Saturday 30th of March 2024

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As I write this news came of the attempt on President Maduro’s life, additional “sanctions” against Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia, a ramping up of the economic warfare against China through the use of trade tariffs, threats of war against all of those nations and dangerous alarms from within the USA that the upcoming midterm elections for Congress are being threatened by Russia. The western media have spun the failed attempt on Maduro as a staged event so he can “clampdown on democracy” and so act as co-conspirators in the plot. If the attempt had succeeded they would have been jubilant that it worked but they are so corrupt we could not put it past them to claim that his murder would be justified. But what strikes me about all these circumstances is the connection between the domestic situation in the USA and its external aggression.


The defeat of the US and its NATO and Middle Eastern allies in Syria dealt them a major strategic blow. They had hoped to be able to take over the land and air space of Syria and ISIS controlled Iraq to build up forces so they could attack Iran. Now that is only possible by air attack and they know as we all know that despite the destruction they can wreak air bombardment alone does not win wars. So the US reneged on the Iran nuclear deal in order to have its pretext to impose crippling economic warfare on Iran, which has had the effect of devaluing its currency and making life difficult. Already some unrest has been provoked because of this and the actions of western agents in Iran. The Americans hope to cause enough unrest to bring down the Iranian government and impose their own puppets or direct western colonial rule but they do not understand either the will to resist nor the Persian culture and people. Nor did they expect to be frustrated by Iran’s friends who refuse to obey US diktats to reduce Iranian oil sales to zero. India, China, Russia, Turkey and some EU countries that need it, will continue to buy Iranian oil.


The Syria defeat, along with their defeat in Iraq and their inability to fully control Afghanistan has enraged the US ruling elite who want revenge and of course the big targets, all allies of Syria are Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. So “sanctions” orders are being issued in a steady stream. Just last week sanctions were slapped on a NATO ally Turkey because it refused to hand over one of their evangelical ministers, a Mr. Brunson, who claimed to be in Turkey for years proselytising for his dominionist church and yet after many years of being there only had 24 members in his flock. Not much of a success and certainly not enough to give him an income and so one has to ask where he gets his money from and why he would stay there with such dismal results unless of course he is exactly what Turkey claims he is, a US agent acting against the interests of Turkey. The very loud hue and cry in the US against Erdogan for refusing to release Brunson and threats from Vice president Pence that “Erdogan will pay for this” all indicate that Mr. Brunson is more than just a small time preacher. Countries do not impose sanctions on allies to save private citizens from being prosecuted for crimes in foreign countries. Turkey, which only recently lifted its emergency laws after the failed US backed coup in 2016 has defiantly responded by imposing some counter sanctions which infuriates the Americans even more, seemingly at a loss as to why nations around the world are no longer obeying them.


Their strategy to make America “great” again, meaning the dominant power in the world, therefore requires the weakening of the powers that oppose them and so the sudden trade war on China, the continual pressure on Russia, and threats of war against Iran and North Korea, despite their stated willingness to talk. Iran has kept its honour and refused to talk to these gangsters under the threat of a gun and North Korea has expressed its deep frustration that its overtures to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula have gone nowhere and resulted only in more diktats from the US to completely disarm or else. The cruel economic war being conducted against North Korea, imposed on them illegally and without any justification by the Security Council, has even backfired on Russia which inexplicably supported the “sanctions” even though it knows that North Korea is not in violation of any international law in having a nuclear weapons defence nor in violation of any valid UN resolutions and only has nuclear weapons for the same reasons Russia does, to defend itself against the American Godzilla. Just on the 3rd of August the US imposed further sanctions on Russia for allegedly violating the sanctions imposed on North Korea, and how can Russia complain when they voted for the sanctions in the first place. They are hoist on their own petard.


But, while the northern hemisphere cooks under the extreme heat caused by a rapidly warming climate that will not stabilise at a “new normal” but, left unchecked will keep accelerating exponentially, and while people die in fires, from heat stress, and crops are damaged, threatening the world food supply, the leaders of the western world squabble about dominance and money and how to save their own skins.


The NATO axis refuses President Putin’s continual offers to resolve differences amicably, they sabotage President Xi’s win-win trade and foreign policies. They refuse any possibility of peace and continue their preparations for war. Not only are they increasing their forces on Russia’s borders, they are now shifting more forces to regions around China and are again supporting the renegade Chinese province of Taiwan. They are increasing the number of US Marines in Australia to engage in sea patrols, ready to cut the Straights of Malacca through which the bulk of Chinese trade flows going west and through which China receives most of its oil. At the same time the US increases its presence in Africa to threaten China’s supply of resources. The whole world has become a tinderbox ready to blow. But it is the situation inside the US that is alarming many.


The canard put out by the US intelligence services in service of the Democratic Party that the Russians somehow, and for reasons no one can explain, “influenced” the vote in the US presidential election is now amplified by the new claims that the Russians are intent on “influencing” the vote in the US midterm elections for Congress this summer. The television networks are working nonstop to foster this myth from the self-styled “progressive” media such as PBS and National Public Radio to the lunatic CNN whose only reason for being these days to is pump this anti-Russian propaganda out 24 hours a day. Many believe it.


But the danger the American republic faces is not from Russian interference in its sorry excuse for a democracy, its two party system which the American writer, Gore Vidal, rightly described as a one party system, run by the business party that has two factions. The danger is from the forces behind the propaganda about Russian influence. They are now claiming that votes for the Republican Party, Trump’s party, will be illegitimate, gained through Russian tricks whereas votes for the Democrats will be considered legitimate. They are in reality setting up the conditions for one party rule, for a dictatorship.


Hilary Clinton began to arrange the stage set when, in the presidential campaign she labelled all the Trump supporters the “deplorables” at one and the same time devaluing their votes and opinions as less than worthless, and feeding into the idea that they can be ignored in determining national policies. Millions of people have been reduced, in this propaganda paradigm to subhumans who do not deserve to have their opinions considered. It seems to me this was a carefully considered word and not chosen by her. It was the opening curtain in the drama unfolding in which the forces in and behind the Democratic Party now claim that only they have the legitimacy to rule.


That Mr. Trump seems to go along with this charade and this attack on what is left of American democracy is puzzling. He is constantly under attack as “soft on Russia” and “Putin’s agent” yet no coup has been mounted, no impeachment proceedings begun and he carries on the Obama, Bush, Clinton policies of beggaring the people while attacking the world. One can think that he is a knowing foil in this plot and dutifully plays his role to provide the set-up for a move towards one party rule. Why the economic powers in the US that control the government want to harass a man who is acting in their favour by encouraging the use of oil, by allowing more oil drilling in banned areas, by imposing trade wars on everyone in the world to force them to buy American products, and by threatening every country that poses a threat to US markets and resources, is a bit of a mystery. Capital should be happy with him. So, what is going on? It seems to this writer that everything in this scenario is geared towards world war.


The campaign against Trump is a campaign against Russia. American capital thought it had control of Russian capital and resources when the US backed Russian capitalist took power. They lost it when Russian nationalists took back that control for themselves and the Americans will not be happy until they take it back again or destroy their competitor. The “Russia influenced the elections propaganda” is a device to generate so much fear and hatred against Russia that the people will tolerate and support a major war against Russia. The anti-Russian campaign is a precursor to a major war and its own logic demands a continual escalation of that propaganda. So, following their logic we can expect serious trouble inside the US around the elections, and a disruption of them by these forces to justify even more fear and hatred, and, if I am correct, to essentially establish one party rule to make it easier to engage in war without political opposition. For that is the road down which they are headed and to adopt a phrase the great American social critic and writer, Hunter S. Thompson, used for the tile of his book on the American election that brought Nixon to power, we can only sit back in fear and loathing of these people who, to increase their power, threaten to destroy democracy in America and all of us along with it.


Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.
https://journal-neo.org/2018/08/07/fear-and-loathing-in-and-of-the-usa/

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2018/08/07/fear-and-loathing-in-and-of-the-usa/

 

 

The philosophy of the USA has always been based on "competition" rather than cooperation. This underpins the hate of socialism in the USA. Socialism is a form of cooperation between people of a nation. While Trump is seemingly upsetting the apple cart and pushing buttons everywhere, apparently without rhyme nor reason, he is purposely employed by the Deep State to halt the flagging of the competition spirit and ability of the USA. Because other nations are rising above the dirt which the USA has been gleefully pushing them into for so long, Trump acts like a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to punch them yet again in the face, in the belly and the gonads, while shaking hands at the same time. This is disturbingly sliding into a full war scenario, which the US — and the largest army in the world — would not mind happening in someone else's backyard... 

 

So the reality is...:

 

President Donald Trump and his neocon advisors have been trying to provoke a war with Iran and Syria for many months.

The neocons are echoing Cato the Elder’s cry, ‘delenda est Carthago!’.  Iran must be destroyed.

So far, Tehran and its ally Damascus have refused to respond to US naval and air incursions or Israel’s growing air attacks in Syria. But the war of words between the US and Iran has now reached a critical phase.

Last week, Trump, who evaded military service during the Vietnam War, made his loudest threats yet against Iran, bringing the danger of war to the boiling point.  On 21 May, the hard-line US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a thunderous ultimatum to Iran during an address to the US Heritage Foundation, a rich, influential arm of America’s Israel lobby.

Pompeo made 12 totally unacceptable demands on Iran that were clearly designed to be rejected by Tehran.  Not since Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum against Serbia in 1914 have we seen such a clear effort to bring about war. Tehran quickly dismissed Pompeo as ‘a gangster.’

Read more:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/07/eric-margolis/us-preparing-for-war-a...

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34888

 

Gus:

The more the USA is going to face "competition" which could place them in second place on the world stage (the new china...) the more they are going to shake the chess board... and create havoc. It's the tantrum kid tactic. What the Donald does is characteristic of the boxer who goes right and left on his feet. Then a one-two... One day it's fair weather, the next it's storms and tornadoes... The hot and cold shower treatment. No-one knows where the punches are going to come from, nor when. 

What upsets the US more than threats is "being ignored". The Chinese in their plan totally ignore the Tantrum kid. The Russians give lip service to the sanctions while managing quite well, thank you... So the biggest bully on the planet is going to attack a small country like Iran to show it still has the "gangsta" spirit in its trousers...

It's time for the USA to take a cold shower and realise they're not they only humans on this planet and that Rome eventually fell.

 

not the russians in the mid-terms...

voting

 

Facebook confirmed it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign believed to be working ahead of November's midterm elections.

The social media company announced Tuesday it had detected and removed 32 fake accounts and pages from both Facebook and Instagram after identifying "coordinated inauthentic behavior." Of the 32 accounts identified, seven were Instagram accounts, 17 were Facebook profiles and eight were Facebook pages, Facebook said. An estimated 290,000 Facebook accounts followed at least one of those pages.

Facebook said it has not been able to confirm if Russia was involved. During the 2016 election, the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency (IRA) was accused in an indictment of election interference. In its announcement, Facebook admitted it did not have all the facts on who was responsible for the effort, but said it was disclosing the fake accounts now ahead of planned protests in Washington, D.C., next week.

"It's clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past," Facebook wrote in a statement.

Just like during the 2016 elections, the fake accounts and pages focused on divisive social issues, like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and an attempt to organize a "Unite the Right" resistance rally in Washington, D.C. "No Unite the Right 2 - D.C.," which has since been removed from Facebook, was scheduled for Aug. 10. Facebook identified another event scheduled for January, but most of the about 30 events linked to fake accounts and pages have already passed. Company officials said they cannot be sure what impact these events actually had, or whether anyone attended. Facebook said the fake accounts spent about $11,000 in ads promoting those divisive posts.

 

Read more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/31/facebook-has-detected-attempts-to-interf...

 

Isn't Facebook all fake anyway? Fake friends that one never met — and news that are not worth reading and annoying advertising? And how do they know the provenance of the fakes since they are "fake"? One can set a loop of addresses via Russia starting from the Bronx...

the mess of hubristic exceptionalism...

In the wake of President Trump’s Helsinki press conference, National Review declared itself “Against Moral Equivalence.” The magazine claimed that there could be no equating American meddling in foreign elections with Russian interference in our election because the goal of the U.S. is to “promote democracy and political liberty and human rights.” Though while America’s actions might be noble and have the sanction of heaven, National Review did concede that its efforts to promote democracy have often been “messy”—an adjective that the people of Iraq might find understated. 

Like many of Trump’s critics, National Review’s embrace of American exceptionalism, of exempting the United States from the moral laws of the universe because of its commitment to democracy, is of a type the West has seen before. Swept up in their revolutionary enthusiasm, the French Jacobins made similar claims. In late 1791, a member of the Assembly, while agitating for war with Austria, declared that France “had become the foremost people of the universe, so their conduct must now correspond to their new destiny. As slaves they were bold and great; are they to be timid and feeble now that they are free?” 

Robespierre himself was taken aback by the turn of a domestic revolution into a call for military adventurism. Of plans to invade Austria and to overthrow “enemies” of liberty in other nations, he famously remarked, “No one loves armed missionaries.” (Robespierre’s advice might have also benefited the American occupiers of Iraq.) The Jacobins’ moral preening led France to declare war on Austria in 1792 and set in motion years of French military adventurism that devastated much of central Europe. Military imperialism abroad and guillotines at home became the legacy of self-declared French exceptionalism.  

Hubristic nations that claim a unique place for themselves high atop the moral universe tend to be imperialistic. This is because claims of national exceptionalism, whether of the French or American variety, are antinomian, even nihilistic. The “exceptional” ones carve out for themselves an exemption from the moral law. And prideful claims of moral purity are the inevitable predicate to imposing one’s will upon another. Once leaders assert that their national soul is of a special kind—indispensable and not subject to the same rules—the road to hell has been paved.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-the-unexceptional/

 

Read from top.

the milk has gone off...

The Democratic candidate in Ohio’s 12th district may lose his bid for the House of Representatives - and some liberal leaning celebrities are freaking out and blaming Russia.

Sputnik News spoke with Alan MacLeod, author of a recent, momentous analysis in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) entitled "The Utility of the RussiaGate Conspiracy," arguing that Democrats have embraced a "new McCarthyism," weaponized to stifle the party's left flank, to its overall detriment.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201808081067055808-Actress-Blames-Moscow-Gree...

 

Yes, In Yamerika, if you vote Greens, you must be declared a traitor the the cause of the Democrats... but worse than this, your Green vote has been inspired by the "Russians" to meddle in American politics... As someone wrote in a tweet:

*Opens fridge*
*Sees milk finished*

PUTIN!!!!!