Neocons try to run another forgery on the international public by Wayne Madsen

Neocons try to run another forgery on the international public

by Wayne Madsen

The one thing that neo-cons deserve credit on is persistence. Even after the neocons sought to fool the international public with obviously forged foreign ministry documents from Niger that were used by the George W. Bush administration to justify going to war with Iraq and forged Iraqi Oil Ministry documents that were used to tarnish the reputations of several political leaders who opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the neocons are at it again. 

This time, a purported arrest warrant for Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman for reaching a deal with Iran to shield Iranian officials wanted for planning the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires was reportedly "found" by investigators in a rubbish bin at the home of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, the alleged author of the arrest warrant. 

Nisman is said to have committed suicide in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment on January 18 of this year. Forensics have shown that there was no other DNA found on the gun Nisman is said to have used to fire a single bullet into his head. Kirchner alleged that Nisman's death may have been a murder carried out by shadowy intelligence figures trying to discredit her and her administration. Kirchner has taken a decidedly anti-Israeli position with her support for Palestine and the establishment of friendly relations with Iran. Kirchner's foreign policy has irked the Israelis and Mossad, which have a heavy presence in Argentina. Kirchner announced that because of her suspicions about agents within the Argentine SIDE intelligence service carrying out a hit on Nisman, she was scrapping the agency and replacing it with a new federal intelligence agency. Presumably, such a move would clean out any Israeli intelligence plants who may have assisted in the possible murder of Nisman -- what would amount to a classic Mossad "false flag" operation in sacrificing a single Jew -- Nisman -- for the greater goals of Israel.

Only photographs of the alleged 26-page arrest warrant were published by the anti-Kirchner newspaper Clarin. Goldman Sachs is a major investor in the Clarin Group, Clarin's parent company. At first, Nisman's assistant prosecutor, Viviana Fein, denied the existence of the arrest warrant. However, she later changed her story and confirmed that the warrant published by Clarin was authentic and that she "mis-spoke" in her earlier statement. It is instructive to note that Nisman was Jewish as is Fein, an important fact that The New York Times chose to ignore in its reporting on the story.

The role of Clarin in disseminating anti-Kirchner is no surprise. The Western media has failed to report that Foreign Minister Timerman, named in the dubious "arrest warrant" is himself a newspaper editor and a longtime competitor, as was his father, Jacobo Timerman, of Clarin. The elder Timerman published the leftist La Opinion and his son, the present Foreign Minister, was editor-in-chief of La Tarde, also left-wing. Attempts by the Israel Lobby to tar Kirchner fall flat in the face of the fact that the Timermans are Jewish but not beholden to Israeli or Zionist interests in Argentina..

Nisman alleged that Kirchner has agreed to swap Argentine grain for Iranian oil in return for dropping Argentina's investigation of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA. On October 24, 2014, WMR reported on the steady warfare being waged by Israel and its allies against Kirchner, both at home and abroad:

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner witnessed her September 24 speech to the UN General Assembly interrupted by what UN officials called "technical difficulties." In fact, Kirchner's speech was censored by the UN amid catcalls from the Israeli delegation and New York Zionist Jews specifically placed by the Israelis in the public gallery to boo those world leaders who criticized the Jewish state's policies.

Kirchner has been subjected to a vicious Zionist campaign launched against its financial system by the Elliott Management Fund, the "vulture" hedge fund owned by New York Zionist and neo-conservative Republican Paul Singer. In 2002, after Argentina defaulted on its debt, Singer's Cayman Islands-based NML Capital Limited bought the devalued Argentina bonds knowing full well he would be lucky to get 30 cents on the dollar. However, Singer began a shake down of Argentina to squeeze more money out of its financially-troubled economy. NML convinced Ghana to seize the Argentine naval training ship Libertad in 2012. Mark Brodsky, Singer's former Elliott Management Fund executive and now head of Aurelius Capital Management, joined in the extortion of Argentina in demanding that a portion of the $1.2 billion debt be paid not only to Singer but also to his fund.

The Israeli media avoids the use of "vulture" funds to describe contrivances like those of Singer and Brodsky. It prefers to use "hold-out funds," which places the onus on the debtors and not the unscrupulous collectors.

A Singer-owned U.S. federal judge in New York, Thomas Griesa, ordered Argentina to pay all the money Singer was demanding instead of a reduced amount. Griesa is 85 years old and is known for taking naps on the bench while hearing cases.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court, on which three American Jews [Ruth Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan] sit and who did not recuse themselves from the case, decided to reject Argentina's appeal of Griesa's ruling.

The Supreme Court's ruling on the Argentina case was purely political. Argentina had determined, contrary to Zionist and neocon myth, that Iran was not responsible for the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, which killed 84 people. Kirchner and other Argentine investigators later discovered that the bombing was an Israeli-inspired false flag operation intended to embarrass Argentina's President Carlos Saul Menem, who was the son of Syrian immigrants to Argentina.

Israel was upset with Menem because he strengthened Argentina's ties to Iran. Menem was forced to abandon an Argentine nuclear cooperation deal with Iran following the 1994 bombing of the AMIA.

The U.S. ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing James Cheek, told The Nation magazine, "To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [that Iran was responsible]. They never came up with anything." The only evidence of any links between the bombing and any Iranians is the fact that "evidence" of the Iranian government's alleged involvement was manufactured by the anti-Tehran Iranian terrorist group Mojaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK), which receives funding and other support from Mossad and the CIA.

After the bombing of the AMIA, Mossad planted evidence at the scene. Two years earlier, after a bomb at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killed 22 people, Mossad also planted evidence suggesting Iran was behind the attack.

Realizing that Menem had been subjected to a vicious character assassination campaign by the Zionist media, Kirchner set about to inform the General Assembly of Israel's culpability in false flag attacks. Perhaps no better setting than the UN could have been used by Kirchner less than a two weeks after the commemoration of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, which amounted to yet another false flag operation that bore all the trademark Mossad handiwork.

After the appearance of the dubious Nisman arrest warrant in Clarin, it was discovered in U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks that Nisman had maintained extensive contacts with the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, which helped him prepare his "case" against Kirchner's government over the AMIA bombing. Nisman continuously met with U.S. embassy officials who helped him hammer out his strategy against Kirchner.

An October 28, 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires states that Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes David S. Cohen, recently selected to be the deputy director of the CIA, met with Nisman to coordinate efforts to undermine Kirchner:

VZCZCXYZ0000 
OO RUEHWEB 
DE RUEHBU #1168/01 3011522 
ZNY CCCCC ZZH 
O 281522Z OCT 09 
FM AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 4526 
INFO RUCNMER/MERCOSUR COLLECTIVE PRIORITY 
RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO PRIORITY 0003 
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L BUENOS AIRES 001168 
SIPDIS 
TREASURY FOR RFEDEWA 
SAO PAULO FOR WBLOCK 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/28/2029 
TAGS: ECON [Economic Conditions], EFIN [Financial and Monetary Affairs], 
PGOV [Internal Governmental Affairs], 
AR [Argentina] 
SUBJECT: ARGENTINA TRIP REPORT OF A/S TREASURY DAVID COHEN 
Classified By: DCM Tom Kelly for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D).
¶1. (U) Summary. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes David S. Cohen traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 2 to address members of the U.S.-Latin America Private Sector Dialogue (U.S.-LA PSD) and conduct meetings with the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina (BCRA) and Ministry of Justice and Human Rights (MOJ) . . .
¶7. (C) A/S Cohen also met with Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who in late 2006 formally accused the government of Iran of directing the 1994 Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) bombing, and Hizballah for carrying out the bombing. Earlier this year, Nisman formally requested that the governments of Germany and France freeze four bank accounts containing over US $48 million associated with the AMIA suspects. Nismansaid that he has yet to receive a substantive reply from either Germany or France, and A/S Cohen offered, on behalf of the Treasury Department, to engage counterparts in these two countries to follow up on Nisman's requests. Nisman added that he has also requested that a judge order the arrest of former Argentine president Carlos Menem for participation in a cover-up after the AMIA attack. 
-----------
An additional cable, gated May 2009, shows that Nisman was in Washington to hold meetings with the State and Justice Departments and "other U.S. government agencies." Other cables indicate that the U.S. Justice Department and FBI assisted Nisman in preparfing INTERPOL arrest warrants for Iranian officials suspected in the AMIA bombing.
-----------
VZCZCXYZ0000 
OO RUEHWEB 
DE RUEHBU #0592 1392245 
ZNY CCCCC ZZH 
O 192245Z MAY 09 
FM AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3744 
INFO RUCNMER/MERCOSUR COLLECTIVE 
RUEHLB/AMEMBASSY BEIRUT 0051 
RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA 1896 
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC 
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC 
RHMCSUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC 
RHMFISS/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC 
RHMFISS/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHINGTON DC 
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC

C O N F I D E N T I A L BUENOS AIRES 000592 
SIPDIS 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/19/2029 
TAGS: PTER [Terrorists and Terrorism], PREL [External Political Relations], ASEC [Security], MASS [Military Assistance and Sales], 
PHUM [Human Rights], SNAR [Narcotics], KJUS [Administration of Justice], IR [Iran], 
LE [Lebanon], AR [Argentina] 
SUBJECT: ARGENTINA: AMIA SPECIAL PROSECUTOR READY TO ANNOUNCE INDICTMENT OF AMIA BOMBING SUSPECT 

REF: BUENOS AIRES 0247 AND PREVIOUS 
Classified By: Ambassador E. Anthony Wayne for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d). 
¶1. (C) Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman called on the Ambassador May 19 to notify us that the following day he would ask Judge Rodolfo Canicoba-Corral to indict a new suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA). Nisman described his painstaking effort to establish the suspect's links to both the environs of the AMIA site, a mosque in Buenos Aires, and his links via cell phone calls to Iranian diplomat and bomb plot suspect Mohsen Rabbani and a cell phone in the Tri-Border Area registered in the name of "Marques." Although the suspect, Samuel Salman El Reda, is Lebanese-Colombian, Nisman considered this a first step against a "local connection" -- that is a resident or Argentine citizen who had helped the Iranian and other suspects, a connection long of interest to the victims of the attack and AMIA. Nisman said El Reda has an Argentine wife and thought both are now living in Lebanon. 
¶2. (C) Nisman described the indictment of El Reda as a substantial breakthrough and as asked that we closely hold his name until it is made public, probably on May 20. Post notes that El Reda has been named in the past as a suspect in the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing and the 1994 AMIA bombing, based in part on investigations by the Argentine intelligence service (SIDE) and others. For Nisman, the breakthrough appears to be that he has pieced together enough evidence independently of the discredited first AMIA investigation to single out El Reda and pursue the indictment. 
¶3. (SBU) Post will report further on local reaction when the indictment is made public. 
¶4. (SBU) Action request: Nisman said that he will be in Washington June 15-20 and would be available to visit the Department of State or Department of Justice or other USG agencies for briefings. Washington offices are asked to contact Poloff Ted Craig by email (craigtj@state.gov) or phone (54 11-5777-4858) to arrange a meeting. 
WAYNE
***********

The alleged arrest warrant for Kirchner and Timerman was supposedly drafted by Nisman in June 2014. Two successive judges, Ariel Lijo and Daniel Refecas have passed on considering Nisman's case against Kirchner due to lack of evidence and other procedural issues. 





The alleged Argentine prosecutorial arrest warrant for Kirchner, Timerman, and National Deputy Andres Larroque has the same neocon "taint" about it as did the forged Niger government and Iraqi Oil Ministry documents. The neocons' stock-in-trade, thanks to the sometimes half-witted efforts of their Mossad allies, include crude forgeries, fake passports, and fake videos and photographs.



   
Forged Niger Foreign Ministry documents purprting to show that Iraq had obtained yellow cake uranium Niger. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the CIA determined the documents were crude forgeries.


British MP George Galloway's meetings with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz were used by the neocons to intimate that he had received bribes from Saddam's government as part of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program. Crudely forged documents, with "Liquid Paper" edits clearly visible were "found" by Western intelligence at the Oil Ministry and used to tarnish anti-war Western politicians in Britain, France, Russia, and other countries.

Bush Redux: As Jeb Bush prepares to run in 2016, remember his brother. Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities by WAYNE MADSEN

Bush Redux: As Jeb Bush prepares to run in 2016, remember his brother

As Jeb Bush prepares to run for president in 2016, WMR is posting this article about his brother, Bush 43, as a reminder of nightmares past . . .

---------------------------


Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities

by WAYNE MADSEN

Adolf Hitler would be proud that an American President is emulating him in so many ways. Hitler, it will be remembered, routinely ignored his military, other world leaders, and the clergy. Bush seems to think that this policy, which ultimately failed for Hitler, will work for him.

First, we should consider what Christian leaders are saying about Bush.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, Frank T. Griswold III, says “I’d like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States” and blasts George W. Bush for his saber rattling. Apparently, poppy Bush, an Episcopalian, believes that the head of his church is wrong and his wayward son is right.

From the Vatican, Pope John Paul II fires a shot over the bow of the Bush administration by declaring, “war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions.”

In a television ad, the chief ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Church, Bishop Melvin Talbert, says that his fellow Methodist’s rush to war “violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

The Anglican House of Bishops has warned, “without compelling new evidence to confirm that Iraq was stockpiling chemical or biological weapons, war could not be morally justified.”

Bush, who, during one of the presidential debates, said his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, has apparently decided to ignore his teachings.

Maybe Bush has decided to turn away from Jesus Christ and instead seek Providence from a tequila bottle, as his State of the Union address with numerous examples of slurred speech would seem to indicate.

Bush, a so-called compassionate conservative and born-again Christian, can only find religious support from the same group of hackneyed pseudo-Christians, hate mongers, and religious cult leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Sun Myung Moon. Bush opts for this band of zealots and ignores South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who asked, “When does compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?” His words fall on deaf ears in the Oval Office.

Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to play with dynamite by ignoring some of America’s top military minds.

One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military commander of Desert Storm. He told The Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf’s comments mirror those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps Commandant and now NATO commander General James Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another recipient of Rumsfeld’s wrath is the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who Rumsfeld accused of having a “case of the slows” in carrying out Bush’s war plans.

Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into open wounds when he ordered his “CINCs” (Commander-in-Chief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one “commander-in-chief” and that is Bush. Neither did it help when Rumsfeld said military draftees never added any value to the service.

Pentagon sources report that some officers are digging out old message traffic that emanated from the Nixon White House in 1974 during the height of the Watergate crisis. One particular order from then Chief of Staff Al Haig stated that military commanders were to ignore any orders from Nixon unless they were authorized and co-signed by Haig. The fear then was that Nixon might have ordered a military move on the Congress during the impeachment hearings and cite national security as the reason for suspending the congressional proceedings against him.

In the end, however, Nixon understood the gravity of his constitutional responsibilities. He resigned. Bush, on the other hand, has done more to shred the Constitution than any of his predecessors.

Of course, there was once another fanatic war-possessed leader who tore up his constitution and routinely berated his generals and ignored their advice. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg strode into a conference room in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair compound with a briefcase bomb. Although the plot to rid the world of Hitler once and for all failed, it confirmed that a number of Germany’s top generals, including its most famous, Erwin von Rommel, were strongly opposed to Hitler’s fanaticism.

War making and saber rattling is not the only similarity of Bush to Hitler. The German leader, along with Joseph Goebbels, was also a master of propaganda. The Bush administration, obviously putting its propaganda arm, the White house Office of Global Communications, into full gear, convinced nine European leaders to take out an ad, billed as an ‘article,” in several European newspapers supporting the Bush administration. Some of the usual suspects signed on to the article, including Tony Blair, who, in addition to Barney and Spot, is Bush’s favorite lap dog. But it is interesting to point out some of the other leaders who backed Bush. They include the Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary and President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. These countries, which joined NATO a few years ago with the provision that they buy billions of dollars of American warplanes, tanks, and other hardware, are virtual subsidiaries of America’s military-industrial complex.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is only in power because of the support he receives from a rabidly anti-immigrant party that mirrors John Ashcroft’s brand of conservatism. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi heads a party that has maintained strong links to Italy’s neo-fascist movement whose founding father was Benito Mussolini. Likewise, the parties of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Portugal’s Jose Barroso have historical links to the fascist movements of Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar, respectively.

Bush’s borrowing liberally from Hitler’s play book was not lost on Germany’s former Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who last September said Bush wanted a war with Iraq to divert attention from domestic problems. She added, “That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that.”

Bush, who is content to win the support of Pentagon stooges in Eastern Europe and neo-fascists elsewhere, has chosen to ignore people like former South African President Nelson Mandela who made no secret of his disgust for Bush when he declared at a women’s forum, “One power with a president who has no foresight — who cannot think properly — is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who did more to bring peace to the world in a couple of years than either of the Bush’s have done in two presidential terms, said last year that George W. Bush is a threat to world peace and that his plans to attack Iraq will destroy the international coalition in the war on terrorism. Former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate warned that a pre-emptive US attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences.

Bush’s disparaging of the United Nations, world opinion, and international statesmen is reminiscent of an April 28, 1939 speech by Hitler before the Reichstag:

“Members of the German Reichstag: The President of the United States of America has addressed a telegram to me, with the curious contents of which you are already familiar . . . The President of the United States believes that in conference rooms as in courts it is necessary that both sides enter in good faith, assuming that substantial justice will accrue to both. German representatives will never again enter a conference that is for them a tribunal . . . Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not invade, the territory or possessions of the following independent nations. He then names as those to which he refers: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia,’ Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain , Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran. I have first taken the trouble to ascertain from the states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and, what is most important, secondly, whether this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us at their suggestion or at least with their consent. The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so . . . I have reunited the territories that have been German throughout a thousand years of history-and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to attain all this without bloodshed and without bringing to my people and so to others, the misery of war . . . For my world, Mr. President, is the one to which Providence has assigned me and for which it is my duty to work. Its area is much smaller. It comprises my people alone. But I believe I can thus best serve that which is in the hearts of all of us a justice, well-being, progress and peace for the whole community of mankind.”

As Congress cheerfully applauded Bush’s State of the Union address, the Reichstag gave Hitler a thunderous reception. Although Hitler’s oratory skills were light years beyond Bush’s, the two speeches had something extremely fundamental in common – they were packed with lies.

THE ROVING EYE Operation Tomahawk The Caliph By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Operation Tomahawk The Caliph By Pepe Escobar The Tomahawks are finally flying again - propelled by newspeak. 42 Tomahawks fired from a Sixth Fleet destroyer parked in Mare Nostrum, plus F-22s raising hell and Hellfires spouted by drones, that's a neat mini-Shock and Awe to honor Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State. It's all so surgical. All targets - from "suspected" weapons depots to the mayor's mansion in Raqqah (the HQ of The Caliph's goons) and assorted checkpoints - were duly obliterated, along with "dozens of", perhaps 120, jihadis. And praise those "over 40" (Samantha Power) or "over 50" (John Kerry) international allies in the coalition of the unwilling; America is never alone, although in this case mightily escorted, de facto, only by the usual Gulf petrodollar dictatorships and the realm of King Playstation, Jordan, all none too keen to engage in "kinetic activities". Aseptic newspeak aside, no one has seen or heard a mighty Gulf Cooperation Council air force deployed to bomb Syria. After all the vassals are scared as hell to tell their own populations they are - once again - bombing a fellow Arab nation. As for Damascus, it meekly said it was "notified" by the Pentagon its own territory would be bombed. Nobody really knows what the Pentagon is exactly telling Damascus. The Pentagon calls it just the beginning of a "sustained campaign" - code for Long War, which is one of the original denominations of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) anyway. And yes, for all practical purposes this is a coalition of one. Let's call it Operation Tomahawk The Caliph. I am Khorasan Hold your F-22s. Not really. The tomahawking had barely begun when an Israeli, made in USA Patriot missile shot a Syrian Su-24 which had allegedly "violated" Israeli air space over the Golan Heights. How about that in terms of sending a graphic message in close coordination with the Pentagon? So this is not only about bombing The Caliph. It is a back-door preamble to bombing Bashar al-Assad and his forces. And also about bombing - with eight strikes west of Aleppo - a ghost; an al-Qaeda cell of the mysterious Khorasan group. No wonder global fans of the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics are puzzled. Two simultaneous villains? Yep. And the other bad guy is even more evil than The Caliph. Astonishing mediocrity Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, has defined Khorasan as "a group of extremists that is comprised of a number of individuals who we've been tracking for a long time." The Obama administration's unison newspeak is that Khorasan includes former al-Qaeda assets not only from across the Middle East - including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra - but also Pakistan, as in an ultra-hardcore extension of the Pakistani Taliban. What a mess. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the embryo of ISIS, which turned into IS. Jabhat al-Nusra is the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, approved by CEO Ayman al-Zawahiri. Both despise each other, and yet Khorasan holds the merit of bundling Caliph's goons and al-Qaeda goons together. Additionally, for Washington Jabhat al-Nusra tend to qualify as "moderate" jihadis - almost like "our bastards". Too messy? No problem; when in doubt, bomb everybody. The Caliph, then, is old news. Those ghostly Khorasan goons are the real deal - so evil that the Pentagon is convinced their "plotting was imminent" leading to a new 9/11. The ghost in the GWOT machine Khorasan is the perfect ghost in the GWOT machine; the target of a war within a war. Because Obama in fact launched two wars - as he sent two different notifications to Congress under the War Powers Resolution to cover both The Caliph and Khorasan. And what's in a name? Well, a thinly disguised extra demonization of Iran, why not - as historic Khorasan, the previous Parthia, stretched from mainly Iran towards Afghanistan. Khorasan is theoretically led by The Joker, sorry, al-Qaeda honcho Muhsin al-Fadhli, born in Kuwait in 1981, a "senior facilitator and financier" to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, in the priceless assessment of the State Department. Although Ayman al-Zawahiri, ever PR-conscious, has not claimed the credit, the Pentagon is convinced he sent al-Fadhli to the Syrian part of the Caliphate to attract Western jihadis with EU passports capable of evading airport security and plant bombs on commercial jets. The Treasury Department is convinced al-Fadhli even led an al-Qaeda cell in Iran - demonization habits die hard -, "facilitating" jihadi travel to Afghanistan or Iraq. And what a neat contrast to the Society of the Spectacle-addicted Caliph. Khorasan is pure darkness. Nobody knows how many; how long they've existed; what do they really want. By contrast, there are about 190,000 live human beings left in bombed out Raqqa. Nobody is talking about collateral damage - although the body count is already on, and The Caliph's slick PR operation will be certainly advertising them on YouTube. As for The Caliph's goons, they will predictably use Mao tactics and dissolve like fish in the sea. The Pentagon will soon be bombing vast tracts of desert for nothing - if that's not the case already. There is no "Free Syrian Army" - that Qatari myth - anymore. There are no "moderate" jihadis left in Syria. They are all fighting for The Caliph or for al-Zawahiri. And still the Obama administration extracted a Congressional OK to train and weaponize "moderate rebels". US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power - Undisputed Queen of Batshit Craziness - at least got one thing right. Their "training" will "service these troops in the same struggle that they've been in since the beginning of this conflict against the Assad regime." So yes - this "sustained campaign" is the back door to "Assad must go" remixed. People who are really capable of defeating The Caliph's goons don't tomahawk. They are the Syrian Arab Army (roughly 35,000 dead so far killed in action against ISIS/ISIL/IS and/or al-Qaeda); Hezbollah; Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers/operatives; and Kurdish militias. It won't happen. This season's blockbuster is the Empire of Chaos bombing The Caliph and the ghost in the GWOT machine. Two tickets for the price of one. Because we protect you even from "unknown unknown" evil. 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.

Obama's inconsistent foreign policy by Wayne Madsen

Obama's inconsistent foreign policy

President Obama's decision to launch targeted air strikes on Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) forces in northern Iraq comes at the same time his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John O. Brennan is coordinating an increase in weapons and training for ISIL-led Salafist guerrillas in Syria. Obama's foreign policy is akin to President Franklin Roosevelt fighting the German Nazis in northern France while at the same time ordering his Office of Strategic Services to train and arm Benito Mussolini's forces in southern France. 

Northern Iraq's Kurds, Assyrian Christians, Yazidis, Turkomans, Shi'as, and other minorities, as well as Syria's Christians, Alawites, and Kurds, are being massacred because of three major players in the Obama administration: Brennan, who has made no secret of his admiration for Saudi Arabia, the principal financier of ISIL in Syria and Iraq; and Obama's two meddlesome and quite incompetent female foreign policy advisers, national security director Susan Rice and UN ambassador Samantha Power. Rice and Power, who should have never been permitted to smash any gender-pandering "glass ceilings" within the State Department and the White House, have seen the fruits of their George Soros-germinated "Responsibility to Protect" in Syria, Iraq, and Libya play out in the killing fields of all three countries. 

Syria, Iraq, and Libya, once united and string foes of Israel, have been torn asunder, with all the U.S. military deaths and wounded in Iraq now totally meaningless as Takfiri and Salafist radicals seize more territory in Iraq. With Arabs killing Arabs in greater numbers, Israel was given a green light to engage in its own slaughter of Arabs in Gaza.

The success of ISIL in Iraq can be directly linked to the ill-advised "de-Baathification" process initiated by the neocon "Coalition Provisional Authority" imposed on Iraq in the wake of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Former members of the Ba'ath Party, a socialist secular party, saw no other choice but to align with the radical ISIL members against the unpopular Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad. Armed with U.S.-supplied weapons, ISIL stormed across the Syrian frontier into Iraq. With ISIL forcess in Iraq supplemented by the arrival of Muslim mercenaries from Britain, France, Germany, and other countries, the alarmed Baathists broke with ISIL and fierce and bloody battles have been waged between ISIL and Ba'athist Saddam Hussein loyalists of the Naqshbandi Army.

Obama ordered the Department of Defense to launch air strikes against ISIL guerrillas in northern Iraq while, at the same time, Brennan has been coordinating CIA and Saudi military and intelligence support for ISIL-led forces in Syria. Rice and Power continue to demonize the Syrian government of recently-reelected President Bashar al Assad, thus giving a propaganda boost to ISIL. The Obama administration seems to believe that there is a difference between ISIL in Iraq and Syria. In fact, as ISIL's name "Iraq and the Levant" indicates, the group wants to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon and impose an Islamic state, with non-Wahhabist minorities being forced to convert to Wahhabism or be slaughtered. 

  

To clean up the mess in the Middle East, two targets must be taken out.

There is only one way for the ISIL juggernaut to be stopped. Brennan, Rice, and Power should be fired immediately. The new CIA director should be authorized, through a Presidential Finding, to arrange for the death, by assassination or "accident," of ISIL's chief promoter, Saudi national security adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka "Bandar Bush." In June, a Qatari official was quoted as saying ISIL was a "Saudi project." Specifically, ISIL is a Bandar project and one that would not have been successful without the support of Brennan, Rice, and Power.

Prior to the Saudi-coordinated 9/11 attack, Bandar reportedly told the head of MI-6, Sir Richard Dearlove, "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally "God help the Shi'a.'" With Bandar's support for ISIL, the time when God must help the Shi'a and the other minorities of northern Iraq has arrived. But Obama's air strikes against ISIL positions are insufficient and meaningless. Brennan, as CIA director, is in a position to inform his Saudi friends of every Pentagon operation directed against ISIL. That is why it is important that Brennan and Bandar must be eliminated from their respective positions of power within their respective intelligence infrastructures.

The "Trojan horse" computer programs pre-installed in sophisticated U.S. weaponry supplied by the United States to Saudi Arabia should be activated. It has long been rumored that the U.S. National Security Agency installed remote-controlled Trojan horse programs in advanced jet fighters, missile systems, radar units, and reconnaissance aircraft supplied to the Saudi armed forces. These "back doors" were designed to be activated in the event the Saudi royal family was overthrown in a coup by anti-U.S. radicals.

There should also be an immediate cessation of U.S. overt and covert support for ISIL-led forces in Syria. U.S. military forces should begin coordinating their clean up operations of Takfiris and Salafists with the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Republic of Assad. The U.S. should provide weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah to clean up Salafist and Takfiri cells operating inside Lebanon. U.S. military aid should be stepped up for the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and the CIA should establish armed self-defense units among Yazidis, Assyrian Christians, and Turkomans in northern Iraq. The United States should also work with the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran to stamp out Takfiris and Salafists who would try to seek safe haven in the border areas of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. Relations should also be established between the CIA and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey to keep in check the radical Sunni Turkish elements that support ISIL.

And, Israeli intelligence assets who have been working with ISIL in Syria and Iraq should be quietly eliminated by CIA sharpshooters and other "wet affairs" operatives. The Middle East can only return to normal by eliminating the twin threats of Salafism and Zionism.

THE ROVING EYE Fear and loathing at Hotel Babylon By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Fear and loathing at Hotel Babylon By Pepe Escobar So now a huge Hardcore Sunnistan stretches all the way from the suburbs of Aleppo to Tikrit and from Mosul to the Jordanian/Iraqi border - the same one that dissolved in 2003 when Shock and Awe turned into Mission (Un)Accomplished. In an eerie echo of Dick Cheney's army's footprints reverberating in the sands of Anbar province, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and their coalition of the willing (jihadis, Islamists, Ba'athists and tribal sheikhs) now pose as the "liberators" of Iraqi Sunnis from the clutches of an "evil" Shi'ite majority government in Baghdad. In addition, ISIS also controls the PR wars. Here, a jihadi details how any sort of possible Washington "kinetic" involvement will be interpreted as an unholy alliance between the Empire and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against the underdogs. From a Sunni perspective, it's down with Iraq's Counter-terrorism law; down with de-Ba'athification (with the ascent of neo-Ba'athist Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqa al-Naqshbandia - JRTN, led by former Saddam honcho Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri); down with the Interior Ministry in Baghdad going after Sunni politicians; down with protests being crushed. At the same time, it's the return of the US-sponsored Sahwa (Sons of Iraq) - who fiercely fought al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007, the mother of ISIS - and the return of assorted Shi'ite militias (Muqtada al-Sadr not only repelled the new wave of US "military advisers" - that's how it started in Vietnam - but also warned that his own badass Men in Black will "shake the ground" fighting ISIS.) The mid-2000s are the new normal; it's gonna be militia hell all over again. Mesopotamia, we got a problem. Neo-Ba'athists want nothing but a secular Iraq run by Sunnis, Saddam-style (rather former neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi.) ISIS wants a Caliphate extending all across the Levant under Sharia law. Something's got to give. What will give will be the Iraqi nation itself - the balkanized, protracted (intended) consequence of the 2003 invasion and occupation, finally transmogrified into Jihad Central. It's payback time The Obama administration's "strategy" (remember "Don't Do Stupid Shit", the Ukraine strategy?) is to impose regime change on al-Maliki; after all, he had the bad taste of refusing to let US troops keep occupying Iraq past the 2012 deadline, and on top of it his government is close to Tehran. Thus the answer to the now legendary question of how the US intel satellite maze failed to capture that long column of ISIS Men in Black in their gleaming white Toyota Land Cruisers crossing the Syrian-Iraq desert wasteland. Call it the Mother of All Intel Failures (remember Saddam's talk of Mother of All Battles?) Here we have trademark Empire of Chaos "revenge" against Baghdad, Tehran and - why not - Moscow (after all Russian president Vladimir Putin offered full support to al-Maliki to fight the jihadis.) Iraq duly merges with Ukraine. And as for payback redux, it's - almost - all spelled out here. As for the Beltway-peddled myth - once again - of "good terrorists" and "bad terrorists", this week Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria pledged its allegiance to ISIS. This means that ISIS now virtually controls both sides of the border, at Albu Kamal in Syria and Al-Qaim in Iraq. As a bonus, ISIS and allied Sunni tribal sheikhs also surrounded the US-controlled Camp Anaconda in Iraq and are ready for a long-term mortar game. Will Beltway "analysts" ever learn? That little fiction known as Jordan - run by King Playstation, aka Abdullah - will be ripe for the taking as soon as hardcore Salafis from Zarqa (Zarqawi's hometown) totally align with ISIS. Add that piece of real estate to the embryo Levantine Caliphate and we'll be talking major business - oil refineries possibly included. "Don't Do Stupid Shit", applied to Syria and Iraq, means that the Obama administration has gone (almost) no holds barred in its "Assad must go" policy, by the way a Ba'ath government; what's implied is that Washington is an ally of ISIS in Syria, while a (determined?) foe of ISIS in Iraq. Assad's "sin" is that he's an ally of both Tehran (like al-Maliki) and, most of all (from an American perspective), Hezbollah. And now comes the Obama administration's latest "Stupid Shit" - in the form of weaponizing "appropriately vetted" rebels in Syria. Lording over this suspension of disbelief scenario, the whole Beltway, White House included, sells the illusion it is thoughtfully deliberating whether the real dangerous Men in Black here are in fact from ISIS - and what to do about them. As some sort of Washington-Tehran cooperation against ISIS becomes self-evident, that poses a major problem for the perennial Bomb Iran crowd in the Beltway, as well as for hardliners in Tehran; after all ISIS has erected a massive geostrategic barrier between Iran and Syria, threatening Tehran's connection with Hezbollah. Likudniks will go no holds barred to prevent any cooperation. But that will be a detail anyway. Baghdad may get all the help it needs from Iranian special forces and militias such as Muqtada's. ISIS does not have the manpower or the expertise to lay siege to Baghdad; people in Sadr City alone would rip them to shreds. Not to mention attack Najaf and Karbala, the Shi'ite holy cities, which are already protected by heavily armed popular brigades. Will NATO meet Jihadistan?  Kirkuk is now under virtual Kurd control. Its "devolution" to Baghdad will be immensely problematic - and that's a major euphemism. Kirkuk produces around 670,000 barrels of oil a day. Up to 300,000 are exported via the pipeline to Ceyhan, in Turkey. Yet only 120,000 barrels a day have been online these past few weeks. Iraq's total production is 3.3 million barrels a day - the bulk concentrated in the south, around Basra. There's no realistic evidence ISIS would ever be able to capture Basra. So the problem remains some refineries in the north such as Baiji. Elite Iraqi counter-terrorism forces can deal with it. If ISIS by any chance would be able to hang on to some oil and gas - a major if - that's certified joy for, most of all, market speculators. And soon there might be thousands of US special forces "securing" Iraqi oil fields and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Assad's Syrian Army can - and it's already - contributing to fight ISIS. In the end, ISIS can realistically be repelled by the Syrian Army, elite Iranian special forces, Shi'ite brigades and yes - animminent cameo by those second-hand fighter jets from Russia and Belarus. ISIS won't take over Baghdad. But like a freak mutant, in a Hardcore Sunnistan goes Hollywood fashion, it might go even more bonkers and try to take over Amman, Doha and even Riyadh. The Empire of Chaos will keep betting on - what else - chaos. And it's going swimmingly its way - from the real possibility of a final push towards a Great Kurdistan (in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and even Iran) to sectarian militia hell all across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Yemen. Not to mention all possible ramifications in Northern Africa, Central Asia and the North Caucasus. What will Hillary Clinton, the Hillarator, do? In this case, one's gotta wait for early 2017. She could always pull another "We came, we saw, he died" and triumphantly stage a second coming in the Levant as a droned Athena singing Light My Fire. In the end, NATO won't meet Jihadistan. No "responsibility to protect" (R2P) Arabs from killing Arabs. NATO will be - gleefully - "watching" in the sidelines. Because from Northern Africa and across the Middle East to the Caucasus and all the way to Western China, the name of the (burning) game is to keep Dr Zbig Brzezinski's "Eurasian Balkans" ever simmering in a funeral pyre. 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.

Indoctrinating a new generation - The Anti-Empire Report #127 - By William Blum

Indoctrinating a new generation

Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when he’s speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to “European youth”, the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth, blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here’s a sample:

– “In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent – an example they say of the West interfering in the affairs of a smaller country, just as they’re doing now. But NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years.”

Most people who follow such things are convinced that the 1999 US/NATO bombing of the Serbian province of Kosovo took place only after the Serbian-forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic deportations of large numbers of people did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it, born of Serbia’s extreme anger and powerlessness over the bombing. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, 1999, and the few days following. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added]

On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that nature.

But the propaganda version is already set in marble.

– “And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized, not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.”

None of that even came close to happening in Kosovo either. The story is false. The referendum the president speaks of never happened. Did the mainstream media pick up on this or on the previous example? If any reader comes across such I’d appreciate being informed.

Crimea, by the way, did have a referendum. A real one.

– “Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan … As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies … “

The president might have mentioned that the main beneficiary of the Marshall Plan was US corporations  , that the United States played an indispensable role in Mandela being caught and imprisoned, and that virtually all the Latin American dictatorships owed their very existence to Washington. Instead, the European youth were fed the same party line that their parents were fed, as were all Americans.

– “Yes, we believe in democracy – with elections that are free and fair.”

In this talk, the main purpose of which was to lambaste the Russians for their actions concerning Ukraine, there was no mention that the government overthrown in that country with the clear support of the United States had been democratically elected.

– “Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. … But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.”

The US did not get UN Security Council approval for its invasion, the only approval that could legitimize the action. It occupied Iraq from one end of the country to the other for 8 years, forcing the government to privatize the oil industry and accept multinational – largely U.S.-based, oil companies’ – ownership. This endeavor was less than successful because of the violence unleashed by the invasion. The US military finally was forced to leave because the Iraqi government refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their many crimes.

Here is a brief summary of what Barack Obama is attempting to present as America’s moral superiority to the Russians:

The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)

How can all these mistakes, such arrogance, hypocrisy and absurdity find their way into a single international speech by the president of the United States? Is the White House budget not sufficient to hire a decent fact checker? Someone with an intellect and a social conscience? Or does the desire to score propaganda points trump everything else? Is this another symptom of the Banana-Republicization of America?

Long live the Cold War

In 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the Bolshevik Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing through Poland carrying the first American diplomats dispatched to Moscow. Amongst their number was a 29 year-old Foreign Service Officer, later to become famous as a diplomat and scholar, George Kennan. Though he was already deemed a government expert on Russia, the train provided Kennan’s first actual exposure to the Soviet Union. As he listened to his group’s escort, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, reminisce about growing up in a village the train was passing close by, and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the Princeton-educated Kennan was astonished: “We suddenly realized, or at least I did, that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these people.” 

It hasn’t happened yet.

One would think that the absence in Russia of communism, of socialism, of the basic threat or challenge to the capitalist system, would be sufficient to write finis to the 70-year Cold War mentality. But the United States is virtually as hostile to 21st-century Russia as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding Moscow with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members. Why should that be? Ideology is no longer a factor. But power remains one, specifically America’s perpetual lust for world hegemony. Russia is the only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn’t believe that the United States has a god-given-American-exceptionalism right to rule the world, and says so. By these criteria, China might qualify as a poor second. But there are no others.

Washington pretends that it doesn’t understand why Moscow should be upset by Western military encroachment, but it has no such problem when roles are reversed. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated that Russian troops poised near eastern Ukraine are “creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine” and raising questions about Russia’s next moves and its commitment to diplomacy. 

NATO – ever in need of finding a raison d’être – has now issued a declaration of [cold] war, which reads in part:

“NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their commitment to enhance the Alliance’s collective defence, agreed to further support Ukraine and to suspend NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia. ‘NATO’s greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will do,’ NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. … Ministers directed Allied military authorities to develop additional measures to strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any threat of aggression against the Alliance, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen said. ‘We will make sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate deployments,’ he said. NATO has already reinforced its presence on the eastern border of the Alliance, including surveillance patrols over Poland and Romania and increased numbers of fighter aircraft allocated to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States. … NATO Foreign Ministers also agreed to suspend all of NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia.” 

Does anyone recall what NATO said in 2003 when the United States bombed and invaded Iraq with “shock and awe”, compared to the Russians now not firing a single known shot at anyone? And neither Russia nor Ukraine is even a member of NATO. Does NATO have a word to say about the right-wing coup in Ukraine, openly supported by the United States, overthrowing the elected government? Did the hypocrisy get any worse during the Cold War? Imagine that NATO had not been created in 1949. Imagine that it has never existed. What reason could one give today for its creation? Other than to provide a multi-national cover for Washington’s interventions.

One of the main differences between now and the Cold War period is that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted or prosecuted for supporting Russia or things Russian.

But don’t worry, folks, there won’t be a big US-Russian war. For the same reason there wasn’t one during the Cold War. The United States doesn’t pick on any country which can defend itself.

Cuba … Again … Still … Forever

Is there actually a limit? Will the United States ever stop trying to overthrow the Cuban government? Entire books have been written documenting the unrelenting ways Washington has tried to get rid of tiny Cuba’s horrid socialism – from military invasion to repeated assassination attempts to an embargo that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.  But nothing has ever come even close to succeeding. The horrid socialism keeps on inspiring people all over the world. It’s the darnedest thing. Can providing people free or remarkably affordable health care, education, housing, food and culture be all that important?

And now it’s “Cuban Twitter” – an elaborately complex system set up by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to disguise its American origins and financing, aiming to bring about a “Cuban Spring” uprising. USAID sought to first “build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then the plan was to push them toward dissent”, hoping the messaging network “would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize ‘smart mobs’ – mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice – that might trigger political demonstrations or ‘renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society’.”  It’s too bad it’s now been exposed, because we all know how wonderful the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, and other “Arab Springs” have turned out.

Here’s USAID speaking after their scheme was revealed on April 3: “Cubans were able to talk among themselves, and we are proud of that.”  We are thus asked to believe that normally the poor downtrodden Cubans have no good or safe way to communicate with each other. Is the US National Security Agency working for the Cuban government now?

The Associated Press, which broke the story, asks us further to believe that the “truth” about most things important in the world is being kept from the Cuban people by the Castro regime, and that the “Cuban Twitter” would have opened people’s eyes. But what information might a Cuban citizen discover online that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami and other southern cities; both CNN and Telesur (Venezuela, covering Latin America) are seen regularly on Cuban television”; international conferences on all manner of political, economic and social issues are held regularly in Cuba. I’ve spoken at more than one myself. What – it must be asked – does USAID, as well as the American media, think are the great dark secrets being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

Those who push this line sometimes point to the serious difficulty of using the Internet in Cuba. The problem is that it’s extremely slow, making certain desired usages often impractical. From an American friend living in Havana: “It’s not a question of getting or not getting internet. I get internet here. The problem is downloading something or connecting to a link takes too long on the very slow connection that exists here, so usually I/we get ‘timed out’.” But the USAID’s “Cuban Twitter”, after all, could not have functioned at all without the Internet.

Places like universities, upscale hotels, and Internet cafés get better connections, at least some of the time; however, it’s rather expensive to use at the hotels and cafés.

In any event, this isn’t a government plot to hide dangerous information. It’s a matter of technical availability and prohibitive cost, both things at least partly in the hands of the United States and American corporations. Microsoft, for example, at one point, if not at present, barred Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service. 

Cuba and Venezuela have jointly built a fiber optic underwater cable connection that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos; the outcome of this has not yet been reported in much detail.

The grandly named Agency for International Development does not have an honorable history; this can perhaps be captured by a couple of examples: In 1981, the agency’s director, John Gilligan, stated: “At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.” 

On June 21, 2012, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) issued a resolution calling for the immediate expulsion of USAID from their nine member countries, “due to the fact that we consider their presence and actions to constitute an interference which threatens the sovereignty and stability of our nations.”

USAID, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (and the latter’s subsidiaries), together or singly, continue to be present at regime changes, or attempts at same, favorable to Washington, from “color revolutions” to “spring” uprisings, producing a large measure of chaos and suffering for our tired old world.

19

Notes

1. William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, p.22-5
2. Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (1986), p.158
3. Washington Post, March 31, 2014
4. “NATO takes measures to reinforce collective defence, agrees on support for Ukraine”, NATO website, April 1, 2014
5. Sandy Berger, White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
6. Associated Press, April 3 & 4, 2014
7. Washington Post, April 4, 2014
8. Associated Press, June 2, 2009
9. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.