Demonize and Distract: Sanitizing Syria for the Masses
By Jason Hirthler | CounterPunch | September 9, 2016
Summoning the Humanitarian Pretext
The arch pragmatist Machiavelli once wrote that, “If you watch the ways of men, you will see that those who obtain great wealth and power do so either by force or fraud, and having got them they conceal under some honest name the foulness of their deeds.” You couldn’t pen a better description of the relationship between the imperial corporate state and its supplicant media. Once the coffers of vulnerable nations are ransacked by American wars of aggression, it is the media that sweeps the crimes of state beneath a carpet of piety. The truth may come out in due time, although it is always ex post facto. Thanks to the the coordination between the corporate sector, the state, and the media, the American doctrinal system is largely a self-contained narrative. It comes complete with a smooth internal logic. Corporations set priorities, the state produces a storyline that rationalizes the pursuit of those priorities, and the media distributes and reifies the storyline until it is gospel. This is no surprise, since the corporations own the politicians and the presses. Yet one way to examine the functioning of this kind of systemic propaganda is by looking at some of the keywords on which the stories hinge.
The foul deeds Machiavelli mentioned now principally occur in the Middle East, where vast resources lie and where power may be usefully projected deep into Eurasia. The Syrian proxy war between forces east and west is a nice example of how the dissimulations initiated in Washington are disseminated through the MSM. For instance, The New York Times, and its deputies in the vast clearinghouses of state propaganda, would have us believe that the White House is supporting freedom-loving rebels in Syria who are politically moderate and fighting for their lives in a civil war against a despotic regime led by an evil optometrist, Bashar al-Assad.
But we know that the entire Syrian fiasco was engineered by the CIA with cash, guns, and training, and unceasing support from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at our behest. It is a long-standing neoconservative plan to break the so-called Shia Crescent that runs from Lebanon through Syria to Iran. These are, of course, the independent-minded states that have thus far refused to accept either Israeli colonization of Palestinian land or permit Western-backed energy projects to take shape on their territory. Hence the need to dismember them into tiny, feckless statelets that pose no challenge to either Tel Aviv or Washington.
But this is hidden behind the fog of war and a domestic haze of media nuance. This entire conflict could reasonably be said to hinge on a single phrase: “moderate rebels.” The words “moderate” and “rebel” make all the difference in the telling of this fable. The truth is that we have hijacked Arab Spring discontent and festooned it with brigades of terrorist mercenaries procured from around the Middle East and Asia, all with the singular mandate to take down the Assad government. Tens of thousands of jihadists have been injected by NATO into a multi-confessional state governed by an elected leader who won a larger percentage of the electorate than our liberal messiah Barack Obama.
But this more truthful interpretation of events is unacceptable. To concede that the White House is now backing al-Qaeda terrorists in an effort to capsize a Middle Eastern democracy would implode the religion of American exceptionalism on which elite power depends. Thus the media cannot point out that the Pentagon’s recent admission of having troops in Syria violates the Nuremberg Principles on wars of aggression as well as the United Nations Charter. Omissions of this kind are what prevent average Americans from a) knowing what we’re really doing; and b) resisting it.
Demonize and Distract
But it isn’t enough to simply cloak our own crimes in the holy cloth of exceptionalism. We must defame our enemies. We must plant false flags in their soil now so that we can bury bombs in them later. It happens the same way every time. ‘Shocking’ discoveries are made about one of our most reviled enemies, usually provided by a defector with a farcical alias (think “Curveball”). Instantaneous mainstream reports issue a coordinated condemnation of the country in question. Each media outlet chooses a particular keyword to drive home the horror. Popular terms include “crimes against humanity”, “war crimes”, the words “industrial scale” in front of any noun or verb, the word “mass” in front of any noun or verb, “brutal crackdown”, “regime”, and so on. Grisly images are plastered across the front pages of the MSM. Often the images are fakes or are from unrelated incidents.
Once the reader has been stupefied, at least one columnist or politician will draw a deep breath, and then ‘draw comparisons’ to either Hitler and Auschwitz or Slobodan Milosevic and mass graves. (Recently Milosevic was declared innocent of all genocidal charges by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia, albeit years after he died in prison after being denied medical treatment by his civilized captors. This process of posthumous exoneration is now practiced on an “industrial scale” by Obama’s drone assassination when various innocents are discovered to have been innocent after they’ve been “terminated”.)
Not only is the supposedly noble Syrian uprising a fraud, but so is our equally principled goal of wiping ISIS from the face of the earth, if the facts on the ground are of any import. Washington has gone after ISIS in a strangely half-hearted way. Why hasn’t it provided air cover for Syrian Arab Army when its helicopters were rendered useless by terrorist TOW missiles? Missiles sold by the United States to Saudi Arabia, likely for the express purpose of funneling them to al Nusrah and other rogue bandits in Syria. Why did the U.S. not immediately attack ISIS-controlled oil wells and oil trading routes–ISIS’ chief source of funding–as Russia did on its entry into the conflict? Why did the Obama administration produce a record-setting arms deal with the Saudis, the leading proselytizer of Wahhabism in the world? Why do we refuse to work with Moscow or the SAA or Iran? Why do we not share grids and intelligence and join their joint operations room in Baghdad?
Isn’t it obvious? We have different goals. We want Assad out and a daft, pliant puppet in charge, presiding over a vast arsenal of domestic police, ready to crush resistance on contact. Of course, any such resisters would be legitimate freedom fighters, as are the Palestinians. But the media takes care to call Palestinians “terrorists” and called citizens resisting the Iraqi occupation “insurgents”. Words matter. They shade the story and bring neutral readers over to the side of empire. They blame the victim for the violence that victimized them.
The dissimulation becomes even clearer when you realize that ISIS emerged from an American interrogation camp in Iraq, in a way that suggests CentCom was more than happy to release radicalized Islamists into the wild. To what purpose? The failed state in Libya and the collapsing scenery of the Syrian state provide plenty of fodder for speculation.
The Wages of Propaganda
Thanks to years of conditioning by the media, the population will do little to resist the escalation to come. Eventually the Syrian “regime” to be eventually overthrown by relentless American-backed violence. Hillary Clinton will win the election and gain control of the Oval Office. As Glen Ford wrote at Black Agenda Report, Clinton will “… ride into the White House on a warhorse”. She is the thinking man’s neocon, unlike President Bush, who represented the anti-intellectual strain of the American character, and Barack Obama, whose reluctance to pour troops into Arab prairie fires was widely predictably condemned as a sign of weakness.
Hillary is neither stupid nor soft. She will doubtless find a useful pretext by which to declare a no-fly zone in Syria, which would inhibit the efficacy of Russia’s campaign against various terrorist clans. (A House resolution is already afoot to lay the groundwork.) She will move more troops into the polder of northern Syria, violating all kinds of charters and conventions and declarations with an icy mixture of contempt and indifference. (See the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the bootless scraps of paper she will trample.) Perhaps most importantly, she will green light the transport of more arms, ammunition, and psychopaths into Syria to make a push for Damascus in the hopes of repeating the Libyan calamity.
Should that project succeed, Hillary will quite possibly ‘discover’ that Iran has been violating its bogus nuclear agreement with the P5 +1. Anonymous administration sources will be “troubled” by the development. This isn’t idle speculation. For lack of a better title, the long-term strategy for the “new world order,” as George H.W. Bush put it, is contingent on splitting the Shia Crescent, removing Iran as a regional antagonist, then moving farther into Eurasia to control Sino-Russian development. And we know how a confrontation with Tehran would play out. With rabid spittle cresting his white beard, Wolf Blitzer will escort numberless brigadier generals through The Situation Room to reassure Americans that the bearded mullahs in Qom are indeed a fearsome clan. Hillary will threaten, and perhaps use, tactical nuclear weapons (B-61s) on Iranian nuclear sites, backed by either a UN Security Council resolution of dubious authority or a coalition of the bullied, bought, and willing. As the mushroom cloud envelops the region in radioactive waste, Israel will be seen fastidiously colonizing more West Bank land, Benjamin Netanyahu rubbing his hands in frenzied anticipation, a dogeared copy of the Yinon plan stuffed in his jacket pocket. Saudi Arabia’s Deputy and Crown Princes will celebrate the fall of their hated rivals. Laconic onlookers in Washington and Europe will shrug and say nothing. CIA plants in D.C. will fastidiously distance Hillary’s bombs from Hiroshima’s, and Tel Aviv will move against Hezbollah in a final confrontation, since the Shia Crescent will by then be nothing more than a few shards of Mesopotamian culture atop a flaming midden.
With the Middle East finally brought “to heel,” as Hillary once proposed doing to young black boys, the ground will have been cleared for the pulse-racing showdown with Russia itself, the greatest thorn in Washington’s side. With Assad out of the way and Tehran chastened, the Kremlinologists and conspiracy theorists can be set loose to harrow the public into a state of high anxiety about the “expansionist” state to the East. NATO will inch closer to Russian borders and shout that Russia is moving closer to NATO. Destabilization will proceed apace. It will be called “democracy promotion” and will be paid for by fronts called “endowments”. Sanctions will tighten the economic screws. Verbal salvos will hit targets on either side of the water. New proxy wars will be touched off. Only a giant peace movement or stray asteroid could prevent something like this from happening. Perhaps the BRICS will halt the spread of empire with a collective stance, but Washington is agile if not artful at executing its core strategy to destabilize, divide, and rule its rivals. Until then, if you want to know what contempt looks like, look at this picture of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin meeting at the G20 in China last week. The tenor of tomorrow is written all over their faces.
Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry and author of The Sins of Empire: Unmasking American Imperialism. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
Obama Flinches at Renouncing Nuke First Strike
President Barack Obama uncomfortably accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10, 2009. (White House photo)
By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | September 8, 2016
Time is running short for President Obama to make good on his 2009 promise “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet as both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times recently reported, Obama’s advisers may have just nixed the single most important reform advocated by arms control advocates: a formal pledge that the United States will never again be the first country to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
Ever since President Truman ordered two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, the United States has reserved the right to initiate nuclear war against an overwhelming conventional, chemical or biological attack on us or our allies. But peace advocates — and more than a few senior military officers — have long warned that resorting to nuclear weapons would ignite a global holocaust, killing hundreds of millions of people.
In a talk to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association on June 6, Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes promised that President Obama would continue to review ways to achieve his grand vision of a nuclear-free world during his last months in office. Obama was reportedly considering a “series of executive actions” to that end, including a landmark shift to a “no first use” policy.
Two-thirds of adult Americans surveyed support such a policy. So do 10 U.S. senators who wrote President Obama in July, proposing a no-first-use declaration to “reduce the risk of accidental nuclear conflict” and seeking cut-backs in his trillion dollar plan for nuclear modernization over the next 30 years.
But Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (who oversees the nuclear stockpile), and Secretary of State John Kerry all warned during a National Security Council meeting in July that declaring a policy of “no first use” would alarm America’s allies, undercut U.S. credibility, and send a message of weakness to the Kremlin at a time of tense relations with Russia.
Yet until they took charge of giant bureaucracies whose funding depends on keeping the threat of nuclear war alive, both Carter and Moniz were on record supporting “a new strategy for reducing nuclear threats” and achieving security “at significantly lower levels of nuclear forces and with less reliance on nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”
In a 2007 manifesto, Carter, Moniz, and other centrist Democratic foreign policy experts rejected the old claim that nuclear weapons are still needed to deter non-nuclear attacks.
“Nuclear weapons are much less credible in deterring conventional, biological, or chemical weapon attacks,” they wrote. “A more effective way of deterring and defending against such non-nuclear attacks – and giving the President a wider range of credible response options – would be to rely on a robust array of conventional strike capabilities and strong declaratory policies.”
They also gave strong implicit support to a no-first-use doctrine, stating that “nuclear weapons must be seen as a last resort, when no other options can ensure the security of the U.S. and its allies.”
Risk of Overreaction
Why does a no-first-use policy matter? In a New York Times column last month, Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and head of the United States Strategic Command, emphasized the folly of introducing nuclear weapons into any conflict.
“Using nuclear weapons first against Russia and China would endanger our and our allies’ very survival by encouraging full-scale retaliation,” he and a colleague wrote. “Such use against North Korea would be likely to result in the blanketing of Japan and possibly South Korea with deadly radioactive fallout.”
A policy of no first use, backed up by a reconfiguration of U.S. nuclear forces to reduce their offensive capabilities, would lower the chance of a rival nuclear power rushing to launch early in a crisis and unleashing World War III. Today some nuclear powers like Russia have their forces on hair-trigger alert for fear of being wiped out by a U.S. surprise attack; as a result, the world is just one false alarm away from all-out nuclear war.
As two senior officials at the Arms Control Association observed recently in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Among other advantages, a clear US no-first-use policy would reduce the risk of Russian or Chinese nuclear miscalculation during a crisis by alleviating concerns about a devastating US nuclear first-strike.
“Such risks could grow in the future as Washington develops cyber offensive capabilities that can confuse nuclear command and control systems, as well as new strike capabilities and strategic ballistic missile interceptors that Russia and China believe may degrade their nuclear retaliatory potential.”
They also discounted the claim that U.S. allies such as Japan or Korea would rebel against such a change of policy: “They are highly likely to accept such a decision, since no first use will in no way weaken US military preparedness to confront non-nuclear threats to their security. . . Many US allies, including NATO members Germany and the Netherlands, support the adoption of no-first-use policies by all nuclear-armed states.”
Warnings by nuclear hawks that a common-sense doctrine of no-first-use would undercut U.S. “credibility” or project “weakness” are simply business-as-usual attempts by national security bureaucrats to inflate threats and keep the war machine in high gear. If they succeed in blocking reform, America and the rest of the world will remain at real risk of annihilation through accidental nuclear escalation.
The question now is whether President Obama will listen to the fear-mongers in his cabinet, or remember what he said in May at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial: “Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012). Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”
There has Never Been Anyone Less Qualified than Killary to be President
By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 07.09.2016
“There has never been a man or a women – not me, not Bill, nobody – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as the President of the United States of America” – Barack Obama speaking at the Democratic National Convention.
There he goes… the liar in chief is at it again: inverting reality and spouting some of the most transparent BS in modern history. The fact that Obama can stand up there and give such an outlandish endorsement of Killary is truly emblematic of his main strength: his ability to deceive.
Killary should be immediately disqualified from being eligible to run for President, considering the fact she had highly classified information on multiple unsecured private servers. Killary should be in jail, not running for the highest office in one of the most powerful countries on earth.
Even the thought of a Killary presidency should terrify everyone not only in the US, but everyone on the planet. Make no mistake about it: she is a neocon and a war hawk. Killary is not just a puppet of Wall Street, but of the military-industrial complex. She has received over $300,000 from war contractors in her presidential bid so far, the second highest amount (after Bernie Sanders) out of all the candidates who initially ran for President.
Killary was instrumental in NATO’s 2011 war in Libya, which resulted in the ousting of Muammar al- Qaddafi and the complete destruction of Libya – a country that previously had the highest standard of living on the African continent. She famously remarked after Qaddafi was murdered that “we came, we saw, he died” (before demonically laughing). I would question the mental sanity of anyone who paraphrases Julius Caesar in such circumstances.
With Killary at the helm, we can expect the total escalation of the Syrian conflict in addition to the very real potential of war with Iran. Killary is also a zealous supporter of Israel (along with Trump), and we can expect the continued support for Israel’s genocidal policies against the people of Palestine no matter who is elected.
Would the World Survive a Killary Presidency?
And now for the most dangerous aspect of a Killary administration: the very real danger of nuclear war with Russia. Although Vladimir Putin and the Russian leadership will try to work with Clinton in a bid to reduce tensions, her close relationship with the neocons and her warmongering attitude would most probably drive the world towards war.
In 2014, when referring to the Ukrainian conflict, Killary actually compared Putin to Hitler in one of the most disrespectful and ludicrous remarks that a Western politician has made in recent years. It becomes even more absurd when you consider the fact that the West overthrew the Ukrainian government, using and supporting neo-Nazis in the process.
A Clinton administration staffed with neocons and war hawks would continue the policy of encircling Russia, and of putting missile facilities in Eastern Europe. With tensions between NATO and Russia already great, the last thing the world needs is a Killary administration.
Putin: “The World is Being Pulled in an Irreversible Direction”
I will leave you with the warning Putin issued to foreign journalists at the end of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on the 17th of June, regarding how NATO and the US are driving the world towards nuclear war, yet the Western public is absolutely oblivious to this reality considering the complete blackout in the mainstream media:
“The Iranian threat does not exist but the NATO missile defense system is being positioned in Europe… Now the system is functioning and being loaded with missiles… So, these are being loaded with missiles that can penetrate territories within a 500km range; but we know that technologies advance, and we even know in which year the US will accomplish the next missile. This missile will be able to penetrate distances of up to 1000km, and then even further; and from that point on, they will start to directly threaten Russia’s nuclear potential.”
Putin continues:
“We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know; it’s only you [the journalists] that they tell tall-tales too and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. Your people in turn do not feel the sense of impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing’s going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.”
Obama’s Final ‘Jihad’ in Asia
By Wayne MADSEN | Strategic Culture Foundation | 06.09.2016
President Barack Obama has opted to ratchet up military tensions in Asia as one of his last foreign policy acts as president of the United States. Using climate change and free trade backdrops at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China and the U.S.-ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Vientiane, Laos as mirages intended to mask his aggressive military posture in the Asia-Pacific region, Obama seeks to cement his «pivot to Asia». It is Obama’s sincere hope that his anticipated successor, his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will expand on the expansionistic and aggressive regional showdown with China and Russia that his administration launched with his Asia «pivot».
The ultra-protocol conscious Chinese threw diplomacy and decorum to the wind when Obama touched down at Hangzhou International Airport and his national security adviser Susan Rice and deputy national security adviser became embroiled in an argument with Chinese security personnel. When White House officials traveling with Obama began issuing orders to the Chinese personnel, one Chinese official yelled at them, «This is our country. This is our airport». It was as if the Chinese, realizing that this would be their last encounter with Obama as president, were letting him and his war hawk national security team know who was the boss as long as they were on Chinese soil. At least on the tarmac at Hangzhou International Airport, the Chinese swung Obama’s Asia «pivot» back to China.
It was an ignominious final «haj» for Obama’s anti-Chinese jihad. Obama began his presidency in 2009 with being awarded, incredibly prematurely as it turned out, the Nobel Peace Prize. For the Asia-Pacific region, Obama’s presidency would end with angry words between his aides and Chinese officials at a Chinese airport.
Obama began his journey as the host for Pacific Island leaders at the Central Intelligence Agency front, the East-West Center, which is located at his mother’s alma mater, the University of Hawai’i. Obama was the official host at the 2016 Pacific Islands Conference (PIC) of Leaders at the CIA-linked center. Obama’s speech before the leaders, many from small Pacific island states, focused primarily on global climate change. Obama also addressed the World Conservation Congress at their meeting in Hawai’i.
Obama was schooled in anti-Chinese bigotry and Cold War fear tactics by his CIA mother and right-wing fascist Indonesian army stepfather while a child in post-1965 coup Indonesia. Obama, who is fully aware that the blood of 800,000 to one million Indonesians, Communists and ethnic Chinese Indonesian nationals, flowed in the streets, canals, and rivers of Indonesia from 1965 to 1967, the year he and his mother arrived in the country, believes it his birthright and duty to continue his familial “jihads” against «Communist» China that were instilled in him as a child, teen, and college student by his CIA-connected parents.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, tipped off the press about the real purpose of the PIC before he departed Port Moresby for Hawai’i. O’Neill, who is in charge of one of Papua New Guinea’s most corrupt governments since independence in 1975, said that “regional security” shared the bill with climate change at the Hawai’i conference. In addition to independent Pacific Island states, the PIC includes the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, and the state of Hawai’i.
U.S. Army Assistant Chief of Staff Colonel Tom Hanson, a relatively low-level official to be issuing policy statements, gave an ultimatum to Australia just prior to Obama’s departure for Hawai’i and Asia. Hanson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “I think the Australians need to make a choice … it’s very difficult to walk this fine line between balancing the alliance with the United States and the economic engagement with China.” The statement chilled U.S.-Australian relations prior to Obama’s meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull at the G20 summit.
Also on Obama’s agenda was pressuring certain PIC leaders who have shown signs of resisting the political status quo imposed by Washington. Northern Marianas Governor Ralph Torres, a Republican, recently signed into law the Second Marianas Political Status Commission that seeks to re-evaluate the islands’ current neo-colonial status imposed by the agreement that transformed the Northern Marianas into a colony where Asian sweat shops predominate and where those of Northern Marianas descent have little say over their domestic affairs. The Pentagon wants to turn the island of Tinian into a live-fire range, a decision that imperils the 3,000 residents of the island.
Another U.S. colony, Guam, has seen the growth of a Commission on Decolonization and an Independence for Guahan Task Force. Guahan is the proper Chuukese name for Guam.
Obama, a product of U.S. imperialist control over Hawai’i, the importance of which for Washington is solely military, has done everything possible to subvert and suppress the anti-colonial aspirations of the Pacific islands under U.S. domination and political influence.
The Obama administration has also been exercising subtle pressure on the Federation of Micronesia, a quasi-independent former U.S. Trust Territory, to deter movements for independence from the island groups of Chuuk and Yap. Under the Compact of Free Association, the U.S. effectively controls Micronesia and reserves the right o build military bases, through the federal government of Micronesia located in Pohnpei. Chuuk and Yap accuse Pohnpei of ignoring their own interests. Similar neo-colonialist “compacts” are in effect with the other former U.S. trust territories of the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. maintains a missile test range, and Palau, where the U.S. would like to build a naval base.
After departing Hawai’i for Asia, Obama stopped at the U.S.-controlled Midway Island, where he expanded the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument, a major marine wildlife sanctuary. However, the national monument, in addition to being the world’s largest marine sanctuary, also extends the protected wildlife area to the limits of America’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Ironically, it was China’s extension of its EEZ around disputed islands in the South China Sea, that resulted in Obama ratcheting up regional military confrontation with China.
Obama’s visit to another monument on Midway Island, the one honoring America’s decisive defeat of Japan in the Battle of Midway of 1942, had little to do with protecting sea turtles, albatrosses, and tiger sharks and everything to do with proclaiming America’s resolve to maintain the Pacific Ocean as an «American lake». The message to China and Russia could not have been more stark regardless of the masking of Obama’s military message with climate change and environmental optics.
Obama’s marine conservation visit to Midway is also suspicious. Under Obama’s neo-Cold War tactics, the United States is reopening abandoned or expanding previously scaled-down military bases in Iceland, Greenland, the Aleutian Islands of Shemya and Attu, Guam, American Samoa, and the Philippines. Midway, a former U.S. base, may also be see a renewed active military presence as part of Obama’s jihads against China and Russia. Midway Atoll is literally owned by the U.S. Interior Department. However, Midway’s Henderson Field is maintained as an active airport — which was capable of landing Obama’s Air Force One Boeing 747 — by a private company, American Airports Corporation. The company operates a number of airports in the western United States that were used to film some of the most jingoistic U.S. television shows, including the CIA propaganda series «24» and the U.S. Navy puffery series «JAG».
Obama, whose presidency has been buoyed by money and sycophancy from Hollywood, perhaps sees himself as not only waging a personal jihad against China and Russia but as a future action film star. It is a preferable option since as a movie star, Obama will only be able to wage fictional wars on movie sets.
Obama makes disguised threat to Russia on cyber warfare
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with his US counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou on September 5, 2016. (AFP)
Press TV – September 5, 2016
President Barack Obama has warned Russia that the United States has “more capacity than anybody” when it comes to cyber warfare, saying hack attacks can not become “wild, wild, West.”
Obama made the remarks to reporters following the G20 conference in Hangzhou, China. The issue of Russian hackers being implicated in breaching US cyberspace was a key issue at the summit.
Though Obama didn’t identify specific instances, he said, “We have had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past” and that the goal is to not to duplicate a “cycle of escalation” that has occurred in arms races of the past.
“What we cannot do is have a situation where this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in unhealthy competition or conflict through these means,” the president said.
Making a subtle threat to Russia, Obama added, “Look, we’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities. And frankly we’ve got more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively.”
US officials have blamed Russia for the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) servers, and law enforcement and intelligence agencies are reportedly concerned about the Kremlin trying to disrupt or undermine the presidential elections.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has in the past rejected claims that Moscow was behind a recent hack of DNC servers.
In July, the WikiLeaks website released about 20,000 emails from the DNC, which showed that party leaders had purportedly sought to undermine the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
The revelation prompted DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce her resignation.
The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton alleged that Russia had released the emails to influence the November presidential election.
Why Hillary is the perfect person to secure Obama’s legacy
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | August 30, 2016
I read a piece that said Hillary, with her speech about racism and extremists taking over the Republican Party, was making a play for a one-party state. That seems rather an exaggeration, but it does contain an important bit of truth. I do indeed believe Hillary thinks along the lines of a one-party state as suggested, but without ever saying so directly, and she is not focused on the particular political party with which she is now associated.
Hillary stands for the establishment, and her views appear to include the idea that anyone without attachment to that establishment is to be designated as a kind of “plebe,” as in 1984, or even “untouchable,” as in the old Indian caste system. That’s the approach that she took in her “racism” speech. It is, if you will, very much a one-party approach to politics as well as an implicitly anti-democratic one.
And, of course, it represents a truly super-arrogant attitude.
But isn’t that the natural inclination of all tyrant temperaments? And there is every indication in Hillary’s past acts and words of a tyrant’s temperament.
Her views on the military and on a long history of events from the FBI Waco massacre (she advocated for aggressive FBI action to get the event out of the headlines) and the bombing of Belgrade (which she advocated privately to her husband) to the invasion of Iraq (which she supported as a Senator) and the death of Libya’s Gadhafi (there’s her infamous, “We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha, ha,” quote as Secretary of State) to the employment of paid terrorists and poison gas in Syria (an operation she oversaw as Secretary of State), could provide a good working definition of a tyrant’s temperament.
And just look at her close friends and associates in, or formerly in, government, people like Victoria Nuland or Madeleine Albright, extreme Neocon advocates for violence and America’s right to dictate how others should live. Madelaine Albright is best remembered for answering a journalist in an interview, when questioned about tens of thousands of Iraqi children dying in America’s embargo, “We think it’s worth it.” She is also remembered for her dirty, behind-the-scenes work in dumping as Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a highly intelligent, fair-minded, and decent man who just happened to disagree with the United States once too often. Victoria Nuland’s claims to fame include being recorded talking about America’s spending $5 billion to create the coup in Ukraine. There is also her wonderfully diplomatic quote, “Fuck Europe,” and a seemingly endless stream of photos of her scowling into cameras.
And the same temperament is revealed in her record of ‘I know better than the expert’ when it comes to matters such as a Secretary of State’s protocols around computer security. Again, her record as First Lady with the Secret Service agents assigned to her protection was so unpleasantly arrogant that there is a residual of ill will still towards her in the Secret Service, enough to cause a number of past agents to tell tales out of school to journalists and in books.
Hillary likes to use language in public speeches which puts her ‘on the side of the angels’ where various social issues are concerned, but it is entirely an advertising campaign of no substance, much resembling the big, clown-like or grimacing smiles she puts on at public events. Many mistakenly associate her with the historic traditions of the liberal left in the older Democratic Party, the kind of traditions Bernie Sanders brought momentarily flickering back to life, although they are in reality now virtually dead in the Democratic Party. Her actual record of behavior, as opposed to her sound bites and slogans, just cannot support that view of her as a liberal or progressive light.
Just to start, Hillary conducted the most corrupt campaign against Bernie Sanders I can recall in my adult lifetime. It included an inappropriate insider relationship with the Chairman of the Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who used every opportunity with the press and other means to disadvantage Bernie Sanders. It included voter suppression in a number of states as well as outright vote fraud in a number of others. Academic statistical analysis of the primaries’ data suggests that Bernie Sanders in fact won the nomination.
Search as you might, you will not find a history of Hillary actually being involved, beyond uttering slogans every so often, with social issues. She has no record at all. But her history does very much include such acts as being fired from her early job as a Watergate Committee lawyer for unethical behavior (the man who fired the young lawyer still has his contemporary notes of the event) and, in an early volunteer case, grinding down a 12-year old rape victim about fanaticizing over older men and getting her brutal 42-year old attacker freed, smiling in an interview later that she in fact knew he was guilty.
There is literally a line of women who were her predator husband’s lovers at one time or another who say that Hillary afterwards approached them with threats about keeping their mouths shut. And, perhaps her single clearest achievement on social issues, is her record of enabling her husband to carry on with a convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, who lives on a private island and keeps a stable of underage girls for the use of visitors. He is a very wealthy man with wealthy friends and arranges large political contributions, so he receives visitors such as Bill. Epstein actually once claimed he co-founded the Clinton Foundation, and he and associates have made large donations, tens of millions. We have a documented record of 28 trips to the island by Bill, and there is no way on earth Hillary wouldn’t know about them. Just as there is no way she could not know about important developments with the Clinton Foundation. She implicitly approved of the relationship with her often seen money-before-morals attitude.
Her husband’s office-leaving pardon of Marc Rich is often regarded as corrupt and having been paid for by Mr. Rich’s family and friends who donated large and continuing sums over time. Mr. Rich had been indicted in New York for tax evasion and fraud, but perhaps the outstanding aspect of his career, as it relates to Hillary and her slogans about social issues, is the way he made a considerable part of his fortune. He smuggled oil to the apartheid government of South Africa over time against international sanctions, and he is said to have made $2 billion doing so. Well, it does seem more than a little hypocritical to have supported a pardon for this man and then today to be giving speeches on someone else’s purported racism, and even to have been photographed, with toe-scrunching smarminess, eating fried chicken with a group of black voters.
We also have the fact of her talking, quite fiercely and recorded on video, about black “super-predators” when she was First Lady. Her husband signed legislation which likely put more young black males in prison than any other piece of legislation. Bill also bragged, as he signed another bill, of ending “welfare as we know it,” again legislation which hit poor black people hard. And, in all these acts, we know he had Hillary’s support. By a great many reports, Bill Clinton never dared do anything major of which his wife disapproved. With his years of flagrant sexual adventures and his need, on more than one political occasion, for her public lies of support when he was caught out, she had a virtual hammer over his head. Besides, Hillary has always regarded herself as having considerable acumen in such policy matters, and hers is a personality type you do not comfortably ignore.
In terms of pure competence, despite her assuming a public air of swaggering competence, her record is simply meagre to poor. We can return to that early instance, her dismissal from the Watergate Investigation for what her boss called unethical conduct and lying. Later, as First Lady, she took over the healthcare portfolio from her husband, the President, with unprecedented arrogance for an unelected person and one holding no formal appointment to office, and she failed badly in the complicated task.
As a Senator from New York, her eight-year record is remarkably undistinguished. Only three bills she sponsored became law, a bill to rename a highway, a bill to re-name a post office building, and a bill to designate a house as a national historic site. As Secretary of State, she of course ran the Benghazi operation which saw an American Ambassador and others killed, and her handling of the families of the dead afterwards, as the bodies were returned, echoes to this day with insensitivity and even brutality. She is deeply resented by family members and accused of lying.
I do believe it would be a difficult task to come up with a more fitting candidate than Hillary Clinton for carrying on the Obama legacy, a legacy of killing in a half dozen lands on behalf of America’s establishment, lying daily, and leaving your own people, the people who elected you with great hopes more than seven years ago, with nothing.
Obamacare Supporters Oppose ColoradoCare
By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | August 24, 2016
As the nation’s largest health insurance companies scale back participation in Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act) creating what insurance jargon refers to as a death spiral, it was only a matter of time before state Democratic leaders and their agents announced their opposition to ColoradoCare (Amendment 69), a medicare-for-all health care system that will appear on the statewide November 8th ballot.
State Democratic establishment leaders who had already announced their opposition to ColoradoCare include Governor John Hickenlooper, former Governor Bill Ritter and Senator Michael Bennett who is running for re-election.
In an effort to salvage what is left of the President’s most significant (and perhaps only) legislative achievement as Obamacare struggles for relevance, ProgressNow Colorado (PN) held a press conference on August 17th (“ProgressNow Colorado Opposes Amendment 69, Calls For Nationwide Health Reform”) to announce their opposition to CC.
Featured speaker at the PN news conference was State House Majority Leader Cristina Duran, considered a ‘rising star’ who recently spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. In 2016, it has been reported that Duran received campaign contributions from at least a dozen special interest groups associated with the health insurance industry.
In addition, Colorado NARAL joined the PN news event, again voicing their opposition to CC. The lack of availability for abortions is what keeps NARAL functioning. The obvious irony is that if CC is adopted (which will allow abortions), NARAL’s raison d’etre will cease to exist and they will be able to close their doors.
Since it is essential for the President to have a functioning Affordable Care Act to top his Legacy List of accomplishments, it would be foolishly naïve to believe that the DNC’s fingerprints are not all over the opposition to ColoradoCare.
As the state’s ‘largest on line environmental and advocacy organization,’ the PN Colorado’s website identifies its vision to “act as a public relations shop promoting progressive ideals while pushing back on bad policies and bad behavior…” The archives of PN press releases reveals the organization acting as a thinly-veiled extension of the neo-liberal Democratic party as a pr flack rather than an issue-oriented, independent thinking progressive organization focused on societal concerns of Colorado citizens.
Curiously, the PN press release called for “nationwide healthcare reform” but isn’t that what the Democrats offered as the Affordable Care Act in 2010?
Since March, 2012, PN has issued twenty press releases solely dedicated to the benefits of Obamacare including “Colorado Progressives Celebrate Upholding of Obamacare” (June 28, 2012) and “Colorado Progressives Celebrate Another Big Obamacare Victory” (June 25, 2015).
In retrospect, it is now apparent that any mention of CC’s successful petition drive with 156,000 submitted signatures in October, 2015 was a deliberate omission by PN. Even as ‘Petitions Delivered Let CU Students Attend GOP Debate” earned a press release from PN on October 22, 2015, the CC ability to secure a place on the 2016 ballot (November 9, 2015), no small feat, was not applauded by the PN.
State Senator Irene Aquilar (also a doctor), one of the authors of CC, said that when “Organizations mislabeled as ‘progressive’ choose to support the status quo, choose moneyed influence over the lives of the 535 Coloradans who die each year because of lack of health care, it makes me angry.”
As the Colorado Democratic party has exposed its true nature; willing to choose narrow political gain and greed over the long-term health of their citizens, they have revealed little social conscience, except when its suits their partisan agenda.
But what do we expect from a party that has opened its doors to Wall Street money, big business that continues to send American jobs abroad, trade agreements that undermine a nation’s sovereignty, pro war neo cons, drone attacks on civilians, support for the MISI (military-intelligence-surveillance industry) and other corporate globalist leeches that care nothing about our native country or its citizens.
Originally dubbed in 2010 by the President as ‘comprehensive health reform’ and given the Act’s controversial nature throughout its short legislative life, it should come as no surprise that success of the Act relied on competition between insurance companies [and] has failed abysmally. The Act was never a panacea to provide health care; it was always a vehicle to provide insurance to cover health care costs. Therein lies a big difference between Obamacare and CC.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, competition among insurance companies will be completely absent in five states (Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming).
In what promises to be a futile attempt at a legislative fix, the Democrats have come up with a ‘reinsurance’ scheme to cover insurance industry losses while attempting to cover the cost of individual coverage. The mounting evidence, however, confirms that the politics of statutory resuscitation is formidable, if not impossible.
Apparently no one at the White House realized how many sick Americans there are, how expensive it would be to provide them with insurance coverage and that healthy Americans would prefer to take the risk and pay the penalty rather than pay double digit premium increases and exorbitant deductibles. Who did not see that coming?
Who believed that younger, healthier Americans would jump at the chance to sign up, take on health care debt on top of student loan debt – just to impress the President they had supported in 2008? My faith in the millennial generation is restored knowing they have the smarts to put the numbers together.
Some of those departing big leaguers who are abandoning their health care customers due to lack of profits include Aetna which covered 900,000 people in fifteen states and has announced a cut back to four states and suffered a loss of $300 M; Humana is cutting back its coverage from 1,350 counties to 156; Blue Cross lost $715 M in just three states and the nation’s largest health care insurance company, UnitedHealthGroup lost $450 M in 2015 and is cutting back to three states.
In late July, the Department of Justice filed suit to prevent the Humana – Aetna and the Cigna – Anthem mergers from taking place. By mid August, Aetna and Anthem informed the DOJ that they would totally pull out of Obamacare unless their mergers were approved. Any bets on whether these mergers will go forward after the Presidential election?
To date, 70% of the original Obamacare insurance participants have backed out because of financial problems with only seven of the original twenty three insurance providers still offering policies.
Those insurance companies not exiting the marketplace have announced premiums with a nationwide average increase of 24% that is not affordable for many families and yet many Americans have an urgent need for health care.
With a $600,000 bank balance, CC is up against what looks like a omnipotent wall of opposition not limited to such community-minded organizations as the Sheet Metal Workers Union, the Denver Center for Performing Arts, the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, all of which chose to publicly oppose the CC rather than remain in the background and thus support their fellow citizens who need reliable, affordable health care.
Meanwhile the main opposition group, Coloradans for Coloradans, which crowed about the Democrats joining the opposition, have collected $1 M from Anthem, $450,000 from UnitedHealthCare Services, Healthone Systems and Centura Health $250,000 each, Cigna Health $100,000, PHRMA $100,000, the Colorado Association of Realtors $100,000 and so forth – you might imagine the rest of the list.
Contributions from some of the very same insurance companies that have either pulled out or are dramatically scaling back their participation is indicative of how corporations can afford to sit and wait – until the Federal government sweetens the pot for their re-entry into the healthcare marketplace.
In addition, the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity are partners with the Democrats in pummeling Amendment 69 into the ground. This may be the first time that the Koch Brothers and the Democratic party have officially and publicly lined up on the same issue, excluding campaign contributions.
If the Democrats (along with the medical care/health insurance industrial complex and Koch Bros) succeed in defeating CC, they can expect to take the blame for depriving Colorado citizens of an alternative to Obamacare which will predictably continue its spiral.
If, by some miracle of divine intervention, Colorado voters approve Amendment 69, they are telling the Obama Administration that they have no faith in the President’s Affordable Care Act, no faith in the Federal government to fix it and no faith in the Democratic party to protect the public interest.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
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Kincora: British intelligence-run sex abuse brothel?
By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · February 6, 2026
Half a century after the public learned that boys at a Belfast group home were sexually assaulted by senior staff, a key question remains unanswered: was British intelligence implicated in the abuse conspiracy, and did Kincora serve as a ‘honeypot’ to entrap and blackmail powerful figures?
A vast trove of declassified files on Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual, political, and intelligence escapades released by the US Department of Justice has once again thrust disgraced former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor into the spotlight. With British police reportedly reviewing Andrew’s past sexual activities and links to Epstein, questions are growing about whether Britain’s spy agencies were aware of Andrew’s alleged escapades with minors.
If the darkest rumors turn out to be true, it will not be the first time a British royal had been embroiled in a child rape conspiracy with spy agency involvement. Back in 1980, a scandal erupted when the Kincora Boys’ Home in occupied Ireland was exposed as a secret brothel run by powerful pedophiles. Chief among the alleged perpetrators was Lord Mountbatten — Andrew’s great-uncle.
From the very beginning, hints began to appear that MI5/MI6 knew of the child abuse taking place Kincora, and could have even been running the group home as part of a dastardly intelligence plot. With Britain’s domestic and foreign spies engaged in a savage dirty war in Ireland, and both services running operatives in Republican and Unionist paramilitaries, Kincora would have provided an ideal means of recruiting and compromising potential assets. Official investigations have strongly insinuated British intelligence chiefs had a close bond with many individuals who ran the Boys’ Home.
In May 2025, veteran BBC journalist Chris Moore published a forensic account of the case titled Kincora: Britain’s Shame. Featuring four and a half decades of firsthand research by the author, its groundbreaking contents have been met with general silence by British mainstream media.
In the book, Moore argues persuasively that the Boys’ Home was just one component of a more extensive child abuse network extending across British-occupied Ireland and beyond — in which London’s spying apparatus was not only aware, but likely complicit. … continue
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