http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48055.htm
"Above All" - The Junta Expands Its Claim To Power
In an advertising campaign in 2008 the U.S. Air Force declared itself to be "Above All". The slogan and symbol of the campaign was similar to the German "Deutschland Über Alles" campaign of 1933. It was a sign of things to come.
On Thursday Masha Gessen watched the press briefing of White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly and concluded:
The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly advanced his four arguments.
Those who criticize the President don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military. ...
The President did the right thing because he did exactly what his general told him to do. ...
Communication between the President and a military widow is no one’s business but theirs. ...
Citizens are ranked based on their proximity to dying for their country. ...
Gessen is late. The coup happened months ago. A military junta is in strong control of White House polices. It is now widening its claim to power.
All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of the power triangle, the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton. The Pentagon's proxy defeated the CIA proxy. (Last months' fight over Raqqa was similar - with a similar outcome.)
On January 20, the first day of the Not-Hillary presidency, I warned:
The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump's cabinet.
With the help of the media the generals in the White House defeated their civilian adversary. In August the Trump ship dropped its ideological pilot. Steve Bannon went from board. Bannon's militarist enemy, National Security Advisor General McMaster, had won. I stated:
A military junta is now ruling the United States
and later explained:
Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.
The military took full control of White House processes and policies:
Everything of importance now passes through the Junta's hands ... To control Trump the Junta filters his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view ... The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing certain alternatives to him. The one that is most preferable to them, will be presented as the only desirable one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be told again and again.
With the power center captured the Junta starts to implement its ideology and to suppress any and all criticism against itself.
On Thursday the 19th Kelly criticized Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of South Florida for hearing in (invited) on a phone-call Trump had with some dead soldiers wife:
Kelly then continued his criticism of Wilson, mentioning the 2015 dedication of the Miramar FBI building, saying she focused in her speech that she “got the money” for the building.
The video of the Congresswoman's speech (above link) proves that Kelly's claim was a fabrication. But one is no longer allowed to point such out. The Junta, by definition, does not lie. When the next day journalists asked the White House Press Secretary about Kelly's unjustified attack she responded:
MS. SANDERS: If you want to go after General Kelly, that's up to you. But I think that that -- if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that's something highly inappropriate.
It is now "highly inappropriate" to even question the Junta that rules the empire.
U.S. soldiers, and especially commanding officers, have a well pampered and safe life. Many civilian jobs pay less and are more dangerous. A myth is built around the U.S. military with the help of hundreds of millions in public relations and marketing expenditures. The U.S. military does not win wars, but its soldiers are depicted as being better humans than the general population. The soldiers themselves drink that Kool-Aid. At the end of his press briefing General Kelly belittled everyone who never signed up for the military or took a swig:
" Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not for any other reason than that they love this country.”
'We do not look down on you. We think of you as a pitiable minor creature.' What an asshole.
If the soldiers do not work "for any other reason than that they love this country" why do they ask to be paid? Why is the public asked to finance 200 military golf courses? Because the soldiers "love the country"? Only a few 10,000 of the 2,000,000 strong U.S. military will ever see an active front-line.
And imagine the "wonderful joy" Kelly "got in his heart" when he commanded the illegal torture camp of Guantanamo Bay:
Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom he had maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality. His response to the detainees’ peaceful hunger strike in 2013 was punitive force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber bullets. Furthermore, he sabotaged efforts by the Obama administration to resettle detainees, consistently undermining the will of his commander in chief.
Former U.S. Army Captain and now CIA director Mike Pompeo was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is part of the Junta circle, installed to control the competition. Pompeo also wants to again feel the "wonderful joy". On Friday he promised that the CIA would become a "much more vicious agency". Instead of merely waterboarding 'terrorists' and drone-bombing brown families, Pompeo's more vicious CIA will rape the 'terrorist's' kids and nuke whole villages. Pompeo's remark was made at a get-together of the Junta and neo-conservative warmongers.
On October 19 Defense Secretary General Mattis was asked in Congress about the recent incident in Niger during which, among others, several U.S. soldiers were killed. Mattis set (vid 5:29pm) a curious new metric for deploying U.S. troops:
Any time we commit our troops anywhere it is based on a simple first question and that is - is the well-being of the American people sufficiently enhanced by putting our troops there, by putting our troops in a position to die?
In his October 20 press briefing General Kelly also tried to explain why U.S. soldiers are in Niger:
So why were they there? They're there working with partners, local -- all across Africa -- in this case, Niger -- working with partners, teaching them how to be better soldiers; teaching them how to respect human rights ...
Is the U.S. military really qualified to teach anyone how to respect human rights? Did it learn that from committing mass atrocities in about each campaign it ever fought?
One of the soldiers who were killed in Niger while "teaching how to respect human rights" was a 39 year old "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist" with "more than a dozen awards and decorations".
The U.S. military sent a highly qualified WMD specialist on a "routine patrol" in Niger to teach local soldiers "to respect human rights" due to which presumably "the well-being of the American people" would be "sufficiently enhanced"?
Will anyone really buy that bridge?
But who would dare to ask more about this? It is"highly inappropriate" to doubt whatever the military says. Soon that will change into "verboten". Any doubt, any question will be declared "fake news" and a sign of devious foreign influence. Whoever spreads such will be blocked from communicating.
The military is now indeed "Above All". That air force slogan was a remake of a 1933 "Über Alles" campaign in Germany. One wonders what other historic similarities will develop from it.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
SC151-12
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48047.htm
John Brennan’s Police State USA
Did the United States warn Russia to stay out of Syria?
Yes, they did.
Did they tell the Russians that if they joined the war against ISIS and helped Bashar al Assad the US would make them pay a heavy price?
Yes.
Did US agents and diplomats warn their Russian counterparts that Russian troops would “come home in body bags” and that the western media would launch a propaganda campaign against them?
Yes, again.
Did US officials say the western media would concoct a phony story about “Russian hacking” that would be used to persuade the American people that Russia was a dangerous enemy that had to be reigned in with harsh economic sanctions, provocative military maneuvers, and threats of violence?
No, but it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which the CIA would pursue such a strategy. After all, the Intel agencies, the media and the entire political establishment have been hammering on Russia for over two years now. Isn’t it possible that elements of these three factions decided to pool their resources in order to poison the public’s perception Russia? Hasn’t the US government dabbled in these type of psychological operations (PSYOPS) many time before?
Of course, they have. And in prior incidents, the facts were fixed to fit the policy just as they have been in this case. For example, the Bush administration had already decided to topple Saddam long-before they cooked up their fake stories about mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, aluminum tubes and “Curveball”. Doesn’t the same rule apply here? Haven’t the “facts” about collusion, Pokémon Go and Facebook all been concocted after-the-fact to support the original thesis, that Russia meddled in the election?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What we know is that high-ranking members of the US State Department and Pentagon threatened Moscow prior to Russia’s military intervention in October, 2015. US diplomats made it clear that if Russia helped the Syrian government, Washington would use the media and its other assets to retaliate. According to Russia’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:
We were asked to pass on to you the most serious warnings that Russia will be hurt by its actions.. We will make sure that Russia really knows what pain is……Keep in mind that everything you do will be manipulated by the media which will cancel out the real (positive) effects of your work. ..You are going to fight terrorists, but you will be made to look like the bad guy.
These threats were delivered to us many times in 2015 as part of the discussions with the Russia’s Representative of Foreign Affairs and his international counterparts. (During Kerry-Lavrov meetings)
We’re talking about the world’s elite who told us these things.
When we told them exactly what targets we planned to strike, they launched a disinformation media campaign against us. Officials from the White House and State Department directly threatened to hurt us. They promised that we’d “come home in body bags” not only diplomatic representatives but also the Secretary of Defense…..The US showed us that the strongest military has unlimited rights to create evil in the world.”
(See the whole interview on YouTube.
Zakharova’s admission is interesting for many reasons. First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington’s proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can’t say. When Zakharova says, “everything you do will be manipulated by the media”, she is tacitly acknowledging that the MSM works in concert with the US government shaping a message that best achieves US imperial objectives. In this case, the obvious goal is the removal of Bashar al Assad and the partitioning of the state consistent with US plans to redraw the map of the Middle East. Russian intervention derailed that plan which is why Russia is despised.
Third, Zakharova’s comments suggest a motive for the Russia hacking campaign. Russia has become an insurmountable obstacle to Washington’s plans for global hegemony. It has blocked US progress in Ukraine and rolled backed US proxy-forces in Syria. Additionally, Russia has united the countries in Central Asia (EEU) and threatens to economically integrate Europe and Asia into the world’s biggest free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Here’s a quote from Putin that explains what’s going on:
“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new Asia.’”
Putin’s dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That’s why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical landbridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam’s path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
The US wants to retaliate for the defeat of its proxy army in Syria but it’s not prepared for a military clash. Not yet, at least. And, keep in mind, Washington’s Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained. The defeat is not a loss for the US Military, but a blot on the record of CIA Director John Brennan, the architect and main proponent of the failed project to remove Assad. Brennan’s whole scheme has gone down in flames.
Why is that important?
Because it suggests that Brennan had a strong motive to strike back at Moscow. He had “a dog in the fight”, and his dog lost. And since he couldn’t win on the battlefield, his only choice was to launch an asymmetrical attack via the media. Isn’t this where the Russia hacking idea originated?
If it did, then there should be footprints that lead back to Brennan himself, the primary source of the psyops. Check out this excerpt from The Washington Times:
What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.
It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama’s, who provided the information — what he termed the “basis” — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president’s 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.
Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.
But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.
(“Obama loyalist Brennan drove FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer”, The Washington Times)
So it all started with Brennan, the resentful Intel chief who got his nose bloodied by Putin in Syria and decided to seek his revenge. But then Brennan needed to conceal his lead-role in the drama by drawing other agencies into the loop, so he included the FBI, the NSA and DIA. The strategy helped to obfuscate the real braintrust in the hacking affair, John Brennan.
According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the “Trump-Russia connection”.. but ..”Former CIA Director John Brennan says he was the one who got the ball rolling.”
Indeed. Brennan appears to be the central figure in this political fiasco, the source from which many of the spurious accusations originated. It was Brennan who first intimated that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents prior to the 2016 elections.
“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” Brennan stated in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May.
This is a deliberate mischaracterization of what Brennan was actually doing. He was spying on the members of the rival party to gain a political advantage. This is how police state operates. How is it that no one in the media or on Capital Hill has condemned this egregious attack on the democratic process?
So far, none of the four investigations on Capital Hill have produced even a shred of evidence supporting Brennan’s claims. Just last week, during a press conference with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr bluntly stated,
“The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any.”
There’s no proof of collusion at all. So what’s Brennan’s real motive here? What’s driving this silly propaganda campaign that has failed to produce any verifiable evidence after a massive 10-month, no-holds-barred investigation involving both Houses of Congress, the establishment media, four intelligence agencies and an Independent Counsel?
The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result, that is, persuading the American people that “evil” Putin is trying to sabotage our pristine democracy and that Donald Trump is not only the country’s lousiest president ever, but also a Russian agent.
That’s not to say, that Brennan’s psyops has not been successful. It has been, amazingly successful. According to a recent CBS Poll, a majority of Americans (57%) now believe that “Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” In contrast, only 34 percent of Americans don’t believe there was any Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
What the numbers don’t explain, however, is how one’s own political ideology shapes the results. For example, 71 percent of Democrats believe that Russia interfered, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans agree. In other words, one’s own prejudices (about Trump and Russia) have a much greater impact on one’s opinion than either facts or evidence. Propaganda campaigns try to exploit public bias to effectively manipulate perceptions. The CBS polling data shows that they have succeeded in that regard.
The US government has a long history of (as Robert Parry says) “cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington’s policies.” That is certainly the case here. Most of the so-called ‘evidence’ is nothing more than baseless accusations that appear momentarily in the headlines only to vanish a week or so later. Brennan and Co. appear to be exploring new frontiers in state propaganda, propaganda that relies less on semi-credible events or evidence than on incessant repetition of far-fetched allegations (Facebook, Google, Pokémon Go) that reiterate the same underlying claim of Russian meddling. The difference between the fabrications that led up to the war in Iraq (mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, shadowy connections to al Qaida and aluminum tubes) and those of Russian hacking suggests that the perpetrators of this charade are convinced that frequency trumps credibility. The American people are being carpet-bombed with dodgy, almost-comical disinformation to see if it has the intended effect. Recent surveys indicate the plan is working.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda (In 2013, Obama gutted the Smith Mundt Act “unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.” (Foreign Policy Magazine) In 2016, Obama paved the way for more domestic propaganda by passing the Orwellian-named “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Ostensibly, the bill lays the groundwork for responding to “fake news” overseas, but in reality, it marks “a further curtailment of press freedom” and an ambitious attempt to suppress accurate, independent information.) The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.
John Brennan’s Police State USA
Did the United States warn Russia to stay out of Syria?
Yes, they did.
Did they tell the Russians that if they joined the war against ISIS and helped Bashar al Assad the US would make them pay a heavy price?
Yes.
Did US agents and diplomats warn their Russian counterparts that Russian troops would “come home in body bags” and that the western media would launch a propaganda campaign against them?
Yes, again.
Did US officials say the western media would concoct a phony story about “Russian hacking” that would be used to persuade the American people that Russia was a dangerous enemy that had to be reigned in with harsh economic sanctions, provocative military maneuvers, and threats of violence?
No, but it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which the CIA would pursue such a strategy. After all, the Intel agencies, the media and the entire political establishment have been hammering on Russia for over two years now. Isn’t it possible that elements of these three factions decided to pool their resources in order to poison the public’s perception Russia? Hasn’t the US government dabbled in these type of psychological operations (PSYOPS) many time before?
Of course, they have. And in prior incidents, the facts were fixed to fit the policy just as they have been in this case. For example, the Bush administration had already decided to topple Saddam long-before they cooked up their fake stories about mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, aluminum tubes and “Curveball”. Doesn’t the same rule apply here? Haven’t the “facts” about collusion, Pokémon Go and Facebook all been concocted after-the-fact to support the original thesis, that Russia meddled in the election?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What we know is that high-ranking members of the US State Department and Pentagon threatened Moscow prior to Russia’s military intervention in October, 2015. US diplomats made it clear that if Russia helped the Syrian government, Washington would use the media and its other assets to retaliate. According to Russia’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:
We were asked to pass on to you the most serious warnings that Russia will be hurt by its actions.. We will make sure that Russia really knows what pain is……Keep in mind that everything you do will be manipulated by the media which will cancel out the real (positive) effects of your work. ..You are going to fight terrorists, but you will be made to look like the bad guy.
These threats were delivered to us many times in 2015 as part of the discussions with the Russia’s Representative of Foreign Affairs and his international counterparts. (During Kerry-Lavrov meetings)
We’re talking about the world’s elite who told us these things.
When we told them exactly what targets we planned to strike, they launched a disinformation media campaign against us. Officials from the White House and State Department directly threatened to hurt us. They promised that we’d “come home in body bags” not only diplomatic representatives but also the Secretary of Defense…..The US showed us that the strongest military has unlimited rights to create evil in the world.”
(See the whole interview on YouTube.
Zakharova’s admission is interesting for many reasons. First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington’s proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can’t say. When Zakharova says, “everything you do will be manipulated by the media”, she is tacitly acknowledging that the MSM works in concert with the US government shaping a message that best achieves US imperial objectives. In this case, the obvious goal is the removal of Bashar al Assad and the partitioning of the state consistent with US plans to redraw the map of the Middle East. Russian intervention derailed that plan which is why Russia is despised.
Third, Zakharova’s comments suggest a motive for the Russia hacking campaign. Russia has become an insurmountable obstacle to Washington’s plans for global hegemony. It has blocked US progress in Ukraine and rolled backed US proxy-forces in Syria. Additionally, Russia has united the countries in Central Asia (EEU) and threatens to economically integrate Europe and Asia into the world’s biggest free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Here’s a quote from Putin that explains what’s going on:
“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new Asia.’”
Putin’s dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That’s why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical landbridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam’s path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
The US wants to retaliate for the defeat of its proxy army in Syria but it’s not prepared for a military clash. Not yet, at least. And, keep in mind, Washington’s Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained. The defeat is not a loss for the US Military, but a blot on the record of CIA Director John Brennan, the architect and main proponent of the failed project to remove Assad. Brennan’s whole scheme has gone down in flames.
Why is that important?
Because it suggests that Brennan had a strong motive to strike back at Moscow. He had “a dog in the fight”, and his dog lost. And since he couldn’t win on the battlefield, his only choice was to launch an asymmetrical attack via the media. Isn’t this where the Russia hacking idea originated?
If it did, then there should be footprints that lead back to Brennan himself, the primary source of the psyops. Check out this excerpt from The Washington Times:
What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.
It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama’s, who provided the information — what he termed the “basis” — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president’s 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.
Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.
But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.
(“Obama loyalist Brennan drove FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer”, The Washington Times)
So it all started with Brennan, the resentful Intel chief who got his nose bloodied by Putin in Syria and decided to seek his revenge. But then Brennan needed to conceal his lead-role in the drama by drawing other agencies into the loop, so he included the FBI, the NSA and DIA. The strategy helped to obfuscate the real braintrust in the hacking affair, John Brennan.
According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the “Trump-Russia connection”.. but ..”Former CIA Director John Brennan says he was the one who got the ball rolling.”
Indeed. Brennan appears to be the central figure in this political fiasco, the source from which many of the spurious accusations originated. It was Brennan who first intimated that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents prior to the 2016 elections.
“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” Brennan stated in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May.
This is a deliberate mischaracterization of what Brennan was actually doing. He was spying on the members of the rival party to gain a political advantage. This is how police state operates. How is it that no one in the media or on Capital Hill has condemned this egregious attack on the democratic process?
So far, none of the four investigations on Capital Hill have produced even a shred of evidence supporting Brennan’s claims. Just last week, during a press conference with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr bluntly stated,
“The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any.”
There’s no proof of collusion at all. So what’s Brennan’s real motive here? What’s driving this silly propaganda campaign that has failed to produce any verifiable evidence after a massive 10-month, no-holds-barred investigation involving both Houses of Congress, the establishment media, four intelligence agencies and an Independent Counsel?
The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result, that is, persuading the American people that “evil” Putin is trying to sabotage our pristine democracy and that Donald Trump is not only the country’s lousiest president ever, but also a Russian agent.
That’s not to say, that Brennan’s psyops has not been successful. It has been, amazingly successful. According to a recent CBS Poll, a majority of Americans (57%) now believe that “Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” In contrast, only 34 percent of Americans don’t believe there was any Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
What the numbers don’t explain, however, is how one’s own political ideology shapes the results. For example, 71 percent of Democrats believe that Russia interfered, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans agree. In other words, one’s own prejudices (about Trump and Russia) have a much greater impact on one’s opinion than either facts or evidence. Propaganda campaigns try to exploit public bias to effectively manipulate perceptions. The CBS polling data shows that they have succeeded in that regard.
The US government has a long history of (as Robert Parry says) “cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington’s policies.” That is certainly the case here. Most of the so-called ‘evidence’ is nothing more than baseless accusations that appear momentarily in the headlines only to vanish a week or so later. Brennan and Co. appear to be exploring new frontiers in state propaganda, propaganda that relies less on semi-credible events or evidence than on incessant repetition of far-fetched allegations (Facebook, Google, Pokémon Go) that reiterate the same underlying claim of Russian meddling. The difference between the fabrications that led up to the war in Iraq (mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, shadowy connections to al Qaida and aluminum tubes) and those of Russian hacking suggests that the perpetrators of this charade are convinced that frequency trumps credibility. The American people are being carpet-bombed with dodgy, almost-comical disinformation to see if it has the intended effect. Recent surveys indicate the plan is working.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda (In 2013, Obama gutted the Smith Mundt Act “unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.” (Foreign Policy Magazine) In 2016, Obama paved the way for more domestic propaganda by passing the Orwellian-named “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Ostensibly, the bill lays the groundwork for responding to “fake news” overseas, but in reality, it marks “a further curtailment of press freedom” and an ambitious attempt to suppress accurate, independent information.) The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.
SC151-11
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48046.htm
Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth
On 16 October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.
Wading through the Clinton book, What Happened, is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. "They" (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian "nihilist", Julian Assange.
In The New York Times, there was a striking photograph of a female reporter consoling Clinton, having just interviewed her. The lost leader was, above all, "absolutely a feminist". The thousands of women's lives this "feminist" destroyed while in government - Libya, Syria, Honduras - were of no interest.
In New York magazine, Rebecca Trainster wrote that Clinton was finally "expressing some righteous anger". It was even hard for her to smile: "so hard that the muscles in her face ache". Surely, she concluded, "if we allowed women's resentments the same bearing we allow men's grudges, America would be forced to reckon with the fact that all these angry women might just have a point".
Drivel such as this, trivialising women's struggles, marks the media hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Her political extremism and warmongering are of no consequence. Her problem, wrote Trainster, was a "damaging infatuation with the email story". The truth, in other words.
The leaked emails of Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, revealed a direct connection between Clinton and the foundation and funding of organised jihadism in the Middle East and Islamic State (IS). The ultimate source of most Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia, was central to her career.
One email, in 2014, sent by Clinton to Podesta soon after she stepped down as US Secretary of State, discloses that Islamic State is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Clinton accepted huge donations from both governments for the Clinton Foundation.
As Secretary of State, she approved the world's biggest ever arms sale to her benefactors in Saudi Arabia, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world - for use in stricken countries like Yemen - doubled.
This was revealed by WikiLeaks and published by The New York Times. No one doubts the emails are authentic. The subsequent campaign to smear WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, as "agents of Russia", has grown into a spectacular fantasy known as "Russiagate". The "plot" is said to have been signed off by Vladimir Putin himself. There is not a shred of evidence.
The ABC Australia interview with Clinton is an outstanding example of smear and censorship by omission. I would say it is a model.
"No one," the interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, says to Clinton, "could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at that moment [of the inauguration of Trump] ... Do you remember how visceral it was for you?"
Having established Clinton's visceral suffering, Ferguson asks about "Russia's role".
CLINTON: I think Russia affected the perceptions and views of millions of voters, we now know. I think that their intention coming from the very top with Putin was to hurt me and to help Trump.
FERGUSON: How much of that was a personal vendetta by Vladimir Putin against you?
CLINTON: ... I mean he wants to destabilise democracy. He wants to undermine America, he wants to go after the Atlantic Alliance and we consider Australia kind of a ... an extension of that ...
The opposite is true. It is Western armies that are massing on Russia's border for the first time since the Russian Revolution 100 years ago.
FERGUSON: How much damage did [Julian Assange] do personally to you?
CLINTON: Well, I had a lot of history with him because I was Secretary of State when ah WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive ah information from our State Department and our Defence Department.
What Clinton fails to say - and her interviewer fails to remind her - is that in 2010, WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the United Nations leadership, including the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
A classified directive, signed by Clinton, was issued to US diplomats in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks.
This was known as Cablegate. It was lawless spying.
CLINTON: He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And ah, he has done their bidding.
Clinton offered no evidence to back up this serious accusation, nor did Ferguson challenge her.
CLINTON: You don't see damaging negative information coming out about the Kremlin on WikiLeaks. You didn't see any of that published.
This was false. WikiLeaks has published a massive number of documents on Russia - more than 800,000, most of them critical, many of them used in books and as evidence in court cases.
CLINTON: So I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.
FERGUSON: Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr for free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him? Well, you've just described him as a nihilist.
CLINTON: Yeah, well, and a tool. I mean he's a tool of Russian intelligence. And if he's such a, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesn't WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?
Again, Ferguson said nothing to challenge this or correct her.
CLINTON: There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to weaponise that information, to make up stories ... to help Trump.
FERGUSON: Now, along with some of those outlandish stories, there was information that was revealed about the Clinton Foundation that at least in some of the voters' minds seemed to associate you ...
CLINTON: Yeah, but it was false!
FERGUSON: ... with the peddling of information ...
CLINTON: It was false! It was totally false! ...
FERGUSON: Do you understand how difficult it was for some voters to understand the amounts of money that the [Clinton] Foundation is raising, the confusion with the consultancy that was also raising money, getting gifts and travel and so on for Bill Clinton that even Chelsea had some issues with? ...
CLINTON: Well you know, I'm sorry, Sarah, I mean I, I know the facts ...
The ABC interviewer lauded Clinton as "the icon of your generation". She asked her nothing about the enormous sums she creamed off from Wall Street, such as the $675,000 she received for speeches at Goldman Sachs, one of the banks at the centre of the 2008 crash. Clinton's greed deeply upset the kind of voters she abused as "deplorables".
Clearly looking for a cheap headline in the Australian press, Ferguson asked her if Trump was "a clear and present danger to Australia" and got her predictable response.
This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clinton's own "clear and present danger" to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to "obliterate totally", and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.
"Libya was Hillary Clinton's war", Julian Assange said in a filmed interview with me last year. "Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails ... there's more than 1700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that we've published, just about Libya. It's not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state - something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.
"So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.
"Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control the movement of people through it."
This - not Clinton's "visceral" pain in losing to Trump nor the rest of the self-serving scuttlebutt in her ABC interview - was the story. Clinton shared responsibility for massively de-stabilising the Middle East, which led to the death, suffering and flight of thousands of women, men and children.
Ferguson raised not a word of it. Clinton repeatedly defamed Assange, who was neither defended nor offered a right of reply on his own country's state broadcaster.
In a tweet from London, Assange cited the ABC's own Code of Practice, which states: "Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond."
Following the ABC broadcast, Ferguson's executive producer, Sally Neighbour, re-tweeted the following: "Assange is Putin's bitch. We all know it!"
The slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview captioned 'Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!'.
In the years I have known Julian Assange, I have watched a vituperative personal campaign try to stop him and WikiLeaks. It has been a frontal assault on whistleblowing, on free speech and free journalism, all of which are now under sustained attack from governments and corporate internet controllers.
The first serious attacks on Assange came from the Guardian which, like a spurned lover, turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks' disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. Assange was portrayed as "callous" and a "damaged personality".
It was as if a rampant jealousy could not accept that his remarkable achievements stood in marked contrast to that of his detractors in the "mainstream" media. It is like watching the guardians of the status quo, regardless of age, struggling to silence real dissent and prevent the emergence of the new and hopeful.
Today, Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him, his tormentors are cowards.
Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth
On 16 October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.
Wading through the Clinton book, What Happened, is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. "They" (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian "nihilist", Julian Assange.
In The New York Times, there was a striking photograph of a female reporter consoling Clinton, having just interviewed her. The lost leader was, above all, "absolutely a feminist". The thousands of women's lives this "feminist" destroyed while in government - Libya, Syria, Honduras - were of no interest.
In New York magazine, Rebecca Trainster wrote that Clinton was finally "expressing some righteous anger". It was even hard for her to smile: "so hard that the muscles in her face ache". Surely, she concluded, "if we allowed women's resentments the same bearing we allow men's grudges, America would be forced to reckon with the fact that all these angry women might just have a point".
Drivel such as this, trivialising women's struggles, marks the media hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Her political extremism and warmongering are of no consequence. Her problem, wrote Trainster, was a "damaging infatuation with the email story". The truth, in other words.
The leaked emails of Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, revealed a direct connection between Clinton and the foundation and funding of organised jihadism in the Middle East and Islamic State (IS). The ultimate source of most Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia, was central to her career.
One email, in 2014, sent by Clinton to Podesta soon after she stepped down as US Secretary of State, discloses that Islamic State is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Clinton accepted huge donations from both governments for the Clinton Foundation.
As Secretary of State, she approved the world's biggest ever arms sale to her benefactors in Saudi Arabia, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world - for use in stricken countries like Yemen - doubled.
This was revealed by WikiLeaks and published by The New York Times. No one doubts the emails are authentic. The subsequent campaign to smear WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, as "agents of Russia", has grown into a spectacular fantasy known as "Russiagate". The "plot" is said to have been signed off by Vladimir Putin himself. There is not a shred of evidence.
The ABC Australia interview with Clinton is an outstanding example of smear and censorship by omission. I would say it is a model.
"No one," the interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, says to Clinton, "could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at that moment [of the inauguration of Trump] ... Do you remember how visceral it was for you?"
Having established Clinton's visceral suffering, Ferguson asks about "Russia's role".
CLINTON: I think Russia affected the perceptions and views of millions of voters, we now know. I think that their intention coming from the very top with Putin was to hurt me and to help Trump.
FERGUSON: How much of that was a personal vendetta by Vladimir Putin against you?
CLINTON: ... I mean he wants to destabilise democracy. He wants to undermine America, he wants to go after the Atlantic Alliance and we consider Australia kind of a ... an extension of that ...
The opposite is true. It is Western armies that are massing on Russia's border for the first time since the Russian Revolution 100 years ago.
FERGUSON: How much damage did [Julian Assange] do personally to you?
CLINTON: Well, I had a lot of history with him because I was Secretary of State when ah WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive ah information from our State Department and our Defence Department.
What Clinton fails to say - and her interviewer fails to remind her - is that in 2010, WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the United Nations leadership, including the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
A classified directive, signed by Clinton, was issued to US diplomats in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks.
This was known as Cablegate. It was lawless spying.
CLINTON: He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And ah, he has done their bidding.
Clinton offered no evidence to back up this serious accusation, nor did Ferguson challenge her.
CLINTON: You don't see damaging negative information coming out about the Kremlin on WikiLeaks. You didn't see any of that published.
This was false. WikiLeaks has published a massive number of documents on Russia - more than 800,000, most of them critical, many of them used in books and as evidence in court cases.
CLINTON: So I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.
FERGUSON: Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr for free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him? Well, you've just described him as a nihilist.
CLINTON: Yeah, well, and a tool. I mean he's a tool of Russian intelligence. And if he's such a, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesn't WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?
Again, Ferguson said nothing to challenge this or correct her.
CLINTON: There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to weaponise that information, to make up stories ... to help Trump.
FERGUSON: Now, along with some of those outlandish stories, there was information that was revealed about the Clinton Foundation that at least in some of the voters' minds seemed to associate you ...
CLINTON: Yeah, but it was false!
FERGUSON: ... with the peddling of information ...
CLINTON: It was false! It was totally false! ...
FERGUSON: Do you understand how difficult it was for some voters to understand the amounts of money that the [Clinton] Foundation is raising, the confusion with the consultancy that was also raising money, getting gifts and travel and so on for Bill Clinton that even Chelsea had some issues with? ...
CLINTON: Well you know, I'm sorry, Sarah, I mean I, I know the facts ...
The ABC interviewer lauded Clinton as "the icon of your generation". She asked her nothing about the enormous sums she creamed off from Wall Street, such as the $675,000 she received for speeches at Goldman Sachs, one of the banks at the centre of the 2008 crash. Clinton's greed deeply upset the kind of voters she abused as "deplorables".
Clearly looking for a cheap headline in the Australian press, Ferguson asked her if Trump was "a clear and present danger to Australia" and got her predictable response.
This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clinton's own "clear and present danger" to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to "obliterate totally", and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.
"Libya was Hillary Clinton's war", Julian Assange said in a filmed interview with me last year. "Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails ... there's more than 1700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that we've published, just about Libya. It's not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state - something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.
"So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.
"Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control the movement of people through it."
This - not Clinton's "visceral" pain in losing to Trump nor the rest of the self-serving scuttlebutt in her ABC interview - was the story. Clinton shared responsibility for massively de-stabilising the Middle East, which led to the death, suffering and flight of thousands of women, men and children.
Ferguson raised not a word of it. Clinton repeatedly defamed Assange, who was neither defended nor offered a right of reply on his own country's state broadcaster.
In a tweet from London, Assange cited the ABC's own Code of Practice, which states: "Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond."
Following the ABC broadcast, Ferguson's executive producer, Sally Neighbour, re-tweeted the following: "Assange is Putin's bitch. We all know it!"
The slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview captioned 'Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!'.
In the years I have known Julian Assange, I have watched a vituperative personal campaign try to stop him and WikiLeaks. It has been a frontal assault on whistleblowing, on free speech and free journalism, all of which are now under sustained attack from governments and corporate internet controllers.
The first serious attacks on Assange came from the Guardian which, like a spurned lover, turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks' disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. Assange was portrayed as "callous" and a "damaged personality".
It was as if a rampant jealousy could not accept that his remarkable achievements stood in marked contrast to that of his detractors in the "mainstream" media. It is like watching the guardians of the status quo, regardless of age, struggling to silence real dissent and prevent the emergence of the new and hopeful.
Today, Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him, his tormentors are cowards.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
SC151-10
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/113365/infuriated-yet
Are You Infuriated Yet?
You should be. I certainly am...
More and more, I'm encountering people who are simply infuriated with how our "leaders" are running (or to put it more accurately, ruining) things right now. And I share that fury.
It’s perfectly normal human response to be infuriated when an outside agent hurts you, especially if the pain seems unnecessary, illogical or random.
Imagine if your neighbor enjoyed setting off loud explosives at all hours of the day and night. Or if he had a habit of tailgating and brake-checking you every time he saw your car on the road. You’d been well within your rights to be infuriated.
Or to use a much more common example from the real world : When your politicians repeatedly pass laws that hurt you in favor of large corporations -- that, too, is infuriating. Especially if those actions run directly counter to their campaign promises.
There’s a lot of be infuriated about in the world today, so go ahead and embrace your rage. By doing so, you’ll be in a better mindset to understand things like Brexit, Catalonia, and Trump, each of which is a reflection of the fury of your fellow citizens, who are finally waking up to the fact that they've been victims for too long.
An easy prediction to make is that this simmering anger of the populace is going to start boiling over more violently in the coming years. Welcome to the Age of Fury.
'Over The Top' Dumb
Do you ever get the sense that, as a society, we're being dangerously reckless? Perhaps so dumb that we might not recover from the repercussions of our stupidity for many generations, if ever?
There are economic and financial idiocies in motion that are, by themselves, unsolvable predicaments without a peaceful solution. But when combined with resource depletion and declining net energy, they're positively intractable.
Take for example the hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of underfunded entitlement and pension promises. Those promises cannot be kept and they cannot be paid. Everybody with a basic comprehension of math can conclude as such.
Yet we continue to operate as if the opposite were true. We comfort ourselves that, somehow, all the promised future payouts will be made in full -- even though the funds are insolvent, their returns are much lower than the actuarial projections require, and payout demand mercilessly rises each year.
Spoiler alert: This isn’t some future disaster lying in wait. It’s unfolding right now.
Take these headlines spanning the past several years:
Congress approves plan to allow pension cuts (Dec 2014)
273,000 union workers and retirees brace for pension cuts (May 2, 2016)
In unprecedented move, pension plan cuts benefits promised to retirees (Jan 27, 2017) -- note the laughable use of "unprecedented" here
Teamsters face 31 percent pension cut (Mar 7, 2017)
New York State Teamsters pension fund cuts approved (Sept 13, 2017)
When it comes to broken retirement promises, the future is now. It will be with us for a very long time.
Why? Because the math simply doesn’t work. It’s broken, it’s been broken for a long time. You can't put too little in the piggy bank at the start, then raid it over time, and still expect to have enough at the end.
And yet we, as a society, have preferred to pretend as if that weren’t the case. Which, it turns out, was a terrible “strategy.”
But if you think that's bad, you’re going to positively hate this chart:
The pension liabilities now blowing up are contained within the thin green smear in the middle of this chart. Think on the nation's inability to handle that single crisis, and now reflect on how overwhelmed it's going to be by the far larger predicaments that lie elsewhere on the chart.
The Infuriating Plunder-fest That Is Health Care
The Medicare liabilities (the orange and largest band on the above chart) are immense, and will only become more so as our largest demographic, the baby boomers, further ages. But they become especially infuriating when seen in the larger context of the racketeering that drives the health care system in the United States.
Instead of doing anything constructive about the high number of IOUs building up within Medicare, Washington DC politicians are sidestepping the most obvious elements that contribute the most to the problem. Enormously wasteful, the “healthcare” system is entirely out of control and spiraling deeper into an abyss that threatens to literally destroy the most productive segment of the US social structure: the middle and upper middle classes.
That should be a topic of serious discussion in the halls of power. But none is being had.
Literally each day brings worse news on the skyrocketing costs of healthcare. But, as with most topics, the media mostly focuses on the symptoms (prices) rather than the causes of the issue.
The real culprits here are the insurance cartel and a hospital system that has the most unfair, incomprehensible, and inhumane billing process ever devised. One easy to grasp feature of both the insurance companies and conspire to pay the executives far more than they actually deserve or are truly worth.
Health care premiums for 2018 set to go up by as much as 50 percent
Oct 5, 2017
Several states have announced rates for health insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchanges for 2018. Topping the list is Georgia, with rates that are 57 percent higher than last year, while Florida said some premiums will be 45 percent higher.
Among the reasons for these increases is the uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal and replace the health care law, which was passed under his predecessor President Barack Obama.
Insurers are raising premiums in the face of repeated threats from President Trump to stop funding so-called cost-sharing reductions, payments to insurers that cover out-of-pocket costs for some low-income consumers. Trump previously referred to these payments as “bailouts” for insurance companies and threatened to stop making the payments so as to “let Obamacare implode”.
That’s the story the health insurers are going with: they have to raise rates because they're uncertain whether they will get AS MUCH LOOT under the new rules being considered as they did under the utterly disastrous Obamacare provisions.
How much loot are we talking about? Look at this chart of the stock price of United Healthcare (UNH) since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare):
If this chart showing massive near-4x gains in just 5 years, coupled with your steep annual premium increases, doesn’t infuriate you, you are just not getting it.
Even if your employer pays for your health care (somewhat obscuring the true impact of premium increases), the cost to you is fewer and lower pay increases, as well as steady yearly reductions in covered services along with higher co-pays and deductible amounts.
Still not infuriated? Ok, maybe this will do the trick. Here how much executive compensation at the major insurers was last year:
The average family health care insurance premium in 2016 was $18,764, meaning that Mark Bertolini from Aetna alone required 100% of the premiums from more than 2,200 families just to pay him in 2016. Of course, the “C-suite” of these health care insurers are loaded with other high-paid parasites who are just as busy gouging the young and old alike.
This is a complete travesty and joke. Congress and the Senate, sitting on their deservedly low approval ratings, pretend they cannot do anything about it. Too complicated they say. Bullshit I say. Go after the obscene pay packages and profits of the insurance industry as a first matter of business. Then make it a crime for hospitals to bill people differently for the exact same services.
That’s a no-brainer. Can you imagine if your mechanic had a secret pricing formula for every customer that was, literally, based on their maximum ability to pay? Nobody would stand for it, it’s disgusting that we tolerate this when it comes to something as vital and necessary as our health and even lives.
Fury, not tolerance, is what's needed now.
Conclusion (to Part 1)
The future has arrived. The pension losses are here and just getting started and the future will have a lot more of those sorts of broken promises.
The health care insurance crisis has been with us for 20 years or so now and Obamacare just put some extra accelerant on that fire, which is now consuming middle class households by the tens of thousands.
Both the pension and health care crises are infuriating and self-inflicted wounds. We could have avoided them by making wiser choices in the past. We didn't. We could limit their damage by making better choices today. We almost assuredly won't.
Current conversations and proposals are thinly disguised sleight-of-hand movements whose purpose is to deflect attention from the thefts underway. Anybody who studies the system and its math comes to the same conclusion: the corporations have all the power and they are misusing it for private gain.
Why there aren’t more politicians willing to call a spade a spade and actually protect their constituents is a real mystery. But the next wave of populist candidates certainly won’t be. People are sick and tired of being asked to give more and more while corporations and wealthy elites keep taking more and more.
It’s simply infuriating.
But that’s not the worst of it. The mistakes we are making right now in terms of energy policy and ecological destruction are far more dangerous to your personal health, liberty and future prospects than a simple market crash....
Are You Infuriated Yet?
You should be. I certainly am...
More and more, I'm encountering people who are simply infuriated with how our "leaders" are running (or to put it more accurately, ruining) things right now. And I share that fury.
It’s perfectly normal human response to be infuriated when an outside agent hurts you, especially if the pain seems unnecessary, illogical or random.
Imagine if your neighbor enjoyed setting off loud explosives at all hours of the day and night. Or if he had a habit of tailgating and brake-checking you every time he saw your car on the road. You’d been well within your rights to be infuriated.
Or to use a much more common example from the real world : When your politicians repeatedly pass laws that hurt you in favor of large corporations -- that, too, is infuriating. Especially if those actions run directly counter to their campaign promises.
There’s a lot of be infuriated about in the world today, so go ahead and embrace your rage. By doing so, you’ll be in a better mindset to understand things like Brexit, Catalonia, and Trump, each of which is a reflection of the fury of your fellow citizens, who are finally waking up to the fact that they've been victims for too long.
An easy prediction to make is that this simmering anger of the populace is going to start boiling over more violently in the coming years. Welcome to the Age of Fury.
'Over The Top' Dumb
Do you ever get the sense that, as a society, we're being dangerously reckless? Perhaps so dumb that we might not recover from the repercussions of our stupidity for many generations, if ever?
There are economic and financial idiocies in motion that are, by themselves, unsolvable predicaments without a peaceful solution. But when combined with resource depletion and declining net energy, they're positively intractable.
Take for example the hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of underfunded entitlement and pension promises. Those promises cannot be kept and they cannot be paid. Everybody with a basic comprehension of math can conclude as such.
Yet we continue to operate as if the opposite were true. We comfort ourselves that, somehow, all the promised future payouts will be made in full -- even though the funds are insolvent, their returns are much lower than the actuarial projections require, and payout demand mercilessly rises each year.
Spoiler alert: This isn’t some future disaster lying in wait. It’s unfolding right now.
Take these headlines spanning the past several years:
Congress approves plan to allow pension cuts (Dec 2014)
273,000 union workers and retirees brace for pension cuts (May 2, 2016)
In unprecedented move, pension plan cuts benefits promised to retirees (Jan 27, 2017) -- note the laughable use of "unprecedented" here
Teamsters face 31 percent pension cut (Mar 7, 2017)
New York State Teamsters pension fund cuts approved (Sept 13, 2017)
When it comes to broken retirement promises, the future is now. It will be with us for a very long time.
Why? Because the math simply doesn’t work. It’s broken, it’s been broken for a long time. You can't put too little in the piggy bank at the start, then raid it over time, and still expect to have enough at the end.
And yet we, as a society, have preferred to pretend as if that weren’t the case. Which, it turns out, was a terrible “strategy.”
But if you think that's bad, you’re going to positively hate this chart:
The pension liabilities now blowing up are contained within the thin green smear in the middle of this chart. Think on the nation's inability to handle that single crisis, and now reflect on how overwhelmed it's going to be by the far larger predicaments that lie elsewhere on the chart.
The Infuriating Plunder-fest That Is Health Care
The Medicare liabilities (the orange and largest band on the above chart) are immense, and will only become more so as our largest demographic, the baby boomers, further ages. But they become especially infuriating when seen in the larger context of the racketeering that drives the health care system in the United States.
Instead of doing anything constructive about the high number of IOUs building up within Medicare, Washington DC politicians are sidestepping the most obvious elements that contribute the most to the problem. Enormously wasteful, the “healthcare” system is entirely out of control and spiraling deeper into an abyss that threatens to literally destroy the most productive segment of the US social structure: the middle and upper middle classes.
That should be a topic of serious discussion in the halls of power. But none is being had.
Literally each day brings worse news on the skyrocketing costs of healthcare. But, as with most topics, the media mostly focuses on the symptoms (prices) rather than the causes of the issue.
The real culprits here are the insurance cartel and a hospital system that has the most unfair, incomprehensible, and inhumane billing process ever devised. One easy to grasp feature of both the insurance companies and conspire to pay the executives far more than they actually deserve or are truly worth.
Health care premiums for 2018 set to go up by as much as 50 percent
Oct 5, 2017
Several states have announced rates for health insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchanges for 2018. Topping the list is Georgia, with rates that are 57 percent higher than last year, while Florida said some premiums will be 45 percent higher.
Among the reasons for these increases is the uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal and replace the health care law, which was passed under his predecessor President Barack Obama.
Insurers are raising premiums in the face of repeated threats from President Trump to stop funding so-called cost-sharing reductions, payments to insurers that cover out-of-pocket costs for some low-income consumers. Trump previously referred to these payments as “bailouts” for insurance companies and threatened to stop making the payments so as to “let Obamacare implode”.
That’s the story the health insurers are going with: they have to raise rates because they're uncertain whether they will get AS MUCH LOOT under the new rules being considered as they did under the utterly disastrous Obamacare provisions.
How much loot are we talking about? Look at this chart of the stock price of United Healthcare (UNH) since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare):
If this chart showing massive near-4x gains in just 5 years, coupled with your steep annual premium increases, doesn’t infuriate you, you are just not getting it.
Even if your employer pays for your health care (somewhat obscuring the true impact of premium increases), the cost to you is fewer and lower pay increases, as well as steady yearly reductions in covered services along with higher co-pays and deductible amounts.
Still not infuriated? Ok, maybe this will do the trick. Here how much executive compensation at the major insurers was last year:
The average family health care insurance premium in 2016 was $18,764, meaning that Mark Bertolini from Aetna alone required 100% of the premiums from more than 2,200 families just to pay him in 2016. Of course, the “C-suite” of these health care insurers are loaded with other high-paid parasites who are just as busy gouging the young and old alike.
This is a complete travesty and joke. Congress and the Senate, sitting on their deservedly low approval ratings, pretend they cannot do anything about it. Too complicated they say. Bullshit I say. Go after the obscene pay packages and profits of the insurance industry as a first matter of business. Then make it a crime for hospitals to bill people differently for the exact same services.
That’s a no-brainer. Can you imagine if your mechanic had a secret pricing formula for every customer that was, literally, based on their maximum ability to pay? Nobody would stand for it, it’s disgusting that we tolerate this when it comes to something as vital and necessary as our health and even lives.
Fury, not tolerance, is what's needed now.
Conclusion (to Part 1)
The future has arrived. The pension losses are here and just getting started and the future will have a lot more of those sorts of broken promises.
The health care insurance crisis has been with us for 20 years or so now and Obamacare just put some extra accelerant on that fire, which is now consuming middle class households by the tens of thousands.
Both the pension and health care crises are infuriating and self-inflicted wounds. We could have avoided them by making wiser choices in the past. We didn't. We could limit their damage by making better choices today. We almost assuredly won't.
Current conversations and proposals are thinly disguised sleight-of-hand movements whose purpose is to deflect attention from the thefts underway. Anybody who studies the system and its math comes to the same conclusion: the corporations have all the power and they are misusing it for private gain.
Why there aren’t more politicians willing to call a spade a spade and actually protect their constituents is a real mystery. But the next wave of populist candidates certainly won’t be. People are sick and tired of being asked to give more and more while corporations and wealthy elites keep taking more and more.
It’s simply infuriating.
But that’s not the worst of it. The mistakes we are making right now in terms of energy policy and ecological destruction are far more dangerous to your personal health, liberty and future prospects than a simple market crash....
Friday, October 20, 2017
SC151-9
https://www.globalresearch.ca/neocon-nikki-haleys-anti-iran-rage-prelude-to-war/5614187
Neocon Nikki Haley’s Anti-Iran Rage: Prelude to War?
Iran and North Korea are prime Trump administration targets for war and regime change.
US war plans were drawn long ago against both nations, updated over time, implementation perhaps coming, a high-risk scenario in both theaters, madness if Washington preemptively attacks either country.
Neocon Nikki Haley is Trump’s leading administration antagonist, notably on North Korea and Iran. Her hostile early September address on the Islamic Republic before the hawkish American Enterprise Institute preceded Trump’s decertification of the JCPOA nuclear deal – an international treaty the president defied by his action.
Haley’s address was a deplorable litany of beginning-to-end Big Lies. On Wednesday during a Security Council open debate on the Middle East, she was at it again.
She lied saying Washington’s goal is “peace, security, and human rights for the region.”
She lied claiming “nearly every threat to peace and security in the Middle East is connected to Iran’s outlaw behavior.”
Washington considers aiding Syria combat the scourge of US-supported terrorism “outlaw behavior.”
Iranian actions in Syria and the region are positive, not “destructive,” and “malign,” as Haley claimed.
She lied saying Iran “flagrant(ly) violat(es) Security Council Resolution 2231.” It endorsed the Iran nuclear deal, prohibiting its military from any activity related to ballistic missiles able to deliver nuclear warheads.
Iran is in full compliance, all its missiles capable only of carrying conventional ones. Haley lied claiming otherwise, falsely accusing the country of “aggressive, destabilizing, and unlawful behavior.”
It fully complies with the JCPOA’s letter and spirit. Washington, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies are outlaw nations, waging aggressive wars in multiple theaters, threatening more.
Resolution 2231 doesn’t prohibit Iran from activities related to combating terrorism or dealings with other countries, including aiding them fight this scourge.
Haley criticized its regional efforts – combating ISIS and other terrorists America and its rogue allies support, she failed to explain.
Her remarks included a long laundry list of long ago discredited canards.
Washington, Israel, and its sinister AIPAC lobby resent Iranian sovereign independence, its military strength solely for defense – an obstacle to Israeli regional dominance, along with America’s presence.
Were Haley’s hostile Wednesday remarks prelude for initiating diabolical Trump administration plans ahead, including naked aggression against the country – nuclear deal decertification a starter for what’s to come?
Haley called for tough Security Council action against Iran not forthcoming. Washington ignores international law, acting unilaterally or with rogue allies, pursuing its ruthless imperial agenda.
Does it include war on North Korea and Iran? Is Trump reckless enough to launch the unthinkable against one or both countries?
Is he willing to risk nuclear confrontation and WW III? Humanity holds its breath to find out.
Neocon Nikki Haley’s Anti-Iran Rage: Prelude to War?
Iran and North Korea are prime Trump administration targets for war and regime change.
US war plans were drawn long ago against both nations, updated over time, implementation perhaps coming, a high-risk scenario in both theaters, madness if Washington preemptively attacks either country.
Neocon Nikki Haley is Trump’s leading administration antagonist, notably on North Korea and Iran. Her hostile early September address on the Islamic Republic before the hawkish American Enterprise Institute preceded Trump’s decertification of the JCPOA nuclear deal – an international treaty the president defied by his action.
Haley’s address was a deplorable litany of beginning-to-end Big Lies. On Wednesday during a Security Council open debate on the Middle East, she was at it again.
She lied saying Washington’s goal is “peace, security, and human rights for the region.”
She lied claiming “nearly every threat to peace and security in the Middle East is connected to Iran’s outlaw behavior.”
Washington considers aiding Syria combat the scourge of US-supported terrorism “outlaw behavior.”
Iranian actions in Syria and the region are positive, not “destructive,” and “malign,” as Haley claimed.
She lied saying Iran “flagrant(ly) violat(es) Security Council Resolution 2231.” It endorsed the Iran nuclear deal, prohibiting its military from any activity related to ballistic missiles able to deliver nuclear warheads.
Iran is in full compliance, all its missiles capable only of carrying conventional ones. Haley lied claiming otherwise, falsely accusing the country of “aggressive, destabilizing, and unlawful behavior.”
It fully complies with the JCPOA’s letter and spirit. Washington, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies are outlaw nations, waging aggressive wars in multiple theaters, threatening more.
Resolution 2231 doesn’t prohibit Iran from activities related to combating terrorism or dealings with other countries, including aiding them fight this scourge.
Haley criticized its regional efforts – combating ISIS and other terrorists America and its rogue allies support, she failed to explain.
Her remarks included a long laundry list of long ago discredited canards.
Washington, Israel, and its sinister AIPAC lobby resent Iranian sovereign independence, its military strength solely for defense – an obstacle to Israeli regional dominance, along with America’s presence.
Were Haley’s hostile Wednesday remarks prelude for initiating diabolical Trump administration plans ahead, including naked aggression against the country – nuclear deal decertification a starter for what’s to come?
Haley called for tough Security Council action against Iran not forthcoming. Washington ignores international law, acting unilaterally or with rogue allies, pursuing its ruthless imperial agenda.
Does it include war on North Korea and Iran? Is Trump reckless enough to launch the unthinkable against one or both countries?
Is he willing to risk nuclear confrontation and WW III? Humanity holds its breath to find out.
SC151-8
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48036.htm
Washington: The Bleeder of the ‘Free World’
Among the many self-flattering epithets it gives itself, the US has always claimed to be the “leader of the free world”. It’s a rather patronizing notion that America views itself as a selfless protector and benefactor of its European allies and others. This fairytale depiction of the world is coming to a rude awakening as American power buffets against the reality of a multi-polar world.
Less a world leader and more like a blood-sucking leech on international relations.
We got a clear view of the contradiction in America’s narcissistic mythology with US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was disavowing the multinational nuclear accord with Iran last Friday.
Trump didn’t axe American participation in the deal just yet, but he has put it on notice that he or the US Congress may terminate the accord over the next two months. How’s that for high-handed arrogance?
However, there was near-unanimous push back around the world to Trump’s disparagement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was originally signed in July 2015 by the US, Russia, China, European Union and Iran. All the signatories uniformly rebuked Trump’s attempt to undermine the deal, which is supposed to lift international economic sanctions off Iran in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
While Trump accused Iran of “multiple violations” of the accord, all the other stakeholders asserted satisfaction that Iran has in fact fully implemented its obligations to restrict uranium enrichment and weaponization of its nuclear program. The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also responded to Trump’s claims by reaffirming that eight consecutive monitoring reports have found Iran to be fully compliant with the JCPOA.
Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, have firmly said that the nuclear deal – which took two years to negotiate during Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House – is not for renegotiation. A point which was reiterated too by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
The deal is also written into international law, having been ratified unanimously by the UN Security Council back in 2015. In a stinging admonishment to Washington, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Morgherini said: “This deal is not a bilateral agreement ... The international community, and the European Union with it, has clearly indicated that the deal is, and will, continue to be in place.”
Russia also denounced Trump’s over-the-top aggressive rhetoric towards Iran. The American president was almost foaming at the mouth when he labelled Iran “the world’s top terror sponsor” and accused Tehran of fueling conflict across the Middle East. Moscow said such rhetoric was unacceptable and inappropriate. Iran dismissed Trump’s accusations as baseless lies.
Evidently, Russia, China and the Europeans do not share America’s debased caricature of Iran. And who in their right mind would? The hackneyed American allegations against Iran are – as usual – not backed up with any evidence. They rely on bombastic assertion repeated ad nauseam. It is especially ironic and odious for Washington to accuse others of sponsoring terrorism, given the litany of illegal wars it has launched across the Middle East and the steadily emerging evidence of US links to terror groups in Syria’s six-year war.
Thus, the commitment by all the signatories – except Washington – to the Iranian nuclear deal is a stunning rejection of Trump’s aggressive stance towards Iran.
Ahead of Trump’s anticipated disavowal of the JCPOA on Friday, Germany’s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that such a move would “drive a wedge between Europe and the US”. Significantly, Gabriel said that Trump’s spurning of the accord was “driving the EU towards Russia and China”.
France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire also warned the US not to interfere in Europe’s growing commercial ties with Iran. He was quoted as saying: “The US must not appoint itself as the world’s police man”.
Trump’s hostility towards the Iran nuclear treaty has created dissent within his own cabinet. His secretary of state Rex Tillerson and the defense secretary James Mattis are among those who were urging Trump to uphold the JCPOA. In the Congress, there are also many opponents to Trump’s desire to axe the deal, even among his Republican party. It remains to be seen if the Congress will call for new sanctions on Iran over the next 60 days, as Trump has requested. If Congress does, it will mean the US crashing out of the accord.
In theory, of course, the EU, Russia and China can continue to uphold the nuclear accord with Iran and conduct international trade and investment without the Americans. Russia and China have signed major oil and gas pacts with Iran over the past two years.
The European states have also lined up huge commercial projects and investments with Tehran in sectors of energy, engineering and infrastructure. Germany and France in particular have seen their exports to Iran soar since the signing of the JCPOA. With Iran’s 80 million population and vast oil and gas reserves, the Persian nation represents lucrative opportunities for Europe, given too the geographical proximity.
But the US is still able to exert tremendous power over international banking to the extent that it is having a chilling effect on other countries doing business with Iran. The European states are particularly vulnerable to American pressure.
In a Bloomberg report, it headlined: ‘Trump's Iran Decision Throws Uncertainty Into Business Plans’.
The report goes on: “Since a landmark nuclear agreement freed Iran’s economy from crippling economic sanctions, investors eager to tap the country’s energy reserves and its 80 million consumers have waited for signs it was safe to enter the market in full force… Donald Trump is about to signal that they should keep waiting.”
The US view of Iran is so warped – much of it from relentless propaganda demonizing the Islamic Republic – that it is evidently incapable of normalizing relations as it is obligated to do under the multilateral nuclear deal. Trump ironically accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit of the accord” when it is the US that has worked assiduously to undermine it.
Since Trump took office, he has reportedly cancelled all export licenses to Iran. His administration and the Congress have slapped more “secondary sanctions” on Iran over allegations that it is destabilizing the Middle East and for its support to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
These bilateral US sanctions inevitably have a deterrent effect on other nations doing business with Iran out of fear that they may be penalized in the future. Long-term investments over several years are prone to prohibitive risks due to the uncertainty about what Washington’s capricious policy towards Iran will be.
America’s unilateral, hegemonic conduct – accentuated under Trump – is rapidly alienating other nations. This president seems to operate a “withdrawal doctrine”, as Richard Haass, president of the DC-based Council on Foreign Relations, commented. Trump’s contempt for multilateral obligations peaked with his announcement back in June on backing out of the Paris Climate Accord. It has peaked again with his repudiation of the UN-backed Iran nuclear deal.
What is becoming increasingly apparent is that US unilateralism is all about pandering to its own selfish interests. Trump’s administration has hit Russia with more sanctions and has warned that European energy companies involved in developing the Nord Stream 2 gas project with Russia’s Gazprom will also be sanctioned. The flagrant agenda here is for the US to replace Russia as Europe’s gas supplier, selling its own more expensive fuel to Europe.
Likewise US hostility and sanctions on Iran are not just limited to its own perverse policies. Washington also wants to block others from also doing legitimate business and trade with Iran. For the Europeans struggling to boost their flagging economies, the impediments being thrown in their way by the US over Iran are another source of resentment towards American unilateralism.
This is not the idealized conduct of the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world”. America is increasingly seen as the “bleeder” – a declining power which wants to suck the economic lifeblood from others in order to sustain itself. This untenable American unipolar craving is inevitably hastening the reality of a multipolar world, as Europeans in particular realize that they can no longer afford to prop up America’s economic obesity.
Washington: The Bleeder of the ‘Free World’
Among the many self-flattering epithets it gives itself, the US has always claimed to be the “leader of the free world”. It’s a rather patronizing notion that America views itself as a selfless protector and benefactor of its European allies and others. This fairytale depiction of the world is coming to a rude awakening as American power buffets against the reality of a multi-polar world.
Less a world leader and more like a blood-sucking leech on international relations.
We got a clear view of the contradiction in America’s narcissistic mythology with US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was disavowing the multinational nuclear accord with Iran last Friday.
Trump didn’t axe American participation in the deal just yet, but he has put it on notice that he or the US Congress may terminate the accord over the next two months. How’s that for high-handed arrogance?
However, there was near-unanimous push back around the world to Trump’s disparagement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was originally signed in July 2015 by the US, Russia, China, European Union and Iran. All the signatories uniformly rebuked Trump’s attempt to undermine the deal, which is supposed to lift international economic sanctions off Iran in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
While Trump accused Iran of “multiple violations” of the accord, all the other stakeholders asserted satisfaction that Iran has in fact fully implemented its obligations to restrict uranium enrichment and weaponization of its nuclear program. The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also responded to Trump’s claims by reaffirming that eight consecutive monitoring reports have found Iran to be fully compliant with the JCPOA.
Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, have firmly said that the nuclear deal – which took two years to negotiate during Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House – is not for renegotiation. A point which was reiterated too by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
The deal is also written into international law, having been ratified unanimously by the UN Security Council back in 2015. In a stinging admonishment to Washington, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Morgherini said: “This deal is not a bilateral agreement ... The international community, and the European Union with it, has clearly indicated that the deal is, and will, continue to be in place.”
Russia also denounced Trump’s over-the-top aggressive rhetoric towards Iran. The American president was almost foaming at the mouth when he labelled Iran “the world’s top terror sponsor” and accused Tehran of fueling conflict across the Middle East. Moscow said such rhetoric was unacceptable and inappropriate. Iran dismissed Trump’s accusations as baseless lies.
Evidently, Russia, China and the Europeans do not share America’s debased caricature of Iran. And who in their right mind would? The hackneyed American allegations against Iran are – as usual – not backed up with any evidence. They rely on bombastic assertion repeated ad nauseam. It is especially ironic and odious for Washington to accuse others of sponsoring terrorism, given the litany of illegal wars it has launched across the Middle East and the steadily emerging evidence of US links to terror groups in Syria’s six-year war.
Thus, the commitment by all the signatories – except Washington – to the Iranian nuclear deal is a stunning rejection of Trump’s aggressive stance towards Iran.
Ahead of Trump’s anticipated disavowal of the JCPOA on Friday, Germany’s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that such a move would “drive a wedge between Europe and the US”. Significantly, Gabriel said that Trump’s spurning of the accord was “driving the EU towards Russia and China”.
France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire also warned the US not to interfere in Europe’s growing commercial ties with Iran. He was quoted as saying: “The US must not appoint itself as the world’s police man”.
Trump’s hostility towards the Iran nuclear treaty has created dissent within his own cabinet. His secretary of state Rex Tillerson and the defense secretary James Mattis are among those who were urging Trump to uphold the JCPOA. In the Congress, there are also many opponents to Trump’s desire to axe the deal, even among his Republican party. It remains to be seen if the Congress will call for new sanctions on Iran over the next 60 days, as Trump has requested. If Congress does, it will mean the US crashing out of the accord.
In theory, of course, the EU, Russia and China can continue to uphold the nuclear accord with Iran and conduct international trade and investment without the Americans. Russia and China have signed major oil and gas pacts with Iran over the past two years.
The European states have also lined up huge commercial projects and investments with Tehran in sectors of energy, engineering and infrastructure. Germany and France in particular have seen their exports to Iran soar since the signing of the JCPOA. With Iran’s 80 million population and vast oil and gas reserves, the Persian nation represents lucrative opportunities for Europe, given too the geographical proximity.
But the US is still able to exert tremendous power over international banking to the extent that it is having a chilling effect on other countries doing business with Iran. The European states are particularly vulnerable to American pressure.
In a Bloomberg report, it headlined: ‘Trump's Iran Decision Throws Uncertainty Into Business Plans’.
The report goes on: “Since a landmark nuclear agreement freed Iran’s economy from crippling economic sanctions, investors eager to tap the country’s energy reserves and its 80 million consumers have waited for signs it was safe to enter the market in full force… Donald Trump is about to signal that they should keep waiting.”
The US view of Iran is so warped – much of it from relentless propaganda demonizing the Islamic Republic – that it is evidently incapable of normalizing relations as it is obligated to do under the multilateral nuclear deal. Trump ironically accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit of the accord” when it is the US that has worked assiduously to undermine it.
Since Trump took office, he has reportedly cancelled all export licenses to Iran. His administration and the Congress have slapped more “secondary sanctions” on Iran over allegations that it is destabilizing the Middle East and for its support to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
These bilateral US sanctions inevitably have a deterrent effect on other nations doing business with Iran out of fear that they may be penalized in the future. Long-term investments over several years are prone to prohibitive risks due to the uncertainty about what Washington’s capricious policy towards Iran will be.
America’s unilateral, hegemonic conduct – accentuated under Trump – is rapidly alienating other nations. This president seems to operate a “withdrawal doctrine”, as Richard Haass, president of the DC-based Council on Foreign Relations, commented. Trump’s contempt for multilateral obligations peaked with his announcement back in June on backing out of the Paris Climate Accord. It has peaked again with his repudiation of the UN-backed Iran nuclear deal.
What is becoming increasingly apparent is that US unilateralism is all about pandering to its own selfish interests. Trump’s administration has hit Russia with more sanctions and has warned that European energy companies involved in developing the Nord Stream 2 gas project with Russia’s Gazprom will also be sanctioned. The flagrant agenda here is for the US to replace Russia as Europe’s gas supplier, selling its own more expensive fuel to Europe.
Likewise US hostility and sanctions on Iran are not just limited to its own perverse policies. Washington also wants to block others from also doing legitimate business and trade with Iran. For the Europeans struggling to boost their flagging economies, the impediments being thrown in their way by the US over Iran are another source of resentment towards American unilateralism.
This is not the idealized conduct of the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world”. America is increasingly seen as the “bleeder” – a declining power which wants to suck the economic lifeblood from others in order to sustain itself. This untenable American unipolar craving is inevitably hastening the reality of a multipolar world, as Europeans in particular realize that they can no longer afford to prop up America’s economic obesity.
Monday, October 16, 2017
SC151-7
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48030.htm
Trump’s Media Furore... US Democracy On Thin Ice
US President Trump’s threats this week to shut down critical news media is an ominous sign of how fragile American democratic rights have become.
For Donald Trump to impugn media freedom – albeit in his usual whimsical, boorish fashion – nevertheless shows how far democracy has been eroded in the “land of the free”.
The latest furore followed a report this week by NBC in which Trump purportedly harangued his top Pentagon advisers for a 10-fold increase in the US nuclear weapons arsenal.
Trump’s outlandish demand was reportedly made during a high-level national security meeting back in July. It was the same meeting during which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have scoffed at Trump’s antics and called him a “moron”.
Trump has reacted angrily to the reports, dismissing them with his characteristic jargon as “fake news”.
But, adding to the furore, the president also went on to question whether the broadcasting license of NBC and other networks should be cancelled because of what Trump views as “fake news”. That is, the president is speculating on shutting down media outlets.
Such a move by a president would be legally unviable, according to US laws. But it shows the kind of slippery slope that US media and democratic rights are on.
Trump’s latest musing about shutting down NBC and other channels drew predictable outcry from US media, who rightly to a degree, deplored his attack on democratic rights.
The irony is, however, that the attack on American democratic rights has already been underway before Trump entered the White House, and without much protest from the same media outlets who are now railing against Trump over this rants. We can point to the increasing surveillance powers of federal intelligence agencies which have steadily encroached since the September 2001 terror incidents in New York and Washington DC.
Media freedom in the US has been under assault for a long time.
Trump’s latest outburst is not a one-off anomaly. In recent weeks, the US government has moved to severely restrict the freedom of Russia-based news media operating in the country. A move that has so far not been reciprocated by Moscow on US media operating in Russia.
Russian state-owned news channel RT has been forced to register as a “foreign agent” which will curtail how it carries out normal journalistic functions. Sputnik, another Russian state-owned channel, is also under investigation by US authorities over allegations of destabilizing American politics with “fake news”.
The crimping of Russian news media is part of a wider campaign to suppress all alternative media outlets, including US-based websites, which are being labelled as agents of “foreign interests” because of merely posting articles sourced from RT and Sputnik.
The willing participation of US internet companies, Google, Twitter and Facebook, in blocking news sources that are designated “fake” or “interfering in US politics” is another troubling sign of how citizens’ access to information is being curtailed. These gatekeepers of information are openly moving to restrict access to “authoritative”, “respectable” media outlets. Many of these “respectable” news outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, have in the past been guilty of purveying outrageously fake news, like the “weapons of mass destruction” claims which led to the 2003 US war in Iraq that killed over a million people and unleashed on the world the ongoing scourge of jihadist terrorism.
There is absolutely no credible evidence that Russian news media or alternative US-based sites are systematically engaged in an “influence campaign” to destabilize American democracy.
Sure, there is plenty of false information on the internet available through platforms like Facebook, which most Americans now rely on for their news feed. But to lay the blame for this on Russian media is preposterous scapegoating. What really is the issue here is that US authorities and established media companies simply can’t abide rival outlets that are providing an alternative, critical perspective.
For example, Russia’s RT and Sputnik have given much critical coverage on the war in Syria, as well as conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. Both channels have reported, with documentary evidence, on how the US government and its NATO and regional allies have been complicit in an illegal, covert war for regime change in Syria involving support for extremist militant groups.
This is a critical perspective with grave legal and political implications for Washington and its allies. Just because the US government does not like this kind of unflattering coverage does not legitimize its opprobrium of “fake news”. The latter charge is brazenly being used as a pretext to censor discomfiting information.
There are many other international issues where Russian media are giving a valid, alternative viewpoint. And because official US interests are offended by this critical perspective, the authorities are moving to ostracize Russian media with the spurious allegation of “foreign agents” and “undermining American democracy”.
But the paramount issue here is that this is an audacious attack on American democratic rights of free media and freedom of speech, as supposedly enshrined in the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
All of the US established news media have propagated the bogus narrative of “Russian influence” and “Russian fake news”. This narrative plays well for political opponents of President Trump, primarily in the Democrat party. On this issue, Trump is right when he denounces as “fake news” the campaign to pillory Russia and to allege that the Kremlin directed state-owned media to influence the November presidential election in Trump’s favor.
There is simply no evidence that Russian news media were or are engaged in anything nefarious to destabilize US democracy. Russian media have and do give critical news coverage. If that “destabilizes” Washington’s illicit activities in overseas’ wars then that’s what responsible journalism should be doing. To curb this journalism because it offends geopolitical interests is, frankly, censorship and the actions of a tyrant.
Trump’s latest threats to shutdown the American news channel NBC over alleged “fake news” are indeed menacing. The NBC report on Trump’s nuclear weapons ranting appear to be credible in any case.
But the outcry from US media over Trump’s boorish threats are hypocritical. Their concern seems to be based on a superficial contempt for Trump as a loathsome individual – as opposed to a principled defense of democratic rights, and media freedom in particular.
The US media outlets that are piously railing against Trump over his “assault on the Fourth Estate” are the same outlets which have piled on the pressure to suppress alternative media outlets like Russia’s RT and Sputnik, as well as other US-based independent information sources that are being demonized in McCarthyite fashion as “foreign agents”.
And, again, much of this hostility towards alternative media is motivated by the fact that these alternative media have admirably exposed the hypocrisy and criminality of US authorities. Also exposed is the aiding and abetting by the servile establishment media who have long covered up for the US authorities and their illicit activities in overseas’ wars and against citizens at home.
American democratic rights are indeed on thin ice. But that was the case long before the elephantine Trump arrived on the scene. His clumsy lurching is merely serving to illustrate how treacherously thin the ice has become upon which US democracy now stands.
Trump’s Media Furore... US Democracy On Thin Ice
US President Trump’s threats this week to shut down critical news media is an ominous sign of how fragile American democratic rights have become.
For Donald Trump to impugn media freedom – albeit in his usual whimsical, boorish fashion – nevertheless shows how far democracy has been eroded in the “land of the free”.
The latest furore followed a report this week by NBC in which Trump purportedly harangued his top Pentagon advisers for a 10-fold increase in the US nuclear weapons arsenal.
Trump’s outlandish demand was reportedly made during a high-level national security meeting back in July. It was the same meeting during which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have scoffed at Trump’s antics and called him a “moron”.
Trump has reacted angrily to the reports, dismissing them with his characteristic jargon as “fake news”.
But, adding to the furore, the president also went on to question whether the broadcasting license of NBC and other networks should be cancelled because of what Trump views as “fake news”. That is, the president is speculating on shutting down media outlets.
Such a move by a president would be legally unviable, according to US laws. But it shows the kind of slippery slope that US media and democratic rights are on.
Trump’s latest musing about shutting down NBC and other channels drew predictable outcry from US media, who rightly to a degree, deplored his attack on democratic rights.
The irony is, however, that the attack on American democratic rights has already been underway before Trump entered the White House, and without much protest from the same media outlets who are now railing against Trump over this rants. We can point to the increasing surveillance powers of federal intelligence agencies which have steadily encroached since the September 2001 terror incidents in New York and Washington DC.
Media freedom in the US has been under assault for a long time.
Trump’s latest outburst is not a one-off anomaly. In recent weeks, the US government has moved to severely restrict the freedom of Russia-based news media operating in the country. A move that has so far not been reciprocated by Moscow on US media operating in Russia.
Russian state-owned news channel RT has been forced to register as a “foreign agent” which will curtail how it carries out normal journalistic functions. Sputnik, another Russian state-owned channel, is also under investigation by US authorities over allegations of destabilizing American politics with “fake news”.
The crimping of Russian news media is part of a wider campaign to suppress all alternative media outlets, including US-based websites, which are being labelled as agents of “foreign interests” because of merely posting articles sourced from RT and Sputnik.
The willing participation of US internet companies, Google, Twitter and Facebook, in blocking news sources that are designated “fake” or “interfering in US politics” is another troubling sign of how citizens’ access to information is being curtailed. These gatekeepers of information are openly moving to restrict access to “authoritative”, “respectable” media outlets. Many of these “respectable” news outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, have in the past been guilty of purveying outrageously fake news, like the “weapons of mass destruction” claims which led to the 2003 US war in Iraq that killed over a million people and unleashed on the world the ongoing scourge of jihadist terrorism.
There is absolutely no credible evidence that Russian news media or alternative US-based sites are systematically engaged in an “influence campaign” to destabilize American democracy.
Sure, there is plenty of false information on the internet available through platforms like Facebook, which most Americans now rely on for their news feed. But to lay the blame for this on Russian media is preposterous scapegoating. What really is the issue here is that US authorities and established media companies simply can’t abide rival outlets that are providing an alternative, critical perspective.
For example, Russia’s RT and Sputnik have given much critical coverage on the war in Syria, as well as conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. Both channels have reported, with documentary evidence, on how the US government and its NATO and regional allies have been complicit in an illegal, covert war for regime change in Syria involving support for extremist militant groups.
This is a critical perspective with grave legal and political implications for Washington and its allies. Just because the US government does not like this kind of unflattering coverage does not legitimize its opprobrium of “fake news”. The latter charge is brazenly being used as a pretext to censor discomfiting information.
There are many other international issues where Russian media are giving a valid, alternative viewpoint. And because official US interests are offended by this critical perspective, the authorities are moving to ostracize Russian media with the spurious allegation of “foreign agents” and “undermining American democracy”.
But the paramount issue here is that this is an audacious attack on American democratic rights of free media and freedom of speech, as supposedly enshrined in the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
All of the US established news media have propagated the bogus narrative of “Russian influence” and “Russian fake news”. This narrative plays well for political opponents of President Trump, primarily in the Democrat party. On this issue, Trump is right when he denounces as “fake news” the campaign to pillory Russia and to allege that the Kremlin directed state-owned media to influence the November presidential election in Trump’s favor.
There is simply no evidence that Russian news media were or are engaged in anything nefarious to destabilize US democracy. Russian media have and do give critical news coverage. If that “destabilizes” Washington’s illicit activities in overseas’ wars then that’s what responsible journalism should be doing. To curb this journalism because it offends geopolitical interests is, frankly, censorship and the actions of a tyrant.
Trump’s latest threats to shutdown the American news channel NBC over alleged “fake news” are indeed menacing. The NBC report on Trump’s nuclear weapons ranting appear to be credible in any case.
But the outcry from US media over Trump’s boorish threats are hypocritical. Their concern seems to be based on a superficial contempt for Trump as a loathsome individual – as opposed to a principled defense of democratic rights, and media freedom in particular.
The US media outlets that are piously railing against Trump over his “assault on the Fourth Estate” are the same outlets which have piled on the pressure to suppress alternative media outlets like Russia’s RT and Sputnik, as well as other US-based independent information sources that are being demonized in McCarthyite fashion as “foreign agents”.
And, again, much of this hostility towards alternative media is motivated by the fact that these alternative media have admirably exposed the hypocrisy and criminality of US authorities. Also exposed is the aiding and abetting by the servile establishment media who have long covered up for the US authorities and their illicit activities in overseas’ wars and against citizens at home.
American democratic rights are indeed on thin ice. But that was the case long before the elephantine Trump arrived on the scene. His clumsy lurching is merely serving to illustrate how treacherously thin the ice has become upon which US democracy now stands.
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