With Democrats lusting for a new and costly Cold War with Russia — and President Trump countering by hiring generals and shoveling more money into the Pentagon — the prospects for peace and rationality are dim, notes William Blum.
By William Blum
Conservatives have had a very hard time getting over President Trump’s much-repeated response to Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly’s calling Russian president Vladimir Putin “a killer.” Replied Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. You think our country is so innocent?”
Army Gen. H.R. McMaster, national security adviser to President Trump.
One could almost feel a bit sorry for O’Reilly as he struggled to regain his composure in the face of such blasphemy. Had any American establishment media star ever heard such a thought coming from the mouth of an American president? From someone on the radical left, yes, but from the President?
Senator John McCain on the floor of Congress, referring to Putin, tore into attempts to draw “moral equivalency between that butcher and thug and KGB colonel and the United States of America.”
Ah yes, the infamous KGB. Can anything good be said about a person associated with such an organization? We wouldn’t like it if a U.S. president had a background with anything like that. Oh, wait, a president of the United States was not merely a CIA “colonel”, but was the Director of the CIA! I of course speak of George Herbert Walker Bush. And as far as butchery and thuggery … How many Americans remember the December 1989 bombing and invasion of the people of Panama carried out by the same Mr. Bush? Many thousands killed or wounded; thousands more left homeless. Try and match that, Vladimir!
And in case you’re wondering for what good reason all this was perpetrated? Officially, to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega on drug charges. How is that for a rationalization for widespread devastation and slaughter? It should surprise no one that only shortly before the invasion Noriega had been on the CIA payroll.
It’s the “moral equivalency” that’s so tough to swallow for proud Americans like O’Reilly and McCain. Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell also chipped in with: “And no, I don’t think there’s any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.” Other Senators echoed the same theme, all inspired by good ol’ “American exceptionalism”, drilled into the mind of every decent American from childhood on … Who would dare to compare the morals of (ugh!) Russia with those of God’s chosen land, even in Moscow’s current non-communist form?
The communist form began of course with the October 1917 Russian Revolution. By the summer of 1918, some 13,000 American troops could be found in the newly born state, the future Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to “strangle at its birth” the Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill so charmingly put it.
A Historical Summary
U.S. foreign policy has not been much more noble-minded since then. I think, dear students, it’s time for me to once again present my concise historical summary:
Vice President George H.W. Bush meeting with Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega in the mid-1980s.
Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:
—Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments most of which were democratically-elected.
—Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
—Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
—Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
–Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
–Though not as easy to quantify, has also led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American instructors.
Where does the United States get the nerve to moralize about Russia? Same place they get the nerve to label Putin a “killer” … a “butcher” … a “thug”. It would be difficult to name a world-renowned killer, butcher, or thug – not to mention dictator, mass murderer, or torturer – of the past 75 years who was not a close ally of Washington.
So why then does the American power elite hate Putin so? It can be dated back to the period of Boris Yeltsin.
During the Western financial looting of the dying Soviet Union, the U.S. could be found meddling in favor of Yeltsin in the election held in 1996. Under Yeltsin’s reign, poverty exploded and life expectancy for men actually decreased by five years, all in the name of “shock therapy.” The U.S./Western-backed destabilization of the Soviet Union allowed global capitalism to spread its misery unfettered by any inconvenient socialism. Russia came under the control of oligarchs concerned only for their own enrichment and that of their billionaire partners in the West.
The transition of power to Vladimir Putin in the Twenty-first Century led to a number of reforms that curbed the disastrous looting of the nation by the oligarchic bandits. Putin and his allies vowed to build an independent, capitalist Russia that was capable of determining its own affairs free from U.S. and Western domination. Such an orientation placed Putin in direct confrontation with U.S. imperialism’s plans for unipolar global hegemony.
Washington’s disdain for Putin increased when he derided U.S. war propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then, the Russian leader played a crucial role in getting Iran to curtail its nuclear program and arranging for Syria to surrender its stockpiles of chemical weapons. Washington’s powerful neoconservatives had been lusting for direct U.S. military strikes against those two countries, leading to regime change, not diplomatic agreements that left the governments in place.
Lastly, after the United States overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014, Putin was obliged to intervene on behalf of threatened ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. That, in turn, was transformed by the Western media into a “Russian invasion”.
Who Murders Journalists?
The same Western media has routinely charged Putin with murdering journalists but doesn’t remind its audience of the American record in this regard. The American military, in the course of its wars in recent decades, has been responsible for the deliberate deaths of many journalists.
A scene from the Collateral Murder video, showing a passerby getting out of a van to help the wounded before being mowed down himself by a U.S. helicopter gunship.
In Iraq, for example, there’s the WikiLeaks 2007 video, exposed by Chelsea Manning, of the cold-blooded murder of two Reuters journalists; the 2003 U.S. air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded; and the American firing on Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine, a known journalist residence, the same year that killed two foreign news cameramen.
(It’s also worth remembering how President Bill Clinton authorized the deliberate bombing of the Serb TV station in Belgrade during NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999, killing at least 16 people and wounding many others. The rationalization was that NATO considered the Serb TV broadcasts to be “propaganda.”)
The Trump honeymoon is over for me. It was never actually love; hardly more than an intriguing curiosity; mainly that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton; that he was unlikely to start a war with Russia or close down the Russia Today (RT) TV station in the U.S., which I and many others depend on daily; and that he was not politically correct when it came to fighting the Islamic State.
Trump’s “moral equivalency” remark above gave me some hope. But this all vanished with his appointment to high office of one war-loving, bemedalled general after another, intermingled with one billionaire Goldman-Sachs official after another; his apparent confirmation of his Mexican Wall; and, worst of all, his increasing the military budget by $54 billion (sic, sick) … this will certainly be at the expense of human life and health and the environment. What manner of man is this who walks amongst us?
The word is “narcissism.” New York Times columnist Frank Bruni (Feb. 28) captures this well: “Why do I get the sense that fighter jets are Donald Trump’s biceps, warships are his pectorals and what he’s doing with his proposed $54 billion increase for the Pentagon is flexing?”
Will there ever be an end to the never-ending American wars?
William Blum is an author, historian, and renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others. [This article originally appeared at the Anti-Empire Report, http://williamblum.org/ .]
Your analysis describes exactly how I feel.
Don’t worry, we won’t care much as we won’t have any health care either – it’s incineration for us.
Just heard the Statue of Liberty has gone dark, New Yorkers trying to find out why. Maybe a symbolic message?
As someone who has had some experience with “deficient men” and power, I can assure you Trump has serious issues with his “manhood”. I knew that wayyy before the laughable “small hands” incident during the campaign. Bruni has the jist of it…
Wasn’t sure which would be worse….Hilary trying to grow a dick to be “tough” or Trump needing to do certain things ( or have certain things) to reassure himself that he HAS one.
As it is…gonna be a rough ride.
Stiv – just curious – how have you had some experience with ‘deficient men’?
Massive #WhiteHelmets Photo Cache Proves Hollywood Gave Oscar to Terrorist Group https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/02/27/massive-white-helmets-photo-cache-proves-hollywood-gave-oscar-to-terrorist-group/
thanks for chopping the rant at the end of American Anti-Empire Report 149. it hurts to see blum indulge his own hatred for islam, and cast a shadow over the excellent work of his own wonderful life.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. ”
– Henry Kissinger to fellow coup plotters in CIA re Chile’s election of socialist Salvador Allende, overthrown by CIA in coup on Sept. 11, 1973, which installed the brutal military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Quoted in “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzer.
Hawaii is not even a legitimate state because the monarchy was overthrown in a coup in 1893 carried out by sugar barons backed by US Marines. Hawaii was illegally annexed by the United States and the native Hawaiians were never given the option to choose independence over statehood vs territory in the 1959 plebiscite which admitted Hawaii to the USA. Clinton in 1993 made an official presidential declaration of the illegality at behest of native Hawaiians, but by that time business as usual went on and it’s a buried fact, although many websites discuss it.
I wonder what will ensue with this latest Wikileaks release of the CIA massive hacking and spying program?
Wasn’t it just yesterday that Bush Jr declared Putin an honorable man?
“When Putin came to power one of the first things he did was go after the oligarchs , many of whom were Russian Mafia, who had backed Boris Yeltsin. Under the drunken Yeltsin, these gangsters had “privatized” what had previously been the State-owned economy, gobbling up entire sectors at unbelievably cheap prices. Putin moved to disassemble their power and the result was the flight of the some of oligarchs and mafia to the West. They are still significant players in Russia as up to 80% of the economy was controlled by these gangsters at the time Putin took over.
It seems to me that Trumps relationship with the Russian Mafia and the banks they own in Russia who have lent Trump great sums of money is being ignored and is the main concern. The Russian Mafia problem in both the US and Israel is not insignificant although there is not much reporting on their activities in either place.
In any event, looking back 100 years ago we had the British Balfour Declaration to Lord Rothschild, Bolshevik Revolution financed and assisted by Wall Street and Germany and Americas entry into WWI to save JP Morgans and the Brits bacon.
These 3 things are not entirely unrelated and directly or indirectly have led to a century of war that included WWII and the victory of Communism over half the world, Cold War against Communism and now the Global War on Islamic Terrorism.
Imagine a world where these 3 things did not happen in 1917.
No victor in WWI w/o US intervention. All parties sue for peace. No Versailles Treaty or Communism that led to Hitler, the holocaust and WWII and the Cold War . No Israel and the resulting tensions leading to Islamic extremism over our support for their policies against the Palestinians and a GWOT
Maybe things turn out much worse but boy I would like to roll back the clock and restart 1917.
I agree with what the writer has said here however, I wonder why he removed the last portion of the same article as published on his website?!
Great Article tells it like it is:
“People everywhere need to wake up. If these war criminals have no compunction about being in bed with terrorists and invading other countries under the pretext of “bringing democracy” while at the same time being in bed with dictators. Then we, in the so-called “democracies” could be next to be violently “liberated.” Because when war criminals rule; the “rule of law” becomes perverted, and the lies, treachery, and madness of militarism takes over.”
[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/03/the-lies-treachery-and-madness-of.html
It was probably one of the most disastrous unintended consequences of war, but according to the historian Leon Wolff the United States was a major factor in averting a truce in the First World War during the summer of 1917. In his book In Flanders Fields Wolff indicated the British refused to participate in a proposed truce because they had reason to believe the U.S. would intervene on the side of the British and French and give them victory. Presumably, the British had this understanding from their contacts with Woodrow Wilson’s agent, Colonel House, in Britain.
By the summer of 1917 millions of people had already lost their lives to this war. Millions more would die between then and Armistice Day. The French, in particular, insisted on crushing terms against the Germans at the peace talks at Versailles in 1919 that many attribute to the rise of Hitler and the Second World War.
The First World War was supposed to be the war to end all wars. If our warmongers have their way, the next world war may prove to the the last war on this planet if it evolves into a nuclear war.
The only obvious way the British would have thought they had a “winning hand” was on account of their January, 1917 interception and decoding of the Zimmerman Telegram. The US was making out like bandits selling war materials to the Allied Powers, and joining the war wasn’t likely to increase those profits.
In her book titled The Zimmerman Telegram Barbara Tuchman repeatedly describes Wilson as resisting declaring war, and how he was almost dragged into finally agreeing to join. After recently learning that Tuchman was a bat-shit crazy Zionist, I’m going to watch in future history books to see how much of this was true.
The wild-card factor here was that Wilson – despite being a total racist with black Americans – was incredibly tolerant of things Jewish. Louis Brandeis was the first Jew to ever serve on the US Supreme Court, and was appointed by Wilson. Some tales surrounding the Balfour Declaration hint that Brandeis was a big factor in talking Wilson into joining WW1, for if the Central Powers weren’t defeated, there would be no “first step” of the “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine.
Back to the thread – I’m pretty darned discouraged by the way the neocons seem to be gaining traction with Trump and getting him under their thumb. I hope we don’t end up with a male version of Hillary after all.
In her book titled The Zimmerman Telegram Barbara Tuchman repeatedly describes Wilson as resisting declaring war, and how he was almost dragged into finally agreeing to join. After recently learning that Tuchman was a bat-shit crazy Zionist, I’m going to watch in future history books to see how much of this was true.
“The Politics of War” by one of my heroes, Walter Karp, will give you an entirely different story on World War I and Wilson’s role. This book also deals with the Spanish-American War. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Walter_Karp/Walter_Karp_page.html
Thanks for the recommendation! A quick check of my public library shows they don’t have it, so I’ll have to cause the postman to deliver yet another book to my mailbox.
The WW1 era is a period where my personal ignorance is abysmal, and it appears that texts I’ve purchased in the past don’t quite make the grade. One is so bad it will be departing soon. Another, Volume 7 of Page Smith’s history series didn’t have reliable information about Wilson, but while searching for that info I did get shocked to the core by another story. Seems that black folks in the south had learned of the war prosperity in the north, and were starting to head that direction for jobs. In one SC town the process got accelerated. Anthony Crawford was a well-off black man and….
The white mob lynched him, then thoroughly shot up his still-hanging body with their Second Amendment viagra devices. Most of the black population immediately left town and headed north. Southern towns quickly began passing laws to require up to $25,000 fees ($556K in today’s money) for anybody trying to recruit black workers for the north. Most history books don’t even hint at any of this.
“The honeymoon was over for me. It was never actually love . . .” I had similar interests with Mr. Blum on this, in seeing Trump, possibly, as a force for change, as with cooperation with Russia. It also seemed likely he would substitute version b) versus a) of the ruling capitalist state and its ambition for “full spectrum dominance,” and his version would be no better. Now we see his administration is another of the failed, inward, narcissistic (yes) type. Obama with his “exceptional nation” stuff was a first class version of Narcissus gazing into the pool at himself. (What do you suppose the peoples of other countries thought of this proposition by our leader?) My question is simple: where are the leaders? Do we have ANY leaders any more, in whatever field, that might lead us out of this mess?
The leaders are spotted by DemRep opportunists and if necessary surrounded with lies and battles for survival to neutralize them. Opposition leaders do not rise far in a scientific totalitarian oligarchy.
Not sure where today I read of MSM back in the day of the three big networks with Sevareid and people like that, Morley Safer, another good one, but whatever the view of them, today does have one enormous plus in the internet forums such as this one. They are in a sense a Public Meeting Place, where citizens are airing their views, and indicating the need for adjustments, the need for real leaders, doing what they are supposed to be doing. There is widespread skepticism and an almost rowdy tendency to want to shove views forward, but this activity also suggests the sleeping giant is waking up.
Yes, we probably have more communication among intellectuals who care than at any prior time, but it is the mass media of an era that leads the sheeple. Intellectuals have very little influence when the mass media are controlled by oligarchy.
The most independent thinker I have seen amongst our establishments political class is Rep Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard calling a spade a spade, is her reference to our CIA funneling weapons into the hands of al Quaeda and ISIS is throughly astounding. Talk about brave, or what, Gabbard is out there with her quest to bring down the secret powers which control our wars. My only hope is that Tulsi Gabbard moves along unhindered, and that she possibly goes on to become even more influential than she already maybe. Call her a work in progress, but for now she seems to be the best game in town.
To further support what Tulsi Gabbard is up against read this report written by Marine combat veteran Gordon Duff….
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/07/syria-fake-news-fake-war-fake-everything/
I would encourage everyone to FULLY check out Gabbard. Though I do not want to smear her in any way..there are questions I would need to be asked and answered.
For sure she is attractive and well spoken, but anyone who cared knew we were supporting Islamic radicals against the secular Syrian government. That’s 3 years old, isnt’ it? For sure, she’d be one of the few elected officials to go publicly against that “strategy”. Strategy….yea…..
I agree Stiv Gabbard needs to be vetted out, but for now at least she is the only one who is bringing the truth to the table and the only one wanting to do something about it. What does amaze me to some degree though, is how so far she has been able to get with her stand against our military’s CIA under the table shenanigans, as I wonder how she has done this up to now. People in Washington have gone down hard, and some have even died, for doing much less than taking a diplomatic trip to Syria and pay a visit to Assad, while America is supposedly trying to unseat this Syrian leader…this is truly amazing, and I wholeheartedly wish her all the luck in the world for what she is pursuing.
Joe, this is a powerful link here, another of your good links. My experience with the military indicates Tulsi Gabbard and Gordon Duff are joined by many others in their thinking. We should not forget what the POB have done to JASTA and what that would mean, not simply to families of the victims of 9/11. JASTA has been stripped of its teeth, with lawyers fees reduced to so negligible they won’t want to take on a case. This is the legislation proposed to allow families related to victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia, due to what was revealed several months ago with de-classification of the 28/9 pages in the official report.
D5-5 Thanks I’m going to check it out. Of all the people living on American soil the families of the 911 victims have been used and insulted the most. Besides the innocents who have either died or been misplaced from all the parts of the world our American government has invaded, these 911 families have been the real casualties of this 21st century crime along with the others I have mentioned here. Thanks for your input D5-5.
Joe
Does the general public have any way to estimate the number of CIA “assets” or FBI “informants” in Congress or the Executive Branch? Define those categories broadly: Anybody who has received money or other favors directly or indirectly from those agencies in the past, expects to receive money or favors from them in the future, has made special agreements to keep their secrets apart from the course of their official duties, or who feels they can be threatened in some way for revealing their info or not complying with requests. What percentages of our Congress are in league in these ways? CIA leaders have commented on occasion that CIA people would be instructed not to divulge such info, even when placed under oath. During his confirmation hearings for CIA director, George HW Bush testified under oath that he had no prior relationship to the CIA. Yet there is lots of evidence that his Zapata Corp. was actually a CIA front that was involved in supplying/planning the Bay of Pigs operation. And on the very next day after JFK was assassinated, FBI Director Hoover made a special point of verbally communicating to “Mr. George Bush of the CIA” that anti-Castro forces should cool it in their reaction to the events – we know this because it was noted in a memo written a week later.
The public should demand to be informed about these influences and ask for laws that make it a serious crime to hide them.
That is very true. Many of these would have to be capital offenses, if democracy is to be protected.
But the situation just got much more serious today, with the WikiLeaks release of the largest library of CIA documents showing extreme surveillance technologies infecting almost every computer, smartphone, and TV in the world, with elaborate schemes to infect, spread infections, maintain infection, sabotage anti-virus programs, pretend to have power off while keeping cameras and microphones on for spies. The spy utilities are also built into most devices, and send your” “encrypted” messages to spies before the are encrypted. They work on Windows, Apple, and even Linux/Solaris. The CIA has over 5000 engineers working on this with no oversight.
This is worse than the wildest speculations after the Snowden revelations. Clearly we are now an extreme totalitarian state.
Criminal violence is more problematic than spying, even though it doesn’t happen as often. Unfortunately, the orders to commit criminal violence against U.S. citizens in the US are never written down. The CIA will deny these acts. The FBI will not investigate and will deny. The mainstream newspapers owners and editorialists are highly influenced by the CIA and not willing to touch “conspiracies” until some official declares them to be fact. So the public is left with a long list of suspicious deaths that are probably related to US Spooks, but not power to investigate or to discuss them in the leading mass communications media.
I saw a comment on Twitter from someone saying “Look, proof that the CIA investigated controlling cars for assassination, so maybe now we can get the Michael Hastings case reopened.” I actually believe Hastings was murdered by Spook, but that small connection doesn’t add that much. In the original case, besides his car traveling at super high speed for a long stretch and then crashing into a tree, it was noted that a) He had said he had something big on CIA/Brennan and needed to lay low, b) some tapes of the crash appear to show multiple explosions, c) the engine block of the car was found some 75 yards behind the place where the car hit a tree (not possible due to the impact with the tree), d) firemen testified that the fire was very, very hot and the car mfg. who looked at the damage said that no collision could cause that type of hot fire, e) reporters who interviewed LA Police found out that the police had been ordered not to talk about it, f) in spite of all that the LA Police (same people who had no interest in coroner report that RFK was shot from close range behind him) declared that Hastings was only an auto accident. In that context, a document saying that the CIA considered using controlled cars for assassination doesn’t add too much – this was long rumored before. But every little bit could theoretically help.
It’s the “moral equivalency” that’s so tough to swallow for proud Americans like O’Reilly and McCain. Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell also chipped in with: “And no, I don’t think there’s any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.”
There is some truth to McConnell’s statement but not in the way he intended. So far in this century with Vladimir Putin mostly running Russia what have he and the Russians done that compares with the illegal and immoral war on Iraq and the consequent chaos that has prevailed throughout the Middle East and North Africa? Is there anything in recent Russian history that compares with the estimated half million children that died in Iraq because of sanctions maintained by the Clinton administration? Putin is no eagle scout, for sure, but has he ever exhibited any callousness comparable to that of the First Wicked Witch of Foggy Bottom who deemed the sacrifice of those half million Iraqi children to have been worth “it” whatever that inconceivable “it” might have been?
As deplorable as Trump may be, we could safely bet that the Queen of Chaos would never have responded to Faux News’ top thug in the refreshing way Trump did.
Bill B I’ve been thinking about a comment you made some weeks back, in which you and I share a childhood experience being bombed as children in Britain. You mentioned gas masks. I had completely forgotten them, probably because I was repressing them, and then, with your reminder, the horrible things were vividly brought back to me. I believe we had school drills with them also, and they are just one more horror of that time that I recall. (Saw today reminder of how a very large number of children in the middle east conflict will be afflicted mentally for life, and I can relate although arguably they have experienced much worse trauma than myself.) Well, my lifelong anti-war views have their origins here, and as a young man I actually thought we were making progress on the monsters we had somehow survived in the first half of the 20th century. Now, it seems, we have our own criminal demons to deal with, glib and effusive with their slickness and lies, the most sickening of which is wrapping themselves in the flag and claiming moral superiority. It’s delusion of the first order, and a sickness, I think, of the mentally impaired. It’s very well to use the term narcissim, but I think we need to remind ourselves this disease is particularly horrible, and related to the psychopath. I thank you Bill B for the reminders, and always enjoy your comments.
D5-5: It was comparatively quiet where I lived during the war. We had a few air raids with maybe around ten bombs dropped on the city, four of which landed within a mile of our home. Three or four of those night air raids got us out to our Anderson shelters where the grown ups encouraged us to join in sing-songs. I still recall a few words from “Roll out the barrel.” My point, however, in my earlier comment on this topic was to distinguish how we were encouraged to keep “our chins up” as opposed to the fear mongering that seems to have been so prevalent in the United States.
I might also have heard Winston Churchill on the “wireless” giving one of his more notable speeches: “… [W]hatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
These are moving lines. They bring me to tears.
How to pull the plug on our criminal Establishment? Glass-Seagall bankruptcy reorganization, or the inevitable explosion of our financial system, worse than 2008, worse than 1929, a veritable Mt. Vesuvius that’ll bury us “Pompeiians”.
I too Brad wonder at times what cataclysmic crisis would turn America around. Certainly a financial crisis would seem preferable over war with another nuclear power, or a couple of nuclear powers at that. I’m of the opinion that America’s established leaders think saber rattling is part of the daily plan, and they honestly don’t think a nuclear war would come of their going through the process.
We the people are the noisy cattle whom they would prefer to ignore. After this past years presidential election it would seem most sensible for us to quit waiting for our savior. Our savior is probably smart enough to be enjoying themselve while they, like us, wait for this house of cards to collapse. So enjoy the birthday cake with the kids, or play with the puppy’s pull toy, or plant a tree and watch it grow, because we are all flying solo until we’re not….sorry kind of having a down day, since I had to spend time in our nation’s airports. Ah that’s why I feel like cattle!
What I mean to say is the criminal Establishment is on an INESCABABLE, short term, terminal path, with only two ways out of it: financial self destruction, their fraudulent investment portfolios turn into “Confederate money”, or Glass-Steagall, where many of them cease being criminal billionaires and are transformed into millionaire businessmen once more, working in the real World once again. They already have this rupture within the ranks of The Establishment, and already at “Civil War” over the issue of continued existence. Their evil Game cannot be sustained in the long run, will not make it through this year probably. It is like when Reagan sent LaRouche as back channel to USSR, to offer cooperation on StarWars technology science-driver program to break the impasse of MAD, to Andropov I believe it was. LaRouche, being the physical economist and historian (polymath actually) that he is, with eleven forecasts to his credit, all of them turning out true, told the Russians if they refused the offer, they’ll disintegrate in five years time. Six years later, the USSR and Warsaw Pact were gone. The Deep State had him thrown into prison on false charges, attempts on his life were made. Had Reagan shot for threatening Rapproachment with Russia. Anyway; LaRouche forecasts inevitable short-term demise of our Establishment. He’s never been wrong in his forecasts.
To “pull the plug on our criminal Establishment” we must have a supply of uncorrupted political parties able to make ruling coalitions (if you are optimistic), or if you are pessimistic, widespread riots to intimidate the rich (as in the race riots of the 1960s) and enforcement agencies filled with commanders who refuse to suppress the riots.
My experience with the extreme corruption of US government suggests that a series of cataclysms leading to riots is most likely, paralleling a series of depressions, by which US military aggressions are soundly defeated at enormous cost, and the US itself is surrounded, isolated, universally hated, and embargoed. Whether that can happen without nuclear war in a nation of stupid bullies, thieves, and demagogues is unclear. But we are not headed for moderation or enlightenment, in the short or long term. We are headed for the trash heap of history, in two or three generations, and if that restores democracy and moderation, the sooner the better for everyone.
Well Sam, it looks like “rioting” has been made easier through executive fiat. The next step is being able to shoot “rioters” on demand. Expect that soon.
I would say so, that waves of totalitarian repression will be part of this. Each set of deaths will build and militarize the opposition. But when the repression is total, the opposition will eventually move into the ranks of enforcement.
The question is whether we will have our Tienanmen square massacre (China 1989) before our corrupt representatives and mass media are sufficiently discredited.
Thanks Mr. Blum. It is so refreshing to hear the truth spoken plainly. The fog of lies in America makes it hard to breathe.
The fog of lies has been lifted enough today by WikiLeaks to show further fogs and lies: they have released the largest library of CIA documents showing extreme surveillance technologies infecting almost every computer, smartphone, and TV in the world, with elaborate schemes to infect, spread infections, maintain infection, sabotage anti-virus programs, pretend to have power off while keeping cameras and microphones on for spies. The CIA has over 5000 engineers working on this with no oversight.
I discovered some of this hiding in plain view on a Windows 10 laptop, and also found my cellphone on after it had been turned “off” several times. Win 10 copies all of your files to spy websites without your permission, allows spies to use the camera and microphone.
The spy utilities are also built into most devices, and send your” “encrypted” messages to spies before the are encrypted. They work on Windows, Apple, and even Linux/Solaris.
The fog of lies has been lifted enough today by WikiLeaks to show further fogs and lies: they have released the largest library of CIA documents showing extreme surveillance technologies infecting almost every computer, smartphone, and TV in the world, with elaborate schemes to infect, spread infections, maintain infection, sabotage anti-virus programs, pretend to have power off while keeping cameras and microphones on for spies. The CIA has over 5000 engineers working on this with no oversight.
I discovered some of this hiding in plain view on a Windows 10 laptop, and also found my cellphone on after it had been turned “off” several times. Win 10 copies all of your files to spy websites without your permission, allows spies to use the camera and microphone.
The spy utilities are also built into most devices, and send your” “encrypted” messages to spies before the are encrypted. They work on Windows, Apple, and even Linux/Solaris.
This is posted again anonymously because it was held up in moderation:
The fog of lies has been lifted enough today by WikiLeaks to show further fogs and lies: they have released the largest library of CIA documents showing extreme surveillance technologies infecting almost every computer, smartphone, and TV in the world, with elaborate schemes to infect, spread infections, maintain infection, sabotage anti-virus programs, pretend to have power off while keeping cameras and microphones on for spies. The CIA has over 5000 engineers working on this with no oversight.
I discovered some of this hiding in plain view on a Windows 10 laptop, and also found my cellphone on after it had been turned “off” several times. Win 10 copies all of your files to spy websites without your permission, allows spies to use the camera and microphone.
The spy utilities are also built into most devices, and send your” “encrypted” messages to spies before the are encrypted. They work on Windows, Apple, and even Linux/Solaris.
The fog of lies has just today been lifted by WikiLeaks with the most important leak of documents in history, on massive see-eye-eh spying on most computers and smartphones and TVs in the world. See wikileaks dot org.
The see-eye-eh has been using over 5000 engineers to install or plant spyware on all personal electronics, which allows them to use the camera and microphone on your computer and phone even when it is off, sends them all of your personal data and all of your files, defeats every anti-virus program, and sends all of your emails to them, before any encryption. This stuff comes with Windows 10, and is installed easily on all Windows/Apple/Linux devices.
They have targeted most foreign governments, but their project has no goals of targeting extremists or terrorists. They have perfected the means of making every hack look like it was done by certain foreign countries.
This material is worth study by every journalist and activist. It is probably the most important revelation about any government in history. This shows that the secret agencies went ahead even faster despite public horror at what Snowden had revealed.
There is now a complete totalitarian oligarchy in control of the US.
From Wikileaks:
“By the end of 2016, the [see-eye-eh] hacking division… had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware…
“Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike…
“[see-eye-eh] malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group)… responsible for … backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware…
“As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems … to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations…
“The [see-eye-eh] Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) … remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the [see-eye-eh] the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.
“These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied…
“The [see-eye-eh] has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools…”