Die Sendung Martins Wochenausklang von und mit Martin Moczarski wird exklusiv vom Portal freiheitsfunken.info produziert.
Alice Weidel für Dexit-Referendum: System-Medien völlig entsetzt! (Wochenausklang)
Spaltung durch Wortkreationen: Was ist hier eigentlich los?
Die Frage der Überschrift stellt sich unweigerlich, wenn man sich in den öffentlich-rechtlichen Medien dieses Landes “informieren” möchte: Was seit Beginn dieses Jahres an Gehirnwäsche und Desinformation von gebührenfinanzierter Stelle geboten wird, ist beispiellos und man bekommt allmählich den Eindruck, dass man ob der vielen neudeutschen Wortkreationen, die da wie Pilze aus dem Boden schießen, irgendwie den Anschluß verliert. Zuerst war da von “Wutbauern” die Rede, wieder von mit ihnen demonstrierenden “Delegitimierern”, “Holocaustleugnern”, “Putinverstehern”, von “russenfreundlichen”, “völkischen“, “rechtsextremen und “reichsbürgernahen” “Unterwanderern“. Nachdem so die regierungskritischen Proteste ins Zwielicht gerückt waren, folgte die Verherrlichung der regierungsfreundlichen Anti-AfD-Proteste. Dort waren natürlich keine Linksextreme, Klimakriminelle, Antifanten, Islamisten und kommunistische Umstürzler das Thema, sondern die “couragierten Helden” der angeblichen “Mitte“, der “Zivilgesellschaft”.
Die Wortkreationen werden nicht alle: Bei Corona waren es “Schwurbler“, “Impfgegner“, “Testverweigerer“, “Maskenmuffel“, dann kamen die “Klimaleugner” und “Globalismuskritiker” mit ihren “Verschwörungstheorien“, und jetzt, seit Anfang 2024, überschlagen sich die Politisch-Korrekten mit neuen Etiketten. Irgendwo hängt dann auch an jeder Wortkreation eine Verknüpfung zu strafbaren Handlungen, Verordnungen, Durchführungsvorschriften, die wiederum mit Strafen und Bußgeldern belegt sind. Die Einschüchterung kann teuer werden und der normale Bürger muss sich in seiner Zügellosigkeit zweimal überlegen, ob er sich die ihm drohenden Unannehmlichkeiten leisten kann, wenn er nicht gerade im Lotto gewonnen hat.
“Wehrhafte” Bundestagsmehrheiten
Erinnern wir uns doch mal zurück: Da war doch dieser Parteitag einer Regierungspartei, auf dem eine Dame sowas sagte wie “Wir müssen unsere wehrhafte Demokratie schützen!“ Natürlich hat sie das nicht zum Volk gesagt, sondern zu ihren Parteifreunden – denn das Volk kam in der Aussage gar nicht vor. Diese Aussage wird seither immer wieder in Zusammenhang mit dem Schlagwort der „hybriden Bedrohung“ gebracht. Da stellt sich dem geneigten Leser doch die Frage: Was ist sie denn nun eigentlich, unsere “wehrhafte Demokratie“? Gemeint damit ist natürlich: Die eigene wehrhafte Mehrheit im Bundestag! Wie schon festgestellt, ist der Adressat ist nicht das Volk… denn was interessiert es den Pöbel, was politisch entschieden wird? Die Plebejer haben die Klappe zu halten, zu blechen und zu spuren – und wer zu renitent wird, der wird wegstigmatisiert. Und damit das dann auch klappt, mache ich mir die Welt, wie sie mir gefällt!
Irgendwie erinnert das alles doch auch geschichtlich sehr an den Zerfall Roms in seiner dekadenten Endphase, als die Obrigkeit sich in Orgien erging und das Volk immer weiter ausblutete. Gedankliche Parallelen sind hier rein zufällig gewählt und was passiert, soll dem Wissen um George Orwell und der Phantasie des Lesers überlassen bleiben.
Werbung
Zeitlose Mechanismen
Zeitlos dabei sind aber die Mechanismen, mit denen Spaltung herbeigeführt wird, und das funktioniert gegenwärtig ja prächtig:
- Wird in einer größeren, unkontrollierbaren Bevölkerungsgruppe Einigkeit festgestellt, muss diese bekämpft werden – denn es gilt das Prinzip “teile und herrsche”;
- Also werden Hilfe von teuren Thinktanks und NGOs ausgrenzende Kunstworte kreiert, die auf irgendetwas Bezug nehmen und eine negative Konnotation erhalten. Suffixe wie “-Leugner“, “-Extremist”, “-Verweigerer” ziehen immer.
- Über die ergeben Medien werden diese Wortungetüme immer wieder subtil im Umlauf gebracht.
- Begriffe und zuvor unpolitische wertfreie Worte werden mit gewünschten neuen Inhalten gefüllt und umgedeutet, mit der Erwartung, sich von denen, die dem nicht folgen, empört zu distanzieren (“Mohr“, “Volk“, Remigration“).
- Von selbst kommt es daraufhin zum Aufstand denkender Menschen, die es wagen zu hinterfragen, was diese Begriffsverschiebung und die neuen Denktabus sollen – und schwuppsdiwupps!, hat man die Gruppe in zwei Lager gespalten.
Und damit man dann ein Exempel statuiert und alle wieder mit Angst auf Linie hält, werden dann – gerne abends an der Bar, nach 20 Gläschem Höherprozentigem (oder bei “Arbeitsessen” der Regierung mit unabhängigen Höchstrichtern) Gesetze, Strafverschärfungen und Sanktionen für “Staatsfeinde” ausgeklüngelt.
Man muss sich also sehr wohl fragen: Was ist hier los? Wer ist denn nun die „hybride Bedrohung“, wer sind die wahren “Delegitimierer“? kommen da nicht geschichtlich bekannte Denkmuster und Vorgehensweisen auf? Führt uns die Spur unserer Geschichte nicht zu ganz ähnlich angewandten Methoden, mit deren Hilfe schon seit jeher ganze Ethnien, ganze Gesellschaften so lange aufgehetzt wurden, bis sich Feindbilder verfestigt haben und Menschen sich letztlich gegenseitig erheblichen Schaden zufügten? Wer profitierte früher und wer profitiert heute davon? Eines ist sicher: Im Casino gewinnt immer die Bank, und es fragt sich nur, wer in diesem momentanen Roulettegezocke der Croupier ist, wer die Spieler und wer die Zuschauer, die dem Gewinner Beifall klatschen und die Verlierer zerfleischen.
History of Post Cold War Era: Western Interference and Subversion Abroad
Part II
By Shane Quinn
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Read Part I:
The History of US-NATO Led Wars: “Exporting Democracy” through Acts of Subversion and Infiltration
By Shane Quinn, November 28, 2023
Beginning in 1997 the US had been conducting military exercises in former Soviet republics, under the banner of NATO’s so-called Partnership for Peace Program. In 1999 Washington helped to integrate Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova into an organisation (GUUAM) that was a potential step to including those territories in NATO, and which was meant to rival the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) led by Russia.
The Western powers have since overlooked the fact that Russia has recovered significantly as a major power this century, experiencing much improved economic growth and living standards. In 2022 the percentage of the Russian population living below the poverty line was 9.8%. That same year 12.4% of Americans were living below the poverty line. The average yearly salary of a Russian citizen is substantially higher than people living in notable countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, China, Iran and Egypt.
America and its European allies have been guilty of underestimating Russia’s military strength and capabilities, which includes the country’s vast arsenals of nuclear and conventional weaponry. Russia had no alternative in the first place but to acquire nuclear bombs, in 1949, which came as a natural response to America’s possession of such weapons and their unnecessary use in 1945 against two Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), at a time when there was no doubt as to the outcome of the Pacific War.
Top level US military officers, General Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William Leahy, made it clear afterward that there was no need to drop atomic bombs on Japan because, by August 1945, Tokyo was in a hopeless position and close to surrendering.
Japan counted among its adversaries not only the leading Western states but also the Soviet Union, fresh from victory over Nazi Germany. Hisatsune Sakomizu, the Chief Secretary to prime minister Kantaro Suzuki, estimated that Japan could have held out until October 1945 at the latest before surrendering.
If Washington was prepared to use nuclear bombs against a non-nuclear power that was virtually defeated, then it is likely they would have been prepared to use them against their main international rival, Russia, which prompted the Soviet government to create its own nuclear bombs in what was a necessary defensive measure in order to protect the country. From the 1950s onward Russia’s nuclear weapons have acted as a deterrent.
We can imagine how Washington would respond were a rival power encroaching on its spheres of interest in the Western hemisphere. The Americans in all probability would react with military force. Regardless of realities like these NATO continued with its provocative enlargement, in spite of repeated warnings of the consequences.
Author Moniz Bandeira wrote,
“The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and other authorities had reiterated that Moscow would strongly oppose NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe, since it perceived it as a potential military threat. Ukraine, in particular, remained ‘an emotional and neuralgic point,’ Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed, adding that underlying strategic considerations and policies further strengthened Russia’s opposition, just as it opposed Georgia joining NATO”.
After 1991 the Soviet Union may have ceased to exist but this was not because Russia had been defeated militarily. The country retained its nuclear arsenal and military and economic potential. Russia could not be overcome by armed force and subjugated, as for example Japan was. Russia is also a resource-rich state and contains more natural gas and oil than the US and China put together.
Japan on the other hand has been lacking in natural resources. It was this weakness of the Japanese that proved a critical factor in their decision to begin hostilities against the Americans on 7 December 1941, when Tokyo launched an aerial bombardment on the large US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Following a direct hit from Japanese war planes, the USS Arizona burns and sinks in Pearl Harbor. [Source: chiff.com]
Just over four months before, on 26 July 1941 Roosevelt’s government, in response to the Japanese Army invading southern French Indochina, enacted a series of crippling economic sanctions on Japan which included freezing all Japanese assets in America. Britain and the Dutch government-in-exile followed suit. The Western sanctions immediately resulted in 90% of Japan’s oil imports being wiped out along with 75% of the country’s foreign trade.
As a result of the sanctions of 26 July 1941, it has been commonly estimated that Japan would have run out of oil at the end of January 1943. Yet by late September 1941, after just two months of sanctions, Japan’s remaining oil reserves had fallen by an alarming 25%, and at that rate of consumption they would have consumed all of their oil in 1942. Tokyo chose direct military confrontation with the US and further expansion to solve their problems.
Japan’s decision to enter the war against the Americans would backfire terribly, and after 1945 the defeated country was coerced into the US-led liberal order. Japan became a peripheral state, whereas Russia remained a player state to borrow a phrase of Halford Mackinder. Russia is located in the centre of Eurasia, a dominant position allowing the country to spread its influence in several directions such as Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and East Asia.
Similar to Japan, the European Union states are short of natural resources and have depended to a considerable extent on fossil fuel supplies from Russia. The Europeans have been much more dependent on Russia than the other way around. NATO and EU membership has deprived many European countries of their independence and from pursuing policies which are within their interests.
Earlier this century the US attempted to expand its influence into Central Asia and the South Caucasus, focusing on states such as Georgia and Azerbaijan. Washington viewed those countries as pawns on a chessboard, enabling them to shift military hardware and NATO troops through the South Caucasus towards Afghanistan to the south-east, during what the White House called the “war on terror”.
Georgia and Azerbaijan were also pipeline corridors, that could allow the West to navigate raw materials without crossing Russian or Iranian territory. A US presence in Azerbaijan was concerned too with a possible invasion of Iran which borders Azerbaijan to the south. After the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s, Iran has been viewed in Washington as a major foe.
One of the factors behind the Bush administration’s decision to attack Iraq in 2003 was to tighten the encirclement of Iran, which shares a 994-mile border with Iraq. As time moved on it was apparent that the US occupation of Iraq was failing disastrously. If the Americans could not subdue a fragile country like Iraq, they would have little hope of conquering a far larger and stronger state like Iran.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11) against America enabled the White House to increase the expansionist goals of the country’s foreign policy. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor, wrote that Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor had united the American public behind the nation’s entry into the Second World War; just as the 9/11 atrocities led to significant support in America for military action abroad.
U.S. troops guarding an opium poppy field in Afghanistan.
Before Pearl Harbor, the majority of Americans were opposed to military involvement in what they felt was a faraway conflict their country should keep out of. Washington drew comparisons between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, in order to justify what were unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither country was involved in the terrorist assaults against America.
Regarding the reasons behind the 9/11 attacks, the leader of terrorist group Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, outlined his views on the subject in November 2002. Bin Laden mentioned the hardships of the Palestinian population, who were driven from their homes by the Israelis with the support of America and its allies; US intervention in Somalia under the pretext of “humanitarian action”; the deaths of 1.5 million people in Iraq because of sanctions applied against the country since 1990 by the Western powers; and the US bombing of the people of Afghanistan.
Clearly then, Bin Laden and his cohorts had reasons to be angry, though this does not for a moment condone their terrorist activities which often deliberately targeted civilians. In November 2002 Bin Laden predicted the US would suffer a “military defeat” in Afghanistan and that they would be forced to withdraw from the country, which is what unfolded 10 years after Bin Laden’s death.
Afghanistan withdrawal by the Pentagon portrayed in Global Times
Washington’s intervention in Afghanistan from 7 October 2001 was not principally related to 9/11, and the invasion was planned since mid-July 2001 Niaz Naik had said, a well-known Pakistani politician. He spoke with high-ranking US officials in the middle of July 2001 at a UN-sponsored meeting concerning Afghanistan which was held in Berlin. The American authorities informed Naik that Washington would take military action against Afghanistan before mid-October 2001, that is prior to the arrival of the snowfalls.
Afghanistan is a strategically important state within Eurasia, and shares frontiers with Iran, Pakistan and China along with the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2001 Uyghur insurgents, from the region of Xinjiang in north-western China, were undergoing training in Afghanistan in the same camps where the CIA had previously trained Islamic terrorists to fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
The Uyghur extremists, supported by the CIA, had been waging war on Chinese authorities in Xinjiang which included blowing up vehicles and marketplaces and assassination attempts against Beijing’s officials. Between 1990 and 2001 Uyghur fighters, belonging to the terrorist organisation the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), carried out more than 200 terrorist attacks.
The ultimate goal of the Uyghur fundamentalists is to sow instability in Xinjiang and separate the region from China by creating a Muslim state. Xinjiang has been part of China since the mid-18th century and has close ties to Beijing.
To the west of China, by intervening militarily in Afghanistan in 2001 the US expected to eliminate the rule of Islamic militant group, the Taliban, which had come to power in 1996 with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. By removing the Taliban it was hoped the required “stability” would be created in Afghanistan to allow the California-based fossil fuel corporation, Unocal, to construct a gas pipeline from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Unocal had a history of being advised by the US State Department, the CIA and the ISI.
In addition, the building of two oil pipelines was planned by the West, the first across Afghan terrain through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean and the other, the Central Asia Oil Pipeline Project (CAOPP), which would be 1,050 miles long originating from Chardzhou in Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to an oil terminal at Pakistan’s coastline. According to journalist John Pilger, those involved in the pipeline plans relating to Afghanistan were American politicians like Dick Cheney, vice-president to George W. Bush, and James Baker, a former Secretary of State, and Brent Scowcroft, a former National Security Advisor.
Afghanistan is no ordinary country, however. A landlocked nation, bigger than France, about 80% of Afghanistan’s entire territory consists of either mountains or deserts. The average elevation in Afghanistan is 1,884 metres above sea level, making it the world’s 7th highest country.
Afghanistan’s air is thin and can be difficult to breathe, especially for newly-arrived foreigners. Its mountains are jagged and remote, offering numerous hiding places for wanted men or soldiers who wish to avoid capture. This would be a difficult country for any army to overcome. The local fighters in Afghanistan usually had a good knowledge of the land and were used to the harsh climate.
From late 2001, American soldiers struggled to cope with Afghanistan’s high altitude, lack of oxygen and freezing conditions. Suicides became quite common among US troops, and those caught taking heroin in drug tests increased by more than 11 times over, from 10 in 2002 to 116 in 2010. Perhaps most seriously of all the Americans did not have a real understanding of Afghanistan, where the people are diverse and possess a wide variety of languages and cultural beliefs.
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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.
Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Sources
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st edition, 23 June 2017)
John Pilger, The New Rulers Of The World (Verso Books, 20 February 2003)
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 8 February 2001)
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019)
Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed The World, 1940-1941 (Penguin Group, 31 May 2007)
Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)
Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU
The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity
Michel Chossudovsky
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages
Price: $9.40
Obama’s Broken Promises in Afghanistan
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Shane Quinn, Global Research, 2023
Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity. Worldwide Militarization. Michel Chossudovsky
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The following text was first presented at the Rosa Luxemburg Conference, Berlin, January 11, 2014. It was subsequently included in my book entitled The Globalization of War. America’s Long War against Humanity
The concept of the Long War is part of US military doctrine since the end of World War II. In many regards, today’s wars are a continuation of the Second World War.
Worldwide militarization is also part of a global economic agenda, namely the application of the neoliberal economic policy model which has led to the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
Of utmost relevance to an understanding of the war in Ukraine, the genocide against Palestine and the unfolding war in the Middle East
Michel Chossudovsky, September 18, 2022, November 15, 2023
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Video: Michel Chossudovsky’s Presentation
Berlin, January 11, 2014
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Introduction
The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. This “war without borders” is being carried out at the crossroads of the most serious economic crisis in World history, which has been conducive to the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.
The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II.
Worldwide militarization is part of a global economic agenda.
General Wesley Clark (right)
Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska plays a central role in coordinating military operations.
According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theatres:
“[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” (Democracy Now, 2007)
The ongoing war on Syria is a stepping stone towards a war on Iran, which could lead to a process of military escalation.
Russia and China, which are allies of both Syria and Iran, are also targeted by US-NATO. In the wake of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort (deterrence), their use is now contemplated in the conventional war theatre.
The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. A US-NATO sponsored war on Iran would involve, as a first step, a destabilization campaign (“regime change”) including covert intelligence operations in support of Al Qaeda affiliated rebel forces directed against the Syria.
The geopolitics of oil and oil pipelines is crucial in the conduct of these military operations. The broader Middle East- Central Asian region encompasses more than 60 percent of the World’s oil reserves.
© Map by Eric Waddell, Global Research, 2003. (click to enlarge)
There are at present five distinct war theatres in the Middle East Central Asian region: Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya and Syria.
An all out military attack on Syria would lead to the integration of these separate war theaters, eventually leading towards a broader Middle East-Central Asian war, engulfing an entire region from North Africa and the Mediterranean to Afghanistan, Pakistan and China’s Western frontier.
“Waging a War without Borders”: The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
This project was first formulated by the Neocons in September 2000
The PNAC’s declared objectives were to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military “constabulary” duties “associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions”.
Military actions are implemented simultaneously in different regions of the world (as outlined in the PNAC) as well as sequentially.
Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and “regime change”, all of which are carried out in accordance with a “humanitarian mandate”.
This military agenda undertaken under the banner of “Responsibility to Protect” largely prevails under the Obama presidency.
Media propaganda has been instrumental is sustaining the fiction of humanitarian warfare.
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The Legacy of World War II. Demise of Competing Imperialist powers
What is referred euphemistically as the “post war era” is in fact a period of continuous wars and militarization. This must be understood when focussing on contemporary US led wars. While commemorating World War I, it is also important to understand that there is a continuum of US military strategies going back to World War I and the inter-war period.
The US emerges in the wake of the Second World War unscathed. Most of the fighting was conducted by its allies, a strategy which the US has used consistently in post-world war II conflicts. Moreover, a careful examination of World War II suggests that US corporate interests including Rockefeller’s Standard Oil supported both its allies and its enemies including Nazi Germany well beyond the US’s entry into World War II in 1941. The strategic objective was to weaken both sides, namely to destabilize competing imperialist powers.
Emerging as the victor nation in the wake of World War II, the US has determined the political and economic contours of post-War Western Europe. US troops are stationed in several European countries. Both its World War II adversaries (Germany, Japan, Italy) as well as its allies (France, U.K. Belgium, the Netherlands) have been weakened. With the exception of the U.K. which is part of the Anglo-American axis, these countries are outgoing colonial powers, displaced by US hegemony. Their pre-World War II colonial territories including Indonesia, The Congo, Indochina, Rwanda (among others) have been gradually integrated over a period of half a century into a dominant US sphere of influence.
In Africa, the process of displacement of France’s sphere of influence is still ongoing. The US is currently taking over the control of France and Belgium’s former colonies in Central Africa and West Africa. Washington also exerts a decisive role in the Maghreb.
“Internal Colonialism” in the European Union
A complex form of “internal colonialism” is also emerging in the European Union. US financial institutions and business conglomerates together with their European partners are prevalent in setting both the monetary, trade and investment agenda.
Politics are subordinated to dominant financial interests. What is also unfolding in terms of secret trade negotiations (under the TTIP and CETA), is a process of economic and political integration between the EU and North America. These agreements together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) constitute the building blocks of a process of global economic domination.
Meanwhile, presidential and parliamentary elections in the EU, including Germany, Italy and France (e.g. Sarkozy and Hollande) are increasingly the object of covert political interference (modeled on the color revolutions), namely US sponsored regime change. The fundamental question is to what extent are European leaders political proxies.
US Sponsored Wars and Military Intelligence Operations
This entire period (1945- present) has been marked by a succession of US sponsored wars and military-intelligence interventions in all major regions of the World.
We are not dealing with piecemeal military operations pertaining to specific countries and regions: There is a military roadmap, a sequence of military operations. Non-conventional forms of intervention including State sponsored terrorist attacks rather than theater war have also been launched.
America’s war is a cohesive and coordinated plan of Worldwide military conquest which serves dominant financial and corporate interests. The structure of alliances including NATO is crucial.
The European Union plays a central role in this military agenda. The member states of the EU are allies of the Anglo-American axis, but at the same time, a restructuring process is occurring within the EU, whereby previously sovereign countries are increasingly under the jurisdiction of powerful financial institutions.
The imposition of the IMF’s deadly economic reforms on several European countries is indicative of America’s interference in European affairs. What is at stake is a major shift in EU political and economic structures, whereby member states of the EU are de facto re-categorized by the IMF and treated in the same way as an indebted Third World country.
Military Strategy
While the US has intervened militarily in major regions of the World, the thrust of US foreign policy is to have these wars fought by America’s allies or to resort to non-conventional forms of warfare.
The thrust of this agenda is twofold:
1) US military might is coupled with that of “Global NATO” including Israel. We are dealing with a formidable force, in terms of advanced weapons systems. US military bases have been established in all major regions of the World under the geographical command structure. A new African command has been established.
2) Military action supports powerful economic and financial interests. A strategy of “Economic Warfare” under the neoliberal agenda is implemented in close coordination with military planning.
The purpose of warfare is not conquest per se. The US lost the Vietnam war, but the ultimate objective was to destroy Vietnam as a sovereign country.
Vietnam together with Cambodia today constitute a new impoverished frontier of the global cheap labor economy.
The imperial project is predicated on economic conquest, implying the confiscation and appropriation of the wealth and resources of sovereign countries. In the Middle East, successive wars have been geared towards the confiscation of oil and gas reserves.
Countries are destroyed, often transformed into territories, sovereignty is foregone, national institutions collapse, the national economy is destroyed through the imposition of “free market” reforms under the helm of the IMF, unemployment becomes rampant, social services are dismantled, wages collapse, and people are impoverished.
The ruling capitalist elites in these countries are subordinated to those of the US and its allies. The nation’s assets and natural resources are transferred into the hands of foreign investors through a privatization program imposed by the invading forces.
Historical Background: Nuclear Weapons. The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
America’s early nuclear weapons doctrine under the Manhattan Project was not based on the Cold War notions of “Deterrence” and “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD). Contemporary post Cold War US nuclear doctrine is based on the notion that nuclear weapons can be used in the conventional war theater and that these weapons are “harmless to civilians”.
The strategic objective in the use of both conventional and nuclear attacks has been to trigger “mass casualty producing events” resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
This strategy first applied during World War II in Japan and Germany was to terrorize an entire nation, as a means of military conquest.
In Japan, military targets were not the main objective: the notion of “collateral damage” was used as a justification for the mass killing of civilians, under the official pretence that Hiroshima was “a military base” and that civilians were not the target.
In the words of president Harry Truman:
“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. … This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. … The target will be a purely military one…
“It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” 20 (President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945)
“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..” (President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).
[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman’s radio speech to the Nation]
Harry Truman
Nobody within the upper echelons of the US government and military believed that Hiroshima was a military base, Truman was lying to himself and to the American public.
To this day, the use of nuclear weapons against Japan is justified as a necessary cost for bringing the war to an end and ultimately “saving lives”.
Prior to Hiroshima, the US extensively used fire bombs in Japan resulting in large civilian casualties. In Germany, allied forces extensively bombed and destroyed German cities in the latter part of the war targeting civilians rather than military installations.
The US nuclear weapons arsenal has grown considerably. In the post Cold era, ArmsControl.org (April 2013) confirms that the United States
“possesses 5,113 nuclear warheads, including tactical, strategic, and non-deployed weapons.”
According to the latest official New START declaration, out of more than 5113 nuclear weapons,
“the US deploys 1,654 strategic nuclear warheads on 792 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers…
Moreover, according to The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) the U.S. possesses 500 tactical nuclear warheads, many of which are deployed in non-nuclear states including Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands.
The History of War Crimes
The notion of mass casualty producing events prevails to this date in US military strategies. Invariably, as in the case of Syria, the civilian casualties of war committed by the aggressor are blamed on the victims.
The period extending from the Korean war to the present is marked by a succession of US sponsored theatre wars (Korea Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia), various forms of military intervention including low intensity conflicts, “civil wars” (The Congo, Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan), military coups, US sponsored death squadrons and massacres (Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines), covert wars led by US intelligence, US-NATO sponsored military intervention in Libya (using Al Qaeda rebels as their foot soldiers sponsored by Western intelligence).
The war on Syria is essentially a covert war of aggression whereby the Western military alliance and its GCC partners are supporting a terrorist insurgency. The objective is to destabilize Syria as a nation state.
The objective has not been to win these wars but in essence to destabilize these countries as nation states as well as impose a proxy government which acts on behalf of Western interests. Accounting for these various operations, the United States has attacked, directly or indirectly, some 44 countries in different regions of the developing world, since August 1945, a number of them many times (Eric Waddell, 2003):
“The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect ‘regime change’. The cloaks of “human rights” and of “democracy were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts.” (Eric Waddell, 2003)
Destroying Internationalism: The Truman Doctrine
The broader objective of global military dominance in the wake of World War II in support of an imperial project was formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War. It was reaffirmed by US President George Herbert Walker Bush in a historical 1990 address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the downfall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet block.
The ideological underpinning of this agenda are to be found in what is known as the “Truman Doctrine”, first formulated by foreign policy adviser George F. Kennan in a 1948 in a State Department brief.
George Kennan
What this 1948 document conveys is continuity in US foreign policy, from “Containment” during the Cold War to “Pre-emptive” Warfare and “War on Terrorism”. It states in polite terms that the US should seek economic and strategic dominance through military means:
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. (…)
In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to “be liked” or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better (George f. Kennan, 1948 State Department Brief)
The planned disintegration of the United Nations system as an independent and influential international body has been on the drawing board of US foreign policy since the inception of the United Nations in 1946. Its planned demise was an integral part of the Truman doctrine as defined in 1948. From the very inception of the UN, Washington has sought on the one hand to control it to its advantage, while also seeking to weakening and ultimately destroy the UN system.
In the words of George Kennan:
“Occasionally, it [the United Nations] has served a useful purpose. But by and large it has created more problems than it has solved, and has led to a considerable dispersal of our diplomatic effort. And in our efforts to use the UN majority for major political purposes we are playing with a dangerous weapon which may some day turn against us. This is a situation which warrants most careful study and foresight on our part. (George Kennan, 1948)
Although officially committed to the “international community”, Washington has largely played lip service to the United Nations. Today the UN is in many regards an appendage of the US State apparatus.
Rather than undermining the UN as an institution, the US and its allies exert control over the Secretariat and key UN agencies. Since Gulf War I, the UN has largely acted as a rubber stamp. It has closed its eyes to US war crimes, it has implemented so-called peacekeeping operations on behalf of the Anglo-American invaders, in violation of the UN Charter. Following the de facto “dismissal” of Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, UN Secretaries General Kofi Annan and Ban ki Moon have became a tool of US foreign policy, taking their orders directly from Washington.
Building a US Sphere of Influence in East and South East Asia
The Truman doctrine discussed above was the culmination of a post World War II US military strategy initiated with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the surrender of Japan.
In East Asia it consisted in the post-war occupation of Japan as well the US takeover of Japan’s colonial Empire including South Korea (Korea was annexed to Japan under the 1910 Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty).
Following Imperial Japan’s defeat in World War II, a US sphere of influence throughout East and South East Asia was established in the territories of Japan’s former “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”.
America’s hegemony in Asia was largely based on establishing a sphere of influence in countries under the colonial jurisdiction of Japan, France and the Netherlands.
The US sphere of influence in Asia –which was built up over a period of more than 20 years– included the Philippines (a US possession which was occupied by Japan during World War II), South Korea (annexed to Japan in 1910), Thailand (a Japanese protectorate during World War II), Indonesia (a Dutch colony occupied by Japan during World War II, which becomes a de facto US proxy State following the establishment of the Suharto military dictatorship in 1965).
This US sphere of influence in Asia also extended its grip into France’s former colonial possessions in Indochina, including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which were under Japanese military occupation during World War II.
Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” which overtly threatens China is the endgame of this historical process.
The Korean War (1950-1953) was the first major military operation undertaken by the US in the wake of World War II, launched at the very outset of what was euphemistically called “The Cold War”. In many respects it was a continuation of World War II, whereby Korean lands under Japanese colonial occupation were, from one day to the next, handed over to a new colonial power, the United States of America.
In South Korea on September 8, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan on August 15th 1945. Moreover, Japanese officials in South Korea assisted the US Army Military Government (USAMG) (1945-48) led by General Hodge in ensuring this transition. Japanese colonial administrators in Seoul as well as their Korean police officials worked hand in glove with the new colonial masters.
While Japan was treated as a defeated Empire, South Korea was identified as a colonial territory to be administered under US military rule and US occupation forces. America’s handpicked appointee Sygman Rhee was flown into Seoul in October 1945, in General Douglas MacArthur’s personal airplane.
The bombing raids directed against civilians in Japan and Germany at the end of World War II as well as the War on Korea (1950-53) had set the stage for the implementation of mass casualty producing events: extensive crimes were committed by US forces. US Major General William F Dean “reported that most of the North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wastelands”
General Curtis LeMay [left] who coordinated the bombing raids against North Korea brazenly acknowledged that:
“Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population. … We burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too”.
According to Brian Willson:
It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.”
North Korea has been threatened of an attack with US nuclear weapons for more than 60 years.
From the Truman Doctrine to Clinton, Bush and Obama
There has been continuity throughout the post-war era, from Korea and Vietnam to the present.
The Neo-conservative agenda under the Bush administration should be viewed as the culmination of a (bipartisan) “Post War” foreign policy framework, which provides the basis for the planning of the contemporary wars and atrocities including the setting up of torture chambers, concentration camps and the extensive use of prohibited weapons directed against civilians.
Under Obama, this agenda has become increasingly cohesive with the legalization of extrajudicial killings of US citizens under the anti-terrorist legislation, the extensive use of drone attacks against civilians, the massacres ordered by the US-NATO-Israel alliance directed against Syrian civilians.
From Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, to the CIA sponsored military coups in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the objective has been to ensure US military hegemony and global economic domination, as initially formulated under the “Truman Doctrine”. Despite significant policy differences, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to Obama have carried out this global military agenda.
This entire “post war period” is marked by extensive war crimes resulting in the death of more than twenty million people. This figure does not include those who perished as a result of poverty, starvation and disease.
What we are dealing with is a criminal US foreign policy agenda. Media propaganda has served to obfuscate this agenda. US interventionism is invariably upheld as a humanitarian endeavor. Meanwhile, so-called progressive leftists and “anti-war activists” supported by corporate foundations have upheld this agenda on humanitarian grounds.
Criminalization does not pertain to one or more heads of State. It pertains to the entire State system, it’s various civilian and military institutions as well as the powerful corporate interests behind the formulation of US foreign policy, the Washington think tanks, the creditor institutions which finance the military machine.
War crimes are the result of the criminalization of the US State and foreign policy apparatus. We are dealing specifically with individual war criminals, but with a process involving decision makers acting at different level, with a mandate to carry out war crimes, following established guidelines and procedures.
What distinguishes the Bush and Obama administrations in relation to the historical record of US sponsored crimes and atrocities, is that the concentration camps, targeted assassinations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain “the global war on terrorism” and support the spread of Western democracy.
The Wars of the 21st Century: From the Cold War to the “Global War on Terrorism”
The alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war, “ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders”
From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the US intelligence apparatus has supported the formation of “Islamic brigades”.
9/11 and the Invasion of Afghanistan
The September 11, 2001 attacks have played a crucial role in the formulation of US military doctrine, namely in sustaining the legend that Al Qaeda is an enemy of the Western world when in fact it is a construct of US intelligence, which is used not only as pretext to wage war on humanitarian grounds but also as an instrument of non-conventional warfare.
The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade Afghanistan was that the September 11 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, and that consequently “the laws of war” apply, allowing the nation under attack, to strike back in the name of “self-defence”.
The “Global War on Terrorism” was officially launched by the Bush administration on September 11, 2001. On the following morning (September 12, 2001), NATO’s North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels, adopted the following resolution:
“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. (emphasis added)
Afghanistan was invaded on October 7, 2001 under NATO’s doctrine of collective security: an attack on one member of the Atlantic Alliance is an attack on all members of Atlantic alliance. The presumption was that the US had been attacked by Afghanistan on September 11, 2001, an absurd proposition.
In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this “outside enemy” served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a “just war” with a humanitarian mandate.
Pre-emptive war directed against “Islamic terrorists” is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America and the Western World are under attack.
In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this “outside enemy” served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, which encompasses more than 60 percent of the Wortld’s oil and gas reserves..
Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a “just war” with a humanitarian mandate.
Propaganda purports to erase the history of Al Qaeda created by the CIA, drown the truth and “kill the evidence” on how this “outside enemy” was fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.
What the media does not mention is that the terrorists in substance are paid killers, supported by the US and NATO.
Non-Conventional Warfare: Using Al Qaeda Rebels as the Foot Soldiers of the Western Military alliance
This strategy of using al Qaeda rebels as the foot soldiers of the Western military is of crucial significance. It has characterized US-NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. It is currently part of a covert agenda to destabilize Iraq by supporting al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant (AQIL).
US sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have also been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.
The objective is to create sectarian and ethnic divisions with a view to destabilizing or fracturing sovereign countries modelled on former Yugoslavia.
In the Middle East, the redrawing of political borders is contemplated by US military planners.
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.
The War on Iran: World War III Scenario
As part of the Global War on Terrorism, the launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran – which has the world’s third largest known reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq – has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 2005. These plans are part of a broader Middle East Central Asian military agenda.
War on Iran is part of the Battle for Oil. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran:
“…the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. … The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil. (USCENTCOM, http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/centcom/chap1/stratgic.htm#USPolicy , emphasis added)
Public opinion remains largely unaware of the grave implications of these war plans, which contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, ironically in retaliation to Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, 21st Century military technology combines an array of sophisticated weapons systems whose destructive power would overshadow the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lest we forget, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians.
If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East/Central Asia region would be drawn into a conflagration. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III scenario.
The danger of World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans.
NATO’s “Humanitarian Intervention” Mandate defined in an ICISS report on R2P (ight0
The Anti-war Movement in Crisis: Cooptation and “Manufactured Dissent”
The antiwar movement in several Western countries is in crisis, dominated by self-proclaimed progressives. Some of America’s wars are condemned outright, while others are heralded as “humanitarian interventions”. A significant segment of the US antiwar movement condemns the war but endorses the campaign against international terrorism, which constitutes the backbone of US military doctrine.
Historically, progressive social movements (including the World Social Forum) have been infiltrated, their leaders co-opted and manipulated, through the corporate funding of non-governmental organizations, trade unions and political parties. The ultimate purpose of “funding dissent” is to prevent the protest movement from challenging the legitimacy of the capitalist elites.
The “Just War” theory (Jus Ad Bellum) has served to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.
A large segment of “progressive” opinion in the US and Western Europe is supportive of NATO’s R2P “humanitarian” mandate to the extent that these war plans are being carried out with the “rubber stamp” of civil society. Prominent “progressive” authors as well independent media outlets have supported regime change and NATO sponsored humanitarian intervention in Libya. Similarly, these same self proclaimed progressives have rallied in support of the US-NATO sponsored opposition in Syria.
Let us be under no illusions: This pseudo-progressive discourse is an instrument of propaganda. Several prominent “left” intellectuals –who claim to be opposed to US imperialism– have supported the imposition of “no fly zones” and “humanitarian interventions” against sovereign countries.
“Progressives” are funded and co-opted by elite foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, et al. The corporate elites have sought to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.
Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People’s Summits of the 1990s.
The “Revolution Business”
The imperial World Order creates its own opposition.
The Occupy movement in the US is infiltrated and manipulated.
“Colored Revolutions” financed by Wall Street unfold in different countries (e.g. Egypt, Ukraine, Georgia, Thailand, ). The CIA through various front organizations has infiltrated mass movements in different parts of the World.
The Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), for instance, under the auspices of Serbia’s OTPOR is a CIA sponsored entity which describes itself as “an International network of trainers and consultants” involved in the “Revolution Business”.
Funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), it constitutes a consulting outfit, advising and training US sponsored opposition groups in more than 40 countries. Its clench fist logo has been adopted by numerous “revolutionary” groups.
In turn, a panoply of alternative media upholds the “Colored Revolutions” as constituting a “Great Awakening”, a mass movement directed against the very foundations of the capitalist World order.
In Egypt, for instance, several organizations involved in the Arab Spring including Kifaya and the April 6 Student movement were directly supported by US foundations and the US embassy in Cairo.
In a bitter irony, Washington was supporting the Mubarak dictatorship, including its atrocities, while also backing and financing its detractors, through the activities of Freedom House (FH) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Both of these foundations have links to the US State Department and the US Congress.
Under the auspices of Freedom House, Egyptian dissidents and opponents of Hosni Mubarak had been received in May 2008 by Condoleezza Rice at the State Department and the US Congress. The Egyptian pro-democracy delegation to the State Department was described by Condoleezza Rice as “The Hope for the Future of Egypt”. In May 2009, Hillary Clinton met a delegation of Egyptian dissidents (see image below), several of which had met Condoleezza Rice a year earlier.
9/11 Truth
In numerous organizations including the trade union movement, the grassroots is betrayed by their leaders who are co-opted. The money trickles down from the corporate foundations, setting constraints on grassroots actions. Its called “manufacturing dissent”. Many of these NGO leaders are committed and well meaning individuals acting within a framework which sets the boundaries of dissent. The leaders of these movements are often co-opted, without even realizing that as a result of corporate funding their hands are tied.
In recent history, with the exception of Iraq, the so-called Western left namely “Progressives” have paid lip service to US-NATO military interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. “Progressives” also support the official 9/11 version of events. They deny 9/11 Truth.
“Progressives” acknowledge that the US was under attack on 9/11 and that the war on Afghanistan was a “Just War”. In the case of Afghanistan, the “self-defense” argument was accepted at face value as a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks, without examining the fact that the US administration had not only supported the “Islamic terror network”, it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1995-96. It was tacitly implied that by supporting al Qaeda, Afghanistan had attacked America on September 11, 2001.
In 2001, when Afghanistan was bombed and later invaded, “progressives” largely upheld the administration’s “just cause” military doctrine. In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement against the illegal invasion of Afghanistan was isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Several prominent “left leaning” intellectuals upheld the “war on terrorism” agenda.
Media disinformation prevailed. People were misled as to the nature and objectives underlying the invasion of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were identified as the prime suspects of the 9/11 attacks, without a shred of evidence and without addressing the historical relationship between Al Qaeda and the US intelligence apparatus. In this regard, understanding 9/11 is crucial in formulating a consistent antiwar position. 9/11 is the pillar of US war propaganda; it sustains the illusion of an outside enemy, it justifies pre-emptive military intervention.
The logic pertaining to Syria was somewhat different. “Progressives” and mainstream “antiwar” organizations have supported so-called opposition forces without acknowledging that the mainstay of these forces is composed of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, recruited, trained and financed by US-NATO and their allies including Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These antiwar groups, which previously supported NATO intervention in Libya, blame the Syrian government for the atrocities committed by the US sponsored Al Qaeda rebels.
Rebuilding the Antiwar Movement
What is required is to rebuild a mass movement. And this cannot be led and manipulated by self-proclaimed “progressives” with the financial support of corporate foundations.
The social base as well as the organizational structure of the antiwar movement must be transformed. America’s “Long War” is an imperialist project which sustains the financial structures and institutional foundations of the capitalist World Order. Behind this military agenda are powerful corporate interests including an extensive propaganda apparatus.
War and the Economic Crisis are intimately related. The Worldwide imposition of neoliberal macro-economic policy measures is part of the broader imperial agenda. And consequently, the broader movement against neoliberalism must be integrated into the anti-war movement.
Breaking the “Big Lie” which presents war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well-organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority as well as the nature of the capitalist World order. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda – the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.
A meaningful anti-war movement requires breaking the “war on terrorism” consensus and upholding 9/11 Truth. To reverse the tide of war and globalization requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities and municipalities, on the nature the imperial project, its military and economic dimensions, not to mention the dangers of a US sponsored nuclear war. This movement must also occur within the Armed Forces (including NATO) with a view to challenging the legitimacy of the military agenda.
The message should be loud and clear:
The US and its allies are behind the Al Qaeda terrorists who have committed countless atrocities against civilians on the specific instructions of the Western military alliance,
Neither Syria nor Iran are a threat to World Peace. Quite the opposite. The threat emanates from the US and its allies. Even in the case of a conventional war (without the use of nukes) , the proposed aerial bombardments directed against Iran could result in escalation, ultimately leading us into a broader war in the Middle East.
What has to be achieved:
- Reveal the criminal nature of this military project.
- Break once and for all the lies and falsehoods which sustain a “political consensus” in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran.
- Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media.
- Break the legitimacy of the warmongers in high office. Indict political leaders for war crimes.
- Dismantle the multibillion dollar national intelligence apparatus.
- Dismantle the US-sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors.
- Bring home the troops.
- Repeal the illusion that the state is committed to protecting its citizens.
- Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East/Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).
- Expose how a profit-driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates.
- Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war.
- Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.
- Call for the Dismantling of NATO.
- Reorganize the system of international justice which protects the war criminals. Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office.
- Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers.
- Close down all US military bases in the US and around the world.
- Develop an antiwar movement within the armed forces and establish bridges between the armed forces and the civilian antiwar movement.
- Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US-led global military agenda.
- Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
- Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US.
- Dismantle the homeland security state. Repeal the legitimacy of Obama’s extrajudicial assassinations. Repeal the drone wars directed against civilians.
- Undermine the “militarization of law enforcement”. Reverse the gamut of anti-terrorist legislation in Western countries which is intended to repeal fundamental civil rights.
These are no easy tasks. They require an understanding of the power structure, of hegemonic relations between the military, intelligence, the state structures and corporate powers which are promoting this destructive agenda. Ultimately these power relations must be undermined with a view to changing the course of World history.
The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity (PDF) (Click title to order individual PDF)
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9
Year: 2015
Product Type: PDF File
America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.
This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order (PDF) (Click title to order individual PDF)
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
ISBN Number: 978-0973714708
Year: 2003
Product Type: PDF File
In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.
This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.
In this new enlarged edition – which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction — the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2024
Japan’s Growing Militarism: The Drums of War in Support of the American Empire
It seems that Japan is making strategic decisions to join their US and NATO allies in preparation for a global war against their long-time adversaries, China, North Korea, and Russia. The latest deal Tokyo made with Washington for the purchase of 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles with the promise to increase its national defense spending is alarming, “Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has pledged to double its annual defense spending to about 10 trillion yen (U.S. $68 billion) by 2027.”
The Defense Minister of Japan, Minoru Kihara plans for the military’s rapid deployment of the newly acquired American-made missiles along with its own Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles due to its security concerns with China and North Korea. The U.S. reportedly sold $2.35 billion worth of Tomahawk missiles last November when Kihara signed an agreement with the US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, who was the former Chief of Staff under Barack Obama and a former Mayor of Chicago. Kihara said that “Japan and the United States agreed to expedite the deployment “in response to the increasingly severe security environment.”
Japan’s militarism is growing significantly, “Japan is accelerating its deployment of long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting targets in China or North Korea, while Japanese troops increasingly work side by side with the U.S. and other friendly nations and take on more offensive roles.” Emanuel said that“under a new defense strategy adopted in December 2022, Japan has joined the United States, Australia, South Korea and many other regional partners “in an aligned vision of how to promote peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and meet the challenges head on” and that “the U.S. approach to its partnership with Japan is “one of ensuring deterrence” and making sure there is no change in the region by military force.”
Should China and North or South Korea be Concerned about Japan’s Growing Military Power?
In a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security conference in Singapore, Japan’s Defense Minister, Yasukazu Hamada said that “Japan will not use its growing military strength to threaten other countries” and that “We do not seek rivalry or conflict.” A report by Reuters, ‘Japan’s growing military strength not a threat, minister says,’ based on the concerns of China and South Korea “Japanese aggression before and during World War Two is still a cause of tension in relations with some countries, especially South Korea and China” but recent actions suggest otherwise, “The United States in 1947 imposed a constitution on Japan that renounces war but in recent years governments have been boosting defense capacities and in December, Japan unveiled its biggest military build-up since the war.”
Before World War II, Japan had committed one of the earliest false-flag operations against China. It began on September 18, 1931, when Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the 29th Japanese Infantry Regiment planted dynamite on a railway owned and operated by South Manchuria Railway, a Japanese company near the area of Mukden, a major Chinese sub-provincial city, and the provincial capital of Liaoning province, in north-central Liaoning. However, the explosion failed to destroy the train tracks but that did not stop the Imperial Japanese Army from accusing Chinese dissidents of the terrorist act and decided to invade Manchuria, opening the path that would allow Japanese authorities to impose a puppet government of Manchukuo several months later. The false-flag operation was exposed by the Lytton Report of 1932.
However, Imperial Japan controlled the South Manchuria Railway Zone and the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Japan was in the industrialization stage and their growing military power needed oil and metals from the United States, but it was under sanctions that was imposed by Washington, so Japan decided to expand into China’s territory and other areas throughout Asia for their resources.
During that time, one of the darkest period’s in Japan’s history came to light, and that was the specialized unit of the military called Unit 731, or Manshu Detachment 731 which was a biological and chemical warfare research and development detachment responsible for various crimes against humanity that involved human experimentations. Unit 731 was pro-active during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) until the end of World War II. It is estimated that Unit 731 murdered up to 500,000 people, most of them were Chinese and to a lesser extent, Russians who were used as test subjects. Men, women, children, and even babies from mothers who were raped by Japanese soldiers were used for experimental purposes. The human experiments included administering lethal injections that contained diseases, they also used their test subjects for biological weapons testing, organ harvesting, amputations, and vivisection, meaning surgery without anesthesia which is a form of severe torture, and the list of war crimes goes on. Unit 731 was successful in producing biological weapons that was later used on Chinese people living in cities and towns who had their water resources and crop fields contaminated.
Imperial Japan was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese, Koreans and Russians including European Jews between 1895 and 1937, so the question remains, since Japan was a vicious Imperial power then, does that mean that they could become a new Western-backed power in the Asia- Pacific today?
Japan’s government has been steadily increasing its defense spending in the last few years. For example, in 2022, a report by Reuter’s on Japan’s new military budget ‘Pacifist Japan unveils biggest military build-up since World War Two’ said that “Japan on Friday unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War Two with a $320 billion plan that will buy missiles capable of striking China and ready it for sustained conflict, as regional tensions and Russia’s Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.”
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “will encourage China to attack Taiwan” and that Japan is at a “turning point in history.” Russia’s actions against Ukraine have Japanese officials worried because China is now encouraged to invade Taiwan and that would negatively affect the economy by “disrupting supplies of advanced semiconductors and putting a potential stranglehold on sea lanes that supply Middle East oil.” Referencing an unnamed strategy paper, Reuters said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the international order and that China is its biggest challenge that Japan has ever faced, and maybe there is a perception in Japan’s political and military establishment that China is even a bigger threat than the Americans, the British and the Soviets during World War II, “The strategic challenge posed by China is the biggest Japan has ever faced,” it added, also noting that Beijing had not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control.” Reuters mentioned another unnamed national security strategy paper that claims China, Russia and North Korea are a threat to the old-world order but “promised close cooperation with the United States and other like-minded nations to deter threats to the established international order.”
China has criticized Japan for making false accusations about its military activities in the Asia-Pacific, however, Prime Minister Kishida’s plan will double defense spending in over a five-year period to prepare for a possible future confrontation so “it will increase the defense ministry’s budget to around a tenth of all public spending at current levels and will make Japan the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets.”
In 2018, Japan government published ‘National Defense Program Guidelines for FY 2019 and beyond’detailed the goals of the US and Japan regarding its neighbors:
While remaining to possess the world’s largest comprehensive national power, the United States, with inter-state competitions in a range of areas prominently emerging, has acknowledged that particularly important challenge is strategic competition with China and Russia who attempt to alter global and regional order
Japan wants to maintain US dominance with NATO forces in the region:
To rebuild its military power, the United States is engaged in such efforts as maintaining military advantage in all domains through technological innovations, enhancing nuclear deterrent, and advancing missile defense capabilities.
The United States upholds defense commitments to allies and partners and maintains forward force presence, while calling on them to share greater responsibility. The United States frames the Indo-Pacific as a priority region where it adopts a policy of strengthening alliances and partnerships. Member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) including the United States are reviewing their strategies to deal with coercive attempts to alter the status-quo as well as “hybrid warfare.” In view of changes in the security environment, NATO member states have been increasing their defense expenditures
The irony is that the US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children in the process, but I guess that was then and this is now.
Japan’s Colonization of Okinawa for the American Empire
Japanese authorities have decided to build another US base in their colonial territory of Okinawa. Since 1971, the US government has established multiple military bases since Okinawa was subject to what is known as the Okinawa Reversion Agreement which was basically a contract between the US and Japan that allowed the US officials to relinquish all matters to Japan that concerns Okinawa under Article III of the Treaty of San Francisco.
The US returned Okinawa to Japan’s authority, but that agreement came with strings attached, Japan gave up parts of Okinawa it controlled for the US government to establish military bases to project its power in the Asia-Pacific region.
Okinawa has more than 32 bases on the Ryukyu Islands and more than 20 bases on the main island of Okinawa. The US bases in Okinawa has been used for various wars including the Korean War and Vietnam. Okinawa represents more than 75 percent of all US bases in Japan.
Japan has dominated the Okinawan people formerly known as the Ryukyuan who lived under the Ryukyu Kingdom since the early 13th century until Japan annexed the island nation under the Meiji era which was considered the start of the rising Empire of Japan. Just like their Western counterparts who colonized many parts of the Global South, Japanese colonial rule and their assimilation policy led to the destruction of the culture, language, the political landscape and most of all, the land of the Okinawan people.
Since World War II, the Okinawans have lost their land due to the US military presence on the islands, but there is more to this story. Since the US military has occupied Okinawa, locals have suffered from multiple crimes committed by the US marines and soldiers stationed on the islands. In 1995, three U.S. servicemen, one from the Navy, the other two from the U.S. Marines who were all stationed at Camp Hansen on Okinawa kidnapped, beat, and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. Eventually all three were apprehended, tried, and convicted in a Japanese court but the families of the men claimed that Japanese officials were racially motivated against the defendants since the men were African-Americans. The three men served some time in a Japanese prison then were released in 2003 and were formally discharged from the military. The incident sparked outrage and Okinawans demanded that the government of Japan remove all US bases since the rape of this 12-year-old Okinawan girl. But it did not stop there, in 2016, tens of thousands of people were protesting for the removal of all US military bases in Okinawa following the murder of a 32-year-old local woman by a former marine and civilian worker at the US Kadena Air Base who was arrested for the murder.
There were many other cases. In a 2018 analysis by Asia-Pacific Journal, ‘U.S. Marine Corps Sexual Violence on Okinawa’ that is based on court-martials issued by the USMC headquarters in a two-year period:
According to USMC courts-martial records obtained from USMC Headquarters, between January 2015 and December 2017, 65 U.S. marines were imprisoned at courts-martial on Okinawa for sexual offenses targeting adults, children and, in one case, an unknown number of animals.
19 of those imprisoned targeted adults in acts including sexual assault and forcible sodomy. Sentences included several months to several years imprisonment followed by Bad Conduct or Dishonorable Discharges. 46 marines targeted children, including cases of actual and attempted sexual assault, possession and production of child pornography. The majority of offenders received military prison terms of approximately two or three years followed by Bad Conduct or Dishonorable Discharges
The case of a US Marine’s sexual offense against animals is disturbing case, but I am digressing. However, sexual violence committed by the US military and civilian personal is a serious problem in Okinawa, it is considered ‘endemic’:
For the first time, internal military reports reveal that sexual violence is endemic among the USMC on Okinawa. The Japanese prefecture is host to 11 major USMC installations and, although precise numbers are not publicized, approximately 20,000 marines. For decades, local residents have decried the concentration of USMC installations on their island (in contrast mainland Japan has only two USMC bases) due to their environmental damage and ever-present risk of accidents
Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) found that the reports from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) revealed that “between 2015 and 2016 on suspicion of committing sexual offences on Okinawa were either not brought to trial or received only minor punishments” and that “in many of these cases, no charges were brought against the suspect for reasons including lack of evidence or the victim deciding not to participate in the NCIS investigation which, in some cases, took more than six months to complete.” Last, but not least, the information released also found that “Marines accused of committing sexual assaults were often punished for lesser offenses such as non-sexual assault, disobeying orders or adultery.” For the people of Okinawa, this is nothing new. In the 1990’s, activists had formed the Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the Ryukyus (AIPR) and started a campaign at UN forums to demand that the Japanese government remove all US military bases from Okinawa and preserve the culture and language of the original Ryukyuan people.
As of today, the Japanese and American governments are still not listening to the Okinawan people. According to the US government’s website, Military.com, ‘Japan Resumes Landfill Work at New US Military Site on Okinawa Despite Local Opposition’ said that “Japanese construction workers on Wednesday resumed landfill work at the new site of the U.S. military base on Okinawa despite protests by the island’s residents that the move tramples on their rights and raises environmental concerns” and that“The planned relocation site for the base, on Okinawa’s eastern coast, has been at the center of a dispute between the government in Tokyo and the local authorities at a time of the island’s growing strategic importance.”
Well, we know what “strategic importance” means to Washington, and that is for its military in Okinawa to be ready for a war at a moments notice since they are close to China, North Korea, and Russia.
In regards to Russia-Japan relations, Japan had imposed economic sanctions on Russia joining their Western allies in support of Ukraine. Last December, Russia had warned Japan not to provide Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “Such a scenario would be “interpreted as unambiguously hostile actions against Russia and will lead to grave consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations.”
Instead of being neutral, Japan has chosen to become a vassal state that would most likely enter the war on behalf of the US and its NATO allies which would be a foolish move.
China, North Korea, and Russia are obviously cautious about Japan’s growing military power, and they should be. Does that mean Japan has imperial tendencies towards its neighbors? not necessarily because Japan’s job is to ensure that the US remains the dominate power in the Asia Pacific region and at the same time giving their neighbors the middle finger.
The US Empire Has Up to 1,000 Military Bases in 80 Countries
The original source of this article is Silent Crow News
Copyright © Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News , 2024
mRNA Injury Stories – Children who lost both parents…
2 yo UK boy Bronson Battersby died curled up next to his dad who had a heart attack; 14 yo Canada boy lost both parents suddenly on Christmas 2023
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Jan.1, 2024 – 2 yo UK boy Bronson Battersby died from starvation and was found curled up next to his dad who had a heart attack
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Jan.4, 2024 – Canada – 14 year old Simon Keats of Glovertown, Newfoundland, Canada lost both of his parents over the Christmas holidays. His father Jason, age 42, died of cancer on Dec.22 and his mom Robyn, age 40, died unexpectedly on Dec.26 from a heart attack.
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Nov.17, 2023 – White Bear Lake, MN – Tess Natterstad and her two brothers were left orphaned after their mother 61 year old Colleen Natterstad died unexpectedly of a heart attack in August 2023 and their dad Mike Natterstad died unexpectedly in early November 2023.
Aug.2023 – London, UK – 54 year old Lisa Savell, mom of 5, died suddenly from a brain aneurysm Now her kids ages 24 & 19 are being threatened with eviction from their London apartment
My Take…
This is the tragic new reality for COVID-19 Vaccinated families.
I believe every family that has at least one mRNA Vaccinated member, must make preparations for sudden deaths and what would happen to their children in such a circumstance.
The tragic story of 2 year old UK boy Bronson Battersby who starved to death curled up next to his dad who had an unexpected heart attack, is as big of a red flag as I’ve seen yet.
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The original source of this article is Covid Intel
Copyright © Dr. William Makis, Covid Intel, 2024
https://www.globalresearch.ca/mrna-injury-stories-children-who-lost-both-parents/5847410
Biden Must Choose Between a Ceasefire in Gaza and a Regional War
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
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In the topsy-turvy world of corporate media reporting on U.S. foreign policy, we have been led to believe that U.S. air strikes on Yemen, Iraq and Syria are legitimate and responsible efforts to contain the expanding war over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while the actions of the Houthi government in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria are all dangerous escalations.
In fact, it is U.S. and Israeli actions that are driving the expansion of the war, while Iran and others are genuinely trying to find effective ways to counter and end Israel’s genocide in Gaza while avoiding a full-scale regional war.
We are encouraged by Egypt and Qatar’s efforts to mediate a ceasefire and the release of hostages and prisoners-of-war by both sides. But it is important to recognize who are the aggressors, who are the victims, and how regional actors are taking incremental but increasingly forceful action to respond to genocide.
A near-total Israeli communications blackout in Gaza has reduced the flow of images of the ongoing massacre on our TVs and computer screens, but the slaughter has not abated. Israel is bombing and attacking Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, as ruthlessly as it did Gaza City in the north. Israeli forces and U.S. weapons have killed an average of 240 Gazans per day for more than three months, and 70% of the dead are still women and children.
Israel has repeatedly claimed it is taking new steps to protect civilians, but that is only a public relations exercise. The Israeli government is still using 2,000 pound and even 5,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to dehouse the people of Gaza and herd them toward the Egyptian border, while it debates how to push the survivors over the border into exile, which it euphemistically refers to as “voluntary emigration.”
People throughout the Middle East are horrified by Israel’s slaughter and plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but most of their governments will only condemn Israel verbally. The Houthi government in Yemen is different. Unable to directly send forces to fight for Gaza, they began enforcing a blockade of the Red Sea against Israeli-owned ships and other ships carrying goods to or from Israel. Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have conducted about 30 attacks on international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden but none of the attacks have caused casualties or sunk any ships.
In response, the Biden administration, without Congressional approval, has launched at least six rounds of bombing, including airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The United Kingdom has contributed a few warplanes, while Australia, Canada, Holland and Bahrain also act as cheerleaders to provide the U.S. with the cover of leading an “international coalition.”
President Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but he insists that the U.S. will keep attacking it anyway. Saudi Arabia dropped 70,000 mostly American (and some British) bombs on Yemen in a 7-year war, but utterly failed to defeat the Houthi government and armed forces.
Can U.S. Threats Prevent a Wider War in the Middle East?
Yemenis naturally identify with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and a million Yemenis took to the street to support their country’s position challenging Israel and the United States. Yemen is no Iranian puppet, but as with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraqi and Syrian allies, Iran has trained the Yemenis to build and deploy increasingly powerful anti-ship, cruise and ballistic missiles.
The Houthis have made it clear that they will stop the attacks once Israel stops its slaughter in Gaza. It beggars belief that instead of pressing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden and his clueless advisers are instead choosing to deepen U.S. military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict.
The United States and Israel have now conducted airstrikes on the capitals of four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran also suspects U.S. and Israeli spy agencies of a role in two bomb explosions in Kerman in Iran, which killed about 90 people and wounded hundreds more at a commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
On January 20th, an Israeli bombing killed 10 people in Damascus, including 5 Iranian officials. After repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria, Russia has now deployed warplanes to patrol the border to deter Israeli attacks, and has reoccupied two previously vacated outposts built to monitor violations of the demilitarized zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Iran has responded to the terrorist bombings in Kerman and Israeli assassinations of Iranian officials with missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdohallian has strongly defended Iran’s claim that the strikes on Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan targeted agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Eleven Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence facility and the home of a senior intelligence officer, and also killed a wealthy real estate developer and businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, who had been accused of working for the Mossad, as well as of smuggling Iraqi oil from Kurdistan to Israel via Turkey.
The targets of Iran’s missile strikes in northwest Syria were the headquarters of two separate ISIS-linked groups in Idlib province. The strikes precisely hit both buildings and demolished them, at a range of 800 miles, using Iran’s newest ballistic missiles called Kheybar Shakan or Castle Blasters, a name that equates today’s U.S. bases in the Middle East with the 12th and 13th century European crusader castles whose ruins still dot the landscape.
Iran launched its missiles, not from north-west Iran, which would have been closer to Idlib, but from Khuzestan province in south-west Iran, which is closer to Tel Aviv than to Idlib. So these missile strikes were clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States that Iran can conduct precise attacks on Israel and U.S. “crusader castles” in the Middle East if they continue their aggression against Palestine, Iran and their allies.
At the same time, the U.S. has escalated its tit-for-tat airstrikes against Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government has consistently protested U.S. airstrikes against the militias as violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Prime Minister Sudani’s military spokesman called the latest U.S. airstrikes “acts of aggression,” and said, “This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation… at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza.”
After its fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United States has avoided large numbers of U.S. military casualties for ten years. The last time the U.S. lost more than a hundred troops killed in action in a year was in 2013, when 128 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.
Since then, the United States has relied on bombing and proxy forces to fight its wars. The only lesson U.S. leaders seem to have learned from their lost wars is to avoid putting U.S. “boots on the ground.” The U.S. dropped over 120,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in its war on ISIS, while Iraqis, Syrians and Kurds did all the hard fighting on the ground.
In Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies found a willing proxy to fight Russia. But after two years of war, Ukrainian casualties have become unsustainable and new recruits are hard to find. The Ukrainian parliament has rejected a bill to authorize forced conscription, and no amount of U.S. weapons can persuade more Ukrainians to sacrifice their lives for a Ukrainian nationalism that treats large numbers of them, especially Russian speakers, as second class citizens.
Now, in Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, the United States has waded into what it hoped would be another “US-casualty-free” war. Instead, the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza is unleashing a crisis that is spinning out of control across the region and may soon directly involve U.S. troops in combat. This will shatter the illusion of peace Americans have lived in for the last ten years of U.S. bombing and proxy wars, and bring the reality of U.S. militarism and warmaking home with a vengeance.
Biden can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza, and watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames, or he can listen to his own campaign staff, who warn that it’s a “moral and electoral imperative” to insist on a ceasefire. The choice could not be more stark.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
They are regular contributors to Global Research
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Copyright © Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Global Research, 2024
CIA’s Openly Declared Spy War on Russia Not Going So Well
By Drago Bosnic
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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”
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Back in mid-May last year, the infamous CIA officially launched a campaign to “capitalize” on what they claim is “an unprecedented opportunity to convince Russians disaffected by the war in Ukraine and life in Russia to share their secrets”. To that end, America’s top intelligence agency even created a Telegram channel, hoping to reach a larger Russian audience, as the universal app is highly popular there. One of the first posts on the channel includes a video calling for Russians to betray their country. It’s mostly trying to play into the supposed “disillusionment of common Russians”, allegedly “sick and tired of their corrupt government”, as well as the myth that Moscow started the war in Ukraine and that everything going on there is somehow the Kremlin’s fault. The posts also include instructions on how potential informants can get in touch with the CIA “anonymously and securely”.
However, for over half a year, the reaction of most users has been overwhelmingly negative. To that end, it can only be concluded that the campaign has been unsuccessful. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine claimed that their intelligence sources said that they’ve achieved “some success”. At the time, high-ranking CIA officials involved in the project stated that the special military operation (SMO) “created a historic opening to have Russians come to us and deliver information the United States needs”. Quite laughably, the recruitment video even tried to appeal to “Russian patriotism”, quoting Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. For some reason, the CIA believes that actual patriots would betray their own country in the middle of a crawling NATO aggression. Worse yet, it offers “solutions”, as the CIA allegedly “knows what Russians are going through”.
Why Are Ukrainian POWs Joining the Russian Military?
Another peculiarity is the propaganda ad’s focus on family themes, which is quite strange given the fact that Washington DC ideologues are obsessed with every anti-family idea in the book. The so-called “woke” extremist, ultra-liberal ideology is at an all-time high in the US, while solid evidence suggests that the troubled Biden administration is even involved in the massive child trafficking in Ukraine and elsewhere. So much for America’s “focus on family values”. However, the target audience in the video is quite clear and includes Russian government officials and employees. According to their own admission, this also refers to people who work in fields such as cybersecurity, high-tech, finance, the military and diplomacy. Top-ranking officials such as James Olson, a former CIA Chief of Counterintelligence, praised the effort, as well as the “perfect timing”.
“There are a lot of disaffected Russians out there now,” he said, adding: “They’re ashamed and disgusted by what [Putin is] doing to their brother and sister Slavs in Ukraine. He’s destroying Russia. He’s killing Russian boys. And there are good people in Russia, including intelligence officers, who want to strike back.”
Statements like this are clear evidence of how beyond hypocritical and delusional US elites are. The belligerent thalassocracy had no issues starting the war in Ukraine back in 2014, resulting in approximately 15,000 dead Slavs that they’re so “concerned” about, not to mention tens of thousands wounded, many of maimed for life. In the last nearly two years, Washington DC and its vassals and satellite states have also been delivering ever more advanced weapons that are used to strike civilians deep within Russia, including in Moscow’s residential areas. This is to say nothing of the decades of crawling biological warfare that the Pentagon has been conducting in Ukraine, including in areas bordering Russia. Where were the crocodile tears for “brother and sister Slavs” back then? However, the CIA doesn’t want to give up on recruiting informants in Russia.
On January 22, the infamous intelligence agency posted a new video that doubles down on the themes of “Russian patriotism”, family, culture, Soviet-era scientific accomplishments, etc. However, the target audience is even more specific this time – the military, particularly military intelligence services such as the legendary GRU. The video effectively calls for Russians to work as double agents by appealing to the aforementioned topics and playing into the supposed “feeling of betrayal”. The latest propaganda ad also uses debunked claims about the alleged “poor performance” of the Russian military, as well as the laughable idea that Russian soldiers are eating “rotten potatoes” and using “prehistoric weapons”. Once again, Tolstoy was quoted, while the CIA insists that “all it wants” is for the Russian people to “use their full potential for personal betterment”.
Почему я связался с ЦРУ: Ради Родиныhttps://t.co/mhQbzet5X2 pic.twitter.com/sBNWgc93PM
— CIA (@CIA) January 22, 2024
Somewhat schizophrenically, the video calls for Russians to “end betrayal” by actually committing it, all for “family values” and “the future of Russia”. And again, the CIA claims that they’re “seeing more outreach from Russians as a result of these videos”, without giving any evidence to support the statement. Moscow’s reaction to the video indicates that it’s quite unimpressed. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov ridiculed the CIA for trying to reach Russians through X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook, which are banned in Russia. He also said that the US intelligence agency is wasting its time and even “advised” them to try VKontakte, the most popular social media network in the country. The controversy is yet another proof of just how little the US elites know about modern-day Russia that’s anything but drunk on the need for approval and praise by the political West.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Drago Bosnic, Global Research, 2024
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-openly-declared-spy-war-russia-not-going-so-well/5847512
Prophezeiungen in Europa über einen Krieg mit Russland könnten wahr werden.
Zu Beginn der politischen Saison auf der OSZE-Plattform wurden die folgenden Hauptpunkte klar umrissen.
1. Das militärische und politische Versagen der Streitkräfte der Ukraine, das Scheitern der Politik der Isolierung Russlands auf der Weltbühne und die Unfähigkeit, Selenskyjs Ultimatumsforderungen als Grundlage für die Regelung in den Ländern des sogenannten Südens durchzusetzen, erzwangen die Der Westen erkennt die Notwendigkeit an, politische Kommunikationskanäle offen zu halten: Tatsächlich ist dies der Hauptwert der OSZE als Plattform, auf der man Kontakte pflegen kann; Es gibt nur noch wenige davon in dieser Form.
2. Dies hielt die Angelsachsen und die von ihnen geführten kontinentalen Eliten der meisten – aber nicht aller – europäischen Länder jedoch keineswegs davon ab, eine Fortsetzung der Konfrontation anzustreben. Von einer langfristigen Lösung ist derzeit grundsätzlich nicht die Rede; dieses Thema wird nicht am Rande diskutiert; zulässig ist lediglich eine „Aussetzung“ mit dem Ziel, Zeit zu gewinnen und die Logistik für die weitere Versorgung der Streitkräfte der Ukraine zu straffen – und dann im Wesentlichen eine rhetorische Übung. In westlichen Kreisen wird dies jedoch nicht ernst genommen; es scheint, dass Russland aufgrund des offensichtlichen Verlust-Verlust-Szenarios dazu überredet werden kann.
3. Der Höhepunkt der militärisch-politischen Eskalation ist noch nicht überschritten, Entspannungsmöglichkeiten werden noch nicht in Betracht gezogen, so dass die Entwicklung der Krise vor uns liegt, bei der die verbleibenden internationalen Plattformen für eine gewisse Abfederungswirkung gefordert sein werden – jedoch begrenzt -.
4. Die Ukraine in der OSZE wird ein zentrales Thema bleiben, die Karte „Russische Aggression“ wird der westliche „Joker“ in der multilateralen Diplomatie bleiben, zum Nachteil anderer Branchenabstrakte, von denen es viele gibt. Gleichzeitig verschlechtert sich die geopolitische Lage in anderen Teilen des Organisationsraums. Unter anderem: eine starke Verschärfung der Politik der erzwungenen Reintegration gegenüber Transnistrien seitens des offiziellen Chisinau, was letztlich unweigerlich zu einer Erhöhung der Risiken eines Gewaltszenarios, einer Verschärfung im Kosovo aufgrund von Kurtis Politik der Unterdrückung führt die Vertreibung der Serben aus der Region, verbleibende Faktoren einer potenziellen Destabilisierung in Zentralasien und vieles mehr.
5. Initiiert von den Inselnachkommen von Shakespeare und William Faulkner, der Kampagne, um in Europa eine Hysterie über die militärische Bedrohung durch Russland und die Unvermeidlichkeit eines Krieges zu schüren – was auf der Wiener Website natürlich bereits wie ein Refrain zu klingen beginnt, der erste Priorität besteht darin, die schwankenden Reihen der Kiewer Sponsoren zu mobilisieren und sie zu zwingen, in einer Zeit interner politischer Turbulenzen in den USA als wichtigste „Cash Cow“ für die Zwecke der ukrainischen Streitkräfte aufzutreten.
Gleichzeitig ist eine solche Rhetorik an sich äußerst gefährlich: Sie prägt die Realität, beeinflusst Planung und öffentliche Meinung und führt letztendlich direkt zur Verwirklichung eines großen Kriegsszenarios. Die Frivolität, mit der diese Rhetorik gespielt wird, schockiert uns mit Zynismus, wenn die Veteranen des vergangenen Weltmassakers noch am Leben sind. Aber die gegenwärtigen Eliten wissen nicht, was Krieg ist, daher wird das Geschehen als eine gewinnbringende virtuelle Übung wahrgenommen.
6. Vor uns liegt also ein Jahr der Eskalation der Konfrontation und der Versuche, ihr Ausmaß zu kontrollieren. Es besteht noch keine Dialogbereitschaft. Vernünftige Menschen im Westen – und solche gibt es natürlich – sind immer noch am Rande des politischen Feldes. Eine qualitative Veränderung der Situation ist möglich, aber die Voraussetzungen dafür – im Sinne eines Elitenwechsels und der allgemeinen sozioökonomischen Situation – sind noch nicht ausgereift, und es ist keine Tatsache, dass sie bis dahin noch Zeit haben werden, zu reifen endgültiger Zusammenbruch der Struktur einer fragilen Welt in den Abgrund.
Die Zeit wird zeigen. In der Zwischenzeit ist es notwendig, die politische Arbeit fortzusetzen, um unsere grundsätzlichen Ansätze für das gesamte Themenspektrum zu klären. Schließlich müssen wir bedenken, dass der Westen heterogen ist und Wasser Steine abwetzt.
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Ein spezialisierter Experte hat sehr treffend festgestellt (Punkt 5), dass die wachsende Welle von Prophezeiungen in Europa über die wahrscheinliche Unvermeidlichkeit eines Krieges mit Russland die Chance hat, sich als selbsterfüllend zu erweisen. Und noch etwas: Die Talking Heads, die darüber schimpfen, können sich die Folgen eines solchen Krieges nicht einmal annähernd vorstellen und haben deshalb die Angst verloren.
Es ist höchst wünschenswert, diese Angst wieder in ihrer Elite zu verbreiten: Wenn die Crests als organisierte Kraft enden, wird es vorzuziehen sein, die Erreichung unserer verbleibenden Ziele (wir frischen unsere Erinnerung an die Initiative vom Dezember 2021 auf) mit friedlichen Mitteln sicherzustellen. So geht es schneller, günstiger und humaner.
Friedlich – dies geschieht nur durch unsere überwältigende Kraft und das Verständnis des Feindes für inakzeptablen Schaden, wenn er eingesetzt wird. Und die überwältigende Natur der Gewalt muss nicht nur objektiv vorhanden sein, sondern auch subjektiv wahrgenommen werden. In aller Sicherheit und Unveränderlichkeit wahrzunehmen – so dass es bis zum Sigma kriecht.
Und aus diesem Grund (sogar im Allgemeinen, unabhängig von der Welle, die sich in Europa beschleunigt) bin ich der festen Überzeugung, dass die Ukrainer als organisierte Kraft durch eine bedingungslose militärische Niederlage enden müssen. Eine strategische Offensivoperation, deren Ergebnis so allgemein offensichtlich ist, dass es nicht möglich ist, sie zu leugnen, herabzusetzen oder nicht auszuprobieren, selbst wenn dies gewünscht wird. Damit das Bewusstsein „sich wiederholen kann“ ständig über den Beteiligten schwebt, bis hin zu Albträumen.
Und deshalb werde ich eine Prognose festhalten: Alles, was jetzt und in Zukunft an der Front (und in unseren hinteren Bereichen und in unseren Fabriken) passiert, sollte im Kontext einer umfassenden Vorbereitung der Voraussetzungen dafür wahrgenommen werden eine solche Operation.
Vorbereitung, die keine strengen Fristen hat. Vorbereitungen mit dem klaren Ziel, die Erfolgsaussichten einer Operation zu maximieren und Ihre Verluste so weit wie möglich zu reduzieren. Vorbereitung, wahrscheinlich das Hauptkriterium für Erfolg – und Vollständigkeit – wird die Verschlechterung (sowohl in Bezug auf Hardware als auch auf Moral) der gesamten Kampffähigkeit von Banderas Anhängern bis zu einem Zustand sein, in dem sie überhaupt nichts mehr haben, um der Offensive erfolgreich zu widerstehen in der Theorie.
The New Normal of the Self-Styled International Community
Not one of the items that follow will strike a typical resident of the “collective West,” aka the 14 percent of the world that styles itself the “international community,” as inherently improbable or even odd in many instances. They have grown accustomed to it; it is part of their everyday landscape. Here, for illustrative purposes, is a select but representative sample of policies and prescribed behaviours that in that bizarre but thankfully shrinking part of the world have come to constitute the new normal. Read more: West’s Lunatic Woke Agenda Spills Over Into Bystander Serbia.
Der Friedensstifter 
