Bulletin
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Civilization and Its Discontents by
Sigmund Freud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRNuTHEmgKU
(3hr.4min)
Subject
:
Preparing for Total War and the Social Engineering
of Human Instincts
26 April 2019
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
morbid obsession of our political leaders with the instruments of social control
and the pathological fixation of corporate capitalists on the maximization of
profitable investments are unsurprisingly causing much death and destruction
around the world. This is the world that Freud’s psychoanalytical theories
attempted to explain. In Civilization
and Its Discontents (1930), Freud describes the human being’s role in
the world as a life of never-ending conflict between “the individual’s claim to
freedom and the demands of society. The theme of this book is that
“civilization is only made possible by individual renouncement. Man’s
instinctive life is aggressive and egoistic, seeking self-satisfaction; the
structure of culture is designed to curb and prohibit his instinctual drives;
the sense of guilt has become the maker of civilized humanity.”
This
Promethean vision of superhuman results produced by the eternal struggle
against instincts is examined by Herbert Marcuse in the first chapter in his
1970 book, Five
Essays (1970). He begins this book with a discussion of “freedom” as
presented in Freud’s theory of instincts. (See items q. & u. below for more on the practice of
social engineering and human instincts.)
A
discussion of Freudian theory from the standpoint of political science and
philosophy requires some justification – in part because Freud repeatedly
emphasized the scientific and empirical character of his work. The
justification must be two-fold: first, it must show that the structure of
Freudian theory is open to and in fact encourages consideration in
political terms, that this theory, which appears to be
purely biological, is fundamentally social and historical. Second, it must show
on the one hand to what extent psychology today is an essential part of
political science, and on the other hand to what extent the Freudian theory of
instincts (which is the only thing we will be concerned with here) makes it
possible to understand the hidden nature of certain decisive tendencies in
current politics.
We
will begin with the second aspect of the justification. Our concern is not with
introducing psychological concepts into political science or with explaining
political processes in psychological terms. That would mean attempting to
explain what is basic in terms of what is based on it. Rather, psychology in its
inner structure must reveal itself to be political. The psyche appears more and
more immediately to be a piece of the social totality, so that individuation is
almost synonymous with apathy and even with guilt, but also with the principle
of negation, of possible revolution. Moreover, the totality of which the psyche
is a part becomes to an increasing extent less “society” than “politics.” That
is, society has fallen prey to and become identified with domination.
We
must identify at the outset what we mean by “domination,” because the content
of this notion is central to Freudian instinct theory. Domination is in effect
whenever the individual’s goals and purposes and the means of striving for and
attaining them are prescribed to him and performed by him as something
prescribed. Domination can be exercised by men, by nature, by things – it can
also be internal, exercised by the individual on himself, and appear in the
form of autonomy. The second form plays a decisive role in Freudian instinct
theory: the superego absorbs the authoritarian models, the father and his
representatives, and makes their commands and prohibitions its own laws, the
individual’s conscience. Mastery of drives becomes the individual’s own
accomplishment – autonomy.
Under
these circumstances, however, freedom becomes an impossible concept, for there
is nothing that is not prescribed for the individual in some way or other. And
in the fact freedom can be defined only within the framework of domination, if
previous history is to provide a guide to the definition of freedom. Freedom is
a form of domination: the one in which the means provided satisfy the
needs of the individual with a minimum of displeasure and renunciation. In this
sense freedom is completely historical, and the degree of freedom can be
determined only historically; capacities and needs as well as the minimum of
renunciation differ depending on the level of cultural development and are
subject of objective conditions. But it is precisely the fact of being
objectively, historically conditioned that make the distinction between freedom
and domination transcend any merely subjective valuation: like human needs and
capacities themselves, the means of satisfying the needs produced at a
particular level of culture are socially given facts, present in martial and
mental productive forces and in the possibilities for their application.
Civilization can use these possibilities in the interest of individual
gratification of needs and so will be organized under the aspect of freedom.
Under optimal conditions domination is reduced to a rational division of labor
and experience; freedom and happiness converge. On the other hand, individual
satisfaction itself may be subordinated to a social need that limits and
diverts these possibilities; in that case the social and the individual needs
become separate, and civilization is operating through domination.
Hitherto
existing culture has been organized in the form of domination insofar as social
needs have been determined by the interests of the ruling groups at any given
time, and this interest has defined the needs of other groups and the means and
limitations of their satisfactions. Contemporary civilization has developed
social wealth to a point where the renunciations and burdens placed on
individuals seem more and more unnecessary and irrational. The irrationality of
unfreedom is most crassly expressed in the
intensified subjection of individuals in the enormous apparatus of production
and distribution, in the de-privatization of free time, in the almost
indistinguishable fusion of constructive and destructive social labor. And it
is precisely this fusion that is the condition of the constantly increasing
productivity domination of nature which keeps individuals – or at least the
majority of them in the advanced countries – living in increasing comfort. Thus
irrationality becomes he form of social reason, becomes the rational
universal. Psychologically – and that is all that concerns us here – the
difference between domination and freedom in becoming smaller. The individual
reproduces on the deepest level, in his instinctual structure, the values and
behavior patterns that serve to maintain domination, while domination becomes
increasingly less autonomous, less “personal,” more objective and universal.
What actually dominates is the economic, political, and cultural apparatus,
which has become an indivisible unity constructed by social labor.
To
be sure, the individual has always reproduced domination from within himself,
and to the extent that domination represented and developed the whole, this
reproduction has been of service to rational self-preservation and
self-development. From the outset the whole has asserted itself in the
sacrifice of the happiness and the freedom of a great part of mankind; it has
always contained a self- contradiction, which has been embodied in the
political and spiritual forces striving toward a different form of life. What
is peculiar to the present stage is the neutralization of this contradiction –
the mastering of the tension between the given form of life and its negation, a
refusal in the name of the greater freedom which is historically possible.
Where the neutralization of this contradiction is now most advanced, the
possible is scarcely still known and desired, especially by those on whose
knowing and willing its realization depends, those who alone could make it
something really possible. In the most technically advanced centers of the
contemporary world, society has been hammered into a unity as never before;
what is possible is defined and realized by the forces that have brought it
this unity; the future is to remain theirs, and individuals are to desire and
bring about this future “in freedom.”
“In
freedom” – for compulsion presupposes a contradiction that can express itself
in resistance. The totalitarian state is only one of the forms – a form perhaps
already obsolete – in which the battle against the historical possibility of
liberation takes place. The other, the democratic form, rejects terror because
it is strong and rich enough to preserve and reproduce itself without terror:
most individuals are in fact better off in this form. But what determines its
historical direction is not this fact, but the way it organizes and utilizes
the productive forces at its disposal. It, too, maintains society at the
attained level, despite all technical progress. It ,
too, works against the new forms of freedom that are historically possible. In
this sense its rationality, too, is regressive, although it works with more
painless and more comfortable means and methods. But that it does so should not
repress the consciousness that in the democratic form freedom is played off
against its complete realization, reality against possibility.
To
compare potential freedom with existing freedom, to see the later in the light
of the former, presupposes that at the present stage of civilization much of
the toil, renunciation, and regulation imposed upon men is no longer justified
by scarcity, the struggle for existence, poverty, and weakness. Society could afford
a high degree of instinctual liberation without losing what it has accomplished
or putting a stop to its progress. The basic trend of such liberation, as
indicated by Freudian theory, would be the recovery of a large part of the
instinctual energy diverted to alienated labor, and its release for the
fulfillment of the autonomously developing needs of individuals. That would in
fact also be desublimation – but a desublimation that would not destroy the “spiritualized”
manifestation of human energy but rather take them as projects for
possibilities of happy satisfaction. The result would be not a reversion to the
prehistory of civilization but rather a fundamental change in the content and
goal of civilization, in the principle of progress. . . .
[T]he realization of this possibility presupposes fundamental changed
social and cultural institutions. In the existing culture that progression
appears as a catastrophe, and the battle against it as
a necessity, with the result that the forces tending toward it are paralyzed.
Freudian
instinct theory reveals this neutralization of the dynamic of freedom in terms
of psychology, and Freud made visible its necessity, its consequences for the
individual, and its limits.(pp.1-6)
. . .
The
organism develops through the activity of two original basic instincts; the life
instinct (sexuality, which Freud for the most part not call
Eros) and the death instinct, the destructive instinct. While the former
strives for the binding of living substance into ever larger and more permanent
units, the death instinct desires regression to the condition before birth,
without needs and thus without pain. It strives for the annihilation of life,
for reversion to inorganic mater. The organism equipped with such an
antagonistic instinctual
structure finds itself in an environment which is too poor and
too hostile for the immediate gratification of the life instinct. Eros desires
life under the pleasure principle, but the environment stands in the way of
this goal. Thus as soon as the life instinct has subjected the death instinct
to itself (a subjection which is simultaneously with the beginning and the
continuation of life), the environment compels a decisive modification of the
instincts: in part they are diverted from their original goal or inhibited on
the way to it, in part the area of their activity is limited and their
direction is changed.*
The result of this modification is gratification which is inhibited, delayed,
and vicarious but also secure, useful, and relatively lasting.
Thus
the psychic dynamic takes the form of a constant struggle of three basic
forces; Eros, the death instinct, and the outside world. Corresponding to these
three forces are the three basic principles which according to Freud determine
the functions of the psychic apparatus: the pleasure principle, the Nirvana
principle, and the reality principle. If the pleasure principle
stands for the unlimited unfolding of the life instinct, and the Nirvana
principle for regression into the painless conditions before birth, then the
reality principle signifies the totality of the modifications of those
instincts compelled by the outside world; it signifies “reason” as reality
itself.(pp.6-7)
_______
* Note : The “plasticity” of the
instincts which this theory presupposes should suffice to refute the notion
that the instincts are essentially unalterable biological substrata: only the
“energy” of the instincts and – to some extent – their “localization” remain
fundamentally unchanged.(p.7)
In
1931, one year after the publication of its first edition, Freud added a final
thought to the conclusion of his analysis in Civilization and Its Discontents. In the context of the beginning
of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, he offered a more optimistic view, that
the epic battle between life and death will be won eventually by life forces
(as it should have done long ago).
Men
have gained control over the force of nature to such an extent that with their
help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man.
They know this, and hence comes a large part of their
current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. And now it is to
be expected that the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers,” eternal Eros, will
make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal
adversary? But who can foresee with what success and with what result?(Civilization and Its Discontents, p.92)
The
24 + items below offer insights into the social control methods that now
dominate our lives and the logical outcome of these capitalist monopoly
political manipulations.
Francis Feeley
---
Professor emeritus of American Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and
Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
April 25, 2019
Avoiding
Assange
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/25/avoiding-assange/
by
Jim
Kavanagh
The
United States government is seeking to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange for one reason: to punish him for publishing true
and embarrassing information about US crimes and intimidate every journalist in
the world from doing so again.
If
the US government succeeds in doing this, it will strike a devastating blow to
the fundamental elements of democracy throughout the world—the freedom of the
press and the related ability of citizens to know what their governments
is doing.
I
say “throughout the world” because It’s important to
understand that the US government in this case is asserting its prosecutorial
authority over someone who is not an American and whose journalistic activity
took place outside the United States. The United States is demonstrating its
ability to get a foreign government to arrest and extradite journalists who are
neither Americans nor citizens of its own country and send them off to the
United States to face charges under American law. It’s not only a brazen
attempt to quash press freedoms; it’s a further extension of the United States’
arrogant assertion of extra-territorial—indeed, universal—jurisdiction of its
laws.
As
Jonathan Cook says,
those who accept this have “signed off on the right of the US authorities to
seize any foreign journalist, anywhere in the world, and lock him or her out of
sight. They opened the door to a new, special form of rendition for
journalists.”
===========
b.
The Orchestration Of Russiaphobia Is The Prelude To War
(April
24, 2019)
by Paul Craig Roberts
via PaulCraigRoberts.org
The
Orchestration of Russiaphobia Is The
Prelude To War
Paul
Craig Roberts
Every
person, government and private organization that supports Washington’s Russiaphobic policies is contributing to the growing threat
of nuclear war…
The
Russian Embassy in Washington has prepared an accurate 121-page report, THE
RUSSIAGATE HYSTERIA: A CASE OF SEVERE RUSSOPHOBIA.https://washington.mid.ru/upload/iblock/3c3/3c3d1e3b69a4c228e99bfaeb5491ecd7.pdf
Everyone
should read this report. It documents the fake news, lies, violations of
diplomatic standards and international law, and gratuitous aggressive actions
taken against Russia during the period beginning May 18, 2016 and continuing
through the issuance of the Mueller Report.
The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/22/the-buried-maidan-massacre-and-its-misrepresentation-by-the-west/#comments
===========
c.
The West's
irrational fear of Iran
is a
disaster waiting to happen
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51477.htm
by Seyed Mohammad Marandi
If the Trump regime
miscalculates, the house can easily come crashing down on its head
While
western regimes craft a fresh humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, their corporate
and state-owned media and corrupted think-tanks embody what Shakespeare's
Lorenzo describes as "this muddy vesture of decay" – and, true to
form, frustrate attempts to provide voice to their latest subaltern victims.
Increasingly vitriolic voices, from Paris to Washington,
reveal exasperation and express a need to intimidate and justify
the eviction of the many increasingly difficult tenants of the Fifth Estate.
Just as advanced capitalism has successfully transformed the
first four estates into an almost homogeneous, postmodern utopia for
well-heeled Wall Street and Ivory Tower dwellers – amid a deluge of
conspiratorial narratives of existential threats – western regime-affiliated
intellectual elites vigorously promote a "benign" monopoly in this
lucrative piece of real estate.
Ethnocentric worldview
As in Palestine, excavation and construction can only begin
with a purge of "inferior" races, religions and social classes, as
well as other "malign" influences. After all, as Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reminds his European and North American allies,
there is no place for the weak, who are destined for slaughter, while the
strong survive.
Based on this Eurocentric, clinical diagnosis and
ethnocentric worldview, language is reformed and policed so that anti-apartheid
now means racism. When it is stated that Palestinian medics, reporters and
children have been killed or maimed in "clashes", it means that
Israeli regime soldiers have targeted unarmed civilians.
In this brave new world, Humpty Dumpty linguistics and
semantics are key to "civilized" conceptual understandings. Al-Qaeda are
"freedom fighters" and "rebels" in Syria, but terrorists in
the United States, France and the United Kingdom.
US President Donald Trump is condemned for his slurs against
Hispanics and Latinos, but praised for his tangible acts to starve Venezuelans.
The US-Saudi-imposed mass starvation and genocide in Yemen was entirely
acceptable for western pundits, while a clear schism exists in relation to the Jamal Khashoggi
killing.
Now that Iranian, Palestinian, Venezuelan, Russian and
even Western detractors – among others – are being purged from the public sphere and even social media
platforms, controlling and manipulating the public discourse may seem much more
undemanding in the corridors of power.
However, as the power and fortune of the US and its European
allies continues to decline, their response to events appears increasingly
frantic and crude. They appear to be engaged in imperial overreach.
Old-school imperialism
+
Trump's Latest Iran Sanctions Show an Unraveling of US
Foreign Policy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0KTa2uSRro
with Mark Steiner and Lawrence
Wilkerson
Col.
Lawrence Wilkerson says unilateral sanctions against Iran are illegal, and show
the ascendancy of John Bolton; they intensify tension with China and threaten
our international position.
===========
d.
Why
did Bush go to war in Iraq?
![Then President George W Bush is seen addressing the US Army soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas about the possibility of military action against Iraq in January 2003 [File: Jeff Mitchell/Reuters]](images/842_002.jpg)
Then President George W Bush is seen
addressing the US Army soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas about the possibility of
military action against Iraq in January 2003
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/bush-war-iraq-190318150236739.html
by Ahsan I
Butt
No,
it wasn't because of WMDs, democracy or Iraqi oil. The real reason is much more
sinister than that.
+
"I Was
The CIA Director - We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51476.htm
by
Tyler Durden
"I was
the CIA Director; we lied, we cheated we stole. We had entire training
courses."
Former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has long accused WikiLeaks
of being a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”, usually manipulated by
Russia. Since Pompeo first made this claim as CIA
Director in April 2017, countless major US news sources from NPR to CNN to the
Washington Post have uncritically repeated the line, smearing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as
"Russian agents," and more broadly using the narrative to stifle
independent journalism and government whistleblowers.
But whether Pompeo or any other
current or former CIA director makes such a bombastic claim without offering
evidence — such as more
recently asserting that China and Russia have "helped
destroy" Venezuela through faltering investments, should anyone ever believe a high CIA official? Certainly the
mainstream media routinely takes intelligence officials simply at their word,
but Pompeo himself recently admitted the CIA is in the
business of lying, cheating, and
stealing.
Last week Mike Pompeo spoke at
Texas A&M University, itself long known for being a favored recruiting
ground of the CIA, considering too that one of the university's last
presidents, Robert Gates, was CIA chief and later served as Bush and Obama's
Secretary of Defense.
During the Q&A session, Pompeo
boasted that in the CIA both the training and culture are geared toward the
following:
"We
lied, we cheated, we stole."
Interestingly, a Christian religious news broadcaster was the
only media that seemed to pick up on Pompeo's words
last week, and described it as follows: "that's not the resume of the Secretary of State... that's
the resume of Satan."
+
The secret
history of America's defeat in Syria
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51470.htm
by
Patrick Lawrence
After years covering
the "main battlefield in World War III," Narwani
says everything you think you know is wrong.
When
the war in Syria was recently declared decisively over, there were few
correspondents or witnesses to turn to for a credible look at exactly what
happened during eight years of conflict. The questions were many, but I could
count on one hand those worth putting them to. Among these was Sharmine Narwani, whose work I
have long counted distinctly thorough and honest amid coverage that — in her view as well as mine — hit a new low by way of collapsed
professional standards and abandoned ethics. Narwani’s
pieces, written for a variety of publications, consistently reflect her hard
work on the ground — work nearly no one else did. She is eyes wide open and
beholden to no national interest or media slant.
Narwani brings impressive credentials to the craft. After earning a masters in journalism from
Columbia, she was for four years (2010–14) a senior associate at St. Antony's
College, Oxford. It was during those years that she began to make her mark
covering the Middle East from her bureau-of-one in Beirut. Her accounts of the
war as it truly unfolded have opened many eyes over the years, mine included.
Having witnessed the Syrian war from start to finish, she now
casts it in a usefully broad context. “The Syrian conflict constitutes the main
battlefield in a kind of World War III,” she said during our lengthy exchange.
“The world wars were, in essence, great-power wars, after which the global
order reshuffled a bit and new global institutions were established.” This, in
outline, is what Narwani sees out in front of us, now
that the Western powers’ latest “regime change” operation has failed.
Narwani and I conducted
our exchange via email, Skype and WhatsApp over a
period of several weeks in late March and early April. In this, the
first of two parts, Narwani dissects the role of
various constituencies — radical jihadists and the nations that backed them,
the Western press, the NGOs — in prolonging a war that, in her view, could have
ended far sooner than it did. I have edited the transcript solely for length.
Part 2 will follow.
+
From: "ana hona" <anahona366@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 2:00:03 AM
Subject: Burning himself because of the treatment of an injured person for almost a year lies in the care of the condenser and waits for someone to help him
Hi
Bilal Masoud, 27, was injured on the second Friday of the return marches almost a year ago. Bilal was hit by three bullets in the foot and one in his shoulder. These bullets were to kill him at the time, Bilal had platinum nails in his feet because of a bone fracture. It is 3 centimeters in the left foot and needs several operations. He went to the operating room 3 times and there was no improvement. The doctor told him two days ago that he should perform an operation that requires a large sum or loses one foot.
After returning home, his mental state worsened and he burned himself with gasoline. He is now in intensive care at Shifa Hospital in Gaza. He has been unconscious for two days and is waiting for anyone to help him if he gets out of the hospital to return his feet.
Bilal is also our friend and lives in the neighborhood near us and we are aware of him since his injury and I sent his picture almost a year ago to you.
Our group is taking care of it so far, but we can not do anything to it now because of the difficult economic conditions we live in. This is your distress call to bring Bilal out of the Gaza Strip and bring him into a hospital that can save him.
I hope you understand this seriously because the situation is really difficult. There are big appeals in Gaza to get him out, but we have not been able so far.
I would like you to donate via the new link due to the closure of the previous account due to PayPal policy and donation sites
https://gogetfunding.com/please-stand-with-us-we-need-you-4
===========
e.
Humor
America’s Bitch -
Honest Government Ad | Julian Assange
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51467.htm
(2min)
Must Watch
(April 22, 2019)
The British, Australian, Ecuadorian and US Governments have
made an ad about Julian Assange’s arrest and it’s
surprisingly honest and informative!
+
"You
Are Being Lied To About Julian Assange!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8mK1eZhavc&feature=youtu.be
(14min)
with Lee Camp
+
WHOLE WORLD Must Focus on Julian Assange
Arrest!
with Roger
Waters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W9DqF6K7Pk
+
George Galloway on Julian Assange:
"Brits know something's wrong here"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99W38N0v7SU
"The British public know there is something wrong here when the whistleblower is in jail while the perpetrators are on TV" says former MP George Galloway who talks to In Question's Manila Chan as many in mainstream media stay mum on press freedom in Julian Assange case.
==========
f.
New CN Series: The Revelations of WikiLeaks:
No. 1—The Video that Put Assange
in US Crosshairs
April
23, 2019
“Collateral Murder” created a media sensation
in 2010 and led to Chelsea Manning’s imprisonment and to a DOJ
investigation of Julian Assange, reports Elizabeth Vos. But the war crimes the video exposed got no one else
in trouble.
Consortium
News today begins
a series of articles, “The Revelations of WikiLeaks,”
that will look back on the major works of the publication that have altered the
world since its founding in 2006. This series is an effort to counter
mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks’
work, and instead is focusing on Julian Assange’s
personality. It is the uncovering by WikiLeaks
of governments’ crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange and which ultimately led to his arrest on April 11.
The “Collateral Murder” video was just the first of many major WikiLeaks revelations that made the journalist one of
the world’s most wanted men, simply for the act of publishing.
*******
The Video
that Put Julian Assange
in the Crosshairs of the United States
by Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News
WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, but it was the April 5, 2010, publication of “Collateral Murder” that made the
whistleblower-publisher a world-wide phenomenon, attracting admirers and
enemies.
WikiLeaks wrote of the film: “The video, shot from an
Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded
Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue
were also seriously wounded.”
WikiLeaks noted that Reuters had unsuccessfully attempted to gain
access to the video through the Freedom of Information Act in the years after
the strike.
The day after the release
of the footage, The New York Times described WikiLeaks as a once-fringe website that
had moved into the big time. “The site has become a thorn in the side of
authorities in the United States and abroad,” it said. “With the Iraq attack
video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging closer toward a form
of investigative journalism and to advocacy.”
Before 2010 WikiLeaks received a few high-profile
journalism awards. But in the years since the publication of the video, it has
received a slew of honors, including The Sam Adams Award for Integrity.
On April 16, WikiLeaks announced a fresh award for its founder, Julian Assange, even as he remains isolated in a London prison.
===========
g.
Julian Assange exposed the crimes of powerful actors, including
Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51474.htm
by Alison
Weir
Wikileaks
publisher Julian Assange has finally been imprisoned,
an objective long sought by powerful parties he helped to expose over the past
dozen years.
Assange’s “crime” was revealing deep, embarrassing,
sometimes deadly, malfeasance by numerous actors, including the U.S.
government, the media, the Democratic Party-Clinton machine, and Israel.
Wikileaks revealed the U.S. government’s cover up of
torture, cruelty, the killing of civilians, spying on its own citizens and
others. It exposed Democratic Party cheating and manipulation, the fraudulence
of “Russiagate.” It unmasked Israeli plans to keep
Gaza on the brink of collapse, to use violence against Palestinian nonviolence,
to make war upon civilians. All of this will be detailed below.
Without Wikileaks’
exposés, many of these actions would quite likely have remained hidden from the
general public, as the perpetrators hoped.
The actual charge against
Assange is allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning
“to commit computer intrusion,” violating a somewhat problematic law
with what one expert terms “overly
expansive wording.”
The government seems to have resorted to this
charge after the Justice Department had concluded in
2013 that it could not charge Assange for publishing
the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs (which
revealed various U.S war crimes detailed below), because government lawyers
said this would also require charging various U.S. news organizations and
journalists.
The Washington Post reported that
Justice officials “realized that they have what they
described as a ‘New York Times problem.’ If the Justice Department
indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the
New York Times and other news organizations and writers
who published classified material, including The Washington Post and
Britain’s Guardian newspaper.”
Even the current charge, when examined closely,
turns out to be problematic on free press grounds. As Glenn
Greenwald notes:
“Assange is charged with helping a source preserve
anonymity, a common practice by investigative reporters.”
Assange is being held in a maximum-security prison in
London that has been called the
UK’s
Guantanamo. It has been used to detain
alleged terrorists, sometimes indefinitely.
Assange’s recent dramatic
arrest in Britain has elicited excellent articles by a number
of writers – including Chris
Hedges, Jonathan
Turley, Pepe Escobar, Ray
McGovern (also here),
John Pilger, Jonathan
Cook, David
Swanson, and Paul
Craig Roberts. Many of these were published by Consortium
News, which, unlike mainstream media and journalism
organizations, has been regularly covering the escalating persecution of Assange for his Wikileaks
revelations.
This article will quote from these valuable
articles and others, and will also present additional information about Wikileaks’ exposés on Israel, which have largely gone
unmentioned.
+
Julian Assange: The 2011 60
Minutes Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubknv_CxSUY
+
The Truth about Comrade Julian Assange
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2019/04/24/the-truth-about-comrade-julian-assange/
by Norman Finkelstein
+
Assange with Vijay Prashad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51kKQcnBjnk
The
arrest of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of
the rule of law and the rights of a free press. Joining Chris Hedges to discuss
the arrest and pending extradition of Julian Assange
is the historian Vijay Prashad.
===========
h.
French
Ambassador Says Trump “Deal of the Century” Is DOA, Calls Israel ‘Apartheid
State’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51473.htm
by
Whitney Webb
“[Kushner] is so
rational, and he is so pro-Israeli also, that he may neglect the point that if
you offer the Palestinians the choice between surrendering and committing
suicide, they may decide the latter. Somebody like Kushner doesn’t understand
that.” — French Ambassador Gerard Araud
In an interview with the Atlantic last Friday, outgoing French Ambassador to the United
States Gerard Araud made headlines after emphatically
stating that Israel is already “an apartheid state” and that the Trump
administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century” aimed at resolving the
Israel-Palestine conflict is “99 percent doomed.”
Araud — whose first government post was in France’s
Tel Aviv embassy, and who was the French ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006
— made
the claim after being asked about his views on the Israel-Palestine
“peace process.” After stating that he enjoys a “close” relationship with Jared
Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law who has spent the last two years drafting a “peace
plan” for the Trump administration — Araud noted that
Kushner’s “proposal is very close to what the Israelis want.”
This outcome has long been noted
by many media outlets based on Kushner’s close ties to Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu; his family’s role
in funding illegal West Bank settlements; and, more recently, statements made
by those familiar with the negotiations and the fact that the Palestinians have
refused to negotiate with Kushner’s team since the Trump administration decreed
Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital in December 2017.
“Smart, no guts”
Araud, who first became France’s ambassador to the
U.S. in 2014, later described Kushner as “extremely smart, but he has no guts.
He doesn’t know the history.” While Araud posited
that there may be an advantage to not knowing the history of the conflict, he
also noted that it was a double-edged sword, stating:
[Kushner] is so rational, and he is so
pro-Israeli also, that he may neglect the point that if you offer the
Palestinians the choice between surrendering and committing suicide, they may decide
the latter. Somebody like Kushner doesn’t understand that.”
Like other politicians who have recently spoken
about the “peace plan,” Araud has not seen the plan
but was told that it was around 50 pages and very “precise.” Yet, drawing on
his closeness to Kushner, Araud stated
that the plan had been created based on three assumptions or “bets”
made by Kushner, the first of which was that Trump would be “uniquely able to
push the Israelis, because he is so popular in Israel.” The second bet, according to Araud, was that
“the Palestinians may consider it’s their last chance to get limited
sovereignty,” while the third element of the plan is “Kushner is going to pour
money on the Palestinians.”
Despite the fact that Araud
clearly likes Kushner and parts of his approach, he said that the plan was
almost guaranteed to fail: “Is it doomed to fail? I should say 99 percent yes,
but 1 percent, you never forget the 1 percent.”
+
http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/
+
UK Israel
Lobby Adds Muscle as US Counterpart Weakens
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/25/uk-israel-lobby-adds-muscle-as-us-counterpart-weakens/
By JonathanCook
(April
25, 2019)
British
politics are being plunged into a stifling silence on the longest example of
mass human rights abuses sanctioned by the West in modern history, writes
Jonathan Cook.
For
decades it was all but taboo to suggest that pro-Israel lobbies in the United
States such as AIPAC used their money and influence to keep lawmakers firmly in
check on Israel-related issues — even if one had to be blind not to notice that
that was exactly what they were up to.
When
back in February U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out the
obvious – that U.S. lawmakers were routinely expected to submit to the lobby’s
dictates on Israel, a foreign country – her colleagues clamored to
distance themselves from her, just as one might have expected were the
pro-Israel lobby to wield the very power Omar claimed.
But
surprisingly Omar did not – at least immediately – suffer the crushing fate of
those who previously tried to raise this issue. Although she was pressured
into apologizing, she was not battered into complete submission for her
honesty.
She
received support on social media, as well as a wavering, muted
defense from Democratic grandee Nancy Pelosi, and even a relatively sympathetic
hearing from a few prominent figures in the U.S. Jewish community.
The
Benjamins Do Matter
===========
i.
The Three Purposes of Russiagate
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51472.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
Russiagate
has three purposes.
One
is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the
military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another,
in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is “to conceal the criminal conduct of
US government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the
Hillary Clinton campaign,” by focusing all public and political attention on a
hoax distraction.
The
third is to obstruct Trump’s campaign and distract him from his agenda when he
won the election.
Despite
the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials
colluded with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability
of Mueller to find evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of
justice, Russiagate has achieved all of its purposes.
Trump
has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have
succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a
blatant criminal attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan
government.
Hillary’s
criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice
(sic) Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI
obtaining spy warrants for partisan political purposes on false pretexts from
the FISA court, were swept out of sight by the Russiagate
hoax.
The
Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any
evidence supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump
of obstruction and passed the buck to the Attorney General. In other words,
Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept the controversy going by setting up
Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.
It
is evidence of Mueller’s corruption that he does not explain just how it is
possible for Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Mueller states in
his report that the crime he was empowered to investigate could not be found.
How does one obstruct the investigation of a crime that did not occur?
===========
j.
'Operation Blackout is underway':
Russia blames US for Venezuela power crisis
by Tom Phillips
Deputy
defence minister says US using a ‘broad range of
techniques’ in bid to oust president Nicolás Maduro;
Russia
has accused the United States of deliberately causing a succession of crippling
power cuts in Venezuela as part of a plot to topple its president, Nicolás Maduro,
dubbed “Operation Blackout”.
The
crisis-stricken South American country has been rocked by a series of
nationwide power outrages since 7 March, which Maduro’s
government has blamed on US-backed
saboteurs and snipers but most experts attribute to poor maintenance and a
bush fire that destroyed a key section of
Venezuela’s power grid.
In
an
interview with the Moscow-funded broadcaster RT, however, Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin,
backed Maduro’s version of events.
Fomin claimed Washington felt reluctant
to launch an outright military operation against Maduro,
fearing it “might rally the nation behind the current government” and anger
other Latin American governments.
But
the US was not a country to “sit idly [by]”, Fomin
added. Instead, it was “employing … a broad range of techniques” in its effort
to remove Maduro, including a “man-made shutdown of
[Venezuelan] energy facilities”.
“Operation
Blackout is underway,” Fomin was quoted as saying.
+
Russia
Warns Bolton: ‘Monroe Doctrine’ Remarks Are Insulting to Latin America
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51475.htm
by
Andre Vltchek
What is the ‘Monroe Doctrine’? In brief, it is a document which
defines the entire Western Hemisphere as a ‘backyard’ of the United States. It
‘philosophically’ justifies Washington’s neo-colonialism, and the most barbaric
coups it has been triggering, as well as covered and open interventions in the
Caribbean, and in Central and South America.
And now, National Security Advisor John Bolton,
is using this term in connection with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, outraging
those who are opposing the US foreign policy in the region. What he means is
clear, although it is never pronounced as bluntly as that: Countries in the
Western Hemisphere should never be allowed to go socialist, and they should be
prevented from disobeying Western dictates.
In Doha, Qatar, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, expressed his outrage over Bolton’s evoking of the
‘Monroe Doctrine’ now, when the West is doing all in its power to overthrow the
democratically elected left-wing government of Venezuela:
“The theory and the practice of “backyards” is generally insulting…
Sergei Lavrov also added that:
“Since 1945, when the UN was founded, the international law
is being regulated by this universal and the most legitimate organization.”
This is, obviously, not how the United States sees the world.
Maybe it never even considered such an approach.
But back to the ‘notorious’ Monroe Doctrine.
Surprisingly, it was not always intended to intimidate and
brutalize independent and progressive Latin American nations.
According to the definition of the United States Department
of State:
“The Monroe Doctrine was a United
States policy of opposing European colonialism in
the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by
European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South
America would be viewed as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition
toward the United States.”
So, in theory at least, this policy was supposed to be
putting the brakes on European colonialist expansionism. This may sound almost
unbelievable now.
How very unfortunate that it has evolved into one of the most
unscrupulous tools of oppression in modern history!
===========
k.
PEPE
ESCOBAR: War on Iran & Calling America’s Bluff
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/24/pepe-escobar-war-on-iran-calling-americas-bluff/
by Pepe Escobar
(April
24, 2019)
Vast swathes of the West seem not to realize that if the Strait of
Hormuz is shut down a global depression will follow, writes Pepe
Escobar.
The Trump administration once again has graphically demonstrated
that in the young, turbulent 21st century, “international law”
and “national sovereignty” already belong to the Realm of the Walking Dead.
As if a deluge of sanctions against a great deal of the planet was
not enough, the latest “offer you can’t refuse” conveyed by a gangster posing
as diplomat, Consul Minimus Mike Pompeo,
now essentially orders the whole planet to submit to the one and only arbiter
of world trade: Washington.
First the Trump administration unilaterally smashed a
multinational, UN-endorsed agreement, the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal. Now the
waivers that magnanimously allowed eight nations to import oil from Iran without
incurring imperial wrath in the form of sanctions will expire on May 2 and
won’t be renewed.
The eight nations are a mix of Eurasian powers: China, India,
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy and Greece.
Apart from the trademark toxic cocktail of hubris, illegality,
arrogance/ignorance and geopolitical/geo–economic
infantilism inbuilt in this foreign policy decision, the notion that Washington
can decide who’s allowed to be an energy provider to emerging superpower China
does not even qualify as laughable. Much more alarming is the fact that
imposing a total embargo of Iranian oil exports is no less than an act of war.
Ultimate Neocon
Wet Dream
Those subscribing to the ultimate U.S, neocon
and Zionist wet dream – regime change in Iran – may rejoice at this declaration
of war. But as Professor Mohammad Marandi of the University of
Tehran has elegantly argued, “If the Trump regime miscalculates, the house
can easily come crashing down on its head.”
Reflecting the fact Tehran seems to have no illusions regarding
the utter folly ahead, the Iranian leadership — if provoked to a point of no return, Marandi
additionally told me — can
get as far as “destroying everything on the other side of the Persian Gulf and
chasing the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the U.S. escalates, Iran escalates. Now
it depends on the U.S. how far things go.”
===========
l.
Yemen: The
Triumph of Barbarism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51469.htm
by Cesar
Chelala
President Donald Trump’s recent veto of a
bipartisan resolution to force an end to American military involvement in Saudi
Arabia’s war in Yemen reminds me of some words by V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidadian
author. In his book “A Bend in the River,” Naipaul says, “The world is what it
is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to
become nothing, have no place in it.”
The war in Yemen has reached a level of barbarism
as few wars in recent history. It has become a humanitarian nightmare that only
a cessation of hostilities by Saudi Arabia and the provision of immediate
assistance to the people in Yemen can help solve. The Trump administration, however,
has chosen to continue supporting the Saudi regime.
U.S. military assistance takes several forms. It
goes from refueling Saudi and Emirati jets leading the bombing campaign in
Yemen, to providing targeting and military advice to the Saudi forces, and
providing fuel and armaments, including precision-guided missiles for use
against the Yemeni Houthis.
The war against the Yemenis by Saudi Arabia
flaunts international law and basic humanitarian principles. Years of conflict
have all but destroyed the country’s public health system and fueled a
humanitarian crisis of dramatic proportions. Since the escalation of the war in
2015, medical personnel and health facilities have been attacked and destroyed.
As a result, thousands of people have been cut off from essential services.
Yemenis are forced to travel long distances to
reach the few remaining health facilities. As a result, pregnant women with
complications arrive late, and those suffering from serious injuries lose
precious minutes of care. In addition, the destruction of the health system has
led to outbreaks of diphtheria, measles, and cholera.
According to the annual Worldwide Threat
Assessment report –which reflects the insights of the U.S. Intelligence
Community, including the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI, as well
as many other federal agencies- of nearly 29 million people in Yemen, about 22
million need some form of humanitarian assistance.
Among them, 16 million don’t have access to food
and drinking water, and more than one million Yemenis –mostly children- suffer
from cholera. In addition, 5 million people are at food “emergency” level, just
short of famine, and there are 2.8 million internally displaced people. In the
meantime, emergency life-saving medicines, trauma kits, diarrheal disease kits,
and blood banks are urgently needed, while the public health system is under
collapse.
The war in Yemen is a flagrant violation of the
principle of proportionality. According to this principle, “The harm caused to
civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not ‘excessive in
relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated’ by an
attack on a military objective.” The Saudi attacks on Yemeni civilians and
military targets make a mockery of this principle of international law.
===========
m.
Iraq’s
wounded and grief-stricken tell a disturbing tale of a divided country after
the ‘defeat’ of Isis
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51471.htm
by Robert Fisk
The men of the Shia militias who helped
rescue the Iraqi government army as Isis advanced on Baghdad complain bitterly
that their government cares little for them
The moment the 54-year-old walks up to the car,
it is obvious something is terribly wrong. The way he drags his feet, then
stamps them on the ground and marches forward like a toy soldier,
head lowered; then the way he looks up at you from beneath dark brows, in
both greeting and concern. Taamy Wahab
Mohamed al-Yasaari should have returned from the Isis
battlefront to a land fit for heroes.
For the Shia Muslims of
southern Iraq, he counts among the heroes. When I ask him when he was wounded,
he looks and stares at the wall in a distressed way, dark eyes framed by thick
black hair but white beard. “Several times I was wounded,” al-Yasaari says. And you can tell that the bullets and
shrapnel have framed a diary in his mind. “On 28 April 2015 at Bayji, on 3 July 2015, again at Bayji,
on 5 May 2016 on the Makhoul mountains near Tikrit, then on 3 July 2017 at Khalidiya
in Anbar province.” It was the last wound which did
for him.
“I was leading a company of the Ali
Akbar brigade into an attack on the enemy, and an Isis sniper shot me in
the head. His bullet hit me in the back of the brain.” And here al-Yasaari puts his left hand to the back of his head. “I lost
part of my skull and words are very difficult for me now. My memories are very
difficult. I regret nothing. I followed the fatwa of our leader [ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani]. Look, here are my wounds.”
And the staring eyes of al-Yasaari
look at me as he rolls up his trousers to show scars and great searing cuts
across his legs. There is a terrible mark on his calf, as if someone has sawed
away at the flesh. He had paid the price of following Sistani’s
fatwa – to fight a “defensive war” against Isis after the Islamist capture
of Mosul in 2014 – and it is clear that today he thinks of little else.
He is still dressed in military uniform,
constantly stretching his legs in pain, and in the little “diwaniya”
reception room of his home on the outskirts of Kerbala
there is a display of coloured photographs of a
smiling, younger al-Yasaari, arms round friends at
the war front, one of the pictures showing him firing a rocket-propelled
grenade. He keeps looking at a camera video of the same scene. He lives in his
own war museum.
“I thought I was dead,” he says. “So did my
comrades. The back of my head was blown away. They called my brother Jassem, and said to him, ‘Your brother has been
martyred’. Jassem asked them, ‘Are you sure?’
They said, ‘What do you expect us to say – he was shot in the head!’ I was
left for dead but two hours later they noticed my pulse. Jassem was asking if he could come and get me but they said
the fighting was too bad.
“Eventually, they got me onto a helicopter and to
the Kadimiyeh hospital [in Baghdad]. Then they took
me to a Kerbala hospital where an Indian and Iraqi
doctor told me that I had to sign an indemnity for an operation – because there
was only a 1 per cent chance of success. The bones at the back of my brain
had to be taken out and replaced with titanium. There were no more bones behind
my brain. I signed.”
Incredibly, al-Yasaari
asked to return to the battle until another holy fatwa was given to leave,
because “I had to be with my comrades, even if I have to clean the lavatories
to be with them”. He was not granted his wish, but instead driven to his tiny
house with its palm tree in the drive, receiving financial help from the Imam
Hussein Holy Shrine group, a Shia organisation,
as well as a pittance from the government. Suddenly, he stands up and begins
stomping up and down the little room, a toy soldier again. “He does not
change,” one of his relatives says.
“The Daesh [Isis] were
all brainwashed – all of them,” he shouts. “Saudis, Chechens, Turks, yes, there
were Iraqis too. Their Islamist beliefs are corrupted by something that comes
from the time before Islam – from the time of the ‘jahaliya’,
the time of ‘ignorance’ before the Prophet. They want to push us back to that.”
Al-Yasaari knew who his
enemies were. And his friends. But – and this is a
common theme in the Shia south of Iraq – does
his government care enough for him? The men of the Shia militias
who helped to rescue the Iraqi government army as Isis advanced on Baghdad
complain bitterly that their government cares little for them, that the most
many families of “martyrs” received is a patch of land far away from the rivers
of Iraq where nothing would grow.
===========
n.
Yellow
Vest Movement Struggles
To
Reinvent Democracy
https://popularresistance.org/yellow-vest-movemennt-reinvent-democracy/
by Richard Greeman
(April
13, 2019)
Act 21 While Assembly of Assemblies Meets,
Macron Cranks Up Propaganda and Repression.
After
five months of constant presence at traffic circles, toll-booths and hazardous
Saturday marches, the massive, self-organized
social movement known as the Yellow Vests has just held its second nationwide
“Assembly of Assemblies.” Hundreds of autonomous Yellow Vest activist groups
from all over France each chose two delegates (one woman, one man) to gather in
the port city of St. Nazaire for a weekend of
deliberation (April 5-7).
After
weeks of skirmishing with the municipal authorities, the local Yellow Vests
were able to host 700 delegates at the St. Nazaire
“House of the People,” and the three-day series of general meetings and working
groups went off without a hitch in an atmosphere of good-fellowship. A sign on
the wall proclaimed: “No one has the solution, but everybody has a piece of
it.”
Their
project: mobilize their “collective intelligence” to reorganize, strategize,
and prolong their struggle. Their aim: achieve the immediate goals of livable
wages and retirements, restoration of social benefits and public services like
schools, transportation, post offices, hospitals, taxing the rich and ending
fiscal fraud to pay for preserving the environment, and, most ambitious of all,
reinventing democracy in the process. Their Declaration ends with the phrase
“government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” I often wonder
if they know who coined it.
+
Yellow Vests news coverage: Are recent journalists
arrests an attempt at intimidating press?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80EY1vNOwdA&feature=youtu.be
Journalist
organisations have condemned French police after 2
reporters were detained on Saturday - during the 23rd consecutive weekend of
the Yellow Vest protests. ‘There’s a question emerging: is there a
determination to intimidate journalists? We have an impression some of them are
being targeted’ - Vincent Lanier, The National Union of Journalists ‘Since the
‘Yellow Vest’ movement appeared, the number of incidents targeting
journalists... when they are filming or photographing, hampers the work of the
press and limits the coverage of events which represent crucial public
interest’ - Catherine Monnet, Reporters without borders
+
The French Revolution: Part Deux
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-28/french-revolution-part-deux
===========
o.
Kushner Talks of 'Accountability' for
Crown Prince Just as Saudis Offer 'Egregious Display of Brutality' With Mass
Beheadings
Top advisor Jared Kushner, his wife Ivanka Trump, and Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Sulman at the White House in 2018. (Photo: The White House/flickr)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/23/kushner-talks-accountability-crown-prince-just-saudis-offer-egregious-display
by Eoin
Higgins
Washington's Gulf Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed called the
killings "the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom's
history."
Just as Jared Kushner answered questions about the close ties between the
White House and Saudi Arabia in New York on Tuesday, the Middle Eastern kingdom
beheaded 37 people in its largest mass execution in at last three years.
The executions, of mostly Shiite men accused of terrorism related crimes,
were part of what Washington's Gulf Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed called
"the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom's history."
Al-Ahmed identified 34 of the 37 victims as Shiite.
According to reports, Saudi
Arabian security services nailed one of the heads to a poll as a warning and
one victim was crucified after his execution.
The killings were announced
by Saudi state media Tuesday morning, Eastern time, right before Kushner,
President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a senior advisor to the president, took
the stage at the Time 100
Summit event honoring the magazine's annual list of the 100 most
influential people in the world.
===========
p.
The Destruction of the Palestinians Will Be Israel’s Undoing
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-destruction-of-the-palestinians-will-be-israels-undoing/
by Robert Scheer
The Israel-Palestine conflict is at the heart of politics not only in the
Middle East, but in the United States. As the Israeli government led by Benjamin
Netanyahu moves
further toward the hard right with the support of U.S. President Donald
Trump, the plight of Palestinians is reaching a new level of urgency. Journalist
and filmmaker Mariam
Shahin, the daughter of Palestinians, has dedicated much of her life’s
work to documenting Palestinians’ stories through film as well as in her book
“Palestine: A Guide” (Interlink Books, 2006). Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert
Scheer describes Shahin’s films as poignant portrayals of “the forgotten people
of every intrusion, every war.”
===========
The logic behind US humiliation of the Palestinians
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/logic-humiliation-palestinians-190423123902553.html
by Marwan Bishara
What an old Hebrew parable can tell us about Kushner's strategy and the
deal of the century.
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has launched an all-out
diplomatic assault on the Palestinians, while preparing a new initiative to
resolve the Middle East conflict. It has claimed its plan is different from any
other, downplayed anything said about it as wild speculation, and accused
critics of rushing to judgment before they have seen it.
Indeed, the Palestinians have not seen the actual plan, but they have a
pretty good feeling about what it will involve. They have watched closely as
the Trump administration has spat out one policy after the other with the clear
intention of humiliating and subduing them.
===========
r.
From: Mark Crispin
Miller
Sent: Wednesday, April
24, 2019
Subject: [MCM] The US
military's 36 code-named operations in Africa
Revealed: The U.S. military's 36 code-named
operations in Africa
by Nick
Turse and Sean D. Naylor
Many Americans
first became aware of U.S. military operations in Africa in October 2017, after
the Islamic State ambushed American troops near Tongo Tongo, Niger, killing
four U.S. soldiers and wounding two others.
Just after the attack, U.S. Africa Command
said U.S. troops were providing “advice and assistance” to local
counterparts. Later, it would become clear that those troops — the 11-man Operational Detachment-Alpha Team 3212 —
were working out of the town of Oullam
with
a larger Nigerian force under the umbrella of Operation Juniper Shield, a
wide-ranging counterterrorism effort in northwest
Africa.
Until
poor weather prevented it, that team was supposed to lend support to another
group of American commandos who were trying to kill or capture Islamic State
leader Doundoun Cheffou as part of Obsidian Nomad II.
Juniper Shield and Obsidian Nomad II were not isolated efforts but part
of a panoply of named military operations and activities U.S. forces have been
conducting from dozens of bases across the northern tier of Africa. Many of
these operations are taking place in countries that the U.S. government does
not recognize as combat zones, but in which U.S. troops are nonetheless
fighting and, in several cases, taking casualties.
Between
2013 and 2017, U.S. special operations forces saw combat in at least 13 African
countries, according to retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who served at U.S.
Africa Command from 2013 to 2015 and then headed Special Operations Command
Africa until 2017. Those countries, according to Bolduc, are Burkina Faso,
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya,
Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Tunisia. He added that
U.S. troops have been killed or wounded in action in at least six of them:
Kenya, Libya, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Tunisia.
Yahoo News has put together a list of three
dozen such operations across the continent.
Click on the link for the rest:
https://news.yahoo.com/revealed-the-us-militarys-36-codenamed-operations-in-africa-090000841.html
s.
Obama & Hillary Easter tweets cause outrage,
as media supports genocide of Christians in Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtq-AFw53S8
(video, 19min.)
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou
and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss tweets made by former US
President Barack Obama and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
following the Easter terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, which left 290 dead and
more than 500 injured on the South Asian island, targeted Christian churches
and functions in the country's capital. Conservative media slammed Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton in the wake of the Sri Lankan terror attacks, but that very
same media has pushed for regime change in Syria and the overthrow of Assad,
whose secular government has protected Christians in the region.
Only Fox News' Tucker Carlson was brave enough to call out the media hypocrisy,
in what has become a war against Christianity from both the
establishment, neocon right and neoliberal left.
===========
t.
The National Security State - Gore Vidal 03-18-1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxyOpQbAz4E
(video,
47min.)
===========
u.
Democracy Now: Noam Chomsky, April 12, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywb9kTpkIjw&feature=youtu.be
(video,
46min.)
+
Chinese Cameras come with Chinese Tactics
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000006007030/china-ecuador-surveillance.html?playlistId=100000002500298
by Jonah M. Kessel, Melisa Chan, Paul Moser, & John Woo
===========
v.
Chris Hedges - The American Empire Will Collapse Within a Decade,
Two at Most (11-19-18)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCDd3VoAFUs
(audio, 54min.)
Here, Chris speaks with CBC Radio about his new book
and predicts that the US empire will collapse within
the next 20 years, probably within the next 10.
===========
w.
RT America: On-air livestream
24/7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRhYIu-TEcs
(video, livestream)
===========
x.
Julian Assange in
conversation with Slavoj Zizek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Xm08uTSDQ
(video, 2hr.)
by Frontline Club, Published on Aug 1, 2012
02/07/2011 - Frontline Club Exclusive: Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj
Žižek moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman Last
year, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released three
of the biggest ever leaks of classified information in history: the Iraq War
Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate. Since
then the world has undoubtedly changed. Ambassadors have resigned amid scandals
exposed by leaked cables; the UK government has ordered a review of computer
security; and, at the same time, a huge wave of protest has swept the Middle
East and North Africa -- in part fuelled, some believe, by WikiLeaks
revelations. Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks on
the world and what it means for the future, for this very special event WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange
will be in conversation with renowned Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. Focusing on the
ethics and philosophy behind WikiLeaks' work, the
talk will provide a rare opportunity to hear two of the world's most prominent
thinkers discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time. It will also
mark the publication of the paperback edition of Living in the End Times, in
which Žižek argues that new ways of using and sharing
information, in particular WikiLeaks, are one of a
number of harbingers of the end of global capitalism as we know it. The event
will be chaired by Amy Goodman, the award-winning investigative journalist and
host of Democracy Now!, a daily, independent news hour
which airs on the internet and more than 900 public television and radio
stations worldwide.
+
60 Minutes: Julian Assange's father reveals
secrets
from inside the Ecuadorian embassy
by Liz Little
The Slandering Of Assange Reveals The Sociopathic Workings Of The Empire’s Propaganda Machine
