OPINOINS BASED ON
FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
YEAR FIVE
OBOF
YEAR FIVE INDEX
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OBOF
TYMHM
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Jan.
07, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 1
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Jan.
19, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 2
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Feb. 03, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 3
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Feb. 23, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 4
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Mar. 02, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 5
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Mar. 06, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 6
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Mar. 13, 2015
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Agenda
1. Thoughts
from Floyd.
2. The
importance of Blogging.
3. WH gives
up on negotiating with GOP.
4. GOP
Senators letter to Iran
5. Sen. Tom
Cotton (R-AR) author of letter.
6. Iran
7. Senator
Elizabeth Warren against TPP.
8. Senator
faces Fed. corruption charges.
9. The rise
of a Democratic Fascism.
THOUGHTS FROM FLOYD
I have been getting a few
comments. If some of you want to send
some comments but have trouble getting linked on, use Google and I believe you
will go right to the comment section.
~
Much of the black print has been changed by the internet carrier so that it is a washed out gray. Hopefully, someday I get a web site set up and I won't have these problems. I spend a lot of time to get things looking right and then this damn thing overrides it and I can't get it corrected. At any rate it is readable. Thanks for your understanding.
I believe this is, without a doubt, the longest
posting I have ever put together. It has
been some time since so much has been happening that could provide two or three
extra postings. However, I want to
stress that there is some very, very important articles here and I strongly
recommend you try to give it all your attention, probably taking more than one
attempt at getting through it.
I particularly want to comment about two of these
articles.
The first is, the matter of 47 GOP Senators sending an
undermining letter to Iran
relating to the negotiations President Obama is having with Iran
This coming on the heels of the House GOP, also,
getting into foreign policy act when they invited the Prime Minister of Israel,
Netanyahu, to speak to a joint session of Congress, without consulting the
White House. In fact, one report said
that the first the White House knew about it was when they saw it in the
papers.
Now, I am not talking about the contents of the
talks with Iran
The second is, with regard to the article entitled
"The Rise of a Democratic Fascism."
This article is very, very long, but, as I read it, I became convinced
that it is a good summary of history and how it relates
to us today. I strongly recommend
you giving it the time to read and digest.
I believe that we are fortunate that Mr. Pilger has put together some
very important points of history leading up to what we
are facing in the free world today. I am, print the last paragraph first, when you
get article so as to more invite you to read, what I consider to be, a very
important article. I will also print it
here.
The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies
of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements
that brought a fragile civilization to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest
of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If
we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.
~~~
THE IMPORTANCE
OF
BLOGGING
THOMA: Blogging has become crucial to public
discourse. "I began blogging just after George Bush
was reelected due to dissatisfaction with how economic issues were being
presented in the mainstream media. The
idea that tax cuts could somehow pay for themselves and the economics of Social
Security were particular issues where I found reporting to be unsatisfactory,
but there was also a dissatisfaction with economics reporting in general. To
me, it seemed like the media had been largely captured by particular interest
groups on the political right. ...
Blogs
have changed this. The reporting today
on economic issues is so much better than it was then, and that is due in no
small part to the interaction between reporters, the public, and academics
willing to blog and put complicated, technical matters into terms that the
general public can understand." The Fiscal Times.
~~~
CHAIT: The White House
has given up on negotiating with Republicans.
"The
original premise of Obama’s first presidential
campaign
was that he could reason with Republicans—or else, by staking out obviously
reasonable stances, force them to moderate or be exposed as extreme and
unyielding. It took years for the White
House to conclude that this was false...
Ever since Republicans took control of the House four years ago,
attempts to court Republicans have mostly failed while simultaneously dividing
Democratic voters. Obama’s most
politically successful maneuvers, by contrast, have all been unilateral and
liberal." New York.
~~~
WALDMAN: Republicans' letter to Iran
"It’s one thing
to criticize the administration’s actions, or try to impede them through the
legislative process. But to directly
communicate with a foreign power in order to undermine ongoing negotiations?
That is appalling. ... Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set
of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set
that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even
a modicum of respect. You can tell
states to ignore the law. You can
sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating
directly with that power." The Washington Post.
Greg Jaffe and Sean Sullivan
An already heated battle between the Obama administration
and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Tehran ’s
nuclear program grew more tense when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran
How Tom Cotton
became the star of the 2014 Senate class
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is the man behind an open letter to Iran
(Danny Johnston/AP)
In the past 42 hours, (from March 10) Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has made appearances on all three
cable news channels to defend an open letter he organized and signed
along with 46 other Senate Republicans encouraging Iranian
leaders against negotiating with President Obama on a deal Congress
won't approve.
On "Fox and Friends,"
"The Lead with Jake Tapper"
and "Morning Joe," Cotton
said that Iranian leaders are unaware of how the U.S. government works and that
is why, in the letter, he explained that
treaties made by a president leaving office in two years could be temporary. He
said he wanted a deal that kept nuclear weapons out of Iran
As Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic tweeted, as a U.S.
senator, Cotton's letter to foreign enemies to not trust the administration on
a nuclear deal was "quite a step." What makes it all the more
bold is that he's been in office just about 60 days.
Cotton has become the Senate class of 2014's rising star, making
more news than even Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa), who delivered the Republican
response to Obama's State of the Union address and whose "make 'em squeal"
ad was a midterm highlight real favorite. But the spotlight hasn't come
without a wave of criticism.
Vice President Biden wrote that Cotton's
letter "threatens to undermined the ability of any future American
President, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other
nations," and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) called him "Tehran New York
Last month, Cotton said during a Senate Armed Services
Committee meeting that terrorists could "rot in hell" and that the detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay ,
Cuba Guantanamo Bay
Politicians will continue to debate Cotton's letter. Some will
call it dangerous and others bold, but they all will continue to mention
Cotton. It's reminiscent of another bold
freshman, Cruz, who led the 2013 government shutdown just months after taking
office. Cruz's tactics won him fans and foes, but today, he's the only
Senate class of 2013 member considering a presidential run. Plus, he has his own coloring book.
If Cotton continues to make headlines at this rate, don't be
surprised if he soon has a coloring book of his own and finds himself
shaking hands in Iowa
Hunter
Schwarz - covers
the intersection of politics and pop culture for the Washington
FROM FLOYD
There were 86 comments about this article. I read about 34. The majority of those were reflected in the
two I have posted here.
saltyone
1:29 AM CDT
Cotton is guilty of treason or very close
to it and these are the same people who are going ballistic about Hillary
Clinton's emails. I truly find it
difficult to believe that this freshman Senator got 44 of his colleagues to
sign this disaster of a letter. They
have made this country the laughing stock of the world.
Joel Stegner
3/10/2015 9:50 PM CDT
Class clown would be a more accurate
statement. In my mind, what he did is
close to treason. Of course, Republicans
don't seem to understand that the commander and chief is just that.
~~~
BREAKING: Iran
This
article had 654 comments
&
1,178 Tweets
by Eyesbright Follow
Mon Mar 09, 2015
This morning, my
husband mentioned that he'd heard a discussion that included some conjecture on
the possibility that Netanyahu's diatribe against a nuclear nonproliferation
deal with Iran might actually push Iran closer to an agreement. That may
prove prescient.
Just now, I've
come across the official response from Iran
Asked about the open
letter of 47 US
Zarif expressed
astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to
leaders of another country against their own President and administration. He
pointed out that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not
only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the
nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the
conduct of foreign policy.
I admit I felt quite a
bit of schadenfreude as I read the words of this obviously intelligent and well
read man lecturing these moronic Republicans about their own country's
constitution and international law.
The Iranian Foreign
Minister added that "change of administration does not in any way relieve
the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its
predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran
He emphasized that if
the current negotiation with P5+1 result in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but
rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other
countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will
also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.
Zarif expressed the hope
that his comments "may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize
that according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the
agreement at any time as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to
impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of US obligations.
The Foreign Minister
also informed the authors that majority of US international agreements in
recent decades are in fact what the signatories describe as "mere
executive agreements" and not treaties ratified by the Senate.
~~~
Elizabeth Warren’s next target:
Trade deals
The senator says Obama’s
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would empower corporations.
Elizabeth
Warren is gearing up for another big fight with the Obama administration, this
time over trade.
The Massachusetts senator is stepping up her criticism of the
administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a centerpiece of the
president’s second-term agenda, saying it could allow multinational
corporations to gut U.S.
regulations and win big settlements funded by U.S.
Story Continued Below
“This
deal would give protections to international corporations that are not
available to United States
environmental and labor groups,” Warren U.S.
Warren’s
comments, following an op-ed in The Washington
Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown
Ordinarily
such a wonky provision might fly deeply under Washington Warren
Her
opposition to President Barack Obama’s choice of a Wall Street banker for the
No. 3 slot at Treasury quickly turned the generally low-profile post into a
national issue and created a major backlash. The nominee, Antonio Weiss,
eventually asked that his name be withdrawn and took a lower-profile,
non-confirmed post at Treasury.
Opponents
of Obama’s trade agenda seized on Warren
“Having
a champion for working families and the environment speaking up like this
against parts of TPP sends a real signal to the rest of Congress,” said Ilana
Solomon, director for The Sierra Club’s “Responsible Trade” program. “If you are on the side of helping the
environment and working families and taking a stand against corporate power,
you have to be against fast-track and TPP as well.” Solomon added that Warren
Administration
officials say they always expected Warren, who enjoys strong backing from labor
and environmental groups, to be firmly opposed to the TPP agreement. And they say her comments are not really new.
In addition, they reject her concerns about ISDS and note that the U.S.
They
say the U.S. has never lost
a case when challenged by a multinational company over a U.S. U.S.
Despite
the private dismissals, the White House clearly felt compelled to quickly
respond to Warren’s complaints, posting a piece on its blog by National
Economic Council Director Jeffrey Zients.
“The
purpose of investment provisions in our trade agreements is to provide American
individuals and businesses who do business abroad with the same protections we
provide to domestic and foreign investors alike in the United States U.S.
sovereignty, change U.S.
Warren
rejected all of those arguments in the interview with POLITICO, noting that
just because the U.S. has not lost a case before an ISDS arbitration panel yet
does not mean it will not lose one in the future. She also noted that the
number of cases before ISDS panels has been rising rapidly. “I take no comfort in the fact that the U.S. U.S. before an ISDS
panel over U.S. wage or
environmental rules they view as unfair and win a large settlement billed to
the U.S. U.S.
But
Warren also slammed what she called a lack of transparency in the TPP drafting
process, saying it was very hard for members of Congress or anyone else to know
what is in the latest draft of the agreement, making assurances from the White
House difficult to trust.
Administration
officials note that any member can view the latest version of the agreement in
a classified setting. They also note
that letting drafts become public would make it much harder for U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman and others
to negotiate the best possible terms for the U.S.
It is
unclear how much Warren
The
administration argues that the dozen or so nations that could sign on to TPP,
including Australia, Japan, Singapore Vietnam and others, would be less likely
to do so if they think Congress could amend the agreement before a final vote. Fast-track authority would make that
impossible. Instead, members of Congress
would have to lobby the administration to make changes before the final vote.
The
administration is hoping for a fast-track bill to emerge from the Senate
Finance Committee soon and then go to the floor. They believe they could pass the measure with
mostly Republican support and a handful of Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has signaled
his opposition to new trade deals but also said he would not block the
administration’s agenda.
Obama
has lobbied Democrats hard on the trade deals, saying they will let the U.S.
set high standards for labor and environmental regulations in the Pacific Rim
while opening new markets to U.S. exporters. In the absence of TPP, the White House argues,
China
The
administration, with few hopes for significant legislative victories with the
GOP-controlled Congress — hopes TPP will be a centerpiece accomplishment of
Obama’s second term. And officials
remain confident in the path forward for TPA and TPP with largely Republican
support and just enough Democrats to make up for any GOP defections.
Still, Warren U.S.
“Conservatives
who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power
from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution,to
unaccountable international tribunals,” Warren
And her
efforts are already succeeding to some degree.
In a
blog post on Thursday, Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote
that Warren
“In
substance, if not style, Sen. Warren’s perspective on ISDS is one that
libertarians and other free market advocates should share,” Ikenson wrote. “As
a practical matter, investment is a risky proposition. Foreign investment is
even more so. But that doesn’t mean
special institutions should be created to protect [multinational corporations]
from the consequences of their business decisions.”
Proponents
of the trade deals in Washington reacted with
concern over Warren Massachusetts Washington operative said,
asking not to be identified so as not to anger Warren
Some
pro-trade Democrats were privately dismissive of Warren
“Trade
opponents use ISDS to stoke protectionist fears but always conveniently leave
out the fact that the U.S. is already party to 50 ISDS agreements across the
globe, and has never lost a single challenge,” one Democrat said. “Throwing out ISDS based on trade opponents’
nightmare scenarios would be like tearing down the entire U.S.
~~~
Senator
Expected to Face Federal Corruption Charges
|
The Justice Department is preparing to file criminal
corruption charges against former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Sen. Robert “Bob” Menendez of New
Jersey Florida
A month after Sen. Menendez assumed office on January
17, 2006, Dr. Melgen began negotiations to purchase ICSSI, a Dominican company
contracted to provide cargo screening in the Dominican Republic. In 2002, ICSSI
had acquired a contract to provide screening throughout the country, but the
government suspended the deal claiming the contract was too expensive and the
bidding was too uncompetitive. Intent on purchasing ICSSI, Dr. Melgen fought to
reinstate the contract, which was reportedly worth $500 million over 20 years.
During this time, Menendez began pushing legislation to
require screening all ship containers headed to the U.S. Dominican Republic
After his company partially purchased ICSSI in 2011,
Dr. Melgen’s business contributed over $700,000 to Majority PAC, which spent
over $582,000 on Menendez’s behalf during the 2012 elections. At a Senate
Foreign Relations Committee hearing in July 2012, Menendez advocated for
convincing the Dominican government to uphold their screening contract with
ICSSI. During the hearing, Menendez
hyped the lack of security at their ports while neglecting to disclose the name
of the company (ICSSI), his relationship to one of its owners (Dr. Melgen), and
the two undocumented trips to the Dominican Republic
In January 2013, Menendez’s former chief counsel, Kerri
Talbot, sent an email to a staff member at the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) attempting to dissuade the agency from donating any more
screening devices to the Dominican Republic. Unbeknownst to the CBP official,
Dr. Melgen viewed the donations as a threat to his attempt to monopolize
screening equipment and charge the Dominican government to conduct the
inspections. That same month, FBI agents
and HHS investigators raided Dr. Melgen’s offices in Florida
During a billing dispute with the government, auditors
began investigating allegations that Dr. Melgen had been fraudulently
overbilling Medicare. While Dr. Melgen
demanded reimbursement for Lucentis, an expensive medication used to treat
macular degeneration, Menendez allegedly abused his position by trying to
influence Medicare to change its reimbursement polices in order to allow Dr. Melgen
to make millions of dollars in profit. In exchange for campaign contributions and
secret trips to the Dominican
Republic
After receiving an anonymous tip, the FBI began
investigating allegations that Dr. Melgen had purchased underage prostitutes
for Menendez during one of his trips to the Dominican Republic
In March 2013, a federal grand jury in Miami
“As we have said before, we believe all of the
Senator’s actions have been appropriate and lawful and the facts will ultimately
confirm that,” Menendez spokesperson Tricia Enright stated on Friday. “Any actions taken by Senator Menendez or his
office have been to appropriately address public policy issues and not for any
other reason.”
Although the Justice Department cannot comment on
ongoing investigations, sources have reported to CNN that Attorney General Eric Holder has
signed off on prosecutors’ request to proceed with corruption charges against
Menendez. An announcement of his
indictment is expected within weeks due to the fact that the statute of
limitation could impact some of the criminal charges.
~~~
The Rise of a
‘Democratic’ Fascism
Authors: John Pilger |
Consortium
News | Op-Ed
Published:
March 8, 2015
Bio:
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London
Some analysts believe a new form of fascism has formed
that has disguised itself as democracy with relentless propaganda and
continuous war. It is our responsibility to expose the lies of warmongers, to
re-awaken popular movements, and to demand change.
FROM
FLOYD:
This
article is very, very long, but, as I read it, I became convinced that it is a
good summary of history and how it relates to us today. I strongly recommend you giving it the time
to read and digest. I believe that we
are fortunate that Mr. Pilger has put together some very important points of
history leading up to what we are facing in the free
world today. I am going to print
the last paragraph first, so as to more invite you to read, what I consider to
be, a very important article.
THE LAST PARAGRAPH
The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies
of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the gre at popular
movements that brought a fragile civilization to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of
ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is
assured, and a holocaust beckons.
~
Traditional fascism is defined as a right-wing
political system run by a dictator who prohibits dissent and relies on
repression. But some analysts believe a
new form of fascism has arisen that has a democratic façade
and is based on relentless propaganda and endless war, as
journalist John Pilger describes.
The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism,
whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering
footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose
war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern
kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.
“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg
Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz
and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its
satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a
million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have
us in thrall to its savagery. They are
the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are
the surreal theatre known as news.
Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are
delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent,
repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya
In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya
Gaddafi’s Torture/Lynching
The public sodomizing of the Libyan president Muammar
Gaddafi with a “rebel” bayonet was greeted by the then U.S. Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton, with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.” His murder, like the destruction of his
country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning “genocide”
against his own people.
“We knew … that if we waited one more day,” said
President Barack Obama, “Benghazi , a city the
size of Charlotte
This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing
defeat by Libyan government forces. They
told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda
Secretly supplied and trained by Britain ’s SAS, many of the “rebels” would become
ISIS , whose latest video offering shows the
beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on
their behalf by NATO bombers.
For Obama, Cameron and Hollande, Gaddafi’s true crime
was Libya ’s economic
independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa ’s
greatest oil reserves in U.S. dollars. The
petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power.
Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common
African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote
economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very
notion was intolerable to the U.S.
as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe
African governments with military “partnerships.”
Following NATO’s attack under cover of a Security
Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, “confiscated $30 billion from
Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an
African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency.”
The Kosovo Model
The “humanitarian war” against Libya Serbia ,
because, they lied, the Serbs were committing “genocide” against ethnic
Albanians in the secessionist province
of Kosovo
David Scheffer, U.S.
The West’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook,
told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.
With the NATO bombing over, and much of Serbia
A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia
Expanding Markets
Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent,
multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in
the Cold War. Most of its utilities and
major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding
European Community, especially newly united Germany ,
which had begun a drive east to capture its “natural market” in the Yugoslav
provinces of Croatia and Slovenia
By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht
in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been
struck; Germany would
recognize Croatia Yugoslavia
In Washington , the U.S. France
The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which
the U.S. Yugoslavia Afghanistan
and Iraq , Syria and Libya ,
and Ukraine
American Interventions
Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the
United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at
the hands of America
“Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat
mission in Afghanistan Afghanistan
“The longest war in American history is coming to a
responsible conclusion,” said Obama. In fact,
more civilians were killed in Afghanistan
The tragedy of Afghanistan
rivals the epic crime in Indochina . In his lauded and much quoted book,The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of U.S.
policies from Afghanistan to
the present day, writes that if America
is to control Eurasia and dominate the world,
it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because “the pursuit of power is not a
goal that commands popular passion. . . . Democracy is inimical to imperial
mobilization.” He is right.
As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a
surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then
President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by
dealing a death blow to Afghanistan
Afghan’s Shining Moment
In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan Afghanistan
The new government introduced free medical care for the
poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university
students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan
“Every girl,” recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon,
“could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we
liked. We used to go to cafes and the
cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest
music. It all started to go wrong when
the mujaheddin started winning. They
used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the
people the West supported.”
The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet
Union , even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later
admitted, “there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution].”
Alarmed by the growing confidence of
liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan
On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorized
support for tribal “fundamentalist” groups known as the mujaheddin, a program
that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. Afghanistan
In August 1979, the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States ’ larger interests … would be
served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might
mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan
The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and
Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions
of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar’s specialty was trafficking in opium
and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London
Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world
had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic
fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation
and “destabilize” the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography,
“a few stirred up Muslims.”
His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the
Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan
Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and
al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn ,
New York , and given paramilitary training at a
CIA camp in Virginia
The “blowback” of Operation Cyclone and its “few
stirred up Muslims” was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the “war
on terror,” in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives
across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan
to Iraq , Yemen , Somalia
and Syria
Threads of Fascism
The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass
murder. The American invasion of Vietnam province of Quang Ngai ,
where I reported from, many thousands of civilians (“gooks”) were murdered by
the U.S. ; yet only one
massacre, at My Lai , is remembered.
In Laos
and Cambodia Cambodia its own ISIS ,
led by Pol Pot.
Today, the world’s greatest single campaign of terror
entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at
funerals. These are Obama’s victims.
According to the New York Times,Obama makes his selection from a CIA
“kill list” presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room.
He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who
will die. His execution weapon is the
Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast
their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each “hit” is registered on a faraway console
screen as a “bugsplat.”
“For goose-steppers,” wrote the historian Norman Pollock,
“substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarization of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the
reformermanque,
blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”
American Exceptionalism
Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority.
“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” said
Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s.
As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it
was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, “The sovereign is he who
decides the exception.” This sums up
Americanism, the world’s dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognized as a
predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognized brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as
enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture.
I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost
all of it a distortion. I had no idea
that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a
cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, U.S. Hollywood
The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited
to wring their hands at the “tragedy” of American psychopaths having to kill
people in distant places — just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood
There are no heroic movies about America America
(and Britain Athens — as it did in Brazil
and most of Latin America .
Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi
aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the U.S. U.S.
In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern
Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of NATO, the heirs to a Nazi
movement in Ukraine
The Ukraine
This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama
administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected
government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the
Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders
include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia”
and “other scum,” including gays, feminists and those on the political left.
These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev Washington to get “the USA Russia
No western leader has spoken up about the revival of
fascism in the heart of Europe — with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose
people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine
It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev Iraq
Nuland’s coup in Ukraine Russia ’s
historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea .
The mostly Russian population of Crimea
— illegally annexed to Ukraine
by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 — voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia
At the same time, the Kiev
More than a million refugees fled across the border
into Russia Stanley
Repressing Ethnic Russians
These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine – a third of the population – have long
sought a federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both
autonomous and independent of Moscow Kiev Kiev
On May 2, 2014, in Odessa Ukraine
The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as
Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington Ukraine
If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his
pre-ordained “pariah” role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine Ukraine ’s
top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed
the very basis for U.S. and
EU sanctions on Russia
Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev’s Deputy Foreign Minister, has
called for “full scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia
On Feb. 21, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma , introduced a bill that would authorize American
arms for the Kiev Ukraine Nicaragua , and Colin Powell’s fake evidence to
the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia
“If you wonder how the world could stumble into world
war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to
do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or
reason.”
In 1946, the Nuremberg
“In the propaganda system of the Hitler State
In the Guardian on Feb. 2, Timothy Garton-Ash, an Oxford America
In 2003, Garton-Ash repeated the propaganda that led to
the slaughter in Iraq Iraq :
Iran
The outbursts — or as Garton-Ash prefers, his “tortured
liberal ambivalence” — are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal
elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The
war criminal Blair is their lost leader.
The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash’s piece appeared,
published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a
menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: “The F-35. GREAT For Britain
Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the
world want Ukraine U.S.
They want Ukraine
for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden’s son is on the board of Ukraine Ukraine
Above all, they want Ukraine ’s
mighty neighbor, Russia Russia Russia
Their man in Moscow Russia
The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies
of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements
that brought a fragile civilization to modern imperial states. Most
important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity,
our self respect. If we remain silent,
victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.
~~~
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