Last year I started work on a book about current western imperialism. How the US has interfered across the world to bring down democratically elected left-wing governments when they threatened American corporate power and put in place vicious, murderous right-wing dictatorships. All done in the name of protecting the world from the Communist threat, of course. The latest phase of this imperialism is George W. Bush’s and Tony Blair’s ‘War on Terror’, under which they invaded a country that was absolutely no threat to us – Iraq – just to loot its oilfields and state industries, all for the benefit of American multinationals, western big business and the Saudi oil industry. And the list goes on, through the continued occupation of Afghanistan, the funding of Islamist forces against Assad in Syria, and Obama’s and Killary’s staged, fake democratic revolution in Ukraine, which launched a government with real Nazis goose-stepping through the streets of Kiev, killing real leftists and chanting their very real hatred of Jews.
The book was suggested by ‘Florence’, one of the many great commenters on this blog, who was afraid of the lack of the understanding of the anti-imperial dimension to Socialist/ Labour party activism. She remembered the 1970s when many people became active in left-wing politics through campaigns against General Pinochet in Chile, for example. He was another real Fascist thug, who seized power in a CIA sponsored coup that overthrew the democratically elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende. The result was decades of Fascist terror, including horrific torture and rape, the internment and murder of radicals, and mass executions. Oh yes, and they stole left-wing activists’ children, to be brought up instead by good Fascist families. Pinochet was strongly influenced by the Chicago school of Milton Friedman and von Miles. The latter had explicitly turned away from democracy, because the masses would never accept his destruction of the welfare state, and state schooling, healthcare et. Pinochet was in power until the late 80s. And he ended up fleeing from justice to Britain, where he had a good friend in Maggie Thatcher. Pinochet is exactly the type of monster left-wingers in the ’70s and ’80s fought very had against, the memory of which might be lost unless more is done to show that monsters like Pinochet are still being installed and supported.
I’ve a few more things to do on the book before I send it off to Lulu. But I’ve worked out the chapters and their contents. Here’s the list:
Introduction and Florence’s request
General US/Western Interference
Abby Martin on the Jimmy Dore Show Talks about US Crimes of Empire: Part 1:
Abby Martin on the Jimmy Dore Show Talks about US Crimes of Empire: Part 2
Abby Martin on the Jimmy Dore Show Talks about the US Crimes of Empire: Part 3
Secular Talk on Seven Fascist Regimes supported by America
The Young Turks: CIA Overthrows Democracies, But Can’t Get Rid of Dictators
William Blum’s List of American Foreign Interventions: Part 1
William Blum’s List of American Foreign Inrterventions: Part 2
Blum’s List of Countries In which US Has Interfered with their Elections
Lee Camp: New Docs Show America Knew about Indonesia Genocide
American State Censored TV Programme on American Nerve Gas Atrocity in Laos.
William Blum on the naïve Trust of Countries invaded by US
William Blum on Right-Wing Coups in Greece
Democracy Now on Hillary Clinton and the Right-Wing Coup in Honduras
Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger
Democratic Socialist on the Von Mises’ Institutes Lies About the Pinochet Coup
RT’s Lee Camp on What the US Military Is Doing in Niger
TeleSur English: CIA Planned False Flag Attacks in Miami
Telsur English: US Planned to Use Biological Warfare Against Cuba
Telesur English: Venezuela Drops Petrodollars, Threatens US Global Power
Jimmy Dore: Taliban Have Surrendered Several Times, Each Time Refused by America
Jimmy Dore Show: Obama Rejected North Korea Nuclear Peace Deal in 2015
Jimmy Dore Show: US Begins Bombing in Somalia Again, Because Oil Found
William Blum on the Abortive Prosecution of NATO Leaders for War Crimes in Yugoslavia
Jimmy Dore on the Church Committee Hearings of 1975 into CIA Corruption
Jimmy Dore: Hillary Wanted to Rig Palestinian Elections
Alan Moore on CIA Atrocities in Central America: Brought to Light Financial Times Review of Book on Origins of American Financial Imperialism
Michael Moore’s New Film against US Miltitarism and Imperialism
Bernie Sanders’ Speech Attacking US Coups of Foreign Governments
Iran
The Pro-Israel Billionaires Pushing Trump towards Confrontation with Iran
Telesur English on the Similarities between Trump’s Action on Venezuela and the 1953 Coup in Iran
Redacted Tonight on How Trump Is Lying to Us About Iran and North Korea
American Comedian Lee Camp on the Real Reason Iran’s Been Put ‘On Notice’
William Blum on the Demonisation of Iran,
The Israel Lobby, Liam Fox and the Planned Bombing of Iran
Jimmy Dore: NBC Attacks Obama, Clinton, Silent about Reagan’s Treachery with Iran
Secular Talk: Candidate for Trump’s Secretary of State Wants War with Iran
Real Reasons for Iraq War
Comedian Bill Hicks on Gulf War I and George Bush Senior
The Case for Prosecuting Blair as War Criminal for Iraq Invasion
Spokesman Pamphlets on Blair, the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ and the Iraq Invasion
George Galloway and Peter Hitchens on Blair and the Iraq War
Vox Political: Youssef El-Gingihy on Western Imperialism in Iraq
An Iraqi Woman Describes the State of her Country before Bush and Blair’s Invasion
Counterpunch Article on the History of British Imperial Domination in Iraq.
Owen Jones on the Chilcot Report, the Iraq War and Tony Blair
Vox Political on Those, Who Believed Blair’s Lies about Iraq
1920s Iraqi Poem on the New Constitution and Order Imposed by and for Britain, Not Iraqis Private Eye on the Western Firms Seeking to Grasp the Iraqi Oil Fields
The Young Turks on Report Showing Iraq Invasion Based on Lies
Brainwash Update on Lawlessness, Murder and Assassination by American Mercenaries Blackwater in Iraq
Young Turks’ Item on Pentagon Censoring Internal Reports Showing War Not Working in Iraq and Syria
Gaddafi and Libya
Telesur English on the Chaos Caused by the Death of Gaddafy
Colonel Gaddafy Predicted He Would Be Killed for his Opposition to Capitalism
The Death Toll from Italian Colonialism: Why Johnson’s Comments about Libyan Corpses Is Not Funny
Russia and Ukraine
HIGNFY Spreads More Lies about Russian Interference in American Election
BBC 2 Programme Next Week on British Forces in Ukraine and Estonia
Despite the Jokes, HIGNFY Is Fake News
Putin and Trump, and Bill Clinton’s Interference in Russian Elections for Yeltsin
Counterpunch Article Claiming US Spy Agencies Trying to Engineer War with Russia
Have I Got News For You and the Bias in BBC News Satire
William Blum on American Preparations for Nuclear War with Russia
More Military Tension between NATO and Russia; Pat Mills Right in ABC Warriors
Seamas Milne on the Dangers of Conservative Propaganda in the History of Communism
Counterpunch on Putin’s Non-Existent Threat to the Baltic States
Counterpunch on NATO’s Preparations for War with Russia
Syria
Syrian Uprising Directed by Saudi Prince and Other Foreign Governments
RT on House of Lord’s Opposition to £200 million Going to Syrian Opposition
Counterpunch on Saudi Arabia’s Influence on British Foreign Affairs
Jimmy Dore: Pentagon-Backed Rebels Fight CIA-Backed Rebels in Syria
Jimmy Dore Show: Putin Refutes Western Media Lies about Syrian Gas Attack
Secular Talk on Lack of Media Outrage for Syrian Rebels Massacring 126 Civilians
Jimmy Dore on Media Censorship of the War in Syria
Canadian Journalist Exposes BBC Lies over Syria
Boris Johnson Slapped Down By May for Telling Truth about Saudi Militarism
Deep State Lies about Terrorist Threat Produced Syria and Russia
Why Are the Tories Demanding Assad’s Overthrow?
More on the Real Reason behind Western Intervention in Syria
Jimmy Dore on the Real Reason for the Civil War and Western Military Attacks on Syria
Counterpunch on American Foreign Policy and Regime Change in Syria
More on US Military Funding of al-Qaeda and Islamist Militants
Syria Chemical Weapons Attacks Were ‘False Flag’ Operations Intended to Draw America into Civil War
Counterpunch on British Spies’ Recruitment of Islamist Fighters against Syria
What’s the Real Reason We’re Bombing Syria?
ISIS Is the Saudis’ Private Army for Control of the Oil Fields
Peter Hitchens Spearing BBC Anti-Russian Propaganda over Syria
Redacted Tonight: Mainstream Media Pushing War in Syria Hiding Connections to Arms Companies
Ukraine
BBC 2 Programme Next Week on British Forces in Ukraine and Estonia
America and the Manufactured Revolution in Ukraine
Global Research on US and EU Sponsored Fascist Regime in Ukraine
Counterpunch on the Washington Post’s Journalist Blacklist and the CIA, Eugenicist Nazis and Ukrainian Fascists
US State Department Supporting Fascism and Puppet Government in Ukraine Private Eye on Britain’s Arms Sales to both Russia and Ukraine Lobster on the Ukraine as Monsanto Trojan Horse
NATO and the Economic Exploitation of Eastern Europe
As you can see, it’s really a collection of articles from this blog, but I hope it will give people an idea of what’s really going on in the world in the name of democracy and freedom, and help get a few more people on to the streets, writing to their MPs or otherwise involved in combatting western corporate militarism and imperialism.
In this clip from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, the host, comedian Lee Camp, tells how Google is trying to scare people away from watching him. Apparently if you Google his name, a little ‘knowledge card’ comes up on the screen telling you a bit about him. If you clip on the influences section, it then tells you that his comedy has been influenced by George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Douglas Stanhope, and that titan of post-Soviet mirth, Vladimir Putin. There then follows a long series of jokes about the Arkhiplut as a radical comedian, before Camp makes the serious point that this is Google trying to put prospective viewers off watching him.
He’s right. Google has been one of those desperately trying to take viewers away from left-wing and alternative news sites. They’ve even been developing computer algorithms to redirect viewers, or to make the sites deliberately difficult to find by ranking them lower than they would otherwise be.
And now they’re following the Red Scare started by Killary and her corporatist friends in the Democrats, in which anyone left-wing is automatically an agent of pernicious Russian state influence, no matter how far-fetched or contrived the allegations are.
RT America is, like RT over here, a prime target, not just because it is owned by the Russian state, but also because it’s dedicated to uncovering the kind of news the Conservative establishment does not want people in America or Britain to see. About mass homelessness, poverty, the deaths, sickness and deprivation resulting from the lack of a single-payer healthcare system, and the well-documented horrors of American imperialism. Redacted Tonight is one of those programmes taking the lid of these highly taboo subjects, which makes Lee a prime target for these smears.
RT America has so far laughed off some of the allegations. I’ve posted a vide they made spoofing the allegations, which showed the video’s host, one of the company’s senior female production crew, walking through their studios in Red Army uniforms, speaking Russian, while the news team creates fake news, amid raging gun battles and with a group of political prisoners kept in the basement.
More seriously, Abby Martin, who used to work at RT, but has since moved to TeleSur English, talked about these allegations in an interview she did with Jimmy Dore. She herself was smeared as a puppet of the Arkhiplut. She wasn’t surprised that they’ve target RT, as she saw years before how they went after Al-Jazeera. She made the point that she never said anything about Putin. And she stated very clearly that the people at RT were leftists and Socialists, who were only there because RT was the only media outlet, where they could express their views.
As for Google, I think I’ve seen somewhere that the head, or one of its heads, is a close friend of Hillary. So with those connections, it’s no surprise that it’s smearing genuine leftists and progressives as agents of Moscow.
This is another very interesting piece from RT America’s Lee Camp. Camp is a comedian and the presenter of Redacted Tonight, a satirical show that uses comedy to take a deep, critical look at American politics and current affairs. In this piece, Camp shows the double standards behind the recent decision to force RT America to register as a foreign agent under FARA, while the real foreign lobbying groups of the type the Act was set up to regulate, AIPAC and John Podesta’s lobbying organisation, are allowed to get away free.
FARA was set up in the 1930s to force lobbyists working for Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and imperial Japan to register with the American treasury, so they could have their government sponsors identified, and would have to reveal their sources of incomes.
Camp then states that AIPAC is Israel’s foreign lobby arm in the US. This shouldn’t be controversial: it’s exactly how AIPAC describes itself, as Camp shows with the masthead from their webpage. It says ‘America’s Pro-Israel lobby’. He then produces a quote about how AIPAC is the most powerful lobbying organisation in America, or at least, more powerful than other very well-organised and funded groups like the gun lobby.
He also plays a piece from former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, describing how, before she had even taken up her seat in Congress, AIPAC sent her a document they wanted her to sign pledging her support. She replied that before she would, she’d have to read about the issues first. She then states that she learned that the operatives for the Israel lobby control women’s organisations, environmental organisations, peace organisations. Every aspect of the political process is controlled by people associated with the Israel lobby.
Camp then goes on to describe how $705 million was given to Israel by America in the latest military budget. And AIPAC has solidly been behind, and indeed urging America on in its wars in the Middle East. AIPAC pushed for the Iraq invasion. They pushed for the war in Syria. They also met with a Democrat party thinktank, the Centre for American Progress, to suppress rumours by their own journalists that AIPAC is pushing for war with Iran.
AIPAC also flexes its clout at the UN. Here there’s a clip of US ambassador Nicky Haley, speaking at an AIPAC gathering, talking about how they got the UN to withdraw a report that made the ‘outrageous’ – but entirely correct claim – that Israel is an apartheid state. And then the UN Secretary General resigned. She also shows how she’s absolutely fine with people wanting to impose sanctions on North Korea and Syria, but really doesn’t see why they should be imposed on Israel.
Camp then points out that AIPAC are actively trying to make it illegal to promote the boycott of Israel, a move that is supported by around 50 senators.
He then goes on to describe the origins of AIPAC. It was set up by a former member of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, who then worked for the American Zionist Council. In 1962 the AZC was ordered by Robert Kennedy to register under FARA and open up their financial records. In December the AZC’s president, Rabbi Irving Miller, asked for a delay. In January the following year, 1963, AIPAC was founded. Then in March the AZC’s lawyers claimed that the Council should not have to register. They then continued to delay and stonewall sending in the required paperwork. The efforts to force AIPAC to register seem to have ended with the deaths of JFK and Robert Kennedy. Basically, AIPAC never got round to registering. In 1967 AIPAC applied for federal tax exemption. This was granted and backdated to 1953. In 1986 the lobbyist then began creating political action groups, in direct contravention of its tax-exempt status.
Camp explains that AIPAC’s purpose is pro-Israeli propaganda, termed ‘hasbara’, a word which literally means ‘explanation’. This is to get America to ignore Israel’s war crimes. Which, as Camp points out, doesn’t mean that all Israelis are terrible people. America commits war crimes, and he likes some Americans. AIPAC is responsible for trying smear those who criticise and protest against Israel as anti-Semites. But despite their best efforts, a growing number of young and older people around the world are standing up for the Palestinians. For the first time a bill for Palestinian human rights has been introduced into Congress. It was introduced by Representative Betty McCollum, and seeks to prevent the US from funding the detention and prosecution of children in Israel’s military courts. And of course, AIPAC are trying to crush it.
Camp makes the obvious point that if FARA was set up to control and regulate foreign lobbyists, then AIPAC is precisely the type of foreign lobbyist it is set up to regulate.
He then moves on to talk about John Podesta and the lobbying organisation he set up with his brother, Tony. John Podesta was one of Hillary Clinton’s aides. It should have registered with FARA, but didn’t, when it was lobbying on behalf of the Russian-owned company, Uranium One, from whom it collected $180,000 in fees in 2012, 2014, and 2015.
Camp then goes on to point out that this all shows that the decision to force RT to register as a foreign agent is entirely political. It’s a way to further suppress and marginalise dissenting voices like Chris Hedges and Jesse Ventura, and reinforce the stories about Russian interference. This is a story concocted by the Democratic National Convention so that it doesn’t have to look at its own corruption. The oligarchy running the country know that they don’t have the solutions to working peoples’ problems, and so are forced to resort to trying to push dissent further to the margins, and force people into an even smaller space of acceptable opinion.
Camp then points out that RT has not broadcast Russian propaganda. It has covered the Dakota pipeline, police brutality and Camp himself covered electoral fraud last year. It has even won an Emmy award for its coverage of the Occupy movement. He ends by stating that it looks like propaganda only if you buy into the corporate bullsh*t coming from CNN.
I’m not sure, but I wonder if Cynthia McKinnon was the Black, Green party politico, who lost her seat because she wouldn’t kowtow to AIPAC. When she refused to follow their line, they smeared her as an anti-Semite, and poured their funding into her political rivals, so that she would lose the election.
AIPAC are a nasty, bullying organisation that is utterly ruthless in trying to shut down any criticism or dissent about Israel. But it certainly does not speak for the majority of Jewish Americans. According to polls, American Jews tend to be politically liberal, and traditionally have been utterly indifferent to Israel. They were always far more keen to build lives for themselves as equal and respected citizens of the US. Just as they have been in Britain and very many other countries. Hence the determination of Zionist groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to give the false impression that hatred of Jews in Europe is at the same level as Germany just before the Nazi seizure of power. And that all Muslims, or nearly all Muslims, are also bitter anti-Semites and a threat to western democracy.
However, as Camp points out, an increasing number of people are becoming more critical of Israel, including young Jewish Americans. Many of them have become even more hostile to the country after going there on the ‘heritage’ tours that the country sponsors amongst American Jews to gain their allegiance and goodwill. The Jews, who have been so alienated from Israel, include those, who have been victims of anti-Semitism. Clearly the experience of being a victim of prejudice and abuse is not leading Jewish American young people to wish to support the abusive Israeli state.
This is another video that chips away more of the lies we’ve been told about the armed opposition against President Assad in Syria. In this short piece of about a minute long from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, host Lee Camp discusses the revelation in the Intercept that an attack by the Free Syrian Army was directed by a Saudi prince, and that America was warned the attack was coming. This revelation shows that the Syrian uprising was under the control of foreign governments.
This news comes from a tranche of NSA documents leaked to the magazine about three years ago. Camp wonders why it took the Intercept so long to publish this, and asks his viewers to imagine how many lives could have been saved, and destruction spared, if the magazine had published it then, rather than wait till now.
I’ve put up quite a number of pieces, as there have been repeated news that the forces the West is backing against Assad very definitely aren’t interested in freedom and democracy as we’ve all been told. They consist of ‘moderate’ organisations like the al-Nusra Front, which used to be the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, as well as ISIS. And the goal is regime change purely for geopolitical reasons. Qatar, Jordan and a number of other Arab states want to topple Assad so they can run an oil pipeline through Syria to Turkey and the West. Assad’s blocking it, as he’s an ally of Iran and Russia, and this would harm their oil industry in the region. The Saudis also hate Assad, because he’s an Alawi, a Shi’a sect, and the government he heads is secular and liberal. Whereas the Saudis are Sunni, theocratic and very illiberal. And the Neocons in America and Britain want Assad out the way, ’cause Assad is an ally of Russia and Iran, and a perceived danger to Israel. And besides, the American military and industrial complex has done its best to overthrow secular, nationalist Arab government since the Cold War, because they were seen as next to Communism, and a threat to Western imperial interests.
As for the Syrian resistance themselves, they’re brutal thugs. They’ve also been responsible for a series of massacres and atrocities against civilians, and have been caught trying to stage or actually staging poison gas attacks, which they then try to blame on Assad. This is to get America to send in ground troops to help them.
They are very definitely not the heroic resistance fighting for a free, democratic Syria that we’ve been told by our politicos and the mainstream media.
I have no doubt that many of the revolutions that spontaneously spread across the Arab world against their despotic regimes were precisely that: spontaneous demonstration by ordinary people against terrible oppressive governments. But in Syria this seems to have been overtaken a very long time ago by very anti-democratic and authoritarian foreign interests.
Like the Saudis.
If Saudi Arabia wins, and Syria falls to the rebels, you can expect more sectarian and tribal bloodshed, such as has happened in Iraq. You can expect it to become another Sunni theocracy, and the massacre and ethnic cleansing of its Christian and Shi’a populations, as well as the butchery of ordinary, moderate Muslims, who want to live in peace with their neighbours in one of the most ancient and cultured centres of Arab civilisation. And, just as in Iraq, you can expect the priceless antiquities and monuments to be smashed and destroyed, because they don’t conform to whatever the new theocratic rulers decide is ‘true’ Islam.
The revelation that the Syrian opposition is under the control of the Saudis and other foreign states shows that its also part of a long line of stage-managed coups and coup attempts, which we’ve been told are entirely spontaneous. Like the Maidan Revolution in Kiev, which overthrew the pro-Russian Ukrainian government, and replaced it with one friendly to the West. We were also told that was spontaneous. It was anything but. It was stage-managed by the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros and Victoria Nuland in Barack Obama’s government. Who was even recorded telling her subordinates how they should go about making sure that they got the people they wanted into the new Ukrainian government.
None of these revolutions are entirely spontaneous, and whatever the Arab people may have initially hoped, they don’t have democracy and freedom as their goal.
And in Syria our politicians are lying to us, again and again, to cover up the reality that this carnage is being caused solely for the profits of American multi-nationals, the arms industry, the American-Saudi oil companies, and the Saudi theocrats.
This story comes from the real, whacky world of spies. In this clip from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, Naomi Karavani talks about the bizarre tactics the CIA used to infiltrate academia, and particularly the fake academic conferences the agency set up to encourage Iranian nuclear scientists to defect. She starts with a statement Harvard University gave after it was revealed that the uni was admitting CIA agents. They defended their admission of the spooks, stating that they were proud to offer an education to members of the security services, just as they were proud to offer it to left-wing and peace activists.
The CIA’s attempt to get nuclear scientists from the Islamic Republic was hampered by the fact that none of the agents charged with conducting the project actually knew anything about science. So in the absence of any knowledge about particle physics and the practical engineering required to build reactors or bombs, they fell back on using ‘chat-up lines’. Like ‘Didn’t I see you in Istanbul’, and ‘Don’t you hate crowds’. They also resorted to using personal information that they gained about their targets. One scientist they attempted to recruit said that one of them blithely told him that he understood that he’d had testicular cancer and had ‘lost a nut’. The agents also tried to get their targets alone through poisoning their guards’ meals, so that they got diarrhoea and vomiting.
Karavani also describes how Israel is accused of trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme through the assassination of at least five of its scientists. Israel has denied this, but nevertheless, in 2015 the American government tried to stop Israel from killing anymore.
Karavani concludes by stating that these tactics are hostile and could lead to a war between America and Iran, while in fact, peaceful negotiations have led to Iran abandoning research costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
There’s a very serious point here amidst the comedy. It’s not just about the assassination that have probably been staged by Israel against the Iranian nuclear programme. This presumably also includes the Stuxnet computer virus, which shut down one of the Iranian nuclear reactors and allegedly killed several scientists and engineers. Nor the hypocrisy of this attitude, when Israel, quite against international law, has nuclear weapons. It’s the whole issue of the CIA and other parts of the security state, including the military, on campus.
Way back in the 1980s/ 1990s Lobster carried an article about British universities that were involved in training military personnel and spies. I think some of those, who were being provided with an education at public expense also included the type of characters, who gave covert help to various dictators around the world.
This issue has become very relevant yet again, as American peace protesters, such as Code Pink, have launched a movement to encourage universities to BDS – Boycott, Divest and Sanction – the American arms industry.
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.
This is a very short video from RT’s Redacted Tonight, presented by the left-wing comedian Lee Camp. Camp shows how Trump is lying to America and the world, in order to bring us closer to war with both of these countries. Trump has said this week that he could declare war with Iran over its failure to keep to the agreement regarding its nuclear programme. Except that, according to the Intercept, UN weapons inspectors have found that Iran has kept to the agreement.
Americans have also been told that North Korea is unwilling to negotiate over its nuclear weapons. Except that the North Koreans have said they’re unwilling to negotiate getting rid of theirs, unless America ends its hostile stance and military threat to them.
Which as Camp points out, means that they are willing to negotiate.
Others have pointed out that the real reason Trump wants a war with Iran is that, while the country certainly is abiding by the treaty limiting its nuclear capability, it is still supplying arms and other aid to groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria and the Shi’a in Iraq. In other words, America’s geopolitical enemies. But they have not violated the international treaty regulating their development of nuclear power, so that shouldn’t be an issue Trump can use for pushing America into another devastating war in the Middle East.
As for the North Koreans, while I don’t trust them, and Kim Jong Un really is a murderous b*stard, with the same taste for killing his family as the most degenerate Roman emperors, past experience with other nations has taught him he can’t trust America if he gives up his nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein did, and the US invaded anyway.
This looks very much like the American military-industrial complex trying to start yet another series of wars, including one that could very easily set off nuclear Armageddon. In Iran’s case, Trump seems simply to be following the policy set by the Likudniks in Israel and the Neo-Cons in the US. They wanted to overthrow the governments of seven nations, including Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran.
As for Israel itself, Tony Greenstein on his blog has posted a piece discussing how no-one wants to discuss the real elephant in the room: Israel’s own nuclear weapons. Israel isn’t supposed to have any, but they do. Nobody has held them to account for breaking the international treaty, and officially the Israel’s don’t have them. But in practice, everyone knows that they do.
I still remember the uproar back in the 1990s when Mordechai Vanunu leaked the information to the international press that Israel had broken the treaty and produced nuclear weapons. He was prosecuted and imprisoned for a very long time. And it seemed shortly thereafter that Robert Maxwell, the obese fraudster, who owned the Mirror, one of the British papers which I think broke the news, fell off his yacht. Of course, I might be wrong about all of this. Maxwell was probably up to his ears in international intrigue, but at the moment it seems that his death was just an accident.
Hmmm….
But back to Greenstein’s article, one of the very interesting things he says there is that a few decades ago one of the Middle Eastern countries did propose a plan for a nuclear-free Middle East. This would have made the world a much safer place.
And the country that put forward this proposal was Iran. Now unfairly accused of building nuclear weapons.
Which bears out in spades what Lee Camp has said about Iran and North Korea. We’re being lied to about them and their supposed nuclear ambitions. And in the case of Iran, they’ve been lying to us for a very long time.
Both of these countries are extremely repressive states, though Iran is more democratic and freer than North Korea. Indeed, according to the book on the country written by the veteran BBC correspondent, John Simpson, Iranians often said things to him about their government, which made him fear for their safety. When he asked them about it, they’d respond with ‘Why not? This isn’t Russia.’ But those countries’ lack of freedom isn’t why the Orange Generalissimo is spoiling for another war with them.
General Smedley Butler was right: war Is a racket. And the western military machine want to be the gangsters that run it.
Mike’s already blogged about this issue on his website, including posting this snippet from RT America’s Lee Camp, one of the satirical hosts of Redacted Tonight.
Facebook have decided that they are going to prioritize material from corporate media. Mike’s been hit by this policy, along with numerous other left-wing bloggers trying to bring you the truth that the Beeb and the mainstream media don’t want you to hear.
Camp calls this what it is: censorship. 44 per cent of Americans get their news from Facebook. And Zuckerberg, Facebook’s head, for his protests to the contrary, does look he’s thinking of running for president. He’s hired a former Clinton aide, and went the other week to a small town in Iowa, where he talked about politics. As Camp says, if he isn’t planning on running for president, then he really needs to get some friends.
This policy is also running with a campaign to cut out ‘fake news’. Camp admits that there is fake news out there, but when the corporate media talk about fake news, they mean the small, independent network of bloggers, activists and small broadcasters, like The David Pakman Show, The Young Turks, Sam Seder’s Minority Report and Secular Talk, who stand outside the corporate big boys like TimeWarner, Comcast, Fox, MSNBC and so on. The algorithm designed to recognize fake news is being created with the assistance of the New York Times. The Times has published some excellent pieces, but it’s also just signed a $600 million contract with the CIA.
He then reads out Facebook’s guidelines for contributors, where they state they do not want clickbait. He also points out that they’re also not interested in showing how America’s bombing Yemen into the ground, and causing a massive famine in one of the Middle East’s poorest nations. Because that doesn’t fit corporate America’s agenda.
He also reads out a few Tweets from ordinary Americans, who are massively unimpressed with this censorship. And he also advises his audience that if they want to continue to hear genuinely independent voices, they need to support those bloggers and vloggers, use independent platforms, and occasionally throw the creators the odd dollar or five.
Absolutely. And this has come as part of a general corporate attack on independent news creators. Google are demonetizing various videos over on YouTube. These seem to be mostly those created by the independent, left-wing news programmes and shows that I mentioned above. It’s affecting David Pakman, and The Young Turks, as well as Sam Seder, amongst others.
Mike’s pointed out that Facebook stands to lose money by this policy. Well, they do, but they’re monopoly capitalists, so they’re confident about retaining overall control of the medium, or at least their massive share of it. What they don’t want is a load of progressives and Socialists coming through, telling people that another world is possible: that the poor aren’t all idle scroungers, that tax cuts for the rich aren’t going to make those at the bottom of the pile richer, that racism is a tool to exploit the White man as well as marginalize and persecute Blacks, Mexicans and Asians, and that single-payer actually makes far more sense than insurance-based health care.
As for the New York Times, Counterpunch have had the Grey Lady in their sights for a very long time for the way it acted as a media cheerleader for the Iraq War, censoring and sanitizing the horrors that American and western forces were committing in the name of ‘spreading democracy’.
These corporate policies, however, show that the mainstream media are on the back foot on this. Their monopoly is being challenged, and despite the bullsh*t and spin they’ve put out about representing quality journalism against independent ‘fake news’, their hold on the media is being challenged and weakening. Last week Mike wrote a piece tearing an article in the Groaniad to pieces when they tried this line.
And their even more terrified now that very many people have liked and republished Ismahil Blagrove’s diatribe about the way corporate television don’t understand and have no interest in representing the views and hopes of ordinary people.
So, instead of supporting corporate media, go and check out independent blogs and vlogs like Vox Political, Johnny Void, Another Angry Voice, Kitty S. Jones, Guy Debord’s Cat, RT, the Canary, Chunky Mark, Aye Up, Let’s Talk, Tony Greenstein, Stilloaks, and many, many others. These are the people worth listening to, the people, who really talk about the harsh realities of Conservative Britain beyond the confines of corporate news.
This is another very incisive little clip from Redacted Tonight, a satirical politics show on RT. In this clip, their reporter John F. O’Donnell discusses disclosure, or rather, the absolute lack of it in the mainstream media when it comes to the connections of their contributors and presenters to arms companies when pushing for war in Syria. Media Matters, a media monitoring group, has criticised the way the Washington Post allows Ed Rogers to write for them urging more intervention in Syria and the Middle East, without mentioning that he is a lobbyist for Raytheon, the arms company that manufactures the Tomahawk missiles using in Trump’s airstrike last week. Fox News had retired American army general, Jack Dean on their show, who praised Trump’s air strike for showing that ‘American leadership is back’. But Fox News did not tell its viewers that Dean is on the board of General Dynamics, which makes the launching systems for the same missiles.
And guess who else also personally profited from launching the missiles? Yep, it’s Mr ‘Drain the Swamp’ himself, Donald Trump, now the biggest monster in it, according to the Young Turks. According to FCC records for last year, 2016, Trump also had stock in Raytheon, whose own stock has risen $5 billion since the attack.
War is business, as the saying goes, and under Trump, business is good.
These points are made in a humorous way by O’Donnell, who contrasts the media’s lack of disclosure with his own, as he makes coarse jokes about his bizarre sex practices, inability to impress a girl he fancied, and how he backed a friend’s lame business venture.
I’ve already put up a piece earlier today from The Humanist Report, which described an article Bernie Sanders had written warning about the threat to American democracy from the bias in the corporate-controlled mainstream media. In this piece from RT’s Redacted Tonight, comedian Lee Camp also discusses this topic.
Camp covers some of the same causes Sanders does, such as the concentration of media into the hands of an increasingly few corporate giants. Only six companies now control American newspapers, magazines, book publishing, television and radio. There were 9 major companies, till ‘Republican’ president Bill Clinton signed the bill permitting a wave of mass media amalgamations. No, that isn’t a mistake. Camp calls him a ‘Republican’, ”cause that’s what he was.’ Absolutely. Clinton did what Blair was to do with the Labour party in England. He took over and imported into the Democrats the anti-welfare stance of the Republicans and their free trade ideology in order to appeal to Republican voters.
Camp also talks about the pressures on companies from the power of the advertisers, who don’t want anything to reflect badly on them or business as a whole. In 1966, for example, Proctor and Gamble sent the TV companies carrying their adverts a message informing them that the must not broadcast anything that would make business and industry look bad. If they did so, and showed a story in which a businessman was the villain, they had to show that the corrupt individual was the exception, not the rule. Camp duly sends this pernicious nonsense up with a riff about a banker’s co-workers in Goldman Sachs being incredibly surprised that he is morally dead.
He also talks about how the corporations themselves are headed by immensely rich businessmen, who don’t want to publicise anything that might harm their profits and corporate power. Thus, anyone, who tries to do something for the poor and vanishing middle class will be attacked and ignored. He quotes the late, left-wing comedian George Carlin: ‘It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.’
One of the ways the media pushes its lies and gross distortions is through constant repetition. Here, Camp quotes a Harvard professor. Others have said the same thing, but quoted an entirely different expert: Adolf Hitler. Hitler said that if you wanted people to believe one enormous lie, you kept on repeating it until it sounded like the truth.
Camp exemplified how effective this tactic is with Obama’s speech about military action in Syria. When he first suggested it, the American public were largely unenthusiastic. The military-industrial complex hadn’t gotten around to propagandising this to the American people. But they soon got to work, and so when it was suggested again a few years later, the American public was supposedly far more enthusiastic about it, after being bombarded with a corporate media campaign.
The government has also tried to ensure that the media broadcast a message that was friendly to big business. In 1975 a document was published on the topic of possible media regulation as a response to falling standards. The thinktank that published this was naturally concerned about this. But as Camp jokes, this wasn’t about whether the girls presenting the weather were wearing underwear or not. No, this was about making sure that broadcasting reflected the ideals and standards of corporate business. If they didn’t, the government would step in and start regulating them.
At the beginning of the clip, Camp states that Americans believe in the myth that they have an impartial media. They believe that because you can say anything you like on TV, as illustrated with a clip of a man ridiculing Hillary Clinton in a bizarre rant, therefore the Land of the Free has an equally free media. However, the immense costs of setting up a newspaper, TV or radio station mean that only the rich can afford to do it, and so the news that Americans receive reflects very much the views and priorities of the rich. Which do not consist in empowering the poor and working people against them.
It’s a very good piece, which cites chapter and verse of studies and writings about the right-wing bias and power of the mainstream media. Camp is, however, quite an edgy comedian, so there’s strong language and some vulgar jokes.
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