Tag Archives: iraq

Lies America’s News-Media Tell

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Here are America’s recent targets for regime-change (against which have been used economic sanctions, invasion, and enormous destruction) — and all of them are nations that never invaded nor threatened to invade America:

Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2011-2018, Yemen 2015-now, Ukraine 2014, and Venezuela 2017-now.

Because all of these were and are aggressive wars by the US against nations that never invaded nor threatened to invade the US, they all ought to be subject to mega-criminal prosecutions as was done by the US, Britain, and USSR, against Germany at the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II. That was merely victors’ ‘justice’, applied by the US, Britain and USSR, but this would instead be actual international justice, the first instance of such in all of world history. It’s desperately needed — especially now.

America’s Government and news-media were and are remarkably unanimous in saying that these invasions and coups are and were done in order to advance democracy and human rights in the given target-nation. However, what it actually brings and has brought, in each and every case, is, instead, massive bloodshed, death, poverty, destruction, and outpourings of refugees — and an increasingly dangerous world, the current world.

Is this lying, by the US and its allies, and their ‘news’-media, mere hypocrisy, or is it something even worse — far worse? In any case, only a fair and international juridical tribunal that’s controlled by no nation and by no alliance of nations can possibly deliver a credible verdict on this. And, so, such international criminal trials must be organized and carried out, or else even worse can be expected to occur. Impunity is desirable only by and for gangsters, and no land where it exists can reasonably be called “democratic.”

America’s news-media — especially the mainstream ones — not only cover-up important truths, but they routinely lie. Both the Democratic Party’s media and the Republican Party’s media report the same lies, which are the Government’s lies, on these international matters. These are lies on which there is bipartisan unity by the nation’s press (and by both political Parties), in order to deceive the public, into support for invading and occupying, or overthrowing via a coup or otherwise, some foreign government. Their target is always a government which America’s billionaires who control international corporations want to replace, and so the US regime unanimously lies against that targeted government, as being dangerous and evil, even though the given takeover-target has never invaded, nor threatened to invade, the United States — is no real national-security threat to the American people. Only on the basis of lies can that succeed. This is the main function of the press, in such countries: deceit, on those international matters.

In other words: the US Government is fascist, like the Axis powers were in World War II. This is worse than, for example, merely wasting billions of dollars on building a border-wall against Mexico in order to protect Americans, but it receives far less press-attention (perhaps because the press is so unanimous in endorsing and supporting these atrocities — and that’s yet further evidence of the American regime’s fascism). The press is owned by, and funded by ads, and donations from, America’s billionaires, the very same people who fund our politicians and who also own controlling interests in the weapons-firms such as Lockheed Martin, which can’t survive without these weapons-sales, and which therefore demand constant conquests, in order to create new markets for their wares, new “allied nations.”

So, naturally, America’s military is mainly the enforcement-arm of the billionaires who control US-based international corporations (especially the weapons-firms and the extractive firms such as mining and fuels, which corporations crave to control foreign natural resources), and those people also control America’s Government and press, and this produces the unanimity for these regime-change operations — which likewise fits the fascist model.

The US is clearly the world’s leading fascist nation, and there is no close second (and none of the nations that the US regime is trying to conquer is fascist at all). What Germany was under Hitler, the US is and has been at least since the time of US President Ronald Reagan. The US has been a dictatorship since at least 1981.

Coup or invasion (either form of aggression) is an international war-crime, but the deceit against America’s public usually succeeds, because the public trust especially the billionaire-controlled mainstream press, which is always leading these lies-for-conquest.

Furthermore, almost all of the ‘alternative news’ media are likewise owned by (and funded by ads or donations from) wealthy interests that participate in and benefit from this mass-deceit — from the stenographic ‘news’ reporting, the Government’s accusations against the particular target-nation that’s about to be (or has been) regime-changed.

For example, all of America’s ’news’-media were stenographically reporting the US Government’s many lies about ‘Saddam Hussein’s WMD’, in order to ‘justify’ America’s kicking out the UN’s weapons-inspectors and simply bombing Iraq and invading and militarily occupying, and basically destroying, that country (which had never invaded ours) in 2003. All of America’s ‘news’ media did the same, but especially all of the mainstream ones did, of both the right and the left, all the way from Fox News to the New York Times. They all were hiding the truth and lying to support an illegal invasion — an international war-crime under international law, and violation of the UN’s Charter. Did Americans stop buying those ‘news’papers and watching those ’news’ channels, and buying those ’news’ magazines, after the truth became reluctantly exposed (during 2002-2005) that those ‘WMD’ didn’t exist and no longer had existed after 1998? No, those same ‘news’-media still are successful. (They all ought to be long-since out-of-business, but such accountability doesn’t exist in the news-business. Not only does a major ‘news’-medium hide its own corruption and lying but it hides that of all other major ‘news’-media, because otherwise the entire ‘democratic’ system of control by the nation’s billionaires would simply collapse.)

America’s ‘news’-media report just as much false ‘news’ (not merely what they call “fake news,” but actually false ‘news’) today, as they did back then, because America’s ‘news’-media cover-up not only for themselves, but also for each other, since they all lie so routinely in order to ‘justify’ their Government’s aggressions, coups, military invasions, foreign mass-murders, etc., and those invasions and coups are part of the unspoken business-plan of them all, for growth or expansion of their global control.

These atrocities are all done for ‘national security’ reasons, and in order to ‘spread democracy’, and in order to ‘protect human rights around the world’ — and Americans continue to believe it, and to believe the regime, and to subscribe to those same mainstream (and hangers-on) ’news’-media. Accountability against lying doesn’t exist in a hyper-aggressive ‘democracy’, a would-be all-encompassing global empire, which America has certainly become.

Today, these ’news’-media hide that they’ve been lying when they report that Russia ‘hacked’ Hillary Clinton’s email and John Podesta’s computer. Just click onto that, right there, and you will immediately see the latest documentation that it’s all mere lies against Russia, which is the only nation that does actually possess the military wherewithal to stand up against the US regime (since it inherited the arsenal of the former Soviet Union when the Cold War ended in 1991 on their side — though that war secretly continued and still is continuing on the American side).

These fabrications could have many reasons, but perhaps the likeliest is in order to increase weapons-sales by Lockheed Martin and other US weapons-makers, all of which are 100% dependent upon their sales to the US Government and to its allied governments. (There are consequently interlocking directorates between the ‘news’-businesses and the armaments-firms, and the Wall Street banks, and the think tanks, etc.; and all of this is intensified by the revolving door between Government officials and the private sector, such as generals becoming directors of ‘defense’ firms.) But this fraud that ‘Russia hacked the election’ has been exposed before, though not with the same thoroughness as it is in that latest news-report, which comes from the “Sic Semper Tyrannus” blog. You might happen to think that it must be ‘fake news’, because it’s from a non-mainstream site? It comes from Bill Binney, who is the NSA whistleblower who was the NSA’s top signals-intelligence analyst before he quit in disgust at the Government’s lying. Of course, he had tried all the mainstream ‘news’-media as prospective outlets for this news-report, but they’re not interested in exposing the truth — because that would expose themselves to be liars. Once a major lie is told, and told repeatedly, by a major ‘news’-medium, exposing that lie would be exposing itself — and none do that.

They also hide that they’ve been lying to report that America was justified to bomb Syria on 11 April 2018, justified to do it in order to punish Syria’s Government for having perpetrated a chemical weapons attack on 7 April 2018 in the town of Douma — a chemical weapons attack that was actually fabricated by the US and its allies, and which US Government lie is still being protected (hidden from the public) by the US regime’s ’news’ media, which media, for example, fail to report that the OPCW did not find any such attack to have occurred:

“OPCW Issues Fact-Finding Mission Reports on Chemical Weapons Use Allegations in Douma, Syria in 2018 and in Al-Hamadaniya and Karm Al-Tarrab in 2016”

Friday, 06 July 2018

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 6 July 2018 — The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), issued an interim report on the FFM’s investigation to date regarding the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria on 7 April 2018.

The FFM’s activities in Douma included on-site visits to collect environmental samples, interviews with witnesses, data collection. In a neighbouring country, the FFM team gathered or received biological and environmental samples, and conducted witness interviews.

OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.

If those “final conclusions” are ever made public by OPCW, will you trust your ’news’-media to report them honestly? And, if the conclusions never are published, will you think that the US regime and its ’news’-media are war-criminals there, just as they were in Iraq, and Syria, and Yemen, and Ukraine, and so many other countries?

According to Russian Television, or “RT” — which all major ’news’-media in the US and its allied regimes say is ‘untrustworthy’ — “Real ‘obscene masquerade’: How BBC depicted staged hospital scenes as proof of Douma chemical attack”. That op-ed by the great British investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, who specializes in Syria, isn’t published by the BBC, or by ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Guardian, or Washington Post. It’s too honest, for that. Could this be part of the reason that they call RT ‘fake news’? If so, maybe RT should replace them, at least for international reporting.

And, before that, there was the claimed 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack in the town of Ghouta by Syria’s Government, which was actually done by the US Government’s allies who were trying to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government — it’s what’s called a “false flag attack” — one that’s designed to be blamed against the other side, in order to serve as an ‘excuse’ to invade. The American Government and its ‘news’-media keep making suckers out of the American public this way, and yet the American public continue to subscribe to them — to pay their good money, for such evil propaganda. Apparently, nobody is even embarassed. It simply keeps happening, again and again.

Another recent example is the ‘democratic revolution’ in Ukraine in February 2014, which was actually a US coup that destroyed that country.

And the latest example is the US-and-Canada-led effort to impose a fascist regime in Venezuela.

Furthermore, as one of the perceptive reader-commenters to that latest Binney article on ‘Russiagate’ noted: “Craig Murray, in a very revealing but neglected interview with Scott Horton, said: ‘I should be plain that the Podesta emails and the DNC emails of course are two separate things and you shouldn’t conclude that both have the same source. But in both cases, we’re talking of a leak not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting the information out had legal access to that information.’” Murray, a whistleblower and former UK Ambassador, had been personally involved in that, by transferring a thumb-drive from the DNC whistleblower to Julian Assange, and he also said there, “If you are looking to the source of all this, you have to look to Americans,” and not at all to any Russians or other foreigners.

The comprehensiveness of the deceit by the US regime is beyond what the vast majority of Americans can even imagine to be the case. It is simply beyond the comprehension of most people. And that false ‘news’-reporting then becomes basic to, and enshrined in, false but best-selling ‘history’-books, so as to deepen, yet further, the deception of the public.

On Sunday, February 24th, the “Zero Hedge” independent news-site headlined “WaPo Quietly Deletes Branson’s Venezuela Concert From Article After ‘Fake’ Attendance Figures Exposed” and reported (and documented) that the British billionaire Richard Branson’s free pop-concert on Friday February 22 at the Venezuela-Colombia border in support of Washington’s attempted coup to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected President had drawn less than 20,000 fans instead of what had been reported in the US regime’s Washington Post, which had reported that 200,000 attended, and that as soon as the US regime’s fraud was publicly exposed — which was done by means of a photo of the crowd which had been taken by Dan Cohen of Russia’s RT, plus careful independent calculations by the “Moon of Alabama” blogger — the US regime’s ‘news’paper retroactively removed their ‘news’-report’s crowd-size-estimate from the online version of their ‘news’-report. Of course, the ‘error’ had already been physically printed in that trashy ‘news’paper, which might (at its discretion) subsequently publish a printed correction, saying that they’d only been trying to fool their subscribers in order to assist propaganda supporting the US regime’s grab for control over Venezuela.

The problem isn’t ‘fake news’ from RT or from small online sites (such as all of the major media claim to be the case), but false ‘news’ from mainstream US (and allied) ‘news’ (propaganda) media. They’ve all got millions of victims’ blood on their hands, and they’re not even a bit ashamed of any of it — and of shifting the blame for it to the targeted nations.

PS: Max Blumenthal is an investigative journalist who formerly believed the lies from the (think tanks and other agencies of the) billionaires who finance the Democratic Party. He was the star journalist at one of the Democratic Party’s leading ‘alt-news’ propaganda-sites, AlterNet, until he lost his employment there after starting to expose the rot that he had previously been fooled into supporting. He increasingly moved away from liberalism to progressivism; and the Democratic National Committee doesn’t want any of that, except as window-dressing — and Blumenthal decided he could no longer do that. He became unemployed for a while and then established, along with another former AlterNet reporter “The GrayZone Project,” in order to continue being employed. Blumenthal recently issued a YouTube video in which he interviewed star Democratic Party Presidential aspirant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of Congress “Is the US Meddling in Venezuela? Max Blumenthal Asks US Congress Members.” As you can see there, all of them are either mildly or very supportive of Trump’s coup-attempt in Venezuela. Unfortunately, Blumenthal didn’t interview Tulsi Gabbard, who might possibly be an exception to the depressing rule that corruption reigns, and who recently announced her candidacy for the US Presidency. Nor did he interview Bernie Sanders, nor Sherrod Brown, nor Elizabeth Warren, all of whom likewise are competing for the progressives’ votes in the upcoming Democratic Party Presidential primaries. As for the other Democratic contenders, they’re competing to become instead the new Hillary Clinton — the American billionaires’ favorite. Instead, with Trump, we got in the 2016 Presidentials their second choice.

On February 18th, Blumenthal and a colleague, Alexander Rubinstein, headlined at one of the few sincere and honest US-based international-news sites, “Mint Press,” “Pierre Omidyar’s Funding of Pro-Regime-Change Networks and Partnerships with CIA Cutouts”, and they exposed Omidyar, the owner of a famous ‘news’ site that’s targeted at naive progressives, “The Intercept.” Whereas Mint Press is called ‘fake news’ by America’s billionaires’ ‘news’-media, The Intercept (which isn’t nearly as honest as Mint Press is) is not. The dictatorship’s aim is to crush the truth, and (like The Intercept does) they let in just enough of truth so as to keep hidden what’s most important to them to keep hidden from the public — things such as what Blumenthal and Rubinstein are now disclosing.

Everybody except America’s 585 billionaires should be reading sites such as the ones that publish Blumenthal and Rubinstein, and other honest investigative journalists (which are banned at all of the mainstream sites). Propaganda that poses as ‘news’ has to be crushed, in order for truth itself not to be crushed. But can their exposé of Omidyar win a top national journalism award without thereby bringing down the entire rotten and corrupt superstructure of lies? And that would also bring down the enormous international crimes this superstructure has supported and continues to support, such as Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2011-2018, Yemen 2015-now, Ukraine 2014, and Venezuela 2017-now.

If such news-reports cannot win top journalism prizes, then what hope is there, realistically, that things will ever be able to improve?

Only by removing the blinders from the public, can the public see the light and the actual truth, about the world in which they are living. That’s what is needed in order for democracy to be able to exist. What now exists is, instead, dictatorship. That’s the current reality. It includes the European Council, which is the unelected government of the EU, which clearly is a dictatorship (and this is true even if Brexit is wrong), and it also includes every other ally of the US regime. The EU was created by the US and its allies after WW II. It “always was a CIA project.” FDR was dead, and maybe whatever there had been of US democracy died along with him. The UN that exists is not the one that he had intended and so carefully planned. We’ve been living in a charade. It didn’t start in 1981. There is this, and there also is this. It’s FDR’s vision turned upside-down and inside-out. That’s the actual world of today. It’s based on lies.

Everyone Has Fallen for the Lies About Venezuela

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By Lee Camp

Source: truthdig

There are three things I know for sure in this fanciful, sometimes inglorious experience we call life:

  1. You will never have a safety pin when you need one, and you will have thousands when you don’t need one.
  2. Wild animals are breathtakingly majestic until they’re crawling up your pant leg.
  3. A U.S. presidential administration will never admit that it invaded another country or backed a coup attempt in order to essentially steal the natural resources (oil) of said country.

This is why it was so very shocking last week when members of the Trump administration admitted they were backing a coup attempt in order to essentially steal the natural resources (oil) of another country.

That country is Venezuela. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Let’s take a second to go over the big three. There are three things that seem to provoke the ornery United States into overthrowing or bringing down a foreign government, no matter how many innocent civilians may die in the process. (If enough die, the perpetrators often get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.) If your country has one of these things, the U.S. might screw with you. If your country has two of these things, the U.S. will definitely screw with you. If your country has three of these things, then look behind you, because the U.S. is currently screwing you:

1. Being socialist.

Pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t have the same economic system as we do, we treat it like you have candy and we’re not allowed to have any, so we slip razor blades in yours and tell everyone your candy kills people.

2. Dropping the U.S. dollar.

Iraq dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Syria dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Iran dropped the dollar. We want to invade.
Libya dropped the dollar. We invaded.

Pakistan dropped the dollar in trade with China, and the following day the U.S. added them to the list of countries violating religious freedom. (I guess you could argue they did indeed violate our religion: The dollar.)

Basically, we do NOT take kindly to countries dropping the dollar.

In unrelated news, Venezuela dropped the dollar.

3. Having oil or other natural resources the U.S. needs.

In case you were curious, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the known world. (But we haven’t checked northern Wyoming yet, because it’s a long, cold drive with nary a 7-11.)

So these are the three ACTUAL reasons the U.S. has created an attempted coup in Venezuela over the past several weeks. And right now, you are falling into one of two categories. Either you’re saying to yourself, “Of course those are the reasons. Those are the only reasons the U.S. ever tries to bring down governments.” OR you still have some strange, deep-rooted faith in our Pepsi-and-pharmaceutical-owned media outlets, and therefore you’re thinking, “That’s not true. The U.S. supports the opposition in Venezuela because we want to help those poor starving people.” But if that were accurate, we would be tripping over ourselves to help starving and sick people around the world. Instead we (oddly) only seek to help them when they have oil under their feet. And in fact, data has proven this true. A study a few years ago from the Universities of Portsmouth, Warwick and Essex found that foreign intervention in civil conflicts is 100 times more likely if the country has a great deal of oil, versus none.

So who is feeding the average American the idea that our involvement in Venezuela is about helping people? Only EVERY mainstream media channel in America—from MSNBC to Fox News to NPR to Bill fuckin’ Maher. It’s truly mind-numbing to watch so-called “liberals” march in lockstep with the likes of John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump and every neocon not currently in a coma.

These outlets froth at the mouth while presenting segments explaining that the Venezuelan people are starving, but they also purposefully avoid mentioning that a lot of Venezuela’s hardships are due to U.S. sanctions. This isn’t to say Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has done an awesome job. But whether he has or not, saying we must sanction them to help them is like if somebody fell through a plate glass window and you said, “Let’s help him! Let’s start cutting the glass shards out of his skin with this rusty flathead screwdriver I found in an abandoned mine! Then we’ll pour Mountain Dew and sewage water in the wounds to help them heal!”

But that’s what our sanctions are designed to do. They’re devised from day one to hurt poor and average people the most, in order to make them angry enough to rebel. Over a year ago, when Rex Tillerson was secretary of state, he publicly said we could tell our sanctions on North Korea were working great because poor fishermen were washing up on the beaches starved to death. (One is perplexed by how difficult it is at times to tell the difference between “helping other countries” and mass murder.)

Sanctions are not smart bombs. They destroy everybody, except the rich—who have enough money to weather the sanctions. Come to think of it, sanctions are kind of like smart bombs. We’re told they’re only going to hit the bad guys, but in fact “smart bombs” kill all kinds of innocent civilians, just like sanctions do.

Furthermore, the U.S. “humanitarian aid” that we claim to be sending is not what it seems. Even NPR took a break from its traditional role as State Department stenographer-in-training to reveal that the “humanitarian aid” is actually meant to create regime change. And McClatchy last week uncovered that the North Carolina-based private freight company 21 Air LLC has made 40 secretive flights to Venezuela from the U.S. in the past month, and the Venezuelan government claimed the flights were filled to the brim with assault weapons and ammunition destined for opposition forces. (Apparently we thought the Venezuelans were going to cook up a fresh pot of bullet stew to ease their hunger pains.) To make matters worse, two executives at the company have ties to an air cargo company that helped the CIA “rendition” supposed terrorists to black sites for “interrogation” (read: torture).

The next piece of propaganda lovingly pedestalled by our mainstream media robot-heads is simply calling Juan Guaidó the “interim president” without mentioning that he was not elected to that position and only 30 out of 200 nations recognize him as such. He just declared himself president. Last I checked, that’s not really how governments work. But if it is—OK, I hereby declare myself governor of … let’s say, Idaho. No one will really notice. I’m pretty sure the current governor is a hedgehog in a bow tie.

There are many other things CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and all the rest don’t want you to know about Juan Guaidó. For example, until he named himselfpresident, 81 percent of Venezuelans didn’t even know who he was, according to a poll conducted by the Venezuela-based firm Hinterlaces. And he only won his own assembly seat with 26% of the vote. In order to win elections in any country, you often need more than 30 percent of the people to have heard of you. Pauly Shore has more name recognition among Venezuelans than Juan Guaidó.

On top of that, Guaidó went to George Washington University. As the Grayzone Project reported, “[In 2007] He moved to Washington, D.C., to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund. …”

Guaidó went to GW, trained under Mr. IMF, and then we declared him president of Venezuela. That’s like studying at the WWE, training under Henry Kissinger, and then the U.S. declares you the King of Japan.

But it doesn’t stop there, according to the Grayzone Project:

“Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.”

Furthermore, Juan Guaidó has already said he wants to sell Venezuela’s oil to foreign companies and let the IMF back in, which will drown the country in debt.

So he’s an American regime-change pawn who was groomed by the IMF to take over Venezuela and give away their natural resources. What a catch. … But if this is what the Venezuelan people really want, then we should respect their wishes. The corporate media tells us this is what the people want, right?

Except that it’s not.

“According to a study conducted in early January 2019 … 86 percent of Venezuelans would disagree with international military intervention,” Grayzone’s Ben Norton reported last month. “And 81 percent oppose the US sanctions that have gravely hurt the nation’s economy.”

So, based on the Hinterlaces poll, most Venezuelans didn’t know Guaidó until recently. Most Venezuelans still support Maduro even if they believe corruption in the government has increased (whether you personally like Maduro or not doesn’t matter), and most Venezuelans don’t want military intervention or U.S. sanctions. Yet CNN and NPR and Fox News and the BBC and every other corporate outlet will have you thinking everyone is starving to death, on their knees begging for America’s democracy bombs to rain down like dollar bills at a strip club.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe those people really need our help, and U.S. intervention will work out great—exactly like it did in Syria,
and Yemen,
and Iraq,
and Iran,
and Afghanistan,
and Chile,
and Honduras,
and Haiti,
and Somalia,
and Libya,
and Guatemala,
and Nicaragua,
and Colombia,
and Panama,
and Fraggle Rock,
and those tree forts where the EWOKS LIVED!

Now that we have a general understanding of the situation (and why Anderson Cooper is not keen to remind viewers what happened with Fraggle Rock in the early ’90s), let’s get back to the question of oil.

When I first started writing this, I didn’t have proof the American government wanted Venezuela’s oil; it was just a hunch. Kinda like if you put a balloon in a room with a porcupine, you have a hunch he’ll pop the balloon. But I didn’t have a quote from a top Trump administration official saying, “We’d like to take their oil.”

Then national security adviser and Mustache of Doom John Bolton said, “hold my beer.” While on Fox News he stated clearly, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

That’s Beltway Speak for “We want their oil.”

For 20 years we’ve been trying to destroy Venezuela, and our government always gives the standard line: “We want to help the people. We care about their democracy. They have a lot of inflation, and that’s why we need to drop our freedom bombs on their heads.” They’ve trotted out that bullshit brigade under Bush, Obama and now Trump. The officials never just say, “Yeah, there’s like, tons of oil there, and we want it.”

Yet, here it is. The disguise of neoliberal world domination has come off. (Ironically, the fake mustache was yanked off to reveal a much larger mustache.)

Also, it’s amazing how monotone and matter-of-fact Bolton is as he speaks. A U.S.-backed coup often ends in terrible violence with tens of thousands of innocent people killed. It’s truly heartbreaking, no matter which side you support. Sometimes it ends up with a brutal military junta taking control. Yet, here is John Bolton discussing it the same way he would analyze whether to have chocolate fudge ice cream or apple pie for dessert. (“Hmmm, possible death of a hundred thousand people? That sounds good—I’ll have that.”)

This is all the more horrifying because these policies are decided by unelected maniacs like Elliot Abrams, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Trump just named Abrams special envoy to Venezuela despite the fact the guy has a resume that would make Josef Mengele blush. And what’s even more jaw-dropping is watching the liberati like Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and nearly every democrat in Congress get in line to support the talking points of right-wing warlords (the belligerati) like Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, Trump, Hannity and nearly every Republican in Congress. The mountains of propaganda put forward make it hard to breathe (the air is thinner up here).

Worse yet—even the Wall Street Journal stated the U.S. push to oust Maduro is just the first shot in the oligarchy’s plan to reshape Latin America. It turns out sociopathy is addictive. Our American empire knows no bounds to its nation-building (after nation-destroying).

The Venezuelan people deserve self-determination, no matter how you feel about the current government. The absolute last thing they need is to be turned into a neocon / neoliberal parking lot in which America rips all their resources out from under them while calling it “freedom.” Luckily, there are already many signs this U.S.-created attempted coup is failing.

—

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This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show, “Redacted Tonight.”

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Ringing in a New Year of War

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By Tom Engelhardt

Source: TomDispatch.com

On December 9th, the Washington Post covered Donald Trump’s offhand, if long expected, announcement of the ousting of retired Marine General John Kelly from an embattled White House. Its report focused on the chief of staff’s “rocky tenure” there with a nod to his many merits, among them that he “often talked the president out of his worst impulses.” Buried deep in the piece, though, was a single line that caught my eye (and possibly that of no one else on this planet): “Kelly told others that among his biggest accomplishments was keeping the president from making rash military moves, such as removing troops from sensitive zones.”

It was admittedly neither a direct quote, nor attributed to anyone, nor elaborated on in the rest of the piece. So that’s all we know, not whether Kelly took particular pride in stopping the president from removing American troops from, say, Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or for that matter Niger. But however passing and non-specific that line may have been, it seemed to catch something striking about these last two years, a time when those in the mainstream opposition to the president have come to love so many of the retired generals and former heads of outfits like the National Security Agency and the CIA, and have turned them into the equivalent of security blankets for the rest of us. They were the men (because they were all men) intent on talking Donald Trump out of “his worst impulses” and so, in the phrase of the era, they were the “adults in the room.”

Thanks to the wars and other shenanigans that those “adults” had already been so deeply involved in and the money — more than $5 trillion of it — squandered on them, they were also the men who helped generate the dissatisfaction that gave Donald Trump his opening in the first place. And now, having been part of the problem, they are in full chorus condemnation of Donald Trump’s most recent solution: to withdraw American troops from Syria (and soon evidently from Afghanistan as well).  We — that is, the country whose actions were crucial in creating ISIS in the first place — are now the only “bulwark” against its return.  That goes without saying, of course, among Republicans, Democrats, the national security elite, America’s generals, and that last “adult” in the room, Secretary of Defense James Mattis — or at least it did until, days ago, he resigned in protest.  And as U.S. Army major and TomDispatch regular Danny Sjursen suggests in his year-ending piece, as that one Washington Post line about Kelly indicates, they worked awfully hard to ensure that President Trump wouldn’t withdraw from any part of the mess they made. With that thought in mind and withdrawals about to be under way on an increasingly grim planet, Happy New Year! Tom

The World According to the “Adults in the Room”
A Year of Forever War in Review
By Danny Sjursen

Leave it to liberals to pin their hopes on the oddest things. In particular, they seemed to find post-Trump solace in the strange combination of the two-year-old Mueller investigation and the good judgment of certain Trump appointees, the proverbial “adults in the room.” Remember that crew? It once included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, and a trio of active and retired generals — so much for civilian control of the military — including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Until his sudden resignation, Mattis was (just barely) the last man standing. Still, for all these months, many Americans had counted on them to all but save the nation from an unpredictable president. They were the ones supposedly responsible for helming (or perhaps hemming in) the wayward ship of state when it came to foreign and national security policy.

Too bad it was all such a fantasy. As Donald Trump wraps up his second year in the Oval Office, despite sudden moves in Syria and Afghanistan, the United States remains entrenched in a set of military interventions across significant parts of the world. Worse yet, what those adults guided the president toward was yet more bombing, the establishment of yet more bases, and the funding of yet more oversized Pentagon budgets. And here was the truly odd thing: every time The Donald tweeted negatively about any of those wars or uttered an offhand remark in opposition to the warfare state or the Pentagon budget, that triumvirate of generals and good old Rex went to work steering him back onto the well-worn track of Bush-Obama-style forever wars.

All the while, a populace obsessed and distracted by the president’s camera-grabbing persona seemed hardly to notice that this country continued to exist in a state of perpetual war. And here’s the most curious part of all: Trump wasn’t actually elected on an interventionist military platform. Sure, he threw the hawkish wing of his Republican base a few bones: bringing back waterboarding as well as even “worse” forms of torture, bombing “the shit” out of ISIS, and filling Guantánamo with “some bad dudes.” Still, with foreign policy an undercard issue in a domestically focused campaign to “Make America Great Again,” most Trump supporters seemed to have little stomach for endless war in the Greater Middle East — and The Donald knew it.

Common Sense on the Campaign Trail

Despite his coarse language and dubious policy positions, candidate Trump did seem to promise something new in foreign policy. To his credit, he called the 2003 Iraq War the “single worst decision ever made” (even if his own shifting position on that invasion was well-documented). He repeatedly tweeted his virulent opposition to continuing the war in Afghanistan and regularly urged President Obama to stay out of Syria. And to the horror of newly minted Cold War liberals, he even suggested a détente with Russia.

Like so much else in his campaign, none of this was from the standard 2016 bullet-point repertoire of seasoned politicians. Sure, Donald Trump lacked the requisite knowledge and ideological coherence usually considered mandatory for serious candidates, but from time to time he did — let’s admit it — offer some tidbits of fresh thinking on foreign policy. However blasphemous that may sound, on certain international issues the guy had a point compared to Hillary, the hawk.

During his presidency, traces of his earthy commonsense still showed up from time to time. In August 2017, for instance, when announcing yet another escalation in the Afghan War, he felt obliged to admit that his original instinct had been to “pull out” of it, adding that he still sympathized with Americans who were “weary of war.”  He sounded like a man anything but confident of his chosen course of action — or at least the one chosen for him by those “adults” of his. Then, last week, he surprised the whole business-as-usual Washington establishment by announcing an imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.  Whether he reverses himself, as he’s been apt to do, remains unknown, but here was at least a flash of his campaign-style anti-interventionism.

How, then, to explain the way a seemingly confident candidate had morphed into a hesitant president — until his recent set of decisions to pull troops out of parts of the Greater Middle East — at least on matters of war and peace? Why those nearly two years of bowing to the long-stale foreign policy thinking that had infused the Bush-Obama years, the very thing he had been theoretically running against?

Well, pin it on those adults in the room, especially the three generals. As mid-level and senior officers, they had, after all, cut their teeth on the war on terror. It and it alone defined their careers, their lives, and so their thinking. Long before Donald Trump came along, they and their peer commanders had already been taken hostage by the interventionist military playbook that went with that war and came to define the thinking of their generation. That was how you had to think, in fact, if you wanted to rise in the ranks.

The adults weren’t, for the most part, political partisans. Then again, neither was the militarist playbook they were following. Both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush had been selling exactly the same snake oil in 2016. Only Trump — and to some extent Bernie Sanders — had offered a genuine alternative. Nevertheless, the Trump administration sustained that same policy of forever war for almost two full years and the grown-ups in the room were the ones who made it so. Exhibit A was the Greater Middle East.

The Same Old Playbook

While George W. Bush favored a “go-big” option of regime change, massive military occupation, and armed nation-building, Barack Obama preferred expanded drone strikes, increased military advisory missions, and — in the case of Libya — a bit of light regime-changing. In Trump’s first two years in office, the U.S. military seemed to merge aspects of the losing strategies of both of those presidents.

If Trump’s gut instinct was to skip future “dumb” Iraq-style wars, “pull out” of Afghanistan, and avoid regional conflict with Russia, his grown-up advisers pushed him in exactly the opposite direction. They chose instead what might be called the more strategy: more bombing, more troops, more drone strikes, more defense spending, more advisors, more everything. And if a war seemed to be failing anyway, the answer came straight from that very playbook, as in Afghanistan in 2017: a “surge” and the need for yet more time. As a result, America’s longest-ever war grew longer still with no end faintly in sight.

Given such thinking, it’s odd to recall that those adults in the room were, once upon a time, reputed to be outside-the-box thinkers. Secretary Mattis was initially hailed as such an avid reader and devoted student of military history that he was dubbed the “warrior monk.” H.R. McMaster was similarly hailed for having written a book critical of U.S. strategy in Vietnam (though wrong in its conclusions). Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington were similarly convinced that if anyone could bring order to the Trump administration, it would be the ever-responsible John Kelly.

Let’s review, then, the advice that these innovators offered the president in his first two years in office and the results in the Greater Middle East, starting with that presidential urge to pull out of Iraq. You won’t be surprised to learn that U.S. troops are still ensconced there in an ongoing fight against what’s suddenly a growing ISIS insurgency (now that its “caliphate” is no more). Nor has Washington taken any meaningful steps to bolster the legitimacy of the Shia-dominated Baghdad government, which portends an indefinite Sunni-based insurgency of some sort (or sorts) and a possible Kurdish secession.

In Syria, rather than downsize the U.S. military mission in the interest of Trump’s stated wish for détente with Russia and his urge to get the troops out “like very soon,” his administration had more than stayed put. It essentially chose to go with an indefinite American occupation of eastern Syria, including up to 4,000 mainly Special Operations forces backing predominantly Kurdish rebels there. In fact, only recently Mattis and other “senior national security officials” reportedly tried unsuccessfully to talk the president out of his recent tweeted proclamation to end the American role in Syria and withdraw those troops from the country as, it seems, is now happening. In this, he clearly wants to avoid the ongoing risk of war with both Russia and NATO ally Turkey, not to speak of Iran. The Turks continue to threaten to invade the northern Syrian region controlled by those U.S.-backed Kurds, while Russian forces had, alarmingly, exchanged fire with U.S. troops more than once along the Euphrates River buffer zone. The Syrian mission was all risk and no reward, but the adults in the room continued to work feverishly to convince the president that to pull out might create a new “safe haven” not just for ISIS but also for the Iranians.

In Afghanistan, whatever Trump’s “instinct” may have been, after many meetings with his “cabinet and generals,” or what he called his “experts,” the president decided on a new escalation, a mini-surge in that then 17-year-old war. To that end, he delegated yet more decision-making to the very generals who were so unsuccessful in previous years and they proceeded to order the dropping of a record number of bombs, including the first-ever use of the largest non-nuclear ordnance in the Air Force arsenal, the so-called Mother of all Bombs. The results were the very opposite of reassuring. Indeed, the U.S. and its Afghan allies may be headed for actual military defeat, as the Taliban controls or contests more districts than ever, while Afghan government casualties have become, in the phrase of an American general, “unsustainable.”

Now, in a rebuke to those very experts and adults, the president will apparently remove half the U.S. troops in Afghanistan. After so many years of fruitless war, this sensible decision raised immediate alarm among the hawks in Congress and in the rest of the Washington national security establishment.  That decision, plus pulling the plug on the Syrian operation, apparently proved to be a red line for the last adult left standing and Jim Mattis promptly resigned in protest.  For the outgoing secretary of defense, it seems that complicity in Saudi war crimes in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi were passing events.  Trump’s willingness to try to end the American role in two failing, dubiously legal quagmires, however, proved to be the general’s breaking point.

Elsewhere, the Trump team has moved ever closer to a regime-change policy in Iran, especially after the replacement of Tillerson and McMaster by the particularly Iranophobic duo of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton as secretary of state and national security advisor. Still, don’t blame any looming Iran disaster on them. Washington had unilaterally pulled out of the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal with that country well before they arrived on the scene. While the grown-ups might not have been quite as amenable to war with Iran as Bolton and Pompeo, they couldn’t countenance détente for even a second.

And, of course, all those adults in the room supported U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led terror bombing and starvation of Yemen, the poorest Arab country. They also favored sustained ties with Saudi Arabia and its increasingly brutal crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Indeed, despite the recent murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist and Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi in that country’s embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Senate’s increasing disenchantment with the war in Yemen, Mattis remained a vocal supporter of the Saudis. Just before the Senate recently voted to pull U.S. military assistance for the Saudi war, he joined Pompeo in urging that chamber not to abandon Riyadh. In addition, key senators called Mattis’s testimony “misleading” because he “downplayed” the Saudi crown prince’s role in the murder, ignoring the conclusion of the CIA that the prince was indeed “complicit” in it.

So when it comes to outside-the-box thinking about the Greater Middle East almost two years into the president’s first term, the U.S. remains ensconced in a series of distinctly inside-the-box and unwinnable wars across the region.  Trump, however, now appears ready to change course, at least in Syria and Afghanistan, perhaps out of frustration with the ever-so-conventional mess the adults left him in.

A Militarized Planet

Elsewhere, matters are hardly more encouraging. At a global level, the grown-ups have neither tempered the president’s more bizarre policies nor offered a humbler, more modest military approach themselves. The result, as the country enters 2019, is an increasingly militarized planet. Mattis’s own National Defense Strategy (NDS), released in January 2018, represents a blatant giveaway to the domestic arms industry, envisioning as it does a world eternally on the brink of Great Power war.

On that planet of the adults, the U.S. must now prepare for threats across every square inch of the globe. Far from the military de-escalation hinted at by candidate Trump (and suggested again in a recent tweet of his), Mattis’s “2-2-1 policy” has the Pentagon ramping up for potential fights with two “big” adversaries (China and Russia), two “medium” opponents (Iran and North Korea), and one “sustained” challenge (conflicts and terrorism across the Greater Middle East). Few have asked whether such a strategy is faintly sustainable, even with a military budget that dwarfs that of any other power on the planet.

In fact, the implementation of that NDS vision is clearly leading to a new arms race and a burgeoning Cold War 2.0. Washington is already engaged in a spiraling trade war with Beijing and has announced plans to pull out of a key Cold War nuclear treaty with Russia, while developing a new group of treaty-busting intermediate range nuclear missiles itself. In addition, at the insistence of his military advisers, the president has agreed to back an Obama-era “modernization” program for the U.S. nuclear arsenal now estimated to cost at least $1.6 trillion over the next three decades.

So much for a Republican insistence on balanced budgets and decreased deficits. Furthermore, climate-change denial remains the name of the game in the Trump administration and, in this singular case, the adults in the room could do nothing about it. Despite earlier Pentagon reports that concluded man-made climate change presents a national security threat to the country, the Trump administration has ignored such claims. It has even insisted upon substituting the term “extreme weather” for “climate change” in current defense reports. Here, the grown-ups do indeed know better — the military has long been focused on the dangers of climate change — but have dismally failed to temper the president’s anti-science policies.

So, as 2018 comes to a close, thanks to the worldview of those grown-ups and the pliability of Trump’s own ideology (except when it comes to climate change), Washington’s empire of bases, its never-ending war on terror, and its blank-check spending on the military-industrial complex were more firmly entrenched than ever.  It will fall to the president — if indeed he proves to be serious when it comes to a course change — to begin the long work of (modestly) undoing a planet of war.

The Last Adult?

Looking toward 2019 in a world on edge, here are a couple of thoughts on our future. Expect that Robert Mueller’s future report will find many things to focus on, including plenty of collusion with women, but — whatever the Russians did and whatever the desires of those around candidate Trump may have been — no actual collusion of substance with Moscow in election 2016. That will undoubtedly break the hearts of liberals everywhere and ensure — despite the best efforts of a new Democratic House — a full Trump term (or two!). Furthermore, whatever “blue-wave” Democrats do domestically, they are unlikely to present a coherent, alternative foreign-policy vision. Instead, prepare to watch them cede that territory (as always) to Trump and the Republicans. Meanwhile, at least until 2021, they will continue to lament the absence of those “adults in the room” and their supposed ability to preserve a respectable foreign policy, which, of course, would have meant war all the way to the bank.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking of those adults as the tools (and often enough the future employees) of a military-industrial-congressional complex that feeds Americans ample servings of endless war, year after year, decade after decade. In truth, in this century presidents change but the failing policies haven’t.

Call it the deep state, the swamp, or whatever you like, but bottom line: during Trump’s first two years in office, there wasn’t, until now, any serious rethinking of American foreign and military policy, not in terms of peaceableness anyway. Trump’s original adults in the room set the table for endless war. Their replacements clearly intended to devour plentiful helpings of the same dishes. Make no mistake, if it were up to those adults, the United States would be ringing in this New Year with yet another copious serving of militarism.  It still may.

I must admit that I find myself in a lonely spot as 2018 ends. I’ve been serving in the U.S. Army during this period, while dissenting from prevailing foreign policy. After spending 18 years in uniform, including tours of duty in both the Afghan and the Iraq wars, and observing a slew of retired generals and policymakers who oversaw those very wars champion yet more (failed) conventional thinking, forgive me for wondering, from time to time, if I weren’t the last true adult in the room.

Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel

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By Ray McGovern

Source: Consortium News

Outgoing Defense Secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis was famous for quipping, “It’s fun to shoot some people.” It remains a supreme irony that Mattis was widely considered the only “adult in the room” in the Trump administration. Compared to whom? John Bolton, the rabid neocon serving as national security adviser? That would be the epitome of “condemning with faint praise.”

With his ramrod-straight image, not to mention his warrior/scholar reputation extolled in the media, Mattis was able to disguise the reality that he was, as Col. Andrew Bacevich put it on Democracy Now! this morning, “totally unimaginative.” Meaning that Mattis was simply incapable of acknowledging the self-destructive, mindless nature of U.S. “endless war” in the Middle East, which candidate-Trump had correctly called “stupid.” In his resignation letter, Mattis also peddled the usual cant about the indispensable nation’s aggression being good for the world.

Mattis was an obstacle to Trump’s desire to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan (and remains in position to spike Trump’s orders). Granted, the abrupt way Trump announced his apparently one-man decision was equally stupid. But withdrawal of ground troops is supremely sane, and Mattis was and is a large problem. And, for good or ill, Trump — not Mattis — was elected president.

Marine Wisdom

Historically, Marines are the last place to turn for sound advice. Marine Gen. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), twice winner of the Medal of Honor, was brutally candid about this, after he paused long enough to realize, and write, “War is a Racket”:

“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. …”

Shortly after another Marine general, former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni, retired, he stood by silently as he personally watched then-Vice President Dick Cheney give his most important speech ever (on August 26, 2002). Cheney blatantly lied about Iraq’s (non-existent) WMD, in order to grease the skids for the war of aggression against Iraq. Zinni had kept his clearances and was “back on contract.” He was well read-in on Iraq, and knew immediately that Cheney was lying.

A few years later, Zinni admitted that he decided that his lips would be sealed. Far be it for a Marine to play skunk at the picnic.  And, after all, he was being honored that day at the same Veterans of Foreign Wars convention where Cheney spoke.  As seems clear now, Zinni was also lusting after the lucrative spoils of war given to erstwhile generals who offer themselves for membership on the corporate Boards of the arms makers/merchants that profiteer on war.

(For an earlier critique of senior Marines, see: “Attacking Syria: Thumbing Noses at Constitution and Law.” )

Marine officer, now Sen. Pat Roberts, R, Kansas, merits “dishonorable mention” in this connection. He never rose to general, but did become Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at an auspicious time for Cheney and Bush. Roberts kowtowed, like a “good Marine,” to their crass deceit, when a dollop of honesty on his part could have prevented the 2003 attack on Iraq and the killing, maiming, destruction, and chaos that continues to this day.  Roberts knew all about the fraudulent intelligence, and covered it up — together with other lies — for as long as he remained Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman

Scott Ritter on Pat Roberts

Roberts’s unconscionable dereliction of duty enraged one honest Marine, Maj. Scott Ritter, who believes “Semper Fi” includes an obligation to tell the truth on matters of war and peace.  Ritter, former UN chief weapons inspector for Iraq, who in April  wrote in April 2005 “Semper Fraud, Senator Roberts,” based partly on his own experience with that complicit Marine.

Needless to say, higher ranking, more malleable Marines aped Zinni in impersonating Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby — not saying nuttin’.

It is conceivable that yet another sharply-saluting Marine, departing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, may be tapped by Trump to take Mattis’s job. If that happens, it will add to President Trump’s bizarre penchant for picking advisers hell bent on frustrating the objectives he espoused when he was running for office, some of which — it is becoming quite clear — he genuinely wants to achieve.

Trump ought to unleash Mattis now, and make sure Mattis keeps his distance from the Pentagon and the Military-Industrial Complex, before he is asked to lead an insurrection against a highly vulnerable president — as Gen. Smedley Butler was asked to do back in the day. Butler said no.

How the West eats its children

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By Thierry Meyssan

Source: VoltaireNet.org

The cause of Western recession

International relations experienced a profound change with the paralysis of the Soviet Union in 1986, when the State was unable to control the civilian nuclear incident in Tchernobyl [1], then with the revocation of the Warsaw Pact in 1989, when the East German Communist Party [2] destroyed the Berlin Wall, and finally, with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

At that time, the President of the United States, George Bush Sr., decided to demobilise one million soldiers and devote the efforts of his country to its own prosperity. He wanted to transform US hegemony within its zone of influence, and expand it into that of the leader of the world, the guarantor of world stability. With that, he laid the foundations for a « New World Order », first of all in the speech he gave side by side with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at the Aspen Institute (2 August 1990), then during his speech to Congress (11 September 1990), announcing operation « Desert Storm » [3].

The world of the après-Soviet Union is one of free circulation, not only of merchandise, but also world capital, under the unique control of the United States. In other words, the passage from capitalism to financialisation – not the triumphant culmination of free exchange, but an exacerbated form of colonial exploitation of the whole world, including the West. Within the space of a quarter of a century, the major US fortunes have multiplied many times, and the global wealth of the world has increased considerably.

By allowing capitalism to run wild, President Bush Sr. hoped to extend prosperity to the world. But capitalism is not a political project, it is simply a system of logic designed for creating profit. The logic of the US multinationals was to increase their profits by delocalising production to China, where it is now possible, and where workers are the lowest paid in the world.

Those who were prepared to measure the cost of this advance for the West were few and far between. New middle classes began to appear in the third world, and although they were, of course, far less wealthy than those in the West, they enabled new, mainly Asian states, to play a rôle on the world stage. But simultaneously, Western middle classes began to disappear [4], meaning that it became impossible for the democratic institutions they built to survive. Above all, the populations of entire regions were to be entirely crushed, starting with those of the African Great Lakes. This first regional war caused 6 million deaths, in Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, and was met with general incomprehension and indifference. The aim was to continue to seize the natural resources of these countries, but to pay less and less for them, which meant dealing with gangs rather than with the States who had to feed their populations.

The sociological transformation of the world is happening very fast and is clearly without precedent, although we do not have the statistical tools available today to evaluate it with precision. However, everyone can witness the increase in power of Eurasia, (not in the Gaullist sense of « Brest to Vladivostok », but that of Russia and Asia without Western and Central Europe), which seeks liberty and prosperity, while the Western powers, including the United States, are slowly and progressively declining, limiting individual freedom and ejecting half of their population into zones of poverty.

Today, the percentage of imprisonment in China is four times inferior to that of the United States,while their purchasing power is slightly higher. Objectively therefore, with all its faults, Chine has become a freer and more prosperous country than the United States.

This process was predictable from the beginning. Its application was studied for a long time. So, on 1 September 1987, a US forty-year-old published a page of counter-current publicity in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He warned his compatriots about the rôle that President Bush Sr. was planning to allocate to the United States – to assume and finance out of their own pockets the responsibility for the developing « New World Order ». People read it and laughed. The author of these texts was real estate promoter, Donald Trump.

The application of the economic model to international relations

One month after the attacks of 11 September 2001, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nominated his friend Admiral Arthur Cebrowski as Director of the new Office of Force Transformation. He was tasked with changing the culture of the entire US military in order to enable it to respond to a complete change in its mission

There was no longer question of using US armies to defend principles or interests, but to use them for a reorganisation of the world by dividing it into two parts – one one side the states integrated into the globalised economy, and on the other, the others [5]. The Pentagon would no longer fight wars in order to steal natural resources, but to control access to those resources by the globalised nations. A division directly inspired by the process of globalisation which had already trashed half of the Western populations. This time, it was half of the world’s population which was to be excluded [6].

The reorganisation of the world began in the political zone known as the « Greater Middle East », that is to say stretching from Afghanistan to Morocco, with the exception of Israël, Lebanon and Jordan. This brought about the alleged epidemic of civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria and Yemen, which has already caused several million deaths.

Like a monster eating its own children, the global financial system based in the United States faced its first crisis in 2008, when the subprime bubble burst. Contrary to a commonly-held belief, this was absolutely not a global crisis, but a Western problem. For the first time, the NATO states experienced the first consequences of the policy they were supporting. Yet the upper Western classes changed nothing in their behaviour, as they witnessed with compassion the wreck of the middle classes. The only notable modification was the adoption of the « Volcker rule » [7], which forbade banks from profiting from information obtained from their clients in order to speculate against their interests. But while conflicts of interest enabled a number of crooks to get rich fast, they are not the root of the problem, which is far more wide-reaching.

The revolt of the Western populations

The revolt of the Western middle and working classes against the globalised upper class began two years ago.

Aware of the Western recession as compared with Asia, the people of the United Kingdom were the first to attempt to save its life-style by leaving the European Union and turning to China and the Commonwealth (referendum of 23 June 2016) [8]. Unfortunately, the leaders of the United Kingdom were unable to conclude the agreement they hoped for with China and experienced great difficulty in reactivating their links with the Commonwealth.

Then, witnessing the collapse of their civil industries, a part of the United States voted, on 8 November 2016, for the only Presidential candidate who was opposed to the New World Order, Donald Trump. He spoke of a return to the « American dream ». Unfortunately for his voters, although Donald Trump began to question the rules of globalised commerce, he had no team with him apart from his family, and was only able to modify, but not change, the military strategy of his country. Almost all of the general officers had adopted the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski ideology, and could no longer imagine themselves in any other role than defenders of financial globalisation.

Aware of the collapse of their national industry, and certain that they would be betrayed by their upper class, the Italians voted, on 4 March 2018, for an anti-system party composed of the Ligue and the 5-star Movement. These parties built an alliance in order to implement social policies. Unfortunately, they were rejected by the European Union [9]. In France, tens of thousands of SME’s (small and medium-sized enterprises), subcontractors of industry, had gone bankrupt over the last ten years, but their compulsory tax deductions, already among the highest in the world, increased by 30 % over the same period.

Several hundreds of thousands of French people suddenly took to the streets to demonstrate against abusive financial measures. Unfortunately for them, the French upper classes have been contaminated by the very idea that was rejected by the United States, and therefore did their best to adapt their policies to the popular revolt, but not to change its basic causes.

If we look at each of these four countries separately, we will find four different explanations for what is happening there. But if we analyse the situation as a single phenomenon affecting different cultures, we will discover the same mechanisms across the board. In these four countries, consecutive with the end of capitalism, the middle classes disappeared more or less rapidly, and with them the political system that they incarnated – Democracy.

So either the Western leaders abandon the financial system they have developed and return to the productive capitalism of the Cold War, or they will have to invent a different organisation that no-one has so far been able imagine. Failing that, the West, which has directed the world for five centuries, will sink into a long period of internal chaos.

The Syrians were the first non-globalised People capable of surviving and resisting the destruction of Rumsfeld-Cebrowski’s infra-world. The French were the first globalised people to rise up against the destruction of the West, even if they are not aware that they are fighting the same unique enemy of all of humanity. President Emmanuel Macron is not the man for the situation, not because he has any responsibility for the system that preceded him, but because he is pure product of that system. In response to the riots in his country, he spoke from the G20 in Buenos-Aires, declaring that the meeting was a success in his eyes, (which it was not), and that he intended to advance more efficiently than his predecessors – in the wrong direction.

How to save privilege

It appears that the British ruling class has its solution – if London in particular and the Western nations in general are no longer capable of ruling the world, it will be necessary to cut one’s losses and divide the world into two distinct zones. This is the policy implemented by Obama in the final months of his presidency [10], then by Theresa May, and now by Donald Trump, with their refusal to cooperate and their ready-made accusations, first of all against Russia and now against China.

It also seems that Russia and China, despite their historical rivalry, are aware that they will never be able to ally themselves with these Westerners who have never ceased trying to carve them up. This is the source of their project, the « Eurasian Economic Union » – if the world must be split in two, each participant will have to organise its own. In concrete terms, for Beijing, this means abandoning half of its « Silk Road » project and its redeployment with Moscow only in Greater Eurasia.

How to determine the line of demarcation

For the West and Greater Eurasia, it will be necessary to determine the split line as fast as possible. For example, what side will Ukraine choose? The construction by Russia of the Kertch bridge was aimed at separating the country, absorbing the Donbass and the Azov Sea basin, then Odessa and Transnistria. On the contrary, the incident at Kertch, organised by the Western powers, is aimed at enrolling all of Ukraine into NATO before the country fractures.

Since the ship of financial globalisation is sinking, many people are beginning to save their personal interests without any care for others. For example this is the source of the tension between the European Union and the United States. As far as this game is concerned, the Zionist movement has always had a length’s lead, which explains the mutation of Israëli strategy, which has abandoned Syria to Russia, and turned to both the Gulf States and East Africa.

Perspectives

Taking into account what is at play here, it is obvious that the insurrection in France is only the beginning of a much wider process which is going to spread to other Western countries.

It would be absurd to believe that at a time of financial globalisation, a government, whatever it might be, could resolve the problems of its country without first of all questioning international relations and at the same time regaining its capacity for action. But precisely, foreign policy has been kept on the sidelines of the democratic field since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is both necessary and urgent to resign from almost all of the treaties and engagements of the last thirty years. Only the states which are able to re-affirm their sovereignty can hope to recover.

Translation
Pete Kimberley

[1] According to Michaïl Gorbatchev, this was the event that made possible the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in so far as it delegitimised the State.

[2] Contrary to a commonly-held belief in the West, it was the nationalists from the East-German Communist Party (and the Lutheran churches), and not the anti-Communists (and pro-US movements), who broke down the symbol of Soviet domination, the Wall.

[3] The main purpose of the invasion of Iraq was not to liberate Kuwaït, but to use this affair to build the strongest coalition possible under US command, including the USSR.

[4] Global Inequality. A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, Branko Milanovic, Harvard University Press, 2016.

[5] “The US military project for the world”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 22 August 2017.

[6] It is obvious that the wars of Bush Jr. and Obama were never intended to expand the Empire. First of all because by definition, democracy can only come from the People, not imposed by bombs. And then because the United States was already a plutocracy.

[7] The ex-president of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, is on the other hand, one of the architects of global financialisation. It is Volcker who took legal action on behalf of the UNO against the people and entities who had helped Iraq to bypass the UN embargo (the « oil for food » affair). Volcker is one of the principal personalities of the Pilgrim’s Society, the trans-Atlantic club presided by Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he became the main economic advisor to President Barack Obama, and organised part of his cabinet.

[8] “The new British Foreign Policy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 4 July 2016.

[9] Replacing the European Common Market, which was originally a system for cooperation between states, the European Union, as defined by the Treaty of Maastricht, is a supranational

[10] “Two separate worlds”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Al-Watan (Syria) , Voltaire Network, 8 November 2016.

The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

The US State Department has issued a statement accusing the Syrian government of having carried out a false flag chemical weapons attack in northwestern Aleppo with the intent to blame it on the jihadist factions in the region, citing “credible info” that the public has not been permitted to see. Never mind the known fact that there are actual, literal Al Qaeda affiliates who have admitted to using chemical weapons in Aleppo, and who are known to have used chemical weapons throughout Syria even by the State Department’s own admission: the Official Narrative is that only the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, so the chemical weapons usage must necessarily be a false flag staged by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Except they didn’t use the words “false flag”. Despite the accusation being the exact definition of the thing that a false flag attack is, you won’t see the US government using that term, nor will you ever see it used in this instance by any of the authorized mainstream narrative-framing institutions like CNN or Fox News. This is because the term “false flag” is reserved solely for mention when referring to crazy, kooky Kremlin propaganda, as in the insane, unhinged, tinfoil hat belief that terrorists in Syria might possibly have some kind of motive to stage a false flag chemical attack in order to get the US, UK and France to act as their air force in a retaliatory strike against the Syrian government. That kind of false flag would be completely inconceivable to any right-minded empire loyalist, and is forbidden to even think about.

At the same time we are seeing a push from the mass media to advance a narrative that the Yellow Vests protests in France are due to Russian influence, with Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot publishing a column today in the Washington Post that is based entirely around the talking point that two trending Russian topics on social media have been “giletsjaune” and “France,” and Bloomberg putting out an article blatantly titled “Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow Vests Rage”. Their entire theory is that since there are people in Russia talking about a major event that everyone else in the world is also talking about, the protests against Macron’s unpopular centrist policies are therefore the result of a conspiracy seeded by Russia.

But you’ll never hear this theory about a Russian conspiracy referred to as a “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream press. The theory that Russian elites have conspired to infiltrate the highest levels of the US government has been given serious treatment at the top echelons of media and political influence, despite its lacking any discernible evidence whatsoever, but when they talk about these alleged conspiracies they always make a point of using the word “collusion” instead. There is no actual difference between the words collude and conspire when used in this way, but the former is used because a deliberate effort has been made to stigmatize the word “conspiracy” while the word “collude” remains effectively neutral in the public eye.

But the fact of the matter is that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, and there is no legitimate reason to call the authorized, power-manufactured conspiracy theories by a different name than the grassroots narratives like those about 9/11 or the JFK assassination. Indeed, due to the nature of populist folk narratives there is a lot more publicly available evidence contradicting the official 9/11 and JFK assassination stories than there is for the establishment Russia conspiracy theories, because those narratives often boil down to nothing more than secretive intelligence agencies saying “This is true because we said so.” Since grassroots conspiracy theories are unable to rely on empty assertions from authority, they tend to be built upon information that is publicly available.

Some people get annoyed with me for using the term conspiracy theory at all, but I insist that the phrase is itself intrinsically neutral: a theory about a conspiracy. The problem is not the phrase, it is the stigma that has been attached to that phrase by establishment media and establishment politicians; shifting to a different phrase to describe theories about conspiracies would only ensure that that phrase becomes stigmatized in the exact same way by the same sort of campaign. This would only ensure the survival of the tactic of regurgitating a pre-stigmatized label in the war of ideas instead of advancing actual arguments. The fact of the matter is that powerful people do indeed conspire, those conspiracies do indeed need to be talked about, and the largest promulgators of conspiracy theories are not Infowars or RT, but mainstream media and the US State Department.

Those who dismiss an idea by calling it a “conspiracy theory” without providing further argumentation are simply admitting to you that they have no argument, and it is right to point this out when they do it, because something being a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s not grounded in facts. Some conspiracy theories are good and are backed by solid evidence, some are stupid and are circulated for intellectually dishonest reasons. Once upon a time you would be called a conspiracy theorist for saying the west is arming terrorists in Syria or the DNC is conspiring to ensure the primary victory of Hillary Clinton; those things are now conspiracy facts, as history has vindicated the solid theories which predicted them. Other conspiracy theories are promulgated by dim-witted partisan loyalists for no other reason than dim-witted partisan loyalty, like the aforementioned Russiagate conspiracy theory, or the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is leading a rebellion against the Deep State as cryptically reported by an anonymous user on 8chan.

Other conspiracy theories are subscribed to simply because they help people escape the cognitive dissonance of conflicting beliefs. For example, a strong believer in capitalism who sees the undeniable signs that a plutocratic class has control of their government, but who cannot accept that this plutocratic takeover was facilitated by a rampant capitalist system which ensures that the greediest sociopaths rise to the top, may avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the existence of the corrupt dominator class with conspiracy theories about Jews or pedovore cults. A liberal who cannot accept that neoliberal empire loyalists like Macron have failed to “make centrism cool” as Max Boot predicted will avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the failures of the Church of the Status Quo with conspiracy theories about Russian social media campaigns.

Conspiracy theories, in reality, are nothing more than people’s attempts to explain what is going on in their world. Why Trump got elected. Why things stay shitty despite our perfectly rational attempts to change them. Why voting doesn’t seem to make much difference in the actual behaviors of one’s government. Why we keep marching into stupid wars, Orwellian dystopia and climate collapse despite having every incentive not to. Why the wealthiest of the wealthy keep getting wealthier while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Some attempts to explain these things will come from a well-informed and intellectually honest place, and some will come from a myopic and intellectually dishonest place. Their individual merits can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

And in my opinion the conspiracy theories coming from the world’s most powerful institutions are the most dishonest by far. I saw a recent post by the WikiLeaks Twitter account which referred to the corporate media as “the narrative business pretending to be in the news business,” which is in my opinion a perfect way to phrase it. The real currency of the world is not gold, nor is it bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military force; it’s narrative control. The ability to control the stories people tell about what’s going on in their world means the ability to control how they think, how they vote, how they behave, and how they all agree money and power itself operates within our society. Since society is made of narrative, controlling the narrative is controlling that society.

Conspiracy theories are a way for those in power to manipulate the narrative without actually giving the public any hard facts and evidence, and the world’s most powerful institutions are increasingly relying on conspiracy theories because they don’t have facts and evidence on their side. And why would they? The same power establishment which deceived the world into destroying Iraq is obviously far too depraved to be able to justify its global hegemony with factual evidence. All they have is narrative control, and they’re starting to lose even that.

GHW Bush: Honoring a War Criminal

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.org

America honors its worst. Throughout his career as a House member, UN envoy, GOP National Committee chairman, ambassador to China, CIA director, vice president and president, GHW Bush was an unapologetic imperial spear carrier.

He supported all US wars of aggression and launched his own – against nations threatening no one. His actions showed profound indifference to rule of law principles and human suffering.

Countless millions were grievously harmed by an agenda he backed and led as president. Major media shamefully praised what demands condemnation and accountability, even posthumously.

Praising “his leadership and choices on the global stage,” the NYT claimed “historians will almost certainly treat him more kindly than the voters did in 1992” – establishment ones only, not honorable truth-tellers.

A Jeb Bush/James Baker op-ed shamefully said they “never met a man as remarkable as George HW Bush” – a profound perversion of truth.

Wall Street Journal editors praised his war on Iraq, ignoring his naked aggression and genocidal sanctions, the latter responsible for the deaths of around 5,000 Iraqi children under age-five monthly while in force.

He was involved in Washington’s Contra war in Nicaragua. It followed the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s (FSLN) overthrow of US-supported tyrannical Anastasio Somoza’s fascist regime.

As president, he ordered the invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989, aiming to prove his toughness against a defenseless nation no match against America’s military might.

Manuel Noriega was Washington’s man in Panama from December 1983 until yearend 1989, a valued CIA asset until forgetting who’s boss.

No longer being convenient stooge enough for his imperial master led to his downfall.

Bush’s machismo and imperial arrogance bore full responsibility for thousands of Panamanian civilian deaths and injuries, many more thousands displaced.

Residential neighborhoods were destroyed in poorest parts of the country, including by incendiary devices used to torch structures.

Tanks crushed victims. Panamanian defense force members, civilians, journalists, and others were executed in cold blood.

Bush proved his cajones by mass slaughter and destruction. In the aftermath, he shamefully said it was “worth it” – smashing nations a US specialty before and after the rape of Panama.

William Blum earlier called (fantasy) “democracy” America’s deadliest export. Its agenda makes the world safe for Wall Street and other corporate favorites at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Commenting on carnage in Panama, Blum said “(t)he invasion and ensuing occupation produced gruesome scenes: People burning to death in the incinerated dwellings, leaping from windows, running in panic through the streets, cut down in cross fire, crushed by tanks, human fragments everywhere.”

Accountability never follows the highest of US high crimes, victims blamed for US wrongdoing every time.

Most Americans know nothing about the so-called 1989 Christmas invasion, why it was launched, the devastation caused, or human toll.

Raping Panama, deposing and arresting Noriega, along with Bush’s Gulf War walkover of Iraq let him crow that “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”

Horrendous Nuremberg-level crimes don’t matter. Noriega fell out of favor for not cooperating with Washington’s contra war on Nicaragua.

Media hysteria vilified him, citing things that didn’t matter when he was Washington’s man in Panama.

When no longer wanted, his fate was sealed, how Washington treats other foreign leaders no longer useful, notably Saddam Hussein.

The January 1991 Gulf War followed imposition of sanctions in August 1990. Enforced for over a dozen years, they were genocidal. A Kuwait-funded PR campaign whipped up public support for naked aggression – ending on February 28.

US forces committed high crimes of war and against humanity, including mass slaughter and destruction of essential to life facilities.

Terror-bombing blasted power plants, dams, water purification facilities, sewage treatment and disposal systems, telephone and other communications, hospitals, schools, residential areas, mosques, irrigation sites, food processing, storage and distribution facilities, hotels and retail establishments.

Transportation infrastructure, oil wells, pipelines, refineries and storage tanks, chemical plants, factories and other commercial operation, civilian shelters, government buildings, and historical sites were also destroyed.

The Panama and Gulf War were two of history’s great crimes. In Iraq, virtually everything needed for normal life was destroyed or heavily damaged.

Genocidal sanctions killed up to two millions Iraqis, two-thirds of them children under age-five. Bush II’s 2003 “shock and awe” blitzkrieg through 2007 took up to 2.0 million more lives, mostly young children.

Two imperial wars of aggression and genocidal sanctions destroyed the cradle of civilization. War and related violence in Iraq continues to this day, the nation occupied as a US colony.

Bush I’s new world order agenda, continued by his successors, including Bush II, features endless wars of aggression, state terror on a global scale, along with growing homeland tyranny, heading toward becoming full-blown.

A special place in hell awaits GHW Bush, Bush II when he passes, and all other US war criminals.

They include everyone supporting Washington’s imperial agenda, including congressional  members authorizing funds without which wars can’t be waged.

An earlier article said the Bush I, II, and entire family dynasty speaks for itself – a crime family for over a century.

 

Related Articles:

The Amazing GWHB Hagiography

The state funeral for George H. W. Bush and the ritual of oligarchy

If There’s A Hell Below, That’s Where He’ll Go: The BAR Obituary on George H.W. Bush

 

Facebook is Not Your Friend

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By Glen Ford

Source: Black Agenda Report

Facebook has become The Great Censor, ready to pull the pages of dissenters that seek to “stir up political debate” in ways that threaten the legitimacy of corporate rule.

“Facebook is indispensable to maintaining the global corporate monopoly on truth — as is Google.”

Facebook has declared war on political dissent. In a rash of purges last week, the behemoth corporation banned 30 pages, with a total of 22 million fans, on the grounds that the accounts were “created to stir up political debate in the US, the Middle East, Russia and the UK.” At the top of the list were the anti-police lawlessness pages Cop Block, Filming Cops , The Free Thought Project and Police the Police, with a combined audience of 8.1 million. The other banned pages range across the non-establishment spectrum , from the reactionary Right Wing News, to Punk Rock Libertarians and the pro-marijuana page, Hemp.

These pages are “inauthentic,” Facebook claims , because they “use sensational political content” to “drive traffic to their websites.” Of course, the New York Times , the Washington Post  and virtually every other organ of corporate media also maintain Facebook pages that are designed to “drive traffic to their websites.” The daily content of these imperial propagandists is filled with “sensational” stories that are designed to inflame the public, laying the groundwork for endless wars — most often on evidence that turns out to be fictitious. Yet Facebook has enlisted as “fact-checkers” the same corporate media that vouched for the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, spread lies about Viagra-fueled mass rape by Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers in Libya, and continue to mask the U.S. alliance with al Qaida fighters in Syria. These same corporate “news” organs have treated allegations of Russian collusion with Trump during the 2016 elections as fact — without a shred of evidence — in order to whip up a new Cold War.

“At the top of the list were the anti-police lawlessness pages Cop Block, Filming Cops, The Free Thought Project and Police the Police.”

Polls have long showed that the U.S. public — of all racial and political shades — no longer believes the corporate media version of reality, which almost routinely turns out to be false, and which Black people have always known to be false. This crisis of legitimacy for the ruling class and its media organs became acute in 2016, when the wildly unpredictable Donald Trump seemed to threaten the gentlemen’s agreement between the two corporate parties on regime change warfare and so-called free trade. Barely a week after Trump’s surprise victory at the polls, outgoing President Barack Obama, on a visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called for the imposition of a standardized version of truth.

“Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television,” said Obama . “If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect.” Or, as he put it later in an interview  with David Letterman: “One of the biggest challenges that we have to our democracy is the degree to which we do not share a common baseline of facts.”

Obama was calling for censorship of the Internet, and for corporate media to reassert its ideological supremacy in defense of the ruling order. The “danger” was not to democracy, but to the legitimacy of the corporate rule.

“Barack Obama, on a visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called for the imposition of a standardized version of truth.

A week after Obama’s remarks in Germany, the Washington Post published the first salvo in the censorship offensive, with an article titled, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” The “experts” were anonymous members of a shadowy organization called Prop-or-Not, whose identities the Post insisted on concealing. The Prop-or-Not list slandered 200 web sites, including many of the best left-wing addresses on the web, as “witting or unwitting” dupes of Russia. Black Agenda Report had the distinction of being the only Black-owned site on the list.

Facebook was dragooned into the censorship frenzy under relentless pressure from Democrats in Congress, who dutifully embraced the role of chief warmongers when Trump started making noises about improving relations with the Russians. Fully two-thirds of Americans are active monthly Facebook users who assumed that the service’s constant invitations to share what’s on their minds included political thought. Not any more. Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth, that began as a student social networking service at Harvard 14 years ago, is now valued conservatively at $140 billion and claims to reach 2.23 billion monthly active worldwide users, 214 million in the United States. Facebook is indispensable to maintaining the global corporate monopoly on truth — as is Google, another mega-monopoly of the Internet. Both have joined the censorship project in defense of empire in decline.

“Google has rigged its algorithms to hide blacklisted sites during web searches, resulting in decreased visitation of up to 75 percent.”

An internal Google document assessed that: “In response to public outcries about the accessibility of unsavory and harmful content, tech firms have been adjusting their software to make it harder to stumble upon it.” The firm was talking about itself, and the “public” it is responding to is actually the capitalist ruling class, seeking to regain legitimacy through censorship. Google has rigged its algorithms to hide blacklisted sites during web searches, resulting in decreased visitation of up to 75 percent. They are strangling the Left, including Black Agenda Report.

Facebook has signed on to the new Cold War, under the ruse of protecting U.S. elections from Russian interference. “We’re excited to launch a new partnership with the Atlantic Council , which has a stellar reputation looking at innovative solutions to hard problems.” In the real world, the Council is the global public relations and think tank resource for NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance, funded by the whole constellation of war industries. Facebook has outsourced its censorship project to the Deep State.

Clearly, the Revolution will not be Friended by such people. Some Black folks may celebrate Facebook’s purges, glad that white supremacist Trump boosters and other overt racists are among the targets. But majorities of white people in the U.S. supported Trump, and there is no possibility that Facebook or any other corporation could effectively police — or even recognize — the racism of most of their users. But they do silence the cop-watchers. What Facebook is attempting to enforce is the absolute authority of the corporate media as the arbiter of Truth — a dictatorship of the white moneyed classes. And that can never be in Black folks’ interest.

 

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com