Iris Vander Pluym
Special Contributing Editor, Cultural & Political Affairs

Whoops! Sorry, were those your chaps?

Today’s report in Most US Citizens Have No Idea What Our Government Does Or Who It Serves (#muschniwogdowis) follows.

The United States violated its ceasefire commitments with Russia, flew four military aircraft and a drone out of Iraq and bombed the shit out of a fragile Syrian Arab Army position at Deir ez-Zor, killing over 60 soldiers and injuring more than 100 others. Earlier in the day, Syria announced the arrival at the base of 1,000 additional soldiers to help liberate the surrounding region from ISIS control. A statement from US Central Command said “U.S. surveillance had been ‘tracking’ an Islamic State fighting position ‘for a significant amount of time before the strike.’” [<- o.O] An anonymous US official from the Department of Defense said the US strike “appears to be an intelligence failure.”

Whoops?

150,000 civilians (still) live in the Deir ez-Zor region, which has been held under ISIS control. While the Syrians and Russians have been hitting ISIS targets in the region for some time, the US had done absolutely nothing about that until yesterday.

For a…slightly different view, let’s hear what Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin had to say:

The US’ sudden attempt to “help” the Syrian army fighting ISIS in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, which resulted in a strike that killed and injured dozens of soldiers, does not look like an honest mistake, Russia’s UN envoy told journalists at the UNSC meeting.

“It is highly suspicious that the United States chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

Churkin questioned why the US suddenly chose to “help” the Syrian army defend Deir ez-Zor after all these years, recalling how American forces just observed terrorists’ movements and did “nothing when ISIS advanced on Palmyra.”

“It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force,” Churkin added.

Regardless of whether the bombing was a deliberate act of provocation by the US (or factions therein) or a more traditional display of blundering Iraq-level incompetence—and barring a future whistleblower’s document leak I suspect we hapless peons will never really know the answer to that question—it is absolutely certain to stymie any potential progress toward peace.

If you have been reading or watching corporate media coverage of these events, please do yourself a favor and take the time to watch Vitaly Churkin’s statement and press conference in its entirety.

In particular, his calling out of the Washington Post editorial board (for this editorial, I think) is a thing of beauty, and he handily puts the blustering belligerence of US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Powers, into perspective. While we are on the topic of Ms Power’s speech, I also like this take  from Signs of the Times (SOTT) (Powers in bold):

Why are we having this meeting tonight? It is a diversion from what is happening on the ground. [SOTT: What’s happening on the ground is that the U.S. violated the ceasefire, provided air support for Daesh, massacred Syrian troops, and potentially spoiled any chance of a solution to the Syrian war.] If you don’t like what is happening on the ground then you distract. It is a magician’s trick… we encourage the Russian Federation to have emergency meetings with the Assad regime and deliver them to this deal. [SOTT: Talk about a magician’s trick! Power could slaughter a village of children, then turn and self-righteously blame the village for not providing clean water – when she was the one who poisoned the well. This woman is pathological.]

What Russia is alleging tonight is that somehow the United States is undermining the fighting against ISIL. [SOTT: That is exactly what is happening.] The Russian spokesperson even said that the United States might be complicit in this attack… [SOTT: You dropped the bombs, for God’s sake!] This is not a game. [SOTT: Unbelievable.]

The Syrian regime that bills itself as the fighter against ISIL let the group grow and grow. ISIL took root and prospered right next to the Assad regime. [SOTT: While they were already fighting a war against Western-trained terrorists in the west of the country, and while the U.S. sat back while Daesh expanded in Iraq and Syria. Remember, the U.S. watched Daesh take Palmyra – they sat back and let it happen. The Syrians can’t be blamed for that.]

Also for perspective, consider this map:

And for yet another perspective, consider political analyst Marwa Osman’s take:

In case you are unfamiliar with her, Osman is a PhD candidate and lecturer at Lebanese International University (LIU) in Beirut and an expert on Islamic movements and the Levant region. @ 2:00 she says [transcript mine]:

What happened today, it obviously is making the entire Middle East, especially—you should see the streets here in Beirut, not to mention what’s going on in Syria—people are furious. People are demanding the Syrian government to take action right away. This is unacceptable. This is even more risky than ISIS taking the area. Now ISIS has its own airforce to bomb for them areas, for them to go in and invade. Let us hear the spokesperson from the Washington White House telling us that oh, it was a mistake. Let us see what he has to say about this.

By all means, everyone: let’s keep getting our “news” from Western corporate media. All of it.

__________

Apropos of absolutely nothing, a bomb exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City last night, and another was found and disarmed nearby. Fortunately no one was killed, and all 29 victims who were injured have been released from hospitals according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Chelsea, New York City, September 17, 2016

Aleppo, Syria before attempted “regime change”

Aleppo, Syria after attempted “regime change”

Originally published at Perry Street Palace.

This is box title

Iris Vander Pluym is a writer, artist and activist based in New York City. A self-described “unapologetic, godless, feminist lefty,” she blogs at Perry Street Palace, is a regular columnist at TPJ Magazine, a contributor at Secular Woman, Worldwide Hippies/Citizen Journalists Exchange and Pharyngula, and has written professionally for Keyboard and Electronic Musician magazines (print editions). Indoctrinated with the notion that Nice Girls™ never talk about politics, sex or religion, it turns out these are pretty much the only subjects she ever has any interest in discussing. Follow Iris not being nice on Twitter @irisvanderpluym

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Moti Nissani, PhD
No Planet – No People

Combined flag of Anglosphere nations.

Part IV of: Why does the Invisible Government Continue to Grow in Strength?

We must admit to ourselves that there are truly evil geniuses out there, and in most cases these characters have taken control of the power structure. — Mike Krieger

The Controllers

Juan O’Gorman, Enemies of the Mexican People

This article takes if for granted that the five major countries of the Anglosphere—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US—are governed behind the scenes by a small group of people.

This group in turn shapes historical events, accounts for the near-uniformity of these five countries’ political developments, and enjoys partial or full control of most countries of the world. As far as we can guess, this group is comprised of a few banking families and their allies in the information, corporate, military, intelligence, and “religious” worlds. This group goes by such names as the deep state, invisible government, bankers, oligarchy, Bilderbergers, and Directors. In this posting, following Aldous Huxley, I shall refer to the members of this group as the Controllers.

What is it that the Controllers are after? Why aren’t they content with what they already have? The best guess is that they are just as sick as the fictional Eddorians:

While not essentially bloodthirsty—that is, not loving bloodshed for its own sweet sake—they were no more averse to blood-letting than they were in favor of it. Any amount of killing which would or which might advance an Eddorian toward his goal was commendable; useless slaughter was frowned upon, not because it was slaughter, but because it was useless—and hence inefficient. And, instead of the multiplicity of goals sought by the various entities of any race of Civilization, each and every Eddorian had only one. The same one: power. Power! P-O-W-E-R!! (Doc Smith, Interplanetary, 1948)

David Rockefeller

The Mush-for-Brains Misconception

Most independent analysts take a dim view of the Controllers’ intelligence. Mao Zedong, for instance, referred to the USA as a paper tiger.

In a recent speech—one of his most outspoken yet—President Putin said:

“I am under the impression that our counterparts [read: America’s Controllers] have mush [porridge] for brains. They really have no idea what is going on in Syria and what they are trying to achieve.”

In other words, the people controlling the USA are poor strategists: They are stupid, do not understand what’s going on, and don’t have clear goals.

In his wonderful China Rising, Jeff Brown writes:

“Baba Beijing and the Chinese think in terms of decades and centuries. Americans can’t think past the 24-hour propaganda spin and quarterly stock reports.”

Likewise, A. Raevsky (“Saker”) believes that the Western leadership is clueless, lacking political vision and professionalism. The American empire is weak and delusional. Echoing Khruschev’s famous reply to Mao, “yes, a paper tiger, but with nuclear teeth,” Raevsky feels that the Russians are only worried about the West because it “does not take a great deal of intelligence to trigger a nuclear war.”

Dmitri Orlov et al. likewise talk about “a string of foreign policy and military disasters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the Ukraine.”

A few more examples of this fundamental misperception appear below, in the Middle East section.

_________

Origins of the Mush-for-Brains Misconception

Alexander Zinoviev’s Self-Portrait: Thinking is Painful.

We shall shortly see that the Controllers have, over the past three centuries or so, made enormous strides: they have accumulated power and riches at a steady pace. This is nothing new. Taylor Caldwell, a novelist, saw this worrisome and astounding progress already in 1972:

“[The men of the Invisible Government] would continue to grow in strength, until they had the whole silly world, the whole credulous world, the whole ingenuous world, in their hands. Anyone who would challenge them, attempt to expose them, show them unconcealed and naked, would be murdered, laughed at, called mad, ignored, or denounced as a fantasy-weaver.”

Why would so many knowledgeable people ignore such a striking and obvious historical record? Let me offer two overlapping speculations.

One possibility involves a failure to appreciate the difference between wisdom and cleverness. The Controllers are indeed utterly clueless about the true meaning of our brief journey on earth. Anton Chekhov said:

“In reality, everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.”

The Controllers are manifestly oblivious to these higher aims. Subscribers to the mush-for-brains view confuse this profound lack of wisdom with stupidity.

This confusion is aided in turn by the seeming contradiction between the Controllers’ avowed and real goals. If you take them at their word, they are indeed idiots. If, on the other hand, you judge the success of their actions by their hidden agenda, they are evil geniuses.

_________

Why is this Mush-for-Brains Controversy Important?

Sun Tzu famously said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” To retain their independence, Russians, Chinese, and revolutionaries the world over must indeed know their enemy. And they certainly must know whether they are confronting imbeciles or Machiavellians.

_________

The Historical Record

The key to the proper assessment of the Controllers is their achievements. Are they steadily nearing the goal they set for themselves (enslaving humanity)? Who is gaining ground, the Controllers or the rest of us?

The historical record, as Caldwell so clearly saw, is unequivocally in favor of the evil geniuses view. One could fill an entire Kindle with examples, but here a few scattered fragments should be enough to drive the point home.

_________

The Domination of Europe

The vicious brilliance of the Controllers at times defies belief. Thanks to bribes, assassinations, the recent variation of the Gladio conspiracy, extensive wiretapping and blackmail of who’s who in Europe, economic warfare (e.g., the FIFA “scandal,” the VW “scandal”), and control of the banks, corporations, media, and intelligence services of Western and central Europe, this continent is now a submissive colony of the USA. In the words of one historian, “the level of abjection passes belief.”

Likewise, the level of strategic planning needed to bring this abjection about, to force once-independent countries like Germany and France to betray the interests of their people in the service of the Controllers’ agenda, also defies belief.

_________

Latin America

As we speak, the Controllers are brilliantly undermining the progressive governments of Latin America, once more turning this entire area into their back yard. Thus, “a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégés of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the ‘new managers’ – of Wall Street.”

The most brilliant move involves Argentina and Brazil, countries who maintained friendly relations with Russia and China and pursued, now and then, independent policies that served the interests of their own people. In Brazil, especially,

“A phony political power grab by Congressional opportunists ousted elected President Dilma Rousseff. She was replaced by a Washington approved serial swindler and notorious bribe taker, Michel Temer.

“The new economic managers were predictably controlled by Wall Street, World Bank and IMF bankers. They rushed measures to slash wages, pensions and other social expenditures, to lower business taxes and privatize the most lucrative public enterprises in transport, infrastructure, landholdings , oil and scores of other activities.

“Even as the prostitute press lauded Brazil’s new managers’, prosecutors and judges arrested three newly appointed cabinet ministers for fraud and money laundering. ‘President’ Temer is next in line for prosecution for his role in the mega Petrobras oil contracts scandal for bribes and payola.

“The economic agenda by the new managers are not designed to attract new productive investments. Most inflows are short-term speculative ventures. Markets, especially, in commodities, show no upward growth, much to the chagrin of the free market technocrats. Industry and commerce are depressed as a result of the decline in consumer credit, employment and public spending induced by ‘the managers’ austerity policies.

“Even as the US and Europe embrace free market austerity, it evokes a continent wide revolt. Nevertheless Latin America’s wave of vassal regimes, remain deeply embedded in decimating the welfare state and pillaging public treasuries led by a narrow elite of bankers and serial swindlers.”

The remaining bastions of semi-independence—Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba—are obviously being targeted now by the “witless” Controllers—while the Russians and Chinese are standing by, doing next to nothing.

China in particular, offers a puzzling example of shortsightedness. China is sitting on trillions of digital dollars that it is surely going to lose. Yet, it doesn’t occur to Xi and his colleagues to counter American aggression by creating their own version of the CIA, NGOs, and regime change outfits. It doesn’t even occur to them to give Venezuela an outright gift of at least $50,000,000,000, to help it ride the current American-engineered maneuvers and especially the masterstroke of manipulating the price of petrol downwards. China faces a far greater peril now than the Controllers-imposed opium addiction, and yet it nickel-and-dimes its few remaining potential allies.

_________

The Middle East

From its inception, America’s modeled itself after the vicious Roman Empire, not the far more civilized Democratic Athens or the Iroquois Confederation. Like the Americans, the Romans endlessly bragged about bringing peace to the world. The reality was diametrically opposite, as one eloquent victim explained: “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In the Middle East, one independent, secular, country after another has come under American control. The countries whose leaders sought an independent path suffered genocide, neo-colonialism, devastating wars, sectarian and ethnic conflicts where hardly any existed before, millions of refugees, fragmentation, environmental contamination, and as a consequence, higher cancer, mutation, and birth malformation rates.

Most independent analysts feel that America (the Controllers’ chief enforcer of military and economic conquests) is failing in the Middle East. These analysts seem to believe American politicians and presstitutes when they say that their main goal is to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Yemen (the Americans of course prefer to keep silent about the vicious dictatorships of their Wahhabi friends). These analysts, as we have seen, believe the politicians when they say that their hearts go out to the long-suffering Arabs, that they really care about the ongoing genocides of Christians and everyone else.

In a typical naïve outburst, for instance, a Georgetown University professor asks: “Why did the United States fail in its war on Iraq?”Eric Margolis calls the Iraq War “the worst disaster for the United States since Vietnam.” Paul Craig Roberts sees America’s policies in the Middle East as a failure.

These astute commentators see the American-created desert, the devastation, the hate that America incurred in the Middle East and elsewhere, and they conclude that these policies have been a failure. But the consistent pattern of “failures” suggests that these “failures” are not an unintended consequence caused by the pursuit of other, loftier, goals. Rather, the “failures,” future conflicts, and chaos themselves are the goal.

Sharmine Narwani describes the real goals of the Controllers:

“A 2006 State Department cable that bemoans Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strengthened position in Syria outlines actionable plans to sow discord within the state, with the goal of disrupting Syrian ties with Iran. The theme? ‘Exploiting’ all ‘vulnerabilities’ [and suggesting, among other things, playing] ‘on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.

“In 2013, influential former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger openly advocated redrawn borders along sectarian, ethnic, tribal or national lines that will shrink the political/military reach of key Arab states and enable the west to reassert its rapidly-diminishing control over the region.”

As usual, Israeli strategists are more outspoken than their American counterparts. By 1982, they had already spelled out its goal of redrawing

“the Mideast into small warring cantons that would never again be able to threaten the Jewish state’s regional primacy. Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.”

Thirty years later, that nightmare describes the world. Narawani warns:

“Arabs and Muslims need to start becoming keenly aware of this ‘small state’ third option, else they will fall into the dangerous trap of being distracted by detail while larger games carve up their nations and plunge them into perpetual conflict.”

Similarly, Russia, China, and humanitarians everywhere must become keenly aware that the Controllers are international grandmasters. Given the comparative naiveté of the people who oppose them, they almost always win.

_________

Former Members of the Warsaw Pact 

The “featherheaded” Controllers now manage, impoverish, and run roughshod over many former countries that had been part of the Russian alliance. Who would have thought, just 30 years ago, that the Americans would one day find a peaceful way of placing nuclear delivery vehicles in countries like Romania and Poland? Who would have predicted that they would ever again place German soldiers 100 miles from St. Petersburg?

_________

Other Nations

The Controllers manage most of the world’s countries. Their armies conquered Japan, Germany, and Italy—and never left. They stole parts of Mexico and Colombia, and turned most of Latin America into subservient, violence-ridden, colonies. Again and again, they assassinated patriotic leaders and replaced them with quislings willing to enrich themselves by serving their foreign masters. No people is safe from their regime change operations (including the American people), and no country—even traditional safe haven Switzerland—is safe from their financial blackmail.

_________

The Controllers’ Brilliant War on their Own People

Sadly, owing in part to the 1990s manufactured collapse of the USSR, America’s Controllers have acquired vastly more power and riches, while gradually relegating the American Constitution to a meaningless piece of paper (see Part I of this series). They, assassinated or brutally tortured their real and imaginary opponents, stole so much from so many to the point that America’s 20 wealthiest people now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, neglected America’s infrastructure, elevated self-serving mendacity to an art form, conducted a phony war on drugs, used these very drugs and an utterly broken justice system to turn the USA into an incarceration nation in which jailers enjoy a de facto license to kill, destroyed American industry, and converted a once-rich country to the “most bankrupt nation in history.”

Take as just one example the so-called bailout of Western banks. In reality, that was the biggest transfers of money (and hence power) in history—from the vast majority of the peoples of these countries to the Controllers.

The criminals who planned the 2008 crisis, the criminals who are deliberately undermining the world’s economies, were paid handsomely for their misdeeds. 

The money the bankers got, had Western governments chose to nationalize these banks instead of giving them the people’s money, could have worked miracles in improving the economic situation of the world’s people.

I must confess that I wouldn’t have thought it possible that anyone could perform such astounding hat tricks as “bailouts” and not have to contend with a revolution the following day. The Controllers had a deeper understanding of the power of propaganda and human nature.

_________

The 1990s Neo-Colonization of Russia and Its Aftermath: Four Trojan Horses

Throughout the 1980s, I studied the Russian-American standoff. And yet I failed to predict Russian naiveté, decency, inferiority complex, and the enormous damage inflicted on the Russian psyche by Stalin. I still find it hard to believe that the “dumb” Controllers were able, in the 1990s, to achieve the de facto occupation of Russia, sinking that once-powerful country into chaos, poverty, criminality, corruption, assassinations, organized crime activities, and social discord. Washington and its quislings were running—and deliberately ruining—the country.

Gratefully, the Americans eventually left—but only after leaving four Trojan horses behind.

_________

Trojan Horse #1: Western-Style “Democracy”

Instead of establishing real democracy, the controllers re-created Russia in their “democratic” image. Even at the best of times, such “democracies” do not represent the interests of ordinary people. Sooner or later, they are doomed to be taken over by psychopaths.

_________

Trojan Horse #2: Oligarchs and the Russian Economy

Another brilliant move on the part of the Controllers was the patronage and creation—from thin air—of the scourge of the Russian oligarchs. These “shysters basically stole Russia’s most valuable companies in the 90s, minting a small handful of mega-billionaires, while the rest of the country ate”—and is still eating—dirt. Very little has so far been done “to strip said shysters of their ill-gotten gains, and redistribute shares to the people.” As a result, unlike the much-maligned Soviet Union, Russia is plagued by vast income inequalities, poverty for the majority, inequality before the law, and unaffordable housing.

These oligarchs, “are still in full control of the Russian financial and banking sector, of all the key economic ministries and government positions, they control the Russian Central Bank and they are, by far, the single biggest threat to the rule of Putin and . . . to the Russian people and Russia as a whole.” Moreover, these oligarchs “connive to make Russia join the West as a junior partner.

Besides controlling the economy, the oligarchs corrupt everything they touch and provide a demoralizing proof that in Russia—as in the West—crime pays.

_________

Trojan Horse #3: Russia’s Central Bank and Constitution

It is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the following question to the wealth and liberty of a nation: Is its central bank private or public?

Here are two quotes (many more are available here), both underscoring the import of this question.

“The issue which has swept down the centuries, and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.”—John Acton (1834-1902)

The second quote provided a dire warning to the American people from the very start. William Pitt, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said of the inauguration of the first privately-owned central bank of the United States under Alexander Hamilton:

“Let the American people go into their debt-funding schemes and banking systems, and from that hour their boasted independence will be a mere phantom.”

This is exactly what the Controllers accomplished, taking control of Russia’s Central bank. From that point to the present day, Russia’s boasted independence has been a mere phantom.

Controllers bearing gifts: The Central Bank of Russia

The most meticulous documentation of this paradoxical reality known to me comes from historian Nikolay Starikov’s Rouble Nationalization (you can read a book review here or freely download the entire English translation of the book here):

“The structure of today’s world is a financial one par excellence. Today’s chains consist not of iron and shackles, but of figures, currencies and debts. That’s why the road to freedom for Russia, as strange as it may seem, lies in the financial sphere. Today we are being held back from the progress at our most painful point—our rouble… Our rouble, the Russian currency unit, is—to put it delicately—in a way, not quite ours. And this situ­ation is the most serious obstacle to our country’s development. . . .

“Let us start with the simplest question—who issues roubles? This is easy—the Central Bank of Russia, also known as the Bank of Russia, has the monopoly on issuing the Russian national currency.

“‘Article 6. The Bank of Russia is authorized to file suits in courts in ac­cordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. The Bank of Russia is entitled to appeal to international courts, courts of foreign countries and courts of arbitration for protection of its rights. . . .

“The Russian economy does not have as much money as required for its proper operation but equal to the amount of dollars in the reserves of the Central Bank. The amount of roubles that can be issued depends of the amount of dollars Russia received for its oil and gas. That means that the whole Russian economy is artificially put in direct correlation with the export of natural resources. This is why a drop in oil prices causes a collapse of everything and everywhere. . . .

“An idea of a bank independent from the state was brought into the Soviet Union as a Trojan horse—through ‘advisors’, through those who had practical trainings at Columbia University, those who were recruited or simply betrayed their country . . .

“Among other things, it contains such amusing details as article 7: ‘Drafts of federal law and regulatory documents of the federal bodies of executive power concerning duties of the Bank of Russia and its performance shall be submitted to the Bank of Russia for approval.’ If you want to dismiss bankers through making amendments to the legislation—kindly submit the draft of the bill to them in advance. Otherwise, they might as well sue you for your legal mayhem in a court of Delaware . . .

“The second security level is the Constitution, as the ‘reformers’ shoved some words on the Central Bank and its status even into the Constitution. Article 75 (points 1 and 2) says that ‘the currency of the Russian Federation is the rouble’, and ‘issuing of money shall only be done by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’, that ‘it performs independently from any other governing bodies.’ If you want to be surprised—have a look at Soviet Constitutions. Read the Constitution of the USA. You will find no mention of a bank that issues money independently anywhere, because such articles should not be a part of the main law of the country. What body issues the currency is a technical question, it is not fundamental for the country and its people. For the people it is not very significant, but it is a key issue for enslaving the country. That is why it was hastily dragged into the Constitution. And now this technical detail is there next to the fundamental rights of Russian citizens.”

Western control by proxy of Russian banking, finance, and the economy as a whole, has yet another sinister aspect. Prof. Michael Hudson and others underscore the fact that the USA has consistent, massive, balance of payment deficits with such countries as Russia, China, and Japan. Financialized and deindustrialized America buys real goods abroad and pays by running its printing press. Consequently, such countries accumulate the digital equivalents of billions or trillions of dollars.

They then use a good part of this money to buy U.S. treasury bonds. The net result of this convoluted, scarcely credible, process is straightforward: By financing the U.S. military and economy, these countries empower their own oppressors.

That is then one other legacy of the Controllers: They created a situation whereby Russia, while fighting for its very survival, finances its own military encirclement and the ongoing attacks on its economy and currency. Thanks to the powerful fifth column and alien constitution the Controllers bequeathed, Russia is “economically enslaved to the United States.”

Can witless people plan and execute such a coup?

_________

Trojan Horse #4: Information

Inside Russia too, the Controllers left behind another curious legacy: Hostile foreigners and their agents indirectly own some mainstream Russian media. And state-owned, independent, and private media are still afraid to tell the people of Russia and the world ugly truths about the West, still trying to curry favor with Washington and its Controllers, still often take the Controllers and their vassals at Langley and Washington at their word.

_________

Parting Words

The Controllers have been trying to subjugate Russia, its vast resources, and educated and creative people, for centuries. They tried direct or proxy wars, and so far failed. They tried nuclear brinkmanship, and they failed. They tried sleight of hand in the 1990s—and almost succeeded. They are resorting to blood-curdling brinkmanship now, and it remains to be seen whether this will lead to the conquest of Russia, its annihilation, or the destruction of humanity.

They are now resorting to military intimidation and economic warfare. They came close several times to turning Russia and China into vassal states, and they are now pursuing that goal, full steam.

They hope that one day soon they will have reached at long last their vision of the future: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

The Controllers are engaged in a cross-generational undertaking. They are closest now to achieving their dream than any other empire in history has ever been. They could be the brightest bunch of psychopaths that ever lorded over humanity. If Russia, China, and revolutionaries everywhere wish to prevail, they must never underestimate their opponents. As well, they must level the intellectual playing field.

Moti Nissani

is an organic farmer (in Argentina), a former university professor (in the USA), a jack of many trades, and the compiler of  “ A Revolutionary’s Toolkit.”.

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Politics for the People

Why US Airstrikes Won’t Defeat ISIS – TRNN

Everyone seems to have a theory on how to obliterate ISIS, or ‘Daesh’. However, two points are rarely raised: one, concerning the origins of the group and the second, on whether there are genuine intentions to defeat it, in the first place.

We must boldly address the first to unravel the enigma behind the rise and growth of ‘Daesh’ – otherwise, how else can the group be dismantled.

We must contend with the second point before engaging in superfluous discussions about the most appropriate war strategy – that if war is, at all, the answer.

The questions are quite urgent yet, somehow, they are frequently overlooked, glossed over through some disingenuous logic or the blame is always placed somewhere else.

Now that the Americans have launched yet another aerial war against Libya, purportedly to target ‘Daesh’ positions there, the discussion is being carefully geared towards how far the US must go to defeat the militant group?

In fact, “can airstrikes alone win a war without ‘boots on the ground’?” has morphed, somehow, to become the crux of the matter, which has engaged a large number of intellectuals on both sides of the debate.

US media gurus, split between two equally war-mongering parties, love to jump at such opportunities to discredit one another, as if waging wars in other countries is an exclusively local American affair.

Days are long gone when the US labored to establish coalitions to wage war, as it did in Kuwait and Iraq in 1990-91 and, to a lesser extent, again, in Iraq in 2003. Now, wars are carried out as a matter of course. Many Americans seen to be unware, or oblivious to the fact, that their country is actually fighting wars on several fronts, and is circuitously involved in others.

With multiple war fronts and conflicts fermenting all around, many are becoming desensitized. Americans particularly have, sadly, swallowed the serum of perpetual war, to the extent that they rarely mobilize in any serious way against it.

In other words, a state of war has become the status quo.

Although the US Administration of President Barack Obama has killed thousands, the majority of whom were civilians, there is no uproar nor mass protests. Aside from the fact that the Obama brand was fashioned to appear as the peaceable contrast to warmongering George W. Bush, there has been no serious change in US foreign policies in the Middle East in any way that could suggest that one president is ‘better’ than the other.

Obama has simply continued the legacy of his predecessor, unhindered. The primary change that has occurred is tactical: instead of resorting to massive troops’ buildup on the ground with an assignment to topple governments, Obama has used airstrikes to target whoever is perceived to be the enemy, while investing in whoever he deemed ‘moderate’ enough to finish the job.

Like Bush’s preemptive ‘war on terror’, Obama’s doctrine has been equally disastrous.

Obama’s wars were designed to produce little or no American casualties, since they were almost entirely conducted from the air and via unmanned drones operated by remote control, sometimes thousands of miles way. That approach proved less taxing, politically. However, it worsened the situation on the ground, and instead of ending war, it expanded it.

While Bush’s invasion of Iraq revived al-Qaeda and brought it to the heart of the region, Obama’s aerial wars forced al-Qaeda to regroup, employing a different strategy. It rebranded itself, from militant cells to a ‘state’, sought swift territorial expansion, used guerrilla warfare when facing an organized army or is bombed from the sky, and carried out suicide bombings throughout the world to break the morale of its enemies and to serve its propaganda efforts aimed at keeping the recruits coming.

Considering that enemies of ‘Daesh’ are themselves enemies of one another, the group is assured that its existence, at least for the foreseeable future, is tenable.

The truth is that ‘Daesh’ thrives on military intervention because it was born from previous military interventions. It is expanding because its enemies are not in unison, as each is serving agendas that are rarely concerned with ending war, but rather seeing war as an opportunity to realize political gains.

With this logic in mind, one cannot expect the US ‘Operation Odyssey Lightning’, which officially began on August 1 in Libya, to achieve any results that could end up in stabilizing the country.

How could such ‘stability’ be projected, if it were not the US and other NATO members’ war on Libya in 2011 that has largely dismembered a once rich and relatively stable Arab country? Indeed, it was the vacuum left by subsequent conflicts that invited ‘Daesh’ to Sirte and other areas. Now, the US – and other western powers, led by the French – are applying unwinnable war tactics to stave off a messy crisis they had created themselves when they waged an earlier war.

Even if ‘Daesh’ is driven out of Sirte, it will find some other unstable environment elsewhere where it will spawn and wreak havoc. Sirte, in turn, will, likely, fall back into a state of bedlam where various militias, many of whom were armed by NATO in the first place, turn their guns against each other.

Without a whole new approach to the problem, the conflicts will certainly keep multiplying.

According to airwars.org, which keeps track of the war on ‘Daesh’, 14,405 coalition airstrikes against the group have been carried out in Iraq and Syria through 735 days of a relentless campaign. An estimated 52,300 bombs and missiles were dropped, although the number must be much higher, since there are numerous strikes that are never claimed by any party, thus are not officially recorded, as such.

This, of course, does not take into account Russia’s own aerial bombardment, or any party that is not officially part of the Western coalition.

But what good did this do, aside from killing many civilians, destroying massive infrastructure and spreading ‘Daesh’ further into the abyss of other vulnerable Middle East and North African spots?

There are few voices in the US media and government that seem serious about changing the perspective completely on the Bush-Obama war on terror. Sensible calls by the likes of Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for President, that the root causes of terror must be addressed to end terrorism, rarely register in the halls of US government and Congress.

In January, the cost of the war on ‘Daesh’, as estimated by US Defense Department data has jumped by $2 million dollars a day to a total of $11 million. “The air war has cost the US about $5.5 billion total since it began in August 2014,” Business Insider reported. The escalation in Libya is likely to produce new, more staggering numbers soon.

Expectedly, this is a great time for business for those who benefit from war. Concurrently, the cycle of war and violence is feeding on itself with no end in sight.

“Hope in aerial bombardment as the prophylactic for peace is absurd,” Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, wrote recently about the futility of airstrike wars.

“It has given us instability and chaos. Other roads have to be opened. Other paths ceded.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ramzy Baroud, PhD

Has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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John Chuckman, Distinguished Collaborator

You just can’t start patriotism too young.

I read a column recently, and it was imbued with hopeful thinking about America’s political establishment dealing with its constituents concerning the now increasing threat of nuclear catastrophe.

The author said the piece was intended as “Drano” to clear the political pipes, but I am afraid that much as I sometimes enjoy the same author’s pieces, this one for me had to be characterized as illusion. It may have a lot to do with the author not being a native of the United States, and I do think my background in that country and having studied its history removes any possibility of illusion ever seriously taking hold.

When did America’s establishment ever discuss, in elections or at other times, issues of war and peace for the people’s understanding and consent?

Virtually never.

There was no mandate for Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or a dozen other conflicts.

Of course, once a war gets going, there is a tendency for Americans to close ranks with flags and ribbons and slogans such as “Support our troops” and “Love it or leave it.”

The senior leaders know this psychological pattern, and they count on it, every time.

The fundamental problem in America’s government is an elaborate political structure much resembling democracy but with actual rule by a powerful establishment and a set of special interests – all supported by a monstrous security apparatus and a huge, lumbering military, which wouldn’t even know what to do with itself in peace.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any apparent solution to this horrible political reality, and, while once it affected primarily Americans themselves, today it affects the planet.

There is an intense new element that has been added to America’s governing establishment: the drive of the neo-cons for American supremacy everywhere, for complete global dominance, and it is something which is frighteningly similar to past drives by fascist governments which brought only human misery on a vast scale.

The neo-cons’ underlying motive, I believe, is absolute security for America’s colony in the Middle East, Israel – put another way, their concern is for Israel’s hegemony over its entire region with no room for anyone else to act in their own interests. It is only if the United States is deeply engaged all over the planet that Israel can constantly benefit from its strange relationship with America.

It did not require the neo-cons to interest America’s establishment with interfering in other people’s affairs. America has a long history of doing so, stretching back to the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the brazen seizure of Hawaii from its people and going right up to the pointless War in Vietnam and Cambodia in the hope of keeping the Pacific Ocean effectively an American lake. But the neo-cons have added a new force, a new impulse to something which would be better left alone, and they are very influential in American affairs.

Ordinary Americans are not interested in world affairs, and there is a great deal of evidence to support that statement. American Imperialists of earlier times disparaged this tendency to just want peace at home with the pejorative name, isolationism, and avoiding isolationism became an excuse for a whole series of wars and interventions.

So, Americans today cannot be allowed to fall back into their natural tendency of not caring. Thus we have the drive of the neo-cons and, tragically, thus we have America being driven into direct confrontation with Russia. And with China, too, of course, but Russia is my focus since Russia is the only country in the world literally capable of obliterating the United States. There is unquestionably a sense here of Rome wanting to go after Carthage, although cavalry, swords, spears, and catapults no longer can settle such conflicts.

The situation is compounded by the American establishment’s dawning realization that its days of largely unquestioned supremacy in the world are fading into memory, as other countries grow and develop and have important interests in world affairs. In many respects, it has been a long downhill slide for the average American since the economic heyday of the 1950s. Decline in real incomes, decline in good job opportunities at home, the export of American industries abroad to areas of less costly labor, and the virtual collapse of American towns and cities in many places, Detroit being perhaps the most sorrowful case of many – all these are evident year-in and year-out.

I do think the American establishment simply does not know how to handle its role in a brave new world, but do something it clearly thinks it must, and that is an extremely dangerous state of mind. It is armed with vast armies and terrible weapons so that it retains a sense of being able to act in some way to permanently reclaim its place, an illusion if ever there was one.

We know from scholars of the past the role that the mere existence of terrible military power can play in disaster. Huge standing armies were one of the major underlying causes of the First World War, a conflict in which twenty millions perished. Germany repeated the effort with Hitler’s government working tirelessly to create what was to become the finest and most advanced army the world had ever seen until that time, but it, too, ended in disaster, and of even greater proportions. America has not discovered the secret to making itself invulnerable, although I fear that its establishment believes that it can do so, and that represents the most dangerous possible thinking.

Contrary to political speeches, America’s establishment has never shown great concern over the welfare of ordinary Americans, and today its lack of concern is almost palpable. Washington’s white-maned, over-fed, crinkly-faced Senators spend virtually every ounce of effort in two activities: raising funds from special interests for re-election (estimated at two-thirds of an average Senator’s time) and conspiring on how to keep America dominant in the world. Anything else is just piffle. America’s unique place in the world of 1950 took care of ordinary Americans, not any effort by government. Again, the utter contempt for ordinary Americans perhaps offers a dark element in the thinking of America’s establishment when it comes to possible nuclear war.

Russia is not, of course, a direct threat to neo-con interests, except when it comes to matters like Syria, a deliberately-engineered horror to bring down the last independent-minded leader in the Middle East and to smash and Balkanize his country, parts of which, Israel has always lusted after in its vision of Greater Israel. The coup in Ukraine, which borders along a great stretch of Russia, represented a direct challenge to Russia’s security, offering a place ultimately to be filled with hostile forces and missiles and American advisors – all of which was expected to silence Russia’s independent voice in the world and its ability to in any way thwart neo-con adventures, if not, in the longer-range, savage dreams of some, to provide a platform for the ultimate destruction or overthrow of Russia herself.

Russia’s effective countering with skillful moves in its own interests both in Syria and Ukraine has driven some of America’s establishment to the edge of madness, and that madness is what we see and hear in Europe. Europe is once again being turned into a vast armed camp, and it is now seething with anti-Russian rhetoric, threats, and activities such as huge war games, the largest of which occurred around the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the single most destructive event in all of human history.

America has created deliberately a situation almost as dangerous as the days of the Cuban missile crisis, which itself arose from the American establishment’s belief that it had every right to interfere in Cuba’s affairs.

We have another element, now compounding the danger, in a far greater variety and level of sophistication of weapons, including some nuclear weapons whose controlled yields are regarded by America’s military as being perhaps “usable” in a theater like Europe. The installation of anti-missile systems near Russia is very much part of this threat since these systems not only are intended to neutralize Russia’s capacity for response to a sudden, massive attack but to provide a cover for future covert, easily-done substitution of other kinds of missiles into the launchers, faster-arriving, nuclear-armed missiles which would indeed be an element in such an attack.

Russia, a country twice invaded with all the might of Germany and before that by Napoleon’s Grande Armeé, cannot be expected just to sit and do nothing. It won’t. It cannot.

The world must not forget that America’s military, a number of times in the past, created complete plans for a massive, surprise nuclear attack on what was then the Soviet Union, the last of which I am aware was in the early 1960s, and it was presented as being feasible to President Kennedy, who is said to have left the Pentagon briefing sick to his stomach.

Nuclear war, just as with any other kind of war, can happen almost by accident through blunders and careless acts and overly-aggressive postures. Just let the blood of two sides get up enough, and an utter disaster could quickly overtake us. Constantly decreasing the possibilities for accidents and misunderstandings is a prime responsibility of every major world leader, and right now the United States is pretty close to having completely abdicated its responsibility.

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Felicity Arbuthnot
Warrior for Peace and Justice

Lessons From The Shadows of Hiroshima ft. Christianus.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” (J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb”, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, New Mexico, 16th July 1945.)

When Paul Tibbets was thirteen years old he flew a bi-plane over Florida’s Miami Beach dropping a promotional cargo of Babe Ruth Candy Bars directly on to the promotional target area, in an advertising stunt. It was his first solo flight and: “From that moment he became hooked on flying.”

He became a test pilot and: “one of the first Americans to fly in world War Two.” Seventeen years later he had graduated from dropping Candy Bars to dropping the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Thirty years later, the now retired Brigadier-General Paul Warfield Tibbets told authors Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, for their minutely detailed and definitive book (1) on one of the world’s greatest crimes, of the background to the venture. Most would surely conclude it was a criminal project from the start, on every level.

Tibbets told the authors:

“I got called on this bomb job … I was told I was going to destroy one city with one bomb. That was quite a thought … We had, working in my organization, a murderer, three men guilty of manslaughter and several felons; all of them had escaped from prison.

“The murderer was serving life; the manslaughter guys were doing ten to fifteen years; the felons three to five. After escaping they had enlisted under false names. They were all skilled technicians … They were all good, real good at their jobs and we needed ‘em. We told them that if they gave us no trouble, they would have no trouble from us.

“After it was over, we called each of them in and handed them their dossiers and a box of matches and said ‘Go burn ‘em.’ You see, I was not running a police department, I was running an outfit that was unique.”

The crime which the “oufit” committed was also unique, making the odd murder, manslaughter or felony on home soil pale in to insignificance in comparison.

In Hiroshima, a millisecond after 8.16 a.m., on 6th August 1945, the temperature at the core of the hundreds of feet wide fireball reached 50,000,000 degrees. Flesh burned two miles distant from it’s outer parameters.

80,000 people were killed or mortally injured instantly. The main area targeted was “the city’s principal residential, commercial and military quarters.”

The entrance to the Shima Clinic was flanked by great stone columns – “They were rammed straight down in to the ground.” The building was destroyed: “The occupants were vapourised.”

Just three of the city’s fifty five hospitals remained usable, one hundred and eighty of Hiroshima’s two hundred doctors were dead or injured and 1,654 of 1,780 nurses.

Sixty two thousand buildings were destroyed as all utilities and transportation systems. Just sixteen fire fighting vehicles remained workable.

People standing, walking, the schoolgirls manning the communications centre in Hiroshima Castle and ninety percent of the castle’s occupants, including American prisoners of war, were also vapourised. Gives a whole new meaning to the US military’s much vaunted “No soldier left behind.”

“The radiant heat set alight Radio Hiroshima, burnt out the tramcars, trucks, railway rolling stock.

“Stone walls, steel doors and asphalt pavement glowed red hot.” Clothing fused to skin. “More than a mile from the epicenter” mens’ caps fused to their scalps, womens’ kimonos to their bodies and childrens’ socks to their legs. All the above decimations happened in the time a crew member of the US bomber, “Enola Gay”, took to blink from the flash behind his goggles. What he saw when he opened them and looked down was, he said : “a peep in to hell.”

At home base, as Hiroshima was incinerated, a party was being prepared to welcome the arsonists. ”The biggest blow out” with free beer, all star soft ball game, a jitter bug contest, prizes, star attractions, a movie and the cooks working overtime to prepare a sumptuous fare.

Hiroshima’s destruction had a uranium-based detonation. Three days later on 9th August, Nagasaki was destroyed by a plutonium-based detonation to ascertain which would be the most “effective” in the new nuclear age warfare.

Not even a nod or thought had been given to the Hague Convention which had very specific legal guidelines to protection of civilians in war. One might speculate that Hiroshima also vapourised any pretention of such considerations for all time, in spite the subsequent Geneva Convention and it’s additional protocols.

In May this year, President Obama visited Hiroshima, he said (2): “Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

“Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.

“Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”

Obama ended his Hiroshima address with: “Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.”

For a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and a constitutional law expert, his words are especially cheap. The man who began his Presidency with a public commitment to build a nuclear weapons free world (speech in Czech Republic, 5th April 2009) has, mind bendingly, committed to a thirty year, one Trillion $ nuclear arsenal upgrade. (3)

The epitaph at Hiroshima was written by Tadayoshi Saika, Professor of English Literature at Hiroshima University. He also provided the English translation: “Let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil.”

On November 3, 1983, an explanation plaque in English was added in order to convey Professor Saika’s intent that “we” refers to “all humanity”, not specifically the Japanese or Americans, and that the “error” is the “evil of war”:

“The inscription on the front panel offers a prayer for the peaceful repose of the victims and a pledge on behalf of all humanity never to repeat the evil of war. It expresses the spirit of Hiroshima – enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony … and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace.” (Wikipedia.)

Did President Obama have a twinge of conscience as he read it? Or did he even bother? He is surely amongst the most unworthy of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. And will the rest of the world heed the words, the pledge and the spirit, before it is too late?

1. Ruin From The Air, The Atomic Mission to Hiroshima: ISBN 0-586-06705-1
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/asia/text-of-president-obamas-speech-in-hiroshima-japan.html?_r=0
3. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162279

About the author

Paying the Price — Killing the Children of Iraq, which investigated the devastating effect of United Nations sanctions on people of Iraq.^[1]   Ms. Arbuthnot is a dedicated pacificist, and her work proves the adage that "the pen is mightier than the sword."

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