IRONY WARS: AND THE PRIZE GOES TO...

No one would do such a cover of McCain, playing into the most damaging rumors, but imagine this: a jaunty young John, in his pilot uniform, sitting comfortably and chatting with his Vietnamese captors. Two gorgeous gals serve his every wish. He is smoking a cigar and drinking a martini. In the next room other POWs are being intensively interrogated. Ha ha, Republicans?

Art by Jeremy Glass. See here

THE SURRENDER OF CENTER-LEFT PARTIES

But Milne makes a further point. The rise of neo-fascism in Italy, and elsewhere, is tied to the collapse -- or rather the surrender -- of center-left parties to the pernicious doctrines of the Right. Everywhere, these parties ---

• Democrats in America,

• Labour in the UK, various

• Social Democrats throughout Europe –
  

have turned themselves into pale copies of conservative parties, adopting policies that have

• degraded society,

• destroyed communities,

• entrenched injustice,

• rewarded greed,

• poisoned the earth,

• embraced militarism and aggression,

• inflicted vast suffering on developing nations (through the straightjacket of "market reforms," i.e., corporate-crony welfare),

• subverted democracy,

• diminished liberty and

• gutted the very notion of the common good.

---

the Democrats – and New Labour and other craven centre-left parties – have embraced the Right's agenda of elitist domination, militarism and scorn for the common good because they agree with it.

• Any figures with genuinely "progressive" views have been winnowed out or marginalized by the big money machines that run the parties.

• Such people are always a minority amongst the self-interested factions who vie for domination over a nation's affairs, of course. But there used to be a more substantial minority of such folks in U.S. politics, with enough leverage to sometimes affect national policy and even score some successes.

• But this strain has been almost completely bred out, as we have seen in the latest Democratic Congress – the most reviled and unpopular Congress in American history.]

---

In the current U.S. presidential campaign, we can see this dynamic of center-left collaboration with the Right – which has been going on for almost a quarter-century in America – playing itself out once again. Barack Obama's "surge" to the Right –

• as exemplified by his vote for the tyrannical FISA measure – is just another iteration of this process.

• Likewise, his embrace of the Terror War; true, he wants to do it more "efficiently," and perhaps add a few more targets – in Pakistan, say – but he still wants to do it.

He makes no bones about continuing this militarist project which has already

• killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people,

• bankrupted the national treasury,

• and is now – through the Terror War oil price spike – strangling the entire national economy.
  

All of this – especially the Terror War's continuing brutalization and coarsening of the national ethos – is meet food for neo-fascism to feed upon.

WHY THE "SHADOW GOVERNMENT" HAD JFK MURDERED

JFK had within his reach the financial resources to get elected, and more than enough money and influence to build a solid political machine to assure himself two terms in office,

---

JFK wasn’t beholding to the cunning Wire Pullers. He was a free agent. JFK could stand aloof from those contrivers. He didn’t need them.

---

JFK had a natural built in electoral constituency--a voting block--who favored his candidacy.

• He was an intellectual, of Irish descent,

• Roman Catholic,

• young and a WWII Veteran, to boot, possessing a hero-like image. And, for the most part,

• large segments of the African-American community felt a special kinship with him.

• The women loved him also. He was charming and better looking than most Hollywood stars of that era.

• Many, too, in the rank and file of the then feisty Labor Movement were attracted to and inspired by his candidacy for the Oval Office.

• The bosses of the Union Movement, with some notable exceptions, like Jimmy Hoffa, were inclined to give JFK the benefit of the doubt.

---

For all of the above reasons, JFK was a threat to the Shadow Government. (1) After he was elected, he alarmed them further by showing a strong streak of independent thinking! He consistently put America’s interests first.

---

Jim Marrs

---

In his latest book: “The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America,”

---

“By mid-1963

---

• He was threatening to disband the CIA...

• withdraw U.S. troops from South Vietnam,

• close the tax breaks of the oil-depletion allowances;

• tighten control over the tax-free foreign assets of U.S. multinational corporations...and

• decrease the power of both Wall Street and the Federal Reserve System. In June, 1963, Kennedy ordered the printing and release of $4.2 billion in United States notes, paper money issued through the Treasury Department ‘without paying interest’ to the Federal Reserve System, which is composed of twelve regional banks all controlled by ‘private banks’ whose owners often are ‘non-Americans.’”

---

• JFK also opposed Israel’s nuclear weapons scheme.

---

after

---

Lyndon B. Johnson, succeeded to the presidency,

• JFK’s policy towards that controversial Nuke-producing project was reversed.

---

Peter Dale Scott in his tome, “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK,” insisted that

• JFK clearly wanted a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, whether military conditions on the ground allowed it or not. On Oct. 11, 1963, JFK issued “NSAM 263” to that effect. LBJ reversed that directive, too, with “NSAM 273.”

---

Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame, a courageous truth teller, had heard from his then Pentagon boss, John McNaughton, in 1964, that Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense,
and JFK, had an agreement that they would close out Vietnam by 1965.


1. For the purpose of this commentary, the term “Shadow Government” is used to refer to the ultra-criminal entity hidden from public view which orchestrated JFK’s assassination. I am convinced, but I can’t prove in a court of law, that he was murdered as the result of a conspiracy. What the nation witnessed, in my opinion, on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, TX, was nothing less than a coup d’etat.

EHUD BARAK AND NOTES ON THE HEZBOLLAH PRISONER RELEASE

And none of the Western coverage is pointing out the cruel and inhumane role of Ehud Barak in 1978: the man who shot Dalal Mughrabi while she was dead. He pulled her by the hair (only after she died as he would not dare do that to an alive Dalal) and mutilated her body before tearing her shirt off. Such are the sexual perversions of the former prime minister of Israel. And as for the details of the deeds of Dalal and her comrades, don't ever believe Israeli accounts of "enemy" operations. The state consistently lies and consistently fabricates. And that saying from the Babylonian Talmud applies to Israel: the punishment of the liar is that he is not believed even when he tells the truth.

HERE IS A VIDEO OF JOHN WEARING JOE'S HAND UP HIS REAR, PUPPET AND PUPPET MASTER

Oh yea, that's right. USA public opinion has figured out that there is some kind of difference between shias and sunnis so it cant be al-queda. Must be something else, extremist terrorists or something. Whatever.

HERE IS A COUPLE OF PICTURES OF JOHN WEARING JOE'S HAND UP HIS REAR, PUPPET AND PUPPET MASTER

WE THE PEOPLE, ARE ITS NATURAL PREY, AND ITS ONLY TRUE ENEMY

Antifa (in comments) said:

• There will be no prosecutions, nor even any investigations of the crimes of the two Bush terms.

• There will be no payback nor recompense to those deceived, robbed, and killed.

• There will not even be a Truth Commission to simply explore without vengeance an accounting of how our Republic went further afield than even the Third Reich in some ways.

For that would be a farce. That would be asking half the whores in the bordello to sit in judgment of the shocking escapades and easy virtues of the rest. Such a trial couldn't stand up long enough for the opening statements.

The entire Congress, the full House and Senate will need to be dragged before honest investigators and prosecutors and their conduct compared to the written laws of the land, to the oaths of office they took, and to the Constitution they have rendered moot if there is to be an accounting of our failure as a Republic.

Because none of this will ever happen, our nation will slide all the more readily into an authoritarian hell where the corporatist State is what matters, is all that matters, and every citizen is but fodder for its maw.

• From banks and corporations too big to fail it is no step at all to a Federal government too big to fail.

• The only inalienable right left in America is for the Federal government to increase its size, budget, strength, reach, power, purse, armaments, and control.

We, the people, are its natural prey, and its only true enemy.

THE FIFTH COLUMN

I now believe there is a major revolt afoot in the land of the free and the home of the brave and this article is the latest in a long line and is the clearest and bluntest expression of that sea change to date.

http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139

There was a time not too long ago when words such as these would dare not be uttered, and censorship and punishment would be swift and complete. The author of this piece is Michael Scheuer. His bio is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

He is a retired 22 year CIA employee and the author of Imperial Hubris, which is, in my opinion, one of the best books outlining the disaster of the neocon foreign policy and its antecedents.

This sea change began with the publication of Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and it has continually picked up more steam ever since.

The best blog that I know of that is chronicling (and cheerleading) this change on a daily basis is written by a liberal Jew, Phillip Weiss and found here

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/

Over the last month I have increasing seen the Neocons referred to, in many forums, as “fifth columnists”. This is extraordinarily pejorative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

In times of imperial and economic collapse scapegoats are sought, but in this case the actual criminals are well known and available to be brought to justice.

Every time I think that this is as far as it will go, it goes a little further.

IRONY WARS

Horsey: A John McCain magazine cover

ISRAEL AND ITS FIFTH COLUMN

Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them, and the American people should tell their congressmen: You vote for 362, we don't vote for you.

Last week, Mossad's chief, Meir Dagan, was here to make the case for war on Iran. This week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Dick Cheney and maybe Bush. Next week, it is the head of Israel's armed forces.

Some 220 members, a majority, have endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 362. This virtual war resolution "demands" that President Bush initiate a blockade to halt all Iranian imports of refined petroleum products and impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran."

A Democratic House that came to power denouncing the rush to war on Iraq is about to vote to demand that Bush commit an act of war against Iran.

The front men for 362 are liberal Gary Ackerman of New York and conservative Mike Pence of Indiana. But the juice behind them is that of the Israeli lobby AIPAC, which is marching in step with Israel.

BASTILLE DAY

The king must die so that the country can live.

-Maximilien Robespierre

THE BLACK PANTHERS MEETS OSAMA BIN LADEN

The Republican Campaign 2008

HORMUZ

Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry between a fifth and a third of the world's oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and Israeli attack on Iran do not take account of this map.

Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval.

The mighty American navy is menacing Iran - but the moment the Strait is closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles. Perhaps it is this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf this week, ostensibly because of the situation in Pakistan.

IRAN IS now a regional power. It makes no sense to deny that.

The irony of the matter is that for this they must thank their foremost benefactor in recent times: George W. Bush. If they had even a modicum of gratitude, they would erect a statue to him in Tehran's central square.

Today it is already clear that the real American aim (as I have asserted in this column right from the beginning) was to take possession of the Caspian Sea/Persian Gulf oil region and station a permanent American garrison at its center. This aim was indeed achieved - the Americans are now talking about their forces remaining in Iraq "for a hundred years", and they are now busily engaged in dividing Iraq's huge oil reserves among the four or five giant American oil companies.

THE REAL TARGET OF FISA

Submitted July 9, 2008 - 1:31 pm by Steven Hunt

"...FISA campaign a waste of time--given that the US security state already gets the info they want through a variety of channels.

And Greenwald will act totally suprised and outraged when it comes out that the US government is focusing on

• leftists,

• stalwart environmentalists,

• indigenous rights activists,

• socialist, etc.

instead of Islamic 'terrorists'. A cursory review of US history in the past hundred years would inform anyone that the consistent target of the security state are democratically minded insurgents on the left of the spectrum.

I even take it as a given that they moniter this website on a regular basis. Why would I expect anything different than this in a country where the plutocratic elites jealously guard their power?"

THANKS JESSE, NO, SERIOUSLY, THANKS

Submitted July 10, 2008 - 4:01 pm by Vik Murthy

...could Jesse Jackson's remarks being broadcast all over the cable punditocracy today have been scripted and choreographed? Here's my rationale:

1. Jesse Jackson is not stupid, and is the father of an extraordinary loyal Obama backer. He also happens to be Chicago-based, which is big-time Obama country.

2. Jackson was on Fox News when he made the remarks, and had to have known that anything he said was fair game for red meat-seeking tabloid journalists.

3. Jacksons' comments actually crudely play to Obama's advantage ... it reverberates Obama's ability to speak truth even when the truth hurts (I hate to compare this to Clinton's Sista Souljah moment, but that's the best analogy I can come up with), tempers concerns from white Democrats that Obama is beholden to his African-American base and highlights his faith-based initiatives.

4. It neuters any of McCain's perceived momentum or foreign policy advantage over Iran's missile tests by completely co-opting the news cycle.

5. Jackson's delivery of the comments look scripted to me.

THE OLD OBAMA

• supported pulling out of Iraq within 16 months,
• called the D.C. gun ban constitutional,
• backed the subjection of telecom companies to expensive lawsuits for cooperating in the terror surveillance program,
• opposed welfare reform,
• pledged to renegotiate Nafta,
• disavowed free trade and
• was strongly against the death penalty in all cases.

THE NEW OBAMA

• not so much

WORDS FROM DR PHIL

McCain's top economic adviser Phil Gramm tells America to suck it up and stop complaining about the economy:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Emily Dickinson's insight on how to reach critical mass in overthrowing tyrants:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind -

JOHN B. JUDIS IN HAARETZ

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as if he, too, was going to be part of the consensus. If anything, he was going to be a little less eager to intervene overseas than his father or Bill Clinton, but no one expected major changes, certainly not with Colin Powell as Secretary of State.

After September 11, however, Bush confounded his critics and supporters alike in the foreign policy establishment by embracing a foreign policy that had been developed by dissenting neo-conservatives in Washington.

Taken as a whole, it represented a break with 60 years of American foreign policy:

• stridently nationalist rather than internationalist,

• contemptuous of international law,

• clothed in the language of American exceptionalism but in fact embracing 19th century German Machtpolitik,

• endowed with what one British journalist once called America's "illusion of omnipotence,"

• and committed to a theory of geopolitics that assumed that the world could be easily shaped by the exercise of American force.

So as we head into the 2008 election, the question is whether the next American president will continue George W. Bush's foreign policy or revert to the kind of foreign policy that America followed from 1940 to 2000.

Of all the leading candidates, the only one who has embraced the neo-conservative vision is John McCain, who since 1998 has been advised by, and followed the approach of, Washington neoconservatives (Those interested in the details might up the profile of McCain I did in The New Republic last year.) In McCain's favor, he does not have the Bush administration or the typical neo-conservatives? contempt for international law. But McCain is also, as one disillusioned Bush supporter told me, a "warrior" who sees the world as a playground in which slights have to be avenged. Witness his recent flip comments about bombing Iran or his proposal to "take out" Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr. So McCain is the major question mark.

On the Democratic side, I can say with some assurance that all the major candidates would attempt to build on the older internationalist foundations of American foreign policy. Their administrations would be sequels to the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations not to the George W. Bush administration

Right Web profile of John McCain

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley








"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." —Lenny Bruce, 1923 - 1966)






"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." - George Orwell








Conspiracies are more common than what the psyop mass media hammered in meaning has led us to think.

When your fiancee is planning to leave you because of a wealthier bloke, or your wive gracefully plots to file for divorce in order to take half of your assets, they are conspiring against you. When your boss considers you are doing a great job but you are outperforming everyone, even him, and sets up a plan to get you out of the way for fear you might put him down, he is conspiring against you.

Even the most famous conspiracy theory is that some cavemen with box cutters were able to kidnap four commercial planes in order to make the world tremble, in the infamous 9-11 attacks.

Even in the current case of GOC trying to sell the story about a conspiracy of the Colombian intelligence against the FARC. Tying loose ends and coming up with another version, is automatically referred to as conspiracy theory, just as mind control puppeteers expect sheeple to claim, in order to ridicule arguments that could set them up against the wall. - Jaime Bustos




Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
- "Chronicle of Young Satan", Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth. - Mark Twain




"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." --H. L. Mencken








"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." –Harry S Truman

ALJAZEERA ON AIPAC

It is said to be the most powerful interest group in Washington DC - but what is the Israel lobby? And how exactly does it operate?

That is the question for this week's Inside USA.

COLOMBIA DEALS SOME PHONY DOPE

This was simply another unilateral prisoner release by FARC, after FARC was called upon by Chávez to release prisoners and following a FARC's track record of unconditional prisoner releases earlier this year, which was hijacked by the Colombian Military

She was being released just in time for the presidential elections and she is probably the only person in Colombia that can defeat Uribe

The Colombian military swooped in and fabricated it into a rescue operation. The complicit western media, especially CNN, is reporting that the prisoner release today was actually a rescue by the Colombia military.

Uribe's political triumph will lead stratospheric ratings both domestically and internationally.

It will lead to an even more intransigent refusal to negotiate for the release of the hostages, and insisting on a military solution including invasions of neighboring countries and assassinations of “high value targets”

It will eclipse the many scandals that Uribe's administration has been battling, such as the buying of votes for a constitutional amendment to allow for Uribe's re-election,

The Supreme Criminal Court condemned a Colombian Congress Member, Yidis Medina, for accepting a bribe.

It will eclipse the high level government connections with right-wing paramilitaries, and those many investigations connecting the Uribe regime to the paramilitaries.

It will blunt the human rights criticisms that have been an obstacle for one of Uribe's principal policy objectives: The Free Trade Agreement

It will shove the trade deal with the US through the Congress which was already boosted in part at least by the Free Trade Agreement with Canada, which was the logic of the Canadian FTA in the first place.



With the rescue of the three US contractors, the Colombian president will now have a debt to collect which will lead to more billions of US taxpayers money on top of billions already spent to the end of repression of the Colombian people

It will leave Uribe and the Colombian government with an even freer hand to repress peasant movements.

It will drowned out the voices of other leaders, including the Polo Democratico, the indigenous movement, the labor movements and outsiders like Chavez, who have long repudiated kidnapping and have worked for a fair and equitable economy for all Colombians

The fact that his regime is based on purchased votes, paramilitary violence, selling the country's assets to multinationals, will be lost in tales of the heroism of an operation that bloodlessly saved an innocent and long-suffering hostage



The only storm clouds threatening an otherwise bright political horizon appear to be emanating from the prize itself.

One hope is that Ingrid herself, like some of the hostages that were freed in rounds of negotiation through Chavez, might provide some perspective in the days to come

Betancourt has announced that she still hopes to serve her country as president.




.

.

...PEOPLE LIKE JOE LIEBERMAN AND THE CROWD OVER AT COMMENTARY

Last week, Joe Klein -- basically out of the blue -- observed that while many advocates of an attack on Iraq (which once included Klein) were motivated by "neocolonial" fantasies or ensuring access to Iraq's oil, many other war proponents were motivated by their allegiance to Israel:




The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives -- people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary -- plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.



Since then, Klein has escalated the provocative rhetoric, writing several days ago:

You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the "benign domino theory" that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about -- off the record, of course -- in the runup to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel's security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel's enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn't, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel? Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none -- for the moment -- to the United States . . . unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran -- it may come to that -- but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.

AN OCTOBER "SURPRISE" IN JULY

URIBE COULD HAVE ARRANGED THE RELEASE OF BETANCOURT TO HUGO CHAVEZ MONTHS AGO



BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors Wednesday in a daring helicopter rescue so successful that not a single shot was fired.

This would have happened a lot sooner if Uribe had not canceled the humanitarian mediation by President Chavez! He brokered the release of six civilian hostages in January and February of this year.





The United States was involved in the planning of the operation and provided “specific support,” the White House said. But officials there would not describe the nature of that support.

One American official who was briefed on the operation but spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the intelligence support to Colombia for the mission, but would not provide details.

The American ambassador to Colombia, William R. Brownfield, and the United States combatant commander in the region, Adm. James G. Stavridis, were “engaged in the planning stages,” according to Gordon D. Johndroe, the deputy White House press secretary.

He said that President Bush was kept apprised of the planning and that he called after the rescue to congratulate President Álvaro Uribe, calling him “a strong leader.”



Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, released a statement that said Mr. Uribe and Mr. Santos had briefed him (along with his babysitter, Joe Lieberman) about the operation on Tuesday night, during his visit to Colombia.



BETANCOURT SAYS:
"The people who stayed behind there, I forgive them," Betancourt said of her rebel captors. "Nobody is at fault."

She thanked Uribe, against whom she was running when she was kidnapped, and said he "has been a very good president."

However, she said, "I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president."

ACCORDING TO THE OFFICIAL VERSION:
a military helicopter camouflaged as belonging to a non government organization picked up the rescued at noon near Guaviare department, in southern central Colombia, bound for San Jose, the capital of this territory, to be later taken to the Tolemaida base.

FOLLOW UP

These guys just routinely board copters in the jungle? Yet they are antigovernment rebels?

Antigov types who use helicopters(sounds like they work closely with the government to some degree) and they take potential political rivals on the left hostage?

FARC running short of the items needed to sustain a movement. Thus it splinters into forms of corruption that mirror the drug trafficing and arms shipment deals that are their staple across regional and international borders.

Possible blowback, the disclosure that she was rescued on an NGO false flag. Now such groups may be targeted to the extent it hedges additional negotiations and progress, it could set those back years to come.

THE APPALLING TRUTH

As much as seven months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Administration was deeply involved in planning and mobilizing for the invasion and military occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the activity was remotely related to Osama bin Laden or counterterrorism of any stripe.

This is the fundamental truth, it is beyond dispute, and it is fully documented.

The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were premeditated, hegemonic wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to gain the geostrategic control of Middle Eastern energy resources. Bald acts of unprovoked military aggression, they are direct violations of the charter of the United Nations. The wars are therefore international crimes, but they were not undertaken until the horror of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular smokescreen. A fraudulent label--the “war on terror”—was concocted to disguise the premeditated violence, and it was quickly unleashed.

A "HANDS ON" WAR CRIMINAL RUNS FOR PRESIDENT

As a Navy pilot in 1967, John McCain dropped bombs and napalm on Vietnam in a war that killed millions of Indochinese people.

LONG LIVE THE DEAR LEADER KIM JONG ILL

If ever China makes a grab for superpower status, it will be East Asia as the starting block where it will attempt to force the United States to exit from its forward military presence in the Western Pacific.

China like Pakistan in South Asia, has built up North Korea as the regional spoiler state to destabilize the region.

HAARETZ - THE ISRAELI " PAPER OF RECORD"

Here is what Neoconservatives Commentary magazines's blog, Contentions, think about Haaretz

srael’s newspaper of record has suffered from a flagrant political bias of what can be called the “Left”: Its antipathy to capitalism, and especially its belief that all of Israel’s woes are to be blamed not on Arab bellicosity but rather on Israel’s occupation and settlement policies, made Haaretz the standard-bearer for a very specific, rapidly dwindling audience.

Not any more. According to the Jerusalem Post’s Calev Ben-David, over the last few months many of Haaretz’s writers — Akiva Eldar, Danny Rubinstein, Gideon Levi, and Amira Hass, to name the most notable — have been either released or had their space significantly curtailed, and a new, more moderate era has begun under the leadership of the paper’s new editor, Dov Alfon.

The essence of the problem, we may assume, is business: As the Israeli economy has boomed because of market reforms, and optimism about peace has vanished in the wake of the Second Intifada and the rise of Hamas, fewer and fewer readers want to hear what Haaretz’s editors have been saying. But lest you think there’s an actual ideological change happening, here’s what Amos Schocken, the paper’s longtime owner, has to say about the shift:

I understand there are those readers who want Haaretz to look like a protest [manifesto] against the occupation - for example, Ashkenazi, secular and righteous, and focused on the occupation. But a newspaper is not a protest [manifesto]; it’s a newspaper. By the way, Haaretz was against the occupation before Amira Hass and Meron [Rappaport], and it will be after them. And don’t misunderstand me. I am certainly of the view that the occupation is Israel’s most severe ailment, one that endangers its very existence. If it were possible, then, I would be ready to be the publisher of a newspaper that solely campaigned against the occupation till its end. The problem is that some of those protesting against the occupation also want to know what is happening in the shops of Comme Il Faut [a clothing chain]. So we were concerned that they wouldn’t take out a subscription to the newspaper that I am prepared to be the publisher of.



Here is Amos Schocken explaining that:



Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state


The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly the kind of practice that leads to the use of such a term, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.

GEOPOLITICS OF ASIA

...the global level the power-play between the United States and Russia can be expected to end with the dawning of a strategic realization that both the United States and Russia would stand to gain by a mutual cooperation

Asia’s strategic calculus today includes two emerging powers i.e. China and India with global aspirations

...it abounds in countries with nuclear arsenals, namely China, India, Pakistan and Israel and those with closet nuclear weapons like North Korea and Iran.



this Paper addresses the theme under the following heads:

• The Middle East: Asia’s Explosive Powder Keg

• Central Asia: The Strategic Power Play

• South Asia: Strategic Destabilization by China-Pakistan Nexus

• South East Asia: Up for Grabs by China

• East Asia: Global and Regional Power Tussle

• Asia’s Security & Stability: Future Perspectives

The Middle East: Asia’s Explosive Powder Keg

Israel as the only island of political stability in the Middle East has been under relentless military and terrorism onslaughts from its Arab neighbours over the Palestine-Israel dispute.

new strategic conflicts...



These are:

• (1) United States as the prime ideological enemy of Islamic fundamentalists/Jihadis combine.

• (2) Strategic rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia for regional power status.

• (3) Implicit in this is also the sectarian Sunni-Shia conflict that predominates in the Islamic World

• (4) Nuclear arms race that would be generated by Iran’s nuclear weapons program

• (5) United States and Western countries severe opposition to Iranian nuclear weapons program
  

• (6) The current confrontation in Iraq between USA and Sunni/Shia armed militias

• (7) Ethnic problems like those of Kurdistan.

• (8) The US-Iran confrontation.

While any global power play would be confined to control of energy resources, strategic choke points and political influence in the region, it’s the intra-regional conflicts and rivalries

Arab unity or Islamic unity as cementing forces for stability within the region have remained a myth.

The United States continues to be the most powerful strategic player



Central Asia: The Strategic Power Play

after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Central Asian Republics that emerged were all Islamic by religion and were soon engulfed as targets for control by Islamic fundamentalists

an area of strategic rivalries between the United States, Russia and China

The United States would wish to draw these nations into the Western orbit for reasons of energy security and so also for strategic hemming-in of China.

power play between USA and Russia.

Russia is better placed currently by virtue of geographical contiguity and the economic interdependence of this region on Russia



South Asia: Strategic Destabilization by China-Pakistan Nexus

During the Cold War, it was the United States which ended building up Pakistan as the regional spoiler state, militarily.

China in its bid for Asian domination ended up more venomously by building up Pakistan as a nuclear weapons and nuclear missiles state to confront India. China has been using Pakistan as a proxy to keep India strategically off-balance.

Kashmir was used as a conflictual flashpoint excuse to strategically brow-beat India.

India has emerged as a contending power for global player status.

South Asia has emerged as the prime arena for a more powerful strategic rivalry between India and China as they jostle for global power status.

China and India perceive each other as military threats.

this has become more pronounced with the evolution of the US-India Strategic Partnership.

while both may not opt for direct war, they could end up doing the same through proxies.

Afghanistan continues to be militarily turbulent

The turbulence is due to Pakistan Army's unceasing military support to the Taliban to strategically destabilize US operations and the Karzai Government. China too is involved in military supplies to the Taliban against the United States.



South East Asia: Up for Grabs by China

South East Asia’s strategic complexion can be expressed very briefly as follows:

• (1) Strategic vacuum has been caused in the region by US strategic distractions in Iraq and Afghanistan

• (2) US has lost interest in South East Asia after open efforts by countries like Malaysia to keep the United States out of the East Asia Summit economic grouping

• (3) Russia under Putin has made limited forays in the region.

the region is ripe for a strategic grab by China. Such an attempt by China in itself carries the seeds of confrontation with USA



East Asia: Global and Regional Power Tussle

East Asia that figures most significantly after the Middle East. However, as opposed to the Middle East mired in intra-regional tussles, East Asia is distinguished by a power play on a much higher plane.

China and the United States perceive each other as major military threats

If ever China makes a grab for superpower status, it will be East Asia as the starting block where it will attempt to force the United States to exit from its forward military presence in the Western Pacific.



in terms of American forward military presence, the largest number of military bases and deployments exist here.

Russia’s resurgence could witness restoration of Russia’s strategic assets in the region also but it is unlikely that this would tilt the military balance in China's favor.

China like Pakistan in South Asia, has built up North Korea as the regional spoiler state to destabilize the region. Once the United States stabilizes Iraq and Afghanistan it is likely to deal with North Korea's strategic delinquencies more firmly.

Japan is no strategic push-over and complicates the East Asian strategic calculus for China in favor of the United States.







Asia’s Security & Stability: Future Perspectives

• “Asia Century” is a myth strategically

• Within Asia a strategic power tussle between China, India and Japan would predominate

• In this three-some power play China would stand isolated with India and Japan enjoying strategic convergences

• This Asian power tussle will have corresponding impact on the global power play.

• In the global power play, it would be more logical and advisable for the United States and Russia as the erstwhile “status-quo” global powers to view the challenge from China as a ‘revisionist power’ in strategically convergent terms.

The Middle East and East Asia will be the most challenging regions in the Asian strategic calculus.

In terms of global power play, China could therefore end up as a “strategic threat” for the United States and a “strategic irritant” for Russia.

FORGET THE CORPORATE MEDIA WHORES. LET CARLIN EULOGIZE HIMSELF

SIACHEN GLACIER

BARACK CASTS A VOTE. BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE SOME CHANGE?

DUTCH TV ON WALT AND MEARSHEIMER'S ISRAEL LOBBY

FROM: Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place (Richard Silverstein)

Tony Judt makes an interesting historical analogy between the Roman relationship with Judea and the U.S. relationship with Israel. He says that Rome tolerated Judea’s troublesome behavior for a time because it did not threaten them. But once those in Judea indeed did threaten Roman interests in a serious way, the latter simply invaded and destroyed Judea to end the threat. Judt uses this analogy to posit a scenario whereby the U.S. at some future time might find that Israel has become too great a burden on national interests. At that time, the U.S. might abandon Israel to its fate. Even the Israel lobby with all their political muscle would be powerless to prevent it. Because Israel has no other major allies, this outcome, no matter how unlikely now, is something greatly to be feared.

All this raises a larger question: why is it that the Dutch can see such a program and Americans can’t? Why hasn’t American public TV or cable seen fit to produce a documentary on this subject? Can it be because the subject isn’t newsworthy or is of marginal interest? I think not. Can it be that if they tried the Lobby would tie them up in such knots that they’d regret ever having made the effort to do such a program? You bet.

BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE SOME CHANGE?

Obama’s National Security Working Group

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Secretary of State Warren Christopher

Greg Craig, former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning

Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig

Representative Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder

Anthony Lake, former National Security Advisor

Senator Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Secretary of Defense William Perry

Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State

Representative Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner

Jim Steinberg, former Deputy National Security Advisor


Where's General Wesley Clark?

The "war by humanitarian intervention" group. The Yugoslavia Model. Much cleaner and more deceptive, subtle. Coming up: Darfur, Sudan, Burma, Tibet, Vietnam,

Media Reform conference in Minneapolis:

By David Walsh
14 June 2008

...The prejudice against socialism, encouraged by decades of officially sponsored anticommunism, goes unchallenged in these circles. And a serious, deep-going critique of American society, including its monstrous media apparatus, is unthinkable without the revival of socialist thought within the intelligentsia and broad layers of the population. A socialist program in regard to the media has to be developed and popularized, involving the nationalization of the major media conglomerates and their transformation into public utilities, democratically controlled. Information, culture and entertainment have to be liberated from corporate control.

Anticommunism, as opposed to socialist opposition to the Stalinist regimes in the USSR and elsewhere, became virtually a state religion in the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This resulted in the systematic elimination of left-wing opinion, its subsequent unavailability to the public. This was not simply a right-wing undertaking. American liberalism and the Democratic Party, in alliance with the state, settled accounts with their opponents on the left in the purges. The consequences of that process for political, social and cultural life have been disastrous.

No one in these circles speaks of this history, especially of the role played by liberalism. The Democratic Party was widely discredited in the 1950s and 1960s, identified as it was with anticommunism, corrupt machine politics, Jim Crow in the South and, eventually, the Vietnam War. The angry, mass protests outside the Democratic convention in 1968 did not come out of the blue. The repackaging of the Democrats, their respectability on the ‘left’ is of relatively recent origin.

...“The American people can handle a broad discourse, from left to right, from libertarian to socialist. Unfortunately, our media denies that to them and as a result, I think, causes a stilted discourse which makes it far less likely that we will solve real problems in this country.”

McChesney put in, “I’d like to add one thing. It’s worse than that. The media serves to police the borders of what is legitimate opinion and that’s always the thing that makes you angriest, they’re the border cops ...”

These are critical issues, facing not only the media reform movement, but the population as a whole. The question remains: to what extent will the media reform movement itself function as a “border cop” for the Democratic Party and official politics?