The Real Big Brother

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Eric Zuesse

Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post, which leads America’s news-media in their almost 100 percent support and promotion of neoconservatism, American imperialism and wars. This includes sanctions, coups, and military invasions against countries that America’s billionaires want to control but don’t yet control — such as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, Libya, and China.

These are aggressive wars against countries which have never aggressed against the United States. They are not, at all, defensive, but the exact opposite. It’s not necessarily endless war (even Hitler hadn’t planned that), but war until the entire planet has come under the control of the U.S. Government, a government that is itself controlled by America’s billionaires, the funders of neoconservatism and imperialism — in both major American political parties, think tanks, newspapers, TV networks, etcetera.

Bezos has been a crucial part of neoconservatism, ever since, at the June 6-9 2013 Bilderberg meeting, he arranged with Donald Graham, the Washington Post’s owner, to buy that newspaper, for $250 million. Bezos had already negotiated, in March of that same year, with the neoconservative CIA Director, John Brennan, for a $600 million ten-year cloud computing contract that transformed Amazon corporation, from being a reliable money-loser, into a reliably profitable firm.

That caused Bezos’s net worth to soar even more (and at a sharper rate of rising) than it had been doing while it had been losing money. He became the most influential salesman not only for books, but for the CIA, and for such mega-corporations as Lockheed Martin. Imperialism has supercharged his wealth, but it didn’t alone cause it. Bezos might be the most ferociously gifted business-person on the planet.

Some of America’s billionaires don’t care about international conquest as much as he does, but all of them at least accept neoconservatism; none of them, for example, establishes and donates large sums to, anti-imperialistic organizations; none of America’s billionaires is determined to end the reign of neoconservatism, nor even to help the fight to end it, or at least to end its grip over the U.S. government. None. Not even a single one of them does.

Plutocrat Bezos at the Pentagon with then Defense Secretary Ash Carter, May 2016. (Wikimedia Commons)

But many of them establish and donate large sums to neoconservative organizations, or run neocon organs such as The Washington Post. That’s the way billionaires are, at least in the United States. All of them are imperialists. They sponsor it; they promote it and hire people who do, and demote or get rid of people who don’t. Expanding an empire is extremely profitable for its aristocrats, and always has been, even before the Roman Empire.

Bezos wants to privatize everything around the world that can become privatized, such as education, highways, health care, and pensions. The more that billionaires control those things, the less that everyone else does; and preventing control by the public helps to protect billionaires against democracy that would increase their taxes and government regulations that would reduce their profits by increasing their corporations’ expenses. So, billionaires control the government in order to increase their takings from the public.

With the help of the war promotion of The Washington Post, Bezos is one of the world’s top personal sellers to the U.S. military-industrial complex. He controls and is the biggest investor in Amazon corporation, whose Web Services division supplies all cloud-computing services to the Pentagon, CIA and NSA. (He’s leading the charge in the most advanced facial recognition technology too.)

In April there was a headline, “CIA Considering Cloud Contract Worth ‘Tens of Billions’,” which contract could soar Bezos’s personal wealth even higher into the stratosphere, especially if he wins all of it (as he previously did).

He also globally dominates, and is constantly increasing his control over the promotion and sale of books and films, because his Amazon is the world’s largest retailer (and now also one of the largest publishers, producers and distributors.) That, too, can have a huge impact upon politics and government, indirectly, by promoting the most neocon works helping to shape intellectual discourse (and voters’ votes) in the country.

Bezos is crushing millions of retailers by his unmatched brilliance at controlling one market after another as Amazon or as an essential middleman for — and often even a controller of — Amazon’s retail competitors.

He is a strong believer in “the free market”, which he has mastered perhaps better than anyone. This means that Bezos supports the unencumbered ability of billionaires, by means of their money, to control and eventually absorb all who are less powerful than they.

Because he is so enormously gifted himself at amassing wealth, he has thus-far been able to rise to the global top, as being one of the world’s most powerful individuals. The wealthiest of all is King Salman— the owner of Saudi Arabia, whose Aramco (the world’s largest oil company) is, alone, worth over a trillion dollars. (Forbes and Bloomberg exclude monarchs from their wealth-rankings.)

In fact, Bloomberg is even so fraudulent about it as to have headlined on Aug. 10, “The 25 wealthiest dynasties on the planet control $1.4 trillion” and violated their tradition by including on their list one monarch, King Salman, whom they ranked at #4 as owning only $100 million, a ludicrously low ‘estimate’, which brazenly excluded not just Aramco but any of the net worth of Saudi Arabia.

Bloomberg didn’t even try to justify their wacky methodology, but merely presumed the gullibility of their readers for its acceptance. That King, therefore, is at least seven times as rich as Bezos is. He might possibly be as powerful as Bezos is. The supreme heir is lots wealthier even than the supreme self-made billionaire or “entrepreneur” is.

Certainly, both men are among the giants who bestride the world in our era. And both men are libertarians — champions of the belief that property rights (of which, billionaires have so much) are the basis of all rights, and so they believe that the wealthiest people possess the most rights of all, and that the poorest people have the least, and that all persons whose net worths are negative (having more debts than assets) possess no rights except what richer people might donate to or otherwise grant to them, out of kindness or otherwise (such as familial connections).

This — privatization of everything — is what libertarianism is: a person’s worth is his or her “net worth” — nothing else. That belief is pure libertarianism. It’s a belief that many if not most billionaires hold. Billionaires are imperialistic because they seek to maximize the freedom of the super-rich, regardless of whether this means increasing their takings from, or ultimately impoverishing, everyone who isn’t super-rich. They have a coherent ideology. It’s based on wealth. The public instead believes in myths that billionaires enable to be promulgated.

Like any billionaire, Bezos hires and retains employees and other agents who do what he/she wants them to do. This is their direct power. But billionaires also possess enormous indirect power by means of their interdependencies upon one-another, as each large corporation is contractually involved with other corporations, especially with large ones such as they; and, so, whatever power any particular billionaire possesses is actually a shared power, along with the others. (An example was the deal Bezos made with Graham.)

Collectively, they network together, even with ones they might never even have met personally, but only through their representatives, and even with their own major economic competitors. This is collective power which billionaires possess in addition to their individual power as hirers of employees and other agents.

Whereas Winston Smith, in the prophetic allegorical novel 1984, asked his superior and torturer O’Brien, “Does Big Brother exist?”

“‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’

‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’

‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.”

This collective power is embodied by Bezos as well as any billionaire does. A few of the others may embody it too, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Charles Koch, Sergey Brin, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and Jack Dorsey. They compete against each other, and therefore have different priorities for the U.S. government; but, all of them agree much more than they disagree in regards to what the Government “should” do (especially that the U.S. military should be expanded — at taxpayer’s expense, of course, not their own).

Basically, Big Brother, in the real world is remarkably coherent and unified — far more so than the public is — and this is one of the reasons why they control Government, bypassing the public.

Here is how all of this plays out, in terms of what Bezos’s agents have been doing:

His Amazon pays low to no federal taxes because the Federal Government has written the tax-laws to encourage companies to do the types of things that Bezos has always wanted Amazon to do.

The U.S. government consequently encourages mega-corporations through taxes and regulations to crush small firms by making it harder for them to grow. That somewhat locks-in the existing aristocracy to be less self-made (as Bezos himself was, but his children won’t be).

Elected politicians overwhelmingly support this because most of their campaign funds were donated by super-rich individuals and their employees and other agents. It’s a self-reinforcing system. Super-wealth controls the government, which (along with the super-wealthy and their corporations) controls the public, which reduces economic opportunity for them. The end-result is institutionally reinforced extreme wealth-inequality, becoming more extreme all the time.

The billionaires are the real Big Brothers. And Bezos is the biggest of them all.

Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Rick Sterling

Source: Dissident Voice

Introduction

The Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign has filed a major law suit against Google. This article outlines the main points of the law suit and evidence the the social media giant Google has quietly acquired enormous influence on public perceptions and has been actively censoring alternative viewpoints.

Tulsi Now vs Google

Tulsi Now, Inc vs Google, LLC was filed on July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The attorneys demand a jury trial and seek compensation and punitive damages of “no less than $50 million”. Major points and allegations in the 36 page complaint include:

* Google has monopolistic control of online searches and related advertising.

“Google creates, operates, and controls its platform and services, including but not limited to Google Search, Google Ads, and Gmail as a public forum or its functional equivalent by intentionally and openly dedicating its platform for public use and public benefit, inviting the public to utilize Google as a forum for free speech. Google serves as a state actor by performing an exclusively and traditionally public function by regulating free speech within a public forum and helping to run elections.” (p. 22)

“Google has used its control over online political speech to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate millions of Americans want to hear from. With this lawsuit, Tulsi seeks to stop Google from further intermeddling in the 2020 United States Presidential Election….. Google plays favorites, with no warning, no transparency – and no accountability (until now).” (p. 2)

* At a critical moment Google undercut the Tulsi Gabbard campaign.

“On June 28, 2019 – at the height of Gabbard’s popularity among internet researchers in the immediate hours after the debate ended, and in the thick of the critical post-debate period… Google suspended Tulsi’s Google Ads account without warning.” (p. 3)

* Google has failed to provide a credible explanation.

The Tulsi campaign quickly sought to restore the account but “In response, the Campaign got opacity and an inconsistent series of answers from Google… To this day, Google has not provided a straight answer – let alone a credible one – as to why Tulsi’s political speech was silence right when millions of people wanted to hear from her.” (p. 4)

Google started by falsely claiming “problems with billing”. Later, as reported in the NY Times story a Google spokesperson claimed, “Google has automated systems that flag unusual activity on advertiser accounts – including large spending changes – to prevent fraud….In this case, ‘our system triggered a suspension.’ ”

* Google has a corporate profit motive to oppose Tulsi Gabbard.

“Google has sought to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential candidate who has vocally called for greater regulation and oversight of (you guessed it) Google.” (p. 5)

“During her career in Congress, Gabbard has moved to limit the powers of big tech companies like Google and has fought to keep the internet open and available to all. Gabbard has co-sponsored legislation that prohibits multi-tiered pricing agreements for the privileged few, and she has spoken in favor of reinstating and expanding net neutrality to apply to Internet firms like Google.” (p. 8)

* Google’s Actions have caused significant harm to the Gabbard campaign and violate the U.S. and California constitutions and California business law.

“Through its illegal actions targeting Tulsi Gabbard, Google has caused the Campaign significant harm, both monetary (including potentially millions of dollars in forgone donations) and nonmonetary (the ability to provide Tulsi’s important message with Americans looking to hear it).” (p. 6)

“Google engages in a pattern and practice of intentional discrimination in the provision of its services, including discriminating and censoring the Campaign’s speech based not on the content of the censored speech but on the Campaign’s political identity and viewpoint.” (p. 27)

* The public has an interest in this case.

“Unless the court issues an appropriate injunction, Google’s illegal and unconstitutional behavior will continue, harming both the Campaign and the general public, which has an overwhelming interest in a fair, unmanipulated 2020 United States Election cycle. (p. 34)

Google Explanation is Not Credible

The Tulsi Gabbard Google Ads account was abruptly suspended at a crucial time. The question is why. Was it the result of “unusual activity” triggering an “automatic suspension” as claimed by Google? Or was it because someone at Google changed the software or otherwise intervened to undermine the Tulsi campaign?

Google’s explanation of an “automatic suspension” from “unusual activity” is dubious. First, the timing does not make sense. The sudden rise in searches on “Tulsi Gabbard” began the day before the suspension. Gabbard participated in the first debate, on June 26. Her presence and performance sparked interest among many viewers. Next morning, June 27, media reported that, “Tulsi Gabbard was the most searched candidate on Google after the Democratic debate in Miami“. The second debate took place in the evening of June 27. With discussion of the Democratic candidates continuing, Tulsi Gabbard continued to attract much interest. Around 9:30 pm (ET) on June 27 the Google Ads account was suddenly suspended. If the cause was “unusual activity”, the “automatic trigger” should have occurred long before.

Second, Google was fully aware of the “unusual activity”. In fact, Google was the source of the news reports on the morning of June 27. Reports said:

According to Google Trends, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the most searched candidate heading into the debate… After the debate, Gabbard vaulted into first.

Third, it is hard to believe that Google does not have any human or more sophisticated review before suspending a major Ads account on a politically intense night. It should have been obvious that the cause of increased interest in Gabbard was the nationally televised Democratic candidates debate and media coverage.

Fourth, the changing explanation for the sudden suspension, starting with a false claim that there were “problems with billing”, raises questions about the integrity of Google’s response.

Google Secretly Manipulates Public Opinion

Unknown to most of the public, there is compelling evidence that Google has been secretly manipulating search results to steer public perception and election voting for years.

Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has been studying and reporting on this for the past six years. Recently, on June 16, 2019 he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution. His testimony is titled “Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat”.

Epstein has published 15 books and over 300 scientific and mainstream media articles on artificial intelligence and related topics. “Since 2012, some of my research and writings have focused on Google LLC, specifically on the company’s power to suppress content – the censorship problem, if you will – as well as on the massive surveillance the company conducts, and also on the company’s unprecedented ability to manipulate the thoughts and behavior of more than 2.5 billion people worldwide.”

As shown by Dr. Epstein, Google uses several techniques to manipulate public opinion. The results of an online search are biased. Search “suggestions” are skewed. Messages such as “Go Vote” are sent to some people but not to others.

Epstein’s written testimony to Congress includes links to over sixty articles documenting his research published in sites ranging from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to Huffington Post. Epstein’s testimony describes “disturbing findings” including:

“In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton”. (Epstein notes that he supported Clinton.)

“On Election Day in 2018, the ‘Go Vote’ reminder Google displayed on its home page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party.”

“My recent research demonstrates that Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split without people’s awareness.”

“Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015. This is because many races are very close and because Google’s persuasive technologies are very powerful.”

Google is Censoring Alternative Media

In August 2017 TruePublica reported their experience and predictions in an article titled “The Truth War is Being Lost to a Global Censorship Apparatus Called Google“. The article says:

60 percent of people now get their news from search engines, not traditional human editors in the media. It is here where the new information war takes place – the algorithm. Google now takes 81.2 percent of all search engine market share globally…. Google has the ability to drive demand and set the narrative, create bias and swing opinion.

In 2017, the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) reported that:

In April, under the guise of combating ‘fake news’, Google introduced new procedures that give extraordinary powers to unnamed ‘evaluators’ to demote web pages and websites. These procedures have been used to exclude the WSWS and other anti-war and oppositional sites. Over the past three months, traffic originating from Google to the WSWS has fallen by approximately 70%…. In key searches relevant to a wide range of topics the WSWS regularly covers – including the U.S. military operations and the threat of war, social conditions, inequality and even socialism – the number of search impressions …has fallen dramatically.

In essence, Google has “de-ranked” and is screening searchers from seeing alternative and progressive websites such as truepublica, globalresearch, consortiumnews, commondreams, Wikileaks, truth-out and many more. WSWS reported numerous specific examples such as this one: “Searches for the term ‘Korean war’ produced 20,932 impressions in May. In July, searches using the same words produced zero WSWS impressions.”

“The policy guiding these actions is made absolutely clear in the April 25, 2017 blog post by Google’s Vice President for Engineering, Ben Gomes, and the updated ‘Search Quality Rater Guidelines’ published at the same time. The post refers to the need to flag and demote ‘unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories’ – broad and amorphous language used to exclude any oppositional content…. “The ‘lowest’ rating is also to be given to a website that ‘presents unsubstantiated conspiracy theories or hoaxes as if the information were factual.’”

Tulsi Gabbard has not only called for much stricter regulations on high tech and social media giants. She has also challenged the Democratic Party and foreign policy establishment. In late February 2016 she resigned as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee to support candidate Bernie Sanders against the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton. Gabbard has issued sharp criticisms of US foreign policy. Recently she said:

We hear a lot of politicians say the same argument that we’ve got to stay engaged in the world otherwise we’ll be isolationists as though the only way the United States can engage with other countries is by blowing them up or strangling them with economic sanctions by smashing them and trying to overthrow their governments. This is exactly what’s wrong with this whole premise and the whole view in which too many politicians, too many leaders in this country are viewing the United States role in the world.

Conclusion

Did Google take the next step from silently censoring websites the corporation does not like to undercutting a presidential candidate the corporation does not like?

This is a David vs Goliath story. Google/Alphabet is the 37th largest corporation in the world with enormous political influence in Washington. Whether or not the law suit succeeds, it may serve the public interest by exposing Google’s immense monopolistic power and illustrate the need for much more regulation, transparency and accountability. It may also generate more interest in Gabbard’s message and campaign in the face of efforts to silence her.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com. Read other articles by Rick.

More Than a Threat, America’s Criminal Ways

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Gordon Duff

Source: New Eastern Outlook

It is one thing watching the news, such as it is, a mix of conspiracy theories, flummery and distraction but quite something else watching the United States under its current regime wage war and politics. We haven’t seen this kind of theatre since Goebbels, Himmler and Von Ribbentrop.

How does one describe Secretary of State Pompeo’s trip to Iraq in early May 2019? Do remember that the United States already murdered two million Iraqi civilians, that was done openly and many of those who planned that fake war backed by fake intelligence now advise Trump, names like “John Bolton” for instance.

The blubbering monstrosity Pompeo, reeling from a failed coup attempt in Venezuela, lands in Baghdad to threaten the Iraqis with 4 nuclear armed B 52s and an American aircraft carrier “racing to the scene.”

Why? The answer is simple, and Trump openly admits it, the Israelis told them to do it. Ouch!

How about Israel? Problems there? Didn’t several hundred rockets just land somewhere inside Israel? Didn’t their US financed “Iron Dome” missile defense system utterly fail? More than that, something else far more serious was exposed.

Not one social media post, not one photo, no interviews, not even a phone call to relatives in the United States was made from Israel regarding these attacks. To be clear, the attacks were in retaliation for the killing of Palestinian protesters by not just IDF forces but armed Israeli civilians.

As an aside, the real threat isn’t from inside Israel, a proven total surveillance state capable of unprecedented tyranny, but that Israel’s model is being sold to nations around the world, particularly the United States, where Facebook and Google, two companies controlled by Israeli passport holders, are leading the way to a draconian society with few nations holding the line.

That those nations are either bombed or sanctioned or both by the United States is telling.

Tyranny as Patriotism

The assumptions aren’t just wrong, they are ignorance in its purest form. Hiding behind patriotic songs, pompous rhetoric and always “hugging the flag,” America is a nation run by gangsters. Was it always that way? To an extent, that answer would be yes, but even the criminal elites, the slave traders, opium shippers, land speculators and robber barons of American history would never have imagined what today has brought.

The world is terrified of America. It is one thing for a nuclear superpower to bully the world on behalf of the wealthy elites that own America’s government. When those elites run every government, not just the US, but Europe as well, Africa and Latin America, much of Asia too, and stage fake wars, quite probably fake terror attacks, mass murders, and many suspect so-called “natural disasters,” we are in uncharted waters here.

Every advancement in science and technology is placed into the waiting hands of, well who? We can thank the controlled media, another equally theatrical organization dominated by fake opposing sides tasked with polarizing the public on issues like abortion rights, vaccinations, racial hatred and class envy, with making a Frankensteinian world possible.

The Threat of Science and Technology

Many are aware that, during World War II, science was pushed to new depths. In America it was the Manhattan Project, creating a capability of incinerating entire cities and making much of the earth’s surface uninhabitable.

In Japan, among their efforts was a biological weapons program under “Unit 731.” Headquartered in China, the Japanese developed weaponized forms of the most virulent diseases known to man, tested them on the Chinese along with American prisoners of war, and unleashed them on the world with limited success. Japan even tried spreading the Black Plague to the United States by attaching infected rats to balloons.

Japan also had a nuclear program and built several very large submarines capable of delivering aircraft off the US coast in order to do to America exactly what it did to Japan. There are records, still classified, that show both Japan and Germany exploding nuclear devices during the closing days of World War II.

Anecdotally, uranium oxide from Germany, destined for Japan by submarine in April 1945, to be used against the United States, was diverted to the Manhattan project with the vessel carrying it, the U234, docked at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There are many such untold stories from World War II, and here is why some of them matter so much.

Let’s look at Unit 731. What happened to the scientists, the war criminals, who unleashed the plague on China’s cities? They came to the US under “Operation Paperclip,” under the auspices of CIA founder Allen Dulles and his assistant, a young Naval officer, Richard Millhouse Nixon. This was the origin of the American biological warfare program that now runs allegedly “peaceful” labs around the world in places like Tbilisi, Georgia.

These facilities are part of the reason so many fear the US. Information on the real research is more than rumors. We know the US has been collecting DNA samples from specific “target” populations, particularly in the Russian Federation, collected and collated by the same organizations that are capable of creating “designer disease.” In fact, this capability comes up in publications, demonstrating the frightening capability of tying genetically modified diseases to racial and/or ethnic markers in human DNA.

An Ethnically Cleansed Planet

Real or not, there are wide perceptions at government level, across Africa for certain but elsewhere as well, that “weaponized medical science” is misusing research into vaccines and studies of genetics to create a world as envisioned by eugenicists in the late 19th and early 20th century.

A movement funded by the wealthiest American families, America began sterilizing its “unfit,” based on race, religion or even social gossip. From Indy Week:

“In Britain, eugenic thought was more of an abstract concept of a utopian society that would prove difficult to put into practice. However, eugenic ideology found fertile ground across the Atlantic in the United States. With the rising influx of immigrants after 1890, increased urbanization and related social ills, people needed a promise of stability and a better future. Eugenics seemed to have the answers. During its heyday, it enjoyed broad support across a variety of social and political spectrums: from social reformers and humanitarians to staunch racists, from strict conservatives to progressives, and from academic and medical communities to religious circles. And it had the financial backing of some of the wealthiest capitalists in the country, including the Kellogg, Carnegie, and Harriman family fortunes.

A national Eugenics Record Office was established in 1910 to collect pedigrees of families suspected of carrying defective genes, and several organizations were formed to promote the study and practice of eugenics. These organizations would sponsor “Better Babies” and “Fitter Families” contests at state fairs across the country. Eugenics exhibits proclaimed “Some people are born to be a burden on the rest, ” with a flashing light going off every 16 seconds to signal the birth of another possibly defective human. Eugenic sermon contests were held across the nation, and biblical passages were quickly reinterpreted to show how eugenics was perfectly compatible with Christian thought. Indeed, advocates claimed, Jesus himself was a eugenicist, according to Christine Rosen’s book, Preaching Eugenics. Scary stories about degenerate family lines sometimes completely fabricated were widely disseminated.

Although eugenics may have started out as a serious science, and elements of it would later shift to the valuable studies of genetics and heredity, the ideology was hijacked by people who knew little about the science and needed a reason to justify their own prejudices. The national Eugenics Record Office would spend years amassing volumes of data on individuals and families, combining “equal portions of gossip, race prejudice, sloppy methods and leaps of logic, all caulked together by elements of actual genetic knowledge to create the glitter of a genuine science,” Edwin Black writes in War Against the Weak.

The goal of the eugenics movement in the United States was to get rid of the “bottom tenth” of society. This, eugenicists hoped to accomplish through restrictive immigration laws, miscegenation laws and forced sterilizations of the unfit. The “fit” of society were imagined as healthy, white, middle-class or higher, educated, English-speaking Protestants bearing a remarkable resemblance to the eugenicists who defined the word “fit.’”

Still the Same Game?

Were one to delve into a darker view of geopolitics than is normally publicly espoused, one where governments, perhaps themselves controlled by what is now termed the Deep State, act in a broadly criminal manner, a pattern emerges. Not all patterns are viable, some if not most are agenda driven and data is always subjective, with fakery and propaganda working its way into the accepted narrative.

One might even go further, that the “accepted narrative” is, in itself, only fakery and propaganda. In fact, stringently focused analytical models reveal exactly this truth.

What is clear is that policies are being enacted that favor lower birth rates in developing nations due to poverty, disease and war.

Moreover, there is a wealth of evidence that scientific research and technological development doesn’t stop at social engineering or even “thought control.” Modeling reveals a broad agenda of capabilities that mirrors the values of those oligarchical elites that so long ago decided a “custom bred” humanity of mindless drones controlled by elites is the only desirable future for mankind.

Thus, when the CIA or USAID builds mysterious laboratories in the dark recesses of the world, Romania, Tbilisi, Georgia, Southern Libya yet no research is published and the only “output” is occasional outbreaks of genetically engineered experimental diseases, fears and suspicions become reality.

One must remember, and this is fact, not conjecture, that the origin of Hitler’s Germany traces to Americans. Hitler’s race laws originated in America and Hitler was long a student of America’s “Black Stork” laws that mandated killing unfit children. From the Guardian:

“Various methods of eugenic euthanasia – including gassing the unwanted in lethal chambers – were a part of everyday American parlance and ethical debate some two decades before Nevada approved the first such chamber for criminal executions in 1921.

Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation. ‘Now that we know the laws of heredity,’ he told a fellow Nazi, ‘it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.’”

Conclusion

Looking at who overtly rules America today, giving no credence to claims of a Deep State or secret societies, we are still faced with overwhelming proof that the “American democracy” is controlled by oligarchical hereditary elites that favor ethnic cleansing and elimination of those they deem unfit.

Though the seats of government may be held by those with different names, the money behind them, the think tanks, the fake institutes, are all under control by these forces.

The policies? Open ethnic cleansing for sure, overtly through sanctions and war, less openly through supporting clearly fascistic regimes around the world, a policy America adopted long ago. When the reins of control in Washington fall into the hands of right-wing extremists, these policies which are always present go a step further, as is now being seen under the Trump regime.

As Trump will be attending the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings in France, a real examination of that war and Hitler’s truncated rule of Europe, would reveal how not only did Hitler follow policies learned from America but how he was funded by Americans as well, from his earliest career to continued full partnership in war industries right up until the end of the war.

It would not be inaccurate to call Hitler a failed American experiment, one like so many others, Diem in Vietnam, the repressive regimes in South Korea, Chaing in China and ten dozen “tin pot” dictators placed in power by the CIA, with that list growing each day.

The goal? Technology and science wielded to create a world envisioned long ago, one with few people, endless power for the debauched few where the self-anointed “high born” could look down from their lofty heights on humanity as though it were a giant ant farm.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today and the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

The Forever War Is So Normalized That Opposing It Is “Isolationism”

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

After getting curb stomped on the debate stage by Tulsi Gabbard, the campaign for Tim “Who the fuck is Tim Ryan?” Ryan posted a statement decrying the Hawaii congresswoman’s desire to end a pointless 18-year military occupation as “isolationism”.

“While making a point as to why America can’t cede its international leadership and retreat from around the world, Tim was interrupted by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard,” the statement reads. “When he tried to answer her, she contorted a factual point Tim was making— about the Taliban being complicit in the 9/11 attacks by providing training, bases and refuge for Al Qaeda and its leaders. The characterization that Tim Ryan doesn’t know who is responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is simply unfair reporting. Further, we continue to reject Gabbard’s isolationism and her misguided beliefs on foreign policy. We refuse to be lectured by someone who thinks it’s ok to dine with murderous dictators like Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad who used chemical weapons on his own people.”

Ryan’s campaign is lying. During an exchange that was explicitly about the Taliban in Afghanistan, Ryan plainly said “When we weren’t in there, they started flying planes into our buildings.” At best, Ryan can argue that when he said “they” he had suddenly shifted from talking about the Taliban to talking about Al Qaeda without bothering to say so, in which case he obviously can’t legitimately claim that Gabbard “contorted” anything he had said. At worst, he was simply unaware at the time of the very clear distinction between the Afghan military and political body called the Taliban and the multinational extremist organization called Al Qaeda.

Watch the 5 minutes that have people talking Tulsi!
A soldier's truth about the establishment war machine driving US foreign policy https://t.co/JC0MqYSEmT #DemDebate – #TULSI2020 pic.twitter.com/kJnp3gRfKq

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) June 27, 2019

More importantly, Ryan’s campaign using the word “isolationism” to describe the simple common sense impulse to withdraw from a costly, deadly military occupation which isn’t accomplishing anything highlights an increasingly common tactic of tarring anything other than endless military expansionism as strange and aberrant instead of normal and good. Under our current Orwellian doublespeak paradigm where forever war is the new normal, the opposite of war is no longer peace, but isolationism. This removal of a desirable opposite of war from the establishment-authorised lexicon causes war to always be the desirable option.

This is entirely by design. This bit of word magic has been employed for a long time to tar any idea which deviates from the neoconservative agenda of total global unipolarity via violent imperialism as something freakish and dangerous. In his farewell address to the nation, war criminal George W Bush said the following:

“In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”

A few months after Bush’s address, Antiwar‘s Rich Rubino wrote an article titled “Non-Interventionism is Not Isolationism“, explaining the difference between a nation which withdraws entirely from the world and a nation which simply resists the temptation to use military aggression except in self defense.

“Isolationism dictates that a country should have no relations with the rest of the world,” Rubino explained. “In its purest form this would mean that ambassadors would not be shared with other nations, communications with foreign governments would be mainly perfunctory, and commercial relations would be non-existent.”

“A non-interventionist supports commercial relations,” Rubino contrasted. “In fact, in terms of trade, many non-interventionists share libertarian proclivities and would unilaterally obliterate all tariffs and custom duties, and would be open to trade with all willing nations. In addition, non-interventionists welcome cultural exchanges and the exchange of ambassadors with all willing nations.”

“A non-interventionist believes that the U.S. should not intercede in conflicts between other nations or conflicts within nations,” wrote Rubino. “In recent history, non-interventionists have proved prophetic in warning of the dangers of the U.S. entangling itself in alliances. The U.S. has suffered deleterious effects and effectuated enmity among other governments, citizenries, and non-state actors as a result of its overseas interventions. The U.S. interventions in both Iran and Iraq have led to cataclysmic consequences.”

Statement from Ryan Campaign on Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/3vuV62kl1S

— Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) June 27, 2019

Calling an aversion to endless military violence “isolationism” is the same as calling an aversion to mugging people “agoraphobia”. Yet you’ll see this ridiculous label applied to both Gabbard and Trump, neither of whom are isolationists by any stretch of the imagination, or even proper non-interventionists. Gabbard supports most US military alliances and continues to voice full support for the bogus “war on terror” implemented by the Bush administration which serves no purpose other than to facilitate endless military expansionism; Trump is openly pushing regime change interventionism in both Venezuela and Iran while declining to make good on his promises to withdraw the US military from Syria and Afghanistan.

Another dishonest label you’ll get thrown at you when debating the forever war is “pacifism”. “Some wars are bad, but I’m not a pacifist; sometimes war is necessary,” supporters of a given interventionist military action will tell you. They’ll say this while defending Trump’s potentially catastrophic Iran warmongering or promoting a moronic regime change invasion of Syria, or defending disastrous US military interventions in the past like Iraq.

This is bullshit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, virtually no one is a pure pacifist who opposes war under any and all possible circumstances; anyone who claims that they can’t imagine any possible scenario in which they’d support using some kind of coordinated violence either hasn’t imagined very hard or is fooling themselves. If your loved ones were going to be raped, tortured and killed by hostile forces unless an opposing group took up arms to defend them, for example, you would support that. Hell, you would probably join in. Secondly, equating opposition to US-led regime change interventionism, which is literally always disastrous and literally never helpful, is not even a tiny bit remotely like opposing all war under any possible circumstance.

She’s not “antiwar” – she’s anti a US war. She’s totally pro the Russian air war in Syria and celebrated Russian air strikes that have killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 6, 2019

Another common distortion you’ll see is the specious argument that a given opponent of US interventionism “isn’t anti-war” because they don’t oppose all war under any and all circumstances. This tweet by The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan is a perfect example, claiming that Gabbard is not anti-war because she supports Syria’s sovereign right to defend itself with the help of its allies from the violent extremist factions which overran the country with western backing. Again, virtually no one is opposed to all war under any and all circumstances; if a coalition of foreign governments had helped flood Hasan’s own country of Britain with extremist militias who’d been murdering their way across the UK with the ultimate goal of toppling London, both Tulsi Gabbard and Hasan would support fighting back against those militias.

The label “anti-war” can for these reasons be a little misleading. The term anti-interventionist or non-interventionist comes closest to describing the value system of most people who oppose the warmongering of the western empire, because they understand that calls for military interventionism which go mainstream in today’s environment are almost universally based on imperialist agendas grabbing at power, profit, and global hegemony. The label “isolationist” comes nowhere close.

It all comes down to sovereignty. An anti-interventionist believes that a country has the right to defend itself, but it doesn’t have the right to conquer, capture, infiltrate or overthrow other nations whether covertly or overtly. At the “end” of colonialism we all agreed we were done with that, except that the nationless manipulators have found far trickier ways to seize a country’s will and resources without actually planting a flag there. We need to get clearer on these distinctions and get louder about defending them as the only sane, coherent way to run foreign policy.

Iran goes for “maximum counter-pressure”

Posted on June 26, 2019 by Reid Mukai

A U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress aircraft assigned to the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron taxis for takeoff on a runway at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, May 12, 2019. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Ashley Gardner

By Pepe Escobar

Source: Information Clearing House

Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly.

For the past few days, intelligence circles across Eurasia had been prodding Tehran to consider a quite straightforward scenario. There would be no need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if Quds Force commander, General Qasem Soleimani, the ultimate Pentagon bête noire, explained in detail, on global media, that Washington simply does not have the military capacity to keep the Strait open.

As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.

Soleimani should also state bluntly that Iran may in fact shut down the Strait of Hormuz if the nation is prevented from exporting essential two million barrels of oil a day, mostly to Asia. Exports, which before illegal US sanctions and de facto blockade would normally reach 2.5 million barrels a day, now may be down to only 400,000.

Soleimani’s intervention would align with consistent signs already coming from the IRGC. The Persian Gulf is being described as an imminent “shooting gallery.” Brigadier General Hossein Salami stressed that Iran’s ballistic missiles are capable of hitting “carriers in the sea” with pinpoint precision. The whole northern border of the Persian Gulf, on Iranian territory, is lined up with anti-ship missiles – as I confirmed with IRGC-related sources.

We’ll let you know when it’s closed

Then, it happened.

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Baqeri, went straight to the point; “If the Islamic Republic of Iran were determined to prevent export of oil from the Persian Gulf, that determination would be realized in full and announced in public, in view of the power of the country and its Armed Forces.”

The facts are stark. Tehran simply won’t accept all-out economic war lying down – prevented to export the oil that protects its economic survival. The Strait of Hormuz question has been officially addressed. Now it’s time for the derivatives.

Presenting detailed derivatives analysis plus military analysis to global media would force the media pack, mostly Western, to go to Warren Buffett to see if it is true. And it is true. Soleimani, according to this scenario, should say as much and recommend that the media go talk to Warren Buffett.

The extent of a possible derivatives crisis is an uber-taboo theme for the Washington consensus institutions. According to one of my American banking sources, the most accurate figure – $1.2 quadrillion – comes from a Swiss banker, off the record. He should know; the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – the central bank of central banks – is in Basle.

The key point is it doesn’t matter how the Strait of Hormuz is blocked.

It could be a false flag. Or it could be because the Iranian government feels it’s going to be attacked and then sinks a cargo ship or two. What matters is the final result; any blocking of the energy flow will lead the price of oil to reach $200 a barrel, $500 or even, according to some Goldman Sachs projections, $1,000.

Another US banking source explains; “The key in the analysis is what is called notional. They are so far out of the money that they are said to mean nothing. But in a crisis the notional can become real. For example, if I buy a call for a million barrels of oil at $300 a barrel, my cost will not be very great as it is thought to be inconceivable that the price will go that high. That is notional. But if the Strait is closed, that can become a stupendous figure.”

BIS will only commit, officially, to indicate the total notional amount outstanding for contracts in derivatives markers is an estimated $542.4 trillion. But this is just an estimate.

The banking source adds, “Even here it is the notional that has meaning. Huge amounts are interest rate derivatives. Most are notional but if oil goes to a thousand dollars a barrel, then this will affect interest rates if 45% of the world’s GDP is oil. This is what is called in business a contingent liability.”

Goldman Sachs has projected a feasible, possible $1,000 a barrel a few weeks after the Strait of Hormuz being shut down. This figure, times 100 million barrels of oil produced per day, leads us to 45% of the $80 trillion global GDP. It’s self-evident the world economy would collapse based on just that alone.

War dogs barking mad

As much as 30% of the world’s oil supply transits the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Wily Persian Gulf traders – who know better – are virtually unanimous; if Tehran was really responsible for the Gulf of Oman tanker incident, oil prices would be going through the roof by now. They aren’t.

Iran’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz amount to 12 nautical miles (22 km). Since 1959, Iran recognizes only non-military naval transit.

Since 1972, Oman’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz also amount to 12 nautical miles. At its narrowest, the width of the Strait is 21 nautical miles (39 km). That means, crucially, that half of the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian territorial waters, and the other half in Oman’s. There are no “international waters”.

And that adds to Tehran now openly saying that Iran may decide to close the Strait of Hormuz publicly – and not by stealth.

Iran’s indirect, asymmetric warfare response to any US adventure will be very painful. Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran once again reconfirmed, “even a limited strike will be met by a major and disproportionate response.” And that means gloves off, big time; anything from really blowing up tankers to, in Marandi’s words, “Saudi and UAE oil facilities in flames”.

Hezbollah will launch tens of thousands of missiles against Israel. As Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hasan Nasrallah has been stressing in his speeches, “war on Iran will not remain within that country’s borders, rather it will mean that the entire [Middle East] region will be set ablaze. All of the American forces and interests in the region will be wiped out, and with them the conspirators, first among them Israel and the Saudi ruling family.”

It’s quite enlightening to pay close attention to what this Israel intel op is saying. The dogs of war though are barking mad.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo jetted to CENTCOM in Tampa to discuss “regional security concerns and ongoing operations” with – skeptical – generals, a euphemism for “maxim pressure” eventually leading to war on Iran.

Iranian diplomacy, discreetly, has already informed the EU – and the Swiss – about their ability to crash the entire world economy. But still that was not enough to remove US sanctions.

War zone in effect

As it stands in Trumpland, former CIA Mike “We lied, We cheated, We stole” Pompeo – America’s “top diplomat” – is virtually running the Pentagon. “Acting” secretary Shanahan performed self-immolation. Pompeo continues to actively sell the notion the “intelligence community is convinced” Iran is responsible for the Gulf of Oman tanker incident. Washington is ablaze with rumors of an ominous double bill in the near future; Pompeo as head of the Pentagon and Psycho John Bolton as Secretary of State. That would spell out War.

Yet even before sparks start to fly, Iran could declare that the Persian Gulf is in a state of war; declare that the Strait of Hormuz is a war zone; and then ban all “hostile” military and civilian traffic in its half of the Strait. Without firing a single shot, no shipping company on the planet would have oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf.

False-Flagging the World to War: A Gulf of Tonkin Incident in the Gulf of Oman

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Washington is playing false flag again, but this time, in the Gulf of Oman as Washington has accused Iran of attacking two commercial tanker ships from Japan and Norway while tensions in the region are at an all-time high. Why would Iran attack commercial tankers in the Gulf of Oman belonging to Norway and the other to Japan in the first place? Keep in mind that just hours before, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were going to meet in an attempt to ease the ongoing crisis between Iran and the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported that “The attacks, including on a Japanese tanker, came just hours before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan met in Iran with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to try to ease the standoff.” the report also said that “Mr. Abe has attempted to work as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, but Mr. Khamenei dismissed Mr. Abe’s effort, darkening prospects for dialogue. “We don’t believe these words at all because honest negotiations will not come from an individual such as [President] Trump.” An ABC news report stated that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo introduced Washington’s assessment that basically declared Iran is guilty as charged:

“It is the assessment of the United States government that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today. This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high-degree of sophistication”

Pompeo also said that the U.S. “will defend its forces, interests and stand with our partners and allies to safeguard global commerce and regional stability.”So what proof does Washington have? The report from ABC news said that “Some of the intelligence that Pompeo referred to includes overhead images taken by a U.S. Navy P-8 surveillance craft that shows Iranians on small boats alongside the Kokuka Courageous attempting to remove an unexploded mine that they had previously attached to the ship, a U.S. official told ABC News. While the images themselves weren’t disclosed, the descriptions suggested that the Iranians were attempting to remove evidence that would link them directly to the tanker attacks.”

Scripted: The Gulf of Tonkin and the Gulf of Oman

It is the same script that was once used on August 2nd, 1964 in what was to become the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ which based on a false claim of an alleged attack by North Vietnam on a U.S. ship, the USS Maddox. Washington’s official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an “unprovoked attack” against the U.S.S. Maddox that was allegedly on “routine patrol” but the truth was that it was engaged in intelligence-gathering and that it was involved in coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by both the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. Then two days later, North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly launched a “deliberate attack” on two U.S. destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy with 22 torpedoes but it was all a lie. There was no evidence to suggest that there was an attack or any damage by North Vietnam. However, US Congress wanted retribution against North Vietnam so they passed The Tonkin Gulf Resolution a couple of days later which gave President, Lyndon B. Johnson authority to enter Vietnam’s civil war and give its full support to South Vietnam. The resolution stated that “Congress approves and supports the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The Vietnam War lasted for about 10 years costing the lives of 55,000 US soldiers and roughly 3 million Southeast Asians including men, women and children.

The recent incident in the Gulf of Oman resembles the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. On August 5th, 1964, The New York Times published ‘The President Acts’ and stated the following:

President Johnson went to the American people last night with the somber facts of an enlarging crisis in Vietnam. He announced new steps in reply to “open aggression on the high seas.”. Air action by the United States is being executed against North Vietnam gunboats and supporting installations.

The President will put to the Congress a resolution expressing our united determination in support of the cause of freedom in Southeast Asia: He will put this grave situation before the Security Council of the United Nations. He has sought—and received—from Senator Goldwater, the Republican nominee for President, the assurance of bipartisan support in this critical hour.

The attack on one of our warships that at first seemed, and was hoped to be, an isolated incident is now seen in ominous perspective to have been the beginning of a mad adventure by the North Vietnamese Communists. After offensive action against more vessels of our Navy the President has backed up with retaliatory fire the warnings that North Vietnam chose frequently to ignore

Johnson called on congress to declare that “The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia” according to a Politico article titled ‘Congress approves Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Aug. 7, 1964′ stated that “The resolution gave the president the right to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” LBJ gave a speech following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident:

My fellow Americans: – As President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.

The initial attack on the destroyer Maddox, on August 2, was repeated today by a number of hostile vessels attacking two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes. The destroyers and supporting aircraft acted at once on the orders I gave after the initial act of aggression. We believe at least two of the attacking boats were sunk. There were no U.S. losses.

The performance of commanders and crews in this engagement is in the highest tradition of the United States Navy. But repeated acts of violence against the Armed Forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight. Air action is now in execution against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North Viet-Nam which have been used in these hostile operations.

In the larger sense this new act of aggression, aimed directly at our own forces, again brings home to all of us in the United States the importance of the struggle for peace and security in southeast Asia. Aggression by terror against the peaceful villagers of South Viet-Nam has now been joined by open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America.

The determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the government of South Viet-Nam will be redoubled by this outrage. Yet our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.

I have instructed the Secretary of State to make this position totally clear to friends and to adversaries and, indeed, to all. I have instructed Ambassador Stevenson to raise this matter immediately and urgently before the Security Council of the United Nations. Finally, I have today met with the leaders of both parties in the Congress of the United States and I have informed them that I shall immediately request the Congress to pass a resolution making it clear that our Government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in southeast Asia.

I have been given encouraging assurance by these leaders of both parties that such a resolution will be promptly introduced, freely and expeditiously debated, and passed with overwhelming support. And just a few minutes ago I was able to reach Senator Goldwater and I am glad to say that he has expressed his support of the statement that I am making to you tonight.

It is a solemn responsibility to have to order even limited military action by forces whose overall strength is as vast and as awesome as those of the United States of America, but it is my considered conviction, shared throughout your Government, that firmness in the right is indispensable today for peace; that firmness will always be measured. Its mission is peace

Washington released a video claiming that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) removed an unexploded mine from one of the two tankers. Last Thursday, Navy Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US military’s Central Command, said in a statement “At 4:10pm local time (00:10 GMT) an IRGC Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine from the M/T Kokuka Courageous.”

The New York Times headlined with ‘Trump Accuses Iran in Explosions That Crippled Oil Tankers’ detailing what Trump had said in relation to the Gulf of Oman incident “Well, Iran did do it,” the president said in a telephone interview on “Fox & Friends” in his first comments since the ships were damaged. “You know they did it because you saw the boat. I guess one of the mines didn’t explode and it’s got essentially Iran written all over it.” The New York Timesweighed in on the accusation by claiming that Iran’s proxy groups have increased attacks in the region, in a way siding with Trump:

In fact, some Iranian proxy groups in the region have stepped up attacks lately. The Houthi faction in Yemen, which has been supported by Iran, has attacked Saudi oil pipelines and other targets. Just this week, a Houthi missile slammed inot the arrival halls of a Saudi airport, injuring 26 people, according to Saudi news. The Houthis reported launching a drone attack on the same airport on Friday but the Saudi military said it intercepted five Houthi drones and the airport was operating normally

According to The New York Times one of the Japanese operators said that the tanker was hit by a flying object not by a limpet mine:

Doubts about the American version of Thursday’s events were raised by the Japanese operator of one of the damaged tankers, which said that it was attacked by air. “Our crew said that the ship was attacked by a flying object,” said Yutaka Katada, the president of the operator, Kokuka Sangyo

Washington’s Hit List: Iran

It’s no secret that Trump is in the pockets of Israel and Saudi Arabia but that’s beside the point, the deep state insiders and the Military-Industrial Complex have been wanting a war with Iran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which ousted the U.S. backed dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also known as the Shah of Iran. But there are a number of reasons why the U.S. wants a war with Iran, one of them being the fact that Iran has dropped its use of the U.S. dollar in trade with several key countries including Russia and China disrupting the petrodollar system. Israel also plays an important part by having the ambitions of becoming the “Greater Israel” in the Middle East, but Iran and its allies including Syria, Hezbollah, Lebanon and the Palestinians are preventing that from happening. If Israel can succeed in pushing the U.S. to attack Iran and destabilize the country as they did with Iraq, then managing the Middle East in its entirely would allow the Zionist state to expand on more Arab territory (Trump recently declared Syria’s Golan Heights as a part of Israel). Then Israel will become a major power in the Middle East armed with nuclear weapons, sort of a mini-empire with teeth.

However, the U.S., Israel and the Gulf States will have their hands tied when it comes to Iran’s military capabilities that includes an estimated 534,000 active personnel and an additional 350,000 reservists in the army, air force, navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is also worth mentioning that Iran has the manpower which is close to 40 million eligible men and women who would unite no matter what side of the political spectrum they are on. They would rally around the Iranian flag and fight for their homeland. One certainty the U.S. and its allies would face is a nation that has much more people and a land mass that is at least four times larger than Iraq. According to Global Firepower Index, a military website ranked Iran at No. 13 out of 136 countries. Iran has more than 500 aircraft, 1,634 combat tanks, 2,345 armored fighting vehicles and 398 Naval assets including 34 submarines and 88 vessels. Iran recently produced an air defense system called the Khordad 15 that is “capable of tracking and shooting down six targets at the same time. The weapon was rolled out amid growing tensions around the Persian Gulf” according to a report by RT.com. The report said that “Iran unveiled its new domestically-designed air defense missile system Khordad 15 on Sunday. Equipped with long-range Sayyad 3 missiles, it can shoot down enemy jets and combat drones at a range of 120 kilometers, Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said.”

The U.S. war machine’s main objective is to destabilize and destroy Iran as a country so that the U.S., the Gulf states and especially Israel can dominate the Middle East and its oil supplies. It will also be a bonus for the Military-Industrial Complex who will profit from what will become a long-term war.

Trump escalates war threats after drone shootdown over Iran

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Bill Van Auken

Source: WSWS.org

US President Donald Trump authorized military strikes against Iran Thursday before unexpectedly cancelling them, the New York Times reported. The abrupt move leaves open the imminent possibility of a major new war in the Middle East with the potential to kill millions and spark a global military conflict.

The Times reported on Thursday that “Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.”

The news came after Trump delivered a series of contradictory statements threatening retaliation over the Iranian downing of a unmanned drone spying on Iranian territory, while at the same time suggesting that the action may have been a “mistake” committed by a member of the Iranian military.

“It’s hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think it could have been somebody loose and stupid that day.”

The statement contrasted with his reaction earlier in the day, when he declared that “Iran made a very big mistake” and answered reporters’ questions about whether it would lead to war by declaring, “You’ll find out.”

The US administration’s real intentions remain opaque. Trump summoned top congressional leaders to the White House “situation room” late Thursday for a classified briefing on Iran. Those attending included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence and armed services committees.

Such a meeting could well be the prelude to US military action.

Trump’s claim that the shootdown of the drone was a “mistake” is wildly at odds with what the Iranian government itself has said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) immediately claimed responsibility for shooting down the drone, which took place near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, declaring that the action was meant to send a message to Washington.

“The message is that the guardians of the borders of Islamic Iran will decisively respond to the violation of any stranger to this land,” Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the IRGC, said on Thursday. “The only solution for the enemies is to respect the territorial integrity and national interests of Iran,” he added in a speech that was broadcast live on Iranian television.

While Iran immediately acknowledged that it had shot down the drone because it had violated the country’s airspace in an “illegal and provocative” manner, the US military initially made no comment on the shootdown, beyond denying that any US aircraft were “operating in Iranian airspace today.”

The drone that was destroyed by an Iranian surface-to-air missile was an RQ-4B Global Hawk, used by the US Navy as a “Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System.” These aircraft, which have the wingspan of a 737 passenger jet, are stuffed with electronic surveillance equipment and cost the Pentagon upwards of $200 million apiece.

The drone is capable of flying at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet and has been used in the US military interventions in Iraq and Syria with no concern about it being vulnerable to attacks from the ground. The buildup to war against Iran, however, as the downing of the drone makes clear, is another matter.

Iran has reported that it brought down the drone with the Iranian-manufactured Sevom Khordad missile defense system. The country has also, however, received missile capabilities from Russia including the S400 surface-to-air missile system, which it has just begun to deploy.

The shooting down of the high-priced US drone has come as a shock to the Pentagon and another warning that the costs of an all-out US war against Iran will be far higher than US imperialism’s previous military interventions in the Middle East.

It marks the second time this month that a US drone has been shot down in the region. On June 6, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down by Houthi rebels over Yemen as it was supporting the near-genocidal war being waged against that country by Saudi Arabia and its allies, which has killed over 80,000 civilians and driven millions to the brink of starvation.

Iran itself has claimed to have downed or taken possession of five other US drones before the latest shootdown. In December 2011, it captured a US Lockheed Martin RQ-170 stealth drone operated from a base in Afghanistan and flying over Iranian territory. It was able to reverse-engineer the drone to produce its own version of the aircraft.

Once the US Central Command (CENTCOM) responded to Thursday’s downing of the drone over Iran, it claimed that the missile strike was an “unprovoked attack” and that the aircraft had been flying over international waters.

As in the case of the claims of Iranian responsibility for the damage to tankers in the Gulf of Oman, no evidence has been provided to substantiate the latest US charges over the downing of the drone.

Both the Pentagon and the Iranian government have provided maps supporting their respective claims that the drone was flying over international versus Iranian territory.

The truth of the matter is that there is no agreement between Washington and Tehran over what constitutes Iranian territory. It was the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah that laid Iran’s claim to territorial waters extending 12 nautical miles from its shores, including into the Strait of Hormuz, which at its narrowest is only 21 nautical miles.

Whatever the flight path of the US spy drone, the claim that its downing by an Iranian missile was “unprovoked” is ludicrous on its face.

The unmanned aircraft was being used to spy on Iran under conditions in which Washington has steadily escalated military threats against the country, with the dispatch of a carrier battle group, a bomber strike force led by nuclear-capable B-52s and an amphibious landing group carrying US Marines. This has been followed by the dispatch to the region of first 1,500 and then another 1,000 US troops, all in the name of “deterring” unsubstantiated claims of Iranian threats to “US interests” in the region.

This military buildup has been carried out in the context of a US economic siege against Iran that is tantamount to a state of war. The Trump administration, having unilaterally ripped up the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement with the major powers, has carried out what it touts as a “maximum pressure” campaign. This act of economic strangulation is aimed at reducing Iranian energy exports to zero and starving the Iranian population into submission to the re-imposition of a US-backed puppet regime along the lines of the hated dictatorship of the Shah.

The strategic aim of this economic and military siege against Iran–pursued by Republican and Democratic administrations alike over the past 40 years–is to assert US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and thereby place Washington in a position to ration, or cut off, energy imports by the principal US global rival, China.

While there are indications of deep divisions within the US state apparatus over the drive toward war against Iran, the US provocations in the Persian Gulf are driving inexorably toward an armed conflict that could quickly claim the lives of tens of thousands.

At the same time, the tensions over the US siege against Iran with both Europe and China are an unmistakable warning that the eruption of a military confrontation could spill over into a new world war.

The Limits of American Destructiveness

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Dmitry Orlov

Source: Club Orlov

US foreign policy has always been directed at wrecking anything that wasn’t deemed sufficiently American and replacing it with something more acceptable—especially if that something allowed wealth to flow into the US from the outside. Compromises were reserved for the USSR, but even there the Americans constantly tried to cheat. For everyone else there was just submission, which was usually tactfully disguised as a positive—a seat at the big table which offered better chances for peace, prosperity and economic and social development.

Of course, it was a simple enough matter to pierce this veil of hypocritical politeness and to point out that the US, living far beyond its means, has only managed to survive by looting the rest of the world, but anyone who dared to do so would be ostracized, sanctioned, regime-changed, invaded and destroyed—whatever it took.

The US establishment has lavished its wrath on anyone who dared to oppose it ideologically, but it reserved its most extreme forms of malice for those who dared commit the cardinal sin of attempting to sell oil for anything other than US dollars. Iraq was destroyed for this very reason, then Libya. With Syria the juggernaut bogged down and stalled out; with Iran it is unlikely to ever get started.

Even the spineless European politicians are now forced to admit that US policies are designed to enrich certain American interests at the expense of their constituents; they understand by now that further denial would cause them further harm at the polls. Most insultingly to the American ego, US attempts at making Russia and China submit are being greeted with shrugs, titters and eye rolls. And now anybody who wants to can openly criticize the US and scheme behind its back.

How times have changed! US politicians and officials have abandoned all attempts at maintaining decorum and no longer disguise their rapacious, grasping ways. Instead of veiled threats, they now deploy big lies and fake threats. Focusing on the manufacture and dissemination of fakes, they have been attempting to use them to coerce obedience. There are the fake threats—Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, Cuban—that are used to call for discipline within NATO and for compliance with US unilateral sanctions.

There are also the fake (or false flag) events—a Boeing shot down over the Ukraine by “pro-Russian rebels”; the Skripal poisoning; fake chemical attacks in Syria preposterously blamed on the government; damaged oil tankers in UAE blamed on Iran. These fakes are being used as an an excuse to wreck everything—international security and trade agreements, the systems for insuring that these agreements are adhered to, and world trade.

Before the Americans would do their best to wreck anything that wasn’t theirs, then work to replace it with something that was theirs; but now they have nothing to offer as a replacement for what they are destroying. The only thing the US can offer China is Chinese victory in the trade war. China does not need the US, and this point is being rather loudly pounded home, not just by the Chinese government but by private companies and individuals as well.

First, there is a flood of countersanctions. In particular, a halt to the export of rare earth minerals will shut down electronics manufacturing and with it the entire US high tech sector. Then there are the bonuses to those who buy Huawei products and punishments for buying anything American, up to and including eating at McDonald’s. iPhones have been all but banned—not by the government but by peer pressure. Taking a trip to the US is now a firing offense. There is now a good chance that, caught up in this patriotic uplift, the Chinese are being prepared to make any sacrifice for the sake of outright victory in their trade war with the US.

But do the Americans still have the power to destroy? When Saddam Hussein decided to start selling oil for euros, the CIA organized a provocation that caused him to invade Kuweit as punishment for stealing Iraqi oil. This allowed the US to organize a gigantic expeditionary force with divisions from a large number of countries, including Syria and Egypt and pretty much all of NATO. After a decade of Hussein festering in place, a somewhat smaller coalition dealt him the coup de grâce, destroying Iraq in the process. The victims of the American invasion and occupation outnumber Saddam Hussein’s victims by orders of magnitude. Later, the same thing was done to Muammar Qaddafi, for similar reasons, and Libya is likely to remain as a ruin. There, some sort of minor coalition was cobbled together.

But now the US finds that it urgently needs to knock out Iran because otherwise it will be too late. It is time to form a new coalition and Mike Pompeo has started racing around Eurasia. First off, he offended the Germans by canceling his state visit with Angela Merkel on a moment’s notice and without offering a reason. Instead, he flew to Baghdad—a perfect location for launching an attack on Iran, except that the Iraqi response was a message of solidarity with Iran, willingness to mediate the US-Iranian dispute, and consideration of a ban on US troops on Iraqi soil.

And so Mike flew to Sochi, where he met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and, briefly, with Putin. Most likely, Putin told him where he can stuff his war plans, and so Mike canceled his planned trip to Moscow, to avoid having Sergei Lavrov wipe his feet on him again. And so Mike flew on to Europe, where he got a quick “no” on Iran from EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini and an outright refusal to meet from the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain. And so Mike flew back to Washington. You can’t tell anything by looking at his smirking fat mug, but I am sure that he was crying on the inside.

US actions around the world can now be compiled into two lists. The first list is of what the US has succeeded or may yet succeed in wrecking. The second list is of what the US wants to or has been trying to wreck but won’t be able to. There is no third list of what the US has managed to wreck and then make whole again. The challenge for the whole world is to move as many items as possible from the first list to the second list. There are many ways of going about doing this that do have a chance of working and one that doesn’t: negotiating with Americans. Because they lie and cheat and aren’t worth talking to.

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After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Tag Archives: US Foreign Policy

The Forever War Is So Normalized That Opposing It Is “Isolationism”

Iran goes for “maximum counter-pressure”

Trump escalates war threats after drone shootdown over Iran

The Limits of American Destructiveness