Redacted Tonight on How Trump Is Lying to Us about Iran and North Korea

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.

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/israels-nuclear-weapons-consistency.html

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.

Secular Talk on True American Decadence: Lavish Party for Defence Contractors and Lobbyists

Yeah, I know this is another video from across the Pond, but it’s too good not to put up here. In this piece from Secular Talk, the show’s host, Kyle Kulinski, discusses what he calls the real American decadence. This was a lavish party held by the defence industry and their lobbyists, in which they made jokes about not selling their wares to human rights abusers. Because obviously, the fact that the Merchants of Death – that’s what they are, so let’s call them it – sell their obscene machinery to murderous dictators and despots around the globe is just so hilarious, right? Kulinski points out that it shows the true moral decay in America. And it isn’t because gangsta rappers are busting rhymes with the ‘N’ word, and going on about how they like ‘b*tches’ with big booties. This is about the immense profits going to these companies from wars around the world. When they can’t get the American government to buy any more weapons, because the last consignment of tanks is out rusting in Nevada, they lobby to sell their weapons elsewhere. Like Israel. Or Saudi Arabia, a country which murders apostates, drug smugglers and people for witchcraft. Kulinski breaks the news here that the Saudis are arming al-Qaeda against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and have bombed hospitals run by Doctors Without Borders and schools for the blind. That’s where these people are making their money.

Kulinski is right about all of this, just as he is when he calls it ‘a conspiracy in plain sight’. It is. But as he also says, not in the crazy Alex Jones Infowars sense of people in smoke-filled backrooms. This wasn’t held in any backroom, but right up front. He also points out that this is exactly what Eisenhower warned about: the military-industrial complex. It also confirms everything General Smedley Butler said when he wrote his War Is A Racket.

Much the same could be said of Britain’s own role in the global arms industry, although ours is trivial compared to the sheer scale of the Americans. Secular Talk has made the point that America spends far more than any other country in the world on arms. And if the defence budget was cut in half, America would still be leading the world in this dubious industry. But that hasn’t stopped our arms manufacturers over here from also trying to sell their ‘kit’ to the Saudis and other, entirely respectable and ethical regimes. As David Cameron himself boasted when he went round one British armaments factory earlier this year.

The fact that Saudi Arabia is again funding and supplying al-Qaeda, a group they financed and supported, just as they financed and supported ISIS, before they turned on them, should fill anyone with any sense after 9/11 with disgust. The Saudis are back there, aiding the same people they helped to commit 9/11. And the American arms industry is selling them weapons. Just like the sold the Taliban weapons when they were the Mujahideen fighting the Russians. Only that after they defeated the Soviets, the Mujahideen did what the Russian ambassador warned they would do: they came after the Americans.

Nothing has changed, nothing’s been learnt. It’s business as usual for the Merchants of Death, who are reaping big corporate profits. The real price is being paid by the ordinary people of the Middle East, as they’re brutalised, butchered and their countries devastated by the Jihadis and their backers in Saudi Arabia and the Great Powers.

Major General Smedley Butler’s ‘War Is A Racket’

I’ve posted several pieces on the immense profiteering by governments and corporations promoting war. One of the most savage critics of such profiteering was the American officer, Major General Smedley Butler. Michelle Thomasson sent me this comment and links to his speech, ‘War Is A Racket’ to my post on the meme on capitalism and war, as well as the amount so far made by the defence contractors and other participating corporations in the war in Afghanistan.

In 2014 when I was researching for Campaign Against Arms Trade I posted Smedley Butler’s 1935 speech (it was also printed as a book). If any readers of your blog have time his ‘War is a Racket’ speech or ‘turning blood into gold’ is worth listening to. A recording of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI3lckqaSk0 or here: http://ia600507.us.archive.org/3/items/nonfiction018_librivox/snf018_warisaracket_butler_jh.mp3

and printed versions: https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket or here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm

On recent spending on war racketeering by the USA (including the sojourn into Afghanistan) this is sobering reading, in 13 years they paid out $1.6 trillion to military contractors (shown on the second page of the Congressional Research file, December 8th 2014) Ref: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

Smedley Butler’s ‘War Is A Racket’ is one of the most famous and celebrated polemics against war. Butler was writing in 1936, and concerned by the growing preparations and clamour for war amongst the European nations. Like very many other soldiers, he was horrified by the mass death and suffering experienced by the squaddies, and disgusted by the vast profits made by the arms and equipment manufacturers. He denounced the way a minuscule few had made money out of the sufferings of millions. In the speech he gives examples of the many firms and industries that made vast profits manufacturing and selling to the American government equipment, munitions and clothing for the conflict. This included surplus and seriously defective items that could never be used, such as shoes, ships that kept sinking, and wrenches that were suitable only for loosening the bolts on the pumping stations at Niagara.

He also describes the way the bankers manipulating the financial system to profit from war bonds. The public was persuaded to purchase them, there was then a crisis so the same public sold them back to the banks at a loss, and then there was flip in the stock exchange, which meant that their value soared again.

Butler also describes the immense suffering of the soldiers themselves. It’s interesting that decades before Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder became a household word, linked to the continued mental suffering of Vietnam vets, he described the shattered mental state of discharged veterans. These were men so traumatised that they were kept under heavy guard in prison-like conditions at the mental hospital. Butler contrasts the way the forces of society, propaganda and psychology were used to persuade them to enlist with the way they were summarily discharged after the war with no thought to training or remoulding their psychologies so that they could fit back into civilian life after being trained to kill.

He also describes the way the American soldier was deprived the profits of war. During the Civil War, Americans were given a bonus if they joined up. And up until the war with Spain, American squaddies also received prize money for ships captured. That was all scrapped, as it made war too expensive. Instead, they were given medal to encourage them to fight. As for the wages they received, these were half the monthly pay of the average factory steel worker. Then there were deductions, to support the families their families so they wouldn’t be a burden on the community while their sons and husbands were away fighting. Other deductions were for the squaddies’ own equipment. The result of all these was that on payday, some soldiers received absolutely nothing at all.

Butler was also not impressed with the various disarmament talks. He considered that their purpose was for countries to get the maximum number of permitted weapons for themselves, and the least number for their opponents. The American government had also declared that it was looking into ways to avoid war. Smedley Butler described how this was undermined by a commission by the corporations and generals, which was set up deliberately to counteract it.

In conclusion, Smedley Butler argued that war would only be ended through a series of reforms intended to take the profits out of it, limit the capability of the American armed forces so that they could not fight an offensive war, and put the decision whether America should go to war or not in the hands of the very people, who would have to fight it. He therefore argued that one month before mobilisation, the capitalists, generals, politicians and workers in the manufacturing and other industries that would profit from the war should also be conscripted, and their pay limited to the $30 a month given to the squaddies. The US armed forces should be limited by law to protecting US territory. The army should be legally prevented from serving abroad, and the range of the American navy and air force limited to a few hundred miles off the American Pacific coast. He also states that before the decision to go to war is taken, their should be a limited plebiscite of men of recruitment age only. Only they should have the power to decide whether to wage war, as they would be the people who have to fight it. Not politicians or businessmen, who were too old to serve, or unfit, and who would profit from it.

Smedley Butler was an isolationist, who states firmly at the end of the speech that he doesn’t care what system other countries live under – democracy, monarchy, Fascism, whatever. He only cares about protecting democracy in America. He believed that America would not have entered the war, if it had not been approached for aid by Britain and France. The declaration that Americans were fighting for democracy was a lie. They were fighting only for corporate profits. As the brief biography for the audiobook version of his speech states, Butler served as a Republican politician. Nevertheless, his isolationism still persists amongst some Conservative American critics of the Neo-Cons, who similarly saw Bush’s desire to extend the American Empire as against the basic principles of American Conservatism. These critics included serving senior army officers, who were spectacularly unimpressed by the fact that the Neo-Cons had not actually fought in any war, and had no understanding of the political situation in the Middle East.

As the vast profits being made by the arms manufacturers in this latest phase of militarism show, war is a racket, and Smedley Butler’s speech still has immense political relevance and moral force.