CALL OF DUTY IS A GOVERNMENT PSYOP: THESE DOCUMENTS PROVE IT

NOVEMBER 18TH, 2022

ALAN MACLEOD

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has been available for less than three weeks, but it is already making waves. Breaking records, within ten days, the first-person military shooter video game earned more than $1 billion in revenue. Yet it has also been shrouded in controversy, not least because missions include assassinating an Iranian general clearly based on Qassem Soleimani, a statesman and military leader slain by the Trump administration in 2020, and a level where players must shoot “drug traffickers” attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry, behind titles games as the Guitar Hero, Warcraft, Starcraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot and Candy Crush Saga series.

Yet a closer inspection of Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state.

In the first five minutes the new Call of Duty has you pilot the missile that kills Soleimani lol

— sad because the female faceapp of me isnt fuckable (@websiteidi0t) October 20, 2022

MILITARY-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

It has long been a matter of public record that American spies have targeted and penetrated Activision Blizzard games. Documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA, CIA, FBI and Department of Defense infiltrated the vast online realms such as World of Warcraft, creating make-believe characters to monitor potential illegal activity and recruit informers. Indeed, at one point, there were so many U.S. spies in one video game that they had to create a “deconfliction” group as they were wasting time unwittingly surveilling each other. Virtual games, the NSA wrote, were an “opportunity” and a “target-rich communication network”.

However, documents obtained legally under the Freedom of Information Act by journalist and researcher Tom Secker and shared with MintPress News show that the connections between the national security state and the video game industry go far beyond this, and into active collaboration.

In September 2018, for example, the United States Air Force flew a group of entertainment executives – including Call of Duty/Activision Blizzard producer Coco Francini – to their headquarters at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The explicit reason for doing so, they wrote, was to “showcase” their hardware and to make the entertainment industry more “credible advocates” for the U.S. war machine.

“We’ve got a bunch of people working on future blockbusters (think Marvel, Call of Duty, etc.) stoked about this trip!” wrote one Air Force officer. Another email notes that the point of the visit was to provide “heavy-hitter” producers with “AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] immersion focused on Special Tactics Airmen and air-to-ground capabilities.”

“This is a great opportunity to educate this community and make them more credible advocates for us in the production of any future movies/television productions on the Air Force and our Special Tactics community,” wrote the AFSOC community relations chief.

Francini and others were shown CV-22 helicopters and AC-130 planes in action, both of which feature heavily in Call of Duty games.

Yet Call of Duty collaboration with the military goes back much further. The documents show that the United States Marine Corps (USMC) was involved in the production of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty 5. The games’ producers approached the USMC at the 2010 E3 entertainment convention in Los Angeles, requesting access to hovercrafts (vehicles which later appeared in the game). Call of Duty 5 executives also asked for use of a hovercraft, a tank and a C-130 aircraft.

This collaboration continued in 2012 with the release of Modern Warfare 4, where producers requested access to all manner of air and ground vehicles.

Secker told MintPress that, by collaborating with the gaming industry, the military ensures a positive portrayal that can help it reach recruitment targets, stating that,

For certain demographics of gamers it’s a recruitment portal, some first-person shooters have embedded adverts within the games themselves…Even without this sort of explicit recruitment effort, games like Call of Duty make warfare seem fun, exciting, an escape from the drudgery of their normal lives.”

Secker’s documentary, “Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood” was released earlier this year.

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The military clearly held considerable influence over the direction of Call of Duty games. In 2010, its producers approached the Department of Defense (DoD) for help on a game set in 2075. However, the DoD liaison “expressed concern that [the] scenario being considered involves future war with China.” As a result, Activision Blizzard began “looking at other possible conflicts to design the game around.” In the end, due in part to military objections, the game was permanently abandoned.

FROM WAR ON TERROR TO FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS

Not only does Activision Blizzard work with the U.S. military to shape its products, but its leadership board is also full of former high state officials. Chief amongst these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard’s senior counsel, and, until September, its chief compliance officer and executive vice president for corporate affairs.

Prior to joining Activision Blizzard, Townsend spent her life working her way up the rungs of the national security state. Previously serving as head of intelligence for the Coast Guard and as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s counterterrorism deputy, in 2004, President Bush appointed her to his Intelligence Advisory Board.

As the White House’s most senior advisor on terrorism and homeland security, Townsend worked closely with Bush and Rice, and became one of the faces of the administration’s War on Terror. One of her principal achievements was to whip the American public into a constant state of fear about the supposed threat of more Al-Qaeda attacks (which never came).

Before she joined Activision Blizzard, Frances Townsend worked in Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for the Bush White House. Ron Edmonds | AP

As part of her job, Townsend helped popularize the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” – a Bush-era euphemism for torturing detainees. Worse still, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the officer in charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, alleged that Townsend put pressure on him to ramp up the torture program, reminding him “many, many times” that he needed to improve the intelligence output from the Iraqi jail.

Townsend has denied these allegations. She also later condemned the “handcuff[ing]” and “humiliation” surrounding Abu Ghraib. She was not referring to the prisoners, however. In an interview with CNN, she lamented that “these career professionals” – CIA torturers – had been subject to “humiliation and opprobrium” after details of their actions were made public, meaning that future administrations would be “handcuffed” by the fear of bad publicity, while the intelligence community would become more “risk-averse”.

During the Trump administration, Townsend was hotly tipped to become the Director of National Intelligence or the Secretary of Homeland Security. President Trump also approached her for the role of director of the FBI. Instead, however, Townsend took a seemingly incongruous career detour to become an executive at a video games company.

ENTER THE WAR PLANNERS

In addition to this role, Townsend is a director of the NATO offshoot, the Atlantic Council, a director at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a trustee of the hawkish think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a group MintPress News has previously covered in detail.

Funded by weapons companies, NATO and the U.S. government, the Atlantic Council serves as the military alliance’s brain trust, devising strategies on how best to manage the world. Also on its board of directors are high statespersons like Henry Kissinger and Conzoleezza Rice, virtually every retired U.S. general of note, and no fewer than seven former directors of the CIA. As such, the Atlantic Council represents the collective opinion of the national security state.

Two more key Call of Duty staff also work for the Atlantic Council. Chance Glasco, a co-founder of Infinity Ward developers who oversaw the game franchise’s rapid rise, is the council’s nonresident senior fellow, advising top generals and political leaders on the latest developments in tech.

A New US Air Force Video Game Lets You Drone Bomb Iraqis and Afghans

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Game designer and producer Dave Anthony, crucial to Call of Duty’s success, is also an Atlantic Council employee, joining the group in 2014. There, he advises them on what the future of warfare will look like, and devises strategies for NATO to fight in upcoming conflicts.

Anthony has made no secret that he collaborated with the U.S. national security state while making the Call of Duty franchise. “My greatest honor was to consult with Lieut. Col. Oliver North on the story of Black Ops 2,” he stated publicly, adding, There are so many small details we could never have known about if it wasn’t for his involvement.”

Oliver North is a high government official gained worldwide infamy after being convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair, whereby his team secretly sold weapons to the government of Iran, using the money to arm and train fascist death squads in Central America – groups who attempted to overthrow the government of Nicaragua and carried out waves of massacres and ethnic cleansing in the process.

REPUBLICANS FOR HIRE

Another eyebrow-raising hire is Activision Blizzard’s chief administration officer, Brian Bulatao. A former Army captain and consultant for McKinsey & Company, until 2018, he was chief operating officer for the CIA, placing him third in command of the agency. When CIA Director Mike Pompeo moved over to the State Department, becoming Trump’s Secretary of State, Bulatao went with him, and was appointed Under Secretary of State for Management.

There, by some accounts, he served as Pompeo’s personal “attack dog,” with former colleagues describing him as a “bully” who brought a “cloud of intimidation” over the workplace, repeatedly pressing them to ignore potential illegalities happening at the department. Thus, it is unclear if Bulatao is the man to improve Activision Blizzard’s notoriously “toxic” workplace environment that caused dozens of employees to walk out en masse last summer.

After the Trump administration’s electoral defeat, Bulatao went straight from the State Department into the highest echelons of Activision Blizzard, despite no experience in the entertainment industry.

Trump stands with then-CIA Chief Operations Officer Brian Bulatao at CIA Headquarters, May 21, 2018, in Langley, Va. Evan Vucci | AP

The third senior Republican official Activision Blizzard has recruited to its upper ranks is Grant Dixton. Between 2003 and 2006, Dixton served as associate counsel to President Bush, advising him on many of his administration’s most controversial legal activities (such as torture and the rapid expansion of the surveillance state). A lawyer by trade, he later went on to work for weapons manufacturer Boeing, rising to become its senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. In June 2021, he left Boeing to join Activision Blizzard as its chief legal officer.

Other Activision Blizzard executives with backgrounds in national security include senior vice president and chief information security officer Brett Wahlin, who was a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent, and chief of staff, Angela Alvarez, who, until 2016, was an Army chemical operations specialist.

That the same government that was infiltrating games 10-15 years ago now has so many former officials controlling the very game companies raises serious questions around privacy and state control over media, and mirrors the national security state penetration of social media that has occurred over the same timeframe.

WAR GAMES

These deep connections to the U.S. national security state can perhaps help partly explain why, for years, many have complained about the blatant pro-U.S. propaganda apparent throughout the games.

The latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, is no exception. In the game’s first mission, players must carry out a drone strike against a character named

The latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, is no exception. In the game’s first mission, players must carry out a drone strike against a character named General Ghorbrani. The mission is obviously a recreation of the Trump administration’s illegal 2020 drone strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – the in game general even bears a striking resemblance to Soleimani.

The latest Call of Duty game has players assassinate a General Ghorbrani, a nebulous reference to Iranian General Qassem Solemani, pictured right

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II ludicrously presents the general as under Russia’s thumb and claims that Ghorbrani is “supplying terrorists” with aid. In reality, Soleimani was the key force in defeating ISIS terror across the Middle East – actions for which even Western media declared him a “hero”. U.S.-run polls found that Soleimani was perhaps the most popular leader in the Middle East, with over 80% of Iranians holding a positive opinion of him.

Straight after the assassination, Pompeo’s State Department floated the falsehood that the reason they killed Soleimani was that he was on the verge of carrying out a terror attack against Americans. In reality, Soleimani was in Baghdad, Iraq, for peace talks with Saudi Arabia.

These negotiations could have led to peace between the two nations, something that the U.S. government is dead against. Then-Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi revealed that he had personally asked President Trump for permission to invite Soleimani. Trump agreed, then used the opportunity to carry out the killing.

Therefore,, just as Activision Blizzard is recruiting top State Department officials to its upper ranks, its games are celebrating the same State Department’s most controversial assassinations.

This is far from the first time Call of Duty has instructed impressionable young gamers to kill foreign leaders, however. In Call of Duty Black Ops (2010), players must complete a mission to murder Cuban leader Fidel Castro. If they manage to shoot him in the head, they are rewarded with an extra gory slow motion scene and obtain a bronze “Death to Dictators” trophy. Thus, players are forced to carry out digitally what Washington failed to do on over 600 occasions.

A mission from “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has players assassinate a hostage-taking Fidel Castro

Likewise, Call of Duty: Ghosts is set in Venezuela, where players fight against General Almagro, a socialist military leader clearly modelled on former president Hugo Chavez. Like Chavez, Almagro wears a red beret and uses Venezuela’s oil wealth to forge an alliance of independent Latin American nations against the U.S. Washington attempted to overthrow Chavez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, multiple times. During the sixth mission of the game, players must shoot and kill Almagro from close range.

The anti-Russian propaganda is also turned up to 11 in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). One mission recreates the infamous Highway of Death incident. During the First Iraq War, U.S.-led forces trapped fleeing Iraqi troops on Highway 80. What followed was what then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell described as “wanton killing” and “slaughter for slaughter’s sake” as U.S. troops and their allies pummeled the Iraqi convoy for hours, killing hundreds and destroying thousands of vehicles. U.S. forces also reportedly shot hundreds of Iraqi civilians and surrendered soldiers in their care.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare recreates this scene for dramatic effect. However, in their version, it is not the U.S.-led forces doing the killing, but Russia, thereby whitewashing a war crime by pinning the blame on official enemies.

A mission in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” has players recreate the infamous highway of death

“Call of Duty, in particular, has been flagged up for recreating real events as game missions and manipulating them for geopolitical purposes,” Secker told MintPress, referring to the Highway of Death, adding,

In a culture where most people’s exposure to games (and films, TV shows and so on) is far greater than their knowledge of historical and current events, these manipulations help frame the gamers’ emotional, intellectual and political reactions. This helps them turn into more general advocates for militarism, even if they don’t sign up in any formal way.”

Secker’s latest book, “Superheroes, Movies and the State: How the U.S. Government Shapes Cinematic Universes,” was published earlier this year.

GAME OVER

In today’s digitized era, the worlds of war and video games increasingly resemble one another. Many have commented on the similarities between piloting drones in real life and in games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Prince Harry, who was a helicopter gunner in Afghanistan, described his “joy” at firing missiles at enemies. “I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game,” he added, explicitly comparing the two activities. U.S. forces even control drones with Xbox controllers, blurring the lines between war games and war games even further.

The military has also directly produced video games as promotional and recruitment tools. One is a U.S. Air Force game called Airman Challenge. Featuring 16 missions to complete, interspersed with facts and recruitment information about how to become a drone operator yourself. In its latest attempts to market active service to young people, players move through missions escorting U.S. vehicles through countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, serving up death from above to all those designated “insurgents” by the game.

Players earn medals and achievements for most effectively destroying moving targets. All the while, there is a prominent “apply now” button on screen if players feel like enlisting and conducting real drone strikes on the Middle East.

U.S. Armed Forces use the popularity of video games to recruit heavily among young people, sponsoring gaming tournaments, fielding their own U.S. Army Esports team, and directly trying to recruit teens on streaming sites such as Twitch. The Amazon-owned platform eventually had to clamp down on the practice after the military used fake prize giveaways that lured impressionable young viewers onto recruitment websites.

Video games are a massive business and a huge center of soft power and ideology. The medium makes for particularly persuasive propaganda because children and adolescents consume them, often for weeks or months on end, and because they are light entertainment. Because of this, users do not have their guards up like if they were listening to a politician speaking. Their power is often overlooked by scholars and journalists because of the supposed frivolity of the medium. But it is the very notion that these are unimportant sources of fun that makes their message all the more potent.

The Call of Duty franchise is particularly egregious, not only in its messaging, but because who the messengers are. Increasingly, the games appear to be little more than American propaganda masquerading as fun first-person shooters. For gamers, the point is to enjoy its fast-paced entertainment. But for those involved in their production, the goal is not just making money; it is about serving the imperial war machine.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Emma Watson, J.K. Rowling, and the Connections Between Hollywood and the National Security State, with Alan MacLeod

January 21st, 2022

Source

By Lowkey

The Department of Defense has been involved in the production of over 800 movies and over 1,100 U.S. TV shows.

Both “Harry Potter” star Emma Watson and the book’s author, J.K. Rowling, have been courting controversy: the former for posting a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people on her official Instagram page; the latter after comedian Jon Stewart took her to task for the insensitive and antisemitic portrayal of goblins in her book and movie franchise.

Yet while Rowling was defended by a wide range of pro-Israel groups who rushed to her side, Watson was slandered as a secret anti-Jewish bigot by figures as official as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Joining Lowkey today on The Watchdog to discuss this blatant double standard is MintPress Senior Staff Writer and Podcast Producer Alan MacLeod. Before joining MintPress News in 2019, Alan was an academic whose work focused on propaganda, media and power. He has published a number of peer-reviewed academic papers on the subject, as well as two books: “Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting,” and “Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent.” His latest article, “J.K. Rowling’s Hypocrisy: The Author who Smeared Jeremy Corbyn Gave Us Books and Films Full of Antisemitic Stereotypes,” can be read on MintPress News.

MacLeod suggested that the furor over Watson’s anodyne message, contrasted with the collective defense of Rowling, can be explained by examining their positions on Israel. While Watson has traditionally supported liberal or progressive causes, Rowling has been something of a champion of the apartheid state. An Israeli marketing firm ranked her as the fourth most important pro-Israel personality online – the highest Gentile on the list. Rowling has consistently opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, calling it “divisive and discriminatory.” She was also a leader in the campaign to unseat Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn over his alleged antisemitic remarks. Corbyn is and was a champion of Palestine liberation and had been highly critical of Israeli governmental policies.

In the second part of the show, the two talk about MacLeod’s work exposing the connections between Hollywood and the national security state. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Department of Defense has been involved in the production of over 800 movies and over 1,100 U.S. TV shows. From military movies like “12 Strong” and “Lone Survivor” to blockbusters like “Iron Man” and comedies like “Brüno,” the military plays a leading role in manufacturing pop culture.

If it is to help with the production of a movie or TV show, the military usually demands complete editorial control over the entire process, often rewriting entire scripts and changing scenes to present itself in the best light possible. In return, they offer military bases to shoot on, access to the latest military technology like battleships or fighter jets, soldiers to appear as extras, and help acquiring uniforms and other props. MacLeod went through how the documents show that the four previously mentioned movies were changed in order to send a pro-military, pro-war message.

“Israel’s” weapon of choice: Anti-Semitism

Jan 06 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

By Narjes El Zein

Once and for all, let us settle the debate and put things into perspective… What is anti-Semitism? And how is it used to criminalize any act of solidarity with the Palestinians?

• Here is how any act of solidarity with Palestine is dubbed as anti-Semitic.

Between the corridors of political discourse in Hollywood, there is a reality that is seldom talked about and always intentionally ignored. It is a fact that is always whispered, spoken in secrecy, never fully vocalized, except by those who are brave enough to withstand the repercussions of supporting the Palestinian people. 

Careers have been ruined, sidetracked, and completely ravaged, all under the pretext of anti-Semitism. But in reality, all what those public figures have done was stand on the right side of history.

10 points for Gryffindor

Emma Watson is one of the latest Hollywood stars that has faced hatred and social media trolling as a result of her political stances and rightful support for the oppressed. 

Watson, an award-winning actress and activist, utilized her personal Instagram with over 64 million followers to post a message expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause… However, her post seemed to upset and trigger pro-“Israel” online commentators, prompting them of course to accuse the British star of anti-Semitism.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emma Watson (@emmawatson)

What happened with Watson is one of the latest controversies that reignited questions over the link between advocating Palestinian rights and randomly accusing people of being racist or anti-Semitic.

Some of the other celebrities and public figures that had been subjected to hate due to their support of the Palestinian cause are: Sally Rooney, Bella Hadid, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, and many others.

So once and for all, let us settle the debate and put things into perspective… What is anti-Semitism? 

Anti-semitism

The term anti-Semitism refers to any kind of hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, anti-Semitism is defined as [an act of] hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group. 

However, in 2016, a new definition of anti-Semitism has been reintroduced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which includes among its “contemporary examples” of anti-Semitism “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”

As such, it goes without saying that anti-Semitism should not be defined by Israelis. 

Such re-definitions and endeavors to plagiarize terminologies express a systematic attempt to impose anti-Zionism as Jew-hatred in order to vilify and assume that “Israel” hatred is equivalent to Jews hatred. 

But, is the criticism of “Israel” anti-Semitic?

To answer this question, we must first address the following: 

Is every Jew Israeli? 

Most Jews do not live in “Israel” and not every inhabitant of “Israel” is Jewish. Claiming the contrary is false and even insulting to a vast number of Jews, who neither are Israeli nor do they possess this “connection” or “attachment” to “Israel”.

And the best proof of that is the Jewish opposition to the Zionist movement long before the “state of Israel” was declared in 1948. 

Thus, being a Zionist and being Jewish are not the same thing.

What is Zionism?

Zionism is a political and colonial movement, supported by plenty of non-Jews, including Western governments. It emerged in 19th Century Europe and was aimed at establishing a Jewish “homeland” in historic Palestine by any means necessary. 

And what we mean by any means necessary includes, but is not limited to: waging wars and carrying out endless aggressions, killing Palestinians (the original rightful owners of the land), stealing properties from the original rightful owners of the land leading to their displacement, and the orphaning of thousands of children, as well as segregation and apartheid policies. 

Thus, the implementation of the Zionist project necessitates the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and the building of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. 

Thus, Zionism itself is a racist ideology, based on the horrific war crimes practiced each and every day against Palestinian people, and it can only be realized through a colonial-settler project. 

Deliberately confusing ideological terms, symbols, and images has long been a tactic of propagandists whereby they manipulate the term “Zionist” to become a code word for “Jew”. 

This is absolutely not a minor speech “slip-up”, rather it is a long-term systematic strategy that Zionists and “Israel” continue to deploy every day to this very day.

Ideological warfare

How can you win against your opponent in the ideological arena? 

Simple: Manipulate the masses to reinforce the idea that criticizing you or the institution that you belong to is a “swearword” and it is an extremely discriminatory and bigotry act. 

Year after year, Zionists understood that they could capitalize on anti-“Israel” sentiments and brand them as anti-Semitic, especially when addressing the Western public opinion. Thus, any call for the end of the Zionist colonization project would be confronted with the conjuring of the argument of anti-Semitism. 

They are deliberately confusing anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism to discredit all attempts to attack apartheid “Israel”. 

So let us make one thing clear: Just as anti-Zionism is in no way the equal of anti-Semitism, the legitimate opposition of the “existence” and actions of apartheid “Israel” in no way reflects anti-Jewish prejudice. 

A camouflage to silence opposition

But, if we dig deeper to understand the reasoning behind this terminology usage in contemporary speech and in the present conflict in interpretation, in addition to the observation of the loosely related group of attitudes… we understand the motives behind it. 

Defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and using the two terms interchangeably reduces the threat of attacking and calling out Israeli policies, which leaves “Israel” free to entrench and impose its own agenda to further expand within historic Palestine and deny millions of Palestinians their most basic rights.

Accusations of anti-Semitism are deployed to establish an environment that intimidates all sorts of people and urges them to attack and delegitimize criticism of Israeli policies. 

Debunking the myth

The brutal policies of the Israeli government, such as the systematic killing of Palestinians, denying Palestinians their basic rights, imprisonment of women and children, neglect of prisoners’ rights, and the building of settlements… to name a few, reflect the indignant and corrosive measures of Zionism, and Zionism only. 

Anti-Semitism has become a means to intimidate individuals and prevent them from voicing their support and expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people and standing against the many, many, many injustices the Palestinians are enduring each and every day. 

So to get to the bottom line, is Emma Watson (along with the other pro-Palestinian celebrities) an anti-Semite just for voicing her support for the Palestinians? 

No.

Is amplifying the voice of an oppressed nation anti-Semitic? 

No.

Quite the contrary.

Because at the heart of it and taking all the facts and stories happening every day into consideration, the rhetoric that does not speak of the sufferings of the indigenous Palestinian people emerges as one of the crudest forms of anti-HUMANITY! 

How the Pentagon Leaned on Hollywood to Sell the War in Afghanistan

September 28th, 2021

By Alan Macleod

Source

In hundreds of films and TV shows, every single word and image has been closely scrutinized and signed off on by senior military figures, all in an effort to convince viewers into supporting deadly and grossly immoral campaigns around the world.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA — The (official) 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has come to a close, with the military beating a hasty and ignominious retreat. The puppet Afghan government NATO installed lasted fewer than two weeks on its own, with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing for the UAE, allegedly with around $169 million in cash.

If the occupation was so unpopular and weak, how was it able to last so long? The Afghanistan Papers  — a trove of military documents leaked to The Washington Post — showed that high-ranking government officials knew that the war was unwinnable but were openly lying to the public about how it was going, all while NGOs and military contractors made billions. 

But documents obtained by journalist Tom Secker under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with MintPress also show that Hollywood also played a significant role, knowingly collaborating with the Pentagon to produce pro-war propaganda about Afghanistan, ultimately helping to artificially buoy public opinion on the unwinnable campaign. This typically included giving the Pentagon direct editorial control over scripts and even removing any anti-war content or scenes that would show the military in a negative light. In exchange, the military offered its human resources, its bases as locations for filming, and its wide range of hi-tech vehicles to be used in movies. This quid pro quo effectively turned much of Hollywood, and the entertainment industry more generally, into cheerleaders for imperialism. 

The military-industrial-media complex

Reading through the documents, what becomes clear is the sheer scale of the military’s involvement in the silver screen, and in pop culture more generally. For instance, between 2015 and 2017, the U.S. Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs West (OCPA-W) — based just outside of Hollywood, CA — was generally working on between 40 and 70 entertainment media projects at one time. The OCPA-W is one of three Army regional offices, the others being in Chicago and New York City. The Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, CIA and other government organizations all have similar agencies and programs aimed at manipulating their image in mass media. 

The OCPA-W’s weekly summary of its affairs for the week of December 22, 2016, for example, notes that it is involved in 63 working projects; 15 in pre-production, 26 in production and 22 in post-production. According to research by Secker  and Matthew Alford for their 2017 book “National Security Cinema,” the Department of Defense has supported at least 814 movies and 1,133 separate TV shows, the majority of those in recent years.

Afghanistan is generally far from American minds. This is by design: few at the top of American society want the public to be scrutinizing U.S. actions there. When the country is portrayed on American screens, the military works extremely hard to present the war in a way most conducive to its interests. Hollywood has been a willing collaborator in this. Below is a selection of case studies of movies about or featuring the war in Afghanistan and a discussion about how the U.S. military has had those movies sanitized before they ever met the public eye. 

12 Strong (2018)

“12 Strong” is a jingoistic action film based on a true story about a small unit of 12 U.S. Special Forces who invaded Afghanistan immediately after the September 11 attacks, thus being the first American boots on the ground of a two-decade campaign that cost the lives of an estimated 176,000 Afghans, displacing almost 6 million more. 

The film entails the elite group attempting to capture the city of Mazar-i-Sharif before NATO forces arrive. The team, so they say, is outnumbered by “50,000 Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces,” as if the two were close allies. This is despite the fact that the Taliban immediately condemned the 9/11 attacks and that Western estimates put al-Qaeda’s global forces at the time at below 100 members. “If we don’t take that city, the World Trade Center is just the beginning,” says one of the heroes of the film, whose tagline is “twelve soldiers gave us a reason to hope.”

Documents show that the military was eager to help with such a nationalistic film, and matched what they called the production company’s “breathtaking” list of asks, including access to a number of military bases in New Mexico for shooting; army uniforms for actors; “target” vehicles they could blow up; the hire of a number of aircraft, including Chinook and Seahawk helicopters; and appropriate Soviet tanks for the enemy to use. They also aided the company in finding military extras to appear in minor roles.

Despite the movie’s strongly pro-war message, the OCPA-W, Air Force, and other military organizations still insisted on going through the script with a fine-toothed comb, removing even minor details it did not like. This included demanding that writers changed their plans to present the 12 soldiers as rugged men with full beards and tattoos. An email from OCPA read: 

My other concern is that during the loadout sequences at Fort Campbell that occurred shortly after 9/11 our soldiers did not have full length beards and neck tattoos. That came later. I hope [REDACTED] guys are going to Shave for those sequences.

A few weeks later, the seemingly minor point had not been resolved. In a show of just how much control over creative direction the military had, the OCPA threatened to pull out of the movie, reminding the production company of the agreement they had signed up for: 

The production company agrees to cast actors, extras, doubles, and stunt personnel portraying military men and women who conform to individual Military Service regulations governing age, height / weight, uniform, grooming, appearance, and conduct standards. DoD reserves the right to suspend support in the event that disagreement regarding the military aspects of their portrayals cannot be resolved in negotiation between the production company and DoD within the seventy-two hour cure-period. The DoD Project Officer will provide written guidance specific to each Military Service being portrayed.

1. U.S. Army.

(1) The depiction of Soldiers in the Continental United States prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks should be in accordance with U.S. Army Regulation 670-1, West and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia. Soldiers would meet height/weight standards, be clean shaven, with a well-groomed haircut and be wearing the Battle Dress Uniform (BDU). Load bearing equipment would be olive drab or the BDU pattern.

(2) The depiction of deployed Soldiers following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks would be in accordance with the tactical situation. Soldiers would still meet height/weight requirements (appear physically fit) with relaxed grooming standards for extended operations. The deployed Soldiers would be wearing the Desert Combat Dress Uniform (DCU) with olive drab or BDU pattern load bearing equipment.

The Department of Defense is well aware that the sort of assistance they offer (free equipment, filming locations, etc.) would be enormously expensive, if not impossible, to otherwise obtain. Therefore, they leverage their considerable influence into what amounts to control over every aspect of a movie or TV show they work on. This often even means jettisoning reality in favor of a relentlessly pro-war message.

Emails show that OCPA instructed the production company to change the minor criminal backstory of one of the 12 soldiers, despite the fact it was perfectly real. As one OCPA official wrote: 

I told him our two biggest issues were the background story of Cpt [REDACTED]

being any FNG [“Fucking New Guy,” a derogatory military term for recruits] when he was actually a Team Leader for two years and the comment about Sergeant [REDACTED] having a choice between Jail and the Army.

According to the book the bar fight incident did happen, [REDACTED] attorney

was able to plea deal it down to a misdemeanor with a probation period. He

did lose his job as a school teacher and he started to work construction. I [sic]

period of time later, he decided to join the US Army.

Production quickly agreed to the changes, a few weeks later sending a new script for the OCPA and Air Force’s approval. “Here is a revised draft of Horse Soldiers,” they replied. “We changed [REDACTED]’s backstory per your suggestion. Please let me know if this works for you. [PERSON’s NAME REDACTED], would you send this draft to the appropriate Air Force personnel and let me know whom to follow up with?” (Cross referencing the documents with the book it is based on makes it clear that the sergeant in question is Sam Diller, one of the main characters in both book and movie). 

None of the military’s demands appear to have caused much resistance from the company. Indeed, towards the end of filming, a senior member of the team even emailed the OCPA and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to offer his profound gratitude for their services: 

[The] Army and the entire team have been absolutely fantastic and helped us achieve an amazing air-to-air shoot this evening. They are the utmost professional highly trained crew. We know if it wasn’t for your great efforts to make this movie badass we would have never gotten such a team. We promise to make the Army proud, so THANK YOU!!!!!

The movie “12 Strong” depicts the #USArmy #soldiers who took down the Taliban after 9/11. #DoD assets helped create the movie. Here's some key facts about it.https://t.co/FInpxqO28E#12StrongMovie #KnowYourMil pic.twitter.com/7BxsN53s5c

— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) January 18, 2018

Lone Survivor (2013)

“Lone Survivor” is the largely true story of a Navy SEAL team that was discovered and attacked by the Taliban while carrying out a special operation to assassinate the organization’s commander, Ahmad Shah. The SEALs suffered devastating losses, leaving only one man — Marcus Luttrell — to tell the story. 

The plot of the film revolves around the squad being discovered by local goat herders and their supposedly heart-wrenching decision on whether to kill the shepherds to cover their tracks, or let them go, the assumption being that the old man and two children in question would immediately alert the Taliban to their whereabouts. The group decided to let their captives go, which almost immediately turned out to be a deadly mistake. 

The story is based upon the book by Luttrell, who is now a Trump-loving media anchor on Glenn Beck’s conservative TV network “TheBlaze.” At times, Luttrell’s book reads like the manifesto of a white-nationalist mass-shooter, and is peppered throughout with his seething hatred of liberals. Luttrell is extremely regretful that he went along with the decision to let the Afghans go and did not stick to his gut feeling and insist they murder an old man and two children (all unarmed). “It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life,” he wrote. “I’d turned into a fucking liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain.” By way of explanation, he said that it was his certainty that the liberal media would betray the troops and side with the Taliban that made him release them, telling his fellow SEALs at the time: 

Just so you all understand, their bodies will be found, the Taliban will use it to the max. They’ll get it in the papers, and the U.S. liberal media will attack us without mercy. We will almost certainly be charged with murder.

Apologizing for not carrying out what amounts to a war crime, he writes: 

That situation might look simple in Washington, where the human rights of terrorists are often given high priority. And I am certain liberal politicians would defend their position to the death. Because everyone knows liberals have never been wrong about anything. You can ask them. Anytime.

The book is a glorification of supposedly righteous violence against a subhuman opponent. As he explains: 

“In the global war on terror, we have rules, and our opponents use them against us. We try to be reasonable; they will stop at nothing. They will stoop to any form of base warfare: torture, beheading, mutilation. Attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, car bombs, suicide bombers, anything the hell they can think of. They’re right up there with the monsters of history.

The original script stayed close to Luttrell’s interpretation of events. Needless to say, however, the military demanded major rewrites. In the finished version, the Navy SEAL commander simply decides to let the goat herders go, with no arguments about whether to kill them and hide their bodies and certainly no long soliloquies about the treachery of the liberal media, as happens in the book.

The military often claims that they aid the film industry merely to ensure depictions of themselves are more accurate. Yet reading through 131 pages of declassified emails between them and production company, Film 44, it is clear that this is not the case. Indeed, Philip Strub, the Department of Defense’s chief Hollywood liaison, made this explicit, writing in a now-declassified email:

While maximizing historical authenticity is our mandate, we share responsibility for the reputations of the four SEALs and to their families’ memories of them.

What also becomes apparent after reading the documents is the level of intimacy between the movie industry and the military, and the latter’s fastidious attention to detail, poring over every single word of dialogue to ensure each frame is as pro-war as the film can get. Strub and his associates even insisted minor touches, like visible tattoos on the SEALs, be written out of the script. They also demanded the deletion of a scene in which Luttrell and another SEAL have a conversation about Power Bars, taunting each other, with Luttrell shouting “blow me, fag,” then loudly farting. This was presumably in an effort to ensure members of the Navy SEALs did not come across as uncouth as Lutrell does in his own book. 

“I just learned from Film 44 (Sarah and Braden) that they are ready to submit Pete’s latest rewrite to us. They say that they have used our notes as a kind of check-list, and addressed all of our concerns. You’ll be receiving the watermarked script via email very shortly,” Strub wrote in an email that suggests that every draft script needed to meet the military’s exacting standards. Strub is one of the most powerful men in the entertainment industry. The list of movies and TV shows for which he is (publicly) credited is staggering, surely more impressive than virtually any other director or producer in Hollywood. Yet his name is all but unknown to the public.

According to the documents, the military categorized their role in the movie into four parts: “script review and vetting,” “production department consulting,” talent training” and “on-set coaching.” In exchange for what amounts to total content control, the military provided “Lone Survivor’s” producers with the use of Kirtland Air Force Base in a rocky and sandy part of New Mexico that could easily pass for Afghanistan; the use of a multitude of expensive aircraft, including Black Hawk and Apache helicopters; and parachute jumpers and other general military personnel.

One reason for this continued involvement is obvious, and made explicit in the emails. “One of the criteria for DoD to support the movie is recruiting,” wrote an officer from U.S. Special Operations Command. 

What is particularly noteworthy about this movie is that its entire premise — that if the SEALs chose not to kill the goat herders they would be found out — is demonstrably incorrect. Interviews with locals (including the man who hid and protected Luttrell, ensuring he was the lone survivor) establish that everybody in the area knew the SEALs were there, thanks to the elite unit’s own incompetence when it came to stealth. An enormous American helicopter landing in a remote part of rural Afghanistan was enough to raise suspicions among locals. If that was not enough, the SEAL team failed to dispose of evidence of their landing. 

Unsurprisingly, Strub and his colleagues insisted this scene, which threatened to introduce a potential alternative reading of the movie — in which bungling Americans get caught, outmaneuvered, then slaughtered — was changed. This helped ensure the movie was as relentlessly pro-military as possible, despite the fact that it was telling the story of one of the deadliest U.S. military blunders of the entire war.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

“Charlie Wilson’s War” tells the story of the eponymous Texas politician most famous for being the driving force behind Operation Cyclone — the CIA’s funding and training of the Afghan Mujahideen (an action that also turned the country into the world’s largest heroin producer).

The original script did not portray Wilson or his endeavors especially sympathetically, explicitly noting how he was supporting extremists like Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. One of these ultra-radicals was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal warlord widely accused of starting the trend of throwing acid in women’s faces. Throughout the original script, 9/11 is presented as a foreseeable consequence of the U.S.’s decision to empower these violent fanatics. Indeed, the original end scene took place at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, with Wilson hearing the deafening screech of an airliner hitting the building.

However, all this — al-Qaeda, Hekmatyar, and the 9/11 scene — was cut from the script after the CIA reviewed it. Instead, the finished film ends with Wilson receiving a medal for his services to freedom in Afghanistan. Also removed was a scene discussing the Sabra and Shatilla Massacres, where Israeli-backed forces slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian refugees.

Earlier versions of the script also portrayed the Soviets somewhat sympathetically, with one character noting that Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan included “forc[ing] them [Afghans] to learn to read and write.” This was also cut in favor of portraying Soviet soldiers as brutal and unthinking monsters slaughtering the local population. 

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016) 

The comedy-drama — which stars Tina Fey, Margot Robbie and Martin Freeman as Western journalists covering the Afghan War — was something of a flop at the box office. Still, it managed to reduce losses significantly by filming at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico (just as “Lone Survivor” did) and using real U.S. Marines as extras. In exchange, producers handed over significant editorial control of the story to the military, which insisted on changing a scene where a U.S. military truck crashed into a crowd of civilians. In the final movie, there are no images of this, and the incident is referred to only in a 20-second news segment that describes it merely as “a fatal traffic accident involving a coalition truck.” 

The crash was a real incident. In 2006, the truck plowed through Kabul during rush hour, killing at least three civilians and injuring many others. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is based on American journalist Kim Barker’s memoir “The Taliban Shuffle.” The incident plays a major role in her book as the point where she finally understood how pointless and unwinnable the war was, how there was no accountability for the rich and powerful and no justice for the “have nots.” She described it and the following anti-U.S. riots as “a major breaking point in Afghanistan, the time when we first saw just how angry some Afghans were, just how ripe the country was for a Taliban comeback, just how leaderless Afghanistan really was.” Yet in the movie, the crash is mentioned only in passing, making the rioting Afghans appear irrationally angry and violent, a typical stereotype of Afghan War films. 

Iron Man (2008)

The original “Iron Man” script was decidedly pacifist, with protagonist Tony Stark attempting to use his enormous manufacturing empire to battle against war profiteers and the military industrial complex. However, after the Pentagon got involved, with Philip Strub again acting as the military liaison, the tone of the movie was radically altered. Much of the fighting in the movie takes place in modern-day Afghanistan, with the U.S. military serving the role of the good guys. In this sense, the film’s stance on war was reversed.

In exchange, the production agreement notes that the military would allow the movie to be shot at Edwards Air Force Base, just north of Los Angeles; provide “approximately 150 extras at Edwards AFB to play military members from various services and Afghan nationals;” help produce around 100 uniforms; and provide the opportunity to use a range of expensive aircraft.

Tom Secker, when asked by MintPress to assess the U.S. film industry’s role in prolonging the Afghan war, responded: 

Hollywood’s coverage of NATO’s war in Afghanistan has been notable by its absence, its silence, and its use of contextless microcosms which represent the war, rather than explore or explain it. “Iron Man” and “Lone Survivor” — two Pentagon-supported blockbusters — are both set during the U.S. occupation, but the scale of that occupation and the mess it was making of the country are ignored by both narratives, in favor of tightly-focused cinematic synecdoches which conveniently avoid the suffering of everyone involved.

Secker concluded:

In that sense, of course Hollywood has played a crucial role in perpetuating the war. They either failed to remind people that the war was still going on, or painted it in heroic, decontextualized colors that make it seem like a benevolent adventure halfway round the world, rather than the crushing, destructive geopolitical ratfuck it truly is.  

A mediated war 

It is not just big-budget Hollywood movies that the Pentagon works on, however. Practically every medium is used to spread a pro-war message. Declassified documents show that the Army flew Arnold Schwarzenegger to Afghanistan for the global-warming documentary TV series “Years of Living Dangerously.” This was, laughably, an effort to present the U.S. military — the single largest polluter in the world — as a force for good with regard to climate change, showing the former bodybuilder their supposed efforts to set up renewable energy systems across the Middle East. 

Likewise, pop culture is full of strategically inserted pro-war messages. For instance, declassified documents show that the OCPA-W carefully placed uniformed service members in opportune spots in the audience of the game show “The Price is Right.” The military pays the National Football League millions of dollars to put troops on the field or fly aircraft over the stadium before big football games, turning the entire event into a recruitment drive. It also has a video-games team called “U.S. Army Esports,” helping to associate the military with fun in the minds of the children watching. They have also been accused of using the same grooming techniques pedophiles use, only to recruit children into joining the war machine. 

Major General Frank Muth, head of Army recruiting & the Army eSports project, openly explains how their sinister strategy of having recruiters on Twitch—in a clandestine and subversive manner—groom teens into joining pic.twitter.com/rie8Xafy7l

— Eyes Left (@EyesLeftPod) July 16, 2020

Meanwhile, the music video for pop star Katy Perry’s song “Part of Me” was shot at Camp Pendleton Military Base in California, and shows Perry getting over a bad breakup by joining the Marines. The training process shows her finding herself again and growing as an individual. When Fox News asked Perry’s team if they had been paid by the military for the video, they refused to answer. The video currently has 887 million views on YouTube.

“The whole videography … is straight out of [Nazi film maker] Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units,” wrote feminist critic Naomi Wolf, who labeled the song “war propaganda.”

TV news is also filled with former high-ranking military officials who play the role of neutral expert while sticking, laser-like, to pro-war talking points, helping to give cable news coverage of the conflict a decidedly jingoistic bent. 

What these documents ultimately underline is the deep interlocking connections between Hollywood and the national security state. Few Americans experience the war from close up. Even fewer realize that depictions of the conflict come heavily mediated through the military. In hundreds of films and TV shows, every single word and image has been closely scrutinized and signed off by senior military figures, all in the effort to convince viewers into supporting deadly and grossly immoral campaigns around the world. Long ago, the military realized the power of Hollywood. It is high time that Americans realized that, when watching movies and TV shows about war, all too often they are not seeing neutral works of art, but carefully constructed pieces of national security propaganda.

Bernays and Propaganda – Propaganda Continues Unabated – Part 5

March 11, 2021

Source

In most nations, when a particular criminal conduct reaches epidemic proportion, the government finally acts decisively to eradicate it. Not in America; they solve the problem by legalising it. They did this with influence-peddling (lobbying) and drugs, the same now occurring with domestic propaganda which has been against the law for a very long time to protect citizens from psychological manipulation and control by their own government. The law has always been ignored, but Congress is now dispensing with the pretense in repealing two major laws, the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act (1) (2) (3) (4) and the 1987 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, so as to permit the authorities to disperse false and misleading propaganda and campaigns of misinformation against its own people. Of course, the government has always done this surreptitiously, sometimes to an overwhelming extent as in the case of war marketing, but it has always been illegal. After this, it won’t be. One Pentagon official claimed this new provision will have “No checks and balances. No one will know if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false”. In an article in USA Today, it was quoted that the US military (Pentagon) already spends about $4 billion per year on propaganda to sway public opinion, much of that directed domestically. (5) (6) (7)

We now have the sock puppets, (8) (9) the fake social media personas on the Internet, used by the US military and intelligence agencies to affect and lead public opinion in many countries, usually with the intent of inciting civil unrest and revolution. It has been obvious for some time that these tactics have been used domestically as well, the new legislation simply legalising the process. Many US government agencies have obtained this software that permits them to flood the social media with fake people making fake posts in support of government positions and discrediting those who hold contrary views or are critical of the government. The software is extremely detailed, providing extensive backgrounds for these fictitious people, permitting a single human to assume the identities of as many as 1,000 fake people, and make them appear to actually be in a certain physical place or even attending an actual event. They control the IP address, making it impossible to detect that a single person in one location is orchestrating all that activity. The program manual states, “There is a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas”. The contract requires “virtual private servers” located in and outside the US, to give false locational information, and also requires what it calls “traffic mixing”, blending the persona controllers’ internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that offers “excellent cover and powerful deniability”.

This “Persona management software” is now being used to manipulate public opinion on key issues, with unlimited numbers of virtual people regularly flooding US social media with pro-government propaganda in attempts to manage public perception and kill political activism. This is called “counter-messaging” and the Pentagon has made no secret of its activities in promulgating “black propaganda” – which means knowingly spreading lies to mislead and misinform the public for the purpose of stifling political dissent. In its increasing fear of political activism, the US government has labeled the Internet as a “breeding ground for domestic terrorists”, and appears to include in this category anyone who questions the government’s version of events. This is all part of a massive program to intimidate, manipulate, and crush all public dissent, and to control not only domestic discussion but also to actively manipulate worldwide opinion. Their activity is becoming common in China where, on the occurrence of an event containing useful propaganda fuel, we often see a flood of commentary on Weibo supporting the American position, these ostensibly being posted by native Chinese but almost inevitably originating in Fort Langley, Virginia.

The government has used these in smear campaigns (10) (11) (12) against reporters and other high-profile individuals who criticise US government policy, to the extent of creating fake Facebook and Twitter accounts in their names, containing fake posts meant to be personally damaging, and have even created fake websites and Wikipedia pages purporting to belong to an individual, all for the purpose of discrediting “dissidents”. When a Taiwanese scientist aired his research identifying the 5 haplotypes of COVID-19 and proving America had to be the original source since these types existed only in the USA, the VOA harassed the man so badly online that he closed all his social media accounts and went dark.

The US government performs surveillance and infiltration in attempts to control the public dialogue in many nations, creating Twitter-like social media platforms in other countries, ostensibly local but all monitored and controlled by US agencies. Most are the work of USAID. The Americans innocently proclaim the purpose as “encouraging open political discussion” (in every nation but the US), but it’s a ‘discussion’ they mean to control entirely and skew to satisfy their agenda of inciting unrest and revolution. One such platform in Cuba was widely ridiculed when knowledge of it became public in early 2014, and was killed. (13) (14) (15) Even the Associated Press reported that it “was set up to encourage political dissent”, but White House officials claimed they wanted only “to provide Cubans with a platform to share ideas and exchange information”, claiming it was used to “share cricket scores” and by farmers to “share market prices”. Maybe, but it was used primarily for political destabilisation. The State Department and USAID actively pushed for these platforms after their successes in causing the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran. The State Department also provided several million dollars to a team of American hackers to develop a system known as a mesh network to enable US-sponsored dissidents in Cuba to communicate more freely and securely, with USAID committing yet another several million to the same cause. This is precisely what the US has been doing in Hong Kong for many years now.

The real owners and controllers of Google are reading from the same script. Google is not actively propagandising, but functions as an information gateway with all searches heavily censored and prioritised so that we see only what the secret government wants us to see and receive only the information they want or permit us to have. (16) Facebook and Twitter are not better. (17) Wikipedia is different, being one of the most criminally-dishonest active propagandists in the world. (18) There is surprisingly little in Wikipedia that is not either censored or outright false. If you want to know the number of protons in a Cesium atom, you will find the correct answer, but in any area related to history, politics, wars, government, the Jews, Israel, Arabs, ‘Axis of evil’ members, crimes of governments and corporations, the truths of the European bankers and their ravaging of the world, Wikipedia is 95% sanitised misinformation. And this propaganda is intense; Wiki has tens of thousands of ‘volunteers’ constantly scouring all the page entries to find items requiring editing or deleting. Many people have reported correcting an obviously false entry only to discover moments later that their corrections had been deleted and the page locked. Perhaps the biggest laugh is Wiki’s claim that “Content Requires Verifiable Data”. Maybe, but only from you.

The final pillar of this social engineering is the Jewish-owned and/or controlled media and entertainment industries which have long since abandoned the dissemination of truth and information and wholeheartedly adopted the primary task of propagandising the public mind. Today, the topics are different than the war marketing of Bernays, but – and this is very important to understand – the intensity remains the same. Just as Bernays once flooded every possible media channel with war-mongering hatred, today those same channels are directed to nations other than Germany (China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Libya Cuba, Syria, Venezuela), to the instillation of fear (the war on terrorism) which is easily manipulated to achieve astonishing measures of social control, and to detail-less information to maintain public ignorance and confusion on all important issues. Paul Craig Roberts wrote that “The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government. The function of the “mainstream media” is to sell products and to brainwash the audience for the government and interest groups.” (19) That is precisely correct.

The book publishers are also onside in this vast propaganda campaign. The content of educational texts especially is heavily controlled by the disparate elements of the propaganda machine, with countless topics and theories proscribed. Howard Zinn was a notable exception in having some of his “radical” (i.e. accurate) history books published, but today, only shortly after his death, all his books are being removed from school libraries and destroyed. During the past two or three generations it has become increasingly difficult, and now almost impossible, to publish books on topics that would pose a threat to the activities of the secret government, and more than a few individuals have been killed for trying. The concentration of media and publishing power is not an accident, but part of a plan to eliminate information contradictory to the best interests of Bernays’ invisible people. Today, many publishers and authors will testify that Amazon actively suppresses many books while pretending to sell them.

Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews invented Hollywood, (20) (21) wrote “What is amazing is the extent to which they succeeded in promulgating this fiction throughout the world. By making a ‘shadow’ America, one which idealized every old glorifying bromide about the country, the Hollywood Jews created a powerful cluster of images and ideas so powerful that, in a sense, they colonized the American imagination. Ultimately, American values came to be defined largely by the movies the Jews made.”

The US movie industry is the worst of all media for fictionalising history and reality and replacing them with fabricated mythology. A recent example is Steven Spielberg’s unforgivably distorted portrayal of Lincoln and slavery and the American civil war. It was the Rothschild’s Barings Bank that financed the slave trade, and a great many if not most of the slave traders were Jewish. Furthermore, we have adequate documentation that it was European Jewish bankers who stimulated the slavery-related rift in American society to instigate the civil war. In this context, Spielberg’s movie is an especially offensive false and mythical portrayal of the true facts. As one columnist noted, Spielberg’s movie “had too many negroes and too few Jews”. The upshot is that tens of millions of gullible Americans will take with them to their graves a totally and absolutely false understanding of a critical period in their nation’s history.

That is the real issue, and that brings us back to Bernays who wrote: “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.” It also begins very early to indoctrinate little minds.

“The American Jews have always used their films as an active propaganda channel to transmit not only their own political agenda but the fiction of US culture, values and way of thinking to people in other nations, these films containing an outpouring of individualism or struggles in pursuit of freedom or the realisation of the American Dream. They have always portrayed an idealised society intended to evoke in others a kind of yearning for America and the things it appears to be. All is cleverly arranged, with meticulous attention paid to the smallest details of setting, with the American flag so often prominent and Americans always portrayed as leaders of the world. All of this is a large and persistent attempt at a kind of cultural colonisation of the world, the Jews excelling at the presentation of a superficial layer of intense audio and visual effects that are “so image rich and content poor that they manipulate our emotions and short-circuit our reason”.”

The great objection to all this is that the presentation is totally false, the US being nothing like the mythical movie presentations, and the values promulgated and unconsciously accepted are not actually held by Americans, and certainly not by the nation’s leaders. Like everything similar emanating from the US, American movies are stimulating, high-quality lies, which is why many nations restrict American content.

All of the above, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, the advertising industry, Hollywood movies and TV programs, book publishing and book selling, Wikipedia, and the social media, are controlled by Jews. Their control over information is almost complete, giving them the power to directly influence people’s thoughts and behavior and to alter the course of events. All of these follow the same inescapable propaganda script. (22) (23) (24) They are not apologetic about this control; Philip Weiss wrote an article in Mondoweiss titled, “Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do?”. (25) I can think of several objections.

Control over the mass media and of the movie industry have always been central to the dissemination of propaganda in the US, with the media presenting the narrative to be adopted and the movies glorifying the propaganda myths disguised as entertainment. The US is the one nation most thoroughly saturated by the media, Americans being bombarded daily with thousands of images on what is essentially political ideology, guiding popular opinion in a predefined direction. The media themselves and many branches of the government spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the art of public propaganda directed at the bewildered herd, this mass media bombardment daily shaping the American view of reality. American author Gore Vidal wrote:

“You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It’s just grotesque. The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent.” (26)

All of the so-called values that Americans hold so dear and appear so determined to inflict on all other nations, have their origin in the propaganda disseminated by Bernays’ invisible government through this tightly-held media cartel. Dr. Nancy Snow, an assistant professor of political science, wrote “Propaganda is most effective when it is least noticeable. What the American people don’t know is that American propaganda is hidden, and its characteristics, integrated into communications and entertainment, convince people that they are not being manipulated. Propaganda is not supposed to be part of an ‘open society’. Much of our media now are so image rich and content poor that they just serve to capture the eye, manipulate our emotions, and short-circuit our reason. The propaganda and advertising industries therefore function increasingly like adult obedience industries. They instruct their audiences in how to feel and what to think, and increasing numbers of people follow and accept the cues without question.”

Snow described one of her previous jobs as being a “propagandist” for the US Information Agency. She said, “In the US, we don’t think of ourselves as a country that propagandises, even though to the rest of the world we are seen as really the most propagandistic nation”. According to her, the US has more PR professionals than news reporters, and the global reach of what Bernays called Public Relations is just a euphemism for propaganda that involves the entire US media. One example of this was the appointment of an advertising professional as Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs. In an article in the LA Times, Naomi Klein wrote that “[Charlotte Beers] had no previous State Department experience, but she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies, and she’s built brands for everything from dog food to power drills, and that her task now was to work her magic on the greatest branding challenge of all – to sell the United States and its war on terrorism to an increasingly hostile world”. (27) (28) (29) Secretary of State Colin Powell actively defended this: “There is nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something. We are selling a product. We need someone who can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy.” (30)

I wrote elsewhere of the fake stories the US military produced for its invasions of Iraq and Libya, with fabricated video of locals apparently cheering the American invaders as liberating heroes. You may have wondered why ‘protestors for freedom’ in many foreign nations (Iraq, Libya, Jugoslavia, Iran, Ukraine) inexplicably seem to create all their protest signs in English; they are all fake, meant for an American audience. Here is some background for you, from a speech given at the US Air Force Academy by John Rendon, a PR consultant employed by the US military. Rendon said, “I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician. I am a politician, an information warrior and a perception manager”, at which point he reminded his audience that when US troops entered Kuwait City during the first Persian Gulf war, they received a wildly enthusiastic greeting from hundreds of Kuwaitis waving US flags. He then asked, “Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City were able to get American flags? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then”. (31) (32) It is interesting that Americans boast so openly about their perverted manipulation of the world’s peoples. This was Pompeo boasting, “We lied, we cheated, we stole.” And the American people cheered.

American propaganda foolishness knows no bounds. Some years ago, prior to President Bush’s helicopter landing in a public downtown park on his visit to Italy, I watched dozens of Secret Service agents with cans of paint, spray-painting all the grass a lovely shade of green so Bush would look prettier on TV. When a US President or State Secretary speaks to an empty hall at the United Nations, the media obligingly cut and paste an audience from another speaker’s talk to make Americans proud that their leader was enthusiastically applauded by a full house.

Today, every part of America is all about marketing the brand, selling the sizzle instead of the steak. The operating philosophy is termed “perception management”, the attempt to substitute a utopian fictionalised version of events for reality. Great efforts are made to determine which actions or attitudes or sentiments to portray to the American public and the world, which items of information should be denied to the public, and which “indicators” are necessary to convey to audiences to influence their emotions and dull their objective reasoning. This perception management combines some facts, some unrelated truths, a great deal of deception, all wrapped in layers of what is termed “psychological operations”, and used to sell patriotism, wars, capitalism, fear and fascism. This is the legacy of Lippman and Bernays: an entire nation has degraded to the point where product substance is irrelevant and brand perception is everything.

The picture in Americans minds of their own country consists of a vast array of misinformation, falsehoods and myths, covering every facet of the human experience and which they fervently, and even belligerently, believe to be true. The reason I have dwelt on the topic of propaganda to the extent I have done, is to demonstrate the equal truth that the picture foreigners hold in their minds of the US also consists of the same vast array of lies, misinformation, falsehoods and myths, their understanding of the US equally as flawed as that of the Americans themselves. Almost everything we read, see and learn about the US is mythical propaganda far removed from reality. We are buying the sizzle without the steak, paying for the brand without understanding or even receiving the product.

Bernays’ secret government has been taking control of the ideological foundations of all of America, the propaganda onslaught including the political, corporate, banking, foreign policy, military, media, and academic sectors of the nation, attempting to force all into a single cohesive mental state. It isn’t simply information or misinformation. By controlling the sources and so deciding what you can and cannot see or learn, they plan to decide how you feel and what you think, and ultimately who has or does not have a voice. This is what led CIA Director William Casey to state, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” (33)

The world finally appears to be awakening to the fictional foolishness that is America today. The Pew Research Center has done several recent studies which document a growing distrust of everything American in most countries (34), including China and Western Europe. At the same time, it notes that American citizens are receiving an increasingly narrow view of important world issues, exacerbating their already fabled ignorance. Pew also note that while the American people receive limited information reduced to child-like sound bytes lacking breadth, depth and context, this deliberately fabricated ignorance also increases the ease of propagandists to make false claims that appear real and are difficult to question.

One recent example was the political coup in the Ukraine, the second time the US has overthrown an elected government in that nation. The Americans first instigated a mini-revolution and installed Julia Tymoshenko as their puppet president, this queen’s reign terminated prematurely when she was imprisoned for massive fraud, embezzlement and murder. The Americans then invested – by their own admission – more than $5 billion to destabilise the country with an impressive amount of violence in a second attempt to take control. This disintegrated when most of Eastern Ukraine, especially the Crimea, objected to the US effort and voted to separate from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia. For background, the Crimea had always been part of Russia but was only recently ‘given’ to the Ukraine as a peace measure; its citizens are virtually all ethnic Russians and wanted to return home.

However, the US media carried only the news and video of riots, omitting the fact that they were all US-inspired and financed and that the CIA had a huge contingent resident in Kiev that was masterminding the events from the US Embassy. They specifically omitted video of the “democratic protestors” returning to the US Embassy compound afterward to collect their pay. The riots were attributed to Russia’s “meddling” and presented as cries for freedom by the Ukrainian people, and the secession vote by the Crimean residents which was entirely self-initiated, was described in the US media as a “Russian invasion” of the Crimea. It is in this context that the US climbs on its hypocritical moral white horse and pretends to “warn” Russia about “interfering in Ukraine’s elections”, filling American hearts with pride in their nation’s fight for truth and freedom. With this heavily-propagandised false picture flooding the US media, most Americans believe they clearly understand the situation in the Ukraine and that Russia is indeed “the evil empire”. In fact, they understand nothing clearly and what little they know is wrong, but when a nation’s government so thoroughly controls the media and the narrative, and is a pathological liar, what hope is there for the people?

This ‘perception management’ marketing of the US brand is not limited to US soil; even more time and money are spent on managing perceptions in other nations, one of these being China. The US spends more than $300 million in China each year on marketing their productless brand. It isn’t only obvious outlets like the Voice of America; the Americans make Herculean efforts to plant pro-American messages in newspapers, magazines, social media Weibo and WeChat, in the topic outline of speeches, placing visiting professors in schools and universities in China, and in thousands of other sources that reach the public. This is entirely a psychological warfare operation and is described by the Americans in these terms. The aim of this huge effort is simply to employ all manner of lies and misinformation to make China’s government look bad in the eyes of its people (and the world).

As one example, the U.S. Consul-General in Guangzhou, Jim Levy, filled the internet with outright false or badly-twisted information about sudden racial discrimination against blacks in China. For background, all visas expired during the COVID-19 epidemic, requiring foreign nationals to return home and wait for approval of new visas. Many Africans, in China to purchase low-cost goods to ship home, and reluctant to lose their income source, failed to comply, essentially hiding underground. As health officers were making the rounds to test foreigners and obtain health codes, there were many stories of Africans jumping out of windows (hopefully first-floor windows) to escape the medical authorities and avoid the necessary quarantines. Finally, the police had to instruct apartments and hotels to not provide accommodation to anyone lacking a valid visa, but the US Consulate filled Chinese social media and foreign airwaves with stories titled, “African nations, US decry racism against blacks in China”. (35) (36) My opinion of Levy is not high, especially since he was using his American diplomatic post to further the political aims of his Jewish masters. In a similar manner, Alan Dershowitz, another American Jew, this one from Harvard, not long ago gave a speech to AIPAC, the Godzilla of Jewish influence in the US, where he asked all Jews to create as much pressure as possible on China’s imaginary human rights violations in Tibet, to take the world’s attention off the Jewish atrocities in Palestine. International politics supported by propaganda, i.e. “perception management”, is a dirty business.

Hong Kong today is saturated with CIA and other US-based media control, their long-term propaganda campaign being the entire source of the Western-oriented political agitation and the persistently negative views of China that originate there. George Soros, another American Jew, finances the seditious “China Media Project” at Hong Kong University, creating a massive anti-China campaign and responsible for much of the violence there. The violence and chaos in Tibet and Xinjiang all have the same source. Philip Agee, a former CIA agent (37), wrote that the US has been conducting this illegal interference in Tibet since prior to the 1950s and 1960s, claiming that his duties in the CIA involved attempting to penetrate and manipulate the institutions of power, infiltrating and manipulating political parties, trade unions, youth and student movements, intellectual, professional and cultural societies, religious groups, women’s groups and especially the media. He details how he paid journalists to publish American propaganda as if it were the journalists’ own information, and how the CIA spent huge sums of money intervening in foreign elections to promote and elect an American puppet candidate. The NYT had very little nice to say about Agee in their obituary. (38)

Jonathan Power told us of one highly-placed British diplomat who stated, “One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States. Everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism”. (39) (40) Power wrote further that “America Is Sadly In The Grip Of ‘Exhausted Ideas’”. (41) And as Naomi Klein noted, nations don’t generally object to America’s so-called ‘values’, but to the fact that the US never adheres to them. Critics see only US unilateralism, defiance of all international laws, great wealth disparity, and increasing unjustified crackdowns and violations of civil rights. She wrote that America’s problem “was not with the brand but with the product”, and that the great and increasing international anger – and it is anger – arises “not only from the facts but also from a clear perception of false advertising”. In other words, American hypocrisy, the Utopia Syndrome I wrote of earlier. However, Americans seem oblivious to these realities and are redoubling their efforts to propagandise not only all Americans but the world.

Introduction – If America Dissolves…  https://thesaker.is/if-america-dissolves/

Bernays and Propaganda – Part 1 of 5 — https://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda/

Bernays and Propaganda – Part 2 of 5 — The Marketing of War — https://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda-the-marketing-of-war/

Bernays and Propaganda – Part 3 of 5 –– Democracy Control – http://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda-democracy-control/

Bernays and Propaganda – Part 4 of 5 –The Transition to Education and Commerce – http://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda-the-transition-to-education-and-commerce-part-4/

Bernays and Propaganda – Part 5 of 5 — Propaganda Continues Unabated — You are now here.

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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 30 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’.

His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

*

Notes

(1) https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/5736

(2) https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/5736/text

(3) https://newswithviews.com/smith-mundt-act-of-1948-and-the-coup/

(4) https://www.rt.com/usa/smith-mundt-domestic-propaganda-121/

(5) https://jonathanturley.org/2012/05/20/how-about-some-government-propaganda-for-the-people-paid-for-the-people-being-propagandized/

(6) https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2013/06/27/afghanistan-propaganda-military-contractors/2463739/

(7) https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2013/07/08/pentagon-propaganda-post-somali/2498339/

(8) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

(9) https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2014/04/18/military-sock-puppets-nsa-trolls-cia-shills/

(10) https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/01/03/never-forget-how-the-msm-smeared-assange-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

(11) https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/03/how-and-how-not-to-beat-a-smear-campaign/

(12) https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/18/us-government-funded-coda-story/

(13) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-created-cuba-twitter-sow-unrest-reports-ap

(14) https://apnews.com/article/904a9a6a1bcd46cebfc14bea2ee30fdf

(15) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest

(16) https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated

(17) https://nypost.com/2021/01/04/ted-cruz-twitter-most-brazen-and-google-most-dangerous/

(18) https://www.serendipity.li/cda/censorship_at_wikipedia.htm

(19) https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/24/the-media-destroyed-america/

(20) https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Their-Own-Invented-Hollywood/dp/0385265573

(21) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118657.An_Empire_of_Their_Own

(22) https://researchlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/jewish-ownership-of-big-media.html

(23) http://tapnewswire.com/2015/10/six-jewish-companies-control-96-of-the-worlds-media/

(24) https://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jews-in-the-media-hollywood/

(25) https://mondoweiss.net/2008/02/do-jews-dominat/

(26) https://www.latimes.com/la-bk-gore-vidal-1989-08-04-story.html

(27) Naomi Klein | The Spectacular Failure of Brand USA; https://naomiklein.org/spectacular-failure-brand-usa/

(28) http://www.pbs.org/pov/borders/2006/de_sellingamerica.html

(29) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-04-fg-beers03-story.html

(30) https://www.alternet.org/2002/03/brand_usa/

(31) https://nexus23.com/warfare2/the-rendon-group-reloaded/

(32) http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_Pentagon%27s_Information_Warrior

(33) https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/03/the-dangers-of-privatized-intelligence/

(34) https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/how-americans-see-problems-of-trust/

(35) https://abcnews.go.com/International/foreigners-black-people-unwelcome-parts-china-amid-covid/story?id=70182204

(36) https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/04/11/african-nations-us-decry-racism-against-blacks-in-china/23975666/

(37) http://www.philipagee.com/

(38) https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/obituaries/10agee.html

(39) https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7021898632.pdf

(40) https://www.globalissues.org/article/163/media-in-the-united-states

(41) https://www.eurasiareview.com/22042020-america-is-sadly-in-the-grip-of-exhausted-ideas-oped/

Bernays and Propaganda – The Marketing of War

February 15, 2021

By Larry Romanoff for the Saker Blog

In the revelation of propaganda as a tool of public mind control and its use for war marketing, it is worthwhile to examine the historical background of Bernays’ war effort. At the time, the European Zionist Jews had made an agreement with England to bring the US into the war against Germany, on the side of England, a favor for which England would grant the Jews the occupation of Palestine for a new homeland. Palestine did not ‘belong’ to England, it was not England’s to give, and England had no legal or moral right to make such an agreement, but it was made nonetheless. The Jews had created in US President Wilson an intense desire to enter the war, but the American population had no interest in the European war and public sentiment was entirely against participating.

To facilitate the desired result, Wilson created a body named the Committee on Public Information (CPI), to propagandise the war by the mass brainwashing of America. The group was led by a muckraking publicist/advertising man named George Creel, and the CPI was known as “The Creel Commission”, but it appears Creel was only a ‘front’, with little contribution to the events that actually occurred. The CPI was staffed with a heavy slate of psychologists and carefully-selected men from the media, academia, advertising, and the movie and music industries. Two of the most important members were Walter Lippmann, whom Wilson described as “the most brilliant man of his age”, and Edward Bernays, who was the group’s top mind-control expert, both Jews and both aware of the stakes in this game. Bernays planned to combine his uncle Freud’s psychiatric insights with mass psychology, blended with modern advertising techniques, and apply them to the task of mass mind control. Movies were already powerful new tools for misinformation and opinion control, as was radio, and TV would soon be added to this list.

“Wilson’s agreement to create the CPI was actually a turning point in world history, the first truly scientific attempt to form, manipulate and control the perceptions and beliefs of an entire population.” (1) (2) (3)ho

With Wilson’s authority, these men were given almost unlimited scope to work their magic, and in order to ensure the success of their program and guarantee the eventual possession of Palestine, these men and their committee carried out “a program of psychological warfare against the American people on a scale unprecedented in human history and with a degree of success that most propagandists could only dream about”.

In his 1922 book Public Opinion, Lippmann wrote, “The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event … For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.” And it was this psychological manipulation that these men employed to turn an entire nation of peaceful Americans into rabid war-mongers. (4) (5)

Note to readers: Some part of the immediately-following paragraphs is not mine. They are partially verbatim and partially paraphrasing, of some content I discovered many years ago and, even with diligent effort, I am today unable to locate the original source.

Having received permission and broad authority from the US President to “lead the public mind into war” and, with success threatened by widespread anti-war sentiment, these men determined to engineer what Lippmann called “the manufacture of consent”. The committee first identified all the different ways that information flowed to the population, examined the characteristics of each, and filled every channel with specially-crafted pro-war material. Their effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication, since the CPI had the power not only to manufacture false news and distribute it nationally through all channels, but to officially censor news and withhold information from the public. “They produced and distributed many thousands of ‘official’ press releases, virtually functioning as the information arm of the US government and were in fact the major provider of war news to the nation.”

These men wasted no time in organising a vast propaganda network and began flooding the US with anti-German propaganda consisting of hate literature, hate movies, songs, media articles and much more.

Lippmann and Bernays divided their Committee into nineteen ‘divisions’, each responsible for a different type of propaganda, and each utilising the expertise of vast numbers of psychologists, advertising experts, media personnel and movie moguls. (6) (7) The intention was to flood every means of communication with the goal of inciting hatred of everything German and to promote American entry into the war as the only option for patriotic Americans. They filled every part of US print media with anti-German hate propaganda. In the News Division alone, in an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried entirely false propaganda articles produced by the CPI, promoting hatred of Germany and Germans, describing atrocities that had never occurred and painting the Germans as vicious and inhuman monsters. Lippmann and Bernays not only instituted (compulsory) “voluntary guidelines” for the inclusion of their monstrous tales in all media, but they rigidly enforced a censorship in the American mass media to suppress any contradictory content.

Bernays cleverly realised that much of the public is disinclined to read long articles, and so formed a special division to produce brief rants and sound bytes meant to arouse the loathsome emotions of those with short attention spans. They created a Syndicated Features Division employing popular novelists to produce essays containing the official propaganda, which reached 10 to 15 million people each month. Another division was responsible for the cartoon sections of newspapers and other media, with the stated intention to “mobilize and direct the scattered cartoon power of the country for constructive war work”. They employed thousands of cartoonists who “achieved new heights in hate-mongering”, picturing the Germans as primitive and evil animals who stole, killed or raped everything they encountered.

They created a similar Division for Cinema that resulted in the Hollywood production of dozens of outrageous and virulently anti-German movies, hate films containing completely fictional tales of atrocities and bestialities committed by the Germans. Bernays was the source of movie scenes where “dirty” Germans (and later the dirtier Japanese) machine-gunned brave American pilots while parachuting to the ground. (8) None of these tales were ever true; these and all others were total fabrications. Then, as now, the motion picture industry in the US was entirely controlled by Jews who were eager to assist. One Jewish editorial stated that “every individual at work in this industry wants to do his share . . . through slides, film leaders and trailers, posters and newspaper publicity they will spread that propaganda so necessary to the immediate mobilization of the country’s great resources”.

In addition to movies produced by the film studios, the CPI created its own Film Division which produced 60 or 70 “official” films that were viewed by many tens of millions of people each week. They created an Advertising Division to influence commercial advertisers to insert anti-German war propaganda into newspaper and magazine advertising, with almost every major US publication carrying a large quota of these ads. Then, as today, much of the media was Jewish-owned or controlled, and these men received much free space.

They created a ‘Division of Work with the Foreign Born’ (9) to reach all immigrants in the country in their own languages, and used members of these communities to propagandise their own people, especially targeting all military-age foreigners who might become war conscripts. The CPI hired bi-lingual speakers to target every specific immigrant group in the US, and even had a Sioux ‘Four-Minute Man’ delivering speeches in seven native languages. They specially targeted all Jews in America, providing Yiddish speakers in thousands of theaters and workplaces. There also was a Foreign Section with sixteen divisions, which established offices in over thirty countries, to propagandise the populations of other nations.

Lippmann and Bernays wrote: “It is a matter of pride to the Committee on Public Information, as it should be to America, that the directors of English, French, and Italian propaganda were a unit in agreeing that our literature was remarkable above all others for its brilliant and concentrated effectiveness”.

Bernays’ Speaking Division organised a group known as the “Four-Minute Men’, 75,000 volunteers who gave speeches provoking hatred and fear of Germany and Germans, and urging war. They used farmers to appeal to farmers and businessmen to businessmen, with short, rousing speeches filled with imagery. These were so emotionally-loaded they often had dreadful consequences, in thousands of instances mobs gathering afterward and vandalising German homes and businesses in their city. (10) In total, their speakers gave nearly 8 million speeches to more than 300 million Americans, all provoking hatred of Germany and Germans, and urging war. (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

A continuing atrocity is that even today misinformation sources like Britannica and the Smithsonian, and many American history websites, carry articles claiming “the CPI’s representatives, known as four-minute men, traveled throughout the U.S. urging Americans to buy war bonds and conserve food.” (16)

The Committee particularly targeted women, establishing a major Women’s Division, from fear that women “might constitute a subversive element in the nation, detrimental to wartime unity and the smooth functioning of [mandatory military conscription]”. They created a womens’ Four-Minute Man division to speak at womens groups and matinees to counteract the resistance to sending their sons and husbands to war. They inserted themselves into many women’s magazines where they controlled the cover and much of the internal content, encouraging women to send their sons to war, claiming he would return as “a man” instead of a corpse. The Ladies Home Journal, once the most inoffensive of publications, had many covers with dirty anti-German posters and most every issue with patriotic articles written by Bernays’ staff extolling the sacrifices of war.

One of Bernays’ mind-control divisions was responsible for popular music, the CPI hiring thousands of songwriters to create songs with anti-German lyrics, these playing constantly on the nation’s radio stations. Another division was responsible for public library content, tasked with the removal of any books favoring Germany, including the works of famous German authors and philosophers. Everything favorably German was censored, removed from public accessibility, or destroyed.

Perhaps the division most indicative of the moral bankruptcy of these men was their work with public school children. They heavily utilised psychologists in programs to spread hatred of Germany throughout America’s public school system where small children were taught the full gamut of Bernays’ hateful propaganda, then used as travelling salesmen to visit other schools and spread the hatred to their classmates, delivering totally fabricated tales of German atrocities to other small children. Uncounted thousands of children were organized as Four Minute Men speakers, with more than 200,000 schools participating. Bernays’ psychologists did their work well: American children became not only hate-filled but terrified of Germans. After these inflamed propaganda sessions, many American children demonstrated their “patriotism” by groups attacking German-Americans and stoning them, sometimes being congratulated by local newspapers for “doing their duty”. The ‘patriotic’ Boy Scouts of America contributed to the effort by regularly burning bundles of German newspapers that were on sale, and Germans were regularly insulted and spat upon by other citizens.

Bernays’ group published many thousands of children’s books and comics containing the most vile and hateful propaganda lies. Libraries sponsored anti-German childrens’ ‘story hours’ that used hate propaganda supplied by Bernays. Sunday school children were given coloring books depicting and encouraging violence against Germans.

Bernays’ Public literature attacked everything German in America, including schools and churches. In many schools the German language was forbidden to be taught to “pure Americans”, and administrators were urged to fire “all disloyal teachers”, meaning any Germans. The names of countless towns and cities were changed to eliminate their German origin: Berlin, Iowa became Lincoln, Iowa. German foods and food names were purged from restaurants; sauerkraut became ‘liberty cabbage’ and German Shepherds became ‘Alsatians’.

All American orchestras were ordered to eliminate from their performances any music by classic German composers like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. In some states, the use of the German language was prohibited in public and on the telephone. German professors were fired from their universities, German-language or German-owned local newspapers were denied advertising revenue, constantly harassed, and often forced out of business.

Bernays instituted a program of questioning the patriotism and loyalty of all Germans in America, including those who had lived there for generations. He created a plan that enlisted volunteers to gather information on Germans, forming a semi-official organisation named the American Protective League that eventually had more than 200,000 members deputised as FBI agents to “police” community loyalty. This group and others “investigated” every German, and soon every person with anti-war views, as prima facie evidence of treason.

Germans were forced to gather in public meetings and denounce Germany and its leaders. They were forced to purchase war bonds and publicly declare their allegiance to the US flag. As Bernays’ rhetoric reached dangerous levels, the anti-German hysteria and violence increased proportionately. Many Germans were forcibly removed from their homes, often torn from their beds during the night, taken out into the street and stripped naked, beaten and whipped, then forced to kneel and kiss the American flag. Many were tarred and feathered, then forced to leave their cities or towns. Some were lynched from trees. Priests and pastors were dragged out of their churches and beaten for giving sermons in German. (17) (18) (19) (20)

The anti-German hysteria had people seeing spies everywhere, with House and Bernays greatly inflaming this trend by preparing Wilson’s infamous “Flag Day” speech (21) (22) where he claimed “The military masters of Germany have filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and have sought to corrupt the opinion of our people”. Newspaper editors were screaming that all Germans were spies who were poisoning American water supplies or infecting medical shipments to hospitals, and that most “ought to be taken out at sunrise and shot for treason”. The Saturday Evening Post, one of America’s most popular and influential magazines, announced that it was time to rid America of Germans, “the scum of the melting pot”. Congressmen recommended hanging or otherwise executing all Germans in America, State Governors urging the use of firing squads to eliminate “the disloyal element” from the entire state. The US Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels stated that Americans would “put the fear of God into the hearts” of these people.

According to Bernays, the key was to dehumanise and demonise the German people by filling American minds with fabricated tales of horror. The compliant media, largely Jewish-owned, obediently carried fake stories of poisoned candy being dropped from airplanes, German soldiers skewering babies like shish kebabs, the raping of nuns, and so much more. Eventually, the stories were accepted as true and the public’s natural resistance to war was overcome. From his uncle Freud, Bernays learned that a particularly effective strategy for demonising Germans was the use of atrocity stories. According to Harold Lasswell:

“So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate. A handy rule for arousing hate is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man.” (23)

The CPI used every weapon available to spread their message to, as Creel would later say, “turn the American people into one white-hot mass (of hatred) . . .” Their psychological travesty so indoctrinated the public that daily life in America became infused with hatred and with Americans automatically conditioned to disgust and hatred for all things German.

They succeeded, and not only in the US. Teams of the same Jewish ‘specialists’ were following the same script in most other nations, all instilling massive hatred for Germans who, in every nation were vehemently portrayed as evil incarnate, simply from the fact of their German origin. In countries all around the world, the media spread the same message of hatred against Germany and the Germans.

In Brazil, anti-German demonstrations and riots consumed the country, with German businesses being destroyed and Germans being assaulted and killed. The Brazilian press carried Bernays’ intensely anti-German atrocity propaganda, stimulating demonstrations that were very ugly anti-German affairs. In some cities, hundreds of businesses, schools and homes were burned. In Porto Alegre, almost the entire German district was burned to the ground. In others, almost all German assets were seized. (24)

In almost every nation, the German-language press and use of the German language completely disappeared during the war from fear of reprisal, as did all German schools and most businesses. None re-opened. In Canada and Australia, many names of towns or streets were changed to eliminate their German origin. In Britain, France, and Canada also, thousands of people were falsely interned and their apartments and shops most often looted. They didn’t miss any opportunity; in one case, they found a photo of a German soldier with a child on his knee and published it with the caption, “One wouldn’t believe I have just killed the mother.” The Jews’ atrocity war propaganda in Canada was almost as bad as in the US, with even the military vandalising German businesses, and all Germans not imprisoned having to register with the government. (25)

The UK was as bad as the US. Persons bearing a German name were driven to despair, driven out of their positions and their businesses ruined.  The Guardian archives document that anti-German riots in England were remarkable for their destruction and violence. “Some Germans were pursued into their homes by the mob and pitched through the windows into the street, others were ducked in troughs, and others had their clothing stripped off their backs.” (26) The anti-German hysteria became so severe that King George V had to change his German name of ‘Saxe-Coburg’ to ‘Windsor’, and relinquish all his German titles. (27)

Most Americans are aware that during the (again Bernays-induced) national hysteria during the Second World War the US government forced more than 100,000 US-born Japanese into concentration camps, but history has deleted the fact that many more Germans were interned in concentration camps in the US prior to and during the First War. German Mennonites who refused the draft as conscientious objectors were given prison sentences for as long as 30 years, and many died from abuse and torture in US prisons. Not only were Germans imprisoned, but all their assets were confiscated, this during both world wars, and not only personal assets but entire corporations owned by Germans were simply seized and sold. The government amassed more than half a billion dollars in seizures, nearly equivalent to the entire national budget at the time. Bayer in America was auctioned off on its own doorstep, to a friend of the Administration. (28) In fact, the US military entered every country with a German corporate presence and claimed ownership of all German assets. This portion is of such consequence I have dealt with it in detail in a separate article. (29)

While Bernays was “making the world safe for democracy”, that safety was not meant for Americans. Under the coaching of Col. E. M. House who was Wilson’s Jewish handler, Wilson passed oppressive legislation including the Espionage Act and Sedition Act that were prepared by Bernays, were entirely fascist in content and which made illegal anything that might hinder American entry into the war. Freedom of speech and assembly, and press freedom virtually disappeared from America during this time, it eventually becoming illegal to say or write anything critical of the US government, its officials and even its “symbols”.

Any expression of objection to American entrance into the war would result in a fine of $10,000 (ten xyears’ average wages at the time) or 20 years in prison, with much of the policing power given to what were in effect private vigilante groups like the infamous American Protective League that operated virtually without oversight. The suppression of public opinion and of dissent, and the control exercised on anti-war communication was universal. The Espionage Act stated “Every letter, writing, circular, postal card, picture, print, engraving, photograph, newspaper, pamphlet, book, or other publication, matter or thing of any kind containing any matter which is intended to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States is hereby declared to be non-mailable.” Nothing was permitted that might prevent the successful recruitment of American soldiers for a war that only the Jews wanted.

Because of Bernays, atrocity propaganda, the deliberate spreading of fabricated evils and inhuman war crimes became the foundation of the Committee’s efforts. With all of this and much more, Bernays and Lippmann turned America into a hotbed of hatred for the entire German population, accomplishing the goal of the Zionist Jews to use the US military as a tool, their own private army in the European war to fulfill their ambition for Palestine, and thus these two men changed the course of history.

Of course, the causes and aims of the propaganda were far more evil than anything the supposed ‘enemy’ had contemplated, but the goal was to not only invent an enemy but to make that enemy “appear savage, barbaric, and inhumane”, and thus worthy of destruction. This process has been followed many dozens of times in recent history, the latest being the US-Israeli destruction of Iraq, Libya and Syria. Usually, the compliant media repeat and embellish the stories without attempt at confirmation and, in virtually every instance, later attempts to confirm the atrocity tales prove fruitless with researchers able to uncover no evidence whatever of the events. Think of Iraq’s gassing of hundreds of thousands and burial in mass graves and the tales of Libyan Viagra; these and many others proved groundless fabrications – typical atrocity propaganda. Prior to the Iraq invasion, stories appeared of Saddam using wood shredders to eliminate political opponents and dissidents but, as always, researchers later determined there was no evidence whatever to support those horrendous allegations. Thanks to Bernays, there were World War One tales of Germans cutting off the breasts of every woman they encountered, of eating babies, of rendering the bodies of massacred Jews for fat and glycerine to make weapons, tales of a tub-full of eyeballs collected by the Nazis. After the war, Bernays openly admitted that he used fabricated atrocities to provoke hatred against Germany. It appears the media will cooperate in propagating the most fantastic lies, and the people will believe almost everything they read.

Bernays and his group produced thousands of posters containing lurid descriptions of these fake atrocities (30), to say nothing of the newspaper articles, cartoons and so much more, but the historical record of this years-long tapestry of lies and hate has been quite well buried. It is possible to find copies on the internet of many wartime posters, but this collection has been well sanitised with virtually all of the genuinely evil and dirty productions apparently lost to history. The narrative today in the history books casually dismisses all this as “an innovative use of graphic arts to stir patriotism”, but it was hatred rather than patriotism that was being stirred, and both America and the Jews will one day need to openly face this entire reprehensible chapter of history.

The official story is that after World War One, propaganda developed such a poor reputation that the US Congress terminated the Committee in disgust, “ending these activities amidst great controversy”, and refused to bother with funding to preserve and archive its vast collection of hate literature and propaganda, but the truth is that the White House, Congress and the Committee conspired to eliminate or destroy much of the evidence of their crimes. There exists a section of Records of the Committee on Public Information in US Government archives (31), but little of use remains, the more dangerous elements all sanitised. And in fact, far from developing a bad reputation, Bernays and his propaganda methods became widely popular with governments and large corporations for both consumerism and the control of public perception during peacetime.

This wouldn’t be the last time Lippmann and Bernays would use these techniques against Germany. This massive attack was repeated little more than ten years later to destroy Germany and push it into yet another war the Germans didn’t want. In the 1930s, the same Jewish European bankers with largely the same agenda wanted the US to join another war they planned to initiate against Germany. In 1933 they embarked on an extensive worldwide commercial war intended to destroy Germany financially, with newspaper headlines screaming “Judea Declares War on Germany”. They had already induced in Roosevelt “an intense desire for war”, but were having the same problem again with the unwilling American public. And they employed precisely the same solutions, this time demonising Hitler.

In all of this, Lippmann and Bernays were not working independently or without guidance. Prior to their massive ‘war effort’ in the US, they had operated a successful pilot test case in the UK, using British newspapers owned by their controllers, primarily Rothschild, to determine the efficacy of their methods. You may want to think about this next sentence and apply it to recent world events. “They (Bernays and his group) practiced revealing fabricated stories of atrocities, false accusations of terror and brutality against any nation or people they wanted the public mind to view as “the enemy”, then tested and evaluated public reactions to their manipulations of this false propaganda.”

Compare those words with George W. Bush’s demonisation of Iraq, the sordid tales of mass slaughters, the nuclear weapons ready to launch within 15 minutes, the responsibility for 9-11, the babies tossed out of incubators, all the fake propaganda against Saddam and Iraq to get the public mind onside for an unjustified war launched only for political and commercial objectives. Compare them to the demonisation of Khaddafi in Libya, his supplying of Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women, the long list of fabrications and lies to get the public onside for yet another war launched for more political and commercial objectives. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and dozens of other demonisations followed this same template, usually culminating in wars and invasions. It was Bernays who created “war marketing”, the theory and the template for the manipulation of public opinion, the plan and pattern for the propaganda and lies that the US government would use repeatedly for the next century to successfully deceive the American public about its motivations and actions in more than 100 military adventures, and to blind everyone to the tragic results of America’s brutal foreign policy. This is the man Americans celebrate today as “the father of Public Relations”.

The plan to mass-engineer public opinion began in a propaganda factory at Wellington House in London in the early 1900s, with Lords Northcliffe and Rothmere, Arnold Toynbee, and of course our two war-marketing geniuses Lippmann and Bernays. It was from this source that the scheme was hatched to force the Rothschild’s privately-owned Federal Reserve banks onto the US Congress, and that trained and coached Lippmann and Bernays on the methods of molding American public opinion to push the US into the First World War for the promotion of Zionism. Bernays’ book ‘Propaganda’ offers a clear vision of his training, not only for war marketing but for the pathology of American consumption, automobiles, the hysteria of patriotism and much more.

Funding reportedly came from the UK Royal Family, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, and eventually included the formation of trans-Atlantic relationships. At various periods, memberships in the Tavistock Institute, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Rothschild’s Round Table, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, the Stanford Research Institute, the Trilateral Commission and NATO, were interchangeable. They also created the ideology for the large American Foundations like Rockefeller and Carnegie that today play a silent but major role in population management.

Wellington House eventually morphed into the Tavistock Institute, which was created at Oxford University in London by the founders of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Round Table (Rothschild again), and was essentially a kind of mass brainwashing facility beginning as a psychological warfare bureau. It was the Tavistock Institute’s studies in psychological programming that were used to create and then exploit a grand mass hysteria during the cold war, evoking fearful delusions of a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union that even led to millions of Americans building bomb shelters in their back yards. In Tye’s biography of Bernays (32), he wrote that

“It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs.”

Many dirty things emerged from this rat’s nest of Satan-worshippers, one being Britain’s Psychological Warfare Bureau which hatched a plan to destroy Germany not by attacking the military but by virtual genocide of the population. It seems that international bankers owned munitions plants and other valuable military targets on both sides of the war fence, and wanted their property maintained in working order in spite of the war. The solution was saturation bombing of the civilian population to collapse the morale of the German people. These ‘scientific sociologists’ determined that the destruction of 65% of German housing, usually including its occupants, would be sufficient to achieve such a collapse. This was the origin of the fame of the British aviation hero “Bomber” Harris, who carried out these night raids – always at night – that culminated in the fire-bombing of Dresden. The explanation of night raids is usually given as safety for the bomber crews, but its purpose was mostly to engender more terror among the civilian population. Working class housing areas were targeted because they had a higher density and firestorms were more likely.” This would disrupt the German workforce and Germany’s ability to produce war materials in its defense. Harris’ widespread deliberate massacres of German civilians – and those by the Americans as well – were desperately kept secret from the public and still appear nowhere in history books in useful detail or with any sincere attempt to accurately estimate civilian casualties. As I pointed out elsewhere, this was the plan that US General Curtis Lemay was following, the same low-level night raids attempting to exterminate the populations of Japan and Korea.

Everything we have seen, read, or heard in the past 70 years that demonised other nations, usually leading to military intervention or “color revolutions”, stems from this template by Lippmann and Bernays originally to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and to promote the agenda of Zionism. This template has been in constant use by the US government since the World War I, ‘engineering consent and ignorance’ in the American and Western populations to mask nearly a century of atrocities, demonising innocent countries and peoples in preparation for 60 or 70 politically-inspired ‘wars of liberation’ fought exclusively for the financial and political benefit of a handful of European bankers, using the US military as a private army for this purpose, resulting in the deaths and miseries of hundreds of millions of innocent civilians.

It does not appear widely-known, but the intense anti-German propaganda surrounding World War I (and also World War II) had an aim additional to the seizure of Palestine, and this was the destruction of the culture and the very soul of Germany. Churchill was clear on this matter, stating “This war is for the soul of the German people.” It was largely successful. There is no question that Bernays’ propaganda had a devastating effect on Germans and their cultural heritage. (33) Germany today is a cowed nation, still humiliated and still paying billions in reparations for crimes it never committed, in large part because the propaganda has never ceased. Even today, movies and TV programs depict Germans as cold robots lacking humanity, and we were recently treated to a widely-publicised revelation that Hitler had been cursed with a “twisted micro-penis”. Few peoples today are ashamed to admit their national heritage, but no Germans boast of being German. Where in America do we find German beer halls and restaurants, German churches or newspapers? In 2004, The Guardian published a review of a book titled “The loneliness of being German”. (34) This is not an accident.

In one CPI publication, Professor Vernon Kellogg asked “Will it be any wonder if, after the war, the people of the world, when they recognize any human being as a German, will shrink aside so that they may not touch him as he passes, or stoop for stones to drive him from their path?” (35) No wonder at all.

In this context, you may care to read my recent article titled “The Anger Campaign against China”, (36) and think of the physical and other attacks ethnic Chinese are experiencing today in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and other Western nations. Consider the accusations of ‘genocide’ in China’s Xinjiang, China’s ‘cover-up’ and full blame for COVID-19, all the (undocumented) tales of spying, of IP theft, of prison camps, of forced abortions, of being ‘Communists’, and much more. Only the atrocity details have changed; all else is the same. Bernays’ template is being followed to the letter, in preparation for World War III.

Introduction – If America Dissolves – http://thesaker.is/if-america-dissolves/

Part 1 of 5 – Bernays and Propaganda – http://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda/

Part 2 of 5 – This current essay

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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 30 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English-language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

Notes

(1) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(2) https://theconversation.com/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-76270

(3) https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news

(4) https://www.amazon.com/Public-Opinion-Original-Walter-Lippmannn/dp/1947844563

(5) https://archive.org/details/publicopinion00lippgoog

(6) https://propagandacritic.com/previous-version-propaganda-critic/articles/ww1.cpi.html

(7) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(8) Cinema as an imperialist weapon: Hollywood and World War I; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/08/holl-a05.html

(9) https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1917-72PubDip/comp1

(10) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(11) https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/one-hundred-years-ago-anti-german-hysteria-consumed-cincinnati/

(12) https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/11/anti-german-hysteria-city-during-wwi/98895422/

(13) https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWantigerman.htm

(14) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/index.html

(15) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/german-triangle.html

(16) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wilson-asks-for-declaration-of-war

(17) https://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522903398/lynching-of-robert-prager-underlined-anti-german-sentiment-during-world-war-i

(18) https://journal.historyitm.org/2013/10/17/feathered-and-tarred/

(19) https://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2014/05/wwi-and-german-americans.html

(20) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4992032/Germans-AMERICA-World-War.html

(21) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-president-woodrow-wilson-gives-flag-day-address

(22) https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/president-wilson-proclaims-flag-day-224127

(23) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/cpi-propaganda.html

(24) https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=historyfacpub

(25) https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-home-during-the-war/enemy-aliens/anti-german-sentiment/

(26) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/13/anti-german-riots-lusitania-1915-first-world-war

(27) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25450726

(28) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-confiscated-half-billion-dollars-private-property-during-wwi-180952144/

(29) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/04/the-greatest-intellectual-property.html

(30) https://www.historyhit.com/anti-german-propaganda-posters-from-world-war-one/

(31) https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/063.html

(32) https://www.amazon.com/Father-Spin-Edward-Bernays-Relations-ebook/dp/B0091I177W

(33) https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/german-americans-during-world-war-i/

(34) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/07/germany.society

(35) https://propagandacritic.com/previous-version-propaganda-critic/articles/ww1.demons.html

(36) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/08/blog-post_49.html

This article appeared first at the Saker Blog

Hamilton movie: central banker worship & proof the US has no left

Source

July 08, 2020

by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog

I wonder if Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will ever understand the real truth about why his play is so popular…?

Miranda probably believes that if he had written a play about Eugene V. Debs (America’s greatest socialist) his talents, approach and techniques would have produced a spectacle of similarly spectacular success, LOL….

The believers of Broadway are nothing if not wilfully naive (i.e. stupid), unsinkably optimistic and totally oblivious to the jingoistic propaganda which is self-centeredly, brayingly warbled at the top of everyone-on-the-stage’s lungs in the vast majority of Broadway musicals, Hamilton included. Non-Americans often roll their eyes at the inevitably absurd “Hollywood ending” of many US movies, but what can a viewer do when confronted by the endless fake cheer and perpetual smiling of Broadway besides beg for temporary blindness?

Indeed, one of the great results of the coronavirus is the shuttering of Broadway’s lights – may it always be dark inside that incredibly empty-headed art. I find very few things as physically disagreeable as all musical theatre (Bertolt Brecht and Monty Python are exceptions which proves the rule). Opera is just as atrocious, and may I give you a news flash: nobody cares about opera. It is a totally outdated art, and yet the vast majority of public arts funding in much of the West is directed towards opera. Why? The answer is also linked to the success of Hamilton – elitism and 1%-er domination of Western governance.

Musicals are not so very elitist as opera, but the average American man only sees a Broadway play after constant arm-twisting from the missus. And yet… we have had this broad success of Hamilton. How can we explain it? Why must we endure it? When will the American musical finally die, ending their assault on our ears and especially the ears of those poor, suffering parents of high school drama club members?

The answer is clear: the US is a bankocracy, and Hamilton is its unparalleled propaganda

I have not seen Hamilton and I never will – if I hate musicals already, why would I like one which is built around mythologising, propagandising and lying about the greatest central banker in American history?

The popularity of Hamilton is completely attributable to the total domination of corporate media in the 21st century. My last article, US national media is useless – so tell me the good local news sources?, thus had to be published before this one: it discusses how ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed the rise of monopolistic media conglomerates, to watch one national US media is to watch them all – there is total uniformity. I also discussed how in music there used to be such a thing as a “local hit” within different US regions, but since 1996 a banal song can be a #1 for as long as 5 months because the conglomerates decide to support it and replay it, replay it, replay it, replay it.

The same goes for Hamilton: advertising works, and the conglomerate media saw a “pro-central banker” play, squealed with delight, and decided it should be bigger than The Bible.

So five years of corporate-ordered omnipresence of Hamilton coverage was not just in the pro-Broadway New York Times (Five Years and 100-Plus Stories: What It’s Like Covering ‘Hamilton’ – that’s 100-plus stories from just one Times journalist, mind you!), but across the nation: “It goes unspoken that ‘Hamilton’ is now available everywhere, for a $6.99 monthly Disney Plus subscription”. It “goes unspoken” precisely because in the US the corporate media has obviously ordered Hamilton to be atop the cultural agenda for years. It is now available as a movie for this Fourth of July weekend, thus the “news peg” for this article.

This omnipresence explains why I truly do not need to see Hamilton to write about it intelligently (though I did interview people who have seen it – hey, I’m not a bad journalist who doesn’t do homework) – the US has been OBSESSED with it for years.

But nobody seems to realise why because in all of the drooling, gushing reviews nobody gets at the economic aspects inherent in a play about a central banker. Nobody seems to make the link between the economic program of Western central banker collusion (Quantitative Easing), the reality of a US & Western “bankocracy” (a 10-part series I wrote on this issue can be found here) which has been crystal-clear since 2008 to anyone with half a brain, the elevation of central bank policy over democratic votes in the Eurozone, and then this absurd adoration of Hamilton?

How can it be a mere coincidence that at a time when central bankers have become more powerful than ever we also cannot – still – turn anywhere without being exhorted to love Hamilton? Just as rap music is the musical propaganda of modern Western capitalism, Hamilton is clearly its musical propaganda.

The pro-central bank propaganda is apparently overt during this 3+ hour show: a large part of the show is dedicated to showing how the US central bank was created, and of Alexander Hamilton persuading them of the worth and necessity of a central bank. Hamilton may not use the phrase “QE”, but how can anyone fail to see the link between inequality-creating, 1%er enriching, 99%er impoverishing QE and this stupid play? Like all great art Hamilton apparently does indeed capture the moment – too bad it is the “moment” of ravenous, society-destroying elite bankers.

Since 2015 I have said that the proof that there is no true left in the US is that I have not read of even one stink-bombing of a Hamilton performance. That the US left has not been able to mount any counter-attack on this neoliberal propaganda shows how appallingly clueless they are. Ishmael Reed Tries to Undo the Damage ‘Hamilton’ Has Wrought from The Nation was so notable because it stuck out so very much – it’s the exception which proves the rule.

The US left has been steamrolled by Hamilton and provided (as usual) so very, very little resistance, but Hamilton is a perfect example of just how easy it is to propagandise the US public – such is the extent of the dominance of their corporate media. Media concentration in the US is so absolute that if they decide something or someone or some concept should be promoted – one simply cannot escape it. And, I am sure, talking about Hamilton in this way at a US dinner party is to ensure that you are not invited back, LOL.

How was this central banker propaganda so effectively repackaged into suitable American jingoism?

In July 2020 even the World Socialist Web Site is decrying the attacks on statues of Lincoln and Jefferson; after decades of trying, corporate sponsors are going to force the rabidly anti-American Indian Washington D.C. to finally give up their “Redskins” football mascot/slur – so why on earth aren’t they coming for Hamilton?!

Alexander Hamilton bought and sold slaves, he married into a wealthy slave-owning family – it’s a no-brainer. If you support Hamilton and have some stupid liberal sign up in your front yard YOU are part of the problem (as much for liking awful Broadway as for being an obvious fake-leftist).

However, when we actually consider the economic ideology all over Hamilton we should easily grasp that the corporate-dominated US media is not about to permit sustained attacks on this spectacularly successful pro-central banker propaganda piece. What they are going to do is what places like The Washington Post just did, print lies about how Hamilton “despised slavery”.

Why would Miranda care – he did the same whitewashing. Of course he wasn’t going to talk about how the central banker Hamilton was all about debt slavery (no corporate media gushing in that case), but it’s pretty artistically opportunistic and cynical to make Hamilton some sort of abolitionist just to sell out his stupid musical. Tellingly, Miranda was forced to publicly admit he was wrong to be silent for so long regarding the George Floyd protests, but the guy adores Alexander Hamilton in the QE era – did you really think he was anti-establishment, LOL?

Reading drama reviews always produces plenty of eye-rolls – they are full of hyperbole and purple prose worthy of the biggest off-off-off-Broadway ham; everybody is just so very, very, VERY SPECTACULAR and AMAZING and TALENTED – but The New York Times lead movie critic writing that he “can’t escape tears” when watching Hamilton… how can we explain that?

Like I said, I’m not going to watch Hamilton to find out. I’m not even going to read its plot summary on Wikipedia. I have been unwillingly forced to acquire adequate Hamilton knowledge via cultural osmosis, but I also did ask around.

Part of its appeal, per reports, is undoubtedly based on jingoism and revisionist history – we’re all just so proud to be American (and to be led by heroic bankers in our wonderful bankocracy).

However, what is more shocking is how the play apparently significantly plays up the anti-monarchical, republican roots of the American Revolution for Independence by… upholding the pro-monarchy Alexander Hamilton? Jefferson said of Hamilton: “Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption.” I hear Miranda’s next play is about the great abolitionist Robert E. Lee.

So the apparently underlying theme of Hamilton is how revolutionary and cool the anti-monarchy stance was (way back in the late 18th century), and it is these ancestor worship-heartstrings which produce tears in fake-leftist pseudo-intelligensia like A.O. Scott. How could they possibly pick Alexander Hamilton as a leader of the fight against aristocratic privilege? Answer: in a bankocracy bankers are the vanguard party, so they simply must be whitewashed as spotless leaders.

Thus we can refer to Scott’s headline – ‘Hamilton’ Review: You Say You Want a Revolution – to get at the heart of what helped draw in so many American males to willingly watch Hamilton: make being conservative “revolutionary”. The play does what Westerners always do – try to end history long before 1917 by perpetuating the false belief that Western liberal democracy is somehow still “progressive” and not fundamentally aristocratic (bourgeois); the play obviously perpetuates the false Western belief that the summit of democracy’s reach is Western liberal democracy and not 20th century socialist democracy. However, with every passing corona hysteria day it’s more and more obvious that in the 21st century the latter is vastly outperforming the former, which did nothing but replace monarchy with bankocracy (thus it was merely a bourgeois/aristocratic revolution).

There are secondary propaganda bases for the success of Hamilton, mainly how it successfully espouses 21st century US liberal (fake-leftist) identity politics. But a huge part of this is merely technical and based entirely on what I can easily prove is the fundamentally reactionary nature of Broadway itself, because absolutely nothing is “Whiter” than Broadway in US culture.

Musicals like Our Town, Oklahoma, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, The Sound of Music, Music Man, Carousel – these are all whiter than Wonder Bread on a styrofoam plate in a snowstorm in themes, composition and musical styles. How can The Unsinkable Molly Brown be played by a Latina, after all? There are no Hindus in Our Town. Finding a young Black girl who can sing, act, AND has red hair is going to make staging a production of Annie difficult, but making Depression-era Daddy Warbucks Black is historically impossible. This is why playgoers have remarked how they have been thrilled by the mere presence of non-White actors in this type of a musical, but also in any musical. All of this supports my assertion of what a fundamentally reactionary institution Broadway is.

The use of rap was also another mere technical – and not intellectual or artistic – pseudo-achievement of Hamilton; that fundamentally reactionary Broadway required 40 years to finally use rap music and Hamilton was the first – big deal? The good news is: nobody over 50 can keep up with such rapid-fire spoken word poetry, and thus many of the elder showgoers surely missed out on the undoubtedly fascinating rap lyrics about the meetings to build the US Treasury.

(Of course, does every rapper think his or her every word is totally fascinating and worthy of your complete concentration and attention? Rappers dominate whatever music they sit in on – in jazz this is the sin of “overplaying” and overplayers are not invited to the next jam session. Sadly, US corporate media rams rap down our throats and refuses to broadcast jazz music literally anywhere, probably because jazz cannot proselytise for individualism and capitalism like rap does with seemingly every breath.)

Western democracy does indeed have two classes: Bankers and everyone else

Making central bankers “cool” – which seems impossible – is the greatest achievement of Hamilton in its effort to propagandise the American public into accepting QE, ZIRP and the post-2008 policies which have gutted the US and left it poised to plummet into prolonged socio-economic chaos following the hysterical corona overreaction.

By portraying Alexander Hamilton as an outsider who worked his way to the top the play undoubtedly allows viewers to maintain a certainly outdated belief in the fiction that the US is a “classless” society; this is just as the election of Barack Obama allowed the creation of the myth that the US had progressed to a “post-racial society”. If that was true – why the George Floyd protests? Miranda thinks Hamilton is a hero mainly because he knows nothing about QE, economics, the class struggle, and because he obviously admires the gangster/bankster values of rap.

If Miranda knew any of those crucial leftist analyses he would have known that in order to maintain this fiction of a “classless” American society absolutely everything must be burned before it: What is identity politics but an endless assertion that absolutely anything – from race to religion to gender to sexual to preference to party affiliation to ___ – is more important than class? Anything to not focus on class!

This explains the reactionary, divisive words of Hamilton as found in the play’s popular song, “Immigrants— we get the job done”. I’m not going to listen to it because when is Broadway very truly funky or cool? However, it surely seems to be an insult to the hard-working capabilities of White Americans – are how is that leftist or progressive? Due to Miranda’s political ignorance and obviously reactionary beliefs he was only too happy to write a song which seeks to divide the worker class based on their country of birth. What’s his next divisive attack, one wonders? May I suggest: “Left-handers do the job a bit differently but still get’er dun”. A pro-immigrant song can be a fine thing, but not coming in the context of banker worship, LOL – it’s an obvious contradiction, and obviously an attempt to distract from Hamilton’s overall capitalist-imperialist ideology with divisive identity politics.

So… not a single stink bomb at a Hamilton performance? Not a single call to take slave-dealer Hamilton off the $10 bill amid these rebellious times? Idiots will deface a statue of Cervantes (the Arab-loving “Multicultural Dreamer”), and steal a Frederick Douglass statue, but the Alexander Hamilton statues outside the US Treasury, in NYC, in Chicago and elsewhere remain standing because he’s apparently “that cool leftist guy from the cool leftist play”?

Alexander Hamilton – cool? Broadway – cool?!?! Hamilton – a leftist play?!

Clearly, the US left has no idea what they are doing, and that’s why we still don’t hear any leftist demands for media discussion about the links between QE, central banker dominance over Western liberal democracies, and the endless corporate promotion of Hamilton.

For all the wrong reasons Hamilton is popular – but they’re dead wrong, I know they are, as the song goes.

*********************************

Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis.

Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020

Corona meds in every pot & a People’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for? – March 23, 2020

A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020

– March 25, 2020

Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? –

March 26, 2020

If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30,

2020

Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020

Corona repeating 9/11 & Y2K hysterias? Both saw huge economic overreactions – April 1, 2020

(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020

Corona rewrites capitalist bust-chronology & proves: It’s the nation-state, stupid – April 3, 2020

Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020

‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020

Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020

No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020

Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020

No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020

Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020

We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20,

2020

Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020

Iran’s ‘resistance economy’: the post-corona wish of the West’s silent majority (1/2) – April 23, 2020

The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26,

2020

The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020

What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’? – April 28, 2020

ZeroHedge, a response to Mr. Littlejohn & the future of dollar dominance – April 30, 2020

Given Western history, is it the ‘Great Segregation’ and not the ‘Great Lockdown’? – May 2, 2020

The Western 1% colluded to start WWI – is the Great Lockdown also a conspiracy? – May 4, 2020

May 17: The date the Great Lockdown must end or Everything Bubble 2 pops – May 6, 2020

Reading Piketty: Does corona delay the Greens’ fake-leftist, sure-to-fail victory? – May 8, 2020

Picturing the media campaign needed to get the US back to work – May 11, 2020

Scarce jobs + revenue desperation = sure Western stagflation post-corona – May 13, 2020

France’s nurses march – are they now deplorable Michiganders to fake-leftists? – May 15, 2020

Why haven’t we called it ‘QE 5’ yet? And why we must call it ‘QE 2.1’ instead – May 16, 2020

‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty public servant!’ That’s Orwell? – May 17, 2021

The Great Lockdown: The political apex of US single Moms & Western matriarchy? May 21, 2021

I was wrong on corona – by not pushing for a US Cultural Revolution immediately – May 25, 2021

August 1: when the unemployment runs out and a new era of US labor battles begin – May 28, 2021

Corona proving the loser of the Cold War was both the USSR & the USA – May 30, 2021

Rebellions across the US: Why worry? Just ask Dr. Fauci to tell us what to do – June 2, 2021

Protesting, corona-conscience, a good dole: the US is doing things it can’t & it’s chaos – June 3, 2021

Why do Westerners assume all African-Americans are leftists? – June 5, 2020

The US as Sal’s Pizzeria: When to ‘Do The Right Thing’ is looting – June 6, 2020

The problem with the various ‘Fiat is all the problem!’ (FIATP) crowds – June 9, 2020

Politicisation of Great Lockdown result of ‘TINA’ economic ignorance & censorship – June 14, 2020

Trump’s only hope: buying re-election with populist jobless benefits – June

16, 2020

US national media is useless – so tell me the good local news sources? – July 4, 2020

---

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the NEW ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.

Militarized Police a Gift from Israel?

Training of American police in brutal tactics revealed

PHILIP GIRALDI • JUNE 9, 2020

The killing of black man George Floyd by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has produced the highest level of national unrest seen in the United States since the 1960s. Tens of thousands of protesters are demonstrating against racism and perceived police brutality. As it also comes at a time of coronavirus pandemic and record unemployment, it has the potential to change the U.S. in fundamental ways. The core issue is that many on the left, as well as some on the right, see America’s police as something like an “occupying force,” increasingly self-serving enemies of the people rather than careful protectors of the taxpayers’ lives and property.

There are already calls to “defund” the police in an attempt to strip local forces of responsibilities and resources that have little to do with community policing relative to actual crime rates, which are low nationwide. And the concept of community itself is under scrutiny and is itself being “reimagined” in an effort to compel police forces and the citizens they interact with to work together more cooperatively for the good of all.

History teaches us that changes in seemingly entrenched attitudes and beliefs occur regularly, though they can sometimes move glacially slowly. Meanwhile, some loony birds on the left are also promoting more radical schemes. One of the more amusing was posted up recently by Alyssa Rosenberg at the Washington Post. Rosenberg maintained that it is now time for Hollywood and the entertainment media to get involved by shutting down all movies and television series that present the police in a positive light.

Rosenberg puts it this way “…there’s something Hollywood can do to put its money where its social media posts are: immediately halt production on cop shows and movies and rethink the stories it tells about policing in America. For a century, Hollywood has been collaborating with police departments, telling stories that whitewash police shootings and valorizing an action-hero style of policingover the harder, less dramatic work of building relationships with the communities cops are meant to serve and protect… The result is an addiction to stories that portray police departments as more effective than they actually are; crime as more prevalent than it actually is; and police use of force as consistently justified. There are always gaps between reality and fiction, but given what policing in America has too often become, Hollywood’s version of it looks less like fantasy and more like complicity.”

Rosenberg has a point, but television shows and movies are fiction and most people are quite capable of watching an entertaining story and not having it become a substitute for reality. And there is nothing particularly wrong in believing that cops should be good guys who solve serious crimes, which is in fact what many police officers actually do. She instead calls for more portrayal of cops as do-little-or-nothing jerks who spend most of their time writing traffic tickets and typing up reports. If she had been around in the nineteenth century, she would no doubt have been conventionally liberal knee jerk antiwar, if such existed at the time. She would have advised Leo Tolstoy to have his Russian soldiers in War and Peace spend most of their time peeling potatoes, smoking and bitching rather than marching off in columns heroically to confront Napoleon at Austerlitz.

One issue that has surfaced in a number of places is the militarization of police, which has been a reality of “maintaining public order” and “fighting terrorism” since 9/11. Police now receive surplus military equipment, to include armored cars, body armor and automatic weapons. One wonders, for example, what my semi-rural county here in Virginia has been doing with its armored car, which, as I recall, the local sheriff’s department did not even want. Ordinary policemen are also increasingly trained in anti-terrorist tactics, to include the increasing deployment of swat teams to perform actions that are not necessarily confrontational, to include serving warrants and collecting fines on library books. Many innocent civilians of all races have been killed as a result.

The militarization of American law enforcement has been in a sense institutionalized through programs set up by the federal government and the states to train with Israeli police, a mentoring relationship established by Michael Chertoff when he was Secretary of Homeland Security. Joint training programs run in Israel are being used to indoctrinate American police forces and are difficult to comprehend as related to normal policing as the Israelis are clueless when it comes to conducting investigations or protecting all of their country’s citizens. Israel’s cops are at the forefront of state violence against Palestinians as well as serving as protectors of rampaging heavily armed settlers who destroy Arab livelihoods so they can steal their land. The Israeli police are also quite good at using the “Palestinian chair” for torture when they are not shooting Arab teenagers in the back. They also invented skunk water, a disgusting smelling chemical spray initially used against Arab demonstrators, and were the first major police force to regularly employ so-called rubber bullets, which can kill or maim.

In fact, there have been suggestions that certain American policemen might well be picking up some unanticipated pointers from the Israelis. Georgia has been experiencing a surge in officer involved shootings, nearly half of the victims being unarmed or shot from behind. As this has unfolded, the state continues to pursue a “police exchange” program with Israel run through Georgia State University.

The police “exchange programs” began twenty-seven years ago in 1992 and are paid for through grants from the U.S. Department of Justice as well as from the state and local governments. Reportedly “law enforcement from [a number of] U.S. states have participated in the program, including those from Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.” In some states and local jurisdictions, the Israel exchange program is managed by the Anti-Defamation League, which also sponsors propagandistic seminars on Israeli “counter-terrorism” practices throughout the U.S.

Some states and cities, however, concerned over being linked to Israel’s militarized police forces and their brutal occupation of Palestinian land, are beginning to withdraw from the training program. Recently the Vermont State Police, the Northampton, Massachusetts police department and the Durham North Carolina city police have canceled their planned training in Israel.

There has been particular concern expressed over the Israeli “us-versus-them” dual track mode of policing where the 20% of the country’s citizens that are Arab are regarded as an enemy while the settlers who prey on the Palestinians are automatically protected by police solely because they are Jewish. Selective policing based on race or ethnicity might be another gift from Israel that visiting American policemen bring home with them. In Israel, lethal force is frequently resorted to on a “shoot-to-kill” basis in any incident involving Arabs and Jews, even when there is no serious threat.

A favorite technique used by the Israeli police to subdue an Arab is the very knee on neck used by Derek Chauvin that killed George Floyd. Minnesota has been actively involved in training its police with the Israelis, to include participation by over 100 officers in a 2012 conference in Minneapolis hosted by Israel’s Chicago consulate. There, they learned the “restraint procedures” employed by Israelis. The conference was jointly hosted by the FBI, the facilities were provided by the city, and the meeting itself was funded by the federal government and the state.

While it is not known if Chauvin actually underwent the specific training, the Israeli techniques have made their way into the city’s police manual, which has been, not surprisingly, removed from online. An archived copy of the relevant section on how to control someone who is resisting arrest does still exist however and can be viewed at this site. It includes “Minneapolis Police Department Use of Force Policy: 5-311, Use of Neck Restraints: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck).” There are admittedly some caveats on the use of the technique, but it is generally approved for use in subduing someone who is resisting arrest, which may plausibly have been the case with Floyd.

That all means that Officer Derek Chauvin used a technique taught to American police by Israeli trainers even if his judgement can be seriously faulted in terms of how he did it and how long her sustained it. He may have received the training with the full cooperation and financial support of both the Federal government, the government of the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis. His lawyers will be able to argue, which they surely will, that he used a technique that was endorsed by the city of Minneapolis’s police manual and was also part of officer training with Israel. This makes for an interesting back story and an unbiased judge and jury, if that can be found anywhere on the planet, just might find Chauvin and his three colleagues innocent, which would be a travesty but inevitable in a system where police have effectively been trained and licensed to kill.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

Hollywood Celebrities Are Psyops Wrapped In Human Skin

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source

CNN recently trotted out Hollywood actor Sean Penn to give the nation expert advice on how to deal with a novel virus pandemic.

Did they do this because we live in a meaningless, godless universe where madness reigns and everything is chaos? Close, but no. They wanted Penn to explain to the public that it would be wonderful if the US military were deployed inside US borders to deal with the pandemic, because the US military is the greatest humanitarian force on planet Earth.

“There is no greater humanitarian force on the planet than the United States military,” Penn said. “The logistical skills, commitment to service, their care for the people. It’s really time to give the military the full breadth command and control of this operation. I wouldn’t blink, I would have put command and control in their hands a month ago, certainly today.”

Anderson Cooper 360°

✔@AC360

“There is no greater humanitarian force on the planet than the United States military… it’s really time to give the military the full breadth and control of this operation.”

– Actor and activist Sean Penn on battling coronavirus#CNNTownHallhttps://cnn.it/2U3aFx2 

The US military is in fact one of the least humanitarian forces on this planet, second only to malaria-laden mosquitos (and even that’s debatable). No other force is circling the globe murdering people in countless undeclared military entanglements and bullying the world into complying with the interests of a nationless alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies at the expense of ordinary humans everywhere. They are the exact opposite of a humanitarian force on this planet.

Medical staff are a force for humanitarianism on this planet right now. Grocery store clerks are a force for humanitarianism on this planet. The US military are the armed thugs of a metastatic globe-sprawling empire run by sociopaths.

Don’t say “Thank you for your service” to veterans whose only contribution to humanity has been helping to murder people for imperialist fossil fuel control agendas and Raytheon profit margins. Say “Thank you for your service” to your local cashier. To do the former is to participate in a cruel collective propaganda operation which only encourages more young people to hurl their bodies into the gears of the US war machine in search of the respect and honor you’re displaying, while to do the latter is to thank someone for actually providing a crucial service to human beings.

The malfunction in Penn’s mind is the result of many malignant factors, but among them is the fact that people who rise to fame and fortune naturally experience a gravitational pull toward elitist echo chambers which cultivate narratives that favor the status quo which gave rise to their fame and fortune. You have a hard time hanging out with normal people because most of them don’t treat you normally anymore, so you find yourself spending time with other rich and famous people, and with people who have a vested interest in the rich and famous.

This dynamic naturally fosters an environment where celebrities are eager to believe positive stories about the system which favors them, and where narrative managers are eager to circulate those stories among influential voices. This is why, with very few exceptions, the closest you’ll ever get to seeing a Hollywood celebrity express an anti-establishment opinion is one of them saying “Fuck Trump” at the Tony Awards. It’s also why every few weeks you’ll see some celebrity tweet something disgusting and then go into a meltdown when thousands of ordinary people react with revulsion; they don’t have ordinary people in their lives giving them feedback on what’s normal anymore, all they have is the elitist echo chamber.

This echo chamber is what led a group of self-quarantining celebrities to believe it would be an awesome idea to share a video compilation where they all badly sing lines from John Lennon’s “Imagine” from inside their mansions with a world full of people who’ve been laid off from their jobs and are terrified for their futures. The figuratively and literally tone-deaf video was universally panned and people have been mocking it on social media ever since its release, which probably would have come as a surprise to the celebrities themselves since nothing in their insulated day-to-day lives would have told them they could all be collectively rejected with such disgust.

The celebrity “Imagine” project was spearheaded by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who as an IDF veteran would not have required any Hollywood echo chambering to have undergone deep psychological programming in favor of the empire. Gadot, who famously came under fire for publicly cheerleading the 2014 Gaza massacre, first shared the video on Instagram with the caption “We are in this together, we will get through it together. Let’s imagine together. Sing with us.”

Memesters have of course been having fun with this.

Then you’ve got celebrities like Rob Reiner, who just tweeted“No more fucking around. We’re standing on a precipice. Time to consider a Federal lockdown.”

Reiner is one of the more ham-fisted of the right-wing Democrats who we first saw promoting Russia hysteria, then working against the Sanders campaign, and are now promoting drastic totalitarian measures from their high-profile platforms. If you still hadn’t seen these people for what they are yet, you should definitely be seeing them now.

It is an absolute guarantee that powerful people will use this pandemic to advance authoritarian measures which they have no intention of rolling back once the pandemic is over. They are working to do this currently. This is not a possibility, this is an absolute certainty.

Rob Reiner

✔@robreiner

No more fucking around. We’re standing on a precipice. Time to consider a Federal lockdown.

While it does appear necessary to collectively use self-quarantining and social distancing to avoid crashing our healthcare systems and needlessly killing millions of people, we need to make sure we slam on the brakes long before we yield any more ground to the authoritarians than they’ve already shored up over the years. And we need to loudly shout down any celebrities who try to tell us otherwise.

Hollywood is a giant propaganda mill which when it isn’t cranking out movies which are literally funded and controlled by the US war machine is putting on spectacular ninety-minute “The imperialist world order is perfectly sane and capitalism is totally working” infomercial presentations. It is an arm of cultural control which is unrivaled by anything else in this world, so of course it has powerful forces at work within it ensuring status quo loyalism.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world, and Hollywood celebrities are psyops wrapped in human skin. May our collective disgust with them continue to grow.

The Cave, Lying Sadists, and Rabid Dogs of War

February 10, 2020 Miri Wood

“The Cave” is what the people of East Ghouta call the underground prison cells and headquarters of the Syrian opposition of ‘Moderate Terrorists’ Faylaq Rahman.

The Cave was a massive underground headquarters

The Cave ( الكهف )was an underground prison discovered by the Syrian Arab Army after the liberation of East Ghouta from NATO supported al Qaeda — specifically the ‘Faylaq Rahman‘ sect of the malignant sociopaths. As previously with Aleppo, prior to the liberation of East Ghouta the rabid western dogs of war howled to protect the criminally insane occupiers, barked about humanitarian catastrophe, and then promptly became irrevocable amnesiacs (the same madness is currently yelped about the last terrorists of Idlib, who will also soon be permanently forgotten).

“The discovery [of The Cave] was in the town of Zamalka in East Ghouta, the town was cleaned from terrorists by the SAA end of last month March after the main defense trenches and fortifications of the terrorist group collapsed by the swift, surprise and forceful SAA attack from the east.

“Following video clip by SANA shows the former building used by the terrorist group as their main command center and under it was a vast network of tunnels and underground prisons where they detained the kidnapped residents of East Ghouta and tortured them.”

The filthy scum sadists behind the scenes — that apocryphal, nebulous, gang known as deep state, Military Industrial Complex, financier global oligarchy – has turned The Cave into another in a long series of never-ending fraudementaries against the Syrian Arab Republic. Such an Orwellian inversion of reality is possible due to the pandemic success of Operation Mockingbird and NATO war whores hijacking virtually all major media.

Hollywood has been primarily a 5th column operation since not long after the talkies began; NATO stenographers have taken to utilizing its techniques of enchantment to brainwash huge segments of the population into alignment with demons and criminal liars.

The sanctimonious inner Hollywood elite nominated two fetid anti-Syrian dramatization of the news high gloss propaganda videos for tonight’s Oscars, and NATO orchestrated MSM and faux liberal media have been breathlessly reporting on the two nominees. For Sama is one of the most manipulative operations; some descriptions of it have attempted to feminize war crimes and war prop as to border on salacious pornification.

If Rep. Waltz wanted to ‘capture the female experience of war’ [creepy, to say the least], why did he show no interest in the Syrian women who were kidnapped by FSA & al Jazeera?

The UK ad was even pervier, in addition to breaching the UN Charter which prohibits a member state from pimping propaganda against another member state.

NATO media, NATO diplomats, and NATO politicians continue to pretend they do not know of the friendship of Sama’s father with the savages who kidnapped 12 year old Abdullah Issa from a hospital, and tormented him before cutting off his head with a kitchen knife, which they videoed and proudly uploaded to the internet.

Abdullah Issa, 12 year old Syrian-Palestinian, kidnapped from hospital, moments before his heinous beheading with a kitchen knife.

The criminal hijacking of The Cave, though, remains one of the most sadistically cynical propaganda operations, to date, and so we shall expose the lies of the criminal liars, quickly.

The fraudumentary was shamelessly produced by National Geographic. The attempted final solution against Syria has been a financial boon to all things in need of economic transfusion. NGO’s receive tax exemption status in return for puking up lies created by the State Department, lies which are then disseminated through the warmongering media. No vetting of facts is required when there is money to be made. One only need to say she is a doctor who hates Syria, to be taken at her word; one only need to say he was tortured, and hates Syria, to be taken at his word.

All things corrupt consider themselves entitled to a taste of Syrian blood.

The front men for the Hollywood movie propaganda are an alleged torture victim cum propaganda director, and an alleged physician cum stay-at-home wife. Neither lives in Syria. Both had massive complaints to the Los Angeles Times on the travesty involving their difficulties in being granted temporary visas to attend tonight’s awards.

The two propagandist story-tellers whined about the ‘Trump travel ban.’

Feras Fayyad is the ‘director’ of the stolen, lying version of The Cave. He lives in Copenhagen and wailed about jet lag, and not enough time to pimp the fraudumentary among the voters. ‘Doctor’ Amani Ballour — who lives in Turkey where she does not practice medicine, since the liberation of East Ghouta was made to feel bad that Geographic and SAMS had to intervene to help her get her visa.

Fayyad is so barely literate in English, that most media have to do re-writes when they interview him.

Like all the others claiming massive, 37,000 hours daily, for 67 years torture status, Pretty Boy Fayyad shows no signs of it. He is fully mobile, maintains full symmetry, has a fabulous head of hair, and his pretty face is unscathed — though the Times reported some scars on his lips (hot coffee? Putting in the wrong end of a lit cigarette?).

Someone surely flunked Torture 101.
How he ‘directed’ ‘The Cave’ fabrication remains a mystery, as he wasn’t there.

The Times interview/report is almost incomprehensible. Ballour — who ‘fled’ — is quoting saying, “A lot of doctors fled, and I don’t understand that.”

The Times incoherently writes that “Ballour began working at the Cave in 2013, shortly after completing general medical studies at the University of Damascus. She was in the midst of her pediatric residency when the war began but abandoned her studies to focus on the hidden hospital,” despite the fact that graduating medical school does not include licensure, and no one out of med school is equipped to run a hospital.

Given that this journal went through the standard litany of lies about hospitals that do not exist, being consistently bombed, in Syria — while never mentioning the actual hospitals that have been bombed, one into dust — the inference is disquieting.

Despite being barely verbal in English, the tired, fake tortured has been provided with a list of appropriate mood-enhancing trigger words for the Mockingbird public: [fake] feminism, [fake] sexism, [fake] chemical attacks.

Fayyad lied that Ballour was the first female manager of a hospital in Syria — unless he meant the first fake female manager of a fake hospital.

The Oscar nominee fabricator probably does not know that Syria’s Vice President is a woman and that President al Assad’s Chief Advisor is a woman, and that both Vice President Najah al Attar and Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban hold doctorate degrees.

This is Dr. Rana Omran. She is the Director of Ophthalmology Hospital in the Ibn al Nafis Medical Complex in Damascus.

Dr. Omran led her hospital’s surgical team in its first artificial corneal transplant in 2018. The surgery was successful and full sight was returned to her patient.

The trailer for the sadistically stolen The Cave should not be ‘inspirational’ to those who are not lunatics. What sane persons want unlicensed, fake hospitals being illegally run by unlicensed ‘surgeons’ in their own cities, states, countries?

Who is this man? Could anyone imagine this as being humorous?

Is this a sadistic joke, or is this an unlicensed Mengele?

The sadistic theft is extended to hijacking something from Syria News:

What fantastic coincidence that the trailer for The Cave just happens to include Beethoven in the illicit operating room, conducted by Japan’s Maestro Yutaka Sado!

Upon Syria’s announcement of the liberation of eastern Aleppo, 14 December 2016, Syria News posted a short congratulation titled Ode to Joy: Syrians Celebrate the Liberation of Aleppo. It included a video clip of the street celebrations, several photographs, the simple words, Aleppo, Syria’s second capital, has been liberated. Syria, Mother of Civilization, Beethoven applauds you. Schiller applauds you. Humanity applauds you. It also contained the full video of Maestro Sado conducting 10,000 singing the 4th Movement of the 9th Symphony.

We have some very good news: Hollywood may have taken a hiatus from acting as NATO’s Public Relations firm. American Factory took the Oscar.

The interlopers inspired by The Cave of al Qaeda terrorists to fabricate another demonization of Syria, based on the real suffering of those forced to endure it, have not been rewarded, this time.

Syrian Artists Bring Sublime Light to Terrorist Tunnels

President & First Lady Visit Newly Illuminated Death Tunnel

America: YOU Are Keeping Drug Cartels in Business

By Devvy Kidd|November 11th, 2019

Devvy Kidd

And so is Congress.

The recent and savage slaughter of Americans living in Mexico by drug cartels brought swift condemnation and threats by President Trump. Three women and six children massacred. All shot at point blank range by evil human waste equal in brutality only to ISIS.

Much press ad nauseum has focused on those innocents being Mormon as if that was some determining factor in their slaughter. It doesn’t matter if they were Mormon, Catholic or atheists, they were all human beings. They all held American and Mexican dual citizenship.

“The Mexican government claims that the sudden attack on Monday, November 4, was the result of local drug cartel gunmen who mistook the Mormons’ fleet of dark SUV’s for a rival gang’s.

“Hector Mendoza, the Army chief of staff, said that the incident involved a faction of the Juarez cartel, La Linea, and their competitors from the Sinaloa Cartel – once controlled by Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.

“Mendoza says that the two groups had an altercation one day before the massacre in the same area.”

Drug cartels the corrupt Mexican government, local cops and federales who benefit from drug profits protect. Continuing:

“The American investigator said: ‘We’ve been saying all along that the Mexican government just doesn’t want to investigate anything related to drug trafficking. They will go to any extreme to cover everything up. It’s completely corrupt, and it’s only going to get worse.’

“This source claims that government officials in Sonora state asked the FBI for help looking into the killings, but were cut off by Mexican federal officials…

“Miller expressed the sentiment that the drug cartels have grown stronger since they began their stronghold in 2007.  More than 250,000 Mexicans have been killed in the continuing violence, several of which were related to drug-related crimes.

“I really believe that the cartels in Mexico have moved to another level of barbarity, they are as bad or worse than ISIS. ISIS have an ideology,’ 65-year-old Rosa LeBaron said. ‘These sicarios, why are they doing it? Out of greed and pure evil.’

“She continued: ‘This is so beyond comprehension, we’re living like we’re in Afghanistan, 100 miles from the U.S. border. They have to wipe these bad men out of Mexico just like the coalition that goes into Syria and these places.’ End.

Mexican drug cartels have grown stronger because?

Because of America’s thirst for illegal drugs like cocaine, meth, heroin and fentanyl.  OUR troops guard poppy fields in Afghanistan which turns into heroin which gets shipped to Mexico and floods across our porous border. Drugs processed in Mexico, Columbia and Bolivia – so Americans can get high. Transforming Opium Poppies Into Heroin

Without American greed for those illegal drugs, drug cartels would have to peddle their poison someplace else.

Oh, but our government is keen to promote the ‘war on drugs’ the same as the ‘war on terror’.  A phony ‘war on drugs’ the CIA has been up to its neck in since Vietnam. Dedicated DEA agents put in extreme danger only to find out the real truth.

More than a decade ago I recommended a book – a must read – by Michel Levine, a 25-year veteran of the DEA who worked undercover blew the whistle big time: The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine Crack Epidemic

The Hidden Story of Pablo Escobar’s Queen of Cocaine, as told in The Big White Lie, by NY Times Bestselling Author, Michael Levine.

“Sonia Atala, without any doubt, was not only the most powerful woman drug trafficker in the world, but also, by far, the most beautiful. She sold cocaine globally for the Bolivian government at a time when Bolivia was the source of 90 percent of all cocaine being processed in Colombia. She was Pablo Escobar’s chief source of supply. He named her “La Reina con la corona de nieve” The Queen with the crown of snow. The queen of cocaine.

“Sonia, who never served a second behind bars for shoveling mountains of cocaine into the brains and veins of Americans for more than a decade was both a DEA Informant and a CIA Asset. I posed as her lover during Operation Hun, the deep cover sting operation that brought down the whole Bolivian cocaine government. The only place on earth that you can read the true story and understand why it has been hidden from the world for decades, is in The Big White Lie.”

Drug profits have been laundered through American banks for decades while the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, past presidents and Congress have looked the other way.  That is not hyperbole. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time researching this and it makes me sick to my soul.

Oh, Americans make the usual, gee that’s terrible when a few minutes on the news shows cartel violence. We have to do something about the violence!  We should legalize all those drugs so we have a nation of brain-dead drug addicts! Yeah, sure, there’s a solution.

Where is the outcry from Hollywood egomaniacs called stars? Oh, wait! Hollywood is known for drowning in drugs like cocaine and heroin. Think they want their drug supply cut off? THIS is what they care about? Actress Jamie Lee Curtis Whines That ISIS Leader ‘Suffered’ When He Was Killed By U.S. Military. Where’s her outrage at those murdered women and children – Americans – by drug cartels?

How about all those Silicon Valley billionaires and their worker ants? Use of illicit drugs becomes part of Silicon Valley’s work culture

Shutting off the supply of drugs coming from and through Mexico would be disastrous for druggies. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, small towns in the Mid-West and suburbs across the nation. Illegal drugs mean people die getting it here and those stupid enough using them.  Anyone in this country over the age of 18 knows those aforementioned drugs are highly addictive and getting started on them is the road to Hell. Yet they do it anyway and tough luck for those slaughtered last week for mistaken identity.

Drug cartels only succeed because Americans continue to demand the poison they sell.

For those who do cocaine, meth and heroin, know that blood runs in rivers in Mexico. Drug Lords and their vicious henchmen murder anyone who stands in their way or tries to stop them. Men, women, children and honest law enforcement (Photo of Mexican policeman). Is your ‘high’ worth it?

Look in the mirror if you’re a drug user – and please, don’t insult me by claiming it’s just ‘recreational – and see if you can live with all that blood on your hands. Parents who are ‘recreational’ dopers or run of the mill addicts say they love their kids. NO YOU DON’T for a dozen different reasons if you’re doing illegal drugs.

After 9/11, the U.S. Congress was Republican controlled under George Bush, Jr., for almost eight years. They could have built a wall, sealed off the border (including Canada) and stopped terrorists, illegals and the damn drugs.

They did NOTHING. Americans continued to be slaughtered every day by illegal aliens and the drugs continued to flow.

Then along came President Trump who also had a Republican controlled Congress for long enough to get the wall financed and the border shut down. They did NOTHING.  Americans continued to be slaughtered every day by illegal aliens and the drugs continue to flow across our border like a flush river.

Then the morally bankrupt Democratic/Communist Party USA allegedly took control of the House.  A party of criminals who have fought Trump on this every day along with the American Communist Lawyers Union (ACLU) and corrupt DemoRAT appointed federal judges.

Our Coast Guard does a great job intercepting drugs, especially off the coast of Florida.  Coast Guard seizes $367M of cocaine from international waters, October 28, 2019

But a lot still gets through to feed Americans who don’t give a damn about how many lives were taken getting those drugs into their hands.

Our brave Border Patrol Agents working under ICE are treated like criminals by growing numbers of useful fools and in my opinion, domestic terrorists: Exclusive–Watch: Leftists Threaten Contractor in Fla; Day Before ICE Facility Shot at in Texas, August 13, 2019

“We know where all your children live throughout the country … John Bulfin you have kids in [bleeped out], you have kids in [bleeped out],” the protester shouted. “We know everything about you and you won’t just be seeing us here.”

“We know where you sleep at night,” another protester shouted. “We know what kind of dog food you buy your dogs.”

“We’re not actually joking,” the protester said before shouting the location of where Bulfin lives. “John Bulfin you go to [bleeped out], you go to church on [bleeped out], you live on [bleeped out the] road. We are not joking.”

“The threats came just a day before gunmen allegedly fired shots into local ICE offices and GEO Group offices in San Antonio, Texas in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is describing as a “targeted attack.”

The Democratic/Communist Party USA has been the biggest screamers to stop a wall along the border between Texas and California. It’s racist, it’s this, it’s that. They don’t give a tinker’s damn how much drugs are making it across the border. Or weapons: 2,000 Illegal Weapons Cross US-Mexico Border Per Day

The Democratic/Communist Party USA doesn’t give a tinker’s damn how many terrorists have come across the border. They all chime in – with the support of their prostitute media – it’s nothing but conspiracy theories.

All they care about is allowing illegals into this country and protecting them for votes and to prop up unsustainable programs like Social Security and Medicare Ponzi schemes. If they cared about one drop of American blood, keeping one more two-year old from being raped by an illegal from Mexico or South America, they would have that wall built in a NY second.

They don’t and neither did the Republicans who controlled Congress under Bush, Jr and while they had control of Congress at the beginning of Trump’s administration.  I play no favorites. The destruction to our country by illegal drugs cannot be overstated but the blame lies at the feet of those who use them and Congress who protects the drug pipeline as well as gun-running across the border.

Yes, there are a couple dozen Republicans in Congress who do care and have worked very hard to stop this on-going nightmare. Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and John Boehner could have rammed a bill to close the borders and build the wall through both chambers and Bush, Jr or Trump could have signed it. Lives would have been saved. Instead, an average of 12 Americans are murdered by illegals or killed by drunk illegals every day.

The FBI broke into President Trump’s campaign, spied on him, then tried to cover it up……

Graham: Pelosi is taking a wrecking ball to the Constitution (Talk and more talk)…

President Trump says it like no other. 1 minute truth bomb clip* full vid see below……

Watters’ Words: Impeachment lite (Clips – 6:27)…

Interview with Congressman Devin Nunes ……

100 Years of Immigration to The U.S., 1919 to 2019 – Cool stats make you stare……

And what have the American people done to stop this nightmare? They keep reelecting the same worthless dogs back to Congress who refused to get the job done when they had the majority.

Democrat voters continue to cheer on the socialist and communist candidates running for the White House who support open borders and reelecting the same incumbents like Chuckie Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who enable the drug trade to flourish, terrorists to cross over as well as guns and protecting illegals who have no right to be on U.S. soil.  Not to mention the huge risk from Africans sneaking across the border from Ebola stricken countries. 1,100 African Migrants Apprehended in One Border Sector In Last 6 Weeks – Comes as WHO declares Ebola a global health emergency this week, July 20, 2019

Any American who votes for a Democrat in Congress votes to keep the slaughter of innocents a daily event. Your vote supports keeping the drug pipeline flourishing as well as human trafficking and allowing rapists and murderers to cross our border. That goes for governors and mayors who also support protecting illegal aliens and open borders.

As I keep harping on, the primaries begin in a couple of months. Will Americans continue to vote in Muslim scum like Illhan Omar and incumbents who have failed We the People miserably? Or, will they vote for a challenger who is qualified, who is pro-life (a big factor for Republicans) and will do what has to be done: Get the wall finished and lock down the damn border. Provide the funds to step up deporting anyone who is in this country illegally regardless of age or sob story.

Trump Surges Deportations of Illegal Aliens by 453 Percent in Recent Months: “President Trump’s administration deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens in the last two months who had arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed to be part of a family unit.

“Federal data obtained by Breitbart News reveals that since August, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens who arrived as a family unit at the southern border and have final orders for removal.”

I for one am sick to death about the old excuse Mexico is our trading partner bull crap. An invasion is just that and a golden opportunity for murderers, rapists, terrorists, guns and drugs to make it across the border. If it were up to me, I would have put the U.S. military across that border the day I took office in the White House. That is what the U.S. Constitution authorizes to repel an invasion and the corrupt Mexican government can go to Hell.

The fate of this nation rests on those primaries because if worthless, corrupt incumbents are not defeated we end up with the same options as we have for the past 50 years: Hold your nose and vote for the incumbent with an R next to his or her name because the only other choice is a Democrat socialist communist on the ticket.

BTW: If you’re an early Christmas shopper, don’t forget to order a copy of my book, Taking Politics Out of Solutions. 400 pages of facts and solutions.  Here’s one review from Amazon: “There’s not a book out there that so substantially documents the source of every truth she presents; links, affidavits, other books, legislative testimony, interviews ad infinitum…You will be amazed at how many instances she refers to regarding the present-day political mechanizations that are plainly and blatantly UnConstitutional!  For all the above reasons, if in the not-too-distant future, the survivors of our once-great nation try to piece together a road map for OUR return to a Constitutional Republic, they couldn’t use a better resource.”

And, in honor of today being Veteran’s Day:

© 2019 Devvy Kidd – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Devvy: devvyk@npn.net

Links

Trump Surges Deportations of Illegal Aliens by 453 Percent in Recent Months, Oct. 9, 2019. “President Trump’s administration deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens in the last two months who had arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed to be part of a family unit.”

Are you or your son or daughter the next victim? Think it can’t happen to your family?

Gov. Newsom’s Sanctuary California: Two Illegal Aliens Charged with Murder of Sheriff’s Deputy, October 28, 2019

HOW SHAMEFUL: Illegal Alien Accused of Rape Released by Oklahoma Sanctuary County – Charged with first degree rape and he’s put back out on the streets? Mothers in that county had better hide your daughters.

ICE slams Maryland county officials after release of illegal immigrant accused of child molestation – 11-years old

Sanctuary County: Two Illegal MS-13 Gang Members Accused of Hacking to Death 16-Year-Old Boy

Illegal alien busted on over 100 child-porn charges: “An illegal immigrant was arrested on over 100 gut-wrenching child pornography charges, including sickening allegations that he manufactured some of the heinous material himself.

GOOD. Throw their backsides in jail and see how they like being some 300 pound gang member’s bitch: Manufacturing Executives Charged with Knowingly Hiring Illegal Aliens

THIS is an outrage costing We the People tens of millions of borrowed dollars: Overloaded immigration judges have 1 million cases pending despite fast work

Illegal Immigrants Committing A Staggering Number Of Crimes – Statistics don’t lie they are based on data

Las Vegas to Become Sanctuary for Criminal Illegals After ACLU Pressure

Border Wall Construction Breaks Ground in South Donna – 71 Miles Completed So Far – 509 Miles By 2020 Election

Watch in real time

Mexico Reports 250% Spike in Africans Trying to Enter U.S. Through Border

Six Chinese Migrants Caught Sneaking Through Border Crossing

1.1 Million Migrants Crossed into U.S. in FY2019, Nearly Half-Million Families – To steal the fruits of your labor. Free medical, dental, drowning our schools and stealing jobs that belong to Americans.

Democrat voters continue to cheer on the socialist and communist candidates running for the White House who support open borders and reelecting the same incumbents like Chuckie Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who enable the drug trade to flourish, terrorists to cross over as well as guns and protecting illegals who have no right to be on U.S. soil.  Not to mention the huge risk from Africans sneaking across the border from Ebola stricken countries. 1,100 African Migrants Apprehended in One Border Sector In Last 6 Weeks – Comes as WHO declares Ebola a global health emergency this week, July 20, 2019

Any American who votes for a Democrat in Congress votes to keep the slaughter of innocents a daily event. Your vote supports keeping the drug pipeline flourishing as well as human trafficking and allowing rapists and murderers to cross our border. That goes for governors and mayors who also support protecting illegal aliens and open borders.

As I keep harping on, the primaries begin in a couple of months. Will Americans continue to vote in Muslim scum like Illhan Omar and incumbents who have failed We the People miserably? Or, will they vote for a challenger who is qualified, who is pro-life (a big factor for Republicans) and will do what has to be done: Get the wall finished and lock down the damn border. Provide the funds to step up deporting anyone who is in this country illegally regardless of age or sob story.

Trump Surges Deportations of Illegal Aliens by 453 Percent in Recent Months: “President Trump’s administration deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens in the last two months who had arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed to be part of a family unit.

“Federal data obtained by Breitbart News reveals that since August, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens who arrived as a family unit at the southern border and have final orders for removal.”

I for one am sick to death about the old excuse Mexico is our trading partner bull crap. An invasion is just that and a golden opportunity for murderers, rapists, terrorists, guns and drugs to make it across the border. If it were up to me, I would have put the U.S. military across that border the day I took office in the White House. That is what the U.S. Constitution authorizes to repel an invasion and the corrupt Mexican government can go to Hell.

The fate of this nation rests on those primaries because if worthless, corrupt incumbents are not defeated we end up with the same options as we have for the past 50 years: Hold your nose and vote for the incumbent with an R next to his or her name because the only other choice is a Democrat socialist communist on the ticket.

BTW: If you’re an early Christmas shopper, don’t forget to order a copy of my book, Taking Politics Out of Solutions. 400 pages of facts and solutions.  Here’s one review from Amazon: “There’s not a book out there that so substantially documents the source of every truth she presents; links, affidavits, other books, legislative testimony, interviews ad infinitum…You will be amazed at how many instances she refers to regarding the present-day political mechanizations that are plainly and blatantly UnConstitutional!  For all the above reasons, if in the not-too-distant future, the survivors of our once-great nation try to piece together a road map for OUR return to a Constitutional Republic, they couldn’t use a better resource.”

And, in honor of today being Veteran’s Day:

© 2019 Devvy Kidd – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Devvy: devvyk@npn.net

Links

Trump Surges Deportations of Illegal Aliens by 453 Percent in Recent Months, Oct. 9, 2019. “President Trump’s administration deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens in the last two months who had arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed to be part of a family unit.”

Are you or your son or daughter the next victim? Think it can’t happen to your family?

Gov. Newsom’s Sanctuary California: Two Illegal Aliens Charged with Murder of Sheriff’s Deputy, October 28, 2019

HOW SHAMEFUL: Illegal Alien Accused of Rape Released by Oklahoma Sanctuary County – Charged with first degree rape and he’s put back out on the streets? Mothers in that county had better hide your daughters.

ICE slams Maryland county officials after release of illegal immigrant accused of child molestation – 11-years old

Sanctuary County: Two Illegal MS-13 Gang Members Accused of Hacking to Death 16-Year-Old Boy

Illegal alien busted on over 100 child-porn charges: “An illegal immigrant was arrested on over 100 gut-wrenching child pornography charges, including sickening allegations that he manufactured some of the heinous material himself.

GOOD. Throw their backsides in jail and see how they like being some 300 pound gang member’s bitch: Manufacturing Executives Charged with Knowingly Hiring Illegal Aliens

THIS is an outrage costing We the People tens of millions of borrowed dollars: Overloaded immigration judges have 1 million cases pending despite fast work

Illegal Immigrants Committing A Staggering Number Of Crimes – Statistics don’t lie they are based on data

Las Vegas to Become Sanctuary for Criminal Illegals After ACLU Pressure

Border Wall Construction Breaks Ground in South Donna – 71 Miles Completed So Far – 509 Miles By 2020 Election

Watch in real time

Mexico Reports 250% Spike in Africans Trying to Enter U.S. Through Border

Six Chinese Migrants Caught Sneaking Through Border Crossing

1.1 Million Migrants Crossed into U.S. in FY2019, Nearly Half-Million Families – To steal the fruits of your labor. Free medical, dental, drowning our schools and stealing jobs that belong to Americans.

Predators United

AUGUST 09, 2019

by Gilad Atzmon

source: http://www.unz.com/gatzmon/predators-united/

In this study I intend to delve into a deeply troublesome topic. Due to the growing sensitivity concerning ‘anti-Semitism’ and new legislation designed to restrict discussion of topics related to Jewish politics, culture and history, I have limited myself to sources that are Jewish, Israeli or mainstream news.

From Weinstein to Epstein and Beyond

“Not Just Weinstein: The Year #MeToo Rocked and Shocked the Jewish World” was the title of a 2018 Haaretz article that reviewed the large number of Jews involved in sex scandals that year. “Over the past year,” Haartez wrote, “a high number of powerful Jewish men have been accused of sexual misconduct. While it has provided fodder for anti-Semites, activists say addressing the problem is vital.”

Haaretz listed some of the prominent Jewish men accused of predatory sexual behaviour. “In addition to (Harvey) Weinstein and (Leon) Wieseltier, the list of Jewish men implicated in #MeToo over the past 12 months includes former Democratic senator Al Franken; ousted CBS chief Les Moonves; actors Dustin Hoffman, Jeffrey Tambor and Jeremy Piven; directors Woody Allen, James Toback and Brett Ratner; playwright Israel Horowitz; journalists Mark Halperin and Michael Oreskes; conductor James Levine; and radio show hosts Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz.”

Apparently someone decided to ‘clean the swamp’. Harvey Weinstein was just an early bird. In 2018 we also learned about the Nxivm sex cult and the role of Clare Bronfman at its centre. The Jewish Forward wrote that Nxivm’s leader attracted “several prominent figures to his group, including heiress Clare Bronfman, who pleaded guilty in April to credit card fraud and harbouring an undocumented immigrant who provided unpaid “labor and services.” Bronfman is the daughter of the legendary ultra Zionist billionaire Edgar Bronfman (1929 –2013) who was president of the World Jewish Congress. In his obituary, Edgar Bronfman was described by Haaretz as “prince of the Jews.” His daughter has been ordered to pay a penalty of $6 million out of her $200 million fortune, and she faces up to two years in prison.

In November 2017, genius comedian Larry David admitted on Saturday Night Live that he was uncomfortable with the fact that so many of those accused of sexual harassment in Hollywood are Jewish. David allowed he would much prefer Jews to be associated with the theory of relativity and the cure for polio.

When it seemed the Jewish universe couldn’t cope with any more scandals involving predatory sexual behaviour, the Epstein affair resurfaced. The Jeffrey Epstein spectacle is one of the biggest of its kind in the history of America ensnaring presidents and prime ministers. Some of the world’s most influential men in cultural, financial and academic fields are allegedly implicated in predatory behaviour with underage girls. And it doesn’t take a genius to observe that the Epstein drama is, unfortunately, unfortunately, a ‘Jewish drama.’

Bloomberg, not exactly an ‘anti-Semitic’ outlet, dug into The Complicated Orbit of Jeffrey Epstein. Zionist enthusiast Leslie Wexner was identified as Epstein’s ‘patron’. The Jewish virtual library informs us that Wexner “often support[s] .. Jewish projects. He serves as Honorary Vice Chairman of the Board of Congregation Aguda Achim… [And] established the Wexner Foundation, which runs both a Graduate Fellowship and an Israel Fellowship Program.”

Bloomberg lists the following as amongst Epstein’s ‘business partners’: Harvey Weinstein, Mort Zuckerman, Donny Deutsch, Nelson Peltz, Ehud Barak and Ponzi aficionado Steven Hoffenberg.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of notorious Zionist pension plunderer Robert Maxwell, is described by Bloomberg as Epstein’s ‘Inner Circle.’ And then there is Alan Dershowitz who has been labouring tirelessly to try to convince the American media and anyone else willing to listen that he didn’t have sex with underage girls.

Again I find myself admitting that the list of Jewish names surrounding an unsavoury character, this time Epstein, resembles my Bar Mitzvah’s guest list: a lot of Jewish names with just a few goyim at the margin.

This raises critical questions, the most elementary of which is, why? Why are so many Jewish men currently in the news in connection with sexually predatory behaviour? What is it about these rich and influential people that pushes them over the edge?

And there are deeper questions that beg attention. Why is it that with so many Jews in academia and media ordinarily so clever in explaining in a ‘professorial manner’ the psychology and sociology behind every world development and political shift, not one has volunteered to explain the cultural, ideological and spiritual continuum between Weinstein and Epstein and beyond? How is it that the academics and think tanks that are so adept in analysing ‘cultural clashes’ and, as they call it, ‘Islamofascism,’ are unwilling to analyse the roots of the cultural crisis at the core of the Epstein saga? And I must extend this inquiry just one step further, why does the Jewish solidarity industry that cares so much for Palestine, Immigrants, the Civil Rights Movement and LGBT issues remain silent when it comes to the crimes committed, and on a mass scale, against underage girls just a few blocks from JVP’s New York headquarters?

I tend to think that it is just a question of time before we see the formation of ‘Jews against Epstein’ or some other racially exclusive ‘Jews only’ group of that sort. Dominating the dissent is a Jewish survival instinct. ‘As Jews’ they will protest against Epstein, Maxwell, Barak, Weinstein and Dershowitz just to make sure that the boundaries of criticism are kept within the safety zone. If this happens, the battle against pedophilia will slowly evolve into an internal Jewish dispute. Gentiles will be assured that Jews can safely take care of their problems.

Some may argue that the sickening stories to do with Weinstein, Epstein et al have nothing to do with Jewishness, Judaism or the Jews. It is a legitimate contention that what we are actually dealing with are the predatory symptoms that can be associated with money and power. The argument is that capitalism and greed corrupts the rich and the powerful and that because Jewish men are over represented in these circles, they only appear to be disproportionately prone to such predatory symptoms. I could easily buy into such a theory. It certainly explains why sex crimes are prevalent within the Jewish elite as Haaretz was brave enough to admit. But it fails to explain the widely spread predatory behaviour within Rabbinical communities. It is even less successful in explaining why a bunch of Israelis were caught recently in Columbia apparently running a human trafficking network that specialised in marketing underage sex tourism packages for Israelis.

Not just the Rich and the Influential

In March 2017 Israeli police arrested 22 ultra-Orthodox Jews for sex crimes against minors and women. In April 2019 Haaretz admitted that “There’s a Hole in the System. Israel Became a Haven for Suspected Jewish Sex Offenders.” The Israeli paper reported that “65 suspected sexual offenders [are] allegedly seeking refuge in Israel.”

In July 2019 The Times of Israel reported that “Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman was alleged to have improperly intervened to aid at least 10 sex offenders from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.” Litzman, who is himself ultra-Orthodox and the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, “had been questioned by police over suspicions that he had attempted to prevent the extradition of accused child molester Malka Leifer to Australia.”

Malka Leifer was formerly the principal of an orthodox Jewish girls school in Melbourne and has been charged with as many as 74 assaults against minors. The extradition battle over Malka Leifer, who fled Melbourne in 2008 with the help of some in the local ultra-Orthodox community, has dragged on for several years, frustrating her accusers.

https://youtu.be/9qaHa3M8q8E

In 2015 Michael Lesher, an orthodox Jewish attorney, published a book titled “Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities.” In the introduction Lesher writes that his book isn’t “about sexual abuse per se but on the dismal history of how far too many of those cases have been assiduously concealed both from the public and from the police: how influential rabbis and community leaders have sided with the alleged abusers against their victims; how victims and witnesses of sexual abuse have been pressured, even threatened, not to turn to secular law enforcement for help; how autonomous Jewish ‘patrols,’ displacing the role of official police in some large and heavily religious Jewish neighbourhoods, have played an inglorious part in the history of cover-ups; … how some Jewish (orthodox) communities have even succeeded in manipulating law enforcement officials to protect suspected abusers.”

Lesher finds the Jewish media culpable. Jewish media outlets steer clear of stories about such predatory behaviour or at most publish them only sparingly. It would be reasonable to postulate that we are dealing with an institutional operation to conceal sex crimes that concern the ‘Jewish orthodox ghetto.’

Far away from the Jewish orthodox ghetto, in Ayia Nap, Cyprus, next to the sunny Mediterranean Sea, a bunch of young Israelis described by the Israeli press as ‘the salt of the Jewish earth,’ were falsely accused this month of a brutal gang rape of a young British citizen. The Israeli youngsters were eventually cleared and sent home. The 19 old British woman is now facing charges for falsifying a rape account.

Unlike Orthodox Jewry whom Lesher claims conceal sex crimes and often take the side of the predator, as did Israeli Deputy Health Minister Litzman, the alleged Israeli gang rape was a headline article in every Israeli media outlet for almost two weeks. Israel didn’t attempt to conceal the story. Israelis were discomfited by the saga and engaged in soul searching. In fact, the Israeli press was alone amongst the media to follow this horrible story closely.

The Daily Mail was probably the only British paper to produce a detailed account of the alleged gang rape. The British tabloid described the attitude of Israeli tourists to others on the Mediterranean island as beyond unacceptable. “Other girls living at the Pambos Napa Rock hotel have told how they were constantly pestered for sex by Israeli men staying at the budget hotel. ‘One of my friends was asleep in her room an Israeli came in and demanded sex. She screamed at him to get out, but the management do not seem to care.’ Another male worker said a friend of his was followed into the ladies toilet and proposition for sex. ‘He just held out some Euros and said he wanted sex. It is disgusting.’ ‘The Israeli men come up behind you and just stand there. Not many of them speak English and it is creepy. I had no idea what it was like here. I do not feel safe.”

Many in Israel were relieved to read that the young Israelis were cleared of the serious allegations. And others may claim that the Daily Mail’s description of the behaviour of young Israelis in Ayia Napa is not representative of Israel or of Jewish culture. After all, the Ayia Napa saga shares little in common with the Epstein/Weinstein continuum. The Israeli suspects were not particularly rich or influential. The British woman who claimed she was raped wasn’t underage. Yet the Ayia Napa story shares a peculiar similarity to the Epstein saga. When the Cypriot police examined the mobile phones of the Israeli suspects, they found a large number of videos of the event.

One may wonder what people video themselves engaged in intimate intercourse and even share such footage with others? Is it possible that they believe that the world surrounding them is a porn set? What kind of gratification is found in such images? Is it romantic memorabilia, libidinal enthusiasm or does it provide some other type of ‘self assurance’? Harvey Weinstein allegedly insisted that his victims watch him indulging himself. We may be tapping here into one of the most intimate aspects of narcissism. The Daily Mail wrote that Epstein is “believed to have used the cameras to tape his famous friends in sex acts with underage girls for blackmail purposes.” And I wonder. Does this explanation also apply to the cinematic enthusiasm of the young Israelis?

In December 2018, law enforcement authorities in Colombia suspected 12 Israelis of running a sex-trafficking network. Haaretz reported that the “alleged sex trafficking ring provided Israeli travellers with ‘tourism packages’ that included prostitutes, some of whom were minors, who received between 200,000 pesos ($63) to 400,000 pesos ($126) in return for sexual services.” Ynet revealed that the Israeli “suspects reportedly scouted local schools, recruiting underage girls as sex workers for drug-fuelled parties, attended largely by Israeli businessmen and discharged IDF soldiers.”

These Israelis are alleged to specialise in the wide scale exploitation of minors. The consumers of these ‘tour packages’ are ordinary Israelis not Wall Street’s financiers or Harvard professors.

Here we may be detecting a significant and disturbing similarity among Epstein, the Israelis at Ayia Napa and their brethren in Columbia. While orthodox Jewish sex criminals target members of their own community, Epstein, the boys at Ayia Napa (as described by the Daily Mail) and the alleged criminals in Columbia prey on others. These others aren’t necessarily Jewish or more likely, aren’t Jewish at all.

This may be the right point to introduce the problematic notion of the Shikse.

Shikse is a derogatory term for a gentile woman or girl. The word, which is of Yiddish origin, is widely used by Jews and others many of whom do not speak Yiddish. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word came into English usage in the late 19th century. It is derived from the Hebrew word sheqeṣ (שקץ ) meaning ‘a detested thing.’ In fact, the Oxford Dictionary is taking a light approach to the pejorative term. Sheqes is a Biblical Hebraic term that expresses abomination and disgust, especially towards a small animal that is unclean.

The notion of the Shikse and the way in which it is utilised in reference to non-Jewish woman is as revealing as it is devastating. You might ask what crime non-Jewish women have committed to be labelled with such a horrendous and disrespectful term.

Once again it is the genius work of Larry David who together with Jerry Seinfeld, brought to light the embarrassing as well as irritating fact that at least culturally, the Shikse is basically a Jewish sex object. It is a subject of Jewish male fascination and libidinal phantasy. The Shikse is an ideal date, a one night stand, a mistress, but not a wife. As you will notice in this short video, this applies to thirteen years old Bar Mitzvah boys, their fathers and even the local Rabbi. Sometime Jewish humour tells us more than we should know.

https://youtu.be/vLRT47mvBig

Also watch this reaction of a gentile woman to being called shikse.

https://youtu.be/Vo3qJrl5Pyc

Genital Utopia from Shabbatai Zvi to Jeffrey Epstein

Jews didn’t invent predatory sexual behaviour nor do they collect royalties for pedophilia. Most Jews are likely embarrassed and disgusted by Epstein, Maxwell, Weinstein and Malka Leifer. And despite Israel’s notorious record of human trafficking in the 1990s, the country is now one of the leaders in the battle against human trafficking. As I noted in Part 1, the Israeli media published clear and reliable accounts of the Ayia Napa saga as well as all the other embarrassing stories of predatory sex scandals involving Israelis and Jews. On top of that, Tel Aviv is a gay capital, famous for its liberal approach to gender and LGBTQ.

Yet, in contradiction to the openness described above, in the Jewish State women are segregated and essentially barred from certain streets for ‘religious reasons.’ In the Jewish State women are segregated on public transport for the same ‘religious reasons.’ Haaretz writes “In the ultra-Orthodox community today, not only do men and women not sit together at celebrations, there are even separate entrances to the places where the events are held.” Haaretz explains the Jewish orthodox community is fearful of the corrupting powers of women and continues, “there is this fear they (male orthodox Jews) will not be able to withstand the temptation of being near women, and therefore they must remove even the smallest doubt – lest the evil urge cause them to commit a sin.”

Jews are amongst the leading advocates on issues to do with women’s rights yet Harvey Weinstein is at the centre of the #MeToo scandal. Many Jews claim to uphold the most precious universal humanist values yet prominent Jewish characters such as Wexner, Maxwell, Barak and Dershowitz are regularly in the news for their association with the Epstein sex trafficking affair.

How can we encapsulate the contradictions presented by humane, progressive and liberal attitudes towards gender, rabbinical dark religious morbidity and the current chain of spectacular predatory criminal affairs with so many famous Jews at their centre?

The issues to do with Jews, sexuality and abuse are confusing, ambivalent and multi layered. Although in the Jewish orthodox home it is the mother who has the dominant and most significant educational and spiritual role, rabbinical Judaism treats women as walking menaces. How are we to interpret that fact that the Judaic morning blessing includes a praise to God “who has not made me a woman”?

Jewishness and Judaism can be realised as existing on fierce dialectical battle grounds. Jews are people distinguished by their relentless inclination towards self-negation. Some have observed that Jews can be defined (politically and culturally) as people who strive to stop being themselves while continuing to be themselves. Early Zionism promised to fix Diaspora Jews by means of a homecoming. It promised Diaspora Jews that it could heal their symptoms and make them ‘people like all other people’ and still stay Jews. Bolshevism promised to fix the Jews by proletarianization, it promised the Jews they could integrate into the working class, be proletarians like all other proletarians and still sustain their Jewishness. Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) and Assimilation gave Jews the ability to look like goyim in the street while sustaining their Jewish identity behind doors. Judah Leib Gordon illustrated this idea with a simple problematic mantra: “Be a Jew in your home and a man outside it.” Liberalism and progressivism offer similar promises. Jewishness can be realised as a rebellious form of self-rejection, whose revolutionary inclinations are set in measured terms and restricted by overarching tribal interests and agendas.

This radical trait of self-rejection is as old as the Jews. The Biblical prophets’ harsh critiques, guided by their thorough self-reflection, offer us a glimpse into Judaic revolutionary dialectics. Judaism and Jewishness can be realised as the medium of the battle between those who adhere to the religion, the politics, the culture, the primacy of the tribe, the spirit of Judaism and Jewish revolutionary dissenters who oppose the above. This Biblical dialectic and rebellious spirit is embedded in Jewishness and Judaism and has never faded.

Shabbtai Zvi was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1625 and became a Muslim in the 1660s. In between he managed to become a Jewish messiah and attracted the admiration of the vast majority of Jews around the globe.

The movement that developed around Shabbetai Zvi became known as Shabbetaianism. It evolved into a secret yet influential sect of Muslim Jewish converts called the Donme. The Shabbetains and the Donme embraced the theory of “sacred sin.” They believed that the Torah could be fulfilled only by amoral acts representing its seeming annulment.

Zvi replaced the Ten Commandments with a new religious order based on 18 precepts that the Donme called ‘Las Incommendensas.’ Las Incommendensas included the Ten Commandments although the formulation of the prohibition on adultery is ambiguous, resembling a suggestion of prudence.

One of the Donme’s distinctive rituals was the Festival of the Lamb, celebrated in the spring. At least two married couples and often many more participated in the ceremony. For the first time that year, they ate the meat of spring’s newly born lambs. After the meal, the lights were extinguished and couples made love without distinguishing among their partners. Children born from these encounters were considered sacred. The practice had its roots in pagan beliefs and orgiastic rituals known from other ancient cultures of the Middle East. The analogy between this practice and messianic rebirth after the days of the apocalypse is clear: the existing order will be abolished and instinctive needs will be freely enjoyed.

The primary concept of Sabbatean theology was that when Zvi entered the Jewish arena, the messianic era had begun. In this new world, everything was turned upside down: the old law was cancelled, all the ‘do not’ commandments, including the strong prohibitions against incest, became ‘do’ mitzvahs.

Jacob Frank was born in Podolia in 1726 to a wealthy Jewish Sabbatean family. Around the year 1755 it dawned on Frank that he was the true successor of Shabbetai Zvi. He gathered a sect of believers who were attracted by his charismatic personality. Frank formed a new, improved Sabbatean theology based on radical mystical symbols that were infused with destruction and nihilism. Frank addressed his followers: “I came not to elevate your spirits, but to humiliate you to the bottom of the abyss…” By ‘abyss’ he meant sexual rituals that included sacred orgies with just a touch of incest.

Both Zvi and Frank’s theology, history and influence deserve deeper analysis. I touch upon them briefly to illustrate the dialectic force within Judaism. It was the rebellious Judaic spirit that opposed rabbinical rigidity. It was the detachment from nature, the human body and soil that brought about its counter movement and the obscene theology promulgated by Zvi and Frank. Zvi managed to excite the majority of his contemporaneous Jews. He offered them the opportunity to emancipate themselves from themselves while being themselves.

The revisionist populist messianic Shabbetianism that arose in opposition to rabbinical Judaism’s prudish obsession with sex and gender central didn’t disappear after Jewish secularization and emancipation in the 19th century, quite the opposite. It morphed into a set of authoritarian pseudo scientific discourses.

The ‘Oedipal Complex,’ a notion introduced by Freud, was at least as sick as it was revolutionary. The idea that love between mother and son involves an ‘oedipal complex,’ an erotically driven murderous intent on the infant’s part, is deeply troubling and has never been scientifically verified. Freud’s theoretical attempt to reduce love, intimacy and compassion to mere (sexual) ‘drives’ suggests that Freud and his cult of avid disciples may have had severe deficits on the human side.

Freud didn’t resolve the complex Jewish relationship to sex and gender, he opened a Pandora’s Box, and at least for a while, inflicted his own morbidity on the entire West.

When Wilhelm Reich was ten years old, his parents allegedly hired tutors to prepare him for the gymnasium entrance exams. According to Reich, his mother had an affair with one of his tutors and the young Reich became jealous. Reich later claimed that he briefly thought of blackmailing his mother to have sex with him by threatening to tell his father about the affair. Eventually, Reich confided in his father, who reacted harshly. In 1910, after a protracted period of beatings from his father, his mother committed suicide, a consequence for which Reich blamed himself.

That an influential man such as Wilhelm Reich, one who rightly claimed a major role in the sexual liberation of western women and children, had such a problematic ‘beginning’ interested me and led me to look into the origin of his ‘Oedipal’ confession.

In Being in Time I wrote that the person who brought attention to this disturbing incident was Wilhelm Reich’s biographer, Myron Sharaf, an American psychotherapist and a Harvard academic. Sharaf was a student, patient, and colleague of Reich’s from 1948 to 1954, and his book, Fury on Earth is widely regarded as the definitive biography of Wilhelm Reich.

After reading Sharaf’s account of Reich’s ‘blackmail’ fantasy, I realized that it raised issues far more disturbing than the alleged incest incident (which I doubt actually occurred).

The manner by which the affair came to light is itself rather peculiar. In late 1919 or early 1920, when Reich was about twenty-three and already a practicing analyst within Freud’s circle, Reich wrote his first published article , The Breakthrough of the Incest Taboo in Puberty. In this article, Reich reported on ‘a patient’ who displayed certain ‘Oedipal patterns.’ The ‘patient’ was attracted to his mother, he was jealous of a visiting tutor who slept with his mother so he informed his father about his mother’s affair, his mother was beaten and eventually committed suicide. According to Sharaf, there is little doubt that the ‘patient’ was Reich himself. Many years later Reich “told his elder daughter that the article was a self-analysis.” (Myron Sharaf: Fury on Earth, pg. 40)

This is a disturbing revelation. First, young Reich published a fabricated patient account in a scientific magazine. This alone is enough to discredit him, and there is more. Reich was under the spell of Sigmund Freud when he penned his ‘revelation.’ This suggests that Reich might have fabricated a patient’s story in order to verify or validate his master’s ‘Oedipal complex.’ Were fabricated tales of incest the path to gaining a position within the Freud academic orbit? Scientists and academics attempt to form theories that correspond with reality and facts: Reich, then a member of the cult of Freud, apparently reversed the scientific method, contriving ‘facts’ to correspond with a theory.

In the 1930s when things turned sour for German and Austrian Jews, the Jewish ‘left’ was quick to diagnose what was wrong with ‘the Germans.’ Wilhelm Reich claimed it was their ‘repressed sexuality.’

Reich posited that sexual liberation on a mass scale would save Marxist dogma and the working people as well. In chapter five of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, he declared war on the traditional patriarchal family which he saw as maintaining the core of mass conservatism: “From the standpoint of social development,” Reich wrote, “the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it.” The traditional family is a “central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation.”

Reich, a neo-Marxist, found both romanticism and traditional family values obstacles to socialist reform. Reich’s vehicle towards the new world order was ‘orgasm’! In his 1927 study, The Function of the Orgasm, he reached the conclusion that: “there is only one thing wrong with neurotic patients: the lack of full and repeated sexual satisfaction.” In the hands of Reich, the Marx-Freud hybrid led to what some critical cynics dubbed “genital utopia.” And isn’t ‘genital utopia’ a fair description of the universe Weinstein and Epstein built around themselves?

Reich’s ideas evolved and spread rapidly in America and the West. Probably the most prominent proponent of such liberal ideas was the Frankfurt School and its primary star as of 1968, Herbert Marcuse.

Marcuse focused on resolving the Freudian conflict between the Reality Principle (work orientated and leisure-less) and the Pleasure Principle (Eros). According to him, the conflict was between alienated labour and Eros. Sex, he declared, was freely accessible to those in power, namely the capitalists, but was available to workers only when it did not disturb their performance. Marcuse contended that in a proper socialist world we will manage without the labour of the “poor” and without the suppression of sexual drives. He predicted that “non-alienated libidinal work” would replace “alienated labour.” Marcuse’s theories offered a post Marxist interpretation of Reich’s genital utopia.

Of course, both Marcuse and Reich were totally delusional. As we know, sex and sexualization didn’t liberate the working class. It did the opposite. Pornography is a distraction that helps blind the workless class from detecting the root cause of their plight. In reference to Marx’s most misinterpreted adage, I allow myself to say, that at least in the post political era in which we live, “pornography is the actual opium of the people.”

I doubt college dropout Jeffrey Epstein has read Marcuse, Reich, Zvi or Frank but he certainly put Reich-Marcuse’s philosophy into practice. As it now seems, Epstein wasn’t really a ‘financier.’ He hardly engaged in labour in any form and was totally consumed by the ‘pleasure principle.’ According to recent reporting, Epstein was dedicated to Eros except when he was amassing footage of his best friends fiddling with underage girls.

The centrality of prominent Jewish names in the current predatory scandals can’t be denied, but I do not at all contend that predatory behaviour or sexual morbidity is a Jewish trait or even something predominantly Jewish. Instead these incidents are consistent with a Jewish as well as Judaic revolutionary continuum driven by sexual obsession. This continuum includes Zvi, Frank, Freud, Reich, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse and many contemporary gender activists such as Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv who made the state of his/her hairy testicles into main stream news. This continuum may well also include Epstein, Weinstein and the many other Jewish celebrities implicated in these far too many nasty predatory acts.

Jewishness, as I see it, is a dynamic dialectical morphing spirit. It contains a bold critical attitude that often evolves into a sense of empowerment, grandeur, impunity and narcissism. This self-confidence often produces sensational scientific and social revolutions as well as spectacular artistic achievement. But it can equally help cause global disasters, social-disorder, financial meltdowns, spiritual confusion and spectacular criminal endeavours.

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Towards a Culture of World Peace

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 16, 2019

The following text was presented at the closing session of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations, programme organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing, May 15-16, 2019

***

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. A culture of war and military conquest is upheld. War is presented to public opinion as a US-NATO peace-making endeavor which will ultimately result in the spread of Western democracy.

Military intervention not to mention “economic warfare” (including sanctions) are routinely upheld as part of a humanitarian campaign.  War has been granted a humanitarian mandate under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

Culture which is the theme of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations (Beijing, May 15-16, 2019) is of utmost importance in resolving conflicts within and between nations. Culture defines perceptions and understanding as well as dialogue and diplomacy.

In this regard, “Towards a Culture of World Peace” constitutes a commitment to Human Livelihood. It is  an initiative  which consists in confronting the discourse in support of  war and military intervention emanating from NATO and the Pentagon. It requires reviving a Worldwide anti-war movement, nationally and internationally as well as establishing a resolve by the governments of sovereign nation states to reject this Worldwide process of militarization.  

The contemporary US-NATO “culture of war” (which has its roots in European colonial history) constitutes an obvious obstacle and impediment to the Dialogue of Civilizations and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013. 

The culture of peace is universal. It is shared by people and nations Worldwide. Today’s “culture of war” is a US hegemonic project predicated on the creation of conflict and divisions within and between countries. It is this (unilateral) project of global warfare which is intent upon destroying civilization.

“The culture of peace” which was addressed by President Xi Jinping in his opening address of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations, constitutes an important instrument which has a bearing on broad geopolitical, economic and strategic relations. The procedure consists in ultimately confronting and dismantling “the culture of war”  which has a pervasive impact on the human mindset. 

This endeavour will not succeed through political rhetoric or a “war of words”.

It requires:

• Translating the “culture of peace” into concrete actions at the geopolitical and diplomatic levels
• Confronting media disinformation and war propaganda
•  A cohesive anti-war movement at the grassroots of society (nationally and internationally)
• An endorsement by the governments of sovereign countries, member states of the United Nations, namely a decisive inter-governmental rejection of the US-NATO “culture of war”, which is in blatant violation of the UN Charter.
• The disbandment of military alliances, including NATO, which are supportive of global warfare.
• The withdrawal of NATO member states and NATO partner member states from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
• The adoption of a coherent and Worldwide disarmament programme coupled with major reductions in military spending.
• The closing down of all military bases, some 800 US military bases in about 80 countries
• The curtailment in the international trade of weapons
• The restructuring of national economies with a view to downgrading and eventually closing down the war economy,
• The reallocation of financial resources and tax revenues towards the civilian economy including social services.

So-called “Humanitarian Warfare”

The victims of U.S. led wars are routinely presented by the Western media as the perpetrators of war.

Realities are turned upside down. “War is Peace” said George Orwell. The Western media in chorus upholds war as a humanitarian endeavor. “Wars make us safer and richer” says the Washington Post.

When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. The consensus is to wage war.

The building of this diabolical consensus consists in the militarization of the “cultural industries”. The latter are supported by the US Department of Defense which allocates a large share of its budget to upholding the “culture of war”.

[T]he ideology of militarism pervades society, glorifying the US state’s use of violence not diplomacy to achieve security in a world divided between a righteous American “us” and an evil and threatening “them,” representing war as the first and most appropriate solution to every problem that vexes America, and reducing patriotism to unquestioning support for each and every incursion. (Tanner Mirrlees, The DoD’s Cultural Policy: Militarizing the Cultural Industries, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, October 2017)

In turn Hollywood in liaison with the Pentagon has endorsed the culture of war and violence:

“[The] Hollywood–Pentagon connection represents a key dimension of the military–entertainment–industrial complex, where a film is simultaneously being used as a tool for recruitment, military public relations, and commercial profit.

According to Tom Secker and Matthew Alford, “A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV”.

Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Meanwhile, the balance sheet of death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria is casually ignored. Civilians in war torn countries are “responsible for their own deaths”. This narrative pervades the Western media:  233,000 estimated deaths in Yemen since 2015, according to a recent United Nations report. 140,000 children killed. The media is silent: who are the war criminals?

Global Warfare

In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”. This document which has a direct bearing on US foreign policy refers to America’s “Long War”

• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”

“The revolution in military affairs” consists in developing advanced weapons systems as well as a new generation of nuclear weapons.

War Culture and Nuclear Weapons

The culture of war is marked by a radical shift in US nuclear doctrine. Starting in 2001, tactical nuclear weapons are heralded as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”.  A new generation of  “more usable”, “low yield” tactical nuclear weapons (mini-nukes) was put forth. They are heralded as peace-making bombs.

The doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) which prevailed during the Cold War era has been scrapped. Under Bush’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) (endorsed by the US Senate in 2002), nuclear weapons are to be used on a “first strike” “pre-emptive basis”, as a means of “self-defense” against both nuclear and non-nuclear states.

This is an absurd and diabolical proposition which can only be sustained by misleading public opinion, i.e. by obfuscating the deadly impacts of  nuclear weapons. Moreover, while the US has waged countless wars in what is euphemistically described as “the post war era” (1945- present), the issue of “self defense” is erroneous: the national security of the United States of America has never been threatened.

While the US and its NATO allies have launched a military adventure which is sustained by the “culture of war”, the public is largely unaware that the use of these “more usable” nuclear weapons (with a variable explosive capacity between one third to twelve times a Hiroshima bomb) threatens the future of humanity.

There are powerful economic interests behind the culture of war: the oil industry, the military industrial complex, Wall Street. In turn, there are powerful lobby groups which influence US foreign policy. Dialogue and debate are required: It is important that these economic actors, including the weapons producers, be made aware of the inherent dangers of global warfare.

Financing the Culture of War

Trump’s 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program constitutes a financial bonanza for the defense contractors. US media reports suggest that the nuclear weapons program “makes the World safer”.

The “culture of war” sustains a unilateral build up of the weapons industry funded by US tax payers.  The culture of war has triggered mounting military expenditures to the detriment of the civilian economy. Total military spending worldwide was of the order of 1.8 trillion dollars in 2018. US defense expenditure was of the order of 649 billion, which represents 36% of Worldwide military expenditure (all countries) (SIPRI).

The Trump administration has supported a significant hike in defense, war and related “National Security” expenditures. The defense budget presented by the presidency to the US Congress for 2020 is of the order of  750 billion dollars, of which 718 billion will go to the Pentagon.

But this figure of 740 billion is in some regards misleading: Accounting for a massive US intelligence budget, Homeland Security, and related war expenses, the requested annual US National Security (War) Budget for 2020 is estimated to be in excess of 1.2 trillion dollars.

“There are at least 10 separate pots of money dedicated to fighting wars, preparing for yet more wars, and dealing with the consequences of wars already fought”  (See, William D. Hartung, Mandy Smithberger, Boondoggle, Inc.: Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget  May 10, 2019).

Compare the figures: The total individual tax revenues for 2020 are of the order of $1.82 billion. Total defense, national security, intelligence, “to make the World safer”, etc is of the order of $1.25 trillion (68.7% of the individual income taxes paid by Americans)

While the weapons industry is booming, the civilian economy is in crisis, civilian infrastructure and social services including medicare are collapsing. Eventually what is required are policy mechanisms for the phasing out of the war economy and the national security apparatus, while channeling resources into rebuilding the civilian economy. No easy task.

The cultural dimension is crucial. US policy-makers believe in their own propaganda. The “culture of war” often combined with twisted ideological and/or religious undertones, influences government officials involved in acts of war.

In 1945, President Truman intimated in the immediate wake of  the bombing of Hiroshima, that God stands on the side of “Us Americans” with regards to the use of nuclear weapons. “We pray that He [God] may guide us to use it [nuclear weapons] in His ways and for His purposes” (August 9, 1945).

Hiroshima was designated as a “military base” in Truman’s historic speech on August 9, 1945. The stated objective of the Harry Truman was to “save the lives of innocent civilians”.

In the contemporary context, diplomatic relations and dialogue are at an all time low. At no time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.

In this regard, what should be acknowledged is that US government officials in high office who decide upon the deployment and use of nuclear weapons do not have a full understanding of the consequences of their acts.

The Legacy of  History

The contemporary US-NATO “culture of war” has its roots in European colonial history. Starting in the late 15th Century, European colonization was invariably supported by military conquest, violence and political subordination. A colonial economy was established. “Western cultural values” and the language of the colonizers were imposed, civilizations were undermined or destroyed. The colonial system ultimately led to the establishment of hegemonic relations, leading up to the consolidation of the British empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, followed by US neo-colonial expansionism in the late 19th century and in the wake of World War I.

What is significant is that this culture of colonial violence inherited from the British empire has a bearing on the nature of  contemporary US foreign policy, which in large part is predicated on militarization at a global level. The US has currently more than 800 military bases in 80 foreign countries.

Many Asian countries which were the victims of US-led war, not only have military cooperation agreement with the US, they also host US military bases on their territory.

In South and Southeast Asia, European colonialism was marked by conquest coupled with the displacement of the pre-existing silk road trade relations.

Historically, China’s trading relations under the land and maritime silk roads were marked by dialogue and the extensive exchange of culture. China’s trade relations during the Antiquity and Middle Age extended into South and South East Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, East Africa and Western Europe. Starting during the Han Dynasty (207 BC- 220 AD), the land and maritime silk road played a key role not only in economic exchange between civilizations but also in the spread of social and cultural values.

In contrast to European colonialism, these relations largely respected the sovereignty, independence and identity of the countries with which China was trading with. The silk road  trade did not  seek to impose or develop a dependent colonial relationship. The language of diplomacy was marked by the benefits of bilateral exchange.

Asian Culture and China’s Belt and Road

The mindset in Asian societies, which historically have been the victims of colonialism and US led wars is in marked contrast to the dominant “culture of war”.

The legacy of history prevails. While the “culture of war” characterizes America’s hegemonic ambitions modelled on the legacy of the British empire, China’s contemporary Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)which consists in developing trade relations with a large number of partner Nations states, is largely committed to a “Culture of Peace”.

Most Asian countries have been the victims of Western colonialism starting in the 15th Century, the impacts of which have led to the destruction of the pre-existing maritime and land trade routes as well as the demise of cultural exchange.

And numerous countries in Asia and the Middle East extending from the Mediterranean to the Korean Peninsula have been the victims of US led-wars in the course of what is euphemistically called “the post war era”. Today most of these countries are partners of the Belt and Road Initiative launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

As we speak, the US is threatening Iran. Washington has announced the deployment of 120,000 US troops to be dispatched to Persian Gulf . Secretary of State of Mike Pompeo (who has little understanding of history and geography) has justified this deployment, while casually  referring to the “clash of civilizations”.

US led wars are intent upon destroying civilizations as well dialogue between sovereign nation states.

As we conclude this closing session of  the Conference on the Dialogue of Asians Civilizations in Beijing, let us endorse “the Culture of Peace” as a means to ultimately abolishing all wars.

*

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.  He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2019

Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War. The Role of Osama bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski

Part II

By Janelle Velina

Global Research, May 08, 2019

Read Part I from the link below.

Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War

By Janelle Velina, April 30, 2019

Below is the second half and conclusion of “Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War”. While the previous sections examined the economic roots of imperialism, as well as the historical context of the Cold War within which to situate the Mujahideen, the following explores the anatomy of proxy warfare and media disinformation campaigns which were at the heart of destabilizing Afghanistan. These were also a large part of why there was little to no opposition to the Mujahideen from the Western ‘left’, whose continued dysfunctionality cannot be talked about without discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski. We also take a look at what led to the Soviet Union’s demise and how that significantly affected the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and many other parts of the world. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for four decades now, and it will reach its 40th year on July 3, 2019. 

The original “moderate rebel”

One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family. Before becoming known as America’s “boogeyman”, Osama bin Laden was put in charge of fundraising for the Mujahideen insurgents, creating numerous charities and foundations in the process and working in coordination with Saudi intelligence (who acted as liaisons between the fighters and the CIA). Journalist Robert Fisk even gave bin Laden a glowing review, calling him a “peace warrior” and a philanthropist in a 1993 report for the Independent. Bin Laden also provided recruitment for the Mujahideen and is believed to have also received security training from the CIA. And in 1989, the same year that Soviet troops withdrew, he founded the terrorist organization Al Qaeda with a number of fighters he had recruited to the Mujahideen. Although the PDPA had already been overthrown, and the Soviet Union was dissolved, he still maintained his relationship with the CIA and NATO, working with them from the mid-to-late 1990s to provide support for the secessionist Bosnian paramilitaries and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia.

The United States would eventually turn Bin Laden into a scapegoat after the 2001 terrorist attacks, while still maintaining ties to his family and providing arms, training, and funding to Al Qaeda and its affiliates (rebranded as “moderate rebels” by the Western media) in its more recent regime change project against Syria, which started in 2011. The Mujahideen not only gave birth to Al Qaeda, but it would set a precedent for the United States’ regime-change operations in later years against the anti-imperialist governments of Libya and Syria.

Reagan entertains Mujahideen fighters in the White House.

With the end to the cycle of World Wars (for the time being, at least), it has become increasingly common for the United States to use local paramilitaries, terrorist groups, and/or the armed forces of comprador regimes to fight against nations targeted by U.S. capital interests. Why the use of proxy forces? They are, as Whitney Webb describes, “a politically safe tool for projecting the U.S.’ geopolitical will abroad.”

Using proxy warfare as a kind of power projection tool is, first and foremost, cost-effective, since paid local mercenaries or terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda will bear the burden of combat and casualties rather than American troops in places like Libya and Syria. For example, it costs much less to pay local paramilitaries, gangs, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, and other reactionary forces to perform the same military operations as U.S. troops. Additionally, with the advent of nuclear weapons it became much more perilous for global superpowers to come into direct combat with one another — if the Soviet Union and the United States had done so, there existed the threat of “mutually assured destruction”, the strong possibility of instantaneous and catastrophic damage to the populations and the economic and living standards of both sides, something neither side was willing to risk, even if it was U.S. imperialism’s ultimate goal to destroy the Soviet Union.

And so, the U.S. was willing to use any other means necessary to weaken the Soviet Union and safeguard its profits, which included eliminating the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan even if it had neither the intent nor the means of launching a military offensive on American soil. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had the means of producing a considerably large supply of modern weapons, including nuclear deterrents, to counter the credible threat posed by the United States. To strike the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles would have been a great challenge for the United States, since it would have resulted in overwhelming retaliation by the Soviet Union. To maneuver this problem, to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union while protecting the U.S. from similar destruction, the CIA relied on more unconventional methods not previously thought of as being part of traditional warfare, such as funding proxy forces while wielding economic and cultural influence over the American domestic sphere and the international scene.

Furthermore, proxy warfare enables control of public opinion, thus allowing the U.S. government to escape public scrutiny and questions about legal authorization for war. With opposition from the general public essentially under control, consent for U.S.-led wars does not need to be obtained, especially when the U.S. military is running them from “behind the scenes” and its involvement looks less obvious. Indeed, the protests against the war on Vietnam in the United States and other Western countries saw mass turnouts.

And while the U.S.-led aggression in Vietnam did involve proxy warfare to a lesser degree, it was still mostly fought with American “boots-on-the-ground”, much like the 2001 renewed U.S.-led aggression against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In contrast, the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that began in 1979 saw little to no protest. The Mujahideen even garnered support from large portions of the Western left who joined the chorus of voices in the Western mainstream media in demonizing the PDPA — a relentless imperialist propaganda campaign that would be repeated in later years during the U.S. wars on Libya and Syria, with the difference being that social media had not yet gained prominence at the time of the initial assault on Afghanistan. This leads to the next question: why recruit some of the most reactionary social forces abroad, many of whom represent complete backwardness?

In Afghanistan, such forces proved useful in the mission to topple the modernizing government of the PDPA, especially when their anti-modernity aspirations intersected with U.S. foreign policy; these ultra-conservative forces continue to be deployed by the United States today. In fact, the long war on Afghanistan shares many striking similarities with the long war on Syria, with the common theme of U.S. imperialism collaborating with violent Sunni extremists to topple the secular, nationalist and anti-imperialist governments of these two former ‘Soviet bloc’ countries. And much like the PDPA, the current and long-time government of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party in Syria has made many strides towards achieving national liberation and economic development, which have included: taking land from aristocratic families (a majority of whom were Sunni Muslims while Shia Muslims, but especially Alawites, traditionally belonged to the lower classes and were treated as second class citizens in pre-Ba’athist Syria) and redistributing and nationalizing it, making use of Syria’s oil and gas reserves to modernize the country and benefit its population, and upholding women’s rights as an important part of the Ba’athist pillars.

Some of these aristocratic landlords, just like their Afghan counterparts, would react violently and join the Muslim Brotherhood who, with CIA-backing, carried out acts of terrorism and other atrocities in Hama as they made a failed attempt to topple the government of Hafez al Assad in 1982.

The connection between the two is further solidified by the fact that it was the Mujahideen from which Al Qaeda emerged; both are inspired by Wahhabist ideology, and one of their chief financiers is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as Israel, a regional imperial power and a key ally of the United States). In either case, these Wahhabi-inspired forces were vehemently opposed to modernization and development, and would much rather keep large sections of the population impoverished, as they sought to replace the PDPA and the Ba’athists with Sunni fundamentalist, anti-Shia, theological autocracies — Saudi-style regimes, in other words.

These reactionary forces are useful tools in the CIA’s anti-communist projects and destabilization campaigns against independent nationalist governments, considering that the groups’ anti-modernity stance is a motivating factor in their efforts to sabotage economic development, which is conducive to ensuring a favourable climate for U.S. capital interests. It also helps that these groups already saw the nationalist governments of the PDPA and the Syrian Ba’ath party as their ‘archenemy’, and would thus fight them to the death and resort to acts of terrorism against the respective civilian populations.

Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in response to the following question:

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

[Brzezinski]: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Once again, he makes it clear that the religious extremism of the Mujahideen fighters was not an issue for Washington because the real political value lay in eliminating the PDPA and putting an end to Soviet influence in the Greater Middle East, which would give the U.S. the opportunity to easily access and steal the country’s wealth. And in order to justify the U.S. imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, as well as to obscure the true nature of the Mujahideen fighters, the intervention needed to be accompanied by a rigorous mass media campaign. The Reagan administration — knowing full well that American mainstream media has international influence — continued the war that the Carter administration started and saw it as an opportunity to “step up” its domestic propaganda war, considering that the American general public was still largely critical of the Vietnam War at the time.

As part of the aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign, anyone who dared to publicly criticize the Mujahideen was subjected to character assassination and was pejoratively labelled a “Stalinist” or a “Soviet apologist”, which are akin to labels such as “Russian agent” or “Assadist” being used as insults today against those who speak out against the U.S.-backed terrorism in Syria. There were also careful rebranding strategies made specifically for Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen mercenaries, who were hailed as “revolutionary freedom fighters” and given a romantic, exoticized “holy warrior” makeover in Western media; hence the title of this section. The Mujahideen mercenaries were even given a dedication title card at the end of the Hollywood movie Rambo III which read, “This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan”; the film itself added to the constructed romantic image as it portrayed the Mujahideen fighters as heroes, while the Soviet Union and the PDPA were portrayed as the cartoonish villains. The Rambo film franchise is well known for its depiction of the Vietnamese as “savages” and as the aggressors in the U.S. war on Vietnam, which is a blatant reversal of the truth.

The Hollywood blockbuster franchise would be used to make the Mujahideen more palatable to Western audiences, as this unabashed, blatantly anti-Soviet propaganda for U.S. imperialism attracted millions of viewers with one of the largest movie marketing campaigns of the time. Although formulaic, the films are easily consumable because they appeal to emotion and, as Michael Parenti states in Dirty Truths, “The entertainment industry does not merely give the people what they want: it is busy shaping those wants,” (p. 111). Rambo III may not have been critically acclaimed, but it was still the second most commercially successful film in the Rambo series, grossing a total of $189,015,611 at the box office. Producing war propaganda films is nothing new and has been a long staple of the Hollywood industry, which serves capitalist and imperialist interests. But, since the blockbuster movie is one of the most widely available and distributed forms of media, repackaging the Mujahideen into a popular film franchise was easily one of the best ways (albeit cynical) to justify the war, maintaining the American constructed narrative and reinforcing the demonization campaign against Soviet Russia and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Now, outside of the cinema, CBS News went as far as to air fake battle footage meant to help perpetuate the myth that the Mujahideen mercenaries were “freedom fighters”; American journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, although decidedly biased against the Soviet Union and its allies, documented this ruse in which the news channel participated. In terms of proxy warfare, these were just some of the ways used to distract from the fact that it was a U.S.-led war.

The dedication title card as it originally appeared at the end of the film Rambo III.

In Afghanistan, proxy forces provided a convenient cover because they drew attention away from the fact that U.S. imperialism was the root cause of the conflict. The insurgents also helped to demonize the targets of U.S. foreign policy, the PDPA and the Soviet Union, all the while doing the majority of the physical combat in place of the American military. In general, drawing attention away from the fact that it has been the United States “pulling the strings” all along, using proxy forces helps Washington to maintain plausible deniability in regard to its relationship with such groups. If any one of these insurgents becomes a liability, as what had happened with the Taliban, they can just as easily be disposed of and replaced by more competent patsies, while U.S. foreign policy goes unquestioned. Criminal gangs and paramilitary forces are thus ideal and convenient tools for U.S. foreign policy. With the rule of warlords and the instability (namely damage to infrastructure, de-industrialization, and societal collapse) that followed after the toppling of the PDPA, Afghanistan’s standard of living dropped rapidly, leading to forced mass migrations and making the country all the more vulnerable to a more direct U.S. military intervention — which eventually did happen in 2001.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: godfather of colour revolutions and proxy wars, architect of the Mujahideen

The late Brzezinski was a key figure in U.S. foreign policy and a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Polish-American diplomat and political scientist was no longer the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy goals in upholding Washington’s global monopoly. The liberal Cold War ideologue’s signature strategy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. Such is the legacy of Brzezinski, whose strategy of funding the most reactionary anti-government forces to foment chaos and instability while promoting them as “freedom fighters” is now a longstanding staple of U.S. imperialism.

How were the aggressive propaganda campaigns which promoted the Mujahideen mercenaries as “freedom fighters” able to garner support for the aggression against the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from so many on the Western left who had previously opposed the war on Vietnam? It was the through the CIA’s use of ‘soft-power’ schemes, because leftist opinion also needed to be controlled and manipulated in the process of carrying out U.S. foreign and public policy. Brzezinski mastered the art of targeting intelligentsia and impressionable young people in order to make them supportive of U.S. foreign policy, misleading a significant number of people into supporting U.S.-led wars.

The CIA invested money into programs that used university campus, anti-Soviet “radical leftist activists” and academics (as well as artists and writers) to help spread imperialist propaganda dressed up in vaguely “leftist”-sounding language and given a more “hip”, “humanitarian”, “social justice”, “free thinker” appeal. Western, but especially American, academia has since continued to teach the post-modernist “oppression theory” or “privilege theory” to students, which is anti-Marxist and anti-scientific at its core. More importantly, this post-modernist infiltration was meant to distract from class struggle, to help divert any form of solidarity away from anti-imperialist struggles, and to foster virulent animosity towards the Soviet Union among students and anyone with ‘leftist’ leanings. Hence the phenomenon of identity politics that continues to plague the Western left today, whose strength was effectively neutered by the 1970s. Not only that, but as Gowans mentions in his book, Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom:

“U.S. universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them the U.S. imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials which conduce to their landing important political positions at home. In this way, U.S. imperial goals indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries.” (pp. 52-53)

And so we have agencies and think-tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has scholarly appeal and actively interferes in elections abroad — namely, in countries that are targets of U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 1983 by Reagan and directed by the CIA, the agency also assists in mobilizing coups and paid “dissidents” in U.S.-led regime change projects, such as the 2002 failed attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as well as helping to create aggressive media campaigns that demonize targeted nations. Another instance of this “soft power” tactic of mobilizing U.S.-backed “dissidents” in targeted nations are the number of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist madrassas (schools) sponsored by the CIA and set up by Wahhabi missionaries from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan — which started to appear in increasing numbers during the 1980s, reaching over 39,000 during the decade. Afghanistan’s public education institutions were largely secular prior to the fall of Kabul in 1992; these madrassas were the direct, ideological and intellectual antitheses to the existing institutions of education. The madrassas acted as centres for cult-like brainwashing and were essentially CIA covert psychological operations (psy-ops) intended to inspire divisiveness and demobilize younger generations of Afghans in the face of imperial onslaught so that they would not unite with the wider PDPA-led nationalist resistance to imperialism.

The NED’s founding members were comprised of Cold War ideologues which included Brzezinski himself, as well as Trotskyists who provided an endless supply of slurs against the Soviet Union. It was chiefly under this agency, and with direction provided by Brzezinski, that America produced artists, “activists”, academics, and writers who presented themselves as “radical leftists” and slandered the Soviet Union and countries that were aligned with it — which was all part of the process of toppling them and subjugating them to U.S. free market fundamentalism. With Brzezinski having mastered the art of encouraging postmodernism and identity politics among the Western left in order to weaken it, the United States not only had military and economic might on its side but also highly sophisticated ideological instruments to help give it the upper hand in propaganda wars.

These “soft power” schemes are highly effective in masking the brutality of U.S. imperialism, as well as concealing the exploitation of impoverished nations. Marketing the Mujahideen mercenaries as “peace warriors” while demonizing the PDPA and referring to the Soviet assistance as an “invasion” or “aggression” marked the beginning of the regular use of “humanitarian” pretexts for imperialist interventions. The Cold War era onslaught against Afghanistan can thus be seen as the template for the NATO-led regime change projects against Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, which not only involved the use of U.S.-backed proxy forces but also “humanitarian” pretexts being presented in the aggressive propaganda campaigns against the targeted countries. It was not until 2002, however, that then-American UN representative Samantha Powers, as well as several U.S.-allied representatives, would push the United Nations to officially adopt the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine into the Charter — which was in direct contradiction to the law that recognizes the violation of a nation’s sovereignty as a crime. The R2P doctrine was born out of the illegal 78-day NATO air-bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999. And although plans to dismantle Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990s that NATO would begin openly intervening — with more naked aggression — starting with the funding and support for secessionist paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. It then sealed the 1999 destruction of Yugoslavia with with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In addition to the use of terrorist and paramilitary groups as proxy forces which received CIA-training and funding, another key feature of this “humanitarian” intervention was the ongoing demonization campaigns against the Serbs, who were at the centre of a vicious Western media propaganda war. Some of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns — which were tantamount to slander and libel — were the claims that the Serbs were “committing genocide” against ethnic Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign was illegal since it was given no UN Security Council approval or support.

Once again, Brzezinski was not the National Security Advisor during the U.S.-led campaign against Yugoslavia. However, he still continued to wield influence as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a private organization and Wall Street think tank. The Council on Foreign Relations is intertwined with highly influential NGOs who are essentially propaganda mouthpieces for U.S. foreign policy, such as Human Rights Watch, which has fabricated stories of atrocities allegedly committed by countries targeted by U.S. imperialism. Clearly, unmitigated U.S. imperial aggression did not end with the destruction of the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, nor with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War years were a continuation of U.S. imperialism’s scramble for more spheres of influence and global domination; it was also a scramble for what was left of the former ‘Soviet bloc’ and Warsaw Pact. The dismantling of Yugoslavia was, figuratively speaking, the ‘final nail in the coffin’ of whatever ‘Soviet influence’ was left in Eastern Europe.

The demise of the Soviet Union and the “Afghan trap” question

Image on the right: Left to right: former Afghan President Babrak Karmal, and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Karmal took office at around the same time (December 1979) the PDPA requested that Moscow intervene to assist the besieged Afghanistan.

The sabotage and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that only one global hegemon remained, and that was the United States. Up until 1989, the Soviet Union had been the barrier that was keeping the United States from launching a more robust military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as in Central and West Asia. While pulling out did not immediately cause the defeat of Kabul as the PDPA government forces continued to struggle for another three years, Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw Soviet troops arguably had a detrimental impact on Afghanistan for many years to come. Although there was no Soviet military assistance in the last three years of Najibullah’s presidency, Afghanistan continued to receive aid from the USSR, and some Soviet military advisers (however limited in their capacity) still remained; despite the extreme difficulties, and combined with the nation’s still-relatively high morale, this did at least help to keep the government from being overthrown immediately. This defied U.S. expectations as the CIA and the George H.W. Bush administration had believed that the government of Najibullah would fall as soon as Soviet troops were withdrawn. But what really hurt the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s army was when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991; almost as soon as the dissolution happened and Boris Yeltsin (with U.S. backing) took over as Russia’s president, the aid stopped coming and the government forces became unable to hold out for much longer. The U.S. aggression was left unchecked, and to this day Afghanistan has not seen geopolitical stability and has since been a largely impoverished ‘failed state’, serving as a training ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It continues to be an anarchic battleground between rival warlords which include the ousted Taliban and the U.S. puppet government that replaced them.

But, as was already mentioned above, the “Afghan trap” did not, in and of itself, cause the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In that same interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski had this to say in response to the question about setting the “trap”:

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

[Brzezinski]: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Likewise with Cuba and Syria, the USSR had a well-established alliance with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, one of mutual aid and partnership. Answering Kabul’s explicit request for assistance was a deliberate and conscious choice made by Moscow, and it just so happened that the majority of Afghans welcomed it. For any errors that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary at the time, may have made (which do deserve a fair amount of criticism, but are not the focus of this article), the 1979 decision to intervene on behalf of Afghanistan against U.S. imperialism was not one of them. It is true that both the Soviet and the U.S. interventions were military interventions, but the key difference is that the U.S. was backing reactionary forces for the purposes of establishing colonial domination and was in clear violation of Afghan sovereignty. Consider, too, that Afghanistan had only deposed of its king in 1973, just six years before the conflict began. The country may have moved quickly to industrialize and modernize, but it wasn’t much time to fully develop its military defenses by 1979.

Image below: Mikhail Gorbachev accepts the Nobel Peace Prize from George H.W. Bush on October 15, 1990. Many Russians saw this gesture as a betrayal, while the West celebrated it, because he was being awarded for his capitulation to U.S. imperialism in foreign and economic policy.

United States War Crimes. A Historical Review

Other than that, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Soviet Union imploded due to an accumulating number of factors: namely, the gradual steps that U.S. foreign policy had taken over the years to cripple the Soviet economy, especially after the deaths of Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. How Gorbachev responded during the U.S.-led onslaught against Afghanistan certainly helped to exacerbate the conditions that led to the dissolution. After the deaths of Brezhnev and Andropov, the Soviet Union’s economy became disorganized and was being liberalized during much of the 1980s. Not only that, but the Reagan administration escalated the arms race, which intensified after they had scrapped the ‘detente’ that was previously made in the mid-1970s. Even prior to Reagan’s hardline, bombastic rhetoric and escalation against the USSR, the Soviet Union was already beginning to show signs of strain from the arms race during the late-1970s. However, in spite of the economic strains, during the height of the war the organized joint operations between the Soviet army and the Afghan army saw a significant amount of success in pushing back against the Mujahideen with many of the jihadist leaders either being killed or fleeing to Pakistan. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that intervening in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people “did the Soviet Union in.”

In a misguided and ultimately failed attempt to spur economic growth rates, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War by withdrawing military support from allies and pledging cooperation with the United States who promised “peace”. When he embraced Neoliberalism and allowed for the USSR to be opened to the U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy, the Soviet economy imploded and the effects were felt by its allies. It was a capitulation to U.S. imperialism, in other words; and it led to disastrous results not only in Afghanistan, but in several other countries as well. These include: the destruction of Yugoslavia, both wars on Iraq, and the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya. Also, Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe were no longer able to effectively fight back against U.S.-backed colour revolutions; some of them would eventually be absorbed as NATO members, such as Czechoslovakia which was dissolved and divided into two states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Without Soviet Russia to keep it in check, the United States was able to launch an unrestrained series of aggressions for nearly two decades. Because of his decision to withdraw from the arms race altogether, in a vain attempt to transform the Soviet Union into a social democracy akin to those of the Nordic countries, Gorbachev had deprived the Russian army of combat effectiveness by making significant cuts to its defense budget, which is partly why they were forced to evacuate. Not only that, but these diplomatic and military concessions with the United States gave them no benefit in return, hence the economic crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin years. Suffice to say, the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years are not remembered fondly in Russia and many regard Gorbachev as a traitor and Western agent who helped to bring the Soviet Union to its collapse. In more recent years, efforts are being made to assess the actions taken by Gorbachev with regards to Afghanistan; this includes going against and revising the resolution put forth by him which suggested that the USSR intervention was “shameful”.

In short, Afghanistan did not cause the Soviet Union’s demise even if it required large military spending. More accurately: it was Gorbachev’s impulsive decision to quickly discard the planned economy in favour of a market economy in order to appease the United States, who made the false promise that NATO would not expand eastward. If there was a real “trap”, it was this and Gorbachev played right into the hands of U.S. imperialism; and so, the Soviet Union received its devastating blow from the United States in the end — not from a small, minor nation such as Afghanistan which continues to suffer the most from the effects of these past events. For many years, but especially since the end of WWII, the United States made ceaseless efforts to undermine the USSR, adding stress upon stress onto its economy, in addition to the psychological warfare waged through the anti-Soviet propaganda and military threats against it and its allies. Despite any advances made in the past, the Soviet Union’s economy was still not as large as that of the United States. And so, in order to keep pace with NATO, the Soviet Union did not have much of a choice but to spend a large percentage of its GDP on its military and on helping to defend its allies, which included national liberation movements in the Third World, because of the very real and significant threat that U.S. imperialism posed. If it had not spent any money militarily, its demise would most likely have happened much sooner. But eventually, these mounting efforts by U.S. imperialism created a circumstance where its leadership under Gorbachev made a lapse in judgment, reacting impulsively and carelessly rather than acting with resilience in spite of the onslaught.

It should also be taken into account that WWII had a profound impact on Soviet leadership — from Joseph Stalin to Gorbachev — because even though the Red Army was victorious in defeating the Nazis, the widespread destruction had still placed the Soviet economy under an incredible amount of stress and it needed time to recover. Meanwhile, the convenient geographical location of the United States kept it from suffering the same casualties and infrastructural damage seen across Europe and Asia as a result of the Second World War, which enabled its economy to recover much faster and gave it enough time to eventually develop the U.S. Dollar as the international currency and assert dominance over the world economy. Plus, the U.S. had accumulated two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves by 1944 to help back the Dollar; and even if it lost a large amount of the gold, it would still be able to maintain Dollar supremacy by developing the fiat system to back the currency. Because of the destruction seen during WWII, it is understandable that the Soviet Union wanted to avoid another world war, which is why it also made several attempts at achieving some kind of diplomacy with the United States (before Gorbachev outright capitulated). At the same time, it also understood that maintaining its military defenses was important because of the threat of a nuclear war from the United States, which would be much more catastrophic than the Nazis’ military assaults against the Soviet Union since Hitler did not have a nuclear arsenal. This was part of a feat that U.S. imperialism was able to accomplish that ultimately overshadowed British, French, German, and Japanese imperialism, which Brzezinski reveals in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives: an unparalleled military establishment that, by far, had the most effective global reach which allowed the U.S. to “project forces over long distances”, helping it to assert its global domination and impose its “political will”. And what makes the American Empire distinct from the Japanese Empire, British Empire, and other European empires is that one of the bases for its ideology is the socially constructed international hierarchy of nations, and not races as was the case with the other aforementioned empires. This constructed international hierarchy of nations is more effective because it means not only greater expansionism, but also the greater ability to exercise global primacy and supremacy. More specific to Central Asia and the Middle East, the Wahhabist and Salafist groups propped up by the CIA were always intended to nurture sectarianism and discord in order to counter a mass, broad-based united front of nations against imperialism — an example of divide-and-conquer, which is an age-old tradition of empire, except this time with Neoliberal characteristics.

Therefore, the Mujahideen against Afghanistan should not be thought of simply as “the Afghan trap”, but rather as the U.S. subjugation and plundering of West and Central Asia and an important milestone (albeit a cynical one) in shaping its foreign policy with regards to the region for many years to come. If one thing has remained a constant in U.S. foreign policy towards West and Central Asia, it is its strategic partnership with the oil autocracy of Saudi Arabia, which acts as the United States’ steward in safeguarding the profits of American petroleum corporations and actively assists Western powers in crushing secular Arab and Central Asian nationalist resistance against imperialism. The Saudi monarchy would again be called on by the U.S. government in 2011 in Syria to assist in the repeated formula of funding and arming so-called “moderate rebels” in the efforts to destabilize the country. Once again, the ultimate goal in this more recent imperial venture is to contain Russia.

Cold War 2.0? American Supremacy marches on

The present-day anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War era; while anti-communism is not the central theme today, one thing remains the same: the fact that the U.S. Empire is (once again) facing a formidable challenge to its position in the world. After the Yeltsin years were over, and under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s economy eventually recovered and moved towards a more dirigiste economy; and on top of that, it moved away from the NATO fold, which triggered the old antagonistic relationship with the United States. Russia has also decided to follow the global trend of taking the step towards reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, which is no doubt a source of annoyance to the U.S. capitalist class. It seems that a third world war in the near future is becoming more likely as the U.S. inches closer to a direct military confrontation against Russia and, more recently, China. History does appear to be repeating itself. When the government of Bashar al Assad called on Moscow for assistance in fighting against the NATO-backed terrorists, it certainly was reminiscent of when the PDPA had done the same many years before. Thus far, the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to withstand the destabilization efforts carried out by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups and Kurdish militias at the behest of the United States, and has not collapsed as Libya, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan did.

But what often gets overlooked is the repeated Brzezinskist formula of funding highly reactionary forces and promoting them as “revolutionaries” to Western audiences in order to fight governments that defy the global dictatorship of the United States and refuse to allow the West to exploit their natural resources and labour power. As Karl Marx once said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Such a phenomenon is no accident or a mere mistake. The geopolitical instability that followed after the overthrow of the PDPA ensures that no sound, united, and formidable opposition against U.S. imperialism will emerge for an indefinite number of years; and it seems that Libya, where the Brzezinskist-style of regime change also saw success and which is now a hotbed for the slave trade, is on the same path as Afghanistan. This is all a part of what Lenin calls moribund capitalism when he discussed the economic essence of imperialism; and by that, he meant that imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme limit. American global monopoly had grown out of U.S. foreign policy, and it should go without saying that the American Empire cannot tolerate losing its Dollar Supremacy, especially when the global rate of profit is falling. And if too many nations reject U.S. efforts to infiltrate their markets and force foreign finance capital exports onto their economies in order to gain a monopoly over the resources, as well as to exploit the labour of their working people, it would surely spell a sharp decline in American Dollar hegemony. The fact that the United States was willing to go as far as to back mercenaries to attack the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and fight the Soviet Union, as well as to spend billions of dollars on a highly elaborate but effective propaganda campaign, shows a sign of desperation of the American Empire in maintaining its global hegemony.

Since the end of World War II the United States has been, and is by and large still, the overwhelming world-dominating power. It is true that the American Empire is in decline, in light of increasing trends towards “de-Dollarization,” as well as the rise of China and Russia which pose as challenges to U.S. interests. Naturally, Washington will desperately try to cling on to its number one position in the world by accelerating the growth of its global monopolies — whether it is through placing wholly unnecessary tariffs against competitors such as China, or threatening to completely cut Venezuelan and Iranian oil out of the global market — even if it means an increasing drive towards World War III. The current global economic order which Washington elites have been instrumental in shaping over the past several decades reflects the interests of the global capitalist class to such an extent that the working class is threatened with yet another world war despite the unimaginable carnage witnessed during the first two.

When we look back at these historical events to help make sense of the present, we see how powerful mass media can be and how it is used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to manipulate and control public opinion. Foreign policy is about the economic relationships between countries. Key to understanding how U.S. imperialism functions is in its foreign policy and how it carries it out — which adds up to plundering from relatively small or poorer nations more than a share of wealth and resources that can be normally produced in common commercial exchanges, forcing them to be indebted; and if any of them resist, then they will almost certainly be subjected to military threats.

With the great wealth that allowed it to build a military that can “project forces over long distances,” the United States is in a unique position in history, to say the least. However, as we have seen above, the now four decade-long war on Afghanistan was not only fought on a military front considering the psy-ops and the propaganda involved. If anything, the Soviet Union lost on the propaganda front in the end.

From Afghanistan we learn not only of the origins of Al Qaeda, to which the boom in the opioid-addiction epidemic has ties, or why today we have the phenomenon of an anti-Russia Western “left” that parrots imperialist propaganda and seems very eager to see that piece of Cold War history repeat itself in Syria. We also learn that we cannot de-link the events of the 2001 direct U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and what followed from those of 1979; Afghanistan’s colonial-feudal past, its break from that with the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the U.S.-led Mujahideen are all as much of a part of its history (and the Greater Middle East, by extension) as the events of 2001. It cannot be stressed enough that it is those historical conditions, particularly as they relate to U.S. foreign policy, that helped to shape the ongoing conflict today.

Obviously, we cannot undo the past. It is not in the interests of the working class anywhere, in the Global South or in the Global North, to see a third world war happen, as such a war would have catastrophic consequences for everyone — in fact, it could potentially destroy all of humanity. Building a new and revitalized anti-war movement in the imperialist nations is a given, but it also requires a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Without historical context, Western mass media will continue to go unchallenged, weaning audiences on a steady diet of “moderate rebels” propaganda and effectively silencing the victims of imperialism. It is necessary to unite workers across the whole world according to their shared interests in order to effectively fight and defeat imperialism and to establish a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world under socialism. Teaching the working class everywhere the real history of such conflicts as the one in Afghanistan is an important part of developing the revolutionary consciousness necessary to build a strong global revolutionary movement against imperialism.

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Originally published by LLCO.org on March 30, 2019. For the full-length article and bibliography, click here.

Janelle Velina is a Toronto-based political analyst, writer, and an editor and frequent contributor for New-Power.org and LLCO.org. She also has a blog at geopoliticaloutlook.blogspot.com.

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Brzezinski visits Osama bin Laden and other Mujahideen fighters during training.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Janelle Velina, Global Research, 2019

The Bottom of the Barrel

May 03, 2019

by Jimmie Moglia for The Saker Blog

In patient resignation, most of us accept that the web of life is of a mingled yarn, that good and ill go together, that our virtues may shine were it not for our faults – and that our sinfulness would induce despair, were it not redeemed by our virtues or, at least, by some atoning acts of charity or goodness.

Yet there are times when the surrounding prevailing powers of evil unite to reach the bottom of a barrel of perfidy, treason, debasement and viciousness – equally filled with the nauseous and abhorrent distillate of the seven capital sins.

Listing the products of evil would imply a priority among degradations, whereas I weigh the acts equally, and equally their performers.

One such time is now, and I would challenge the historical skeptic, among my twenty-five readers, to prove that it isn’t. For he may say that WW2, or the Vietnam war, or the Iraq war etc. were worse. And that emotion drives our perceptions, that man is but a quintessence of dust, and that a personal internal revolt is sometimes essential to spiritual health, and can create a particular form of relief.

All this may be true, but irrelevant. For the history of man is but the history of time, and each age, epoch or era has distinct characteristics and sometime comparable features, such as commensurable levels of treachery, deceit and mass deception.

Commensurable and in this instance worse. For I rate as treasonous the treason of Julian Assange, the war on Venezuela and the ‘recognition’ of the ‘sovereignty’ of Israel on the Golan Heights by the Trump Cartel.

Hell is empty and all the devils seem to have gathered at the headquarters of the Cartel, along with the train of mental eunuchs, (domestic but also especially notable the English parliament,) ever ready to kiss the devil’s ass – and to gather by repugnant deceit the rewards they could never collect by honest labor.

Its indifference to openly criminal acts shows that the Cartel apparatus is corrupted beyond the common degree of wickedness. And by seemingly unquestioning condescendence, Trump must listen with pride, pleasure and shamelessness to the commands of his masters, mixed with flattering suggestions by the peacocks of the palace.

For whether we call them masters or “deep state” or use any other euphemism, the still uninformed or unaware will find, with a brief search, who owns, directs and controls the banks, the main avenues of communications and censorship, the tools of social media, the educational curricula, and that manufacturer-promoter of vice, referred to as “Hollywood” – whose machinery of persuasion is ever ready to surprise the unawareness of the thoughtless, by promoting, as patterns for imitation, the behavior and values of the dregs of humanity.

For there is a coincidence of interests between and among the deep state, economy, finance, entertainment, official and criminal enterprises, mobs, crime, gangs, cliques, politicians, marauders and plunderers in the global cupola. Where ‘cupola’, a metaphor mediated from architecture, meaning ‘dome’, perfectly conveys the sense of a comprehensive protective environment. An environment that erases the very notion of crime and makes it a property indistinguishable and consubstantial with the business of living.

Somewhere inside the cupola sits the current Trump Cartel, with its mischief and malignity, applied with the utmost acrimony even on people and states that do not hurt the US national interest. Thanks to Julian Assange, for instance, the world learned, or at least had undeniable confirmation, of the crimes committed by the recent US cartels to bring to the world ‘democracy’ and exceptionalism.

Him who commits an odious crime, and tries to hide it, we call a psychopath or a pervert. With the Cartel, claiming that perversion is in the national interest causes an epistemological problem of sufficient magnitude, as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language, a heavier burden than they can be reasonably expected to bear.

As for the Golan Heights, Trump and that minister of Hell, whose sole name blisters my tongue, and whom even the devil should be ashamed to call him a colleague – are a seeming pair of turtle-doves, that cannot live asunder day or night. So much for the so-called “America First” electoral program, which, for logical coherence and intent of adherence, Trump should have printed on toilet paper.

For in the end, the only obvious shared and choral property of the Cartel is a pathetic, disagreeable, ignorant and unjustified arrogance (assuming, but not given, that arrogance can ever be an asset rather than a liability).

The bullying state awes the timorous with violence and the credulous mistake the state’s injustice for law. As if each member of the Cartel were saying, “I am Sir Oracle, and when I open my lips, let no dog bark!” – preaching the imperious doctrine of the necessity of submission, to nations and peoples as old or older than the United States, such as Venezuela in the latest instance.

Furthermore, along with the fetor, the stink and the stench produced by the actors of the Cartel, there has been a concurrent, noticeable and remarkable increase in the power and externations of the already referred-to ‘deep-state,’ a still uncensored term, used to name what cannot be openly said.

And the sharpening of censorship is worldwide. For example, a French judge has just condemned the intellectual Alain Soral to one year in prison for having referred to the “Holocaust” without the expected, mandatory tone of religious guilt and plea for atonement.

Here, by relinquishing her foreign affairs to the Talmudists, rather than being considered an exceptional nation, the United States has turned into an abyss of profound littleness. Which is unfair, because the Zionist Cartel are not, nor they represent, the American people.

In this context, and considering Trump’s pronouncement about the Golan Heights, it is relevant to quote verbatim a public declaration by the leader of the US Senate Democrats. A declaration thunderously applauded by an ecstatic audience, and demonstrating to still potential skeptics, what America stands for, for whom certain “Americans” in the Cartel work, and to whom they pledge their allegiance.

“Schumer comes from the Hebrew word “schowmer”, which means guardian, watchman. My ancestors were guardian of the ghetto-ward of “Jordcoast” in Galicia, and when they came to Ellis Island, they said their name in Yiddish, “Schoimer” and it got written down as “Schumer”

To you I say this. That name was given to me for a reason. For as long as I live, for as long as I have the privilege of serving in the senate from New York , I will unflinchingly, unstintingly, and with all of my strength be “shoumer Israel, a guardian of Israel. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am your “throwel kai (yiddish)” in Israel and America. The Jewish nation lives, now and forever.”

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but after the recent elections, Ukraine has now a Jewish prime minister and a Jewish president. And the oligarch who made this possible, is another Ukrainian Jew (Kolomoisky), with Israeli nationality. Given that speech is one index of a person, the interested reader may get an idea of Kolomoisky’s character by reading the article https://bit.ly/2WklObG – posted in 2015.

And in the next US presidential elections Biden is now an official Democratic contender, who declares to be “proud of being a Zionist”, who wholeheartedly supported all recent wars (for Israel), and who advocates yet another war against Iran.

Furthermore, given that Bernie Sanders is also a presidential contender, Americans may have to choose between the Trump Cartel, the most Zionist among recent administrations, and a presidential ticket made up of an actual Jew with a questionable ideological background, and an extreme Zionist, barely short of conversion.

That the mythical majority of ‘people,’ in whose name the government governs, are demonstrably helpless in changing the political course of events, requires no demonstration. It is already a kind of miracle that the same majority can – at least so far – share ideas among themselves.

Clearly, the stupendous expectations of positive social changes by earlier prophets did not materialize. But no tenderness for disappointed prophecies ought to induce us to disconnect effect and causes.

On the other hand, it is possible to ascribe effects that cannot be disputed, to causes which may be arguably denied. For many are the springs whose waters feed into the river of time. Focusing on some implies disregarding others.

Therefore, unless he only gives history the cold regard of idle curiosity, I suggest to the interested but disagreeing reader to seek alternative interpretations and to remember that a point of view is unavoidably relative.

And to keep in mind that a dogmatic history is neither true nor reliable. Unfortunately, current historical thought has drifted towards dogmatism. How else can we explain that, even in European, self-described ‘democratic’ societies, rational disagreement with the oligarchically-endorsed historical line can bring the disagreer to jail, and/or subject him to harmful penalties. And this, in deference to supreme hypocrisy, to prevent ‘hate’.

Hypocrisy is often but a vice concealed, hence we can easily verify that there is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts.

In selecting the factors that shape an age, including ours, one major influence is its inspiring ideology. In turn, an ideology involves a three-fold dispensation: intellectual, practical and moral.

The intellectual dispensation consists of retaining only facts favorable to the thesis that the ideologue(s) support – often by inventing them, by denying them, and by forgetting or omitting others to prevent them from being known.

In the instance, Assange’s videos showed conclusively the patent, inherent, criminal and undeniable evil of the political-military-ideological machine, at work during the Iraq war and beyond. And later, that the Cartel was, directly and indirectly, arming and supporting the ISIS terrorists it pretended to fight. In this context, Trump’s assertion that “we have declared victory over ISIS” rings like the comic relief inserted into the classical tragedies.

The practical dispensation eliminates the function of debate, disregarding the value of any confutation, however factual and logical. By removing argument, ideology also fabricates its own self-absolving explanations. For example, Venezuela is ‘bad’ because is ‘socialist.’ The Washington Cartel cannot possibly imagine that a nation or people may prefer a more equitable socio-political system to the degraded life of the South-American favelas and the sordid affluence of a tiny minority.

Assange endangered American security, etc. The inadmissibility of confutation prevents any related questions, such as which Americans Assange actually made insecure and why.

The moral dispensation abolishes any notion of good and evil for the ideological players; or rather, ideology becomes the substitute of morals. With Venezuela, the moral waiver enables the pretense that an etero-appointed puppet is the actual ‘president’. And it justifies the carrying out of large-scale criminal and genocidal acts, such as the terrorist cyber and electromagnetic attacks on the electrical and water system of Venezuela and the nefarious economic war on the country.

Ideology finds assistance and fertile ground in the general incuriosity for the facts – leaving free range to sundry pundits, goons and ruffians to popularize the version of the reality they are paid to peddle – or the reality that suits their soul and fills their wallet.

Considering the history of the Western world during the last few hundred years, we may observe that it takes between 30 and 50 years before the effects of a new ideology show themselves in full in the country or regions that produced it.

Examples are: the intervals between the ideology of the Enlightenment and its expression in the French Revolution, – between the European nationalist movements, arisen after the Council of Vienna in 1815, and the actual independence of the new affected countries after 1850, – between the brewing of a communist ideology in Russia in the latter 1800 and the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

At the cost of objectionable over-simplification, here is an outline of the plot and the play on the development of our current prevailing ideology. The world being a stage, and all men and women merely actors, the play includes a prelude, a rising action, a climax and a denouement.

The prelude involves three characters, Freud, his nephew Edward Bernays, and Wilhelm Reich. Freud and Reich, hiding behind their phony pseudo-scientific lingo, were perverts, unable to deal with their own perversion. As a remedy, they tried to prove that everyone else was a pervert too, thereby making their own perversion acceptable. Hence anyone who was not a sex addict or a sodomite, or did not find incest repugnant, was ‘repressed’ and needing ‘liberation’.

Bernays and his associates capitalized on the idea that desires other than actual necessity influence consumption, that sex is an easily manipulated passion, and that attaching a product to the consumer’s sexual passion would induce him to purchase the product.

Reich was the true inspiration, along with Cultural Marxism, of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s. Students facing policemen on campus threw copies of Reich’s books at them. He was born in 1897 into a wealthy family from Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had a private tutor, as was the case with the offspring of the rich, and discovered that the tutor was having an affair with his mother.

In an early article on psychiatry, pretending to write about one of his patients, Reich described himself as torn between two choices. An impulse to use this knowledge to blackmail his mother into having intercourse with him, or to tell his father about her affair with the tutor. Eventually he chose to inform his father and as a consequence of the upheaval in the family, Reich’s mother committed suicide.

Reich then married a patient whom he had seduced, after her parents discovered the relationship. But to justify his own subsequent behavior, he discovered a yet unknown principle of human nature. Namely that sexual morality was a far-reaching historical conspiracy to cripple the psyche of otherwise healthy people.

He also discovered and profitably adopted the idea of using sex as an attention getter for crowds variously indifferent to philosophy. For Freudian-Reichian inspired psychiatry, stripped of its academic gilding and scientific mimicking, is but a narrowed-down branch or pretense of philosophy. And practically a substitute for Catholic confession – where instead of a priest absolving a sinner with a recommendation to repent, a “psychiatrist” absolves a (usually wealthy) patient from any guilt about his sexual mores or perversions, in exchange for big bucks. Freud familiarly called his wealthy patients as “my negroes.”

Reich also got involved in politics but he found that his audience at large was not (yet) ready to accept his view that the problems of the world were due to sexual inhibition. Therefore he had to choose between conforming his drives to the tenets of the current moral order, or attempting to change the world to suit his perversion. He chose to change the world, with foreseeable consequences. He ended his life in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1957.

The rising action in the play is Cultural Marxism, which essentially rejected any kind of moral authority, to be exchanged for a complete abandonment of what were/are usually referred-to as social norms. In some ways Cultural Marxism is/was – with minor adaptation to local circumstances – the implementation of Reich’s idea of a brave new world.

The climax occurs in 1968, in the shape of what has been indifferently called the students’ revolution and/or the sexual revolution. Hence the rise of feminism, abortion on demand, the idea that gender is a “construct”, the same for race, the fierce (and successful) battle for no limits to public pornography, presented as “free speech” etc.

In time a country embodies the ideology it accepted. Our times reflect the ideology that bloomed in the 1960s and 1970s, and its manifest political archetype is/was Bill Clinton, a Wilhelm Reich’s dream come true, and the denouement of the ideological play.

It began when the biography of this future president was ignored or deemed irrelevant. The name of Jennifer Flowers has now probably sunk into the swallowing gulf of oblivion. But in those pre-election times, it came out that Flowers was Clinton’s lover and that he had paid for her abortion. Clinton strenuously denied everything, but Flowers had been sagacious enough to record the call in which Clinton proposed the abortion and made the offer. The call became public and not even Clinton could deny his own voice.

What I think ideologically relevant is not the event, but the implications. Namely, the media, and consequently the public, sanctioned that broad lying by a presidential candidate is irrelevant. Or better, that sexual “liberation” trumps elementary veracity in the highest office of the state. A fact later confirmed in the Lewinsky business, when the senate decided that Clinton’s lying to the nation under oath (“I never had sex with that woman”) was not an impeachable offense. It follows that if sexual liberation is liberation from repression, freedom to lie is liberation from the repression of telling the truth.

Hence – to name but few truths – bomb Serbia and kill thousands because suddenly Albanians had a right to Kosovo, 19 drunkards and drug addicts did 9/11, Saddam had weapons of mass distraction, Libya was a dictatorship to be destroyed, so was Syria, and Guaido’ is the legitimate president of Venezuela.

It has not yet sunk into the consciousness of the White House Cartel that, as of now, absurd lies or lying beyond the absurd can be easily unmasked through alternative non-censored media.

During the latest on-site performance by the US appointed president of Venezuela, Mike Pompeo announced that Maduro was on the point of leaving Venezuela on a plane bound for Cuba, when some unidentified Russians forced him to remain in Caracas – while the US puppet was marching in triumph towards the presidential palace.

The Russian Foreign Minister did not even waste time to respond directly but did so through the new spokeperson of the Kremlin, the attractive Maria Zacharova, who said that Pompeo’s news was the fruit of his imagination. And Maduro, calling on Pompeo via public television said, “Pompeo, come on!” – a diplomatic rendering of “You are a twit”.

John Bolton and Narco Rubio announced that masses of Venezuelan would soon install the puppet in office. The coup had succeeded. But a few hours later, when the coup was proven but a botched attempt at creating chaos and death, Bolton declared that it was not a coup but a demonstration.

In such hands rests the credibility of the American Republic, where all the women are strong, all men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Incidentally, the recent Mueller Report on alleged ‘Russian Collusion’ in the presidential elections of 2016, concluded that there were none. But it contains extended redacted sections, among which, some are said to be transcriptions of the phone-sex that Clinton had with Lewinsky, as recorded by the Russians. Here, unlike with Assange, we can easily envision the possibility of blackmail and the actual real implications for national security.

If this attitude is/was permissible for a head of state, why not for all others? After all, self-control, especially in matters sexual, is a “repression,” an emotional disorder (a la Freud and Reich,) from which the public – and even school children – must be “liberated,” via “sex-education” and transgressive imagery.

But if morality is a form of repression, so is reason. Therefore man is free to become irrational. Once irrational, he is only driven by his appetites, impulses and passions. But when driven by his passions he can’t control his actions –

and, in the end, as Plato predicted, this type of freedom becomes a sort of slavery.

The victim of the ideology does not realize that “sexual freedom” is a form of social control, because his reason, which previously prompted his actions, has been replaced by his passions. Consequently, pornography and the Hollywood-produced sewage, rather than expressions of sexual freedom, are actually tools of social control. For those who profit financially from promoting pornography, will contribute to elect those who will protect them politically. Hence the link between the “liberated” consumer, his financial exploiters and the political system that protects the exploiters and strengthen their exploitation.

Reich thought that sex repression led to totalitarianism – it’s actually the reverse. The sex revolution associated with the Bolshevik Revolution led to Stalin. In fact, the disruption and destruction of the family that followed the Bolshevik-inspired sex revolution created such a social chaos as to threaten the very existence of the state. Lenin himself issued commands to reverse the course and soon Russian political commissars spoke like Catholic priests. In Germany, the sex freedom and excesses of the Weimar Republic led to Hitler.

We could describe the current neo-liberal philosophy – with the accompanying explosion of inequality, the race to the bottom, the loss of political interest in evened-out economic progress and in the general welfare – a form of soft totalitarianism. Soft because iconic representative figures (like Hitler or Stalin), are no longer needed at the end of history.

Many still attribute the phenomenon to the dissolution of the Soviet Union – when grievances in the West, arising from excessive inequality, would have found support among the Soviet enemy, and now lo longer could. Maybe, but it could be argued that the ideological upheaval brought about by the “sexual revolution” – epitomized by licensing a president to lie, because it was “only” about sex – shifted the priorities. Which, broadly speaking, are now same-sex marriage, transgenderism, homosexual rights, lowering the age of consent, should pedophilia be still a crime, and debates on whether gender is but a construct, whether races are a fascist invention, and how late should abortion be allowed.

To be fair, there have been efforts at bringing attention to the growing inequality – but they have been weak and uninspiring, at least in America.

In Europe, movements in Greece and Spain have practically suffered the same fate. Or rather, their initial plan, based on passive revolution, has converted into active immobilism.

The French Gilets Jaunes, so far, have proven to be different. They discovered that in a world converted into a fiscal paradise for the rich, it is natural that the fiscal burden be borne by all others. To which is added the cost of feeding, lodging, health-care, policing and administering millions of third-world migrants, pushed into Europe and America as part of the war against Western Culture and against Christian Civilization at large. Of that war we know the generals and the strategists, though we are not supposed to.

The outcome of the Gilets Jaunes movement is unknown. The forces of reaction are waging a hybrid war against them. It consists of violence, maiming, blinding and limbs severance. It includes the injection of (presumably hired) anarchists among the demonstrators, to cause counterproductive damage to property, palpable havoc among the citizenry and natural fear among the timid.

But unlike other reformers that I know of, the Gilets Jaunes have identified a paradox of any potential large-scale reformation. Namely, that appointing and electing a leader narrows or compromises the choices and direction of reform. For this reason, as of now, they still have none.

For they may remember that the pain of the people triggered the French Revolution. And that by the time the Revolution had its most notorious leader, Robespierre, it had turned into terror. Then another leader, Napoleon, put an end to the terror, and to relieve the original pain of the people, he converted them into conscripted soldiers sending them to die throughout Europe.

How the Gilets Jaunes will resolve the paradox is unknown, but the original inspirers of the movement have at least recognized the challenge.

In a similar spirit, I conclude with an unanswered question: does an ideology develop spontaneously, or is it the product of more-or-less occult groups that have a specific self-serving objective? In my view the question suggests a detective story without a clear solution, because reality itself is also a mystery.

“People Who Never had a Voice Now Have One and will Never Give it up Again”

Interview with Venezuelan in Canada

*re-published at Global Research

Eva Bartlett 

On April 25th, I gave a talk on some of what I had seen in Venezuela, March-April, sharing photos and clips–with an emphasis of allowing people to hear voices our media generally silences or pretends don’t exist.

In Q & A, the issue of discrimination and racism in Venezuela was raised. This eloquent Venezuelan musician replied to the question so articulately, and disturbingly, that I asked him to re-address it on camera after the event.

Do listen to his words not only on the racism that still exists (not only in Venezuela but in media portrayal of Venezuelans), that in the 80s there actually was a crisis, unlike today, and that the people won’t let their revolution end.

Excerpts:

“In 1999, for the 1st time every in any country in South America, a law was passed to not discriminate against people of colour. People that never had a voice now have one and will never give it up again. You can go to the remotest area in my country and everybody can read. Everybody knows their rights and knows that their voice counts.” <!–more CONTINUE READING–>

“In Venezuela, its a racism that’s very alive, but hidden under class status. When you come to Canada, you just don’t see Venezuelans that look like me, at all. Or even if you go to the States, anywhere you go, you’re not gonna see Venezuelans that look like me.”

“What the Canadian public, the American public and the international community are watching is a huge Hollywood show.”

“I have a challenge for anyone in the opposition to simply answer one question: What would they do different? What is their plan? If they’re planning to go back to those great old days (sarcasm), the people are not having it. Two million militias, old people, young people, everybody knows what the United States is doing. My mother is 70, she’s about to join the militia!”

تفجيرات سريلانكا الأميركية وحرب المضائق والخلجان

أبريل 26, 2019

محمد صادق الحسيني

سيظلّ الحدث السيرلانكي حاضراً في المشهد الإعلامي العالمي إلى حين استكمال واشنطن لعبتها الهوليودية القذرة في أعالي البحار في إطار حربها المفتوحة على الكبار من إيران الى روسيا والصين…!

فمما لا يخفى على أيّ متابع للشأن السياسي بشكل عام، وللحملة الأميركية الإسرائيلية ضدّ إيران وحزب الله بشكل خاص خلال الأيام القليلة الماضية، إلا أن يقرأ تصريحات وزير الخارجية الأميركي، مايك بومبيو، والتي أطلق من خلالها سلسلة تهديدات، ضدّ كلّ الدول التي تكسر قرار الولايات المتحده القاضي بفرض حصار شامل على إيران، على انها التصريحات قنابل صوتية للتغطية على الفعل الحقيقي الذي اقترفته الإدارة الاميركية، عبر أدواتها التكفيرية المتطرفة، في سريلانكا هذه المرة في عيد الفصح المجيد عند الطوائف المسيحية الكاثوليكية في العالم، الحدث الذي لا يزال مستمراً…!

فعلى الرغم من خطورة تصريحات مايك بومبيو إلا أنه يعلم تماماً أنها غير قابلة للتطبيق، وذلك لأنّ إيران قادرة على منع ذلك، خاصة أنّ الولايات المتحده قد استدركت القرار من خلال إصدار سلسلة من الاستثناءات، لدول وهيئات ومؤسسات دولية، تعفيها من العقوبات في حال تعاملت مع الحرس الثوري الإيراني، الذي سرعان ما هدّد بإغلاق مضيق هرمز إذا ما أقدمت الولايات المتحدة على فرض إجراءات لوقف تصدير النفط الإيراني.

الأمر الذي ردّت عليه الولايات المتحدة بصيغة باهتة جاء فيها انّ هذا التهديد غير مبرّر وغير مقبول…!

فأين عنجهية وصلف الولايات المتحدة في مثل هذه الحالات…!؟ بالإضافة إلى انّ هذه التصريحات لا تحمل أيّ جديد وذلك لأنها تكرار للسياسة الأميركية، من فرض الحصار والعقوبات على إيران، المتبعة أصلاً منذ أربعين عاماً ضدّ هذا البلد الصامد…

هذا كما انّ اتفاق بومبيو مع السعودية لزيادة إنتاجها من النفط ليصل الى 14 مليون برميل يومياً لن يؤدّي الى أيّ نتيجة بسبب قدرة إيران على منع السعودية من رفع حجم صادراتها النفطية، حتى لو استطاعت رفع الإنتاج من الناحية الفنية، وذلك عبر سلسلة إجراءات إيرانية ميدانية سيتمّ تطبيقها في الوقت المناسب…

انها صورة جلية عن العجز والوهن الأميركيين…!

لكن الولايات المتحدة هذه، ورغم عجزها هذا، تواصل العمل على إشعال الحروب الأهلية والصراعات المسلحة، فها هي تطلق بؤرة توتر دولية جديدة في شبه القارة الهندية، وذلك عبر إعطاء الضوء الأخضر لمجموعات التطرف والإرهاب المتنقلة، والتي تشرف على إعادة تدويرها وتشغيلها الأجهزة الأمنية والعسكرية الأميركية، وذلك خدمة لأهداف استراتيجية أميركية على الصعيد الدولي.

فما هي هذه الأهداف الأميركية المتوخاة من وراء التفجيرات التي حصلت في عيد الفصح ولا تزال في سريلانكا، وذهب ضحيتها أكثر من ألف قتيل وجريح؟

ويبدو أنّ المستهدف الرئيسي كانت الكنائس الكاثوليكية في البلاد… وهذا ما يجعل الأهداف الاميركية من وراء ذلك تتمثل في ما يلي:

1 ـ السعي لإشعال حرب أهلية طائفية بين مكونات الشعب السريلانكي، الذي يبلغ تعداده 21 مليون نسمه، منهم 70 من البوذيين، و12 من الهندوس، إلى جانب 10 من المسلمين، و 8 من المسيحيين مليون ومائتي ألف مسيحي .

2 ـ يكمن الهدف الأميركي من وراء ذلك في خلق الظروف الملائمة لتدخل عسكري أميركي يفضي إلى إقامة قواعد عسكرية، جوية وبحرية، في هذا البلد الذي يتمتع بموقع استراتيجي غاية في الأهمية.

إذ انّ هذا البلد يقع على مدخل خليج البنغال، الذي تمرّ من جنوبه باتجاه الشرق، الطريق البحري المؤدّي الى مضيق مالاقا Strait of malacca ، الموصل الى بحر الصين الجنوبي. ما يعني تمكن الولايات المتحدة، في حال إقامتها لقواعد عسكرية في سريلانكا، من التحكم المباشر بحركة الملاحة البحرية عبر هذا المضيق وهو ما يعني تهديد حركة الملاحة البحرية الصينية، سواء كانت مدنية او عسكرية.

3 ـ كما تعني إقامة قواعد جوية وبحرية أميركية في سريلانكا تعزيزاً هاماً في عمليات الحشد الاستراتيجي الأميركي البعيد المدى ضدّ الصين. إذ انّ إقامة مثل هذه القواعد سيعزز قدرات القاعدة الجوية الاستراتيجية الأميركية في دييغو غارسيا في المحيط الهندي وذلك عبر إقامة قواعد أكثر قرباً الى الصين مما يشكل ميزة استراتيجية للولايات المتحدة في هذا الجزء من العالم.

4 ـ مواصلة الضغط على الهند شمالاً والتي تعتبرها واشنطن حليفاً لروسيا في الاصطفافات العالمية رغم صداقاتها الإسرائيلية التجارية وغير التجارية…

5 ـ أيضاً وأيضاً محاولة عرقلة خط الطاقة الاستراتيجي الصيني الذي تمرّ خطوطه من وسط خليج البنغال، وهو الطريق الذي اختارته الصين منذ مدة لنقل احتياجاتها النفطية عبره الى الأراضي الصينية الأكثر حاجة للتنمية المستدامة إضافة لكونه من خطوط مشروع طريق واحد حزام واحد الصيني الشهير…!

6 ـ يأتي كلّ هذا في إطار حرب المضائق والخلجان التي تخوضها الولايات المتحدة الأميركية وأذنابها الصغار من جبل طارق إلى باب المندب وهرمز امتداداً إلى أعالي البحار غرباً وشرقاً…! ورغم كلّ ذلك فإنّ سياسة واشنطن هذه تسارع الخطى للاصطدام بأسوار المقاومة العربية والإسلامية والعالمية من جبال الأطلس الكبير وصولاً إلى سور الصين العظيم.

بعدنا طيبين قولوا الله…

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The United States Is the Most Corrupt Country in the World

The United States Is the Most Corrupt Country in the World

by Juan Cole /

John M. Cropper / CC BY-NC 2.0

The United States fell six places to a ranking of only 22 in Transparency International’s list of countries by corruption. Under Donald Trump, America is not in the top 20 for fair dealing.

But as I have argued before, the United States is the most corrupt country in the world and should be ranked 194, not 22. What follows is a much-revised version of my popular list.

Transparency International

 

Obviously, the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Treasury would not give corporations impunity for obtaining contracts by bribery, and it is this sort of scrupulousness that the Transparency International list is rewarding. And Americans don’t have to bribe government officials, as is true in many countries (though, to be fair to the government officials, they typically demand bribes because their governments don’t pay them a living wage).

But in all sorts of ways, U.S. corruption is off the charts, and because the U.S. is still the No. 1 economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product, massive corruption here has a global impact.

Here are the top signs that the U.S. is the most corrupt country in the world:

1. The U.S. is so corrupt that our ruling Republican Party would even deny human-made climate change and adopt pro-carbon policies inexorably destined to wreck the planet earth, all to ensure a few extra years of profits for dirty coal companies and oil giants like ExxonMobil.

Americans are now finally waking up from the 30 years of mesmerized unreality into which Big Carbon and its willing henchmen in the U.S. government had cast them. But nothing of any significance is being done by the federal government on the climate emergency, and the real leaders are states like California. Americans do not realize how peculiar their climate dementia is. No government in Europe openly denies human-made climate change through the burning of fossil fuels and the lodging of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, however lackadaisical some of them are about addressing the problem.

The Chinese Communist Party is more realistic than the U.S. government, and is making a full-court press to move to green energy. Germany, the fourth-largest economy, has announced the end of coal. Britain gets a third of its electricity from wind, and coal provides only 2 percent of British electricity—an achievement of less than a decade.

Only the dodo birds of the sneakily misnamed Australian Liberal Party are still vehemently pro-coal and shrilly denying the plain science of greenhouse gases.

2. Our government is so corrupt that the Environmental Protection Agency has not only ceased protecting the environment, it has become a cheerleader for polluting industries, gutting any regulation that might stand in the way of making a little extra money at the expense of, like, killing people. Its current head is a former coal industry lobbyist! The EPA has decided to back coal plants and to remove the annoyance of government regulations interfering with their spewing mercury into the air. Mercury is a nerve poison, and it concentrates at the top of the food chain (i.e., in us). The Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland” was driven crazy by using his hands to put mercury on the brim of felt hats so as to straighten them. Continual exposure to mercury damages your neural system.

3. The U.S. government is so corrupt that it is winking at the murder by Saudi authorities of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, almost certainly at the order of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And the grounds which the president of the United States gave for his insouciance at the deployment of a bone saw on the hapless scribbler were that he did not want to endanger Saudi arms purchases from and investments in the United States. This response is the very definition of corruption. Saudi Arabia is bribing the U.S. government to ignore a vicious murder of a high-profile journalist whose children are American citizens and who wrote for the Washington paper of record. You can tell all this is corrupt by just imagining what the response would be in Washington if Iran were discovered carving up a dissident in a consulate with a bone saw.

4. The U.S. is so corrupt (audience: “How corrupt is it?”) that the Senate has allowed a bill to come to the floor, introduced by Marco “Benedict Arnold” Rubio, that approves of individual states excluding vendors and contractors who boycott Israel. Although Rubio, Gary Peters, Ron Wyden and other backers of the bill maintain that it does not affect freedom of speech, it actually guts freedom of speech. We university lecturers who speak on other campuses are considered contractors, and people will be prevented from giving talks at the University of Texas, for example, by such laws. The law is unconstitutional and will be struck down if the U.S. judiciary still has a modicum of integrity. But the law was passed in order to uphold the Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank and the sentencing of Palestinians to being stateless and helpless and without rights. And it was worked up in the shadows in coordination with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (i.e., of propaganda), with the backing of pro-squatter fanatics such as sleazy casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has been accused of making his pile, in part, by bribing members of the Chinese Communist Party to let him open a lucrative casino in Macau. The senators have brought this bill to the floor, despite its being a poison pill for the U.S. Constitution, because they are in the back pocket of the Israel lobbies, which help fund their political campaigns. (I hasten to add that most American Jews do not approve of these shenanigans.)

In other words, the senators are acting this way because they are being bribed by a sliver of corrupt American businesspeople, who in turn are virulent partisans of a foreign state, or by U.S. evangelicals, who have an irrational hope that the final solution of the Palestinian problem will provoke the return of Christ. The important thing is that U.S. electoral politics is an elaborate system of bribery, for which even the Constitution itself is not sacrosanct.

5. A sure sign of corruption is an electoral outcome like that of 2016. An addled nonentity like Donald Trump got filthy rich via tax loopholes and predatory behavior in his casinos and other businesses, and then was permitted to buy the presidency with his own money. He was given billions of dollars in free campaign time every evening on CNN, MSNBC, Fox and other channels that should have been more even-handed, because they were in search of advertising dollars and Trump was a good draw. Then, too, the way the Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open, unlimited secret buying of elections is the height of corruption. The permitting of massive black money in our elections was taken advantage of by the Russian Federation, which, having hopelessly corrupted its own presidential elections, managed to further corrupt the American ones as well. Once ensconced in power, Trump Inc. has taken advantage of the power of White House to engage in a wide range of corrupt practices, including an attempt to sell visas to wealthy Chinese and the promotion of the Trump brand as part of diplomacy.

6. The rich are well-placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich. The Koch brothers and other megarich troglodytes explicitly told Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan in 2017 that if the Republican Party, controlling all three branches of government, could not lower taxes on its main sponsors, there would be no billionaire backing of the party in the 2018 midterms. This threat of an electoral firing squad made the hundreds of bribe-takers in Congress sit up and take notice, and they duly gave away to the billionaire class $1.5 trillion in government services (that’s what federal taxes are, folks—services, such as roads, schools, health inspections, implementation of anti-pollution laws), things that everyone benefits from and that won’t be there any more. To the extent that the government will try to continue to provide those slashed services despite assessing no taxes on the people with the money to pay for them, it will run up an enormous budget deficit and weaken the dollar, which is a form of inflation in the imported-goods sector. Inflation hits the poor the worst. As it stands, 3 American billionaires are worth as much as the poorest 150 million Americans. That kind of wealth inequality hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since the age of the robber barons in the 19th century. Both eras are marked by extreme corruption.

7. One sign of American corruption is the rapidity with which American society has become more unequal since the 1980s Reagan destruction of the progressive income tax. The wealthier the top 1 percent is, the more politicians it can buy to gather up even more of the country’s wealth. In my lifetime, the top 1 percent has gone from holding 25 percent of the privately held wealth under President Eisenhower to over 38 percent today. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right that we need to much increase the top marginal tax rate, and we need to tax unearned income as well.

8. The U.S. military budget is bloated and enormous, bigger than the military budgets of the next 12 major states. What isn’t usually realized is that perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services, not on the military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. I’ve seen with my own eyes how officers in the military get out and then form companies to sell things to their former colleagues still on the inside. Precisely because it is a cesspool of large-scale corruption, Trump’s budget will throw over $100 billion extra taxpayer dollars at it.

9. The U.S. has a vast gulag of 2.2 million prisoners in jails and penitentiaries. There is an increasing tendency for prisons to be privatized, and this tendency is corrupting the system.  It is wrong for people to profit from putting and keeping human beings behind bars. This troubling trend is made all the more troubling by the move to give extra-long sentences for minor crimes, to deny parole and to imprison people for life for, for example, three small thefts.

10. Asset forfeiture in the “drug war” is corrupting police departments and the judiciary. Although some state legislatures are dialing this corrupt practice back, it is widespread and a danger to the Constitution.

So don’t tell the Global South how corrupt it is for taking a few petty bribes. Americans are not seen as corrupt because we only deal in the big denominations. Steal $2 trillion and you aren’t corrupt, you’re respectable.

Juan Cole / Informed Comment

Juan Cole

Contributor

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the proprietor of the Informed Comment e-zine. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in…

In this article:

Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro flashes victory signs, declaring he will prevail amid a “coup,” during a press conference at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday. (Ariana Cubillos / AP)

On Friday, The New York Times continued its long, predictable tradition of backing U.S. coups in Latin America by publishing an editorial praising Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This will be the 10th such coup the paper has backed since the creation of the CIA over 70 years ago.

A survey of The New York Times archives shows the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America, with two editorials—those involving the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 2009 Honduras coup—ranging from ambiguous to reluctant opposition. The survey can be viewed here.

Covert involvement of the United States, by the CIA or other intelligence services, isn’t mentioned in any of the Times’ editorials on any of the coups. Absent an open, undeniable U.S. military invasion (as in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada), things seem to happen in Latin American countries entirely on their own, with outside forces rarely, if ever, mentioned in the Times. Obviously, there are limits to what is “provable” in the immediate aftermath of such events (covert intervention is, by definition, covert), but the idea that the U.S. or other imperial actors could have stirred the pot, funded a junta or run weapons in any of the conflicts under the table is never entertained.

More often than not, what one is left with, reading Times editorials on these coups, are racist, paternalistic “cycle of violence” cliches. <i>Sigh, it’s just the way of things Over There.</i> When reading these quotes, keep in mind the CIA supplied and funded the groups that ultimately killed these leaders:

• Brazil 1964: “They have, throughout their history, suffered from a lack of first class rulers.”
• Chile 1973: “No Chilean party or faction can escape some responsibility for the disaster, but a heavy share must be assigned to the unfortunate Dr. Allende himself.”
• Argentina 1976: “It was typical of the cynicism with which many Argentines view their country’s politics that most people in Buenos Aires seemed more interested in a soccer telecast Tuesday night than in the ouster of President Isabel Martinez de Perlin by the armed forces. The script was familiar for this long‐anticipated coup.”

See, it didn’t matter! It’s worth pointing out the military junta put in power by the CIA-contrived coup killed 10,000 to 30,000 Argentines from 1976 to 1983.

There’s a familiar script: The CIA and its U.S. corporate partners come in, wage economic warfare, fund and arm the opposition, then the target of this operation is blamed. This, of course, isn’t to say there isn’t merit to some of the objections being raised by The New York Times—whether it be Chile in 1973 or Venezuela in 2019. But that’s not really the point. The reason the CIA and U.S. military and its corporate partisans historically target governments in Latin America is because those governments are hostile to U.S. capital and strategic interests, not because they are undemocratic. So while the points the Times makes about illiberalism may sometimes be true, they’re mostly a non sequitur when analyzing the reality of what’s unfolding.

Did Allende, as the Times alleged in 1973 when backing his violent overthrow, “persist in pushing a program of pervasive socialism” without a “popular mandate”? Did, as the Times alleged, Allende “pursue this goal by dubious means, including attempts to bypass both Congress and the courts”? Possibly. But Allende’s supposed authoritarianism isn’t why the CIA sought his ouster. It wasn’t his means of pursuing redistributive policies that offended the CIA and U.S. corporate partners; it was the redistributive policies themselves.

Hand-wringing over the anti-democratic nature of how Allende carried out his agenda without noting that it was the agenda itself—not the means by which it was carried out—that animated his opponents is butting into a conversation no one in power is really having. Why, historically, has The New York Times taken for granted the liberal pretexts for U.S. involvement, rather than analyzing whether there were possibly other, more cynical forces at work?

The answer is that rank ideology is baked into the premise. The idea that the U.S. is motivated by human rights and democracy is taken for granted by The New York Times editorial board and has been since its inception. This does all the heavy lifting without most people—even liberals vaguely skeptical of American motives in Latin America—noticing that a sleight of hand has taken place. “In recent decades,” a 2017 Times editorial scolding Russia asserted, “American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy, sometimes with extraordinary results.” Oh, well, good then.

What should be a conversation about American military and its covert apparatus unduly meddling in other countries quickly becomes a referendum on the moral properties of those countries. Theoretically a good conversation to have (and one certainly ongoing among people and institutions in these countries), but absent a discussion of the merits of the initial axiom—that U.S. talking heads and the Washington national security apparatus have a birthright to determine which regimes are good and bad—it serves little practical purpose stateside beyond posturing. And often, as a practical matter, it works to cement the broader narrative justifying the meddling itself.

Do the U.S. and its allies have a moral or ethical right to determine the political future of Venezuela? This question is breezed past, and we move on to the question of how this self-evident authority is best exercised. This is the scope of debate in The New York Times—and among virtually all U.S. media outlets. To ante up in the poker game of Serious People Discussing Foreign Policy Seriously, one is obligated to register an Official Condemnation of the Official Bad Regime. This is so everyone knows you accept the core premises of U.S. regime change but oppose it on pragmatic or legalistic grounds. It’s a tedious, extortive exercise designed to shift the conversation away from the United States’ history of arbitrary and violent overthrows and into an exchange about how best to oppose the Official Bad Regime in question. U.S. liberals are to keep a real-time report card on these Official Bad Regimes, and if these regimes—due to an ill-defined rubric of un-democraticness and human rights—fall below a score of say, “60,” they become illegitimate and unworthy of defense as such.

While obviously not in Latin America, it’s also worth noting that the Times cheerled the CIA-sponsored coup against Iran’s President, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. Its editorial, written two days after his ouster, engaged in the Times’ patented combination of victim-blaming and “oh dear” bloviating:

• “The now-deposed Premier Mossadegh was flirting with Russia. He had won his phony plebiscite to dissolve the Majlis, or lower House of Parliament, with the aid of the Tudeh Communists.”
• “Mossadegh is out, a prisoner awaiting trial. It is a credit to the Shah, to whom he was so disloyal, and to Premier Zahedi, that this rabid, self-seeking nationalist would have been protected at a time when his life would not have been worth the wager of a plugged nickel.”
• “The Shah … deserves praise in this crisis. … He was always true to the parliamentary institutions of his country, he was a moderating influence in the wild fanaticism exhibited by the nationalists under Mossadegh, and he was socially progressive.”

Again, no mention of CIA involvement (which the agency now openly acknowledges), which the Times wouldn’t necessarily have had any way of knowing at the time. (This is part of the point of covert operations.) Mossadegh is summarily demonized, and it’s not until decades later the public learns of the extent of U.S. involvement. The Times even gets in an orientalist description of Iranians, implying why a strong Shah is necessary:

<blockquote>[The average Iranian] has nothing to lose. He is a man of infinite patience, of great charm and gentleness, but he is also—as we have been seeing—a volatile character, highly emotional, and violent when sufficiently aroused. </blockquote>

Needless to say, there are major difference between these cases: Mossadegh, Allende, Chavez and Maduro all lived in radically different times and championed different policies, with varying degrees of liberalism and corruption. But the one thing they all had in common is that the U.S. government, and a compliant U.S. media, decided they “needed to go” and did everything to achieve this end. The fundamental arrogance of this assumption, one would think, is what ought to be discussed in the U.S. media—as typified by the Times’ editorial board—but time and again, this assumption is either taken for granted or hand-waved away, and we all move on to how and when we can best overthrow the Bad Regime.

For those earnestly concerned about Maduro’s efforts to undermine the democratic institutions of Venezuela (he’s been accused of jailing opponents, stacking the courts and holding Potemkin elections), it’s worth pointing out that even when the liberal democratic properties of Venezuela were at their height in 2002 (they were internationally sanctioned and overseen by the Carter Center for years, and no serious observer considers Hugo Chavez’s rule illegitimate), the CIA still greenlit a military coup against Chavez, and the New York Times still profusely praised the act. As it wrote at the time:

<blockquote>With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona. </blockquote>

Chavez would soon be restored to power after millions took to the streets to protest his removal from office, but the question remains: If The New York Times was willing to ignore the undisputed will of the Venezuelan people in 2002, what makes anyone think the newspaper is earnestly concerned about it in 2019? Again, the thing that’s being objected to by the White House, the State Department and their U.S. imperial apparatchiks is the redistributive policies and opposition to the United States’ will, not the means by which they do so. Perhaps the Times and other U.S. media—living in the heart of, and presumably having influence over, this empire—could try centering this reality rather than, for the millionth time, adjudicating the moral properties of the countries subject to its violent, illegitimate whims

Just how corrupt is the American soul?

Just how corrupt is the American soul?

By Lawrence Davidson

Debunking the “noble American soul”

In an oped piece published in AlJazeeera on 15 November 2018, Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi challenges the widespread assumption that “the American soul is something quintessentially good and even noble”. He goes on to point out that most of those who hold this view also believe that President Donald Trump and his policies and practices cannot possibly be representative of real American values.

Dabashi’s position is that both of these idealistic beliefs are nothing but historical delusions. “We may, in fact, be hard pressed to find a single moment in American history when hateful racism, sexism, militarism and xenophobia have not been entirely definitive to this American soul.” In addition, “those who view President Donald Trump as unrepresentative of American values are wrong”. In Dabashi’s view, this president’s policies and practices are indeed who we are.

It is the liberals who Dabashi is particularly upset with for it is they who, in his view, have reinforced the facade of national goodness and held at bay, or perhaps simply ignored, any critical examination of this self-glorifying image. For instance, Dabashi notes that, while campaigning against Trump in the lead-up to the recent mid-term elections, Barack Obama asserted that “we [the US] helped spread a commitment to certain values and principles like the rule of law and human rights and democracy and the notion of the inherent dignity and worth of every individual”.

Dabashi is having none of this. More often than not both Republicans and Democrats have “identically” supported dictators and the brutalisation of entire populations. He notes that Obama is the president who “who gave billions of dollars to Israel to slaughter Palestinians with ease.” In terms of foreign policy, almost every president preceeding Obama has acted in the same culpable way, or worse.

Dabashi goes on to point out that the Democratic Party, the political party now opposing President Trump, is a “structurally corrupt” organisation that is adverse to really basic change and so “it is crucial for us not to fall into the trap of thinking the enemies of the Trumpian loonies are the friends of any progressive politics”. In fact, it is Dabashi’s opinion that the United States is not, as the liberals say, “a divided country”. It is rather an “unmistakably racist, sexist, xenophobic and violent country obsessed with domestic gun violence and foreign conquest with a few pockets of wishy-washy liberal resistance here or there.”

Qualifications

Is Professor Dabashi correct? Well, in terms of foreign policy there can be no doubt that he is. Such claims that the US has made a project of spreading democracy, the rule of law and the “dignity of the individual” are historically untrue, and I agree with his reaction of disgust when he hears such unfounded claims coming out of the mouth of someone like Barack Obama.

Domestically, despite a history of “corporate corruption” in politics, the picture is more complicated. Dabashi himself suggests that this is so. He tells us that “there is nothing in the DNA or “blood” of any people, Americans included, that makes them constitutionally susceptible to latent and blatant fascism. Millions upon millions of Americans gathered around the most progressive figure in recent US politics, Bernie Sanders, in the hope of liberating themselves from the shackles of this gridlock of corrupt corporate politics. Such efforts at “liberation” through significant progressive efforts is not confined to the Sanders movement. There was, of course, the seminal civil rights movement of the 1960s – supported at that time by many Democrats and Republicans alike.

So it is not literally true that, domestically, there is not “a single moment in history” when America has not acted from the corrupt motives of racism, sexism, etc. However, I will go along with Dabashi as far as saying that America’s progressive moments are historically the exception. That is, they are reactions to an otherwise regressive norm.

There are some additional contextualising observations that can be made about this imbalance between the uncivilised and the civilised.

— The uncivilised attitudes and practices we find dominating United States history are certainly not uniquely American. In one form or another, they are probably universal and, in the era of the nation state, magnified by just how much power a nation possesses, how prevalent are minorities within its population, and how strong are its political and / or religious ideologies. There is always a wide range of denials and / or rationalisations that are used to turn the inexcusable into the excused.

— In every case populations are held captive by remarkably effective, long-term brainwashing convincing them of the acceptability of their culturally inbred sins. This is how the nonsense of exceptionalism and noble national souls can be so convincing.

— In most instances, it is probably the case that the leaders are as delusional true believers as the populace.

These observations only reinforce Dabashi’s bleak picture. In fact, it looks like we are all stuck in an age-old self-destructive rut. The classic conservative explanation for this is that it is due to the unchanging “evil” quality of human nature. But then how does one account for the humanitarian moments – are they somehow in defiance of human nature? That does not sound right.

Hope?

It is hard for those Americans, particularly those of colour, who understand the “dark side” of the “American soul”, to lend much credence to the moments of humanitarian idealism that arrive periodically on the historical scene.

But these moments do come around, and not just in the case of the US. For instance, there was the remarkable effort to spread international law following the debacle that was World War II. And, one might hope against hope that these humanitarian moments represent the accumulation of precedents that may underpin a better future.

However, as Professor Dabashi’s lament implies, history is not on our side (even now international law is being eroded away) and thus the prospect of a better future entails never-ending struggle. Nonetheless, as long as things like civil rights and international law are possibilities we can’t give up on them. I certainly don’t think that giving up is Dabashi’s intent. He just doesn’t want a bad situation denied based on delusional propaganda. Shaking loose from that propaganda is an essential first step – and perhaps, the hardest.

‘Trump’s incoherence is too much — and it’s getting worse’

Source

The writer of this piece, Jennifer Rubin–

Is a lying, warmongering, Jewish supremacist gangstress and NeoCon Israel firster who played an indispensable role in ‘selling’ Americans into drinking the koolaid by signing away their tax money, freedoms, and the blood of their children in the form of George Bush’s ‘war on terror’, otherwise known as the ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christianity and Islam. She–working alongside confreres with names such as Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Eliot Cohen, etc–have been relentless in their attempt at ‘selling’ the American people into drinking the koolaid AGAIN in the form of impeaching/removing an American President who is pushing for a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian situation and who has made it clear that he wants no more wars for Israel.

We are forced to point this out due to the depressingly-high percentage of geniuses, experts, and prophets, some of the ‘brightest luminaries’ in fact within the ‘9/11 truth movement’, who find themselves in the peculiar and perplexing circumstance of standing alongside these aforementioned warmongering, Neocon Zionist Jews by lending their voices and their support in causing Trump as much discomfort as possible, thus assisting Israel in her drive to see this guy–

Mike Pence, a died-in-the-wool Christian Zionist, take over as the new occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave per the desires and demands of the other guy in the picture, Bibi Netanyahu, looking at him with obvious great interest and with grand plans in his eyes…

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, and for the simple reason that there are still quite a few out there who just don’t seem to ‘get it’ yet–

Gangsters don’t shoot the horses they have bet all their money on to win in a race they have fixed. They give them an open road to 1st place and only a political dolt who has as much business performing brain surgery as they do rendering commentary and analysis on complex and oftentimes convoluted political drama can’t see this.

Washington Post

President Trump has never been a model of consistency or coherence. However, as pressure builds both from looming investigations and the impending transfer of power in the House from the Republican majority to the Democrats, his ability to maintain even the pretense of normalcy and rationality begins to crumble. That’s true on both foreign and domestic policy, giving the impression of a president teetering on the brink of a complete meltdown.

On foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats alike have hammered the president on his specious defense of the Saudis’ brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), bluntly stated on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I have been briefed by the CIA. And while I cannot discuss the contents of the briefing in any way, I can say that I think the president is being dishonest with the American people.”

In this case, a solid bipartisan consensus stands against Trump. The Post reports:

“I disagree with the president’s assessment,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s inconsistent with the intelligence I’ve seen. . . . The intelligence I’ve seen suggests that this was ordered by the crown prince.” . . .

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” acknowledged that Saudi Arabia was a “great strategic partner” but added that the United States’ commitment to human rights and the rule of law requires Congress “absolutely to consider further action. At such a time when it becomes necessary, the president also needs to speak directly to the Saudis and say enough’s enough.”

The result is likely to be a bipartisan effort to cancel Saudi arms sales and to sanction all those involved. Moreover, with a Democratic House majority, the Democrat-led intelligence and foreign affairs committees can investigate not only the murder and coverup but also Trump’s own potential financial conflicts with the Saudis, whom he bragged in the past have purchased tens of millions in real estate properties from him. In the meantime, Trump appears to all but his most deluded cultists to be in the Saudis’ pockets, remarkably gullible and/or a liar. On this he remains politically isolated against a united front of our international allies, Democrats, Republicans and our intelligence agencies. (As an aside, one wonders how CIA Director Gina Haspel can remain in an administration in which the president lies about her agency’s findings and sides with a foreign power.)

The same lack of coherence and political support appears on the domestic policy front. The Post reports:

President Trump is demanding top advisers craft a plan to reduce the country’s ballooning budget deficits, but the president has flummoxed his own aides by repeatedly seeking new spending while ruling out measures needed to address the country’s unbalanced budget.

Trump’s deficit-reduction directive came last month, after the White House reported a large increase in the deficit for the previous 12 months. The announcement unnerved Republicans and investors, helping fuel a big sell-off in the stock market. Two days after the deficit report, Trump floated a surprise demand to his Cabinet secretaries, asking them to identify steep cuts in their agencies.

As striking as Trump’s utter inability to grapple with basic problems, his staff’s unwillingness to maintain any semblance of unity and loyalty suggests they no long think it’s in their personal interest to be associated with a president who makes mincemeat of one policy issue after another. His childish inability to make hard decisions and engender possible complaints from his base makes him a hapless, inept figure. He’s not so much leading as he is meandering — with aides racing after him to prevent bigger disasters and embarrassments.

Republicans would be wise to forge their own course on a whole array of matters and to stop defending an indefensible president (as they are doing on Saudi Arabia). If not, the 2020 election will make 2018 look like a smashing success for the GOP.