Syria: the Horrible End Versus the Endless Horror

https://www.randyshields.com/

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Neocon Max Boot now says it’s better for the Syrian people if Assad stays in power. But we still can’t get the American left to come to its senses about Syria.

Louis Proyect says in Counterpunch that the suffering coming out of East Ghouta is “on a massive scale reminiscent of Leningrad in 1941.”

According to Wiki, a million and a half people died during the Leningrad siege. According to the authoritative-sounding Syrian Observatory for Human Rights -- one anti-Assad guy in a Coventry flat, relying mostly on reports from anti-Assad fighters -- 1,000 people have been killed in East Ghouta, horrible to be sure but not Leningrad. In Leningrad, people were reduced to cannibalism. There was cannibalism in Syria in 2013: a commander for the left's beloved Free Syrian Army cut the lungs out of a Syrian Army soldier and ate them on camera. A “moderate” rebel eminently worthy of CIA dollars -- and spicy recipes.

While bringing up Lou-dicrous comparisons to 1941 Leningrad, Proyect fails to mention the US-destroyed Raqqa and Mosul from which dead bodies are still being found and dragged out of the rubble. Rest assured that the Great Satan will not rebuild those cities as Assad is doing with Palmyra and Aleppo. To the colonized mind of the American left, the crimes of America’s enemies are always worse and more worth talking about than the crimes of America itself. US airstrikes were responsible for most of the 40,000 dead civilians in Mosul and over 3,000 in Raqqa.

Continues below editor's note.

The Jackals' Choir: Western "news" networks gang up to sing the same tune, accusing Syria and Russia of crimes against humanity. Hypocrisy has never strutted around so impudently.

  1. By Euronews

  2. By ABC News (US)

Published on Feb 23, 2018
Syrian government's offensive has escalated humanitarian crisis, warns U.N. as aid fails to reach people.

  3. By Star TV  —complete propaganda, using staged material furnished by the notoriously spurious White Helmets organisation. Notice the professional production value, including the Hollywood sound track.

   4. By CBS/ Face the Nation

Bombing in eastern Ghouta has killed at least 500 this week

Published on Feb 25, 2018

  5. By AlJazeera (owned by the Qatari government, one of the US-affiliated Gulf tyrannies supporting the overthrow of Pres. Assad and Syria's dismemberment.

???????? Syria: Deadly onslaught continues in Idlib, Eastern Ghouta

The Syrian government, backed by its key ally Russia, has been pounding rebel-held areas in Syria. Rescue workers are scrambling to keep up with the onslaught in Idlib and the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. At least 138 people have been killed in the last 48 hours - activists say most of them are civilians. Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reports.

  6. By Strait Times (Reuters)

Straits Times

 Published on Feb 21, 2018
VIDEO: REUTERS

Aah, the children, the children. "For God's sake stop all that bombing!"
Syria's Ghouta residents 'wait to die' as more bombs fall

7. The Washington Post (WP)

Published on Feb 8, 2018

The WaPo is literally owned by Jeff Bezos, richest man on earth and heavy contractor with the CIA. Guess how impartial this rag is going to be.

Eight days of airstrikes in Idlib and Eastern Ghouta, Syria

 

Text by Randy Shields resumes here.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]y the way, two thirds of the casualties in Syria have been Syrian soldiers and anti-government fighters. The anti-Assad left and the mockingbird media would have us believe that all 345,000 Syrian deaths have been civilians who Assad and Putin deliberately, personally and exclusively killed. The presstitutes tell us how unpopular the Alawite Assad is while the entire world sees a Sunni majority army fighting to the death for him and the rest of Syria by killing off Wahhabist Sunni fanatics. Huh? (Syria has never been a “civil war” or a “sectarian conflict” -- it’s been a pre-planned destruction led by the US, piggy-backing on legitimate grievances of the Syrian working class.)

Interestingly, the anti-Syrian-government left never tells us the names of the armed opposition groups that it supports. Why? Is it because they are al-Qaeda offshoots? Is it because they are so tiny and few in number that they are inconsequential and/or the Syrian working class majority don't support them? Is it because they collaborated with the most regressive fundamentalist groups and/or got wiped out by them? The anti-Assad left seems to live in an ivory tower that got destroyed somewhere around 2012 -- they never say what should be done now.

Then [Louis] Proyect makes a false equivalency between Israel bombing Gaza in response to Hamas’ largely ineffectual rockets and the Syrian government bombing terrorists in East Ghouta who have been shelling Damascus for years with howitzers, mortars and GRAD rockets, killing and wounding thousands of civilians. Gazans are occupied and have legitimate rights under international law to resist, including violently.

Proyect quotes Counterpunch’s Jeffrey St. Clair that aerial bombing of cities is a war crime. I couldn’t agree more and I’ll raise you an aerial bombing of jungles also. And I think shooting a barrage of GRAD rockets into downtown Damascus is a war crime too. (What parts of war aren’t a crime?) So, where does that put us? It puts “us” safely and snugly in the belly of the beast. It puts the Syrian working class majority wanting its government to protect them from a minority of al-Qaeda metastases, funded and armed by the most reactionary regimes on earth, trying to win violently what they can’t win intellectually, socially or politically. The left just won’t cut its intellectual (“moderate” rebels) or political (Russia-gate) losses. And isn’t it interesting how so much of what the left does is in harmony with what the Pentagon, the CIA and the empire wants.

And since Proyect brought up Gaza and the Palestinians… It was the Palestinian Liwaa al-Quds force who stormed the al-Shaaher roundabout in Aleppo on September 24, 2016 which liberated the Handaraat Camp which turned around the battle for Aleppo which turned around the fight for Syria which is turning the American empire upside down with indispensable help from Russia and Iran. On that memorable September day eastern Aleppo residents were cheering on Liwwa al-Quds, Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army as they hunted down and killed the members of the CIA-funded Nour al-Din al-Zenki who beheaded the 12-year-old Palestinian boy on film. The Syrian working class doesn’t actually like the 31 flavors of takfiri terrorists that some western leftists find so sweet.

In fact, during the December 2016 liberation of Aleppo, Syrians who lived for years under the rule of the fanatics were outraged that the Syrian army put the terrorists on buses to Idlib instead of killing them outright. A day later it was discovered that, just before they surrendered, the terrorists had summarily executed over 100 hostages and prisoners in basement prisons, including many Syrian soldiers.

Then Proyect attempts to make a case for the fanatics in East Ghouta by contrasting their poverty-stricken area with wealthier Damascus. A splendid insight. Now, how about you leading the charge of South Central against Beverly Hills? Oh, that’s right -- the impotent defeated American left has been on the run for 40 years and can only mind the business of the Assads, Saddams, Gadaffis and the ayatollahs -- all Israeli enemies and sitting atop large energy resources -- while “our” own government remains the chief engine of destruction in the world. Blessedly, the brown working classes of the world don’t give a flying fuck about what white western leftists think because they know they aren’t going to get any help from us. We’re irrelevant. Ask a Yemeni, ask a Honduran, ask a Congolese.

Christmas and New Years have been celebrated for the last two years in Aleppo and some semblance of normalcy is returning. Right now, in liberated areas of East Ghouta, people are welcoming the return of the Syrian Arab Army and telling the media how they've been used as human shields. In non-liberated areas, civilians are demonstrating against the terrorists and negotiating with them to leave. As with Aleppo in 2016, people in East Ghouta have been telling the SAA the locations of terrorist commanders, ammo dumps, jails and headquarters. Also, as with Aleppo, terrorists are sniping and shelling humanitarian corridors so civilians have difficulty leaving. There are also now civilians rallying in Raqqa for the occupying American monster to GTFO.

The future of the world is being fought for in Syria -- that’s why the propaganda of the mockingbird media has been unrelenting in its lies, hypocrisy, hysteria and demonization for seven years. Tel Aviv and Riyadh are going crazy and they are making sure Mordor-on-the-Potomac goes crazy with them. Putin is killing off America’s regime-changing terrorist mercenary army although, characteristically, he’s been too slow and cautious and Daesh has now set up shop in Afghanistan to harass, delay and destroy China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Assad and Putin are bringing a horrible end to the carnage in Syria as opposed to the Saudi, Israeli and US-preferred endless horror.

One last thing. People have not been paying proper attention to the written transcript of several lines toward the end of Putin’s March 1st address to the Russian Federal Assembly: “I should note that our military doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons solely in response to a nuclear attack, or an attack with other weapons of mass destruction against the country or its allies, or an act of aggression against us with the use of conventional weapons that threaten the very existence of the state. This all is very clear and specific. As such, I see it is my duty to announce the following. Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any range at all, will be considered as a nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences.” (My emphasis.)

An attack with other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its “allies.”  Who does Russia consider allies? China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela? Turkey? The Donbass? Did Putin just tell the criminal neocon filth who rule America to never attack Iran and North Korea -- or ever attack the Syrian government again? No sane person in the world should test that out. Perhaps the previously mentioned neocon Max Boot is one of the first to “listen.”

The last time no one paid careful attention to Putin was his September 28, 2015 address to the United Nations where he condemned the US use of terrorists to further its regime change operations throughout the world, saying “We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world.” Two days later Russia began bombing hundreds of ISIS oil tankers in Syria that US satellite surveillance had been contentedly watching grow for years. Wake up, Americans. “Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences.” The three horses' asses of the apocalypse -- Trump, Satanyahoo and Saudi Clown Prince Mohammad bin Salman -- are leading the world to disaster.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Randy Shields, is a Marxist, vegan, writer and artist who believes that individuals should never stop challenging themselves to lead more compassionate and sustainable lives while working collectively to make those changes easier, faster and more widespread. 

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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SPECIAL: Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union (Text & Videos)

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union

By Mario Sousa

From Hitler to Hearst, from Conquest to Solzhenitsyn 

Soviet battery at work in the Crimea. Their precision and obstinacy gained them German respect.

The history of the millions of people who were allegedly incarcerated and died in the labour camps of the Soviet Union and as a result of starvation during Stalin’s time.

INTRODUCTION

Stalin was the West's bete noire for generations: he was a firm believer in communism, unbribable and impossible to intimidate. He was at the USSR's helm during some of the toughest years of the young state, including the Nazi onslaught. He provided the capitalists with a perfect propaganda platform onto which they could and did pile up all manner of lies to scare people about communism and the Soviet Union.

In this world we live in, who can avoid hearing the terrible stories of suspected death and murders in the gulag labour camps of the Soviet Union? Who can avoid the stories of the millions who starved to death and the millions of oppositionists executed in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time? In the capitalist world these stories are repeated over and over again in books, newspapers, on the radio and television, and in films, and the mythical numbers of millions of victims of socialism have increased by leaps and bounds in the last 50 years.

But where in fact do these stories, and these figures, come from? Who is behind all this?

And another question: what truth is there in these stories? And what information is lying in the archives of the Soviet Union, formerly secret but opened up to historical research by Gorbachev in 1989? The authors of the myths always said that all their tales of millions having died in Stalin’s Soviet Union would be confirmed the day the archives were opened up. Is that what happened? Were they confirmed in fact?

The following article shows us where these stories of millions of deaths through hunger and in labour camps in Stalin’s Soviet Union originated and who is behind them.

The present author, after studying the reports of the research which has been done in the archives of the Soviet Union, is able to provide information in the form of concrete data about the real number of prisoners, the years they spent in prison and the real number of those who died and of those who were condemned to death in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The truth is quite different from the myth.

The present author, Mario Sousa is a member of the Communist Party in Sweden, KPML(r). The article was published in the Communist Party’s newspaper Proletären in April 1998.

There is a direct historical link running from: Hitler to Hearst, to Conquest, to Solzhenitsyn. In 1933 political change took place in Germany that were to leave their mark on world history for decades to come. On 30 January Hitler became prime minister and a new form of government, involving violence and disregard of the law, began to take shape. In order to consolidate their grip on power the Nazis called fresh elections for the 5th of March, using all propaganda means within their grasp to secure victory. A week before the elections, on 27 February, the Nazis set fire to parliament and accused the communists of being responsible. In the elections that followed, the Nazis secured 17.3 million votes and 288 deputies, about 48% of the electorate (in November they had secured 11.7 million votes and 196 deputies). Once the Communist Party was banned, the Nazis began to persecute the Social Democrats and the trade-union movement, and the first concentration camps began to fill up with all those left-wing men and women. In the meantime, Hitler’s power in parliament continued to grow, with the help of the right wing. On 24 March, Hitler caused a law to be passed by parliament which conferred on him absolute power to rule the country for 4 years without consulting parliament. From then on began the open persecution of the Jews, the first of whom began to enter the concentration camps where communists and left social-democrats were already being held. Hitler pressed ahead with his bid for absolute power, renouncing the 1918 international accords that had imposed restrictions on the arming and militarisation of Germany. Germany’s re-armament took place at great speed. This was the situation in the international political arena when the myths concerning those dying in the Soviet Union began to be put together.

The Ukraine as a German territory

At Hitler’s side in the German leadership was Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, the man in charge of inculcating the Nazi dream into the German people. This was a dream of a racially pure people living in a Greater Germany, a country with broad lebensraum, a wide space in which to live. One part of this lebensraum, an area to the east of Germany which was, indeed, far larger than Germany itself, had yet to be conquered and incorporated into the German nation. In 1925, in Mein Kampf, Hitler had already pointed to the Ukraine as an essential part of this German living space. The Ukraine and other regions of Eastern Europe needed to belong to the German nation so that they could be utilised in a ‘proper’ manner. According to Nazi propaganda, the Nazi sword would liberate this territory in order to make space for the German race. With German technology and German enterprise, the Ukraine would be transformed into an area producing cereals for Germany. But first the Germans had to liberate the Ukraine of its population of ‘inferior beings’ who, according to Nazi propaganda, would be put to work as a slave labour force in German homes, factories and fields - anywhere they were needed by the German economy.

The conquest of the Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union would necessitate war against the Soviet Union, and this war had to be prepared well in advance. To this end the Nazi propaganda ministry, headed by Goebbels, began a campaign around a supposed genocide committed by the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, a dreadful period of catastrophic famine deliberately provoked by Stalin in order to force the peasantry to accept socialist policy. The purpose of the Nazi campaign was to prepare world public opinion for the ‘liberation’ of the Ukraine by German troops. Despite huge efforts and in spite of the fact that some of the German propaganda texts were published in the English press, the Nazi campaign around the supposed ‘genocide’ in the Ukraine was not very successful at the world level. It was clear that Hitler and Goebbels needed help in spreading their libelous rumours about the Soviet Union. That help they found in the USA.

William Hearst – Friend of Hitler

Son of a mining prospector turned newspaper tycoon,  the towering Scot-Irish William Hearst (1.91 m) was one of the great anti-communist and raw imperialist scourges of the 20th century. His overt Nazi sympathies were logical.

William Randolph Hearst is the name of a multi-millionaire who sought to help the Nazis in their psychological warfare against the Soviet Union. Hearst was a well-known US newspaper proprietor known as the ‘father’ of the so-called ‘yellow press’, i.e., the sensationalist press. William Hearst began his career as a newspaper editor in 1885 when his father, George Hearst, a millionaire mining industrialist, Senator and newspaper proprietor himself, put him in charge of the San Francisco Daily Examiner.

This was also the start of the Hearst newspaper empire, an empire which strongly influenced the lives and thinking of North Americans. After his father died, William Hearst sold all the mining industry shares he inherited and began to invest capital in the world of journalism. His first purchase was the New York Morning Journal, a traditional newspaper which Hearst completely transformed into a sensationalist rag. He bought his stories at any price, and when there were no atrocities or crimes to report, it behoved his journalists and photographers to ‘arrange’ matters. It is this which in fact characterises the ‘yellow press’: lies and ‘arranged’ atrocities served up as truth.

These lies of Hearst’s made him a millionaire and a very important personage in the newspaper world. In 1935 he was one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune estimated at $200 million. After his purchase of the Morning Journal, Hearst went on to buy and establish daily and weekly newspapers throughout the US. In the 1940s, William Hearst owned 25 daily newspapers, 24 weekly newspapers, 12 radio stations, 2 world news services, one business providing news items for films, the Cosmopolitan film company, and a lot of others. In 1948 he bought one of the US’s first TV stations, BWAL – TV in Baltimore. Hearst’s newspapers sold 13 million copies a day and had close to 40 million readers. Almost a third of the adult population of the US were reading Hearst newspapers every day. Furthermore, many millions of people throughout the world received information from the Hearst press via his news services, films and a series of newspapers that were translated and published in large quantities all over the world. The figures quoted above demonstrate how the Hearst empire was able to influence American politics, and indeed world politics, over very many years – on r issues which included opposition to the US entering the Second World War on the side of the Soviet Union and support for the McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.

William Hearst’s outlook was ultra-conservative, nationalist and anti-communist. His politics were the politics of the extreme right. In 1934 he travelled to Germany, where he was received by Hitler as a guest and friend. After this trip, Hearst’s newspapers became even more reactionary, always carrying articles William Hearst’s outlook was ultra-conservative, nationalist and anti-communist. His politics were the politics of the extreme right. In 1934 he travelled to Germany, where he was received by Hitler as a guest and friend. After this trip, Hearst’s newspapers became even more reactionary, always carrying articles against socialism, against the Soviet Union and especially against Stalin. Hearst also tried to use his newspapers for overt Nazi propaganda purposes, publishing a series of articles by Goering, Hitler’s righthand man. The protests of many readers, however, forced him to stop publishing such items and to withdraw them from circulation.

After his visit to Hitler, Hearst’s sensationalist newspapers were filled with ‘revelations’ about the terrible happenings in the Soviet Union – murders, genocide, slavery, luxury for the rulers and starvation for the people, all these were the big news items almost every day. The material was provided to Hearst by the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s political police. On the front pages of the newspapers there often appeared caricatures and falsified pictures of the Soviet Union, with Stalin portrayed as a murderer holding a dagger in his hand. We should not forget that these articles were read each day by 40 million people in the US and millions of others worldwide!

The myth concerning the famine in the Ukraine

The "discovery" of articulate and famous dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a boon for American anti-Soviet propaganda. Quirky and complex, Solzhenitsyn was an old-fashioned White Russian nationalist who eventually proved difficult to manage by the west, although his anti-Sovietism never waned.

One of the first campaigns of the Hearst press against the Soviet Union revolved round the question of the millions alleged to have died as a result of the Ukraine famine. This campaign began on 18 February 1935 with a front-page headline in the Chicago American ‘6 million people die of hunger in the Soviet Union’. Using material supplied by Nazi Germany, William Hearst, the press baron and Nazi sympathiser, began to publish fabricated stories about a genocide which was supposed to have been deliberately perpetrated by the Bolsheviks and had caused several million to die of starvation in the Ukraine. The truth of the matter was altogether different. In fact what took place in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1930s was a major class struggle in which poor landless peasants had risen up against the rich landowners, the kulaks, and had begun a struggle for collectivisation, a struggle to form kolkhozes.a bit

This great class struggle, involving directly or indirectly some 120 million peasants, certainly gave rise to instability in agricultural production and food shortages in some regions. Lack of food did weaken people, which in turn led to an increase in the number falling victim to epidemic diseases. These diseases were at that time regrettably common throughout the world. Between 1918 and 1920 an epidemic of Spanish flu caused the death of 20 million people in the US and Europe, but nobody accused the governments of these countries of killing their own citizens. The fact is that there was nothing these government could do in the face of epidemics of this kind. It was only with the development of penicillin during the second world war, that it became possible for such epidemics to be effectively contained. This did not become generally available until towards the end of the 1940s.

The Hearst press articles asserting that millions were dying of famine in the Ukraine – a famine supposedly deliberately provoked by the communists – went into graphic and lurid detail. The Hearst press used every means possible to make their lies seem like the truth, and succeeded in causing public opinion in the capitalist countries to turn sharply against the Soviet Union. This was the origin of the first giant myth manufactured alleging millions were dying in the Soviet Union. In the wave of protests against the supposedly communist-provoked famine which the Western press unleashed, nobody was interested in listening to the Soviet Union’s denials and complete exposure of the Hearst press lies, a situation which prevailed from 1934 until 1987! For more than 50 years several generations of people the world over were brought up on a diet of these slanders to harbour a negative view of socialism in the Soviet Union.

KEEP READING—
please download the complete article in PDF by clicking here.  

 

 

BONUS VIDEO MATERIALS

The author offers a lecture on the same topic: CIA asset Robert Conquest's lies about socialism and USSR.

AND, WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? Communist have been slandered for over 100 years, with the bourgeois press and politicians attributing all manner of sinister and sordid motivations to their activism, including the absurd notion they want to acquire power, as if power for power's sake, or to line their pockets, was all that communists were after. In this video, Michael Parent puts such stupid and insidious notions to rest. 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The present author, Mario Sousa is a member of the Communist Party in Sweden, KPML(r). The article was published in the Communist Party’s newspaper Proletären in April 1998. 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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An American: “Why I Don’t Trust My Government, At All”

BE SURE TO PASS OUR ARTICLES ON TO KIN, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Filth and criminality naturally flow to the top of the American power heap. Of late, as signaled, among others, by Barack Obama, unindicted war criminal George W Bush has also been receiving a warm welcome among liberals, and his rehabilitation is now certain.

Would you trust your government if it were headed by a President who just now appointed to become the head of the CIA, the very same person who had headed the CIA’s interrogation of a 9/11 suspect whose interrogation consisted of 83 waterboardings (plus other tortures, which blinded his left eye), all in order to get him to say that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, so as to ‘justify’ invading Iraq?

Current U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed, to head the CIA, Gina Haspel, who, as a CIA official in Thailand, the Chief-of-Base there, or Thai “COB”, in 2002, had headed the interrogation of suspect Abu Zubaydeh, and kept using waterboardings and other means of torture against him until he would implicate Saddam Hussein. He told them what he thought they wanted to hear, but didn’t know that this was what they wanted the most to hear. As Raymond Bonner described it at propublica on 22 February 2017:

chief of base and another senior counterterrorism official on scene had the sole authority power to halt the questioning.

She never did so, records show, watching as Zubaydah vomited, passed out and urinated on himself while shackled. During one waterboarding session, Zubaydah lost consciousness and bubbles began gurgling from his mouth. … At one point, Haspel spoke directly with Zubaydah, accusing him of faking symptoms of physical distress and psychological breakdown. …

The CIA officials in Thailand understood that the methods they were using could kill Zubaydah and said that should that happen, they would cremate his body. If he survived questioning, Haspel sought assurances that “the subject will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

So far, that promise has been kept. Zubaydah is currently incarcerated at Guantanamo. His lawyers filed a court action in 2008 seeking his release, but the federal judges overseeing the case have failed to issue any substantive rulings [after now 16 years]. …

[Ultimately,] the source on whom the CIA had based its assessment that Zubaydah was number three or four in the al-Qaida organization had recanted his testimony, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture released in 2014. The agency would ultimately conclude that Zubaydah was not even a member of al-Qaida.

So, a man who wasn’t even in Al Qaeda, is being hidden from the public because the U.S. Government 17 years ago captured him in Pakistan and tried to get him to say that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 but they didn’t get the false testimony they required from him, and so he’s still hidden at Guantanamo so as to continue still deceiving the American public (such as to support U.S. use of torture), and to continue keeping his case against the U.S. Government away from whatever (laughable) international-law bodies exist.

Buried in a December 2008 Vanity Fair article by David Rose is this:

The tribunal president, a colonel whose name is redacted, asked him: “So I understand that during this treatment, you said things to make them stop and then those statements were actually untrue, is that correct?” Abu Zubaydah replied: “Yes.”

Some of those statements, say two senior intelligence analysts who worked on them at the time, concerned the issue that in the spring of 2002 interested the Bush administration more than almost any other — the supposed operational relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Given his true position in the jihadist hierarchy, Abu Zubaydah “would not have known [about] that [even] if it was true,” says Coleman. “But you can lead people down a course and make them say anything.”

Some of what he did say was leaked by the administration: for example, the claim that bin Laden and his ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were working directly with Saddam Hussein to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. There was much more, says the analyst who worked at the Pentagon: “I first saw the reports soon after Abu Zubaydah’s capture. There was a lot of stuff about the nuts and bolts of al-Qaeda’s supposed relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be.”

Within the administration, Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation was “an important chapter,” the second analyst says: overall, his interrogation “product” was deemed to be more significant than the claims made by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, another al-Qaeda captive, who in early 2002 was tortured in Egypt at the C.I.A.’s behest. After all, Abu Zubaydah was being interviewed by Americans. Like the former Pentagon official, this official had no idea that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured.

“As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done,” the Pentagon analyst says. “I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq.”

As I documented in my “America’s News Is Heavily Censored”, George W. Bush knowingly lied on 7 September 2002 when he said that the IAEA had just issued a new report that Saddam Hussein was within six months of having a nuclear weapon. When the IAEA denied, several times, that there was any such new report, the press ignored it, and the public impression from the President’s lie remained unchallenged in the press.

Barack Obama was no better, and he continued almost all of the cover-ups and lies from his predecessor. This is not a partisan matter. It is a matter of a bipartisan dictatorship, which rules in Washington.

I give this here as only one of the large number of conclusive, rationally undeniable, reasons why it would be ludicrous to trust the U.S. Government. 

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

 

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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Further Signs of More War: A Most Dangerous Game


MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.

The dangerous role played by prostituted politicians like Theresa May—a glorified imperial puppet— in the service of the anglozionist mafia is to be expected, but why aren't more people rising in anger and revulsion at these interminable criminal charades? The only answer has to be found in the empire's unrelenting war on truth, reaching now totalitarian dimensions.

Donald Trump’s days of playing the passive/aggressive host of a reality-television game show are coming to an end.  Either he fires all the apprentices who might slightly hesitate to wage a much larger world war and lets the bombs fly, or he will be replaced by one who will.  Signs are that he has learned what his job entails and the world will suffer more death and destruction as a result.

Back in the days of the first Cold War – the late 1950s to early 1960s when our little world came close to extinction – my very large family appeared on many American television shows.  Their names told the story of those times: “Who Do You Trust,” “To Tell the Truth,” “Charades,” “Play Your Hunch,” and “Beat the Clock,” to name a few.  It was as if those silly game shows were unconsciously suggesting we probe a little deeper behind the headlines to discover what was really going on before the Doomsday Clock ran out.

Today things are far more sophisticated and sinister, with a massive and unrelenting war on truth being waged by the Western corporate media, an arm of the CIA, capitalism’s invisible army.  It is a twisted game show with deadly consequences.  Its method is Janus-faced.  From one face, repeat over and over again bold-faced lies always lacking in evidence – e.g. Russiagate, WMD in Iraq, the Syrian government used chemical weapons, Russia is an aggressor planning to invade Eastern Europe, three World Trade Center buildings fell into their own footprints in virtual free fall speed because of fires, etc.; from the other face, play the game of suggesting to the public that they know more than they do because they watch CIA-backed shows like “Homeland,” movies like “Zero Dark Thirty,” and are being informed by all the so-called ex-CIA and intelligence commentators that populate the corporate media and explain what’s really going on.  The old adage that “you never leave the CIA” has somehow imperceptibly morphed into “Yes, we can; trust us.”

Now we have the British Prime Minister Theresa May accusing Russia of poisoning in England the double-agent Sergei Skripal and threatening Russia to give a “credible” explanation why they killed this man or else, a man who sold the identities of Russian agents to the UK for cash, putting them in serious danger.  Or else, she says, the UK “will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.”  Naturally she presented no evidence for Russian involvement, but the BBC, as is its wont, speculates on how the British may punish Russia, and the other corporate media chime in.  But we are left to wonder where this is leading.  Could it be Syria?  Former British diplomat Craig Murray suggests it could be a false-flag setup aimed at raising Russiaphobia to hysterical proportions.  But to what end?

"Today things are far more sophisticated and sinister, with a massive and unrelenting war on truth being waged by the Western corporate media, an arm of the CIA, capitalism’s invisible army.  It is a twisted game show with deadly consequences.  Its method is Janus-faced..."

If we look to the United Nations and the accusations and threats flying from the mouth of the US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s doppelganger in war lust, we see that the picture expands.  Haley threatened that the US will take unilateral action in Syria against Syrian and Russian forces if the UN didn’t adopt her resolution that would have allowed anti-government terrorists plenty of time to escape from East Ghouta.  She said, echoing words we have heard numerous times:

It is not the path we prefer, but it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we  are prepared to take again….When the international community fails to act, there are a times when states are compelled to take their own action(s).

In response we have the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warning that another US strike on Syrian government forces would have serious consequences.  And the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov saying,

We have reliable information about militants preparing to falsify a government chemical attack against civilians.  In several districts of Eastern Ghouta, a crowd was assembled with women, children, and old people, brought from other regions, who were to represent the victims of the chemical incident.

He added that “White Helmets” activists (proven to be financed by the US and UK) had already arrived at the scene with satellite video transmitters ready to film the scene and that the Russians had discovered a “laboratory for the production of chemical weapons in the village of Aftris which was liberated from terrorist.”  After the planned false-flag attack, the US was going to bomb government held districts in Damascus fulfilling Haley’s threat.

And here in the US, Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff when Powell lied at the UN in 2003 to garner support for the criminal attack on Iraq, spoke to The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018 conference ten days ago and said, speaking of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, that:

They’re both headed for war. Of that I’m convinced. They will use Iran’s allegedly existential (sic) to Israel presence in Syria which is becoming even more so from a military perspective every day, Hezbollah’s accumulation of some 150,000 missiles if we believe our intelligence agencies. The need to set Lebanon’s economy back yet again, that’s important. Look at what they’re deliberating right now with regard to the new very, very rich gas find in the Eastern Mediterranean with Israel claiming Section 9 and Lebanon claiming Section 9. Take that, Lebanon. We’re going to bomb you, then you’ll let us have it. And that will be their excuse.

Now Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State and the head of the CIA, the far more war minded Mike Pompeo slides naturally into the role. Musical chairs for the power elite. As Trump has said of Pompeo, “We are on the same wavelength.” Riding that same wavelength is Nikki Haley, a trio whose alliance bodes very poorly for Middle Eastern peace or for any rapprochement with Russia.  The game turns deadlier as the Presidential Apprentice learns the rules and the empire prepares to shed more innocent blood in an unholy alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other “team players.”

But this time the game won’t be, in the words of another CIA liar, “a slam dunk.”  The opponents are ready this time.  The game has changed.

And in eastern Ukraine, the snow should be melting in the next 3-4 weeks.

Play your hunch. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, Ed Curtin teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He states: "I write as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. I believe a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore see all my work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding."   His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/ . 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 



Venezuelan Cryptocurrency, el Petro, Has Won Whether It Succeeds or Not

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

BY RORY HALL, EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE DAILY COIN

PUBLISHED MARCH 13, 2018 · UPDATED MARCH 13, 2018

 

There has been a variety of articles published by TelesurTV, the first week of March, covering the advancements and influence of el Petro, the Venezuelan created cryptocurrency backed by oil and possibly gold and diamonds as well. The White Paper for the currency is yet to be released, but when the cryptocurrency was first announced at the beginning of December 2017 Venezuelan President Maduro stated it would be backed by gold, diamonds and oil.

Today our friend and colleague Jeff Brown, China Rising, passed along two different articles that show the global impact of el Petro and why the Federal Reserve Note is moving closer to the dustbin of history with each passing day. If you think the criminals benefiting from the world reserve currency status of the Federal Reserve Note aren’t concerned about el Petro and cryptocurrencies in general, well, look no further than what Menendez and Rubio are doing in the U.S. Senate.

Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and his Republican counterpart, Marco Rubio, have co-authored a letter denouncing the Petro, and requesting that the U.S. Treasury Department closely monitor its progress. The lawmakers also made suggestions on measures the agency can take to undermine the success of the digital currency. Source

It is no secret that nations around the world are moving away from the “world reserve currency” Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar, and either utilizing direct currency swaps, primarily with China or coming to terms in more creative ways of conducting international commerce. The days of a world reserve currency system are numbered and we at The Daily Coin believe those days will run out before the calendar strikes 2030.

Venezuela Pres. Maduro has been encouraged by the Petro's swift acceptance in key sectors.

Cambodia is inspired by Venezuela’s el Petro and has decided to create their own cryptocurrency, EntaPay. Some of you are thinking “who cares, it’s Cambodia!” To which I say – death by a thousand cuts is still death.

EntaPay sounds like someone has been paying close attention to what is happening, not only within the crypto space, but fully understands how dangerous the Federal Reserve Note, US dollar based system has become to any nation that doesn’t fall in line and do as they are told. The days of the US government being able to strangle a nation with economic sanctions, using the world reserve currency, are rapidly coming to an end.

A press release describing Entapay said that the cryptocurrency would serve as “the connection between integration payment of encrypted currency and the real world. It has the great potential to even replace Visa as the new mainstream payment mode.”

The statement also mentioned the Petro, saying that it was a means to “assist” Venezuela in “avoiding the Western world’s economic sanctions.”

Threatened with sanctions by western governments, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen may view the launch of Entapay as an economic survival tactic for the future. Source

These are, basically, the same words Russian President Putin used when he stated moving away from the Federal Reserve Note, US dollar was a matter of national security.

Venezuela’s economy has been crushed by some of the sanctions imposed by the US government and was a major catalyst for the development of el Petro.

On Feb. 20, Venezuela officially launched the Petro, the first cryptocurrency backed by oil reserves. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said the goal of the digital coin is to combat sanctions and the “economic war” waged by the United States government and its junior partners against his country and advance “on issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade.”  Source

Venezuela is on the verge of being able to move their country away from US sanctions and, move towards "the socialist nightmare" Maduro has envisioned. Oh, wait a minute, that’s already happening. Could it get worse; could Maduro gather in more power with the success of el Petro?

The Petro, the world’s first national cryptocurrency based on natural resources, has generated sales over five billion dollars during its pre-sale period and has recorded over 186,000 certified purchases. The sale of the Petro has also significantly strengthened the country’s foreign reserves amid increased international aggression.

The announcement of the continued success of the cryptocurrency was made by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during a meeting with members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, in the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas on Friday.

Maduro explained that the revenue generated from the sale of the Petro would be used to service “everything our country needs” and formed part of a wider “economic solution” the country’s government had put together.

Data released by Carlos Vargas, Venezuela’s Superintendent of Cryptocurrency and Related Activities, shows that over 83,000 persons in 127 countries have made certified purchase offers for the states cryptocurrency. Source

How many other nations, like Cambodia, are watching this scenario unfold in Venezuela? How many other nations are asking the same questions these two nations are asking and beginning to answer?

We do NOT support Venezuelan President Maduro, we do NOT support cryptocurrencies. We are merely pointing out nations around the world are now using tools against the US and the world reserve currency system that were not on the radar as of September 2017. Those tools are now seedlings taking root on opposite sides of the planet to be rid of the world reserve Federal Reserve Note and the crippling effects of saying or doing something the US deep state/shadow government is opposed. What we are seeing are the consequences of an out-of-control government, that, under the Bush, Jr and the Obama regimes made calculated and deadly global moves that have awakened leaders across the planet. These leaders are now doing whatever is necessary to get away from the clutches of dollar hegemony.

Sharing is caring!

—The Daily Coin  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Author ImageRory Hall, The Daily Coin. Beginning in 1987 Rory has written over 1,000 articles and produced more than 300 videos on topics ranging from the precious metals market, economic and monetary policies, preparedness as well as geopolitical events. His articles have been published by Zerohedge, SHTFPlan, Sprott Money, GoldSilver, Silver Doctors, SGTReport, and a great many more. Rory was a producer and daily contributor at SGTReport between 2012 and 2014. He has interviewed experts such as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Dr. Marc Faber, Eric Sprott, Gerald Celente and Peter Schiff, to name but a few. Don't forget to visit The Daily Coin and Shadow of Truth YouTube channels to enjoy original videos and some of the best economic, precious metals, geopolitical and preparedness news from around the world. 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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