The Rise of a ‘Democratic’ Fascism (John Pilger)

[Octafish]

The Rise of a ‘Democratic’ Fascism

Traditional fascism is defined as a right-wing political system run by a dictator who prohibits dissent and relies on repression. But some analysts believe a new form of fascism has arisen that has a democratic façade and is based on relentless propaganda and endless war, as journalist John Pilger describes.

By John Pilger
ConsortiumNews.com, March 2, 2015

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that “most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten.”

Gaddafi’s Torture/Lynching

The public sodomizing of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a “rebel” bayonet was greeted by the then U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.” His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning “genocide” against his own people.

“We knew … that if we waited one more day,” said President Barack Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.” Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for NATO’s inferno, described by David Cameron as a “humanitarian intervention.”

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS, many of the “rebels” would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by NATO bombers.

For Obama, Cameron and Hollande, Gaddafi’s true crime was Libya’s economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa’s greatest oil reserves in U.S. dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power.

Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the U.S. as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships.”

Following NATO’s attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, “confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency.”

The Kosovo Model

The “humanitarian war” against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent NATO to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo.

David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59? might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War.”

The West’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the NATO bombing over, and much of Serbia’s infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the “holocaust.” The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines.”

A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide. The “holocaust” was a lie. The NATO attack had been fraudulent.

Expanding Markets

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its “natural market” in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia.

By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognize Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the U.S. saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans. NATO, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo “peace” conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer’s duplicitous tactics.

The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the U.S. delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia — a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation — and the implementation of a “free-market economy” and the privatization of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; NATO bombs fell on a defenseless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

American Interventions

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America’s modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as “sanctions.” The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

“Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.” These were opening words of Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment.

“The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records. The majority have been killed — civilians and soldiers — during Obama’s time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina. In his lauded and much quoted book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of U.S. policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion. . . . Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.” He is right.

As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan’s first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

Afghan’s Shining Moment

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform program that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan’s doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers.

“Every girl,” recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, “could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported.”

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, “there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution].” Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the “threat of a promising example.”

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorized support for tribal “fundamentalist” groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first secular, reformist government.

In August 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar’s specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a “freedom fighter.”

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and “destabilize” the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, “a few stirred up Muslims.”

His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them.

Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called “Operation Cyclone.” Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah — who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help — was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The “blowback” of Operation Cyclone and its “few stirred up Muslims” was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the “war on terror,” in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer’s message was and remains: “You are with us or against us.”

Threads of Fascism

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its “free fire zones,” “body counts” and “collateral damage.” In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians (“gooks”) were murdered by the U.S.; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered.

In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world’s greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama’s victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA “kill list” presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each “hit” is registered on a faraway console screen as a “bugsplat.”

“For goose-steppers,” wrote the historian Norman Pollock, “substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarization of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”

American Exceptionalism

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s.

As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, “The sovereign is he who decides the exception.” This sums up Americanism, the world’s dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognized as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognized brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture.

I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, U.S. losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the “tragedy” of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places — just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood’s violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, American Sniper, which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a “patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days.”

There are no heroic movies about America’s embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens — as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America.

Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the U.S.; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the “father” of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the U.S. space program.

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of NATO, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its “new wave” hailed by the enforcer as “nationalists.”

The Ukraine Coup

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum,” including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On Feb. 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington to get “the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry.” If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe — with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the U.S. arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defense Minister as “the minister for defeatism.”

It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert Kagan, a leading “neo-con” luminary who was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which began pushing for the invasion of Iraq in 1998. She was a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Nuland’s coup in Ukraine did not go to plan. NATO was prevented from seizing Russia’s historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea — illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 — voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleaning. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions.

More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping “the violence” caused by the “Russian invasion.” The NATO commander, General Breedlove — whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove — announced that 40,000 Russian troops were “massing.” In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

Repressing Ethnic Russians

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine – a third of the population – have long sought a federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not “separatists” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous “states” are a reaction to Kiev’s attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history.” In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington’s new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says.” Obama congratulated the junta for its “restraint.”

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On Jan. 29, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: “The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army.” There were “individual citizens” who were members of “illegal armed groups,” but there was no Russian invasion. This was not news.

Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev’s Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for “full scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia.

On Feb. 21, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorize American arms for the Kiev regime. In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell’s fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America’s most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, “No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established. …

“If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason.”

Nuremberg Lessons

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. …

“In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”

In the Guardian on Feb. 2, Timothy Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, called, in effect, for a world war. “Putin must be stopped,” said the headline. “And sometimes only guns can stop guns.” He conceded that the threat of war might “nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement”; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that “America has the best kit.”

In 2003, Garton-Ash repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, “has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones.” He lauded Blair as a “Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist.” In 2006, he wrote, “Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran.”

The outbursts — or as Garton-Ash prefers, his “tortured liberal ambivalence” — are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader.

The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash’s piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: “The F-35. GREAT For Britain.” This American “kit” will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world. In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev’s new Finance Minister, Natalie Jaresko, is a former senior U.S. State Department official who was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship.

They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden’s son is on the board of Ukraine’s biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine’s rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine’s mighty neighbor, Russia. They want to Balkanize or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia’s long Arctic land border.

Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country’s economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilization to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.

John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com

SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/02/the-rise-of-a-democratic-fascism/

NOTE: Robert Parry and ConsortiumNews allow DUers to post articles in their entirety. This excellent read is an example of why that kindness makes sense for those interested in democracy.

[Octafish]

1. Important DU replies and links to original thread here...

...including some I don't agree with:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6288236

PS: I deleted the original and reposted in order to include John Pilger's entire article, per ConsortiumNews.

[uhnope]

50. Pilger HEARTS Fascist Russia. He's a paid liar

Since he writes the same article over and over again, he's probably getting paid per word by a PR agency hired by the Kremlin.

"Meet The PR Firm That Helped Vladimir Putin Troll The Entire Country"

...Using filings from the Justice Department, the non-profit ProPublica detailed last November how Ketchum helped place op-eds by "seemingly independent professionals" that praised Russia in outlets like CNBC and the Huffington Post, among others, without proper disclosure.

It is not unusual for a PR firm to work with a government.

There's more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/vladimir-putin-nyt-op-ed-ketchum-pr-2013-9#ixzz2ejAKeAlK

[Octafish]

65. As opposed to Corporate McPravda that helped lie America into illegal wars of aggression?

(With apologies to Bill Withers) We all need to loathe somebody.



The U.S. Owns the Narrative on Ukraine

Return of the Evil Empire

by JASON HIRTHLER
CounterPunch, Sept. 1, 2014

EXCERPT...

In 2014 the U.S. has succeeded in demonizing Vladimir Putin and Russia, precipitating a New Cold War that may yet become a hot one. The evil empire is back. The White House has made proficient use of mass media propaganda to get the job done. First, they’ve controlled the narrative. This is critical for two reasons: one, because it permits the White House to sweep the February coup in Kiev into the dustbin of American memory, never to be seen again. Second, it has allowed it to swiftly assert its claim that Russia is a dangerously expansionist power on the edges of a serene and peace-loving Europe. In other words, the omission of one fact and commission of another.

On the former front, by the State Department’s own concession, it spent some $5 billion in Ukraine, fomenting dissent under the standard guise of democracy promotion. The myriad NGOs beneath the nefarious cloud of the National Endowment for Democracy are little more than Trojan horses through which the State Department can launch subversive activities on foreign turf. We don’t know all the surely insidious details of the putsch, but there are suggestions that the violence was staged by and on behalf of the groups that now sit in power, including bickering neofascists that were foolishly handed the nation’s security portfolio.begging slogans3

On the latter end, a frightful portrait of a revanchist Russia will be presented for public consumption. But consider the context before you consign Putin to the sordid annals of imperial tyrants. A belligerent superpower arrives on your doorstep by fostering a violent coup in a neighboring nation with the obvious intent of ensuring Kiev accepts an IMF deal rather than a better Russian one, and further that Ukraine become the newest and perhaps decisive outpost of NATO. Had you been in his shoes, would you have permitted an illegitimate, Western-infiltrated government to challenge the integrity of your Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol? Doubtful.

SNIP...

This is no surprise. A sophisticated doctrinal system adept at manufacturing consent will succeed less by what it asserts than by what it leaves out. The facts omitted are always inconvenient ones. Among other missing pieces of the story currently being peddled by the MSM, is the issue of NATO’s raison d’être, which vanished with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the USSR. No matter, it has swiftly refashioned its mandate into a rapid-reaction force ready to descend on flashpoints around the globe, like Serbia and Libya and Afghanistan. Despite promises to the contrary, it has essentially worked to bring all the former Warsaw Pact countries into its U.S.-dominated embrace. The goal is self-evident: put missiles on Russia’s doorstep, the better to alienate Moscow from Berlin and ensure that Washington isn’t left out in the cold by its rivals.

SNIP...

Little if any coverage is given to another critical piece of real story, namely the obvious economic rivalry underlying the conflict. Ukraine is a major chip in the tussle for access to Black Sea resources, and for primacy in the provision of those resources to European homes. Likewise, the importance of channeling that access and supply through IMF-engineered loans, naturally denominated in dollars and central to the dollar’s now-threatened role as the world’s reserve currency.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/01/return-of-the-evil-empire/

I'm all for war when the nation's security is at stake. When war is to make the world safe for Goldman Sachs, no.

BTW: Pilger is a Guardian reporter. His work is syndicated, world wide.

[Adrahil]

329. Putin demonizes himself....

The love affair some on the "left" have with that evil man is utterly perplexing. It's almost comical.

[Autumn]

74. Out of curiosity which part here in this link proves that this is all CT"

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

I'm trying to understand but it's not very clear. Is it the Ukraine, Libya, Kosovo, American Interventions? What is the CT?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

78. Pilger claims President Obama spent $5 billion in 2014 to finance a coup in Ukraine.

There's no evidence of that fact whatsoever. The link debunks that fact.

So if Pilger's not talking about the two-decade long investment by various NGOs in Ukraine but instead actually talking about a $5 billion appropriation in 2014 to finance a Ukrainian "coup" (somehow involving Victor Yanukovych taking three days to pack up his luxury items and fly away in his own helicopter fleet), that's some creative speculation on his part and it's his duty as a journalist to back such a claim up.

[Autumn]

81. Where in the OP is that stated? I'm scrolling through until my eyes cross and I'm not finding it

[Tommy_Carcetti]

82. First sentence of the section titled "The Ukraine (sic) Coup" nt

[Autumn]

90. Thank you. Now to bother you again, the article does not say

That Obama "spends $5 billion paying Ukrainians to riot and dismantle their democratically elected government.". The OP says that the administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government.
The Department of State says we spent about $5.1 billion to support a "democracy-building program in the Ukraine"

What would be a "democracy-building program in the Ukraine"?

I'm just trying to understand what is the offensive part of this OP that was alerted on is. I appreciate you taking the time to explain.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

92. Assorted NGOs.

The Politifact article cites examples such as the Peace Corps.

Mind you I'm not vouching for Nuland's characterization of NGOs as "democracy building programs." That's her words, not mine.

But she certainly didn't say that we're spending a lump sum of $5 billion in 2014 to overthrow the Ukrainian government, which is what Pilger claims.

I get offended by blatant lies in the face of verifiable facts, so that's my issue here with the Pilger piece.

[Autumn]

93. Thank you.

[sabrina 1]

141. Explain the 'democracy building' we are doing in Ukraine for all that money. We did the same thing

in Iraq, airc. Democracy building. That's what the neocons call invading a country either militarily or using NGOs to cover the 'investments' we put into our Democracy building. That is why of course, NGOs have been throw out of other countries.

And Nuland did not say HOW that money she was boasting about was 'invested' in 'democracy building'. I posted a link to her exact words.

And who benefits from this 'investment' of Tax Dollars. So far, the American people have received NOTHING from the 'investment in democracy building in Iraq, except thousands of dead troops and tens of thousands more maimed for life not to mention all those who came back so damaged mentally, they are committing suicide every day.

And what WAS Nuland doing over there, plotting for the overthrow of the government and WHO would replace the elected President? Was she working for neocons or for the President who has stated he does not want to send arms or anything else to Ukraine.

Is she, like Netanyahu attempting to undermine this President's foreign policy, together with McCain?

WE THE PEOPLE of this country have a right to know what is going on with this, what is in it for the AMERICAN PEOPLE.

You appear to not recognize the rights of the American people to the FACTS about these mysterious shenanigans Nuland is involved in over there. But you are WRONG. We do have a right to that information.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

149. The bottom line here is that Pilger lied regarding the $5 billion figure, and you can't escape that.

Unless you have some proof that in 2014, President Obama authorized $5 billion for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Ukrainian government, Pilger is not telling you the truth.

And then you have to ask yourself, why would an "investigative reporter" feel the need to print long-debunked falsehoods? Isn't responsible journalism checking one's facts before you publish?

You can try to distract the issue by talking about NGOs and Nuland and McCain and neocons all you like. But you can't prove the truth of what Pilger says.

[Octafish]

163. He did not lie, no matter how often you repeat that.

He reported the facts. If the government of the United States were more forthright with its secret and illegal policies, we could be more precise with the figure.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

164. Okay. I'll ask you again.

Where is the proof that in 2014, President Obama authorized $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government?


Please, please, please don't respond by posting some link to some article from 2006.

[Octafish]

174. No where. So why base your smears on that?

Why do you ignore the reality to smear Pilger or Parry or Mearsheimer or anyone who doesn't go along with your fantasy?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

176. So if a so-called "investigative journalist" makes a brash claim....

....namely that a US president secretly authorized $5 billion to overthrow a foreign government....

....and you now admit that there is no proof to support such a brash claim....

.....what does that make said "investigative journalist"?

[sabrina 1]

185. What happened to the Orange Revolution and all that democracy building and how much did we

spend on THAT 'revolution'?

Remember what Pilger had to say about that?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

188. I don't know.

Do you know?

Does Pilger know?

[sabrina 1]

302. WHY is the US pouring money into that country? Do you support that?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

304. Foreign investment in a country is a complex issue.

You can't just say it's good or bad on a general level, especially when you have so many NGOs out there. Some might be better than otherse. It's a case-by-case matter.

Of course, what Pilger wanted you to believe wasn't that NGOs were investing in Ukraine over a two decade period. What he wanted you to believe was that the US appropriated $5 billion in 2014 for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Ukrainian government. And that of course was false.

[sabrina 1]

310. Pilger didn't need to 'want me' to believe anything. We poured money into Iraq, into Ukraine

during the Orange Revolution, into Libya, into so many other awful places, now into Uganda, into Uzbekistan among others.

What I want to know is 'why'? Who benefits from all this money being poured into those nations? They sure haven't changed much have they?

The Orange Revolution, received wall to wall coverage here, no doubt to justify the money being poured into it. Iraq also.

So, what do WE the American people get in return? We know who benefits mostly, it certainly doesn't seem to have 'created' any Democracies.

So I outright oppose enabling some of the world's worse characters and WITHOUT any accountability.

What is that money being used for?? In Ukraine I am talking about. Where is it going, who received it, what were the results, benefits received by the American tax payers?

Kerry asked for that during the Iraq War and was SLAMMED by the right wingers, using much the same tactics I'm seeing right here against anyone who dares to question these policies. They accused him of NOT SUPPORTING THE TROOPS.

[Octafish]

2. BFEE is no joke.

Shitstains, douchebags and assholes* hate me for posting this stuff.



BFEE Scorecard

Bartcop coined the term "Bush Family Evil Empire" to denote the 60-year pre-eminence of one family in the formation of the political philosophy in the United States, that of the War Party. The first to do so to my knowledge on the World Wide Web, Bartcop chronicled their ascension to the top of the national security state by hook and by crook. At least three generations have held high national office, while also making big money off war and looting the public Treasury. The last president of the United States, a man who wasn't elected fair and square by any stretch of the imagination, actually said: "Money trumps peace" at a press conference. For some reason, not a single "journalist" had the guts to ask him what he meant by that.

Bartcop did. And We and Democracy are better for it.

* GOOGLED the original earlier today. Now it's gone.

[uhnope]

60. no, THIS is fascism:

Sit through these and you won't use BS terms like "Democratic Fascism" anymore

[Octafish]

68. Telling me to shut up makes you sound like some kind of nutty authority, uhnope.

The headline ConsortiumNews used for the article:

The Rise of a ‘Democratic’ Fascism (John Pilger)

"Democrat" as in false Democracy.

Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004

The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing
Posted: 06/20/2013

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004.

Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

"Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now."

Host Sibel Edmonds and Tice both raised concerns that such alleged monitoring of subjects, unbeknownst to them, could provide the intelligence agencies with huge power to blackmail their targets.

"I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on," Tice said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html

Which is what we have when people vote for peace and justice, yet the warmongers and banksters walk free. Why is that, uhnope?

[uhnope]

107. lol. oh yes, play the persecuted victim

while pushing Pilger's flagrant lies and dangerous BS like "democratic fascism" when Pilger is a spokesman for fascism. Disgusting OP, really

[Octafish]

114. Not me. My country. Learn: The CIA's History Problem is Our History Problem

Best of luck to you!

The CIA's History Problem is Our History Problem

By David Wallace
Fri Jun 16, 9:22 PM ET

The author David Lowenthal once noted that the "past is a foreign country." The past might be better described as being more like a moving target - always in transition and susceptible (and vulnerable) to becoming unrecognizable to what we once believed. And more often than not new revelations are disorientating and troubling.

SNIP…

Such is the case with recent news accounts in the Washington Post and the New York Times that in the late 1950s the CIA knew that Adolf Eichmann was living in Argentina and had a pretty close pseudonym for him (Clemens instead of the actual alias of Klement), but did nothing to bring him to justice. That the CIA sought the cooperation and protection of Nazis, even those guilty of war crimes, after World War Two to serve its Cold War struggles is not news. But the extent of these relationships and the depths the CIA went through to protect them is news. These disclosures have been made possible through the ongoing efforts of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), launched over eight years ago by the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (Public Law 105-246). The key that unlocked this unsavory history has been the unparalleled access granted to the IWG into formerly secret government records and archives.

Concern over these disclosures extend beyond the sad facts surfaced by the IWG: such as official protection of Nazis residing in the United States and the CIA's post-war use of top Eichmann aides. They also include the entirely unconscionable fact that it has taken generations for the CIA to disclose this information, and only did so after a special act of Congress supplemented by years long battles to protect them from public knowledge. IWG member Thomas H. Baer pointed to such battles when he thanked the CIA for finally coming clean this past week. However, coming clean occurred only after "reversal of policy of thinly veiled noncompliance" with the IWG's legal mandate and the ongoing efforts of members of Congress and (some) IWG members and staff in making an "ironclad case decrying CIAs misinterpretation of its obligations."

Why has the CIA taken so long to open such records and archives? And do the excuses proffered around protecting national security really hold any credible value? I think the answer to the second question must be no, of course not. As to the first question, that is a trickier one, but one must look beyond the legal loopholes that protect secret information for such inordinate periods and look to see what agendas are at play. Clearly one agenda is to provide a simplistic and comforting (and at times woefully inaccurate) past as a means of enabling an ignorant, but strongly held, patriotism as a form of social glue that (kind of) holds society together. But a simplistic and comforting and inaccurate past can only be realized through the unreasonable, though legal, controls granted to the CIA over its historical records and archives. And it is in these seemingly rationally derived controls that the past itself can be held hostage.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wallace/the-cias-history-problem-_b_23206.html

Almost forgot: What's disgusting is you attempting to shut down discussion. It's undemocratic, for one thing.

[sabrina 1]

146. That's your opinion. Pilger has enormous credibility around the world. Maybe that is why

people object to his work being seen. Censorship is fascism btw. If we lived in a healthy Democracy no one would be concerned about a journalist writing about what he has personally experienced. They would discuss it, agree, disagree, but they would not fear it.

The very fact that there has been so much effort to SMEAR good journalists, PROVES Pilger right.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

153. Pilger "personally experienced" Ukraine as much as......

....Bill O'Reilly "personally experienced" all the shit he's made up.

But who knows? Maybe John Pilger saw a map of Ukraine once, so he's fit to write about it.

[NuclearDem]

3. Yet another tanfuckingfastic source.

I guess we can add John "LGBTs are a distraction" Pilger to your list of piece of shit sources.

[Octafish]

5. That's what a character assassin would say.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025497520#post30

Why do you hate freedom of the press, NuclearDem?

[NuclearDem]

7. Why do you despise the LGBT community, Octafish?

I've got a feeling you agree with Pilger that LGBT rights are just distractions.

[Octafish]

10. Why smear me? Nothing to say about Fascism in the USA? I'd add, 'Huh?' but, you know.

Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy

Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world

by John Pilger
The Guardian, Thursday 4 July 2013 14.00 EDT

EXCERPT...

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request ," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official.

The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather's Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather's lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/04/forcing-down-morales-plane-air-piracy

2013 OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3176980

[NuclearDem]

22. John Pilger isn't the be-all, end-all to anti-fascism.

In fact, his blatant apologia for Putin in stating there was no Russian invasion of Crimea indicates that he's completely two-faced--he'll scream from the rooftops about Blair and Bush, but apologize for Putin.

Which makes his anti-LGBT stance make a lot more sense.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

27. Pilger's against the fascists that he wants to be against. But he's okay with the other fascists.

You know, the "good" fascists.

Funny how he trumpets the March 2014 Crimean referendum as having "international observers" when in fact those "observers" were in good part fascist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Observatory_for_Democracy_and_Elections

Eurasian Observatory for Democracy and Elections (EODE) is a Russia-based far-right non-governmental organization which on its website claims that it monitors elections.[1][2] According to its website, it specializes in the "self-proclaimed republics" (Abkhazia, Transdnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh).[3][1] It is led by the Belgian far-right activist Luc Michel.[4] EODE's other leader is Jean-Pierre Vandersmissen. Both Michel and Vandermissen are followers of the Belgian Neo-Nazi politician Jean-François Thiriart.[5][6][7]

According to Oliver Bullough, on its website the organization stated that "it shares the values of "the current Russian leadership and V.V. Putin.""[8]

EODE visited Crimea during the 2014 Crimean referendum international observer team and claimed that the referendum was conducted in a legitimate manner.[9][10]

The organization has offices in Moscow, Paris, Brussels, Sochi and Chișinău.[9]

Methinks the issue with Pilger isn't actually fascism.

[sabrina 1]

38. Just keep telling the truth Octafish. A lot of people hate freedom of the press.

Pilger is not just a great recorder of history, he has put his own body in harm's way to do so.

Thank your for caring enough about this country to not be willing to allow the lies to continue.

[NuclearDem]

45. Yes, calling an asshole an asshole is hating freedom of the press.

Nailed it as always, sabrina.

[sabrina 1]

46. Thank you, I appreciate the compliment.

[Octafish]

116. Emoticons. Cool!

You know what they say about illiterates, NuclearDem.

[NuclearDem]

134. They make up your readership?

[Octafish]

135. No. Readers are literate.

The illiterate need pictures. Hence, emoticons.

[NuclearDem]

136. Seeing as how your OP and one of your replies in this thread contain pictures

yes, I would say so.

[Octafish]

119. First Amendment was put there for a reason.

A free press is the cornerstone of Democracy. Seeing it attacked on a democratic board is telling, at least.



Here's a bit on its real abuse, lying America into war on Vietnam:

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

The Newspaper of War

by Howard Friel
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 by Common Dreams

Many years ago, Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam, Communist China, and Soviet Russia were saying one thing about what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964, while President Johnson and top administration officials were all saying the exact opposite. How should the Times have responded to that situation, assuming a commitment to an independent press and an informed citizenry?

Ten years earlier, in July 1954, the governments of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China all signed the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which formally concluded France’s U.S.-supported colonial war in Vietnam. The United States refused to sign, and thereafter proceeded to undermine the most important stipulation of the accord – that elections to unify the northern and southern zones of Vietnam take place in 1956. By what journalistic criteria should the New York Times have covered this refusal by the Eisenhower administration to sign and comply with the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which opened the door to the twenty-year American military campaign in Vietnam?

When Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice claimed in 2001-2003 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including an active nuclear weapons program, and when Saddam Hussein denied those claims, what journalistic standard did the Times apply in its response to those conflicting claims?

Journalism schools should teach a course focused on questions like these, given that over the past sixty years the Times and every other mainstream news organization has repeatedly flunked such tests, in each instance aiding the government’s efforts in its illegal interventions and wars.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/13-0

This is the "paper of record" that gave us Judith Miller and aluminum tubes, while failing to mention word that George W Bush's illegal domestic spying operation until after Selection 2004. I also want to emphasize this paper has done all it can to keep up the fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot President John F. Kennedy, who had ordered withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam. In addition, this is an important read for those interested in seeing how Corporate McPravda exclusively serves the warmongers and not the People, as intended by the nation's Founders in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

[nationalize the fed]

4. Truth cuts like a knife

And Pilger tells the truth

The Kosovo Model

The “humanitarian war” against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent NATO to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. ...

Kosovo was a PNAC war



Another US ‘Success Story': The Creation and Abandonment of Kosovo

Thomas Harrington, February 28, 2015 AntiWar.com

Kosovo is falling apart at the seams, with it thousands of its citizens seeking desperately to escape life there by any means possible.

Haven’t heard about that one?

Perhaps that’s because the U.S. is almost wholly responsible for creating an independent Kosovo, and from there, the brutal and corrupt power structure that lords cruelly over the life of its people. The creation of an independent Kosovo in the name of democracy and humanitarianism is considered by the Clinton crowd to be one of the U.S.’s first post-Cold War foreign policy successes. ..

************
My Kosovo thread was locked because of "crazy talk"- even though Joe Biden has said "The Affirmative Task We Have Now is to Actually Create A New World Order"- factor that. Oh and Antiwar.com is not permitted. !!!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026295853

[Octafish]

6. Yugoslavia was a model for the future world. Nothing commie about putting people over war profits.

...and the place had people of different ethnicities and religions and political systems living and working together -- in peace with prosperity for all.

Thank you for those outstanding articles and links to discussion, nationalize the fed. This PNAC crew aims to balkanize Russia. Joe's kid is financing at the front for fracking in the Ukraine.

Redrawing the Map of the Russian Federation: Partitioning Russia After World War III?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, September 10, 2014
Strategic Culture Foundation 10 September 2014

EXCERPT...

Dmytro Sinchenko published an article on September 8, 2014 about dividing Russia. His article is titled «Waiting for World War III: How the World Will Change». [3] Sinchenko was involved in EuroMaidan and his organization, the Ukrainian Initiative «Statesmen Movement» (Всеукраїнської ініціативи «Рух державотворців»), advocates for an ethnic nationalism, the territorial expansion of Ukraine at the expense of most the bordering countries, reinvigorating the pro-US Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova (GUAM) Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, joining NATO, and launching an offensive to defeat Russia as part of its foreign policy goals. [4] As a note, the inclusion of the word democracy in GUAM should not fool anyone; GUAM, as the inclusion of the Republic of Azerbaijan proves, has nothing to do with democracy, but with counter-balancing Russia in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Sinchenko’s article starts by talking about the history of the «Axis of Evil» phrase that the US has used to vilify its enemies. It talks about how George W. Bush Jr. coined the phrase in 2002 by grouping Iraq, Iran, and North Korea together, how John Bolton expanded the Axis of Evil to include Cuba, Libya, and Syria, how Condoleezza Rice included Belarus, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar (Burma), and then finally he proposes that Russia be added to the list as the world’s main pariah state. He even argues that the Kremlin is involved in all the conflicts in the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine, and Southeast Asia. He goes on to accuse Russia of planning to invade the Baltic States, the Caucasus, Moldova, Finland, Poland, and, even more ridiculously, two of its own close military and political allies, Belarus and Kazakhstan. As the article’s title implies, he even claims that Moscow is intentionally pushing for a third world war.

This fiction is not something that has been reported in the US-aligned corporate networks, but is something that has been published directly by US government-owned media. The forecast was published by the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has been a US propaganda tool in Europe and the Middle East that has helped topple governments.

Chillingly, the article tries to sanitize the possibilities of a new world war. Disgustingly ignoring the use of nuclear weapons and the massive destruction that would erupt for Ukraine and the world, the article misleadingly paints a cozy image of a world that will be corrected by a major global war. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the author are essentially saying that «war is good for you» to the Ukrainian people and that some type of utopian paradise will emerge after a war with Russia.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/redrawing-the-map-of-the-russia-federation-partitioning-russia-after-world-war-iii/5400748

BFEE believe they can survive World War III. The rest of us locked outside of the secure, undisclosed location not so much.

[TBF]

66. Good note on the fracking -

although being a power player is certainly part of the psychology, it is always a case of "follow the money" with this crew. I don't even know what to say anymore. People seem more concerned about reaching the next level of candy crush than dealing with this.

[Rex]

24. For some strange reason bringing up the BFEE or PNAC makes the gatekeepers in GD

giggle and tee hee like 5 year olds. I know it sounds unbelievable but true story.

[sabrina 1]

40. I've noticed that also. And wonder why anyone here would be upset about the truth

being told about the Bush gang and the PNAC crowd?

[Octafish]

73. The reason goes back asking Poppy Bush: why he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963?

[font color="red"]We know he was there because George Herbert Walker Bush told the FBI.

We also know, from the same FBI report, that Poppy heard someone threaten to kill President Kennedy.

So, why did Bush wait until AFTER JFK was assassinated to come foward with the warning?[/font color]

Here's the document:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Here's background:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbushG.htm

Another FBI memo, from a week later, was unearthed just prior to the 1988 election. In it, "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover himself about the Pro- and Anti-Castro Cuban communities in Miami. 1988 Presidential Candidate Vice President ex-DCI ex-China legation head George Bush said "It wasn't me." Surprisingly and contrary to longstanding policy, the agency even released the name of another "George Bush" who worked at CIA for six months or so. That guy was surprised to find reporters on his doorstep and told them he was a photo analyst on loan from another government department and he never was debriefed by J Edgar Hoover, let alone for the anything to with the assassination of President Kennedy.



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show.

And the Church Committee represents the last time our elected representatives worked to reign in the Secret Government agencies. That was 1975.

So. We wonder why America is in the shape it's in?

Austerity for the majority and a state of permanent war, where "money trumps peace."

Thank you, sabrina1. Your kindness means the world.

[sabrina 1]

101. Why didn't he report that earlier? That's a good question. I can think of a few reasons why

he reported it at all. One could think, eg, that if he had reported it earlier, Kennedy would have lived. And why report it at all? Possibly to cover himself should anyone report that he knew what he knew.

We have been told so many lies my default reaction is 'they are lying until they prove it'.

And I know I am not the only one. Few people trust this government anymore, according to statistics.

And that is not a good sign for the future of this country.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. Pilger: Fascism is bad, m'kay? But while I have you here.....

Here's a bunch of false and/or distorted information on some other conflicts that I'll throw in while I have your attention.

A pretty little poison pill, eh?

[Octafish]

11. If you're proud that I closed the other thread, be proud.

I didn't do it for you.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Um, no, I don't really care.

Lies are lies no matter what thread you post them on.

[Octafish]

15. That's a smear. Show where I lied.

I'll be happy to admit a mistake.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

17. You posted Pilger's documentable lies.

I can't speak for you yourself, but your piece is full of lies, at least as it relates to Ukraine.

[Octafish]

20. So, you can't find where I lied. That's different, isn't it? That's called a smear.

As for Pilger and Parry, I'll take their word over yours, any day.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

21. I never said you personally lied.

Only that you post other's lies.

Comprende?

Although your endorsement of those lies does make you a liar by proxy.

[Maedhros]

35. If they're documentable lies, then by all means DOCUMENT THEM with some links.

Otherwise, you're just giving an unsupported opinion.

[Rex]

39. Ukraines new leader put himself in the role of dictator as soon as he was elected.

So when I posted the relevant parts to prove it, just ignored as if it wasn't even read. Both countries have shitty leaders trying to rule, why one gets a free pass and the other doesn't by some here is amusing.

[sabrina 1]

47. I've asked the same question. But still have not received the documentation that supposedly exists.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

54. Ahem. Post 53.

Sorry, it took a while to go through the list of Pilger's documentable lies on Ukraine.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

53. You know, I thought you'd never ask. Just a few examples.

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government.

A blatant, "Pants on Fire" level lie according to Politifact:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government.

First of all, there was no coup in Ukraine. Secondly, if by fascists Pilger is referring to members of the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, neither party has any representation in Ukraine's governing cabinet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Ukraine

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe — with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine.

"Vladimir Putin's people" didn't lose 22 million in World War II. The now-defunct Soviet Union lost over 20 million people. Of course, the Soviet Union comprised 15 separate Republics, only one of which was Russia. Vladimir Putin (who was born 7 years after the end of World War II) is president of the Russian Federation. And estimates show that the Russian SSR lost approximately 14 million people (both civilian and military), or 12.7% of its population. The Ukrainian SSR actually lost a greater proportion of its population than the Russian SSR in World War II (16.3%), as did the Belarussian SSR and Armenian SSR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union

Now, if Pilger is insinuating that Vladimir Putin's "people" includes the 14 other former Soviet States as well as Russia, well, that's quite telling.

Nuland’s coup in Ukraine did not go to plan. NATO was prevented from seizing Russia’s historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea — illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 — voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

Here's a good one. First of all, of course, there was no coup. Secondly, NATO never attempted to "seize" the Russian Black Sea Fleet--I don't know where he's coming from there. The 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR was an internal Soviet matter, but Crimea had never, ever been part of the modern Russian Federation, and in 1994 Russia agreed via treaty that notwithstanding the existing Black Sea Fleet bases, Crimea was Ukrainian territory and it would respect Ukraine's sovereignty.

Funny thing about the Crimean referendum and the so-called "international observers." These were not observers from the UN or OSCE or any other legitimate election monitoring agency. These "observers" came from the "Eurasian Observatory for Democracy and Elections", a sham Russian based group whose leaders have ties to far right organizations (funny that Pilger trumpets them while supposedly decrying fascism, don't you think?):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Observatory_for_Democracy_and_Elections

Of course, the biggest lie by Pilger is that "There was no invasion (of Crimea by Russia)" which is simply idiotic. Of course there was a Russian military invasion of Crimea. Well-organized and well-armed, regimented military units--far beyond the capabilities of any local militia that would have the opportunity to organize in literally four days--seized the local parliament, airports, harbors, Ukrainian military bases and other portions of Crimea beginning around February 26, 2014. A timeline of events in the run up to the infamous March 16, 2014 referendum:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2014_Crimean_crisis

Here's a report from The Guardian the day the local parliament was seized

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/ukraine-pro-russian-gunmen-seize-crimea-parliament-live-updates?view=desktop#block-530efb46e4b0ddf5cbe7ba63

Maxim, a pro-Russian activist who refused to give his last name, told the Associated Press that he and other activists had been camping out overnight outside the local parliament in Crimea’s regional capital, Simferopol, when heavily armed men wearing flak jackets, and holding rocket-propelled grenade launchers and sniper rifles took over the building. He said:


"Our activists were sitting there all night calmly, building the barricades. At 5 o’clock unknown men turned up and went to the building. They got into the courtyard and put everyone on the ground.

They were asking who we were. When we said we stand for the Russian language and Russia, they said: ‘Don’t be afraid, we’re with you.’ Then they began to storm the building bringing down the doors.

They didn’t look like volunteers or amateurs, they were professionals. This was clearly a well-organised operation. They did not allow anyone to come near. They seized the building, drove out the police, there were about six police officers inside.

Who are they? Nobody knows. It’s about 50-60 people, fully armed."

And finally:

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history.” In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

In fact, the events in Odessa on May 2nd were indeed clashes between two sides and not just a one-sided slaughter of pro-Russian separatists as Pilger claims. While the official pro-Russian line only wants to focus on the fire at the trade union building itself, the events did not start there. In fact, the incident started when a pro-Ukrainian demonstration was attacked by a pro-Russian group, and at various points gunmen identified as pro-Russian were seen shooting at and killing several on the pro-Ukrainian side. Only after that initial event was there the later confrontation at the Trade Union building. Even at the Trade Union building, sources said there were Molotov cocktails thrown at the building and from the building, indicating it was a two-sided clash between the groups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_May_2014_Odessa_clashes

This rally was later attacked by a pro-Russian mob of 300 from the group Odesskaya Druzhina armed with bats and firearms at Hretska Street.[3][15][24] Both sides fought running battles against each other, exchanging stones and petrol bombs, and built barricades throughout the city during the afternoon.[25] Both sides had firearms.[26] Some eyewitness accounts said the first victim was a pro-Ukraine protester shot with an automatic weapon in the lung around 13:40 local time,[27][28] and that an anti-Maidan supporter, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, opened fire in a lane leading to Deribasivska Street.[17] Some shots were fired from the roof top of the Afina shopping centre to shoot down at the crowds.

So, as you can see, Pilger's account on Ukraine is full of documentable falsehoods. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to lay it out.

[sabrina 1]

55. So Virginia Nuland was the one lying then, and Pilger was merely giving her credit for telling the

truth?

In a leaked phone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain “on the outside,” but to consult with the US’s replacement for Yanukovich, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “four times a week.” At a December 5, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation Conference, Nuland boasted that the US had invested $5 billion to “build democratic skills and institutions” in Ukraine

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/

So who's lying, the reporter or the State Department official?

Who do YOU think is the liar here?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

58. Regardless of what "Virginia" Nuland said, the issue has been researched and Pilger's lying.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

The $5 billion figure represents US NGO investment in Ukraine over a 20 year period.

Pilger claimed--and I quote--"This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government."

Unless Pilger has evidence that President Obama in 2014 made a secret appropriation of $5 billion to finance a "coup" in Ukraine (that somehow involved Yanukovych packing up all his goodies over a three-day period and flying off in his own helicopter), then yes, he is lying.

[sabrina 1]

61. So neocon, Virginia Nuland lied? Someone is lying, that's for sure, and generally speaking when a

State Dept official makes a statement like that, that is tax payer dollars, a whole lot of them in fact, one would assume they are telling the truth.

But you are now saying SHE lied. How come HER lies, since she is the one on the payroll of the American people, are NOT important to you at all??

You think the 'messenger' is more important to focus on than the Assist Sec of State?

Either SHE lied, which is shameful and should have cost her her job, or she is not. Which is it?

I am far more interested in the lies our Government officials tell frankly than what a reporter has to say. We don't pay him, we pay HER.

So is she a liar or not? And why is it so hard to answer that question?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

63. As far as I know, "Virginia" Nuland appears to be correct in her assertion. Pilger is lying.

If in fact there was $5 billion worth of NGO investment in Ukraine since 1992, that's a correct statement on "Virginia" Nuland's part, love her, hate her or otherwise don't care about her.

The idea that President Obama spent $5 billion in 2014 to sponsor a US led coup in Ukraine is a flat out lie. And that's what Pilger said. Hence, Pilger is a liar.

[sabrina 1]

67. Virginia Nuland is a neocon, married to a neocon. I despise Neocons. They lie, they lied us into a

devastating, never ending war in Iraq and cost the lives of thousands of American troops, while they and their buddies profited hugely from the lies they told.

How do you know she was telling the truth? IF she is, then that is even WORSE. It means that this government was financing protesters that included, see photos of our Senators posing with Neo Nazis and Nuland's 'plans' (does she run things over there) for what part the Neo Nazis would play AFTER the government was toppled.

I don't CARE what reporters say, I care what those acting in OUR name taking OUR tax dollars are up to in places where we don't belong.

So now you say she is telling the truth?

In a leaked phone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain “on the outside,” but to consult with the US’s replacement for Yanukovich, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “four times a week.” At a December 5, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation Conference, Nuland boasted that the US had invested $5 billion to “build democratic skills and institutions” in Ukraine

There is nothing in there about when or how this money was 'invested'. Just the US has invested $5 billion dollars in Ukraine.

There should be some documentation of where this money went. Where can we find it?

And why is the US wasting money in Ukraine while cutting school lunches here, cutting food stamps for our own citizens??

Who got that money?

I think your priorities are not in line with those of the American people who are constantly told we have no money FOR THEM.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

70. Why are you talking about "Virginia" Nuland? We're talking about John Pilger lying. Read his quote.

"This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government."

Pilger's claiming that in 2014, President Obama spent $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

Read the Politifact article. Clearly the $5 billion figure represented a two decade period of NGO investment in Ukraine, whether you agree with it or not.

Was Barack Obama president of the United States circa 1991? Was Victor Yanukovych president of Ukraine circa 1991? If the answers to both those questions are no--and here's a hint, the answers are no--how is Pilger's claim even remotely accurate?

I don't care if Nuland's a neo-con in Richmond, Norfolk or Roanoke, you're dodging the fact that Pilger is the one caught pants down lying here.

[Octafish]

75. Nuland's Husband is Robert Kagan, an architect of PNAC

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_Kagan

[Tommy_Carcetti]

76. That's lovely.

How exactly does that make John Pilger's statement "This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government" not a lie, again?

[Octafish]

79. It is precisely the point. You argue relentlessly that Pilger is a liar, Tommy_Carcetti.

The point you don't admit is the coup in Ukraine is just another step in the game for PNAC, Kagan, Bush, Bush, Cheney, next Bush, and the rest of the "Money trumps peace" crowd.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

84. Are you admitting that Pilger lied when he claimed Obama spent $5 billion on a "coup" in Ukraine?

That's a yes or no question.

As to the point you say I don't admit, you're right. I don't admit it for the fact there was no neo-con sponsored coup in Ukraine. I'm not going to admit things that the evidence doesn't support.

[Octafish]

89. We don't know, do we? It's classified Top Secret. Along with a lot more information we should know.

And what matters is the traitors who lied the United States into wars for profit continue to walk free. That shows there is no justice, and without justice, there is no democracy.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

91. Like Area 51 and Tower 7, right?

Creative speculation is speculativey.

[Octafish]

102. No, like in a Democracy, We the People are the government.

We're supposed to know what the government does in our name and with our money. But, we don't. And for some reason, you like to smear those like me who point it out.

Why Secret Law Is Un-American

The system established by the U.S. Constitution requires an informed electorate.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic, Jan 3 2014, 9:25 AM ET

EXCERPT...

What good are frequent elections if the people are ignorant as to the actual policies their representatives have put into place? National-security state apologists would prefer a system whereby the people elect representatives and trust them to act judiciously in secret. The design of the House presupposes constant reevaluation of a legislator's actions. Americans watching the debate over reauthorizing the Patriot Act couldn't meaningfully lobby or evaluate the performance of their representative. They didn't know the law had been secretly interpreted to allow mass surveillance. The secret interpretation subverted the ability of the people to evaluate their representatives.

The secrecy surrounding surveillance law also meant that many House members themselves were ignorant of what they were voting upon, sometimes because they failed to take advantage of secret briefings, other times because they were incapable of understanding the content of those briefings without outside help, and still other times because the national-security state deliberately withheld information.

Federalist 53 states:

No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate. A part of this knowledge may be acquired by means of information which lie within the compass of men in private as well as public stations.

In other words, outside help is something legislators are expected to seek by design. Secrecy renders these legislators incompetent by denying them a source of vital information that was presupposed by the men who designed our system of government.

Federalist 57 ponders the loyalty of legislators in the House to the American people, and explains why they won't be captured by special, elite interests. "They will enter into the public service under circumstances which cannot fail to produce a temporary affection at least to their constituents," it states. "There is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor, of favor, of esteem, and of confidence, which, apart from all considerations of interest, is some pledge for grateful and benevolent returns. Ingratitude is a common topic of declamation against human nature; and it must be confessed that instances of it are but too frequent and flagrant, both in public and in private life. But the universal and extreme indignation which it inspires is itself a proof of the energy and prevalence of the contrary sentiment."

For many members of the intelligence committees, honor, favor, and esteem seem to be most lavishly conferred not by constituents but by members of the national-security state. The gratitude owed the people is often directed toward these insiders, in return for being included in the club of serious people with security clearances.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/why-secret-law-is-un-american/282786/

Government of the people, by the people and for the people. That's democracy. Nothing about secret agents and secret agendas benefiting secret parties through secret wars, which, without public oversight, which is tyranny -- and what we have.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

125. But all you are doing is pulling stuff out of your ass.

It's not like you are performing an actual public service here.

Admit it--Pilger lied when he claimed President Obama spent $5 billion in 2014 to sponsor a coup in Ukraine. We're not talking about Top Secret information here. If Pilger had some document to show that President Obama did such a thing, he'd be waiving it from the rooftops. All he is doing is repeating debunked misinformation.

I could claim that the United States is run by a secret society of leprechauns and it would literally have as much factual substantiation as John Pilger's claim that President Obama spent $5 billion in 2014 to sponsor a coup in Ukraine.

Does it pain you that much that you can't admit that Pilger is lying here?

[Octafish]

94. Supporting Mr. Kagan are Richard Perle and Adnan Khashoggi...

Remember Richard (PNAC) Perle? Just after September 11 and the Washington-Wall Street axis of war profiteering was heating up, Perle hit up Adnan (Iran-Contra/BCCI) Khashoggi for $100 million to make his new "Trireme Partnerships" take off.



Khashoggi's money would help launch the Carlyle Group-like investment group Perle founded. The petromoney was not for arms, directly. It was for investing in companies that were going to be making a killing off of homeland security related areas.

Interesting selling point: Perle already had secured financing from in from Boeing and some other bigwigs like Henry Kissinger.

One of the most important articles The New Yorker ever published:

Lunch with the Chairman

by Seymour M. Hersh
17 March 2003

At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact

[font color="green"]To make a killing off war, that is what PNAC is partly about. The other side is control.[/font color]

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.

By Jim Lobe / AlterNet May 18, 2003

What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?

A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.

Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.

Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deception

And Tommy_Carcetti pretends he doesn't know anything about PNAC, he just wants to show how demonstrably un-factual the $5 billion cost of overthrowing Ukraine is that liar Parry, er, Pilger reported. Right. The figure's probably a higher. A lot higher.

[sabrina 1]

100. Yes, and neocons are suddenly popular here, AND 'truthful'! She was caught planning the coup

in Ukraine, it's on TAPE. And still a few people are in denial. I wonder what it will take to rid this country of these war criminals finally, so our Foreign Policies are based on what is good for THIS country rather than for THEM and the war profiteers?

[Octafish]

104. It's a strange feeling, we now are supposed to cheer the Big Lie.

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: "[Booz Allen has] got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience."

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

Wouldn't it be great to live in a democracy, a republic built on equal justice for all? That way, traitors, warmongers and banksters would be in jail instead of printing money for themselves on wars without end, then charging us with treason for pointing it out?

Back in 1975, Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) warned us, so NSA spied on him...

Frank Church was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, of course, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

[sabrina 1]

96. You don't want us to talk about the neocons who were over there plotting for AFTER the Coup

boasting about the money the US was pouring into a country that has ZERO to do with us? This issue is for the Europeans and Russians to sort out. Let THEM deal with it.

We are told in this country that there is 'no money for the children, no money for the poor and disabled, no money to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, but there's obviously money for Ukraine?? Really?

YOU want to talk about the messenger, a messenger btw, how has been RIGHT about every issue he has reported on for decades.

Let me see, who should I believe, a bunch of neocon liars, or a reporter with a record of 'getting things right' on all these Imperial wars.

I can understand WHY you would rather attack the messenger, that is your priority.

But the American people deserve the FACTS and so far, we are not getting them from the Corporate Media, or apparently from the neocons who are desperately trying to drag this country into more of their For Profit Wars.

[Octafish]

105. From 2011: Goldman Sachs Is So Desperate To Get Into Ukraine It's Advising The Government For FREE

by Katya Wachtel,
Business Insider, June 25, 2011

Goldman Sachs has agreed to advise the Ukraine government for free, according to Bloomberg.
The bank, "which hasn’t arranged a debt or equity sale in Ukraine since at least 1999... will advise the administration of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on managing its investments, state debt and 'other issues of financial-policy implementation.'"

"The selection follows Goldman’s third attempt in 17 years to crack " the former Soviet Republic.

Meanwhile other American banks including JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have work on various bond sales in Ukraine.

SOURCE:

http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-is-so-desperate-to-get-into-ukraine-its-advising-the-government-for-free-2011-6

Read more:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-24/goldman-sachs-agrees-to-advise-ukraine-for-free-government-says.html

I've been to parts of the world where people must make do with a small fraction of what people here in the USA enjoy. These gangsters who run Wall Street on the Potomac keep people impoverished, just so they can have more. Michael Parenti -- wish I knew about him when I was a young student. A person capable of expressing that characteristic in historic terms would make an outstanding teacher.

Thank you for standing up to the disinformation, sabrina 1. Your kind words, too, I very much appreciate.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

126. I don't want you to lie and post bullshit.

I've shown that Pilger is wrong on numerous counts in his piece and you refuse to admit it because admitting it apparently would be a blow to your solar plexus.

I don't like bullshit on DU. This has nothing to do with you or Octafish; I'm sure you are probably pretty nice people in real life. This only has to do with the lies you post.

[sabrina 1]

139. I posted FACTS. Not lies. Facts you claim are TRUE. That neocon Victoria Nuland boasted that the US

has put $5 Billion dollars into Ukraine, and that she did so while she was in Kiev where she was caught plotting who should be installed AFTER the coup. And lo and behold, what a coincidence, 'our guy' Yatze WAS installed.

I also posted the FACT that she was consorting with Neo Nazis. BEFORE the coup. And that it was decided by her that the Neo Nazi Leader photographed with TWO of our Senators, should, AFTER the coup, work with 'our guy' Yatze, behind the scenes. Visiting and advising Yatze several times a week.

Now you show me where any of that is a LIE.

And do not call me a liar again.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

154. Pilger claimed President Obama spent $5 billion in 2014 to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

That's a flat out lie.

Unless you have proof to offer otherwise. Do you have any?

[SidDithers]

167. "Virginia"...

Sid

[Tommy_Carcetti]

168. Is for lovers!

[sabrina 1]

181. ...

[NuclearDem]

189. They're not even trying to get basic facts right anymore.

[zappaman]

196. But still promoting anti-Semitic writers.

Weird, eh?

[Octafish]

218. Sideshow SidDithers of DU.

"Still, the neocons achieved one of their chief goals, alienating Obama from Putin and making the two leaders’ collaboration on Syria, Iran and other trouble spots more unlikely. In other words, the neocons have kept alive hope that those problems won’t be resolved through compromise, but rather might still lead to more warfare." -- Robert Parry

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/17/the-human-price-of-neocon-havoc/

[Rex]

77. Sad ain't it? They yell about sources then when you finally get one

it is a neo-con! Surprise! I guess the hesitation comes from their obvious understanding of double standards.

Then again, I think it is because they embrace the same neoliberal belief system as neocons. Supporting RWing regimes is OKAY, as long as it their pony!

The stench from the double standard is hideous. I guess shame means nothing to these 'posters'.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

80. "Hey that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?"

[Rex]

83. Don't you have some RWing leader to apologize for or something?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

88. I'm very sorry for Austro Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I.

For what reason, I'm not quite sure.

On edit, I now know the reason for my apology. It was for his outfit and his facial hair.

[Scootaloo]

95. I would vote for those muttonchops in an instant, no lie n/t

[NuclearDem]

178. Her name isn't Virginia, it's Victoria.

[sabrina 1]

182. I like Virginia better for her which should be for obvious reasons.

[NuclearDem]

186. If anyone ever needed this whole argument summed up in a nutshell, there it is.

Side A: Here are basic demonstrable facts about this situation.

Side B: Fuck your facts, here's what I think the facts should be to fit my agenda, no matter how demonstrably and unbelievably wrong they are.

It's hilarious at this point.

[sabrina 1]

209. I agree with that. Virginia, yes there is a Santa Claus, Nuland's involvement in the pre-coup is

undeniable, her plotting as to who 'we' wanted in the place of Yanukovych was heard on tape. Yet, Side B consistently ignores those facts and/or attempts to dismiss them denying the US involvement in the coup when the evidence could not be more clear.

[NuclearDem]

210. You just keep on making my point for me.

[zappaman]

211. That's a nice thing to do.

You should be thankful.

[sabrina 1]

212. Considering you again have refused to at least acknowledge the facts I just stated, you

are making my point for me. That is exactly what I said, Side B refuses to acknowledge these facts. And there it is, a perfect example of what I said.

[NuclearDem]

213. Acknowledge what? That Nuland discussed who the US would want in charge?

Because I've never denied that.

Still doesn't mean it was a coup.

[sabrina 1]

260. And coincidentally, she got what she wanted. And even considered what to do about the Neo Nazis

who were a big help in the coup, AFTER it was accomplished. Clearly they would make the new government look bad to the West, so she suggested they have a more 'behind the scenes role' consulting with and advising the 'our guy', what was it, 'four times a week'?

When it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc, what are to think?

[Octafish]

215. sabrina 1 is TOPS!

They miss the point on purpose. These are fascist times.

Something else they avoid discussing: That is the side they've chosen.

Thank you for standing up to the neoconservative warmongers.

[NuclearDem]

216. And this is who you and sabrina have decided to side with:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026307929

Which doesn't surprise me in the least.

[zappaman]

217. I guess some folks don't give a shit about LGBT rights.

Sad.

[sabrina 1]

258. I'm glad you brought that up.. 'Things May Have Gotten Worse in Ukraine for the LGBT Community'

Another reason why our government should not be supporting the Ukraine Govt

Dashed Hopes in Gay Ukraine

According to a 2013 poll conducted by GfK Group, almost 80 percent of Ukrainians say they oppose any sexual relations between people of the same sex. In another poll, by the Ukrainian Gay Alliance and Ukrainian State Sociological Institute, 63 percent labeled homosexuality “a perversion” and “a mental disease.” That same year, a survey within the LGBT community carried out by Nash Mir Center found that 65 percent of respondents faced infringements of their rights due to sexual discrimination. The list included verbal abuse, intimidation, and loss of employment or direct physical violence. Few of these cases (about 15 percent) ever get reported to the police authorities because of the victims’ fear of further reprisal and humiliation. There have been other cases of arson, too, long before the one at the Zhovten theater: In 2009, the Kiev art gallery Ya was set on fire after the presentation of a gay literary anthology.

Please stop 'using' this extremely serious issue, Gay Rights, to try to defend the neocons' involvement in the coup in Kiev.

It is despicable the way Women's rights and Gay rights are used by people who clearly could not care less about them.

Ukraine's LGBT community are living in fear right now. And it is reprehensible to ignore their plight to try to gain some kind of 'points' on the internet.

We have, according 'Virginia' neocon Nuland, poured over $5 billion dollars into a bigoted, anti Gay nation, where a vast majority of the population views the LGBT community as 'perverted' and where an anti-gay bill was introduced before the revolution.

Yanukovich held up that anti-gay bill in order to try to get support from Europe.

And when a group of Gay Rights activists joined the Maiden Square demonstrators, they were accused of being there ONLY to 'divide' the protesters and WORKING FOR PUTIN.

So don't give me your 'concern' for the LGBT community in Ukraine. Those of us who HAVE worked for those rights have been totally aware of the plight of the LGBT community in that overwhelmingly anti Gay nation.

Clearly you were not. Now that you have been informed, I imagine you will join those of us who oppose our tax dollars going to support that country. The Europeans and Russia are the ones who have interests in sorting out their issues. WE have no interests there to my knowledge.

[NuclearDem]

263. And you're getting this impression that LGBT allies don't care about the Ukrainian LGBT community...

...where, exactly?

Oh wait, you fucking made it up.

The only times I ever see you even discussing LGBT or women's rights is when you're using them as human shields to protect yourself against completely deserved criticism.

[sabrina 1]

269. Stop it! I did not try to use this issue, I responded to Zappaman's attempt to use it. Do NOT

attempt to challenge DUers who have worked for YEARS to #1 try to stop this country from supporting and financing anti Gay nations such as Uganda eg. And #2 prevent the cynical use of the rights of all minorities, by people who appear to care ONLY when it suits their purposes. Zappaman apparently thinks that Ukraine is a paradise for the LGBT community.

Why did you NOT correct that false impression?

Your friend is the one you should have personally attacked for doing what has become a despicable tactic, USING WOMEN and GAYS for their own purposes.

I will continue to expose this tactic wherever I find it.

As someone who has fought here in this country, how dare you who I do not know, nor do you know me, question my work, for both women and gays and minorities. Prove your claim or take it back. DUers here know ME, not sure they know you as well.

Now I expect you to join me in educating your friend about the plight of the LGBT community in Ukraine, assuming you do care about the issue.

[NuclearDem]

272. Oh, you want to play this game? Because I will.

A thread in which you eviscerate Bob Costas for calling out Russian homophobia, or as you call, "undermining the Olympics." Additional points for trying to tell an LGBT DUer that you know better than he does:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4554798

And another in which you deflect from the Pope's record on LGBT rights and falsely claim Ugandan Catholic bishops have condemned that country's law (because, you know, Neo-liberalism):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4577494
And here, where when someone brings up Russian LGBT issues, you *shockingly* deflect to Saudi Arabia, which is just a tu quoque fallacy. (I'm sure that Snowden had nothing to do with your opinion on the matter either):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024891953#post49

I'd do more, but I'm already about to vomit.

[zappaman]

278. Oops.

[sabrina 1]

285. Do you support the US funding Ukraine, where 80% of the population opposes Gay Rights?

Didn't click those links did you? They confirm my consistent opposition to doing what you are doing, USING the rights of Women and Gays by supporting anti Gay/Women dictatorships while pretending to care about them.

YOU brought up this ongoing issue for those of us who OPPOSE the US supporting anti-Gay nations, especially the funding of them.

So, until you inform us of where you stand, I assume you support the US Funding of Anti-Gay/Women nations, such as Ukraine.

Using the rights of persecuted minorities for one's own personal reasons is one of the most despicable tactics many of us have consistently exposed, as I am doing here.

I will await your response as to where you stand on Ukraine's treatment of Gays and of the US funding of such an anti Gay nation.

[sabrina 1]

280. You are defending the use of Gay Rights as a political football? Ignoring Ukraine's 80% opposition

to Gay rights, while focusing on Russia's for political reasons? The Gay communities in both countries are denied rights. YOU apparently don't believe that Gays in Ukraine matter.

How despicable.

Thanks for taking all that time to 'investigate' me rather than Ukraine's treatment of Gays. Very telling.

Every one of those links are pointing out the exact same despicable use of Gay Rights, IGNORING the horrendous treatment of Gays in Saudi Arabia, Uganda and wherever the US HAS INTERESTS while PRETENDING to care by focusing on them ONLY when it suits them.

I am very consistent on this topic, as you have just proved, unintentionally I am sure.

Thank you for those links, as I told you already, I will continue to point out the total lack of concern for the rights of Women AND Gays by IGNORING their plight in countries the US decides to support.

You still have not condemned the treatment of Gays in Ukraine. Thereby making my point, not just about Ukraine, but as those links demonstrate, EVERY country where the US ignores their treatment of minorities and EVEN FINANCES brutal dictators, such as SAUDI ARABIA, when it suits them.

So, do you support the US funding Ukraine whose record on the rights of the LGBT community are at least as bad if not WORSE than Russia's?

You haven't said where you stand on this topic.

[NuclearDem]

283. I stand with the Russian, Ukrainian, Ugandan, and Saudi

LGBT communities, and not as human shields to deflect from completely legitimate criticism of one.

And despite your repeated bullshit accusations that I support funding and arming the Ukrainian government, you still don't have shit to prove it.

Not every single damned thread about Russian LGBT policy demands you throw in a tu quoque about Saudi Arabia.

I have never once supported financing governments hostile to their LGBT communities, nor denied the horrendous fact that the US government supports some of these countries.

You on the other hand seem to be in almost a constant state of "leave Russia alone." That's quite apparent in the Costas thread. You're certainly consistent; if the US is even partially to blame for the mistreatment of LGBT communities across the world, you'll bring it up; if it's not at all responsible, then you'll bring up where it is, no matter how irrelevant it is to the topic at hand.

Your position is not pro-LGBT, it's anti-Western. Your silence on Putin's campaign against Russia's LGBT community is damning, not even to mention your 'splaining to LGBT DUers about the subject.

[sabrina 1]

286. Now you are simply rambling. You support the US funding of Ukraine. You jumped in on the

side of someone who is known for the despicable tactic of using the rights of persecuted minorities for political purposes.

I responded to that tactic as I ALWAYS HAVE, and which you PROVED with your links. And always WILL.

You know NOTHING about me, yet you jump in to defend that DESPICABLE tactic and have still not stated your position on the funding of Ukraine, an almost totally anti Gay nation.

My position on this IS clear, and always has been. I oppose the US funding any nation that persecutes minorities, Gays, Women and other minorities.

Why is it so hard for you to simply state where you stand?

And WHY are you supporting someone who is doing exactly what many of us who have for years fought for the rights of minorities, have consistently objected to?

Your support for Zappaman puts you on the side of those who USE these persecuted minorities for their own personal political agendas.

Btw, did you go searching for his 'record' on minority rights?

Disgusting to see the defense of the use of these minorities for political purposes. Just totally despicable.

[NuclearDem]

287. "You support the US funding of Ukraine."

At any point are you going to even try to prove this? Never once--not ever--at no point--have I ever supported arming or funding the Ukrainian government. In fact, my position from the start has been that the US and Russia need to keep their hands off Ukraine.

You keep accusing me of that, and not once have you provided any fucking shred of evidence to support it.

My position on this IS clear, and always has been. I oppose the US funding any nation that persecutes minorities, Gays, Women and other minorities.

Fucking shock, so do I. And I don't even make exceptions for countries providing asylum to our whistleblowers!

Your support for Zappaman puts you on the side of those who USE these persecuted minorities for their own personal political agendas.

My position on LGBT rights has nothing to do with what any other poster says or doesn't say about it.

I'm addressing you, and instead of you addressing me, you drag zappaman into the issue.

The DU LGBT community is united in its disgust for Russian LGBT policy. Your position seems to be to 'splain to them about Saudi Arabia and Uganda, as if they don't give enough a shit about their LGBT brothers and sisters in those countries.

Concern trolling isn't concern--it's trolling.

If you want to join the rest of the Putin bootlickers in stabbing our Russian LGBT brothers and sisters in the back, go right ahead. I'm done with you. It's clear where you stand, and it's not in solidarity.

[sabrina 1]

288. You supported someone who used the despicable tactic of using the rights of persecuted minorities

for their own purposes. That is a fact and clear from your continued attempts to explain it away.

IF you supported the rights of those minorities, you would have condemned that despicable post.

DO you support the US funding of Ukraine, where 80% of the population opposes Gay Rights?

And btw, to my knowledge the US isn't funding Russia. If they are I add them to the list where I do not want MY tax dollars being spent..

[NuclearDem]

294. Wow, you must be incapable of reading.

DO you support the US funding of Ukraine, where 80% of the population opposes Gay Rights?

Here, in the second sentence in the post you replied to:

Never once--not ever--at no point--have I ever supported arming or funding the Ukrainian government.

Did you actually read it at all? Or are you just trolling again?

IF you supported the rights of those minorities, you would have condemned that despicable post.

I don't have to do shit to appeal to your standards. You've accused LGBT allies of, among other things, undermining the Sochi Olympics by calling out Russia's hate. Fuck your standards.

And btw, to my knowledge the US isn't funding Russia.

RT ad money certainly is, and you sing that network's praises whenever possible.

[sabrina 1]

295. RT doesn't run ads. Nice try, and proof again that you have

stated opinions on something you knew nothing about. The US has allowed RT to reach US Audiences. The US banned Al Jazeera under Bush, it has now been granted access to US audiences.

If you want these channels censored from US audiences, then speak to the US Government.

You have consistently supported the coup Government in Kiev, despite the presence among those most responsible for it, of far right neo nazis and anti-gay rights morons.

You have never stated until pressed that you opposed funding to that anti-Gay nation.

You jumpted in to support someone who also supports that anti-Gay government.

You personally attacked ME rather than HIM if Gay Rights was an issue for you.

I oppose the US being involved in any way with that country's coup anti gay government.

And remember it was your friend here who raised the important issue of Gay Rights but only to USE it for his own purposes. You defended that.

[zappaman]

296. Back off RT

Did you know it's "watched by over 50 million US households"?
It's true!
I read it on DU!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4363923

[zappaman]

289. Putin is a piece of shit who is doing his best to

Squash the rights of human beings who happen to be LGBT.
But, he's not an evil American so I guess it doesn't matter.

[sabrina 1]

291. Do you support the funding of an almost totally anti-Gay rights Ukraine by the US?

[zappaman]

290. Yes, I see you don't care about Putins oppression of the LGBT community.

Despicable, but not surprising.

[sabrina 1]

292. You support Ukraine, a nation where 80% of the population opposes Gay Rights.

Despicable!

I oppose our government funding and/or supporting ANY nation where minorities are denied rights.

Are we funding Russia? If so I vehemently oppose it along with Uganda, Uzbekistan and every other anti-minority rights nation we are currently funding, including Ukraine, and Russia IF we are funding that nation.

You are so informed on this issue, you must be up on which anti Gay nations the US is funding. So please provide what funding if any, the US is providing to Russsia so I can add them to my list.

[Octafish]

219. Why the constant need to smear fellow DUers, NuclearDem?

It really is a sign of what kind of mind you have.

[NuclearDem]

220. Why the constant need to stab the LGBT community in the back?

At least people like Pilger have the guts to pony up and say they consider LGBT rights a distraction. You know, own their hatred.

[Octafish]

221. Show where I've done that, otherwise it's another smear, NuclearDem.

And when that and misdirection is all you have, that's a sign of what side you're on.

[zappaman]

224. How about continually posting the writings of homophobic, anti-Semites?

Because you do that quite often.
Would you like links?

[Octafish]

227. When all you have are insults, you've got nothing zappaman.

[zappaman]

261. When all you have it deflection, we can figure out the truth.

Pointing out your sources and the writers you promote on DU is not an insult.
As to why you promote homophobic, anti-Semites on DU, I cannot say.

[Octafish]

264. No, I posted what Pilger wrote about Fascism.

You added the misdirection.

[zappaman]

267. Now you're pretending not to know you posted an anti-Semite AGAIN on DU?

Nice try.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6302659

[Octafish]

271. I thought I told you what I told SidDithers of DU, zappaman?

I've asked you, repeatedly over the years, to show what you term my "propensity for promoting and legitimizing the work of noted bigots, racists, homophobes and conspiracy theorist lunatics. You're a guy who thinks white-nationalist Paul Craig Roberts and insane homophobe Wayne Madsen are credible, and appropriate sources for use on a progressive message board."

Seeing how you fail to actually show any of that, I want these to be in the record for all DU to see:

Where I quoted Roberts when he supported Don Siegelman:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022073759


Where I quoted Madsen recently to document the business links between Bush and bin Laden:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6059251


Where I first quoted Madsen on DU2 in 2003 (earlier examples exist, but none so illustrative):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x610051


Where you smear Naomi Klein, making me think the practice is your speciality:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5318151


You will note that I did not support any theory, smear, or lie; I only posted what these people wrote. And as far I as I knew or know, none of these people are anything like what you describe, zappaman.

[zappaman]

276. I like how you pretend Madsen and Roberts aren't homophobic anti-Semites.

Why do you not care they are homophobes and anti-Semites, Octafish of DU?

[Octafish]

315. I find it telling how when I ask you to provide proof, you don't.

Why is that?

[zappaman]

318. Lol!

I post your links and you deny they are your links!

Here is a link to an article by Paul Craig Roberts that you posted.
You've posted quite a few by this piece of shit and I'd be more than happy to supply those links as well..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4504297

Roberts is a right wing white supremacist who has written repeatedly anti-disability, anti-jewish, anti-gay, anti-immigrant anti- people of color, rants for years. (and while attempting to be “pro-Islam, pro-Arab”, his assertions are rife with orientalist assumptions of Amerikan/western superiority.) His critique of U.S./Israeli policy is not part of a human rights, social justice, anti-imperialist movement for self-determination or liberation, but rather is simply an extension of his white supremacist fear that white people and Amerika are losing ground.

Roberts has written for years for VDARE (a racist publication, named for Virginia Dare, the first “white” baby to be born in the “New World”), but recently he has been published, without criticism or reference to his racist, ableist, sexist anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab trajectory by Counterpunch, ifamericansknew, antiwar.com, Democracy Now, Information Clearing House, Alternet and other “progressive” media.

In his article “Why Does Israel Want to Initiate War Between theU.S. and Iran?” (1) Roberts repeats what we’ve been hearing for years: that the U.S. government is a puppet regime of Israel. immediately contradicting himself with the refrain we’ve heard for 10 years, that Israel is trying to drag the U.S. into war with IRan, or that Israel will bomb Iran on its own. We’ve heard this from the left, the right, and from two U.S. Vice Presidents. (Cheney and Biden) and yet– no war. (Sanctions, defamations, pressure, but no war!) Does this mean that the tail doesn’t wag the dog, as has been suggested? After all, if Israel has really wanted the U.S. to go to war, or if Israel really wants to bomb Iran, if Israel really did run the show, wouldn’t this have happened years ago?

More at link about one of your favorite authors...
https://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/867/

[NuclearDem]

226. Every single time you make excuses for that fascist fuck in the Kremlin.

Every single time you deflect criticism of that homophobic warmonger by spamming the same old tired BFEE nonsense.

Every time you give a platform to Pilger, who considers LGBT rights a distraction.

[Octafish]

228. Whether by accident or design, you do the work of a disinformationist.

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." -- Eduard Bernays

Here's a PDF for you: https://archive.org/details/Propaganda1928

Keep getting better and better and you might get recognition one day.

[NuclearDem]

231. And whether by accident or design, you do the work of a Putin puppet.

Your posts are very clear on that front.

[Octafish]

232. Tag Team is so you, NuclearDem.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026086269#post62

[NuclearDem]

234. Same with you and homophobic bullshit.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5970336

Face it, you have a history, and it's not particularly pro-LGBT.

[Octafish]

235. Criticizing a professional debunker is not homophobic. Amazing Randi is undemocratic.

Even stupid people know that, NuclearDem.

[NuclearDem]

236. Science and reality aren't democratic. You don't get to vote on what's true or not.

I never said criticizing Randi is homophobic; however, your "evidence" was that Randi lied to protect the man he loves for persecution, and an LGBT DUer called you on that for the despicable tactic that it was.

[Octafish]

238. Amazing Randi smeared Rupert Sheldrake. Amazing Randi broke US immigration law.

Seems that Amazing Randi has got mental problems, too, NuclearDem. But that's his business.

You don't like the article? Tough.

[NuclearDem]

240. Once again, you are treading on some thin fucking ice.

Do you have even the slightest fucking clue as to what gay men have to deal with throughout the world? Obviously you fucking don't, or you wouldn't be shaming Randi for his actions.

What about abolitionists who hid runaway slaves? Or people who hid European Jews? They all, like Randi, broke the law and lied to authorities to protect people. Do you really want to go down that road?

That was absolutely fucking shameless of you, and it's finally nice to see your true colors come out. I originally suspected you were maybe just faux anti-imperialist who will side with whatever group happens to be the thumb in the eye of the West du jour, and consequently find yourself siding with unsavory characters, but now it's patently obvious that there is something far more sinister going on with you.

Shame on you.

[Octafish]

246. Nice smear. Show where I supported any of that.

Pretty frightening post:

Once again, you are treading on some thin fucking ice.

Do you have even the slightest fucking clue as to what gay men have to deal with throughout the world? Obviously you fucking don't, or you wouldn't be shaming Randi for his actions.

What about abolitionists who hid runaway slaves? Or people who hid European Jews? They all, like Randi, broke the law and lied to authorities to protect people. Do you really want to go down that road?

That was absolutely fucking shameless of you, and it's finally nice to see your true colors come out. I originally suspected you were maybe just faux anti-imperialist who will side with whatever group happens to be the thumb in the eye of the West du jour, and consequently find yourself siding with unsavory characters, but now it's patently obvious that there is something far more sinister going on with you.

-- NuclearDem

Seeing how you can't show I'm any of that, you mention it anyway.

[NuclearDem]

248. You shamed Randi for lying to immigration about Alvarez.

Randi lied to protect him, but all that matters to you is that he lied. Following that train of thought, all that would've mattered to you about the abolitionists would have been that they violated fugitive slave laws. All that would've mattered to you in Europe is how people lied to fascist authorities.

Frankly, I've just come to expect this from you. When someone runs contrary to your line of thinking, you run shameless and utterly unfounded attacks accusing them of being anything from liars to shills to criminals, but when someone calls you on it, often by linking to your own damn writings, all of a sudden you're the victim of a "smear."

It's just gotten sad at this point.

[Octafish]

250. No shaming, other than the facts in the articles.

Show where I said any of that.

Your agenda is showing, NuclearDem.

[NuclearDem]

251. I'm done here.

This is absolutely fucking pointless if you're just going to assume I'm an idiot and can't read subtext.

Good luck with whatever reality you live in.

[Octafish]

253. Good riddance.

You didn't add anything worth reading, anyway, NuclearDem.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

255. Well, the OP wasn't worth reading either.

Considering you had to admit that Pilger lied in it.

[Octafish]

256. Speaking of never adding anything.

Show the lie. But that's what you want to talk about.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

257. Post 174.

It's your post.

And for a more complete documentation of Pilger's lies, please see Post 53. That one's mine.

[Octafish]

262. See this post.

The point, from a friend and once, if I'm not mistaken, current DUer:

Will Congress Finally Cut Them Off?

Bush Family War Profiteering

by EVELYN PRINGLE
CounterPunch, APRIL 12, 2007

EXCERPT...

According to the January 14, 2007 LA Times, Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, says that, starting with the anti-terrorism appropriation a week after the 9/11 attacks, he estimates the US has spent $400 billion fighting terrorism through fiscal 2006, which ended on September 30, 2006.

In January 2007, Marine Corps spokeswoman, Lt Col Roseann Lynch, told Reuters that the war in Iraq is costing about $4.5 billion a month for military "operating costs," which did not include new weapons or equipment.

Since this war on terror was declared following 9/11, the pay levels for the CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors have doubled. The average compensation rose from $3.6 million during the period of 1998-2001, to $7.2 million during the period of 2002-2005, according to an August 2006, report entitled, "Executive Excess 2006," by the Washington-based, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Boston-based, United for a Fair Economy.

This study found that since 9/11, the 34 defense CEOs have pocketed a combined total of $984 million, or enough, the report says, to cover the wages for more than a million Iraqis for a year. In 2005, the average total compensation for the CEOs of large US corporations was only 6% above 2001 figures, while defense CEOs pay was 108% higher.

But the last name of one family, which is literally amassing a fortune over the backs of our dead heroes, matches that of the man holding the purse strings in the White House. On December 11, 2003, the Financial Times reported that three people had told the Times that they had seen letters written by Neil Bush that recommended business ventures in the Middle East, promoted by New Bridges Strategies, a firm set up by President Bush’s former campaign manager, who quit his Bush appointed government job as the head of FEMA, three weeks before the war in Iraq began.

Neil Bush was paid an annual fee to "help companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Times said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/12/bush-family-war-profiteering/

That was 2007. yet, the Department of Justice has failed to prosecute these war profiteers? Any idea why?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

281. I literally have no idea where you are going with this or how it's relevant to our discussion. nt

[zappaman]

265. Not this first time this DUer has used a homophobic author to make a point.

There is a record.

[Octafish]

266. That is a smear, zappaman.

Otherwise I'd have more than your "word" on it. Not that your word is worth anything in real life, either.

[zappaman]

268. Would you like links to all the homophobes and anti-Semites you promote on DU?

I've done it before, but happy to do so again.

[Octafish]

270. Are you on a Tag Team mission? Go ahead.

In the meantime:

Will Congress Finally Cut Them Off?

Bush Family War Profiteering

by EVELYN PRINGLE
CounterPunch, APRIL 12, 2007

EXCERPT...

The Carlyle Group was best known for buying defense companies and doubling or tripling their value and was already heavily supported by defense contracts. But in 2002, the firm received $677 million in government contracts, and by 2003, its contracts were worth $2.1 billion.

Prior to 9/11, some Carlyle companies were not doing so well. For instance, the future of Vought Aircraft looked dismal when the company laid off 20% of its employees. But business was booming shortly after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, and the company received over $1 billion in defense contracts.

The Bush family’s connections to the Osama bin Laden’s family seem almost surreal. On September 28, 2001, two weeks after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal reported that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm."

As a representative of Carlyle, one of the investors that Bush brought to Carlyle was the Bin Laden Group, a construction company owned by Osama’s family. The bin Ladens have been called the Rockefellers of the Middle East, and the father, Mohammed, has reportedly amassed a $5 billion empire. According the Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq bin Laden to invest $2 million with Carlyle.

The Journal found that Bush had met with the bin Ladens at least twice between 1998 and 2000. On September 27, 2001, the Journal reported that it had confirmed that a meeting took place between Bush Senior and the bin Laden family through Senior’s Chief of Staff, Jean Becker, but only after the reporter showed her a thank you note that was written and sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after the meeting.

The current President’s little publicized affiliation with the bin Laden family goes back to his days with Arbusto oil when Salem bin Laden funneled money through James Bath to bail out that particular failed company.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/12/bush-family-war-profiteering/

You know why I bother to reply to you and your Tag Team mates, zappaman? LOL.

[zappaman]

274. Just because more than one DUer has noticed

Your promotion of homophobes and ant-Semites, doesn't make it a tag team.

Start here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6051960

Then you can tell us why we should take an anti-Semite like "Mearsheimer seriously.

[Octafish]

277. Why smear me over what Mearsheimer wrote? Take it out on him. That's the Fascist thing to do.

Here's why I defend Mearsheimer and everything he's published: That's the Democratic thing to do.

[zappaman]

279. Yes, it's democratic to defend anti-semitism according to you.

[Octafish]

311. Repeatedly misstating what I write is a propagandist's technique.

To make it clear: Mearsheimer has a right to state what he wants. I may or may not agree with it.

Going by what you've posted over this thread and over the years, no matter how much you try, you have no idea what that means.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x274505

[zappaman]

312. Hey, you're the one who called a banned anti-Semite troll a "great DUer"

Not me.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5888735

Fire Walk With Me was banned for being an anti-Semite. Hardly someone I would call a "great DUer".
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=167827&sub=trans

Odd that you would refer to him that way well after he was banned.
Why you would do that, i cannot say.
Maybe he liked puppies?

[Octafish]

313. Misrepresentation is the mark of a propagandist.

Are you known for anything, zappaman?

[zappaman]

316. What do you call someone who denies their own words, Octafish of DU?

[Octafish]

317. Why can't you prove what you say? You say I'm a horrible person, zappaman.

So, show.

[zappaman]

320. No I didn't say you were a horrible person.

Why are you making things up?
So, show.

[Maedhros]

71. Thank you for supplying links.

The "$5 Billion to Fund The Rebels" claim certainly appears a bit shaky, though State Department denials are not necessarily to be taken as true.

The situation surrounding the collapse of Yanukovych's government could be described as a "coup" given that his impeachment and exile took place amidst violent demonstrations. A semantic argument over the term "coup" is not productive, though.

The Wikipedia link you provide as evidence against participation in Ukraine's government by neo-nazis is far too limited in scope to serve as proof of what you claim.

Quibbling over WWII casualties is a ridiculous argument and I refuse to participate, so I will skip that.

It appears that the international observers involved in the 2014 referendum included more than just the EODE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014#International_observers

The Crimean election spokesman Mikhail Malyshev reported that 135 international observers from 23 countries and 1,240 local observers were registered and 623 accredited journalists from 169 international media outlets were invited.[103][108][109][110]

103. http://rt.com/news/crimea-independence-referendum-poll-110/
108. http://news.am/eng/news/199152.html
109. http://en.c-inform.info/mainnews/id/11
110. http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/politics/op-ed-the-crimea-referendum-and-international-observers/article/377812

The OSCE was not present, which is problematic. Russian sources should be taken with a grain of salt as well.

Here is the report of a Western news source regarding the referendum (NOTE: I make no claims regarding the viability of this source):

http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-the-western-media-wont-tell-you-crimean-tatars-and-ukrainians-also-voted-to-join-russia/5373989

The observer mission reports which include members of theEuropean Parliament have been casually ignored by the mainstream Western media:

Mateus Piskorkski, the leader of the European observers’ mission and Polish MP: “Our observers have not registered any violations of voting rules.”

Ewald Stadler, member of the European Parliament, dispelled the “referendum at gunpoint” myth: “I haven’t seen anything even resembling pressure… People themselves want to have their say.”

Pavel Chernev: Bulgarian member of parliament: “Organization and procedures are 100 percent in line with the European standards,” he added.

Johann Gudenus, member of the Vienna Municipal Council: “Our opinion is – if people want to decide their future, they should have the right to do that and the international community should respect that. There is a goal of people in Crimea to vote about their own future. Of course, Kiev is not happy about that, but still they have to accept and to respect the vote of people in Crimea”.

Serbian observer Milenko Baborats “People freely expressed their will in the most democratic way, wherever we were… During the day we didn’t see a single serious violation of legitimacy of the process,”

Srdja Trifkovic, prominent and observer from Serbia: “The presence of troops on the streets is virtually non-existent and the only thing resembling any such thing is the unarmed middle-aged Cossacks who are positioned outside the parliament building in Simferopol. But if you look at the people both at the voting stations and in the streets, like on Yalta’s sea front yesterday afternoon, frankly I think you would feel more tense in south Chicago or in New York’s Harlem than anywhere round here,” he said. (For more details see Crimean ‘Referendum at Gunpoint’ is a Myth – International Observers By Global Research News, March 17, 2014)

Not 100% iron clad, but in the absence of proof of coercion or vote tampering, it serves to suggest that there were indeed independent observers present and the referendum was valid.

As for the "invasion", there certainly was a not-so-covert Russian military operation. Pilger is engaging in a semantic argument.

Pilger is clearly not objective on this issue. As for myself, I see the entire situation as problematic. Events surrounding the regime change in Ukraine are troubling in a number of ways, and U.S/NATO meddling cannot be ruled out. Proof is needed, though, before accusations are leveled. Russia is acting solely from national interest - it cannot afford to lose its Black Sea port. That doesn't excuse their actions, however.

BTW, this is what Russia historically does - its empire fragments, then a charismatic autocrat re-conquers what was lost (and then some). Then it fragments again, and the cycle repeats.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

72. You're very welcome. nt

[sabrina 1]

41. What lies did Pilger tell? Could you link to them with documentation? You did say they

are 'documented' no? Your opinion alone is pretty worthless as are the opinions of all posters here. IF you can document the lies you are talking about, that would contributed something to the discussion. Must attacking messengers contributes nothing of any value.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

59. Again, Post 53. nt

[Octafish]

123. Which don't address the issue, does it? USA overthrew democracy in Ukraine.

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

By John J. Mearsheimer
Foreign Affairs, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 ISSUE

ccording to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.

Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.

But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

CONTINUED...

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault

[Tommy_Carcetti]

124. If you paste together a narrative of lies, such as the one I've pointed out on the Pilger piece...

....you can argue anything without respect to the facts.

[Octafish]

129. You don't know who John Mearsheimer is, do you?

Don't Arm Ukraine

By JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER
Opinion, The New York Times, FEB. 8, 2015

The Ukraine crisis is almost a year old and Russia is winning. The separatists in eastern Ukraine are gaining ground and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, shows no signs of backing down in the face of Western economic sanctions.

Unsurprisingly, a growing chorus of voices in the United States is calling for arming Ukraine. A recent report from three leading American think tanks endorses sending Kiev advanced weaponry, and the White House’s nominee for secretary of defense, Ashton B. Carter, said last week to the Senate armed services committee, “I very much incline in that direction.”

They are wrong. Going down that road would be a huge mistake for the United States, NATO and Ukraine itself. Sending weapons to Ukraine will not rescue its army and will instead lead to an escalation in the fighting. Such a step is especially dangerous because Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and is seeking to defend a vital strategic interest.

There is no question that Ukraine’s military is badly outgunned by the separatists, who have Russian troops and weapons on their side. Because the balance of power decisively favors Moscow, Washington would have to send large amounts of equipment for Ukraine’s army to have a fighting chance.

But the conflict will not end there. Russia would counter-escalate, taking away any temporary benefit Kiev might get from American arms. The authors of the think tank study concede this, noting that “even with enormous support from the West, the Ukrainian Army will not be able to defeat a determined attack by the Russian military.” In short, the United States cannot win an arms race with Russia over Ukraine and thereby ensure Russia’s defeat on the battlefield.

Proponents of arming Ukraine have a second line of argument. The key to success, they maintain, is not to defeat Russia militarily, but to raise the costs of fighting to the point where Mr. Putin will cave. The pain will supposedly compel Moscow to withdraw its troops from Ukraine and allow it to join the European Union and NATO and become an ally of the West.

This coercive strategy is also unlikely to work, no matter how much punishment the West inflicts. What advocates of arming Ukraine fail to understand is that Russian leaders believe their country’s core strategic interests are at stake in Ukraine; they are unlikely to give ground, even if it means absorbing huge costs.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/dont-arm-ukraine.html?_r=0

You're exposed, Tommy_Carcetti.

[zappaman]

133. Posting writings from anti-semites again, Octafish of DU?

Seems to be a habit of yours.

"Rather unbelievably (or believably, depending on where you sit) Mearsheimer has written an endorsement of Atzmon's new book, "The Wandering Who?" Here is what Mearsheimer says about Atzmon:

Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it incredibly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of their 'Jewishness.' Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism (blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering (the threat of another Holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim. As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish. The Wandering Who? Should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.'

In this new book, Atzmon suggests, among other things, that scholars should reopen the question of medieval blood libels leveled against Jews-- accusations that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make matzo, and which provoked countless massacres of Jews in many different countries.

Gliad Atzmon, by the way, is also on record saying this:

"I believe that from certain ideological perspective, Israel is actually far worse than Nazi Germany."

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/john-mearsheimer-endorses-a-hitler-apologist-and-holocaust-revisionist/245518/

You're exposed, Octafish of DU.

[Octafish]

137. Except you don't show he's any of that. So, all you got is a smear, zappaman.

You've been long exposed, zappaman.

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10022194573#post586

[zappaman]

138. I have no idea why you like to post anti-Semites on DU, Octafish.

Perhaps you can explain?

[Octafish]

157. When you got nothing, resort to insult.

zappaman.

[zappaman]

170. Its not an insult to point out how you like posting articles from anti-Semites and homophobes.

It's a fact.
I have no idea why you post articles from homophobic anti-Semites, but I guess you have your reasons..

[Tommy_Carcetti]

147. Someone you conveniently use in an attempt to change the conversation?

Here's the thing.

You post the Pilger post that contains numerous documentable falsehoods.

I reply by pointing out that he's lying.

You act with great offense that I could be calling Pilger a liar and demand proof of his lies.

I provide proof of Pilger's lies.

You don't address the actual lies other than to claim that Pilger is using "Top Secret" information and then go on a cut and paste binge that doesn't actually address the factual basis of the claims Pilger is making.

So I'll ask you once again--do you have any evidence to support Pilger's claims that in 2014, President Obama authorized the lump sum payment of $5 billion to finance an overthrow of the Ukrainian government?

Please don't tell me that it's all "Top Secret" because that just means you don't have anything to support your position.

Oh, and I'm "exposed"? Dare I ask what I'm apparently "exposed" as?

[Octafish]

158. No, you waste time posting a $5 Billion straw man again and again.

Mearsheimer is an expert in the field of international relations. That's why he teaches at University of Chicago and the New York Times gives him space to explain his thoughts.

I'd call him a "Pundit," but that term has been co-opted by shitstains, wankers and other assorted assholes

[Tommy_Carcetti]

159. You're claiming Pilger's own quote on the $5 billion is a strawman?

Because I've been quoting him directly on that one, and you don't seem to want to explain it.

I don't think you know the definition of the word "strawman."

[Octafish]

161. Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1547206

Unlike your sideshow, there's information there that supports Pilger and his thesis that the USA is behaving like a fascist state.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

162. Oh dear Lord.

Do you have a rotating set of links you throw out as non-sequiturs whenever you feel you can't honestly answer a question?

Is there evidence to support Pilger's claim that "this reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government"?

Yes or no.

Posting a link to a DU post from 2006 is not an answer.

[Octafish]

165. Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x872755

That one's from 2007. It shows the NAZI influence on USA's secret government goes back way before 1945 and runs through to the present day.

Come to think of it, the information also shows how much you've missed, Tommy_Carcetti.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

166. You know, at this point I'm thinking you are some Andy Kauffman-esqe caricature....

.....of a conspiracy theorist.

Of course, a link to a 2007 article about what you claim happened in 2014 works so much better.

[Octafish]

171. Know your BFEE: War and Oil are just two longtime Main Lines of Business

From 2008:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2596898

BTW: Insults don't mask Ignorance, Tommy_Carcetti.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

173. Okay, we've narrowed the gap to six years now.

2014--that's when Pilger claims President Obama authorized $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

Do you have any articles from 2014? (Let's skip 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, okay?_

[Octafish]

183. Do I have to spell it out for you? The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.

Generation upon generation, knowing only service to power and property.



Kevin Phillips called them a ''multigenerational family of fibbers.''

The Barreling Bushes

Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest

by Kevin Phillips
Published on Sunday, January 11, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

EXCERPT...

During these years, Bush's four sons - George W., Jeb, Neil and Marvin - were following in the family footsteps, lining up business deals with Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini moneymen and cozying up to BCCI. The Middle East was becoming a convenient family money spigot.

Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds.

In the late 1980s, after several failed oil ventures, the future 43rd president let the ailing oil business in which he was a major stockholder and chairman be bought out by another foreign-influenced operation, Harken Energy. The Wall Street Journal commented in 1991, "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken - all since George W. Bush came on board - likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

Other hints of cronyism came in 1990 when inexperienced Harken got a major contract to drill in the Persian Gulf for the government of Bahrain. Time magazine reporters Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in their book "The Outlaw Bank," concluded "that Mahfouz, or other BCCI players, must have had a hand in steering the oil-drilling contract to the president's son." The web entangling the Bush presidencies was already being spun.

CONTINUED...

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kevin_phillips.htm

The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.

And they are the ones* screwing America now.

What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.



Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.

* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.

Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.

And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, as planned in 1933, their weapon since Pruneface made his first payment to the Ayatollah has been "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans, that means Trickle-Down.

Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal

By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times

Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.

Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.

Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.

JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.

CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html

And Americans wonder why Wall Street gets ahead from wars without end.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

187. Don't you see? He was only doing it to fool Lloyd Braun!

So the Bushes had kids, and that means President Obama paid $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government in 2014.

I mean, naturally.

You know what? It all makes perfect sense now!

[Octafish]

190. No, it just shows what you know, Tommy_Carcetti.

Which is a lot about something, but not much about secret government and fascism.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

191. Dude, you are the unsexiest Ygritte I've ever seen.

[zappaman]

172. "Mearsheimer is an expert in the field of international relations." And an anti-Semite.

Guess that part doesn't bother you, but it bothers me and I'll bet it would bother more than a few DUers.

[Octafish]

175. You sound so scary, zappaman. Show where Mearsheimer is an anti-Semite.

[zappaman]

177. Reply #133

And I'm not sure why you are scared since we know you are "afraid of no man!"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4337158

The big question is why you promote anti-Semitic writers on DU?
If I didn't know you better, I'd say you are afraid to reveal why you do so...

[Octafish]

184. So you have no evidence. Then why call me an anti-Semite, zappaman?

That's what a smear artist does.

Can a smear artist truly be a man, zappaman?

[zappaman]

195. I didn't call you an anti-Semite, Octafish.

You know I didn't, but as usual, you want to avoid the question.
Again, why do you promote homophobic, anti-Semitic writers on DU?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Neo-liberal Fascism masks itself with the trappings of Democracy.

But, it's really the same old oligarchy coupled with the military.

[truebluegreen]

13. Yup. Empire over community, always. nt

[Octafish]

14. People are waking up to the undemocratic nature of US politics.

There are a ridiculous number of people on DU trying to shut down discussion of this topic by smearing two important journalists who don't take sides, they report what they see and think.

And it really is the same old oligarchy coupled with the military, Tierra_y_Libertad. LBJ changed things from "peace and prosperity for all" to "money trumps peace" the day after the funeral:

The Nation magazine wanted to know "Why don't Americans know what really happened in Vietnam?" Interesting read, it brings up how much USA uses the volunteer military and observes the corporate owned news media don't want to bring that up so that people continue to thank the troops for their service without wondering why they're tasked with missions in 133 countries around the world. What the article missed and people need to know:

JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...

The 1,000 advisors were the beginning. All US military personnel were to be out of the country by the end of 1965, reported James K. Galbraith.

Then in NSAM 273, four days after the assassination, the day after the funeral, LBJ changes the policy to stay and support South Vietnam in its "contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy."

OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026226003

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. If they are waking up, we can expect a lot more flagwaving and scary bogeymen to appear

to counter the rumors that America isn't the saintly democracy it is (falsely) advertised to be.

[Rex]

37. Yeah one in here, poor little fella is trying as hard as he can.

Strange that one would want to defend fascism in another country. Strange hobby.

[Rex]

16. I read this article last year and was wondering what it was about, thanks for the info.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/the-neo-nazi-question-in_b_4938747.html

It isn't too surprising that conservative outlets like FOX News would downplay Russian allegations but the so-called "liberal" press has also contributed to the American disinformation campaign. Celestine Bohlen from The New York Times considers harsh epithets, like the word "neo-Nazi," which Putin has hurled at the demonstrators in Kiev as part of a Russian propaganda effort to tarnish Ukraine's revolutionary struggle against authoritarianism.

Yet after simply Googling the terms "Ukraine" and "Neo-Nazi," the official position of the United States government along with the stance taken by many in the American media both now seem quite dubious, if not downright ridiculous, especially considering that one would be hard-pressed to machinate the lineup that now dominates Ukraine's ministry posts.

For starters, Andriy Parubiy, the new secretary of Ukraine's security council, was a co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), otherwise known as Svoboda. And his deputy, Dmytro Yarosh, is the leader of a party called the Right Sector which, according to historian Timothy Stanley, "flies the old flag of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at its rallies."

I haven't kept up with the war going on between Russia and the Ukraine. Though this article made me wonder what kind of government was running things.

[Octafish]

19. Amazing cast of nefarious characters.

You got them pegged, Rex.

In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia

Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world

John Pilger
Guardian, 13 May 2014

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".

SNIP...

Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

SNIP...

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of "special units" from the CIA and FBI setting up a "security structure" that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.

SNIP...

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta's defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on "insurgents" would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow "trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation", according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama's grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its "remarkable restraint" after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is "duly elected". As Henry Kissinger once said: "It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true."

In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as "murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia's "undeclared war". For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger

Can you believe the smears against this guy? It's like living in 1933 Germany.

[Rex]

23. Well I did not know what to believe, neo-nazis in charge of Ukraine? Yikes!

But as the article says, all one has to do is 'google' or in most cases...just open up wiki and type in the names. Yep, looks bad for both Russia and Ukraine.

Svoboda (political party) - wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_%28political_party%29 - RWing fascists.

Seems both countries are in for a bloody battlefield. Nothing good can come from a cold war dictator on one side and neo-nazis on the other. Just dead innocent people caught in the crosshairs.

I feel a great amount of sympathy toward the people of both countries.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

25. Little problem there.

Svoboda's not "in charge" of Ukraine.

They aren't even in the governing cabinet.

Do a little more Googling and Wikiing.

[Rex]

28. Yes now they are on their 5th president in Ukraine. Another RWing crook it appears.

"In September 2005, highly publicized mutual allegations of corruption erupted between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko involving the privatizations of state-owned firms.[1] Poroshenko, for example, was accused of defending the interests of Viktor Pinchuk, who had acquired state firm Nikopol Ferroalloy for $80 million, independently valued at $1 billion.[29] In response to the allegations, Yushchenko dismissed his entire cabinet of ministers, including Poroshenko and Tymoshenko.[30] State prosecutors dismissed an abuse of power investigation against Poroshenko the following month,[31] immediately after Yushchenko dismissed Svyatoslav Piskun, General Prosecutor of Ukraine. Piskun claimed that he was sacked because he refused to institute criminal proceedings against Tymoshenko and refused to drop proceedings against Poroshenko.[32]

In the March 2006 parliamentary election Poroshenko was re-elected to the Ukrainian parliament with the support of Our Ukraine electoral bloc.[18] He chaired the parliamentary Committee on Finance and Banking. Allegedly, since Poroshenko claimed the post of Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament for himself, the Socialist Party of Ukraine chose to be part of the Alliance of National Unity because it was promised that their party leader, Oleksandr Moroz, would be elected chairman if the coalition were formed.[30] This left Poroshenko's Our Ukraine and their ally Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc out of the Government."

So I am supposed to feel warm and fuzzy because another RWing criminal has control over Ukriane? Also your pretending that political groups just vanish and no longer have any influence is amusing.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

30. What are you talking about?

None of Ukraine's presidents have ever been Svoboda.

[Rex]

31. What are you talking about?

I said no such thing, why are you playing CYA for RWing leaders?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

33. You claimed Svoboda was "in charge" of Ukraine, I called you on it....

...and you responded by saying how Ukraine's on its fifth president and noted issues of potential corruption. Which I mean....okay?

Unless you just wanted to quickly change topics after I called you on your false claim and don't want to admit you are wrong after lecturing us all about using Google.

[Rex]

36. So you are okay with the 5th president being a RWing criminal, thanks that was what i wanted to know

Us all? You seem to be the only one in this thread trying to cover for RWing leaders. The rest of us are talking about influence and control over the country known as Ukraine.

I understand if it makes you mad all these facts being presented and you not a single link of proof to refute them with. Seriously, we don't care (the people in this thread) you are an apologist for RWing leadership in other countries. We get that.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

56. I'm not a Ukrainian citizen so obviously I didn't vote for Poroshenko.

I'm too far removed domestically from judging his performance as a Ukrainian president so I can't really offer an opinion on him. Honestly, it's not my place.

And I honestly don't know whether Poroshenko would fall under right, left or center in the political spectrum as we view it from American eyes. Most accounts place him somewhere around the middle. Certainly, he's not a member of the far-right political parties such as Svoboda or Right Sector, so I don't know where you are coming from in terms of labeling him "right wing", but clearly you are attempting to move the goal posts after I called you on your claims that Svoboda was "in charge" in Ukraine.

Is he corrupt? I don't know. Corruption is a big problem in Ukraine, before and after Yanukovych, but I don't have enough knowledge regarding Poroshenko so I'm not going to make any rash asssumptions one way or the other.

The problem I see here is that you claimed Svoboda was "in charge" of Ukraine and I pointed out that it wasn't, and now you are desperately attempting to save face instead of simply admitting you were wrong.

[sabrina 1]

51. "Is the US backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine"

Is the US backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?

Right Sector is a shadowy syndicate of self-described “autonomous nationalists” identified by their skinhead style of dress, ascetic lifestyle, and fascination with street violence. Armed with riot shields and clubs, the group’s cadres have manned the front lines of the Euromaidan battles this month, filling the air with their signature chant: “Ukraine above all!” In a recent Right Sector propaganda video [embedded at the bottom of this article], the group promised to fight “against degeneration and totalitarian liberalism, for traditional national morality and family values.” With Svoboda linked to a constellation of international neo-fascist parties through the Alliance of European National Movements, Right Sector is promising to lead its army of aimless, disillusioned young men on “a great European Reconquest.”

Svoboda’s openly pro-Nazi politics have not deterred Senator John McCain from addressing a EuroMaidan rally alongside Tyahnybok, nor did it prevent Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland from enjoying a friendly meeting with the Svoboda leader this February. Eager to fend off accusations of anti-Semitism, the Svoboda leader recently hosted the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine. “I would like to ask Israelis to also respect our patriotic feelings,” Tyahnybok has remarked. “Probably each party in the [Israeli] Knesset is nationalist. With God’s help, let it be this way for us too.”

In a leaked phone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain “on the outside,” but to consult with the US’s replacement for Yanukovich, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “four times a week.” At a December 5, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation Conference, Nuland boasted that the US had invested $5 billion to “build democratic skills and institutions” in Ukraine, though she did not offer any details.

I guess they're keeping the Neo Nazi in the background, 'consulting with the US's replacement 'our guy Yatze' four times a week'.

Wow, and this is where OUR tax dollars going! No wonder they are working so hard to hide all this from the American people.

Adding the photo evidence of two US Senators posing with the neo Nazi leader who is apparently working behind the scenes of the Kiev Government:



U.S. Senator John McCain, center, speaks as Democratic senator from the state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, left, and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok, right, stand around him during a Pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013.

Just a little over a year ago! How nice!

[Octafish]

29. Ukraine War: A Reverse Cuban Missile Crisis

Guided by an aggressive neocon “regime change” strategy, the United States has stumbled into a potential military confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, a dangerous predicament that could become a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse, as ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk explains.

By William R. Polk
ConsortiumNews, February 24, 2015

In a rather ghastly Nineteenth Century experiment, a biologist by the name of Heinzmann found that if he placed a frog in boiling water, the frog immediately leapt out but that if he placed the frog in tepid water and then gradually heated it, the frog stayed put until he was scalded to death.

Are we like the frog? I see disturbing elements of that process today as we watch events unfold in the Ukraine confrontation. They profoundly frighten me and I believe they should frighten everyone. But they are so gradual that we do not see a specific moment in which we must jump or perish.

So here briefly, let me lay out the process of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and show how the process of that crisis compares with what we face today over the Ukraine.

Three elements stand out in the Cuban Missile Crisis: 1) Relations between the USSR and the U.S. were already “on the edge” before they reached the crisis stage; each of us had huge numbers of weapons of mass destruction aimed at the other. 2) The USSR precipitated the Crisis by advancing into Cuba, a country the U.S. had considered part of its “area of dominance” since the promulgation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. 3) Some military and civilian officials and influential private citizens in both countries argued that the other side would “blink” if sufficient pressure was put on it.

Allow me to point out that I had a (very uncomfortable) ringside seat in the Crisis. I was one of three members of the “Crisis Management Committee” that oversaw the unfolding events.

On the Monday of the week of Oct. 22, 1962, I sat with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Under Secretary George Ball, Counselor and Chairman of the Policy Planning Council Walt Rostow and Under Secretary for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson and listened to President John F. Kennedy’s speech to which we all had contributed.

The account Kennedy laid out was literally terrifying to those who understood what a nuclear confrontation meant. Those of us in that room obviously did. We were each “cleared” for everything America then knew. And we each knew what our government was seeking — getting the Russian missiles out of Cuba. Finally, we were poised to do that by force if the Russians did not remove them.

Previous to that day, I had urged that we remove our “Jupiter” missiles from Turkey. This was important, I argued, because they were “offensive” rather than “defensive” weapons. The reason for this distinction was that they were obsolescent, liquid-fired rockets that required a relatively long time to fire; thus, they could only be used for a first strike. Otherwise they would be destroyed before they could be fired.

The Russians rightly regarded them as a threat. Getting them out enabled Chairman Nikita Khrushchev to remove the Russian missiles without suffering an unacceptable degree of humiliation and risking a coup d’état.

Then, following the end of the crisis, I wrote the “talking paper” for a review of the crisis, held at the Council on Foreign Relations, with all the involved senior U.S. officials in which we carefully reviewed the “lessons” of the crisis. What I write below in part derives from our consideration in that meeting. That is, it is essentially the consensus of those who were most deeply involved in the crisis.

CONTINUED...

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/24/ukraine-war-a-reverse-cuban-missile-crisis/

They don't care who picks up the tab, Rex. They're skipping out before the waiter returns like they did during the S&L crisis... and Iran Contra... and lying the USA into Iraq thrice... and the Bank Bailout of 2008...

[Rex]

32. It is amusing, just to defend their pony people here will defend RWing leaders in other countries.

Good to know.

[KoKo]

42. yes....

I had a video hidden in V&MM saying Pilger was "CT." It was his post talking about about how dangerous the situation in Ukraine is and that we were in danger of starting a Nuclear Confrontation with Russia that would not end well. Some of the juror's responses seemed to think the word "Nuclear" in the Video Title of his talk meant that both I and Pilger were promoting "CT" and that was also the Alerter's view. Pilger is on some DU'ers "Unapproved List" for DU readers.

[sabrina 1]

44. There really is no way to deny the neo-Nazi elements in the Ukraine government. So the default

position is always to attack the messengers. But no matter how much the messengers are attacked, it doesn't remove the neo-Nazis from the Coup Government in Kiev.

I don't know why they try to so hard to deny FACTS. Imo, it would be better to admit that obvious, and then try to explain it away somehow.

The fact that they keep denying it is why they have zero credibility.

We can't erase the phots of our Senators posing with the leader of the neo-Nazi party.

Looks to me like THEY didn't care.

[daleanime]

26. bookmarked

for later study.

[Octafish]

97. The Post-9/11 Homeland Security Industrial Complex Profiteers and Endless War

Hate adding to anyone's reading without good reason:

James Risen: The Post-9/11 Homeland Security Industrial Complex Profiteers and Endless War

Unintimidated by the efforts of two administrations to force him to reveal a confidential source who disclosed the betrayal of the public by the government, Pulitzer Prize- winning New York Times reporter James Risen exposes more about the reality of greed, power and endless war in his new book, Pay Any Price.

Sunday, 16 November 2014 00:00
By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview

EXCERPT...

Mark Karlin: In your third chapter, you state that the "corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror." You refer to these people as post-9/11, corporate entrepreneurs and opportunists. Can you provide a couple of brief examples?

James Risen: In chapter three, I focus on corporate leaders who have largely tried to avoid the limelight, but have nonetheless been among those who have profited the most from the war on terror. People like the Blue brothers, whose company, General Atomics, has produced the Predator and Reaper drones, the signature weapons of the global war on terror.

I also write about J. Philip London, executive chairman of CACI, the huge defense and intelligence contractor that was caught up in the Abu Ghraib scandal but then managed to continue to thrive in the war on terror, and Robert McKeon, a clever Wall Street maven who acquired Dyncorp as it profited from rival Blackwater's problems. McKeon eventually committed suicide, and the sale of assets by his estate after his death provided a glimpse at the massive wealth accumulated by the corporate leaders who benefit from being on the top rung of the war on terror.

Your prologue refers to the "homeland security-industrial" complex (including the related wars since 9/11) costing an estimated $4 trillion. Where did all that money go?

James Risen: The Homeland Security Industrial Complex operates differently than the traditional Military Industrial Complex. Instead of spending on ships, airplanes and other big weapons systems, much of the money goes to secretive intelligence contractors who perform secret counterterrorism work for the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies. Because it is all classified, there is no public debate about the massive amounts of money being poured into these contractors. And with little oversight, there is no way to determine whether these contractors have performed well or poorly. Four trillion dollars is the best estimate for the total price tag of the war on terror, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much of it has gone to shadowy contractors. It is one of the largest transfers of wealth in American history, and yet it has gone largely unnoticed.

CONTINUED...

http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/27425-james-risen-the-post-9-11-homeland-security-industrial-complex-profiteers-and-endless-war

Thank you for reading, daleanime!

[daleanime]

98. Trust me, don't worry about adding to my list.....

I've been driving the local public library a little bonkers lately.

[KoKo]

160. Recommend...

[Javaman]

34. as I have been saying for a quite a few years now...

we live under fascism with a smiley face.

[Octafish]

229. Smile. Don't believe what your eyes and ears tell you.

Just because the warmongers and banksters go unpunished and good people like Siegelman and Manning are in prison and the rest of us are considered suspects until proven innocent doesn't mean it's not what it is.

Obama Adviser Cass Sunstein Rejects Prosecution of “Non-Egregious” Bush Crimes

by jonathanturley, 1, July 21, 2008

With many Democrats still fuming over the refusal of Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow even impeachment hearings into detailed allegations of crimes by President Bush in office, close Obama adviser (and University of Chicago Law Professor) Cass Sunstein recently rejected the notion of prosecuting Bush officials for crimes such as torture and unlawful surveillance. After Sen. Obama’s unpopular vote on the FISA bill, it has triggered a blogger backlash — raising questions about the commitment of the Democrats to do anything other than taking office and reaping the benefits of power.

The exchange with Sunstein was detailed by The Nation’s Ari Melber. Melber wrote that Sunstein rejected any such prosecution:

Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, [Sunstein] argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it.

Sunstein did add that “egregious crimes should not be ignored,” according to one site, click here. It is entirely unclear what that means since some of us take the views that any crimes committed by the government are egregious. Those non-egregious crimes are precisely what worries many lawyers who were looking for a simple commitment to prosecute crimes committed by the government.

We will have to wait for a further response from Sunstein, but liberal groups are up in arms given his close association with Sen. Obama.

Sunstein and I were on opposite sides on the Clinton impeachment. While I voted for Clinton and came from a well-known democratic family in Chicago, I believe (and still believed) that Clinton was rightfully impeached for lying under oath. One of the objections that I made in an academic writing at the time was that some professors seemed to accept that Clinton did commit perjury but argued that it should not have been prosecuted as an impeachable offense — or a criminal offense. As with the current controversy, many argued that some crimes could be prosecuted while others tolerated or excused. It was the same egregious versus non-egregious distinction. Obviously, it could be argued that perjury is not an impeachable offense — though I strongly disagree with this view. However, many also opposed any criminal prosecution in the Clinton case. At the time, many cited the dangers to the presidency in such cases as raising the appearance of political prosecutions (much like the current rationale with Bush). I view the dangers as far worse when you fail to act in the face of a crime committed by a president, even one who I supported. I feel equally strongly that President Bush should be subject to impeachment based on the commission of the crimes of torture and unlawful surveillance.

The main concern with Sunstein’s reported comment is how well they fit within the obvious strategy of the Democratic party leaders: to block any prosecution of either President Bush or his aides for crimes while running on those crimes to maintain and expand their power in Washington. The missing component in this political calculus is, of course, a modicum of principle.

SNIP...

Here’s the problem about “avoiding appearances.” There seems ample evidence of crimes committed by this Administration, in my view. To avoid appearances would require avoiding acknowledgment of those alleged crimes: precisely what Attorney General Mukasey has been doing by refusing to answer simple legal questions about waterboarding.

SNIP...

The combination of Obama’s vote to retroactively grant immunity for the telecoms and Sunstein’s comments are an obvious cause for alarm. We have had almost eight years of legal relativism by both parties. For a prior column on the danger of relativism in presidents, click here A little moral clarity would be a welcomed change.

CONTINUED...

http://jonathanturley.org/2008/07/21/obama-adviser-cass-sunstein-rejects-prosecution-of-possible-bush-crimes/

That was published in July 2008. Gee. Here it is March 2015 and the banksters and warmongers are still riding high in the saddle and We the People are paying for their thievery and wars without end for profits without cease.

PS: For some reason I thought you'd written that, Javaman. Did you?

[Blue_Tires]

43. Pilger certainly lays his cards on the table...

Blaming U.S. for Kosovo? -- Check

Blaming U.S. for Yugoslavia? -- Check

Snowden cheerleading? -- Check

Blaming U.S. for Ukraine while completely ignoring Russia's involvement? -- Check

Numerous comparisons of the U.S. to Nazi Germany? -- Check

Blaming U.S. for "creating" ISIS? -- Check

Whitewashing despots toppled by the U.S. (In this case, Gaddafi)? -- Check

(Here I just want to say holy fuckin' DAMN...I've seen some useful idiots on the leftist blogosphere defend some outrageous things in their opposition to U.S. foreign policy, but Gaddafi is a new low)

Please tell me why in the name of holy hell a leftist commentator would defend this guy with a straight face: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12688033 Because let's have some real talk for a minute -- If Pilger is OK with Gaddafi, then he has no moral high ground to criticize the U.S....So either Pilger is so desperate to make his point he narrates himself full-circle, or he hasn't bothered to read up on Libyan history...

[KoKo]

48. He's been a war correspondent and documentary film maker for decades

He's well respected and his view may differ from MSCorporate Media...if you think about it. Remember the MSM that tried to convince us that Saddam had WMD based on false evidence that had us invade Iraq and now we have a mess there with millions dead, dislocated from their homes, business and families living in "relocation camps" with nothing to go back to and few places to go forward. The same MSCorporate Media that still lies and distorts the truth when it suits whatever agenda the Think Tanks and Corporations/MiC have in mind.

[Blue_Tires]

52. I'm just saying...

There is no "MSCorporate Media" spin on Gaddafi -- His evilness has been well documented going back decades from any number of world media outlets you'd care to research...

There's NO defending the indefensible...And for Pilger to be outraged at the U.S. "meddling" in Libya when Gaddafi for decades was a notorious meddler in other nations' affairs, while at the same time whitewashing his atrocities is beyond the pale...

[sabrina 1]

57. Would you like to see the photos of all the world leaders who were posing with and making deals with

the 'evil' Gadaffi? Don't you think that we should never deal with evil leaders? Airc, the US was sending 'detainees' to Libya for the purpose of torturing them. Why would a nice, democratic, anti-torture nation like this one, do such a thing?

According to the Wikileaks cables, he was quite popular with western leaders for quite a while.

Of course he isn't the first or only dictator this country associates with. And still is.

Compared to eg, Karamov to whom we sent our tax dollars right now, Gadaffi looks like a kitty cat. At least Gadaffi shared some of the oil wealth with the Libyan people. Karamov tortures them, boils them in oil eg, and leaves t heir bodies on the doorsteps of their families. So why do you think we are 'allies' with such a monster?

Btw, both Bishop Tutu and Mandela called Gadaffi 'brother' and mourned his death. Apparently he supported South Africa's anti-Apartheid freedom fighters, giving them money and training in Libya. While our own leaders supported Apartheid.

It's a complicated world.

[G_j]

62. thank you

well said

[Blue_Tires]

85. He also supported the IRA

the PLO, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines, the Japanese Red Army, the Berlin nightclub bombing, almost certainly Lockerbie, UTA, etc...Is this really the legacy you want to promote here?

For all your activity in the NSA/civil liberties threads, even you must know that none of that existed in Gaddafi's regime...No independent media, no democracy, and public dissent was a death warrant -- Even outspoken Libyan expatriates living abroad weren't safe from Gaddafi's hit squads...

Gaddafi a "kitty cat"? You know the small change from that oil money he spread around was just to buy the loyalty of specific people/groups, right??


Since people always ask me for links instead of researching these things themselves, here you go:


We all know Gaddafi *never* tortured anyone
http://www.mediaite.com/online/gaddafi-reportedly-tortured-men-with-superglue-in-the-most-unpleasant-way-imaginable/
http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/01/13/human-rights-libya
http://www.minnpost.com/global-post/2011/09/gaddafi-used-torture-squads-terrify-opposition-report

Media shutdown:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x34715

Assassinations:
http://news.yahoo.com/case-prosecuting-libyas-muammar-gaddafi-20110301-194128-748.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gaddafi-has-a-long-history-as-a-killer--and-must-be-stopped/2011/03/14/ABQlmtV_story.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/us-libya-weapons-embassies-idUSBRE82710Y20120308

Unarmed protestors killed:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021707150.html
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/gaddafi-brutalises-foes-armed-or-defenceless-449140

This story sound familiar to you?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203764804577056230832805896


And there's plenty more you can find out there...

Like I said, there's no defending the indefensible...If You, Pilger and his peanut gallery want to whitewash Gaddafi, more power to you all...Me personally, I want no part of it

[sabrina 1]

99. Oh it wasn't WE who 'white-washed all these Dictators, it was our LEADERS. So go talk to THEM.

I am glad he supported the Irish Freedom fighters and the anti-Apartheid freedom fighter in South Africa. Those fighting Imperial Colonialism, need support from wherever they can get it.

I will take Bishop Tutu's and Madela's (also called a terrorist by the Colonialists, not to mention many our own leaders here) over our own Republican War Mongers whose bigoted Foreign Policies, see the ME, have caused untold heartbreak on millions of innocent people for decades now.

Pilger is one of the great recorders of history of our times.

Btw, what are YOUR 'reliable sources'? Murdoch's WSJ? Reuters? Wasn't that bought by the Rev. Moon? No thanks.

[Blue_Tires]

117. HRW not "reliable" enough for you?

It's easy to dismiss the source when it counters your worldview...Go do your own research and find someone "reputable" to say what a great guy Gaddafi was...

I'm not talking about "leaders", (since last I checked, Obama isn't whitewashing Gaddafi's legacy)...I'm talking about PILGER who intentionally ignored his atrocities to make a cheap political point; and which you made even worse by laughably trying to argue that Gaddafi is "better" than Karimov because Tutu, Mandela and Chavez shook his hand once or twice...

The sword cuts both ways -- Either Gaddafi was a good guy in the past up until his death, or he was an evil despot in the past up to his death...You and Pilger don't get to change Gaddafi's "stripes" whenever it suits you for the current argument of the moment...If Gaddafi was a GOOD guy, or even a not-so-bad guy, then I would hope for sake of consistency Pilger was writing the same positive things back in the 70s and 80s, and I would hope your assessment of that regime is just as optimistic as it was when you joined DU back in '08...

Pilger has had a stellar career, but that doesn't mean he isn't immune to the "Useful Idiot Myopia" which has claimed Robert Parry among other favored commentators on DU...



Well, let me reset this a little...

Please...Just stop...I happen to like you, and I'm giving you the opportunity to back out of this argument while saving face...I don't want the DU I used to know to descend to a place nutty enough where posters are *defending* Gaddafi, because in that case they might as well merge us with InfoWars right now...I don't want the left I used to know to get so binary and absolutist in their anti-interventionist opposition to U.S. foreign policy that Gaddafi, Putin, and Assad become retroactive "heroes" for standing up against 'American Hegemony'...

It's up to you if you want to respond or not, but I'm leaving this thread...Adieu

[sabrina 1]

143. Who liked Gadaffi? Bishop Tutu for one, and Mandela. Both referred to him as a 'brother' for the

his help in ending Apartheid.

We here in the West view Africa still as a Colonial Continent. Gadaffi was pouring money into building up an African NATO to prevent the West from colonizing the Continent every again. That didn't sit well with the old Colonial Imperialists. They still have 'interests' on that Continent.

I try to look at things from the POV of Africa rather than of Western Empires. And when you do that, it's amazing what a different view you get.

I imagine both Bishop Tutu and Mandela also viewed Gadaffi, whose country had one of the highest standards of living in Africa and whose government was employing Africans from other African nations and paying them large salaries for the work they were doing in Libya, from the POV of Africa also.

He was also putting money into other African nations, helping with infrastructure, education etc.

We in the West have a very bigoted Foreign Policy. In our view, Africa and the ME and South America cannot get along without our superior intellects guiding them choosing their Dictators for them and 'managing' their resources, from the pov of Africa.

To us in the West, THEIR leaders are all bad if they won't hand over their natural resources.

And yet, we've supported some of the most brutal leaders, all over the globe. So it's not like it matters if a leader is bad or good, it matters how much of his country's resources he's willing to hand over.

Try viewing Africa from the viewpoint of Africans rather than the Western Colonial nations.

Our Western Leaders were quite fond of Gadaffi so long as they had access to his oil.

It didn't bother them how brutal he was, I already told you, the US sent 'detainees' to be tortured in Libya.

So it's not like we CARED what kind of guy he was so long as he was on board with our needs.

But when he decided that Africa needed its own currency, suddenly all the stuff we turned a blind eye to before, became just 'terrible'.

I hate and despise hypocrisy.

The West destroyed Africa after years and years of Colonialism. The Belgians, the French, the British, all the old Colonialists, just as they destroyed the ME.

I guess I don't agree that African nations are not capable or smart enough to run their own countries. Gadaffi was a leader who was dealing with the aftermath of Colonialism.

Mostly, Libya is not our business, is it?

And speaking of Libya since we 'liberated' it. Have you checked on it lately? Seems we got the oil, and forgot about the 'brutalized civilized' who are now living in a world that makes Mad Max look civilized. Yay for us, we 'democratized another 'inferior' nation of brown people.

[KoKo]

242. Indeed.

"But when he decided that Africa needed its own currency, suddenly all the stuff we turned a blind eye to before, became just 'terrible'.

I hate and despise hypocrisy.

The West destroyed Africa after years and years of Colonialism. The Belgians, the French, the British, all the old Colonialists, just as they destroyed the ME.

I guess I don't agree that African nations are not capable or smart enough to run their own countries. Gadaffi was a leader who was dealing with the aftermath of Colonialism.

Mostly, Libya is not our business, is it?

And speaking of Libya since we 'liberated' it. Have you checked on it lately? Seems we got the oil, and forgot about the 'brutalized civilized' who are now living in a world that makes Mad Max look civilized. Yay for us, we 'democratized another 'inferior' nation of brown people."

[elias49]

64. Plenty of 'evilness' out there. We get to choose?

“We came, we saw, he died.”

Nice..

[Blue_Tires]

87. Hey, if Gaddafi was a "good guy" then everybody is a "good guy"

so why the complaint?

[KoKo]

244. Good and Evil....Its often in the eye of the beholder and people are complicated....

Who is a Good Guy....who are the Bad Guys. People are complicated.

I shudder when I see our MSM have their "Security Experts" and "Military Advisors" on talking about the "Bad Guys." It mocks intelligent thinking and dumbs down the viewership into simplistic thinking. Implying that these so called "Experts" can be the judge and jury on any issue doesn't promote deeper thinking about crucial issues.

[eridani]

225. Which of course totally justifies turning Libya into a shithole full of squabbling warlords n/t

[Doctor_J]

49. Parenti calls it fascism in a pin-striped suit

Much more insidious and deadlier than Mussolini's

[Octafish]

103. From 1996!

Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit,

Rollback

excerpted from the book

Dirty Truths

by Michael Parenti

City Lights Books, 1996, paper

FASCISM IN A PINSTRIPED SUIT

p33
Unless one was Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or actively leftist or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from 1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the "good Germans" had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared.

Since many "middle Americans" already obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, are themselves distrustful of political heterodoxy, and applaud when unions are broken and troublesome people are disposed of, they probably could live without too much personal torment in a fascist state...

p34
It is sometimes argued by those who deny the imminence of American fascism that we are more free today than ever before. One's ability to accept such reassurance partly depends on the class conditions and life chances that one confronts. The affluent individual whose views fit into that portion of the American political spectrum known as the "mainstream" (from rightist Republican to centrist Democrat) and whose political actions are limited to the standardized forms of participation- informal discussion, television viewing, newspaper reading, and voting-is apt to dismiss the contention that America is fascistic. But those who oppose the existing political orthodoxy and who find themselves under surveillance and subjected to the intimidations, harassments, and sanctions of the U.S. national security state have a less sanguine view. '

p36
The FBI and local police Red squads are once again spying, burglarizing, disrupting, and otherwise targeting various organizations that work for social justice, peace and disarmament, or environmentalism. During the 1980s almost two hundred organizations were labeled, not communist fronts as during the repressive McCarthy era of the 1950s, but "terrorist fronts," including Martin Luther King Jr.'s own Southern Leadership Conference and various church and student organizations.

p36
In the last two decades one of the fastest growing markets has been in guns, clubs, helmets, bulletproof vests, and other items of domestic warfare sold to law enforcers, and the fastest growing area of public employment has been police and prison guards. The prison populations in most states have grown exponentially, mostly with small-time drug users. By 1995-96, California was spending more on prisons than on education.

This is not to assume that the police are busy fighting crime. For all their new equipment and personnel, they do little if anything to stop the big drug traffickers, slumlords, sweatshop operators, mobsters, corrupt politicians, spouse beaters, child abusers, rapists, muggers, hate mongers, and others who prey off the most vulnerable among us.

The real function of the police is social control. Their job is to keep in line those elements that might prove potentially troublesome to the powers that be.

p37
The social control function of law enforcement operates on three levels within inner-city communities and among potentially "troublesome" populations. First, there is the street-level repression provoked and perpetrated by too many police officers, who use their badges and guns as a cover for venting their racist animosities and personal distortions. All this is a matter of public record, with case after case of police brutality and case after case of settlements. And for every brutality victim who wins damages there are many who never make it into court.

Second, there is the mass trafficking in narcotics, in which the police play an active role as distributors along with federal agencies, such as the CIA, that are linked directly to overseas traffickers. This too is a matter of public record, with findings by three different congressional committees and sworn testimony by pilots who have flown narcotics and weapons shipments for the CIA.

On the third level are the coordinated systematic efforts by federal, state, and local authorities to undermine community protest organizations, because the powers that be prefer demoralized, divided, disorganized, and drug-ridden populations to people who are politicized and who mobilize for collective action and /radical change.

p39
It seems that the ability of most middle-class whites to perceive the fascist features of American society is seriously blunted not only by their class experiences but by the aura of familiarity and legitimacy that enshrouds the established political culture. In making comparisons between their society and others, they tend to employ a double standard. Thus the organized forms of police violence in America are seen as isolated, aberrant happenings on the infrequent occasions they are publicized- rather than as inherent manifestations of our social order. But the same practices in certain other lands are treated as predictable components of totalitarian systems.

The Nazi invasion of Poland is fascism in action; the American invasion of Vietnam is a "blunder" or at worst an "immoral application" of power. The indoctrination of children in Nazi Germany into the myths and rituals of the nation-state is seen as characteristic of fascism; but our own grade-school indoctrination replete with flag salutes, national anthems, and history books espousing the myths of American superiority is "education for citizenship." Many social arrangements and happenings that would evoke strongly negative sentiments if defined as products of a totalitarian state become, by their proximity and cultural familiarity, no cause for alarm when practiced at home.

p40
The collusion between Center and Right is understandable. Despite their differences in emphasis and methods (differences that are not always to be dismissed as insignificant) the Center and Right share a common commitment to the ongoing corporate class structure, and conservative institutional authority.

p41
Those of us designated as "extreme leftists" actually want rather moderate and civil things: a clean environment, a fair tax structure, use of social production for social needs, expansion of public sector production, serious cuts in a bloated military budget, affordable housing, decently paying jobs, equal justice for all, and the like. There is nothing morally extreme about such things. They are "extreme" only in the sense of being extremely at odds with the dominant interests of the status quo. In the face of such gross injustice and class privilege, considerations of social justice and betterment take on the appearance of "extreme" measures.

Nor does it follow that those who occupy the center of any political spectrum are thereby incapable of the kind of brutal, repressive, destructive, intransigent actions usually associated with fascist extremists. It was not the John Birch Society that tried to bomb Indochina into the Stone Age, nor was it the American Nazi Party that perfected napalm and put thalidomide in the defoliants used throughout Indochina. And today it is not the skinheads and Klan that maintain the death squads and other homicidal operations throughout so much of the Third World. It is the best and the brightest of the political Center (with plenty of help from rightists).

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Parenti/Fascism_Pinstriped_DT.html

Thank you, Doctor_J! That is some phrase. And Parenti is some kind of atomic guy.

[Doctor_J]

111. His best book IMO

20 years old and still very applicable

[Octafish]

113. TUC Radio has an archive of Michael Parenti lectures...

Time of Useful Consciousness Radio,

a resource hosted by Maria Gilardin:

http://www.tucradio.org/parenti.html

TUC: Time of Useful Consciousness
The time between the onset of oxygen deficiency and the loss of consciousness, the brief moments in which a pilot may save the plane.

I believe almost everything on the site is available for download. Ways to send $ for hard copies, support also are there.

[Doctor_J]

131. Thanks. I will check that out. The most under-referenced liberal intellectual of my lifetime

I can't believe Hartmann gives air time to cons instead of people like Parenti.

[hifiguy]

69. The surface appearances of "democracy" with the results of fascism

have been the goal of the plutocrats since the days of the Butler plot. Not one damn thing has changed in 80 years.

Thanks for this, Octafish, you are one of the jewels of DU.

[Octafish]

108. ''Friendly Fascism'' is how Bertram Gross put it in 1980...

Before Pruneface Ronnie's team worked the first deal with the Ayatollah in 1980, Professor Gross had documented how money and power work, intertwined, to concentrate wealth and power, which, in turn, get used to muzzle dissent:

Friendly Fascism - The New Face of Power in America

by Bertram Gross

EXCERPT...

Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world."

[font color="red"]The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership.[/font color] This drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others. This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household, workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and for this reason is bitterly fought...

These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". [font color="red"]Mind management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into reality.[/font color] On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege" and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".

A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the first tendency.

But events soon began to change perceptions.

CONTINUED...

link:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html

Thank you hifiguy! Your kind words means the world.

[Yorktown]

106. Pilger's worldview: USA=fascists. anti-US countries= good guys.

Some quotes about Pilger from wikipedia:

• Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens said of Pilger: "there is a word that gets overused (..) anti-American – and it has to be used about him. "
• The Economist '​s Lexington columnist "John Pilger, who thinks the Arab revolts show that the West in general and the United States in particular are "fascist."
• The New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait about Pilger "defend[s] Vladimir Putin on the grounds that he stands opposed to the United States, which is the font of all evil" is a comical "attempt to cast land-grabbing, ultranationalist dictator Vladimir Putin as an enemy of fascism."

Putin is ex-KGB. I wonder how many Pilger-types the FSB runs?

[Octafish]

109. He's entitled to his opinion. Do you think the United States is entitled to kill innocent people?

I don't. That puts me in agreement with Pilger.

[Yorktown]

115. True, Pilger is entitled to be wrong

Let's be clear: Fascism is an authoritarian regime which uses force against its internal opponents and uses war for land gain.

In the US, I see a functioning Democracy which hasn't invaded Canada or Mexico.
• Internally, I do not see political prisoners, political oppression. There are problems due to the influence of money, but it doesn't make it a dictatorship.
• Externally, the Bush wars were remarkably stupid (I wrote so many times), but they were wars. In wars, civilians die, and they are innocent. But that doesn't make the country waging war a fascist state. Even when the war was remarkably stupid.

If we used a scale to rank countries from very fascist to not fascist,
• Least fascist = Scandinavian countries
-> followed by most western democracies, US included.
• Most fascist = Communist/ex-Communist countries (North Korea, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Cuba) and muslim Islamic/strongman countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Syria,..)
-> followed by Russia and China.

It's rather well sketched on the 'Democracy Index' of 'The Economist' below.

To even suggest the US is as fascist as Russia is a travesty of reality.

[Octafish]

121. Russia never attacked anybody for their oil.

USA did and does at a cost of millions of innocent lives and trillions in wealth.

Who do you think gets all that money?

Answer: Carlyle Group and their cronies

[Yorktown]

122. LOL Putin's Russia has attacked Georgia and Ukraine for land (twice each)

And to know why the US invaded Iraq, we would need access to the files of GW's psychiatrist.
Well, GW didn't have one, but should have had.

Anyway, IF oil was one in the nefarious cocktail of reasons to invade Iraq, it failed.
Anyone knowing the Shiq/Sunni divide could have predicted Iran would control the Iraqi oil.
How the educated cabinet of Bush could have been blind to that is a mystery.

Here, a Reagan advisor blasts GW better than I could do:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17850.htm

[R B Garr]

127. Excellent posts. Thanks. All of these conspiracy theories

about the neocons fail to mention that they used 9/11 as cover to go into Iraq. The neocons didn't lie us into war, they lied us into attacking the wrong country. Most polls around 9/11 showed high public support for military intervention after 9/11, which is also something the conspiracy theories fail to mention.

Here's what Bush Sr. said about leaving Saddam in Iraq after Desert Storm. I'm just posting this to show that Bush Jr. used the 9/11 tragedy to correct what the subsequent neocons deemed a mistake for leaving Saddam in power. Bush Jr. had the unique circumstances of 9/11 handed to him to facilitate the neocon agenda. Obviously Bush Sr. didn't share those goals during his administration.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/gulfwar.asp

[Yorktown]

132. LOL I love the comment at the end of the quote

In his memoirs, A World Transformed, written more than five years ago, George Bush, Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

If only his son could read.

(comment at the end of the original post analyzed by Snopes, your link)

[NuclearDem]

142. Why would they?

Depending on the year, they're either the second or first largest oil producer in the world with Saudi Arabia.


However, when the flow of their oil or natural gas is impeded by pesky things such as Chechnya wanting independence or Ukraine deciding to side with the EU, they flatten cities and destabilize the country, respectively.

[zappaman]

144. Please stop with the facts.

It's a shitty way to argue.

[Octafish]

148. International Law?

Which hasn't stopped the government of the United States from making war on Iraq for no good reason.

[NuclearDem]

152. International law didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine either.

Please don't tell me you're actually going to argue that Putin's Russia respects international law.

[Octafish]

155. Why waste my time trying to teach you what you don't want to know?

Best of luck to you.

[NuclearDem]

156. So to sum up your "lesson"...

Russia, the country tied for first place with Saudi Arabia in oil production, doesn't invade countries with oil because of respect for international law that doesn't see to apply to the former Soviet republics.

Fantastic.

[Octafish]

192. Glad you got something out of it. Here's some of what you missed:

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

[NuclearDem]

193. I'm sorry, Prescott Bush has something to do with Putin's war of aggression...how?

Or are you just deflectospamming again?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

194. It's because he's trying to fool Lloyd Braun! nt

[Octafish]

197. Prescott's ancestors are still on the Bridge of the Ship of State, making Big Bucks off War.

Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering

[NuclearDem]

198. I'll ask again:

Prescott Bush has what exactly to do with Putin's war of aggression?

[Octafish]

199. His son, George Herbert Walker Bush, and grandson, George Walker Bush, both lied America into war.

Courtesy of Hill & Knowlton, back in 1991:



The Kuwait ambassador's daughter, committing perjury on behalf of the administration as she tells the US Congress she was a nurse at a Kuwaiti City hospital who saw the Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor so they could steal the incubators for babes in Baghdad.

"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

That's not just fascism. That's NAZI.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

200. So, of course then President Obama paid $5 billlion in 2014 for a "coup" in Ukraine!

Because Bush and Kuwait in 1991 equals Obama and Ukraine in 2014, you see!

[Octafish]

205. Focusing on $5 billion diverts attention from the point: Wars for Profit.

Wars for Profit that go unpunished. Ever hear of Cass Sunstein, Tommy_Carcetti?

Government Nanny Censoring "Conspiracy Theories" Is Also Responsible for Letting Bush Era Torture and Spying Conspiracies Go Unpunished

Washingtons Blog, Oct. 7, 2010

EXCERPT...

[font color="purple"]Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, (Sunstein) argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it. [/font color]

SOURCE w links n details: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/10/main-obama-adviser-blocking-prosecution.html?m=1

You've got a lot to learn, Tommy_Carcetti. If more people knew then what you know now, Bush and Cheney might be in jail, rather than running around free.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

206. The $5 billion figure was important enough for Pilger to lie about.

It seems to be a key component of the "US sponsored coup in Ukraine" argument.

[Octafish]

207. Pilger is accurate, which is why you have to smear him.

Breaking the last taboo - Gaza and the threat of world war

John Pilger
11 September 2014

EXCERPT...

With its fascist past, and present, Ukraine is now a CIA theme park, a colony of Nato and the International Monetary Fund. The fascist coup in Kiev in February was the boast of US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, whose "coup budget" ran to $5 billion. But there was a setback. Moscow prevented the seizure of its legitimate Black Sea naval base in Russian-speaking Crimea. A referendum and annexation quickly followed. Represented in the West as the Kremlin's "aggression", this serves to turn truth on its head and cover Washington's goals: to drive a wedge between a "pariah" Russia and its principal trading partners in Europe and eventually to break up the Russian Federation. American missiles already surround Russia; Nato's military build-up in the former Soviet republics and eastern Europe is the biggest since the second world war.

During the cold war, this would have risked a nuclear holocaust. The risk has returned as anti-Russian misinformation reaches crescendos of hysteria in the US and Europe. A textbook case is the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner in July. Without a single piece of evidence, the US and its Nato allies and their media machines blamed ethnic Russian "separatists" in Ukraine and implied that Moscow was ultimately responsible. An editorial in The Economist accused Vladimir Putin of mass murder. The cover of Der Spiegel used faces of the victims and bold red type, "Stoppt Putin Jetzt!" (Stop Putin Now!) In the New York Times, Timothy Garton Ash substantiated his case for "Putin's deadly doctrine" with personal abuse of "a short, thickset man with a rather ratlike face".

The Guardian's role has been important. Renowned for its investigations, the newspaper has made no serious attempt to examine who shot the aeroplane down and why, even though a wealth of material from credible sources shows that Moscow was as shocked as the rest of the world, and the airliner may well have been brought down by the Ukrainian regime.

With the White House offering no verifiable evidence - even though US satellites would have observed the shooting-down - the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker stepped into the breach. "My audience with the Demon of Donetsk," was the front-page headline over Walker's breathless interview with one Igor Bezler. "With a walrus moustache, a fiery temper and a reputation for brutality," he wrote, "Igor Bezler is the most feared of all the rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine... nicknamed The Demon... If the Ukrainian security services, the SBU, are to be believed, the Demon and a group of his men were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17... as well as allegedly bringing down MH17, the rebels have shot down 10 Ukrainian aircraft." Demon Journalism requires no further evidence.

Demon Journalism makes over a fascist-contaminated junta that seized power in Kiev as a respectable "interim government". Neo-Nazis become mere "nationalists". "News" sourced to the Kiev junta ensures the suppression of a US-run coup and the junta's systematic ethnic cleaning of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. That this should happen in the borderland through which the original Nazis invaded Russia, extinguishing some 22 million Russian lives, is of no interest. What matters is a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine that seems difficult to prove beyond familiar satellite images that evoke Colin Powell's fictional presentation to the United Nations "proving" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. "You need to know that accusations of a major Russian 'invasion' of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence," wrote a group of former senior US intelligence officials and analysts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Rather, the 'intelligence' seems to be of the same dubious, politically 'fixed' kind used 12 years ago to 'justify' the U.S.-led attack on Iraq."

The jargon is "controlling the narrative". In his seminal Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the western media machine was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of humanity with a "wiring" as influential as that of the imperial navies of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by media.

CONTINUED...

http://johnpilger.com/articles/breaking-the-last-taboo-gaza-and-the-threat-of-world-war

[Tommy_Carcetti]

233. But you yourself admit he's not accurate. See Post 174.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026300021#post174

You admit that Pilger has no evidence to support his claim that President Obama spent $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

And that's no minor little claim. That's a major, major accusation.

So he's a liar, or at the very best, extremely reckless in making baseless accusations.

Why can't you admit that Pilger lied?

[Octafish]

273. Because secret government is secret? Ask PNAC Robert Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland.

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Fri, Feb 7, 2014
By ORIENTAL REVIEW

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue things together”. Referring to the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.

In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland made her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is more worthy of an apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse which was made public, it was unlikely an unfortunate misspelling. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago describing Mrs.Nuland’s blatant lack of professionalism and personal integrity. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://orientalreview.org/2014/02/07/what-about-apologizing-to-ukraine-mrs-nuland/

Great video at the link, too. Perfect for Tag Team watching.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

293. You've got her name wrong.

It's Virginia Nuland.

Sheesh.

[Octafish]

298. Why do you spread disinformation, Tommy_Carcetti? Is it some sort of sick game for you?

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/214343.htm

[Tommy_Carcetti]

299. Someone clearly hasn't been reading all the responses to his own posts here. nt

[Octafish]

300. You want to make me out as some kind of asshole, Tommy_Carcetti of DU?

I miswrote her name? Where? If I did, it should be no big fucking deal, unless that's all you can hang on me in which case I can honestly tell you, I don't care.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

301. What I can hang on you, Octafish, is that you posted a piece with blatant misinformation.

And that you sheepishly admitted there were no facts to support key assertions contained within the piece, but you then backtrack and claim that I haven't disproven anything in the piece when in fact you know I have.

And no, actually you have always written Ms. Nuland's name correctly.

[Octafish]

303. What disinformation did I post? Where I said you posted her name wrong when you didn't?

Isn't that what an asshole does? I don't want to be an asshole, Tommy_Carcetti of DU.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

305. See post 53. nt

[Octafish]

307. Time Waster.

That's about the nicest thing I can think of saying about you.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

308. I believe....

.....that you are the one who when confronted as to whether you had any evidence to support Pilger's claim that President Obama authorized $5 billion in 2014 to overthrow the Ukrainian government, responded by posting cryptic articles from 2007 that don't even mention Ukraine. Which, if you aren't aware, was seven years before 2014.

So you're really not in the position to lecture me about wasting one's time.

I read the Pilger piece and highlighted the parts where his claims on Ukraine did not match the documented facts. And I provided links to reputable sources showing how they did not match the documented facts.

If you like, I can re-post them again, and you can counter my own position, but something tells me that you will say you don't want to be bothered with doing that. But I'm more than happy to do so.

The choice is yours.

[NuclearDem]

201. And I'll ask yet again:

What does any of this have to do with Putin's war of aggression?

At least we're getting into this century.

[Octafish]

202. And I'll answer again: Three Generations of Bush and Counting.

Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush, and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil. Their cronies in government service, Wall Street and academia still do their bidding to their mutual advantage.

The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War

Exclusive: Americans today know a lot more about Iraq than they did ten years ago, knowledge gained painfully from the blood of soldiers and civilians. But a crucial question remains: why did George W. Bush and his neocon advisers rush headlong into this disastrous war, a mystery Robert Parry unwinds.

By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews, March 20, 2013

A decade after President George W. Bush ordered the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, one of the enduring mysteries has been why. There was the rationale sold to a frightened American people in 2002-2003 – that Saddam Hussein was plotting to attack them with WMDs – but no one in power really believed that.

There have been other more plausible explanations: George Bush the Younger wanted to avenge a perceived slight to George Bush the Elder, while also outdoing his father as a “war president”; Vice President Dick Cheney had his eye on Iraq’s oil wealth; and the Republican Party saw an opportunity to create its “permanent majority” behind a glorious victory in the Middle East.

Though George W. Bush’s defenders vigorously denied being motivated by such crass thinking, those rationales do seem closer to the truth. However, there was another driving force behind the desire to conquer Iraq: the neoconservative belief that the conquest would be a first step toward installing compliant pro-U.S. regimes throughout the Middle East and letting Israel dictate final peace terms to its neighbors.

That rationale has often been dressed up as “democratizing” the Middle East, but the idea was more a form of “neocolonialism,” in which American proconsuls would make sure that a favored leader, like the Iraqi National Congress’ Ahmed Chalabi, would control each country and align the nations’ positions with the interests of the United States and Israel.

Some analysts have traced this idea back to the neocon Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which advocated for “regime change” in Iraq. But the idea’s origins go back to the early 1990s and to two seminal events.

The first game-changing moment came in 1990-91 when President George H.W. Bush showed off the unprecedented advancements in U.S. military technology. Almost from the moment that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi dictator began signaling his willingness to withdraw after having taught the arrogant al-Sabah ruling family in Kuwait a lesson in power politics.

But the Bush-41 administration wasn’t willing to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Kuwait invasion. Instead of letting Hussein arrange an orderly withdrawal, Bush-41 began baiting him with insults and blocking any face-saving way for a retreat.

Peace feelers from Hussein and later from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev were rebuffed as Bush-41 waited his chance to demonstrate the stunning military realities of his New World Order. Even the U.S. field commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, favored Gorbachev’s plan for letting Iraqi forces pull back, but Bush-41 was determined to have a ground war.

So, Gorbachev’s plan was bypassed and the ground war commenced with the slaughter of Iraqi troops, many of them draftees who were mowed down and incinerated as they fled back toward Iraq. After 100 hours, Bush-41 ordered a halt to the massacre. He then revealed a key part of his motivation by declaring: “We’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.” [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Neocons Celebrate

Official Washington took note of the new realities and the renewed public enthusiasm for war. In a post-war edition, Newsweek devoted a full page to up-and-down arrows in its “Conventional Wisdom Watch.” Bush got a big up arrow with the snappy comment: “Master of all he surveys. Look at my polls, ye Democrats, and despair.”

For his last-minute stab at a negotiated Iraqi withdrawal, Gorbachev got a down arrow: “Give back your Nobel, Comrade Backstabber. P.S. Your tanks stink.” Vietnam also got a down arrow: “Where’s that? You mean there was a war there too? Who cares?”

Neocon pundits, already dominating Washington’s chattering class, could barely contain their glee with the only caveat that Bush-41 had ended the Iraqi turkey shoot too soon and should have taken the carnage all the way to Baghdad.

The American people also rallied to the lopsided victory, celebrating with ticker-tape parades and cheering fireworks in honor of the conquering heroes. The victory-parade extravaganza stretched on for months, as hundreds of thousands jammed Washington for what was called “the mother of all parades.”

Americans bought Desert Storm T-shirts by the caseloads; kids were allowed to climb on tanks and other military hardware; the celebration concluded with what was called “the mother of all fireworks displays.” The next day, the Washington Post captured the mood with a headline: “Love Affair on the Mall: People and War Machines.”

The national bonding extended to the Washington press corps, which happily shed its professional burden of objectivity to join the national celebration. At the annual Gridiron Club dinner, where senior government officials and top journalists get to rub shoulders in a fun-filled evening, the men and women of the news media applauded wildly everything military.

The highlight of the evening was a special tribute to “the troops,” with a reading of a soldier’s letter home and then a violinist playing the haunting strains of Jay Ungar’s “Ashoken Farewell.” Special lyrics honoring Desert Storm were put to the music and the journalists in the Gridiron singers joined in the chorus: “Through the fog of distant war/Shines the strength of their devotion/To honor, to duty,/To sweet liberty.”

Among the celebrants at the dinner was Defense Secretary Cheney, who took note of how the Washington press corps was genuflecting before a popular war. Referring to the tribute, Cheney noted in some amazement, “You would not ordinarily expect that kind of unrestrained comment by the press.”

A month later at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the U.S. news media and celebrity guests cheered lustily when General Schwarzkopf was introduced. “It was like a Hollywood opening,” commented one journalist referring to the spotlights swirling around the field commander.

Neocon pundit Charles Krauthammer lectured the few dissidents who found the press corps’ groveling before the President and the military unsettling. “Loosen up, guys,” Krauthammer wrote. “Raise a glass, tip a hat, wave a pom-pom to the heroes of Desert Storm. If that makes you feel you’re living in Sparta, have another glass.”

American Hegemony

Like other observers, the neocons had seen how advanced U.S. technology had changed the nature of warfare. “Smart bombs” zeroed in on helpless targets; electronic sabotage disrupted enemy command and control; exquisitely equipped American troops outclassed the Iraqi military chugging around in Soviet-built tanks. War was made to look easy and fun with very light U.S. casualties.

The collapse of the Soviet Union later in 1991 represented the removal of the last obstacle to U.S. hegemony. The remaining question for the neocons was how to get and keep control of the levers of American power. However, those levers slipped out of their grasp with Bush-41’s favoritism toward his “realist” foreign policy advisers and then Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.

But the neocons still held many cards in the early 1990s, having gained credentials from their work in the Reagan administration and having built alliances with other hard-liners such as Bush-41’s Defense Secretary Cheney. The neocons also had grabbed important space on the opinion pages of key newspapers, like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and influential chairs inside major foreign-policy think tanks.

The second game-changing event took place amid the neocon infatuation with Israel’s Likud leaders. In the mid-1990s, prominent American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for the campaign of Benjamin Netanyahu and tossed aside old ideas about a negotiated peace settlement with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Rather than suffer the frustrations of negotiating a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem or dealing with the annoyance of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the neocons on Netanyahu’s team decided it was time for a bold new direction, which they outlined in a 1996 strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”

The paper advanced the idea that only “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Under this “clean break,” Israel would no longer seek peace through compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Saddam Hussein who were supportive of Israel’s close-in enemies.

The plan called Hussein’s ouster “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of “regime change.”

American Assistance

But what the “clean break” needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel’s highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel’s economy from such overreach would have been staggering.

In 1998, the U.S. neocon brain trust pushed the “clean break” plan another step forward with the creation of the Project for the New American Century, which lobbied President Clinton to undertake the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

However, Clinton would only go so far, maintaining a harsh embargo on Iraq and enforcing a “no-fly zone” which involved U.S. aircraft conducting periodic bombing raids. Still, with Clinton or his heir apparent, Al Gore, in the White House, a full-scale invasion of Iraq appeared out of the question.

The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a political climate across America favoring war and revenge.

Of course, Bush-43 had to first attack Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda maintained its principal base, but he then quickly pivoted to the neocons’ desired target, Iraq. Besides being home to the already demonized Saddam Hussein, Iraq had other strategic advantages. It was not as heavily populated as some of its neighbors yet it was positioned squarely between Iran and Syria, two other top targets.

In those heady days of 2002-2003, a neocon joke posed the question of what to do after ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq – whether to next go east to Iran or west to Syria. The punch-line was: “Real men go to Tehran.”

But first Iraq had to be vanquished, and this other agenda – restructuring the Middle East to make it safe for U.S. and Israeli interests – had to be played down, partly because average Americans might be skeptical and because expert Americans might have warned about the dangers from U.S. imperial overreach.

So, Bush-43, Vice President Cheney and their neocon advisers pushed the “hot button” of the American people, still frightened by the horrors of 9/11. The bogus case was made that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of WMD that he was ready to give to al-Qaeda so the terrorists could inflict even greater devastation on the U.S. homeland.

Stampeding America

The neocons, some of whom grew up in families of left-wing Trotskyites, viewed themselves as a kind of a “vanguard” party using “agit-prop” to maneuver the American “proletariat.” The WMD scare was seen as the best way to stampede the American herd. Then, the neocon thinking went, the military victory in Iraq would consolidate war support and permit implementation of the next phases toward “regime change” in Iran and Syria.

The plan seemed to be working early, as the U.S. military overwhelmed the beleaguered Iraqi army and captured Baghdad in three weeks. Bush-43 celebrated by landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit and delivering a speech beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.”

However, the plan began to go awry when neocon pro-consul Paul Bremer – in pursuit of a neocon model regime – got rid of Iraq’s governing infrastructure, dismantled much of the social safety net and disbanded the army. Then, the neocon-favored leader, exile Ahmed Chalabi, turned out to be a non-starter with the Iraqi people.

An armed resistance emerged, using low-tech weapons such as “improvised explosive devices.” Soon, not only were thousands of American soldiers dying but ancient sectarian rivalries between Shiites and Sunnis began tearing Iraq apart. The scenes of chaotic violence were horrific.

Rather than gaining in popularity with the American people, the war began to lose support, leading to Democratic gains in 2006. The neocons salvaged some of their status in 2007 by pushing the fiction of the “successful surge,” which supposedly had turned impending defeat into victory, but the truth was that the “surge” only delayed the inevitable failure of the U.S. enterprise.

With George W. Bush’s departure in 2009 and the arrival of Barack Obama, the neocons retreated, too. Neocon influence waned within the Executive Branch, though neocons still maintained strongholds at Washington think tanks and on editorial pages of national news outlets like the Washington Post.

New developments in the region also created new neocon hopes for their old agenda. The Arab Spring of 2011 led to civil unrest in Syria where the Assad dynasty – based in non-Sunni religious sects – was challenged by a Sunni-led insurgency which included some democratic reformers as well as radical jihadists.

Meanwhile, in Iran, international opposition to its nuclear program prompted harsh economic sanctions. Though President Obama viewed the sanctions as leverage to compel Iran to accept limits on its nuclear program, some neocons were salivating over how to hijack the sanctions on behalf of “regime change.”

However, in November 2012, Obama’s defeat of neocon favorite Mitt Romney and the departure of neocon ally, CIA Director David Petraeus, were sharp blows to the neocon plans of reclaiming the reins of U.S. foreign policy. Now, the neocons must see how they can leverage their continued influence over Washington’s opinion circles – and hope for advantageous developments abroad – to steer Obama toward more confrontational approaches with Iran and Syria.

For the neocons, it also remains crucial that average Americans don’t think too much about the why behind the disastrous Iraq War, a tenth anniversary that can’t pass quickly enough as far as the neocons are concerned.

SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/20/the-mysterious-why-of-the-iraq-war/

Those are the facts. Wish I could say, "Sorry they make you angry" when I bring them up, NuclearDem.

[NuclearDem]

203. They don't make me angry.

They do however confound me as to why they're being presented as somehow relevant to Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine.

The only thing I've been able to conclude is that they exist solely for the purpose of a tu quoque argument. As tu quoque is a fallacy, all I can conclude is that your entire argument is fallacious.

The US's behavior doesn't excuse Russia's behavior. The only person I see as being angry about anything is you; you seem rather desperate to deflect from that homophobic, fascist war criminal in the Kremlin. I wonder why that is, Octafish.

[zappaman]

208. Have you tried asking a chair?

You might get a more reasoned response...

[Octafish]

230. That's what they said about me on Conservative Cave, zappaman.

Octafish, for those who aren't aware, is famous for his sporadic "Know your BFEE" posts, in which he attempts to link all badness in the world to the Bush family. He is also obsessed with the Kennedy assassination, so much so that it has become essentially a job for him. When provoked or encouraged (same difference, really), he does the Judi Lynn routine of writing 500-word jeremiads and links to arcane sources which (a) don't generally support anything in particular, and (b) are probably larded with spyware anyway.

SOURCE: http://conservativecave.com/index.php?topic=99014.0

What a coincidence! That's the kind of reasoning you've displayed in your responses on this thread and many others going back many years.

[KoKo]

112. Have you recently checked Jonathan Chait's BIO?

It might surprise you..........

[Yorktown]

118. No idea about Chait, but I trust Hitchens and The Economist

Just glanced through Chait's bio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Chait

I haven't noticed anything horrific. Please elaborate.

[seveneyes]

110. Mayhem has no party preference

All it takes is a resonance of the majority which envelops the carrier of the message.

Humanity has fortunately found a way past this harmonic noise and prospered with losses less than gains...so far

[Octafish]

120. Think the world of that album and those knuckleheads and their friends.

"I proceeded to untangle the entire area."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1157620/

Their "Freedom of Speech Tour" echoes from Vietnam through the current day.

Saw CSNY at least four times, several more times as solo and duos wsg over the decades. Well, mostly the 70s.

[Purveyor]

128. Thanks for posting Octafish. Pleased to see the number of 'recs' your OP is receiving.

It is reassuring that there are many on DU who choose to peruse all sources of information.

I'm starting to detect a bit of blowback for the 'silencers' that screech so loudly when their narrow-minded views aren't supported.

[Octafish]

130. Hiya, Purveyor!

It is most gratifying to know there are so many DUers who care to learn for themselves for the sake of Democracy -- that's the essence of the First Amendment is all about:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

THere's a reason it's the only business named in the entire Constitution -- the press. That's why Bill Casey, Rev. Moon, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk spent billions on corrupting it.

PS: What's horrifying is how few people know about it. Fewer every year have a chance, thanks to the same folks leading the charge to destroy public education.

[JEB]

140. K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links.

Thanks for your tireless efforts.

[Octafish]

222. Remember who Uncle Sam hired for the secret government: the Mafia and the NAZIs.

Both of which were infiltrated by communists and who knows what else in the name of insane power and greed. One thing in particular stands out about their confluence: the assassination of President Kennedy.


[font color="purple"]President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office when members of his administration hired the Mafia to murder Fidel Castro in 1960.[/font color]

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

[font color="purple"]Details on the actual sit-down:[/font color]

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

[font color="purple"]Yet, the CIA uses the media to repeat the false news that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.[/font color]

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

[font color="purple"]Lies that continue to the present day.[/font color]

Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.

What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know

A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”

By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015

EXCERPT...

Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.

“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”

Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”

Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.

That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV

[font color="purple"]The CIA did not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, to know the truth about its illegal assassination program. This represents just one area in which CIA obstructed justice in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy.[/font color]

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

You are most welcome, JEB! Thank you for siding with the First Amendment, the foundation of Democracy. Going by the heightened efforts of the same flock of talented debunkers that has targeted me since pointing out the Bush-Dallas connection more than a decade ago -- something I never heard mentioned in the newspaper or on the tee vee, radio or in the classroom; I learned about it on DU.

[AZ Progressive]

145. I think all the U.S. government / Obama apologists here prove that America is indeed a fascist state

Propaganda foot soldiers are a hallmark of a fascist nation.

[Octafish]

150. Thank you, AZ Progressive.

Were it otherwise, they would encourage discussion -- the democratic thing to do.

Fascists fear the truth.

[marmar]

151. K/R

[Octafish]

204. Democrats believe in Democracy for everyone. It's genetic. Same for Fascism. You can just tell.

CIA director Allen Dulles participated in the assassination of a political ally of President Kennedy three days before JFK's inaugural -- Patrice Lumumba, president of the Congo.

David Talbot explained:

During his nearly decade long run as America's intelligence chief from January 1953 to November 1961, Allen Dulles turned the CIA into the most lethal and most secretive agency in Washington. He recruited bright, young, ambitious men from Ivy League backgrounds and he turned them loose on the world. They were "Mad Men" with a "License to Kill."

President Eisenhower gave Dulles and his killing machine a long leash, because he thought that by allowing the CIA to engage in covert proxy wars in the Third World, he was avoiding a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. But, this cold war calculation inflicted severe collateral damage upon the developing world.

Leaders and political movements that could have lifted their nations out of poverty and suffering were cut down in their prime. Leaders like Patrice Lumumba, the young, charismatic nationalist in the former Belgian Congo.

Lumumba's efforts to lift his people out of the near-slavery imposed on them by their Belgian colonial masters elicited the wrath of U.S. and European mining conglomerates. And, yes, these mining giants were, indeed, represented by the Dulles law firm. Lumumba was inevitably portrayed by the CIA and the agency's assets in the media in the United States and Europe as a reckless communist and he was targeted for elimination.

By the way, i'm speaking here of media assets like the New York Times correspondent in the Congo who covered the sad end of Patrice Lumumba, a man named Paul Hoffmann, who's a familiar byline to many of us who read New York Times foreign coverage for many years. Paul Hoffman was an ex-NAZI who had served U.S. intelligence since (the end of) World War II. This is the man the New York Times sent to cover Patrice Lumumba in his final days.

The CIA also sent its Doctor of Death, Sydney Gottlieb, to the Congo with a tube of toxic toothpaste. When this poison plot didn't work, the agency brought in contract killers from Europe.

Finally, in one of the CIA's first cases of what would become known as extraordinary rendition, Lumumba was captured with the CIA's help and handed over to his mortal political enemies, a gang of killers that included CIA mercenaries.

But, the CIA continues to this day to deny any responsibility -- any direct responsibility for Patrice Lumumba's death. The agency is directly implicated in his savage torture and murder. Lumumba's assassination would lead to decades of dictatorship and social collapse and further misery in the Congo.

It's important to know the timing of Lumumba's murder: January 17, 1961 -- just three days before the inauguration of President Kennedy.

And what America's fascists did to Congo they're starting to do at home. While everyone in Lansing is paying attention to potholes, the crooks who pay Snyder ripped off Detroit's pensioners and future. That's fascist, too.

[Orrex]

169. That post is longer than all the rest of DU combined.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

179. You're exposed, Orrex!

Clearly only a neo-con troll would make such an observation.

[Orrex]

180. What a bastard I am!

[Zorra]

214. Big K&R nt

[Octafish]

223. Goldman Sachs is in the Money Trumps Peace Loop

Here's what really bugs the Powerful: when the Little People discover how the Powerful use their office and privilege for personal benefit, including lying American into wars without end for profits without cease. Hence, their hatred for Wikileaks and journalists.

Wikileaks Release Suggests Stratfor Inside Info Plan with Goldman Sachs Exec

By Ryan Villarreal: Subscribe to Ryan's RSS feed
IBTimes.com
February 27, 2012 6:26 PM EST

WikiLeaks released more than 5 million e-mails Monday hacked from U.S.-based global intelligence firm Strategy Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), revealing an alleged plan between the firm's CEO and a Goldman Sachs executive to set up an investment fund that would rely on inside information gathered by the company.

A September 2011 company-wide e-mail composed by Stratfor CEO George Friedman indicates that Goldman Sachs financial adviser and former Managing Director Shea Morenz was directly involved in the establishment of the investment fund StratCap.

"Shea Morenz provided us with two opportunities," wrote Friedman.

"First, he made an investment in Stratfor designed to give us the capital needed to build our staff and our marketing. Second, he proposed a new venture, StratCap, which would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue -- an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds. We would now have our own, itself fully funded by Shea."

CONTINUED...

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/305532/20120227/wikileaks-stratfor-stratcap-goldman-sachs-fund-julian.htm

These so-and-sos would get away with all this, were it not for a few brave souls.

WikiLeaks' Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-Industrial Complex

WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering

by Pratap Chatterjee
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by The Guardian/UK

What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.

The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.

SNIP...

Assange notes that Stratfor is also seeking to profit directly from this information by partnering in an apparent hedge-fund venture with Shea Morenz, a former Goldman Sachs managing director. He points to an August 2011 document, marked "DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS", from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, which says:

"What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-10?print

How much more real can it get than members of the secret team using inside information for personal gain?

WikiLeaks Goes Inside Corporate America's Wannabe CIA

What do Coke, Goldman, the Marines, and the Knights of Columbus have in common? They all paid Stratfor to act as their own private intelligence agency.

—By Adam Weinstein | Mother Jones, Mon Feb. 27, 2012 1:42 PM PST

EXCERPT...

Few companies seemed as concerned about threats from activists as Archer Daniels Midland, the "Goliath of world food production" Mother Jones once described as equally concerned with "possible price-fixing in Bulgaria" and "influence-peddling in Washington." Shortly after Stratfor started its Global Vantage service, Rich Ryan of ADM's "investigative unit" began to hit them up for intel on political enemies:

• On July 24, 2006: "Rich called to ask a few more questions about activist campaigns to pass to other business divisions. Watching for more information."

• Two days later: "Talked with Rich several times about activist campaign against the company."

• On November 9, 2006: "Received email from Rich regarding some animal rights protesters. Setting up a meeting while he and Mark are in DC next week."

• Five days later: "Rich came into the office for a brief discussion about animal rights as it relates to their new facilty in Decatur. He seems very happy with the service, and happy with our information and assistance."

CONTINUED...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/wikileaks-strafor-leak-corporate-intelligence

How about OWNING the system whereby the government gathers "intelligence"?

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: " got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience." (Emphasis added.)

For instance, James Clapper had a stint at BAH before becoming the current Director of National Intelligence; George Little consulted with BAH before taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency; John McConnell, now vice chairman at BAH, was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the ‘90s before moving up to director of national intelligence in 2007; Todd Park began his career with BAH and now serves as the country's chief technology officer; James Woolsey, currently a senior vice president at BAH, served in the past as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and so on.

BAH has had more than a little problem with self-dealing and conflicts of interest over the years. For instance in 2006 the European Commission asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Privacy International (PI) to investigate BAH’s involvement with President George Bush’s SWIFT surveillance program, which was viewed by that administration as “just another tool” in its so-called “War on Terror.” The only problem is that it was illegal, as it violated U.S., Belgian, and European privacy laws. BAH was right in the middle of it. According to the ACLU/PI report,

Though Booz Allen’s role is to verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its relationship with the U.S. Government calls its objectivity significantly into question. (Emphasis added.)

Among Booz Allen’s senior consulting staff are several former members of the intelligence community, including a former Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA.

As noted by Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, “It’s bad enough that the administration is trying to hold out a private company as a substitute for genuine checks and balances on its surveillance activities. But of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment.” (Emphasis added.)

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

Wikileaks and the associated leakers and journalists brave enough to "go there" are proof-positive that "money trumps peace" for government insiders and their rich cronies and political sponsors. It's no wonder so much is classified Top Secret, they're using the ultimate in inside information to make a killing through the biggest racket there is, war.

PS: Thank you, Zorra! Very much appreciate you being here.

[muriel_volestrangler]

237. As an example of Pilger's dishonesty, here's Garton-Ash's piece

From what Pilger wrote, you wouldn't guess that Garton-Ash was unconvinced by Powell or Blair. He listed 'for' and 'against' reasons; Pilger quotes from 'for' without mentioning the existence of 'against'. He says Garton-Ash 'praised' Blair as 'a Gladstonian Christian liberal interventionist'; but it was actually criticism of not really believing what he says in public:

In defence of the fence

Colin Powell did not convince me. But nor does the peace movement

After watching Colin Powell's riveting performance at the UN security council, with its crackling phone intercepts, satellite photos and carefully crafted televisual moments, I asked myself: what does this change in your view of the Iraq war? The answer is: not much. I remain unconvinced by the case for - and doubtful of the case against.
...
But on Iraq, I would still like to defend a position of tortured liberal ambivalence. Being liberal doesn't mean you always dither in the middle on the hard questions. I was strongly against the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, against the American interventions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, for military intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, and for the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan, all on good liberal grounds. Iraq is different and more difficult. I see four strong arguments on each side.
...
My hunch is that if you injected Tony Blair with a truth serum in the dark reaches of the night, he would confess to most of this liberal ambivalence. I don't believe that he has secret intelligence of a kind that would convince us all if only we could be allowed to see it. And the Foreign Office is constantly whispering warnings in his ear. But in public, he is full of passionate, even missionary conviction. Why? Because of who he is, of course - a Gladstonian Christian liberal interventionist. Perhaps because he thinks that maintaining British solidarity and influence with the US is more important even than the probable negative consequences of a war with Iraq. But also because he's prime minister, not a writer or commentator. He has to decide. He has to lead. He has to convince a sceptical public and resentful party.

That doesn't mean we all have to do the same, putting just one side of a complex dilemma with passionate, simplistic conviction. Even if it does make better television.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/feb/06/iraq.antiwar

And he says "In 2006, he wrote, “Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran.” ". Yes, and the conclusion of that piece was:

Let's make sure we do better with Iran than we did with Iraq

The west's next step on Tehran's nuclear plans should be to understand the regime and society, not to start bombing

...
So what should Europeans and Americans do on the edge of this Persian precipice? Here are a few things for starters. First, Europeans should take the threat of an unpredictable, fragmented Islamic revolutionary regime obtaining nuclear weapons very seriously indeed. Europeans led the movement against nuclear arms escalation by the superpowers in the 1980s; today's threat of nuclear proliferation is probably more dangerous. Americans, for their part, should not confuse European warnings about the need to proceed cautiously with cowardice, euroweeniness, and all those other failings of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" attributed to us by red-blooded American anti-Europeans.

Second, we should share all the information, knowledge and intelligence that we have. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has observed that Iran is unique among the countries of the world in that the US has so little direct contact with it. The US has had no diplomats there since the end of the embassy hostage crisis a quarter-century ago. It has very few businesspeople or journalists there. And, if James Risen's State of War, is to be believed, the CIA managed to shop its whole network of agents in Iran to the Tehran authorities by inadvertently sending a list of them to a double-agent. So they don't even have any spooks there. The Europeans, by contrast, have diplomats, businesspeople, journalists and possibly also spooks aplenty in Iran, and so should be better informed.

We need to share all this information and reach a common analysis. And before we take any step in the diplomatic dance, we need to ask ourselves two questions: how will this affect the Iranian regime, and how will it affect Iranian society? The regime is complex. Ahmadinejad is the president, but not the ultimate boss. The boss of this theocratic regime is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini. Without his say-so, the nuclear seals would not have been broken. But he is constrained by strong interest groups, such as the Revolutionary Guards, and by other ayatollahs, such as the president's fudamentalist guru, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi.

As important is the dynamic within Iranian society. I feel deeply uncomfortable when I hear the American neoconservative Frank Gaffney calling for a revolution in Iran. It's so brave of him to risk other people's lives. Iranians would do well to remember what happened to their fellow Shias in the south of Iraq when the last President Bush encouraged them to rise up at the end of the Gulf war. But it is the case that Iranian society is potentially our greatest ally - indeed, probably the most pro-western society in the Middle East outside Israel.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jan/12/foreignpolicy.world

[Octafish]

239. The PNAC guy?

Right here: http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html

Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns

The time for diplomacy will come again, but it is not now: Ukraine urgently needs military support, and a counter to Russian propaganda

by Timothy Garton Ash

EXCERPT...

There is a Polish saying which translates roughly as “we play chess with them, they play kick-arse with us”. (Dupniak, or kick-arse, is a Polish game in which people try to identify who kicked them from behind.) This is the problem of the democratic west in general and the slow-moving, multi-nation EU in particular. It was recently exemplified in a woefully unrealistic chess paper on strategy towards Russia prepared for Federica Mogherini, the EU’s new high representative for foreign and security policy.

In the long run, Putin will lose. The people who will suffer most from his folly will be the Russians, not least those in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But the long run for skilful, ruthless dictators in large, well-armed, resource-rich and psychologically bruised nations can be quite long. Before he goes, more blood and tears will flow unquietly down the river Donets.

So the challenge is to shorten that period and stop the mayhem. To do this Ukraine needs modern defensive weapons to counter Russia’s modern offensive ones. Spurred on by John McCain, the US Congress has passed a Ukraine Freedom Support Act which allocates funds for the supply of military equipment to Ukraine. It is now up to President Obama to determine the timing and composition of those supplies.

A report by a group including Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato, and Strobe Talbott, the veteran Russia expert, identifies the equipment needed: “counter-battery radars to locate long-range rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), electronic countermeasures for use against opposing UAVs, secure communications capabilities, armoured Humvees and medical support equipment”.

Only when Ukrainian military defence can plausibly hold Russian offence to a stalemate will a negotiated settlement become possible. Sometimes it takes guns to stop the guns.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda

More "money trumps peace" thinking, too.

[muriel_volestrangler]

241. No, not a PNAC guy

The only claim I can find of any connection of his (a British historian, not an American politician) to the PNAC is this, saying he signed a letter to NATO and EU heads of state: http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html

The letter:

As citizens of the Euro-Atlantic community of democracies, we wish to express our sympathy and solidarity with the people of the Russian Federation in their struggle against terrorism. The mass murderers who seized School No. 1 in Beslan committed a heinous act of terrorism for which there can be no rationale or excuse. While other mass murderers have killed children and unarmed civilians, the calculated targeting of so many innocent children at school is an unprecedented act of barbarism that violates the values and norms of our community and which all civilized nations must condemn.

At the same time, we are deeply concerned that these tragic events are being used to further undermine democracy in Russia. Russia's democratic institutions have always been weak and fragile. Since becoming President in January 2000, Vladimir Putin has made them even weaker. He has systematically undercut the freedom and independence of the press, destroyed the checks and balances in the Russian federal system, arbitrarily imprisoned both real and imagined political rivals, removed legitimate candidates from electoral ballots, harassed and arrested NGO leaders, and weakened Russia's political parties. In the wake of the horrific crime in Beslan, President Putin has announced plans to further centralize power and to push through measures that will take Russia a step closer to authoritarian regime.

We are also worried about the deteriorating conduct of Russia in its foreign relations. President Putin's foreign policy is increasingly marked by a threatening attitude towards Russia's neighbors and Europe's energy security, the return of rhetoric of militarism and empire, and by a refusal to comply with Russia's international treaty obligations. In all aspects of Russian political life, the instruments of state power appear to be being rebuilt and the dominance of the security services to grow. We believe that this conduct cannot be accepted as the foundation of a true partnership between Russia and the democracies of NATO and the European Union.

These moves are only the latest evidence that the present Russian leadership is breaking away from the core democratic values of the Euro-Atlantic community. All too often in the past, the West has remained silent and restrained its criticism in the belief that President Putin's steps in the wrong direction were temporary and the hope that Russia would soon return to a democratic and pro-Western path. Western leaders continue to embrace President Putin in the face of growing evidence that the country is moving in the wrong direction and that his strategy for fighting terrorism is producing less and less freedom. We firmly believe dictatorship will not and cannot be the answer to Russia's problems and the very real threats it faces.

The leaders of the West must recognize that our current strategy towards Russia is failing. Our policies have failed to contribute to the democratic Russia we wished for and the people of this great country deserve after all the suffering they have endured. It is time for us to rethink how and to what extent we engage with Putin's Russia and to put ourselves unambiguously on the side of democratic forces in Russia. At this critical time in history when the West is pushing for democratic change around the world, including in the broader Middle East, it is imperative that we do not look the other way in assessing Moscow's behavior or create a double standard for democracy in the countries which lie to Europe's East. We must speak the truth about what is happening in Russia. We owe it to the victims of Beslan and the tens of thousands of Russian democrats who are still fighting to preserve democracy and human freedom in their country.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/an-open-letter-to-the-heads-of-state-and-government-of-the-european-union-and-nato/228041.html

Pretty accurate to say that in 2004. Other signatories included Madeleine Albright, Joe Biden, Vaclav Havel and Glenys Kinnock. It had plenty of PNAC people on it, but plenty of left wingers too. Being anti-Putin is not a sign of being neoliberal.

Is it your contention that Putin should be allowed to take over eastern Ukraine without any resistance? Is that why you posted the article saying that Putin's offence needs to be stopped with weapons?

[Octafish]

243. Which makes him out to be PNAC chums with Robert Kagan, husband, coincidentally, of Victoria Nuland.

To show it really is a small world: Biden's son just happens to be making money in Ukraine in the fracking field.

Michael Hudson: The Fracking/World Bank/IMF/Hunter Biden Dismantling Plan for Ukraine

by Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism, Posted on August 5, 2014

Richard Smith was early to take a dim view of R. Hunter Biden becoming a director of a Ukraine’s biggest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings:

This has to be a hoax, right?

It’s so bizarre that you almost have to assume it’s a hoax. It sounds more like a cliched movie plot — a shady foreign oil company co-opts the vice president’s son in order to capture lucrative foreign investment contracts — than something that would actually happen in real life. But the indications as of this afternoon are that the board appointments actually happened, and that a Ukrainian energy company has retained the counsel of the vice president’s son and the Secretary of State’s close family friend and top campaign bundler.

Michael Hudson reports in a Real News Network interview that the commercial and geopolitical logic behind the Biden role, and the bigger US and World Bank/IMF program, is to push fracking onto a decidedly unreceptive population in Eastern Ukraine.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/michael-hudson-frackingworld-bankimfhunter-biden-dismantling-plan-ukraine.html

A Buy-Partisan world, too.

[muriel_volestrangler]

245. No, it doesn't make him a 'chum'

Don't make up shit like that. Signing a letter warning that the right wing Putin is dangerous does not make you part of the PNAC.

[Octafish]

247. PNAC is attempting to force US into arming Ukraine in a hoped-for war with Russia.

PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan and his wife, State Department official Victoria Nuland, are helping lead the charge.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

Don't get all sanctimonious for me pointing that out.

[muriel_volestrangler]

249. I pointed out you made up that he is a 'chum' of Kagan

Look them up and you find Garton Ash is critical of Kagan:

Anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity, Robert Kagan reported from Europe recently in the Washington Post. In London one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of US foreign policy. Britain’s most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory sexual imagery.

The last sentence must be a reference to a recent essay I wrote in the New York Review of Books. Well, thanks for the compliment but no thanks for the implication. If I’m anti-American, then Robert Kagan is a Belgian. Since he and I have never met or conversed in accents melodious or otherwise, I take it that the earlier sentence cannot refer to me; but whoever it does refer to, its innuendo is even more disturbing.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/thegreatdivide

The trans-Atlantic chasm has by now generated its own substantial literature. The best known example is Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power (2003), which famously argues that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus—i.e., that the differences between them are both deep and of the essence. One of Kagan’s earliest critics was Timothy Garton Ash, a fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and during the 1990’s a perceptive writer on Eastern Europe and its transition out of Communism.

In Free World, Ash continues his critique of Kagan by laying out a systematic account of why he believes the trans-Atlantic rift is not permanent or necessary, and how the “free world” that we used to celebrate in the days of the cold war might be restored. While I would very much like to be persuaded that Ash is right, I think that in the end he underestimates not only the depth of existing differences but the difficulty of coming to an agreement on a common agenda.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/free-world-by-timothy-garton-ash/

[Octafish]

252. PNAC ''Chums'' is a bad word on my part. Sorry. PNAC "Co-conspirators" would be more accurate.

Conspirators, not only as commonly used today to describe a criminal action planned by two or more people, but also as in the original sense of the word: "to breathe together" in unison.

Thank you for pointing out where Garton Ash points out Kagan's shortcomings. Thanks also for pointing out how the pro-Israel crowd would think any criticism of PNAC is anti-Semitic.

[KoKo]

254. A "Liberal Interventionist" who believes in Global Stability?

Yet the methods used for "Global Stability" are proving to cause more instability. It's time for a rethink. War and Chaos in the Middle East because of an Invasion in Iraq fed to the American People and Europe based on deception and lies which has conveniently followed the guidance of the "Project for New American Century" almost to the letter. We and our "allies" have expanded NATO into countries it was never intended to be in. It is the West's Global Army along with mercenaries and others who are paid who have no loyalty to anyone but their own paychecks.

Is the world more stable today than it was before 9/11 when the power of the Miltitary/Corporate/Industrial/Media Complex was unleashed?

RE: Putin. Since "Regime Change" was always a chief goal of the "PNAC" and Iran is one of the targets on the original list it would make sense that Russia's alliance with Iran and other areas where the "Liberal Interventionists" have interest would mean that Putin is an "enemy" to the goals of the Global Interests. Regime change is in store for Russia. Ukraine is the door. When the Soviet Union dissolved there were agreements made about NATO expanding into those former Soviet States and threatening Russia's "Homeland" (since we in the USA are so fond of that word). Putin's past speeches have shown that he always wanted to Russia to work with the Eurozone in cooperation economically. One can say that his speeches are a cover up for this "true intentions" (since so many Political Leaders tend speak out of both sides of their mouths) but the track record of our US/Allies in bringing chaos wherever we go would seem to give justification that Putin has some justification for his actions.

This is an alternative view that many on the Left have about the failures of our foreign policy from Korea, through Vietnam, South America, arming Taliban against Soviet Union and now this disaster in the ME and looming confrontation with Russia. I've left out a few other "interventions" that have had unintended consequences from "Bringing Freedom and Democracy"....but this is enough to call for some serious Re-Think of what is going on with our foreign policy that Chaos is the result.

[Octafish]

259. PNAC, like Banksters, are Buy Partisan...co-incidentally, of course.

An Intelligence Question:

"Is the world more stable today than it was before 9/11 when the power of the Miltitary/Corporate/Industrial/Media Complex was unleashed?" -- KoKo

Where NSA spying fits into this corporate war for control of the planet's resouces comes in:

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: "[Booz Allen has] got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience." (Emphasis added.)

For instance, James Clapper had a stint at BAH before becoming the current Director of National Intelligence; George Little consulted with BAH before taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency; John McConnell, now vice chairman at BAH, was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the ‘90s before moving up to director of national intelligence in 2007; Todd Park began his career with BAH and now serves as the country's chief technology officer; James Woolsey, currently a senior vice president at BAH, served in the past as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and so on.

BAH has had more than a little problem with self-dealing and conflicts of interest over the years. For instance in 2006 the European Commission asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Privacy International (PI) to investigate BAH’s involvement with President George Bush’s SWIFT surveillance program, which was viewed by that administration as “just another tool” in its so-called “War on Terror.” The only problem is that it was illegal, as it violated U.S., Belgian, and European privacy laws. BAH was right in the middle of it. According to the ACLU/PI report,

Though Booz Allen’s role is to verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its relationship with the U.S. Government calls its objectivity significantly into question. (Emphasis added.)

Among Booz Allen’s senior consulting staff are several former members of the intelligence community, including a former Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA.

As noted by Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, “It’s bad enough that the [Bush] administration is trying to hold out a private company as a substitute for genuine checks and balances on its surveillance activities. But of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment.” (Emphasis added.)

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

Gee. PNAC and the BFEE do a lot of war, heh heh heh, I mean "work" together.

Small world.

[muriel_volestrangler]

282. Not in favour of intervention in all cases

eg he was not in favour of intervention in Iraq - despite the way Pilger tried to quote him.

Putin is a right winger. I have no time for people who defend him.

[KoKo]

319. No...I'll give that to him in your first link to his article about Iraq....

but then...the rest....

[JEB]

275. Must have touched a sensitive spot. LOL.

[Octafish]

297. Meanwhile, I mention what Rahm said...I get a post locked.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6310850

What is it with some people? Don't they know what PNAC's about?

[NuclearDem]

324. Wow. I know you guys think you're being clever and all

but could you maybe hold off on the slurs?

[Octafish]

325. As compared to Rahm?

http://www.salon.com/2010/09/03/more_taunts_to_the_democratic_base/

[NuclearDem]

326. Rahm saying it doesn't justify you using it too.

[NuclearDem]

330. No, I'm hoping you'd maybe realize how hurtful and derogatory a word like r******* is.

And choose not to use it by virtue of its power to hurt.

I don't know where you got the idea for that second part.

[zappaman]

331. Good luck.

I agree with you, but I don't know that everyone does...

[Ichingcarpenter]

284. CIA manual Urged Rebels to Assassinate Their Own In Order to Create “Martyrs”

another link to fascist nazi tatics

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026309828

[Octafish]

306. Thank you for reminding DU, Ichingcarpenter.

"Let’s forgive the NAZI war criminals." -- George H.W. Bush, as quoted in The New York Times, April 14, 1990.

Not an odd thing for him to say.

Recruiting George H.W. Bush

GEORGE H.W. BUSH’S ENTIRE early life was devoted to winning the affection and approval of his father. George’s success in sports at Yale and as a World War II hero never seemed to be enough for Prescott. That need for his father’s approval was at the heart of how and why George H. W. Bush was drawn to overseas adventures. Americans know about his public life as a businessman, presidential appointee, politician, and family man. This is, in large part, a public-relations illusion. The real George h.W. Bush probably would have been happiest as a career intelligence officer, according to Rocerick Hills, an old Bush supporter and friend. Bush’s secret history as an intelligence asset is buried in his early career.

There is a myth that George Bush struck off for the Texas oil fields in 1948 to seek his fortune on his own. In reality, his father, with his long-standing connections with Dresser Industries, arranged a job for George with henry Neil Mallon, a fellow Bonesman from Yale and chairman of Dresser. According to another fellow Bonesman of Bush’s, who later rose to a high-level job at the CIA and asked that he not be identified because of his membership in Skull and Bones (and not because of his work for the CIA), Dresser “had long provided cover jobs for the Agency.” Confirming Mallon’s cooperation with the Agency was Robert T. Crowley, who was in charge of relations with corporations providing cover for the Agency. Another former CIA official explained that agents were trained as Dresser salesmen and eventually sent to operate overseas. Because the company sold drilling equipment all over the world, ti was the perfect cover job. But Bush was not on track to be a CIA case officer. The role Dulles had in mind for him, according to William Corson, was that “Bush would operate overseas and meet people who could be targeted for recruitment by the Agency.” Bush was officially considered a CIA business asset, according to Crowley and Corson.

“George’s insecurities were clay to someone like Dulles,” William Corson said. To recruit young George Bush, Robert Crowley explained, Dulles convinced him that “he could contribute to his country as well as get help from the CIA for his overseas business opportunities. Of course it was all nonsense. Dulles could care less about helping the kid. It really was a tool to help give him a wedge with Prescott if he needed it.”

SOURCE: Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror, pp13-14.

Especially considering how all those spider webs mean the spider in the middle knows where all the flys are thing.

The CIA and Nazi War Criminals

National Security Archive Posts Secret CIA History
Released Under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 146

Edited by Tamara Feinstein

February 4, 2005

Washington D.C., February 4, 2005 - Today the National Security Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary history of the U.S government's relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals. The use of Gehlen's group, according to the CIA history, Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49, was a "double edged sword" that "boosted the Warsaw Pact's propaganda efforts" and "suffered devastating penetrations by the KGB."

The declassified "SECRET RelGER" two-volume history was compiled by CIA historian Kevin Ruffner and presented in 1999 by CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jack Downing to the German intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) in remembrance of "the new and close ties" formed during post-war Germany to mark the fiftieth year of CIA-West German cooperation. This history was declassified in 2002 as a result of the work of The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) and contains 97 key documents from various agencies.

This posting comes in the wake of public grievances lodged by members of the IWG that the CIA has not fully complied with the mandate of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and is continuing to withhold hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation related to their work. (Note 1) In interviews with the New York Times, three public members of the IWG said:

• "I think that the CIA has defied the law, and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at the Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II." - Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman

• "I can only say that the posture the CIA has taken differs from all the other agencies that have been involved, and that's not a position we can accept." - Washington lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste

• "Too much has been secret for too long. The CIA has not complied with the statute." - Former federal prosecutor Thomas H. Baer

The IWG was established in January 11, 1999 and has overseen the declassification of about eight million pages of documents from multiple government agencies. Its mandate expires at the end of March 2005.

CONTINUED w LINKS…

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm

Limited hangout, in a way.

Shameful old CIA secrets

Boston Globe, Editorial, June 12, 2006

A STRIKING example of the need to keep government from hiding matters that have lost their security sensitivity was on view last week when the CIA, bowing to a 1998 federal law mandating such disclosures, released 27,000 pages of previously classified material documenting how, after World War II , US intelligence agencies shielded Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi war criminals.

The declassified documents contain secrets that were hidden from view not because they might endanger national security, but because they cast shame on governments past.

SNIP...

One of the old CIA documents made public last week at the National Archives is a memo from then-CIA director Allen Dulles noting that the agency had read the Eichmann memoirs and found a mention of Globke "which Life omitting at our request." This bit of CIA censoring was done at the request of the Adenauer government. In hiding Globke's past, the agency was protecting an author of the Third Reich's infamous Nuremberg Laws.

The CIA's discretion was meant to prevent embarrassment for an ally, whose postwar intelligence director, the notorious Reinhard Gehlen, had been Hitler's intelligence boss on the eastern front. A sad truth that haunts the shameful disclosures in these old documents is that many of the erstwhile Nazis sheltered and employed by the CIA or West German intelligence were vulnerable to Soviet blackmail and became double agents. The CIA's ethically indefensible recycling of Nazi war criminals also turned out to be incompetent spycraft. When will they ever learn?

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/06/12/shameful_old_cia_secrets/

And to think it hurt me when a DUer hit Alert on me for quoting Rahm Emanuel:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6310850

[Ichingcarpenter]

309. I saw that

and knew who you were quoting,Rahm Emanuel, which was a bad call by the jury... I would write a letter to the adm on that one.

[Octafish]

314. Russia's actions in Ukraine conflict an 'invasion', says US official Victoria Nuland

Comment by Victoria Nusland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, might be the first time a senior official has used the term publicly

Alan Yuhas
Guardian, March 4, 2015

Assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland has admitted the US considers Russia’s actions in Ukraine “an invasion”, in what may be the first time a senior American official has used the term to describe a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people.

SNIP...

The assistant secretary said she supported the representatives call to reform the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and boost its US-funded affiliates in eastern Europe and Russia, such as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, in order to counter Russian propaganda abroad and at home. Royce said: “If we can’t begin to change minds then the struggle over Ukraine today will become a generational struggle.”

SNIP...

But Nuland defended the Obama administration’s strategy of financial support for Kiev, as it struggles with corruption and financial chaos, and sanctions on Russia, saying that the State Department is in talks with EU leaders for another round of sanctions on Russia.

Only California representative Dana Rohrabacher broke with the tough talk of the committee, implying that Ukrainian revolutionaries “ignited this situation” by ousting President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Rohrabacher has long carried on an iconoclastic defense of Putin, and said that the US should not seek “to humiliate Russia again and again and again”.

Nuland briefly won infamy for a phone conversation leaked online last year in which she said “fuck the EU” to the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, while discussing a new government in then revolutionary Kiev. Nuland then became a bugbear of Russian state media, which often used the recording as evidence of direct American meddling to orchestrate a coup. The recording made clear that Nuland and Pyatt were involved in negotiations with prominent Ukrainian leaders, but at the time Russian and European intermediaries were as well.

A career diplomat, Nuland has navigated through the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, focusing on Russia and former Soviet republics. [font color="red"]She served as an adviser to former vice-president Dick Cheney as well as a State Department spokeswoman for the Obama administration, and is married to Robert Kagan, a historian often called a neocon (he rejects the label) for his generally interventionist policies.[/font color] Nuland herself appears to have taken a more diplomatic approach to intervention, and declined to tell the committee in “an unclassified setting” about her own views on whether the US should arm Ukraine.

SOURCE:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/04/victoria-nuland-russia-actions-ukraine-invasion

I pledge allegiance to Goldman Sachs...

[nationalize the fed]

321. The author from the Guardian

left out the fact that Kagan Co-Founded PNAC - the Project for a New American Century

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership". The organization advocated the view that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world," and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity",[4] referring to Ronald Reagan.

Or maybe he doesn't know what PNAC is. It wouldn't be surprising.

... is married to Robert Kagan, a historian often called a neocon (he rejects the label) for his generally interventionist policies.

He "rejects the label" does he.

A co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been a foreign policy advisor to several U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State under President Obama.

This is good

Kagan's essay "Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline" (The New Republic, February 2, 2012)[24] was very positively received by President Obama. Josh Rogin reported in Foreign Policy that the president "spent more than 10 minutes talking about it...going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph."[25] That essay was excerpted from his book, The World America Made (2012).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

DC is infested with neocons. Neo Con Men.

"the transformation of American armed forces through new technologies and operational concepts is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
PNAC

[woo me with science]

323. K&R

[Octafish]

328. THE WELL OILED MEDIA

Where are the moderating voices, the views of those who stand against the momentum of war, who challenge the self-serving rationalizations of empire? You are unlikely to find them in the major media.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is headed by Bob Coonrad, formerly deputy managing director of the U.S. propaganda station Voice of America. At the helm of National Public Radio is Kevin Klose, formerly director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio and Television Marti. (Klose in September 2002 was in Rhinebeck, New York, arguing the necessity of attacking Iraq.) The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is Michael Powell, son of the secretary of state.

(March 2003: Clear Channel, the Texas-based owner of more than 1200 radio and 36 television stations in the USA, with its own syndication and tour management divisions, has been organizing rallies in support of invading Iraq. They also maintain and enforce a list of banned songs and musicians for their stations. Vice chairman Tom Hicks made George W. Bush a multimillionaire by buying the Texas Rangers baseball team from him. As one of the creators and the first chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (with Clear Channel founder Lowry Mays on the board) when Bush was governor, he turned over the control of its funds to companies close to the Bushes, including The Carlyle Group mentioned below. Clear Channel's growth has depended on continued deregulation and lax oversight by the FCC and has its own lobbying office in Washington.)
SNIP...

Oil companies often share board members with the media. The director of Texaco (recently merged with Chevron), former senator Sam Nunn, is also on the board of directors of GE/NBC (GE is the nation's sixth largest defense contractor). Texaco board of directors member Charles Price sits on the New York Times/Boston Globe board of directors. Corporate board member William Steere is on the board of directors of Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. A member of the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal corporate board, Rand Araskog, also sits on the board of directors of Shell Oil.

SNIP...

Robert Oakley, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan in the 1980's and instrumental to the CIA support of the Afghan Mujahedin (in which Osama bin Laden became a commander), now works for Unocal. One of the Mujahedin's leaders, Hamid Karzai, was the main intermediary between the Mujahedin and the CIA. He later became a top advisor to Unocal and after the ending of Taliban rule in Afghanistan was installed as prime minister. Henry Kissinger also works for Unocal. Secretary of the Air Force under the elder George Bush, Donald Rice, is on Unocal's board of directors. (Rice is also a former president of the military think tank RAND.) Another board member is Charles Larson, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy's pacific command. Former RAND employee and Unocal advisor Zalman Khalilzad is now the National Security Council's advisor for southwest Asia. Afghanistan-born Khalilzad was also an advisor to the state department in the 1980's and is a close associate of Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

CONTINUED...

http://rosenlake.net/er/media_oil.html

[woo me with science]

332. kick

[polly7]

333. Kick and recommend! nt.