The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump
The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom
By Glenn Greenwald | December 28, 2020
Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.
In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.
But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.
A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.
Virtually every prediction expressed by those who pushed this doomsday narrative of Trump as a rising dictator — usually with great profit for themselves — never materialized. While Trump radically escalated bombing campaigns he inherited from Bush and Obama, he started no new wars. When his policies were declared by courts to be unconstitutional, he either revised them to comport with judicial requirements (as in the case of his “Muslim ban”) or withdrew them (as in the case of diverting Pentagon funds to build his wall). No journalists were jailed for criticizing or reporting negatively on Trump, let alone killed, as was endlessly predicted and sometimes even implied. Bashing Trump was far more likely to yield best-selling books, social media stardom and new contracts as cable news “analysts” than interment in gulags or state reprisals. There were no Proud Boy insurrections or right-wing militias waging civil war in U.S. cities. Boastful and bizarre tweets aside, Trump’s administration was for more a continuation of the U.S. political tradition than a radical departure from it.
The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.
The Trump administration was by no means free of authoritarianism: his Justice Department prosecuted journalists’ sources; his White House often refused basic transparency; War on Terror and immigration detentions continued without due process. But that is largely because, as I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late 2016, the U.S. Government itself is authoritarian after decades of bipartisan expansion of executive powers justified by a posture of endless war. With rare exception, the lawless and power-abusing acts over the last four years were ones that inhere in the U.S. Government and long preceded Trump, not ones invented by him. To the extent Trump was an authoritarian, he was one in the way that all U.S. presidents have been since the War on Terror began and, more accurately, since the start of the Cold War and advent of the permanent national security state.
The single most revealing episode exposing this narrative fraud was when journalists and political careerists, including former Obama aides, erupted in outrage on social media upon seeing a photo of immigrant children in cages at the border — only to discover that the photo was not from a Trump concentration camp but an Obama-era detention facility (they were unaccompanied children, not ones separated from their families, but “kids in cages” are “kids in cages” from a moral perspective). And tellingly, the single most actually authoritarian Trump-era event is one that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media: namely, the decision to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws (but that, too, is an extension of the unprecedented war on journalism unleashed by the Obama DOJ).
The last gasp for those clinging to the Trump-as-dictator fantasy (which was really hope masquerading as concern, since putting yourself on the front lines, bravely fighting domestic fascism, is more exciting and self-glorifying, not to mention more profitable, than the dreary, mediocre work of railing against an ordinary and largely weak one-term president) was the hysterical warning that Trump was mounting a coup in order to stay in office. Trump’s terrifying “coup” consisted of a series of failed court challenges based on claims of widespread voter fraud — virtually inevitable with new COVID-based voting rules never previously used — and lame attempts to persuade state officials to overturn certified vote totals. There was never a moment when it appeared even remotely plausible that it would succeed, let alone that he could secure the backing of the institutions he would need to do so, particularly senior military leaders.
Whether Trump secretly harbored despotic ambitions is both unknowable and irrelevant. If he did, he never exhibited the slightest ability to carry them out or orchestrate a sustained commitment to executing a democracy-subverting plot. And the most powerful U.S. institutions — the intelligence community and military brass, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the corporate media — opposed and subverted him from the start. In sum, U.S. democracy, in whatever form it existed when Trump ascended to the presidency, will endure more or less unchanged once he leaves office on January 20, 2021.
Whether the U.S. was a democracy in any meaningful sense prior to Trump had been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. A much-discussed 2014 study concluded that economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of such a small number of U.S. corporate giants and mega-billionaires, and that this concentration in economic power has ushered in virtually unchallengeable political power in their hands and virtually none in anyone else’s, that the U.S. more resembles oligarchy than anything else:
The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
The U.S. Founders most certainly did not envision or desire absolute economic egalitarianism, but many, probably most, feared — long before lobbyists and candidate dependence on corporate SuperPACs — that economic inequality could become so severe, wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, that it would contaminate the political realm, where those vast wealth disparities would be replicated, rendering political and legal equality illusory.
But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.
The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story:
The combined wealth of the world’s super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (€8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017.
Meanwhile, though exact numbers are unknown, “roughly one in five small businesses have closed,” AP notes, adding: “restaurants, bars, beauty shops and other retailers that involve face-to-face contact have been hardest hit at a time when Americans are trying to keep distance from one another.”
Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S., which are thriving. A Brookings Institution study this week — entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” — found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers.”
These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.
Those must disgusted by this outcome should not be socialists but capitalists: this is a classic merger of state and corporate power —- also known as a hallmark of fascism in its most formal expression — that abuses state interference in markets to consolidate and centralize authority in a small handful of actors in order to disempower everyone else. Those trends were already quite visible prior to Trump and the onset of the pandemic, but have accelerated beyond anyone’s dreams in the wake of mass lockdowns, shutdowns, prolonged isolation and corporate welfare thinly disguised as legislative “relief.”
What makes this most menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — are now classic monopolies. That the wealth of their primary owners and executives — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai — has skyrocketed during the pandemic is well-covered, but far more significant is the unprecedented power these companies exert over the dissemination of information and conduct of political debates, to say nothing of the immense data they possess about our lives by virtue of online surveillance.
Stay-at-home orders, lockdowns and social isolation have meant that we rely on Silicon Valley companies to conduct basic life functions more than ever before. We order online from Amazon rather than shop; we conduct meetings online rather than meet in offices; we use Google constantly to navigate and communicate; we rely on social media more than ever to receive information about the world. And exactly as a weakened population’s dependence on them has increased to unprecedented levels, their wealth and power has reached all new heights, as has their willingness to control and censor information and debate.
That Facebook, Google and Twitter are exerting more and more control over our political expression is hardly contestable. What is most remarkable, and alarming, is that they are not so much grabbing these powers as having them foisted on them, by a public — composed primarily of corporate media outlets and U.S. establishment liberals — who believe that the primary problem of social media is not excessive censorship but insufficient censorship. As Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Mark Zuckerberg when four Silicon Valley CEOs appeared before the Senate: “The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they’re taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
As I told the online program Rising this week when asked what the worst media failings of 2020 are, I continue to view the brute censorship by Facebook of incriminating reporting about Joe Biden in the weeks before the election as one of the most significant, and menacing, political events of the last several years. That this censorship was announced by a Facebook corporate spokesman who had spent his career previously as a Democratic Party apparatchik provided the perfect symbolic expression of this evolving danger.
These tech companies are more powerful than ever, not only because of their newly amassed wealth at a time when the population is suffering, but also because they overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party candidate about to assume the presidency. Predictably, they are being rewarded with numerous key positions in his transition team and the same will ultimately be true of the new administration.
The Biden/Harris administration clearly intends to do a great deal for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley is well-positioned to do a great deal for them in return, starting with their immense power over the flow of information and debate.
The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism. They view those who oppose them and reject their pieties not as adversaries to be engaged but as enemies, domestic terrorists, bigots, extremists and violence-inciters to be fired, censored, and silenced. And they have on their side — beyond the bulk of the corporate media, and the intelligence community, and Wall Street — an unprecedentedly powerful consortium of tech monopolies willing and able to exert greater control over a population that has rarely, if ever, been so divided, drained, deprived and anemic.
All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very wrong about the real source of that danger.
Biden’s Pony Problem: Why The Hunter Biden Scandal Is No Dead Horse
By Jonathan Turley | December 23, 2020
President-elect Joe Biden has a pony problem. During the primary, Joe Biden bizarrely responded to a woman who asked why voters should believe that he could win a national election by saying “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” That encounter came to mind when Biden this week mocked Fox reporter Peter Doocy, who violated the virtual news blackout on the Hunter Biden story by asking about the scandal. Biden immediately walked off stage and then stopped and said “Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man — you’re a one-horse pony, I tell you.”
Like many kids this Christmas, many voters are still angling for a pony. Biden has spent months mocking the Hunter Biden story – and anyone asking about it. When CBS News reporter Bo Erickson asked Biden about his son’s scandal, Bo Erickson drew a similar rebuke from Biden. He simply asked ‘Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?’ Biden’s response was again a personal attack: “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” Biden also blew up at a question that referred by the scandal by a NBC reporter and at a Fox reporter who asked about his son.
It is just not working. The media openly worked to bury the Hunter Biden scandal before the election, but the ponies keep finding their way back. The problem is when you have one reporter like Doocy who refuses to be corralled and insists on an answer to a serious question.
The question yesterday was a good one. Doocy yelled out “Mr. President-elect, do you still think that the stories from the fall about your son Hunter were Russian disinformation and a smear campaign like you said?” Biden’s response of “yes, yes, yes” seemed to continue a discredited claim (indeed, “disinformation”) put out by figures like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff who assured the pubic that the allegations against “this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.” Some 50 former intelligence officials, including Obama’s CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, also insisted the laptop story was likely the work of Russian intelligence. Cable hosts and journalists laughed at the laptop story as fake news to justify the blackout on coverage before the election.
Then the pony showed up again. After the election, it was confirmed (as some of us discussed in columns before the election) that Hunter Biden is under federal investigation. The laptop appears to be genuine. The emails appear to be genuine. And Doocy continued to ask the obvious questions.
Biden is still hoping that he can continue to mock and the media will continue to do the rest. One reporter yesterday did raise the scandal but only to ask if Biden discussed it with Attorney General candidates (the campaign already said that Biden was going to allow the Justice Department to reach its own conclusions). There are other obvious questions, including whether a key business associate of the Bidens, Anthony Bobulinski, is lying. Either Tony Bobulinski or Joe Biden is lying. Bobulinski is repeatedly praised by Hunter Biden in the emails and identified as the person in control of transactions for “the family.” He has directly contradicted Joe Biden’s denial of any knowledge or involvement in his son’s dubious dealings.
There is a reason why Biden may not want to answer that question. If he calls Bobulinski a liar, Biden would be hit with a defamation lawsuit within days. He would then be forced to go under oath. Such depositions present their own dangers. Just ask Bill Clinton. So it is not a pesky pony but a sworn deposition that Biden may be trying to avoid.
The same problem exists on other questions. For example, not only were Joe and Jill Biden included as “office mates” with controversial Chinese investor (and associate of Hunter) Gongwen Dong, but emails also refer to unsecured loans going to the Biden family and shares going to “the big guy.” The “big guy” appears to be Joe Biden. Moreover, Biden spent the election denying that his son did anything wrong and that he made no money from China. The question is when Biden learned of the federal investigation and whether he was aware of the dealings over multimillion dollar unsecured loans (as well as alleged gifts like a valuable diamond givento his son). Answering those questions falsely could trigger a congressional investigation and then more ponies would show up.
That is the problem with a bunker press strategy of denial and isolation. Like water, truth has a way of coming out. Clearly many in the media will continue to be in the bag for Biden. However, horses tend to gather where the water is found. First, there was one pony (Doocy). Then another showed up (Erickson). Before you know it, you have a herd and a threat of a stampede. Then it could be too late.
In the mocking comment to Doocy, Biden was clearly trying to say a “one-trick pony.” That trick however was once called “journalism” back in the day when reporters doggedly demanded answers, particularly on questions like influence peddling. So many of us still hoping for ponies – and even some answers – for Christmas.
Rhodes Scholars Surge in Biden’s Potential Cabinet
By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 27, 2020
With Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2016, the Rhodes Scholars that had permeated the U.S. Deep State over many years found themselves choking on humble pie as they were removed from the drivers’ seat of world affairs for the first time in decades. The paradigm of post-nation state unipolarism that had been carefully built up over the post-WWII period had somehow been successfully challenged by an outsider as the republic was slowly returned to its patriotic traditions as a nation committed to non-interventionism, industrial progress and protectionism.
In the last few days, it has become clear that these Oxford-trained Rhodes Scholars have re-emerged as leading voices in Biden’s cabinet, and since a general understanding of this problem is so lacking today (leading many patriots to be duped into believing that the evil Chinese are at the heart of their woes), I think some preliminary words are needed as a matter of historical context.
Cecil Rhodes’ Vision Revisited
Every year since its creation in 1902, over 30 talented young American scholars have been rewarded each year with the privilege of an all-expenses paid brainwashing in the halls of Oxford University on the dime of the riches left to posterity by the deceased race patriot diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes before being re-deployed back to their home nations.
Rhodes’ early disciples included such luminaries as Lord Alfred Milner, Sir Halford Mackinder, George Parkin, W.T. Stead and the Canadian oligarch Vincent Massey (to name a few). His early backers included high level figures among the British intelligentsia including Prince Edward Albert and Lord Nathaniel Rothschild who saw that a new strategy was needed to halt the spread of American System policies around the world in the wake of Lincoln’s victory over the South during the Civil War.
At the time, anyone with half a brain knew that the unipolar days of the British Empire were coming to an end as a new multipolar system of win-win cooperation was emerging… and this was a prospect deemed intolerable by many devout social Darwinists among the British ruling class.
These early Rhodians interfaced closely with London’s Fabian Society throughout the 20th century and became the new disciplined elite that gradually infiltrated every branch of society. This new breed of imperial managers exerted its influence in much the same way earlier Jesuit operations had been formed and deployed across Europe beginning in the 16th century.
For anyone confused as to the purpose of this Rhodes Scholarship program, one need look no further than Rhodes’ 1877 Confessions of Faith and 7 wills which called for domination of the “inferior races” to Anglo-Saxon superiority, and the ultimate recapturing of America and the creation of a new Church of the British Empire:
“Let us form the same kind of society, a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.’
In another will, Rhodes described in more detail his intention: “To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world. The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, these aboard of China and Japan, [and] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.”
Describing his thinking to his disciple W.T. Stead, Rhodes wrote: “Please remember the key of my idea discussed with you is a Society, copied from the Jesuits as to organisation”.
A Calamitous 20th Century
As generations passed, the continuity of purpose that transcended individual lives of players on the stage was maintained by certain organizations that grew out of the original Rhodes/Milner Round Table movements and which had branches in every part of the Anglo-Saxon part of the British Empire. By 1919 after the Round Table had taken control of Canadian and British governments during 1911 and 1916 coups, this group created the Royal Institute for International Affairs (aka: Chatham House). By 1921, an American branch was set up called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) staffed with Rhodes Scholars and Fabians which has maintained a continuity of intention to the present day. This organization spawned dozens of influential sub organizations which always interface with a form of “central command”.
A young student of Harvard’s William Yandell Elliot (himself a Rhodes Scholar who operated the Oxford Branch of Harvard) was none other than Sir Henry Kissinger who stated gushingly at a May 10, 1981 Chatham House event:
“The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations… In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department… It was symptomatic”.
While the Rhodes Scholar hives managed to permeate ivy league schools, media outlets, private corporations, elected offices and the civil service during the 20th century as laid out by Professor Carrol Quigley’s posthumously published The Anglo-American Establishment, the prize of the presidency remained an elusive trophy… until the day that one of Quigley’s students returned from Oxford and became Governor of Arkansas.
Clinton Opens the Floodgates
With Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, Rhodes Scholars like Strobe Talbott (Assistant Secretary of State and co-architect of Perestroika) and Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor), were joined by Rhodies Ira Magaziner, Derek Shearer (Senior Economic Advisors), Susan Rice (Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs), Kevin Thurme (Health and Human Services Chief of Staff), George Stephanopoulos (Communications Director) and dozens of other Rhodes Scholars. These individuals were funneled into positions of influence aiming to oversee the “end of history” celebrated by neocon thinker Francis Fukuyama as the Soviet Union disintegrated.
While some Rhodies remained in positions of power during the period of the Straussian controlled opposition of 2000-2008, the Rhodes Hives again enjoyed vast policy-shaping influence under the Obama-age where the architecture for one world government was built on the wreckage of troublesome nation states like Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
Despite the set back caused by a populist deplorable who wrestled the reins of power away from these self-professed experts in 2016, a Rhodie is a stubborn creature if nothing else, and as we have discovered in past months, both Talbott and Rice have been revealed to be two figures at the heart of the Russiagate plot designed to undo the results of 2016. While still serving as Brookings Institute President in 2015-17, it was Talbott who interfaced with MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele in the months before the elections by cooking up and circulating the dodgy dossier and it was Rice who was revealed to be at the center of the “unmasking” entrapment operation conducted on a bewildered Michael Flynn in January 2017.
Revenge of Rice and the Rhodies
With the recently announced appointment of Susan Rice as director of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, it has become apparent that the Rhodies are drooling at the prospect of correcting the “aberration” of Trump by re-ascending to the inner sanctum of Washington D.C., bringing in droves of Clinton-Obama era unipolar zombies with them.
Beyond Rice, other Rhodes Scholars emerging into positions of control include National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who graduated from Oxford’s Magdalene College and worked under Strobe Talbott at the Brookings Institute’s Center for the Study for Globalization at Yale in 2000. During this time, Rice had also come to work as Senior Fellow at Brookings followed by a stint as UN Ambassador from 2009-2013 and National Security Advisor from 2013-2017, while Sullivan went onto become Biden’s top security aid during the Obama years.
Describing her love of Oxford, Rice delivered remarks at Rhodes House in 1999 saying:
“To be at Rhodes House tonight with so many friends, benefactors and mentors is a personal privilege. It is like a coming home for me for much of what I know about Africa was discovered within these walls, refined at this great university with generous support of the Rhodes Trust.”
It is worth keeping in mind that as she spoke those words, Rice had recently demonstrated her imperial worldview by coordinating the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998 and threatening South Africa with economic destruction unless it gave up its desires for producing generic and affordable AIDS medication in the same year. Her work to carve up Sudan, promote military intervention across the Arab and African worlds under R2P and supranational organization’s like Soros’ International Criminal Court (ICC) that issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir would have made Cecil Rhodes proud. We should not forget that the Sudan-Libya-Egypt alliance under the combined leadership of Mubarak, Qadhafi and Bashir, had moved to establish a new gold-backed financing system outside of the IMF/World Bank to fund large scale development.
Pete Buttigieg
As of this writing, Rhodes Scholar Eric Garcetti (LA Mayor) has been pulled from the Biden cabinet due to a growing mountain of scandals, and corruption in his local state which have turned him into political poison for the time being.
The other Rhodes Scholar mayor Pete Buttigieg, has been more fortunate however and has been given the keys to Transport portfolio as of December 15, although had first been poised to take the position of US Ambassador to China. While many Trump supporters are being induced to hate and fear China as the “natural enemy of the USA”, it was in fact Buttigieg who demonstrated that his disdain for Trump was only paralleled by his disdain for China when he said in May 2020: “Beijing sees an opportunity to call into question the American project and liberal democracy itself. One thing they’re banking on is four more years of Trump.”
As I laid out in my previous report, Soros himself has repeatedly labelled the two greatest threats to his “open society” as 1) Xi Jinping’s China and 2) Trump’s USA.
Another Rhodie named Bruce Reed who had originally entered Washington as part of the first 1992 Rhodes Scholar infusion as the Clinton-Gore campaign manager and later director of Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council, has been tapped as the top tech advisor to Biden where he has openly called for cracking down on free speech online by cancelling Federal Internet law Section 230. This law currently keeps website owners free of prosecution for content published on their sites. It’s cancellation would crush what dwindling free speech exists on social media. The argument advanced by Reed has been that Section 230 has been used by Russian and Chinese operatives to infiltrate the information ecosystem and manipulate western elections. With its repeal, Facebook and other social media sites will be forced to censor all “illicit” thought crimes under fear of federal prosecution.
Reed had earlier teamed up with Biden in drafting the infamous 1994 crime bill which placed countless petty criminals to long-term sentences, benefiting the prison cheap labor complex. During the Obama years Reed worked as Biden’s Chief of Staff and lead handler.
Blinken, Rhodes and Soros
While Biden’s pick for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is not himself a Rhodes Scholar, he is a life-long friend and classmate with Robert Malley (a Rhodes Scholar who had formerly acted as Special Assistant to Obama serving as “point man in the middle east” at the NSC). Earlier, Malley had been special assistant to Bill Clinton on Arab Israeli Affairs and was always deeply enmeshed with George Soros’ operations from day one of his entry into politics. Since 2016, Malley has acted as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group (ICG) founded by George Soros and Lord Malloch Brown in 1994 as a tool to promote global humanitarian wars under the guise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Joining Soros, Malloch-Brown and Malley at the ICG, we should not be surprised to find none other than… Jake Sullivan.
Additionally, Blinken’s father Donald Blinken made a name for himself as Soros’ point man in Hungary from 1994-1998 where he served as US Ambassador facilitating the growth of Soros’ Open Society Foundation. He was later rewarded by the Hungarian speculator with a “Donald and Vera Blinken Open Society Archive” (OSA) at Budapest’s Central European University. The Soros-funded university was created in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Blinken was instrumental in that operation.
President Viktor Orbán knew exactly what he was doing when he expelled this foreign anti-nation state brainwashing operation from Hungary’s borders in 2018. At the time, Central European University President Count Michael Ignatieff screamed “This is unprecedented. A U.S. institution has been driven out of a country that is a NATO ally.”
A Segue on Count Ignatieff
It is noteworthy that Ignatieff is himself the son of Rhodes Scholar globalist George Ignatieff and great grandson of Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev (founder of the Russian Okhrana secret police) whose family was rewarded handsomely for services rendered to London-centered oligarchy during the overthrow of the Czarist system in Russia (sort of a precursor to today’s modern Color Revolutions). This story is partially told in Cheney Revives Parvus’ Permanent War Madness by Jeff Steinberg (2005).
As a sidenote, Michael Ignatieff’s great grandfather on his maternal side is none other than George Parkin, the first controller of the Rhodes Trust from 1902-1922 and the man whose Oxford lectures and books inspired Cecil Rhodes and Milner to devote their lives to the cause of Empire. Michael is also a global board member of Soros’ Open Society Foundations headed by none other than Mark Malloch Brown (as of December 4, 2020).
As I laid out in my recent report, not only did these two upper level managers come to light as coordinators of the Dominion/Smartmatic vote fraud operation underway within the USA, but both have also pioneered the new age of regime change color revolutions beginning with Marcos’ 1986 ouster during the Peoples’ Power revolution in the Philippines, through the Balkans, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Moldova, Bolivia, etc.
Some Final Thoughts
While the Rhodes Trust has been close to the causal nexus of much of recent world history, no one should assume that every Rhodes Scholar is guilty by association. It is an undeniable fact that some Rhodes Scholars have broken with their training and have gone on to live useful lives and I see no reason to assume, for instance, that actor/singer Kris Kristofferson played a nefarious role in anything (though some of his film choices were a bit weak).
Similarly, Canada’s John Turner did some very useful things in his short stint as Canadian Prime Minister which earned him the ire of many unipolarists then promoting NAFTA, Maastricht and the Euro. Even Bill Clinton was induced to break from his profile on a few occasions and support some good things that ran contrary to the world government agenda under the positive influence of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown (whose convenient death in 1996 alongside 34 journalists and business executives in Croatia ended that pesky issue- a story for another time).
The key thing to hold in mind is that longer waves of history are shaping the present more than most historians would care to admit. Anyone taking an intention-driven approach to historical analysis will come to recognize quickly enough that events that took place centuries ago have an active impact on the events playing out today.
How and why is this so? Because history is shaped by IDEAS. Good ideas that are in tune with the truthful nature of reality vs bad ideas that are out of tune with said reality. But this battle over ideas (and ideas about ideas e.g.: Plato’s higher hypothesis) is where the causal nexus of universal history is found. With this in mind, we can see clearly how certain people use their influence to conspire and create cultural and political institutions that transmit those ideas and organizing principles across many generations. Sometimes we find these forces to be acting in harmony with natural law (as in the case of Benjamin Franklin and his international network of co-thinkers) and sometimes very much in defiance of natural law.
Today’s battle between the opposing paradigms of the multipolar alliance led by Russia and China on the one hand vs the unipolarist/post-nation state worldview on the other has everything to do with these longer forces of history. The only way to comprehend the color revolution playing out within the USA, or the anomalous emergence of Rhodes Scholars shaping the possible Biden presidency, is by recognizing this higher reality. This exercise may cause you to think about thinking differently, and at first may be uncomfortable, but just as the figure released from the cave who slowly accustoms his/her eyes to the light of the sun and reality, the satisfaction of enjoying a higher order of truthfulness is incomparably more pleasant to a life believing in the shadows cast by an elite class of puppeteers.
New York Can’t Buy Its Way Out Of Blackouts
By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ PA Pundits ~ December 26, 2020
New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.
The City of New York’s director of sustainability (I am not making this title up), Mark Chambers, is ecstatic, bragging: “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant scale.” (Emphasis added)
In reality the scale here is incredibly insignificant.
In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, the president of Con Edison, New York’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York’s clean energy future, especially in New York City where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed offshore.”
This puts the Con in Con Edison.
Here is the reality when it comes to the scale needed to reliably back up intermittent renewables. For simplicity let us suppose New York City is 100% wind powered. Including solar in the generating mix makes it more complicated but does not change the unhappy outcome very much.
NYC presently peaks at around 32,000 MW needed to keep the lights on. If Mr. Biden makes all the cars and trucks electric it might be closer to 50,000 MW but let’s stick to reality.
This peak occurs during summer heat waves which are caused by stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs. These highs often last for a week and because they are stagnant there is no wind power generation. Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power. During a Bermuda high folks are happy to get the occasional 5 mph breeze. These huge highs cover many states so it is not like we can get the juice from next door.
So for reliability we need, say, seven days of backup, which is 168 hours. Here’s the math:
32,000 MW x 168 hours = 5,376,000 MWh of stored juice needed to just make it. Mind you for normal reliability we usually add 20% or so. Did I mention electric cars?
It is easy to see that a trivial 400 MWh is not “significant scale.” It is infinitesimal scale. Nothing. Nada. Might as well not exist.
More specifically, 5,376,000 divided by 400 = 13,440 so only 13,439 more to go.
On the other hand, this measly 400 MWh battery array may well cost half a billion dollars, which is significant, especially to the New Yorkers who will pay for it. No cost figures are given because the system is privately owned, but EIA reports that the average utility scale battery system runs around $1.5 million a MWh of storage capacity. That works out to $600 million for this insignificant toy.
So what would it cost to reliably back up wind power, at this MWh cost and NYC’s scale? Just over $8,000,000,000,000 or EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. I have not seen this stupendous sum mentioned in the media. Perhaps Con Ed has not mentioned it.
Then too, New York State has the same problem. Only much bigger if New York City is included, which it often is.
But hey, maybe the cost will come down a few trillion. Not if we create a seller’s market by rushing into intermittent renewables, which is certainly where we are headed. After all, this is just New York City. Imagine what backing up America with batteries might cost. Don’t bother because it is impossible.
I should also add that we have no idea how to make 5 million MWh of batteries work together. The tiny 400 will be a challenge. It may not be possible.
Maybe fracked geothermal, the reliable renewable, is the answer. Or how about coal, oil, gas and nuclear power? Too bad they are all out of fashion.
All of this battery backup hype is a scam, and not just in New York either. The papers are full of this con, from coast to coast. The utilities know perfectly well that these loudly touted battery buys are a hoax, but they are getting rich building the wind and solar systems the politicians are calling for.
The voters are oblivious to these impossible numbers, since they are told that intermittent wind and solar are cheaper than reliable coal, gas and nuclear. Only when the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, which is not all that often.
Reality is just sitting there, waiting. It can’t work so it won’t work. At this point it is just a question of how and when we find out the hard way.
Why are Tel Aviv and Washington Inflaming the Situation in the Persian Gulf?
By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 26.12.2020
During the run-up to the anniversary of the insidious assassination of Iranian General Soleimani – and after one month had passed since the equally controversial massacre of leading nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – Israel and the United States, which are the ones responsible for this atrocity, are demonstratively increasing their military presence in the Middle East, and doing so in demagogic fashion under the guise of fearing “retaliation from Iran”.
The United States, located both at a considerable distance from Iran and outside the range of its missiles, having provoked this crisis clearly fears only a missile attack on its diplomatic mission in Iraq, as well as other American facilities in the region. Washington is trying to validate these fears with reports from American intelligence services, according to which pro-Iranian armed formations that can deliver a “retaliatory strike” have allegedly stepped up their activity in Iraq.
However, on December 21 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denied these suspicions, which especially resounded in recent statements made by US Secretary of State Pompeo about the alleged complicity of pro-Iranian militia in the latest rocket strikes executed on Baghdad’s “Green Zone”. Along with that, Khatibzadeh wrote on Twitter that for Tehran “attacks on diplomatic facilities are unacceptable”.
Washington still dispatched additional warships and a squadron of fighters to the Middle East, and demonstratively conducted a nonstop flight of a B-52 strategic bomber that has the ability to carry nuclear weapons, by doing so intending to “intimidate Tehran”. In addition, on December 21 a US naval unit entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz that included a USS Georgia (SSGN 729) Ohio-class submarine, which carries up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and is capable of taking on board up to 66 special operations service personnel, as well as two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers: a USS Port Royal (CG 73) and a USS Philippine Sea (CG 58). Previously, at the end of November, a USS Nimitz (CVN-68) aircraft carrier was sent off the Persian Gulf “to help contain the enemy”; this was rationalized by the need “to have additional defensive capabilities in the region in case of any unforeseen circumstances.”
As far as Israel goes, it clearly fears a “retaliation strike” from Iran since, given the Jewish state’s modest size, a successful attack on it could actually terminate its existence. This is especially true if the strike were to hit the Dimona Nuclear Research Center, which is considered to be the site where Israeli nuclear weapons originated; Tel Aviv neither confirms nor denies that the center exists. Incidentally, Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Movahedi Kermani already delivered a warning to Israel that “if Iran decides to put up resistance, then one missile strike on the Dimona reactor would be enough”.
It is clear that Iranian missiles will not really be launched at Dimona, since this is fraught with consequences that entail nuclear contamination and destruction not only for Israel, but for Iran and quite a few neighboring countries across the region. And that is why the Iranian media occasionally names another target: the Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel, fearing the hysteria itself that potential military action could unleash, in a speech made by IDF Chief of General Staff Aviv Kochavi on December 21 cautioned Iran not to attack Israel, stating that “the Jewish state will retaliate against any aggression”.
Along with that, A. Kohavi evidently pointedly forgot to mention that it is not Iran, but Israel itself, that has already demonstrated its aggressive stance toward the Islamic Republic to the whole world by organizing and initiating acts of terrorism and assassinations – and not only against nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. After all, this is far from the first time that Iranian scientists and leading representatives from Iranian society have been killed by an Israeli act of terrorism. For example, in Tehran, five nuclear physicists have been assassinated recently – and this specifically includes Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the architect of Iran’s ballistic missile program. All this points to the systematic destruction of the best Iranian scientists employed in the defense industry, which is being accomplished by the international community with impunity. This series of assassinations of prominent Iranian scientists, politicians, and military personnel – who ended up being unacceptable for the United States and Israel – substantiates the suspicions first voiced long ago that Western intelligence services and Israel have adopted the terrorist practice of eliminating key personnel and various prominent figures in those countries with which they are at war; this is done to weaken their defense systems and technological potential.
In addition to the words it speaks to help deter Tehran, Tel Aviv has taken a series of measures to test the combat readiness of its army against any potential foreign attacks, and is active about consulting with Washington – especially with representatives from the Pentagon – about how to work out joint coordination for the two countries to take military action against Iran. In particular, large-scale, unprecedented exercises came to an end in December, during which the capabilities of the three levels of Israel’s anti-missile defense (ABM) systems to neutralize various air threats were put to the test. Senior Israel Defense Forces officers, according to the Internet publication Breaking Defense, held “negotiations on coordination work” with their counterparts in the US Central Command (CENTCOM, which includes the Middle East) to bolster cooperation between the armed forces in the two countries “against Iran possibly taking revenge in the region”. According to this publication, Israel has reached its highest degree of readiness, in particular with regard to repelling “some of the 140,000 missiles that Iran-backed Hezbollah has in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.” At the same time, it has been reported that although the Israeli command does not disclose the details about how it prepares for war, its tactical and operational anti-missile defense systems, and long-range missile systems, are still on high alert.
In addition, as reported by The Times of Israel, on December 17, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley arrived in Israel as part of his Middle East tour to discuss the threat that Iran poses to Washington’s allies, including the Jewish state.
As part of preventive measures taken against the armed situation in the region potentially escalating, Israel began to actively spread out its naval fleet around Iran. An Israeli Navy Dolphin-class (Type 800) submarine carrying cruise missiles on board passed through the Suez Canal, and on December 21 demonstratively surfaced in the Persian Gulf, in the waters that stretch between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Dolphin is a series of German modified diesel-electric submarines that are specially designed for Israel, and which have from 6-10 torpedo tubes. Besides torpedoes, they are armed with mines and Popeye Turbo SLCM cruise missiles that have a range of up to 1,500 km, and are capable of carrying nuclear charges with a capacity of up to 200 kilotons launched from torpedo tubes. The Israelis regularly keep at least two of their submarines.in the Indian Ocean, in the immediate vicinity of the Persian Gulf.
Today, in the assessments made by numerous experts, there is reason to presume that in January 2021, before Donald Trump [prospectively] leaves the White House, a joint American-Israeli missile strike could be launched against Iran, primarily to neutralize Iran’s air defense systems, as well as its nuclear industry facilities.
However, while ramping up the degree of military tension in the region Tel Aviv and Washington cannot help but clearly see that Iran does not intend to attack either the United States or Israel. Iran is not in an ideal condition to wage war now, since its economy is seriously undermined by the restrictive measures imposed on its oil sales abroad, as well as by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, the deficit inflicting its national budget, and the weakening of its national currency. Yes, military operations “against American and Israeli aggressors” can raise patriotic sentiments in the Islamic Republic for a certain period, but they would quickly drain the Iranian economy and militaristic zeal. In addition, hoping for a change in the attitude taken toward it after the White House administration [potentially] changes, for political and economic reasons it would now be clearly disadvantageous for Tehran to carry out any large-scale “retaliatory strike”. Therefore, the maximum that Tehran is capable of doing today, without causing itself significant damage, is to carry out a special operation against the Israelis involved in the murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – or to inflict a targeted strike on American facilities in the region through its “proxies.”
As for the United States, Israel, and their allies taking military action against Iran right now, it should be kept in mind that the Islamic Republic, despite all its existing economic problems, is a pretty tough nut to crack in terms of its military, and aggression against it would have serious costs. And this cost is obviously unacceptable for either Trump or Netanyahu, who intend to keep pursuing their political careers.
The subject of Israeli hegemony over US must be addressed
By Walt Peretto | Press TV | December 25, 2020
It’s pardon season for President Trump. The likely outgoing president has issued 15 pardons that include two members of the Russian investigation and four convicted murderers who worked for the private security firm Blackwater.
These four were convicted of murdering 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007. Private security corporations such as Blackwater (since renamed Academi) have played a major role in war zones since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the false flag events of 9/11/2001. They are also suspected of participation in other domestic false flag events that include the Boston Marathon event in 2013.
These pardons by Trump will facilitate the use of private security firms in the near future both domestically and abroad. Further lockdowns in the US and crushing strains on small business may create unrest which could overwhelm municipal law enforcement and the federal government may choose to hire private security to deal with such occurrences. Overseas, tensions may increase in Syria as the new Democratic president may resurrect the goal of toppling President Assad which would likely be carried out by hiring private mercenaries which the West has done in the past.
I think these pardons by Trump send a signal to private security firms that their actions will not be hampered by long prison sentences for employees who engage in murder. Similar to municipal policing in which cops that murder are virtually never convicted. If the US does rededicate itself to regime change in Damascus, it’s hired security forces and clandestine paid terrorists don’t want restraints like convictions of murder in the courts.
Trump’s pardon of two people involved with the Russiagate fiasco makes sense since Russian collusion was never proven and the whole story was really a distraction for 4 years designed to take people’s eyes off of leaked emails involving Hillary Clinton, the Podesta brothers, Barack Obama and others that were quite damning if they were thoroughly investigated.
For four years the left-leaning media in the United States filled the news with accusations of Russian collusion in US elections and other illegal and immoral interactions between Russian officials and the Trump administration.
This also kept the eye off the elephant in the room called Israel which has seized control of the presidency, the Congress, the Judiciary, the economy through the FED, and the mainstream media.
China has provided another useful distraction from Israeli influence in America. If one honestly examines recent US presidential administrations — don’t strain to find any Chinese or Russian nationals in positions of power in the US federal government. Dual US/Israeli citizens are abundant and ubiquitous in the Trump administration and it will be similar in the Biden administration if he makes it to the White House. The subject of Israeli hegemony over the United States is a subject no one seems to want to address.
Judging from the proposed COVID Stimulus Package which allocates billions of dollars to other countries, this proves that the globalist intention is to bleed the United States dry until it submits wholly to the international cabal of psychopaths that includes Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum who are attempting to reset the world into a one-world system led by global organized psychopathy.
China does not have allies, but has friends with partnership diplomacy
By Xue Li – Global Times – 2020/11/8
The Wall Street Journal published an article earlier this month entitled “China’s Risky Bet on a Lonely Return to Greatness,” suggesting China has no friends. China does not have allies indeed, but it doesn’t lack of friends. This is not only because of China’s historical tradition and the current international environment, but also because of China’s own choices.
Based on Christian monotheism, the spirit of Roman law and Greek formal logic, Western civilization largely views problems and world order from the perspective of binary opposition. Therefore, they prefer forming alliances in diplomacy so as to restrain and even assimilate allies through mandatory mechanisms. This allows them to confront and even defeat the non-allies.
At the same time, they firmly believe that every country must have a similar diplomatic philosophy, so it is necessary to encircle and even disintegrate emerging powers. They not only try to equate the history of Christian expansion since the maritime exploration during the age of discovery with the universal history of humanity, but also view the diplomatic concept of the Christian civilization over past 500 years as the world’s universal diplomatic philosophy. They do not realize that 500 years is a relatively short period in the history of human civilization, and that different civilizations have different views on diplomacy world order.
During the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220), Taoism and Confucianism are the main concepts on which Chinese civilization is used to view issues, advocating the construction of an order through rule of ritual. Therefore, China has few diplomatic alliances, and it advocates that countries should adjust their ties according to specific situations. In diplomatic operations, China emphasizes that a country should believe in the charm of their own values and civilization, rather than forcefully imposing their own values and systems onto others.
In the past 500 years, some European countries became global empires through colonial expansion by means of force. The US has become a superpower after the end of the two world wars through building alliance systems. With the changing times and the emergence of nuclear weapons, it’s impossible for China to copy the emergence of European countries or the approaches of the US. One feasible option to realize the rejuvenation of Chinese civilization would be to expand its overseas interests in a way that is acceptable to the host country – whether with general policies, economics, and culture.
In modern times, China once allied itself with other countries. Those alliances were not systematic and continuous, and the outcomes were not ideal enough. China thus gave up diplomatic alliances, and carried out its non-aligned diplomacy in 1960s and 1970s, independent foreign policy of peace in 1980s, and partnership diplomacy since 1990s.
Chinese civilization is a kind of regional civilization. Although it has global influence in some aspects, it lacks the gene of global expansion of monotheistic civilizations. Perhaps because of the reasons mentioned above, Chinese leaders have repeatedly stressed that China has no intent to replace any other country in the world. But Western countries will take a long time to accept this.
Partnership diplomacy meets the needs of the contemporary world. On the road of rejuvenation, China firmly believes that partnership diplomacy is a better and more suitable choice for itself than alliance diplomacy. So far, 112 countries and international organizations have established partnerships with China. This number will undoubtedly continue to increase. Partnership diplomacy has become a prominent feature of China’s diplomacy.
After the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013, China’s diplomacy has changed from maintaining a low profile to becoming more proactive in global affairs. But the policy of “partnership rather than alliance” has not changed, and it is unlikely to change in the future. The indisputable fact is that the system of alliance diplomacy preferred by Western countries is the choice of a few countries in the world, and most countries choose non-aligned diplomacy. Besides, the vast majority of them are developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The world has entered a long period of competition and cooperation among civilizations. It is necessary for the West to think outside the box instead of seeing the world from the perspective of Christian civilization, and learn to put itself into China’s position. Only in this way can the West truly understand the Chinese civilization and contemporary China, and base the relationship between China and the West on an accurate judgment and a relatively solid foundation so as to reduce misunderstandings and conflicts, and increase cooperation and mutual benefits.
The author is director of the Department of International Strategy at the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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