Category Archives: society

Manufactured Reality: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

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(Editor’s note: though this article was originally published in 2008 it remains sadly relevant. We’ve appended it with a more recent video from Truthstream Media which needs to be seen and shared.)

Source: Global Research

In order to force a new reality upon any targeted populace, the masters of the universe follow a simple strategy – they immediately make things twice as bad as they intend to keep them, only to take one step back after a short while, so that the new manufactured reality will be easier to accept.  This strategy holds constant from the manipulation of oil prices to the military strategy to rule the world by force.

In the terror war, nuclear terrorism has become the weapon of both first choice and last resort for American war planners.  It was more important to create the impression that nuclear war was imminent than it was to convince the world that we intended to use nuclear weapons as our ace in the hole.  The world had to be terrorized into believing that our insane cowboy president was about to unleash nuclear war upon the world, so that it could be held over the people’s heads.  The world had to be shocked and awed by American military supremacy into submitting to Bush’s demands.

America took two giant steps forward militarily, intending in the end to take one step back from the precipice of actual global thermonuclear war, to a more limited approach that only called for a limited use of “tactical” nukes.  A two-track approach to the war was undertaken; one path leading to immediate global nuclear war and another “democratic” approach, which put-off the use of nuclear weapons until some future action, in order to create unlimited opportunities for subversion where America’s full military might could be brought to bear upon more specific targets.  (Have they already been used?)  http://webwarper.net/ww/~av/www.redress.cc/global/dhalpin20080517

The threat that full-scale nuclear war in the center of the world’s primary energy basket was imminent created a global atmosphere of mortal fear and dread, while covert limited wars were simultaneously pursued.  This was intended to cow both the American people and the people in the targeted countries into submission to presidential dictates. The threat of general nuclear war was used to intimidate the targeted governments into “playing nice” diplomatically, while America interfered in their national affairs, introducing its revolutionary “democratic” form of politics, which included backing extremist groups.

Fear of US nuclear forces provided cover to American agitation in the Middle East region along the lines of “Operation Gladio,” which was used against our own allies in Europe.   In both operations, sympathetic right-wing leaders were found who could be bought, to be groomed by the CIA, to cultivate and organize local opposition groups.  From these agitated groups more violent radicals were found and hired to stage terrorist (“false flag”) attacks upon civilians and the governments, to be blamed upon their local opposition, which were usually actual patriot groups.

The second leg of the neoconservative war doctrine is the spreading of subversion under the cover of implanting democracy by force, and its companion, the spreading of force through democratic means.  Divisive political campaigns in targeted nations (including staged attacks by extremists) were engineered, to split the tribal societies into heavily-armed polarized factions waiting for retribution.

We have this apt description of this divisive American strategy from former Pakistani  ISI agent, turned human rights activist, Khalid Khawaja:

“Many of us call it a battle between East and West, between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian world, but it is neither of these. It is in fact the ruling regimes that want to dictate their will…

Ninety percent of people accept to be ruled, but there always remain some elements who refuse to succumb. They fight for freedom and resist till their last. However, in this conflict of two minorities – those who impose their will and those who resist it – the majority remains the sole victim. Yet people talk about Islam versus Christianity or Judaism. The basic theme remains the same. There is a group of people who want to impose their will, whether they happen to be Christian or Muslim, and there is a group of people who want to resist, and there is a silent majority which is trampled in between.”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GF22Df04.html

Mr. Khawaja continues to delve into the under-discussed cause of the whole war on terror:

“In Afghanistan’s case, a similar game was carried out on a massive scale when Muslim youths from all over the world were brought in by Pakistan and the US [to fight against the Soviets in the 1980s]. They were tools for the empires’ proxy war. The name of jihad was used…it is a question of a state imposing its will. The message is clear: if you are against us, we will kill you and your sympathizers. In this state terrorism, there is no exception, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Pakistan, India, the US or Israel. All are the same.

When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets crushed. When two elephants make love, it is again the grass that gets crushed. Whether states fight with each other or make friendships, it is only the tools who became victims.”

The same deception has been practiced in both Iraq and Afghanistan, to prolong both of those wars until the doctrine could be spread beyond them.  Both countries had been targeted for regime change, but nonetheless, even after the first regime was replaced, the doctrine of creating surrogate militias to promote democratic revolution was still developed in each one, targeting the new regimes.  In each country violent extremist groups, usually identified as “al Qaida related,” were put on the American payroll to fight against US troops and US installed governments.  The hiring and training of these “militia” mercenary groups falls within the recognized definition of treason, “levying war against [the United States].”

That destabilizing doctrine is now being exported into Iran from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where beachheads have been established for a planned assault upon the entire neighborhood. These training centers are terrorist camps, plain and simple.  These are the American trained terrorists who will carry the limited warfare scenario into Iran under cover of the greater threat of nuclear terrorism.  The United States of America is the world’s number one supporter and exporter of terrorism; it always has been.

In order to carry out the Israeli-centric PNAC (Project for a New American Century) terror war plan that they have committed to, Bush and Cheney have doggedly undermined America’s national interests at home and all over the world.  America’s national interest has always been based on advancing liberty and human rights to the whole world, but now, under the neocon plan, these are rights that must be earned.  Bush was sent unto the world to turn reality upon its head.

On a rotating basis, America and Israel took turns slinging threats of nuclear annihilation and libelous invective at Iran and Syria, hyping the threats to intensify the notion that a nuclear attack was becoming imminent.  As Israel and America ramp-up the war-mongering against Iran and Syria, Israel sings out the threats first, then America will provide the chorus and hopefully the highly desired “money shot” afterwards.

As a final machination, to seal America and Israel’s position, the neocon doctrine unlocked the prohibition of the offensive use of nuclear weapons, even in civilian areas.  It is this new free use of nuclear weapon doctrine that is the icing on the cake for those who are plotting to seize the world under the threat of American nuclear terrorism.  Because it is now possible, it is easy to convince us all that our cowboy administration of religious zealots is about to commit an insane act, i.e., unleashing nuclear war to eliminate the possibility of a nuclear war.

Patriotic anti-government voices in this country and in the targeted countries, helped to create a strong public perception that nuclear war was imminent.  Antiwar voices of protest like mine sound a warning to alert the people to the crimes being planned that must be heard, but in so doing, we play into the government scheme by helping to hype the threat.  It is both necessary and natural that patriots arise to defend their nations in the face of American invasion or aggression.  We play a vital role in the planned drama, as it unfolds.  We have convinced the world that Bush and Cheney were insane enough to radiate the Middle Eastern oil fields, in order to steal the world’s oil.  We now may have to convince the world that the crazies themselves are the source of most of the terrorism which we fight.

It is pretty obvious that they really are that insane, but it should be even more obvious that their greedy masters don’t want their world destroyed, they only want to control it.  Why should they actually nuke Iran, if they can persuade the locals to overthrow the regime for us, causing less collateral damage (it would be difficult to operate the Middle East oil facilities, if they were all radioactive).  We have to convince the American people that Bush even though the little dictator is both stupid and insane, the real deciders are neither of those things.  It is their wills which will prevail, meaning that there are other less final, less costly ways to takeover the oil reserves and the pipeline routes.

We have to concentrate on stopping the secret war, without being blinded by the glare of nuclear terrorism.  Exposure of American sponsorship of world terrorism (some of the very “terrorism” we are fighting) must become our top priority.  Legal actions must be taken to stop the illegal support of terrorism upon civilians by our government.  Further legal actions must be taken to separate American foreign policy from Israel, in order to bring the terror war to an end.

Israel has been the primary source for most of the “intelligence” that launched the war on Iraq, the Iranian reactors and hypothetical nuclear weapons, as well as the alleged Syrian reactors.  America turned Israel’s evidence into grounds for waging war, even nuclear war.  They are behind the new push to find other Syrian nuclear facilities as well as the alleged Iranian warhead blueprint.

Israel is behind every military move against Iran that is being brought-up in the press.  It was the first to suggest taking out Iranian reactors, the first to recommend a naval blockade of Iran and an embargo on air flights between Iran and Syria and Lebanon.  American Zionist Congressional leaders gladly took up the torches lit by Israel, to create Israeli security at America’s expense.  A Congressional resolution is awaiting passage in the Senate, which demands that our government carry-out these acts of war, both the naval blockade and the air embargo, House Resolution 1194.

The American people must rise-up in outrage to the terrorists who rule over us and stop the planned escalation, as a first step to de-escalating the war.  It is time for us to take our own two steps forward, to force the aggressors to take one step back and begin to tear-down their manufactured reality.

 

Contact author: peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com

Related Video:

A Monster Eating the Nation

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Is there any question now that the Deep State is preparing to expel President Donald Trump from the body politic like a necrotic organ? The Golden Golem of Greatness has floundered pretty badly on the job, it’s true, but his mighty adversaries in the highly politicized federal agencies want him to fail spectacularly, and fast, they have a lot of help from the NY Times / WashPo / CNN axis of hysteria, as well as such slippery swamp creatures as Lindsey Graham.

There are more problematic layers in this matter than in a Moldavian wedding cake. America has been functionally ungovernable for quite a while, well before Trump arrived on the scene. His predecessor managed to misdirect the nation’s attention from the cumulative dysfunction with sheer charm and supernatural placidity — NoDrama Obama. But there were a few important things he could have accomplished as chief exec, such as directing his attorney general to prosecute Wall Street crime (or fire the attorney general and replace him with someone willing to do the job). He could have broken up the giant TBTF banks. He could have aggressively sponsored legislation to overcome the Citizens United SOTUS decision (unlimited corporate money in politics) by redefining corporate “citizenship.” Stuff like that. But he let it slide, and the nation slid with him down a greasy chute of political collapse.

Which we find embodied in Trump, a sort of tragicomic figure who manages to compound all of his weaknesses of character with a childish impulsiveness that scares folks. It is debatable whether he has simply been rendered incompetent by the afflictions heaped on by his adversaries, or if he is just plain incompetent in, say, the 25th Amendment way. I think we’ll find out soon enough, because impeachment is a very long and arduous path out of this dark place.

The most curious feature of the current crisis, of course, is the idiotic Russia story that has been the fulcrum for levering Trump out of the White House. This was especially funny the past week with the episode involving Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak conferring with Trump in the White House about aviation security around the Middle East. The media and the Lindsey Graham wing of the Deep State acted as if Trump had entertained Focalor and Vepar, the Dukes of Hell, in the oval office.

Why do you suppose nations employ foreign ministers and ambassadors, if not to conduct conversations at the highest level with other national leaders? And might these conversations include matters of great sensitivity, that is, classified information? If you doubt that then you have no understanding of geopolitics or history.

The General Mike Flynn story is especially a crack-up. Did he accept a twenty thousand dollar speaking fee from the Russian news outlet RT in his interlude as a private citizen? How does that compare to the millions sucked in by the Clinton Foundation in pay-to-play deal when Madame was secretary of state? Or her six-figure speeches to Goldman Sachs and their ilk. Are private citizens forbidden to accept speaking fees or consulting fees from countries that we are not at war with? I’d like to know how many other alumni of the Bill Clinton, Bush-II and Obama admins have hired themselves out on this basis. Scores and scores, I would bet.

Trump’s adversaries might not get any traction on the Russia story, but they may enrage the rogue elephant Trump enough in the process that he will appear sufficiently incompetent to run him over with the 25th Amendment, and I think that is the plan for now. Of course, there are some jokers in the deck. A really striking one is the story of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich last July. He was shot in the back on the street outside his apartment one night by persons as yet unknown, and twelve days later over 40,000 DNC emails landed at Wikileaks. His laptop is reportedly in the possession of the DC cops — if it hasn’t been dumped in the Potomac. I’m generally allergic to conspiracy theories, but this looks like an especially ugly story, which might ultimately be clarified if-or-when Julian Assange of Wikileaks ever divulges the source of that data dump. Anyway, the new Special Counsel at the DOJ, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, may have to venture down that dark trail.

One way or another, though, the Deep State is determined to drive Trump from office. In the final rounds of this struggle, Trump might conceivably undertake a sudden swamp-draining operation: the firing of a great many politicized Intelligence Community officers, especially the ones legally culpable for leaking classified information to media — another area that Mr. Mueller could also shine a light on. The colossal security apparatus of this country — especially the fairly new giant NSA — has become a monster eating America. Somebody needs to literally cut it down to size. Perhaps that’s the Deep State’s main motive in moving heaven and earth to dump Trump.

When they do, of course, they are libel to foment an insurrection every bit as ugly as the dust-up that followed the shelling of Fort Sumter. Trump, whatever you think of him — and I’ve never been a fan, to put it mildly — was elected for a reason: the ongoing economic collapse of the nation, and the suffering of a public without incomes or purposeful employment. That part of the common weal is liable to completely whirl down the drain later this year in something like a currency crisis or a depressionary market meltdown engineered by yet another Deep State player, the Federal Reserve. That and the ejection of Trump could coincide with disastrous results.

Truth or Delusion?

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By Robert J. Burrowes

One inevitable outcome of the phenomenal violence we all suffer as
children is that most of us live in a state of delusion throughout our
lives. This makes it extraordinarily difficult for accurate information,
including vital information about the endangered state of our world and
how to respond appropriately, to penetrate the typical human mind.

‘Phenomenal violence?’ you might ask. ‘All of us?’ you wonder. Yes,
although, tragically, most of this violence goes unrecognised because it
is not usually identified as such. For most people, it is a
straightforward task to identify the ‘visible’ violence that they have
suffered and, perhaps, still suffer. However, virtually no-one is able
to identify the profoundly more damaging impact of the ‘invisible’ and
‘utterly invisible’ violence that is inflicted on us mercilessly from
the day we are born.

So what is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?

‘Invisible’ violence is the ‘little things’ that adults do to children
every day, partly because they are just ‘too busy’. For example, when
adults do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and
feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying
their internal communication system. When adults do not let a child say
what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops
communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to
meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are
genetically programmed to do).

When adults blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate,
taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize
with and/or judge a child, they both undermine their sense of Self-worth
and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame,
humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail,
moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by
this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by
feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However,
parents, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively
interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioural
responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly
invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioural
outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by
comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their
feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a
child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when
they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behaviour that
is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them
or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to
unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their
awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their
feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed
their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. In brief,
this means that the child now lives in a state of delusion. And because
this state was caused by terrorizing the child, the child is unable to
perceive the series of delusions in which they now live.

Moreover, unless the child (or, later, adult) consciously feels their
fear and terror, it will be extraordinarily difficult for them to
perceive anything beyond the delusions that they acquired during
childhood. This is simply because the various elements of the child’s
delusional state (the ‘values’, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, biases)
were the ones approved by the key adults – parents, teachers, religious
figures – in the child’s life.

Needless to say, living in a delusional state has many outcomes that are
disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the
individual will now behave on the basis of their delusions rather than
in response to an accurate assessment of all available information
through appropriate sensory, emotional, intellectual and conscientious
scrutiny. For a full explanation of this process, see ‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

In essence then, the typical human being lives in a delusional state and
this state is held in place by enormous, but unconscious, terror: the
unfelt and hence unreleased childhood terror of being endlessly
threatened and punished (for not complying with parental or other adult
‘authority’ throughout childhood).

And if you have ever tried to persuade someone, by argument of an
intellectual nature, that a belief they hold is inaccurate and wondered
why you couldn’t get anywhere, it is because you have run into their
unconscious terror. And sheer terror beats the best argument in the
world ‘hands down’.

So when you listen to people like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, or
ponder those politicians and military generals who conduct endless wars,
or watch those people on the street protesting against Muslims and
refugees, or watch police beating up another indigenous or black person,
or hear someone else deny the climate science, remember that you are
witness to a person or people living in a terrified and delusional state
that prevents them from perceiving and responding intelligently to
reality. And that, in the case of political and corporate leaders, they
only have the support to do what they do because a great many other
delusional individuals (including voters and employees) enable them.

Equally importantly, however, it is also necessary to recognise that a
delusional state afflicts many of those we like to regard as ‘on our
side’. It is just that their delusions work differently, perhaps, for
example, by making them believe that only token ‘make it up as you go
along’ responses (rather than comprehensive strategies) are necessary if
we are to work our way out of the multifaceted crisis in which human
society now finds itself. This is why many ‘leaders’ of liberation
struggles as well as activist movements concerned with ending war(s) and
the climate catastrophe, for example, are so unable to articulate
appropriately visionary and functional strategies. But the problem
afflicts many other ‘progressive’ social movements as well, which limp
along making only occasional or marginal impact, if they have any impact
at all.

So what are we to do? Well, the most important thing you can do is to
never consciously participate in a delusion, whether your own or that of
anyone else. I say ‘consciously’ of course because unless you identify
the delusion, you will not be able to avoid participating in it. And
there are probably few humans in history who have avoided all of the
delusions their culture threw at them. If they did, they were probably
outcast or killed. Christ, Gandhi and King are reasonably good examples
of people in this latter category. But, historically speaking, many
activists have been killed for refusing to participate in elite-promoted
delusions. And many others have been marginalised, one way or another,
depending on the culture.

The value of not participating in a delusion, whether someone’s personal
delusion or a widespread social one, arises from the impact you have on
those around you: some of these people will have the courage to reflect
on your behaviour and reconsider their own.

If you believe you are relatively free of delusion and are committed to
taking serious steps to tackle one or more aspects of our multifaceted
global crisis, then you are welcome to consider making ‘My Promise to
Children‘,  and to consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on
Earth‘, signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘
and/or considering using the strategic framework on one or the other of these two websites for your campaign or liberation struggle: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Living the truth on a daily basis is a tough road. And it will never
come without cost. But living in the comfort of delusion, rather than
taking action, is the path of cowards.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

—
Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

The Price of Resistance

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Statues at the Museum of Myths and Traditions. (León)

By Chris Hedges

Source: OpEdNews.com

In the conflicts I covered as a reporter in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, I encountered singular individuals of varying creeds, religions, races and nationalities who majestically rose up to defy the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed. Some of them are dead. Some of them are forgotten. Most of them are unknown.

These individuals, despite their vast cultural differences, had common traits–a profound commitment to the truth, incorruptibility, courage, a distrust of power, a hatred of violence and a deep empathy that was extended to people who were different from them, even to people defined by the dominant culture as the enemy. They are the most remarkable men and women I met in my 20 years as a foreign correspondent. And to this day I set my life by the standards they set.

You have heard of some, such as Vaclav Havel, whom I and other foreign reporters met most evenings, during the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, in the Magic Lantern Theatre in Prague. Others, no less great, you probably do not know, such as the Jesuit priest Ignacio Ellacuria, who was assassinated in El Salvador in 1989. And then there are those “ordinary” people, although, as the writer V.S. Pritchett said, no people are ordinary, who risked their lives in wartime to shelter and protect those of an opposing religion or ethnicity being persecuted and hunted. And to some of these “ordinary” people I owe my own life.

To resist radical evil is to endure a life that by the standards of the wider society is a failure. It is to defy injustice at the cost of your career, your reputation, your financial solvency and at times your life. It is to be a lifelong heretic. And, perhaps this is the most important point, it is to accept that the dominant culture, even the liberal elites, will push you to the margins and attempt to discredit not only what you do, but your character. When I returned to the newsroom at The New York Times after being booed off a commencement stage in 2003 for denouncing the invasion of Iraq and being publicly reprimanded by the paper for my stance against the war, reporters and editors I had known and worked with for 15 years lowered their heads or turned away when I was nearby. They did not want to be contaminated by the same career-killing contagion.

Ruling institutions–the state, the press, the church, the courts, academia–mouth the language of morality, but they serve the structures of power, no matter how venal, which provide them with money, status and authority. In times of national distress–one has only to look at Nazi Germany–all of these institutions, including the academy, are complicit through their silence or their active collaboration with radical evil. And our own institutions, which have surrendered to corporate power and the utopian ideology of neoliberalism, are no different. The lonely individuals who defy tyrannical power within these institutions, as we saw with the thousands of academics who were fired from their jobs and blacklisted during the McCarthy era, are purged and turned into pariahs.

All institutions, including the church, Paul Tillich once wrote, are inherently demonic. And a life dedicated to resistance has to accept that a relationship with any institution is often temporary, because sooner or later that institution is going to demand acts of silence or obedience your conscience will not allow you to make. To be a rebel is to reject what it means to succeed in a capitalist, consumer culture, especially the idea that we should always come first.

The theologian James H. Cone in his book “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” writes that for oppressed blacks the cross was a “paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.”

Cone continues: “That God could ‘make a way out of no way’ in Jesus’ cross was truly absurd to the intellect, yet profoundly real in the souls of black folk. Enslaved blacks who first heard the gospel message seized on the power of the cross. Christ crucified manifested God’s loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life–that transcendent presence in the lives of black Christians that empowered them to believe that ultimately, in God’s eschatological future, they would not be defeated by the ‘troubles of this world,’ no matter how great and painful their suffering. Believing this paradox, this absurd claim of faith, was only possible in humility and repentance. There was no place for the proud and the mighty, for people who think that God called them to rule over others. The cross was God’s critique of power–white power–with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.”

Reinhold Niebuhr labeled this capacity to defy the forces of repression “a sublime madness in the soul.” Niebuhr wrote that “nothing but madness will do battle with malignant power and ‘spiritual wickedness in high places.’ ” This sublime madness, as Niebuhr understood, is dangerous, but it is vital. Without it, “truth is obscured.” And Niebuhr also knew that traditional liberalism was a useless force in moments of extremity. Liberalism, Niebuhr said, “lacks the spirit of enthusiasm, not to say fanaticism, which is so necessary to move the world out of its beaten tracks. It is too intellectual and too little emotional to be an efficient force in history.”

The prophets in the Hebrew Bible had this sublime madness. The words of the Hebrew prophets, as Abraham Heschel wrote, were “a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.” The prophet, because he saw and faced an unpleasant reality, was, as Heschel wrote, “compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected.”

This sublime madness is the essential quality for a life of resistance. It is the acceptance that when you stand with the oppressed you get treated like the oppressed. It is the acceptance that, although empirically all that we struggled to achieve during our lifetime may be worse, our struggle validates itself.

Daniel Berrigan told me that faith is the belief that the good draws to it the good. The Buddhists call this karma. But he said for us as Christians we did not know where it went. We trusted that it went somewhere. But we did not know where. We are called to do the good, or at least the good so far as we can determinate it, and then let it go.

As Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” the only morally reliable people are not those who say “this is wrong” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t.” They know that as Immanuel Kant wrote: “If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.” And this means that, like Socrates, we must come to a place where it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. We must at once see and act, and given what it means to see, this will require the surmounting of despair, not by reason, but by faith.

I saw in the conflicts I covered the power of this faith, which lies outside any religious or philosophical creed. This faith is what Havel called in his great essay “The Power of the Powerless” living in truth. Living in truth exposes the corruption, lies and deceit of the state. It is a refusal to be a part of the charade.

“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career,” Havel wrote. “You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. … The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin–and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”

The long, long road of sacrifice and suffering that led to the collapse of the communist regimes stretched back decades. Those who made change possible were those who had discarded all notions of the practical. They did not try to reform the Communist Party. They did not attempt to work within the system. They did not even know what, if anything, their tiny protests, ignored by the state-controlled media, would accomplish. But through it all they held fast to moral imperatives. They did so because these values were right and just. They expected no reward for their virtue; indeed they got none. They were marginalized and persecuted. And yet these poets, playwrights, actors, singers and writers finally triumphed over state and military power. They drew the good to the good. They triumphed because, however cowed and broken the masses around them appeared, their message of defiance did not go unheard. It did not go unseen. The steady drumbeat of rebellion constantly exposed the dead hand of authority and the rot of the state.

I stood with hundreds of thousands of rebellious Czechoslovakians in 1989 on a cold winter night in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as the singer Marta Kubisova approached the balcony of the Melantrich building. Kubisova had been banished from the airwaves in 1968 after the Soviet invasion for her anthem of defiance “Prayer for Marta.” Her entire catalog, including more than 200 singles, had been confiscated and destroyed by the state. She had disappeared from public view. Her voice that night suddenly flooded the square. Pressing around me were throngs of students, most of whom had not been born when she vanished. They began to sing the words of the anthem. There were tears running down their faces. It was then that I understood the power of rebellion. It was then that I knew that no act of rebellion, however futile it appears in the moment, is wasted. It was then that I knew that the communist regime was finished.

“The people will once again decide their own fate,” the crowd sang in unison with Kubisova. [Editor’s note: To see YouTube photographs of the 1989 revolution and hear Kubisova sing the song in a studio recording, click here.]

The walls of Prague were covered that chilly winter with posters depicting Jan Palach. Palach, a university student, set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square on Jan. 16, 1969, in the middle of the day to protest the crushing of the country’s democracy movement. He died of his burns three days later. The state swiftly attempted to erase his act from national memory. There was no mention of it on state media. A funeral march by university students was broken up by police. Palach’s gravesite, which became a shrine, saw the communist authorities exhume his body, cremate his remains and ship them to his mother with the provision that his ashes could not be placed in a cemetery. But it did not work. His defiance remained a rallying cry. His sacrifice spurred the students in the winter of 1989 to act. Prague’s Red Army Square, shortly after I left for Bucharest to cover the uprising in Romania, was renamed Palach Square. Ten thousand people went to the dedication.

We, like those who opposed the long night of communism, no longer have any mechanisms within the formal structures of power that will protect or advance our rights. We too have undergone a coup d’e’tat carried out not by the stone-faced leaders of a monolithic Communist Party but by the corporate state.

We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers for larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the state consumes itself, attract wider and wider numbers. Perhaps this will not happen in our lifetimes. But if we persist, we will keep this possibility alive. If we do not, it will die.

Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus’ novel “The Plague” is not driven by ideology. He is driven by empathy, the duty to minister to suffering, no matter the cost. Empathy, or what the Russian novelist Vasily Grossman called “simple human kindness,” becomes in all despotisms a subversive act. To act on this empathy–the empathy for human beings locked in cages less than an hour from us [here in Princeton], the empathy for undocumented mothers and fathers being torn from their children on the streets of our cities, the empathy for Muslims who are demonized and banned from our shores, fleeing the wars we created, the empathy for poor people of color gunned down by police in our streets, the empathy for girls and women trafficked into prostitution, the empathy for all those who suffer at the hands of a state intent on militarization and imposing a harsh cruelty on the vulnerable, the empathy for the earth that gives us life and that is being contaminated and pillaged for profit–becomes political and even dangerous.

Evil is real. But so is love. And in war–especially when the heavy shells landed on crowds in Sarajevo, sights so gruesome that to this day I cannot eat a piece of meat–you could feel, as frantic family members desperately sought out loved ones among the wounded and dead, the concentric circles of death and love, death and love, like rings from the blast of a cosmic furnace.

Flannery O’Connor recognized that a life of faith is a life of confrontation: “St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: ‘The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.’ No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.”

Accept sorrow–for who cannot be profoundly sorrowful at the state of our nation, the world and our ecosystem–but know that in resistance there is a balm that leads to wisdom and, if not joy, a strange, transcendent happiness. Know that if we resist we keep hope alive.

“My faith has been tempered in Hell,” wrote Vasily Grossman in his masterpiece “Life and Fate.” “My faith has emerged from the flames of the crematoria, from the concrete of the gas chamber. I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious leaders, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”

Racket of Rackets

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

If you thought banking in our time was a miserable racket — which it is, of course, and by “racket” I mean a criminal enterprise — then so-called health care has it beat by a country mile, with an added layer of sadism and cruelty built into its operations. Lots of people willingly sign onto mortgages and car loans they wouldn’t qualify for in an ethically sound society, but the interest rates and payments are generally spelled out on paper. They know what they’re signing on for, even if the contract is reckless and stupid on the parts of both borrower and lender. Pension funds and insurance companies foolishly bought bundled mortgage bonds of this crap concocted in the housing bubble. They did it out of greed and desperation, but a little due diligence would have clued them into the fraud being served up by the likes of Goldman Sachs.

Medicine is utterly opaque cost-wise, and that is the heart of the issue. Nobody in the system will say what anything costs and nobody wants to because it would break the spell that they work in an honest, legit business. There is no rational scheme for the cost of any service from one “provider” to the next or even one patient to the next. Anyway, the costs are obscenely inflated and concealed in so many deliberately deceptive coding schemes that even actuaries and professors of economics are confounded by their bills. The services are provided when the customer is under the utmost duress, often life-threatening, and the outcome even in a successful recovery from illness is financial ruin that leaves a lot of people better off dead.

It is a hostage racket, in plain English, a disgrace to the profession that has adopted it, and an insult to the nation. All the idiotic negotiations in congress around the role of insurance companies are a grand dodge to avoid acknowledging the essential racketeering of the “providers” — doctors and hospitals. We are never going to reform it in its current incarnation. For all his personality deformities, President Trump is right in saying that ObamaCare is going to implode. It is only a carbuncle on the gangrenous body of the US medical establishment. The whole system will go down with it.

The New York Times departed from its usual obsessions with Russian turpitude and transgender life last week to publish a valuable briefing on this aspect of the health care racket: Those Indecipherable Medical Bills? They’re One Reason Health Care Costs So Much by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Much of this covers ground exposed in the now famous March 4, 2013 Time Magazine cover story (it took up the whole issue): Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, by Steven Brill. The American public and its government have been adequately informed about the gross and lawless chiseling rampant in every quarter of medicine. The system is one of engineered criminality. It is inflicting ruin on millions. It is really a wonder that the public has not stormed the hospitals with pitchforks and flaming brands to string up that gang in the parking lots high above their Beemers and Lexuses.

There are only two plausible arcs to this story. One is that the nation might face the facts and resort to the Single Payer system found in virtually every other nation that affects to be civilized. There is no other way to eliminate the deliberate racketeering. The other outcome would be the inevitable collapse of the system and its eventual re-set to a much less complex, cash-on-the-barrelhead, local clinic-based model with far less heroic high-tech interventions available for the broad public, but much more affordable basic care. Both outcomes would require jettisoning the immense overburden of administrative dross that clutters up the current model, with its absurd tug-of-war between the price-gouging hospital “Chargemaster” clerks and the sadistic insurance company monitors bent on denying treatment to their sick and hapless “customers” (hostages). Be warned: these represent tens of thousands of supposedly “good” jobs. Of course, they are “good” because they pay middle class wages, of which there are fewer and fewer elsewhere in the economy. But, they are well-paid because of the grotesquely profitable racket they serve. They’ve turned an entire generation of office workers into servants of criminal enterprise. Imagine the damage this does to the soul of our culture.

My suggestion for real reform of the medical racket looks to historical precedent:

In 1932 (before the election of FDR, by the way), the US Senate formed a commission to look into the causes of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and recommend corrections in banking regulation to obviate future episodes like it. It is known to history as the Pecora Commission, after its chief counsel Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant Manhattan DA, who performed gallantly in his role. The commission ran for two years. Its hearings led to prison terms for many bankers and ultimately to the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which kept banking relatively honest and stable until its nefarious repeal in 1999 under President Bill Clinton — which led rapidly to a new age of Wall Street malfeasance, still underway.

The US Senate needs to set up an equivalent of the Pecora Commission to thoroughly expose the cost racketeering in medicine, enable the prosecution of the people driving it, and propose a Single Payer remedy for flushing it away. The Department of Justice can certainly apply the RICO anti-racketeering statutes against the big health care conglomerates and their executives personally. I don’t know why it has not done so already — except for the obvious conclusion that our elected officials have been fully complicit in the medical rackets, which is surely the case of new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, a former surgeon and congressman who trafficked in medical stocks during his years representing his suburban Atlanta district. A new commission could bypass this unprincipled clown altogether.

It is getting to the point where we have to ask ourselves if we are even capable of being a serious people anymore. Medicine is now a catastrophe every bit as pernicious as the illnesses it is supposed to treat, and a grave threat to a nation that we’re supposed to care about. What party, extant or waiting to be born, will get behind this cleanup operation?

Washington’s Chaoskeeping in Syria

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By Martin Berger

Source: New Eastern Outlook

What is the US up to in Syria? – This question is not simply bugging the Arab world, as the whole international community has been trying to find an answer to this puzzle. This matter became especially relevant after the so-called “chemical attack” in the Syrian Governorate of Idlib that occurred on April 4 and the subsequent cruise missile strike against the Al-Shayrat air base that followed a few days later.

The initial false-flag attack, which immediately resulted in a stream of accusations against the Syrian army and the allied Russian troops, was abused by the so-called Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, which has repeatedly participated in spreading fake reports, along with unreasonable and unverified accusations against the Syrian authorities over the years. Then, in accordance with a clearly pre-planned scenario, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini along with France and Britain joined the action thriller, quickly switching the blame mode on. There can be no doubt that a stream of accusations being voiced against Damascus prior to any sort of preliminary investigation, let alone a thorough one, was what the Washington coalition was aiming at.

Why bother trying to provide any sort of evidence, when previously Washington managed to bring down an unwanted regime by simply handing over a tube filled with unknown substances that was handed over to Colin Powell for him to shake it in the air in front of the UN Security Council. Sure, it was a cheap trick but it worked due to the fact that nobody expected Washington to fall so low, using a dubious pretext to invade and destroy Iraq.

Once Washington, London, and Paris went under a wave of public outrage for their baseless acusations against Damascus, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on April 26, acting in accordance with the instructions that Washington provided him with, rushed to present the world a “declassified report of the French secret services,” that were allegedly convinced that Damascus used sarin nerve agent to launch an attack against the town of Khan Shaykhun.

But one could remind Western powers and Jean-Marc Ayrault in particular that six days before the release of this so-called declassified report Australian doctors fell victims of sarin gas in Iraq. Should we hold Damascus responsible for that attack too? Or would we be better off admitting that ISIS militants have repeatedly used sarin and other nerve gas agents both Syria and Iraq, along with their own drones!

By the way, one would not be out of line by demanding how the blood thirsty ISIS radicals that are supposedly surrounded by the US coalition forces and cut off any outside forms of support are not simply continue using nerve agents from the warehouses that remain in their control, while Damascus has officially destroyed all of its chemical stockpiles which has been officially confirmed by the representatives of international community, but are building their own drones. Any drone production operation is something that can hardly be done in the field, especially under the nose of the vigilant French intelligence services, that chose to get engaged in a propaganda war against Damascus instead. As for their British counterparts, they are sending the so-called White Helmets in the contested areas of Syria without the slightest concern for the security of these propaganda heroes in territories occupied by ISIS.

In short, Washington’s actions and the steps taken by its loyal servants in Paris and London with a theatrical performance with “Assad’s chemical attack” and their unwillingness to conduct a thorough investigation of this incident bears a strong resemblance of the events of 2003 in Iraq, which resulted in in the complete destruction of the country and the emergence of ISIS that Washington is allegedly fighting today.

Therefore, it is hardly worth explaining once again what sort of dangerous developments on both the regional and international levels can be triggered by the repetition of the reckless scenario when Washington first makes a political decision, and then creates a political excuse to go along with it. This is how armed conflicts were started not only in Iraq in 2003, but Yugoslavia and Libya, with the so-called Western humanitarian intervention, and Afghanistan too.

Provocations like the one that occurred in Khan Sheikhoun, without a doubt, demand a professional investigation conducted under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by a team of international experts from various regions of the world. There can be no doubt that such an investigation must be open and transparent. The current attempts to block this approach only confirm the doubts about the sincerity of those who are trying to use the incident to push forward their own agenda, in a bid to bring down the UN Security Council Resolution 2254, going along with a time-tested regime change tactics instead.

As for the United States, it is still very difficult to say what plans Washington can try to pull out in Syria in a bid to bring Damascus down. However, Washington’s policies in the region conducted through the last two decades can be briefly described as #chaoskeeping.

 

Who Controls The Government?

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By Scott Lazarowitz

Source: Activist Post

It is quite ironic that the previous Drone-Bomber-in-Chief, Barack H. Obama, has been given the “profile in courage” award, which is being presented to him this week by the JFK Library Foundation. But how much courage did it take for Obama to order the bombings of several different countries, killing mostly innocent civilians, when those countries were of no threat to us?

How insulting to President John F. Kennedy, who promoted peace after recognizing that the post-World War II Cold War and national security state were destructive and unnecessary, and who wanted to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

In a June, 1963 speech promoting peace, nuclear disarmament, and diplomacy, Kennedy stated, “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find Communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements — in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.”

The hard-core Cold Warriors probably didn’t like that. Their existence as “security” bureaucrats and their little fiefdoms in Washington were dependent on the fear and paranoia of those “commies,” just as the modern day bureaucrats are dependent on post-9/11 fear-mongering.

And the corporatist cronies back then also probably didn’t like Kennedy’s assertion that “the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles — which can only destroy and never create — is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.”

The hard-core Cold Warriors probably didn’t like that. Their existence as “security” bureaucrats and their little fiefdoms in Washington were dependent on the fear and paranoia of those “commies,” just as the modern day bureaucrats are dependent on post-9/11 fear-mongering.

And the corporatist cronies back then also probably didn’t like Kennedy’s assertion that “the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles — which can only destroy and never create — is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.”

The narcissistic arrogance could be seen in the military bureaucrats when they consciously and knowingly pursued continued aggressions in Vietnam despite their knowing by the mid-1960s that the war could not be won, as revealed by the Pentagon Papers. Those “leaders” contributed to the deaths of a million innocents and tens of thousands of American soldiers who died for no good reason but to serve the deranged egos of the military bureaucrats.

And Iraq in 1990-91, the decision by President George H.W. Bush to start a whole new war and bombing campaign against a country, Iraq, that didn’t attack us and was of no threat to us, was not just an act of incompetence, but a criminal act.

Bush approved of the U.S. military’s bombings of civilian water and sewage treatment centers and electric service facilities, followed by sanctions and no-fly zones that were continued by President Bill Clinton throughout the 1990s which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian Iraqis. It was an intentional policy of sadism and psychopathic cruelty, that perhaps involved more sinister long-term goals than just to do with oil.

Who would purposely cause a whole population to be vulnerable to disease and death? Who would do that?

But now we have President Donald Trump, who campaigned with anti-war, anti-imperialism rhetoric, but is now the Happy Warmonger. And Trump’s civilian cabinet advisors include military general graduates from West Point or other top military academies but they aren’t exactly trained in the ideas of restraint, diplomacy, the rule of law, and the U.S. Constitution.

No, post-World War II  military people are trained to suppress their consciences, their moral scruples, in order to rationalize their invasions of other territories and the deaths of innocents they cause.

And oh how happy the Trump-advising generals and the other higher-ups in the military must be that Donald Trump is so easily manipulable and spongy. Their psy-ops are working on him like a charm.

It used to be that psy-ops were used by the military and CIA on foreign agents, to manipulate the enemy’s emotions and their decisions. And then the military saw how useful such a technique had been on their own U.S. senators, as reported by the late Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone.

Which is apparently illegal, under U.S. law. Unless they view their own fellow Americans as the “enemy.” Hmm.

Foreign policy analyst Gareth Porter recently tweeted: “Military now seeking permanent US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Time to say loud ‘No’ to permanent war.”

So it’s getting worse now.

Some theorists believe the zealous bureaucrats of the military need permanent war and occupation abroad in order to achieve such a takeover at home. (There may be other reasons, however.)

When the military controls the government, and then there is some kind of emergency or economic collapse, of course they will not think twice about imposing martial law, legal or not, constitutional or not. They will also not think twice about disarming law-abiding Americans.

In Revolutionary times, the early Americans were rightfully wary of militarism, because they knew that would lead to tyranny. But the immoral and incompetent bureaucrats of the modern U.S. government long ago abandoned any concern for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

 

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. please visit his blog.

 

The Russian Hacking Fiasco

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By Mike Whitney

Source: CounterPunch

There’s no proof that Russia hacked the US elections.

There’s no proof that Russian officials or Russian agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign.

There’s no proof that Russia provided material support of any kind for the Trump campaign or that Russian agents hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails or that Russian officials provided Wikileaks with emails that were intended to sabotage Hillary’s chances to win the election.

So far, no one in any of the 17 US intelligence agencies has stepped forward and verified the claims of Russian meddling or produced a scintilla of hard evidence that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 elections.

No proof means no proof.  It means that the people and organizations that are making these uncorroborated claims have no basis for legal action, no presumption of wrongdoing, and no grounds for prosecution. They have nothing. Zilch.  Their claims, charges and accusations are like the soap bubbles we give to our children and grandchildren. The brightly-colored bubbles wobble across the sky for a minute or two and then, Poof, they vanish into the ether. The claims of Russia hacking are like these bubbles. They are empty, unsubstantiated rumors completely devoid of substance. Poof.

It has been eight months since the inception of this unprecedentedly-pathetic and infinitely-irritating propaganda campaign, and in those eight months neither the media nor the politicos nor the Intel agents who claim to be certain that Russia meddled in US elections, have produced anything that even remotely resembles evidence. Instead, they have trotted out the same lie over and over again ad nauseam from every newspaper, every tabloid and every televised news program in the country. Over and over and over again. The media’s persistence is nearly as impressive as its cynicism, which is the one quality that they seem to have mastered. The coverage has been relentless, ubiquitous, pernicious and mendacious. The only problem is that there’s not a grain of truth to any of it. It is all 100 percent, unalloyed baloney.

So it doesn’t matter how many Democratic senators and congressmen disgrace themselves by lighting their hair on fire and howling about “evil Putin” or the imaginary “threats to our precious democracy”. Nor does it matter how many hyperbolic articles appear in media alleging sinister activities and espionage by diabolical Moscow Central.  It doesn’t matter because there is have absolutely zero solid evidence to support their ludicrous and entirely politically-based claims.

Whether Russia was involved in the US elections or not, is a matter of pure speculation. But speculation is not sufficient grounds for appointing a special prosecutor, nor are the lies and misinformation that appear daily in our leading newspapers, like the dissembling New York Times, the dissembling Washington Post and the dissembling Wall Street Journal. The call for a special prosecutor is not based on evidence, it is based on politics, the politics of personal destruction. The Democrats and the media want this tool so they can rummage through whatever private information or paperwork anyone in the Trump administration might possess. So while they might not dig up anything relevant to the Russia hacking investigation, they will certainly gather enough sordid or suspicious information to annihilate the people in their crosshairs. And that’s precisely what the special prosecutor provision is designed to do; it provides the  administration’s rivals with the weapons they need to conduct a massive fishing expedition aimed at character assassination and, ultimately, impeachment.

But, why?

Because Donald Trump had the audacity to win an election that was earmarked for establishment favorite and globalist warmonger-in-chief, Hillary Clinton. That’s what this witch hunt is all about, sour grapes.

But why has Russia been chosen as the target in this deep state-media scam? What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?

That’s easy. Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world. It’s the Great Game all over again, only this time-around, Uncle Sam is in the drivers seat not the Queen of England.

But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan.

Russia.

Russia has stopped Washington’s murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off.  US elites aren’t used to obstacles.

For the last quarter of a century– since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the world had been Washington’s oyster. If the president of the United States  wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him?

Nobody.  Because Washington owns this fu**ing planet and everyone else is just a visitor.

Capisce?

But now all that’s changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington’s landbridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.

The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way.  It’s that simple. Their global strategy is in a shambles because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.

So now Russia must pay. Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian. And, most of all, Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun, including the firing of a completely worthless sack of sh** FBI Director, James Comey, who– at various times in his career– “approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration….including  torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.” (ACLU)

This is the low-down, good-for-nothing scalawag that the Democrats are now defending tooth in nail.

It’s pathetic.

Russia has become the all-purpose punching bag because Washington’s plans for global domination have gone up in smoke.

The truth is,  Putin’s done us all a big favor.

 

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.