France says Iran may be targeted with new sanctions over its recent ballistic missile tests, to which the Islamic Republic says it is entitled because they fall within the realm of conventional military capabilities.
“If necessary, sanctions will be taken,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in Paris on Sunday. He was speaking after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry and several European counterparts.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles, dubbed Qadr-H and Qadr-F, on Wednesday as part of military drills to assess their capabilities.
A day earlier, the Guards had fired another ballistic missile, called Qiam, from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country.
Last October, Iran successfully test-fired its precision-guided long-range Emad missile, sparking an uproar among US politicians.
In January, the US Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions against Iranian citizens and companies over the country’s ballistic missile program.
Iran says it has a right to carry out missile tests, asserting that none of its missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was speaking alongside the French top diplomat, described the recent tests as a breach of UN resolutions. Washington has, meanwhile, asked the UN Security Council to discuss the matter on Monday.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly said that its military might poses no threat to other countries, reiterating that its defense doctrine is merely based on deterrence.
March 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel | France, Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The United States extended the national emergency vis-a-vis Tehran despite the recent lifting of nuclear-related sanctions stipulated in Iran’s agreement with the P5+1 group of countries, President Barack Obama told the Speaker of the US House of Representatives in a letter on Wednesday.
On July 14, 2015, Iran and the P5+1 group of negotiators, comprising China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States plus Germany, signed a historic accord to guarantee the peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
“The national emergency with respect to Iran that was declared on March 15, 1995, is to continue in effect beyond March 15, 2016,” Obama stated.
“Though lifting of nuclear-related sanctions constitutes a significant change in our sanctions posture [with Iran], non-nuclear related sanctions remain in place.”
The United States, Obama explained, lifted nuclear-related sanctions against Iran after the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report in January verifying that Iran implemented key nuclear-related steps specified in the JCPOA.
“Nevertheless, certain actions and policies of the government of Iran are contrary to the interests of the United States in the region and continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Obama claimed.
Earlier this week, according to reports, Iran carried out ballistic missile tests that Washington vowed to raise with the UN Security Council if confirmed.
March 10, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Iran, Obama, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
Leave a comment
The United States is led by two corrupt establishments, one Democratic and one Republican, both deeply dependent on special-interest money, both sharing a similar perspective on world affairs, and both disdainful toward the American people who are treated as objects to be manipulated, not citizens to be respected.
There are, of course, differences. The Democrats are more liberal on social policy and favor a somewhat larger role of government in addressing the nation’s domestic problems. The Republicans embrace Ronald Reagan’s motto, “government is the problem,” except when they want the government to intervene on “moral” issues such as gay marriage and abortion.
But these two corrupt establishments are intertwined when it comes to important issues of trade, economics and foreign policy. Both are true believers in neo-liberal “free trade”; both coddle Wall Street (albeit seeking slightly different levels of regulation); and both favor interventionist foreign policies (only varying modestly in how the wars are sold to the public).
Because the two establishments have a chokehold on the mainstream media, they escape any meaningful accountability when they are wrong. Thus, their corruption is not just defined by the billions of special-interest dollars that they take in but in their deviations from the real world. The two establishments have created a fantasyland that all the Important People treat as real.
Which is why it has been somewhat amusing to watch establishment pundits pontificate about what must be done in their make-believe world – stopping “Russian aggression,” establishing “safe zones” in Syria, and fawning over noble “allies” like Saudi Arabia and Turkey – while growing legions of Americans have begun to see through these transparent fictions.
Though the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have many flaws, there is still something encouraging about Americans listening to some of straight talk from both Trump and Sanders – and to watch the flailing reactions of their establishment rivals.
While it’s true Trump has made comments that are offensive and stupid, he also has dished out some truths that the GOP establishment simply won’t abide, such as noting President George W. Bush’s failure to protect the country from the 9/11 attacks and Bush’s deceptive case for invading Iraq. Trump’s rivals were flummoxed by his audacity, sputtering about his apostasy, but rank-and-file Republicans were up to handling the truth.
Trump violated another Republican taboo when he advocated that the U.S. government take an evenhanded position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even told pro-Israeli donors that they could not buy his support with donations. By contrast, other Republicans, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, were groveling for the handouts and advocating a U.S. foreign policy that could have been written by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s Israel heresy brought the Republican foreign-policy elite, the likes of William Kristol and other neoconservatives, to full battle stations. Kristol’s fellow co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, was so apoplectic over Trump’s progress toward the GOP nomination that he announced that he would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s Struggles
Clinton, however, has had her own struggles toward the nomination. Though her imposing war chest and machine-driven sense of inevitability scared off several potential big-name rivals, she has had her hands full with Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old “democratic socialist” from Vermont. Sanders pulled off a stunning upset on Tuesday by narrowly winning Michigan.
While Sanders has largely finessed foreign policy issues – beyond noting that he opposed the Iraq War and Clinton voted for it – Sanders apparently found a winning issue in Michigan when he emphasized his rejection of trade deals while Clinton has mostly supported them. The same issue has worked well for Trump as he lambastes U.S. establishment leaders for negotiating bad deals.
What is notable about the “free trade” issue is that it has long been a consensus position of both the Republican and Democratic establishments. For years, anyone who questioned these deals was mocked as a know-nothing or a protectionist. All the smart money was on “free trade,” a signature issue of both the Bushes and the Clintons, praised by editorialists from The Wall Street Journal through The New York Times.
The fact that “free trade” – over the past two decades – has become a major factor in hollowing out of the middle class, especially across the industrial heartland of Middle America, was of little concern to the financial and other elites concentrated on the coasts. At election time, those “loser” Americans could be kept in line with appeals to social issues and patriotism, even as many faced borderline poverty, growing heroin addiction rates and shorter life spans.
Despite that suffering, the twin Republican/Democratic establishments romped merrily along. The GOP elite called for evermore tax cuts to benefit the rich; demanded “reform” of Social Security and Medicare, meaning reductions in benefits; and proposed more military spending on more interventions overseas. The Democrats were only slightly less unrealistic, negotiating a new trade deal with Asia and seeking a new Cold War with Russia.
Early in Campaign 2016, the expectations were that Republican voters would again get behind an establishment candidate like former Florida Jeb Bush or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, while the Democrats would get in line behind Hillary Clinton’s coronation march.
TV pundits declared that there was no way that Donald Trump could win the GOP race, that his high early poll numbers would fade like a summer romance. Bernie Sanders was laughed at as a fringe “issue” candidate. But then something expected happened.
On the Republican side, blue-collar whites finally recognized how the GOP establishment had played them for suckers; they weren’t going to take it anymore. On the Democratic side, young voters, in particular, recognized how they had been dealt an extremely bad hand, stuck with massive student debt and unappealing job prospects.
So, on the GOP side, disaffected blue-collar whites rallied to Trump’s self-financed campaign and to his promises to renegotiate the trade deals and shut down illegal immigration; on the Democratic side, young voters joined Sanders’s call for a “political revolution.”
The two corrupt establishments were staggered. Yet, whether the populist anti-establishment insurrections can continue moving forward remains in doubt.
On the Democratic side, Clinton’s candidacy appears to have been saved because African-American voters know her better than Sanders and associate her with President Barack Obama. They’ve given her key support, especially in Southern states, but the Michigan result suggests that Clinton may have to delay her long-expected “pivot to the center” a bit longer.
On the Republican side, Trump’s brash style has driven many establishment favorites out of the race and has put Rubio on the ropes. If Rubio is knocked out – and if Ohio Gov. John Kasich remains an also-ran – then the establishment’s only alternative would be Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a thoroughly disliked figure in the U.S. Senate. It’s become increasingly plausible that Trump could win the Republican nomination.
What a Trump victory would mean for the Republican Party is hard to assess. Is it even possible for the GOP establishment with its laissez-faire orthodoxy of tax cuts for the rich and trickle-down economics for everyone else to reconcile with Trump’s populist agenda of protecting Social Security and demanding revamped trade deals to restore American manufacturing?
Further, what would the neocons do? They now control the Republican Party’s foreign policy apparatus, which is tied to unconditional support for Israel and interventionism against Israel’s perceived enemies, from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, to Iran, to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Would they join Kagan in backing Hillary Clinton and trusting that she would be a reliable vessel for neocon desires?
And, if Clinton prevails against Sanders and does become the neocon “vessel,” where might the growing ranks of Democratic and Independent non-interventionists go? Will some side with Trump despite his ugly remarks about Mexicans and Muslims? Or will they reject both major parties, either voting for a third party or staying home?
Whatever happens, Official Washington’s twin corrupt establishments have been dealt an unexpected and potentially lasting punch.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
March 10, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, United States |
Leave a comment
Pluto-Zionism is the three-way marriage of plutocracy, right-wing Zionism and US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a serial war criminal, racist and servant of Wall Street. How did this deadly ménage-a-trois come about? The answer is that a stratospherically wealthy donor group, dedicated to promoting Israel’s dominance in the Middle East and deepening US military intervention in the region, has secured Clinton’s unconditional support for Tel Aviv’s ambitions and, in exchange, Hilary receives scores of millions to finance her Democratic Party foot soldiers and voters for her campaign.
Pluto-Zionism and Clinton
Pluto-Zionists comprise the leading financial backers of Clinton. Her million-dollar backers, among the most powerful financiers and media moguls in America, include: George Soros ($6 million), Marc Benioff, Roger Altman, Steven Spielberg, Haim and Cheryl Saban ($3 million and counting), Jeffrey Katzenberg, Donald Sussman, Herb Sandler, Jay and Mark Pritzker, S. Daniel Abraham ($1 million), Bernard Schwartz, Marc Lasry, Paul Singer, David Geffen, Fred Eychaner, Norman Braman and Bernie Marcus. Waiting in the wings are the Republican billionaire ‘king-makers’, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the Koch brothers as well as the ‘liberal’ multi-billionaire, Michael Bloomberg who had contributed $11 million in 2012 elections. These erstwhile Republican funders are increasing frightened by the anti-‘free trade and anti-intervention’ rhetoric of their party’s front-runner, Donald Trump, and are approaching the solidly pro-Israel, pro-war and pro-Wall Street candidate, Madame Clinton.
Israeli-First Ideologues and Clinton
In addition to the powerful Pluto-Zionists, a vast army of Israel-First ideologues is behind Clinton, including ‘veteran’ arm-chair war mongers like Victoria Nuland Kagan, Donald and Robert Kagan, Robert Zoellick, Michael Chertoff, Dov Zakheim among so many other promoters of Washington’s continuous wars on many fronts. Ms Nuland-Kagan, as US Undersecretary of State for East European Affairs, openly bragged about using hundreds of millions of dollars of US taxpayer money to finance the right-wing Ukrainian coup. Michael Chertoff, as head of Homeland Security after 9/11, jailed thousands of innocent Muslims while freeing five Israeli-Mossad agents arrested by the FBI for suspected involvement or pre-knowledge of the attacks in New York after they were seen filming the collapse of the towers and celebrating the event from a warehouse rooftop in New Jersey!).
Pluto-Zionists and the Israel-First ideologues support Ms Clinton as a reward for her extraordinary military and economic activities on behalf of Tel Aviv’s quest for regional dominance. Her accomplishments for the Jewish State include the promotion of full-scale wars, which have destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan; economic sanctions and blockade against Iran (she threatened to ‘obliterate Iran’ in 2007; and her own repeatedly stated unconditional support for Israel’s devastation against the people imprisoned in Gaza, which has cost thousands of civilian lives and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless. (In a letter to her ‘banker’, Haim Saban, Hillary stated: “Israel didn’t teach Hamas (the people of Gaza) a harsh enough lesson last year”).
Clinton versus Trump: ‘Moderation’ is in the Eyes of the Deceiver
The Pluto-Zionists, Israel-First ideologues, the US mass media and their acolytes on Wall Street and the Republican and Democratic Party elite are all on a rampage against the wildly popular Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, labeling him as ‘a danger to everything America stands for. (sic)’ Apart from savaging his persona, the anti-Trump chorus contrast his ‘extremism’ with warmonger Clinton’s ‘pragmatism’.
A careful examination of the facts reveals who is the ultra-extremist and who deals with reality:
Women
Madame Clinton’s much touted wars against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of women and children and uprooted millions of households. This bloody and undeniable record of mayhem was cited by Donald Trump when he argued that his policies would be much better for women than the Feminist Clinton’s had been.
So far, Trump’s worst offenses against women are his crude rhetorical misogynist quips, which pale before Hillary’s bloody record of devastation.
African-Americans
Clinton is backed by the leading black politicians who have long fed out of the Democratic Party patronage trough while selling the Clintons to the black electorate as ardent protectors of civil rights. In fact, as Steve Lendman has written, Hillary had referred to marginalized black youth as “super predators (with) no conscience, no empathy”. During her husband Bill’s presidency, she was on record supporting his draconian ‘three strikes’ crime laws, leading to the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of young blacks; and she backed his ‘welfare reform’ program, which shredded the social safety net for the poor and forced millions of impoverished mothers to work for sub-poverty wages, further eroding the stability of black female-headed households. On the African front, ‘Sister’ Secretary of State Hillary’s war on Libya led to the displacement, rape and murder of tens of thousands of black women of sub-Saharan origin at the hands of her jihadi war-lord allies. Millions of black sub-Saharan migrants had lived and worked in Gadhafi’s Libya for years, tens of thousands becoming Libyan citizens. They endured the horror of rampant ethnic cleansing in Clinton’s ‘liberated’ Libya.
Trump, at worst, has done nothing of direct harm to African Americans and remains an enigma on black issues. He opposes Clinton’s war on Libya and has vividly blamed her policies as responsible for the chaos and human misery in post-NATO bombing Libya.
Latinos
Under the Obama-Clinton administration almost 2 million Latino immigrants have been seized from their homes and workplaces, separated from their families and summarily expelled. As Madame Secretary of State, Clinton backed the Honduran military coup that overthrew the elected government of President Zelaya and led directly to assassination of over three hundred activists, including feminist, indigenous, human rights and environmental leaders, like Berta Caceres. Clinton actively backed unsuccessful coups against the democratically elected Bolivian and Venezuelan governments.
Trump has verbally threatened to extend and deepen the Obama-Clinton expulsion of whatever remains of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrant Latino workers after Obama’s expulsion of the 2 million and the hundreds of thousands who have voluntarily gone home. His ‘extremist’ vision is completely in line with that of his allegedly ‘pragmatic’ opponent whose State Department promoted the destruction of so many Latino families in the US.
Foreign Policy
Clinton has launched or promoted more simultaneous wars than any Secretary of State in US history. She was the leading force behind the US bombing of Libya and the brutal ‘regime change’ that has fractured that nation. She promoted the military escalation in Iraq, backed the violent seizure of power in Ukraine, ‘engineered’ the military build-up (pivot to Asia) against China and negotiated the continued presence of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan.
Clinton has repeatedly pledged to her supporter Haim Saban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Victoria Nuland Kagan, Donald and Robert Kagan, Robert Zoellick, Michael Chertoff, Dov Zakheim that she will give Israel with “all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to vanquish Hamas” regardless of the many thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties. The ‘pragmatic feminist’ Hillary is a fervent supporter of the Saudi despotism and its genocide war against the popular forces in Yemen. Hillary tried to pressure President Obama to send US ground troops into Syria. She promotes the continuation of harsh trade sanctions against Russia.
Trump opposes any further direct US intervention in the Middle East. During his debate in South Carolina, he repeatedly denounced President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq – as based on ‘deliberate lies to the American people’, to the shock and horror of the Republican Party elite. He has rejected Pluto-Zionist financing, arguing that only as an independent ‘honest broker’, who doesn’t take the side of Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, can he be effective in brokering a ‘deal’. He opposes sending ground troops overseas to Europe or Asia, which imposes a huge financial burden on the US taxpayers. He has gone on to suggest that European and Asian powers can and should pay for their own defense. Trump argues that the US could work with Putin against radical Islamist terrorism and he regards Russia as a potential trading partner. His anti-interventionism has been labeled as ‘isolationist’ by the Pluto-Zionist ideologues and militarist warlords holed up in their Washington think tanks, but Trump’s ‘America First’ resonates profoundly with the war-weary and economically devastated US electorate.
Israel
Clinton has totally and unconditionally pledged to widen and deepen US subordination to Israel’s war aims in the Middle East and to defend Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories and within apartheid Israel. As a result, Clinton has built a coalition made-up of unsavory mafia-linked, gambling, media and speculator billionaires, whose first loyalty is not to America but Israel. She denounces all critics of Israel as ‘anti-Semites’.
Trump has never been a critic of Israel but he has called for greater ‘evenhandedness’, which is anathema within Zionist circles. For that reason he has not secured a single Pluto-Zionist supporter. So far, he has not been labelled an anti-Semite…. perhaps because his own daughter converted to Judaism following her marriage, but his lack of effusive philo-Zionism has him marked as ‘unreliable’ to the Jewish State. As a subterfuge for his lack of servility to Tel Aviv, Democratic Party Zionist hacks emphasize his ‘racism’ and ‘fascist’ tendencies…
The Democratic Elections: The Real Muck
Clinton currently leads Sanders for the Democratic nomination mostly on the basis of non-elected delegates, the so-called ‘super delegates’, who are party loyalists appointed by the bosses and elite politicians. Sanders’ call for a “political revolution in America” has no traction unless there is first a political revolution within the Democratic Party. But the Democratic Party is like the Augean Stable – a clean up requiring a Herculean effort and a loud pugnacious leader with a big broom. Senator Sanders is no Hercules.
As a positive beginning, Sanders has mobilized grass roots support, raised progressive health, education and tax policies that adversely affect Clinton’s billionaire Wall Street backers (Big financier Jaime Diamond called Sanders ‘the most dangerous man in America’), and secured millions of contributions from small donors. But he has failed to target and demand the exit of the Pluto-Zionists, the Wall Street bankers and speculators and venal black politicians controlling the Democratic Party. They run the elections of US presidents and will make sure Hillary Clinton secures the nomination by hook or (more likely) crook.
Clinton is backed by this formidable authoritarian (profoundly anti-democratic) electoral machine. She is totally embedded in the process. Clinton has a track record of enthusiastic support for the barbarism of torture – laughing at and cheering on the torture-death of the wounded Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In the pursuit of wars and war crimes, Hillary Clinton knows no limit and has borne no accountability. What makes Hillary so terrifyingly dangerous is that she could be ‘Commander in Chief’ of a great military power. While Clinton may be no Hitler, the US is vastly more engaged in world politics than Weimer Germany ever was. Her dictate would bring on global destruction.
If the Democratic primaries are as profoundly undemocratic as they have been in the past, the Republicans and their plutocrat partners are openly planning and plotting to ‘Dump the Donald’ and prevent Trump from obtaining an electoral victory. They have been discussing ways to use convention procedures to undermine a majority vote, and set up a ‘brokered convention’, where the ‘big-wigs’ jigger the delegates, rules and voting procedures behind closed doors robbing the populist front-runner of his party candidacy.
Conclusion
The US presidential primaries reveal in all their facets the decay and corruption of democracy in an era of imperial decline. The ascendancy of a financial oligarchy in the Democratic Party, backing a psychopathic militarist, like Hillary, cannot disguise her track record by labeling their candidate a ‘pragmatist’; the majority of Sanders supporters have no illusions about Madame Clinton. Panic and hysteria among an unsavory elite in the Republican Party and its efforts to block a sui-generis conservative Republican isolationist speaks to the fragility of imperial rule.
If the psychopathic war-monger Clinton is crowned the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, there is no way she can be considered the pragmatic ‘lesser evil’ to Donald Trump or any Republican – their bosses decide to spew out. At best, she might be the ‘equal evil’. In this case, more than 50% of the electorate will not vote. If, after being robbed of his growing movement for the Democratic Party candidacy, ‘Bernie’ Sanders does not break out with an independent bid for the White House, I will join the minuscule 1% who vote for Green Party candidate, Dr. Jill Stein.
James Petras is author of The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East.
March 10, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Democratic Party, Donald Trump, George Soros, Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Palestine, Sanctions against Iran, Syria, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
“We must remember that the plutocrats dominated by the Israeli supporters [have] been extremely generous in financing Hillary’s campaign for president,” Professor James Petras says.
An American scholar says that “the plutocrats dominated by the Israeli supporters” are financing Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president of the United States.
Professor James Petras, who has written dozens of books on the Latin America and Middle East, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
He was commenting on US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel to discuss a new military aid package.
Washington and Tel Aviv are discussing details of a 10-year military aid package that will be larger than the $3.1 billion US package Israel received this year.
According to reports, Israeli officials have asked the US to increase its annual military assistance by 60 percent to an average of $5 billion a year over the 2018-2028 period.
Biden’s visit comes as the relationship between US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu took a new setback over the Israeli premier’s decision not to accept an invitation for talks in Washington later this month.
Netanyahu cancelled the meeting with Obama, US National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on Monday.
“This visit by Biden fits in with the Obama administration, which has at times had personal conflicts between Obama and Netanyahu, but on the substance of military and economic aid to Israel, [the US] has been exceedingly generous,” Professor Petras said.
“This despite the fact that Israel has been engaged in a war against the Palestinians, in particular the savage invasions of Gaza which seem not be of importance either to Biden, Obama or Hillary Clinton,” he added.
“We must remember that the plutocrats dominated by the Israeli supporters [have] been extremely generous in financing Hillary’s campaign for president and this new visit by Biden fits in with the attempt by the rightwing of the Democratic Party to undermine the challenge from Bernie Sanders,” the analyst stated.
Professor Petras said “an increase in military support for Israel is a destabilizing element not only because of Israel’s threat to the Palestinians and the land-grabbing but also because it could invite Israel to become more aggressive and threatening to Iran.”
“And I think it is a very foolish move by Obama and Biden and Clinton to destabilize the agreement that was reached with Iran regarding the nuclear understanding. I think it’s a very a bad omen for peace in the Middle East,” he concluded.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a vocal critic of the P5+1 group’s nuclear deal with Iran and has focused on derailing it, causing great resentment within the White House.
Ties between Obama and Netanyahu have been further strained over the Israeli premier’s resistance to the creation of a Palestinian state, which has been a key element of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
See also:
Clinton calls for sanctions on Tehran over test-firing missiles
March 9, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Palestine, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
US Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton has called for sanctions against Iran over the country’s test-firing of ballistic missiles.
“Iran should face sanctions for these activities and the international community must demonstrate that Iran’s threats toward Israel will not be tolerated,” claimed the former first lady, who is running for the 2016 presidential election, in a statement on Wednesday.
Her remarks run contrary to the Obama administration’s statement that the move is “not a violation of the Iran deal.”
Earlier in the day, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles in line with the country’s defense doctrine.
The missiles were fired from East Alborz heights in northern Iran and could hit targets 1,400 kilometers away in Makran Coasts southeast of the country.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Islamic Republic would continue to develop its missile program and that Tehran would need “no permission” to enhance the country’s defense capabilities.
US State Department Spokesman John Kirby has expressed concerns over the move but made it clear that it does not violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) singed between Tehran and the world powers last year.
“We’re not going to turn a blind eye to this… I’m just trying to get to a technical point here, which is that it’s not a violation of the Iran deal itself,” Kirby said earlier.
In recent years, Iran has made great achievements in its defense sector and manufactured different types of military equipment.
Iran has repeatedly assured other countries that its military might poses no threat to other states, insisting that its defense doctrine is entirely based on deterrence.
In her new statement, Clinton repeated her pro-Israeli rhetoric, calling Iran a “threat.”
“As President, I will continue to stand with Israel against such threats,” she said, adding she was “deeply concerned.”
She stated that it was possible to “address Iran’s destabilizing activities across the region, while vigorously enforcing the nuclear deal.”
The former secretary of state had heartily supported President Barack Obama for his efforts in reaching a deal with Tehran, which she had described as “the path of diplomacy.”
According to Barry Grossman, an international lawyer based in Indonesia, voting for Hillary means voting for “the Israeli hard right and the US war machine.”
“By making prior unqualified commitments on US policy in return for large sums of money and media support, Hillary Clinton is now incapable of honoring the oath of office which any president must take before stepping into the oval office,” he said in an interview with Press TV in July 2015.
See also:
Israeli supporters financing Clinton’s campaign: James Petras
March 9, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel | Hillary Clinton, Iran, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
Leave a comment
It could be about Israel
Now we all know that many of those who are hating on Donald Trump are doing so because he is threatening the cozy-crony-politico-predatory-capitalist system that has made so many of them fat and rich. He is intending to break their rice bowls as the Chinese would put it or, in a more American vernacular, the gravy train might be ending. To be sure The Donald is warning that he will do just that, even if he will find in practice, if elected, that turning the ship of state around might well be a task beyond the ability of any aspirant to the presidency.
But while pure self-interest might well be driving many of the chattering nonentities that populate our congress and the senior political appointee ranks in government there is something nevertheless extraordinary in the level of venom and sheer hatred that is being spewed at random about a potential Trump administration. It is not uncommon to read or hear that Trump is seeking to overturn the Constitution of the United States and establish a dictatorship that will promote his allegedly warped views of what must be done to correct America’s domestic and foreign policies, suggesting that our form of government is so fragile that it can be subverted by one man.
The anger directed against Trump is unique, one might note, as it also includes demands to somehow overturn the popular will expressed in primaries and caucuses to obtain a candidate that is more in tune with what the Republican establishment is seeking to promote as the “national consensus.” That Trump is voicing an overwhelming American middle class perspective on the evils of mass illegal immigration matters not a whit to the Mandarins whose only concerns on that issue center on the availability of a supply of cheap labor to clean their McMansions and swimming pools.
The anti-Trump effort is being well funded, has included notable defections to the Democratic Party, has led to lists of Republican politicians who will not accept a Trump nomination or support a President Trump, and has even produced calls for a third party neo-Republican entity to run against him. Some other reactions are stupid, including Canadian neocon Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calling for even more immigrants to the U.S., while talk radio extremist Glenn Beck has tweeted that if he had a knife and were able to get close to Trump he would have to keep on stabbing him.
To be sure, Trump has provided considerable fuel for the fire through his extraordinary ad libs about banning Muslims from the U.S., killing the families of terrorists and using torture. But mainstream politicians have already recommended and even done that much and more without the level of censure that Trump is receiving. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush have engaged in widespread killing of civilians, torture and assassinating families of suspected militants, to include American citizens, without any of the invective being leveled at Trump.
Indeed, Trump would appear to have a more sensible foreign policy in mind, consisting of avoiding unnecessary wars and “regime changes,” honoring the multilateral negotiated agreement with Iran, engaging diplomatically even with heads of state that we consider to be adversaries and encouraging Russia to fight ISIS. His three current opponents have recommended “carpet bombing” areas controlled by ISIS, fusing Syrian sand into nuclear radiating glass, provoking wars with both Russia and China, arming Ukraine, punching Vladimir Putin in the nose and sending in thousands of American soldiers to the Middle East. They are not in the least bothered by fattening up the already fat national security state with trillions more dollars while domestic needs go unaddressed. So who is the crazy one?
But there is one significant difference between Trump and the “establishment,” be they Democrats or Republicans that has not been highlighted. I would suggest that quite a lot of the depth and intensity of what we are experiencing is actually about Israel. Trump is the first high level politician aspirant within living memory to challenge the notion that the United States must stand by Israel no matter what Israel does. Even while affirming his affection for Israel, he has said that Washington must be even handed in its efforts to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, implying that Tel Aviv might have to make concessions.
Trump has also added insult to injury by delinking himself from the blandishments of Jewish political mega-donors, who largely call the tune for many in the GOP and among the Democrats, by telling them he doesn’t need their money and can’t be bought. His comments have challenged conventional interest group politicking in American and have predictably produced a firestorm reaction in the usual circles. Robert Kagan announced that he would be supporting Hillary, who famously has declared that she would immediately call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon taking office as a first step in moving the relationship with Tel Aviv to “the next level.” It is to be presumed that Kagan and his fellow neocons will be experiencing a welcoming vibe from at least some of the Democrats as the neoconservatives have always been liberals at heart on nearly all issues except foreign policy, rooted by them in the “unshakable and bipartisan bond” with Israel.
It is my opinion that the “I” word should be banned from American political discourse. Ironically, many American Jews are themselves uneasy about the place occupied by Israel in ongoing political debates, recognizing that it is both unhealthy in a democracy and reflective only of the extreme views of the hardline members of their own diaspora community. It is also unpleasantly all about Jews and money since the Republicans and other mouthpieces now piling on Trump are motivated largely by their own sinecures and the Sheldon Adelson type donations that might be forthcoming to the politically savvy candidates who say the right things about the conflict in the Middle East.
Slate’s Isaac Chotiner has noted a particularly odd speech by Senator Marco Rubio in which he spoke of his single electoral triumph in Minnesota before immediately jumping to the issue of Israel, as if on cue or by rote. It is a tendency that is not unique to him. I read through the transcript of the GOP debate that preceded Rubio’s sole victory, which in part reflected a competition to see who could promise to do most for Israel. Senator Ted Cruz stated that he “would stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel… and the alliance with Israel.” Governor John Kasich declared that he’s “been a supporter of Israel – a strong supporter of Israel longer than anyone on this stage.” Senator Marco Rubio indicated that “I will be on Israel’s side every single day because they are the only pro-American, free enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East.” Ben Carson called Israel not only a strategic partner but also an element in America’s “Judeo Christian foundation” that can never be rejected.
Quite a few assertions about Israel made by politicians are, of course, nonsense. It is not in alliance with the United States and is not a democracy for starters, but the real question becomes why is Israel part of the debate at all? It is because of concerns that the deep pocketed donors like Sheldon Adelson will join his good friend Haim Saban in funding Hillary if candidates do not say what he expects to hear. Saban has referred to Trump as a “clown” and attacked him because he would be “dangerous for Israel.”
And then there is the recent attack of the Beltway Midgets, a “a strongly worded letter” orchestrated by Eliot Cohen, a former Condoleezza Rice State Department appointee whose attachment to Israel might well be regarded as demented, that attracted the signatures of more than one hundred self-described GOP foreign policy “leaders,” declaring that “We are unable to support a party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head.” Quite a few of the signatories are well known neocons, including Max Boot, Robert Zoellick, Michael Chertoff, Eric Edelman, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, Kori Schake, Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, Ray Takeyh and Philip Zelikow. Boot has vilified Trump as “emerging as the number one threat to American security.” All the signatories were passionate supporters of the Iraq War, which Trump has correctly disparaged as a catastrophic foreign policy failure, and all of them are describable as strong supporters of Israel.
The friends of Benjamin Netanyahu in the United States rightly fear that someday the American people and government will come to their senses and regard Israel as just another friendly foreign state, without any “special relationship” attached. To counter that possibility, the lashing out against any public figure who dares to criticize Israel is both immediate and visceral. Note, for example, the fate of former President Jimmy Carter who was virtually excommunicated by the Democratic Party after he condemned Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
But what the neocon subset of Israel’s powerful lobby fears most is something quite different – becoming irrelevant. They have weathered being wrong about nearly everything but what they particularly fear is finding themselves without a major political party whose foreign policy they can manipulate because that would cut off their funding from defense contractors and pro-Israel zealots. They will have to give up the emoluments that they have accumulated since hijacking the GOP under Ronald Reagan. They might have to abandon their corner offices and secretaries and could even have to find real jobs. And what would the Sunday morning talk shows be like without the Cheshire cat grin of Bill Kristol?
The end of the hypocrisy driven neocon ascendancy in foreign policy will be welcomed by many. Dan McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute has described the Trump hating neocons as “… soft skinned and well-perfumed keyboard warriors who eagerly send America’s sons and daughters to be slaughtered in wars that achieve nothing but the ascendance of new ‘bad guys’ used to justify ever more wars. And all of it pays very nicely for them.” Exactly.
March 8, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Daniel Pipes, Donald Trump, Eric Edelman, Gary Schmitt, Israel, Kori Schake, Max Boot, Michael Chertoff, Michael Rubin, Philip Zelikow, Randy Scheunemann, Ray Takeyh, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Robert Zoellick, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | March 8, 2016
I keep reading stuff in British papers about what America’s Left must do in an election where Donald Trump “has thrown caution to the wind.” Each time I read anything along that line, invariably, I ask myself, “What Left are they talking about?” As perhaps few in Europe understand, there is no Left in the United States.
Bernie Sanders comes closest to being Left, but he is not only from one of the very smallest states in the Union, it is a state known for its liberal bent, something which exists in very few corners of that huge “pounding fist” of a country.
It would be refreshing if Sanders could win, but he cannot. The odds are completely stacked against him. I believe the unexpected force of his campaign, this man whose name was widely unknown west of New England in a campaign against someone whose name and face are, by contrast, as well known as Hershey bars, is a quiet wave of public recognition of just how repulsive a person Hillary Clinton is. It seems a miracle that he has run so well against her, sometimes beating or virtually tying her.
But remember, this is America we’re talking about, a plutocratic imperial power, not a democracy, and one engaged in vast military and secret state security operations. There is simply no room for a self-declared “democratic socialist.” America has no truck with socialists, even rather nice and soft ones.
Money counts hugely in politics, as it does in every nook and cranny of American life. An accurate motto for America might well be, “If it can’t be bought, it ain’t worth having.” Hillary is exceptionally well connected with, and financed by, the people who really count in shaping American government. Short of a tidal wave of support, any primary lead by Sanders would be stripped of delegates or would be defeated by “super-delegates” at the convention by party insiders.
As for Hillary being elected, nothing in my view could be a greater disaster. She has a murderous record, and I doubt she has told the truth twice in her entire life.
There is simply no question about her tendency to brutal violence. She pushed husband Bill on the needless war in Serbia. She advocated inside the administration for what became the Waco horror. She voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq. She ran at least part of what went on in Libya, a black operation to gather weapons and men to send to Turkey for terrorizing Syria. And we have her brutal idea of humor, complete with sneering laughter, about Gadhafi, a man who on the whole did a decent job of governing in a difficult part of the world: “We came, we saw, he died.” She supports Israel’s worst bloody excesses with a smile and regularly takes money from some of the people who work strenuously to keep them going.
Trump carries a great deal of heavy baggage, and has said many things with which I totally disagree, but he does not have Hillary’s record of death and destruction on a grand scale. He may often be quite unpleasant, but Hillary is almost certainly a psychopath whose narcissistic personality feels driven and entitled to be President so she can continue toying with human beings. I reject 90% of what Trump says, but I reject just about 100% of what Hillary has actually done.
There is one area, and a very important one, where possibly Trump can do something good for the world, and that is foreign affairs. Some of his views there are sound, sounder by far than Hillary’s. His views on matters like Syria and Russia are entirely rational and not weighed down by America’s malicious policies of the last quarter century, policies which Hillary not only supports but helped to establish and execute.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for more American bullying and terror in the world, and that is not in the least an exaggeration. Terror is the right word for what America has done in the Middle East: it has crashed and raged through the region, leaving it in blazes. Hillary has served as a “willing executioner” in that hellish effort.
If you look at the groups and individuals who are key Hillary supporters, it is a pretty grim picture. It includes many corrupt and brutal foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Israel, and a vast collection of gigantic international corporate special interests, even financial terrorists like the firm of Goldman Sachs who played a key role in the collapse of 2008 and who have never really been called to account for bringing so many to ruin. There is not a glimmer of genuine liberalism or democratic ideals in the people paying and easing her way, although she likes to put on her best clownishly little-girl face and claim how interested she is in the welfare of ordinary Americans at campaign stops.
If we could only gain some sense and rationality in America’s foreign affairs, it would be a genuine advance for the entire world. Almost certainly you have to pay a price for doing that in a place like the United States. Nothing comes free in a throbbing plutocratic power. That price may be living with Trump’s many unpleasant aspects.
The neocons especially see that possibility in Trump, which is why they hate him beyond telling. Already many have said really ugly things in public. And, remarkably, the word “assassination” keeps popping up in those circles. That fact alone should tell us how destructive the impact of the neocons has been upon America’s own society.
It would have been unthinkable fifty years ago for prominent Americans to talk or joke of assassinating a political candidate. That is how low American society has sunk during its long march with neocons, bombing, invading, promoting terrorism through proxies, and assassinating in the Middle East and in places like Ukraine – virtually all of which derives from the special influence of the neocons.
The political poverty of America was embarrassingly displayed in the original field of Republican candidates which resembled nothing so much as Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. Fortunately, most of them are gone. As for Ted Cruz, the neocons’ possible “go to” man for stopping Trump, he is, just for a start, a right-wing religious wacko. There is a video of him on-line sitting at breakfast holding hands with his perfect little suburban family praying over the Sugar Pops. Staff working for Cruz include neo-con and CIA-types, and his wife is associated with Goldman Sachs. He is intellectually gifted, but many of his old associates in government say he is an extremely unpleasant man with which to work, extremely arrogant, and one not to be trusted, being given to treacherous turns. His former roommate at Princeton tells of getting e-mails from other students asking why he didn’t suffocate Cruz with a pillow while he had the chance. At least one person has commented on his resemblance to a serial killer. It would be a pretty desperate move by Republicans to try stopping Trump by loading Cruz, a man they simply don’t like, with money and influence. And I tend to feel the effort would fail in any event.
You get nothing free in a big, ugly place like America, so if you would like to see some end to a quarter century of brutal wars and the savage practices which have taken root under Bush/Clinton/Obama, perhaps you need to take a chance.
As few non-Americans realize, in domestic affairs the American President’s office is a rather weak one. It was designed to be that way. We have seen the frustration of Obama trying increasingly to govern by executive order, a pernicious practice not much different than imperial fiats, but even with that practice he has made little headway in this rigidly structured society. And no one, certainly no genuine liberal, ever can, without fundamental changes we have no reason to expect any time soon. America in its governance much resembles a giant wearing a huge, thick suit of concrete.
It is only in the area of military and foreign affairs that the American President has some real power, and that is an area which needs serious change. It won’t happen under bloodthirsty Hillary, loyal servant to neocon interests.
As far as ugly stuff like great walls or drastic changes to migration, Trump could do nothing without both houses of Congress, so they are proposals unlikely to become realities. Even on such domestic subjects, however, we do hear echoes of the neocon influence. After all, Israel has built many walls and builds more now, all on other people’s land and all of which prevent normal life for millions of others. It couldn’t be more unfair and anti-democratic, but the same people viciously attacking Trump for his proposals are the last ones to say a word about Israel’s actual practices. So those most violently attacking Trump cannot claim concerns for human decency or human rights motivate them, although they very much pretend to do so rather than being open about their real motives. Calling Trump a fascist over mere rhetoric and proposals is pretty ridiculous when we see Israel’s actual practices left unquestioned by crowds of prominent people.
March 8, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel | Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, United States |
Leave a comment
As soon as the Gulf Cooperation Council blacklisted the Lebanese party of Resistance – Hezbollah – on Wednesday, Zionist mass media welcomed the resolution, considering it “critical and serious,” reflecting a great relief among Israelis who have been seeking to fight Hezbollah from the Arab gate.
Former Zionist foreign minister Tzipi Livni hailed the GCC resolution as “an important step, while Zionist daily Maariv stated that “blacklisting Hezbollah is an achievement that serves Israel.” … Full article
Al-Manar | March 6, 2016
The Tunisian Foreign Ministry clarified on Friday that the closing statement of the meeting of the Arab Interior Ministry did not include blacklisting Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
In a statement, the Tunisia Foreign Ministry reiterated that Tunis rejects to interfere in the domestic issues of the other countries, noting that Hezbollah has contributed to liberating the Lebanese territories, supported Palestine’s cause and fought ISIL.
“Tunisia attempted to take into account the Arab consensus during the meeting of the Arab Interior Ministers through approving the decision that is not compulsory.”
Al-Manar | March 6, 2016
The leader of En-Nahda Islamic movement in Tunisia Rached Ghannouchi asserted on Saturday that it is impossible to label Hezbollah as a terrorist group because of the his historic achievements in liberating Lebanon and protecting it from the Zionist aggressions.
Although Hezbollah’s role in Syria is controversial, we cannot generalize any label against the party, Ghannouchi added.
Meanwhile, a number of political parties in Tunisia demanded that the government withdraw from the Saudi-led coalition in the region over the decision to blacklist Hezbollah.
In Egypt, the founder of the Popular Current Hamdeen Sabahi greeted Hezbollah and his Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah for confronting the Zionist occupation, noting that who has blacklisted the Resistance aims at stirring the Shiite-Sunnite sedition in the region.
Press TV | March 7, 2016
At least 25 people, including four civilians, have been killed in Tunisia in an exchange of gunfire between security personnel and unidentified gunmen near the Libyan border.
Tunisia’s Defense and Interior Ministries announced in a joint statement that a group of gunmen targeted a police station and military facilities in the eastern border town of Ben Guerdane, situated approximately 600 kilometers (372 miles) southeast of the capital, Tunis, early on Monday.
Army units repelled the attack, killing 21 militants and capturing six others. Four civilians also died in the crossfire.
The Tunisian military has dispatched reinforcement forces and helicopters to Ben Guerdane. Local residents have been ordered to stay indoors.
The militant attack came amid rising international concern about the growth of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in neighboring Libya, which has been struggling with instability since 2011. Back then, the country’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown, and armed groups as well as regional factions engaged in armed clashes in a battle for power.
The capital, Tripoli, is controlled by a political faction that calls itself Libya Dawn and is allied with powerful armed forces based in the city of Misrata. The faction has reinstated the old parliament, known as the General National Congress, in the capital.
The internationally-recognized government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni is on the other hand based in the northeastern city of Bayda, with its elected House of Representatives being based in Tobruk.
Last week, Tunisian security forces killed five heavily armed men who had sneaked into the North African country from Libya.
March 7, 2016
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Africa, Hezbollah, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Zionism |
Leave a comment
By Richard Hugus | Aletho News | March 6, 2016
Have you ever met someone in a narrow passage and found it difficult to get around them because they kept moving the same way as you? Did you ever see a bird attacking his reflection in a window, thinking it was another bird? What about the foretelling of an experience in déjà vu?
These are instances of the uncanny. They involve the phenomenon of mirroring. There is something about mirrors that undermines human rationality. We are presented with a logical impossibility – something is apparent to our senses, but it isn’t real. If we do believe it’s real, as Narcissus did, we may fall into an abyss. Birds don’t have even the first clue of what mirrors are, but humans are not much better. Show us our reflection in the outside world and we are discombobulated. Yet, the world often reflects ideas we have of it. And we often project onto the world ideas in our own heads, as if our perceptions were a kind of movie which we are in the process of making.
How does this apply to modern-day false flags? False flags are staged events covertly planned and executed by one state or group which, by impersonating another state or group, incriminates the other in a terrible attack. An enemy is thus created where none existed. By pointing to the crime, the aggressor is able to demonize and justify war against the supposed enemy. The agenda is war.
The more notorious false flags in history are well known: the sinking of the Maine in 1898 started the Spanish American War, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 enabled full scale US aggression against Vietnam, and the September 11, 2001 attacks started the first-ever war on an abstraction – the “war on terror.” The war on terror might best be described as a Zionist war against Arabs and Muslims, their lands, their culture, and their religion, following the model of the Zionist attack on Palestine, but with the apparent goal of Israel becoming a superpower as it manipulates others into fighting its wars.
There were a number of false flags during the Cold War under the rubric of Operation Gladio. But since the attacks of 9-11, false flag events have become so numerous that it is as if they are created in the mode of a prime time television series, with production facilities, a large stable of actors, big budgets, script writers, and full publicity, every week churning out another drama.
One of the aspects of those false flags we have the most evidence about is their use of concurrent drills or exercises which mimic the planned crime. The exercises are a good example of mirroring being used to discombobulate people, such as those unwittingly involved in a planned operation. An example is the air traffic controller on 9-11 who responded to an alert of hijacked planes approaching New York by asking, “Is this real world or an exercise?” A large number of drills were taking place on 9-11, some to disable US defenses by sending response aircraft out of range, and others to mimic the event, as with false blips on radar, so that no one knew what was real and what was a simulation.
Drills in false flag operations are like the energized tables in amusement centers where, by turning on the energy, people are able to slide pucks over the table without the force of gravity affecting them. Concurrent drills make all things possible in the commission of broad-daylight crimes, from providing logistic support where and when it is needed, to creating confusion among people who might be in a position to stop the crime. Drills provide the buzz which seems to suspend the laws of physics. The buzz on 9-11 was so strong that two of the tallest skyscrapers in the world could fall with no resistance and no one would ask why.
The motivation for crimes such as 9-11-2001 in the US, the 7-7-2005 bombings in London, the two massacres in Paris in 2015, and the unlikely shoot-up at a center for the handicapped in San Bernardino, California, was to first create and then keep going a war on terror, built upon the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. The means for carrying out this war have been unlimited money, arms, explosives, police power, court authority, full ownership of almost all media, and totally amoral covert “intelligence” manpower.
This is a kind of war not envisioned in theories of class struggle and imperialist plunder. Evil of such magnitude has been perpetrated on the world that it almost seems we are dealing with the diabolical. An agenda of world conquest through war and enslavement can perhaps be explained as a goal of imperialism, but methods by which this agenda is being carried out today involve manipulations of human nature which are unprecedentedly dark and insidious.
The evidence is in those at the top pretending to the power of God, creating reality. In 2004, neocon shill Karl Rove is said to have bragged:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The arrogance in this statement is so extreme as to be psychopathic. Most of the people in the world are not psychopaths. Most of the people in the world are good. Good people are unable to fully understand evil when it occurs. They see in the world what they have it in them to see. This often does not include an understanding of evil.
The organizers of the new world order have gotten into the highest positions of power. With the full weight of the mainstream media behind them, they are able to dictate some of the most important memes in today’s culture, to dissent from which is almost the same as being crazy. This is the response many still have to those who claim (rightly) that 9-11 was carried out by a cabal working inside the US government. That the meme of heartless Muslims trying to destroy western freedom might not be true is a prospect too horrible for many people to face. We have, after all, been told the same story year after year, in newspapers, magazines, TV, movies. Could so many different sources all be telling lies? Yes, they could.
The war on terror has been a major investment. Neocons in positions of power in the US government have largely been responsible for creating it. Planners like Philip Zelikow have written of the effect of “searing events” on human psychology, the advantage which large-scale trauma gives those in power to make public myths. For these theoreticians, to attain a hidden goal by sacrificing thousands of innocents, as in 9-11, is not a moral issue; it is a political calculation. This is diabolical.
Those who make a deal with the devil must eventually pay, but until then they have the use of the power they sold their souls for. We must understand that power as well as the hubris it gives them, which goes to the point now where false flag perpetrators barely provide a cover up, and will even forecast what they plan to do. Indeed, forecasting is another kind of mirror, a way of preempting analysis: Who would speak about committing a crime before doing it? Who would call for “a new Pearl Harbor”, and then bring that very thing about?
Yet another kind of mirroring is the criminal blaming the victim of the crime which he, the criminal, has committed. The thief accuses the shopkeeper of theft. The settler accuses the Palestinian of stealing his land. Uncle Sam has accused the Arab world of attacking him.
With their power, the “creators of reality” and their media have put us into a hall of mirrors. Our values have become distorted by a steady stream of deceptions. As Yeats said, “Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Many actually believe we live in a world where there is a valid war on terror. Candidates for public office, making their own deals with the devil, pledge fealty to that war and to its main sponsor, Israel. Political prisoners languish in prison, unheard from. Police gun down African Americans with impunity in American streets. Israeli forces openly execute Palestinians for no reason. False flag mass murders are carried out by covert forces for the political gain of a very few. Millions die in what we’re told will be unending war, created by lies created by a distorted mirror.
We have the power to reject the neocons’ reality and create a reality where the money and guns are immediately taken out of the hands of these psychopaths. Once we understand the trick, the deception no longer works. Steve Biko said, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” The real struggle is in our minds. To end this war, we must escort these people and their world out of our own psyches, and then help others do the same.
https://richardhugus.wordpress.com/
March 6, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 9/11, Karl Rove, Philip Zelikow, United States |
Leave a comment
The US government has been urged to impose economic sanctions on any company doing business with the private Iranian airline Mahan Air, four US senators wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
The US Department of the Treasury has designated Mahan Air for its support for terrorism and funneling of weapons to Hezbollah and to the government of President Bashar Assad in Syria, yet the airline continues to operate with a network of partners throughout Europe, the senators pointed out.
“Mahan Air continues to operate and even expand its international business network… It is time to impose sanctions now on companies aiding Mahan Air,” Senators Kelly Ayotte, Chris Coons, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal wrote in the letter on Friday.
“We urge you to immediately identify to us all known entities engaged in commercial transactions with Mahan Air and take action now to sanction those companies, including freezing all assets of those entities found under US jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said.
Mahan Air flies to and from Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, as well as Persian Gulf Arab allied nations. The airline has recently introduced new flights to Russia, the senators added.
March 5, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Chris Coons, Iran, Kelly Ayotte, Lebanon, Lindsey Graham, Mahan Air, Richard Blumentha, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Proving that there is no discernible difference between Republican and Democratic administrations (as if the Bush-Obama years were not proof enough), Hillary Clinton’s dramatically pro-war, Zionist, and police state policies are earning her the support (or at least the lack of public opposition) from noted Neo-Con figures who typically play the role of the right-wing Republican side of the dialectic.
Consider Jacob Heilbrunn’s article in the New York Times entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons,” where he argued that many hawkish Neo-Cons are considering the possibility of crossing over from the GOP to the Hillary Clinton camp. While the ideology of the Neo-Cons is scarcely discernible from other factions in the US ruling class, there are minor differences in terms of the presentation of that ideology. This presentation has been carefully crafted by the ruling class for years for the purposes of dividing and ruling the American people. The fact that a seemingly “conservative” movement would thus be so open about supporting a seemingly “liberal” candidate is extremely telling.
Heilbrunn’s article tends to focus on the possibility that neo-cons like Robert Kagan are considering open support for Clinton. He writes,
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.
. . . . .
It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto.[1] He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)[2]
Jason Horowitz, also writing for the New York Times, quotes Kagan as being comfortable with Clinton in terms of her foreign policy. Horowitz writes,
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”[3]
Heilbrunn also points out that Kagan is not the only well-known Neo-Con who is open to public support for the Clinton campaign. Max Boot has also expressed respect for Clinton when he described her tenure as Secretary of State.[4] He describes Clinton by saying, “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya. Later she urged arming the moderate opposition during the early days of the Syrian civil war—advice that, if Obama had taken it, might well have short-circuited the violent disintegration of Syria, which is far advanced today.”
Heilbrunn also writes that former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, a Neo-Con in everything but official title, echoes the sentiments of Boot and Kagan and that measure of support for Clinton might also be expected from his camp.
Journalist Robert Parry summed up Clinton’s history of pro-Neo-Con positions in his article, “Is Hillary Clinton A NeoCon-Lite?” by writing,
Based on her public record and Gates’s insider account, Clinton could be expected to favor a more neoconservative approach to the Mideast, one more in line with the traditional thinking of Official Washington and the belligerent dictates of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton rarely challenged the conventional wisdom or resisted the use of military force to solve problems. She famously voted for the Iraq War in 2002 – falling for President George W. Bush’s bogus WMD case – and remained a war supporter until her position became politically untenable during Campaign 2008.
Representing New York, Clinton rarely if ever criticized Israeli actions. In summer 2006, as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”
At a pro-Israel rally with Clinton in New York on July 17, 2006, Gillerman proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon. “Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
Sen. Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks, since doing so would presumably have offended an important pro-Israel constituency.[5]
Of course, in this sense the term “pro-Israel constituency” can easily be translated to mean “neo-con constituency” since, in reality, that is exactly what it is. Clearly, Clinton was not going to offend the Neo-Con leadership not because she is simply courting campaign funds but because Clinton herself is a Neo-Con.
Brandon Turbeville’s new book, The Difference It Makes: 36 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President is available in three different formats: Hardcopy (available here), Amazon Kindle for only .99 (available here), and a Free PDF Format (accessible free from his website,BrandonTurbeville.com).
[1] Kagan, Robert. “Superpowers Don’t Get To Retire.” Foreign Policy. May 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117859/allure-normalcy-what-america-still-owes-world Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[2] Heilbrunn, Jacob. “The Next Act Of The Neocons.” New York Times. July 5, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[3] Horowitz, Jason. “Events In Iraq Open Door For Interventionist Revival, Historian Says.” New York Times. June 15, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?src=twrhp&_r=1 Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[4] Boot, Max. “Why Is Robert Gates Angry?” New Republic. February 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116500/duty-memoirs-secretary-war-reviewed-max-boot Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[5] Parry, Robert. “Is Hillary Clinton A Neo-Con Lite?” Consortium News. April 23, 2015. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/23/is-hillary-clinton-a-neocon-lite-2/ Accessed on September 4, 2015.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
March 2, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Hillary Clinton, Jason Horowitz, Robert Kagan, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Aletho News
Aletho News 