian government; bombed a hospital in Afghanistan which killed at least three children; destroyed and destabilized the nation of Libya (which previously had the highest standard of living in Africa); supports Saudi Arabia in its war crime in Yemen; tortures and interrogates people across the world; and countless other crimes that kill and maim innocent people, yet no tears are shed by the US President.
Was San Bernardino a Black Op?
There are also some anomalies in many of the mainstream narratives regarding mass shootings in the US. The tragic shooting in San Bernardino for instance, which the mainstream media claimed was carried out by husband and wife, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appears to conflict with some eyewitness accounts of the attack. Two reported eyewitnesses claim that the shooters were three tall white men wearing military gear.
Was San Bernardino a black op carried out by military personnel or mercenaries to further legitimize the push for gun control? It is difficult to conclusively say what actually happened, but the official narrative is a shaky one. It should also be noted that some investigative journalists have argued that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of mass shootings under Obama, one of the most pro-gun control President’s in recent decades.
How Obama Went From the Anti-Bush to a Bush on Steroids
Sputnik – January 12, 2016
In a recent article for independent German magazine Zeiten Schrift, contributor Klaus Faissner reflected on the US president’s journey from an electrifying candidate with a savior-like quality to a tired leader tarnished by drone strikes, mass surveillance, and a relationship with the media reminiscent of the worst days of the Nixon administration.
In his article, republished and translated by foreign media translation service WhatTheySayAboutUSA.com, Faissner recalled that in the run-up to his presidency, while he was still a candidate, Barack Obama “was presented as the savior of the world – almost a Messiah.”
“He was rapturously greeted by a crowd of over 200,000 in Berlin in 2008 – even before he had been officially crowned as President of the USA. “Yes, We Can!” was the campaign slogan that electrified the crowd, even before he began speaking. The American presidential candidate gathered bigger crowds in Germany than even the Pope, rock stars, or a football game with the national team. He promised to liquidate nuclear arms, reestablish good relations with Russia, pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan – and to close the US’s nefarious concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.”
“As the US’s first black president,” Faissner reflected, “Barack Obama ought to have become the antithesis of everything that George ‘Dubya’ Bush had stood for – a president whose wars had run through the world like cancer, whilst clamping down on basic freedoms for his own people. This was the way the media presented the incoming President Obama – and the world believed the simulacrum they’d been given.”
Unfortunately, the journalist recalled, “what the press wasn’t reporting, however, was that [by the end of his first term], Obama signed more orders for drone assaults than Bush Jr. had done in the entire eight years of his presidency. These were drone strikes which caused catastrophic levels of non-combatant casualties, which America simply wrote-off under the euphemism of ‘collateral damage.'””Like his predecessor, Obama threw all his weight behind GMO agriculture; he didn’t give the slightest thought to his promises to close Gitmo; he showed no interest whatsoever in improving relations with Russia, and he worked actively on destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.”
A ‘Tense’ Relationship With Journalists
“In 2009,” Faissner recalled, “the incoming president declared his intentions for a previously unprecedented level of transparency in government and the apparatus of national administration. ‘Openness will strengthen our democracy,’ as he stressed in subsequent legislation.”
However, “now that Obama has been at the helm for nearly seven years, it’s clear that all these promises were empty piffle. No president after Richard Nixon has been so aggressively opposed to the media, as was highlighted in a piece written by the former Washington Post chief editor Leonard Downie, published in 2013 – about freedom of speech in the United States. Downie suggested the Obama administration was operating a misinformation policy, used electronic snooping on journalists, and was behind a ratcheted-up campaign of persecution against whistleblowers and journalists involved in investigation.”
“An atmosphere of fear pervaded the work of journalists, Downie wrote, with their investigations permanently occluded in secret observation by the state. Despite the administration’s promises to end the ‘unreasonable secrecy’ that typified the Bush era, Obama has in fact continued to expand it. Often entirely irrelevant documents are systematically classified ‘top secret’ to deny reporters access to them.””On top of this,” Faissner laments, “Obama administration staffers frequently take personal offense to articles criticizing government policy. To ward off the increasing frequency of such articles, the Obama administration is increasingly reaching out for the 1917 Espionage Act. Although it had only been employed three times in the first 90 years of its existence, over the period between 2009 to 2013… eight different government officials were arraigned with it, charged with passing governmental information to journalists, putting out a powerful resonance on Capitol Hill. One of those thus charged was Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on government snooping on the whole world’s population by the National Security Agency. Bob Woodward, who broke the news of the Watergate scandal in the Nixon era, warns that any fight against critical journalists only leads in the long term to weaken the nation’s national security.”
A Unique and Powerful Surveillance System
“In reality,” Faissner warned, “Obama has set up a unique system of surveillance. It was done in such a way that people around the world have no idea that Obama’s policies are a continuation, or even a worsening of those of George W Bush. Since October 2011 government staffers in every branch of the administration have been encouraged to snitch on their colleagues. Staff in Federal departments have been obliged since 2012 to report all their contacts with the media, and moreover to report on suspicious colleagues. Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA, said the program had been incepted to ‘block all contact.’ Even staffers of new agencies who are remote from revolutionary activities, such as Associated Press or Fox News have come under the crosshairs of the Obama administration.”
“One such journalist has been James Rosen of the Fox News television channel, who came under observation from the Justice Department, for using information he had received from a highly-placed government official. The information referred to the international community ratcheting up sanctions against Pyongyang over new nuclear weapons testing by North Korea. The Washington Post notes that the FBI monitored Rosen’s phone calls, and even screened his private email correspondence.”Moreover, Faissner suggests, “the situation worsened drastically in 2015. In a document entitled ‘Law on War’ [a set of instructions on the legitimate warfare practices approved by the US military], the Pentagon stated that journalists could be treated as ‘unprivileged belligerents,’ a status which, according to a representative from the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, ‘gives U.S. military commanders across all services the purported right to at least detain journalists without charge, and without any apparent need to show evidence or bring a suspect to trial.'”
“If the Pentagon is putting spying in the same basket as journalism, the New York Times noted, then this is a step in the same direction as totalitarian regimes. It’s hardly surprising that in the World Press Freedom Index for 2015, the USA is rated at 49 place – on a par with El Salvador, Burkina Faso and the Republic of Niger.”
Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Obama Dropped 23,144 Bombs in 2015
Sputnik – January 11, 2016
The United States in the past year dropped more than 20,000 bombs on Muslim-majority countries Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In an article published January 7, Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at CFR, states that since January 1, 2015, the United States has dropped an estimated 23,144 bombs in those six countries: 22,110 in Iraq and Syria; 947 in Afghanistan; 58 in Yemen; 18 in Somalia; and 11 in Pakistan.
“This estimate is based on the fact that the United States has conducted 77 percent of all airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, while there were 28,714 US-led coalition munitions dropped in 2015. This overall estimate is probably slightly low, because it also assumes one bomb dropped in each drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which is not always the case,” Zenko writes.
Despite dropping tens of thousands of bombs over the past 17 months, Washington’s strategy has failed to defeat Daesh and other Islamic militant groups, Zenko observed.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban control more territory than at any point since the 2001 US invasion, according to a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine.
Zenko notes that the primary focus of Washington’s counter-terrorism strategy is to kill extremists, and that far less attention is paid to prevent a moderate individual from becoming radicalized.
As a result, “the size of [Daesh] has remained wholly unchanged,” Zenko writes.
In 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated the size of Daesh to be between 20,000-31,000 members. On Wednesday, Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, estimated the group at 30,000 members, despite Pentagon claims that 25,000 Daesh members have been killed in US air strikes.
At the same time, the Pentagon claims that only six civilians have “likely” been killed in the course of the bombing campaign.
Yemen: A US-Orchestrated Holocaust
By Stephen Lendman | Peoples Voice | January 9, 2016
Millions of lives are at risk from violence, starvation, lack of vital medical care, and overall deprivation.
A new UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) report downplayed the ongoing catastrophe, shamelessly undercounting civilian casualties since conflict began last March.
It’s likely in the tens of thousands from Saudi terror-bombing heavily populated areas and absence of vital essentials to life.
Claiming it’s only 2,800, another 5,200 wounded mocks the unbearable suffering of millions of Yemenis, victims of US imperialism.
The world community remains largely indifferent, ignoring an entire population at risk. Millions may perish before conflict ends. Nothing is being done to prevent it.
Fighting shows no signs of abating. Obama’s orchestrated war complicit with Riyadh is another high crime on his rap sheet, major media scoundrels giving it short shrift.
Famine stalks Yemen, around 20 million at risk, children, the ill and elderly most vulnerable. War without mercy continues.
Secure sources of food, potable water, fuel, electricity and medical care are absent or in too short supply in most of the country – impossible conditions to survive for many.
Malnutrition is rampant, near-starvation commonplace. So are preventable diseases claiming unknown numbers of lives for lack of treatment. Body counts exclude nonviolent deaths.
A phantom mid-December ceasefire ended in the new year. Saudis escalated terror-bombing US selected targets, including densely populated residential areas, hospitals, refugee camps, vital infrastructure and other non-military sites.
A blockade remains in force, preventing vital to life essentials from getting to people in need in amounts enough to matter.
Washington and Riyadh want war, not peace. Ceasefire was more illusion than reality – Houthis irresponsibly blamed for imperial crimes. Yemenis continue suffering horrifically.
Their country is being systematically ravaged and destroyed – increasingly looking like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
US imperialism bears full responsibility, destroying life on earth one country at a time, making things unbearable for survivors.
Last September, a largely Saudi-drafted (US/UK supported) UN Human Rights Council resolution on Yemen excluded an independent international war crimes investigation, whitewashing imperial high crimes.
It authorized only UN provided technical assistance to a Yemeni inquiry headed by illegitimate president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi – US-installed in a 2012 election with no opposing candidates.
Yemen remains a black hole of endless violence and instability, no relief in sight for its suffering millions.
-###-
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
OBAMA’S TEARS
“Even those tears, I me mine
“I me mine, I me mine” – the Beatles
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | January 7, 2015
Had I seen the image of Obama, weeping over American gun deaths, seven years ago, I know I would have been deeply moved. It would have reinforced my view of him then as an empathetic, bright, and progressive politician. And I did then, and do now, find America’s violence – all of it, not just the small fraction of it seen in street killings – an appalling assault on the human spirit.
But the image comes seven years later, following a period of Obama’s proving himself an utterly cold and dry-eyed killer. Actually, apart from seven years packed with regular killing and support of others doing killing in at least half a dozen lands, he is reliably reported to have once said at a high-level meeting, without tears or the least change in demeanor, “I’m pretty good at killing.”
I don’t know whether the recent tears were artificially induced, as by an irritant placed on a fingertip to be touched to his face at the right moment of his performance, or squeezed out from heretofore unknown political acting talent. Perhaps they just reflect a kind of strangely compartmentalized brain.
This last possibility would make him more bizarre than I had come to regard him. I had come pretty much to accept him as just one more of the garden-variety psychopaths who have held the American Presidency for decades. There were even rumors, stemming from gaps in his resume, that he was CIA, an organization that employs a lot of psychopaths and has now deeply penetrated America’s elected government, having itself produced several presidents – George Bush père for sure – and other high office holders. The practice is equivalent to the Mafia’s having a “made man” on the bench of a high court.
After seven years of mass murder, dirty tricks destroying countless lives and destabilizing many peaceful lands, thousands of extrajudicial killings conducted by young thugs from basement computer-games rooms at CIA, and unblinking acceptance of such brutal savageries as we’ve seen from Israel or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, his tears truly mean nothing, except perhaps somewhere in the back of his own dark and terrible mind.
Only a few days before my writing this, I read of Israel spraying a huge swath of land inside the boundary of Gaza with a deadly herbicide. So these miserable people – these people who cannot even import cement to repair Israel’s savage destruction of homes and schools and public sanitation in 2014 – are now also to live with reduced arable land plus the virtual certainty of heavy future birth defects, much as the Vietnamese still experience from America’s hellish saturation of their land with Agent Orange about half a century ago.
That Nazi-like behavior solicited no teary scenes from Obama, just as Israel’s slaughter of more than 500 children and 1,700 adults in 2014 solicited not a tear from Obama, not so much as an awkward throat-clearing.
I don’t know what caused him to cry in his little performance about guns in America, but if you tell me it was because a decent human was overwhelmed momentarily by America’s hideously murderous society, I will not even bother to answer.
As remarkably few in other lands appear to grasp, America is a massively brutal society. This is true both at home and abroad, and I should know because I grew up there. I also know it will not change within the lifetimes of any readers, the overwhelming size and nature of the situation being beyond what many outside observers can imagine.
Certainly the insipid measures Obama has taken will not make a dent in the toll. Strangers to American society simply cannot imagine how many guns are floating around there. A recent Small Arms Survey estimated 270 million small arms, but there are a remarkable number of military-grade weapons in private hands as a result of exposure to a vast armed services with its galaxy of local military bases, major national guard organizations and facilities in every state, and the past heavy arming of police and numerous agencies such as the TSA. The kind of police who beat up drug suspects and take their money are also the kind of police who illicitly trade in guns, and America has large numbers of them amongst its rag-tag collection of a million or so.
America swims in guns, and there is a vast market just in private sales and stolen guns. There will always be a market under such conditions no matter what regulations Washington may impose. And increasingly, the individual states have permitted what was in my day in Chicago a serious felony, the concealed carrying of guns. Some also allow citizens to carry them openly in holsters.
Remember, there is not just the matter of thousands of murders and countless maimings each year. There are, as was revealed by The Guardian for the first time ever, 1,134 people killed by their own police in 2015. It all charges the atmosphere of the United States with a kind of regular, low-grade terror. And America’s prisons have an international reputation for brutality. They include such barbaric innovations as super-max prisons (in which prisoners live out entire lives in total isolation), private profit-motivated prisons, and a prison population whose total size dwarfs that of all other advanced countries.
I read in British newspapers, discussing Obama’s efforts, expressions from readers such as “it’s about time” or “those awful Republicans,” and I know they reflect views of people who just really do not understand America.
America is a country which has killed at least 6 million people over the last half century abroad, virtually all the killing to no purpose other than America’s trying to have its own way in places as distant as Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and still others. If you think violence officially sanctioned on such a scale has no effect on the country responsible for it, you are extremely naïve.
Much of the killing was savage beyond description, employing fire bombs, napalm, white phosphorus, Agent Orange, carpet bombing, and that truly hideous invention, cluster bombs.
America also remains the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, twice, on civilian targets of no military significance, and this after Japan had made strong feelers for its surrender. No, for America only unconditional surrender was acceptable. And a series of 12 atomic bombs for 12 cities was scheduled. Some sensible minds questioned the lunacy, considering that Japan had been almost flattened by a ferocious campaign of fire-bombing, so that not one primary or even secondary military target was left standing.
The fact that only two atomic bombs were used had nothing to do with America’s humanity. In later years, detailed plans for massive atomic attacks on Russia and China were drawn up, the last of which so far as I am aware was in 1961, being earnestly advocated to President Kennedy by the insane men then running the Pentagon. Nuclear weapons also were seriously discussed as options during the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War.
America is, far and away, the world’s largest arms dealer, literally dwarfing the trade in death machines of any other country, and it sells its arms to tyrants and madmen across the planet enabling players like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, or Egypt to hugely expand the total number of deaths for which America is responsible.
America also spends as much on its military as all the world’s militaries combined. It is an obscene amount of money dedicated to killing and oppression.
American advisors are in the business of advising kings and tyrants how they can control people and efficiently kill them if needed. America had an outfit called The Army School of the Americas which became infamous for its teaching military personnel sent from Latin America in the fine points of killing and torture. Today it’s been reborn as the bland-sounding Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
In a county like contemporary America, with its often poor employment prospects for young adults, the military is a major employer. It has an elaborate enticement system to attract young people. General military training anywhere consists of just two central matters: how to be doggedly obedient and how to kill people. So every year in America, many thousands of such young people are dumped back into the general population. Many of them then go on to become police because military service is a favorite entry qualification. Many of them remain unemployed. Some even homeless.
There are not just the regular armed forces involved in saturating the country with military values and attitudes, there are also the huge national guards and reserves and high school and college ROTCs. It is a massive effort, blanketing a supposedly democratic society with undemocratic and violent ideas. You might view it as kind of a national immunization program, immunization against democratic and human values, conducted year-in, year-out. So the young generation of Americans is constantly immersed in the concepts of blind obedience and killing. And all this is further reinforced by the vast numbers of Americans dependent upon work at its many regional military bases and other facilities.
Just a portion of this avalanche of annual spending on murder might have created countless new opportunities in America with new and better schools, better medical facilities, improved housing, and intervention into troubled families. No, instead, everything is just allowed to rip, and on the streets of Chicago and other cities, week-in and week-out, the toll of young blacks resembles minor battle scenes with as many as twenty-five shot (not all killed) on a single week-end.
That brings us to yet another aspect of American violence and passion for guns. America remains in many respects just as divided a society on racial lines as it was a century ago. The unspoken reason for many Americans keeping guns is the same one that caused Southern plantation owners to sleep each night with a knife and a pistol under the pillow. It rarely is openly discussed, but it is there like a great unnerving presence in a thousand dark places.
There is yet one more dimension to American violence. About half a dozen years ago, a study, led by a Harvard Medical School researcher, found evidence of mental problems in 26.4 % of people in the United States, versus, for example, 8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned with matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment, but for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think the salient finding is simply America’s high percentage. The world is being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have genuine mental problems.
I’m afraid America’s movie industry has created sugary fantasies about America which still influence the views of many abroad. There really are no Jimmy Stewart types, with tears in the eyes and benign expressions, running America.
And in case you missed it, even in as sugary a confection as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” sobbed over by millions every Christmas season, some raw truth creeps in. Jimmy Stewart’s run-in with Bert the cop ends with Stewart running madly away in the snow and good old Bert pulling out his pistol and firing several times, trying to hit Stewart in the back and putting at risk pedestrians up and down the charming street. That’s the truest scene in the film.
And that is America. Fine-tuning and tears are about as fitting for the state of America as they would be on the Russian Front in World War II, the most horrendous conflict in all of human history in which 27 million Soviets and millions of Germans perished.
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
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- Palantir’s Technological Republic is a blueprint for digital tyranny
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- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 