THE ROVING EYE - Western plutocracy goes bear hunting By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Western plutocracy goes bear hunting By Pepe Escobar The post-Cold War status quo in Eastern Europe, not to mention in Western Europe, is now dead. For Western plutocracy, that 0.00001% at the top, the real Masters of the Universe, Russia is the ultimate prize; an immense treasure of natural resources, forests, pristine water, minerals, oil and gas. Enough to drive any NSA-to-CIA Orwellian/Panopticon war game to ecstasy. How to pounce and profit from such a formidable loot? Enter Globocop NATO. Barely out of having its collective behind unceremoniously kicked by a bunch of mountain warriors with Kalashnikovs, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is now fast "pivoting" - that same old Mackinder to Brzezinski game - to Russia. The road map will be put in place at the group's summit in early September in Wales. Meanwhile, the MH17 tragedy is undergoing a fast metamorphosis. When the on-site observations by this Canadian OSCE monitor (watch the video carefully) are compounded withthis analysis by a German pilot, a strong probability points to a Ukrainian Su-25's 30 mm auto-cannon firing at the cockpit of MH17, leading to massive decompression and the crash. No missile - not even an air-to-air R-60M, not to mention a BUK (the star of the initial, frenetic American spin). The new possible narrative fits with on-site testimony by eyewitness in this now famously "disappeared" BBC report. Bottom line: MH17 configured as a false flag, planned by the US and botched by Kiev. One can barely imagine the tectonic geopolitical repercussions were the false flag to be fully exposed. Malaysia has handed out the flight recorders to the UK; this means NATO, and this spells out manipulation by the CIA. Air Algerie AH5017 went down after MH17. The analysis has already been released. That begs the question of why it is taking so long for MH17's black boxes to be analyzed/tampered with. Then there's the sanctions game: Russia remains guilty - with no evidence - thus it must be punished. The EU abjectly followed His Master's Voice and adopted all the hardcore sanctions against Russia they were discussing last week. Yet there are loopholes. Moscow will have reduced access to US dollar and euro markets. Russian state-owned banks are forbidden from selling shares or bonds in the West. Yet Sberbank, Russia's largest, has not been sanctioned. So Russia in the short and medium term will have to finance itself. Well, Chinese banks could easily replace that kind of lending. Don't forget the Russia-China strategic partnership. As if Moscow needed another warning that the only way to go is to increasingly bypass the US dollar system. EU nations will suffer. Big time. BP has a 20% stake in Rosneft, and it's already freaking out on the record. ExxonMobil, Norway's Statoil and Shell will also be affected. Sanctions don't touch the gas industry; now that would have propelled the EU's counterproductive stupidity to galactic levels. Poland - hysterically blaming Moscow for everything under the sun - gets more than 80% of its gas from Russia. The no less strident Baltic states, as well as Finland, get 100%. The ban on dual-use goods - civilian and military applications - will badly affect Germany, the top EU exporter to Russia. On defense, the UK and France will suffer; the UK has no less than 200 licenses selling weapons and missile launching gear to Russia. Yet the French 1.2 billion euro (US$1.6 billion) sale of Mistral assault ships to Russia will go ahead. Meanwhile, in the demonization front ... This is what Associated Press spins as "analysis" and distributes to papers around the world; a collection of cliches desperately in search of a thesis. Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center, faithful to who pays his bills, gets a few things right and most things wrong. David Stockman at least has a ball deconstructing the lies of the Warfare State. But the real thing is definitely Putin's economic adviser Sergei Glazyev. One of his key theses is that European business must be really careful to protect their interests as the US attempts to "ignite a war in Europe and a Cold War against Russia". This, though, is the ultimate bombshell - delivered by a cool, calm and collected Glazyev. Watch it carefully. A detailed reappraisal of what Glazyev has been saying for weeks now, mixed with some outstanding comments here leads to a inevitable conclusion: key sectors of Western plutocracy want a still ill-defined war with Russia. And journalism's Holy Grail - never trust anything until it's officially denied - confirms it. NATO's Plan A is to install missile batteries in Ukraine; that is already being discussed in detail in the run-up to NATO's summit in Wales in early September. Needless to say, if that happens, for Moscow, that's way beyond a red line; it implies a first strike capability at Russia's western borderlands. Washington's short Plan A, meanwhile, is to organize a wedge between the federalists in Eastern Ukraine and Russia. This implies progressive, direct funding of Kiev in parallel to building up, via American advisers already on the ground, and vast weaponizing, a huge proxy army (nearly 500,000 by the end of the year, according to Glazyev's projection). Endgame on the ground would be to seal the federalists off into a very small area. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshensko has been on the record saying this should happen by early September. If not, by the end of 2014. In the US, and a great deal of the EU, a monstrous grotesquerie has developed, packaging Putin as the new Stalinist Osama bin Laden. So far, his strategy on Ukraine was to be patient - what I called Vlad Lao Tzu - watching the Kiev gang hang themselveswhile trying to sit down with the EU in a civilized manner working for a political solution. Now we may be facing a game changer, because the mounting evidence, which Glazyev and Russian intel relayed to Putin, points to Ukraine as a battlefield; a concerted drive for regime change in Moscow; a concerted drive aiming for a destabilized Russia; and even the possibility of a definitive provocation. Moscow, allied with the BRICS, is actively working to bypass the US dollar - which is the anchor of a parallel US war economy based on printing worthless pieces of green paper. Progress is slow, but tangible; not only the BRICS but BRICS aspirants, the G-77, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the whole Global South is absolutely fed up with the Empire of Chaos's non-stop bullying and want another paradigm in international relations. The US counts on NATO - which it manipulates at will - and mad dog Israel; and perhaps the GCC, the Sunni petro-monarchies partners in the Gaza carnage, which can be bought/silenced with a slap on the wrist. The temptation for Putin to invade Eastern Ukraine in 24 hours and reduce the Kiev militias to dust must have been super-human. Especially with the mounting cornucopia of dementia; ballistic missiles in Poland and soon Ukraine; indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Donbass; the MH17 tragedy; the hysterical Western demonization. A bear with limited patience But Putin is wired for playing the long game. The window of opportunity for a lightning strike is gone; that kung fu move would have stopped NATO in its tracks with a fait accompli, and the ethnic cleansing of 8 million Russians and Russophones in Donbass would never have developed. Still, Putin won't "invade" Ukraine because Russian public opinion doesn't want him to. Moscow will keep supporting what is a de facto resistance movement in the Donbass. Remember: in give or take two months, General Winter starts to set in those broke, IMF-plundered Ukrainian pastures. The leaked German-Russian peace plan will be implemented over Washington's collective dead body. This New Great Game, to a great extent, is also about preventing Russia-EU economic integration via Germany, part of a full Eurasian integration including China and its myriad Silk Roads. If Russia's trade with the EU - about US$410 billion in 2013 - is due to take a hit because of sanctions, then that also spells out a Go East movement. Which implies a Russian fine-tuning of theEurasian Economic Union project. No more a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok - Putin's original idea. Enter the Eurasian Union as a brother in arms of China's myriad Silk Roads. Still, this spells out a strong Russia-China partnership at the heart of Eurasia - and still this is absolute anathema to the Masters of the Universe. Make no mistake, the Russia-China strategic partnership will keep evolving very fast - with Beijing in symbiosis with Moscow's immense natural and military-technological resources. Not to mention the strategic benefits. A case could be made this has not happened since Genghis Khan. But it's not like Xi Jinping is pulling a Khan to subdue Siberia and beyond. Cold War 2.0 is now inevitable because the Empire of Chaos will never accept Russia's sphere of influence in parts of Eurasia (as it doesn't accept China's). It will never accept Russia as an equal partner (exceptionalists don't do equality). And it will never forgive Russia - alongside China - for openly defying the creaking, exceptionalist, American-imposed order. If the US deep state, guided by those nullities who pass for leadership, in desperation, goes one step beyond - it could be a genocide in Donbass; a NATO attack on Crimea; or worst case scenario, an attack against Russia itself - watch out. The Bear will strike. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

THE ROVING EYE - Crime (Israel) and punishment (Russia) By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Crime (Israel) and punishment (Russia) By Pepe Escobar The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining it ... A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic -George Orwell, 1984 So Obama, Merkel, Cameron, Hollande and Italian Premier Matteo Renzi - let's call them the Fab Five - get on a video conference call to muster their courage and "increase pressure" asking for a cease-fire in Gaza. Later in the day, Israel's Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu delivers his answer, in plain language: he remains dead set on achieving his version of a Final Solution to Gaza. [1] With or without "pressure". So what's left for the Fab Five after having their illustrious Western collective behinds solemnly kicked? They decide to dump Gaza and instead sanction Russia - again! How brilliant is that as an exit strategy? Spectacular non-entity Tony Blinken, who doubles as deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, was keen to stress to Western corporate media that the unruly Eurotrash mob is now "determined to act". No, not against Israel because of Gaza; against Russia because of Ukraine. Such a lovely Orwellian symmetry: the extended Two Minutes Hate from Israel towards Gazans morphs into the extended Two Minutes Hate from the "West" towards Russia, mirroring the extended Two Minutes Hate from Kiev towards Eastern Ukrainians. Not even Hollywood could come up with such a plot; Israel gets away with unlawful premeditated mass murder of civilians, while Russia gets framed for a (smaller-scale) airborne mass murder of civilians that has all the makings of being set up by the Kiev vassals of Russia's Western "partners". Here I have exposed how sanctions, sanctions, sanctions is the one and only official Obama administration "policy" on Russia. On top of the next European Union sanctions, coming soon, the US will be piling up - what else - more sanctions. After all, Washington is so "concerned" that Moscow will sooner or later invade Ukraine; that would certainly, and finally, answer all those In God We Trust prayers. Where we stand now Let's follow the facts. Washington from the get-go said it was Russian President Vladimir Putin's missile that downed MH17. They swore they had evidence. Like in "We know. Trust us". The historical record for the past 60 years at least shows they cannot be trusted. There was never any evidence. Just spin. Moscow, via the Defense Ministry, presented hard evidence. And called for an unbiased international investigation. Washington ignored it all - the call and the hard evidence. The US Navy, crammed with state-of-the-art missile defense radars, has been in the Black Sea for weeks now. As much as the Russians, they have tracked every particle flying over Ukraine. The NSA goes for signals intelligence; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency goes for phenomena in the imagery realm; the Defense Intelligence Agency adds Humint; there's the CIA; and there's the all-seeing, all-knowing Director of National Intelligence. How come all this trillion-dollar Full Spectrum Dominance apparatus cannot come up with a single, conclusive piece of evidence? The only risible "evidence" presented so far pictures the acronym salad of US intel agencies spending their time reading blogs and Twittering. As in the State Department head in Kiev twittering satellite imagery that the New York Times parroted "proved" Russia is shelling Ukraine from across the border. The proverbial "senior US officials" even had to tersely admit on the record they have no proof whatsoever about "Putin's missile". If they had, NATO would be ready to flip burgers in Red Square. Based on the wealth of info now in the open, the top probability of what caused the MH17 tragedy was an R-60M air-to-air missile shot from a Ukrainian Su-25 - and not a BUK (there's also the possibility of a double down; first an R-60M and then a BUK). The R-60M is very fast, with an ideal engagement distance of up to five kilometers. That's how far the Su-25 detected by the Russians (they showed the graphics) was from MH17. SBU - Ukrainian intel - for its part confiscated the recordings of Kiev control tower talking to MH17. That would certainly explain why MH17 was overflying a war zone (Malaysian Airlines revealed they were forced to). Hefty bets can be made the recordings are now being "doctored". Then there are the black boxes, which will not de decoded by the Malaysians or by the Dutch, but by the Brits - acting under Washington's orders. As The Saker blogger summed up the view of top Russian specialists, "the Brits will now let the NSA falsify the data and that falsification will be coordinated with the SBU in Kiev which will eventually release the recordings who will fully 'confirm' the 'authenticity' of the NSA-doctored recordings from the UK." To make it more palatable, and erase suspicions about Anglo-American foul play, the Dutch will announce it. Everyone should be forewarned. NATO heads, for their part, are droolin'. Kiev's forces/militias will hold "joint exercises" with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Ukraine in slightly over a month from now, on September 1; red alert applies, because this is when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Donbass will be finished. As for the R2P ("responsibility to protect") angle, it sounds quite improbable. True, Moscow can always say that unless the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Donbass stops they will recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. In that case, Moscow would be replaying Abkhazia and South Ossetia; a de facto R2P backed by military muscle. Under international law - which Washington never respects, by the way - this is not the same as "invading" Ukraine. The frankly scary Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, would obviously freak out - but that's a dose of her own medicine. It would indeed be comparable to what the Americans are doing to the benefit of those Salafi-jihadis in Syria; and better yet, to what the US did in Kosovo. The $50billion vultures And now, on top of sanctions, Moscow also has to contend with a massive US$50 billion theft attempt. The International Arbitration Court in The Hague found that the Kremlin's pursuit of Yukos and its main shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a decade ago was politically motivated. Moscow can't appeal - but it will pursue all legal avenues for trying to get this ruling "set aside". Well, it's The Hague's decision itself that is political. Khodorkovsky was found guilty not only by the Russian judicial system but also by the European Court of Human Rights. Yukos and Menotep shareholders were and remain a bunch of oligarch gangsters - to put it mildly. So here's the Empire of Chaos once again in action, manipulating a Dutch court after literally stealing Germany's gold and fining France for selling warships to Russia. In this case though, the "West" has more investments in Russia than the Russian government in the West. Payback could be a bitch - as in Moscow, for instance, freezing all US and EU energy investments especially in the new ultra-profitable frontier, the Arctic oil fields. Western Big Oil will never allow this to happen. This could go on forever. The bottom line: the Russian state simply won't allow itself to be robbed by a dodgy ruling on behalf of a bunch of oligarchs. In parallel, a case can be made that not only the Return of the Living (Neo-Con) Dead but also substantial sections of the deep state in Washington DC and environs - as well as "Western" plutocracy - want to provoke some sort of NATO war against Russia, sooner rather than later. And in another parallel line, Moscow rumor has it that the Kremlin finds this protracted post-Yukos battle just an afterthought compared to the economic war about to convulse Europe and eventually pit Europe against Russia: exactly what the Empire of Chaos is praying - and working - for. "Two Minute" Hate? Talk about hours, days, weeks, and years. Note: 1. Netanyahu: We're prepared for an extended operation in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post, July 28, 2014. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Israel is the Middle East's apartheid South Africa - Wayne Madsen Report

Update: Israel is the Middle East's apartheid South Africa

Like the apartheid regime, Zionist Israel should be consigned to the ash heap of history

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa has demanded that South African expel the Israeli ambassasdor and recall its own ambassador in Tel Aviv. Today's South Africa knows an apartheid regime when it sees one. Although the West Bank now resembles discontiguous South African bantustans, nothing like Gaza ever appeared in apartheid South Africa. Gaza mirrors the worst ghettos of Nazi Germany. WMR is republishing the following article by the editor from 2012:

Israel adopting apartheid Bantustan model for Palestinians

By Wayne Madsen

The Israeli government calls them Areas A, B, and C of “Judea and Samaria.” To the rest of the world, the areas are known as Palestine, a nation that has state observer status in the United Nations and is a full member of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Arab League.

No other country in the world recognizes the existence of “Judea and Samaria” but 142 nations recognize the independence and statehood of Palestine.

Area C of the West Bank of Palestine is under full Israeli political and military control and there are plans underway to annex Area C to Israel. The Israeli military has security control over Area B, largely Palestinian rural land and in danger of being gobbled up by Israeli annexation if the expansionist Israel Home Party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and the right-wing of Likud have their way. Area A is under the control of the Palestinian Authority and includes its administrative headquarters city of Ramallah and other Palestinian population centers.

When one looks at a map of the Israeli area boundaries in the West Bank one can only be reminded of the patchwork quilt of majority African “Bantustans” created by apartheid South Africa. In fact, what the Benjamin Netanyahu government has offered to Palestine in the way of independence is for an unarmed and defenseless entity to exist as an unequal part of a greater Israeli zone of influence with Area C being exchanged for Israel’s recognition of Palestine’s faux “independence.” Netanyahu has referred to the co-principality of Andorra as a template for Palestine. Andorra’s actual heads of state are a Spanish Catholic bishop and the French president. Andorra’s actual independence from Spain and France is highly debatable, even though the country is a member of the UN and Council of Europe.

Such contrivances as planned by Israel for Palestine have been seen before in Bantustans with the names of Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana.

And in what should be taught to every African student, Israel was not only a major supporter of apartheid South Africa but it had close trade and security relations with the Bantustans because it saw them as a model for future “Arabstans” in the occupied Palestinian territories. These “Arabstans” now exist in the Gaza Strip and Areas A, B, and C of the West Bank.

Close Israeli-South African relations were capped off by a visit from South African Prime Minister B. J. Vorster to Israel in April 1976, the first by a South African head of government. Israel and South Africa jointly manufactured military hardware and weapons and electronic and signals intelligence systems as a way to bypass UN sanctions imposed on the apartheid state. And the two countries, with the assistance of Taiwan, jointly produced nuclear weapons and the fissionable U-235 uranium isotope, testing an atomic bomb in the South Atlantic near the Prince Edward Islands on September 22, 1979. 

Although South Africa’s self-proclaimed Bantustans were only recognized by South Africa, Israel maintained de facto relations with the four entities. Transkei, Ciskei, and Bophuthatswana maintained trade missions in Tel Aviv staffed by Israelis. In fact, these Israelis were using passports from the “republics,” as well as other diplomatic contrivances, to support the illegal side of Mossad and international Jewish lobbying and Israeli influence-peddling operations worldwide.

With Transkei, Israel maintained close intelligence and counter-insurgency ties. Its Prime Minister George Matanzima, a nephew of then-imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, visited Israel in 1984, along with four Transkei Cabinet ministers.

But it was Ciskei, headed by President Lennox Sebe, which provided Israel with its closest Bantustan ally. Sebe traveled to Israel, supported illegal settlements in occupied Palestine, and received Israeli assistance, especially for his brutal police force. Relations were so close between the Bantustan and Israel, the Ciskei capital of Bisho had a sister city relationship with Ariel, an illegal Israeli settlement on the West Bank. A number of Israeli companies, many led by Likud officials, established themselves in Ciskei. Mossad and Israel Defense Force personnel helped Ciskei establish paramilitary units and an intelligence service. Ciskei’s flag shared its light blue and white colors with those of Israel’s flag.

Bophuthatswana resembled Palestine’s Area A and B territories. The Tswana “homeland” consisted of eight non-contiguous enclaves within South Africa. The Bantustan’s Sun City casino not only attracted top Western entertainers who did not want to run afoul of the sanctions on the apartheid regime, but also a fair number of Israeli-South African dual national organized crime figures who ran casino operations and opened up nearby strip clubs and bordellos catering to inter-racial sex.

Bophuthatswana maintained an unofficial embassy in Israel and the Bantustan’s President Lucas Mangope was received by a number of Israeli officials, including the famed General Moshe Dayan. Israel provided Bophuthatswana’s official armed forces with training and equipment and, in 1994, when Mangope was overthrown, he could only rely on the support of the white racist Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (AWB), which was also believed to have received covert support from Israeli trainers and equippers. North West University in the former capital of Bophuthatswana, Mafikeng, honored the late Mangope in 2010. Unsurprisingly, the university also maintains close ties with Ben Gurion University in Israel.

Venda also received security assistance from Israel and its president, Patrick Mphephu, paid an official visit to Israel in 1980. In 1983, Israel hosted a large delegation from the Venda Chamber of Commerce.

Israel showed every intention of supporting other Bantustans after they became fully independent. In 1985, Israel received KwaZulu Bantustan’s Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. There were low-level Israeli links, mostly by Israeli military intelligence operatives in the guises of tourists and backpackers, with the Bantustan governments of Lebowa and Qwa Qwa in South Africa and Kavangoland, Ovamboland, and East Caprivi in then-Southwest Africa.

The Bantustans disappeared after the end of apartheid and were incorporated back into South Africa. Today, South Africa has implemented plans to boycott any goods originating from Israeli businesses in the occupied territories. Israel, the second-most ardent supporter of the Bantustans, after apartheid South Africa, has cried foul and is accusing South Africa of anti-Semitism. However, Israel stands guilty of racism and pro-segregation in Africa. It is a shameful history that Israel should not be permitted to run away from.

USS Seawolf missile shot down TWA 800 - Wane Madsen Report

USS Seawolf missile shot down TWA 800

According to a senior member of the staff of then-Secretary of the Navy John Dalton, the test firing of a new generation Navy missile from the submarine USS Seawolf accidentally struck TWA flight 800 en route from New York to Paris on July 17, 1996. According to the former Navy official, the missile test was so important for the Clinton administration, it was being shown live on a Navy closed-circuit television feed at the White House. The Seawolf's missile was to have struck a drone reportedly being towed by a Navy P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft. However, to the horror of the Navy personnel involved with the test and senior White House staff gathered to witness the missile's successful launching, it veered off course and intercepted the TWA 800 Boeing 747, killing the 230 passengers and crew on board the aircraft.

ABC News Paris correspondent and former John F. Kennedy Press Secretary and U.S. Senator Pierre Salinger reported that a U.S. Navy missile, according to his sources, had downed TWA 800. A vicious smear campaign was launched against Salinger and he was eventually fired by ABC. This editor subsequently spoke at length with Salinger about both TWA 800 and Pan Am 103. We agreed that the investigations of both involved U.S. government cover-ups.

The Seawolf, which had recently completed sea trials but had not yet been fully commissioned into service, was participating in a major Navy exercise off Long Island in exercise area W-105. The exercise was dubbed GLOBAL YANKEE '96. Ironically, the Seawolf was to be commissioned in Groton, Connecticut on July 17, 1997, the anniversary of the shooting down of TWA 800, but the Navy, sensitive to the date, altered the commissioning to July 19, two days later.  Margaret Dalton, the wife of Navy Secretary John Dalton, carried out the submarine's "christening" in Groton.

The FBI initially believed that terrorism was the cause of the crash of TWA 800 and it ran a criminal investigation parallel to that of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). However, as the need to cover-up the missile angle became paramount, the FBI changed modes and began harassing witnesses who clearly saw a bright streak or arc in the sky moments before the massive explosion tore apart the Boeing 747 sending bodies and debris into the Atlantic Ocean. Two Air National Guard Blackhawk helicopter pilots saw an orange-red streak prior to the fireball while conducting helicopter training approaches at nearby Gabreski Field.

But the missile theory never could be put to rest. Senator Alphonse d'Amato (R-NY) said he believed a missile struck TWA 800, as did a number of individuals with military and flight experience. D'Amato served on the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST), which was set up in September 1989 to make aviation security recommendations after the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 1993, D'Amato opposed funding any more Seawolfsubmarines, however, as they were built by the Groton, Connecticut-based Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, the two Connecticut senators, Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd, were strong proponents of the submarines the Navy said they did not even need in the post-Cold War era.

The unfolding events surrounding the Seawolf's missile impact on TWA 800 was witnessed in real-time in the White House Situation Room by startled officials who were viewing what was suppose have been a successful intercept of a drone. However, according to our Secretary of the Navy senior staff source, as the impact of what transpired dawned on White House officials, the director of the White House Situation Room, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, immediately ordered the mobilization of Navy and other military assets to cover up the Navy's role in the disaster. As the National Security Council's director of Systems and Planning, Cosgriff was partly responsible for obtaining the White House Situation Room to show-off the Navy's latest missile capabilities to gathered civilian and military officials.

The crew of the P-3 that was towing the drone was immediately transferred to new assignments. The P-3's number 3 engine showed signs of damage from the explosion of TWA 800 and maintenance records on the engine were suppressed by the Navy. Three other submarines participating in GLOBAL YANKEE '96 were also ordered out of the area. They were the USS Albuquerque, the USS Augusta, and the USS Trepang. The FBI accounted for all missiles aboard the three submarines but not those on board the Seawolf, which was not yet officially commissioned into service and which had just completed it sea trials a little over a week earlier.

Our source confirmed that US Navy SEAL team members were dispatched to recover TWA 800 wreckage with the sole intent being the alteration of the debris to fit the story of a defective fuel tank explosion. Two U.S. Navy salvage ships, the USS Grasp and USS Grapple, were sent to Long Island waters to recover TWA wreckage.

In 2000, conservative pundit Reed Irvine confirmed what Salinger had reported four years earlier. Irvine reported that he recorded an interview with a Navy petty officer who was on the deck of a submarine near where TWA 800 was hit by the missile. The petty officer told Irvine that he was "underneath TWA 800 when he saw a missile hit it and the 747 explode overhead."

Irvine also wrote, "There are hundreds of Navy and Coast Guard personnel, as well as some FBI, CIA, FAA, NTSB and former White House employees who know that the real cause of the crash of TWA 800 was papered over with a tissue of lies. Two of them, James Kallstrom and George Stephanopoulos, have made statements that indicate an official cover-up. Stephanopoulos, a Clinton adviser who is now an ABC News correspondent, mentioned on the air a secret meeting in the White House situation room 'in the aftermath of the TWA 800 bombing.' Kallstrom, who headed the FBI's TWA 800 investigation, told me – and I have this on tape – that three radar targets close to the crash site were Navy vessels on a classified maneuver. We know they were submarines because the radar tracks disappeared when TWA 800 crashed."

One of the submarine's that was ordered to immediately leave the area of the TWA crash was the Seawolf. The Seawolf was testing a missile that could be fired on an enemy aircraft while the submarine was fully submerged. The Navy ordered all radar data of the incident seized. The Navy and other U.S. agencies subsequently altered data tapes to be consistent with the NTSB's contrived conclusion that TWA 800 was brought down by a spontaneous explosion in the center wing fuel tank. Radar tapes showing the P-3 at 20,000 feet and a towed drone at 17,600 feet at about a mile behind the P-3 were erased.


The CIA developed an animation to bolster the center wing fuel tank explosion explanation.

The Seawolf's Cooperative Engagement Capability, which linked its weapon systems with the Aegis radar systems installed on other Navy ships participating in the exercise, also saw its data purged. Once the subsurface missile was launched, the Seawolf's combat software no longer had control over the missile.

The Navy's Aegis training platform, the Combat System Engineering Development Site (CSEDS), located in the middle of a cornfield in Moorestown, New Jersey, off of the New Jersey Turnpike, which had a AEGIS SPY-1 radar window off Long Island, also saw its data tapes confiscated as did the Federal Aviation Administration control center in Islip, Long Island and the FAA technical center in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A Lockheed-Martin engineer who worked at CSEDS in Moorestown said the SPY-1 radar was reported to be "down for maintenance" during the exercise, an exercise in which it was to have been a participant.

The NTSB falsified data in their cover-up, billed as an investigation. The Flight Data Recorder's indication that something struck the Boeing 747 was brushed aside. 
Hank Hughes, a former senior NTSB accident investigator, revealed in 2013 that evidence that a "high-velocity debris exiting the right side of the aircraft." Hughes said evidence was tampered with. Other NTSB investigators joined Hughes in criticizing the NTSB's "accident" report. Testing done by the Brookhaven and Sandia National Laboratories could yield no evidence that TWA 800 was brought down as the result of a mechanical failure.

Researchers were able to piece together the following timeline of events from open source information:
20:31:11 Intact and climbing 747 approaches 13,800 feet.
20:31:12 U.S. Navy subsurface-launched missile impacts TWA 800 at 13,800 feet. Beginning of decapitation process.

20:31:47 Massive fireball explodes in the falling wreckage at 7500 feet.

20:31:43 Wreckage begins hitting the water's surface.
20:31:55-20:31:57 splashdown of the massive fireball flames.

A number of observers witnessed a subsurface wake after the explosion of TWA 800. The Seawolf, if ordered out of the area at maximum speed, is capable of doing over 35 knots submerged. At such a speed, a visible surface wake is very possible. The pilot of a Cessna reported seeing a distinct subsurface wake in addition to a passenger on board US Air flight 277.

The Navy continues to classify a "design deficiency" discovered during theSeawolf's Weapons Systems Accuracy Trials (WSAT) conducted in 1998. In addition, the November 1999 Operational Assessment report cited six critical operational issues as high risk for Seawolf. The second issue on the Navy's list was the submarine's "weapon launch, handling, and stowage."

President and Mrs. Clinton were attending a Democratic National Committee function at the Sheraton Washington Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, as the Seawolf's missile impacted with TWA 800. Rather than deal with the event in the White House Situation Room, the president and the first lady decided to retire to the private quarters of the White House and not issue any immediate comment on the tragedy. Hillary Clinton has all but announced her desire to run for president in 2016. The families of those who lost loved ones on TWA 800 may not be all that enthused about Mrs. Clinton's ever-expanding diary of secrets.

Cynthia McKinney - Veterans for Peace 2014 Convention - Asheville, North Carolina

Cynthia McKinney
Veterans for Peace 2014 Convention
Asheville, North Carolina
July 26, 2014

Thank you so much for inviting me to be with you this evening. I don’t know whose idea it was, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for building this bridge to me.

I awoke this morning to the sounds of nature: birds chirping and I looked outside to this beautiful natural environment and thought to myself, no matter how hard humans try to replicate what is natural, only Mother Nature can do what I see now and what I saw yesterday as my plane arrived near dusk into Asheville.

My thoughts then went to movements around the world that have successfully guaranteed, in national constitutions, the rights of nature, itself. And the right of humans to live in a clean environment. And then I lamented that we seem to not be able to sustain many victories in the many movements that we have for justice and peace in this country. I lament because when our movements for justice are weak at home, then people suffer—not only at home, but also abroad. And I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of war, oppression, and suffering--when there need not be any. We are in this predicament in the U.S. because of deliberate actions that some people take and that other people allow. Either we are actively engaged in the struggle for justice and peace, or we are on the sidelines watching as events unfold, or even worse, we take the side--knowingly or unknowingly--of the perpetrators of war and injustice.

And now, because of U.S. policies from the Clinton Administration to the Obama Administration, we know that all people are potential do-gooders and that too many people choose to go the other way. The perpetrators of injustice and war can be White men and women, Asian men and women, Latino men and women, and African descendant men and women. By now, we should have learned that blindly voting for a Barack Obama was not going to give us the policies of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Therefore, let us be clear, that blindly voting for any candidate that is popularly portrayed in the media—so-called mainstream or progressive—is not going to give us the change that all of us want and need. There is no substitute for each of us doing personal research on the candidates that step forward--from the school board, to judges, to Congress, to the White House--to make sure that the candidates for whom we vote actually align with our values.

The time is out for settling for the lesser of two evils, because as Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report likes to say, you end up with a more effective evil: A more effective evil that we the voters are responsible for putting in power.

So, the first theme I’d like to explore with you as I ruminate aloud is the idea that arsonists are at work all over our world.

I find it interesting that we have been called together at a time when the world is literally on fire. And the arsonists who are setting these fires are still not happy. They want every corner of the world to be aglow—either with nuclear radiation of one sort or another: a la Fukushima or as a result of what this President calls “high or low kinetic activity” that includes the use of Depleted Uranium munitions, or with this human species being alit with hatred. Institutions in the U.S. have trained everyone since the beginning of this country to be especially afraid of Black males. And with that now so permanently seared into the psyches of Blacks, Whites, and all newcomers to the U.S., it was time to move on to the next group to hate: Latinos from what Hugo Chavez called Nuestra America, Our America, where the straightness and thickness of the hair reveal too much Indigenous heritage and the darkness of the skin or the roundness of the lips or the frizziness of the hair reveal too much African heritage. Latinos from Nuestra America, leave their family, homes, communities, and countries because U.S. foreign policy has made life unbearable there, come to the U.S. and are abused for their labor and our programmed hatred of them makes it easier for us to support policies that abuse and mistreat them.

Today, the U.S. is supposedly negotiating with Hondurans, a way to deal with the influx of underage asylum seekers arriving on the U.S. border with Mexico; but just imagine if the United States had not interfered with two Honduran elections, regime changing the Presidency of Manuel Zelaya when he dared to support land reform and a new Constitution for all the Honduran people and then the U.S. interfered in Honduras’s most recent, 2013, Presidential election, preventing the election of Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro. Without that foreign policy of the U.S., President Obama’s first coup after he came to office, Hondurans would be building their nation instead of fleeing it.

If truth is the first casualty of war, then it could also be said that hatred is one of the spoils of war.

Not satisfied with lighting the fire of hatred of Blacks and the Indigenous, and “Nuestra America” Latinos, in the last decade or so, we have been told that Muslims are worthy of our hatred. So, many of the new generation of young people in the U.S. believe that Muslims want to kill us or kill them them because Muslims hate our freedoms and so we had better kill them before they kill us. But, interestingly, while we are taught to hate Muslims, from what I’ve seen of the arsonists’ successful work, Muslims are doing a pretty good job of killing each other; but we are supposed to hate and fear them.

Now, not even satisfied with the carnage thus produced: Colombia is on fire, Venezuela is on fire, Syria is on fire, North Africa is on fire, West Asia is on fire, the arsonists have added China and Russia to the menu, and have set Eurasia afire on their path to these countries. For the moment, that is Ukraine. But, for the arsonists, Iran and Turkey are mere stepping stones toward setting Russia and China afire. And they’ve already firing up the kindling inside these countries—that includes the Chechens for the Russians and the Uighurs for the Chinese. So, today, in a highly calculated move to overthrow the government of Ukraine and set the wheels in motion, the chariots of fire have begun their roll through Asia. It just dawns on me to ask, is this what our President meant when he announced U.S. policy as a “pivot” to Asia?

Interestingly, we have been called together to this beautiful hamlet tucked away in the heart of the Cherokee nation; a plateau where two Cherokee trails crossed is now the town of Asheville. And even as we gather in this idyllic setting, the arsonists are still at work. While here, it might even be easy to forget what is happening in the rest of the world. But I can’t. Because I know that what is wrought abroad, comes home and what is made at home is exported abroad. And I have evidence for what I say.

Medea was with me in Georgia when the pro-Israel Lobby struck me the first time. We had waged a valiant struggle, and Medea and all of you who were with me then, at that very difficult time, I say “thank you” to you now. I have been quoted as saying that the moment I refused the AIPAC pledge of loyalty to Israel as a candidate in 1992, I became engaged in hand-to-hand combat and staying in Congress was trench warfare. And sadly, very few people understood or even cared what I was going through, because as other victims, I was made to appear in public as if I “deserved” what I got.

Media demonization is purposeful in that it leads the public to believe that the demonized person deserved what they got. I can point to the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose murder I have studied extensively —both as a Congressperson and as a Ph.D. student. According to Sheldon Appleton’s research, nearly one third of respondents to a poll taken after the murder of Dr. King felt strongest that Dr. King had brought his assassination on himself. That’s why whole countries are now personified in the media by the likeness of one individual whom we are actually being directed to hate. So, seven million people in Libya are reduced to Muammar Qaddafi; one hundred forty three million Russians are reduced to Vladimir Putin; one point four billion Chinese will be reduced to Xi Jinping—if he stands up for the Chinese people and their national interest and fights foreign domination. It works that way whether the arsonists are lighting the kindling underneath a foreign leader or a domestic one. Not only have I been through this firsthand and have my own personal experiences, and can watch and understand what is happening when this template is being applied in other situations to other leaders, but I now understand the mechanisms of oppression and repression because Antioch University has allowed me to study this particular phenomenon as a part of my Ph.D. studies. And so that’s where I want to go next in this moment of what I hope is mutual sharing: what we struggle against are the tactics and orchestrations that prevent us from experiencing peace at home as well as peace abroad.

Your theme for this 2014 Convention is “Peace at Home, Peace Abroad.” One thing we should know by now is that the arsonists will prevent peace abroad by lighting up, for example, Congo in the 1960s with regime change that brings about untold suffering on the African Continent and then will spark fire again by executing regime change in the 1990s in Rwanda, Burundi, and then Congo again that brings about even more suffering in Africa. From these two examples in Africa, we now know that the United States will have targeted assassination as a policy and will lie about it for as long as it can get away with the lie.

In December of 2013, the United States finally admitted that President Eisenhower authorized the murder of Patrice Lumumba and set aside dollars for the deed to be carried out. On my Facebook page, I asked my subscribers, “How do we as a country make up for something like that?” The murders of the democratically elected Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda during the Clinton Administration, with regime change as its objective, unleashed what the world knows now as the Rwanda genocide and exposes the lie to those willing to do the research that Africans just like to kill each other. The arsonists have succeeded in keeping Africa on fire.

John Perkins, in his many interviews after publication of his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, exposes the targeted assassinations carried out by the U.S. of Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Roldos of Ecuador because they dared to care more about the people of their own countries and less about the interests of the cartel of bankers that wanted to indebt them and U.S. corporations that wanted to rape them. Declassified documents from U.S. Operation Condor show the establishment of kill teams whose function was to go around the world–-wherever needed—to kill public officials who, like us, only wanted justice and peace.

The Frank Church Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities specifically found that policies and behaviors that were honed overseas were brought back home and used against U.S. citizens. That was the point of COINTELPRO, the U.S. government’s organized and total effort to wipe out dissent at home for its policies abroad. The purpose of the Church Committee was to examine U.S. intelligence policies and found that they included targeted assassination, illegal employment by the CIA of university professors, members of the clergy, journalists, publishing houses, and media outlets; the Church Committee found that anti-war activists were subjected to illegal break-ins into their homes, illegal wiretaps, blacklisting so that they could not earn a living, and a broad range of activities to smear them in the press so that whatever happened to them would appear as if they “deserved” what they got. When the FBI’s COINTELPRO program used the word “neutralize” in reference to Black groups, it meant bad jacketing that sent innocent people to prison (like recently passed Geronimo Pratt, later known as Geronimo Ji Jaga), and even targeted assassination, like Malcolm X and Dr. King. For the Puerto Rican independence movement, Filiberto Ojeda Rios was “neutralized” when he bled to death at his home after the FBI surrounded his home and shot through his front door, wounding him, and then prevented an ambulance from coming to save him. Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was neutralized when she was bad jacketed and then murdered and dismembered, with the autopsy being performed by a “company coroner” thereby preventing her immediate identification. Anna Mae was a budding leader in the American Indian Movement who was neutralized as a result of affirmative U.S. government policy to do so.

Now, what I want to leave you with is this: If these arsonists would light a fire in Africa, Asia, Latin America, even Eurasia if they have to to preserve their freedoms over us, why wouldn’t they light fires at home? I hope I’ve demonstrated that they will just do that.

My final admonition is this. I have lent extensive study to the assassinations in the U.S. during the decade of the 1960s. These are assassinations that mattered: they changed U.S. policy from a peace and justice orientation to what we have today. I believe that the antecedents to the struggles in which we are engaged today can be found in what happened in the U.S. in the 1960s when we the people who struggle for peace were on the verge of winning.

The torch of leadership in the U.S. was about to be passed to a new generation that thought differently. President John Kennedy said the word peace over 30 times in his graduation address to American University just weeks before he was killed; in one of my Congressional Conferences on COINTELPRO, we learned from one researcher that Bobby Kennedy had shortlisted Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Vice Presidential possibility. And so, instead of the torch being passed to a new generation that was willing to struggle with the meaning of U.S. patriotism in a multipolar world, and what we ask our soldiers to do for us; and what we expect our police to do to us; and what we do for them in return, every one of you in this room knows what we have, instead.

At this conference you have covered important issues like conscientious objection—my son is one and I insisted that he learn about that as an option; ways to heal PTSD; serving homeless veterans; the legacy of Agent Orange; the battle for justice in Palestine; and new forms of resistance. I’ve been underneath U.S. bombs in Libya; I’ve tasted the grit and had to flush it from my uncovered eyes; I’ve been in prison in Israel, but nothing I have done for peace can ever give me an experience like what you all have had. I have long said let’s end U.S. wars and create not one more generation of veterans who will in the future be neglected by their own government.

I salute you for leading for peace and I hope that this Convention has been all that its planners and attendees hoped it would be.

Make my funk the peace funk and bring the troops back home!

Thank you.

THE ROVING EYE - A chessboard drenched in blood By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE A chessboard drenched in blood By Pepe Escobar "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Everyone remembers the Downing Street Memo, which unveiled the Bush/Blair "policy" in the run-up to the 2003 bombing/invasion/occupation of Iraq. The "policy" was to get rid of Saddam Hussein via a lightning war. The justification was "terrorism" and (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which had "disappeared", mounted in trucks, deep into Syria. Forget about intelligence and facts. The tragedy of MH17 - turned, incidentally, into a WMD - might be seen as a warped rerun of imperial policy in Iraq. No need for a memo this time. The "policy" of the Empire of Chaos is clear, and multi-pronged; diversify the "pivot to Asia" by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine to sabotage trade between Europe and Russia; expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Ukraine; break the Russia-China strategic partnership; prevent by all means the trade/economic integration of Eurasia, from the Russia-Germany partnership to the New Silk Roads converging from China to the Ruhr; keep Europe under US hegemony. The key reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin did not "invade" Eastern Ukraine - as much as he's been enticed to by Washington/NATO - to stop a US military adviser-facilitated running slaughter of civilians is that he does not want to antagonize the European Union, Russia's top trading partner. Crucially, Washington's intervention in Kosovo invoking R2P - Responsibility to Protect - was justified at the time for exactly the same reasons a Russian intervention in Donetsk and Luhansk could be totally justified now. Except that Moscow won't do it - because the Kremlin is playing a very long game. The MH17 tragedy may have been a horrendous mistake. But it may also have been a desperate gambit by the Kiev minions of the Empire of Chaos. By now, Russian intel may have already mastered the key facts. Washington's predictable modus operandi was to shoot from the hip, igniting and in theory winning the spin war, and doubling down by releasing the proverbial army of "top officials" brimming with social media evidence. Moscow will take time to build a meticulous case, and only then lay it out in detail. Hegemony lost The Big Picture spells out the Empire of Chaos elites as extremely uneasy. Take Dr Zbigniew "The Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, who as a former foreign policy mentor has the ears of the increasingly dejected White House paperboy. Dr Zbig was on CNN this Sunday challenging Europe's leaders to "stand up to Putin". He wonders if "Europe wants to become a satellite" and worries about "a moment of decisive significance for the future of the system - of the world system". And it's all Putin's fault, of course: "We're not starting the Cold War. He [Putin] has started it. But he has gotten himself into a horrendous jam. I strongly suspect that a lot of people in Russia, even not far away from him who are worried that Russia's status in the world is dramatically being undermined, that Russia's economically beginning to fail, that Russia's threatened by the prospect of becoming a satellite to China, that Russia's becoming self-isolated and discredited." Obviously Dr Zbig is blissfully unaware of the finer points of the Russia-China strategic partnership, as well as their concerted voice inside the BRICS, the G-20 and myriad other mechanisms. His trademark Russophobia in the end always gets the better of him. And to think that in his latest book, Strategic Vision (2012), Dr Zbig was in favor of an enlarged "West" annexing Turkey and Russia, with the Empire of Chaos posing as "promoter" and "guarantor" of broader unity in the West, and a "balancer" and "conciliator" between the major powers in the East. A quick look at the record since 2012 - Libya, Syria, Ukraine, encirclement of China - reveals the Empire of Chaos only as fomenter of, what else, chaos. Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein - who was a huge influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel bookGlobalistan. In this piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can't accept its geopolitical decadence - and that's why it has become so dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground. In Europe, everything hinges on Germany. Especially after the National Security Agency scandal and its ramifications, the key debate raging in Berlin is how to position itself geopolitically bypassing the US. And the answer, as pressed by large swathes of German big business, lies in a strategic partnership with Russia. Show me the missile Slowly, with no hype and no spin, the Russian military are starting to deliver the goods. Here, courtesy of the Vineyard of The Saker blog, is their key presentation so far. As The Saker put it, Russia had - and has - a "20/20 radar vision", or full spectrum surveillance, on everything going on in Ukraine. And so, arguably, does NATO. What the Russian Ministry of Defense is saying is as important as the clues it is laying out for experts to follow. The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an air-to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos - is being discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used. Way beyond the established fact of a Ukrainian SU-25 trailing MH17, plenty of unanswered questions remain, some involving a murky security procedure at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport - where security is operated by ICTS, an Israeli company based in The Netherlands and founded by former officers from the Israeli Shin Bet intel agency. And then there is the unexplained presence of "foreign" advisors in Kiev's control tower.  As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in Gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death. Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration. One week before the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies was already sounding the alarm concerning the Empire of Chaos's "policy" and its refusal to "adhere to the principles and norms of international law and the rules and spirit of the existing system of international relations". Moscow, in building its case on the MH17 tragedy, will bide its time to debunk Kiev's claims and maximize its own credibility. The game now moves to the black boxes and the cockpit voice recorder. Still Ukraine will remain the do or die battlefield - a chessboard drenched in blood. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.