Trump: The ‘Peace’ Candidate
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Crossposted on OpEdNews 6/14/2017
Editor’s Note: Admittedly fragile hopes for a reset of US foreign policy toward a saner and more peaceful posture toward Russia were extinguished rather quickly by Trump’s “enhanced conversion” to the bellicose Neocon script of endless confrontation with Moscow after a withering campaign of demonisation of all things Trump (and he does present a huge and juicy target) threatened his regime with virtual extinction at the hands of the older, “CIA/deep state” establishment currently fronted by the Democrats and their enormous media machinery. Ironically, Trump’s abject and opportunistic delegation of military policy to the generals has not appeased the warmongering forces arraigned against him, who are still plotting his demise, albeit on a more nuanced schedule. Meanwhile, by attacking Trump from the right, continuing the cynical Russiagate campaign, and collaborating with the CIA, the liberals and whatever passes for the left in the US has finished itself off as a force for credible moral leadership. If there is any upside to this development is that, eventually, even the stubbornly obtuse mainstream Democrats may come to realise the duopoly is only an arrangement for fools who wish to remain complicit in the crimes of the empire. —PG
Nazi false flag agent Alfred Naujocks, who organized and led the Gleiwitz operation on the orders of the Gestapo. The object was to make it look as if the Poles had actually attacked Germany, thereby giving Hitler a casus belli. (See more about this in the Appendix.)
(It happens that false flag operations had been going on for quite some time. For example, at the time of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 a first-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois thought it very possible that President Polk had mis-located an attack by Mexican troops on those of the U.S. along the disputed border, and that that attack had occurred on Mexican, not U.S./Texas territory. He introduced what were called the “Spot Resolutions,” designed to determine just where the original attack had occurred. His Congressional initiative went nowhere and at the next election he lost his seat in the House because of that initiative. His political career was put on hold for some years because of that event, but he did eventually achieve higher office in the U.S. His name was Abraham Lincoln.)
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And so why am I telling these stories of false-flag and possible false-flag operations. Well, numbers of good friends and long-time colleagues of mine took the position during the last Presidential campaign that Donald Trump, at least as compared with Hillary Clinton, was the “peace” candidate. After all, he spoke admiringly of President Vladimir Putin (the first name “Vladimir” being the only discernible characteristic that Putin has in common with the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin). He changed a component of Republican National Platform from one that sharply criticized Russia over the “Ukraine” events to one that softened it sharply. He openly asked the government of President Putin to hack Hillary Clinton’s email files. [Albeit in jest.] More importantly, he did talk about “detente” with Russia (even though that word was always used to describe the easing of relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. [or China], not another capitalist power). And so on and so forth.
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And so, the proto/21st/century fascist tendencies that Trump revealed right from the beginning of his Presidential campaign were set aside as concerns by certain parties in the U.S., in search of “peace.” For one thing, Clinton, who at one time had talked about establishing a “no-fly zone” over parts of Syria, was considered a strong war hawk. (If she had won and had she implemented that policy that could have led to a shooting war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. — ooops, I mean Russia. It does happen that there are some folks, including some seemingly experienced ones, who seem to get the two confused. History lesson, folks: the U.S.S.R. was, in terms of the ownership of the means of production at least, a socialist nation, while the Russia is organized around a rapacious, robber-baron style of capitalism, based on a large set of means of production which were stolen from the people of the U.S.S.R. at time of its collapse, aided and abetted by U.S. stooge, the former Communist — and drunk — Boris Yeltsin.)
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But something happened to the “pro-peace” Donald Trump since he became President. He has bombed in Syria and Afghanistan. He has increased U.S. “boots of the ground” in that theater . He has threatened war with Iran and North Korea (although in general terms). He has characterized the ISIS attack in Tehran as being “deserved” by Iran. He has done nothing to try to influence Saudi Arabia to pull back in its war in Yemen which some fear could, among other things, lead to wide-spread famine there . At the same time he has inexplicably taken sides in the increasingly sharp conflict between Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which is of course home to the most important U.S. airbase in the Middle East). And so on and so forth.
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At this point you might be asking “where are you going with this?” And why did you begin with that brief description of the Nazi false flag attack on Poland in 1939? Because Trump has now taken an action that, under his type of leadership, and that of the political and ruling class forces behind him, could actually lead us into war with Russia. This step is his open, sharp, and very explicit commitment of the United States to Article 5 of the NATO treaty. That Article requires all of the NATO signatories to come to the aid of any one of them attacked by a non-NATO power.
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NATO powers, especially the United States are now talking all the time of “threats by Russia towards its neighbors,” namely Poland and the Baltic countries. They use Russian actions in Ukraine as the example of what might happen, when in fact they are not. In Ukraine, as is well-known (but never referred to in Western media) a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected, Russia-leaning government (corrupt and inefficient, but nevertheless elected) and installed a pro-Western one. Russia moved quickly to protect its only warm-water naval base, at Sevastopol in Crimea. It had been held on a lease from Ukraine which, with its new government, could have revoked it at any time. They also gave aid to Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine who right-wing forces in the new Kiev government had threatened with violent suppression.
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Further, Trump may have one or more personal reasons for not wanting to move against Russia: investments there; loans from Russians to his businesses; tapes; proof that he, or at least certain underlings, colluded with the Russians in their election-interference which benefited the Trump campaign; and so on and so forth. But the forces behind Trump need Permanent War as much as any previous elements of the U.S. ruling class/Military Industrial Complex. And so, as I have detailed before, since the other two leading candidates for “permanent enemy,” China (too many economic inter-relationships) and Iran (just not big enough), Russia has to be it, Trump, and Tillerson, to the contrary notwithstanding. As a matter of fact, Tillerson, who desperately wanted the sanctions lifted so that Exxon-Mobil could pursue its proposed Arctic drilling joint venture with Russia, recently made a strong anti-Russia statement.
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“Article 5” has always been there. But now Trump has put it forth loud and clear. For many reasons, it is beyond imagining that Russia would ever mount an invasion of any its neighbors to the north of Ukraine. The latter was a special circumstance. And anyway, there were no worries about NATO in that situation. But by sharply endorsing Article 5, something he had been loathe to do until very recently, Trump has set up the perfect storm for a false flag attack, let’s say on Poland. On September 1, 1939, Poland was subjected to a false flag attack from the West. What is to say that in 2017 they could not face one from the East, set up, if not actually initiated, by Trump “the peacemaker.” After all, the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex does have to keep on being fed.
APPENDIX
Materials excerpted from Wikipedia
The Gleiwitz incident (German: Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz; Polish: Prowokacja gliwicka) was a false flagoperation by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 1 September 1939, against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitzin Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe. The goal was to use the staged attack as a pretext for invading Poland. This provocation was the best-known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a series of unconventional operations undertaken by the SS in order to serve specific propaganda goals of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the war. It was intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany in order to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.
Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the affidavit of SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he stated that he organized the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo.[1]
On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[2] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The Germans’ goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[2][3]
Heydrich (left) with Karl Hermann Frank at Prague Castle in 1941
To make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans used human corpses to pass them off as Polish attackers. They murdered Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer known for sympathizing with the Poles. He had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. He was dressed to look like a saboteur, then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented to the police and press as proof of the attack.[4]
In addition to Honiok, several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp[2] were drugged, shot dead on the site, and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.[3][5] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” (“canned goods“). For this reason, some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as “Operation Canned Goods”.[6] In an oral testimony at the trials, Erwin von Lahousen stated that his division of the Abwehr was one of two that were given the task of providing Polish uniforms, equipment, and identification cards, and that he was later told by Wilhelm Canaris that people from concentration camps had been disguised in these uniforms and ordered to attack the radio stations.[7]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books. In addition to his position on The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. Furthermore, he is an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash Commentary Headlines and The Harder Stuff. Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon.
His most recent book on US politics is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY), and available on Amazon.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?
..
And so, the proto/21st/century fascist tendencies that Trump revealed right from the beginning of his Presidential campaign were set aside as concerns by certain parties in the U.S., in search of “peace.” For one thing, Clinton, who at one time had talked about establishing a “no-fly zone” over parts of Syria, was considered a strong war hawk. (If she had won and had she implemented that policy that could have led to a shooting war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. — ooops, I mean Russia. It does happen that there are some folks, including some seemingly experienced ones, who seem to get the two confused. History lesson, folks: the U.S.S.R. was, in terms of the ownership of the means of production at least, a socialist nation, while the Russia is organized around a rapacious, robber-baron style of capitalism, based on a large set of means of production which were stolen from the people of the U.S.S.R. at time of its collapse, aided and abetted by U.S. stooge, the former Communist — and drunk — Boris Yeltsin.)
“Article 5” has always been there. But now Trump has put it forth loud and clear. For many reasons, it is beyond imagining that Russia would ever mount an invasion of any its neighbors to the north of Ukraine. The latter was a special circumstance. And anyway, there were no worries about NATO in that situation. But by sharply endorsing Article 5, something he had been loathe to do until very recently, Trump has set up the perfect storm for a false flag attack, let’s say on Poland. On September 1, 1939, Poland was subjected to a false flag attack from the West. What is to say that in 2017 they could not face one from the East, set up, if not actually initiated, by Trump “the peacemaker.” After all, the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex does have to keep on being fed.
APPENDIX
Materials excerpted from Wikipedia
The Gleiwitz incident (German: Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz; Polish: Prowokacja gliwicka) was a false flagoperation by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 1 September 1939, against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitzin Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe. The goal was to use the staged attack as a pretext for invading Poland. This provocation was the best-known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a series of unconventional operations undertaken by the SS in order to serve specific propaganda goals of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the war. It was intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany in order to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.
Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the affidavit of SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he stated that he organized the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo.[1]
On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[2] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The Germans’ goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[2][3]
Heydrich (left) with Karl Hermann Frank at Prague Castle in 1941
In addition to Honiok, several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp[2] were drugged, shot dead on the site, and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.[3][5] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” (“canned goods“). For this reason, some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as “Operation Canned Goods”.[6] In an oral testimony at the trials, Erwin von Lahousen stated that his division of the Abwehr was one of two that were given the task of providing Polish uniforms, equipment, and identification cards, and that he was later told by Wilhelm Canaris that people from concentration camps had been disguised in these uniforms and ordered to attack the radio stations.[7]
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books. In addition to his position on The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. Furthermore, he is an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash Commentary Headlines and The Harder Stuff. Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon.
His most recent book on US politics is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY), and available on Amazon.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?