Exclusive: Neocons want a new Cold War – all the better to pick the U.S. taxpayers’ pockets – but this reckless talk and war profiteering could spark a nuclear war and leave the world to the cockroaches, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
If the human species extinguishes itself in a flash of thermonuclear craziness and the surviving cockroaches later develop the intellect to assess why humans committed this mass suicide, the cockroach historians may conclude that it was our failure to hold the neoconservatives accountable in the first two decades of the Twenty-first Century that led to our demise.
After the disastrous U.S.-led invasion of Iraq – an aggressive war justified under false premises – there rightly should have been a mass purging of the people responsible for the death, destruction and lies. Instead the culprits were largely left in place, indeed they were allowed to consolidate their control of the major Western news media and the foreign-policy establishments of the United States and its key allies.
A cockroach, which some scientists believe has the best chance to survive a nuclear holocaust.
Despite the Iraq catastrophe which destabilized the Middle East and eventually Europe, the neocons and their liberal interventionist chums still filled the opinion columns of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and virtually every other mainstream outlet. Across the American and European political systems and “think tanks,” the neocons and the liberal hawks stayed dominant, too, continuing to spin their war plans while facing no significant peace movement.
The cockroach historians might be amazed that at such a critical moment of existential danger, the human species – at least in the most advanced nations of the West – offered no significant critique of the forces leading mankind to its doom. It was as if the human species was unable to learn even the most obvious lessons needed for its own survival.
Despite the falsehoods of the Iraq War, the U.S. government was still widely believed whenever it came out with a new propaganda theme. Whether it was the sarin gas attack in Syria in 2013 or the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, U.S. government assertions blaming the Syrian government and the Russian government, respectively, were widely accepted without meaningful skepticism or simple demands for basic evidence.
Swallowing Propaganda
Just as with the Iraqi WMD case, the major Western media made no demands for proof. They just fell in line and marched closer to the edge of global war. Indeed, the learned cockroaches might observe that the supposed watchdogs in the American press had willingly leashed themselves to the U.S. government as the two institutions moved in unison toward catastrophe.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right). (White House photo)
The few humans in the media who did express skepticism – largely found on something called the Internet – were dismissed as fill-in-the-blank “apologists,” much as occurred with the doubters against the Iraqi WMD case in 2002-2003. The people demanding real evidence were marginalized and those who accepted whatever the powerful said were elevated to positions of ever-greater influence.
If the cockroach historians could burrow deep enough into the radioactive ashes, they might discover that – on an individual level – people such as Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wasn’t fired after swallowing the WMD lies whole and regurgitating them on the Post’s readership; that New York Times columnist Roger Cohen and dozens of similar opinion-leaders were not unceremoniously replaced; that Hillary Clinton, a neocon in the supposedly “liberal” Democratic Party, was rewarded with the party’s presidential nomination in 2016; and that the likes of Iraq War architect Robert Kagan remained the toast of the American capital with his opinions sought after and valued.
The cockroaches might observe that humans showed little ability to adapt amid very dangerous conditions, i.e., the bristling nuclear arsenals of eight or so countries. Instead, the humans pressed toward their own doom, tagging along after guides who had proven incompetent over and over again but were still followed toward a civilization-ending precipice.
These guides casually urged the masses toward the edge with sweet-sounding phrases like “democracy promotion,” “responsibility to protect,” and “humanitarian wars.” The same guides, who had sounded so confident about the wisdom of “shock and awe” in Iraq and then the “regime change” in Libya, pitched plans for a U.S. invasion of Syria, albeit presented as the establishment of “safe zones” and “no-fly zones.”
After orchestrating a coup in Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, overthrowing the elected president and then sponsoring an “anti-terrorism operation” to kill ethnic Russian Ukrainians who objected to the coup, Western politicians and policymakers saw only “Russian aggression” when Moscow gave these embattled people some assistance. When citizens in Crimea voted 96 percent to separate from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, the West denounced the referendum as a “sham” and called it a “Russian invasion.” It didn’t matter that opinion polls repeatedly found similar overwhelming support among the Crimean people for the change. The false narrative, insisting that Russia had instigated the Ukraine crisis, was accepted with near-universal gullibility across the West.
A Moscow ‘Regime Change’
Behind this fog of propaganda, U.S. and other Western officials mounted a significant NATO military build-up on Russia’s border, complete with large-scale military exercises practicing the seizure of Russian territory.
Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016. (Russian government photo)
Russian warnings against these operations were dismissed as hysterical and as further proof for the need to engineer another “regime change,” this time in Moscow. But first the Russian government had to be destabilized by making the economy scream. Then, the plan was for political disruptions and eventually a Ukraine-style coup to remove the thrice-elected President Vladimir Putin.
The wisdom of throwing a nuclear power into economic, political and social disorder – and risking that the nuclear codes might end up in truly dangerous hands – was barely discussed.
Even before the desired coup, the West’s neoconservatives advocated giving the Russians a bloody nose in Syria where Moscow’s forces had intervened at the Syrian government’s request to turn back Islamic jihadists who were fighting alongside Western-backed “moderate” rebels.
The neocon/liberal-hawk plans for “no-fly zones” and “safe zones” inside Syria required the U.S. military’s devastation of Syrian government forces and presumably the Russian air force personnel inside Syria with the Russians expected to simply take their beating and keep quiet.
The cockroach historians also might note that once the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks decided on one of their strategic plans at some “think-tank” conference – or wrote it down in a report or an op-ed – they were single-minded in implementing it regardless of its impracticality or recklessness.
These hawks were highly skilled at spinning new propaganda themes to justify what they had decided to do. Since they dominated the major media outlets, that was fairly easy without anyone of note taking note that the talking points were simply word games. But the neocons and liberal hawks were very good at word games. Plus, these widely admired interventionists were never troubled with self-doubt whatever mayhem and death followed in their wake.
So, when the decision was made to invade Iraq, Libya and Syria or to stage a coup in Ukraine or to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocons and their friends never countenanced the possibility that something could go wrong.
And when setbacks and even catastrophes resulted, the messes were excused away as the failure of some politician to implement the neocon/liberal-hawk scheme to the precise letter. If only more force had been used, if only people on the ground were more competent, if only the few critics were silenced and prevented from sowing doubts about the wisdom of the plan, then it would have succeeded. It was never their fault.
As the West’s new foreign-policy establishment, the neocons and their liberal helpers validated their own thoughts as brilliant and infallible. And who was there to doubt them? Who had the necessary access to the West’s mass media and who had the courage to counter their clever arguments and suffer the predictable ridicule, insults and slurs? After all, there were so many esteemed people and prestigious institutions that stamped the neocon/liberal-hawk plans with gilded seals of approval.
Still, the cockroach historians might yet be puzzled by how thoroughly the world’s leadership failed the human species, particularly in the West, which prided itself in freedom of thought and diversity of opinion.
So, the pressures kept building, unchecked, until – perhaps accidentally amid excessive tensions or after some extreme nationalist had exploited Russia’s “regime change” chaos to seize power – the final line was crossed.
‘Extending American Power’
Though much of human information would likely have been lost in the nuclear firestorms that were unleashed, the cockroach historians could learn much if they could get their antennae around a 2016 report by a group called the Center for a New American Security, consisting of prominent neocons and liberal interventionists, including some expected to play high-level roles in a Hillary Clinton administration.
Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)
These “experts” included foreign-policy stars such as Robert Kagan (formerly of the Reagan administration’s State Department, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century – an early advocate for the Iraq War – and later a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a Washington Post columnist), James P. Rubin (who served in Bill Clinton’s State Department and made a name for himself as a TV commentator), Michele Flournoy (the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during Barack Obama’s first term and touted as Hillary Clinton’s favorite to be Secretary of Defense), Eric Edelman (who preceded Flournoy in her Obama job except he served under George W. Bush), Stephen J. Hadley (George W. Bush’s second-term national security advisor), and James Steinberg (a deputy national security advisor under Bill Clinton and Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).
In other words, this group, which included many other big names as well, was a who’s who of who’s important in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. Their report was brazenly entitled “Extending American Power” and painted an idyllic picture of the world population living happily under U.S. domination in the seven decades since World War II.
“The world order created in the aftermath of World War II has produced immense benefits for peoples across the planet,” the report asserted, ignoring periodic slaughters carried out across the Third World, from Vietnam to Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, often inflicted by the massive application of U.S. firepower and other times by tribal or religious hatreds and rivalries exacerbated by big-power interference.
Also downplayed was the environmental devastation that has come with the progress of hyper-capitalism, threatening the long-term survival of human civilization via “global warming” – assuming that “nuclear winter” doesn’t intervene first.
Even though many of these benighted “experts” were complicit in gross violations of international law – including aggressive war in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere; lethal drone strikes in multiple countries; torture of “war on terror” detainees; and subversion of internationally recognized governments – they deluded themselves into believing that they stood for some legalistic global structure, declaring:
“United States still has the military, economic, and political power to play the leading role in protecting a stable rules-based international order.” Exactly what stability and what rules were left fuzzy.
In line with their underlying delusions, these “experts” called for feeding more money into the maw of the Military-Industrial Complex and flexing American military muscle: “An urgent first step is to significantly increase U.S. national security and defense spending and eliminate the budgetary strait-jacket of the Budget Control Act. A second and related step is to formulate policies that take advantage of the substantial military, economic, and diplomatic power Washington has available but has been reluctant to deploy in recent years.”
Battling Russia over Ukraine
The bipartisan group – representing what might be called Official Washington’s consensus – also urged a tough stand against Russia regarding Ukraine, including military assistance to help the post-coup Ukrainian regime crush ethnic Russian resistance in the east.
Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, killing dozen of ethnic Russians who had sought refuge there on May 2, 2014. (From RT video)
“The United States must provide Ukrainian armed forces with the training and equipment necessary to resist Russian-backed forces and Russian forces operating on Ukrainian territory,” the report said, adding as a recommendation: “Underwrite credible security guarantees to NATO allies on the frontlines with Russia. Given recent Russian behavior, it is no longer possible to ignore the possible challenge to NATO countries that border Russia. The Baltics in particular are vulnerable to both direct attack and the more complicated ‘hybrid’ warfare that Russia has displayed in Ukraine.
“To provide reassurance to U.S. allies and also to deter Russian efforts to destabilize these nations, it is necessary to build upon the European Reassurance Initiative and establish a more robust U.S. force presence in appropriate central and eastern Europe countries, which should include a mix of permanently stationed forces, rotationally deployed forces, prepositioned equipment, access arrangements and a more robust schedule of military training and exercises. …
“The United States should also work with both NATO and the EU to counter Russian influence-peddling and subversion using corruption and illegal financial manipulation.”
Apparently that last point about “influence-peddling” was a reference to the need to silence dissident voices in the West that object to the new Cold War and dispute U.S. propaganda aimed at justifying the increased tensions with Russia. The report’s Washington insiders clearly understand that their future career prospects are advanced by taking a belligerent approach toward Russia.
Regarding Syria, the bipartisan group of neocons and liberal hawks urged a U.S. military invasion with the goal of establishing a “no-fly zone” while building up insurgent forces capable of compelling “regime change” in Damascus, a strategy similar to those followed in Iraq and Libya to disastrous results.
“In our view, there can be no political solution to the Syrian civil war so long as the military balance continues to convince [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad he can remain in power. And as a result of Iran’s shock troops and military equipment deployed to Syria, and the modern aircraft and other conventional forces Russia has now deployed, the military balance tilts heavily in favor of the Assad regime,” the report said.
“At a minimum, the inadequate efforts hitherto to arm, train, and protect a substantial Syrian opposition force must be completely overhauled and made a much higher priority. In the meantime, and in light of this grim reality, the United States, together with France and other allies, must employ the necessary military power, including an appropriately designed no-fly zone, to create a safe space in which Syrians can relocate without fear of being killed by Assad’s forces and where moderate opposition militias can arm, train, and organize.”
How a U.S.-led invasion of a sovereign country and the arming of a military force to overthrow the government fit with the group’s enthusiasm for “a rule-based international order” is not explained. Clearly, the prescribed actions are in violation of the United Nations Charter and other international legal standards, but apparently the only real “rules” the group believes in are those that serve its purposes and change depending on the needs for “extending American power.”
Similar hypocrisy pervaded the group’s other recommendations, but the blind obedience to these double standards – indeed the inability to see or acknowledge the blatant contradictions – might be of interest to the cockroach historians because it could help them understand how the U.S. foreign policy establishment lost its mind and blundered into unnecessary conflicts that could easily escalate into strategic warfare, even thermonuclear conflagration.
A Steady Drumbeat
But this collection of neocons and liberal hawks wasn’t just an odd group of careerist “thinkers” trying to impress Hillary Clinton. Their double-thinking “group think” extended throughout the American establishment in the second decade of the Twenty-first Century.
Columnist Roger Cohen
For instance, The New York Times and other major publications were dominated by both neocon and liberal-hawk commentators, writers like Roger Cohen, who was one of the many pundits who swallowed the Iraq War lies whole and — despite the disaster — avoided any negative career consequences. So, in 2016, that left Cohen and his fellow Iraq War cheerleaders still pressing political leaders to expand the war in Syria and ratchet up tensions with Russia at every opportunity.
In a column about the mass shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, on June 12 – in which the shooter was reported to have claimed allegiance to ISIS – Cohen tacked on a typically distorted account of President Obama’s approach to the Syrian conflict. Ignoring that Obama had the CIA and the Pentagon covertly train and arm rebel groups seeking to overthrow the Syrian government, Cohen wrote:
“Yes, to have actively done nothing in Syria over more than five years of war — so allowing part of the country to become an ISIS stronghold, contributing to a massive refugee crisis in Europe, acquiescing to slaughter and displacement on a devastating scale, undermining America’s word in the world, and granting open season for President Vladimir Putin to strut his stuff — amounts to the greatest foreign policy failure of the Obama administration. It has made the world far more dangerous.”
But Cohen did not acknowledge his own role as a brash supporter of the Iraq War in sparking the creation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State or ISIS. Nor did he address the fact that the United States and its allies, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have essentially kept the Syrian civil war going, a point even acknowledged by some supporters of Syrian “regime change.”
For instance, Thanassis Cambanis of the “progressive” Century Foundation produced a report entitled “The Case for a More Robust U.S. Intervention in Syria,” which acknowledged that “most of the armed opposition has survived only because of foreign intervention.” In other words, much of the death and destruction in Syria, which also has fueled political instability in Europe because of the massive refugee flow, resulted from intervention from the United States and its allies.
So, the cure to the mess created by these not-thought-through interventions, at least in the view of Cohen and other eager interventionists, is more intervention. It was just such obsessive and irrational thinking – embraced as Official Washington’s “conventional wisdom” – that pushed the world toward the eve of destruction in 2016.
Contemplating all this human foolishness, the cockroach historians might be left using one of their six legs to scratch their heads.
[For more on these topics, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Family Business of Perpetual War“; “Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill“; and “The State Department’s Collective Madness.”]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
I will right away snatch your rss feed as I can’t to find your e-mail subscription link or newsletter service.
Do you’ve any? Kindly allow me recognise so that I could subscribe.
Thanks. http://www.yahoo.net
The USA has to separate into 3-4 different countries and disarm for there to be world peace. We can’t continue to be united states and have to be separated states
The proposition that there will be cockroaches to scratch their antennae over our idiocy & hubris in some future is, in my view, overly optimistic. There may be, perhaps, unicellular organisms happily mutating away in some deep-sea abyss… perhaps.
That is Great Piece. Very Worrisome indeed. I served in Soviet Peace Keeping Force and know the value of peace. I see what State Dept and NATO is pedaling from other side of the Atlantic and I’ll tell you – It is so ugly and cynical yet so pointless that one may doubt if it is actually for real. Can these “Think Tanks”, Speech writers, Journos, and most of the Anglo-Saxon media and other Establishment talking heads be so Evil and Sinister? Even more you wonder because most of It just doesn’t make any sense anymore. In Washington and in Most of the Brussels alike. Collective psychoses of unknown origin. Some spooky stuff (excuse my jargon)
Peace.
Comments on ICH are hot. Information Clearing House has this article up also. The Comments are Ferocious and call a spade a shovel re: the Firstest of the Israeli Firsters: The Neocons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44998.htm
“Also downplayed was the environmental devastation that has come with the progress of hyper-capitalism, threatening the long-term survival of human civilization via “global warming” – assuming that “nuclear winter” doesn’t intervene first.”
Eliminate that one line above, and Robert Parry’s article is perfect in truth.
The PNAC attacks are becoming Nuking Futs !
Jun 29, 2016 Neoconservatives Endorse Hillary Clinton for President Because They Know She’s One of Them
Neoconservatives like Iraq warmonger Robert Kagan aren’t endorsing Hillary Clinton for president merely because they want rid of Donald Trump, but because she’s one of them, writes Trevor Timm at The Guardian.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/neoconservatives_endorse_hillary_clinton_for_president_because_they_know_sh/
Thank you one and all; from Parry on down.
After reading everything, i realize that i don’t have a drinking problem.
And I don’t have a drug problem.
Senate Democrats Block Zika Funding Bill Laden with GOP Measures
JUNE 29, 2016
Senate Democrats have blocked a bill providing funding to combat the mosquito-borne Zika virus,
after Republicans loaded it with measures to block funding for Planned Parenthood,
take money away from Obamacare, roll back parts of the Clean Water Act
and allow the Confederate flag to fly at veterans’ cemeteries.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted, “I didn’t think the GOP could write 1 bill to hurt women, vets, Obamacare, PP, AND clean water all at once—but they did it. #Zika.”
Tuesday’s vote ensures there will be no legislation to address the crisis this month while Congress is in recess.
http://www.democracynow.org
which were the real cockroaches in that episode?
“And finally the cockroach historians struck pay dirt: they came upon a surviving cache of CN articles by one Robert Parry, which helped them understand a lot more about WHAT the humans had done to hasten their self-destruction although not WHY. They were also stumped by RP’s taxonomy: he mentioned “neocons” and “liberals” and seemed to imply that they were two distinct subspecies that acted in concert. Nevertheless, try as they would the cockroach historians could not spot defining differences between the two, although they could tell them, if taken together, apart from the rest of the humanoids by one feature that the humanoids often identified as “ethnicity” inherited or simulated. They wondered why RP never mentioned it and concluded that he must have been a euphemism afficionado, like another contemporary of his who signed his articles PC Roberts”
This article is amazing in the cognitive dissonance it displays towards President Obama. The President eagerly wanted to invade Libya and Syria. He was only stopped in Syria because the British, the pentagon, and congress had no interest in overtly supporting his illegal bombing campaign and a potential war with Russia.
Why isn’t Obama’s picture up there with the other war mongers? So what if he is less of a war monger than some of those that he hired and confides in. Is Bush a great guy because he resisted Cheney’s desire to bomb Iran? Remember the Ukraine? The Obama administration and the CIA overthrew that country with the help of Nazi battalions and later appointed Hunter Biden, the Vice President’s son, to the largest gas company in the Ukraine. If that isn’t imperialism, I don’t know what is. Yet here we see him conveniently written out of the history of 21st century imperialism and militarism.
Is this stupidity, or simply an out of control man-crush?
The Declaration of Independence describes the remedy for government abuse and oppression.
Parry’s article amply justify the terminology I would like to populate in the media for the neocons, namely NEOCONPOOPS.
As Madeleine Albright would say about all the death, misery, and destruction in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, as well as in Gaza and the West Bank, “Worth it!”
But, probably the main questions on most Americans mind when facing the prospect of thermonuclear annihilation was not answered…’Will this affect the stock market? Should I short the S&P?’
If Hillary owned a golf course in Scotland she might be more worried about nuclear fallout, since it might have to close (for 1000 years).
I found the Center for a New American Security at cnas.org and found a lot more that one could spend one’s life opposing, but who has the stomach for it? So congrats to Parry for even reading one of those publications. His coverage here is as usual excellent.
I doubt that Parry reads these comments but in case he does, please see http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Age-of-Constipation-an-by-Michael-David-Morr-Dialogue_Issues_People_People-160612-577.html. I mention him as one of a handful of people that I would urge to get together and write regular “memos” on the model of the VIPS.
I listened to a Podcast interview with John Perkins (The New Economic Hit Man) while I was reading this article. Perkins says “live your passion.” If you are a dentist, for example, fix teeth but also talk to people about the failed system and how to save it (sustainable resources). This is no different from the advice we get constantly from the likes of Noam Chomsky and other “activists.” Get off your butts and “organize.” I am saying to them, “Get off YOUR butts and organize. If a few of you can’t get together (like the VIPS), how can you expect the masses to self-organize? Set an example.”
I wrote to Chomsky, Roberts, Cohen, and McGovern. The only one who answered was Cohen, who referred me to his eastwestaccord.com website, to whom I then also wrote, but received no response. I did not write to Parry, but as I said maybe he will read this.
This is very discouraging. If 51 govt flunkies can get together to urge more war, why can’t 5 or 6 (even 2 or 3!) of our “leading dissidents” — all so smart and well informed and, most importantly, talking sense — get together?
I am not going to repeat what I said in my article because it is obvious that not even “progressives” agree on everything, but the point is that they agree on enough (for example, what Parry writes here). Yes, of course it bothers me that Parry and Chomsky are missing what for me and about half the US population consider the elephant in the room (9/11), but I am quite willing to ignore that if we can just manage to prevent nuclear war. I have no doubt at all that everyone agrees on that. But the egos and inertia prevail, and nothing happens. Our “leaders” just think about what to write or lecture about next instead of writing to each other and sitting down to write and talk together, and prefer to cajole us, the nameless millions, into “organizing.” And while we (and they) wait for that pie-in-the-sky million-man march on Washington and the likes of another Martin Luther King to lead it, the world will very likely explode.
Mike, I would not blame progressive leaders for not getting together. It is progressives who are not getting together enough, with or without leaders. The leaders are the ones who are acting.
I’m sure that the “51” letter was a fraud, which is why the State Dept. won’t release or investigate their names. Scammers have recently been using the idea of fifty people as a scare tactic, probably from the mass media.
Love the visuals of this article. The sight of these neocons is even more nauseating than the sight of the cockroach. Time should come now when all of us in the US understand what powers we are dealing with.
At this moment I am watching c span. Marco Rubio is interviewing Brett McGurk (special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to combat ISIS)…. Rubio asked about the influence of ISIS on radical jihads such as Orlando. Now, think of this, no senator inquired to ask this question:
Mr McGurk, would you say that if the U.S. Wasn’t illegally engaged inside of the sovereign nation of Syria fighting ISIS an insurgency armed and aided by our Middle Eastern coalition partners & possibly Hillary/Petraeus that if we the U.S. were to withdraw our military presence that this would necessitate a reason for ISIS to recall there American terrorist cells?
Rubio also has a clever framing of blaming Assad for the ISIS being there. In other words, ISIS is Assad’s fault. Rubio hit it out of the park, not really he hit so many foul balls fans quit shagging them….. But, Rubio had away of bringing up Russia, sort of sounding like Putin is meddling into our Syrian affairs, never a mention of Syria’s sovereignty and never a word about Russia being there by request. No, nasty Russia is attacking our rebels, yes, the same rebels who give away our arms & aid to these ISIS fighters who everybody hates. Never a mention to how a military is suppose to fight one enemy while fighting another inside the same box, oh and somehow do this while our two enemies fight each other, and we are fighting them. Just, forget that 2012 DOD leaked report….that’s a internet thing….& you should know that. There definitely was no mention, of if a no fly zone over Syria (a sovereign country) was legal….why ask questions not on their congressional bullet point sheet… Hey, these legislative guys and gals need to have time to make nice nice with their special interest donors. Watch the video, and yes, they did bring up our number one talking point when speaking about Assad & Syria ….you got it, ‘Barrel Bombs’. Get some popcorn and a brick and watch……
http://www.c-span.org/video/?411885-1/brett-mcgurk-testifies-efforts-defeat-isis
I’m still voting for Jill, but you should listen & watch this cspan 6/28/16 Trump in Monessen Pa.
Having lived in the rust belt all my life Trump does a pretty good job of sounding like a 50’s union boss, or a wrestling promoter, but listen to him denounce globalism…. What’s going on here? Trump spoke to the old rust belt voter the best way he could, using their language, and sometimes on trade deals he went deep into the weeds, and came up selling it, totally coherent-amazing as it is… if Trump continues this way, and keeps himself out of the news….. Well, you watch & listen for yourself;
http://www.c-span.org/video/?411870-1/donald-trump-delivers-remarks-us-economy
I can’t believe I’m telling you to watch this!!!!
The military/industrial complex makes money (lots of money) whether they win or lose a war. President Hillary will give the neoconservatives EVERYTHING they want.
Wake up America.
What a catchy title Mr Parry,
At first glance I thought you were going to compare these war obsessed neocon criminals to cockroaches, which would hardly be a surprise actually, and carry the equivalence further in your article. I was a bit disappointed when the roaches became historians, looking back at the foolishness and arrogance of the individuals you named. Your article though touches on some very good and serious points again.
When did the world become their personal playground? We, in the US, can’t even clean up our nuclear mess from the Manhattan Project (i.e. Hanford) and yet buzz words are thrown around like chum for the fish-like voters who seem ready to bite the nearest or biggest hook. Putin this, Putin that, Russia this and Russia that…. ad nauseam. Prominent ‘scholars’ who may have never been to Russia, nor Syria, are experts on the subjects. Some reports, not in the US media of course, put Fukushimas’ problems into the next century or longer. Can these people not get serious about the dangers of nuclear war?
What could these self described geniuses have done with the 1.5 Trillion dollars spent on the F-35? Twenty years later it can’t get off the ground, or if it does, it can shut down mid-flight so the pilot has to re-boot the system to ‘see’. Could they have thought of something else to spend our taxes on? Or, again, write about the New American Century being something about America? Is this too mundane for these genius war criminals?
For those who are interested in propaganda, just watch Leni Riefenstahls’ Triumph des Willens (“Triumph of the Will”) and read her reasons for photographing Hitler the way she did. I think you’ll be surprised how much the US media, and those damn think-tanks, have learned since that experiment. I bring this up only to voice how upset many Germans are today that NATO is using their children again, 75 years later, on the very route of German invasion of the USSR, and for some very vague reasons too.
The trials of Nüremberg created, supposedly, a legal president for those who instigate wars. The very writers, and neocons you name Mr Parry (along with presidents, and Sec of State) should be right up there in front of our legal experts, judges and tried, and then put in prison for their lies and propaganda. Using war as a solution to their world ambitions should not be out of reach for any legal scholar. The “I was just following orders”, or “I was paid to say that” didn’t work then and it shouldn’t work now.
Thank you for challenging the lies these people would prefer left unchallenged.
This is a remarkably astute article with a poignantly clear historical perspective. It’s wrenching to think that we can’t even begin to hope for the kind of serious accountability that is needed when so many prefer to distort or be distorted. Truthful, fact-based accounts and narratives involving intellectual curiosity, honesty, and insight are up against too many insidious people the likes of a Roger Cohen. How clever he must think it is to criticize Obama in such a way as to present the false choice of “robust” intervention vs. “allowing evil” or “doing nothing”. Trapped in his own false narrative, Obama won’t backtrack and deal in truths, exposing Cohen and “our” crime of attempting to destroy Syrian society. So the war drums beat on…uninterrupted by truth.
I move we bury a time capsule and fill it with Robert Parry articles. I always love how Mr Parry goes over the many details of a subject, he covers with his writing. To anyone who would not be familiar with a subject Parry would be a great learning tool, and to an experienced news junkie Parry never disappoints. To criticize the American media over their lack of news coverage, is a full time job. I recall a few weeks ago, while NATO was installing AEGIS missiles in Poland, and Romania, our illustrious news media was stuck on Trump’s rant about the Hispanic Judge, oh and they carried on about Trump University too. Something that maybe worth knowing, but hardly worthy of the 24/7 coverage it received, and yet no mention of NATO’s aggressions. The Neocon’s are without a doubt true arm chair warriors. I see these sickening stooges getting all excited over a power-point presentation, graphically showing the U.S. winning with a first strike attack against Russia, and oh hell why not China to? That is if Walmart will allow us to bomb China. Although, I would guess by now, the big box giant has another vendor on line, who will suffice for this overpopulated land mass. Cohen’s regret that Barrack didn’t take advantage of the false Syrian gas attack meme, is nothing short of barbaric. Consider what Cohen is suggesting, there wouldn’t be refugees in Europe, because we would have killed them with our bombs while they slept in their beds in Syria. Nice guy, uh? Although, people like Cohen sell the idea that by leaving Assad in power, that this is why there is an ISIS enemy, and he expects us to buy into that logic. It never gets mentioned how between our CIA, and Hillary aided by Petraeus funneled weapons, and training into Syria, which was to arm ISIS into attacking Assad. But it’s Assad’s fault, and damn that Putin for everything he stands for. These NeoNutJobs should concern themselves with the determination the Russians bring to a fight, and partner up with them, to destroy ISIS in there ugly nest. This will never happen, because first and foremost, we must carry out the plans of Israel, and that is to enforce the famous Yinon Plan. Maybe like a fellow commenter here said the other day, when America gets a leader who will expose the JFK murder for what it was, and only until then everything is just theater for the ignorant masses. Our grandfathers, and maybe even our great grandparents, were sold a bad bill of goods back in 1913, when America handed over it’s wallet to the private banker cabal, which we know as the Federal Reserve. Cecil Rhodes would have loved to see all this coming together, as his legacy is our demise. Let’s hope what goes around comes around, and these evil bastards get their comeuppance one day, and let’s hope their power-point won’t work for them…peace.
Hey do you want to see Robert Parry, click on the link below and watch the Oliver Stone movie trailer for his new movie ‘Ukraine on Fire’ …..Robert Parry is in it.
http://theduran.com/oliver-stones-documentary-ukraine-fire-another-big-dent-western-maidan-narrative/
The Periplanetans would gather to worship, invoking the sign of their Savior’s ascent,
Insisting that after he died for their sins, his wings came to life bidding them to repent-
His sacrifice then on those wings of salvation redeemed all the souls of the Blattidae tribe,
They hold sacred the form of the object upon which he died as the prophets describe.
“He died on The Nephroid, for all of our sins, and he suffered such cruel indignation,
Today we are gathered to proclaim his message, of brotherhood, peace and salvation.
Behold the inscription engraved by his likeness, passed down by the prophets of yore,
The words of our faith are immortalized there, and dissent from His truth is a sin to abhor!”
The Blatellans subscribe to an alternate faith, though their passion is no less profound,
They worship the monolith bearing inscriptions which only the infidel Blatters confound-
Those of The Faith say divine revelation occurs when belief conquers logic and reason,
They testify speaking in tongues to The Cylinder, begging abundance in egg-laying season,
Their segmented bodies prostrated in faith, they may fornicate freely in worshipful mirth,
His Image is faded, though still is discerned, The Urn symbolizes fecundity’s worth,
The Cylinder promises mystical fruit and portends that in combat their numbers prevail,
Their birthrate augments owed to ritual harlotry, wantonly staged within view of The Grail!
Planetans perform with the same carnal glee, The Nephroid is lowered till flat on the ground,
In a frenzy of faith they take turns underneath, abandoning modesty, partners abound-
In the darkness no shame impedes rapturous orgy, faith proclaims triumph in riot’s embrace,
Restraint makes no claim on depravity’s vice, demanding to penetrate each carapace!
Planetans seek parity with the Blatellans, eggs prove devotion to Nephroid belief,
Devotion demands consummation in rape, or in cannibal ritual, combat’s relief-
Propitious fecundity spurs the Blatellans to dream of Planetans degraded and shamed,
Debasement inspires their warlike predation, opponents molested and thoroughly maimed-
They march into battle carrying banners, Nephroid and Cylinder ornate their standards,
Weapons invincible promise a triumph, those symbols are carried for luck on their lanyards.
The Nephroid depicts a ferocious munition, The Cylinder conjures a frightful one too-
If we could time travel, we might recognize, a big can of Raid and the sole of a Thom McAn shoe.
Blattidae warriors might find us inspiring, we also placed faith in mythology’s lure,
They’d ponder our folly and lunatic schemes, and wonder which faction invented the cure-
They might think ascension to Paradise happened, our faith transcendental transmogrified us,
But they’d more likely note how familiar we are, and find us a novel footnote to discuss.
It’s your story F.G., but would it be appropriate to end your story with the song ‘Another One Bites the Dust’?
You are ingenious, FG Sanford
“Nephroid”
This is a masterpiece… ! (if I may say.)
Thank you for your artistry with ideas and words.
God bless you.
This is a piece of artistry, FG Sanford.
The Nephroid,
It’s comic book style fantasy
in search of an illustrator
God bless you and your gift..
(Mark Blithe)
Jesus Wept
There should have been at least a debate about Nuremberg type War Criminal Trials for the twenty-odd Americans primarily responsible for the Iraq War, as well as Afghan and Guantanamo crimes. That would have diminished the appetite of the neo-cons for the nonsense being planned by the Kagans, the Nulands and the other would be criminals around the Clintons. The lies about Russia, Syria, and the Ukraine are eerily similar. A courageous attorney general, with a moral centre, sadly lacking in today’s justice department, even eight to ten years late, could shake some of the insanity out of today’s blunderers into what would certainly be Armageddon. Even a few popular demonstrations now might be effective if they were centred on getting charges against Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Woo, Bybee, Petraeus, Negroponte, Mitchell, Addington, Bradbury, Brennan, Rice, D’Andrea, Cambone, Hayden, Jensen, McChrystal, and for good measure, Obama, for the illegal drone assassinations. The forgoing list was suggested in Rebecca Gordon’s book American Nuremberg listing the legal basis for what was committed post 9/11 during the War on Terror.
There should have been at least a debate about Nuremberg type War Criminal Trials for the twenty-odd Americans primarily responsible for the Iraq War, as well as Afghan and Guantanamo crimes.
The Nuremberg Trials were an exercise in victors’ justice. To inaugurate something similar would require another power to achieve a victory over the US and its satraps. Actions promoted by the US government since Nuremberg – Vietnam, Central and South America, The Balkans, Iraq, Libya, Syria – are glaring examples of American hypocrisy.
Yes Bill, you are correct. I posted my comment before I had read yours. But I think there was hope in the international community that Nüremberg would create a template, or at least some legal groundwork for those who suffered so many loses in WW2, and would provide a “never again” argument. It took years to create the ICC which the US probably just chuckles about. But people had hope. The newer Geneva Conventions were part of that hope too I would think.
My most serious paper in school was on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. I wouldn’t defend his actions by any means, but I was ostracized when I posited a simple question roughly 40 years ago. Did Israel have the right to try Eichmann in Israel since Israel was not a state nor an entity at the time of Eichmanns’ doings? By what measure, or presidence did Israel have legally, not just morally?
I’ve been interested in international law since that time, and that is why many still have hope that those who went to war in the US on false premises would have a trial. The people involved in creating the war in Iraq certainly killed a lot more people than Eichmann did. And I don’t care how important they think they are. And, of course, it’s not only Iraq.
Bill Bodden, “The Nuremberg Trials were an exercise in victors’ justice.”
As was the trial and Hanging of Saddam Hussien — a man who served US wishes for approx 40 years.
“The Nuremberg Trials were an exercise in victors’ justice.”
As was the Illegal emigration of Nazi spies when it fit our purpose, and’ve used them approx 70 years.
Nazi spies?For whom were they spying,a defunct German govt?The only spies that matter are the plethora of Israeli ones stealing our secrets daily.Jesus.
Thank you Michael Fish and of course Robert Parry. Surely you are right Michael , the list above is a criminal faction if there ever was one. The criminal world is fracturing before our very eyes. A note this morning from Webster Tarply points to a significant faction of Nixon/Ford CREEP people in the Trump campaign and the Clintons are another faction of criminal behavior. Americans are being presented apparently with a choice between two evils…
I agree A trail for the Bush administration for starting a war against innocent Iraq . A war crime . But Clinton also started a war against Yugoslavia . So we have another war criminal . And the same goes for Obama in Libya . 3 war criminals in a row .
Christians use the word ‘heathen’ as a pejorative against non-Christians yet ‘heathen’ is a Jewish word from the Old Testament written by Jews prior to the establishment of Christianity. Anyone who is not a Jew is a ‘heathen’ and just about anything can be done to a ‘heathen’ including murder. Many of the names in this article are Jewish.as are the majority of the people in power in the banking, financial, media and Washington elite.
I am circumcised so you could say I have skin in this game. I dare to point out the Jewish control of just about everything of importance in matters affecting most Americans yet to do so will most certainly bring about accusations of antisemitism against me.
Israel is the great provocateur in the Middle East that has most benefited from the ruins of its surrounding Muslim neighbors. Israel remains virtually untouched by the turmoil and refugee crisis and benefits most from the wars it has fomented through its contacts and influence in America and Europe. Israel received all the oil produced and sold by ISIS. Israel takes almost all the water from the occupied territories and rations small amounts to Palestinians. Israel constantly pushes America to attack Iran over its nuclear possibilities over 1000 miles away yet N. Korea already has the bomb and the wall that separates it from Seoul is only 40 miles away.
War is about oil and money. Jewish investors are the ‘money changers’ most benefiting from the terrorism they exploit. Jewish investors look upon non-Jews as nothing but ‘heathens’ to be milked for all they are worth. The financial industry is majority owned and run by Jews whose first allegiance is to Israel. Until the west wakes up to this fact nothing will be done to reign in the US military. Notice how there is no discussion regarding reducing the military budget. All talk is about reducing entitlements and anything else that helps the average American. The military which is owned by Jewish investors of arms manufacturers is not only untouchable but not even open for debate. Jews own Congress. Jews own America, the land of Christian ‘heathens’. Deal with it. Jews own America, a fine Christian country of ‘heathens’.
Very true, and there is certainly no “anti-semitism” in saying so. Note that Sanders and Stein are also Jewish, which is not a coincidence; Hillary swears allegiance to their money, and Trump now wants it. There is no democracy until their extraordinary racism is removed from politics.
That IS anti-Semitic. Also, Sanders and Stein are critical of Israeli wars, with Stein I believe being pro-Palestine. The facts that you say otherwise is not even wrong.
No, it is not opposition to a group, when one opposes a subset of the group. You are surrendering to Israeli propaganda. Do you think it is anti-German to oppose Naziism? Criticize any subset you want. We all know that Sanders and Stein oppose Israeli aggression, that is not the point.
Financial industry controlled by Jews? What rubbish. Jewish investors being the ones who mots benefit from terrorism? That is more rubbish. Robert Parry even said at the beginning of the year to stop making anti-Semitic comments at the beginning of this year – but you idiots didn’t listen. Consortium News is as uncensored as YouTube.
You are the one who is trying to censor, RRT, and the question is why.
If you doubt his statement that the financial industry is “controlled by Jews” that is a question of fact, not an occasion for Jewish right-wing propaganda. Jews are much better off without that kind of help. Nearly every neocon mentioned in Syria warmongering has a Jewish name: should we try to persuade ourselves that that is pure coincidence?
to Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen,
You seem young, and new to the cause and effect of events which have deep roots.
(Holden Caulfield?)
You don’t really think the little country of Israel has all this control do you .
1. By writing that neocons wish “to pick the U.S. taxpayers’ pockets” Robert Parry seems to be implying that the neocons’ aims are primarily of an economic nature. This is an interesting hypothesis, but it has not been proven, and I see no evidence to support it.
2. Annexing Crimea can be construed as a purely defensive act on Russia’s part. NATO’s charter forbids admitting a state to NATO if it has outstanding territorial disputes. Consequently by annexing Crimea, Putin blocked the Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
Neocons are neoliberals.
It’s more like they’re “separate but equal”
I suspect they are One World Government people following the NWOs
They are really neocommunists. They should be referred to as Neocoms. Leon Trotsky is their ideal.
So how did Croatia and Montenegro Kosovo get into the E.U. ? Maybe the law is just for the other side
Much as the neo cons want to start another war, the changing military balance in favor of Russia may check their mad dreams. These human scum only like to attack weak opponents.
Brexit is another major obstacle. Many or perhaps most Europeans favor better ties with Russia and want to bring Mideast wars to an end ASAP.
US military much larger than Russia, but global responsibilities mean it is stretched very thin.
I doubt that Russia can match the US militarily. Does it matter though, once they fire nukes? I’ve always said that capitalists tend to push until things break. Real capitalists are not, apart from insidious influences, the real problem, which isn’t to say that capitalism works. If it doesn’t work for everyone, then it doesn’t work, in my view. Maybe we reformulate then; Neocons and neoliberals, a macho, unprincipled lot, tend to push until things break.
The problem with that is the things broken are sometimes whole societies.
That is the basic unwisdom that underpins this dark, elite-imposed system. If you could inject our political and corporate and religious leaders with a truth syrum and ask them whether they’d prefer a rickety, unsafe for everyone system over an intact, safe system in which everyone contributed and benefitted, Guess how they’d answer. Although we don’t have to guess. We all see their answer.
I doubt that Russia can match the US militarily.
No doubt many people also said the Vietnamese, the Taliban and the Iraqis were no match for the US military.
It will take lots of revision to claim the US military won in Vietnam.
The Taliban, with a budget that is chump change at the Pentagon, is still standing after 15 years.
No one thought of the Iraqis forming militias and insurrections and the day would come when the US military would be glad to get the hell out of Baghdad.
Bill you may have read this article by the Saker, but it speaks to how the Russians may fight us, if God forbid that should ever happen. It’s a long article, but I insist you or anyone interested read it to the end where he talks about the comparison of American to Russian generals.
http://thesaker.is/how-russia-is-preparing-for-wwiii/
Joe, I know you were answering Bill, but I had to check out your link. I am a civilian but I have witnessed the Black Guard in South Korea, and the elite Russians outside of St Petersburg. Both were very well trained and fierce. For US politicians to go to their cocktail parties and come out with new anti Russian slogans is troubling me at many levels. Reading your link I had to wonder to myself whether the blowhard ex-NATO Gen Breedlove would say ” oh, Russia, sorry, just kidding!! We just needed to pad our budget and prove our unnecessary existence at your expense. We didn’t think you’d actually come up with some counter measures like this!”
Two comments that stand out to me from other news sources are the one from a NATO General (not sure on this) who said the Russian deployment in Syria was “eye watering” (meaning, how could they do this so quickly?) and another comment made by Putin who said something to the effect of ” now we have to go and save Europe from itself again”
The US seems to be small minds with big toys, and this is unfortunate for the world. Thanks for the link!
Curious, interesting reply, thank you. Read this link I am providing. This Russians comments about his feelings toward America says a lot about the two countries relationship.
https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/
Joe: Thank you very much for this very informative link. When it comes to information about Russia’s military The Saker is in another league beyond me, but having read similar trustworthy comments elsewhere I’m prepared to take his word for it. Where The Saker and I are clearly on the same page is our mutual skepticism about the competence of our generals whose greatest skill seems to be in knowing how to play politics to get promoted to their respective levels of incompetence. Nothing new there. There was McClellan during the Civil War. Pershing and MacArthur used the political stairway to become generals in the First World War. As I mentioned on another thread, the British General Sir Michael Jackson probably helped obviate World War III when he refused an order given to him by another political climber, Wesley Clark, to confront the Russians during the Balkans war. Then there are the incompetents in the Armed Services committees who are supposed to provide oversight on military issues but who are more likely to be rubber stamps when Pentagon brass jerks their chains.
Bill, Curious, & others …please see the link entitled ‘the Russia they Lost’ it goes nicely as a flip side to the Saker link. The comparison to Russian generals vs American generals is thought provoking, if nothing else. I never served under a Russian general, but when I was in the Navy (many moons ago) I served under good and bad Captains & Executive Officers. They are like the fingers on your hand, they are all different. I have too bad of an opinion of General David Petreaus to judge the man fairly, so I will let others evaluate his performance instead. I do know this, any war waged with Russia will be a hard war to win. If we struggle with insurgence as we have been doing for these last fifteen years or so, well then taking on Russia would be a death sentence at the very least. What we need now is diplomacy, and we need it in a bad way. Madeline Albright once told Colin Powell, ‘what good is a military if you don’t use it’, well Madame all women go to hell Albright, ‘what good is having a State Department if you don’t use it’? To take that thought a little further, why is the State Department talking like the Pentagon? In my mind, that is totally wrong, and someone should tell the State Department to do what diplomats should do, and that is to be diplomatic.
I live this dream in Senator Bernie Sanders for POTUS! And so do many, many others ready for change. Seriously, I can Feel The Burn!
Just whom has the US army defeated outside of Panama and Grenada the last 60 years?
Russia could not match NATO in a conventional war if nukes were left out of the war . But China and Russia together would be more than NATO would like to tangle with . And they will have to be together in order to defend themselves . NATO wants little upraisings that they can finance and control . Like a coup in Ukraine , A attack on South Ossetta or a no fly zone over Libya . I don’t think Russia or China will tolerate much more like what has happened to Yugoslavia ,Iraq ,Libya , Ukraine and Syria . I suspect we will be meeting Russia or China a lot more often from now on .
Well said. I think U and Paul Craig Roberts along with Stephen Ledmann and Eric Zuess should be part of the next USA administration. We then might get the much needed detente that should be coming from the new third reich(the Washington Consensus).Yesterdays news gets wrapped in todays fish
“Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan.”
I thought that “intellectual” meant ‘smart’???
On many occasions “intellectual” means someone who possesses an illusion of intelligence.
“In a column about the mass shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, on June 12 – in which the shooter was reported to have claimed allegiance to ISIS –”
For those who continue to hold out hope for a legitimate JFK assaination (including RFK, MLK, and many civil rights leaders of that period of shame), this murderer has all the decorations that were put on Oswald. Worked then. Why not now?
Reference is made in this very interesting article to people who have made monstrous mistakes not being held accountable. The list of people who are equally guilty and who continue to pedal their lies and idiotic ideas, if printed, would be very, very long. We might also note that politicians who got it terribly wrong by supporting these follies were mostly re-elected by the American people if they chose to run again for their offices. Many Americans, however, are paying a price for this madness because funds are diverted from vital social services and infrastructures to feed that five-sided black hole on the Potomac.
Indeed. 1% of the 99% is on the ball. Without a higher power, it is game over.
They are on the ball because it is the unethical bully boy who prevails in business and any democracy that does not protect its institutions from money. A new constitution must make influence upon US government by money or deception a form of treason.
We will not get a new constitution because the tools of democracy are already controlled by money. There is no peaceful solution unless the police and national guard are infiltrated before the takeover, as in Cuba and the USSR.
Yes, times are indeed darkening; with global warming looming all these government warhawks can do is…plan for more war. The ability to solve the current problems are within the grasp of current technology but instead they want to conquer the world. So people such as myself and countless others wanting peace sit back and watch elected leaders take us all to the brink of extinction; at least I have no children to worry about. If this unthinkable horror is unleashed, by thoughtless psychopaths, we will lose everything because throughout history Russia really hasn’t lost any wars, it’s too big. Oh well. Thanks Robert for keeping us well informed on the situation and I’ll keep reading to see if anybody has a solution to these idiotic politicians taking us all to the precipice of total destruction.
It seems to me that a vital component of intelligence (as in mental capability, not espionage) is understanding the need to at least try and understand the possible consequences of one’s actions down the road. Our “leaders” have displayed a fanatical inability and indifference to consequences for decades, and thus qualify as just plain stupid. I.e., how does anybody not understand that setting up a no-fly zone over Syria means immediate military confrontation (spelled W A R) with Russia?
The assumption that policies are rationally determined seems unjustified. Politics is less rational than economics. Yet the economic behavior of capitalists is rational only in a limited sense. Economic research reveals that profit-maximizing behavior of investors has a five-year horizon. In other words, investors systematically ignore forecasts beyond 5 years. And the financialization of the world economy, i.e. its takeover by banks and insurance companies, has merely reduced the average planning horizon by encouraging economic decisions based on purely speculative, i.e. short-term, motives.
Moreover political decision-making takes place within a space structured by existing institutional constraints that often generate results that cannot be rationally justified.
The US political system is largely determined by institutional factors that often lead to irrational outcomes. The current US Constitution is hopelessly outdated. The first-past-the-post electoral system inherited from Great Britain encourages manipulation of election results through gerrymandering of electoral districts. A proportional representation system would assure that a majority of voters would always generate a majority in Congress, and there would be no “wasted” votes. The electoral college system and the state-by-state computation of presidential election results discourages new political parties (i.e. third parties) from arising. The currently existing political parties in the US are more than a century old. In Italy none of the currently dominant political parties even existed ten years ago. The US should adopt Italy’s system of a cluster of supreme courts instead of a single multi-purpose Supreme Court. Italy has a constitutional court that decides constitutional issues, a supreme court of appeals that makes final decisions on criminal and civil cases, and a couple of others. Judges of the constitutional court are appointed by different bodies, i.e. parliament, the president, etc. each appoints a certain quota of judges. And finally US arrangements for amending the Constitution are antediluvian. In Austria a super-majority of parliament can amend the constitution at any time, and the Austrian constitution is accordingly amended three or four times a year.
The problem of biased courts and other institutions is not solved by dividing them by responsibility, just as the US government functional division into legislative, executive, and judicial branches did not provide working checks and balances. The executive branch had all of the real power and now starts wars st its pleasure that Congress cannot stop. To stabilize the result, it is necessary to divide each functional division into groups that do the same thing and have checks and balances over each other. That corresponds to the redundancy within critical control systems like aircraft autopilots, which vote on every result.
But even that does not correct a system corrupted by money. A new Constitution must restrict funding of mass media and elections to registered and limited individual contributions.
But no solution can be implemented because money already controls the mass media and elections, the tools of democracy. Peaceful revolution is no longer technically feasible, and other means of revolution are prevented by complacency, infiltration, universal spying, and overwhelming propaganda. Much like the czarist and other states overthrown by communism. So really the US is 100 percent recyclable, and the sooner the better.
Sounds like a case of “Those whom the Gods would destroy, They first make mad”…and yet another Tower of Babel/babble is being prepared for the take-down, and the madly babbling idiots will never know what took them down, because we’ve all long been deliberately blinded to Their existence (to better enable Them to quietly go about Their work of carrying out the execution of Karmic Law).
I think that the neocon is supporting a perpetuate war for the military complex. Since Syria war serves that purpose so they are still working on destroying the regime. Just think of it, this way the US economy will still expand (follow the Keynesian economics) not through government spending on infrastructure maintanance or building, but on war maching building. Thus the neocons are plotting targets for the right wing US military industrial complex for perpetuate war opportunities.
So basically what this boils down to is the US attempting “World Domination” – which is what I see! It is interesting to listen to American politicians and then think about someone like Xi or Putin saying the exact same words – which, if they did, we would decry them as aggressors or dictators. I believe that when Obama was speaking about the TPP, he said something to the effect that the US should write the rules for the 21st century economy. Even listen to John McCain joke about bombing Iran using a Beach Boy song – bomb, bomb, bomb Iran! Then you have Clinton joke about the brutal murder of Gaddafi – we came, we saw, he died – ha, ha, ha! I am sorry America but your government scares the hell out of me and what is even more disturbing is that people like Hillary Clinton are being “supported” to attain the highest office in the land. I think this is why the US was voted as the number one threat to global peace as seen in a Pew Research Poll, I believe.
I am sorry, even as a Canadian, I don’t want to live under the dictatorship of any nation – the US, China, Russia or any culmination. I am sure that many people would disagree with me but this is also why I see the rise of other countries such as China, Russia etc. as a good thing to counterbalance the west and put an end to US hegemony. I don’t believe that any country, or group of countries, should dominate this planet – instead we need to learn how to live together instead of running head first toward a nuclear war that will end all life on earth – except for maybe the cockroaches.
As a good Canadian Joe L you should read this;
http://theduran.com/us-eu-spectre-brexit/
You don’t need to be Canadian to appreciate what this article I provided the link for is all about, but the article does explain a lot about the exceptional nation, and it’s hidden hand. Let’s put it this way, it’s like Dorothy looking under the curtain before she pulled it back.
Joe Tedesky… That article certainly explains a lot and was much of what I expected – US control of the EU. When I heard Obama weigh in for the people of the UK to “remain” in the EU, I thought that was none of Obama’s business and that he should stay out of it, and I believe that speech most certainly enraged some Britons. The article also explains why the US spies on its allies and probably also why US bases still occupy countries such as Germany. I keep hoping that Europe will find its’ backbone and put an end to all of this dangerous rhetoric towards Russia – itself being the likely first casualty of a nuclear war. But maybe it is not that easy when the whole system is designed around the US – the IMF, World Bank, SWIFT and I believe even the internet (this is why Rousseff in Brazil wanted to build a separate internet) etc. I wonder if European countries, at the behest of the United States, joined the AIIB as an attempt to break away from this system? I mean the only hope that I see of breaking the current system is coming from the BRICS countries which have created their own institutions such as the BRICS Development Bank, AIIB, SCO, and I believe they have developed or are developing a SWIFT alternative. Maybe that is why Rousseff had to go in Brazil – which I believe that the US likely had a hand in? I guess I just don’t want to see imperialism or Empire by anyone anymore because I don’t want to be anyone’s serf! That is another reason why the TPP, TTIP etc. are bad ideas because they would further integrate the western world with the United States – with the United States at the centre of all of these agreements also giving largely the US even more control over other countries. I sometimes wonder Joe, if the American people realize when they celebrate the 4th of July, a day that commemorates breaking away from an Empire, that the United States has become that Empire but on an even larger scale (the roles are now reversed)?
Anyway, Joe Tedesky, thank you very much for the article and I have bookmarked the website for future reference.
Your welcome, it is always good to hear your point of view.
As for the NYT and its vaunted brilliance, I stopped my subscription when a comment I wrote in which I referred to Al Qaeda as Al CIA-da was deleted and people from Jerusalem were brought in to counter comments made about the phoniness of the 9/11 story. It was not until I retired that I found the time (and the will) to begin to truly understand what has gone wrong in this country. Loading people down with the specter of penury, the constant fear of unemployment and not enough to live on is part of the larger picture to stupidify the American population but what excuse can you make for the Hiatts, the Cohens and the Kagans? (and I might add, Paul Krugman who seems to have lost his wits)?
The raw desire for power at any cost is what would seem to make people like Hillary Clinton so unlikable. After the ruthless need to be the center of the universe is the lackey mentality that gathers around these freaks of human nature. I call them “freaks” because thank goodness most people are not driven to do literally anything to be at the center of power.
Let’s hope that more of the good people of this world (which are, I believe, the majority) will take note of the courage recently exhibited by the British, stand up, step forward and put the cockroaches and their ant armies out of business. Crush them underfoot. That might feel good.
Let’s hope that more of the good people of this world (which are, I believe, the majority)…
There are two groups in the presumed majority. One consists of the good people you refer to. The other is the, probably, larger group that is apathetic and who do nothing that allows evil to succeed. Unfortunately, those who would seek power and wealth at any cost tend to be more aggressive with a more likely chance of winning.
The people who would like to make this world, or even this nation, one with liberty and justice for all have a daunting task.
BTW… not even the roaches will survive… it’s quite likely in an all out battle the Russians will detonate a weapon over the Yellowstone super-volcano… which will explode and bury most of the US under a meter of ash and rock.. “Recovery” will be measured in geologic time…
The Russians have made it very clear that while they may not win a nuclear war, the US isn’t going to either. 100 megatons planted squarely on Yellowstone would guarantee that the US of A would be mostly destroyed. Oddly enough last year Scientific American published a little piece on the effects of an eruption.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/buried-in-ash/
Here in Indiana, I could theoretically survive – supposing I could manage to live through a couple or three years of Volcano/Nuclear Winter without harvesting anything from the local farms or gardens. Not a very likely prospect, that.
No need to get into the other things happening in an all-out war which might drive us to the point of extinction. At least one is even worse than Yellowstone, IMO.
Somebody or other started the saying that in a Democracy, people get the government they deserve. Not that the US really and truly elects anybody these days (think Touch-Screen Computer Voting Machines), but it’s still close enough to sting. If Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will inherit plans for war with China and Russia in the advanced stages. After considering her past history, this isn’t a bit good.
I live in the area, and the geologists who know Yellowstone best are the most skeptical of a supervolcano eruption actually happening, even an induced one, but that may be academic if the idiots at State get their way. If there’s one thing the ruling class isn’t prepared for, it’s how the American people will react if we suddenly lose one or more aircraft carrier groups over some shithole we should have stayed the hell out of.
Neo-con wars have forced 65 million war refugees to flee the Middle East… tearing apart the EU nations and sparking the disintegration of the EU itslef and the rise of the far-right
the is the architecture of peace and stability they must be talking about..
wish there were an edit function.
But that would be respectful.
Yes, this is brilliant on every level — the title especially suggesting the gutter level to which the leadership of the US has sunk. And now we’re faced with the prospect of HRC as President of this unholy pile of kindling.
She will definitely lead us into the sewer (if we’re lucky) and no one seems able to see that Donald is actually her better half. With so much information out on the internet, with brilliant reportage from places like Consortium News and people like Robert Parry, how is it that we’ve become so blinkered? How is it that we can have so much evidence of the Truth right at our fingertips, and be able to do so little about it?
No,its only the Zionists who can’t see Trumps appeal for Americans,to them he is the golem.
Agree…..Agree….Agree…..
Isn’t it great, when Mr Parry drops the reserve a bit….and goes after all these thoroughly odious “beltway” cucarachas !
This is brilliant and touches all the bases. Somehow the power structure has to be overturned for humanity to survive. Too bad the plebes are already brainwashed by the multitude of pravdas spouting propaganda for nuclear war on behalf of el qaeda to bolster yankee dominance.
Yep.
“meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.
It’s must be sort of like living in the Soviet Union (except they didn’t launch wars like Iraq) in say 1980, these preposterous claims presented by public “thinkers” in the official press are presented not simply as an acceptable reality (damn the facts) but the only reality.
The NY Times is still lying about bad “intelligence” being the cause of the Iraq war. When it was the Times, and NBC etc, pushing what was obviously bad intelligence to sell the Iraq invasion.
Look at the lies about the Obama economic recovery, jobs that don’t pay are counted. The biggest, most criminal, banks are rewarded. And hedge funds make billions on the side. Little of this money makes it out to the real economy, unless you’re a nanny to the wealthy or say an interior decorator, or an architect/engineer working on huge private buildings where the very wealthy with have a 5th home costing tens of millions of dollars.
Thanks Jay for putting this in words anyone can understand. A picture of words from Picasso’s darkest moments brilliantly and simply put. Hopefully it will cause many to stand in front of it and sink deeply into contemplation of its value.
Cockroaches… All of them.
Go Putin.