THE VETO: Exposing CNN, Al Jazeera, Channel 4, western media propaganda war in Syria

Actually there is no need to imagine. It's happening already.

"Western media has been tasked with writing the history of the Syrian conflict to serve the aggressors in the US Coalition of terrorism..."

By Vanessa Beeley
Published on 21 Mar 2019

[dropcap]I [/dropcap]met journalist and friend Rafiq Lutf and cameraman Abdul-Mun’aim Arnous in January 2018 and I was honoured when Rafiq asked me to work with him on his film project, The Veto. As Dr Shaaban said to me in August 2016, “Western propaganda is paid for in Syrian blood”. This is true.

The horrifying bloodshed and loss of life in Syria could never have happened without the colonial media manufacturing consent for another illegal war against a Sovereign nation. The Veto tracks the evolution of the propaganda campaign waged by Western media against Syria. From Baba Amr in Homs 2011/2012 until the modern day “propaganda construct” – the NATO-member-state funded White Helmets. It honours Russia and China’s vetoes that have consistently defended Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the UN. George Orwell said ““The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Western media has been tasked with writing the history of the Syrian conflict to serve the aggressors in the US Coalition of terrorism. As Dr Shaaban also told me: “The US alliance and its media are focusing on our history, material history, cultural history, identity, our army. Any power that keeps you as an entire state, or any statesman that represents strength or unity will be demonized and destroyed.” The Veto exposes the criminal intentions of Western media and it archives the progression of the propaganda war waged by the West against Syria. Syrians are writing the history of the Syrian conflict because Syria and her allies have courageously resisted the Imperialist machine. As Rafiq has said so eloquently “ we are the Veto” and we must use it against the Industrial Media Complex in the West. Syria’s history belongs to the Syrians and Syria’s final victory must ensure that Western media is never again given the power to destroy a nation, divide its people and promote international terrorism both military and economic.

Addendum

"Syria - the Trump effect" by Vanessa Beeley

Date de publication: 12.07.2017

Syria - the Trump effect

by Vanessa Beeley

IDC, 12 July 2017

Tonight, I wish to discuss a little of the background of Washington’s Long War on Syria that started way back, after independence from France in 1946 and has continued to this day with the war on Syria that began in 2011 and has had devastating consequences for the Syrian people.

Then I would like to cover the Trump effect, the evolution of the situation on the ground in Syria since Trump came to power in January 2017 and demonstrate the ratcheting up of military activity and “soft power” pressure since Trump’s inauguration.

The war in Syria has lasted more than six years, with an estimated 400,000 deaths, the majority of whom are the SAA contrary to reports from the compromised media who would have us believe these are all civilian deaths at the hands of President Assad. What is happening in Syria is not a civil war, it is the continuation of decades of external intervention in Syria’s sovereign affairs with a variety of proxy actors. It is a Dirty War on Syria [Tim Anderson] or Washington’s Long War on Syria [Stephen Gowans]

Roland Dumas informed us that the British were preparing a “rebel” invasion of Syria at least two years before the start of the armed uprisings.

As Stephan Gowans tells us in the introduction of his book:

“The United States efforts to oust the govt of Bashar Al Assad antedated the “Arab Spring” by many years and Washington had a hand in inciting the MB, which had a long history of violent antagonism toward the Syrian government dating back to 1963. Washington’s motivations to topple Bashar Al Assad’s government prior to 2011 were related to Damascus’ embrace of anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist positions and its program of state directed economic development.”

Arab nationalism, the core ideology of Hafez and Bashar Al Assad threatened imperialism and most importantly the oil wealth monopoly ruled over by the US/UK ally, the House of Saud, an absolute Monarchy with one of the worst human rights violations records in the world today.

Vanessa must be doing something right. The Guardian's filthy apologist for western imperialism, Brian Whitaker, accuses her of being a "goddess of propaganda for Assad," adding that her reports from Syria "are basically crap." Read this disgusting piece of pseudo journalism in full here, but be warned, a strong stomach is required.

“[Arab nationalism was a vision] that Washington could not allow to grip the imagination of the world’s 400 million Arabs. The US accordingly embarked on a decades long campaign of invasions and economic warfare to drive Iraq’s experiment in Arab nationalism into ruin and eventually to purge the state of its secular Arab nationalist influence. De Baathification. Wall street’s war on Syria was motivated by the same aim; the de Baathification of Syria and the elimination of secular Arab nationalist influence from the Syrian State as a means of expurging the Arab nationalist threat to US hegemony” on a global level.

Harold Pinter, during his 2005 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize spoke of the UK/US led war against Iraq:

“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.”

In Iraq and in Syria the US coalition has waged a brutal Hybrid war, in Iraq leading to the starvation of 500,000 children, described by Madeleine Albright, while Bill Clinton’s UN representative as “a price that was worth it”. We could just as easily apply Pinter’s prophetic speech to the US intervention in Syria…

In Syria we have seen the deployment of the “soft power” complex on an unprecedented scale in lock-step with the funding, arming and promotion of a multitude of extremist proxies, many of whom are foreign mercenaries. This war has been underpinned by the NGO complex, the NATO-aligned & Gulf media, a variety of government sponsored think tanks and even international institutions like the UN.

The “soft power” complex is exemplified for me by the creation and multi-million-dollar NATO and Gulf state funding of the White Helmets. The ultimate propaganda heist conducted over a four-year period since their establishment in 2013, culminating in their being awarded the Oscar in 2016 for the Netflix documentary that recorded their exploits However it should be noted the production team did not enter Syria but relied upon unverified footage supplied by the White Helmets embedded in East Aleppo with Nusra Front led extremists [Al Qaeda in Syria]

Admiral Sir Phillip Jones, UK First Sea Lord, said: “So the hard punch of military power is often delivered inside the kid glove of Humanitarian relief….”

The UK FO were primary funders and creators of the WH construct, the organisation was established by James Le Mesurier, an ex-British military officer who had a history of working alongside NATO states in a number of interventions including Kosovo & Afghanistan. The White Helmets are a shadow state construct, designed to erase the Syrian state institution, the REAL Syria Civil Defence, from western public perception. The REAL Syria Civil Defence was established inside Syria in 1953. It is the only SCD recognised by the ICDO in Geneva, and the UN. The REAL SCD operates in areas inhabited by 80% of Syria’s population.

My time in East Aleppo, gathering testimonies from civilians, freshly liberated from Nusra Front-led occupation and securing documents left behind in the abandoned White Helmet centres confirmed that they are working exclusively as Nusra Front Civil Defence, helping only the extremist fighters, rarely civilians. Their primary purpose for their multiple-state funders is to produce the false flags and propaganda that will facilitate further military or pseudo-humanitarian intervention in Syria.

[National Endowment for Democracy] NED founder reportedly said the following in the 1990s: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ What was once done at night under the cloak of ‘imperialism’ is now done during the day under the guise of ‘humanitarianism.’

Moving on to the “evolution” of the conflict in Syria under Trump.

There are four main areas that I will cover to demonstrate this evolution.

1: What Maria Saadeh, an independent parliamentarian in Damascus calls economic terrorism, US and EU derived economic sanctions. These have been modified and increased under Trump, with the passing of the Cesar Bill through congress.

2: US Military bases in Syria

3: Revival of the Chemical Weapon narrative with the Khan Sheikhoun attacks.

4: An increase in the targeting of the SAA & civilians in both Iraq and Syria under the pretext of fighting DAESH.

1: SANCTIONS – ECONOMIC TERRORISM

In January 2016 there was a propaganda spike when corporate media universally attempted to convey an image of the Syrian government starving its own civilians in the Ahrar al Sham occupied town. The reality was the opposite. The Syrian government had allowed humanitarian aid convoys to enter the town which had provided ample sustenance for the 20k civilians living there. As happened in East Aleppo, militants/extremists starved civilians or sold the received food and essential items at extortionate prices.

Dr Bashar Al Jaafari Syrian Permanent representative at the UN, made the statement in response to a question from the media, that all of Syria was under siege from sanctions, 23 million, or 18.9 million people were being collectively punished by the US and EU.

Sanctions under Trump have increased with the Cesar Bill that passed through the house in April 2017 and increases the demands on the Syrian government and its allies and the punishments for non-compliance. The bill is based on unfounded and un-evidenced accusations that are flung at the Syrian government by the western compromised media, “regime change” focused governments and their intervention lobbyists in their associated think tanks and NATO aligned NGOs.

As part of a Hybrid war, the sanctions serve, very much the same purpose as the proxy terrorism - destruction of infrastructure, destabilization of the economic process, weakening of the target state’s ability to take care of its people.

In Syria, every sector is affected. Petrol, Industry, Education, Health, Agriculture, Financial sector, Commercial sector, Electricity, Transport and finally tourism.

This image was taken in the Sheikh Najjar industrial centre of Aleppo in December 2016, just after liberation of East Aleppo from the Nusra Front led extremist factions.

In Aleppo alone, 26,000 factories have been forced to close or been destroyed by terrorist attacks, 17,000 were partially destroyed by the terrorists, and 50,000 factories were forced to suspend their activity. [these figures are taken from a Syrian Chamber of Commerce report 2015] Over 3000 were dismantled and taken to Turkey by the extremist groups.

Trump’s campaign had filled everyone with the hope of some change in policy towards Syria and divergence away from a Clinton aggressive foreign policy, but once in power, he appears to have reneged on his early promises and to have maintained the trajectory towards Syria’s destabilization and partitioning.

US BASES IN SYRIA

With very little fanfare from the western media, the US is quietly creating a hostile military footprint inside Syria.

By establishing a chain of airbases, military outposts and missile bases inside Syria, the US is illegally, stealth-occupying a sovereign nation. The number of US military installations in Syria has increased to eight bases according to recent reports, and possibly nine according to one other military analyst.

Full military bases are in Hasaka [3 bases including 1 airbase], Raqqa [2 bases including Kobane airbase], Northern rural Aleppo [2 bases], Al Tanf at the Jordan, Iraq borders with Syria.

While one could argue that these bases were established under Obama’s administration, under Trump they have expanded and in the case of the airbases, been modified to enable a greater air power.

Airmen from the 621st Contingency Response Group have been deployed to modify and “expand” the Kobani airbase, with the stated intention of supporting anti-ISIS coalitions on the ground in Syria.

The fundamental flaw with US Coalitions is that they do not include the Syrian Arab Army, Russia and their allies who have been systematically fighting ISIS & NATO state extremists, since the start of the externally waged war against Syria. The US coalition is, in reality, an uninvited, hostile force, violating Syria’s territorial integrity, operating under the false pretext of combatting ISIS while many reports expose the collusion between US coalition command & forces and ISIS.

The US military footprint has been strategically placed inside Syria. If we look at the map, The US bases are concentrated in the areas controlled by their currently, preferred proxies, the SDF in the north of Syria and Maghawir al Thawra & Southern Front militant forces, close to Al Tanf on the Syrian border with Iraq.

In a recent article for the American Conservative, political analyst, Sharmine Narwani laid out the US agenda, in establishing a military camp at Al Tanf and the abject failure of this military strategy:

“Re-establishing Syrian control over the highway running from Deir ez-Zor to Albu Kamal and al-Qaim is also a priority for Syria’s allies in Iran. Dr. Masoud Asadollahi, a Damascus-based expert in Middle East affairs explains: “The road through Albu Kamal is Iran’s favored option – it is a shorter path to Baghdad, safer, and runs through green, habitable areas. The M1 highway (Damascus-Baghdad) is more dangerous for Iran because it runs through Iraq’s Anbar province and areas that are mostly desert.”

If the U.S. objective in al-Tanaf was to block the southern highway between Syria and Iraq, thereby cutting off Iran’s land access to the borders of Palestine, they have been badly outmaneuvered. Syrian, Iraqi, and allied troops have now essentially trapped the U.S.-led forces in a fairly useless triangle down south, and created a new triangle (between Palmyra, Deir ez-Zor, and Albu Kamal) for their “final battle” against ISIS.”

In the North, we can speculate that the US is trying to create optimum conditions for an autonomous Kurdish region and the eventual partitioning of Syria, following the already skewed US road map. According to Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor of Political Science at Russia’s Finance University, Kurds control 20% of Syrian territory, when ISIS is defeated the likelihood is that they will want to declare a “sovereign” state. This would play into, not only US, but primarily Israel’s hands. There is also the clear indication that the US, the YPG/SDF and ISIS are not always working against each other but are often supporting one another’s operations.

Sergey Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s forces in Syria, told the media just last week that “According to available reliable information, in early June ISIL terrorists entered into collusion with the command of the Kurdish armed units, which are part of the Democratic Forces Union, left the populated localities of Tadia and al-Hamam located 19 kilometers southwest of Raqqa offering no resistance and headed toward Palmyra.”

The US/Israeli agenda has clearly been to form a buffer zone inside all Syrian borders from North to East to South preventing Syrian access to neighbouring country borders & territory and reducing Syria to a geopolitically isolated, internalized peninsular.

“We’ve even set up a base at Al Tanf in the southern part, it’s an American base within the country of Syria,” Black said. “You can’t get a more obvious violation of international law than to actually move in and set up a military base in a sovereign country that has never taken any offensive action towards our country.” ~ Senator Richard Black

Under Trump, the US is relentlessly and even more blatantly, flaunting international law, as it has throughout this protracted conflict – it has established, inside Syria, almost as many bases as it has set up in its regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

3: REVIVAL OF THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS NARRATIVE

Khan Sheikhoun has dominated the headlines for some time now since the alleged CW attack took place on the 4^th April this year. Since than an array of NATO-aligned think tanks such as Bellingcat and the Syrian Network for Human Rights among others have been speculating on the responsibility for the attack, of course coming down heavily on the conclusion that it must the Syrian regime’s responsibility.

However, the methodology of the investigation is highly questionable. The OPCW was unable to visit KS due the proliferation of Nusra Front and extremist factions. The samples were provided by organisations that are known to be terrorist affiliated, like the White Helmets or various other multi-spectrum war constructs funded once again by the intervention coalition, such as Bellingcat and SNHR among others.

There are signs that the US and its allies are preparing for a major escalation in Syria.

The Trump administration has already reacted hastily to the alleged CW event in Khan Sheikhoun […] with a limited cruise missile strike. Since then, tensions have risen with the US downing a Syrian Air Force jet and, recently issuing warnings to the Syrian government regarding alleged use and alleged FUTURE USE of prohibited weapons. This week’s release of the OPCW report into the KS event, which finds that “sarin or a sarin-like material” had been used, has been seized upon by UK, US and German officials as confirmation of the Syrian govt culpability. […] British MPS Crispin Blunt and Johnny Mercer are advancing the idea of pre-emptive parliamentary authority, whereby military action could be initiated without the need for parliamentary debate.”

The US military build-up in Syria has visibly increased under Trumps presidency. Piers “As the drum beats for war grow louder, it is imperative that we learn, and implement, the lessons of the last 15 years of destructive western military engagements across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Chemical Weapon narrative that is produced by NATO and Gulf state actors on the ground in Syria, led by the White Helmets is the clear casus belli of this intervention, just as the WMD were the smoking gun for the Iraq War. The fact that Trump has almost immediately into his presidency reproduced the now universally debunked Ghouta Chemical attack 2013 that was Obama’s “red line” suggests that contrary to his pre-election rhetoric, he is being controlled by deep state, military industrial complex, powers that will never permit deviation from their longstanding middle east, geopolitical road map, with Israel as main beneficiary of Syria’s engineered instability.

TARGETING OF THE SAA & CIVILIANS

Under Obama the support for the terrorist factions and collusion with those terrorist factions, including ISIS, on the battleground was a relatively subtle affair when compared to the Trump knee jerk foreign policy decisions. Obama was responsible for the massacre of SAA soldiers defending Deir Ezzor from ISIS besieging forces. The US coalition including Australia and the UK bombed the soldiers for over one hour and then declared it a “mistake” after more than 72 soldiers had been killed, enabling ISIS to advance towards strategic positions surrounding Deir Ezzor.

Trump on the other hand has deliberately targeted the SAA on four occasions in the last 2 months alone and killed an estimated 225 civilians during their bombing raids in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. The US coalition has reportedly killed an estimated 225 civilians since Trump became President, during bombing raids on Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. One can’t help but speculate that the US government and its NGO, Media cohorts liberally flung accusations at the SAA and its allies during the battles to liberate Aleppo but are yet to be held accountable for their campaign to target Syrian civilians in areas where they should be targeting ISIS.

CONCLUSIONS

Andrew Korybko:Trump's Presidency has this far been transformational in changing the course of the War on Syria. In only a little more than six months, the US revived the Obama Administration's previously failed chemical weapons ploy; actually went forth with directly attacking the Syrian Arab Army under the aforesaid pretext for the first time in the war; and openly armed the Kurdish militias with heavy weaponry to improve the prospects that they'll retain their quasi-independent statelet after the war. These three developments are entirely attributable to the Trump Administration, and the phased progression between them represents a new sort of asymmetrical aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic, successfully modified from the Obama-era strategy to adapt to the changing battlefield conditions brought about by the Russian anti-terrorist intervention and the closing stages of the Daesh campaign. After evaluating the three most noteworthy Syrian-related developments of the Trump Presidency thus far, it becomes clear that his election has had a powerful impact on the on-the-ground dynamics of this conflict and will therefore strongly influence the course of the coming so-called "political solution".

The illegal U.S. presence in Syria is a “Nuremberg crime against peace. It was Obama that started the aggression against Syria, Trump’s just exacerbating it.” —Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois

President Putin in his interview with Oliver Stone: “There is one curious thing, the presidents of your country change, but the policy doesn’t change, on matters of principle”.

Finally I will leave you with one question based on a quote from Paul Craig Roberts:

“What Planet Earth, and the creatures thereon, need more than anything is leaders in the West who are intelligent, who have a moral conscience, who respect truth, and who are capable of understanding the limits to their power.

But the Western World has no such people.” Or do they?

About the Author

Vanessa Beeley (born June 17, 1964) is independent Investigative journalist, researcher, writer and photographer, best known for her articles based on eyewitness views of the Syrian conflict.

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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FBI arrests Marzieh – who of us at PressTV is next?

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

Marzieh with her son.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike illegally jailed PressTV anchor Marzieh Hashemi, I am a journalist at Iran’s PressTV and also a dual-citizen of Iran and the US, with family in both countries. So should I cancel my next trip to the United States, then?

Well, I refuse to.

I visit the US at least once a year, and nothing could possibly prevent me from returning whenever I want - full stop.

So I take a special interest in the illegal and immoral 10-day detention of my PressTV colleague by the United States FBI, and not merely because it would certainly start my next vacation on the wrong foot.

Frankly, I was not terribly worried for Marzieh, and you - kind reader - should not worry for me: Marzieh and I have both surely always known that working for Iran would cause us problems in the West eventually. We would be naive to think otherwise, given the West’s brutal, deadly, illegal, inhumane, four-decade war on Iran - we knew what we were getting into (and were proud to do so).

I wish it had been me instead of Marzieh, but the US really took on the harder case: Marzieh is 59 years old, and in journalism that is very rare these days, given the fact that young, cheap labor is prioritised over experienced, difficult, knowledgeable, older journalists who are much more difficult for editors to control. I was certain that Marzieh would remain principled during her detention: in fact, I imagined Marzieh’s attitude towards her captors was akin to Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies: “Go ahead - make my day.”

Such is the combative, defiant, principled outlook of a good journalist, and Marzieh certainly is that. Her place is empty at PressTV, but, Insh’Allah, she will return soon.

So who among us is next to be arrested?

Is it me? Is it one of my PressTV colleagues working in the United States? Is it one of our journalists working in a country allied with the US?

About the author

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

A Nationalist Faction on Wall St. Challenges the War Faction Which Owns the CIA and Media

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON TO KIN, FRIENDS AND WORKMATES

by jay Janson

If we peoples historians are aware of this, the investment analysts of the wealthiest investors would have to be even more so keenly aware of changing future economic conditions. It’s for certain that at least some high tech research calculating investment advisors see this future yawning.

In July of 2016, OpEdNews, US, Countercurrents, India, and Minority Perspective, UK, published Economic Hegemony Loss to China Looming! Powerful Investors Have Trump Call for an About Face The title reflected something that the author thought was logical if not at times noticeable.

The author surmised that the 2016 media managed US election process seemed a playing out in public of indecision within the rich one tenth of one percent, who rule America and much of the world, indecision over whether to switch to less profitable investing in their home base America, or to continue wildly enriching themselves, heavily investing in the much higher profit rendering low wage economies of the rest of the world, thereby accelerating forward the arrival of the time when those Third World nations led by China will overtake the US and Europe in economic and political power and demand equity.

Boisterous billionaire Republican candidate Donald Trump seemed to have been designated by a forward thinking substantial group of investors to present a demand that government force America's wealth controlling deep-pockets to invest in a United States suffering from neglect, rather than continue to promote investing more profitably in the low wage economies of developing nations regardless of the consequences of speeding up development of future contenders for world power. The handwriting is on the wall that reads 'pale skin folks will not keep power over six times as many folks of color toned skin for all that much longer. The willingness of humanity to continue to accept the white world's profitable investments in genocide will end when enough economic power shifts from Europeans, and their descendant nations, to the six sevenths of humanity they have plundered. Realizing this, a block of important investors within the 1/10th of 1% who rule America have been in fraternal confrontation with the war establishment and its CIA-fed media pushing for investment in the neglected US instead of in the low wage 3rd World that China will soon lead

The more perspicacious among them must be thinking logically, 'Better begin investing in our home countries and see that the world power shift coming to overtake us comes later rather than sooner, while we make our economies better able to deal with the inevitable change in world leadership.'

However, it is obvious that a much more substantial and powerful faction of the important investors ruling the US and much of the world have their investments so heavily weighted in the super lucrative military industrial complex, that they must desperately count on the West's overkill military dominance to assure Western control of the world far into the foreseeable future. Investors locked into the financial-industrial-military complex must surely be more powerful than investors, whose portfolios are weighted in production, trade and acquisitions. A glance at our vastly over militarized world, continuing massively destructive wars and steady impoverishment of half of mankind would seem to be sufficient to assume the primacy of investments in the profitable but criminal use of the Armed Forces, CIA and CIA-controlled US mainstream media.

Since predatory investments go hand in hand with bombings and invasions, the Military Industrial Complex faction had to be virulently opposed to forcing investors to invest in the USA, as Trump had been trumpeting to an ever widening audience, ergo the wild efforts of its CIA controlled newscasters, commentators and talk shows to denigrate Trump in whatever desperate method possible for his rocking the wars industry’s boat containing trillions of dollars invested in future military conflict.

After Trump was elected, CIA-fed US mainstream media put out an amazing amount of talk of assassination and about how Trump was keeping his own bodyguards. Since the Helsinki Summit, US media, with one exception, has again promoted in a calculated frenzy, a climate of pending violence threatening President Trump for having talked too peacefully with his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin.

That exception being FOX, which with its three TV channels and other media, is defending Trump and has been doing so even before his election. The CIA, which has controlled all US major media and most of all Western media since its Operation Mockingbird[2] in the early 1950s, must be allowing FOX to do so.

We have heard guests interviewed on FOX Channel, like retired US Army Colonel, author and consultant, Douglas Macgregor referring to themselves as adhering to the nationalist faction supporting President Trump ‘because the president is confronting ultimately disastrous internationalist foreign policies.’

This deviation of FOX channels from the usual monolithic propagandistic reporting on foreign policy and foreign events by all the other giant news and entertainment conglomerates is striking. (Of course, FOX is still in unison the rest of criminal mainstream media when it comes to programming ‘patriotic’ pride in all past US military action no matter their never mentioned lawless and genocidal nature.)

In promoting military confrontation with Russia, deep state media as well as FOX, continue to put out some imbecilic phony baloney about American democracy being attacked and undermined by the Russians. Anyone with half and education knows that the USA is not a democracy, but a plutocracy, and a malevolent neocolonial imperialist racist genocidal one at that. Online dictionaries define ‘plutocracy’ as government by the wealthy, a country or society governed by the wealthy, a government or state in which the wealthy class rules, an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth.

In 2018, the ruling US plutocracy does not appear to be a united one since it has two media outlets arguing and a president that seems to be beholden to two competing factions on Wall Street.

That all US presidents must be wary of behavior which endangers the mega enormous investments of the ruling class (maybe best keep in mind what happened to Presidents Kennedy, Lincoln and Garfield), could explain Trump’s seemingly erratic behavior, for example, pleasing the internationalist war faction in bombing Yemen, keeping the attempt to overthrow the Syrian government going, firing missiles at Damascus over an obvious false flagged claim of a gas attack, threatening Iran and Latin America, yet on the other hand playing to the nationalist faction by displaying friendly intentions with the leaders of long designated enemy nations North Korea and Russia and upsetting the internationalist establishment’s free trade treaties. Did Trump force through a imponderably enormous raise in the military budget with mammoth expenditure for new nuclear weapons to make himself feel safe from harm from the Military Industrial Complex? Did going public with questioning his advisors in obvious baby talk, “Why don’t we just invade Venezuela,”[3] have the same purpose of ingratiating himself with the war establishment, as was his appointment of freaky John Bolton, whose advice he probably does not plan to take? (Bolton’s simpleminded uncouth manner seems to have been actually helpful up to now in getting himself sidelined.)

The theater of Trump’s bumptious behavior is taking place in front of a brutal set of powerful alien-like investors on Wall Street, rabid monsters who gave the world the Somali, Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian, Yemeni and South Sudan genocides and a bloody permanent racist occupation of Afghanistan, just as their elders and some of their parents gave the world the genocides surpassing the Holocaust in Korea, Congo, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Central America.

But nothing in this world is absolute, and some considerable number within this powerful investor elite, concerned for their own skin in an uncertain future, might even have realistically accepted that Chinese civilization will ultimately replace the present American-led crazed speculative-banking-driven genocidal white folks neocolonial power plundering of much of the rest of humanity. It doesn't seem credible that all wealthy and powerful Americans have become comfortably inured to the massive taking of lives and deadly impoverishment of hundreds of millions of other human beings during their criminal capital acquisitions. Wealthy criminals, even when insane are not stupid.With China's rise as a world power making itself more noticeable month by month, economic might has begun to loom more and more important than military might. After all, bigger money buys bigger guns and the biggest money will always buy the most of anything necessary. Equally important, one can suppose all investors are aware of a predicted future in which China and not the US will be most influential if not controlling critical world institutions including the United Nations and its courts.

But a greater number of investors in weapons must be in denial, unwilling to accept a probable future fall in value of those up to now lucrative investments in widespread death and destruction. The ubiquitous media of the genocidal gangsters on Wall Street vilifying Trump is nothing new. Let us remind ourselves of the vilification during the election campaign. Trump astoundingly voiced some devastating truths about US leaders in war and government war policies, though balanced off with Trump lies and rabid statements about Cuba and Latin America for the ears of the Florida electorate and even more rabid statements about Iran, most likely to cover his back from the dangerous Israelis.

Consider, how pugnacious and egotistically sure of himself Trump was blisteringly denouncing America’s household-word famous war establishment celebrities. He must have had or at least sensed great support while having a field day hammering in cutting remarks in ridicule of his own party’s folk heroes, their policies and their “80% lying media.”

Condi Rice: Deep State tool and virulent neocon queen in black face, this genocidal insider was holding all the cards in her hand.

"Trump asked, "why does the United States always pursue regime changes - Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and now it wants a regime change in Syria, Damascus, when the result is disaster." This wholesale attack on the war establishment was astonishing.

(Of course, though Trump might have seemed to have been reproaching ruling investors for the costly death and destruction of regime change wars, Trump was careful never to awaken sympathy for the innocent millions of victims of US firepower, as he religiously emoted praise for the Americans who had blasted away with that fire power and now were veterans summa cum laude.)

Before Trump, with backing from we know not where, inserted doubts about the rational for US deadly and devastating foreign policy, mass media had been dutifully preparing the public for war with Russia, China and Iran. Even anti-imperialist journalists had been predicting doom - inescapable world war.

Since investors in outrageously murderous criminal ventures have had their co-criminal wars-heralding media convince Mr. and Mrs. America to see US perpetrated genocide after genocide as perfectly acceptable, even praiseworthy, at first, media sought to ridicule Trump's anti-war pro peace posture, but then, perhaps noticing public appeal for it, changed tactics to putting a cap on the public being aware of Trump's less belligerent foreign policy, and opened up a barrage of coverage of Trump the racist and sexist, the latter being helped by extremely boorish and distasteful revelations.

Mainstream media continues to capture public attention by putting overwhelmingly intense focus on the president, as it has with every US president for as long as this writer can remember, portraying him as some sort of emperor whose every whim can translate into his ordering bombings, military invasions, covert violence or ordering its halt of his own free will, never minding that it could adversely affect the trillions of dollars of investments of the plutocrats who rule and misrule the nation and a good deal of the world. Trump playing an egomaniac role, feeds this false portrayal of a presidents personal power and has everyone guessing and awaiting in suspense for his next utterance, which will be super highlighted by a cartel of news and entertainment conglomerates.

Thus, a media of entertainment and insanity constantly drumming up attention on the president successfully concentrates public attention away from the reality of a genocidal US plutocracy, burying away its horrific crimes against humanity in poor countries and distracting attention from its present mass murderous destruction of seven countries in the cradle of human civilization to the detriment of the future of all humanity. The rest of the world more or less accepts the far reaching Western media portrayal of the president as the most powerful person in the world, a kind of elected king, and this covers well the behind the scenes devilish and maniacal machinations of the rulers of the USA plutocracy - not a kingdom, but an empire, seeding death and destruction without an emperor.

In 1933, America’s last aristocratic wealthy real insider President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, lamented his lack of power in a note to a confidant as follows: “You and I know that a financial element in the centers of power has owned this government since the days of Andrew Jackson.”   (Jackson was president a hundred years earlier). FDR using the phrase “you and I know” indicates something obvious, but only obvious to insiders.

FDR said the government was owned by a “financial element.” Why wouldn’t that “financial element” of Wall Street oligarchs own the president and vice president? They own the vast majority of the members of the Congress that is the Legislative Branch, the vast majority of judges of the Judicial Branch. They not only own the two elected officers of the Executive Branch, but get to force the choice of appointed cabinet members and presidential advisors, like for instance, David Rockefeller’s henchmen, the Dulles brothers, Kissinger and Brzezinski.

Since that “financial element” that owns the government also has owned the media as Einstein deplored[5] even before Operation Mockingbird was completed, a US president can be either denigrated arbitrarily for something he has no power over or given credit for something accomplished during his administration that more powerful forces had seen to, as in the case of Nixon given credit for opening trade with China, concluded by David Rockefeller and his Chase Bank with his man Henry Kissinger negotiating the political arrangements. Eisenhower’s ordered crimes against humanity and crimes against peace were, and still are, portrayed as permissible heroic deeds against the evil international force of communism.

We are supposed to credit, or criticize, Obama for his agreeing to the transfer of a near trillion dollars over to bankers on Wall Street, and be impressed, or mortified, that he, Obama, saw to the criminal destruction of beautiful and prosperous Libya.

Do the tycoons within that ruling “financial element,” not think it quaint that the world thinks mentally challenged President Bush junior was in charge of invading whenever and wherever he wished? Likewise hapless Bill Clinton, about whom media had us all wondering where his penis had been or not been, never mind the truth about important things like starvation in Haiti caused by policies credited to Clinton.

The social scientists and historians of tomorrow will eventually be able to sort out what was happening within that “financial element in the centers of power” while the world was a captive audience watching the wide swings in policy of a president Trump, who to this writer seems to be theatrically walking a tight rope to avoid a unsafe landing in the midst of some frightened confusion about the future of the world and the fall of the American empire.

Post Script

Even if a renegade faction among the monstrous killing machine that is Wall Street be bringing about some change, the cohesion among long time mass murderers is greater than any dissension.

According to CNN, following Trump's surprise victory, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates and James Baker during conversations with Vice President Pence, played a crucial role in convincing Trump's team to select Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State. This speaks to the charade of presidential power that the decision as to who will be secretary of state can remain the same whichever gang occupies the White House. Likewise, was it Obama’s choice to reappoint the entire Bush administration war cabinet of Robert Gates, Richard Holbrooke, John Negroponte, keeping Bzrezinski and Kissinger as advisors?

Less than two months into Trump’s presidency, CNN reported:

Washington (CNN), March, 2017, “President Donald Trump met Friday with an unlikely guest, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the former top administration official under President George W. Bush met Trump in the Oval Office after first sitting down with Vice President Mike Pence. Trump's head-to-head Friday with Rice, their first publicly known meeting, follows Trump's repeated criticism on the campaign trail of the Iraq War and the neoconservative thinking that mired the US in the trillion-dollar war. Rice, who at the time of the invasion was Bush's national security adviser, was a chief architect and proponent of the Iraq War, arguing publicly -- and ultimately erroneously -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Trump had repeatedly slammed Bush and his top officials for pushing the US into the Iraq War, arguing it was based on lies.”

They met after Trump won the election, but we imagine genocidal insider Rice was holding all the cards in her hand.

Wonder if tough insider Rice found it necessary to make any offers that Trump couldn't refuse.

End Notes

1.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/emerging-vs-developed-economies

2.

Mockingbird was a secret operation by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts and also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns. After 1953, Operation Mockingbird had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known pro-American big business and anti-communist views.

The CIA currently maintains a network of individuals around the world who attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda, and provide direct access to a large amount of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets."

The CIA and the Media - Carl Bernstein  www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. > http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

Newly Declassified Govt Docs Reveal Operation Mockingbird is Alive ... >thefreethoughtproject.com " Be The Change

Oct 2, 2015 - For those unfamiliar, Operation Mockingbird was a CIA operation began as the Cold War ramped up in the 1950's. In an attempt to gather ... > http://thefreethoughtproject.com/feds-exposed-planting-talking-points-questions-60-minutes-episode-wikileaks/

Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program - YouTube > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCfTIapds0

3.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/world/us-official-trump-pressed-aides-about-venezuela-invasion/wcm/2878b030-53c2-430b-824f-9b7125b894b0

Why can't the U.S. just invade Venezuela? U.S. official says Trump stunned security aides with question  Associated Press

4.

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.

F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373

5.

"Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights." - Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAY JANSON, Resident Historian, Distinguished Collaborator • Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong's Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

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

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What Just Happened

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

What happened right after the second direct U.S.-missiles invasion of Syria, which had occurred on the night of April 13th, could turn out to have momentous implications — far bigger than the attacks themselves.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons headlined on April 14th, in the wake of this U.S.-UK-France invasion of Syria that was allegedly punishing Syria’s Government for allegedly having used chemical weapons in its bombing in the town of Douma on April 7th, “OPCW Fact-Finding Mission Continues Deployment to Syria”, and reported that:

The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) team of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma.

The OPCW has been working in close collaboration with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security to assess the situation and ensure the safety of the team.

This means that the effort by the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council, to squash that investigation, has failed at the OPCW, even though the effort had been successful at blocking U.N. support for that specific investigation.

The OPCW is not part of the U.N., nor of any country; it, instead (as introduced by Wikipedia):

is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force on 29 April 1997. The OPCW, with its 192 member states, has its seat in The Hague, Netherlands, and oversees the global endeavour for the permanent and verifiable elimination of chemical weapons.

In conformity with the unchallenged international consensus that existed during the 1990s that there was no longer any basis for war between the world’s major powers, the Convention sought and achieved a U.N. imprimatur, but this was only in order to increase its respect throughout the world. The OPCW is based not on the U.N. Charter but on that specific treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was formally approved by the U.N.’s General Assembly on 30 November 1992 and was then opened for signatures in Paris on 13 January 1993. According to the Convention’s terms, it would enter into effect 180 days after 65 nations signed it, which turned out to be on 29 April 1997.

So, although the treaty itself received U.N. approval, the recent Russian-sponsored resolution at the U.N.’s Security Council to have the U.N. endorse the OPCW’s investigation of the 7 April 2018 Douma incident, did not receive U.N. approval. It was instead blocked by the U.S. and its allies. Nonetheless, though without a U.N. endorsement, the OPCW investigation into the incident will move forward, despite the invasion. This fact is momentous, because a credible international inspection, by the world’s top investigatory agency for such matters, will continue to completion, notwithstanding the effort by the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council, to block it altogether. This decision was reached by the OPCW — not by the U.N.

Among the 192 signers of the Chemical Weapons Convention are U.S., Russia, and Syria, as well as China, Iran, and Iraq, but not Israel, nor North Korea and a very few other countries. So: all of the major powers have already, in advance, approved whatever the findings by the OPCW turn out to be. Those findings are expected to determine whether a chemical attack happened in Douma on 7 April 2018, and, if so, then perhaps what the specific banned chemical(s) was(were), but not necessarily who was responsible for it if it existed. For example, if the ‘rebels’ had stored some of their chemical weapons at that building and then Syria’s Government bombed that building, the OPCW might not be able to determine who is to blame, even if they do determine that there was a chemical attack and the chemical composition of it. In other words: science cannot necessarily answer all of the questions that might be legal-forensically necessary in order to determine guilt, if a crime did, in fact, occur, there.

If the investigation does find that a banned chemical was used and did cause injuries or fatalities, then there is the possibility that its findings will be consistent with the assertions by the U.S. and its allies who participated in the April 13th invasion. That would not necessarily justify the invasion, but it would prove the possibility that there had been no lying intent on the part of the U.S.-and-allied invaders on April 13th.

However, if the investigation does not find that a banned chemical was used in the Syrian Government’s bombing of that building, then incontrovertibly the U.S.-and-allied invasion was a criminal one under international laws, though there may be no international court that possesses the authority to try the case.

So: what is at stake here from the OPCW investigation is not only the international legitimacy of Syria’s Government, but the international legitimacy of the Governments that invaded it on April 13th. These are extremely high stakes, even if no court in the world will possess the authority to adjudicate the guilt — either if the U.S. and its allies lied, or if the Syrian Government lied.

For us historians, this is very important. And, for the general public, the significance goes much farther: to specific Governments, to their alleged news media, and to the question of: What does it even mean to say that a government is a “democracy” or a “dictatorship”? The findings from this investigation will reverberate far and wide, and long (if World War III doesn’t prevent any such findings at all).

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

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.

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

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MIRABILE DICTU: Jefrey Sachs opposes US policy in Syria—on MSNBC, no less.

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

By Addison dePitt

We must be living in the end times, an age of miracles and terrors and sundry unusual things. Consider the following, much of it improbable:

1. Jeffrey Sachs appears on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the channel a bastion of liberaloid/Deep State propaganda, to denounce US foreign policy on Syria, while also pointing out what is usually deleted in such exchanges, that this filthy ball of wax was first given the imperial imprimatur by the darling of clueless but recalcitrant liberals, Barack Obama.

Apparently Sachs, at one time a fierce evangelist for savage capitalism's "shock therapy" and all the rest of that bogus economic medicine, a sort of Friedmanite "Chicago Boy" redux, is still expiating his awful sins during the sacking and dismantling of the USSR in the 1990s, something that ruined an entire generation of Russians, shortened the life span of millions, and almost, just almost, destroyed Russia as a countervailing force to the depredations of the evil and ever bullying Anglozionist empire. Now at least he's appearing on visible mainstream media to denounce what is by any measure a colossally deranged policy, let alone cynical and corrupt to the nth degree, as befits the characters formulating it. We are talking about America's Middle East policy, of course.

2. Equally improbable and ironic, one of the chief interviewers, Mika Brzezinski, is the daughter of one of the great architects of an instance of uber malignant US foreign policy, Carter National Security Advisor and Polish aristocrat Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who conceived the notion of using muslim Takfiris as a proxy for imperialist ends, yea, the arming of crazy jihadists in Afghanistan (financed in part by the Saudis), including Osama bin Laden, just to give the Soviets "their own Vietnam." Anything to bloody the nose of those commies. Realpolitik writ large, I guess, eh?

Hanks and Roberts in Wilson's War.

Never mind that the Afghanistan government at the time, a communist government, was the first in ages to bring that country some measure of modernity, including literacy in the countryside, an egalitarian ethos and probity; and a firm commitment to the emancipation of women (something that bourgeois feminists, for all their posturing and pink hats, practically all upper middle class in the West, don't give a hoot about, Hillary proudly being one of them). The Kabul modernisers were intent on rectifying eons of barbaric medievalism. For anyone still believing the fairytale of America's goodness, it would seem like an easy choice. So who do you think we sided with? Well, with the fanatical obscurantists, the head choppers, that's who. We know how to pick'em. The people who routinely butchered (I'm being precise here) literacy teachers sent by Kabul, many being courageous women.

The clueless American public even celebrated this dastardly underhanded meddling, which eventually spawned al-Qaeda, and after further sociopathic US intrigues, ISIS, in a revolting film —a comedy no less—done with all the characteristic moral insouciance of imperial denizens crawling all over liberal Hollywood, Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks, to eternal shame, in the lead, along with blank brain Julia Roberts, for the requisite decoration. Readers may still be awed by Washington's metronomic ability to pick the rotten apples in any basket. But the formula is simple: We always pick our champions by class affinity (conservatives or reactionaries instinctively friendly to the US and its gang, and loyal to existing power structures; people who love tradition, no matter how rotten, and who do not mind having their country picked clean by foreign carpet baggers, usually lending a hand in the vulturing), and second, while the USSR was around, as a matter of fouling any project in which the USSR—the only rival superpower, might have a hand, regardless of whether it was good for the people or not. The people, need we remind you, do not count for the cynical rulers of the empire.

About the Author
A renegade economist, Addison dePitt likes to focus on the intersection of politics, culture and media.

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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