By Patrick Martin, Senior Political Analyst, wsws.org

Rebel fighters in the city of Slavyansk shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter Thursday, killing 14 soldiers, including an army general, according to press reports from eastern Ukraine that were confirmed by government officials in Kiev.

Acting president Oleksandr Turchynov told parliament that a shoulder-launched air defense missile was used to shoot down the Mi-8 helicopter. It was ferrying troops into the outskirts of Slavyansk, a stronghold for pro-Russian separatists opposed to the fascist-backed government in Kiev.

The general killed was identified as Maj. Gen. Vladimir Kulchytsky, a former officer in the Soviet military who was in charge of combat training for Ukraine’s National Guard. The National Guard has become the vehicle for the mobilization of fascist and ultra-nationalist gunmen against the population of Ukraine, drawing new recruits from the Right Sector and the Svoboda (Freedom) party, two groups that hark back to the pro-Hitler Ukrainian nationalists of the World War II era.

Six of the dead were members of the National Guard, while the other eight were from a special forces unit of the Interior Ministry—all evidently picked for their willingness to go into combat against their own people.

Turchynov described those who shot down the helicopter as “terrorists” and “criminals,” the terms used by the Kiev regime to describe all its political opponents in eastern and southern Ukraine. He claimed that air strikes and artillery strikes had destroyed the insurgent unit responsible for shooting down the aircraft.

Addressing the parliament, Turchynov threatened sweeping military vengeance against those who resisted Kiev’s dictates. “Our armed forces, our security forces will complete their job against terrorism,” he said. “And all the criminals who are now funded by the Russian Federation will be destroyed or sit in the dock.”

Press reports spoke of heavy fighting around Slavyansk, including artillery bombardments of residential neighborhoods in the city—a true act of terrorism, perpetrated by the government forces. There were no confirmed reports of casualties on either side, behind the death toll from the helicopter shoot-down.

The Associated Press quoted one resident, Olga Mikailova, who said she was leaving the city for her family’s safety. “They are shooting at us from grenade launchers. We hear explosions. The windows of our house are shaking,” she said. “I have four children. It is terrifying being here, because I am afraid for their lives.” USA Today cited comments from Olga Oliker, an analyst at Rand Corp. familiar with the capabilities of the Ukrainian army. She said that it lacked the ability to gather intelligence, conduct precision strikes and avoid civilian casualties, concluding with the remarkably open admission, “They are fighting a domestic population.”

The Russian broadcast NTV reported popular opposition to the intensified warfare in the east, expressed in the actions of parents of conscripts who went to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry base in the Luhansk region to take their sons home.

In Donetsk, the capital of the eastern region, funerals were taking place for many of those killed in fighting near Sergei Prokofiev airport just outside the city. After separatist fighters seized control of the airport, the Ukrainian regime called in airstrikes, incinerating as many as 50 people, including both local residents and volunteers who had crossed the border from Russia, a few miles away.

Billionaire chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko, who won the gunpoint election held Sunday in the government-controlled portions of Ukraine, hailed the bloodbath in Donetsk, declaring the fight to reestablish Kiev’s control over the eastern region “has finally really begun.”

Poroshenko’s comments were echoed by US President Obama in his commencement speech at the US Military Academy Wednesday, where he announced that he had spoken to the incoming Ukrainian president and condemned what he called “armed militias in ski masks”—not the fascist thugs who spearheaded the overthrow of Yanukovych, but the people of eastern Ukraine opposed to the ultra-right regime in Kiev.

The US-backed regime has now set June 7 for Poroshenko’s inauguration, although there will be no significant change in either the policy or the personnel in control in Kiev. Poroshenko said he would keep Arseniy Yatsenyuk as premier, while delaying any parliamentary election until the end of the year.

The Party of Regions, the organization previously headed by the ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, has a plurality in the current parliament, although many of its legislators have stayed away from Kiev for fear of violence by Right Sector and Svoboda thugs.

In an interview Wednesday with Germany’s Bild newspaper, Poroshenko said that he would ask the US government for military supplies and training. It is not clear where this training would take place, raising the possibility of stationing US “advisers” on Ukrainian soil.

Poroshenko issued a statement Thursday saying he would sign an economic agreement with the European Union as soon as he takes office next week. Yanukovych’s balking at such an agreement—which includes drastic austerity measures that will devastate the Ukrainian economy and drive up unemployment—was the occasion for the US-backed drive to remove him from office.

“The signing and enactment of the agreement … is part of Ukraine’s modernization plan,” Poroshenko said, adding that he hoped to “implement the reforms package within a very short period of time.”

He also said that he would hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July. Russia has effectively halted all support to the separatist forces in the east and recognized Poroshenko’s election. As the fighting in the east flared, Putin travelled to Central Asia Thursday, signing an economic agreement to establish a “Eurasian Union” with Kazakhstan and Belarus.

[Photo by Duy Nguyen.]

War is darkness – man killing man- overshadowing human consciousness of the self and the spirit – fighting soldiers driven to political indoctrination of “ennobling enmity” and wired to instigated emotional madness, forced to animalistic behavior and end-up losing the balanced material and spiritual manifestation of the nature of human originality. War means planned deaths and destruction of all that is holistic and progressively imagined by the human emancipation for the larger good of the mankind.

The Death of Daniel Somers.”  Information Clearing House, 6/24/ 2013):  “The numbers sadly tell the story: more military suicides than combat deaths in 2012, some 22 military veterans take their lives every day.”  The US Army Times (Rick Maze: “18 Veterans Commit suicide each day”: 4/26/2010), reported that 18-25 war veterans commit suicide every day and noted “Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department……. Suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains a key area of concern. In fiscal 2009, there were 1,621 suicide attempts by men and 247 by women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, with 94 men and four women dying.”

This week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – CBC reported the suicidal deaths of 4 Canadian soldiers – the veterans of Afghanistan War.  It is a painful story telling to common folks explains the CBC television news reporting on 12/4/2013, that some 42 Canadian war veterans have taken their lives since 2011 to 2012 and a total of 129 since the armed forces were sent to Afghanistan.  Rationality fails to substantiate the reported 158 Canadians troops lost life in US-led war in Afghanistan when Canada is not at war with Afghanistan. The poverty-stricken Afghans were not the people to ever challenge or pose any threat of violence and security to America, Canada or Europe. Often the combat soldiers and their victims do not know why and what are they fighting for?  America and its paid allies did not go to Afghanistan or Iraq for peace, freedom or democracy. They invaded to take control of the oil and gas pipelines to be managed by the American enterprises in which the warlords had vested interests. Be it the ideology or the nationalism being the focal point of human insanity as was the case of the Two World Wars, combat soldiers forced to fight against their own very nature – The Nature of Things based on which God created the human beings.

Human consciousness enjoins a synchronized balanced of material and spiritual life but killing others is an affront to continuity of the self within the interwoven compound of human life. Overwhelming materialistic powers, advanced technology and rigid expert determination often stall approaches to understand the reality of human life composed of material and spiritual balance and the imperatives of freedom of critical thought and Divine knowledge to articulate a better future. Life is not an invention of human mind or machines but God is the creator of all living things: Life, Time, Universe and Earth and its sustainable supporting system – immensity of factors constituting the scope of self-realization of human life. Could the reality of life and death be realized by human thinking, instruments and approaches?  During the 2011 London annual war memorial parade, the last surviving First World War British veteran age 111 years made it known on BBC news camera that “he did not know why he fought in the war and war made no sense to him.”  With broken hearts, wounded minds and tarnished bodies, when combat soldiers return to homeland, they confront another challenge of survival – the ripple and constantly haunting images of the inhuman cruelty of man against man. None of post war syndrome treatment (PTSD) can cure or sideline such first-hand real life experiences asking for rational answers why and what for were they fighting and killing innocent peoples?  All politicians are self-centered; they have no knowledge and understanding of the human nature as they have not fought on any real war fronts or created anything durable except amplifying the self and re-election ambitions. Greed and wickedness knows no ending. Politics is a game of pretension on stage, not a connection to reality of life-making and life-supporting endeavors.

Daniel Somers (“<ahref=”http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35403.htm” target=”_blank”>”I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This”: A Soldier’s Last Words.” Information Clearing House: 6/24/2013) was an American war veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2004-2005 and then again 2006-2007, was 30 years old and suffered greatly from PTSD and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel Somers wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life.

I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time………The simple truth is this: during my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity……….To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing cover up is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me….. And for what? Bush’s religious lunacy? Cheney’s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for……. My body has become nothing but a cage, a source of pain and constant problems. The illness I have has caused me pain that not even the strongest medicines could dull, and there is no cure. All day, every day a screaming agony in every nerve ending in my body. It is nothing short of torture. My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. Simple things that everyone else takes for granted are nearly impossible for me. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever. It was quick, and I did not suffer. And above all, now I am free. I feel no more pain. I have no more nightmares or flashbacks or hallucinations.

American politicians no longer enjoy moral and intellectual leadership but claim it and act like surrogated mothers to the war-lobbyists and pundits of the major military-industrial complex. America needs a stern challenger and that is what is missing. The global warlords continue to divide and rule the mankind. The sensation of political and material power drives them to commit untold crimes against the very humanity of which they are a part within the living Universe. War is not peace and peace will not emerge out of the broken hearts and dreams of One Humanity. But contrary to the brutal perceptions and actions of the US and former Europeans imperialists, the international community is informed, mature, and enjoys the moral and intellectual capacity to know and understand the facts of life and to challenge the politically imperiled insensitivity to universal accord and unity of the mankind against brutality of the Terrorism of Wars that unites them with a common fate more than divides them by any token of adversity and separate national identities.

Politicians waging wars against the mankind are not the competent people to answer vital issues of moral and spiritual values and significance affecting the soldiers and on the growing epidemic of combat soldiers committing suicides. Fighting soldiers and the common people are the victim of delusional and vengeful hatred of the few global warlords who have vested corporate interests in the oil and gas supplies coming out of the Muslim world. All troops are indoctrinated with mythology of animosity to fight the unknown enemies. While on the war front, they lose rational consciousness by targeting and killing the innocents – men, women and children as are the instances in Afghanistan and Iraq and daily drone attacks on innocent Pakistani civilians – a cold-blooded murder game of the warriors. It is probable some governments and secret agencies  could be using drug formulas to enhance the invisible crush for fighting and enmity. Those fighting soldiers – men of conscience lose unity of the human consciousness- unity of material and spiritual balanced characteristic– fair and foul. It is a tragic conjuncture of inner revolt of human consciousness for a crime that is not part of the human nature and not visible to scientifically expert minds – the doctors who simply identify mental health issues of those suspected of syndrome to commit suicide. These are the net causalities of man’s war against man. The real reasons are hardly mentioned in expert reports. Science and machines cannot comprehend the intricate balance between material and spiritual life and inner consciousness of the self- the human. Politicians who entangle the human beings into warmongering are void of the knowledge of Unity of Human Self – an all embracing sanctity of sacred life created by God:  time, material, spiritual, thought, life and purpose of life – the ultimate source of all individual life and human unity. Politicians and concerned social scientists and military strategists perceive the broken hearts and minds of returning soldiers as they want to see it and they do not wish to see the reality as it persists.

Daniel Somers letter tells us all:  “My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. ….. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission.”  The war-torn human consciousness needs spiritual and moral enhancement support to come out of the self-inflicted tragic and inhuman experience of killing other human beings. Politicians and society that drives soldiers to the madness of war fronts to kill others and get killed have no sense of moral responsibility to facilitation of remedial human help to console and motivate the entrenched life – the wounded inner soul of the combat soldiers. Pills alone do not remove spiritual stagnation but scholars of the Divine religious knowledge and wisdom could help the fractured human soul and body in moment of self- endured crisis for survival and sustainable future-making. All experiences are immediate and individual. Others see the prevalent reality differently with overwhelming societal and political expediency. Nazism and Fascism did not grow out of the nowhere but to a large extent were supported and propagated by the then European and North American academia, news media, businesses and politicians. During the WW2, helpless common people, Jews and Gypsies were targeted by the extremists and global warlords and now Muslims are seen as the eye of the storm. The political warriors and the military-industrial complex have not learnt anything from the pages of living history.

All beginnings have an end. Throughout history warlords were subject to time and place, not for ever. Hitler and Mussolini were democratically elected but drove the humanity to terrible consequences of their own insanity. The contemporary warlords need to see the mirror and the urgency of a Navigational Change, if they have the moral and intellectual capacity to THINK and ACT and to spare the mankind from further catastrophic tragedies.  Can America revitalize its originality of thinking, moral and intellectual values and people’s interests-based system of political governance for a peaceful co-existence and future-making in relation to the global humanity?

With 17 trillion dollars in budgetary deficit, approximately three millions Iraqi civilians massacred by the US led bogus wars on terrorism, 20,000 or more American killed and many times more wounded, and almost one million Afghan civilians killed and displaced, and millions of wounded American and disabled veterans causality of the two bogus wars on Muslims are surviving on mere food stamps and neglected drug addicted corridors; continued daily US drone attacks on innocent Pakistani civilians, 18-25 US war veterans daily committing suicides, insane politicians acting in egoistic behaviors, leaders without lead in the society point-out to more dreadful things to happen to America – it could soon be replaced by another morally and economically competent nation or group of small nations in global politics. Strangely enough in a knowledge-based age, American politicians are not mindful of this historical and unstoppable phenomenon of change. The living Universe and American politics appear to be set on a direct clash course. America does not appear to be on a path of harmony with the rest of the global community. In situations of adversity and crises, competent leaders extend moral and intellectual security to the people and represent hope and optimism for a navigational change and future-making, not egoistic political agenda and shutdown of the government and irrational behaviors to the interests of the people who elected them to govern. On the 10^th anniversary of the Iraqi genocide, there were no statements issued by the Obama administration or apologies by British politicians. Tom Engelhardt (“The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” Information Clearing House: 3.28.2013), sums up the paradox of contemporary global warfare and how the history shall judge the warlords?

We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world.  It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington.  As for the people — that’s us — in these last years, we largely weren’t there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name. So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice.  You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do.  At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.

Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we’ve hurt ourselves.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012.

The Anti-Empire Report #114
By William Blum – Published March 11th, 2013

By William Blum, williamblum.org

Hugo Chávez

Commemorative stamp honoring President Allende, by the much maligned German Democratic Republic. Kneejerk anticommunists, including the anticommunist “left” scoffed at such gestures.

I once wrote about Chilean president Salvador Allende:

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume – a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.

There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run “United States, Inc.” wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty. Repeatedly. Constantly. Saying things that heads of state are not supposed to say. At the United Nations, on a shockingly personal level about George W. Bush. All over Latin America, as he organized the region into anti-US-Empire blocs.

Long-term readers of this report know that I’m not much of a knee-reflex conspiracy theorist. But when someone like Chávez dies at the young age of 58 I have to wonder about the circumstances. Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. I would like to see the Venezuelan government pursue every avenue of investigation in having an autopsy performed.

Back in December 2011, Chávez, already under treatment for cancer, wondered out loud: “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” The Venezuelan president was speaking one day after Argentina’s leftist president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This was after three other prominent leftist Latin America leaders had been diagnosed with cancer: Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff; Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo; and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Evo take care of yourself. Correa, be careful. We just don’t know,” Chávez said, referring to Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, both leading leftists.

Chávez said he had received words of warning from Fidel Castro, himself the target of hundreds of failed and often bizarre CIA assassination plots. “Fidel always told me: ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.” 1

When Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested possible American involvement in Chávez’s death, the US State Department called the allegation absurd. 2

Several progressive US organizations have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, asking for “any information regarding or plans to poison or otherwise assassinate the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has just died.”

I personally believe that Hugo Chávez was murdered by the United States. If his illness and death were NOT induced, the CIA – which has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, many successfully 3 – was not doing its job.

When Fidel Castro became ill several years ago, the American mainstream media was unrelenting in its conjecture about whether the Cuban socialist system could survive his death. The same speculation exists now in regard to Venezuela. The Yankee mind can’t believe that large masses of people can turn away from capitalism when shown a good alternative. It could only be the result of a dictator manipulating the public; all resting on one man whose death would mark finis to the process.

It’s the end of the world … again

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recent convention in Washington produced the usual Doomsday talk concerning Iran’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons and with calls to bomb that country before they nuked Israel and/or the United States. So once again I have to remind everyone that these people – Israeli and American officials – are not really worried about an Iranian attack. Here are some of their many prior statements:

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” 4

2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington”, reported the Washington Post (March 5), asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”

January 2012: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” 5

Later that month we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts – the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz – all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.

In an April 20, 2012 CNN interview Barak repeated this sentiment: “It’s true that probably [Iranian leader] Khamenei has not given orders to start building a [nuclear] weapon.” 6

And on several other occasions, Barak has stated: “Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.” 7

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a January 2012 report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead. 8

So why, then, do Israeli and American leaders, at most other times, maintain the Doomsday rhetoric? Partly for AIPAC to continue getting large donations. For Israel to get massive amounts of US aid. For Israeli leaders to win elections. To protect Israel’s treasured status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power.

Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. 9

Osama bin Laden, Bradley Manning, & William Blum

Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.

Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.

So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.

But now the prosecutors have announced that a Navy Seal involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden is going to testify at the court martial that bin Laden possessed articles about the Wikileaks documents that Manning leaked. Well, there must be a hundred million other people in the world who have similar material on their computers. The question remains: What use did the enemy make of that?

The Iraqi government made use of the material, inducing them to refuse immunity to US troops for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the cold-blooded murders revealed by the Wilileaks videos; this in turn led the US to announce that it was ending its military engagement in Iraq. However, Manning was indicted in May 2010, well before the Iraqi decision to end the immunity.

In January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audio tape, declared: “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State’ [by William Blum], which states in its introduction … ” He then went on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions – including the awful bombings – have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

“That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”

Thus, Osama bin Laden was clearly making use of what I wrote, and the whole world heard it. And I was thus clearly “aiding the enemy”. But I was not prosecuted.

The United States would like to prove a direct use and benefit by “the enemy” of the material released by Wikileaks; but so far it appears that only possession might be proven. In my case the use, and presumed propaganda benefit, were demonstrated. The fact that I wrote the material, as opposed to “stealing” it, is irrelevant to the issue of aiding the enemy. I knew, or should have known, that my criticisms of US foreign policy could be used by the foes of those policies. Indeed, that’s why I write what I do. To provide ammunition to anti-war and other activists.

The Department of Justice and socialism

For many years when I’ve been asked to explain just what I mean by “socialism” I’ve usually replied simply: “Putting people before profits”. There are a thousand-and-one details that would have to be considered in a transformation from a capitalist society to a socialist society, but rather than going into all that it’s much simpler to leave it with just that motto, which expresses the essence of my socialist society. In any event, in that glorious future world things will evolve in ways that could not be wholly predicted. The structure could take any one of many forms, but the essence must remain the same if it’s going to be called socialist.

Thus was I both surprised and amused in reading a news article about the current trial in New Orleans which is attempting to determine, amongst other things, the extent of blame of various companies, particularly BP, involved in the 2010 historic accident which took the lives of 11 workers and dumped an estimated 172 million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Justice Department attorney declared in his opening statement: “The evidence will show that BP put profits before people, profits before safety and profits before the environment.” 10

Well, imagine that. The Justice Department certainly captured the essence of corporate behavior. The attorney chose such words because he knew that the sentiments expressed would appeal to the average American sitting on a jury. The members of the jury would understand that BP had blatantly ignored and violated certain cherished ideals like people, safety and the environment. Prosecuting the corporation would sound fair and just to them.

Yet, when someone like me expresses such sentiments – and I have used the exact same words on occasion – I run the risk of being written off as an “extremist”, a “radical”, and other bad-for-you labels; not long ago it was “commie”.

The irony runs even deeper. If a corporation flagrantly ignores putting profits before everything else, stockholders can sue the executives.

This just in! The real reason the Pope resigned!

He’s losing his mind.

In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Pope Benedict XVI to receive his blessing. Afterward, Panetta said the pontiff told him, “Thank you for helping to keep the world safe.” 11

The precious art of assassinating legally

Obama hopeium addicts can soon be expected to call for support of the president’s increasing use of drones for assassination on the ground of their being good for the environment. My White House agent informs me that Obama is going to announce that all American drones will soon be composed 85% of recyclable material and will be solar-powered. And each drone missile will have the following painted on its side: “He was a bad guy. Just take our word for it!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Blum is an author, historian, and renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others

By STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH 

Mussolini: Il Duce came to power by invitation and consent of the King. Royals or capitalists, their fear of socialism is universal. It’s a class question.—Eds

Admiral Miklos Horthy of Hungary is generally acknowledged to have been history’s first fascist dictator (that is an authoritarian ruler, operating under capitalism, who was not royalty. And Admiral Horthy? Well, while Hungary is presently a land-locked country, before World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a major naval presence on the Adriatic Sea, through Slovenia, Croatia, and parts of Italy). Following the overthrow of a Hungarian Communist government by Romanian royalist forces in 1919, with the acquiescence of his own King he was appointed “Regent” (for the King) in 1920, and became an authoritarian, repressive, right-wing dictator.He held the post of Regent until he himself was displaced by the Nazis in 1944.

Italy’s Benito Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister by the Italian King in 1922, and with the latter’s acquiescence by 1927 had become dictator of Italy. (He invented the word “fascism” to describe his form of authoritarian government.) So, we have two prominent fascist dictators in essence appointed by Kings. It may surprise you to learn that the most prominent fascist dictator of them all, Adolf Hitler, got to his position by more-or-less constitutional means, in a Republic, not a Kingdom.

Following the end of the First World War, an attempted German Communist revolution was thwarted by the combined forces of the ex-Prussian Army and various right-wing paramilitaries. With the cooperation of the right-wing of the German Socialist Party, the successors to the Prussian Hohenzollern Monarchy (the Kaiser having abdicated and fled to Holland), and other center and right-wing forces, established what came to be known as the Weimar Republic. (Weimar was a small provincial city in central Germany chosen as the new Republic’s capital.) Those forces created the first republican constitution for Germany out of whole cloth. The resulting Presidential/Parliamentary system governed Germany from mid-1919 until the Nazi coup d’état which took place in stages starting on January 30, 1933.

A key feature of what was called the Weimar Constitution was that it had a clause that granted the President emergency powers, which he could claim on his own authority, but under fairly strict control by the Reichstag (parliament). The President from 1925 onwards, the former commander of Prussian forces in World War, was Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg. Hindenburg claimed Constitutional emergency power in 1930 and ruled under it until he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor (Prime Minister) on Jan. 30, 1933. Hitler then proceeded to establish what would become the state ruled by his National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis for short). (Clever name, eh? Like certain other folks, the Nazis had their own good namers and sloganeers.) Among his very first acts was to begin rounding up Communist Reichstag deputies and other leading communists and imprisoning them either without charge or on specious ones. But even with their enforced absence from the Reichstag, he still did not have the 2/3’s majority he needed to amend the Constitution. He wanted to enable the Reichstag to grant emergency powers to the Chancellor, as well as to the President.

Then came the Reichstag Fire of Feb. 27, 1933. Although it was actually set by a team sent by Hitler’s no. 1 deputy, Hermann Goering (1), it was a false-flag event (sound familiar?) Hitler blamed it on the Communists, and using documents later proved to be forgeries (the Communist leadership was shocked to see them) was able to stir up a major anti-communist hysteria in the nation. This situation eventually led to the passage on March 23 by the Reichstag of what was called the “Enabling Act of 1933,” (there having been others during the course of the Weimar Republic). This one, however, gave Hitler dictatorial power and the rest, as they say, is history. However, except for the fact that the Nazis cheated (if the Communist deputies had still been seated in the Reichstag, Hitler never could have gotten the 2/3rds vote he needed to pass the Act), the whole thing was “Constitutional.” Indeed Hitler made sure that the act was regularly renewed either by the Reichstag or eventually by himself, on the time schedule set during its original passage.

Among other powers, Hitler was able to arrest and imprison without charges or trial any German he labeled as a “threat,” or what have you. Having the parallel Army of the Schutz Staffel (SS, “Protection Squadron”) just going out and shooting perceived enemies or “members of an inferior race” in the street and etc., happened later. Further, I believe, although many Germans were sent to concentration camps and into the hands of the Gestapo (the “police” branch of the SS) direct execution happened only outside the borders of the German state.

You likely see where I am going with this. President Obama has apparently arrogated to himself, and through himself to the US Presidency, the power to arrest, and indeed kill, US citizens, on US soil, for “crimes” like “suspicion” of terrorism, “potential” terrorism, or “aiding and abetting terrorism” (2, 3). The next possible step is broadening that out to a total authoritarian government, based on “responding to terrorism” as defined by ??? (3) Now the Democrats who find themselves behind this say words to the effect of “well, Obama can be trusted with these powers.” Maybe, maybe not. But nevertheless, what of a possible successor? And in any case, is any of this Constitutional? Well, not if you read the plain language, as “Justice” (“I rule the way I want to rule on any given day, given how I feel that day, my prejudices [literally “pre-judgements”] and all, and that’s just tough, buddy”) Scalia is always lecturing us to do (see Articles II and VI and the 4^th and 5^th Amendments).

US Presidents have been arrogating to themselves war-making and extra-judicial powers that are simply nowhere to be found in the Constitution at least since Lyndon Johnson used the (fake) Gulf of Tonkin incident to vastly expand the US un-declared war on Vietnam. And that trail has led to the Obama Presidency. At least Hitler could claim (and he did) that what he did beginning on January 30, 1933 was in accord with the Weimar Constitution.

American exceptionalism? You betcha. If fascism does eventually come here it will be because a series of US Presidents gradually expanded their executive power, way beyond anything provided for in the Constitution, often invoking “communism” (see Reagan breaking the law, the Boland Amendment, to support the counter-revolution in Nicaragua) or “terrorism” (see G.W. Bush and now B. H. Obama, to justify what they are doing). At least previous fascist dictators could cite Kings, or a Constitution, or plain old civil war to overthrow a democratically-elected Republic — see Franco Spain. In the U.S., if it comes, it will simply be on a President’s say-so. And there will be no-one to say “NO.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Protean writer and political analyst Steven Jonas is not only a distinguished physician, but a prolific author with scores of titles to his credit and hundreds of essays on topics ranging from culture to health and, of course, economics and politics. His classic, The 15% Solution, visualizing the coming to power of a Christofascist regime in the US, by more or less “constitutional” means, is scheduled for publication in a substantially revised edition this month by Punto Press. 

——————————————————————————————————

References:

The Monthly Review, Vol. 60, No. 10, March 2009

2. Paul Craig Roberts, “It Has Happened Here in America: The Police State is Real,” Feb. 9, 2013. http://www.globalresearch.ca/it-has-happened-here-in-america-the-police-state-is-real/5322223.

3. Chris Hedges, “The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State,” Feb. 11, 2013,http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_ndaa_and_the_death_of_the_democratic_state_20130211/