Obstacles to the aggressors’ expansion and occupation in the Middle East are Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shia militia in Iraq. They are presented as “threats” rather than defenders of their dignity, sovereignty and land.
U.S.-Israel biennial command post simulation and training exercise, October 2010. Then IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and Deputy EUCOM Commander U.S. Lt. Gen. John D. Gardner (IDF/Flickr)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
If you understand who the aggressor is, you are on your way to understanding the mad and perilous times we live in.
Once you get that, what you’ve been taught all your life starts to lose its hold on you.
Establishment education and media try to confuse you. Independent media like Consortium News try to clarify.
Establishment education and media portray the aggressor as the defender, and the victim as the threat. Consortium News endeavors to show you the “threat” is really an obstacle. An obstacle to aggression and occupation. An obstacle to expansion. Locally and globally.
Few would agree with aggression, paid for with your taxes in a so-called democracy. So obstacles to aggression become threats you’re supposed to be afraid of. Offensive action is made to appear as “defense” to protect you from the “threat.”
There’s nothing new in this. The Romans dressed up their imperial aggression as self-defense against fake threats. Rome provoked tribes, first in Italy and then Gaul and Germania, into forming alliances to protect the tribes’ sovereignty, and then Rome presented these alliances as “threats” that had to be destroyed, justifying war against them.
Rome would also provoke an adversary into invading or launching an attack to obtain the casus belli needed to start a pre-planned war. For instance, Roman ally Masinissa of Numidia repeatedly raided Carthage to provoke it into finally responding militarily in violation of a treaty it had with Rome. The empire used this as a pretext for total destruction and annexation — even though Carthage, an obstacle to Roman expansion, posed no realistic, existential threat.
In the earlier U.S. imperium, Mark Twain explained it this way:
“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Today the obstacles to the aggressors’ expansion and occupation in the Middle East are Iran plus the legal, armed resistance to Greater Israel and Greater America: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shia militia in Iraq. They are presented as “threats”rather than defenders of their dignity, sovereignty and land. Nazi Germany portrayed resistance fighters in France, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and elsewhere as a “threat,” as “terrorists” and “bandits” to delegitimize legitimate obstacles to total domination.
In Asia the “threat” is China. Beijing protecting its sovereignty in its own region is somehow a threat to U.S. warships near China’s waters and to Taiwan, which the U.S. agrees is part of China.
In Europe years of NATO expansion, refusal to negotiate a mutual security treaty, rehabilitation of fascism, a coup, and civil war in Ukraine against ethnic Russian coup-resistors provoked Russia to intervene, much as the Romans provoked Carthage.
Getting Russia to invade Ukraine allows the portrayal of Moscow as the aggressor and a “threat” to all of Europe and not as an obstacle to the U.S. and Wall Street return to their 1990s dominance of Russia. (Now there is constant talk of direct NATO war with Russia. The fear is another provocation to get Russia to start it.)
All of these obstacles to U.S. global hegemony are presented to you as existential threats that only the mighty United States, NATO and Israel can protect you from. There’s nothing in it for them, of course, except saving your life, we’re expected to believe. Except you don’t have to believe it. You have alternative media like Consortium News to expose the deceptions on a daily basis.
That’s why pro-establishment social media companies and so-called anti-disinformation services have tried to hurt us. And that’s why we need your help. So …
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Our global field is full of stories that soften power and hide intent. Wars are described as protection, concentrated authority is called consensus, and the deeper forces — economic pressures, geopolitical aims, media framing, and rapid technological change (AI), move strategically beneath the noise.
Clarity comes when we step back from the ceaseless current of confusion and let the surface settle. In that stillness, what the language tries to cover becomes visible. The more of us who can see through the shadows, the quicker the solutions. To feel the truth rise through the layers of distortion is always a quiet joy.
One of the best things about Consortium News is that you don’t overwhelm us with TOO MUCH info. When we want to find out the news from 1 day ago or 10 minutes ago, that’s where mainstream news outlets are useful. But when we want to get IN DEPTH info that’s where we look at Consortium News.
I believe it more accurate to state that establishment education and media seek to misinform rather than confuse people. Misinformation equals deceit equals corruption equals evil. The brainwashed masses don’t view themselves as confused at all. Indeed, the spectacular achievements of propaganda. Thank you CN.
It is not more accurate. People are made to confuse resistance with terrorism, obstacle with a threat, oligarchy as democracy and yes, war as peace. That is how they are misinformed. By confusing them. Of course people don’t think they are confused.If they did it wouldn’t be successful propaganda.
It worked well in occupation of the ME stealing a religion and accusing it of violating their temples and suspicion of an imaginary messiah. Ages of defamation has now allowed use of tactic similar to own continent acquisition.
With godless communism arising from WWI countering our religious PR then returns once more to a battle between religious orthodox franchise wars. Our sects have a long history secular rule was meant to prevent but now a religious culture war has won the Supreme Court and now we are courting world disaster for empires once more. A deal holding up a nomination gave advantage to a President running against the Bush era and also against a feminist twice.
Another thank you Mr. Lauria. You have been exposed to facts that few in the USA are privy to. And that leads to conclusions hard to find. You have in my opinion provided ones here that needs attention if democracy is to stand any chance of having some amount of success. It’s interesting that some moneyed interests do all they can to limit the facts that are available, and then they also cry out about how democracy is being undermined.
Thank you Joe Lauria. Consortium News has for many years reliably informed me of how the world really works.
Mr. Editor-In-Chief Joe Lauria, you nailed it with the Mark Twain quotation!
Thank you and everyone at Consortiumnews for informed content and honest critique.
We still have options. One being the absurd “Board of Peace” which is a real creature now that the Security council of the UN created it. It presents a fat target to ultimately engage the rest of the world that has been relegated to observer status and receiver of all the negative fallout of the economic disruption that is being visited upon us all. Here’s the plan:
First a letter to UN secretary Guterres. Requesting a new resolution to eliminate any Board members who are in “non-compliance” with UN rules and international law. Guess who they are. That would generate a veto and then the path of Uniting for Peace” could follow engaging the rest of the plant’s national representatives. Much like the 1956 Suez Crisis did. It could lead us to a worldwide BDS movement to pressure the US and Israel. The effort would be to recreate the Board of Peace into a genuine body dedicated to actually solving the world’s conflicts. Fantasy? Give me a better path forward.
I for one think that’s a bloody good idea Mike. But the UN in my opinion is pretty useless.
Good reminder.
Excellent essay.
Thank you for this.
I just got done skimming through a documentary on YouTube “Reel Bad Arabs” about how Arabs are depicted in Hollywood as little more than perfidious and violent aggressors. It dovetails nicely with this great piece.
Thank You Joe
Thanks to Joe Lauria for emphasizing the role provocation plays in international conflicts. Who provokes and who responds? That is always a key question to answer.
The world of nation-states is a lawless jungle. The heavily-weaponized nation-states—among them the US, Russia, the UK, France, and last but not least Israel, all nuclear weapons states—represent the greatest threat to humanity. Because international law is not enforceable except on weaker nations, pacifism—“turn the other cheek”—is not an option for any of them, and to think otherwise is dangerously unrealistic.
To evaluate Russia’s preemptive/defensive action in Ukraine without recognizing the impossibility of pacifism in that context is deceptive. The best we can hope for is mutual respect and avoidance of provocation between nation-states. In fact, provocation—when deliberately perpetrated to cause war—is the greatest evil.
The US provoked Russia needlessly over the past 30 years, the ultimate being the coup against Ukraine’s legally-elected government in 2014. But apologists for the US national security complex, in fits of dangerous fantasy, would like Russia to wave the white flag of surrender in the face of continuous provocation designed to weaken Russia and meddle in its internal affairs. The US is politically and morally vulnerable on this point, which is why the major propaganda line carried ad nauseum by Western mainstream media consistently characterized Russia’s defensive move against the US’s Ukraine client as an “unprovoked invasion.”
When considering the US’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, look at the history of US provocations and adhere to the truth of Orwell’s warning: Omission is the most dangerous form of lie.
Easy question to answer, actually. Just look at a map. When one nation is on the other side of the world from its own land, and the other nation is fighting on its own land or next-door to its home, it becomes incredibly obvious who is the aggressor. It also becomes incredibly obvious that CNN, Fox and all the rest are big liars. At that point the question becomes, why would anyone listen to a known liar? What you hear will be more lies, and such liars only use the truth occasionally to make their lies more believable. So, why listen? What value can possibly be found in what a liar says?
One advantage of this site is that not all the analysis is based on what some author watched on CNN. The phrase Garbage In-Garbage Out applies to many American analysts, simply because of their poor choice of source info.
Thanks for letting us know that America’s “They hit me first!” routine dates back to the democracy and freedom of the Roman Emperors and their slaves. Humans have not advanced very far in thousands of years. Not beyond screaming children on the playground explaining their aggressions with “he hit me first.”
Repeat the lies, keep your job.
In reality children are much less prone to aggression and infinitely less devious than adults are. They don’t hold grudges and they don’t make anyone’s life miserable because they believe themselves to be the center of the universe. All this despite the fact that they have no rights and little to no control over their lives. And yet adults see themselves as absolute paragons of judgement and wisdom, when nothing could be farther from the truth. There’s one thing every catastrophe the world over has in common: they’re all caused by adults.
Thanks,Joe. Consortiumnews and all of its grateful fans couldn’t have a greater editor.Your words here explain to a tee just how dire the threat is to our humanity and how necessary Consortiumnews is!
…and, how much they depend on us, the receivers of their valuable & trustworthy information and analysis, to help financially support their highly-esteemed mission!