Witnesses to History
CALEB T. MAUPIN

Qingdao vs. Hollywood: Rising Chinese Influence on American Entertainment

Hollywood Has Always Been Political

DW Griffith directing his masterpiece. Griffith had Confederate officers in his family past.

Attempts to say that the products of the film studios located in southern California are “art for art’s sake” and have no political agenda are highly disingenuous. Hollywood’s politics have often been very blatant, so blatant that the US government has stepped in either to utilize or control them.

The first full length movie ever produced was D.W. Griffiths “The Birth of a Nation,” released in 1915. The film contained lengthy quotations from the writings of the sitting President, Woodrow Wilson, and was screened at the White House. The film was a blatant work of political propaganda, designed to strengthen the Democratic Party.

The film retold the history of the American Civil War, portraying Lincoln as a cruel tyrant and the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. The film lauded the defeat of attempts at creating social equality in the post war period, and the establishment of Jim Crow. The title is derived from the belief that the unity of southern and northern whites against African-Americans constituted “The Birth of a Nation.”

Griffith’s film presented the Klan as heroic fighters for the people, against tyrannical invaders.

The film was shown across the USA, and in Boston and Philadelphia, the audiences were so inflamed with hate, that they left the theaters to go attack African-Americans. Not only did the film inspire race riots, but shortly after its release, the previously illegal Ku Klux Klan was revived as a mass white supremacist movement.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the late 1930s, Hollywood swung to the left. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a wave of opposition from big business, bankers, and industrialists; the artists, actors, and film directors of Hollywood saw him as their friend and ally. Movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” portrayed capitalists as selfish villains ruining the lives of the common people. Meanwhile, films like Humphrey Bogart’s “The Black Legion” portrayed far-right politics as a destructive scam. Charlie Chaplin ended his anti-fascist comedy film, “The Great Dictator” (see below) with a four minute anti-capitalist speech saying “Soldiers, don’t give yourself to brutes! … Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts!… Let us fight for a new world…Let us do away with national barriers, let us do away with greed… In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

When the Second World War broke out, Hollywood films crossed into blatantly pro-Communist territory. The 1942 film “The North Star” portrayed Ukrainian guerrillas fighting off Nazi invaders while singing the praises of socialism in the USSR. The film “Mission to Moscow” portrayed the Moscow Trials of 1937 in a positive light, presenting Stalin as heroically exposing a domestic conspiracy of Japanese Imperialists and German Nazis, in league with Russian Trotskyites. The film “Gung Ho” portrayed a group of US marines utilizing the military tactics of Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter the war, in the late 1940s and early 50s, Hollywood faced a huge crackdown on its hard left elements. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated people working in entertainment who held pro-Soviet and anti-capitalist sentiments. Ten screenwriters who had associated with the Communist Party famously went to prison for refusing to testify against their co-workers. Charlie Chaplin fled the country. Pete Seeger was banned from performing his folk music on national television for over a decade.

Since the 1950s, Hollywood has largely strayed from anti-capitalist or Marxist themes, though it has never been a bastion of social conservatism. Almost since its inception Hollywood has been pushing back the standards of “decency” by including explicit sex, drug use, homosexuality, sacrilege, and other things that both offend people in middle America, and also sell lots of tickets. Hollywood encompasses both ends of the American political spectrum. American cinema generally worships the right-wing capitalist ideal of wealth and profits, while promoting a more liberal cultural hedonism that opposes tradition and community obligation.

A few of the Oscar winning films of recent years have been quite political. The 2012 Academy Award Winning Film “Argo” (directed by a typical H-wood liberaloid, Ben Affleck), portrayed the Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as cruel mob of fanatics, persecuting the well intentioned Americans. The 2008 “Best Picture” winner was a film called “Slumdog Millionaire”, which portrayed the people of India as uncultured primitive barbarians, whose only hope for salvation was the investment of western corporations. In one scene, an American tourist actually hands the young protagonist some cash saying “This is what the real America is all about.”

A “Red Dawn” at the Box Office

The brave American guerrillas fight North Koreans in this utterly imbecilic remake of the original, also from MGM, which was stupid enough in concept and execution.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen preparing to release the 2012 film “Red Dawn”, the Hollywood producers at MGM realized they had a problem. The action movie depicted the United States being taken over by an army of Chinese invaders who commit horrific atrocities. Such a film would undoubtedly be quite offensive to Chinese audiences. At the last minute, the film was digitally edited, so that invaders were no longer Chinese, but rather soldiers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. (sic)

Why did MGM change the film? The Chinese box office is very important. In 2018, it is predicted that movie ticket sales in China will surpass those of the United States for the first time. Furthermore, with theaters rapidly opening across China’s countryside, giving its population of more than a billion people access to the big screen, it is predicted that the already high cinema revenue will double by 2023.

Recent articles in the US press have highlighted the huge amount of influence that the Chinese market, and by default, the Chinese Communist Party has on global entertainment. The AMC Movie Theater chain is owned by the China based Dalian Wanda Group. Dalian Wanda Group, like many supposedly private corporations in China, does not function according to the laws of the market. Just like Huwai, the largest telecommunications manufacturer in the world, or the various “groups” that make up the Chinese steel industry, Dalian Wanda Group is completely subservient to the government.

The original version (1984) had the Russkies as the villains. The whole premise is utterly ludicrous as the US, save for a devastating nuclear attack that would turn both Russia and America into radioactive burial grounds, would have no people or environment capable of sustaining an invasion, let alone occupation and resistance. But nothing is impossible to the feverish anti-communist mind when driven by dollar signs.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he CEO of Dalian Wanda Group is Wang Jianlin, the richest man in China. Wang Jianlin may be very wealthy, but he is also a member of the Communist Party. Wang’s father was a hero in the Chinese revolution who marched alongside Mao on the legendary long march. Wang spent 16 years in the military before going into business, and his market activities, which have attracted lots of foreign investment, have always been completely in accordance with the State Development Plans. The Wall Street Journal quoted a former executive of AMC Theaters, Gerry Lopez, complaining about how the directives of Wang, a loyal Chinese Communist Party member, had priority over everything else: “He’s total control. Every decision period, gets made by one guy.”

The products of China’s blossoming domestic film industry are certainly different than those put out by American studios. Chinese films, especially in recent years, tend to promote a sense of duty to the homeland. A large percentage of Chinese films and TV programs promote heroes from the country’s history such as Zhou Enlai or Lei Feng.

An NPR article on Chinese influence on global media gives the impression that Chinese media is almost totalitarian. It complains about how Chinese government officials insist that films not contain “offensive” content, and that their overall message be consistent with the Communist Party’s goals for society.

While this certainly sounds upsetting to adherents of western liberalism, it is more consistent with society’s view of artists throughout most of human history. In most civilizations that have existed over the past 4,000 years, artists were considered to be public servants, who had a duty to improve people with their art. Throughout the vibrant history of human civilization, painters, writers, and performers were not expected to dumb down their art, and make it appeal to the most crass and primitive instincts within people in order to maximize revenue for production companies. Rather than lowering their standards to broaden their appeal, artists were expected to educate, inform, persuade, and challenge their audiences. Art served the purpose of making all of society better, not simply making profits.

Chinese cinema is a business, but it fits its profit-making activities into the overall goals of the Communist Party for a prosperous [and healthy] society. In 2014, China’s President Xi Jinping condemned artists who “are salacious, indulge in kitsch, are of low taste and have gradually turned their work into cash cows, or into ecstasy pills for sensual stimulation.” The Chinese government urges film and TV producers to make art that promotes “socialist core values, as well as patriotism and Chinese fine traditions.” Chinese companies are forbidden from working with films that “harm national dignity and the interest of China, cause social instability, or hurt the national feeling.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, American producers are already limiting the amount of films that contain certain themes like “homosexuality and the undead” because Chinese audiences disfavor them. Furthermore, Hollywood is working hard to include more Chinese actors in supporting roles to appease the desire of Chinese audiences. 

Qingdao: “Popularity Should Not Necessitate Vulgarity”

In American mythology W. Wilson is always presented as a peaceloving idealist, the man who gave us the Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI, and later sponsored the League of Nations.  His actions, however, fell into the usual pattern of US presidents: interventionist, racist, imperialist, and anti-communist. In his 1915 State of the Union, Wilson asked Congress for what became the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, suppressing anti-draft activists. The crackdown was intensified by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to include expulsion of non-citizen radicals during the First Red Scare of 1919–1920.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]oodrow Wilson, the American President who worked with D.W. Griffith to create the racist propaganda film “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915, was widely hated, far beyond American shores. In 1919, he was hated across the Chinese mainland, most especially in the streets of a city called Qingdao.

Qingdao is part of the Chinese mainland that was forcibly seized by the German empire in 1897. The Germans used Qingdao to host a naval base. While building it, the Germans deported thousands of Chinese people from their homes in order to erect railroads and munitions factories. After Germany was defeated in the first world war, US President Woodrow Wilson, refused to allow Qingdao to be returned to China at the Paris Peace Conference.

In response, Chinese students revolted across the country, burning Wilson in effigy and boycotting American and Japanese products. The May Fourth Movement, a huge explosion of anti-imperialism in response to Wilson’s humiliation of the Chinese people, is often considered to be the opening battle of the Chinese revolution.

Among the young street fighters who forced a boycott on foreign goods and denounced the Versailles treaty was an organization called the “New People’s Study Society” led by a man named Mao Zedong. Eventually the New People’s Study Society abandoned the Anarchist teachings of Peter Kropotkin and helped to form the Chinese Communist Party. Qingdao was finally returned to China in 1922, after decades of foreign occupation. It was seized by the Red Army in 1949, just weeks before the People’s Republic of China was declared in Beijing.

While Qingdao has played a huge role in the armed battles between western capitalism and China’s drive for independence, today it is at the center of a cultural and intellectual battle.

Today, Qingdao is the home of the “Oriental Movie Metropolis.” Already there are 30 sound stages that have been constructed. The world’s largest studio pavilion, set to be over 10,000 square meters, is currently being constructed there. The area will also be home to a research center on IMAX theater technology, and a museum on the history of cinematography. The site is set to become fully operational in 2018.

China’s planned economy, which has already overtaken the rest of the world in telecommunications and steel manufacturing, now moves ahead in the cultural arena. The many thousands of Chinese people involved in film production are guided in their work by the recent words of President Xi Jinping.

In discussing the role of art, he said: “Popularity should not necessitate vulgarity and hope should not entail covetousness… Pure sensual entertainment does not equate to spiritual elation…. The true value of a masterpiece lies in its intellectual depth, artistic exquisiteness and skillful production.”

Caleb Maupin

Is an American journalist and political analyst. Tasnim News Agency described him as "a native of Ohio who has campaigned against war and the U.S. financial system." His political activism began while attending Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. In 2010, he video recorded a confrontation between Collinwood High School students who walked out to protest teacher layoffs and the police. His video footage resulted in one of the students being acquitted in juvenile court. He was a figure within the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. Maupin writes on American foreign policy and other social issues. Maupin is featured as a Distinguished Collaborator with The Greanville Post.  READ MORE ABOUT CALEB MAUPIN HERE.

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British imperialism in cartoon. Great Britain declares Egypt a Protectorate. By Tennyson, “Punch,” Sept. 27, 1882 (A Cartoon History of the Middle East)

Today is built upon the actions of yesterday. This is a truism that is generally disregarded in the US with its continual disdain for the past and it lessons. The Sykes-Picot Agreement (aka Asia Minor Agreement) created many of the conflicts still raging through the Middle East. It was a secret agreement between Britain and France to divide the Arab lands which had been under Ottoman rule – essentially the Middle East was treated as the booty of war.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne hundred years ago this week, a secret deal was concluded between Britain and France that plunged the Middle East into a century of bloodshed. Two colonial negotiators, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, agreed to carve up the Middle East between their respective countries in order to secure European control of the failing Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Promises of self-determination that had been made to the Arab peoples by the British in order to secure their help in defeating the Turkish occupying forces were swiftly brushed aside. Instead of national liberation, there would just be a changing of the imperial guard.

The treachery was brutally simple. France and Britain would divide up the Middle East between them by means of a ‘line in the sand’ drawn on the map between Acre on the Mediterranean coast and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Everything to the north of that line would be controlled by the French, and everything to the south by the British. France would get Syria and Lebanon, while Britain would have Iraq and Transjordan. “Even by the standards of the time,” writes the leading historian of Anglo-French rivalry during the inter-war years, “it was a shamelessly self-interested pact.”

The question of who would rule Palestine remained unresolved in the Sykes-Picot agreement, so the British government turned to another stratagem to ensure that Britain, not France, would secure that mandate at the end of the First World War. Through a series of guarantees to leading figures in the burgeoning Zionist movement, the British government was able to secure international backing for its control of Palestine on the pretext of more than just imperial self-interest. The strategy culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which announced British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and ushered in a century of Palestinian dispossession by successive waves of European settlers. As Balfour himself admitted, “The weak point of our position of course is that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination.”

British duplicity was further compounded by the Anglo-French declaration of November 1918 to the Arab peoples, which promised “the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations”. When this unambiguous commitment to national self-determination was published in Jerusalem, the Palestinian response was a mixture of elation and relief. Only later was it revealed that the British government had always intended to exclude Palestine from the declaration, and that the order for its publication in Jerusalem had been issued by mistake.

To Britain’s colonial administrators, Palestine was originally valued as a buffer zone to protect the all-important Suez Canal. By 1927, however, the British high commissioner in Iraq was excitedly reporting the discovery of “immense quantities” of oil in that country, and Palestine offered a crucial outlet for the pipeline that would connect the Iraqi oil fields to the Mediterranean. The Sykes-Picot agreement had left the French in charge of the northern route to the sea ports of Lebanon, effectively granting them permanent control over any oil exports from Iraq. The Palestinian port of Haifa offered the British an alternative route free from French control, and the Palestine mandate thus acquired a new strategic importance in securing Britain’s national energy needs.

The Sykes-Picot agreement cast its shadow over more than just Palestine, as shown by the bloody histories of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon up to the present day. French rule in Syria and Lebanon finally came to an end in 1946, but neither pan-Arab nationalism nor Ba’athism were able to overcome the Sykes-Picot legacy. Tragically, it was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former head of al-Qaida in Iraq, who was finally able to hail the ‘End of Sykes-Picot’ in a widely circulated video when he proclaimed the founding of Islamic State on territory spanning both sides of the Iraq-Syria border in 2014. Indeed, when ordered by Osama bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri to pull back from Syria and concentrate his forces on Iraq alone, al-Baghdadi responded contemptuously that he did not recognise the artificial frontier created by the “infidel” agreement of 1916.

The rise of Islamic State is just the latest and most vivid reminder of the catastrophic consequences of British imperialism in the Middle East. In 2005, as the US-led occupation of Iraq spiralled out of control, the CIA warned that the decision to foment sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shi’a would result in a ‘blowback’ far more deadly than that experienced in the wake of the West’s earlier intervention in Afghanistan. Sure enough, the peoples of Iraq, Syria and the wider region must now face unimaginable levels of violence at home, or risk their lives as refugees in the increasingly desperate search for sanctuary abroad. The jihadist attacks on London, Paris, Madrid and Brussels are a reminder in Europe of the ongoing horrors experienced by those living with the fallout of our imperialist wars in the Middle East itself.

According to George Santayana’s famous dictum, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In truth, those who have been on the receiving end of Britain’s imperialist past need no reminding of their history, as they are condemned to live out its consequences on a daily basis. It is the British people who need reminding of the human cost of our interventions in the Middle East and across the wider world, just as we need reminding of our absolute responsibility to provide refuge to all those fleeing the wars that we have started. The centenary of the Sykes-Picot agreement is a good place to start.

John Hilary is the Executive Director of War on Want, and will be speaking at the Stop the War national conference on the centenary of the Sykes-Picot agreement in Birmingham on 14 May; details here

Source: War on Want

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=By= Cathy Breen

Camp Fallujah, Iraq – (Official USMC photograph by Cpl. Samuel D. Corum) Please see note at end of this article for more information.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]It is hard to put my feelings into words. I am travelling as a peace witness in Iraqi Kurdistan. Just the other day we visited a sheikh whom I had met in Fallujah in 2012. He and his family were forced to flee to Kurdistan about two years ago. Fallujah, as you probably know, is being held by ISIS. None of the residents are allowed to leave. People are literally dying of starvation.

We met in the rented apartment of another sheikh who also fled Fallujah with his family. Although he himself is sick with cancer, both he and our sheikh friend welcomed us warmly. The afternoon was balmy and pleasant, the room was airy and light, with cushions on the floor, a couple of plastic chairs and a bed which also served as a sofa. Water was fetched immediately and we were graciously served sweets and tea. In the course of our visit, we were joined by yet another sheikh from Ramadi. The U.N. recently reported that the destruction in Ramadi, also in the Anbar region, was the worst they had witnessed in all of Iraq.

Outwardly everything seemed so normal that at first I forgot I was with people now counted among the hundreds of thousands who are internally displaced in Iraq. In the next couple of hours though, we would hear many tragic stories that would dispel any thought of “normalcy.”

“We have lost everything” our sheikh friend said. “We are like babies just being born. We’ve lost schools, universities, houses, bridges, hospitals, markets. All gone. People in the U.S. need to know what their government did to the Iraqi people. All this pain, destruction and hurt.” Our host told of a woman who had no breast milk to feed her baby as she herself was starving.  However, she had a goat and, for a while, she was able to give this milk to her baby son. Then the goat died. At this point of the story the Iraqi woman translating for me was unable to continue. Overcome by sorrow, she began crying and left the room to collect herself. I learned later that this mother searched desperately for someone to give her baby to in order to save his life.

After a lengthy open discussion, we were invited to join the sheikh’s wife, watching children with other women of the family in a second room. Again a very warm welcome belied an all-too-grim reality.  This dear woman’s mother, sister and daughter are all currently trapped in Fallujah, and with ten children in their collective care. On occasion she is able to reach them by phone.  The women in Fallujah weep to her across the line. They are reduced to eating grass.  “We can do nothing to save them!” the sheikh’s wife said. “The government doesn’t help!  We don’t know how this is possible!” It was incomprehensible to me – I find myself simply unable to imagine this family’s pain. “We have a saying” she said. “People far away from the fire, don’t get burned. They don’t feel the heat.” Across that phone line, and waiting for the next call, she feels it.

As we stood to take our leave, we embraced and kissed one another. One by one, I took the sweet faces into my hands. They thanked us for the visit. Photos were taken to remember each other by, and I recorded all of the names of their loved ones in Fallujah so they will not be forgotten. I would write those names here, and include the photo for those who read this, but I am fearful to do so. My friends’ situation is so precarious already

It was early the next day – that is, yesterday morning – that my driver and I left for Dahook, about three hours northwest of Erbil. The road to Dahook is dotted with many Yazidi, Christian and Kurdish villages. My driver and his family are themselves internally displaced from one of the villages surrounding Mosel, and our trip would take us very close to his village. Actually we entertained the thought of visiting there, but the very real fear of random explosions and directed ISIS attacks decided us against the visit. The family that was to host me in Dahook are Christians from the same village as my driver. They lost a house to ISIS in Mosel in 2008 and fled after priests were murdered in their church. They had lived there for twenty years. They fled to a village called Teleskuf where they would live for another 6 years until ISIS took this village as well. To date no one has returned to Teleskuf other than the Peshmerga.

We passed the area of the Mosel dam and later with my host family we looked together at a map marking the whereabouts of ISIS.  “We all know where ISIS (Da’ash) is”  they told me. And lines were drawn on the map to show me their current location. They were only kilometers away from us.

Upon arriving in Dahook we visited with some Yazidis in an unfinished building where they are living. After a word of welcome we were given water, juice and sweets in a ceremonious manner, so typical of the graciousness in the Middle East. An elderly gentleman shared the terrible story of one of his granddaughters, who had been away from the area at the time of the terrible August 2014 massacre and siege of Sinjar Mountain, but who, when she returned and learned of the brutality her people had suffered, found it so unbearable she took her life. How to respond to such pain?   With action – Seated on the mat beside this sorrowing grandfather was a young Yazidi man who is studying in the university and plans along with other young Yazidis to reach out to about 5,000 children on the mountain with hopes of educating them. I shared the story of my friends, the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul and the fruits they are reaping from their literacy program with street children.

Next in Dahook we were able to visit several families living side by side as refugees in a church hall.   Excited little children led me to the curtain which acted as their front door.

These are some of more than the 200,000 people who have fled from Fallujah ahead of the US attack. Obviously many more have been forced to flee. These are some of the faces behind the numbers. (NSW Community Network)

Behind the curtain

The families behind curtains like these, in camps, or in repurposed or unfinished buildings, have for the time a desperately welcomed measure of security. But they have lost everything they owned. The family I stayed with had fled here with only the clothes on their backs. Fourteen people in a car!  Because they are in Kurdistan which is officially still part of Iraq, they have no refugee status and are not eligible for resettlement. They would have to go to Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan and register there as refugees. They would be at the bottom-of-the-pile, and in the meantime they would have no money with which to sustain themselves.
It’s hard to put my feelings into words. “People far from the fire don’t feel the heat.” Here in Kurdistan I find myself feeling the heat of the fire as I watch so many good people who are being burnt.

The husband and father of my host family has a mother and several sisters in the United States.  His wife has family in Canada, Germany and the US. They must feel the heat from here as few others in the comfortable West, author of so much of this region’s suffering, ever can. “What can we do?” my hosts ask. “We want a future for our children.”

Cathy Breen is a member of the New York Catholic Worker community and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). For more information, contact info@vcnv.org.

Note on Featured Graphic: The photo of the fire pit at Camp Fallujah comes with an interesting commentary from Defense Imagery (the source):

Camp Fallujah, Iraq – Sgt. Robert B. Brown from Fayetteville, N.C. with Regimental Combat Team 6, Combat Camera Unit takes a photograph of civilian Fire Fighters at the burn pit as smoke and flames rise into the night sky behind him on May 25th, 2007. Camp Fallujah has its own civilian run Fire Department to assist the Marines and Soldiers during a fire or emergency. Regimental Combat Team 6 is deployed with Multi National Forces-West in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq to develop Iraqi Security Forces, facilitate the development of official rule of law through democratic reforms, and continue the development of a market based economy centered on Iraqi reconstruction. (Official USMC photograph by Cpl. Samuel D. Corum)

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DISPATCHES FROM
STEPHEN LENDMAN

It’s a complete hoax – a phony pretext for waging endless imperial wars, wanting whole continents carved up for profit and dominance.  Fictitious enemies are created. Premeditated wars of aggression follow. Rules of engagement are changed from rule of law observance to anything goes. America declared war on humanity, the greatest threat to life on earth, using terrorist groups to do much of its dirty work. 

The most important question about ISIS—its origin and its sources of support, to this day—–is always hidden or camouflaged by the media scoundrels, as the truth leads directly to Washington’s and NATO’s doorstep.

The US imperial military is good at massive destruction. Heaps of rubble and blood is our signature everywhere.

Their names don’t matter. Earlier US supported anti-Soviet Afghan mujahadeen forces became opposition Taliban fighters. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and likeminded groups are similar. Names and faces change, not methods of operation other than access to more modern weapons and new funding sources.

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Obama’s vow to degrade and destroy ISIS (and by implication likeminded terrorist groups) is a complete fabrication, the public willfully deceived to believe otherwise. Washington backs the scourge it claims to oppose – along with rogue allies providing ISIS and other terrorist groups with arms, munitions, training, funding, direction and other material support. They couldn’t exist without it.

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Media scoundrels front for power and privilege, perpetuating the Big Lie about America combating terrorism instead of explaining what news consumers need to know – The New York Times as willfully deceptive as Fox News. Its editors say “America needs frank talk on ISIS,” never explaining it created and supports the group. They lied, claiming “Obama authorized…airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014 to curb the rise of the Islamic State.”

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Syrian intervention was and continues to be flagrantly illegal without Security Council or Damascus authorization. Baghdad was pressured to let Washington to maintain the fiction of combatting ISIS. In both countries, infrastructure and government sites are struck, ISIS and other terrorists aided. Thousands of US combat forces are in Iraq, likely more coming, limited numbers in Syria. Russia alone along with Syrian ground forces achieved significant victories against ISIS and likeminded groups.

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The Obama administration lied, claiming US warplanes cut ISIS revenues by striking its oil trucks and other targets. It says “intensif(ied) airstrikes and raids” are coming. America’s air campaign in Iraq and Syria have been ongoing for over 18 months. ISIS advanced steadily until Russia intervened in Syria.

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Instead of exposing Obama’s phony war on terror, his lawless aggression, using ISIS and other terrorist groups as imperial foot soldiers, The Times perpetuates the myth of combating a scourge America supports.

ABOUT STEPHEN LENDMAN

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."  ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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The USSR was warning about Hitler from 1933 on….but Europe wouldn’t listen

Soviet sniper, Leningrad front, 1942. The people in arms. The USSR produced many women heroes, and many served as snipers, recon specialists, and even fighter pilots. The Soviet Union was by far the main contributor to Nazi Germany’s destruction.

The title of this article is intended to be ironic because of course the Red Army did play the predominant role in destroying Nazi Germany during World War II. You would not know it, however, reading the western Mainstream Media (MSM), or watching television, or going to the cinema in the west where the Soviet role in the war has almost entirely disappeared.

If in the West the Red Army is largely absent from World War II, the Soviet Union’s responsibility for igniting the war is omnipresent. The MSM and western politicians tend to regard the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941 as the Soviet Union’s just reward for the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, the USSR «brought their own fate upon themselves when by their Pact with [Joachim von] Ribbentrop they let Hitler loose on Poland and so started the war…» Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, was Stalin’s fault and therefore an expatiation of sins, so that Soviet resistance should not be viewed as anything more than penitence.

Whereas France and Britain «appeased» Nazi Germany, one MSM commentator recently noted, the USSR «collaborated» with Hitler. You see how western propaganda works, and it’s none too subtle. Just watch for the key words and read between the lines. France and Britain were innocents in the woods, who unwisely «appeased» Hitler in hopes of preserving European peace. On the other hand, the totalitarian Stalin «collaborated» with the totalitarian Hitler to encourage war, not preserve the peace. Stalin not only collaborated with Hitler, the USSR and Nazi Germany were «allies» who carved up Europe. The USSR was «the wolf»; the West was «the lamb». These are not only metaphors of the English-speaking world; France 2 has promoted the same narrative in the much publicised television series, «Apocalypse» (2010) and «Apocalypse Staline» (2015). World War II erupted because of the non-aggression pact, that dirty deal, which marked the beginning of the short-lived «alliance» of the two «totalitarian» states. Hitler and Stalin each had a foot in the same boot.

MSM «journalists» like to underscore Stalin’s duplicity by pointing to the abortive Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations in the summer of 1939 to create an anti-Nazi alliance. No wonder they failed, how could the naïve French and British, the lambs, think they could strike a deal with Stalin, the wolf? Even professional historians sometimes take this line: the 1939 negotiations failed because of Soviet «intransigence» and «duplicity».

If ever Pot called Kettle black, this has to be it. And of course the trope of the Pot and the Kettle is a frequent device of western or MSM propaganda to blacken the USSR and, by implication, to blacken Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. There is just one problem with the western approach: the MSM «journalist» or western politician or historian who wants to incriminate Stalin for igniting World War II has one large obstacle in the way, the facts. Not that facts ever bother skilled propagandists, but still, perhaps, the average citizen in the West may yet have an interest in them.

Consider just a few of the facts that the West likes to forget. It was the USSR which first rang the alarm bells in 1933 about the Nazi threat to European peace. Maksim M. Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, became the chief Soviet proponent of «collective security» in Europe.

M. Litvivov

 He warned over and over again of the danger: Nazi Germany is a «mad dog», he said in 1934, «that can’t be trusted with whom no agreements can be made, and whose ambition can only be checked by a ring of determined neighbours». That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Litvinov was the first European statesman to conceive of a grand alliance against Nazi Germany, based on the World War I coalition against Wilhelmine Germany. Soviet would-be allies, France, Britain, the United States, Romania, Yugoslavia, even fascist Italy, all fell away, one after the other, during the mid-1930s. Even Poland, Litvinov hoped, could be attracted to collective security. Unlike the other reluctant powers, Poland never showed the slightest interest in Litvinov’s proposals and sought to undermine collective security right up until the beginning of the war.

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[dropcap]L[/dropcap]itvinov reminds me of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in his thankless dealings with the Russophobic West. During the interwar years, the Russophobia was mixed with Sovietophobia: it was a clash of two worlds between the West and the USSR, the Silent Conflict, Litvinov called it. When things were going badly, Litvinov appears occasionally to have sought consolation in Greek mythology and the story of Sisyphus, the Greek king, doomed by Zeus to push forever a large rock to the top of a mountain, only to see it fall back down each time. Like Sisyphus, Litvinov was condemned to pointless efforts and endless frustration. So too, it seems, is Lavrov. The French philosopher, Albert Camus, imagined that Sisyphus was happy in his struggles, but that’s an existentialist philosopher for you, and Camus never had to deal with that damned rock. Litvinov did, and never could stick it on the mountaintop.

My point is that it was the West, notably the United States, Britain, and France – yes, that’s right, the same old gang – which dismissed Litvinov’s repeated warnings and spurned his efforts to organise a grand alliance against Nazi Germany.

Dominated by conservative elites, often sympathetic to fascism, the French and British governments looked for ways to get on with Nazi Germany, rather than to go all out to prepare their defences against it. Of course, there were «white crows», as one Soviet diplomat called them, who recognised the Nazi threat to European security and wanted to cooperate with the USSR, but they were only a powerless minority. The MSM won’t tell you much about the widespread sympathy for fascism amongst conservative European elites. It’s like the dirty secrets of the family in the big house at the top of the hill.

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Poland also played a despicable role in the 1930s, though the MSM won’t tell you about that either. The Polish government signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1934, and in subsequent years sabotaged Litvinov’s efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance. In 1938 it sided with Nazi Germany against Czechoslovakia and participated in the carve-up of that country sanctioned by the Munich accords on 30 September 1938. It’s a day the West likes to forget. Poland was thus a Nazi collaborator and an aggressor state in 1938 before it became a victim of aggression in 1939.

By early 1939, Litvinov had been rolling his rock (let’s call it collective security) up that wretched mountain for more than five years. Stalin, who was no Albert Camus, and not happy about being repeatedly spurned by the West, gave Litvinov one last chance to obtain an alliance with France and Britain. This was in April 1939. The craven French, rotted by fascist sympathies, had forgotten how to identify and protect their national interests, while the British stalled Litvinov, sneering at him behind his back.

 So Sisyphus-Litvinov’s rock fell to the bottom of the mountain one last time. Enough, thought Stalin, and he sacked Litvinov and brought in the tougher Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

Still, for a few more months, Molotov tried to stick the rock on the mountaintop, and still it fell back again. In May 1939 Molotov even offered support to Poland, quickly rejected by Warsaw. Had the Poles lost their senses; did they ever have any? When British and French delegations arrived in Moscow in August to discuss an anti-Nazi alliance, you might think they would have been serious about getting down to business. War was expected to break out at any time. But no, not even then: British instructions were to «go very slowly». The delegations did too. It took them five days to get to Russia in an old, chartered merchantman, making a top speed of 13 knots. The British head of delegation did not have written powers giving him authority to conclude an agreement with his Soviet «partners». For Stalin, that must have been the camel breaking straw. The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was signed on 23 August 1939. The failure of the negotiations with the British and French led to the non-aggression pact, rather than the other way around.

Sauve qui peut motivated Soviet policy, never a good idea in the face of danger, but far from the MSM’s narrative explaining the origins of World War II. Good old Perfidious Albion acted duplicitously to the very end. During the summer of 1939 British government officials still negotiated for a deal with German counterparts, as if no one in Moscow would notice. And that was not all, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, boasted privately to one of his sisters about how he would fool Moscow and get around the Soviet insistence on a genuine war-fighting alliance against Nazi Germany. So who betrayed who?

Historians may debate whether Stalin made the right decision or not in concluding the non-aggression pact. But with potential «partners» like France and Britain, one can understand why sauve qui peut looked like the only decent option in August 1939. And this brings us back to Pot calling Kettle black. The West foisted off its own responsibilities in setting off World War II onto Stalin and the Soviet Union.

(to be continued)

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