Bulletin N° 849
Seven Days in May
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOd5lGVXOZw
(1h58min)
Subject : The Whores
of War and the Rest of Us . . . .
15 June 2019
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Many years ago, when I was contemplating doing
research for a Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I came
across the writings of existentialist psychologists, R.D. Laing and David
Cooper. Like most graduate students at the time, I was grounded in an
idealistic metaphysics, that easily produced a
problematic devoid of social context. In this mode of thinking, historical
writing risked becaming belle letters and research no more than cherry-picking. Some of my
classmates thought the prospect of a Ph.D. was an irresistible opportunity to
evade class struggle, like being offered a place at the table in a
corporate board room, oblivious to the weather outside.
This was not my take on the situation in which I found
myself. Such an effortless existence seemed to contradict my very motives for
pursuing higher education in the first place. I was familiar with the jungle
that existed outside academia, and my attraction to an intellectual life was
not some idealist escape through self-delusion, but rather a genuine desire to
understand what the world really looked like and what my corner of this world
had produced in me.
I was taught that any course of study should be
preceded by a serious meditation on personal motivations; such ethical
considerations, I was told, are an indispensible precondition for
the production of original work, and I was drawn to books in radical psychology
at Wisconsin as a preliminary step toward historical research.
For example, the work of R.D. Laing, H. Phillipson, and A.R. Lee – Interpersonal
Perception, A Theory and a Method of Research (London, 1966) - offered insights into the complex character
of social interactions and the frequent distortions that produced
miscommunication with historic results.
“The human race is a myriad of refractive surfaces
staining the white radiance of eternity”, they wrote in their first chapter, entitled,
“Self and Others,” discussing their theory of interpersonal perception,
Each
surface refracts the refraction of refractions of refractions. Each self
refracts the refractions of others’ refractions of self’s refractions of
others’ refractions . . . .
Here is
the glory and wonder and mystery, yet too often we simply wish to ignore or
destroy those points of view that refract the light differently from our own.
Over a
hundred years ago Feuerbach effected a pivotal step in
philosophy. He discovered that philosophy had been exclusively oriented around
“I”. No one had realized that the “you” is as primary as the
I. It is curious how we continue to theorize from an egoistic
standpoint. In Freud’s theory, for instance, one has the “I” (ego), the
“over-me” (super-ego) and “it” (id), but no you. Some philosophers, some
psychologists, and more sociologists have recognized the significance of the
fact that social life is not made up of a myriad I’s and me’s only, but of you,
he, she, we, and them, also, and that the experience of you or he or them or us
may indeed be as primary and compelling (or more so) as the experience of “me”.
The
critical realization here is that I am not the only perceiver and agent in my
world. The world is peoples by others, and these others are not simply objects
in the world: they are centers of reorientation to the objective universe. Nor
are these others simply other I’s. The others are you, him, her, them, etc.
The
presence of the others has a profound reactive effect on me. This has been
expressed by a number of thinkers in different ways. Philosophically, the meaninglessness
of the category “I” without its complimentary category of “you”, first stated
by Feurerbach, was developed by Martin Buber. Scheler and Husserl have incorporated our primary
experience of intersubjectvity into their
philosophical reflections. George Herbert Mead reflected on how my concept of myself is
mediated by the “generalized other”, and Cooley had the concept of “the looking
glass self”. Talcott Parsons, in his social action
theory, describes the relations between ego and alter, and Heider
(1959) has given us some basic constructs for a
genuinely interpersonal psychology.
If we
obstinately continue to regard human beings as persons, then it is clear that
there can no more be “simple locations”, in Whitehead’s sense, in the human
scene than anywhere else. But many languages (English included) express as a
further complexity , arising from the refractions a
person undergoes as he is seen from different perusal perspectives. Language
expresses this by forcing the one person through various pronominal
transformations, according to his relation to the signifier. This curious and
highly significant fact is, we believe, specific to those forms of relationship
we are calling personal.
My field of experience is, however, filled not only by my direct view
of myself (ego) and of the other (alter), but of what we shall call metaperspectives – my view of the other’s (your,
his, her, their) view of me. I may not actually be able to see myself as
others see me, but I am constantly supposing them to be seeing me in particular
ways, and I am constantly acting in the light of the actual or supposed
attitudes, opinions, needs, and soon the others has in respect of me.
From
this we see that as my identity is refracted through the media of the different
inflections of “the other” – singular and plural, male and female, you, he she,
them – so my identity undergoes myriad metamorphoses of alterations, in
terms of the others I become to the others.
These
alterations in my identity, as I become another to you, another to him, another
to her, another to them, are further reinteriorized by
me to become multifaceted meta-identities, or the multifacets
of the other I take myself to be for the other – the other I am in my own eyes
for the other. The concept of a meta-identity should not lead to any error that
it is in some way secondary to self-identity, whether ontogenetically, cause-effectwise, or in importance.
To
summarize: we have ego (self) and alter (other). We recognize that I have my
own view of myself (direct perspective) in terms of which I establish my
self-identity. However, self-identity is an abstraction.
We
recognize furthermore that ego exists for alter. This gives my being-for-the-other, or one’s identity for the other. The
existence one has for the other is not that of the “I”. For the other, I am
another. The other I am for the other is a constant concern for us all. My view
of the others’ view of me, my perspective on the other’s perspective on me, is
what we are calling a metaperspective, and the other
that I take myself to be for the other, how I think you see me, is what we are
calling my meta-identity. Now this scheme can be extended to encompass
meta-meta and meta-meta-meta perspectives and identities logically extendible
to infinity.
Self-identity (my view of myself) and meta-identity (my view of your
view of me) are theoretical constructs, not concrete realities. In concreto, rather than in abstracto,
self-identity (“I” looking at “me”) is constituted not only by our looking at
ourselves, but also by our looking at others looking at us and our
reconstituting and alterations of the views of others about us. At this more
complex, more concrete level, self-identity is a synthesis of my looking at me
with my view of others’ view of me. These views by others of me need not be
passively accepted, but they cannot be ignored in my development of a sense of
who I am. For even if a view by another of me is rejected it
still becomes incorporated in its rejected form as part of my self-identity.
My self-identity becomes my view of me which I recognize as the negation of the
other person’s view of me. Thus “I” become a “me” who is being misperceived by
another person. This can become a vital aspect of my view of myself. (E.g., “I
am a person who no one really understands”.
Similarly my meta-identity (in which we can incorporate all my
meta-identities and my meta-meta-identities) is intimately interwoven with my
self-identity. The “me” that I think another sees, the “me” that I feel I
perceive that another sees, can be cognitively created only in conjunction with
the basic structure of the “me” that I perceive. Thus meta-identity is woven
into the fabric of self-identity, as self-identity is woven into the fabric of
meta-identity.(pp.3-6)
. . .
In the
game theory idiom, everyone has a certain limited repertoire of games, based on
particular sets or sequences of interactions that have been learned. Actually
others may have games that mesh with the subject sufficiently to allow a
greater or lesser variety of more or less stereotyped drama to be enacted. The
games a person plays have certain rules, some public, some
secret. The games that certain people have come to play break the rules that
most other people play by, and certain people play undeclared, secret and
unusual games. The latter tend to be regarded as neurotic or psychotic, and to
be required to undergo the ceremonials of psychiatric consultations, diagnoses
prescriptions, or treatment and cure, which consists in pointing out to them
the unsatisfactory issues of the game they play (e.g., Loser wins, Poor little
old me, This one will fool you) and teaching them new games. A person reacts by
despair more to
loss of a game than to losing his partners as real persons. Critical is maintenance of the game rather than the identity of the
players e.g. Berne (1961) and Szasz (1961).
This
idiom saves those who use it from committing at least some of the more banal
and unproductive errors that some psychologists have perpetrated.
The
failure to see the behaviour of one person as a
function of the behaviour of the other has led to come extraordinary perceptual and conceptual aberrations
that are still with us. For instance, in a sequence of moves in a social
interaction between person (a) and person (b):
a1 →
b1 → a2 →
b2 → a3 →
b3, the sequence a1 →
a2 → a3 is extrapolated.
Direct links are made between a1 →
a2 → a3, and
this artificially derived sequence is taken as the entity or process
under study. It is in turn “explained” as an intrapersonal sequence
(process) due to intrapsychic pathology.
The
games theory, has not, however, addressed itself fully to the sector of the
problem we shall now consider.(pp.9-11)
The writings of historian Gabriel Kolko stand as an example of original research, using both
Marxist and non-Marxist theories to uncover patterns of reality that have
affected us all. In his book, Century
of War: Politics, Conflicts, and Society Since 1914 (New York, 1994), Kolko emphasizes the habits of thought and limits of
consciousness on the part of those privileged and powerful men who rule
capitalist society. Again and again we are confronted with their “false
expectations”:
To
varying degrees, the men who have embarked on wars in this century repeatedly,
almost exclusively, substituted their interests, desires, and preconceptions
for accurate assessments of the most likely possibilities once they began. Most
assumed conflicts would be fought conveniently in the ways the preferred and for which their
intellectual and social backgrounds and deeply inculcated myopic visions of
reality had prepared them. The result was that they learned very little, if
anything, from repeated failures. As we shall later see in greater detail,
technology and firepower hypnotized and fascinated politicians and generals
before wars and shaped their projections of their length and costs, but
experience profoundly deceived them and inevitably destroyed their neat plans.
Wars in
this century have been the outcome of not only inherited economic or
geopolitical structural forces and nationalism, but also of leaders’ military
strategies and assumptions about the nature, conduct, and risks of armed
conflict in exceedingly complex institutional and historical contexts.
Combining all these elements with increasingly destructive technology, modern
wars have always successively become qualitatively distinctive phenomena which,
of course, interact in crucial ways with social and structural legacies but
also profoundly transcend them to produce essentially new social, political,
and economic challenges for future generations to confront. It is the very
unpredictability of such changes, each one different from those of past wars,
that has caused the very processes of war to defy planning or control, become nonrational organizationally, and irrationally
self-destructive in social and class terms. They have blighted our century in
countless, terrible ways.
Ultimately, the world in this century has marched into its increasingly
destructive major wars with no safeguards against (the irrationality of its
doctrines and objectives or against the gravely dysfunctional but relentless
political and class needs – both domestic and foreign – of the major
aggressors. What was called intelligence became part of an ideologically and
politically self-reinforcing system, which complex or often elegant rhetoric
buttressed but that repeatedly eliminated any sane, restraining impulse that
nominally nonauthoritarian nations still had the
latent capacity to consider. Rationality was not the essence of the system but
rather its antithesis, and what was deemed ‘intelligence’ became a
justification of the propensity of nations to commit fatal errors that only
intensified their illusions and false expectations and made wars vastly more
costly, both humanly and materially, as the century advanced.(pp.42-43)
The 22 + items below will provide readers
with critical interpretive essays and stark first-hand reports of the condition
of humankind in this era
of mindless brinksmanship in a game that can only be described as “Mutually Assured Destruction”. Just how
far the world’s population will allow political leaders and financial investors
to pursue this intrigue is an open question. The alternative to a clearly
stated and generally agreed-upon political agenda is more extreme violence, of
an almost unimaginable magnitude, and the complicit suicide of humanity.
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.
No Furture for our Grandchildren
Unless We 'Overthorw Corporate Power'
https://www.rt.com/news/461956-chris-hedges-overthrow-corporate-power/
+
All Wars Are
Bankers' Wars
audio
(48min)
&
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz5qr2uwhpw
text
+
Americans Pay Price for Criminal Wars From
Mass Shootings at Home
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51754.htm
by Finian Cunningham
America’s horrendous gun violence
can be attributed to many factors, but there is one factor that is hardly
talked about or explored in public discourse – the apparent link between mass
shootings and the rampant culture of US militarism.
Mass shootings in the US –
involving four or more persons – occur on an almost daily basis. The most
recent major atrocity was in Virginia Beach last month in which 12 people were
killed. The shooter was reportedly a military veteran.
Turns out that
US military veterans are disproportionately responsible for violent gun
deaths among American civilians. Investigative journalist David Swanson has
recently found that some 35 per cent of mass shootings in the US
have involved an ex-serviceman. Swanson studied a database sample of 97 recent
deadly incidents, and found that, from publicly available information, more
than a third of the perpetrators were listed at some time in the past as having
served in the military. The journalist cautions that the actual proportion
could be much higher due to lack of publicly available information on the other
shooters.
Swanson emphasizes an obvious
point that the vast majority of US military veterans are not mass shooters.
Nevertheless, the factor of having served in the armed forces and the frequency
of mass shootings does appear to be a highly significant correlation. What’s
more, he says that it is strangely conspicuous how US corporate news media have
not delved into what seems to be an urgent issue concerning gun violence in
American society.
The reluctance by news media and
politicians to acknowledge such a factor is no doubt because it would open up a
Pandora’s Box of self-indictment. It raises painful questions about a host of
issues that Americans take for granted as normal: the militarization of US
culture and society, where young children are compelled to salute the stars and
stripes and sing paeans to American “greatness”; the obscene expenditure of
over $700 billion a year on military instead of on public services and social
development; the near-permanent deployment of US military forces all around the
world in countless illegal wars; the blasé indifference to war crimes committed
by US servicemen, whereby even President Donald Trump wants to grant amnesty to
killers in uniforms.
On the latter issue, it should be
deplored, but isn’t, how a congressman and former veteran recently went on a
mainstream news channel and appeared
to brush off mass killings and other war crimes committed by US forces as being
a routine occurrence, and therefore in his view no big deal. His chillingly
nonchalant views were aired with barely a murmur of public reaction, never mind
condemnation.
America’s criminal overseas
military rampaging over several decades is bound to take a grim toll on society
at home. Veterans return home traumatized in body and mind from the horror of
mass violence they have participated in or witnessed. The American public pay the price from ballooning budgets for veterans’
medical care. They also pay a price from broken families and myriad pathological problems, ranging from drug abuse to suicides.
It is reckoned that more US veterans have lost their lives by suicide than were
killed in action during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. American
ex-military personnel turning guns on themselves. Why is that?
Put starkly, it cannot be expected
that US military forces inflict millions of casualties in foreign countries and
for that slaughter not to be manifest at home in some pathological way or
another.
Millions of young Americans, mostly
from poor, deprived backgrounds, are trained to use lethal weaponry funded by
billions of dollars at public expense. After they are sent to shoot up foreign
countries while loaded up on paranoid propaganda that often dehumanizes, these
professional killers are then unceremoniously dumped back in their home
country, often without jobs or a future, and often with haunting memories of
crimes conducted in the service of “American greatness” – whose “greatness”
does not extend to treating them as human beings.
This brutalizing subject needs a
lot more research. What is the definitive number of US military veterans
involved in American society mass shootings? Swanson, the journalist, seems to
have tapped a very significant causal factor. But a bigger database of mass
shooting incidents should be studied and the military history of all the
shooters disclosed. As Swanson surmises, the proportion of ex-servicemen
involved in mass killings is likely to be a lot more than 35 per cent.
It should also be studied how many
of the veterans involved in mass shootings were deployed overseas.
+
The Generals Won’t Save Us From the Next War
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51755.htm
by Danny Sjursen
The brass are
careerists, never punished for their mistakes, quietly assenting to the latest
doomed interventions.
Poll after poll indicates that the only public institution Americans still trust is the military.
Not Congress, not the presidency, not the Supreme Court, the church, or the
media. Just the American war machine.
But perhaps that faith in the U.S.
Armed Forces is misplaced. I got to thinking about this recently after I wrote articles calling for dissent among military
leaders in order to stop what seems to be a likely forthcoming war with Iran.
While I still believe that dissent in the ranks stands the best chance of
galvanizing an apathetic public against an ill-advised, immoral conflict in the
Persian Gulf, I also know its
a pipe dream.
These are company men, after all,
obedient servants dedicated—no matter how much they protest otherwise—to career
and promotion, as much or more than they are to the national interest. The
American military, especially at the senior ranks, is apt to let you down
whenever courage or moral fortitude is needed most. In nearly 18 years of
post-9/11 forever war, not a single general has resigned in specific opposition to what many of
them knew to be unwinnable,
unethical conflicts. Writing about the not-so-long-ago Vietnam War, former
national security advisor H.R. McMaster, himself a problematic war on terror
general, labeled in his book title such military acquiescence Dereliction of Duty.
That it was, but so is the lack of moral courage and logical reasoning among
McMaster and his peers who have submissively waged these endless wars in
Americans’ name.
Think on it: of the some 18
general officers who have commanded the ill-fated, ongoing war in Afghanistan,
each has optimistically promised not only that victory was possible, but
that it was “around the corner” or a “light at the end of the tunnel.” All
these generals needed, naturally, was more time and, of course, more resources.
For the most part they’ve gotten it, billions in cash to throw away and
thousands of American soldiers’ lives to waste.
Why should any sentient citizen
believe that these commanders’ former subordinates—a new crop of ambitious
generals—will step forward now and oppose a disastrous future war with the Islamic Republic? Don’t believe it! Senior military
leaders will salute, about-face, and execute unethical and unnecessary combat
with Iran or whomever else (think Venezuela) Trump’s war hawks, such as John
Bolton, decide needs a little regime changing.
Need proof that even the most
highly lauded generals will sheepishly obey the next absurd march to war? Join
me in a brief trip down an ever so depressing memory lane. Let us begin with my
distinguished West Point graduation speaker, Air Force General and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers. He goes down in history as as
a Donald Rumsfeld lackey because it turns out he knew full well that there were “holes” in the
Bush team’s inaccurate intelligence used to justify the disastrous Iraq war.
Yet we heard not a peep from Myers, who kept his mouth shut and retired with
full four-star honors.
Then, when Army Chief of Staff
General Eric Shinseki accurately (and somewhat courageously) predicted in 2003
that an occupation of Iraq would require up to half a million U.S. troops, he
was quietly retired. Rummy passed over a whole generation of active officers
to pull a known sycophant, General Peter Schoomaker,
out of retirement to do Bush the Younger’s bidding. It worked too. Schoomaker, despite his highly touted special forces
experience, never threw his stars on the table and called BS on a losing
strategy even as it killed his soldiers by the hundreds and then the thousands.
Having heard him (unimpressively) speak at West Point in 2005, I still can’t
decide whether he lacked the intellect to do so or the conscience. Maybe both.
After Bush landed a fighter plane
on a carrier and triumphantly announced “mission accomplished” in Iraq, poor
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the newest three-star in the Army, took
over the hard part of conquest: bringing the “natives” to heel. He utterly
failed, being too reliant on what he knew—Cold War armored combat—and too
ambitious to yell “stop!” Soon after, it came to light that Sanchez had bungled the investigation—or coverup
(take your pick)—of the massive abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib
prison.
General John Abizaid
was one of the most disappointing in a long line of subservient generals. It
seems Abizaid knew better: he knew the Iraq war couldn’t be
won, that it was best to hand over control to the Iraqis posthaste, that
General David Petraeus’s magical “surge” snake oil
wouldn’t work. Still, Abizaid didn’t quit and retired
quietly. He’s now Trump’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, which is far from
comforting.
+
Forgiving Debt to
Promote Environmental Healing
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/11/forgiving-debt-to-promote-environmental-healing/
===========
b.
The Unipolar Moment is Over
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51753.htm
by Pepe Escobar
The Russia-China strategic partnership, consolidated last week in
Russia, has thrown U.S. elites into Supreme Paranoia mode, which is holding the
whole world hostage.
Something
extraordinary began with a short walk in St. Petersburg last Friday.
After a
stroll, they took a boat on the Neva River, visited the legendary Aurora cruiser, and dropped in to examine
the Renaissance masterpieces at the Hermitage. Cool, calm, collected, all the
while it felt like they were mapping the ins and outs of a new, emerging, multipolar world.
Chinese
President Xi Jinping was the guest of honor of
Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Xi’s eighth trip to Russia since 2013,
when he announced the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
First
they met in Moscow, signing multiple deals. The most important is a bombshell:
a commitment to develop bilateral trade and cross-border payments using the
ruble and the yuan, bypassing the U.S. dollar.
Then Xi
visited the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF),
Russia’s premier business gathering, absolutely essential for anyone to
understand the hyper-complex mechanisms inherent in the construction of
Eurasian integration. I addressed some of SPIEF’s foremost discussions and
round tables here.
In
Moscow, Putin and Xi signed two joint statements – whose key concepts,
crucially, are “comprehensive partnership”, “strategic interaction” and “global
strategic stability.”
In his
St. Petersburg speech, Xi outlined the “comprehensive strategic partnership”.
He stressed that China and Russia were both committed to green, low carbon
sustainable development. He linked the expansion of BRI as “consistent with the
UN agenda of sustainable development” and praised the interconnection of BRI
projects with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He emphasized how all that was
consistent with Putin’s idea of a Great Eurasian Partnership. He praised the
“synergetic effect” of BRI linked to South-South cooperation.
+
Film
“The Coming War on China”
(1h53min)
by John Pilger
2016
The Coming War on China (2016) is John Pilger's 60th film for ITV. Pilger
reveals what the news doesn't - that the world's greatest military power, the
United States, and the world's second economic power, China, both
nuclear-armed, are on the road to war. The film is a warning and an inspiring
story of resistance.
+
Putin says
U.S.-Russia relations
are getting ‘worse and worse’
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-putin-idUSKCN1TE0L7
"We really hope that common sense will finally
prevail. I hope that, together with our partners, including US partners, we
will be able to achieve some solutions, as part of the upcoming G20 meeting,
that will be constructive and will create stable conditions for economic
cooperation," Putin said in an interview with the MIR broadcaster.
"[Relations] are deteriorating and becoming
worse and worse. I believe that over the past years, the current [US]
administration has made several dozen decisions related to sanctions toward
Russia," Putin added.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump confirmed that
he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the
upcoming G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan.
US
Has Prepared New Sanctions Against Russia Over Skripal Case - Reports
In mid-March, the US Treasury Department hit Moscow
with new punitive measures, on eight Russian individuals and six entities,
including shipbuilding and energy companies.
The sanctions
were introduced over their alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis. Washington
stated that the restrictions were imposed with coordination with its allies:
the European Union and Canada.
Within the past five years, the United States has
imposed numerous rounds of punitive measures against Russia, accusing Moscow of
interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs, also in the American presidential
election in 2016, alleged use of chemical weapons against Russian former
intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK city of Salisbury and over the Kerch Strait
incident.
+
What Comes After Trump – World War
III?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51757.htm
by Federico Pieraccini
What will the United States’
relations with Russia and China be like when the 46th president of the United
States takes office in 2025? This is a question that I often ask myself,
especially in light of Trump’s political choices regarding international
arms-control treaties (INF Treaty), nuclear proliferation, economic war with China, a financial crisis that is artificially postponed thanks
to QE, out-of-control military spending, an increasingly aggressive NATO
stance towards the Russian Federation, and continuous provocations
against the People’s Republic of China. Where will we end up with after another
five years of provocations? For how much longer will Putin and Xi Jinping maintain the “strategic patience” not to respond to
Washington with drastic measures?
Let us imagine we are in 2025
The four current global hot spots
– Iran, Syria, Venezuela and DPRK – have maintained their resistance to
Washington’s diktats and have emerged more or less victorious. Syrian territory
in its entirety is now under the control of Damascus; Iran has established
enough deterrents not to be attacked; Pyongyang continues in its negotiations
with Washington as the reunification of the two Koreas continues along; the
Bolivarian revolution still lives on in Venezuela.
Putin is preparing to leave the
Russian Federation as president after 25 years. Xi Jinping
could see his mandate expire in a few more years. Washington is about to
appoint a new president, who in all probability will be the opposite of Trump,
in the same way Obama was the opposite of Bush and Trump a reaction to Obama.
So let us imagine someone emerging
in the Democratic Party completely committed to advancing the view of the US
deep state and the military-industrial complex – someone like Hillary Clinton,
Madeleine Albright or any of the 2019 Democratic candidates for the 2020
elections (the ones with anything to commend them do not count).
Such a person would be committed to reinvigorating the idea of American exceptionalism following eight years of a Trump presidency
that has mostly focused (the neocons notwithstanding)
on domestic issues and the policy of “America First”.
Now let us think about what has
been, and will be, dismantled internationally by Trump during his presidency,
namely: the suspension of the INF Treaty and an indication not to extend the New START treaty (on
nuclear-arms reduction), deployment of troops on the Russian border in Europe,
sanctions, tariffs and economic terrorism of all kinds.
Ask yourself how likely it is that
the next US president will want and be able to improve relations with Russia
and China as well as accept a multipolar world order? The answer to that is zero, with
the Trump presidency only serving to remind us how every administration remains
under the control of the military, industrial, spy and
media apparatus, expressed in liberal and neocon
ideologies.
Trump has increased military
spending considerably, singing the praises of the military-industrial complex
and promising to modernize the country’s nuclear arsenal. Such a modernization
would take two decades to be completed, a detail always omitted by the media.
For Trump it is a case of “America First”. For the deep state the project is
long term and ought to be far more alarming for the global community.
Russia, China and the US all
appear committed to further militarization, with Russia and China strongly focussing on defending their strategic interests in the
face of US aggression. Beijing will focus on building a large number of aircraft carriers to defend her
maritime borders, while Moscow seeks to seal her skies against missiles and
stealthy aircraft (a land campaign against Russia, as history teaches us, has
little chance of success).
+
Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo Accuses Iran of Attacking Oil
Tankers
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/14/us_blames_iran_oil_tankers_attack
with Vijay Prashad
===========
c.
More Evidence US Armed Syria Terrorists as Trump Pleads Ceasefire
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51748.htm
by Finian Cunningham
Remember when Donald
Trump was running for president back in 2016, and he bragged he would “bomb the
hell out of” terrorists in Syria. Now, in a reversal, Trump is calling on
Syrian and allied Russian forces to stop bombing Idlib,
the last redoubt of terror groups in Syria.
Trump urged
Syria, Russia and Iran to “stop bombing the hell out of Idlib”
claiming that civilians were being indiscriminately killed in the offensive to
retake the renegade northwest province.
It seems like a
strange plea from the American president. Idlib is
unquestionably a stronghold for internationally proscribed terror groups,
mainly Jabhat al Nusra
(rebranded as Hayat Tahrir
al Sham). Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power say it is their
sovereign right to rout the militants, who have reportedly broken ceasefire
agreements to launch attacks on civilian areas in government-controlled areas,
as well as on the Russian air base at Hmeimim.
Moscow rejected
Trump’s characterization of indiscriminate killing of civilians, saying that its operations along with
Syrian forces are being directed at defeating illegally armed militants.
Moreover, the
offensive to retake Idlib comes as new evidence
emerges of the massive – albeit covert – international military support given
to the various terror groups during Syria’s nearly eight-year war. Syrian state
media this week reported
arsenals of weaponry recently recovered in Damascus countryside and further
south in the Daraa area.
The arsenals included
rows and rows of heavy machine-guns, sniper rifles and US-made TOW missiles.
Much of the weaponry was also of Israeli-origin, according to reports.
A separate find showed
tonnes of C-4 plastic explosive, which Syrian
military intelligence said was “US-made”. Up to four tonnes (4,000 kgs) were recovered
this time around. Half a kilo of this lethal material is enough to kill several
people.
This is not, of
course, the first time that such huge caches of US, Israeli and NATO-origin
weaponry have been recovered from territory formerly held by terrorists in
Syria. There have been numerous such finds, which also included industrial
chemicals made in Germany and Saudi Arabia, capable of producing sarin and other highly toxic munitions. That implies
military-grade logistics and technical knowhow.
Taken together, the
unavoidable conclusion is that internationally proscribed terrorist groups have
been systematically weaponized by the US, its NATO
allies, Israel and the Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The array of
weaponry indicates international and state-level organization, not haphazard
procurement from disparate private arms dealers.
A plausible
configuration for how the weapons into Syria were delivered and paid for is the
following: most likely through smuggling routes from Turkey, Jordan and Israel.
The oil-rich Arab monarchs would have footed the bill. The American CIA and
Britain’s MI6 managed the logistics and weapons handling. The circuitous supply
chain was sufficiently obscure to avoid oversight by the US Congress and
European parliaments. But the bottomline is that
terrorist organizations were evidently weaponized by
Washington and its allies for the objective of regime change in Damascus.
That is why President
Trump and other Western leaders do not have any moral authority whatsoever when
they make belated calls for a ceasefire in Idlib
province.
Syria has faced an
international criminal conspiracy to destroy its nation. Washington and other
NATO states have been fully complicit in directing that conspiracy by arming
terror groups to the teeth. Western corporate news media have served as
propaganda cover for the entire criminal enterprise, lionizing the terrorists
as “rebels”, and continually demonizing the Syrian army and its allies in their
efforts to liberate the country from the foreign-sponsored scourge. Recall the
disgraceful Western media distortion over the liberation of Aleppo by the
Syrian army and Russia in 2016-2017, endeavoring to portray that defeat of
besieging terror groups as a “massacre”. The Western media never followed up
their hysterical charade with subsequent reports of how Aleppo citizens
actually rejoiced in their liberation from Western-backed “rebels”.
The infernal problem
of conflict and violence in Syria is the direct consequence of Western states
embarking on a criminal scheme years before
the war started in 2011 in order to overthrow the government of President Bashar al Assad.
+
Manufacturing Coma
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51758.htm
by Paul Edwards
Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing
Consent”, published in 1988, was a ground-breaking, comprehensive analysis of
the processes used by American government to persuade citizens to approve
whatever witches’ brew of deceit, crime, and murder the ruling elite elected to
perpetrate.
Today that idea has a quaint,
nostalgic charm since no serious person would now contend that our government
requires anything resembling consent from its people. It rules
imperiously an intellectually lobotomized public it has rendered torpid,
quiescent, inanimate. You are now told what it
has done or is doing, if you are told anything at all.
While the stupefied, comatose
condition of Americans that allows them to opt out of the moral universe and
assuage their guilt with petitions, donations, and memberships in faineant feel-good drum circles is not necessarily
permanent, an awakening is most unlikely since all forces that could break that
trance are devoted to maintaining it.
Government, which Plato, Burke and
the Federalist argue will always work to aggrandize itself against all
restraint, has triumphed over the people who theoretically empower it, but
Government is only a device, a giant toy, a Rube Goldberg machine, and the
wholly-owned subsidiary of Capitalism, and the dirty, tattered cover for its
absolute rule. With apologies to Clausewitz, American government is the
continuation of Capitalism by other means.
Capitalism, controling
education, media and culture, ran an intense PR blitz to create a society of
shallow, childish, insatiable consumers, paradoxically certain that they were
at once utterly worthless and undeniably Number 1. This infantilization of the people produced a double payoff: a
citizenry without the acuity to oppose the criminality of the state, but with
no limit to their ingrafted materialist
“needs”. As their regressive, debilitating self-absorption grew, so did
their indifference to their own psychic, spiritual, and social health, as well
as to the full-spectrum horror their country continually inflicts on nations
that won’t come to Jesus and kneel to submit to our ravenous Minotaur.
Capitalism, dubiously victorious,
is not what it used to be, evolving as its DNA coding required and Marx
described. It is now so sick with Financial Elephantiasis that it can’t
evade its own voracity and, enchained in unpayable
debt, it blindly, greedily devours itself. The insanity of world neurosis
based on U.S. Capitalist rapacity is now driven entirely by America’s own
economic panic, not ideology.
There will be no redemption.
Capitalism will crash and come disastrously, catastrophically undone. As
Marx said, a mode of production’s power continues until advancing
history enforces its replacement. We are there, and ironically, as the
terminally haemorrhaging Capitalist ghoul lurches
toward its demise, its death throes will be most agonizingly painful to those zombified American souls who lost consciousnes
to the siren lullabies of their destroyers.
===========
d.
British Home
Secretary signs US extradition order for
Julian Assange
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jun/13/julian-assange-sajid-javid-signs-us-extradition-order
+
Journalists silent on Assange’s
plight are complicit
in his torture and imprisonment
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/461509-journalists-media-assange-wikileaks/
+
Video Emerges of Assange
in Belmarsh
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/07/video-emerges-of-assange-in-belmarsh-join-us-live-at-4-pm-edt/
+
On Contact: “Julian Assange w/UN Special Rapporteur
on Torture"
+
As US seeks to crush media freedom, we all need to read Assange’s letter from prison
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51738.htm
by John McEvoy
The Canary has received exclusive
access to a purportedly hand-written letter from Julian Assange
in Belmarsh prison. The letter, dated 13 May 2019,
reveals Assange’s prison conditions and difficulties
building his own defence. It also acts as a critique
of Washington’s attempts to crush media freedom, and as a call to action from
his supporters.
+
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei
visits Julian Assange in prison hospital, urges
Britain to stop WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to US
+
Assange's Father Visits Son in Prison, Shares News on WikiLeaks' Founder Condition
https://sputniknews.com/world/201906121075824570-assange-father-visit-condition/
===========
e.
US official sacked after 'illegally fast-tracking
$8bn
in weapons transfers' to Saudi Arabia, UAE
The US State Department has sacked a
senior official who is thought to have helped spearhead a scheme
that saw the weapons manufacturer he formerly lobbied for rake in billions
of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to the Wall Street
Journal.
Charles Faulkner, who formerly
represented weapons manufacturer Raytheon Co. as a lobbyist, used his
influential position in the Trump administration to bypass the usual
congressional review process and fast-track over $8 billion
in weapons deals to the two Gulf kingdoms by declaring an emergency
over rising tensions with Iran in May this year.
A former arms lobbyist in the Trump administration
is accused of helping bypass restrictions for a weapons deal to the Gulf countries
that saw his former company earn billions.
Yemen war, US politics, Raytheon, arms deal, arms industry.
+
The Joke of the Century
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51747.htm
by Jeremy Salt
With fresh elections
called by Benyamin Netanyahu for September, it is possible that the ‘deal
of the century’ may never see the light of day. Condemned across the
board by Palestinians, even supporters are backing away. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State, said recently it was a
deal “only the Israelis could love” and was “unexecutable.”
Still, for what it reveals of the minds that could come up with such a scheme,
the ‘deal of the century’ is still worth examining.
The ‘deal’ would be
the joke of the century were it not so seriously
intended. Whether deal or joke, however, the bottom line is blackmail and
even murder. If Hamas and Islamic Jihad don’t accept this deal, the US will
allow Israel to “personally harm” their leaders, in other words, kill them.
The full package is to
be unveiled in late June but these are some of the details, as leaked from the
Foreign Ministry to Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, Israel Hayom,
a propaganda conduit for the Netanyahu government. Adelson’s
wife Miriam, Israel Hayom’s chief executive, is one of the richest women
in the world, with an estimated personal fortune of $22 billion. She and
her husband have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into their pet causes,
the Republican Party and the state of Israel. Described in the US media
as an ‘humanitarian’ and ‘philanthropist,’ this sponsor of Israel’s racist war
on the Palestinians was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, the
highest US award that can be conferred on a civilian.
Some of the detail in
the Jared Kushner ‘deal of the century’ may be kite-flying, to be modified
before the formal release of the plan, so that it won’t look so bad after all,
but the deadly intent, to erase Palestine forever and replace it with a
strangulated state of ‘New Palestine,’ is not to be doubted.
As outlined in Israel Hayom,
Israel would annex all the West Bank settlement blocs. Together with the
isolated settlements to be brought within this land grab, Israel could be
expected to seize most if not all of Area C of the West Bank, as assigned to
full Israeli control in the long-moribund ‘peace process.’
This would give it up
to 62 percent of the West Bank. ‘New Palestine’ would consist of Area A
(about three percent) and presumably most of Area B, consisting of 24 percent,
to make statehood even remotely plausible. The territory taken by Israel would
include the fertile and well-watered Jordan Valley. Overall, the
Palestinians would be left with about 12 percent of their stolen homeland.
In practice, there would be no real change from the present
situation. The ‘deal’ would simply ratify Israeli settlement and land seizures
in a new pseudo-legal arrangement.
The West Bank would be
connected to Gaza by a highway, to be funded mainly by China but with smaller
financial contributions from South Korea, Australia, Canada, the US, and the
EU. Egypt would lease land to ‘New Palestine’ for the construction
of an airport and an industrial zone in Sinai. The Palestinians would also have
a port. This and other infrastructural and administrative costs would be
covered by $30 billion paid by the oil-producing Gulf states
(70 percent, the US (20 percent) and the EU (10 percent).
A time frame of five
years would provide plenty of room for the freezing of grants if the
Palestinians misbehave, in the event of rockets still being fired into Israel
or through their perceived failure to comply with the terms imposed on them, as
interpreted by Israel, of course.
Israel would continue
to oversee the ‘security’ of ‘New Palestine’s’ land and sea borders, so no
change here either except the semantic. As the trump hand in negotiations
would always be held by someone else - Israel, the US or Egypt or the donors to
the various projects – the Palestinians would be perennially open to threat and
intimidation and the withholding of financial grants.
‘New Palestine’ would
have its capital in Jerusalem, most probably in the village of Abu Dis, which was brought within the municipal boundaries by
Ehud Barak during the Camp David negotiations to create the fiction of a shared
capital. In fact, Jerusalem would remain under the full control of the Israeli
municipality and government. Palestinians would have no say at all in how the
city is run.
East Jerusalem
Palestinians would remain the citizens of ‘New Palestine’ but Israel would
control their daily lives as before. Restrictions would be formally
applied to real estate deals, so that Israelis could not buy Palestinian houses
and Palestinians could not buy properties sequestered by Jewish settlers.
In practice, given Israel’s determination to turn Jerusalem into a wholly
Jewish city, except for Palestinian remnants, it is difficult to see this
restriction being applied to the settlers, whom the occupier’s law allows to
seize Palestinian property by the most dubious means.
===========
f.
Good Morning Britain: Watch "George Galloway
Fired From talkRADIO After 'Anti-Semitic' Tweet”
with Lord Alan Sugar
+
Gaza: Isolation and control
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/gaza-isolation-control-190608081601522.html
by Ben White
+
Australian film: 'Stone Cold Justice'
on Israel's torture of Palestinian children
+
“Advocate”: Israeli Attorney Lea Tsemel Reflects on Defending Palestinians Who Resist
Occupation
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/14/lea_tsemel_advocate_documentary_israel_palestine
+
US Senators meet with Jewish leaders in semi-secret
annual event
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51745.htm
by Alison Weir
===========
g.
In Leaked Tape, Pompeo Vows to Prevent
Jeremy Corbyn
From Becoming UK's Prime Minister
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51743.htm
by Sputnik News
US President Donald
Trump’s administration has been foraying into British politics; last week,
during his UK visit, Trump praised Boris Johnson, lauding him as an acceptable
successor to Theresa May, while snubbing Jeremy Corbyn,
calling the Labour leader a negative force.
US State Secretary
Mike Pompeo has been accused of trying
to stop the UK’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn from becoming prime minister; an audio clip
leaked to the Washington Post featured him reassuring Jewish leaders that
he would “push back” against the Labour party’s
leadership after continued allegations of anti-Semitism
within its fold.
In the leaked
recording, Mike Pompeo was apparently asked what he
would do if Jeremy Corbyn were elected prime
minister.
The questioner asked:
“Would you be willing to work with us to take on actions if
life becomes very difficult for Jews in the UK?”
In the response, Mike Pompeo appears to suggest he would seek a pre-emptive
push back before Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had an opportunity to claim the prime
minister’s seat.
“It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected,”
he said in the audio clip.
“It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait
for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will
do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s
already happened.”
In response to Pompeo’s
comments, a Labour spokesman rejected accusations
of anti-Semitism and condemned US President Donald Trump and his senior
officials for wading into British domestic politics.
“President Trump and
his officials’ attempts to decide who will be Britain’s next prime
minister are an entirely unacceptable interference in the UK’s democracy,”
said the spokesperson.
He added that the
party was “fully committed to the support, defence
and celebration of the Jewish community and is implacably opposed to antisemitism in any form”.
Mike Pompeo’s comments are the latest example of a glaring
intervention by the Trump administration in British politics.
Last week,
during a visit to Britain, Donald Trump had praise for Boris
Johnson, saying the former Foreign Secretary would be an "excellent"
successor to Theresa May.
The US President also
snubbed Jeremy Corbyn during his trip
to London, calling the Labour leader a negative
force.
During a press
conference with Theresa May Trump had said:
“He wanted
to meet, today or tomorrow, I decided I would not do that.”
“I don't know Jeremy Corbyn,
I've never met him, never spoke to him,”
“I think that he is,
from where I come from, somewhat of a negative force.”
The UK Labour Party has been embroiled in a crisis
since 2016 which has seen senior MPs accused of engaging
in anti-Semitism. Leader Jeremy Corbyn
established the Chakrabati inquiry in 2016
to investigate the state of racism within the party’s ranks.
Now, the Equality and
Human Rights Commission announced last week that it is to formally
investigate Labour over anti-Jewish racism.
+
The Neocolonial Arrogance of the Kushner Plan
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51751.htm
By Rashid Khalidi
“You cannot do without
us,” Lord Curzon condescendingly told the Indians over whom he ruled as
British imperial viceroy more than a century ago. As the Trump family rubbed
shoulders with the Windsors during their recent visit
to London, there was no mistaking the difference between the real aristocracy
and the trumped-up one. However, Jared Kushner, presidential son-in-law
and senior adviser responsible for crafting a Middle East peace plan, does have
something in common with Lord Curzon and his colonial ilk.
In an interview with Axios shown on HBO on June 2, shortly before he
arrived in the UK, Kushner cast doubt on the feasibility of independent
Palestinian self-rule, declaring, “we’ll have to see,” adding, “the hope is
that they over time can become capable of governing.” When asked if
Palestinians should ever be able to enjoy freedom from “Israeli government
or military interference,” he said only that this was “a high bar.” After
suggesting that Kushner had consulted few if any Palestinians over the two
years during which his peace plan was in the works, his interviewer asked if he
understood why the Palestinians did not trust him. Kushner responded curtly,
“I’m not here to be trusted.”
This was not the first time the
Palestinians have been told they cannot govern themselves, that they are
obliged to remain under foreign tutelage, and do not warrant being consulted
about their national future. In 1919, another British imperialist, Lord
Balfour, wrote—in a confidential memo to Curzon himself—“in Palestine we
do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the
present inhabitants of the country… Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad,
is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far
profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now
inhabit that ancient land.”
The 1917 declaration associated
with Balfour’s name, the basis of the British Mandate that led to the
establishment of Israel, excluded the Palestinians—whom Balfour never mentioned
by name—from the political and national rights it accorded to Jews. In the Axios
interview, Kushner echoed Balfour’s words, repeatedly excluding Palestinians
from political and national rights. Kushner and his colleagues, White House
adviser Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the US
ambassador to Israel, have consistently stressed that theirs is essentially an
economic development initiative for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip,
meant to operate under existing conditions of almost absolute Israeli control.
So far, it has no disclosed political element, except the clear indication that
Palestinian statehood and sovereignty are ruled out. All the Palestinians
deserve, in Kushner’s view, is “the opportunity to live a better life… the
opportunity to pay their mortgage,” under Israel rule.
Understandably, almost
universally, Palestinians—along with many international commentators—see such
an approach as simply paving the way to a normalization of never-ending
occupation and creeping annexation under conditions of extreme legal discrimination
between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs: a situation resembling nothing so
much as apartheid South Africa.
Astonishingly, for someone who is
supposedly a successful businessperson, Kushner is apparently ignorant of the
economic consensus that describes a Palestinian economy as strangled primarily
by the systematic interference of the Israeli military occupation that he
advocates maintaining. The Trump administration has added to this economic
stranglehold with its decisions to cut both direct US aid to the West Bank and Gaza and its support for UNRWA. Meanwhile, the US continues to
support the Israeli blockade of Gaza, aided by Egypt, with disastrous effects
on its 1.8 million people, including chronic power and water shortages, minimal
sewage treatment, more than 50 percent unemployment, and a complete lack of freedom of
movement.
These are only some of the ways
that the administration of which Kushner is part has made its contempt for the
Palestinians apparent. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it has
unilaterally taken an issue Israel is treaty-bound to negotiate with the
Palestinians off the table, and reversed seventy-plus years of US policy, while
ignoring an international consensus that the city’s final status would be
subject to a mutually acceptable peace agreement. The Trump administration has
also explicitly avoided endorsing a two-state solution or any form of
Palestinian sovereignty, positions Kushner reiterated in his interview. It
closed the Palestinian mission in Washington, D.C., and cut off US aid to the
Palestinian Authority. It claimed that, contrary to the status of all other
refugees since World War II, the descendants of Palestinians, declared refugees
in 1948, are not themselves refugees. Finally, in endorsing
Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, the Trump administration has cleared
the way for the annexation of whatever parts of the West Bank Israel should
choose to swallow up.
Indeed, in a recent interview with The New York Times,
Ambassador Friedman, who is reportedly a “driving force” in shaping the
Trump Administration’s Middle East policy, stated that Israel has the “right”
to annex “some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.” Friedman then waxed
philosophical: asked whether Kushner’s plan includes a Palestinian state, he
mused, “What’s a state?” He concluded by ludicrously comparing the indefinite
forcible Israeli occupation of Palestinian land to the treaty-based US military
presence in Germany, Japan, and Korea. These declarations are the clearest
possible indicator of which way the wind is blowing in Washington.
+
An Israeli
Double-Feature:
52nd Anniversary of Israel’s Attack on the USS
Liberty
Israel Is a Dictatorship, Not a Democracy
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51739.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
Two days ago the US celebrated the 75th anniversary
of D-Day with accolades to the armed forces and thanks to surviving
veterans. The country stood strongly with the military. But today
two days later is the 52nd anniversary of a day of shame when Washington turned
its back on the US Navy. It was June 8, 1967 when the USS Liberty, a
surveillance ship stationed off the coast of Egypt was attacked by Israeli
fighter aircraft and torpedo boats.
The Israelis were unable to sink the Liberty, but
managed to kill 34 American sailors and wound 174. Seventy percent of the crew were casualties of the Israeli attack.
The White House, fearing the Israel Lobby,
prevented the US Navy from going to the defense of the Liberty, thus
sacrificing American lives, and further dishonored the US Navy by ordering
Admiral McCain, father of the former US Senator John McCain, to orchestrate a
cover-up. The surviving crew were threatened
with court-martial and imprisonment if they spoke about the event. It was
20 years before one of the surviving officers wrote a book about the greatest
act of shame the US government ever inflicted on the US military.
In 2003, 36 years after the Israeli attack on the
Liberty, Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval
Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, convened the Independent
Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of
Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Liberty was Under Attack, and the
Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government. The Commission consisted
of Adm. Moorer, Gen. Raymond Davis, former Assistant
Commandant of the US Marine Corps, Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, former Judge
Advocate General of the US Navy, and Amb. James
Akins, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
You can read the report online, here for example: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Moorer_Report
The report is devastating. Among the report’s
conclusions, these stand out:
“That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful
supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the
facts of this attack from the American people;
“That due to continuing pressure by the pro-Israel
lobby in the United States, this attack remains the only serious naval incident
that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no
surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify
about the attack;
“That there has been an official cover-up without
precedent in American naval history; the existence of such a cover-up is now
supported by statements of Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN (Ret.), former
Judge Advocate General of the Navy; and Captain Ward Boston, USN, (Ret.), the
chief counsel to the Navy’s 1967 Court of Inquiry of Liberty attack;
“That the truth about Israel’s attack and
subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the
American people to the present day and is a national disgrace;
“That a
danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are
willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and
specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict
with American interests; this policy, evidenced by the failure to defend USS
Liberty and the subsequent official cover-up of the Israeli attack, endangers
the safety of Americans and the security of the United States.”
After interviewing many of the survivors, Captain
Ward Boston, who was assigned to cover up the attack and afterward repudiated
the cover-up, and Bill Knutson, the executive officer of the USS America
fighter squadron that was called back on orders from the White House, and
lengthy discussions with Adm. Moorer, my former
colleague at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I have written
about the Israeli attack on the Liberty a number of times. Some of them
are available in the archive on this website, for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/07/26/the-israeli-attack-on-the-uss-liberty-paul-craig-roberts/
All who discount the influence of Israel on the US
government are ignorant fools.
Netanyahu Elevates
Himself to Dictator
We hear every day that “Israel is the only
democracy in the Middle East,” but is Israel a
democracy or a dictatorship?
In a democracy even the highest members of the
government are accountable to law, but this isn’t the case with
Netanyahu. After a two-year investigation the Israeli attorney general
announced his intention to indict prime minister
Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/world/middleeast/benjamin-netanyahu-indicted.html
This is like Mueller indicting President Trump for
colluding with Putin to steal the US presidential election. All would be
over for Trump, but not for Netanyahu. Netanyahu simply removed the Israeli
justice minister, Avichai Mandelblit,
and appointed himself to the post, thus immunizing himself from
prosecution. https://www.rt.com/news/461082-netanyahu-justice-minister-charges/
As prime minister
Netanyahu had already assigned himself the ministries of Defense, Health, and
Education. Now he is Justice minister as
well. How much of a government can be in the hands of one person before
that person becomes a dictator? Think about it this way: If
President Trump were also Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of
the Treasury, and Secretary of Homeland Security, would he be a president or a
dictator?
Trump has none of these posts, but some Democrats
accuse him of being a dictator. What then does that make Netanyahu?
+
Israel attacks Gaza after rocket 'intercepted' from
territory
===========
h.
Netanyahu Has Changed The Democratic Party –
One Candidate At A Time
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51752.htm
by Peter Beinart
If you don’t think Benjamin
Netanyahu has changed the debate about Israel inside the
Democratic Party,
just listen to Pete Buttigieg’s foreign
policy speech yesterday at Indiana University. Buttigieg
is no radical; he’s a darling of the post-Obama
Democratic establishment. And yet he said things on Tuesday that
would have been unthinkable during Obama’s campaigns.
First, Buttigieg
implicitly compared Israel
to Saudi Arabia. After initially talking about China and Russia, he then called
for “upholding our values not just with our adversaries but with our allies.”
His first example was Riyadh’s treatment of dissidents; his second was Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians.
This linkage is an unintended
byproduct of the de facto Israeli-Saudi alliance, and the parallel behavior of
the two Middle Eastern powers. Both are growing more arrogant and more brutal.
Both undermined Obama and boost Donald Trump. And both are pushing America
towards a confrontation with Iran that could lead to war. It’s not surprising
that Democrats
increasingly lump them together.
Second, Buttigieg
made it clear that while Israel
may share some of America’s democratic principles, Benjamin Netanyahu—whose
government the South Bend mayor called “right-wing” and “turning away from
peace”—does not. This too is the result of Netanyahu’s affinity with Trump.
Just as Democrats
see Trump as threatening America’s democratic principles, they see Netanyahu as
doing the same to Israel’s. Why does Beto O’Rourke
feel comfortable calling Netanyahu a “racist”? Because Democrats
now routinely apply that epithet to Trump. Obama may have thought such
things but he couldn’t say them publicly. Now Democrats
can.
Most importantly, Buttigieg warned that, “if Prime Minister Netanyahu makes
good on his threat to annex West Bank settlements, a President Buttigieg will take steps to ensure that American taxpayers
won’t foot the bill.” Obama never said anything like this. To the contrary, in
his final year in office he gave Israel the largest aid package in its history
without requiring any changes in its policies toward the Palestinians. No
president has used American military aid as a vehicle to change Israeli policy
since George H.W. Bush more than a quarter-century ago.
As policy, Buttigieg’s
statement isn’t that significant. Israel doesn’t need American money to annex
parts of the West Bank. But it opens a broader conversation. (One I discussed
at greater length in an essay
a few weeks ago).
If America shouldn’t subsidize
policies that, in Buttigieg’s words, increase the “suffering
of the Palestinian people” and turn Israel “away from peace,” why stop at the
annexation of settlements? Why not refuse to subsidize settlement building at
all?
Make Israel prove that none of the
weaponry it buys with American money is used to entrench a system of bigotry
and land theft in which Israeli Jews enjoy citizenship, due process, free
movement and the right to vote for the government that controls their lives
while their Palestinian neighbors are denied these rights. The core of the problem,
after all, isn’t that Israel might formalize its oppression of Palestinians by
annexing parts of the West Bank. It’s that Israel is oppressing Palestinians in
the West Bank in the first place.
+
Palestine in Pictures: May 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-pictures-may-2019/27471
+
A day in the life of a Palestinian Child
+
'I was afraid to protest when I was 8. Not
anymore':
18-yo Palestinian icon Ahed
Tamimi to RT
https://www.rt.com/news/461408-tamimi-interview-israeli-occupation/
===========
i.
Letters from Our Readers
https://blackagendareport.com/letters-our-readers-30
by Jahan Chowdhry
This week you wanted to talk about Joe Biden’s
presidential run, the National Lawyers Guild, Julian Assange,
and Israeli apartheid. Strong comments came for “Joe Biden, Prince of Private Prisons,” “National Lawyers Guild Echoes Smear Campaign Against Julian Assange,” and “Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles.”
“Joe Biden, Prince of Private Prisons”
by Glen Ford exposes the presidential candidate’s key role in
black mass incarceration.
+
Inside Israel's million dollar troll army
Act.IL’s Israeli headquaters in Herzliya. (Act.IL/Facebook)
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566
by Asa Winstanley
A global influence campaign funded by the Israeli
government had a $1.1 million budget last year, a document obtained by The
Electronic Intifada shows.
Act.IL says it has offices in three countries and
an online army of more than 15,000.
In its annual report, from January, Act.IL says its
goal is to “influence foreign publics” and “battle” BDS – the boycott,
divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
Through its app, Act.IL issues “missions” to this
troll army in exchange for
“cool prizes” and scholarships.
The app directs comments towards news websites in support of Israeli wars
and racism, while attacking Palestinians and solidarity campaigners.
The leaked report claims Act.IL’s
app completes 1,580 such missions every week.
Act.IL’s report was obtained by The Electronic Intifada
thanks to researcher Michael Bueckert.
Bueckert monitors the app, and posts screenshots of its missions
to the Twitter account Behind Israel’s Troll Army.
+
Doublespeak in Israel and the United States
Targets “the Left” as Traitorous
Photograph Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – Public Domain
by Yoav Litvin
No
syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit
makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern
culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve
knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. ~ Umberto Eco
In
spite of a seemingly convincing victory in Israel’s recent elections, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu failed to form a right-wing coalition, which would secure him the
premiership for an additional four years.
The
reason: hard-right Member of Knesset (MK), former Israeli Security Minister,
and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu
party Avigdor Lieberman – a settler in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, ex-nightclub bouncer and convicted
child beater – refused to budge on a draft bill for ultra-orthodox
Jews. In response to Lieberman’s opportunistic move, a disheveled-looking
Netanyahu spoke to reporters claiming: “Lieberman is now
part of the left”.
Yet
Lieberman is as far from left wing politics as can be. In fact, his signature
fascistic opinions are no secret – e.g. he has openly endorsed expulsion of
Palestinians from Israel and spearheaded attempts to legalize execution and even beheading of Palestinian prisoners, whom he
collectively refers to as “terrorists”.
Across
the pond in the United States, President Donald Trump has adopted the term
“radical left” to describe his opponents in the media and the Democratic Party. With the ramping up of the
2020 election fever, Trump will likely soon drop the “radical” and simply
scapegoat the “left”.
===========
j.
“They Are Not the Central Park 5”: Ava DuVernay’s Series
Restores Humanity of Wrongly Convicted Boys
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/7/ava_duvernay_when_they_see_us
+
Rev. William Barber: Racist Gerrymandering Created
a GOP Stronghold in the South. We Must Fight Back
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/10/rev_william_barber_racist_gerrymandering_crea
+
Scott Warren Provided Food & Water to Migrants
in Arizona;
He Now Faces Up to 20 Years in Prison
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/29/scott_warren_provided_food_water_to
+
DHS Agents Treat Undocumented Immigrants as
Criminals in Hospitals, Shackling Them to Beds and Impeding Care, Study Finds
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51750.htm
+
Teen Mother and Premature Baby Found Neglected
in Border Patrol Custody
===========
k.
From: "Medea Benjamin,
CODEPINK" <info@codepink.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Subject: Arrested at 13, now
facing execution
|
|
|
Dear francis, Murtaja Qureiris was 10 years old. Wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and
black flip-flops, he smiled for the camera as he took off on his bicycle to
join a children’s protest for the rights of Shia
Muslims in Saudi Arabia. “The people demand human rights!” he shouted into a
megaphone as he rode along. Three years later, as he and his family were
traveling to Bahrain, Murtaja was arrested for the
bicycle protest and attending other peaceful demonstrations. He has been in
prison since the age of 13. Now that he has turned 18, the
kingdom wants to execute him. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo constantly says that Iran needs
to behave like a “normal country” but is U.S. ally Saudi Arabia a normal
country? Shamefully, the U.S. continues its close relationship with this
ruthless kingdom regardless of the number of juveniles, journalists,
activists, bloggers, and dissidents it imprisons and executes. Send Secretary Pompeo and
Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud a message now: Don’t let Saudi
execute child prisoner Murtaja Qureiris.
Murtaja is being tried in Saudi’s “anti-terror” court, where the sentence of
execution will be carried out by crucifixion or dismemberment after
execution. This is despite
any evidence that Murtaja engaged in any violent
activity. The only evidence against Murtaja are his confessions, obtained through torture when he was
only 13. If Murtaja is sentenced to death, he will be the third
prisoner executed this year by Saudi Arabia for crimes allegedly committed
before the age of 18. In April, the country carried out a mass
execution of 37 people — 33 of them Shia minority. The UN and human rights groups
condemned the mass execution and called for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to be held accountable. But the U.S. made no
change to its relationship with the Saudis, once again sending MBS a message
that he can act with complete impunity. Will Murtaja
be the next victim? Add your name to our petition to Secretary Pompeo
and Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema
asking speak up that Saudi not execute child prisoner Murtaja
Qureiris. Towards justice, Ann, Ariel Carley, Clara, Jodie, Kelly,
Kirsten, Lily, Maya, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Paki,
Ryan, Sarah, Tighe, Ursula, and Zena
P.S. Want to do more
to hold Saudi Arabia accountable? We are asking Lush cosmetics — a
company known for social responsibility to close its stores in Saudi
Arabia. Send an email now to Lush asking them to speak out in
condemnation of the execution of Murtaja Qureiris and then plan a protest outside a Lush store
near you. You only need 2 people and 15 minutes to carry out the protests and
we have supplies available for you to use. |
===========
l.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Since Assange indictment, cops worldwide are going after
journalists for publishing classified material (2)
After Assange’s Espionage
Act Indictment, Police Move Against More Journalists
for Publishing Classified Material
by Joe Lauria
+
The
Thought Police Are Coming
Mr.
Fish / Truthdig
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/first-assange-then-us/
by
Chris Hedges
===========
m.
DHS
Agents Treat Undocumented Immigrants as Criminals
in
Hospitals, Shackling Them to Beds and Impeding Care,
Study
Finds
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51750.htm
by Julia Conley
"I
couldn't think of the rationale of chaining someone who is so sick he almost
died."
A new report by
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) revealed Monday that although most of these
migrants have broken no laws other than the misdemeanor of crossing the border
without going through a designated entry point, the agents frequently shackle
them to beds, insist on standing guard in their rooms, and interfere with their
care in a number of ways.
"Doctors,
who have a moral and ethical obligation and duty to care for patients, are
actively being prevented from carrying out the practice of medicine as they've
been trained to practice it," Kathryn Hampton, a program officer for PHR
and a co-author of the report, told the New
York Times.
The
study details a number of cases of agents intimidating doctors and hospital
staff as they refused to leave physicians with patients for private exams and
attempting to pressure doctors into discharging immigrants early.
PHR
described the case of one critically ill patient who was shackled to a bed by
agents who refused to give his doctor a reason for the restraints after
repeated questioning.
"I
couldn't think of the rationale of chaining someone who is so sick he almost
died," the physician told PHR.
In
other cases described in the report, agents insisted on standing guard in the
room while patients were examined, had private conversations with their
doctors, and demanded that the doors to patients' rooms be kept open.
Supervision
of a patient "makes sense if you have a prisoner that's convicted of
murder, but this is a different population, especially the asylum
seekers," Dr. Patricia Lebensohn, a physician in Tucson, Arizona, told the
Times. "They're not criminals."
Under
federal law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is prohibited from
arresting undocumented immigrants in certain "sensitive locations"
including courthouses and hospitals. But as PHR reports, CBP agents frequently
flout the law at community hospitals near the southern border:
Physicians
for Human Rights (PHR) has uncovered cases of egregious violations where
medical advice was ignored and patients undergoing urgent treatment were
arrested and their treatment impeded.
[...]
Jose
de Jesus Martinez was reportedly visiting his injured son in the intensive care
unit of a San Antonio hospital when ICE agents entered and accosted him. Oscar
Millan was reportedly arrested while attempting to pick up his newborn son from
a hospital in Boston, and Joel Arrona was detained by ICE while driving his
pregnant wife to a hospital for a cesarean section, leaving her to drive
herself to the hospital alone to deliver her baby.
According to the Times,
such arrests have caused immigrants who are already living in the U.S. to avoid
seeking care, including one man in Texas who delayed getting medical attention
for a stroke.
===========
n.
Is
Trump a Fascist? Well, He’s Not Hitler or Mussolini Yet,
But
He’s Getting Closer
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/11/is-trump-a-fascist-well-hes-not-hitler-or-mussolini-yet-but-hes-getting-closer/
by Patrick Cockburn
Is
Donald
Trump a fascist? The question is usually posed as an insult rather than
as a serious inquiry. A common response is that “he is not as bad as Hitler”,
but this rather dodges the issue. Hitler was one hideous exponent of fascism,
which comes in different flavours but he was by no means the only one.
The
answer is that fascist leaders and fascism in the 1920s and 1930s were similar
in many respects to Trump and Trumpism. But they had additional toxic characteristics,
born out of a different era and a historic experience different from the United
States.
What
are the most important features of fascism? They include ultra-nationalism and
authoritarianism; the demonisation and persecution of minorities; a cult of the
leader; a demagogic appeal to the “ignored” masses and against a “treacherous”
establishment; contempt for parliamentary institutions; disregard for the law
while standing on a law and order platform; control of the media and the
crushing of criticism; slogans promising everything to everybody; a promotion
of force as a means to an end leading to violence, militarism and war.
The
list could go on to include less significant traits such as a liking for public
displays of strength and popularity at rallies and parades; a liking also for
gigantic building projects as the physical embodiment of power.
Hitler
and Mussolini ticked all these boxes and Trump ticks most of them, though with
some important exceptions. German and Italian fascism was characterised above
all else by aggressive and ultimately disastrous wars. Trump, on the contrary,
is a genuine “isolationist” who has not started a single war in the two-and-a-half
years he has been in the White House.
It
is not that Trump abjures force, but he prefers it to be commercial and
economic rather than military, and he is deploying it against numerous
countries from China to Mexico and Iran. As a strategy this is astute, avoiding
the bear traps that American military intervention fell into in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It is an approach which weakens the targeted state economically,
but it does not produce decisive victories or unconditional surrenders.
It
is a policy more dangerous than it looks: Trump may not want a war, but the
same is not true of Mike Pompeo, his secretary of state, or his national
security adviser John Bolton. And it is even less true of US allies like Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have been pushing Washington towards
war with Iran long before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control in
Riyadh in 2015.
Trump’s
aversion to military intervention jibes with these other influences, but it is
erratic because it depends on the latest tweet from the White House. A
weakness, not just of fascist leaders but of all dictatorial regimes, is their
exaggerated dependence on the decisions of a single individual with God-like
confidence in their own judgement. Nothing can be decided without their fiat
and they must never be proved wrong or be seen to fail.
Trump
has modes of operating rather than sustained policies that are consequently
shallow and confused. One ambassador in Washington confides privately that he
has successfully engaged with the most senior officials in the administration,
but this was not doing him a lot of good because they had no idea of what was
happening. The result of this Louis XIV approach to government is
institutionalised muddle: Trump may not want a war in the Middle East but he
could very easily blunder into one.
Of
course, Trump is not alone in this: populist nationalist authoritarian leaders
on the rise all over the world win and hold power in ways very similar to the
fascists of the inter-war period. What is there in these two eras almost a
century apart that would explain this common political trajectory?
Fears
and hatreds born out of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the
Great Depression propelled the fascists towards power. When old allegiances and
beliefs were shattered and discredited, people naturally looked to new creeds
and saviours. “The more pathological the situation the less important is the
intrinsic worth of the idol,” wrote the great British historian Lewis Namier in
1947. “His feet may be of clay and his face may be blank: it is the frenzy of
the worshippers which imparts to him meaning and power.”
Is
the same thing happening again? Fascism was the product of a cataclysmic period
in the first half of the 20th century that is very different from today. The US
failed to get its way in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but these were
small-scale conflicts in no way comparable to the First World War. The
recession that followed the 2008 crash was a blip compared to the Thirties.
Many
of the better off reassure themselves with such thoughts. But they
underestimate the destructiveness of de-industrialisation and technological
change for great numbers across the globe. Inequality has vastly increased.
Economies expand, but the benefits are skewed towards the wealthy. Metropolitan
centres plugged into the global economy flourished, but not their periphery.
The
distinction between winners and losers varies from country to country but
governments everywhere underestimated the unhappiness caused by social and
economic upheaval. Beneficiaries of the status quo invariably downplay the
significance of fault lines that populists are swift to identify and exploit.
===========
o.
From: Monty Kroopkin
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2019
Subject: A new article posted
at newindicator.org
Military
Minds Contemplate Human Extinction ?
http://newindicator.org/?p=1456
===========
p.
"Airports
rush to adopt controversial facial recognition tech"
More
than a dozen US airports are using facial recognition and biometric technology and
more are expected to follow, even though the technology is imperfect and
largely unregulated. RT America’s Trinity Chavez reports for News.Views.Hughes.
+
The
Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51759.htm
by
John W. Whitehead
“You
had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that
every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Tread
cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an
operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
It’s
been 70 years since Orwell—dying, beset by fever and bloody coughing fits, and driven
to warn against the rise of a society in which rampant abuse of power and mass
manipulation are the norm—depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous
technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984.
Who
could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his
dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and
come to love Big Brother.
“To
the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are
different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists
and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of
solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink —
greetings!”—George Orwell
1984 portrays a global society of total control
in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with
the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has
become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and
cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with
anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or "Party," is
headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words:
"Big Brother is watching you."
We
have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by
not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood
and Philip K. Dick.
“If
liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear.”―George Orwell
Much
like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its
corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley’s A
Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have
their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are]
distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.” Much like
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to
“know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights
but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of
themselves that they
will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”
And
in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police
state—which became the basis for Steven
Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority
Report—we are now trapped in a world in which the government is
all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line,
dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to
bring the populace under control.
What
once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly,
as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and
corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases,
behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex,
interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts
and controlling our behavior, the dystopian
visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
Our
world is characterized
by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining,
fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial
recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime)
aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
+
Tariff
Temper Tantrum: Trump “Created a Fake Crisis & Has Announced a Fake
Solution” with Mexico
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/10/tariff_temper_tantrum_trump_created_a
with
Lori Wallach
===========
q.
From: RT in English
[mailto:noreply@subscribe.rt.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019
Subject: RT NEWSLETTER (June 12, 2019)
|
13
June |
RT
NEWSLETTER (June 12, 2019)
https://subscribe.rt.com/preview/mfVLWy
UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia
in section on Yemen war
The UK has published its annual human rights report, but
with some notable omissions in its section on Yemen’s war – namely the identity
of the country bombing its civilians, and the UK’s own involvement in the
conflict.
+
John Bolton’s Long Goodbye –
Consortiumnews
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/12/john-boltons-long-goodbye/
===========
r.
Greenwald
defiant after 'grotesque' threats
over
Brazil's Car Wash leaks
https://news.yahoo.com/greenwald-defiant-grotesque-threats-over-brazils-car-wash-224622672.html
+
Ola
Bini Was Friends with Julian Assange. He Has Spent Two Months in Jail Without
Charge in Ecuador
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/14/ola_bini_ecuador_arrest_wikileaks_assange
===========
s.
Robert
Reich: Here are the 7 biggest failures of Trumponomics
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/robert-reich-here-are-the-7-biggest-failures-of-trumponomics/
+
German
car nightmare: Motor expert warns of worldwide chaos WORSE than financial
crisis
by
Levi Winchester
A
WORLDWIDE car crisis is feared to be imminent with a German motor expert
predicting the United States-China trade war will leave a deeper scar than the
2008 financial crisis.
===========
t.
From:
Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2019
Subject: [MCM] The state has
smeared THREE champions of Wikileaks as sex criminals (MUST-READ)
This
is a masterful analysis of how the tactics used to smear Assange as a
sex
criminal were also used to ruin Jacob Applebaum and Trevor Fitzgibbon,
two
other figures crucial to maintaining Wikileaks.
In
a sense, this represents the dark side—which is to say, the state's
weaponization—of
#MeToo.
MCM
GUEST
BLOG: Suzie Dawson – Freeing Julian Assange: Part One
By The Daily Blog / June 9, 2019 /
TDB recommends Voyager - Unlimited internet @home as fast
as you can get
Print Email
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/06/09/guest-blog-suzie-dawson-freeing-julian-assange-part-one/
We’ve been so busy sifting through the ashes that too few
of us have noticed what’s been staring us in the face all along.
Let’s
change that.
The
Big Picture
With
millions of words written about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and its associates,
swirling all around us daily, it’s easy not to see the wood for the trees.
The
first port of call for those defending the world’s most at-risk publishing
organisation and its staff has been tackling the individual narratives of its
oppressors. Focusing on Sweden, or Ecuador, or the US Department Of Justice,
the Grand Juries or the United Kingdom and debunking their spin seems a
necessary task. But we have to face the reality: Years of arguing til we’re blue
in the face about the intricacies of all the various aspects of the
aforementioned – plenty of which I’ve engaged in myself – hasn’t achieved
victory. We aren’t better off, or stronger for it. Things are slipping, and
slipping fast.
A
decade into this battle, it’s time to reflect upon the sum total of the
parts. We need to acknowledge what has happened not just to Julian – but
to his organisation as a whole. We need to examine WikiLeaks at an
architectural level, just as its opponents have. In doing so, we see that the
desecration of Julian’s reputation and the attacks against his work,
relationships and his physical person were actually never about him – it was
always about his organisation, what it is and what it does, all along.
Sweden
and the cases against Julian were only ever a distraction, a red herring. To
get a crystal clear picture of the situation we must zoom out to an eagle eye’s
view.
What
that lofty vantage point reveals is an obvious and protracted systematic destabilisation of
the key pillars of the organisation. The social decapitation
of its most effective members. The undermining of their ability to continue to
serve and add value to it.
These
are the rotten fruits of the transnational agenda to eradicate WikiLeaks. A
state-level, international conspiracy which long pre-dates then-CIA
Director Mike Pompeo’s declaration of war against WikiLeaks in 2017. His overt
threats were merely a cover for covert operations that track back at least as
far as 2009.
Those
who oppose WikiLeaks are closer to their goal of destroying it than ever
before. If we’re to turn that tide, we must examine what made WikiLeaks good at
its best, find the missing pieces between then and now, and reinstitute them
with haste.
Click
on the link for the rest: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/06/09/guest-blog-suzie-dawson-freeing-julian-assange-part-one/
===========
u.
From:
"Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK"
<info@codepink.org>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2019
Subject: Latest attack on oil
tankers by Iran?
|
|
|
Dear
francis, BREAKING
NEWS: Just hours after the attack on the
Japanese and Norweigan oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, Secretary of State
Pompeo was already blaming Iran. He is using the attack to push his agenda of
going to war with Iran, just like the Bush administration manufactured a
crisis to go to war with Iraq. Take action right now. Tell Congress: Don’t let Trump take us to war with
Iran.
The
attacks came as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wrapped up his trip to
Iran to help ease tensions between the U.S. and Iran. We don’t know who is
behind the sabotage, but whoever is behind it wants to escalate
the conflict between the two nations. The
only REAL news here is that the Trump administration’s maximum pressure
policy is pushing us closer to war. It’s the
Trump administration’s bellicose actions, withdrawing from the nuclear
agreement, imposing brutal sanctions, and deploying warships closer to the
Persian Gulf to “send a clear and unmistakable message to Iran” that is
driving this escalation. The facts of this latest attack on the oil tankers
are not clear, but we know that we can’t trust anything warmonger Pompeo and
serial liar John Bolton tell us about Iran without providing internationally
verified evidence. And no matter who was responsible for this attack,
the solution is mediation. What’s
happening right now with Iran is all too reminiscent of the prelude to the
war with Iraq in 2003, when Bush’s “intelligence”
showed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — which
turned out to be all lies. Now in 2019,
Trump’s “intelligence” insists that Iran is responsible for the attacks in
the Gulf of Oman. Key
members of Trump’s administration, especially John Bolton and Mike Pompeo,
have been looking for a pretext for war with Iran. So have their allies in
Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Israel. Against the will of Congress, the
Trump administration is trying to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia and the
UAE under the guise of a national emergency — the emergency being Iran. And now the
warmongers in the administration are using the incident in the Gulf to try to
create that emergency. The Middle East is still coping with the
horrible consequences of the Iraq war. Send a message to Congress now that they can’t let the
Trump administration take us to war with Iran. Towards
stopping the next war,
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Explosions rock Syrian military zone in suburbs of Damascus (PHOTOS)
https://www.rt.com/news/461963-large-explosion-syria-damascus/
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Subject: RT NEWSLETTER
(June 14, 2019)
RT NEWSLETTER (June 14, 2019)
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