Category Archives: Geopolitics

The Matrix Is Real and How It Will Change All Of Our Lives

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: King World News

Americans are the most manipulated people in history. Since 2008, the economy has been manipulated for the benefit of a few oversized banks “too big to fail.” US foreign policy has been manipulated to serve the hegemonic agenda of a handful of neoconservatives. These manipulations have undercut the consumer basis of the US economy and have pushed the American people into a conflict situation with Russia and China.

Lies, US Economic Collapse And Nuclear War

US economic collapse and nuclear war are the two most likely outcomes of Washington’s manipulations of the American people. Time and again, the American public has fallen for transparent lies and orchestrated events. 2015 is a decisive year. Will a credulous people cast off their gullibility, or will they be swept away by economic collapse and war?

There are reasons to believe that the government’s manipulations have overreached and are crossing the point of believability, even on the part of credulous Americans. Let’s review some of these manipulations — first, economic, and then foreign policy.

Unemployment Number Is Meaningless

On January 9, the US government told Americans that the unemployment rate had fallen to a comforting 5.6 percent, an indication that the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing was successful in restoring the US economy. A 5.6 percent rate of unemployment suggests that Americans have a reasonable chance of finding a job. Yet we know there are millions of discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job.

The explanation of this paradox is that the 5.6 percent unemployment rate (U.3) does not include unemployed people who have not looked for a job in the previous four weeks. These unemployed are called “discouraged workers.” If they have been discouraged for less than one year, they are counted in a seldom-reported measure of unemployment (U.6). This rate stands at 11.2 percent, twice as high as the unemployment rate stressed by government and financial media.

The 11.2 percent rate is an official measure, but it is not publicized because it indicates a dismal employment outlook 5.5 years after the 2008 recession was declared over, in June 2009. What kind of recovery is it when the unemployment rate remains at 11.2 percent years after the recession has officially ended?

The Great Lie Exposed

The story worsens. The 11.2 percent rate does not include the millions of unemployed long-term discouraged workers (those discouraged for more than one year). Prior to 1994, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics counted the long-term discouraged as unemployed, and the government of Canada still does. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to include the long-term discouraged. When the long- term discouraged are added to the U.6 measure, the rate of unemployment again doubles, to 23 percent.

In other words, the actual unemployment rate is actually four times higher than the comforting figure released January 9.

Inflation Rate Also Falls Victim

The government engages in similar deception with the inflation rate. If the price of an item in the index rises, a lower-priced item is substituted, thus eliminating inflation by substitution. Inflation also is eliminated by redefining a price rise as a quality improvement.

By undercounting inflation, the government reports price increases as real economic growth, denies cost-of-living increases to Social Security recipients, and justifies paying savers negative real interest rates. These manipulations provide banks with free money, thus boosting bank profits while encouraging the stock market with “good news.”

Americans who search for jobs without success know other Americans in the same situation. As time passes, they learn from experience that the unemployment rate cannot be low and falling when jobs are harder to find. People who shop for food and pay utility bills know inflation is far higher than the government reports. Experience and the passage of time make the government’s numbers less and less believable.

Global Financial Markets Manipulated

The financial markets also are manipulated. To protect the dollar from declining in value due to its overproduction, the Federal Reserve’s bullion bank agents drive down the price of gold and silver by dumping uncovered shorts in the futures market. Since 2011, we have had the extraordinary situation in which the prices of gold and silver have been driven down despite strong demand and constraints on supply — a result that can be achieved only by manipulation in the futures market.

The dollar’s value also is manipulated by foreign central banks in cooperation with Washington. The Japanese and European central banks print yen and euros to protect the dollar’s exchange value. If all major currencies also are being printed, the dollar cannot decline.

The government’s Plunge Protection Team can prevent major stock-market corrections by stepping in and purchasing S&P futures, thus preventing the market’s overvaluation from bursting the bubble.

These manipulations are apparent to experienced investors. Sooner or later, attentive Americans will realize that the government’s deceit is not limited to the marketplace, but extends into foreign policy.

Fooled Over And Over Into War

Ever since the Clinton regime’s demonizations of Yugoslavia and Serbia, Americans have been deceived into supporting expensive wars and foreign-policy positions that are not in their interest. Washington’s demonizations of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, Iran and of Muslims generally have resulted in 14 years of wars in which seven or eight countries have been invaded, bombed and attacked with drones. Increasingly, people at home and abroad understand these wars and bombings are based on lies and deceptions.

The destruction of countries and the massive human hurt happened because the US government lied and deceived.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Assad did not use chemical weapons in Syria. Gaddafi did not issue Viagra to his troops to assist in the rape of Libyan women. Iran does not have a nuclear- weapons program.

Millions of Muslims have been killed, maimed and dislocated by these wars, and tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed and physically or psychologically maimed. The destruction of countries and the massive human hurt happened because the US government lied and deceived.

The most extraordinary aspect of the Charlie Hebdo event is that the French cartoonists are being championed in the name of free speech. Yet the Anglo-American world does not have free speech. Free speech, if it involves criticism or exposure of the government, is being redefined as “domestic extremism.” Criticism of Washington now implies that the critic is hostile to the public, a possible extremist who must be deterred before he inflicts harm on innocents. As Glenn Greenwald noted, try satirizing Israelis in the manner that Charlie Hebdo satirized Muslims, and you will find out how little free speech there is. http://bit.ly/1xYF93V Free speech is used to demonize Washington’s hand-picked enemies. That’s about as far as it goes.

Washington Demonizing Russia

As 2014 drew to a close, Washington was at work demonizing Russia and its president. Russia no more invaded Ukraine than Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But despite years of experience with the government’s foreign-policy lies, polls show that more than 60 percent of the US population has fallen for Washington’s demonization of Russia.

We now have two decades of evidence that Washington uses demonization as a prelude to war. Russia and China, recognizing Washington’s intent to destabilize, have formed a strategic alliance. War with Russia and China would not be like war with Iraq and Libya, or drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan. Unlike Saddam Hussein and Iran, Russia and China do have weapons of mass destruction — plenty of them.

Whereas Americans are not subject to any meaningful retaliation from Washington’s wars against Muslims, Washington’s aggressive warlike policy toward Russia and China, ringing both countries with military bases while demonizing both with false charges, threatens the life of every American and every person on earth. A threat of this magnitude could pull Americans out of their insouciance and force them to confront the government over its dangerous manipulations of public opinion.

Governments successful with their deceptions end up overreaching. The Charlie Hebdo affair possibly is an overreach. The Paris shootings have many characteristics of a false-flag operation. The attack on the cartoonists’ office was a disciplined professional attack associated with special forces; yet the suspects later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like they were two different sets of people.

Is This Really The Official Story?

Muslim terrorists are usually prepared to die in the attack; yet the two professionals who hit Charlie Hebdo so hard escaped. Their identities were established by the unprofessional and unlikely act of leaving their identification in the getaway car. This reminds me of the undamaged passport miraculously found among the ruins of the two World Trade Center towers. The incriminating passport was the only undamaged item in the entire ruins and was the basis for identifying the 9/11 alleged hijackers.

It is a plausible inference that the ID left in the getaway car was the ID of one of the two brothers later killed by police, from whom we will never hear anything, and not the ID of the professionals who attacked Charlie Hebdo. An important fact that supports this inference is the report that the third suspect in the attack, Hamyd Mourad, the alleged driver of the getaway car, when seeing his name circulating on social media as a suspect, realized the danger he was in and quickly turned himself in to police for protection against being murdered by security forces as a terrorist.

Hamyd Mourad says he has an ironclad alibi. If so, this makes him the despoiler of a false-flag attack. If that is the case, he is likely to be coerced or tortured into some sort of confession to support the official story. http://bit.ly/1Aai8pJ

Mainstream Media Clueless

The American and European media have ignored this important story. I googled Hamyd Mourad and all I found (January 12) was the main US and European media reporting that the third suspect had turned himself in. The news was reported in a fashion that gave credence to the accusation that the suspect who turned himself in was part of the attack. Not a single US mainstream media source reported that the alleged suspect turned himself in because he had an ironclad alibi. The list of sources that reported Mourad’s turning himself in to police report in a way that can be read as confirmation of his guilt.

Some merely reported it in a headline with no coverage in the report. The list of those I googled includes:

• The Washington Post (January 7, by Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola)

• Die Welt (Germany), “One suspect has turned himself in to police in connection with Wednesday’s massacre at the offices of Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo”

• ABC News (January 7), “Youngest suspect in Charlie Hebdo Attack turns himself in”

• CNN (January 8), “Citing sources, the Agence France Presse news agency reported that an 18-year- old suspect in the attack had surrendered to police.”

High-Ranking Police Official Suddenly Commits Suicide?

Another puzzle in the official story that remains unreported, according to my 6 p.m. Google search on January 12, is the alleged suicide of a high-ranking member of the French Judicial Police who had a lead role in the Charlie Hebdo investigation. For unknown reasons, a police official involved in the most important investigation of a lifetime decided to kill himself in his police office in the middle of the night while writing his report on his investigation. The alternative media reports it: http://bit.ly/1xc8W1W So did the UK Telegraph. But no suspicion is seen in the police official’s death, and as far as the US “presstitute” media is concerned, it did not happen. There are no reports, domestic or foreign, at the time of writing, about his death and whether his report has disappeared.

Media Cloaks The Lies And Crimes Of Government

As Gerald Celente has pointed out for years and as Patrick L. Smith writes in CounterPunch (Vol. 21, No. 10, 2014), the media serve as presstitutes. The media justify withholding information from the public on the basis of patriotism. Patriotism requires the media to support the government, not the truth. Patrick Smith quotes former New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who says in defense of the New York Times misleading the American people: “Journalists are Americans, too. I consider myself to be a patriot.” Of course, journalists lie to us because their careers are controlled by government and corporations dependent on government. Patriotism has little to do with it, but it serves as a cover. Patriotism is like “national security,” a cloak for the lies and crimes of government.

Life In The Matrix

Here we have it. The media lie to us because they are patriots. We believe the lies because we are patriots. More likely, the fact of the matter might be that both the media and the people are morally and spiritually corrupt.

In other words, we willfully live in The Matrix and are our own worst enemy.

The Global De-dollarization and the US Policies

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By Vladimir Odintsov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

In its quest for world domination, which the White House has been pursuing for more than a century, it relied on two primary tools: the US dollar and military might. In order to prevent Washington from establishing complete global hegemony, certain countries have recently been revising their positions towards these two elements by developing alternative military alliances and by breaking with their dependence on the US dollar.

Until the mid-twentieth century, the gold standard was the dominant monetary system, based on a fixed quantity of gold reserves stocked in national banks, which limited lending. At that time, the United States managed to become the owner of 70% of world’s gold reserves (excluding the USSR), therefore it pushed its weakened competitor, the UK, aside resulting to the creation of the Bretton Woods financial system in 1944. That’s how the US dollar became the predominant currency for international payments.

But a quarter century later this system had proven ineffective due to its inability to contain the economic growth of Germany and Japan, along with the reluctance of the US to adjust its economic policies to maintain the dollar-gold balance. At that time, the dollar experienced a dramatic decline but it was saved by the support of rich oil exporters, especially once Saudi Arabia began to exchange its black gold for US weapons and support in talks with Richard Nixon. As a result, President Richard Nixon in 1971 unilaterally ordered the cancellation of the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold, and instead he established the Jamaican currency system in which oil has become the foundation of the US dollar system. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that from that moment on the control over oil trade has become the number one priority of Washington’s foreign policy. In the aftermath of the so-called Nixon Shock the number of US military engagements in the Middle East and other oil producing regions saw a sharp increase. Once this system was supported by OPEC members, the global demand for US petrodollars hit an all time high. Petrodollars became the basis for America domination over the global financial system which resulted in countries being forced to buy dollars in order to get oil on the international market.

Analysts believe that the share of the United States in today’s world gross domestic product shouldn’t exceed 22%. However, 80% of international payments are made with US dollars. As a result, the value of the US dollar is exceedingly high in comparison with other currencies, that’s why consumers in the United States receive imported goods at extremely low prices. It provides the United States with significant financial profit, while high demand for dollars in the world allows the US government to refinance its debt at very low interest rates.

Under these circumstances, those hedging against the dollar are considered a direct threat to US economic hegemony and the high living standards of its citizens, and therefore political and business circles in Washington attempt by all means to resist this process. This resistance manifested itself in the overthrow and the brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who decided to switch to Euros for oil payments, before introducing a gold dinar to replace the European currency.

However, in recent years, despite Washington’s desire to use whatever means to sustain its position within the international arena, US policies are increasingly faced with opposition. As a result, a growing number of countries are trying to move from the US dollar along with its dependence on the United States, by pursuing a policy of de-dollarization. Three states that are particularly active in this domain are China, Russia and Iran. These countries are trying to achieve de-dollarization at a record pace, along with some European banks and energy companies that are operating within their borders.

The Russian government held a meeting on de-dollarization in spring of 2014, where the Ministry of Finance announced the plan to increase the share of ruble-denominated contracts and the consequent abandonment of dollar exchange. Last May at the Shanghai summit, the Russian delegation manged to sign the so-called “deal of the century” which implies that over the next 30 years China will buy $ 400 billion worth of Russia’s natural gas, while paying in rubles and yuans. In addition, in August 2014 a subsidiary company of Gazprom announced its readiness to accept payment for 80,000 tons of oil from Arctic deposits in rubles that were to be shipped to Europe, while the payment for the supply of oil through the “Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean” pipeline can be transferred in yuans. Last August while visiting the Crimea, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced that “the petrodollar system should become history” while “Russia is discussing the use of national currencies in mutual settlements with a number of countries.” These steps recently taken by Russia are the real reasons behind the West’s sanction policy.

In recent months, China has also become an active member of this “anti-dollar” campaign, since it has signed agreements with Canada and Qatar on national currencies exchange, which resulted in Canada becoming the first offshore hub for the yuan in North America. This fact alone can potentially double or even triple the volume of trade between the two countries since the volume of the swap agreement signed between China and Canada is estimated to be a total of 200 billion yuans.

China’s agreement with Qatar on direct currency swaps between the two countries are the equivalent of $ 5.7 billion and has cast a heavy blow to the petrodollar becoming the basis for the usage of the yuan in Middle East markets. It is no secret that the oil-producing countries of the Middle Eastern region have little trust in the US dollar due to the export of inflation, so one should expect other OPEC countries to sign agreements with China.

As for the Southeast Asia region, the establishment of a clearing center in Kuala Lumpur, which will promote greater use of the yuan locally, has become yet another major step that was made by China in the region. This event occurred in less than a month after the leading financial center of Asia – Singapore – became a center of the yuan exchange in Southeast Asia after establishing direct dialogue regarding the Singapore dollar and the yuan.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has recently announced its reluctance to use US dollars in its foreign trade. Additionally, the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has recently tasked the National Bank with the de-dollarization of the national economy.

All across the world, the calls for the creation of a new international monetary system are getting louder with each passing day. In this context it should be noted that the UK government plans to release debts denominated in yuans while the European Central Bank is discussing the possibility of including the yuan in its official reserves.

Those trends are to be seen everywhere, but in the midst of anti-Russian propaganda, Western newsmakers prefer to keep quiet about these facts, in particular, when inflation is skyrocketing in the United States. In recent months, the proportion of US Treasury bonds in the Russian foreign exchange reserves has been shrinking rapidly, being sold at a record pace, while this same tactic has been used by a number of different states.

To make matters worse for the US, many countries seek to export their gold reserves from the United States, which are deposited in vaults at the Federal Reserve Bank. After a scandal of 2013, when the US Federal Reserve refused to return German gold reserves to its respective owner, the Netherlands have joined the list of countries that are trying to retrieve their gold from the US. Should it be successful the list of countries seeking the return of gold reserves will double which may result in a major crisis for Washington.

The above stated facts indicate that the world does not want to rely on US dollars anymore. In these circumstances, Washington relies on the policy of deepening regional destabilization, which, according to the White House strategy, must lead to a considerable weakening of any potential US rivals. But there’s little to no hope for the United States to survive its own wave of chaos it has unleashed across the world.

Vladimir Odintsov, political commentator, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy

There is a brouhaha underway about an American journalist who told a story about being in a helicopter in a war zone. The helicopter was hit and had to land. Which war zone and when I don’t know. The US has created so many war zones that it is difficult to keep up with them all, and as you will see, I am not interested in the story for its own sake.

It turns out that the journalist has remembered incorrectly. He was in a helicopter in a war zone, but it wasn’t hit and didn’t have to land. The journalist has been accused of lying in order to make himself seem to be “a more seasoned war correspondent than he is.”

The journalist’s presstitute colleagues are all over him with accusations. He has even had to apologize to the troops. Which troops and why is unclear. The American requirement that everyone apologize for every word reminds me of the old Soviet practice, real or alleged by anti-communists, that required Soviet citizens to self-criticize.

National Public Radio (2-5-15) thought this story of the American journalist was so important that the program played a recording of the journalist telling his story. It sounded like a good story to me. The audience enjoyed it and was laughing. The journalist telling the story did not claim any heroism on his part or any failure on the part of the helicopter crew. It is normal for helicopters to take hits in war zones.

Having established that the journalist had actually stated that the helicopter was hit when in fact it wasn’t, NPR brought on the program a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, an expert on “false memory.” The psychologist explained various reasons a person might have false memories, making the point that it is far from uncommon and that the journalist is most likely just another example. But the NPR presstitute still wanted to know if the journalist had intentionally lied in order to make himself look good. It was never explained why it made a journalist look good to be in a helicopter forced to land. But few presstitutes get to this depth of questioning.

Now to get to the real point. I was listening to this while driving as it was less depressing to listen to NPR’s propaganda than to listen to the Christian-Zionist preachers. In the previous hour NPR had presented listeners with three reports about civilian deaths in the break-away provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine. The first time I heard the report, the NPR presstitute recounted how explosives had hit a hospital killing 5 people in the break-away Donetsk Republic. The presstitute did not report that this was done by Ukrainian forces, instead suggesting that it could have been done by the “Russian-supported rebels.” He didn’t offer any explanation why the rebels would attack their own hospital. The impression left for that small percentage of informed Americans capable of thought is that presstitutes are not allowed to say that the Washington-backed Ukrainians attacked a hospital.

In all three reports, Secretary of State John Kerry was broadcast saying that the US wanted a diplomatic, peaceful solution, but that the Russians were blocking a peaceful solution by sending tank columns and troops into Ukraine. On my return trip, I heard over NPR Kerry twice more repeating the unsupported claim that Russian tanks and troops are pouring into Ukraine. Obviously, NPR was serving as a propaganda voice that Russia was invading Ukraine.

Think about this for a minute. We have been hearing from high US government officials, including the president himself, for months and months about Russian tank columns and troops entering Ukraine. The Russian government denies this steadfastly, but, of course, we cannot trust the now-demonized Russians. We are not allowed to believe them, because they are positioned as the Enemy, and good patriotic Americans never believe the Enemy.

But how can we help but believe the Russians? If all these Russian tank columns and troops that have allegedly been pouring into Ukraine were real, Washington’s puppet government in Kiev would have fallen sometime last year, and the conflict would be over. Anyone with a brain knows this.

So, we arrive at my point. A journalist told a harmless story and has been roasted alive and forced to apologize to the troops for lying. In the middle of this brouhaha, the US Secretary of State, the President of the United States, innumerable senators, executive branch officials, and presstitutes have repeatedly reported month after month Russian tank columns and troops entering Ukraine. Yet, despite all these Russian forces, the civilians in the break-away provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine are still being slaughtered by Washington’s puppet state in Kiev.

If Russian tanks and troops are this ineffective, why are NATO commanders and neoconservative warmongers warning of the dire danger that Russia poses to the Baltics, Poland, and Eastern Europe?

It doesn’t make any sense, does it?

So the question is: Why are the presstitutes all over some hapless journalist rather than holding accountable the Great Liars, John Kerry and Barak Obama?

The answer is: It is costless to the presstitutes to try to destroy, for totally insignificant reasons–perhaps just for the pleasure of it, like “American Sniper” killing people for fun–one of their own, but they would be fired if they hold Kerry and Obama accountable, and they know it. But they have to get someone, so they eat their own.

A democracy without an honest media cannot exist. In America democracy is a facade behind which operates every evil inclination of mankind. During the past 14 years the American people have supported governments that have invaded, bombed, or droned seven countries, killing, maiming, and displacing millions of people for no reason other than profit and hegemonic power. There is scant sign that this has caused very many Americans sleepless nights or a bad conscience.

When Washington is not bombing and killing, it is plotting to overthrow reformist governments, such as the Honduran government Obama overthrew, and the Venezuelan, Bolivian, Ecuadoran, and Argentine governments that the Obama regime is current trying to overthrow. And, also, of course the democratically elected government in Ukraine that has been supplanted by Washington’s coup.

The new Greek government is in the crosshairs, and so is Putin himself.

Washington and its fawning presstitutes branded the elected Ukrainian government that was a victim of Washington’s coup, “a corrupt dictatorship.” The replacement government consists of a combination of Washington puppets and neo-nazis with their own military forces sporting Nazi insignias. The American presstitutes have been careful not to notice the Nazi insignias.

Ask yourself why a journalist’s false memory episode of an insignificant event is so important to the American presstitutes, while John Kerry’s and Barak Obama’s extraordinary, blatant, blockbuster, and dangerous lies are ignored.

In the event you have forgotten the efficiency of the Russian military, remember the fate of the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army that Washington sicced on South Ossetia. The Georgian invasion of South Ossetia resulted in the deaths of Russian peace-keeping soldiers and Russian citizens. The Russian military intervened, and the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army collapsed in five hours. All of Georgia was back in Russian hands, but the Russians withdrew and left the former province of Russia independent, despite the lies from Washington that Putin intends to restore the Soviet Empire.

The only correct conclusion that any American can make is that every statement of the US government and its presstitute media is a blatant lie designed to serve a secret agenda that the American people would not support if they knew of its existence.

Whenever Washington and its whore media speak, they lie.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Former CIA Official Lied in Boston Bombing Cover-Up

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By Daniel Hopsicker

Source: MadCowNews

Former top CIA official Graham Fuller lied in a press interview about his former son-in-law, Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of “The Brothers Tsarnaev,” Tamerlan, now dead, and Dzhokhar, soon to go on trial in Boston for allegedly planting a homemade pressure-cooker bomb packed with shrapnel near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. 

“A story on the Internet implying possible connections between Ruslan (Tsarni) and the Agency through me is absurd,” Fuller said in an Apr 27 2013 story headlined “Former CIA officer: ‘Absurd’ to link uncle of Boston suspects, Agency,” in Washington-D.C.-based Al-Monitor, which bills itself as the “Pulse of the Middle East.”

Fuller was responding to an exclusive report published here headlined “Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?”,which he and reporter Laura Rosen churlishly refused to credit, calling it merely a “story on the Internet” even as they labored to debunk it. Yet it was reported and re-published so widely in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror attack that Fuller felt compelled to respond.

Well,  compelled to respond may be a little strong. Still, respond he did, in an interview which marshalled arguments to indicate questioning whether Ruslan Tsarni’s connection with the CIA had been through his famous former father-in-law were not just an exercise in futility. They were absurd. 

Just to be clear, there is zero evidence to indicate either Uncle Ruslan Tsarni or the CIA hired the Tsarnaev Brothers to blow up Boston.  There is, however, abundant evidence that elements of the U.S. Government have been playing footsie with Chechen terrorists, presumably to divert Russia from committing the kind of rash Neo-Communist Gangster stuff they’d be doing already unless we’re very very  careful.

Here’s a troubling question: If it was blow-back from that campaign which blew up in Boston—throwing covert U.S. support at Chechen terrorists—do you think anyone in the U.S. Government is eager to let the American people in on that no-doubt classified-for-reasons-of-national-security secret?

Why, the very idea seems—to use Mr. Fuller’s word—absurd.

Uncle Ruslan meets ‘the boys’

In his interview, Graham Fuller admitted that a second bombshell disclosure in an exclusive Apr 26, 2013, report headlined Boston bombers’ uncle married daughter of top CIA official, also was true: The Tsarnaev Brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, was his former son-in-law.

Tsarni was married to Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha between 1994 and sometime near the dawn of the millenium, Fuller grudgingly admitted.  Still, he insisted,without explanation, that suggestions that law enforcement should be checking to see if Ruslan Tsarni had “hooked up” with the CIA through Fuller were “absurd.”

It was an odd assertion. At the very moment he was making it, investigators with the FBI—who remained convinced the Tsarnaev Brothers had outside help and support—were in an intensive manhunt to find foreign connections to the case.  Asking questions about links between Ruslan, the CIA, and the bombers would not be seen as out of bounds. Or would they?

Of course, statements by former top CIA officials should be taken with a large grain of salt. Double the salt allowance if the “former” official is still engaged in intrigue in Central Asia.

Hannibal crosses the Alps; Fuller fords his Rubicon

And that’s before discounting fstill further for being widely and infamously known as the man who convinced the Reagan Administration that it would be a neat idea to send a callow Marine Lt. Col. named Oliver North with a cake under one arm and some TOW missiles under the other to a meet-and-greet in Tehran with the Ayatollah.

But back to the body blows being thrown against the credibility of anyone with the temerity of reporting the obvious…

“Fuller retired from the agency almost a decade before the brief marriage,” sniffed Laura Rosen, the reporter  selected to give him a sympathetic hearing.

“I, of course, retired from CIA in 1987,” Fuller offered helpfully, suggesting his Agency past had receded into the far reaches of recorded history, a dimly-remembered time located somewhere just this side of Hannibal crossing the Alps.

If Fuller retired, moved to Florida, and taken up golf while decked out in the vibrant hues of lime-green and canary-yellow sweater-slack combinations favored in the Florida golfing fraternity, he might have a point.

That was not, alas, how Fuller chose to spend his dwindling years. Even today he keeps stirring the pot in Central Asia, a long-time player in what previous generations called the Great Game.

He’s a consultant at Rand Corp; and he’s written a prodigious number of books with Great-Game-y titles: “Turkey & the Arab Spring;” “The Arab Shia’a;” “The Future of Political Islam;” “Turkey’s Kurdish Question;” “The Geopolitics of Islam & the West. “

Kazakh-style crony capitalism, illustrated

Ruslan Tsarni’s former father-in-law isn’t his only link to the CIA. There’s also his decades-long work history, discovered in a press release from a dodgy oil-related company with no assets and a ridiculous name whose President had been somehow lured away from a life-long career with Halliburton.

It reveals that Tsarni had worked in Central Asia for the Agency for International Development (USAID)—a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by the CIA, including a two-year stint in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.

At a time when vast natural resources and enormous fortunes were ‘in play’ during the economic free-for-all in the “Stans” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 24-year old Ruslan Tsarni was already a ‘player.’

Ruslan Tsarni is once again working (since 2010) working for USAID. Oddly enough, Russia, the country competing with the US for influence in the region, unceremoniously kicked USAID out of the country just months before the Boston Bombing terror attack, for, according to a Putin spokesmen, encouraging his political opposition.

Ruslan Tsarni & the Congress of Chechen International Organizations

In his interview with Laura Rosen, Fuller uncorked a whopper. Said Fuller,“Like all Chechens, Ruslan was very concerned about his native land, but I saw no particular involvement in politics [although] he did try to contact other Chechens around.”

Perhaps Fuller felt that no one would notice. Perhaps he felt immune to fact-checking, a sentiment common among Reagan-era CIA officials. But whatever his motivation, he has been caught in a provable lie.  Ruslan Tsarni, as Fuller well knows, has been up to his neck in Central Asian political intrigue for decades. 

On August 17,1995, while Ruslan Tsarni and Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha were still virtual newlyweds, Tsarni incorporated a company in Maryland called the “Congress of Chechen International Organizations.” 

Ruslan Tsarni was listed as the company’s resident agent. The group sent aid to Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, including thousands of pairs of combat boots, coordinating its efforts with another so-called “charity,” Benevolence International, designated “financiers of terrorism” by the Treasury Department before being shut down by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

The company’s listed address, 11114 Whisperwood Ln. Rockville MD., was the home address of former top CIA official s Graham Fuller.

Today, the home remains listed in his wife’s name.

“An impromptu press conference aired live on network television”

With worldwide attention on the upcoming trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, what facts could possibly be being deliberately de-selected and hidden from view?

In “Long Mile Home” a book about the Boston Marathon Bombing by two Boston Globe reporters,  everything they have to say about Ruslan Tsarni isn’t much:

“On the Friday morning after Tamerlan was  killed, with police still hunting for Dzhokhar, investigators and reporters found their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, a corporate attorney living outside Washington D.C.

When he emerged after speaking to FBI agents inside his home, he walked up to television cameras and reporters gathered outside looking for the latest in what had become the biggest story in the world. In an impromptu press conference aired live on network television, Tsarni offered condolences to the bombing victims, denounced his nephews, and ordered Dzhokhar to turn himself in.

Asked to explain what provoked the brothers to attack, Tsarni said, “Being losers. Hatred for those who were able to settles themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else—anything to do with religion, with Islam –that’s a fraud. It’s a fake.”

Asked how he felt about the United States, Tsarni said, “I respect this country. I love this country.”

An opinion writer for the Washington Post called his words “inspiring,” and said his press conference was “a moment we all needed.”

The New Yorker said he “looked like he might hunt his nephew down himself.”

That’s it. That’s everything they wrote about Ruslan Tsarni. Nothing about his work overseas for USAID. Nothing about being the former son-in-law of a top CIA official, or about running an organization out of his house that was sending aid to Chechen terrorists. Most of all nothing about his being—at the same time he was calling his nephews “losers”— a guy involved, according to the London Telegraph, in the biggest bank fraud in history.

By anyone’s standards, that’s a lot not to report. The authors must be proud.

“Uncle” Ruslan Tsarni is the elephant in the living room

“News,” someone once wrote, “is selection.”

And selection is always  based on an ideology and an agenda. Just something to remember the next time you’re reading, or watching, the ‘news.’

As jury selection proceeds in Boston in the upcoming trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the most pressing question about the attack remains one which is so obvious even Time Magazine is asking it: Did They Really Act On Their Own? 

The logical place to start would be with Uncle Ruslan, who’s been married to the daughter of a former top CIA official who remains a”player” in Central Asia’s Great Game.  But, of course, it ain’t gonna happen.

Whether by accident or design, Ruslan Tsarni played the same role in the aftermath of the Boston terror attack played after the 9/11 terror attack by Rudi Dekkers,  manager of Mohamed Atta’s flight school in Venice. And just like Rudi Dekkers before him, his pronouncements were received uncritically.

The mainstream media fawned all over him. He was soon being called “Uncle Ruslan. He  became the primary go-to source on the suspects, peddling his brief about the perfidy and all-around loser nature of his two nephews, one of whom, who he’d helped raise and bring to America, had just been killed in a hail of gunfire with police.

There were no tears for Uncle Ruslan. He was “protected,” and no doubt glad for it.

When Graham Fuller fibbed about Ruslan’s political activities, was it out of personal loyalty, or in support of a larger operation which had Ruslan Tsarni leading every 24-hour news cycle for more than a week during the biggest story of the year? Is there anyone in America who still thinks this happens by accident?

What does this say about the CIA’s ability to mold news coverage of a major event?

Already a valuable asset, Uncle Ruslan hadn’t even executed his most valuable task yet. Tsarni would soon be single-handedly responsible for leading the entire mainstream media of the Western World on a two-week long wild goose chase. Like a Pied Piper for the electronic age, he led the world away from whoever had actually punched the Tsarnaev Brothers ticket to jihad, towards something that didn’t even exist, “a chubby red-haired Armenian Muslim exorcist named Misha.”

More on this in our next story.

Uncle Ruslan’s  network for “international corruption”

When he was pontificating daily on live network television, why had no one thought to ask him about his contemporaneous  involvement in what London newspapers had begun calling “the biggest bank fraud in history?”

That’s the other side, the well-connected oil executive-side, of Ruslan Tsarni, that remains hidden. When one reporter had the bad manners to ask him what he did, Tsarni got touchy, and would say only, “I work for a living.”

End-of-story,CIA-style.

Tsarni is implicated in an international criminal investigation that oddly enough also involves another name currently in the news: Britain’s Prince Andrew, who sold his run-down estate to a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive looking for asylum in London who paid Andrew $10 million more than it was worth.

Before he left Almaty for a more exciting life in London, the banker, with Tsarni’s help, had made off with a cool six billion dollars. Six billion. With a “B.”

More on this in our next story too.

When Graham Fuller was caught lying, it confirmed growing suspicions that huge chunks of the truth about the Boston Marathon Bombing—the biggest act of terrorism in America since the 9/11 attack— are deliberately being hidden from view.

In truth, news that another cover-up is underway comes as no great surprise. What is surprising is how much of cover-up, both in the 9/11 and the Boston Marathon terror attacks, was first identified here, in The MadCow Morning News, whose very name points out the surrealistic absurdity of contemporary American journalism.

Novelist Thomas Pynchon put it best: “If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”

Who’s the “Low Life Scum:” Kissinger or CODEPINK?

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By Medea Benjamin

Source: Information Clearing House

A very angry Senator John McCain denounced CodePink activists as “low-life scum” for holding up signs reading “Arrest Kissinger for War Crimes” and dangling handcuffs next to Henry Kissinger’s head during a Senate hearing on January 29. McCain called the demonstration “disgraceful, outrageous and despicable,” accused the protesters of “physically intimidating” Kissinger and apologized profusely to his friend for this “deeply troubling incident.”

But if Senator McCain was really concerned about physical intimidation, perhaps he should have conjured up the memory of the gentle Chilean singer/songwriter Victor Jara. After Kissinger facilitated the September 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende that brought the ruthless Augusto Pinochet to power, Victor Jara and 5,000 others were rounded up in Chile’s National Stadium. Jara’s hands were smashed and his nails torn off; the sadistic guards then ordered him to play his guitar. Jara was later found dumped on the street, his dead body riddled with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.

Despite warnings by senior US officials that thousands of Chileans were being tortured and slaughtered, then Secretary of State Kissinger told Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

Rather than calling peaceful protesters “despicable,” perhaps Senator McCain should have used that term to describe Kissinger’s role in the brutal 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which took place just hours after Kissinger and President Ford visited Indonesia. They had given the Indonesian strongman the US green light—and the weapons—for an invasion that led to a 25-year occupation in which over 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death. The UN’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) stated that U.S. “political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation” of East Timor.

If McCain could stomach it, he could have read the report by the UN Commission on Human Rights describing the horrific consequences of that invasion. It includes gang rape of female detainees following periods of prolonged sexual torture; placing women in tanks of water for prolonged periods, including submerging their heads, before being raped; the use of snakes to instill terror during sexual torture; and the mutilation of women’s sexual organs, including insertion of batteries into vaginas and burning nipples and genitals with cigarettes. Talk about physical intimidation, Senator McCain!

You might think that McCain, who suffered tremendously in Vietnam, might be more sensitive to Kissinger’s role in prolonging that war. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger, along with President Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—killing perhaps one million during this period. He gave the order for the secret bombing of Cambodia. Kissinger is heard on tape saying, “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything about it. It’s an order, to be done. Anything that flies or anything that moves.”

Senator McCain could have taken the easy route by simply reading the meticulously researched book by the late Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Writing as a prosecutor before an international court of law, Hitchens skewers Kissinger for ordering or sanctioning the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of “unfriendly” politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists and clerics who got in his way. He holds Kissinger responsible for war crimes that range from the deliberate mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina, to collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, and the incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor.

McCain could have also perused the warrant issued by French Judge Roger Le Loire to have Kissinger appear before his court. When the French served Kissinger with summons in 2001 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Kissinger fled the country. More indictments followed from Spain, Argentina, Uruguay—even a civil suit in Washington DC.

Hitchens was disgusted by the way Henry Kissinger was treated as a respected statesman. He would have been appalled by Senator McCain’s obsequious attitude. “Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded,” Hitchens said. “No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers.”

Rather than fawning on him, Hitchens suggested, “why don’t you arrest him?”

Hitchens’ words were lost on Senator McCain, who preferred fawning to accountability. That’s where CodePink comes in. If we can’t get Kissinger before a court of law, at least we can show—with words and banners—that there are Americans who remember, Americans who empathize with the man’s many victims, Americans who have a conscience.

While McCain called us disgraceful, what is really disgraceful is the Senate calling in a tired old war criminal to testify about “Global Challenges and the U.S. National Security Strategy.” After horribly tragic failed wars, not just in Vietnam but over the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s time for the US leaders like John McCain to bring in fresh faces and fresh ideas. We owe it to the next generation that will be cleaning up the bloody legacy left behind by Kissinger for years to come.

 

How the War on Drugs Advances Transnational Capitalism

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How US drug policy in the Americas is a pretext for extending militarization and global capitalism south of the border.

By Mark Karlin

Source: Alternet

Dawn Paley, a Canadian journalist, offers a transformative view of the US war on drugs in the Western Hemisphere (with the exclusion of Canada as a targeted nation because it is a neoliberal partner of the United States in exploitation). Her just-released book,  Drug War Capitalism, is a sweeping, exhaustively detailed analysis that reveals the insidious actual goals of the US-led and funded militarization south of the border in the name of destroying drug cartels. As Paley writes, “This war is about control over territory and society [and market share, cheap labor, mineral rights and profits], much more so than it is about cocaine or marijuana.”

The following is the Truthout interview with Dawn Paley about  Drug War Capitalism:

Mark Karlin: You state the so-called war on drugs is really a war on people. This is a key point in your exhaustively documented and cogently threaded book. Can you expand on that – and of course you are talking about a certain class and background of person: the indigenous and the poor south of the US Border?

Dawn Paley: There is excellent work being done in the US examining and resisting the impacts of the drug war, specifically when it comes to the mass incarceration of young people from communities of color on that pretext.  Drug War Capitalism looks at how the drug war is deployed south of the US border, where the key mechanism for social control is the use of terror against the people/ el pueblo/los pueblos. Some activists and writers use words like social cleansing to describe the impacts of drug war militarization and paramilitarization, and how both primarily target poor young men in urban and rural environments. The case of Ayotzinapa, with the disappearance of 43 students and the murder of three others (one of the disappeared students is now confirmed to have been murdered) by municipal police in Iguala, Guerrero, is just the latest example of how often the victims of the drug war come from marginalized – and often well organized – communities and groups.

In the US, many people have been turned into frightened puppets who support any action in the name of the war on terrorism, even when such military and police action has to do with the goal of expanding transnational business opportunities. How is this analogous to the use of the war on drugs as a cover for US military intervention in Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the rest of most of the Western Hemisphere, with the exclusion of Canada? After all, doesn’t the US benefit by having a state of violence among the poor and socially marginal people keep them from considering populist political rebellion in these nations?

I’d like to approach this question a little differently, and ask instead why it is that the hundreds of thousands of people who mobilized throughout the United States against the unjust war in Iraq were able to make the connection between US invasions and oil extraction, and why it has been so difficult for folks to mobilize and make the same connections to resource extraction and capitalism in the case of the US-backed war on drugs in Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere.

Once we can start to make the connections between US-backed war agendas in the form of Plan Colombia or the Merida Initiative and the expansion of capitalism in Mexico and Colombia, a lot of things begin to make sense. In the immediate term, the militarization and the paramilitarization stemming from these plans to sow terror and strengthen the state repressive apparatus, which, as we are well aware, works to protect transnational capital, like mining companies or oil companies.

Over the longer term, the structural reforms that go hand in hand with Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative deepen neoliberalism. With the privatization of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Mexico’s state oil company, for example, 70 percent of Mexico’s federal budget is at stake, something I argue could lead to a previously unknown level of austerity in Mexico. Already financially starved sectors like health and public education could be impacted, as could existing subsidies for transportation, basic goods and otherwise.

As the privatization of Pemex kicks in and the effects begin to be felt over the next decade, should people rise up in protest, the fact that police and military forces as well as nominally non-state armed actors were strengthened through the Merida Initiative will certainly come in handy in order to control dissent.

You bring up how narcotrafficking money laundering has been profitable for banks and even that the cash liquidity of such funds helped some large US banks survive the 2008 implosion of the economy. In addition, drug cartels invest a lot of their money – 85 percent of which you note is generated in the US, in the cocaine market – in legitimate businesses. Aren’t narcotraffickers often the shady cousins of neoliberal capitalists, who collaborate for mutual benefit at times?

I suppose you could say that, yes. The book doesn’t focus on the role of banks, as this is one of the areas of the drug war that has been extensively covered in the mainstream media. However, There’s a tendency towards showing images of Mexican traffickers with stacks of US dollars, but their proceeds represent a fraction of the overall cash generated because of prohibition. I think it’s important to point out that when we talk about the wealth generated by the drug trade it is essential to remember that the vast majority of that cash is generated in the United States and helps prop up the US economy in various ways.

Perhaps the linchpin to your investigative reporting is that the war on drugs is a cover, in many ways, for the expropriation of land for excavation and fossil fuel companies – as well as the creation of secure manufacturing, assembly and marketing environments for other international corporations. I know that specific alliances of corruption are often difficult to ascertain when it comes to the so-called war on drugs, but how do paramilitary groups (sometimes drug cartels), the military and the police play a role in securing land and providing security for transnational corporations. As you point out, large corporations and their employees are rarely victims of violence in the nations that have been targeted for drug war capitalism.

Colombia provides us with the strongest examples of this: paramilitaries hired to kill union organizers, or companies like BP and Drummond using paramilitaries to ensure they had access to lands for mining and pipeline building. These cases are extensively documented by court cases which have led to settlements for victims.

In a place like Ciudad Juarez we see how, for example, it is workers and their families who are terrorized by the drug war, and especially by state forces, while police go to great extents to protect the US-based owners of manufacturing plants when they visit the city. In the book I document how communal landowners dedicated to protecting their land from resource extraction are threatened by Federal Police deployed in the name of fighting the war on drugs, or how they are murdered by so called cartel hitmen, who I consider to be more akin to paramilitaries. And this is just the beginning. Unfortunately these trends are likely to become more obvious in Mexico, as they did in Colombia, as time goes on.

What role did NAFTA and other trade agreements play in having laid the groundwork for killing, kidnapping and displacing people to seize land for excavation and fossil fuel development? As a further note, you are a Canadian, and Canadian mining companies appear to play a large role in land seizures, hiring of enforcers (in many cases assassins and torturers), and cooperation with corrupt governments, police and even drug cartels. Is it safe to assume that this is with the full support of the Harper government?

Well, in Colombia it was actually Plan Colombia that paved the way for the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. They didn’t advertise it at the time, but following Plan Colombia it was made clear by officials from both the US and Colombia that though the flow of drugs wasn’t reduced, Plan Colombia was a success because it created the conditions for the implementation of these new free trade agreements.

In some ways NAFTA, which became active in January 1994, happened too soon. Let me explain: While NAFTA went a long way towards destroying local economies especially in rural areas and impoverishing small farmers, by 2008 when the Merida Initiative kicked off, it left much to be desired in terms of how open the Mexican economy actually was to transnational capital. At that time, the Mexican government continued to be the full owner of the Federal Electricity Commission and the national oil company, Pemex.

Communal landowners were refusing to enter into privatization schemes made possible when Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution was changed prior to the signing of NAFTA in 1992. Elite Mexican families took control over certain sectors of the economy that were privatized, as NAFTA era privatizations did not include regulations that meant that US bidders would be considered on equal footing with national bidders. All of these elements, among others, meant that Mexico was ripe for a new round of neoliberalism and austerity that would open new areas for investment. That’s part of what the Merida Initiative has provided a platform to do.

NAFTA was a key ingredient in opening up Mexico’s mining sector. Large scale, modern mining, especially gold mining, provides us with a bit of a preview of the kinds of conflicts that could erupt if widespread private sector oil and gas exploration and exploitation goes ahead in Mexico. Gold mining in Mexico is dominated by companies based in Canada, which gives them a litany of financial as well as diplomatic and legal supports for their activities. In the book, I document cases where these Canadian mining companies take advantage of the conditions created by the Merida Initiative in order to push their projects forward.

It appears ironic that the free trade treaties squeeze out small business people and entrepreneurs, benefiting almost exclusively the large multinational corporations. After all, the promoters of the treaties claim that they stimulate the business environment for everyone. You provide evidence, however, on why that is just a sales point for free trade agreements, but hardly the reality.

Free trade agreements decimate local economies and small businesses. They allowed the US and other nations to dump their subsidized agricultural products, like corn, into a diverse national market that included many small holders, as in Mexico, who operate with very few subsidies. There are social classes that benefit greatly from these kinds of agreements, but they are the minority, in the US as well as in target countries like Mexico. Rendering small farms and family businesses unprofitable is more than an economic issue: It is a root cause of forced migration, of displacement, and in the destruction of social and community fabric. This, in turn, is beneficial in terms of increasing state and corporate control over peoples’ lives and lands.

You provide a good deal of clarity on how Plan Colombia was the model for the Mérida Initiative in Mexico. What was the real priority of Plan Colombia in terms of creating a nation that is structured to provide an accommodating and secure environment for transnational businesses?

I believe the real priority of Plan Colombia was just that: improving the conditions for investment throughout the country. Officially this takes a couple of forms, including regulatory and judicial reforms and the extension of police forces and soldiers throughout the national territory. Off the books, it is known that paramilitary groups work closely with police and soldiers throughout the country, and that this tends towards benefiting the activities of transnational companies.

One of the implications of the US working to graft its legal model on nations south of the border is that it appears likely to increase prison populations. Given that the United States has the highest percentage of its population incarcerated, that is an ominous portent, isn’t it?

It is indeed. The Merida Initiative also included funds for building and expanding Mexico’s prison facilities and training Mexican prison guards in the ways of US jailers.

That brings us back to the first question. Who is responsible for the social cleansing that is a significant component of the violence associated with the alleged war on drugs? Who gains from killing “disposable people”?

There are cases where we can talk about individuals responsible for killings, but the approach I take in the book is to try and present what I argue are structural elements which allow this kind of killing and terror to take place. Certainly US-funded militarization is a key component. There’s the media and the government, which blame victims for their own deaths by linking them with drug trafficking. Then there is the impunity, the fact that those responsible for criminal acts not only get away with their crimes, but that various levels of government are actively involved and thus also cover their tracks. That impunity exists at a national level in Mexico and elsewhere, but it is allowed to thrive because it is backed by the US State Department, which boasts that it has had closer relations with the Mexican government since the beginning of the Merida Initiative than at any previous juncture.

One of your key points is that the US State Department basically concedes that the flow of drugs into the US will never really significantly diminish. However, as you point out, by constantly militarizing nations south of the border, the US is able to – through its Northern and Southern Commands – gain large footholds in the militaries, police, paramilitaries (who not infrequently are at the service of global corporations) and even drug cartels that can cooperate to favor US financial interests. In that sense, we are really talking about drug war capitalism, aren’t we?

We are! I hope folks will be inspired to pick up  Drug War Capitalism and explore these issues. In the conclusion, I write that I consider the book to be an early attempt to articulate and make visible connections between the war on drugs and the expansion of capital. Sadly, as recent events in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero and Tlatlaya, Mexico State, have shown, it is likely to become increasingly obvious that the drug war is in fact a war on the people, waged in large part by US-backed state forces.

Fascism and War: Elite Tools to Crush and Kill Dissent

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By Julie Lévesque

Source: GlobalResearch.ca

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1937 with Adolf Hitler.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1937 with Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Jacques Pauwels is not the kind of historian you often hear about in the mainstream media. He’s obviously not the kind of “expert” they refer to for historical facts. Actually, one crucial propaganda method consists in excluding current events from their historical context.

Listening to Pauwels makes one realize the scope of the lies we’ve been fed about the Second World War, fascism and democracy, and how myths related to previous wars need to be upheld in the mainstream discourse to satisfy never ending war propaganda needs.

In a speech held December 15 in Montreal, he explained that World Wars I and II were all about crushing mass revolutionary movements.

The myth of the Good War

Every time Westerners’ approval for war is required, the myth of the good war surfaces: the Second World War was a good war, a necessity to quench Hitler’s blood thirst. Pauwels tears this myth apart, uncovering the vicious nature of the western elite.

The reasons for the US involvement in World War II lie in the social-economic conditions of the time, not in an outpouring of compassion destined to save humanity from fascism. The US elite was actually in favor of fascism, a very convenient tool to crush the mass revolutionary movement embodied by the Russian Revolution and the USSR.

WWII was in fact a continuity of WWI. “We are always told that WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but it’s not true”, Pauwels says. It is indeed a well established myth carried on by various sources, whether history is written by “thousands of eminent experts, scholars, and leaders” like in Encyclopedia Britannica, or by just about anybody, like in Wikipedia:

The outbreak of war

With Serbia already much aggrandized by the two Balkan Wars (1912–13, 1913), Serbian nationalists turned their attention back to the idea of “liberating” the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, head of Serbia’s military intelligence, was also, under the alias “Apis,” head of the secret society Union or Death, pledged to the pursuit of this pan-Serbian ambition. Believing that the Serbs’ cause would be served by the death of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph, and learning that the Archduke was about to visit Bosnia on a tour of military inspection, Apis plotted his assassination. (World War I, Encyclopedia Britannica)

The immediate trigger for war was the 28 June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. This set off a diplomatic crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia,[10][11] and international alliances formed over the previous decades were invoked. Within weeks, the major powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. (World War I, Wikipedia)

 

Both WWI and WWII had two dimensions: the vertical dimension, namely the rivalry between empires, and the horizontal one, class warfare, Pauwels explains.

These wars were actually the best way for the western elite to cope with the ever growing revolutionary and democratic movements fueled by dire economic conditions and which threatened the established order.

In Nietzsche’s view for example, Pauwels says “war was the solution against revolution, since in a war, there are no discussions, like there is in a democracy. In a war, the minority, the elite, decides and the majority, the proletarians, obey.”

For members of the elite like Malthus, “the system could not be the cause of poverty since they were profiting from it. The cause of poverty was the poor: there were too many of them. Therefore the solution to poverty and threatening revolutionary movements was simply to eliminate poor people and what better solution than war to kill poor people?”

After WWI though, “revolution was no longer a simple idea but rather something concrete: the Soviet Union.” That’s when fascism came to the rescue. “Fascism was the instrument used by the elite to further the objectives of 1914, namely put an end to revolutions and communism.”

Communism and socialism were gaining worldwide momentum after WWI. “The German industrial and financial elite wished to crush the revolutionary movement and destroy the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler was their instrument.”

According to popular belief Western leaders were defending democracy, engaged in a war against Germany to save humanity from fascism and the US involvement in the war led to the downfall of Hitler’s war machine. Nothing is further from the truth. “Hitler was supported by other European countries and the US because they wanted him to destroy the USSR, the cradle of the revolution.” The exact opposite occurred: it was the USSR that defeated Nazi Germany, losing over 20 million souls in the battle.

The US even recruited the best Nazi scientists, technicians and engineers to work for them after the war. That piece of history called Operation Paperclip (picture below) has yet to find its way in Encyclopedia Britannica.

WWII was the victory of American Imperialism, a term which is rarely used today even if it best describes the reality the world has been living in ever since.

But even more surprising is the surviving myth that we are going to war to save the world from evil dictators or terrorists and that the western world fights for freedom and democracy. Thanks to the “stenographers of power”, the tactic is still reliable and used several decades later.

Visit Jacques Pauwels’ web site at http://www.jacquespauwels.net/about/. His articles and books are available in several languages. See also Jacques Pauwels’ articles on Global Research.

The Dire State of Our Nation (What You Won’t Hear from the Politicians)

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

No matter what the politicians might say about how great America is, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding. Consider the following facts:

Our government is massively in debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $18 trillion. More than a third of our debt is owned by foreign countries, namely China and Japan.

Our education system is abysmal. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education ($115,000 per student), we rank 36th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science, far below most of our Asian counterparts. Even so, we continue to insist on standardized programs such as Common Core, which teach students to be test-takers rather than thinkers.

Our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to crash through your door if they suspect you’re up to no good, now have radars that allow them to “see” through the walls of your home.

Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that rely on the inmates for cheap labor.

We are no longer a representative republic. The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a recent survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

We’ve got the most expensive, least effective health care system in the world compared to other western, industrialized nations.

The air pollution levels are dangerously high for almost half of the U.S. population, putting Americans at greater risk of premature death, aggravated asthma, difficulty breathing and future cardiovascular problems.

Despite outlandish amounts of money being spent on the nation’s “infrastructure,” there are more than 63,000 bridges—one out of every 10 bridges in the country—in urgent need of repair. Some of these bridges are used 250 million times a day by trucks, school buses, passenger cars and other vehicles.

Americans know little to nothing about their rights or how the government is supposed to operate. This includes educators and politicians. For example, 27 percent of elected officials cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, while 54 percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

Nearly one out of every three American children live in poverty, ranking us among the worst in the developed world.

Patrolled by police, our schools have become little more than quasi-prisons in which kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches and lockdowns, and suspended for childish behavior.

We’re no longer innocent until proven guilty.  In our present surveillance state, that burden of proof has now been shifted so that we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Parents, no longer viewed as having an inherent right to raise their children as they see fit, are increasingly being arrested for letting their kids walk to the playground alone, or play outside alone. Similarly, parents who challenge a doctor’s finding or request a second opinion regarding their children’s health care needs are being charged with medical child abuse and, in a growing number of cases, losing custody of their children to the government.

Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.

Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately.

Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later.

If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

Now these are not problems that you can just throw money at. As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, these are problems that will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things.

For starters, we’ll need to actually pay attention to what’s going on around us, and I don’t mean by turning on the TV news, which is little more than government propaganda. Pay attention to what your local city councils are enacting. Pay attention to what your school officials are teaching and not teaching. Pay attention to whom your elected officials are allowing to wine and dine them.

Most of all, stop acting like it really matters whether you vote for a Republican or Democrat, because it doesn’t, and start acting like citizens who expect the government to work for them, rather than the other way around.

While that bloated beast called the federal government may not listen to you, you can have a great impact on your local governing bodies if you’ll just take a stand. This will mean gathering together with your friends and neighbors and, for example, forcing your local city council to start opposing state and federal programs that are ripping you off. And if need be, your local city council can refuse to abide by the dictates that continue to flow from Washington, DC.

All of the signs point to something nasty up ahead. The time to act is now.