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Zionist Theatre of the Absurd presents a double-bill farce starring Donny and Bibi

By Greg Felton | January 30, 2017

Upon entering public service, the need to sell oneself to the highest donors has a way of morphing politicians into private-interest puppets; therefore, few sights are as inspiring as a politician rediscovering his testicular fortitude at the end of his political career, free to do what he dared not do while his political career still mattered. President Barack Obama, in this instance at least, was one such politician. With only weeks to go before he left the White House, he managed to get his balls out of hock in time to deliver a stinging uppercut to Benjamin Netanyahu’s imperial glass jaw.

UNSC Resolution 2334 (2016)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 7853rd meeting, on 23 December 2016 (excerpt)1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;2. Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;3. Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations ….

As I have shown, the United States has long been a client state of Israel, which means that the U.S. veto for Israel in the UN Security Council is taken for granted. In one of his last acts as Israel’s governor, though, Obama chose not to do his imperial duty. He abstained on UNSC Resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s continued colonization of Palestine as illegal. Doing the right thing in a zionist-dominated world is risky, but even a satrap can get pissed off if pushed too far.

The main reason for Obama’s decision was Emperor Netanyahu, himself, because of two acts of imperial hubris. The first came in March 2015 when Netanyahu was invited by Israel-firsters in Congress to come to speak against Obama’s Iran policy. The sight of a foreign politician receiving ovation after ovation from U.S. lawmakers for attacking U.S. policy was virtually treasonous and proof that the U.S. is owned by Israel.

The second act came last September. After the U.S. government announced a record $38 billion military “aid” package for Israel, Netanyahu quickly announced the construction of new illegal Jewish colonies (“settlements”) and made no secret that the “aid” money was being used for that purpose. The U.S. was forced to watch as its “aid” was openly used to bankroll a criminal act—the dispossession of Palestinians. It also showed that Israel’s military “aid” is just imperial tribute. The U.S. was played for a chump. UNSC Resolution 2334 gave Obama a rare chance to get back at the emperor and the treasonous Israel-firsters for their hubristic anti-Americanism.

Obama’s imperial defiance also was directly related to the U.S. election. He could not have acted as he did while the campaign was going on because to have placed U.S. policy over Israeli imperialism would have split the Democratic Party into pro-U.S. and pro-Israel factions, thus making Hillary Clinton’s chances of victory even slimmer than they already were. Even if Clinton had defeated Trump, though, Obama would still likely have abstained since he no longer had any reason to fear imperial retribution.

Finally, Obama wanted to give a parting kick to Donald Trump, who selected rabid settler apologist David Friedman to be his ambassador to Israel. Now, with the UN on recorded as refusing to normalize Israel’s illegal settlements, Trump will not have a free hand to involve the U.S. further in Israel’s criminality.

Abstention Dissension

Obama’s abstention should have been greeted with relief in the U.S. Since 1967, successive governments have had to pay at least lip service to the fiction of a two-state solution both to feign respect for Palestinian rights and to pretend to be in charge of foreign policy. Nevertheless, Israel-firsters inside and outside the U.S. government reached for their hysterical hasbara hymn books and intoned the ritualistic imprecations: Obama’s vote was a betrayal of the imperial homeland! The U.S. stabbed its friend in the back! Obama showed himself to be a Jew-hating anti-Semite! We must work to rebuild our alliance [sic!] with Israel!

Israel’s loyalists dutifully gave the anti-Obama/poor-wounded-Israel propaganda campaign wide dissemination, and leading the way has been Israel’s newly elected governor Donald Trump. It still has not dawned on His Donaldness that the UN vote was both consistent with U.S. policy and necessary under international law.

It would have been expedient, logical and patriotic for Trump, Congress and the media at least to feign respect for Obama’s abstention on Resolution 2334. Every time the U.S. runs interference for Israel in the UN Security Council—at least 41 times to date—it further isolates itself from civilization.

As a candidate who ran against the political establishment and its warmongering swamp critters, Trump sounded like a president who would finally put America’s interests first, but by regurgitating the stale “Israel is a friend and ally” schtick Trump is sending mixed signals:

Did he run a disingenuous campaign?
Was he forced to chug the Kosher Kool-Aid®?
Is his cheerleading for Israel a reflexive impulse that can be corrected?

Because Trump was never steeped in corporatist neo-fascism that permeates the political establishment he ran against, it is possible for him to be taught to distinguish right from Zionism. First, though, he has to be taught to act like a president. So far, the disconnect between Trump and reality is nearly total, and he acts less like a president than as the producer/writer/star of his own reality show in which reality is what he says it is.

Trump puts the ‘twit’ in Twitter

A president is supposed to make policy statements after proper consideration and analysis, especially in areas where he has little or no expertise. Trump the amateur, though, spouts whatever half-baked impulse crosses his mind on Twitter, essentially an unfiltered gossip medium. After the UN vote, he proceeded to put his impulsive vacuity on display for the whole world to see.

What did he mean, for example, when he tweeted: “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20”? The U.S. will go back to sabotaging the will of the international community? The U.S. will go back to being an accomplice in the Zionist genocide of Palestine after committing one act of decency? On what rational basis could Trump object to the U.S. abstention on a resolution that demands Israel cease building illegal “settlements” on Palestinian land?

The next day, on Dec. 24, Trump posted this gem: “The big loss for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we’ll get it done anyway.”

Trump apparently believes that peace would be easier to negotiate if the U.S. had vetoed UNSC Resolution 2334. In other words, he believes that Israel’s creeping, violent theft of Palestine is a benefit to peaceful negotiations. What Trump claims is a “big loss for Israel” is really a great victory for the law and Palestinian rights. By reflexively pandering to Israel, Trump has begun his presidency by disgracing his country and declaring himself to be an outlaw.

Bibi Goes Bughouse!

The star of the other half of this farcical double-bill is Benjamin Netanyahu. As the mad emperor of Isramerica and other subject nations, he does not handle disobedience well. Emperors seldom do. When the Security Council voted its conscience, such as it is, Netanyahu threw a tantrum—there is no other word for it. It was a spectacular blend of hubris, petulance and impotence.

After the vote, the emperor summoned ambassadors from the 14 “offending” countries for an official rebuke. These even included Malaysia and Venezuela, which don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel. Netanyahu also recalled its own ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal and even cut all aid to the African state. Despite the U.K.’s long history of abject Zionist subservience, Netanyahu cancelled a meeting with his governor in London, Theresa May, who reportedly was reduced to tears.

Writing in late December on mondoweiss, editor Phillip Weiss depicted how Netanyahu’s tantrum epitomized the waning influence and credibility of Israel:

[By abstaining on Resolution 2334, Obama] has nudged Israel, and the media, toward recognition of [Israel’s] new status, as a rogue state; he has split the Israel lobby right down the middle, or down the side anyway; and he has given huge impetus to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). That is why Israeli leaders are going crazy this weekend, flinging accusations against the president on the cable networks and national news too because what Obama did is so meaningful.

Israel’s supporters long claimed that Israel only makes progress if you embrace it and tell Israel you love it. (Dennis Ross says this all the time.) Obama heeded that advice for years and got nothing. Now he has made one gesture against Israel, and the progress in a few days is amazing.

The hysteria against the resolution from Israeli leaders is a reminder to even-moderately well-informed Americans of ideas that were once heresies but are now hardening into public attitudes here: We give these people tens of billions of dollars and they act like spoiled brats.

Asking for trouble

For a political entity built on a fraudulent history, drawing attention to the historical record is not recommended, but Isramerica’s hubris-intoxicated emperor was beyond thinking rationally. In the wake of the vote, he declared that Israel would re-evaluate its relationship with the UN. If he meant that as a threat, he was sorely mistaken.

Contrary to popular myth, Israel is not now, nor has it ever been, a legitimate member of the world body. It lied to gain conditional admission, but the world has lacked the courage to do anything about it. Now, Netanyahu has made Israel’s illegitimacy a topic political discussion. Nearly eight years ago on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s illegitimate admission, I ran “a speech” by former Secretary-General Ban Ki–Moon in which he called for Israel’s expulsion for this very reason:

Few people know that Israel is the only state to be given a conditional admission. Under General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel was admitted on the condition that it grant all Palestinians the right to return to their homes and receive compensation for lost or damaged property, according to General Assembly Resolution 194, paragraph 11. Suffice to say, Israel has never lived up to these terms, and never intended to. For 60 years Israel has violated its terms of admission, and for 60 years the UN has done nothing about it. It has watched as Israel heaped misery upon misery on Palestine, and violated international law with impunity.… Therefore, I will ask the General Assembly to meet in special session at the earliest possible time to strip Israel of its membership.

Regrettably, the Zionist interloper is still around, but now the world has the perfect opportunity to be rid of it, thanks to Netanyahu. As if his tantrum weren’t enough, he virtually asked to be expelled by spitting on the UN’s authority: “Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms.” Interestingly, this is not the first time a spokesman has declared Israel to be an outlaw nation. Within two weeks of the end of the 1967 War, Abba Eban said:

If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of ‘Israel’ returning to the armistice lines [pre June 1967 borders] ‘Israel’ would refuse to comply with the decision.” (New York Times, June 19, 1967.)

If only one state demands that the General Assembly enforce the terms of UNGA Resolution 273, Netanyahu won’t have a relationship to re-evaluate.

Those who see nothing but doom and gloom from Trumpian America can take solace in one historical analogy. When he was elected in 1980, Ronald Reagan was a moralistic loose cannon with a profound ignorance of foreign policy and government in general. He was a staunch Cold Warrior who called the Soviet Union “the focus of evil in the modern world” and declared that anyone who did not believe in God and the afterlife could not be trusted. For this former actor who built his own reality, the presidency was just another role, and accordingly he treated speeches as ends in themselves. By the end of his second term, Reagan had put aside his prejudices to work with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to put and end to the Cold War.

Despite Trump’s early bouts of stupidity, he may also be forced to grow into his position. His nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James Mattis (Ret.), has reaffirmed that the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv, thereby contradicting Trump’s amateurish and unnecessary ambition to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

The world has spoken in unison that it will no longer tacitly accept Israeli cruelty and criminality in the name of Zionist determinism. Trump can either accept reality and join the civilized world in asserting an honourable, non-Zionist Middle East policy, or he can continue to isolate the U.S. by acting as Israel’s bitch.

Reagan was an inept president who managed to rise above his limitations on one crucial issue. Let’s hope Trump can overcome his prejudices to recognize Israel as an existential threat to the U.S.

January 31, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

What’s the End Game: hype and hysteria surrounding the “Muslim Ban”

By Kit | OffGuardian | January 30, 2017

They’re calling it the “Muslim Ban”, that’s the headline attention-grabber. It has its own twitter hashtag too. Everyone, all around the progressive “free world” is coming together to denounce this barbarism with one voice. Actors are making speeches at the SAG awards, and earnest navel-gazing columnists are writing about how this travel ban clashes with “British values”. There’s a petition to ban Trump from entering the UK with over a million signatures already (only tree from the British Antarctic Territories this time). John Harris, in the Guardian, even manages to make this all about Brexit – how triggering Article 50 will push us closer to a Trump administration that is “ruining America’s reputation”. Not even Jeremy Corbyn was immune, his biggest weakness it seems, is that he cannot ever miss an opportunity to be “nice”.

So what does it all mean? I have no idea. Is it a catastrophe? Absolutely not. It’s not even a surprise. This is something Trump spoke about doing over and over again during his campaign. That we’ve got to the point where a politician actually doing something he said he was going to do is a shock, is perhaps the most revealing aspect of this whole situation.

It’s NOT a Muslim ban. It applies to only seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. All in all less than 200 million of the world’s 1.6 BILLION Muslims are affected.
It’s NOT permanent, or even long-term. It’s only 90 days long for everywhere but Syria.
It’s NOT unprecedented, Jimmy Carter banned all immigrants from Iran during the Hostage Crisis, and Barack Obama put a six month delay on Iraqi refugees in 2011. Just two years ago, during the “ebola crisis”, America imposed a travel ban on people coming in from West Africa. It is an entirely sensible and pragmatic thing to do…. if you believe your country to be in some kind of danger.

NOTE: Somehow, in the last four years or so, the media has established a meme that protecting the borders of your country is akin to racism. (This is probably part of a corporate, globalist agenda to allow the free movement of cheap labour, to undermine workers rights).

Now – let’s look at the seven named countries.

Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. These seven countries have all been bombed by America in the last 12 months, and regularly going back dozens of years.

Obama sent predator drones to attack weddings and markets in Somalia and Iraq, and Britain and US sell bombs to the Saudis, who drop them on Yemeni civilians without a thought of repercussion, or even rebuke, from their Western allies. These countries have been destroyed. Libya, Iraq and Somalia are husks of states, with barely infrastructure enough to supply water to everyone, let alone do background checks on all the mercenaries and militant zealots hopping over the borders between the various war-zones America has dotted the Middle-East with.

Interestingly, none of these cynical and murderous acts of war ever resulted in a petition to stop Bush, Clinton or Obama from entering the country. Creating a failed state, killing a million people, and rendering millions homeless is less of a black-mark on your character than a 90 day travel ban.

The idea it “damages America’s reputation”? That is hilarious. America’s reputation was in tatters decades ago, to anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention. If drone assassinations, or dropping Agent Orange on Vietnamese children, or cluster bombs on Baghdad, or torturing people in Gitmo doesn’t dint your belief in American values… then a 90 travel ban shouldn’t either. And if it does, you need to re-sort your priorities.

What those seven countries have in common is not Islam, but chaos, violence and (allegedly) terrorism.

IF you believe in the rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS, IF you still think that these organizations are anything but American constructs for proxy wars and regime change, IF you truly believe in the fear porn and staged-managed terror the media hydra constantly pumps out, IF you truly believe these people are a threat to ordinary innocent civilians all over “the West”… then you have to agree a travel ban is a practical and logical step to control that threat. Just as it was in the 1970s, just as it was in 2011, just as it was in 2014.

And if your response to this move, as the mainstream media response has been, is to talk as if this threat doesn’t exist? Well, then you are admitting that you don’t believe your own coverage, that all the hyped-up “terrorism” talk was at best ratings driven hysteria, and at worst agenda-pushing lies.

The political establishment’s rush to virtue signal and oppose this move simply confirms what so many of us in the alt-news have been saying for years – terrorism was never the threat they pretended it was.

The question becomes – why is the vast majority of the media, the establishment and their various media voices so against this move? Is it because it means nothing? It is essentially harmless, but allows “liberals” and “progressives” to add some virtuous notes to their CV though strident opposition.

Is it simply a case that Trump will be opposed and ridiculed no matter what he does? If so, why? What good does turning the POTUS into a figure of scorn and mockery do anyone?

Is Trump essentially the anti-Obama? Obama was a construct that allowed immediate good-by association. Supporting Obama meant you were a good-guy, perhaps in a change of tack we now have a president you have to hate. Perhaps it’s all just an elaborate social experiment. It’s impossible to tell anymore.

The first 10 days of Trump’s presidency has, so far, produced far more questions than answers.

January 30, 2017 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn | Leave a comment

‘Focus on ISIS, not starting WWIII’: Trump blasts Senators McCain & Graham

RT | January 30, 2017

The latest targets of US President Donald Trump’s ire are fellow Republican Senators John McCain & Lindsey Graham, who Trump says should focus on important issues “instead of always looking to start World War III.”

The president tweeted the rebuke in response to a joint statement by veteran GOP legislators who criticized Trump’s executive order placing a temporary travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries. McCain and Graham said the move was hasty and “not properly vetted,” and may ultimately work contrary to the stated goal of improving national security.

“This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security,” the statement said.

The Republican hawks joined the loud chorus of largely left-wing condemnation of the executive order, commonly known as the ‘Muslim ban’ by critics. McCain and Graham have criticized Trump on a number of issues, including his plans to work alongside Russia in fighting terrorism in Iraq and Syria. The senators consider Russia a major threat to America.

In addition to accusing McCain and Graham of being warmongers, Trump issued a statement defending his decision to impose the travel ban.

“The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror. To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” the statement said.

“This is not about religion – this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order. We will again be issuing visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days,” it added.

Critics accuse President Trump of hypocrisy for citing the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an example of what he hopes to prevent with the travel ban. The perpetrators of the plane hijackings were nationals of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon, but none of the countries were affected by the executive order.

January 30, 2017 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Donald Trump, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Russia, United States | Leave a comment

11 Jews occupy top positions in Trump’s administration

Palestine Information Center – January 28, 2017

Eleven Jews assume top positions in the administration of the new US president Donald Trump, according to an Israeli report published on Friday.

Under the headline “Meet the top Jewish officials in the Trump administration”, the right-wing Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post introduced the 11 influential Jewish figures working alongside Trump.

However, the newspaper pointed out that Trump won 24% of the Jewish vote.

According to the Paper, the 11 Jewish figures are:

Jared Kushner

Kushner is Trump’s 36-year-old son-in-law and will serve as his senior advisor.

The Paper said that Kushner will not receive a salary and will focus on the Middle East and Israel, partnership with the private sector, and free trade.

It added, “Kushner married Trump’s daughter in 2009 and played an essential role in the president’s election campaign especially in Israel.”

David Friedman

Friedman, who is in his late fifties, has worked for a long time as Trump’s lawyer. He speaks Hebrew and owns a house in al-Talbiya neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Trump announced Friedman US ambassador to Israel.

The Jerusalem Post noted that Friedman “funded and declared support for the Israeli settlements and expressed his doubts about the future of the two-state solution.”

Jason Greenblatt

He is an Orthodox Jew who studied in a religious school in the West Bank in the mid-eighties and did armed guard duty there, according to the newspaper.

Greenblatt is going to serve as special representative for international negotiations with focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the US-Cuba relations, and the US trade agreements with other countries.

Greenblatt told the Israeli Army Radio in November 2016 that Trump “will not impose any solution on Israel” and that “he doesn’t view the Jewish settlements as an obstacle to peace process.”

Steven Mnuchin

Mnuchin, 54, will serve as the US Treasury secretary.

The Paper mentioned that Trump and Mnuchin have been friends for 15 years, and before assuming the financial affairs of Trump’s campaign, Mnuchin served as his advisor.

Stephen Miller

Miller, 31, was named senior adviser for policy.

The Paper pointed out that Miller, who worked previously as a parliamentary assistant, played a vital role in Trump’s campaign by writing speeches.

Carl Icahn

An 80-year-old businessman and investor who is going to serve as special adviser in the regulatory reform issues.

The paper said that he will be working in his capacity as a private citizen not as a federal employee or a special government employee.

Icahn, who is one of the earliest supporters of Trump’s candidacy, is the founder of Icahn, New York-based diversified business companies.

Gary Cohn

Cohn, 56, will head the National Economic Council of the White House.

He occupied senior positions in a number of companies, according to Jerusalem Post.

Boris Epshteyn

Epshteyn is in his mid-thirties. He will work as a special assistant to the president, and also as an assistant communications director for surrogate operations.

Epshteyn, who moved to the United States from Moscow in 1993, is an investment and finance lawyer living in New York. He defended Trump on major TV networks more than 100 times.

David Shulkin

A 57-year-old internist who is going to serve as Minister of Veterans Affairs once the Congress accepts.

He worked as assistant minister for health in the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and held senior positions in hospitals, universities and companies.

Reed Cordish

Cordish is in his early forties and is going to serve as the president’s assistant for intragovernmental and technology initiatives. He will be responsible for the initiatives which require multi-agency collaboration focusing on technological innovation and modernization.

The newspaper said that he is a partner at his family’s real estate and entertainment company in the state of Baltimore.

Avrahm Berkowitz

The 27-year-old Harvard Law School graduate will serve as a special assistant to president Trump and Jared Kushner.

Berkowitz is a friend of Kushner, and after graduating from College, Berkowitz worked for Kushner’s Companies and wrote for his newspaper, the New York Observer.

January 28, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Donald Trump, United States, Zionism | 1 Comment

President Trump: Nationalist Capitalism, An Alternative to Globalization

By James Petras :: 01.27.2017

Introduction: During his inaugural speech, President Trump clearly and forcefully outlined the strategic political-economic policies he will pursue over the next four years. Anti-Trump journalist, editorialists, academics and experts, who appear in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly distorted and lied about the President’s program as well as his critique of existing and past policies.

We will begin by seriously discussing President Trump’s critique of the contemporary political economy and proceed to elaborate on his alternatives and its weaknesses.

President Trump’s Critique of the Ruling Class

The centerpiece of Trump’s critique of the current ruling elite is the negative impact of its form of globalization on US production, trade and fiscal imbalances and on the labor market. Trump cites the fact that US industrial capitalism has drastically shifted the locus of its investments, innovations and profits overseas as an example of globalization’s negative effects. For two decades many politicians and pundits have bemoaned the loss of well-paid jobs and stable local industries as part of their campaign rhetoric or in public meetings, but none have taken any effective action against these most harmful aspects of globalization. Trump denounced them as “all talk and no action” while promising to end the empty speeches and implement major changes.

President Trump targeted importers who bring in cheap products from overseas manufacturers for the American market undermining US producers and workers. His economic strategy of prioritizing US industries is an implicit critique of the shift from productive capital to financial and speculative capital under the previous four administrations. His inaugural address attacking the elites who abandon the ‘rust belt’ for Wall Street is matched by his promise to the working class: “Hear these words! You will never be ignored again.” Trump’s own words portray the ruling class ‘as pigs at the trough’ (Financial Times, 1/23/2017, p. 11)

Trump’s Political-Economic Critique

President Trump emphasizes market negotiations with overseas partners and adversaries. He has repeatedly criticized the mass media and politicians’ mindless promotion of free markets and aggressive militarism as undermining the nation’s capacity to negotiate profitable deals.

President Trump’s immigration policy is closely related to his strategic ‘America First’ labor policy. Massive inflows of immigrant labor have been used to undermine US workers’ wages, labor rights and stable employment. This was first documented in the meat packing industry, followed by textile, poultry and construction industries. Trump’s proposal is to limit immigration to allow US workers to shift the balance of power between capital and labor and strengthen the power of organized labor to negotiate wages, conditions and benefits. Trump’s critique of mass immigration is based on the fact that skilled American workers have been available for employment in the same sectors if wages were raised and work conditions were improved to permit dignified, stable living standards for their families.

President Trump’s Political Critique

Trump points to trade agreements, which have led to huge deficits, and concludes that US negotiators have been failures. He argues that previous US presidents have signed multi-lateral agreements, to secure military alliances and bases, at the expense of negotiating job-creating economic pacts. His presidency promises to change the equation: He wants to tear up or renegotiate unfavorable economic treaties while reducing US overseas military commitments and demands NATO allies shoulder more of their own defense budgets. Immediately upon taking office Trump canceled the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and convoked a meeting with Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA.

Trump’s agenda has featured plans for hundred-billion dollar infrastructure projects, including building controversial oil and gas pipelines from Canada to the US Gulf. It is clear that these pipelines violate existing treaties with indigenous people and threaten ecological mayhem. However, by prioritizing the use of American-made construction material and insisting on hiring only US workers, his controversial policies will form the basis for developing well-paid American jobs.

The emphasis on investment and jobs in the US is a complete break with the previous Administration, where President Obama focused on waging multiple wars in the Middle East, increasing public debt and the trade deficit.

Trump’s inaugural address issued a stern promise: “The American carnage stops right now and stops right here!” This resonated with a huge sector of the working class and was spoken before an assemblage of the very architects of four decades of job-destroying globalization. ‘Carnage’ carried a double meaning: Widespread carnage resulted from Obama and other administrations’ destruction of domestic jobs resulting in decay and bankruptcy of rural, small town and urban communities. This domestic carnage was the other side of the coin of their policies of conducting endless overseas wars spreading carnage to three continents. The last fifteen years of political leadership spread domestic carnage by allowing the epidemic of drug addiction (mostly related to uncontrolled synthetic opiate prescriptions) to kill hundreds of thousands of mostly young American’s and destroy the lives of millions. Trump promised to finally address this ‘carnage’ of wasted lives. Unfortunately, he did not hold ‘Big Pharma’ and the medical community responsible for its role in spreading drug addiction into the deepest corners of the economically devastated rural America. Trump criticized previous elected officials for authorizing huge military subsidies to ‘allies’ while making it clear that his critique did not include US military procurement policies and would not contradict his promise to ‘reinforce old alliances’ (NATO).

Truth and Lies: Garbage Journalists and Arm Chair Militarists

Among the most outrageous example of the mass media’s hysteria about Trump’s New Economy is the systematic and vitriolic series of fabrications designed to obscure the grim national reality that Trump has promised to address. We will discuss and compare the accounts published by ‘garbage journalists (GJ’s)’ and present a more accurate version of the situation.

The respectable garbage journalists of the Financial Times claim that Trump wants to ‘destroy world trade’. In fact, Trumps has repeatedly stated his intention to increase international trade. What Trump proposes is to increase US world trade from the inside, rather than from overseas. He seeks to re-negotiate the terms of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements to secure greater reciprocity with trading partners. Under Obama, the US was more aggressive in imposing trade tariffs that any other country in the OECD.

Garbage journalists label Trump as a ‘protectionist’, confusing his policies to re-industrialize the economy with autarky. Trump will promote exports and imports, retain an open economy, while increasing the role of the US as a producer and exporter. The US will become more selective in its imports. Trump will favor the growth of manufacturing exporters and increase imports of primary commodities and advanced technology while reducing the import of automobiles, steel and household consumer products.

Trump’s opposition to ‘globalization’ has been conflated by the garbage journalists of the Washington Post as a dire threat to the ‘the post-Second World War economic order’. In fact, vast changes have already rendered the old order obsolete and attempts to retain it have led to crises, wars and more decay. Trump has recognized the obsolete nature of the old economic order and stated that change is necessary.

The Obsolete Old Order and the Dubious New Economy

At the end of the Second World War, most of Western Europe and Japan resorted to highly restrictive ‘protectionist’ industrial and monetary policies to rebuild their economies. Only after a period of prolonged recovery did Germany and Japan carefully and selectively liberalize their economic policies.

In recent decades, Russia was drastically transformed from a powerful collectivist economy to a capitalist vassal-gangster oligarchy and more recently to a reconstituted mixed economy and strong central state. China has been transformed from a collectivist economy, isolated from world trade, into the world’s second most powerful economy, displacing the US as Asia and Latin America’s largest trading partner.

Once controlling 50% of world trade, the US share is now less than 20%. This decline is partly due to the dismantling of its industrial economy when its manufacturers moved their factories abroad.

Despite the transformation of the world order, recent US presidents have failed to recognize the need to re-organize the American political economy. Instead of recognizing, adapting and accepting shifts in power and market relations, they sought to intensify previous patterns of dominance through war, military intervention and bloody destructive ‘regime changes’ – thus devastating, rather than creating markets for US goods. Instead of recognizing China’s immense economic power and seeking to re-negotiate trade and co-operative agreements, they have stupidly excluded China from regional and international trade pacts, to the extent of crudely bullying their junior Asian trade partners, and launching a policy of military encirclement and provocation in the South China Seas. While Trump recognized these changes and the need to renegotiate economic ties, his cabinet appointees seek to extend Obama’s militarist policies of confrontation.

Under the previous administrations, Washington ignored Russia’s resurrection, recovery and growth as a regional and world power. When reality finally took root, previous US administrations increased their meddling among the Soviet Union’s former allies and set up military bases and war exercises on Russia’s borders. Instead of deepening trade and investment with Russia, Washington spent billions on sanctions and military spending – especially fomenting the violent putchist regime in Ukraine. Obama’s policies promoting the violent seizure of power in Ukraine, Syria and Libya were motivated by his desire to overthrow governments friendly to Russia – devastating those countries and ultimately strengthening Russia’s will to consolidate and defend its borders and to form new strategic alliances.

Early in his campaign, Trump recognized the new world realities and proposed to change the substance, symbols, rhetoric and relations with adversaries and allies – adding up to a New Economy.

First and foremost, Trump looked at the disastrous wars in the Middle East and recognized the limits of US military power: The US could not engage in multiple, open-ended wars of conquest and occupation in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia without paying major domestic costs.

Secondly, Trump recognized that Russia was not a strategic military threat to the United States. Furthermore, the Russian government under Vladimir Putin was willing to cooperate with the US to defeat a mutual enemy – ISIS and its terrorist networks. Russia was also keen to re-open its markets to the US investors, who were also anxious to return after years of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry imposed sanctions. Trump, the realist, proposes to end sanctions and restore favorable market relations.

Thirdly, it is clear to Trump that the US wars in the Middle East imposed enormous costs with minimal benefits for the US economy. He wants to increase market relations with the regional economic and military powers, like Turkey, Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Trump is not interested in Palestine, Yemen, Syria or the Kurds – which do not offer much investment and trade opportunities. He ignores the enormous regional economic and military power of Iran. Nevertheless Trump has proposed to re-negotiate the recent six-nation agreement with Iran in order to improve the US side of the bargain. His hostile campaign rhetoric against Tehran may have been designed to placate Israel and its powerful domestic ‘Israel-Firsters’ fifth column. This certainly came into conflict with his ‘America First’ pronouncements. It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will retain a ’show’ of submission to the Zionist project of an expansionist Israel while proceeding to include Iran as a part of his regional market agenda.

The Garbage Journalists claim that Trump has adopted a new bellicose stance toward China and threatens to launch a ‘protectionist agenda’, which will ultimately push the trans-Pacific countries closer to Beijing. On the contrary, Trump appears intent on renegotiating and increasing trade via bilateral agreements.

Trump will most probably maintain, but not expand, Obama’s military encirclement of China’s maritime boundaries which threaten its vital shipping routes. Nevertheless, unlike Obama, Trump will re-negotiate economic and trade relations with Beijing – viewing China as a major economic power and not a developing nation intent on protecting its ‘infant industries’. Trump’s realism reflects the new economic order: China is a mature, highly competitive, world economic power, which has been out-competing the US, in part by retaining its own state subsidies and incentives from its earlier economic phase. This has led to significant imbalances. Trump, the realist, recognizes that China offers great opportunities for trade and investment if the US can secure reciprocal agreements, which lead to a more favorable balance of trade.

Trump does not want to launch a ‘trade war’ with China, but he needs to restore the US as a major ‘exporter’ nation in order to implement his domestic economic agenda. The negotiations with the Chinese will be very difficult because the US importer-elite are against the Trump agenda and side with the Beijing’s formidable export-oriented ruling class.

Moreover, because Wall Street’s banking elite is pleading with Beijing to enter China’s financial markets, the financial sector is an unwilling and unstable ally to Trump’s pro-industrial policies.

Conclusion

Trump is not a ‘protectionist’, nor is he opposed to ‘free-trade’. These charges by the garbage journalists are baseless. Trump does not oppose US economic imperialist policies abroad. However, Trump is a market realist who recognizes that military conquest is costly and, in the contemporary world context, a losing economic proposition for the US. He recognizes that the US must turn from a predominant finance and import economy to a manufacturing and export economy.

Trump views Russia as a potential economic partner and military ally in ending the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and especially in defeating the terrorist threat of ISIS. He sees China as a powerful economic competitor, which has been taking advantage of outmoded trade privileges and wants to re-negotiate trade pacts in line with the current balance of economic power.

Trump is a capitalist-nationalist, a market-imperialist and political realist, who is willing to trample on women’s rights, climate change legislation, indigenous treaties and immigrant rights. His cabinet appointments and his Republican colleagues in Congress are motivated by a militarist ideology closer to the Obama-Clinton doctrine than to Trumps new ‘America First’ agenda. He has surrounded his Cabinet with military imperialists, territorial expansionists and delusional fanatics.

Who will win out in the short or long term remains to be seen. What is clear is that the liberals, Democratic Party hacks and advocates of Little Mussolini black shirted street thugs will be on the side of the imperialists and will find plenty of allies among and around the Trump regime.

January 28, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Donald Trump, NAFTA, Obama, Russia, TPP, United States | 3 Comments

DJT: TPP, RIP!

Foes of War, Now Silent, Should Celebrate

By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | January 25, 2017

On day one of Donald Trump’s presidency, he drove a stake through the heart of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), as he had repeatedly promised during his campaign. Foes of war should rejoice and congratulate Trump since the TPP was the economic arm of the “Pivot to Asia”, the military/economic assault on China promoted vigorously by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, neocons and humanitarian interventionists of every stripe. It was a trade agreement that linked twelve Pacific Rim powers but pointedly excluded China in an effort to isolate and weaken it.

Thus in his first hours in office Trump has, in fact, made a move away from confrontation with China – and the goal of US global domination. Such a move should elicit support and congratulations for Trump from foes of war and Empire. So far there has not been much of that.

Let us be clear. If Donald Trump were lying during the campaign about the TTP, so beloved by corporate America and the neocons, he could have revived it – easily. After all he has a clear majority in both House and Senate whom he is increasingly bending to his will. And there are many Democrats pining to please their corporate masters who would have joined his effort at TPP resuscitation. But Trump did not do this. He was dead serious about his promise. Expect the same on Détente 2.0 with Russia and other policies to which he has made a solid commitment.

Trump’s first full day in office was a great day for peace on another front as well. Marco Rubio, aka “Little Marco,” announced he would vote to confirm Rex Tillerson as Trump’s Secretary of State. Tillerson, a friend of Putin and someone with a clear understanding of Russia, is associated with Trump’s oft-stated desire to “get along” with Russia. Tillerson has been the target of the neocons who hoped to stop him, and Rubio tried to pressure him into declaring Putin a “war criminal” in his confirmation hearings, something that Tillerson refused to do. Like Trump, Tillerson does not seem like the kind of person who is easily pushed around.

That was two strikes for peace on Day One of the Trump presidency.

As is well known, the TPP was opposed by many progressives and labor leaders for reasons other than a desire for peace. For these activists it was correctly seen as one more attack on democracy and sovereignty, written in secret and designed to give corporations and banks control over the terms of trade and laws of the land. Democratic Party progressives opposed it vehemently, and so it would make sense for them to hail Trump’s action.

But look at the comments at that bastion of conformist progressivism, the HuffPost, and you will find that many progressives have abruptly switched and are opposing Trump and even praising the TPP! Thankfully at least a few commenters over there are honest enough to admit the hypocrisy behind this switch. One HuffPost commenter wrote:

OK, when Bernie was talking about how bad the TPP was almost every comment here (on Huffington Post) was how they didn’t trust Hillary to get us out of the TPP. Now that Trump pulled us out, people are taking the opposite view. … At least admit that this is a good thing. Does it matter who stops TPP? 9 months ago we all agreed it was a bad thing.

This stance is all too reminiscent of Democratic “progressives” who were out in force opposing the war on Iraq under Bush but were nowhere to be seen when Obama came into office and continued the war.

But let us give credit where credit is due. Bernie Sanders announced his pleasure with Trump’s deep sixing of the TPP, according to the Guardian, which reported:

Sanders praised Trump’s decision, saying TPP is ‘dead and gone’….If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers then I would be delighted to work with him.

Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO also praised the termination of TPP, but unlike Bernie he did not mention Trump by name as the terminator. This is not surprising since the labor misleadership did not back Bernie, the choice of the rank and file, but instead squandered their dues on support of pro-TPP Hillary.

Sanders’s and Trumka’s concerns about TPP are economic and these concerns are the ones usually reported in the mainstream media. But the neocon hawks understand the imperial aspects of the TPP as shown by the words of the hegemonist John McCain, again according to the Guardian:

Senator John McCain criticized the move. ‘President Trump’s decision to formally withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a serious mistake that will have lasting consequences for the American economy and our strategic position in the Asia Pacific region,’ he said. (Emphasis, jw)

Looking abroad, TPP has been running into troubles in East Asia as well, with Vietnam, the Philippines Malaysia and possibly even the Republic of Korea (South Korea) moving toward closer ties with China and away from U.S. engineered strife between China and its neighbors. We might well regard Trump’s position and those of the East Asian countries pulling away from the U.S. as manifestations of a new view of the world and a new balance of power already in place. From that point of view President Trump, by rejecting the TPP, is simply moving to negotiate the best deal possible for the U.S. in this new developing global arrangement.

The question for liberals/progressives is will they mindlessly oppose Trump on everything he does or support what is desirable and criticize what is not. That question will come to the fore soon if Trump and Tillerson manage to fashion Détente 2.0 with Russia. The War Party, both its neocon and liberal interventionist wings, will fiercely oppose this. Will liberals/progressives support and defend Détente 2.0 – or oppose it simply because it comes from Donald J. Trump?

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.

January 26, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism | Donald Trump, TPP, United States | 1 Comment

Trump’s Foreign Policy: An Unwise Inconsistency?

By Ron Paul | January 23, 2017

Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s foreign policy positions have been anything but consistent. One day we heard that NATO was obsolete and the US needs to pursue better relations with Russia. But the next time he spoke, these sensible positions were abandoned or an opposite position was taken. Trump’s inconsistent rhetoric left us wondering exactly what kind of foreign policy he would pursue if elected.

The President’s inaugural speech was no different. On the one hand it was very encouraging when he said that under his Administration the US would “seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world,” and that he understands the “right of all nations to put their own interests first.” He sounded even better when he said that under Trump the US would “not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.” That truly would be a first step toward peace and prosperity.

However in the very next line he promised a worldwide war against not a country, but an ideology, when he said he would, “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth.” This inconsistent and dangerous hawkishess will not defeat “radical Islamic terrorism,” but rather it will increase it. Terrorism is not a place, it is a tactic in reaction to invasion and occupation by outsiders, as Professor Robert Pape explained in his important book, Dying to Win.

The neocons repeat the lie that ISIS was formed because the US military pulled out of Iraq instead of continuing its occupation. But where was ISIS before the US attack on Iraq? Nowhere. ISIS was a reaction to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The same phenomenon has been repeated wherever US interventionist actions have destabilized countries and societies.

Radical Islamic terrorism is for the most part a reaction to foreign interventionism. It will never be defeated until this simple truth is understood.

We also heard reassuring reports that President Trump was planning a major shake-up of the US intelligence community. With a budget probably approaching $100 billion, the intelligence community is the secret arm of the US empire. The CIA and other US agencies subvert elections and overthrow governments overseas, while billions are spent spying on American citizens at home. Neither of these make us safer or more prosperous.

But all the talk about a major shake up at the CIA under Trump was quickly dispelled when the President visited the CIA on his first full working day in office. Did he tell them a new sheriff was in town and that they would face a major and long-overdue reform? No. He merely said he was with them “1000 percent.”

One reason Trump sounds so inconsistent in his policy positions is that he does not have a governing philosophy. He is not philosophically opposed to a US military empire so sometimes he sounds in favor of more war and sometimes he sounds like he opposes it. Will President Trump in this case be more influenced by those he has chosen to serve him in senior positions? We can hope not, judging from their hawkishness in recent Senate hearings. Trump cannot be for war and against war simultaneously. Let us hope that once the weight of the office settles on him he will understand that the prosperity he is promising can only come about through a consistently peaceful foreign policy.

January 23, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism | CIA, Donald Trump, United States | 1 Comment

US drone strikes in Yemen, absolutely atrocious: Analyst

Press TV – January 22, 2017

Separate US drone attacks have killed four people in the southwestern Yemeni province of Bayda. The United States carries out drone attacks in Yemen and several other countries, claiming to be targeting al-Qaeda elements, but, local sources say civilians have been the main victims of the attacks. The drone strikes in Yemen continue alongside the Saudi military aggression against the impoverished conflict-ridden country.

A radio host and political commentator says US drone strikes are “absolutely atrocious,” adding that Washington is directly involved in Yemen’s war when it is “actively dropping bombs” on the war-torn country.

“I do not think a lot of the people in the United States even realize that United States is actually bombing Yemen. They think that the United States is simply supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, but the fact is United States is actually in there bombing people themselves with these drone strikes,” Max Igan told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.

He noted that it is “pretty outrageous” and “terrible” that the drone strikes are going on at the time of US presidential transition.

The commentator further argued that if US President Donald Trump wants to deescalate the war on terror and try to bring about stability and peace to the Middle East, he should stop the drone strikes.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Igan criticized the Western media for not reporting anything about the war and the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.

“It is one of the most unreported wars that we have seen in modern history. Nobody really realizes what is going on there, we do not hear anything about it on the media … we are not hearing about this war and it is an ongoing human rights catastrophe. There are so many people suffering in Yemen, it is almost impossible to get aid to these people and the arms just keep getting poured in there and the bombs just keep getting dropped and the media is not reporting anything about it,” he said.

He concluded by saying that there needs to be some sort of an organization in the world that can do something to stop this ongoing onslaught of the Yemeni people.

January 22, 2017 Posted by aletho | Militarism, War Crimes | Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia, United States, Yemen | 1 Comment

Bashing Trump’s Justifiable Outrage Over Disgraceful Press Coverage

By Stephen Lendman | January 18, 2017

With few exceptions, media scoundrels relentlessly bashed him throughout the political season.

Vilification continues daily post-election, inventing reasons to denigrate him, an unprecedented example of political presstitution at its worst.

An open letter to him from the US press corp, written by Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief and publisher Kyle Pope, warrants a reader response. Trump and his team can speak for themselves.

Pope: “You’ve banned news organizations from covering you.”

Fact: False! He leveled sharp criticism as justified, including blasting CNN as fake news. He should have applied that label to the entire scoundrel media establishment, suppressing hard truths, substituting managed news misinformation and Big Lies – about him and on virtually all other important issues.

Any news organization and their members are free to cover him. He’s free to ignore any ones he wishes.

Pope: “(Y)our press secretary is considering pulling news media offices out of the White House…”

Fact: False! Incoming press secretary Sean Spicer said space is being sought to accommodate a larger number of journalists – not change the workspace for White House reporters.

At the same time, Trump is entitled to challenge members of the press spreading malicious lies about him. No one should put up with abusive practices.

Pope: “You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same.”

Fact: Western media scoundrels are a national disgrace. Trump should respond when they blast him irresponsibly.

Twitter is his favorite way of communicating. He’s able to reach millions, free from misquotes and distortions. Earlier I called him America’s tweeter-in-chief, encouraging him to keep tweeting.

Pope: “You’ve avoided the press when you could and flouted the norms of pool reporting and regular press conferences.”

Fact: Advice referees give prize fighters to protect themselves at all times especially applies to presidents and other heads of state. If he wishes, Trump is entitled to avoid press corp members denigrating him maliciously.

He’s yet to assume office, so it’s unknown how often he’ll hold press conferences. Franklin Roosevelt, serving nearly four terms, held far more than any other president. They were more informal affairs in pre-television days than how they’re held today.

Pope: “You’ve ridiculed a reporter who wrote something you didn’t like because he has a disability.”

Fact: Trump debunked the accusation as a malicious lie.

Pope: Press “access is preferable, but not critical.” Lacking it is “a challenge we relish.”

Fact: Trump has no problem with responsible reporting. Denigrating him without just cause is another matter entirely.

Pope: “Ground rules are the prerogative of the press.”

Fact: That type attitude would antagonize anyone.

Pope: “We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates.”

Fact: How much time isn’t the issue. Responsible truth-telling matters most – what’s sorely lacking in mainstream Western reporting, turning journalism into presstitution.

Pope: “Facts are what we do…”

Fact: Media scoundrels suppress them, substituting fake news.

Pope: “(W)hile you may seek to control what comes out of the West Wing, we’ll have the upper hand in covering how your policies are carried out.”

Fact: If reporting on Trump follows the pattern seen throughout the political season and post-election so far, expect endless rubbish substituting for responsible journalism.

Pope: We’ll set higher standards for ourselves than ever before.”

Fact: Presstitutes make street whores look good by example. Case closed!

Stephen Lendman 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 WW III.

January 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Columbia Journalism Review, Donald Trump, Kyle Pope, United States | Leave a comment

Regime Change Comes Home: The CIA’s Overt Threats against Trump

By James Petras :: 01.17.2017

Introduction: The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive elections, unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W. Bush victory over ‘Al’ Gore in 2000.

But despite the dubious electoral outcomes in these cases, the ‘defeated’ candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful protests to register their opposition.

These norms are no longer operative. During the election process, and in the run-up to the inauguration of US President-Elect Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were challenged and coercive institutions were activated to disqualify the elected president and desperate overt public pronouncements threatened the entire electoral order.

We will proceed by outlining the process that is used to undermine the constitutional order, including the electoral process and the transition to the inauguration of the elected president.

Regime Change in America

In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often intervened against independent foreign governments, which challenged Washington’s quest for global domination. This was especially true during the eight years of President Barack Obama’s administration where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of ‘regime change’.

The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US political, administrative and security structures are involved in this process. The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction between operating within constitutional norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.

Today the distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been obliterated by the state and quasi-official mass media. The US security apparatus is now active in manipulating the domestic democratic process of electing leaders and transitioning administrations.

The decisive shift to ‘regime change’ at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries.

Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the political parties seek to delegitimize the election process and undermine the President-elect. The mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip, decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents.

Alongside the media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come together to question the legitimacy of the November 2016 election results. Even after a recount confirmed Trump’s victory, a massive propaganda campaign was launched to impeach the president-elect even before he takes office – by claiming Trump was an ‘enemy agent’.

The Democratic Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump militants sought to blackmail members of the Electoral College to change their vote in violation of their own mandate as state electors. This was unsuccessful, but unprecedented.

Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the elected president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and US celebrity icon) as a ‘tool of Moscow.’ The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA, Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump’s overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia were acts of treason.

The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate ‘dodgy dossiers’ linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or ‘vulnerable to KGB blackmail’. The CIA’s phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance ’security’ contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to ‘take the bite’ on the ’smelly’ dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain (’war-hero’ and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government ‘act on these vital revelations’!

Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the ‘CIA dossier’ was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former ‘British official – now – in – hiding…!’ Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-elect. Trump likened the CIA’s ‘dirty pictures hatchet job’ to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d’état.

CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous ‘regime changes’ overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ‘just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump’s policies) on the United States could be profound…”

Clearly CIA Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a sinister, unaccountable power dictating policy to an elected US president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia Capo, he threatens the physical security of the incoming leader.

From a Scratch to Gangrene

The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the corporate mass media and the ‘progressive’ websites and pundits providing ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated ‘regime change’.

Whatever the limitations of our electoral norms – and there are many – they are now being degraded and discarded in a march toward an elite coup, involving elements of the militarist empire and ‘intelligence’ hierarchy.

Mass propaganda, a ‘red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason (’Trump, the Stooge of Moscow’) resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany. A broad ‘coalition’ has joined hands with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA) and imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits their drive for world power and a US dominated global political order.

January 18, 2017 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | CIA, Donald Trump, John Brennan, NSA, Obama, United States | Leave a comment

Trump’s Remaking of US Foreign Policy

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | January 16, 2017

Over the weekend, President-elect Trump received two journalists from mainstream European print media — The Times of London and the German magazine Bild — for a joint interview in New York City’s Trump Tower. The event was videotaped and we are seeing some remarkable sound bites, particularly those of interest to the British and German publics.

President-elect Donald J. Trump donaldjtrump.com

For the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May, nothing could have sounded sweeter than Donald Trump’s statement that she would be invited for talks in the White House shortly after he is sworn in on Jan. 20 and that he seeks very quickly to reach agreement on a bilateral free trade pact. The effect of the pledge itself, even ahead of its successful implementation, assures the British that the sting of severing ties with the European Union will be greatly offset by new commercial possibilities in the world’s biggest economy; in this way, it strengthens May’s hand enormously as she enters into talks with the E.U. leadership over the detailed terms of what will apparently be a “Hard Brexit.”

Further adding to her leverage with the E.U. were Trump’s remarks suggesting that the E.U. will face stern trade pressure, beginning with Germany and its automobile industry, to do more to manufacture in the U.S. That precisely raises the relative importance of the U.K. market, which the E.U. will otherwise lose if it imposes severe penalties on Britain in negotiations over Brexit.

For the general public’s consumption, Donald Trump used the interview to explain his special affection for Britain, speaking about his Scottish mother’s delight in the Queen and her watching every royal event on television for its unequaled pageantry. But we may expect that Prime Minister May will find there is a bill to pay for the “special relationship” with the U.S. under President Trump.

Rather than the British media’s early speculation that Prime Minister May would be the one to set the misguided Trump straight about the nefarious Vladimir Putin, she may now have to become a leading European advocate for détente with Russia at Trump’s behest. In this connection, British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s advice to Congress during his visit to Washington last week that Official Washington “stop demonizing Putin” may well have been a straw in the wind.

For the Germans, Trump also offered a bit of flattery, saying how much he respected their Chancellor Angela Merkel. However, as he went on, he virtually flattened the Iron Lady’s reputation by calling her open-door policy of admitting migrants into Germany and the E.U. a catastrophe. He noted that Merkel’s controversial position had swayed the election results in Britain on Brexit and may lead to the departure of other countries from the E.U. Given his staff’s consultation with Marine Le Pen, a visiting French candidate for the presidency from the right-wing Front National, Trump’s list surely includes France.

Finally, among the sound bites that will be featured in media coverage of the interview, we hear Donald Trump describe NATO as an outdated organization that needs overhaul. However, apart from his reiterated insistence that Member States must pay their fair share, which he claims only Britain and four others from the 28 Member States are currently doing, the interview offers no specifics on what kind structural change, if any, he seeks for NATO. We only hear that NATO has not been prepared to deal with the threat of international terrorism.

Views on Russia

But it was in another area, Trump’s remarks on Russia and the terms he named for possibly lifting sanctions, that we find convincing proof that the President-elect’s approach to foreign affairs is not just the sum of isolated tactical considerations but a complete reinvention of the guiding principles of U.S. foreign policy. What we are witnessing is a shift to a new strategic, geopolitical paradigm.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (UN Photo)

In the past couple of decades, going back to the second term of President Bill Clinton, the ideology of neoconservatism with its stress on “democracy promotion” as being the whole of national interest, dictated policy decisions that amounted to the tail wagging the dog. The Baltic States were admitted into NATO in its 2004 enlargement because they wanted it. The decision to station U.S., German and other NATO brigades in Poland and other states along the Russian border taken last July in Warsaw and implemented, in the case of Poland, by U.S. forces in the past several days, was justified by the anxiety of these countries over the possibility of Russian aggression, even though NATO’s action has been highly provocative vis-à-vis Russia and brought the major nuclear powers ever closer to direct confrontation.

In the interview, Trump changed entirely the metrics by which sanctions on Russia would be lifted. Instead of fulfillment of the Minsk Accords over Ukraine’s ethnic Russian Donbas region – which nationalist hardliners in Kiev had the power to block – Trump conditioned the relaxation of sanctions on progress in curbing the nuclear arms race and moving toward significant nuclear disarmament, issues that are fully within the power of the Kremlin to implement.

To be sure, these issues today are more complex than they were in the heyday of disarmament talks. The recent obstacles include the U.S. anti-ballistic missile installations in Poland and Romania, the forward stationing of NATO human and materiel resources in the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the standing invitations to Ukraine and Georgia to enter NATO. So any negotiations between Washington and Moscow will be very complex.

But Trump’s statement shows that he is focused on the big picture, on the triangular relationship between Washington, Moscow and Beijing that he believes to be of vital importance in keeping the peace globally, rather than on some amorphous reliance on expanding democracy globally on the unproven assumption that democracies among themselves are peace-loving.

These elements in Donald Trump’s thinking, quite unexpected in a businessman, bring him very close to the Realism of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, while his setting nuclear disarmament as a key goal, aligns him with Ronald Reagan and — strange to say — with Barack Obama at the very start of his presidency.

If Donald Trump can stave off the jackals from the Western mainstream media and the U.S. foreign policy establishment – a combination that has formed a snarling circle around him even before he takes office – he may have a chance to make historic changes in international relations toward a more peaceful world.

Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

January 17, 2017 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Donald Trump, European Union, NATO, Russia, UK, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Donald Trump v. the Spooks

By Annie Machon | Consortium News | January 16, 2017

The clash between plutocratic President-elect Trump and the CIA is shaping up to be the heavyweight prize fight of the century, and Trump at least is approaching it with all the entertaining bombast of Mohammed Ali at the top of his game. Rather than following the tradition of doing dirty political deals in dark corners, more commonly known as fixing the match, Trump has come out swinging in the full glare of the media.

In that corner, we have a deal-making, billionaire “man of the people” who, to European sensibilities at least, reputedly espouses some of the madder domestic obsessions and yet has seemed to offer hope to many aggrieved Americans. But it is his professed position on building a rapprochement with Russia and cooperating with Moscow to sort out the Syrian mess that caught my attention and that of many other independent commentators internationally.

In the opposite corner, Trump’s opponents have pushed the CIA into the ring to deliver the knock-out blow, but this has yet to land. Despite jab after jab, Trump keeps evading the blows and comes rattling back against all odds. One has to admire the guy’s footwork.

So who are the opponents ranged behind the CIA, yelling encouragement through the ropes? The obvious culprits include the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose corporate bottom line relies on an era of unending war. As justification for extracting billions – even trillions – of dollars from American taxpayers, there was a need for frightening villains, such as Al Qaeda and even more so, the head choppers of ISIS. However, since the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, those villains no longer packed as scary a punch, so a more enduring villain, like Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state in George Orwell’s 1984, was required. Russia was the obvious new choice, the old favorite from the Cold War playbook.

The Western intelligence agencies have a vested interest in eternal enemies to ensure both eternal funding and eternal power, hence the CIA’s entry into the fight. As former British MP and long-time peace activist George Galloway so eloquently said in a recent interview, an unholy alliance is now being formed between the “war party” in the U.S., the military-industrial-intelligence complex and those who would have previously publicly spurned such accomplices: American progressives and their traditional host, the Democratic Party.

Yet, if the Democratic National Committee had not done its best to rig the primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton, then perhaps we would not be in this position. Bernie Sanders would be the President-elect.

Two-Party Sham

These establishment forces have also revealed to the wider world a fact long known but largely dismissed as conspiracy theory by the corporate mainstream media, that the two-party system in both the U.S. and the U.K. is a sham. In fact, we are governed by a globalized elite, working in its own interest while ignoring ours. The Democrats, openly disgruntled by Hillary Clinton’s election loss and being seen to jump into bed so quickly with the spooks and the warmongers, have laid this reality bare.

In fact, respected U.S. investigative journalist Robert Parry recently wrote that an intelligence contact told him before the election that the intelligence agencies did not like either of the presidential candidates. This may go some way to explaining the FBI’s intervention in the run-up to the election against Hillary Clinton, as well as the CIA’s attempts to de-legitimize Trump’s victory afterwards.

Whether that was indeed the case, the CIA has certainly held back no punches since Trump’s election. First the evidence-lite assertion that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC emails and leaked them to WikiLeaks: then the fake news about Russia hacking the voting computers; that then morphed into the Russians “hacked the election” itself; then they “hacked” into the U.S. electric grid via a Vermont utility. All this without a shred of fact-based evidence provided, but Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats last month solidified this dubious reality in Americans’ minds.

All this culminated in the “dirty dossier” allegations last week about Trump, which he has rightly knocked down – it was desperately poor stuff.

This last item, from a British perspective, is particularly concerning. It appears that a Washington dirt-digging company was hired by a Republican rival to Trump to unearth any potential Russian scandals during the primaries; once Trump had won the nomination this dirt-digging operation was taken over by a Democrat supporter of Hillary Clinton. The anti-Trump investigation was then sub-contracted to an alleged ex-British spy, an ex-MI6 man named Christopher Steele.

The Role of MI6

Much has already been written about Steele and the company, much of it contradictory as no doubt befits the life of a former spy. But it is a standard career trajectory for insiders to move on to corporate, mercenary spy companies, and this is what Steele appears to have done successfully in 2009. Of course, much is predicated on maintaining good working relations with your former employers.

That is the aspect that interests me most – how close a linkage did he indeed retain with his former employers after he left MI6 in 2009 to set up his own private spy company? The answer is important because companies such as his can also be used as cut-outs for “plausible deniability” by official state spies.

I’m not suggesting that happened in this case, but Steele reportedly remained on good terms with MI6 and was well thought of. For a man who had not been stationed in Russia for over 20 years, it would perhaps have been natural for him to turn to old chums for useful connections.

But this question is of extreme importance at a critical juncture for the U.K.; if indeed MI6 was complicit or even aware of this dirt digging, as it seems to have been, then that is a huge diplomatic problem for the government’s attempts to develop a strong working relationship with the US, post-Brexit. If MI6’s sticky fingers were on this case, then the organization has done the precise opposite of its official task – “to protect national security and the economic well-being of the UK.”

MI6 and its U.S. intelligence chums need to remember their designated and legislated roles within a democracy – to serve the government and protect national security by gathering intelligence, assessing it impartially and making recommendations on which the government of the day will choose to act or not as the case may be.

The spies are not there to fake intelligence to suit the agenda of a particular regime, as happened in the run-up to the illegal Iraq War, nor are they there to endemically spy on their own populations (and the rest of the world, as we know post-Snowden) in a pointless hunt for subversive activity, which often translates into legitimate political activism and acts of individual expression).

And most especially the intelligence agencies should not be trying to subvert democratically elected governments. And yet this is what the CIA and a former senior MI6 officer, along with their powerful political allies, appear to be now attempting against Trump.

Chances for Peace

If I were an American, I would be wary of many of Trump’s domestic policies. As a European concerned with greater peace rather than increasing war, I can only applaud his constructive approach towards Russia and his offer to cooperate with Moscow to stanch the bloodshed in the Middle East.

(Photo Nov. 23, 2015 Tehran: http://en.kremlin.ru)

That, of course, may be the nub of his fight with the CIA and other vested interests who want Russia as the new bogeyman. But I would bet that Trump takes the CIA’s slurs personally. After all, given the ugliness of the accusations and the lack of proof, who would not?

So, this is a world championship heavy-weight fight over who gets to hold office and wield power, an area where the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies have considerable experience in rigging matches and knocking out opponents. Think, for instance, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953; Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973; Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003; and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is wobbly but still standing, thanks to some good corner support from Russia.

However, it would appear that Trump is a stranger to the spies’ self-defined Queensbury Rules in which targets are deemed paranoid if they try to alert the public to the planned “regime change” or they become easy targets by staying silent. By contrast, Trump appears shameless and pugnacious. Street-smart and self-promoting, he seems comfortable with bare-knuckle fighting.

This match has already gone into the middle rounds with Trump still bouncing around on his toes and still relishing the fight. It would be ironic if out of this nasty prize fight came greater world peace and safely for us all.

Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI).

January 16, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Militarism | Christopher Steele, CIA, Donald Trump, United States | Leave a comment

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… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.

There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue

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