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Why America Will Never Hear the Entire Benghazi Story

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By Larry Hancock

Source: WhoWhatWhy.org

The underlying story of Benghazi is one that cannot and will not be talked about in any open session of Congress. This means that Thursday’s hearing featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was nothing but an exercise in futility.

It is the story of a covert CIA operation that was operating from a separate facility in the Benghazi compound that was simply known as the “Annex.” Some two dozen CIA case officers, analysts, translators and special staff were a part of this operation and its security was provided by CIA Global Response Staff (GRS), who had entered the country under diplomatic cover.

The CIA’s mission included arms interdiction — attempting to stop the flow of Soviet-era weapons to Central Africa — and very possibly the organization of Libyan arms shipments to vetted insurgent groups on the ground in Syria.

There is also evidence that the mission was working in concert with military personnel from the Joint Special Operations Group Trans-Sahara. At the time of the attack, an unarmed American surveillance drone was in flight over the territory east of Benghazi and Trans-Sahara military personnel were stationed in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

In contrast, the State Department’s special diplomatic mission facility, classified as “temporary,” was minimally staffed with a rotating series of State Department officers sent to and from Tripoli.

US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had not been in Benghazi for a year. When he arrived for a short stay in September 2012, only a single diplomatic officer was present there, and that officer rotated back to Tripoli upon the ambassador’s arrival. Stevens was accompanied by a communications officer and a handful of Diplomatic Service Security staff. The security personnel provided protection for the ambassador during his travels and meetings in the city. His presence was intended to be extremely low key, but it was exposed in the local media shortly after his arrival.

Fruitless, Meaningless, Pointless Questioning

Asking Clinton to justify maintaining the State Department temporary mission in the face of a worsening security situation is fruitless, given its actual function as a clandestine national security mission cover.

Questioning Clinton about that role would be as meaningless as questioning senior CIA personnel about operational information. Such missions cannot be publicly acknowledged or discussed, and revealing anything about them is strictly prohibited.

The same national security laws constraining State Department and CIA personnel also prevent lawmakers, other than those on select intelligence committees, from being briefed on such missions. And even those privileged individuals could not raise related questions in public — or even in closed sessions that include committee members or staff without the appropriate clearances.

In addition, querying Clinton about her involvement in the immediate response to the attacks is also pointless. The Secretary of State has no legal or operational role in a military response to a diplomatic facility attack. Only National Command Authority (president/secretary of defense) can order a foreign military intervention. The State Department does have Foreign Emergency Support Teams (FEST), composed of personnel from multiple agencies and maintained on alert to respond to crisis. But the FEST teams have no military elements and are dispatched only in the aftermath of a crisis, when the security situation allows. Following an attack their role is damage assessment and recovery.

Earlier investigations have already documented that President Obama ordered a military response immediately upon word reaching Washington. They showed as well that the AFRICOM commander responded to that order right away, directing deployment of the closest military quick reaction units — units which were on station in Spain, training in Eastern Europe, or back in the United States.

There were no armed American aircraft or naval units close enough to respond during the attack, those assets were in operation in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the Horn of Africa in Somalia and Yemen.

Maintaining a Covert Profile

As for the well-equipped paramilitary operatives at the CIA station, according to their own statements, they were initially held back by the CIA station chief — as they had been in other incidents. And the station chief was, in turn, acting under his directive to let local militia groups respond. That practice was intended to maintain the station’s covert profile. Unfortunately, it was not consistent with providing any real time defense for the State Department compound.

Given all of the above, it is clear why the hearing quickly turned into a game of “pin the tail on the donkey.” As Democrats have claimed all along — and some Republicans have recently admitted — the committee’s work is mostly about beating up a political adversary and not at all about advancing the security of American diplomats abroad.

 

Larry Hancock conducts investigative and historical research in the areas of intelligence and national security. He has studied Benghazi in regard to both its covert aspects and the issues it raises for diplomatic security. That work is published in Shadow Warfare, A History of America’s Undeclared Wars (Counterpoint, 2014) and his most recently published book, Surprise Attack, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi (Counterpoint, Sept. 2015).

Why Hillary Won the Debate (Even though She Didn’t)

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By Gary Leupp

Source: Dissident Voice

CNN and Facebook co-sponsored last week’s Democratic presidential frontrunners’ “debate.” After the event, CNN conducted a poll. “Who won the debate?” it asked. The result: 83% Bernie Sanders; 12% Hillary Clinton.

Facebook also took a poll. “Who do you think won?” Over 79% responded, “Bernie Sanders.”

The CNN editors’ take? “CLINTON’S CONFIDANT SWEEP.”

Slate conducted a poll. “Who won the presidential debate?” asked the magazine. 75% of respondents said Bernie Sanders; 18% gave it to Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton won,” reported Slate “senior writer” Josh Vorhees exuberantly. “She just needed to be solid in the debate. Instead, she was spectacular.”

Spectacular! with 18% of Slate’s own polling numbers. Go figure.

“Who do you think won?” asked Time Magazine. The response?  Bernie Sanders: 70%, Hillary Clinton 16%.

The Time headline:  “CLINTON IN CONTROL.”

Are you disgusted yet? This goes far beyond distortion, and far beyond the tampering with facts that characterized Soviet-style reporting in Izvestia and Pravda in the decade before the USSR collapsed. This is in-your-face rejection of empirical reality, to say nothing of an insult to the viewers polled. The entire mainstream news media is complicit.

Imagine if the “free” press—free to publish whatever its corporate editors want, including even the truth, at their discretion—had sought to spin this story differently.

“POLLS SHOW BIG WIN FOR SANDERS,” CNN might have proclaimed, between commercials.

“A great night for Sanders,” Slate might have announced.

“SANDERS TROUNCES CLINTON,” Time might have acknowledged.

But no, and this is par for the course. The TV cable news anchors took ages to concede that, well, yes, maybe Jed Bush—despite his solid RNC support and Wall Street’s firm endorsement—is not the inevitable GOP candidate. They’ve had to acknowledge that (for whatever reasons) Donald Trump’s actually striking a much deeper chord than warmonger Dubya’s little brother among likely voters.

But they’re stubbornly refusing to recognize some things they don’t want to see—things that don’t follow their script.

They don’t understand that people in their twenties who constitute the 75-year-old Sanders’ support base have no problem with “socialism” but rather have lots of problems with Wall Street. These “millenials” are even—horrors!—increasingly inclined to question the national god of capitalism itself. It has fewer positive connotations to them than it did for their parents who grew up during the Cold War and were subjected to its particular brainwashing agenda.

That’s the sort of brainwashing that allows Trump, a demagogue preying on the most abjectly ignorant to tell cheering crowds that he calls Sanders “a ‘socialist, slash, communist,’ okay? ‘Cause that’s what he is!”

‘Cause that’s what he is! Sanders is a communist. End of story. End of rational thought.

I myself am not a Sanders supporter. He’s nowhere nearly left enough for me. But then I’m not a supporter of the whole bogus, skewed, money-driven two-party electoral system itself, which seems designed to hoodwink people, channel their energies into itself, and then produce disillusionment soon after the election, as the elected official reneges on promises and proved to be anything other than a harbinger of “change.” The system is wired to then hoodwink people again, re-channel their energies (again back into itself), bouncing people back and forth between two hopelessly corrupt parties that are really two factions of a single corporate party.

The system tells us, “If you don’t vote, you have nothing to say” and reduces political involvement to endorsing one of its (safe) choices. It excludes from the debate stage even the discussion of needed radical change. The electoral process is designed to keep you out of the street (where history is really made) and lead you into a box, like a confessional booth or a porno video cubicle, a private space in which you’re touched by something greater than yourself and leave with a sense of gratification. You were a good citizen. You exercised your precious right to VOTE and did your part!

Casting that ballot in private is supposed to make you feel good about yourself, as a participant in the state. It’s supposed to make you think that, since you actually participated in the construction of the existing polity, when you talk about what it does, you can accept personal responsibility for its crimes.

For example, you might say: “We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq.” In doing so you implicitly include yourself—despite your disagreement—among those who actually did the vicious deed. I prefer to say, “Leave me out of that ‘we,’ since I had nothing to do with it. I fought against it, tooth and nail, attending every anti-war demonstration I could and railing against it to all who would listen.”

“Well, our government did it,” you might correct yourself. “We voted for it.” But I will reply I didn’t; I stayed at home on election day, 2000. It’s like I was invited to a party that day, and disliking all who’d be there, I politely declined to attend.

When you vote, you vote not so much for a person as for the system itself, validating it and the rules surrounding the procedure. Casting the ballot is the state’s highest ritual, the individual’s most intimate connection with the state. It makes you feel one with it. It’s rather like taking the Holy Communion at mass. You’re swallowing something, and making a statement of faith: I believe in this system!

This (corporate) system you vote for, every time you vote at all, commands the (corporate) media to such an extent that it can do what we see in the reportage cited above. It can turn reality on its head and get away with it, whether it’s shaping public opinion about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. successes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Syrian “moderates” gaining against Assad, or victory in a farcical televised debate.

Whatever you think about Sanders, is it not outrageous that the mass media can obscure his plain victory in that exercise as a triumph for Hillary Clinton? Even a “spectacular” win? Isn’t it clear that she was pronounced the victor not because she actually won out over Sanders but because powerful people steering the “free” press needed her to do so?

As PR/disinformation master Karl Rove once put it (and this should be repeated as often as we repeat that wonderful quote from the imprisoned Goebbels at Nuremberg about using fear to build mass support for war): “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

It’s not a sentiment unique to Republicans. Recall how, during the 2012 Democratic national convention, the crowd clearly voted down the inclusion of a line supporting Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel in its platform. The change required a two-thirds majority of the vote, according to party rules. At least half the delegates voted against it.

Still, the convention chairman to the outrage of many present announced (after some hushed consultation) that the “Ayes” carried the day. So much for democracy at the “Democratic” Party’s convention.

The mainstream press, by and large, wants Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for president. Wall Street’s leading candidates are Jeb Bush and Clinton; both are beloved of big money and either one will do. Sanders (even though in office he would likely buckle to their will, the same way Greece’s “socialist” Alexis Tsipras buckled to the IMF and European Central Bank) is anathema to Wall Street. And the connections between Wall Street, the Washington power elite, and the press are—to use the Chinese expression—as close as lips and teeth.

Finance capital rules the world and will do so until the “millions and millions” Bernie keeps talking about find some way to effectively challenge it.

Thus Sanders could not win the debate, even though he did. And Hillary was destined to win the debate, even though she didn’t. Get it? And isn’t it great you have the right to vote for her?

 

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. Read other articles by Gary.

The MH17 Big Lie: The Russians Did It

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: Steve Lendman Blog

Downing MH17 was a classic false flag, the scheme likely cooked up in Washington, using its Kiev puppet regime to do its dirty work, then point fingers the wrong way.

The Russians DID NOT down MH17 – nor Donbass freedom fighters. No credible evidence suggests it. Only fools and liars believe it.

What could they possibly gain from downing a commercial airliner, unrelated to conflict on the ground, killing 298 passengers and crew members.

Washington and/or Kiev had motive and opportunity, gaining plenty by pointing fingers the wrong way, supported by the usual scoundrel media chorus, featuring Big Lies and innuendos.

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) is a front for US imperial policy. Joint Investigation Team (JIT) countries include the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine – conspiratorially allied against Russia, Washington pulling the strings behind the scene.

DSB’s final report is out. It stopped short of naming perpetrators, suggested Russia and Donbass freedom fighters were responsible without saying so.

It claimed a (a no longer in use Soviet era) Russian-made Buk 9M38-series (surface-to-air) missile (used only by Ukraine, not Russia’s military) downed MH17 – refuting earlier reports based on high-resolution photos showing cockpit damage from likely 30 millimeter air-to-air cannon fire.

Eyewitnesses on the ground saw a Ukrainian warplane trailing MH17. Russian radar tracked a Ukrainian SU-25 jet fighter within three km of the fated aircraft.

An unsatisfactorily answered question is why Ukrainian air traffic control let MH17 overfly a war zone. Other commercial airliners avoided it for obvious reasons.

Did Kiev authorities deliberately put MH17 in harm’s way to down it and blame Russia and Donbass freedom fighters for their crime?

Did Washington and Ukrainian fascists jointly plan the incident? Further US and EU sanctions followed plus relentless, irresponsible Putin-bashing.

DSB’s September 9 preliminary report said MH17 “broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.”

Its final report claimed a missile was launched from an Eastern Ukraine 320 square km area without pinpointing the launch site.

Its chairman, Tjibbe Joustra, suggested it came from rebel-held territory without specifically saying so. He claimed “Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit. This warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the BUK surface-to-air missile system.”

It was fired from “an area where the borders have fluctuated a lot, but it’s a territory where the pro-Russian rebels have laid down the law.”

A White House statement ludicrously called DSB’s report an “important milestone in the effort to hold accountable those responsible.”

A criminal investigation is underway. Dutch Prime Minister insultingly asked Russia for “complete cooperation.” The DSB ignored key Moscow supplied evidence.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed it, saying: “There are facts delivered by the Russian side that for unclear reasons are being apparently ignored.”

Moscow “repeatedly expressed its disappointment over the lack of proper level of cooperation and engagement of the Russian experts into the investigation.”

Russia’s Roasaviation deputy head Oleg Storchevoy accused the DSB of ignoring “comprehensive information” presented by Moscow, suggesting willful coverup – in a letter to the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAA).

Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey presented its own findings, based on exhaustive study and sophisticated simulations of what likely happened, disputing DSB’s conclusions, saying MH17 wasn’t downed from rebel-held territory.

CEO Yan Novikov said an older, out-of-date Buk missile (last produced in 1986), no longer used by Russia, still used by Ukraine, downed MH17. DSB members ignored Almaz-Antey’s findings.

The incident occurred on July 17, 2014. The instant knee-jerk reaction from Washington, other Western capitals, and go-along media scoundrels (still unchanged) was “Russia did it” – despite no evidence suggesting it then or now.

A sampling of headlines following release of the DSB’s final report include the following:

New York Times: “Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Most Likely Hit by Russian-Made Missile, Inquiry Says”

Washington Post: “The Latest: Ex-war crimes judge: Dutch report refutes Russia”

Wall Street Journal: “Dutch Investigators Say MH17 Was Downed by Russian-Made Missile”

Los Angeles Times: “Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: Report says Russian-made missile system downed jet”

Chicago Tribune: “Dutch Safety Board: Russian-made Buk missile downed MH17 in Ukraine”

BBC: “MH17 Ukraine disaster: Dutch Safety Board blames (Russian-made Buk) missile”

The disturbing innuendo from all these headlines implies Russian-made means Russian-launched.

It bears repeating what should be clear to everyone. Russia DID NOT down MH17 – nor Donbass freedom fighters. Kiev fascists, very likely complicit with Washington, were responsible, wanting Putin blamed for their crime.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

The Internet Doesn’t Exist

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By Jacob Silverman

Source: The Baffler

The Internet has been very busy. In just the last week, Caitlyn Jenner broke the Internet, but she also united it. The FCC made war on the Internet. The Internet shamed a couple. The Internet had a dark side, Nikki Finke was barred from the Internet, the Supreme Court made the Internet less safe for women, the Internet named a famous fetus, the Internet did stuff with a superhero movie, and the Internet changed. A girl also won the Internet, Jack White had a difficult history with the Internet, and the Internet “shafted” a Canadian journalist.

“The Internet” is the universal straw man, a hero or villain for every occasion. The Internet, the Internet, the Internet—this decentralized communications network has long been granted a proper noun and practically a degree of sentience. Yet few people talk about “the Telephone” as if it were some person or place, though perhaps they once did. This eagerness to grant the Internet some degree of autonomy—to make it into an actor, an entity—stems in part from its apparent abstraction. Where does all this information come from? As Ray Bradbury famously said, “To hell with you and to hell with the Internet. It’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Bradbury wasn’t just slipping into kneejerk techno-fear. He was also guilty of the same fallacy that crops up again and again in digital journalism: the assumption that the Internet is some monolithic mass, a discrete population or interest group. “It’s distracting,” Bradbury said, without specifying what “it” was.

But in another, more important way, Bradbury was absolutely right: the Internet doesn’t exist.

A couple years ago, Rachel Law, a grad student at Parsons at the time, had this to say: “The ‘Internet’ does not exist. Instead, it is many overlapping filter bubbles which selectively curate us into data objects to be consumed and purchased by advertisers.” As she also said, a bit less academically, “Browsing is now determined by your consumer profile and what you see, hear and the feeds you receive are tailored from your friends’ lists, emails, online purchases, etc.”

What we call the Internet—and what web writers so lazily draw on for their work—is less a hive mind or a throng or a gathering place and more a personalized set of online maneuvers guided by algorithmic recommendations. When we look at our browser windows, we see our own particular interests, social networks, and purchasing histories scrambled up to stare back at us. But because we haven’t found a shared discourse to talk about this complex arrangement of competing influences and relationships, we reach for a term to contain it all. Enter “the Internet.”

The Internet is a linguistic trope but also an ideology and even a business plan. If your job is to create content out of (mostly) nothing, then you can always turn to something/someone that “the Internet” is mad or excited about. And you don’t have to worry about alienating readers because “the Internet” is so general, so vast and all-encompassing, that it always has room. This form of writing is widely adaptable. Now it’s common to see stories where “Facebook” or “Twitter” stands in for the Internet, offering approval or judgment on the latest viral schlock. Choose your (anec)data carefully, and Twitter can tell any story you want.

We fall back on “the Internet” because it gives us a rhetorical life raft to hang onto amidst an overwhelming tide of information or a piece of sardonic shorthand to utter with a wink and a grimace, much like “never read the comments.” It also reflects a strange irony about today’s culture: despite being highly distributed, and despite offering an outlet for every subculture and niche interest and political quirk, what we think of the Internet often does feel rather uniform and monolithic.

This impression is partly based in fact; the tech and media industries are currently undergoing a kind of recentralization, exemplified by the rise of massive platforms like Facebook and recent mega-deals, such as Verizon buying AOL or Charter Communications (who?) snapping up Time Warner Cable. Attention is increasingly being manipulated and auctioned off by a handful of big conglomerates. The relegation of Twitter to also-ran in the social media sweepstakes—the loser to Facebook in the rush to industry monopoly—also reflects this centralization. That a company with hundreds of millions of users can seem like a failure only shows how bad the market is at apportioning value. (But there I go falling into abstractions again—as if there is anything called “the market.”)

“The Internet” is easy, a convenient reference point and an essential concept for web journalists tasked with surfacing monetizable content from this great informational morass. Digital culture, or writing about “what people are talking about on the Internet,” is considered its own beat now. But in the same way that someone born in the 1980s might not think of himself as a millennial—an arbitrary distinction crafted by demographers and marketers—a user of an online service is not necessarily from, or part of, the Internet. Even some of the subcultures often held up as part of the Internet are mostly notional. Is “Black Twitter” a specific, homogenous entity, as it’s so often described in news coverage? Or is it more something that people do, a set of social relations acted out by varying groups of mostly black Twitter users?

The more we write about what takes place online as if it occurred in some other world, the more we fail to relate this communication system, and everything that happens through it, to the society around us. To understand the Internet, we have to destroy it as an idea.

Jacob Silverman’s book, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, is out now.

America: Dangerous Curve Ahead

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By Helaine Olen

Source: The Baffler

At some point in the early 1980s, a large yellow placard began turning up in the back window of cars proclaiming “Baby on Board.” At first it seemed a joke, an inadvertent high-sign that the driver was someone who took this parenthood thing a little too seriously. Even as the shiny placards became omnipresent, a lot of us dismissed them as yet another badge of Baby Boomer self-importance.

Of course we were wrong. It’s now conventional wisdom that the Baby on Board sign was one of the precursors to a more widespread change in parenting from a time when, to us, children appear to have been neglected to our present situation in which doting over children is every parent’s self-congratulatory purpose in life. But those Baby on Board announcements dovetailed with something else too, something we don’t normally connect them with: the decline in the United States’ spending on infrastructure. As we were begging people to give special consideration to this babied-up car or that screaming station wagon, even as we were increasingly crazed with protecting our own individual children, we were not exactly securing their future.

According to a report released last year by the Council on Foreign Relations, spending on transportation went from more than one percent of the gross national product in the 1960s to just under one percent by 1980. That latter percentage point, which would have seemed at the time to be low, is now considered a 35-year high point. If you are looking for a common point of reference for our nation’s crumbling bridges—which received a C+ for maintenance from the American Society of Civil Engineers for 2013—or train derailments, like last week’s fatal Amtrak wreck outside of Philadelphia, look hard at that number. The most recent grade for our overall infrastructure? A D+.

The collapse in public funding for our transportation needs did not lead to anger by the vast majority of the population, however. While our leaders ran the country off the road and into the ditch, we coped. And truly, no one seemed to want to pay the tax bill to fill potholes, but we were happy to spend more and more of our money on things ranging from ridiculous bright yellow signs begging other drivers to take care of our children to purchasing ever larger cars and trucks that we thought would keep us personally safe, and damn everyone else.

Those driving SUVs certainly thought they would receive a safety boost, and didn’t seem to care that it came at the cost of driving a weaponized car known for a design that actively and provably caused disproportionate damages in collisions. As New York Times Hong Kong bureau chief Keith Bradsher noted in his 2003 book High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, market research showed many consumers buying the behemoth automobile were “self-centered,” willing to “endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety,” adding “the public perception that SUVs provide considerable protection in a crash has been an important factor in their sales for many years.”

And if something did go wrong in an SUV? Well, the sad tale of Ellen Brody, the suburban New York City woman who drove her Mercedes SUV onto the tracks at a notorious Westchester County Metro-North crossing this past winter during a massive traffic jam, is instructive. Six people—including Brody—died when the safety gates came down and, apparently discombobulated, she drove onto the tracks instead of backing up.

But inquiries into how and why Ellen Brody ended up making her fatal wrong move seem almost designed to obfuscate the fact that if it hadn’t been this luckless woman, then it would have been someone else on those tracks eventually. As it turns out, there have been transportation reports going back to 1970 begging for investment in the area and recommending sane reforms such as eliminating the crossing entirely or at least adding gates and lights to make the sight lines significantly safer for drivers. None of it happened.

The Amtrak derailment last week is bringing us more of the same blame game. There’s the open question of why the train’s engineer permitted the train to reach 106 miles-per-hour as it approached a curve with a speed limit of 50 miles-per-hour, for example. And the accident exposes the political lobbying that persistently enervates our society, possibly preventing the installation of a safety system that would have slowed this train automatically. These are all legitimate and important lines of inquiry to pursue. But the search for individual villains and lunge toward stop-gap safety solves is also a wreckage clearance and scrubbing operation, allowing us to forget that the number one cause of the Amtrak accident is the United States’ tax and spending policies and priorities that have left us with transportation system falling apart a little more every day. The kids grow up, the world spins in reverse.

Hmm. What about those goddamn Baby on Board signs? A survey from 2012 found they might have contributed to an increase in car accidents by blocking driver sight lines. Self-absorption left too many of us blind to the curve ahead.

Helaine Olen is the author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, a contributing editor for Pacific Standard, and a regular Slate contributor.

Life Imitates “Black Mirror”

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Fans of the superb dystopian series “Black Mirror” (including myself) had our collective minds blown by recent claims (first widely reported by the Daily Mail) that British Prime Minister David Cameron performed a sexual act with a pig carcass as part of a depraved initiation ritual. The story would be very bizarre even had it not mirrored a key plot point of the premiere episode of Dark Mirror. No doubt besieged by questions about the recent news, Dark Mirror creator Charlie Brooker took to Twitter to state: “Just to clear it up: nope, I’d never heard anything about Cameron and a pig when coming up with that story. So this weirds me out.”

These are the most recent statements on the topic from Brooker’s Twitter feed (as of 9/21/15):

  1. 16h16 hours ago

    Perhaps the least prescient line from the script.

    Embedded image permalink
    4:18 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    2,262 retweets 2,519 favorites

     

    16h16 hours ago

    I hope White Bear doesn’t come true next.

    4:17 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    1,280 retweets 1,563 favorites

     

    19h19 hours ago

    Just to clear it up: nope, I’d never heard anything about Cameron and a pig when coming up with that story. So this weirds me out.

    4:17 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    5,223 retweets 5,143 favorites

 

Read more about David Cameron’s days of elitist debauchery at Oxford.

Was this a case of insider knowledge, extra sensory perception, retrocausality, premonition, intuition or coincidence? Watch the full episode and judge for yourself.

Was Afghanistan’s Invasion Also Based on Lies?

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It’s Time for a Real Investigation

By Jack Balkwill

Source: Dissident Voice

There appears to be a bigger lie than “weapons of mass destruction.”  It’s not simply that the illegal invasion of Iraq was based on lies, but that the entire “war on terrorism” is likely based on lies.

We were told by our government that Afghanistan was invaded for giving shelter to Osama bin Laden, who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  Mainstream press have pushed this so repeatedly that “9/11″ and “Osama bin Laden” have become interchangeable.

While working on this piece I asked the first three people I ran into at my local grocery store “Who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks?,”  three times getting “Osama bin Laden” for replies.  This is not scientific, yet it makes one wonder how this would work out in national polling.

But what if bin Laden was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks despite the drumbeat of government officials and the corporate press?  What if there has been a rush to judgment to make it appear the Bush regime was taking definitive action?

The invasion of Afghanistan certainly wasn’t about the Taliban – the Bush regime gave the Taliban $43 million in “aid” only four months before the 9/11 attacks, so were on friendly terms.

Following are three reasons to question official sources on their casus belli for invading Afghanistan.

Attempts to Peacefully Resolve the Issue

First, before the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban offered to try bin Laden in exchange for evidence that he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

President Bush provided no evidence, and invaded Afghanistan instead.

After the start of the U.S. air campaign, the Taliban offered to send bin Laden to a third country for trial if evidence could be provided that he had been involved in the 9/11 attacks – a proposal the United States also promptly rejected.

Why not provide evidence, if it were available, to prevent a war?  It was obvious that the people of Afghanistan would defend their country from a foreign invasion, as they had since Alexander the Great invaded, and there would be a great loss of life (see Roman Empire, British Empire, USSR, etc.).

There can only be two answers– that there was no evidence supporting the cause for invasion, or that former President Bush is a psychopath who doesn’t care about human life, so contemptuously ignored the request for evidence.

Bin Laden’s Denials

Second, bin Laden denied, more than once, in the months following 9/11, that he was involved in the dirty deed.  Less than a week after the 9/11 attacks, al Jazeera quoted bin Laden:  “The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it.  I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seem to have been planned by people for personal reasons.”

In an interview with Pakistan’s Karachi Ummat on 28 September 2001, bin Laden was quoted,

Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. … I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.

This is a translation from Arabic to Urdu to English, and may not be entirely clear.  But for those who believe bin Laden was lying, I would suggest they come up with a motive for such a lie.  The USA had offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture, and President Bush had threatened “I want justice, and there’s an old poster out West that says, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive,’” so bin Laden had nothing to gain from such a lie – he was condemned either way.  Bin Laden’s followers would have admired him as a great hero for having taken on the USA, so he had much to gain by accepting responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, were it a fact.

Demonization

Third, there was an extensive effort to demonize bin Laden, at times with apparently false charges.  Why would this be necessary for one who was guilty?

Our government and corporate media, as one on National Security State issues, made him out to be abominable, and without providing evidence, unceasingly assumed his guilt.  Recordings were blasted and headlined in Western corporate print and electronic media of bin Laden accepting responsibility for 9/11.  The public were not given the same eyeball-grabbing headlines when the recordings were proven to be likely bogus.

Here is a Guardian report showing that Swiss Scientists suggested that an audio tape of bin Laden taking responsibility was likely faked, although widely broadcast in the corporate press as evidence of his involvement in 9/11 attacks.

Here’s a BBC report showing how the “smoking gun” video may have been faked, again, after the corporate press hyped the video as incontrovertible evidence.

Conclusion

The official version, that 19 Arab hijackers were responsible, has flaws.  One flaw was that many of the alleged hijackers have been found alive and well since 9/11.  Of course, it may be that the hijackers used pseudonyms to conceal their identities.

But getting beyond these 19 Arabs is difficult because they are all dead and cannot be interviewed.  Official government investigations into 9/11, much of which are classified, look like reflexive actions to neatly tie up loose ends rather than serious inquiries.

Certainly, as Ward Churchill pointed out (and lost his job for raising the issue), Arabs had a clear motive for the 9/11 attacks, with the UN revealing, only two years earlier, that the sanctions pushed mainly by the USA on the people of Iraq resulted in over 500,000 deaths of children under age five, mostly Arab, and most Arabs were aware of this and seething with anger.

To jump to the conclusion that bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks causes one to wonder, “Why then did the FBI never bring charges against bin Laden for the hijackings and murders?  Why did the wanted posters (up to his death he was on the FBI ten most wanted list) not mention the biggest crime, though they mentioned smaller terrorist incidents as reasons for his being on the list?

We may never know if bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, but his involvement was used as the excuse for invading Afghanistan and slaughtering a massive number of people, based on the assumption that they gave bin Laden refuge.

Just as nobody has been charged with a crime for the illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies, it would appear that an investigation is in order involving the justification behind invading Afghanistan, starting with the matter of proof that bin Laden was directly involved.  The American people and the people of Afghanistan have every right to be presented with the evidence.

Jack Balkwill is an activist in Virginia. He can be reached at libertyuv@hotmail.com Read other articles by Jack.

Related article: Who Was Really Behind the 9/11 Attacks?

“Breaking the Fear Factor”: Opposing War, Financial Fraud and State Terrorism, Dismantling Propaganda

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By Peter Koenig

Source: Global Research

We are living in a (western) world dominated by neoliberal dictators, criminals and crooks. And many of us, impregnated with the human idiocy, as so well described by  Andre Vltcheck (The West Spreads Intellectual Idiocy) are every day deeper and deeper immersed into fear – fear of action, fear of what’s next – fear of losing our comfort zone. The western propaganda machine paid for by the corporate and financial oligarchy through the presstitute media is constantly indoctrinating the little we have left of our free-thinking brains.

Fear is everywhere. People who are afraid can easily be manipulated. People who are afraid obey. The system needs people who don’t resist. Renegades are potential drone targets. The Big Constant that pervades our western world with ambitions to also infiltrate Asia – is terrorism. Man-made terrorism – or better – elite-made terrorism; George Orwell would have called it Big Brother-made terrorism; terrorism with a particular purpose: spreading fear and submission.

On Friday, 21 August 2015, on a train from Amsterdam to Paris, according to the New York Times, “a heavily armed gunman opened fire aboard a packed high-speed train, traveling from Amsterdam to Paris [….] wounding several passengers before he was tackled and subdued” by two American military servicemen (on leave), who were helped by a third American. According to French officials, they “averted a mass killing.”- The gunman was armed with an automatic pistol, an AK47 and a knife (NYT annotation: AK47 is Al Qaeda’s preferred weapon). The Americans were coincidentally and suitably near to subdue the shooting 26 year-old Moroccan, a convenient Arab, who was taken into custody when the train stopped in Arras, France, just beyond the French-Belgian border. No doubt, he will be squeezed for confession. He may try to escape – and then may be shot death. Amen.

The French anti-terrorist unit took immediately charge of the investigation. The unit is known to work in utmost secrecy. Whatever news comes out of it is most likely ‘cooked’ to suit the system.

The NYT proclaims that the three Americans saved the train from a massacre. Nobody was killed. Just one of the American heroes was injured. Hollande thanked Obama for the brave Americans’ exemplary behavior and for preventing a train carnage. Propaganda all over. In America we trust – is dogma number one; dogma number two is – there is no save place on earth.

Fear everywhere, but America is there to help. Danger lingers at every corner. A terrorist may be just next door. Just give yourself up to Big Brother and he won’t let you down.

The first step towards sub-doing fear is asking yourself: Who invented and fabricated terrorism in the first place? In countries and entire regions ravaged by Washington incited wars and conflicts, terrorism is the expression of hopelessness, of wrath – of fighting back, when there is nothing left to lose. Look at the Middle East. A battlefield of nations destroyed by years of war – people living in ruins, in miserable squalor; some escape – and become the endless and EU loathed stream of refugees. According to the UN High Commissioner, there are more than 50 million refugees worldwide.

People take-up arms in self-defense. The west calls them terrorists. A term popularized by the media. A term that instills fear. – Imagine a world where the Judeo-Christian aggressors would suddenly see the light and stop spreading wars and conflicts and subjugating the world – peace would break out and settle in – terrorism, one of the key reasons for fear, would have no purpose to persist – fear would die, trust and solidarity would grow. The empires worst enemy: solidarity, friendship, and trust among people.

All wars and conflicts are multi-purpose. They boost the elite-dominated war industry; in the US more than 50% of GDP; they help dominate and subjugate people, exploit their resources, and are trailblazing a path towards Full Spectrum Dominance – world hegemony. They also help one of the ‘elite’s’ key objective – depopulating the world, so the elite may live longer with the ever scarcer resources of our gradually depleted planet. Reducing world population is a key objective of the Bilderberg Society – voiced by Henry Kissinger already in the 1960s. Recently I overheard one buddy telling another: I hate wars; but the only good thing about wars is – they reduce world population.

That is the horrendous level of immorality and greed to which humanity has sunk. – We the over-fed west may not get enough in an ‘overpopulated world’ (sic), therefore let’s reduce the human stock by killing off the under-people.

According to FAO – the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – with the current available agricultural technology Mother Earth could aliment at least 12 billion people, almost double of today’s world population. Fear and greed decimate our rational thinking. The me-me-me of abject western consumerism – and the fear of losing it – overwhelms our innate sense of human solidarity.

Remember the infamous Christmas Day 2009 ‘underwear bomber’ on a Northwest Airliner approaching Detroit wanting to detonate a plastic bomb sewed into his undies? He was suitably identified as a Nigerian Al Qaeda fighter and also conveniently and par hazard filmed by a passenger in the back row — This was such an amateurish attempt to spread fear, that after a short while even the media didn’t want to lose their ‘credibility’ (sic) and shut up.

Is there ever a thought among the fearful that such terrorists might be ‘planted’ by those who are served by the fear they cause?

A former CIA official recently admitted that virtually all so-called terror acts in the US and most of those in other parts of the world since (and including – added by me) 9/11 are false flags. With every false flag, the system can tighten its grip on the population under the pretext of ‘protection and security’. The populace literally asks for it – please protect us, please come to our houses, put them upside down and see whether there are terrorists hiding in our closets… that’s how the Boston people reacted after the April 2013 false-flag Marathon bombing.

Since 9/11 US citizens have lost more than 90% of their civil rights; first through the Patriot Act, then by subsequent extensions of police ‘protective measures’. Most US citizens are not even aware of the power they gave up to the police which has now the authority to invade people’s homes at will, without search warrant or explanation and then find anything justifying the arrest and indefinite confinement without trial of an inconvenient person. The ‘suspects’ are mostly Muslims. These days it’s easy selling to the brainwashed western world a Muslim as a criminal or terrorist.

Yet, the Boston Marathon false flag was of such low grade that anybody with a little bit of reason left, could recognize that the bombs were detonated by special forces with the mere purpose of implanting the notion that even a relatively progressive thinking university town like Boston is in danger of terrorism. Therefore let’s control the people, let’s not this ‘intellectual Boston crowd’ choose its own ways, abandoning the sinking ship. All sheep must be kept together in false solidarity, of course.

The two Chechnyan brothers were pre-identified, they had no clue what may eventually happen to them. They conveniently had a police record, maybe fabricated, to also hurt Russia, hitting two flies with the same stone. The Chechnyan ‘malfeasance’ could easily be sold to the public. One of the two alleged suspects was killed – and silenced – in an artificially created ‘shootout’. The other one is in solidarity confinement and is not allowed to talk, not even in court – condemned to die – soon to be silenced too.

Public events henceforth project fear. – People, please stand up against police and state-sponsored violence and terrorism! – Analyze for yourselves! Don’t believe the lies spread by the mainstream media. Yes, it takes a little effort, seeking out the truth and reading the news on internet – Global Research, Information Clearing House, Sputnik News, VNN, RT, TeleSUR, PressTV, CounterPunch, New Easter Outlook, The Saker – and many more – but it is one of the few chances you have to see the light and stand up for your rights – and get rid of fear.

The Boston false flag bombing, was followed by a similar horror event in Paris, in January this year. The Hebdo Charlie and related supermarket assault killed 17 people. It was opportunely planned at a notoriously anti-Muslim cartoon magazine, executed by CIA-Mossad forces in full connivance with the French secret service

(see http://www.globalresearch.ca/paris-charlie-the-shock-doctrine-par-excellence/5424960).

Two plus one ‘suspects’ with previous police records, were pre-identified. One of them ‘forgets or loses’ casually his ID in the get-away car – the only link the police has to the ‘terrorists’ – they find two, kill them at sight – so they won’t talk anymore. – The third related alleged assassin of a Jewish supermarket at the outskirts of Paris awaited the same fate: death by a police barrage of bullets. A blurred amateur video (maybe by now taken off internet) shows how a hand-cuffed individual is thrown before the wolves outside of the supermarket, to be riddled mercilessly with bullets. Nobody to talk. The truth remains ugly propaganda – propaganda for the system – a system that prevails over and feeds on terrorism. Millions of people, dulled by the event, walked the streets of European cities, solemnly parading placards lettered with “I am Charlie” — millions of people submitted – and still do – to a miserable lie – spreading and perpetuating fear.

Hollande had a justification to tighten the grip around France and within Paris – police everywhere, reducing civil liberties just a tad more – orders from the Washington masters. Being a nominal ‘socialist’ (sic), the emperor doesn’t quite trust him – as he may resent having been forced by the White House to abrogate his country’s lucrative sale of two Mistral type amphibious assault ships to Russia. To dampen any lingering sympathy for Russian President Putin, Hollande had to be reined in; and the spineless French leader (sic) did indeed cave in.

Fear is everywhere. European politicians are all afraid they may be in the crosshairs of the CIA or Pentagon or other US mercenary hit men if they don’t behave. A couple of days ago it was reported that Hollande is now also planning preventive drone assassinations, mimicking his brother-in-crime, Peace Nobel Laureate, Barack Obama. Imagine! – How far can you sink to lick – ehhh – the naked toes of the naked emperor. How far has our western civilization sunk in only the last 30 years – the onset of neoliberalism!

Fear commands everyone – almost. Fear is the public enemy number One – but it can be overcome – with courage, an open mind and foremost an awakened consciousness.

People feel reasonably happy. They feel protected. They gladly trade their civil rights for police and military protection. Terrorism is horrible and it is so unpredictable. It lurks everywhere. And nobody dares to question these bloody fabricated horror events. Nobody dares ask: what motivates the terrorists? How come their number has increased exponentially in the last 15 years? Terror sows more terror. Fear disseminates more fear. More fear facilitates more oppression and manipulation of people – and eventually more terrorism.

Take the massive flood of refugees engulfing Europe. The EU laments the ‘refugee crisis; seemingly not realizing that they helped making it. The Eurocrats cannot deal with the overwhelming influx of refugees. They use the bought media to make people afraid of them. The refugees come from these Arab countries the west is fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’. They are dark-skinned, poor and no-good. They steal our jobs, food and women. The human touch and solidarity of westerners has been annihilated long ago – by the neoliberal doctrine – that knows no mercy, only profit and power. Western powers don’t want these poor homeless beggars within their frontiers. What to do with them? They are a costly nuisance. Most of them are Muslims anyway. There is no space for them.

Would it ever occur to one of those high-flying, arrogant never elected Maastricht politicians to ask ‘why is this onslaught of refugees increasing by the day?’ – They may find the answer in front of their nose, in case they still have some left-over ticking brains. We, Europeans, in full complicity with war-mongering hegemonic Washington have helped destroy their countries, their economies, their jobs, torn apart their families, killed their children, have bombed their very homes to ashes – now they come to seek help from us. These poor people have no choice but asking their hangmen for a bit of mercy, for some crumbs of bread, for some rudimentary shelter. The raped seeks alms from the rapist. It’s the Stockholm syndrome. – Its fear from dying. Maybe the criminals who almost killed them have some humanity left, a bit of mercy – please.

What makes them tick – these criminal hegemonic politicians? Why are they so inhumanly selfish, greedy and violent? The public at large is afraid to even ask. Asking could produce answers that may derange one’s comfort zone. Better don’t ask and follow the rules. Let fear continue to rule.

The NYT also reports, “Stock prices around the world continued to plunge on Friday, threatening to end one of the longest bull runs in the history of the United States stock market.” Fear of losing money is spread. Such ‘market’ fluctuations, as most of us know, have little to do with ‘markets’, be it share or money markets. Money is fabricated by a mouse-click of a bank dishing out debt. Markets are manipulated by banks and political powers for monetary profit and political gains – and to sow fear – fear that something horrendously drastic may happen, may affect our fragile economy – and may foremost affect our stolen well-being. Yes, stolen. Our western riches have been stolen during hundreds of years of abject, murderous colonization of the southern hemisphere. And we continue colonizing them with our modern weapon – MONEY. When banks spread fear, it is to steal the money, pension funds, social systems from us, their faithful clients. Stealing from abroad is not enough.

Rather than fearfully shutting up – wake up! Dare stand up fellow citizen – against the white collar onslaught of fraud and exploitation, against corruption of our elitist neoliberal system! Get rid of those deceiving politicians – the scum of greed and power. Expose them. Neutralize them.

The US as well as the European Commission just enacted laws, allowing banks, effective immediately – to ‘rescue’ themselves by so-called ‘bail-ins’ – meaning, a bank that has overstretched and over-speculated itself into bankruptcy may literally save itself by stealing the money from its depositors and shareholders. – Why does such an edict – not really a law because those who designed the rule are unelected Eurocrats – not prompt an immediate run on the banks? – Why does nobody even protest? – Because people don’t know? Maybe. But Fear – sheer fear from being punished for ‘disobedience’ – is a better explanation.

Instead, our fear makes us trust that such ‘bail-ins’ will always happen to others. We so easily forget what happened only two years ago, in March 2013 to the people of Cyprus, when their deposits were decimated by the infamous ‘haircut’, administered by the highly indebted Cypriot banks, by order of the BCE, with full complicity of the Cypriot elites, who first transferred their fortunes abroad. It was like a trial run. How much would the populace swallow without (too much) protesting? – It worked. The rule is now institutionalized – and nobody says beep. – For fear that worse may follow? – Or for sheer comfort of not moving our butts.

The famous late Howard Zinn said civil disobedience is our – as in ‘we the people’ – strongest weapon against corporate and state injustice and abuse. Today’s version of this wisdom might be for the 99.99% of us, the people, to organize and infiltrate the reigning criminal system and breaking it down from within. Much like did and do the State Department funded Washington-based thinktanks (sic) – initiating the deadly and destructive ‘Arab Spring’, intruding and subverting the European Parliament with bought proxies and fake NGOs – and what they attempt to do in Russia and China, albeit unsuccessfully.

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Back to the NYT article on the plunge of the US stock exchange. Finger-pointing of the guilty is of the order. The fear factor has to be substantiated and enhanced by fault of an ‘outsider’ – in this case China – which according to the NYT has ‘unexpectedly’ devalued its currency, a sign of a troubled economy and a bleak outlook for the economy of other large ‘developing countries’.

Let’s fear the Evil East. – No good may come from the east. The NYT has of course no explanation of truth. Namely that the Chinese Yuan had been artificially over-valued under pressure of the US, and kept within a 2% band of fluctuation by the Chinese authorities. This was also in line with China’s huge dollar reserves, some 1.6 trillion dollars. Relaxation of the fluctuation – letting the rate slide naturally to an expected 3% margin, would not only make China more competitive, but might enhance the currency’s international standing to eventually becoming a new currency in the IMF’s basket constituting the SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights. The SDR is an international virtual money that may be lent to countries which so desire, hence, better balancing the currency exchange risk of the loan. The current SDR basket is composed of only four ‘world’ currencies; the US dollar, the British Pound, the Euro and the Japanese Yen.

If the Yuan can keep its own by floating against other major currencies, chances are it may be admitted by the west-dominated IMF as the fifth currency to the SDR basket, thereby opening the door for the Chinese Yuan to become a major official world reserve currency. Washington may not like it, but may have little choice preventing the currency of the world’s strongest economy to become an officially admitted reserve currency.

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Fear may also be the main reason for the Greek Tsipras Government 180 degree U-turn after the 62% NO vote on July 5 – No to austerity, No to more strangulation by the infamous troika – European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Not Germany, not the troika, are Greece’s strongest enemies; fear is. The Syriza government was pressured, blackmailed, coerced – and possibly even corrupted – into accepting an even more nefarious austerity package than the one against which Greeks voted with an overwhelming NO. If indeed enacted, the new debt commitment of € 86 billion will drive Greece’s debt to GDP ratio way above 200 % – and not one euro will flow into Greece’s economy, her social system, fighting unemployment, bringing back public hospitals, schools, water and electricity.

The Syriza Tsipras Government has committed an illegal act against Greece’s own Constitution which puts the people above parliament and above the executive – as a true democracy should. Tsipras’ anti-democratic act could be undone any time by a simple decision of the Supreme Court. According to international standards, Greece’s accumulated debt is fully illegal and could be erased by a mouse click, the same way it was created. Any contract – in this case debt – concluded under duress, coercion, corruption and / or blackmail does not stand up before an international court of law. This must have been known to the Tsipras government. Yet, Tsipras and his inner circle went to Brussels to ‘negotiate’ ignoring this chance. Instead they sold out their country to the banksters, let themselves be humiliated, ridiculed in the face of their own people, let alone the rest of the world.

Fear was most likely the engine for Tsipras’ behavior. Many of his Syriza colleagues left the government coalition. Ministers who didn’t agree with his politics were fired. He preferred succumbing to fear – fear of the potential wrath that might emanate from the corrupt and criminal EU; from greedy Germany whose neoliberalism is rapidly taking on the colors of Nazism. – German supremacy over Europe – again? – Maybe there were death-threats involved, who knows. It is common practice when power and resources are at stake.

However, a true leader has no fear. He or she stands tall with the moral and ethical obligation to defend the interests of the people who elected him or her. As did Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, Lula, Dilma Rousseff and many more.

Traveling recently all over Greece fear was visible everywhere. When asked, why their inaction in the face of this shameful treason of their PM – no protests, the streets remained calm – the answer was almost uniformly – we are afraid. Afraid of what? Of the police; they shoot at us with rubber bullets, with water cannons – and we don’t know when the military will intervene.

In Delphi, the very town where democracy was born some 2,500 years ago, a shop owner confessed, democracy is dead, not only in Greece – but in Europe, in the world. With this backdrop, a new military takeover was according to him not far-fetched. The Tsipras betrayal was a boon for the rightwing, the Nazi-like ‘Golden Dawn’ – a perfect backing for a new military regime.

After the 1967 US-supported so-called Coup of the Colonels, Greece suffered seven years of a most repressive right wing military dictatorship, where full obedience was of the order, where people disappeared, where the communist party was forbidden and communists were prosecuted and killed, where anything resembling left-wing literature was censured, during which miniskirts, pop-music, long hair, the peace sign and the like were prohibited. This repressive regime has deeply marked the Greek population. They are afraid it may return. They are aware of their country’s vulnerability due to its importance for Washington, hosting the southern-most strategic NATO base. Any deviation of the Washington made and EC imposed rule may bring back the military horror – reminiscent of Costa Cavras’ 1969 extraordinary docudrama “Z”.

Now, the Tsipras Government has resigned – for fear of the domestic consequences of its actions? – A new interim government is to be prepared before the announced 20 September election. Will the radical break-away Syriza faction, the new Unity Party, be able to form a viable coalition and gather the necessary trust to win the coming September elections?

Will Greece after all be able to break the paralyzing streak of fear?

Will Greece set the new standard of fearlessness for the rest of Europe to follow? – Will Greece dare to go the only practical way – exit the unviable euro – go back to her drachma and revamp their economy with public banking for the benefit of the Greek people? – I trust Greece will dare take back her sovereignty, breaking the all-permeating Fear Factor and become a flagship of courage for Europe and for the world.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik News, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance .