Why are Police in the USA so Terrified?

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Reid Mukai

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

Robert J. Burrowes

In a recent incident in the United States, yet another unarmed man was shot dead by police after opening his front door in response to their knock. The police were going to serve an arrest warrant on a domestic violence suspect – the man’s neighbour – but went to the wrong address. See ‘Police kill innocent man while serving warrant at wrong address’.

For those who follow news in the United States, the routine killing of innocent civilians by the police has become a national crisis despite concerted attempts by political and legal authorities and the corporate media to obscure what is happening. See ‘Killed by Police’ and ‘The Counted: People killed by police in the US’.

So far this year, US police have killed 1,044 people. In contrast, from 1990 to 2016, police in England and Wales killed just 62 people. See ‘Fatal police shootings’.

Of course, these murders by the police are just the tip of the iceberg of police violence as police continue to demonstrate that the freedoms ‘guaranteed’ by the Fourth Amendment have been eviscerated. See ‘What Country Is This? Forced Blood Draws, Cavity Searches and Colonoscopies’.

So why are the police so violent? you might ask. Well, several scholars have offered answers to this question and you can read a little about what they say in these articles reviewing recent books on the subject. See ‘The Fraternal Order of Police Must Go’ and ‘Our Ever-Deadlier Police State’.

While there is much in these works with which I agree – such as the racism in US policing and the corruption of the legal system which is used to violently manage oppressed peoples in the name of ‘justice’ while leaving the individuals, banks and corporations on Wall Street unaccountable for their endless, ongoing and grotesque crimes against society, the economy and the environment – I would like to pose a deeper question: Why are police in the USA so terrified? This is the important question because only people who are terrified resort to violence, even in the context of policing. Let me explain why this is the case and how it has occurred in the police context in the USA.

Violence does not arise ‘out of nowhere’. And, sadly, its origin can be traced to what is euphemistically called the ‘socialization’ of children but which is more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’. You might think that this sounds extreme but if you spend some time considering the phenomenal violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – that we adults inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day – see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice ’ – while deluding ourselves that we are preparing them to become just, decent and powerful citizens, then you might be willing to reconsider your concept of what it means to nurture children. Tragically, we are so far from any meaningful understanding of this notion, that it is not even possible to generate a widespread social discussion about how we might go about it.

So, having terrorized children into submission so that they unthinkingly and passively accept their preordained role in life – to act as a cog in a giant and destructive enterprise which they are terrorized into not questioning and over which they have no control – each of them takes their place in the global ‘economy’ wherever they can find a set of tasks that feels least painful. The idea of seeking their true path in order to search out their own unique destiny never even occurs to most of them and so they lead ‘shadow lives’ endlessly suppressing their awareness of the life that might have been.

Some of these individuals end up as recruits at a police training facility, where they are further terrorized into believing an elite-sponsored ideology that precludes genuine appreciation of the diversity of people in the community they will later police (that is, terrorize) in the name of ‘law and order’. After all, elite social control is more readily maintained when people, including the police, live in fear.

Police training further terrorizes the individuals involved and militarizes policing by encouraging recruits ‘to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies’; the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades and Armoured Personnel Carriers, evoke a sense of war. See ‘War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing’.

But it doesn’t end with terrorization during childhood and then police training. Police practice functions within a long-standing cultural framework which has both wider social dimensions and narrower, localized ones. And this cultural framework has been changing, more quickly in recent years too. Unfortunately, more than ever before, this framework is increasingly driven by fear and older, delusional social expectations that police are there to maintain public safety or defend the community from criminal violence have given way to militarized assumptions, language and procedures that regard virtually everyone (and certainly indigenous people and people of color) as both dangerous and guilty until proven otherwise and treat the family home and car as targets to be ‘neutralized’ with military-style tactics and weapons. And this trend has been accelerated under Donald Trump. See ‘Trump to lift military gear ban for local police’.

By triggering fear and using military-style tactics and weapons, however, the very essence of the relationship between police and civilians is more rapidly, completely and detrimentally transformed in accord with elite interests. It equates law-enforcement with counter-terrorism and community safety with social control.

Fundamentally, of course, this plays its part in ensuring minimal effective resistance to the broader elite agenda to secure militarized control of the world’s populations and resources for elite benefit.

This transformation in the relationship between police and civilians has been accelerated by training US police in the use of military tactics that the Israeli military employs against the occupied Palestinians. See ‘Israel trains US law-enforcement in counter-terrorism’.

But consider the implications of this.

As Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, has noted in discussing this phenomenon: US police are learning paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics from the Israeli military, border patrol and intelligence services, which enforce military law.

‘If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population’. See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Moreover, the most tangible evidence that the militarized training is having an impact on US policing is that both Israel and the US are using identical equipment against demonstrators, according to a 2013 report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and photographs of such equipment taken at three demonstrations in the USA. ‘Tear gas grenades, “triple chaser” gas canisters and stun grenades made by the American companies Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. were used in all three U.S. incidents, as well as by Israeli security forces and military units.’ See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Given the sheer terror that drives Israeli military policy towards occupied and militarily undefended Palestine, it is little wonder that this fear is transmitted as part of any training of US police. All knowledge and technology is embedded with emotion, and fear is utterly pervasive in any military activity. Especially when it is directed in pursuit of unjust ends.

So what can we do?

If you are interested in working to reduce police fear and violence, you will get plenty of ideas in the document ‘A Toolkit for Promoting Justice In Policing’ which is summarized here: ‘15 Things Your City Can Do Right Now to End Police Brutality’.

If you want to organize a nonviolent action while reducing police fear to minimize the risk of police violence, there is a comprehensive list of guidelines here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

If you want to work towards ending the underlying fear that drives police (and other) violence, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. In essence, if you want powerful individuals who are capable of resisting elite social control, including that implemented through police violence, then don’t expect children terrorized into obedience by parents, teachers and religious figures to later magically have this power.

And if you are inclined to resist violence in other contexts, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth ’, signing the online pledge of ‘The People ’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World ’ and/or using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy for your peace, environmental or social justice campaign.

Why are the police so terrified? Essentially because they were terrorized as children and then terrorized during police training to violently defend elite interests against the rest of us. Elite control depends on us being too terrified to defend ourselves against their violence.

If humans are to survive this elite-driven onslaught, we need people courageous enough to resist police violence and other elite-driven violence strategically. Can we count on you?

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

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

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

Does the Washington Post Have Fake News?

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Eric Zuesse

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

There are two kinds of fake news:

One is a report of something that actually didn’t happen, which for a newspaper to do can reasonably be called lying, inasmuch as a newspaper is expected to report only things that happen, and any violation of that strict standard — which separates journalism from propaganda — is at least negligence violating the very reason why consumers purchase or subscribe to a newspaper (that reason being trustworthiness). This deception amounts unqualifiedly to lying, in any case where a reasonable assumption can be made that the given false ‘news’ report’s falsehood results from the publisher’s propagandistic orientation and intention to deceive on that given matter. (This might be done in order to please the controlling stockholder of an advertiser, or for many other reasons.) In such cases, the fake news is propaganda instead of news. To sell to consumers propaganda as ‘news’ is additionally to deceive them into paying the publisher in order to become deceived by the publisher; so, it’s a deception on top of a deception; it is actually deception-squared. That’s why selling such ‘news’ is even worse than merely giving it away for free (such as honest PR or propaganda is — it is free).

The other type of fake news is omission of a crucial fact from a report, whenever the omission is so crucial that it will sway some readers to believe «x» when «not x» is true, and therefore such an omission is equivalent to lying. This is a far more subtle type of deception, because it relies upon the consumer to deceive himself, instead of upon the publisher explicitly asserting the falsehood to the reader or hearer. Such «sins of omission» are impossible to outlaw, but are more insidious than direct lying is, because any publisher can easily abuse this power to deceive, merely by making clear to his employees what types of facts they will be penalized (demoted etc.) for reporting. For example, any publisher who causes employees to exclude stating as a fact that some public official is lying or did lie about a particular matter, when proof is available that the given official did lie about it, would be publishing fake news on that matter. However, more often, a publisher simply establishes a policy not to hire editors (or producers) who would allow a report to be published that calls a «liar» a person whom the publisher favors, not even if that person can be proven to have lied — he may be said to have «erred» maybe, but not «lied». The tendency, therefore, is that people in power may be described as «lacking in experience» or etc., but not described as a «liar».

Examples will be provided here of both types of fake news in the Washington Post, all of which examples exhibit the same intention to deceive readers in the same type of way on a particular broader subject. This broader subject that’s being deceptively presented is whether or not the U.S. should conquer foreign countries; or, in other words, whether or not America’s military-industrial complex (which thrives upon taxpayers’ enhanced appetites for financing and shedding blood for the nation’s conquests abroad) will be served. Service to that objective is otherwise called «neoconservatism» or neoconservative propaganda, which is the way that the Washington Post will be documented here to be. Understanding the motive for such fake news is far more complex; the only issue to be addressed here is the fake news itself — this particular agenda (neoconservatism) for the WP’s fake news:

First of all, here, will be the paradigmatic case of neoconservative propaganda: the deceptions that were perpetrated upon the American public in order to invade Iraq.

As has been pointed out by many books and by some bloggers, the Washington Post was, in 2002 and 2003, one of the leading deceivers of the American public into invading Iraq so as to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The fact that President George W. Bush lied to assert that he was in possession of conclusive evidence that Hussein was producing WMD in 2002 was, in at least one instance, incontestable practically at the very moment that he said it, but this crucial fact was never reported by the Washington Post, not even when the authoritative agency in the particular instance, the IAEA, made repeated attempts to draw the attention of America’s reporters to the lie.

During a press conference with Britain’s Tony Blair, Bush said, on 7 September 2002, that a «new report» had just come out of the IAEA that Iraq «were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need,» in order to invade and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The IAEA made clear that «There’s never been a report like that issued from this agency», but the WP (like the rest of America’s press) failed to report that the IAEA was accusing the U.S. President, of, essentially, concocting an IAEA ‘report’, on this vitally important matter, a ‘report’ that never existed — in other words, of outright lying in order to assert that the case to invade Iraq had already been made by the IAEA.

This instance wasn’t like all of the U.S. ‘intelligence failures’ in which the President’s own — i.e. U.S. — intelligence agencies, had refused to contradict him in public; this was instead an entirely independent intelligence agency that the President was citing as an authority here — and they were directly contradicting him, in public, about it. They just couldn’t get word out about that, to the American public. So, the idea that Bush wasn’t lying in order to ‘justify’ his invading Iraq, but was only relying upon America’s own faulty intelligence agencies regarding the matter, definitely does qualify as fake news in the WP, and it persists even today, as fake ‘history’ about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The invasion on 20 March 2003 wasn’t ‘an error’; it was a crime, and a very massive one.

This fake news that Bush had ‘erred’ to invade Iraq was of the indirect type because it entailed suppression of the crucial fact from being published; it wasn’t fake news because the WP published their own lies about it. However, such stenographic ‘reporting’ of the government’s lies is merely passing along a dictatorship’s propaganda, not publishing real news. Real news always requires a publisher’s own investigation and the skepticism that any real scientist has about any allegation. In matters so important as an invasion of a foreign country, ‘news’-reporting can’t get any worse than such stenography being palmed-off as ‘news’, and the persons to be blamed for this fraud against the public are never the mere employees (who might lose their jobs if they don’t comply) but the publisher himself or herself — ultimately the controlling stockholder in the firm, who wouldn’t invest in the given ‘news’-organization if it were to be fully honest.

More recently, the WP has published fake news about Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (who is a Ba’athist, like Saddam Hussein was), like it had published fake news about Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

On 2 April 2017, it was «‘The hospitals were slaughterhouses’: A journey into Syria’s secret torture wards».

On 15 May 2017, it was «Syria using crematorium to hide executions, State Department says».

On 16 May 2017, it was «‘I still have nightmares’: Voices from inside Assad’s torture network in Syria».

All were based upon PR-agency-shopped allegations and questionable evidence (like ‘Saddam’s WMD’ etc. had also been) from people who either were, or could have been, Al Qaeda affiliated, or else Islamic Brotherhood affiliated, extremist Islamists — supporters of Sharia law. And it all started with (and the WP’s ultimate sources were uncorroborated testifiers as having personally experienced what was shown in) «the Caesar photographs», from «the Syrian Detainee Report». As wikipedia puts it (my boldfaces):

The source, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was at the time a photographer with the Syrian military police who worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Movement. His job was «taking pictures of killed detainees» at just two military hospitals in Damascus.[5] He told war crimes investigators that he used to be a forensic investigator. But once the Syrian uprising began, his job became documenting the corpses of those killed in Syrian military prisons.[8] He did not claim to have witnessed executions or torture.

As the U.S. government’s Wilson Center explains about the Syrian National Movement:

The 2011 uprising

After Syrians launched their own uprising in March 2011, the [Muslim] Brotherhood took a leading role in assembling the exiled opposition in the Syrian National Council. It was launched in August 2011. The Brotherhood was the only organized and experienced movement among an otherwise deeply fragmented opposition. It also had support from Qatar and Turkey. But its domination over the opposition in exile was contested. The Brotherhood’s immediate challenge was competition from rival Islamists who secured influential positions on the Syrian National Coalition, the Council’s successor, which was established in November 2012.

The rival Islamists included the Coalition’s first president, Sheikh Mouaz al Khatib. Khatib, a former preacher at the historic Umayyad Mosque, had special legitimacy since he had just left Damascus. Another rival was Imad al din al Rashid, former vice-dean of the Faculty of Sharia of Damascus. His Syrian National Movement, an alliance of secularists, moderate Islamists and Salafis [«Salafis» means extreme fundamentalist Muslims], failed to recruit significant following.

Both Qatar and Turkey are run by fundamentalist («Sharia») Sunni Muslims who want to conquer the Shia Muslims who lead the fundamentalist Shia regime in Iran and the non-sectarian secular regime in Syria. These Sunnis want also a (U.S.-supported) gas pipeline to be built through Syria to transport Qatar’s gas into the EU to grab market-share away from Russia, which is the main country that America’s aristocracy wants to weaken and ultimately to conquer.

Saddam Hussein had been supported by America’s aristocracy when Saddam was trying to conquer Shiite Iran back in the 1980s, but became opposed by the U.S. aristocracy as soon as he turned against and invaded fundamentalist Sunni Kuwait and became friendly toward secular Russia, which since 1979 has been plagued by (U.S.-Saudi-backed) «mujahideen» (who became called «Taliban» and some of whom then became «Al Qaeda») and other fundamentalist Sunnis in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere, who want a Sharia-law-ruled Russia. The Obama regime in America came into office in 2009 determined to overthrow Syria’s secular leader Bashar al-Assad; and, starting in 2010, actively pursued organizing rebels against Syria’s secular government. On 24 September 2010, Jared Cohen of Hillary Clinton’s State Department was working to find a way to stir demonstrations to bring down Assad’s government; and, on 23 June 2011, he was meeting inside the London Ecuadorean Embassy with Google’s Eric Schmidt to pry out of Julian Assange information about how to do this; and, on 25 July 2012, Cohen was (now as a high Google executive paid by top Hillary backer Schmidt) telling Hillary’s other aides about Cohen’s own progress in putting the Syrian overthrow-plan into effect. Google also assisted the 1 March 2013 start of Hillary’s plan for the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, which used nazis to bring down Ukraine’s government, just as they used jihadists to bring down Syria’s government — extremists in both cases.

With ‘allies’ such as Saudi Arabia’s despots, and such as the apartheid Israeli ‘democracy’ (which latter is so theocratic it doesn’t even have any constitution), the U.S. government is no ‘democracy’, despite its Constitution (which the U.S. government routinely violates). But whereas the Washington Post calls Russian Television ‘fake news’, Russian Television presents news about those regimes and their allies, while the WP presents lies about RT, and about Russia, and about any ally of Russia (such as Saddam Hussein was, and Bashar al-Assad is). If this sounds like a lopsided characterization, it’s nonetheless stated because the associated reality is also lopsided. That’s the reality which should be reported but is instead blacked-out in America’s press

Of course, one of those Russian allies is Syria, whose government the U.S. government therefore is at war against, and has invaded, while pontificating that the world’s most ‘aggressive’ country is Russia, and while claiming to be the moral authority that can dictate morality to the ‘barbarous’ Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.

On 16 December 2016, Human Rights Watch published «If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities», claiming to confirm the «Caesar» photos. Then, on 7 February 2017, Amnesty International published «Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Exterminations at Saydnaya Prison, Syria», further ‘confirming’ the alleged depravity of Assad’s government. Yet a third ‘authority’ that was additionally cited in the three articles in the Washington Post that were here referred to as having alleged that Assad was doing these types of things to innocent people during the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkey-UAE-Kuwait war to conquer his country, was the Syrian Network for Human Rights. How reliable, then, are these three alleged ‘authorities’ on that subject?

Wikipedia’s section «Criticism of Human Rights Watch» has a subsection «Allegations of Bias», which states, among other things:

Ideological and selection bias[edit]

HRW has been accused of evidence-gathering bias because it is said to be «credulous of civilian witnesses in places like Gaza and Afghanistan» but «skeptical of anyone in a uniform».[1] Its founder, Robert Bernstein, accused the organization of poor research methods and relying on «witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers».[2] In October 2009, Bernstein said that the organization had lost critical perspective on events in the Middle East:[2] «[T]he region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region».[2] HRW responded by saying that HRW «does not devote more time and energy to Israel than to other countries in the region, or in the world».[3] Tom Porteus, director of the HRW’s London branch, replied that the organization rejected Bernstein’s «obvious double standard. Any credible human rights organization must apply the same human rights standards to all countries».[4]

According to The Times, HRW «does not always practice the transparency, tolerance and accountability it urges on others».[1] …

Fundraising[edit]

On September 7, 2010, it was announced that George Soros planned to donate $100 million to Human Rights Watch.[69] Soros’ donation was criticized by Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor.[70]

Journalists have criticized Human Rights Watch for requesting, encouraging or accepting financial donations in Saudi Arabia and for its fundraising methods.

Moreover, the PR department of New York’s Syracuse University headlined on 17 December 2016, «HRW Validates Caesar Report on Syrian Torture, First Reported by Law Professor David Crane» and reported regarding the HRW study, which was co-authored by Professor Crane:

Commissioned by London law firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of Qatar, the Caesar Report’s other co-authors were international prosecutors Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva QC and Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. This team — which also included forensics experts — analyzed 835 images, 150 of those in depth, uncovering evidence of starvation, beatings and strangulation, as well as an obsessive documentation of the killings. The lawyers also cross-examined Caesar and found him to be «a truthful and credible witness,» according to Crane.

Qatar had commissioned anti-Assad PR from HRW, and got what they had paid for, in their «Caesar Report».

Regarding Amnesty International’s report, which was issued on 7 February 2017, the invariably cogent «Moon of Alabama» blogger headlined and documented appropriately about it the same day, «Hearsay Extrapolated — Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof», but one could also say that it provided zero evidence (but lots of allegations). Three days later, the also credible Tony Cartalucci bannered «US Cooks Up New Syrian Atrocities Amid Syrian Talks». Then, yet another day later, on February 11th, the brilliant Rick Sterling headlined «Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War» and he utterly destroyed the AI study’s credibility. Among many other things, he tracked the AI study’s funding and backing back to Soros and other rabid haters of Russians. Finally, on February 25th, Paul Mansfield bannered «Amnesty fake report ‘Human Slaughterhouse’ invents Assad war crimes to undermine Syria peace talks».

As regards the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), it (and other U.S.-arsistocracy-backed fronts) was discussed by Helena Glass, on 8 February 2017, headlining «Amnesty International – A Propaganda Machine»:

Like the Syrian Observatory of [for] Human Rights, the SNHR is a one man show. One man who lives in the UK, who has no background, and who adamantly and openly hates Assad. Neither of these ‘organizations’ list their funding although it is widely believed to come from the UK’s GCHQ.

BOTH organizations claim to have ‘a network of spies on the ground in Syria with whom they converse daily for information’. Like SOHR, Fadel Abdulghani, the Director of Syrian Network of Human Rights, lists absolutely no previous background or history on social media sites. He never existed prior to becoming an expert…and Chairperson of his one man show…

But it gets worse: Fadel Abdulghani is aligned with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which the US and Australia consider an alias of MEK. MEK, headed by Maryam Rajavi was considered a terrorist organization by the US as of 2003 and was delisted in 2012.

It gets worse: The delisting of MEK as a terrorist organization was made by then Secretary of State – Hillary Clinton!

Uh-oh.

Thus it would appear that one of Amnesty International’s prime source[s] for their claim that Assad tortured and murdered 13,000 comes from one man who is affiliated with a former terrorist organization who has no background or previous experience and who would seem to have been ‘created’ from thin air…and possibly funded by GCHQ! Wow!

Apparently, Maryam Rajavi openly declares that she is the leading advocate and voice to ‘violently over-throw the government of Iran’.

The international war to overthrow Assad is barbaric, and nothing that is said in the present article is necessarily rejecting the possibility that some of the gruesome things that have been alleged about Assad’s handling of his side of that international invasion against Syria’s government might be true. But that’s not the topic here, anyway; the topic is instead the question as to whether the Washington Post has fake news. It certainly does — and lots of it, including also, for example, that ‘news’paper’s continuing not to report that the coup that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 was a coup by the U.S., and no grass-roots democratic revolution, such as the U.S. regime (and its propaganda-organs) claim it to have been. That ‘news’paper’s subscribers are buying propaganda.

Manufactured Reality: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Reid Mukai

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

Source: Global Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact author: peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com

Forbidden Questions? 24 Key Issues That Neither the Washington Elite Nor the Media Consider Worth Their Bother

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Andrew J. Bacevich

Source: TomDispatch.com

Donald Trump’s election has elicited impassioned affirmations of a renewed commitment to unvarnished truth-telling from the prestige media. The common theme: you know you can’t trust him, but trust us to keep dogging him on your behalf. The New York Times has even unveiled a portentous new promotional slogan: “The truth is now more important than ever.” For its part, the Washington Post grimly warns that “democracy dies in darkness,” and is offering itself as a source of illumination now that the rotund figure of the 45th president has produced the political equivalent of a total eclipse of the sun. Meanwhile, National Public Radio fundraising campaigns are sounding an increasingly panicky note: give, listener, lest you be personally responsible for the demise of the Republic that we are bravely fighting to save from extinction.

If only it were so. How wonderful it would be if President Trump’s ascendancy had coincided with a revival of hard-hitting, deep-dive, no-holds-barred American journalism. Alas, that’s hardly the case. True, the big media outlets are demonstrating both energy and enterprise in exposing the ineptitude, inconsistency, and dubious ethical standards, as well as outright lies and fake news, that are already emerging as Trump era signatures. That said, pointing out that the president has (again) uttered a falsehood, claimed credit for a nonexistent achievement, or abandoned some position to which he had previously sworn fealty requires something less than the sleuthing talents of a Sherlock Holmes. As for beating up on poor Sean Spicer for his latest sequence of gaffes — well, that’s more akin to sadism than reporting.

Apart from a commendable determination to discomfit Trump and members of his inner circle (select military figures excepted, at least for now), journalism remains pretty much what it was prior to November 8th of last year: personalities built up only to be torn down; fads and novelties discovered, celebrated, then mocked; “extraordinary” stories of ordinary people granted 15 seconds of fame only to once again be consigned to oblivion — all served with a side dish of that day’s quota of suffering, devastation, and carnage. These remain journalism’s stock-in-trade. As practiced in the United States, with certain honorable (and hence unprofitable) exceptions, journalism remains superficial, voyeuristic, and governed by the attention span of a two year old.

As a result, all those editors, reporters, columnists, and talking heads who characterize their labors as “now more important than ever” ill-serve the public they profess to inform and enlighten. Rather than clearing the air, they befog it further. If anything, the media’s current obsession with Donald Trump — his every utterance or tweet treated as “breaking news!” — just provides one additional excuse for highlighting trivia, while slighting issues that deserve far more attention than they currently receive.

To illustrate the point, let me cite some examples of national security issues that presently receive short shrift or are ignored altogether by those parts of the Fourth Estate said to help set the nation’s political agenda. To put it another way: Hey, Big Media, here are two dozen matters to which you’re not giving faintly adequate thought and attention.

1. Accomplishing the “mission”: Since the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States has been committed to defending key allies in Europe and East Asia. Not long thereafter, U.S. security guarantees were extended to the Middle East as well. Under what circumstances can Americans expect nations in these regions to assume responsibility for managing their own affairs? To put it another way, when (if ever) might U.S. forces actually come home? And if it is incumbent upon the United States to police vast swaths of the planet in perpetuity, how should momentous changes in the international order — the rise of China, for example, or accelerating climate change — affect the U.S. approach to doing so?

2. American military supremacy: The United States military is undoubtedly the world’s finest. It’s also far and away the most generously funded, with policymakers offering U.S. troops no shortage of opportunities to practice their craft. So why doesn’t this great military ever win anything? Or put another way, why in recent decades have those forces been unable to accomplish Washington’s stated wartime objectives? Why has the now 15-year-old war on terror failed to result in even a single real success anywhere in the Greater Middle East? Could it be that we’ve taken the wrong approach? What should we be doing differently?

3. America’s empire of bases: The U.S. military today garrisons the planet in a fashion without historical precedent. Successive administrations, regardless of party, justify and perpetuate this policy by insisting that positioning U.S. forces in distant lands fosters peace, stability, and security. In the present century, however, perpetuating this practice has visibly had the opposite effect. In the eyes of many of those called upon to “host” American bases, the permanent presence of such forces smacks of occupation. They resist. Why should U.S. policymakers expect otherwise?

4. Supporting the troops: In present-day America, expressing reverence for those who serve in uniform is something akin to a religious obligation. Everyone professes to cherish America’s “warriors.” Yet such bountiful, if superficial, expressions of regard camouflage a growing gap between those who serve and those who applaud from the sidelines. Our present-day military system, based on the misnamed All-Volunteer Force, is neither democratic nor effective. Why has discussion and debate about its deficiencies not found a place among the nation’s political priorities?

5. Prerogatives of the commander-in-chief: Are there any military actions that the president of the United States may not order on his own authority? If so, what are they? Bit by bit, decade by decade, Congress has abdicated its assigned role in authorizing war. Today, it merely rubberstamps what presidents decide to do (or simply stays mum). Who does this deference to an imperial presidency benefit? Have U.S. policies thereby become more prudent, enlightened, and successful?

6. Assassin-in-chief: A policy of assassination, secretly implemented under the aegis of the CIA during the early Cold War, yielded few substantive successes. When the secrets were revealed, however, the U.S. government suffered considerable embarrassment, so much so that presidents foreswore politically motivated murder. After 9/11, however, Washington returned to the assassination business in a big way and on a global scale, using drones. Today, the only secret is the sequence of names on the current presidential hit list, euphemistically known as the White House “disposition matrix.” But does assassination actually advance U.S. interests (or does it merely recruit replacements for the terrorists it liquidates)? How can we measure its costs, whether direct or indirect? What dangers and vulnerabilities does this practice invite?

7. The war formerly known as the “Global War on Terrorism”: What precisely is Washington’s present strategy for defeating violent jihadism? What sequence of planned actions or steps is expected to yield success? If no such strategy exists, why is that the case? How is it that the absence of strategy — not to mention an agreed upon definition of “success” — doesn’t even qualify for discussion here?

8. The campaign formerly known as Operation Enduring Freedom: The conflict commonly referred to as the Afghanistan War is now the longest in U.S. history — having lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I, and World War II combined. What is the Pentagon’s plan for concluding that conflict? When might Americans expect it to end? On what terms?

9. The Gulf: Americans once believed that their prosperity and way of life depended on having assured access to Persian Gulf oil. Today, that is no longer the case. The United States is once more an oil exporter. Available and accessible reserves of oil and natural gas in North America are far greater than was once believed. Yet the assumption that the Persian Gulf still qualifies as crucial to American national security persists in Washington. Why?

10. Hyping terrorism: Each year terrorist attacks kill far fewer Americans than do auto accidents, drug overdoses, or even lightning strikes. Yet in the allocation of government resources, preventing terrorist attacks takes precedence over preventing all three of the others combined. Why is that?

11. Deaths that matter and deaths that don’t: Why do terrorist attacks that kill a handful of Europeans command infinitely more American attention than do terrorist attacks that kill far larger numbers of Arabs? A terrorist attack that kills citizens of France or Belgium elicits from the United States heartfelt expressions of sympathy and solidarity. A terrorist attack that kills Egyptians or Iraqis elicits shrugs. Why the difference? To what extent does race provide the answer to that question?

12. Israeli nukes: What purpose is served by indulging the pretense that Israel does not have nuclear weapons?

13. Peace in the Holy Land: What purpose is served by indulging illusions that a “two-state solution” offers a plausible resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? As remorselessly as white settlers once encroached upon territory inhabited by Native American tribes, Israeli settlers expand their presence in the occupied territories year by year. As they do, the likelihood of creating a viable Palestinian state becomes ever more improbable. To pretend otherwise is the equivalent of thinking that one day President Trump might prefer the rusticity of Camp David to the glitz of Mar-a-Lago.

14. Merchandizing death: When it comes to arms sales, there is no need to Make America Great Again. The U.S. ranks number one by a comfortable margin, with long-time allies Saudi Arabia and Israel leading recipients of those arms. Each year, the Saudis (per capita gross domestic product $20,000) purchase hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. weapons. Israel (per capita gross domestic product $38,000) gets several billion dollars worth of such weaponry annually courtesy of the American taxpayer. If the Saudis pay for U.S. arms, why shouldn’t the Israelis? They can certainly afford to do so.

15. Our friends the Saudis (I): Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, were Saudis. What does that fact signify?

16. Our friends the Saudis (II): If indeed Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing to determine which nation will enjoy the upper hand in the Persian Gulf, why should the United States favor Saudi Arabia? In what sense do Saudi values align more closely with American values than do Iranian ones?

17. Our friends the Pakistanis: Pakistan behaves like a rogue state. It is a nuclear weapons proliferator. It supports the Taliban. For years, it provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Yet U.S. policymakers treat Pakistan as if it were an ally. Why? In what ways do U.S. and Pakistani interests or values coincide? If there are none, why not say so?

18. Free-loading Europeans: Why can’t Europe, “whole and free,” its population and economy considerably larger than Russia’s, defend itself? It’s altogether commendable that U.S. policymakers should express support for Polish independence and root for the Baltic republics. But how does it make sense for the United States to care more about the wellbeing of people living in Eastern Europe than do people living in Western Europe?

19. The mother of all “special relationships”: The United States and the United Kingdom have a “special relationship” dating from the days of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Apart from keeping the Public Broadcasting Service supplied with costume dramas and stories featuring eccentric detectives, what is the rationale for that partnership today? Why should U.S. relations with Great Britain, a fading power, be any more “special” than its relations with a rising power like India? Why should the bonds connecting Americans and Britons be any more intimate than those connecting Americans and Mexicans? Why does a republic now approaching the 241st anniversary of its independence still need a “mother country”?

20. The old nuclear disarmament razzmatazz: American presidents routinely cite their hope for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet the U.S. maintains nuclear strike forces on full alert, has embarked on a costly and comprehensive trillion-dollar modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and even refuses to adopt a no-first-use posture when it comes to nuclear war. The truth is that the United States will consider surrendering its nukes only after every other nation on the planet has done so first. How does American nuclear hypocrisy affect the prospects for global nuclear disarmament or even simply for the non-proliferation of such weaponry?

21. Double standards (I): American policymakers take it for granted that their country’s sphere of influence is global, which, in turn, provides the rationale for the deployment of U.S. military forces to scores of countries. Yet when it comes to nations like China, Russia, or Iran, Washington takes the position that spheres of influence are obsolete and a concept that should no longer be applicable to the practice of statecraft. So Chinese, Russian, and Iranian forces should remain where they belong — in China, Russia, and Iran. To stray beyond that constitutes a provocation, as well as a threat to global peace and order. Why should these other nations play by American rules? Why shouldn’t similar rules apply to the United States?

22. Double standards (II): Washington claims that it supports and upholds international law. Yet when international law gets in the way of what American policymakers want to do, they disregard it. They start wars, violate the sovereignty of other nations, and authorize agents of the United States to kidnap, imprison, torture, and kill. They do these things with impunity, only forced to reverse their actions on the rare occasions when U.S. courts find them illegal. Why should other powers treat international norms as sacrosanct since the United States does so only when convenient?

23. Double standards (III): The United States condemns the indiscriminate killing of civilians in wartime. Yet over the last three-quarters of a century, it killed civilians regularly and often on a massive scale. By what logic, since the 1940s, has the killing of Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Afghans, and others by U.S. air power been any less reprehensible than the Syrian government’s use of “barrel bombs” to kill Syrians today? On what basis should Americans accept Pentagon claims that, when civilians are killed these days by U.S. forces, the acts are invariably accidental, whereas Syrian forces kill civilians intentionally and out of malice? Why exclude incompetence or the fog of war as explanations? And why, for instance, does the United States regularly gloss over or ignore altogether the noncombatants that Saudi forces (with U.S. assistance) are routinely killing in Yemen?

24. Moral obligations: When confronted with some egregious violation of human rights, members of the chattering classes frequently express an urge for the United States to “do something.” Holocaust analogies sprout like dandelions. Newspaper columnists recycle copy first used when Cambodians were slaughtering other Cambodians en masse or whenever Hutus and Tutsis went at it. Proponents of action — typically advocating military intervention — argue that the United States has a moral obligation to aid those victimized by injustice or cruelty anywhere on Earth. But what determines the pecking order of such moral obligations? Which comes first, a responsibility to redress the crimes of others or a responsibility to redress crimes committed by Americans? Who has a greater claim to U.S. assistance, Syrians suffering today under the boot of Bashar al-Assad or Iraqis, their country shattered by the U.S. invasion of 2003? Where do the Vietnamese fit into the queue? How about the Filipinos, brutally denied independence and forcibly incorporated into an American empire as the nineteenth century ended? Or African-Americans, whose ancestors were imported as slaves? Or, for that matter, dispossessed and disinherited Native Americans? Is there a statute of limitations that applies to moral obligations? And if not, shouldn’t those who have waited longest for justice or reparations receive priority attention?

Let me suggest that any one of these two dozen issues — none seriously covered, discussed, or debated in the American media or in the political mainstream — bears more directly on the wellbeing of the United States and our prospects for avoiding global conflict than anything Donald Trump may have said or done during his first 100 days as president. Collectively, they define the core of the national security challenges that presently confront this country, even as they languish on the periphery of American politics.

How much damage Donald Trump’s presidency wreaks before it ends remains to be seen. Yet he himself is a transient phenomenon. To allow his pratfalls and shenanigans to divert attention from matters sure to persist when he finally departs the stage is to make a grievous error. It may well be that, as the Times insists, the truth is now more important than ever. If so, finding the truth requires looking in the right places and asking the right questions.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, now out in paperback. His next book will be an interpretive history of the United States from the end of the Cold War to the election of Donald Trump.

Propaganda Techniques of Empire

Posted on February 17, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By James Petras

Source: Axis of Logic

Introduction
Washington’s quest for perpetual world power is underwritten by systematic and perpetual propaganda wars. Every major and minor war has been preceded, accompanied and followed by unremitting government propaganda designed to secure public approval, exploit victims, slander critics, dehumanize targeted adversaries and justify its allies’ collaboration.

In this paper we will discuss the most common recent techniques used to support ongoing imperial wars.

Propaganda Techniques of Empire

Role Reversal
A common technique, practiced by the imperial publicists, is to accuse the victims of the same crimes, which had been committed against them. The well documented, deliberate and sustained US-EU aerial bombardment of Syrian government soldiers, engaged in operations against ISIS-terrorist, resulted in the deaths and maiming of almost 200 Syrian troops and allowed ISIS-mercenaries to overrun their camp. In an attempt to deflect the Pentagon’s role in providing air cover for the very terrorists it claims to oppose, the propaganda organs cranked out lurid, but unsubstantiated, stories of an aerial attack on a UN humanitarian aid convoy, first blamed on the Syrian government and then on the Russians. The evidence that the attack was most likely a ground-based rocket attack by ISIS terrorists did not deter the propaganda mills. This technique would turn US and European attention away from the documented criminal attack by the imperial bombers and present the victimized Syrian troops and pilots as international human rights criminals.

Hysterical Rants
Faced with world opprobrium for its wanton violation of an international ceasefire agreement in Syria, the imperial public spokespeople frequently resort to irrational outbursts at international meetings in order to intimidate wavering allies into silence and shut down any chance for reasonable debate resolving concrete issues among adversaries.

The current ‘US Ranter-in-Chief’ in the United Nations, is Ambassador Samantha Power, who launched a vitriolic diatribe against the Russians in order to sabotage a proposed General Assembly debate on the US deliberate violation (its criminal attack on Syrian troops) of the recent Syrian ceasefire. Instead of a reasonable debate among serious diplomats, the rant served to derail the proceedings.

Identity Politics to Neutralize Anti-Imperialist Movements
Empire is commonly identified with the race, gender, religion and ethnicity of its practioners. Imperial propagandists have frequently resorted to disarming and weakening anti-imperialist movements by co-opting and corrupting black, ethnic minority and women leaders and spokespeople. The use of such ‘symbolic’ tokens is based on the assumption that these are ‘representatives’ reflecting the true interests of so-called ‘marginalized minorities’ and can therefore presume to ‘speak for the oppressed peoples of the world’. The promotion of such compliant and respectable ‘minority members’ to the elite is then propagandized as a ‘revolutionary’, world liberating historical event – witness the ‘election’ of US President Barack Obama.

The rise of Obama to the presidency in 2008 illustrates how the imperial propagandists have used identity politics to undermine class and anti-imperialist struggles.

Under Obama’s historical black presidency, the US pursued seven wars against ‘people of color’ in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Over a million men and women of sub-Saharan black origin, whether Libyan citizens or contract workers for neighboring countries, were killed, dispossessed and driven into exile by US allies after the US-EU destroyed the Libyan state – in the name of humanitarian intervention. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been bombed in Yemen, Syria and Iraq under President Obama, the so-called ‘historic black’ president. Obama’s ‘predator drones’ have killed hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani villagers. Such is the power of ‘identity politics’ that ignominious Obama was awarded the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’.

Meanwhile, in the United States under Obama, racial inequalities between black and white workers (wages, unemployment, access to housing, health and educational services) have widened. Police violence against blacks intensified with total impunity for ‘killer cops’. Over two million immigrant Latino workers have been expelled – breaking up hundreds of thousands of families– and accompanied by a marked increase of repression compared to earlier administrations. Millions of black and white workers’ home mortgages were foreclosed while all of the corrupt banks were bailed out – at a greater rate than had occurred under white presidents.

This blatant, cynical manipulation of identity politics facilitated the continuation and deepening of imperial wars, class exploitation and racial exclusion. Symbolic representation undermined class struggles for genuine changes.

Past Suffering to Justify Contemporary Exploitation
Imperial propagandists repeatedly evoke the victims and abuses of the past in order to justify their own aggressive imperial interventions and support for the ‘land grabs’ and ethnic cleansing committed by their colonial allies – like Israel, among others. The victims and crimes of the past are presented as a perpetual presence to justify ongoing brutalities against contemporary subject people.

The case of US-Israeli colonization of Palestine clearly illustrates how rabid criminality, pillage, ethnic cleansing and self-enrichment can be justified and glorified through the language of past victimization. Propagandists in the US and Israel have created ‘the cult of the Holocaust’, worshiping a near century-old Nazi crime against Jews (as well as captive Slavs, Gypsies and other minorities) in Europe, to justify the bloody conquest and theft of Arab lands and sovereignty and engage in systematic military assaults against Lebanon and Syria. Millions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians have been driven into perpetual exile. Elite, wealthy, well-organized and influential zionist Jews, with primary fealty to Israel, have successfully sabotaged every contemporary struggle for peace in the Middle East and have created real barriers for social democracy in the US through their promotion of militarism and empire building. Those claiming to represent victims of the past have become among the most oppressive of contemporary elites. Using the language of ‘defense’, they promote aggressive forms of expansion and pillage. They claim their monopoly on historic ‘suffering’ has given them a ‘special dispensation’ from the rules of civilized conduct: their cult of the Holocaust allows them to inflict immense pain on others while silencing any criticism with the accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ and relentlessly punishing critics. Their key role in imperial propaganda warfare is based on their claims of an exclusive franchise on suffering and immunity from the norms of justice.

Entertainment Spectacles on Military Platforms
Entertainment spectacles glorify militarism. Imperial propagandists link the public to unpopular wars promoted by otherwise discredited leaders. Sports events present soldiers dressed up as war heroes with deafening, emotional displays of ‘flag worship’ to celebrate the ongoing overseas wars of aggression. These mind-numbing extravaganzas with crude elements of religiosity demand choreographed expressions of national allegiance from the spectators as a cover for continued war crimes abroad and the destruction of citizens’ economic rights at home.

Much admired, multi-millionaire musicians and entertainers of all races and orientations, present war to the masses with a humanitarian facade. The entertainers smiling faces serve genocide just as powerfully as the President’s benign and friendly face accompanies his embrace of militarism. The propagandist message for the spectator is that ‘your favorite team or singer is there just for you… because our noble wars and valiant warriors have made you free and now they want you to be entertained.’

The old style of blatant bellicose appeals to the public is obsolete: the new propaganda conflates entertainment with militarism, allowing the ruling elite to secure tacit support for its wars without disturbing the spectators’ experience.

Conclusion
Do the Imperial Techniques of Propaganda Work?

How effective are the modern imperial propaganda techniques? The results seem to be mixed. In recent months, elite black athletes have begun protesting white racism by challenging the requirement for choreographed displays of flag worship. . . opening public controversy into the larger issues of police brutality and sustained marginalization. Identity politics, which led to the election of Obama, may be giving way to issues of class struggle, racial justice, anti-militarism and the impact of continued imperial wars. Hysterical rants may still secure international attention, but repeated performances begin to lose their impact and subject the ‘ranter’ to ridicule.

The cult of victimology has become less a rationale for the multi-billion dollar US-tribute to Israel, than the overwhelming political and economic influence and thuggery of billionaire Zionist fundraisers who demand US politicians’ support for the state of Israel.

Brandishing identify politics may have worked the first few times, but inevitably black, Latino, immigrant and all exploited workers, all underpaid and overworked women and mothers reject the empty symbolic gestures and demand substantive socio-economic changes – and here they find common links with the majority of exploited white workers.

In other words, the existing propaganda techniques are losing their edge – the corporate media news is seen as a sham. Who follows the actor-soldiers and flag-worshipers once the game has begun?

The propagandists of empire are desperate for a new line to grab public attention and obedience. Could the recent domestic terror bombings in New York and New Jersey provoke mass hysteria and more militarization? Could they serve as cover for more wars abroad . . .?

A recent survey, published in Military Times, reported that the vast majority of active US soldiers oppose more imperial wars. They are calling for defense at home and social justice. Soldiers and veterans have even formed groups to support the protesting black athletes who have refused to participate in flag worship while unarmed black men are being killed by police in the streets. Despite the multi-billion dollar electoral propaganda, over sixty percent of the electorate reject both major party candidates. The reality principle has finally started to undermine State propaganda!

America, the World’s Most Dangerous Dictatorship

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Gordon Duff

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Though Russia doesn’t consider herself a superpower, other than the US, and just perhaps China, Russia is as close as we come. A very real problem is that Russia has a very poor understanding of America, how politics work, what Americans think and, more than anything else, Russia still thinks America is a democracy.

You see, at the same time America was tearing the Soviet Union apart, the same thing was being done to America. Neither nation survived, it wasn’t just the Soviet Union that fell to the New World Order, it was America as well. Let me explain as succinctly as possible.

During the Clinton years, powerful Nazi inspired elements in America plotted what has been the successful overthrow of America’s constitution. The movement was led by rogue “industrialist” John Mellon Scaife and lawyers Antonio Scalia and Newt Gingrich. Financing them all was the Rothschild owned and controlled Federal Reserve Corporation.

A secret society hidden in plain sight was set up called the Federalist Society. This Nazi controlled group, backed by the powerful Israel lobby, moved into every law school in America, recruiting top candidates based on skill sets needed.

This program was devised by the CIA and recruited thousands of budding sociopathic personality types, recruiting them into the Federalist Society and channeling them into top law firms or government agencies.

Adding to these recruits were senior lawyers with ties to organized and corporate crime, thousands of them in a major CIA operation.

There, they were pushed forward and after a decade ran the US Department of Justice, nearly every court in the nation, controlled the law schools, controlled the American Bar Association, the FBI and had put over 150 of their members into the Congress of the United States.

They also controlled every regulatory agency, environment, banking and finance, food and drug safety, you can see where this is going.

They also controlled 5 justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

During the Clinton Administration, they managed to temporarily get control of the US House of Representatives through the help of the Contract with America and Newt Gingrich, financed by Zionist “black propaganda” moneyman Rupert Murdoch. In payment for this, “Newt” gave Murdoch an American broadcast network, Fox, though illegal. You see, non-Americans can’t control networks, or couldn’t. That’s ok, Gingrich eventually gave Murdoch illegal American citizenship as well.

Murdoch only had to publish Newt’s useless books and give his wife, and Newt traded them in with regularity, a highly paid “do nothing job” as a bribe.

Where things really paid off was 2000. During the Clinton administration, Scaife hired lawyer Ken Starr to investigate Clinton and get himself nominated as Special Prosecutor. Scaife paid Starr by naming him President of Pepperdine University, which Scaife controlled, for those who care about facts.

Clinton backer George Soros hired a former CIA agent named Steve Kangas to get dirt on Scaife. Kangas amassed enough evidence on Scaife and his deal with Starr to send them both to the electric chair. Scaife, Scalia and the Federalists had Kangas kidnapped and murdered in order to save Ken Starr who had been promised a seat on the US Supreme Court. Look into it.

The deal really came to life in 2000. The CIA and Diebold Corporation had contracted with a computer guru named Michael Connell who developed software that would simply flip votes done on electronic voting machines. Targeted would be the states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia only, piling up votes in key precincts just enough to guarantee control of the Electoral College.

Without this it is impossible for the Republican Party to get a president elected without staging an international incident such as the kidnapping of US diplomats in Tehran. We aren’t going to say the Ayatollah was an MI6 agent and was sent to Iran for exactly this purpose, even though it is true and we can prove it.

In 2000, even with millions of votes flipped, exit polls support Bush losing by 5 million votes, the election couldn’t be saved. Here, the Federalists stepped in and had their 5 Supreme Court justices step in and overthrow both the areas of equal protection and states’ rights of the US Constitution to place Bush in office.

2000 was important. This was a presidential election that also took place on a census year. You see, the census is a rationale for redistricting the US House of Representatives using State legislatures, which were largely taken over by the Federalist Society. Bribes and payoffs at state level are hard to control and organized crime easily got control of enough states to allow redistricting.

Here, the CIA developed a program for designing odd shaped congressional districts that would pile union workers and minorities into bizarre and often discontiguous shapes, taking districts away from democrats by joining them together and creating new republican only districts, often with almost no people living in them.

Additionally, problem representatives like Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich were eliminated entirely, their districts were simply erased, all of this, and it is called gerrymandering, is illegal.

By 2004 there were no more free elections for the House of Representatives, giving this house free rein to investigate anyone, any time and to quell any investigation as well, such as 9/11.

By 2005, by a 5/4 vote, the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case overturned for all time limitations on foreign and corporate spending on American elections, citing an end to democracy in America.

Mike Connell, GOP “guru” died in a mysterious plane crash in Ohio just before testifying about his role in CIA “vote flipping.”

This is as short and sweet as it could be put. For those who fail to understand the Federalist Society and the hold organized crime through the Republican Party has gained over American government, the new Cold War and the threat of a hot war as well is a total surprise.

For those who pay attention, we saw it coming all along.

Dem politician questions Israel’s ties to terrorism

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Reid Mukai

Source: Press TV

Former US Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney has questioned Israel’s ties to recent attacks in France and Germany, after an Israeli reporter managed to capture both attacks as they were happening.

“Same Israeli photographer captures Nice and Munich tragedies,” the six-term congresswoman from Georgia said in a tweet on Saturday.

The journalist in question is Richard Gutjahr, who videotaped the truck attack in Nice, France, that killed more than 80 people and injured dozens more on July 14.

Eight days later, the reporter happened to be on the site of another attack in Munich, Germany, where a shooting rampage claimed nine lives.

“How likely is that? Remember the Dancing Israelis?” McKinney asked, referring to reported Israeli celebrations during the September 11, 2011, attacks in the US.

The former American lawmaker also posted a video, showing an article with the headline: “Same Israeli photo-propagandist pre-positioned in Nice AND NOW MUNICH.”

“The fact that this guy happened to be at both, there’s no way it’s a coincidence,” the narrator of the video said.

He went on to talk about Gutjahr’s wife, a former Israeli Kensset member, before concluding that “it’s 100 percent clear that Israel’s fingerprints are all over these events.”

During the Nice attack, Gutjahr filmed the whole incident from a balcony at the Westminster Hotel, right next to the street where the French National Day celebrations were being held.

He also provided major Western media outlets with extensive reports about the Munich attack, posting images and videos on his Twitter account. Some of the tweets like the one showed above were deleted later on.

Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae identified the gunman as an 18-year-old German-Iranian man from Munich, who had no criminal record and whose motive was “completely unclear.”

Shooter apparently inspired by Anders Behring Breivik

München Shooting: Terror Embedded Journalism?

Pugnacious Parasites and the Provocation

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Zen Gardner

Source: ZenGardner.com

Everyone knows the unscrupulously manipulative always accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of. It’s an age old trick to obfuscate the obvious and buy time to accomplish their purposes.

Lying is their pathological language.

Such behavior, especially in high profile public figures, is unthinkable, yet for some inexplicable reason it is not just tolerated, but ironically readily expected.

People still buy into it. And the reaction always remains the same. Complacency on the most part, and a rising sense of anger in others. No doubt a byproduct of cognitive dissonance and range of other deliberately triggered mechanisms, but surreal just the same.

A Bald Faced Lie is a Punch in the Face

This is essentially what transpires when someone knowingly lies to your face. It jars your mind and pushes you back on the defensive and you’re left to try and understand why your heart and head are not matching up with what you just heard.

Everyone, except these willingly possessed psychopaths, has a conscience. And it’s faithful to speak to us. This is why humanity has been conditioned to not respond to it, and also why fear is so essential to their game. When our signals are scrambled, our gut reaction belittled and intuition denied we’re left in a daze.

This is exactly what they want to happen. It gives them time to keep executing their programs, especially when a complicit media candies and bandies it about as if it’s true and nothing to question.

This is the whirled we’re in and up against. Again, another reason to stay fully conscious and circumspect and thoroughly educated as to their techniques and true nature. Not pretty stuff to look at, but understand it we must.

Abject bullies like Israel are relatively easy to spot – if we grasp their obvious odious nature and where they’re coming from. The bully in the playground works by pure intimidation and force and will resort to any form of expression they can – loud mouthed intimidation, brandishing weapons, and all bathed in swaggering bravado right up to and including physical force to get their point across.

Send a signal is their MO. And those who don’t cower, teach them a lesson. Again, just look at the abject genocidal insanity of the Israeli occupiers. Now that they’ve gained control of most of the world’s media, especially in the west, what they say goes. And if the media or governments don’t toe their line well enough they’ll hear from these vociferous, self serving elitist beasts.

The Provocation

Another aspect of bullying is provoking your supposed enemy. The US is at this big time, deliberately firing up the conservative right and constitutionalists. It’s full on deliberate. The opulent extravagance of the Obamas, the clearly deliberate crashing of the economy, the flagrant trashing of patriotism and removal of individual rights are all carefully planned. Threatening to disarm fiercely independent Americans is an essential part of this agenda.

The mass migration agenda is the same. While the US gets inundated with needy Central Americans with clear governmental manipulation, Europe is similarly being swept with an influx that threatens their economies and cultural identities.

What’s most amazing about this is anyone can read this agenda for themselves from UN statements and documents and the Agenda 21 or 2030 programs. That so many can’t be bothered to look into much of this is outright frightening.

Israel again is a master example of aggressive agendas designed to push back common sense and reason as well as true empathy for the plight of others. A clearly apartheid state while claiming they were the victims of such treatment is completely nonsensical. It flies in the face of simple reason and logic. Yet they get away with it. How? They’ve taken over the media and political structures through the same tactics of intimidation and potential consequence by their massive Mossad/CIA/MI6 black hand of control.

Strategy of Tension and Not Just Provoking, but Demonizing Your Subjects

What’s amazing is the thoroughness of psychopathic social engineers. This is where we need to wake up and get smart.

They operate according to something called the Strategy of Tension, keeping peoples and nations nervous and afraid and more inclined to rely on government and enforcement to protect them. It also homogenizes cultures in a form of group think and a state of malleability due to this state of fear.

The extension of their influence is far and wide. Mass shootings, weird mass “accidents” at certain interims, and most of all false flags, never mind assassinations and the like. This has been the weapon of choice for every totalitarian regime for eons and a real favorite of this latest push for world dominion by these psychopaths.

The end result, ironically, is not entirely to direct everyone’s attention to a foreign enemy. That’s just a ruse and excuse for genocide and expansion. The enemy to them is within – us. We must be contained like animals and malleable to their every whim.

So-called domestic terrorism has been a meme on the rise. The deliberate migration of “potential muslim extremists” is a key part of this, as any and every incident they stage can more and more be justified and conveniently blamed on outside influences. The end result is the same: clampdown on the populace.

Just look at this propaganda piece brought to you by the Rothschild/Rockefeller owned and CIA/Mossad/MI6 et all run Reuters news agency:

U.S. eyes ways to toughen fight against domestic extremists

The U.S. Justice Department is considering legal changes to combat what it sees as a rising threat from domestic anti-government extremists, senior officials told Reuters, even as it steps up efforts to stop Islamic State-inspired attacks at home.

Extremist groups motivated by a range of U.S.-born philosophies present a “clear and present danger,” John Carlin, the Justice Department’s chief of national security, told Reuters in an interview. “Based on recent reports and the cases we are seeing, it seems like we’re in a heightened environment.” (source)

The agenda is obvious. If we’re looking. The language as well is a giveaway, the smooth talking and use of buzz phrases like “clear and present danger”, “national security” and the like are rife.

The Subtler Techniques of Deceit

This may seem a bit tangential to the main point I’m making here but is nonetheless essential information if we’re to more fully understand how these tactics are carried out on subtler levels.

You’ll see the following logical fallacy tactics in use continually, but unfortunately most people fall for them for lack of discernment as well as awareness of just what deceitful people are capable of doing.

This is a big subject well worth researching on your own but here are a few to get you started:

1. The Strawman Argument – Misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack.

Example: After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenseless by cutting military spending.

You’ll see this in use continually especially in the political and government arenas. It’s very clever really, side-stepping the real issue and misdirecting the argument to a false issue having nothing to do with the original question or discussion.

2. The False Choice Dilemma – Giving an extremely narrow range of choice to an issue or situation that is much wider than is being portrayed with virtually unlimited possibilites.

Baby Bush’s carefully framed post 9/11 statement is the classic geopolitical example: “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

You have to admit that’s pretty damn galvanizing. But in what way? Now you can’t question what the “good guys” are doing or you might be with “axis of evil”? That’s what it’s since come down to. Again, cleverly staged propaganda by these very intelligent psychopaths. Keeping the public drugged and dumbed down would sure work in their favor, wouldn’t it?

3. Correlation versus Causation. You can apply this across the board. It’s so easy to assume what we’re told is true in this context. Beware.

The easiest example is when two events occur at the same time, or in close apparent relation with each other. One is then seen as the cause of the other. An increase in robberies occurs at the same time that jobs cuts are announced, for example. There is no evidence to support the claim that the expected job losses caused the increase in robberies.

This is best seen in false flag events when the enemy or culprit is named before any investigation whatsoever. If someone “claims” responsibility it’s case closed, as they go after their pre-selected patsy to confirm this or already executed this planted persona on the spot. Done deal.

4. Overgeneralization or Oversimplification.

This is another framework for logical fallacies. Generalizing from too small of a population, or reducing complex social issues to only one choice or the other, and leaving out the complex issues that do not support the claim are examples of fallacies that stem from overgeneralization and oversimplification. (source of last two citations)

These are just a few examples. It’s a field well worth exploring and getting a handle on. When you dissect and analyze these mechanisms it is extremely empowering.

All That To Say…

Be on the look out. Stay alert and awake and aware. What we see around us is not what we get, unless we fall for it and thereby make it our reality. Personal empowerment in such an environment as we’re living in is essential.

But you have to do the work.

Psychopaths are running the external world. It’s more evident by the day to more and more people. Those not fully on board even at higher and middle levels are being bullied into it within the power structure. They can see who the apparent heirs are to the coming positions of power so they’re buckling under the pressure in an effort to save their hides.

Others at many levels of society are waking up and looking for ways to expose this nefarious agenda and help humanity push back in whatever way it can. We need to keep our voices loud and clear and distinctly truthful and helpful.

There may be many vectors by which they’re coming at us, be they geoengineering, manipulated food, societal crackdowns, media programming and the like, but we’re clearly up to the challenge.

After all, we’re here! We’re thriving just fine in spite of all they do, and we’re growing stronger by the day.

Never forget that, let down your guard, nor grow weary in well doing.

This is our day – not theirs. Let’s fulfill our mission, and use the massive spiritual weapons at our disposal – love, truth, our connection to Source and essential eternal nature which can never be taken away.

Stay true.

Love always, Zen

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Tag Archives: Israel

Related Video:

Related Articles:

A Bald Faced Lie is a Punch in the Face

The Provocation

Strategy of Tension and Not Just Provoking, but Demonizing Your Subjects

U.S. eyes ways to toughen fight against domestic extremists

The Subtler Techniques of Deceit

All That To Say…