More on the contents of the 3,000 files relating to JFK, which have recently been declassified. This is another short video from the Latin America news broadcaster, TeleSur. They reveal that the files show that the CIA was considering carrying out a series of false flag attacks in Miami and other cities in Florida, and even Washington. One of the possible tactics was to sink a Cuban refugee boat, which the Agency stated could be real or simulated, and encourage a series of murder attempts on Cuban refugees in America. This was to fool the American people into believing that there was a Communist terrorist campaign operating in America itself, backed by the Cubans, which would serve as a pretext for invading the country.
The files also reveal the various attempts the Americans made to assassinate Castro. But they also show that Cuba was not behind J.F.K’s assassination. The video ends by stating that the contents of these files makes you wonder what it is in the others, that have not been released.
In this clip from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, comedian Lee Camp talks about the recent findings from 39 declassified documents that the American government was fully aware of the mid-1960s genocide in Indonesia. The docs came from the American embassy in Jakarta. The killing was launched by the Indonesian dictator, Suharto, against real or suspected members of the Communist party. Over a million people were butchered. Suharto continued as president for the next thirty years, looting billions from his country. The radical American magazine, Mother Jones, called the carnage ‘the biggest genocide you’ve never heard of’. Another reputable paper named Suharto as the world’s most corrupt politicians. Camp jokes that it’s a very crowded field, like finding the sleaziest Hollywood producer at Harvey Weinstein’s pool party.
Before he talks about this, however, he discusses the Dow Jones index recording a massive rise, as the banks that screwed the American people carry on as usual and resist proper regulation and oversight.
From what I’ve read, the declassified docs about Indonesia are just the tip of the iceberg. A number of historians have argued that not only did America know about the genocide carried out between 1965-66, but that Suharto had the full backing of America. The parapolitics magazine, Lobster, carried a very detailed article about it back in the 1990s.
There is also a very, very grim documentary about the massacres, which talked to the families of the victims and the generals and government officials responsible. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve read some of the reviews that have called it ‘harrowing’. And I’ve no doubt it is, considering the subject matter. And what is particularly disgusting is that those responsible show no remorse whatsoever.
The Real News Network is another great alternative news service that’s on the net. Like RT, it’s actually doing proper journalism and showing just how corrupt and unjust contemporary politics is under neoliberalism in the West. In this video, Shir Hever from Heidelberg talks to Moshe Machower, an Israeli professor and anti-Zionist activist, about his expulsion from the Labour party. Hever states that the allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour party started shortly after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader, and that it has become clear that they don’t have any basis in reality. They are a device to smear critics of Israel. There’s a brief clip of Jackie Walker, the Black Jewish anti-racist campaigner, who was smeared and falsely suspended as an anti-Semite because of her views on Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians, and her refusal to kowtow to the fake definition of anti-Semitism which conflates it with opposition to Israel. Walker states that the anti-Semitism smears were an entirely constructed scandal in order to bring down Corbyn.
One of the most recent victims of this witch-hunt is Professor Moshe Machower, a long time critic of Israel. Machower’s not just Jewish, but an Israeli himself. He is also a prominent mathematician and very well respected. He was expelled under the pretext that he was an anti-Semite last week because he made a very well received speech and wrote an article in the Weekly Worker making the point that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. In the article he committed the heinous crime of pointing out that the Zionist organization in Nazi Germany actually welcomed the infamous Nuremberg Laws separating ‘Aryan’ and Jewish Germans in 1937.
Machower was then approached by Labour Party Marxists, who asked if they could reprint his article in their magazine. He agreed. And this is what precipitated his expulsion. The Blairites in the party used the article’s publication by the Marxists to have him ‘autoexcluded’ without any opportunity to defend himself as a Communist infiltrator. They then used the smear that he was an anti-Semite to expel the Marxist comrades, who published the article, as anti-Semites in their turn.
Machower states that this is not about anti-Semitism. It’s just a weapon in a campaign by the Blairites in the Labour party to try to cling on to power. Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party has expanded to become the largest political party in Europe. Not only have new, younger members joined, but also the old ‘uns, who had previously left, disillusioned with the cynicism and Tory-lite policies of Blair and his cronies. And most of the Labour party, including Jeremy Corbyn and its top leadership, are left-wing. Hence, this isn’t a struggle in which the Labour party is trying to destroy itself, as Mr. Hever asks. It’s a struggle in which the Blairites are desperately trying to expel the Left.
I’d say here while the Blairites are trying to expel the Left from the Labour party, they have shown that they have absolutely no qualms about destroying the party in doing so. Several times there have been rumours about the Blairites wishing to split the party, and local Blairite Labour party officials have even gone so far as to ask Tories and Lib Dems to join the party to help them remove left-wing, pro-Corbyn members.
This shows how desperate they are, and how actively disloyal to the party. As well, of course, as their complete lack of morals in foully smearing decent, anti-racist, Jewish and non-Jewish men and women. And as Hever and Walker comment, their smears have been picked up by the other, competing parties and organizations outside the Labour party.
But their smear and expulsion of Prof. Machower has not been without consequences. Tony Greenstein, another long-term Jewish critic of Zionism, and stout anti-racist and anti-Fascist campaigner, has put up a very interesting piece on his blog, reporting the mass anger that has erupted against Machower’s expulsion. So great is this discontent, that MacNicholl and the other Blairites behind Machower’s exclusion have invited him to present his case defending himself. This is in stark contrast to their earlier, summary expulsion.
I hope this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that the expulsion of Prof. Machower becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It should be a step too far, and should discredit not just the smears and lies against Professor Machower, but all the lying allegations of anti-Semitism against decent people in the Labour party.
There’s another article by John Booth over at the parapolitics magazine Lobster, which also makes very clear that the anti-Semitism smears are baseless lies, used by the Blairites and the Zionist lobby in the Labour party, the Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement, to hang on to power. And it makes very clear in its opening paragraphs just how much these allegations differ from reality by describing the Jews active in the Labour party, or who were speaking as guests as its conference last week. He writes (footnotes included)
Anyone reading and hearing about Labour’s annual conference in Brighton might have thought it riven by yet more acrimonious controversy over antisemitism. From The Guardian to the Daily Express and the broadcast journalists in between that was the big story for those critical of the party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. 1 But for those who were there or learned of it through the burgeoning alternative media, there were other impressions to be gained. The Jewish former party leader Ed Miliband appeared in relaxed mode at fringe events. 2 The keynote conference speaker was Naomi Klein, the Canadian author of Jewish descent who has done much to challenge the orthodoxies of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism. On the conference floor Jewish party 3 activist Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi wowed delegates by her denunciation of Israeli policy on settlements and Gaza. She concluded: ‘This party does not have a problem with Jews.’ 4 Away from the formal party conference fringe, the events of the Momentum-led festival The World Transformed were routinely oversubscribed. Momentum is chaired by Jon Lansman, a former kibbutznik brought up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Later that day Wimbourne-Idrissi helped launch Jewish Voice for Labour
or 1 or <http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/858647/labour-party-conference-2017-antisemitism-jew-brighton
or 2
3
4
(JVL) alongside international jurist Sir Stephen Sedley, Oxford emeritus 5 professor Avi Shlaim (a member of the Israel Defence Forces in 1967) and David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists’ Group. 6 A clue as to why the Corbyn-led Labour party has been dogged by antisemitism allegations can be found in comparing the words with which Rosenberg concluded his 2017 JVL address to a packed audience and one from a fundraiser for New Labour 15 years earlier. Here’s Rosenberg on Marek Edelman, the longest surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who died in 2009: ‘This hero was persona non grata in Israel for remaining an anti-Zionist, and for saying about that incredible Uprising: “We fought for dignity and freedom. Not for a territory, nor for a national identity”. But the very most important thing he said was: “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed, never with the oppressors.”’ In contrast, this is Jon (now Lord) Mendelsohn speaking to Jewsweek.com on 8 September 2002: ‘[Tony] Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party . . .Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs. The milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Friends of Israel meetings.’
Another reason for the Blairites’ hatred of Corbyn is his own personal convictions. Not only has Corbyn been active in pro-Palestinian movements, but his second wife was a refugee from Pinochet’s Chile. As Blair was quite easy about providing support to every right-wing thug while trying to mask it under liberal platitudes, it’s not surprising that Mandelson and the others should be bitterly opposed to someone who takes standing up for human rights very seriously.
For more information, see:file:///C:/Users/User/lob74-labour-corbyn-anti-semitism.pdf
I found this extremely interesting snippet in Robin Ramsay’s ‘News from the Bridge’ section in the latest issue of the parapolitics magazine, Lobster, for Summer 2017. According to Frank Field, shortly after she retired, someone asked her what she most regretted. The Iron Lady answered that it was cutting taxes. She said she believed that it would result in a more giving society. This had not materialised.
He writes
I watch our politicians and, even though I know that as politicians they’re interested in power first and the truth second (or fifth, or not at all15), and have been conditioned to listen to polls and focus groups for their professed views, I find myself unable to suppress the thought: I wonder what they are really thinking? Take Margaret Thatcher: what did she really think she was doing when she fronted the creation of the grossly unequal society we now have? Frank Field MP gave us a striking insight into her thinking recently. Just after
she retired she was asked, ‘“What was your greatest disappointment in
government?” Back shot Mrs T: “I cut taxes because I thought we would get a giving society. And we haven’t.”
If we take this seriously, she apparently thought charitable giving would replace some of the state’s functions. This is consistent with the anti-state prejudices of the group with which she was allied in the 1970s – Keith Joseph, Alfred Sherman, the Institute for Economic Affairs et al. Another interpretation would be that, having decided to cut taxes to win elections, she rationalised the reduction in state spending with the thought. ‘Oh, well, people will give more to charity.’ Either way, it shows that Mrs T had no understanding of the
society in which she lived and the great tide of possessive individualism17 she was encouraging. But we knew that already, I guess.
Assuming that this is genuine, and not Thatcher trying to make herself look genuinely caring and self-aware when the opposite was the case, this undermines somewhat the central myth of Thatcherism. The Tories have consistently attacked the welfare state on the grounds that it discourages private charity. I remember Thatcher and the Tory press prating on about how the retreat of welfare provision would strengthen private charity, as private individuals and charities stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the state. Reagan and the Republicans spouted the same nonsense over the other side of the Pond, followed by Bill Clinton. There’s footage of the former governor of Arkansas telling one Conservative group that ‘we know that there isn’t a government programme for every need or social problem’ or words to that effect, before going on to praise the effectiveness of private charity in tackling poverty and deprivation. And it’s true that American religious Conservatives are personally more generous than secular liberals. But the left has pointed out that private charity is inadequate for tackling poverty, unemployment, and issues like disability and poor health. You need state provision.
Now it seems, despite all the rubbish talked about Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ or May’s ‘shared society’, all this Thatcherite talk about private charity was rubbish, and known to be so by the woman who uttered it, after she tried it and it didn’t work. This has to be an embarrassment to a party for whom Maggie can do no wrong, and which is still preaching her discredited bilge nearly forty years after she came to power.
Get May and the Tories out now! Before they can wreck the NHS still further.
This is another very interesting piece from YouTube, again featuring George Galloway. It’s not really a video, as it’s just recorded dialogue, presumably from his radio show. In it, he talks to the right-wing columnist and broadcast, Peter Hitchens. The two are from completely the opposite ends of the political spectrum, but on the matter of the Chilcot Inquiry and the Iraq War they are largely in agreement. Galloway acknowledges that he has profound disagreements with Hitchens, but also some overlap. Most of the talking in conversation is done by Hitchens, who makes some very interesting points.
Hitchens points out that, although the Chilcot Inquiry made Blair the sole culprit responsible for the Iraq War, there were many others involved, who have been exonerated, such as Alistair Campbell. Hitchens is not greatly impressed with Blair’s intellectual abilities. He states several times that he was only a figurehead, and the real leadership of New Labour was elsewhere. Blair, he contends, didn’t really understand what was going on around him. At one point Hitchens states that Blair didn’t really want to be a politician. He wanted to be Mick Jagger. He probably had the intellectual ability to be Jagger, but certainly lacked the necessary brainpower to be prime minister. He also argues that Blair was really only a figurehead for New Labour. He was found and groomed by the real leaders of the faction, who wanted someone who would be ‘the anti-Michael Foot’. They settled on Blair, and prepared him for the role without him really understanding what was going on.
Hitchens and Galloway also discuss the allegation that everyone was in favour of the War, and it was only the Left that was against it. Hitchens states that he was initially in favour of the War, but if he had the sense to turn against it in 2003, it shows that you didn’t have to have any great prophetic ability to be against it. Hitchens states that he feels that people were led to support the War, because of the myth of the ‘Good War’. This is based on the belief that the Second World War was a straightforward, uncomplicated struggle against evil. Ever since the War, our leaders have been fancying themselves as Churchill or Roosevelt, and casting every opponent as Hitler. They did it with the Iraq War, and they’re doing it now with the Russians and Vladimir Putin. They’re presenting Russia as an expansion power, and preparing for another war with Russia by sending troops to Estonia and Poland, when the reality is that Russia is not an expansionist threat and has actually ceded hundreds of miles of territory. Hitchens also informs Galloway and his listeners that Britain has actually sent troops into the Ukraine.
Hitchens goes on to state that much of the West’s destabilisation and attempts to destroy opposing regimes is done covertly, through the funding of opposition movements, the manipulation of aid, and – here Galloway supplies the words – ‘moderates’. This happened in Syria, where considerable damage was done before we started bombing them. But people don’t realise it, as this will never show up in a newsreel. As for how warmongers like Blair can be stopped, it can only come from parliament. Hitchens remarks approvingly on the way parliament stopped Cameron when he wanted to bomb Syria. Unfortunately, Hitchens concludes that turning Blair into an object of ridicule is the only justice we can expect. He is pessimistic about there being any tribunal that can bring war criminals like Blair and Bush before it, and so here there’s a difference between those, who have and those who don’t hold a religious belief. For religious believers, you hope that there will be an ultimate judgement coming. Galloway concludes by saying that he believes that there is such a punishment coming to Blair.
It’s an interesting dialogue, as the two clearly have pretty much the same perspective on the Gulf War. They’re both religious believers, as they themselves make clear. Hitchens converted from Marxism and atheism to Christianity, while I think Galloway has said that he’s converted to Islam. As believers in two of the Abrahamic religions, they share the faith that God does judge the guilty in the hereafter. Galloway is very supportive of Hitchens in this video as well. Hitchens states at one point that he’s going to publish a book on the myth of the ‘Good War’. Galloway asks him when it’s going to come out. Hitchens then replies that he hasn’t written it yet, to which Galloway then tells him to come on, as he wants to read it.
Hitchens is right about the manipulation of protest movements, humanitarian aid and opposition groups by the West to destabilise their opponents around the world. This is what happened in Chile and Iran with the overthrow of Salvador Allende and Mossadeq respectively. It happened in the Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, and I’ve no doubt Hitchens is exactly right about it occurring in Syria. The parapolitical magazine, Lobster, has been saying this more or lest since it was founded in the 1980s. It laments that very few, in any, academic scholars are willing to accept the fact that so much diplomacy and politics is done through covert groups.
I think Hitchens is also correct about Britain and the West always casting themselves as the heroic ‘good guys’ in their wars, though I strongly disagree with Hitchens’ reasoning behind it. Hitchens has made clear in his books, column and website that he believes Britain should have stayed away from the Second World War. He correctly points out that it was not about saving the Jews from the Holocaust, but honouring our treaty with the French to defend Poland. he also thinks that if Britain had not declared War, we would still have the Empire.
I’ve blogged before that I believe this to be profoundly wrong. We did the right thing in opposing Hitler, regardless of the motives of the time. The Poles, and the other nations threatened by Nazi Germany needed and deserved protection. Churchill’s motives for urging Britain into the War was that Nazi Germany would be a threat to British naval power in the North Sea, if they were allowed to conquer Europe. This is a correct evaluation. A Europe under Nazi domination would see Britain pushed very much to the periphery. The Nazis believed that it was control of the Eurasian landmass which would determine future economic and political power and influence. If Britain was deprived of this, she would eventually stagnate and decline as an international power.
Nor do I believe we would have kept the Empire. The first stirrings of African nationalism had emerged before the Second World War. Ghana had taken a momentous first step in being the first African colony to have indigenous members of its governing council. The Indian independence movement had been growing since the 19th century, and was gathering increasing support and power under the leadership of Gandhi. Orwell, remarking on a parade of Black troopers in French Morocco in the 1930s, stated that in the mind of every White man present was the thought ‘How long can we keep fooling these people?’ The War accelerated the process of independence, as, along with the First World War, it taught the indigenous peoples of the Empire that the British alongside whom they fought were not gods, but flesh and blood, like them, who suffered sickness and injury. The War also forced the pace of independence, as Britain was left bankrupt and exhausted by the War. As part of their reward for aiding us, the Americans – and also the Russians – demanded that we open up the Empire to outside commerce and start to give our subject people’s their independence. This was particularly welcome to the leaders of the Jamaican independence movement. This had also started in the 1930s, if not before. It was partly based on the dissatisfaction of the Jamaican middle class at having their economy managed for British interests, rather than their own. They hoped that independence from Britain would allow them to develop their economy through closer links with the US.
I also think that the belief of most British people in the rightness of the Wars we fought also comes from British imperial history. Part of the Victorian’s legacy was the Empire and the belief that this was essentially a benign institution, which gave the less developed peoples of the world the benefits of modern British rule, medicine, technology and so on, while downplaying the atrocities and aggression we also visited on them. It’s a rosy view of the Empire, which is by no means accepted by everyone. Nevertheless, it’s the view that the Tories would like to instil into our schoolchildren. This was shown a few years ago by their ludicrous attack on Blackadder and demands for a more positive teaching of British history. Unlike the Germans, who were defeated and called to account for the horrors of the Nazis and Second World War, Britain has never suffered a similar defeat, and so hasn’t experienced the shock of having to re-evaluate its history and legacy to that level. And because Hussein was a brutal dictator, Blair was indeed able to pose as Churchill, as Thatcher did before him, and start another War.
This is another piece from The Young Turks’ Jimmy Dore. It’s another piece of news from America, but I’m reblogging it because it’s also relevant of here. Obama the other day released over $400 million of Iranian money, which had been frozen in American accounts following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. At the same time, Iran released four American prisoners or hostages, depending on how you looked at it. NBC, one of the main American broadcasting networks, decided that Obama had effectively caved in to Iranian demands, and had paid a ransom for their release. They then brought on various foreign policy experts and military officers to explain why you shouldn’t give in to terrorists.
In this piece, Jimmy Dore explains the background to the frozen money, and what the mainstream media isn’t telling you about the background to these events, such as the CIA sponsored coup that overthrew the Iranian prime minister, Mossadeq, and resulted in the absolute rule of the Shah, which was ended in turn by the Islamic revolution. How most Iranian revolutionaries didn’t want to take hostages in 1979, and how Ronald Reagan, that great patriot, treacherously struck a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini over them, against official negotiations by President Jimmy Carter and the Iranian premier, Bani-Sadr.
Mossadeq was overthrown in the late 1950s by another CIA sponsored coup because he dared to nationalise the Iranian oil industry, then dominated by foreign companies, including Anglo-Persian Oil, which later became BP. This led to the White Revolution of the Shah, whose absolute and brutal rule increasing alienated Iranians until in 1979, they finally rebelled and overthrew him. Dore in this piece sarcastically remarks on how Americans can’t understand why they’re so unpopular in the Middle East, after bombing its peoples, overthrowing its governments, including that of the country next door, Iraq, putting its peoples under the rule of brutal tyrants. ‘I guess’, he goes on, ‘it must be due to their religion.’ This is another poke at the simplistic assumption of the Islamophobic right that the peoples of the Islamic world hate America, simply because they’re Muslims, rather than the fact that America has repeatedly intervened militarily and covertly in their own affairs, to their disadvantage and exploitation.
He points out that at the time, most of the Iranian revolutionaries with the exception of the faction around the Ayatollah were opposed to taking hostages. Dore quotes some of the figures to show how over three quarters of the Revolutionary leadership didn’t want this to happen. Bani-Sadr, the president, who was elected with over 75 per cent of the vote, also didn’t want the Americans taken hostages. Dore makes the point that this is what Americans have not been told, because they wanted to turn Iran into an international bogeyman to frighten the American people.
Then he gets to the ‘October Surprise’. Here he draws on reports by PBS, the American public broadcasting network. This is what the mainstream media really won’t tell you, because it reflects extremely badly on the Right’s hero, Ronald Reagan. Reagan decided it would be a good idea to pay the ransom the Iranians, well, really the Khomeini youth wing, were demanding as a way of increasing American influence in Iran, and exerting some form of control over Lebanon, whose Shi’a factions were strongly influenced and connected to Iran. However, he arranged for the ransom to be paid and the hostages released after the American elections that October. It’s therefore no surprise that Carter was made to look weak by having not secured their release, and so lost the election. Dore makes the point that this is treason under the explicit meaning of the act. The only people, who are supposed to make deals with foreign governments, is the government of the USA. In other words, the president. He remarks on the instant denunciations that would have occurred from the Right if the Democrats had done something similar. As it is, they’re already denouncing Obama as a traitor, and tried to connect to Clinton, although she hasn’t been involved.
Dore also makes the point that this shows how American television journalism has degenerated, as the NBC reporters refuse to take sides, and just repeat Republican talking points – and their rebuttals from the Democrats – without doing any deep investigation of their own to establish the truth.
As for Bani-Sadr, the Iranian Revolutionary president at the time of the crisis, he had some very strange and interesting views of Islam and democracy. He had been a student in Paris, and drawing on contemporary post-colonial political theory, amongst other radical doctrines, developed a revolutionary ideology that was, in its way, far more libertarian than the Ayatollah’s. He wanted to create a kind of Islamic democracy, where the communities of ordinary believers in the mosques would exercise control over their imams, and hence achieve through them political power. In the event, Bani-Sadr was also ousted as the Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters assumed absolute control.
Heres the video:
I’ve decided to reblog this piece, as it shows how the radical parts of the internet news services are picking up on genuine conspiracies, which previously have been confined to the pages of specialist magazines like Lobster, Counterpunch and the conspiracy fringe. Britain tends to follow the American foreign policy line, with horrendous and disastrous consequences, as we’ve seen. Britain was also strongly involved in the coup that overthrew Mossadeq. See the relevant article in Lobster about this for the full story. However, we’re not told any of this either, and so the Neocons, Blairites and right-wing historians like Niall Ferguson, can continue promoting the line that somehow American military intervention abroad has created a freer, safer world, when the truth is that for millions of people, it has done the opposite.
The conspiracy/parapolitics magazine and website, Lobster, has run a number of articles over the years on the British intelligence agencies and their suspicion and smears against the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, as a Soviet spy. In issue 13 of the magazine, its editor, Robin Ramsay, carried a piece about an interview he once did with Colin Wallace, a British army officer working in their psy-ops unit in Northern Ireland. Wallace was supposedly contacted by an MI5 officer, who asked him to compile a spurious document, purporting to come from Irish Republicans, which would smear various politicos. Wallace’s notes, as revealed to Ramsay, showed the bizarre thinking and deep suspicion the agency had of a number of senior politicians, including Harold Wilson. Wilson was considered particularly subversive because they thought, as did James Angleton, the head of the CIA, that he was controlled by the Soviets. One of the signs that he was under the thumb of the Soviets was that he was ‘pro-Israel’.
There you go. The Right are now busily attacking Labour for being ‘anti-Semitic’, because Corbyn doesn’t believe in persecuting the Palestinians. Forty years ago, they were out gunning for Harold Wilson, partly for the opposite reason: he was ‘pro-Israel’. The political stance has changed, but the Right still hates Labour because of its attitude to Israel and Palestine. Assuming, of course, that this isn’t a case of finding any old smear that will do the job against Labour.
I’ve received a couple more extremely interesting comments from Michelle Thomasson about the wars in the Middle East and the US funding of Islamist militants. She writes
You probably already have this info… but just in case it is also relevant here. One of the three most important military officials re the war on terror, General Flynn (was head of the Defence Intelligence Agency), is caught admitting on video what the U.S. government already knew in 2012 about the establishment of a caliphate by Islamic extremists and then still supplying them the arms (though not mentioning they may have been supplying some clapped out weaponry). Clip from Democracy Now, https://youtu.be/MQDRGrA9I7A?t=3m17s
If people really understood!
and
The information is out there, yet still most of our mainstream media peddle devastating misinformation for the war mongers!!
Here is a very telling clip from Joe Biden talking to people at Harvard. I can imagine he thought they were too smart to try and fool hence the honesty to appear ‘informed’ but he has tried to withdraw comments since his admission. The clip is just over 2mins and the Biden mishap comes in at 1 min:
Interestingly, Qatar mentioned in the link above was involved in paying a very large ransom to IS for UN peacekeepers under the scrutiny of the Israelis, it is a rather unusual way to openly give militants a big wad of money: https://youtu.be/PMDc_NBsfi0
And with Israel that brings up a conundrum, as ISIS/IS (Daesh) is just an extension of Wahhabism why have these recent medieval-like slaughterers not included Israel in their target sights? Wahhabism was always against Zionist goals…
And for your records here is Hilary Clinton admitting how they used the “Wahhabi brand of Islam to go beat the Soviet Union” makes it sound like a baseball match! This information is so terrible, when are they going to wake up to what they are doing re the havoc, desperation and destruction they have designed for millions of people?
I also have some short notes I wrote up on the roots of Wahhabism if you want them with an interesting quote re Zionism from John McHugo the author of ‘A Concise History of the Arabs'(2014)
I’d be very interested in the notes on the origins of Wahhabism, as well as the quote about Zionism from John McHugo. And it is very strange that Israel has not been attacked by ISIS or al-Qaeda, when so much Arab and Islamic politics is fiercely hostile to the Jewish state. If you look on Youtube, there are a number of pieces on there claiming that ISIS is the creation of the Israelis and funded by Mossad. I haven’t looked at them, because it’s too much like some of the stupid, genocidal conspiracy theories about Jews and Zionism that influence and motivate the Neo-Nazis, ever since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
And the mainstream media is silent about nearly all of this. The award-winning American journalist, Glenn Greenwald, speaking on one of the clips, explains why mainstream American journalists are hostile to blowing the lid off this particular can of worms. He states that journalists are just as susceptible to the hyper-patriotism as the rest of society; that many of them come from the same socio-economic groups as the politicians, generals and business leaders they interview. They’re dependent on them for stories, and so don’t press them or criticise them, for fear of losing leads or stories. He also adds that much of it is motivated by professional jealousy after the Snowden revelations. They were angry at the way they were excluded from the material Snowden revealed, and bitter about the way he received journalism awards while they didn’t. So they’re personally hostile against him, and against the journalism he represents.
Lobster, the parapolitics magazine, has also been discussing the issue, and the reason why mainstream historians by and large are hostile to taking into account the role of clandestine groups in politics. Any mention of conspiracies is excluded from respectable academic discussion as it recalls all the murderous and stupid fantasies about vast, global conspiracies by Jews and Freemasons, fantasies that have resulted in the deaths of millions. But real conspiracies – by corporations, secret political groups and the secret state, do exist. You only have to look at the way the CIA orchestrated coups in Latin America and the Middle East. Or simply at the way the CIA again funded much radical art and movements in the 1950s through to the 1970s, in order to present the West as much more culturally pluralistic and democratic, in contrast to the monolithic, totalitarian East.
Some of this reluctance to concede the role of clandestine groups is probably due to academic inertia. Doctoral students are placed under the supervision of academic supervisors, who made demand major changes to their work if they don’t agree with it. Doctoral students are required to show they can make an original contribution to research, and while students obviously do need advice and guidance, it also puts limits on how original or radical an academic dissertation can be. Also, some of the academic institutions are in receipt of monies from the intelligence services. Lobster also published a list of these some time ago.
I also think part of the problem is that the whole notion of the role of powerful, secret interest groups controlling politics is unacceptable because it problematizes vast areas of contemporary politics. The dominant ideal of the democratic West is that our rulers are essentially benign, and however beneficial or detrimental their particular party politics may be, the foundation of their power is that of the sovereign individual, as established by liberal political theorists going back to John Locke. It is also tacitly assumed that government and corporations will also work for the public good, despite obvious scandals involving political corruption.
Genuine parapolitics raises profound question marks about all this, by showing how secret groups or factions within political parties, in concert with allies in the media and the military-industrial complex, can and do manipulate public opinion, and world affairs without reference to any kind of democratic mandate. Instead of the Whig view of history, which sees it as the gradual march of progress, culminating in the establishment of liberal democracy, or the Marxist view, which sees history as produced by impersonal economic forces producing inevitable changes to the social fabric, and hence the ruling ideologies, it shows history to be made by big business and political factions, with the sovereign people there only to provide a democratic façade for decisions that have already been made by their social superiors for their own class political and economic benefit. It explicitly raises the problem that you can’t trust what politicians and big business tell you. And not just in the superficial, cynical sense, but right to the core of the political process and the nature of the democratic state itself.
And that’s unacceptable to large parts of the media and the academic establishment, embedded and nurtured as they are by the status quo.
The parapolitics/ conspiracy magazine, Lobster, has a fascinating review of Sarah Chayes’ Thieves of State (London: W.W. Norton 2015) in the issue, no. 70, for winter 2015. Chayes was an official, who arrived in Afghanistan in 2001, and later joined the International Security and Assistance Force. Working in Afghanistan, she witnessed the massive growth in corruption under the post-war regime installed by the West, including the government of Hamid Karzai. She describes the Afghan government as
best understood not as a government at all but as a vertically integrated criminal organization – or a few such loosely structured organizations, allies but rivals, coexisting uneasily – whose core activity was not in fact exercising the functions of a state but rather extracting resources for personal gain.
Under the regime, political posts are on sale, with the successful purchaser expected to make back his losses through bribery, drug deals and embezzlement. The head of the counter-narcotics ministry, Daoud Daoud, was a notorious drug baron. Karzai’s election campaign was marred by blatant fraud, and his declared intention to clean up his country’s politics was hollow. When he made it, he had standing next to him his two vice-presidents, men, who were notorious war criminals. It was a tacit statement that in fact he had no such intention of doing anything about the corruption whatsoever.
Chayes was convinced that the corruption needed to be tackled as it was a ‘force multiplier’ for the terrorists. She found many of those who joined the Taliban and the insurgents did so as they believed that the Taliban were only force capable of rooting out the corruption. She approached two of the American commanders, Dan McChrystal and David Petraeus, in the hope that they would concur and act accordingly. McChrystal didn’t wish to alienate the ruling Northern Alliance, and Petraeus, although he did agree with her, didn’t act either.
Chayes blames much of the corruption on the influence of the CIA. Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was so horrendously corrupt that he was hated by three provinces. Nevertheless, the US supported him because he was a CIA asset. Karzai himself is also on the Agency’s payroll, while Petraeus went on to become its head.
Chayes’ book also discusses other kleptocratic regimes facing Islamist rebellions – in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Nigeria and Iraq. The decline of America as a geo-political force means the country can oust regimes, but not successfully install their successors. And globalisation means that the kleptocrats can invest their money in Dubai, Switzerland and Britain, or, more properly, the City of London, and can move anywhere in the world to escape Islamist attacks if this becomes too dangerous. Chayes is also pessimistic about the West, as she feels that this too is moving towards becoming a series of kleptocracies.
I thought I’d blog about the book and its review because, like the research showing that recruits to ISIS are motivated primarily by politics rather than by religion, this also shows the secular issues that are moving many Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. The invasion of Afghanistan has made the situation in some ways worse for the ordinary people, though the Taliban was a bloody and intolerant regime that fully deserved its overthrow.
As for the West becoming increasingly kleptocratic, we’ve seen the massive influence of money pouring into politics from big business and the multinationals to influence official policy. The revolving door between the arms industry, government and civil service is also notorious, not just in America but also over here in Britain where it has been repeatedly attacked by Private Eye. And public services are now more expensive and less efficient after being privatised than they were when they were publicly owned. And the massive greed and apparent immunity from punishment or prosecution of the banking and financial sector is a continuing scandal.
Garrick Alder, in his piece ‘Holding Pattern’ in issue 69 of the parapolitical magazine, Lobster, has a very interesting piece about the current myths flying about the First World War. Alder has been contributing to Lobster for many years, and I think I’ve seen his name amongst the credits as one of the ‘elves’ on QI. Amongst the other snippets of interest to the watchers of the murkier parts of history and the political landscape is the piece, ‘Set in Stone’. In this he follows a contemporary war memorial, that placed the date of the end of the First World War not as 1918, but the following year, 1919. The War was supposed to have ended on 11/11/1918, but there was an extension to allow the allies to advance and occupy the Rhineland.
He also notes that as its the centenary of the War’s outbreak, there has been a lot of talk about how the War was fought to protect democracy. He found this disquieting, a feeling probably shared by many of his readers. He points out that at the time Britain was not a democracy, and the monarch still held considerable power behind the scenes. So where did this myth come from?
Alder states that it
seems to have sprung from US President Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda advisor Edward Bernays, who helped Wilson craft an oftquoted slogan about ‘making the world safe for democracy’ to encourage the USA’s voters into supporting a war they had hoped to avoid.
and concludes
So the lie of the war being fought in the name of democracy was being told during the war itself. History is being rewritten under our noses – and this time, there are no living witnesses left to protest against it.
Bernays was Freud’s cousin, whom Adam Curtis identified in his excellent documentary, The Century of the Self, as the person, who incorporated Freud’s psychological theories into advertising and then into politics as a way of manipulating public opinion. As for the First World War, the catalyst was the campaigns of the Yugoslav peoples to gain more independence from their Austrian overlords. The War itself was fought not for democracy, but to decide the balance of power in Europe.
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