THE DUOPOLY WATCH | 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
“Shortly after noon on August 31 , [1939, Chancellor Adolf] Hitler [of Germany secretly] ordered hostilities against Poland to begin at 4:45 a.m. the next morning. At 8 p.m. on August 31, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead concentration camp prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of the supposed Polish invasion, which Nazi propagandists publicized as an unforgivable act of aggression.”
Of course, the planning for this operation had been going on for quite some time, as had been the flood of Nazi propaganda about how the “poor German residents” of Poland were being “horribly mistreated” by the Polish Government. (The Nazis had used the same excuse for the invasion of Western Czechoslovakia in September, 1938, summarized for all time by the single word “Munich .”) But even with that run-up, the Nazis still set up a “false flag” operation, even though hardly anyone in the world at the time (with the possible exception of the pro-Nazi political forces in the United States and Great Britain) would believe it.
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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.)
“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]
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.
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