De elektromagnetische plaag die VS ambassadepersoneel, CIA en overheidsbeambten treft kan volgens Caitlin Johnstone heel makkelijk worden voorkomen. Ondanks dat men niets kan vinden wat deze hysterie veroorzaakt, hysterie die intussen zelfs de medische aanduiding Havana-syndroom (ha! ha!) heeft gekregen, wijst men in de VS alweer met de bloedige vingers naar Rusland als de dader die middels elektromagnetische pulsen VS beambten de hersenen zo bewerkt dat ze niet meer kunnen functioneren…….
Bij deze zaak kan je je afvragen of werken voor een overheid die wereldwijd zoveel ellende veroorzaakt als de VS uiteindelijk geen psychische stoornissen veroorzaakt, of mensen zelfs niet knotsknettergek maken, immers je moet wel een psychopaat zijn wil alle terreur van de VS je onberoerd laten als beambte van die grootst terreurentiteit ter wereld……. Waarbij de CIA een terreurorganisatie is die bomvol psychopaten zit……
Op een simpele en uiterst sarcastische manier geeft Caitlin de aanwijzing om middels aluminium een ‘soort helm’ te maken die de drager beschermd tegen de kwade machinaties van het Kremlin en Putin in het bijzonder.
Nadat ze uitlegt hoe je de helm moet maken, geeft ze het advies aan alle westerse overheidsvertegenwoordigers, als ook alle beambten van inlichtingendiensten, iedereen van de reguliere media en elk burger die ‘gewoon voelt dat de Russen een grote bedreiging zijn voor haar/zijn manier van leven’, om gebruik te maken van de Havana-syndroom afbuigingshelm.
Verder komt Caitlin met het bericht dat wetenschappers hoopvolle resultaten hebben geboekt met het voorkomen van het Havana-syndroom door het dragen van een gekleurde pruik, een wit geschminkt gezicht, aangevuld met een rode dopneus!!
Lees het uiterst sarcastische en humoristische artikel van Caitlin.
(On the top right hand side of this page you can choose for a translation in the language of your choice, first choose ‘Engels’ [English] so you can recognise your own language [the Google translation is first in Dutch, a language most people don’t understand, while on the other hand most people recognize there language translated in English])
(als je het Engels niet machtig bent, kopieer dan de Engelse tekst en plak die in deze vertaalapp, de app werkt snel en de vertaling is van een redelijk goede kwaliteit)
As the dire threat of Havana Syndrome gains increasingly widespread acknowledgement, the US government employees who’ve been finding themselves targeted by these attacks are desperate for a way to protect themselves from this electromagnetic menace.
Luckily, scientists at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Agency have devised an innovative new solution to this peril which anyone who feels they may be in danger of Kremlin microwave beams can implement using a common and inexpensive household product.
Here is a step-by-step breakdown of the simple prophylactic measure that experts are recommending for US diplomats, CIA operatives, government officials, wealthy media pundits, and anyone else who fears they may fall victim to GRU ray gun attacks:
First, you will need a roll of standard aluminum foil.
Second, lay out an arm span’s length of the foil. Don’t be stingy; your neurological wellbeing may depend on it.
Next, fold it in half. Doubling the layers adds extra protection from Kremlin radiation blasters.
Gather the foil around your head, careful to leave no vulnerable part of the cranium exposed.
Now pack down the foil over your skull. Be thorough now; you don’t want to let Russian brain phasers turn you into an idiot.
Manually adding two antennae helps your foil helmet deflect pulsed microwaves.
And there you have it. Not today, Ivan! You’ll have to try your dastardly Kremlin mind tricks on somebody less clever.
Experts highly recommend all western government officials make use of a Havana Syndrome deflector helmet for the foreseeable future, as well as all intelligence operatives, all major media figures, and anyone who just generally feels as though Russians pose a major threat to their way of life.
Scientists are now reportedly seeing encouraging research suggesting that Havana Syndrome can also be deflected by a rainbow-colored wig supplemented by white face makeup and a red ball on the nose.
So it turns out we here in the free world are a step or two ahead of the Kremlin. Nice try, Mister Putin. You’ve got to wake up pretty early in the morning to make fools out of us.
____________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Hier nog een paar berichten over false flag operaties: ‘‘False flag terror’ bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken……….‘ (zie ook de links in dat bericht voor meer false flag operaties) False flag operaties, de specialiteit van de VS, door een aanval op bijvoorbeeld een VS marinefregat te simuleren en deze vervolgens in de schoenen te schuiven van een regering die de VS wil vervangen, er zijn een groot aantal voorbeelden van deze werkwijze, zoals het Golf van Tonkin incident, die voor de VS de weg vrijmaakte om Noord-Vietnam grootschalig aan te vallen…… Volgens Wikipedia is e.e.a. echt gebeurd, ofwel Wikipedia maakt zich meer en meer schuldig aan geschiedvervalsing……
Oorlogshitser Voordewind, die vluchtelingen het liefst opvangt in de regio, is speciaal ambassadeur van ZOA, een christelijke organisatie die zich o.a. inzet voor vluchtelingen. ZOA staat voor Zuidoost-Azië en werd opgericht als reactie op linkse organisaties die Noord-Vietnam steunden tegen de ongebreidelde VS terreur tegen dat land, ofwel ZOA stond voor hulp aan het inhumane en uiterst corrupte bewind in Zuid-Vietnam en stond achter de vreselijke bombardementen van de VS op zowel Noord-Vietnam als Laos en Cambodja >> echt héééél christelijk!!
Door de westerse oorlogen o.l.v. de VS, het land dat ook al vanaf de oprichting van de NAVO het militaire opperbevel heeft over deze terreurorganisatie, zijn niet alleen deze eeuw al meer dan 5 miljoen mensen omgekomen, of beter gezegd: vermoord, maar zijn ook enorme vluchtelingenstromen opgang gekomen. Illegale oorlogen die van A tot Z werden gesteund door Voordewind…… Echter die vluchtelingen mogen van Voordewind niet naar Nederland, tenzij ze christelijk zijn natuurlijk…..
Zelfs de oorlog tegen Syrië steunde Voordewind, terwijl onder het bewind van Assad alle geloven naast elkaar konden leven, wat gelukkig weer zo is in de door de reguliere Syrische troepen bevrijde gebieden, desondanks kan Voordewind het maar niet laten om alle leugens van de VS geheime diensten te herhalen en erop te hameren dat Assad moet verdwijnen, wat tevens zou betekenen dat de christenen moeten vluchten uit dat land….. Benieuwd of Voordewind die christenen wel op zou willen vangen in Nederland en dat voor onbepaalde tijd….. (de vraag stellen is haar beantwoorden: niemand zo hypocriet als een fundi-christen!!)
Voordewind op een foto met een tot christendom bekeerde moslim die niet terug kan naar Somalië, foto bij bericht van het ChristenUnie partij vod: ‘Christelijke ex-moslim kan niet terug naar Somalië‘ (toch vreemd dat hij deze christenen wel wil opvangen in Nederland, benieuwd of hij dat ook wil als het om een homoseksueel persoon gaat, die bij deportatie moet vrezen voor diens leven……)
Wat zal Voordewind verdienen als ‘speciaal ambassadeur’ voor ZOA?? Dat zal niet misselijk zijn, want voor niets gaat de zon op, nietwaar Voordewind??!!!
(On the top right hand side of this page you can choose for a translation in the language of your choice, first choose ‘Engels’ [English] so you can recognise your own language [the Google tranlation is first in Dutch, a language most people don’t understand, while on the other hand most people recognize there language translated in English]).
Caitlin Johnstone heeft weer eens een formidabel stuk geschreven over de grootste terreurorganisatie ter wereld: de CIA (en het Pentagon). Ze heeft dit ingekleed als zou je je moeten voorstellen dat er een terreurgroep is met militaire bases (en geheime gevangenissen) over de hele wereld, een terreurorganisatie die drones, kruisraketten, kernkoppen, straaljagers en vliegdekschepen in haar bezit zou hebben…. Een organisatie die oorlog voert tegen landen die zich niet onderwerpt aan haar wensen en eisen…..
Overduidelijk dat de VS in feite de grootste terreurentiteit op de wereld is, het aantal oorlogsmisdaden begaan in naam van dat land zijn niet meer te tellen en hebben vanaf het eind van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (WOII) aan meer dan 25 miljoen mensen het leven gekost…… Het precieze cijfer is niet eens bekend, daar de VS een ongelofelijk aantal geheime militaire operaties heeft uitgevoerd en voert, waartoe je ook nog eens de drone-terreuraanslagen moet rekenen, waarbij intussen al tienduizenden mensen zijn vermoord en voor meer dan 90% van die mensen geldt dat ze niet eens werden verdacht….. (het is overigens middels internationale verdragen verboden om verdachten te vermoorden!!)
Als de VS in een buitenland een andere regering wenst, wordt dat veelal voorafgegaan door het instellen van sancties en daarna het organiseren en regisseren van demonstraties en opstanden in die ongehoorzame landen, in de hoop dat het ontevreden volk zijn regering omverwerpt en mocht dat niet lukken kan men het leger van zo’n land omkopen zodat deze een coup pleegt, uiteraard geholpen door de VS, mocht zelfs dat niet lukken kan de VS op basis van leugens, meestal in de vorm van een false flag operatie*, het land binnenvallen en zelf een junta instellen……
De landen die militaire bases van de VS op hun grondgebied hebben worden meestal al geregeerd door een kliek die aan de hand van de VS loopt, bijvoorbeeld Australië**. Vergeet hierbij niet dat de VS meer dan 800 militaire bases buiten haar eigen grondgebied over de wereld heeft……
Het grootste deel van de westerse mensheid ziet zich als goed op de hoogte van wat er gebeurt, die anderen zien als dom zien en onwetend van wat er aan de hand is, terwijl ze zich laten leiden door wat politici en de reguliere media hen dagelijks voorschotelen in de VS en daarmee in de rest van het westen, de reden waarom men niet in opstand komt*** en men zich als schapen laat leiden naar de rand van de afgrond…… De reden waarom men 20 jaar lang heeft geloofd in de zinloze oorlogen in Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië (en in feite de oorlog in Oekraïne, die voortkomt uit een door de VS georganiseerde opstand en coup tegen de democratisch gekozen president Janoekovytsj)…… De reden ook waarom men niet in grote getale de straat opging om te demonstreren tegen de waanzin van oorlogen in landen waar het westen niets te zoeken had en heeft……
The CIA just casually discussed sinking a boat full of Cuban refugees and planting bombs in Miami and blaming Castro, but you’re bat shit crazy if you suspect such agencies may have had similar discussions about other geostrategic situations and decided to go through with it.
❖
There’s more public criticism of ordinary people taking ivermectin than there is of planet-dominating power structures driving humanity to armageddon.
❖
Nobody who supports internet censorship does so because they’re worried they themselves might consume dangerous words and believe them, it’s always to protect other people from dangerous words. It’s about the most megalomaniacal, emotionally stunted desire anyone could possibly have.
They see themselves as responsible adults who can be trusted to independently sort out truth from falsehood, but see other people as infants who cannot be trusted to do this. This is nothing other than garden variety narcissism.
❖
Internet censorship via monopolistic government-tied tech corporations isn’t just a problem because of free speech issues, it’s a problem because the way it’s applied is completely uneven and power-serving: politicians and the mass media circulate disinformation constantly without ever being censored. It’s not just silencing people, it’s actually shifting power upwards.
❖
There is no path forward for humanity on this planet without complete female reproductive sovereignty.
❖
Imagine if the world’s deadliest terrorist group got their hands on drones and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and circled the planet with hundreds of military bases and began waging wars and destroying any country which disobeyed their dictates.
❖
No, Texas conservatives aren’t like the Taliban. No, US government authoritarianism isn’t like China or North Korea. You know what it’s like? It’s like America. It says so much that the most corrupt and destructive nation on earth keeps comparing its homegrown depravity to foreign nations.
❖
It’s crazy how there are guys whose whole entire job is trying to get large number of people killed by mass military violence and we just let that be a thing like it’s a perfectly legitimate way for someone to be.
“Hey why does that mustache guy keep trying to get large numbers of people violently killed?”
“Oh he’s just one of those war starty guys.”
“What?? Why are there war starty guys??”
“I dunno. Isn’t that normal? I just assumed it was normal to have war starty guys.”
❖
Every single soldier who died in Afghanistan died in vain. Don’t make up sugary fairy tales about it, just stop letting it happen.
❖
Are soldiers working under the US empire the worst people in the world? No. But in terms of moral standing you’d have to rank someone who murders foreigners on behalf of imperialists and war profiteers below most of the people in your average prison.
❖
“If it wasn’t us waging all these wars and killing all those people it’d be someone else” sounds very much like the sort of thing an abusive tyrant would say.
❖
There’s no good reason to respect the analysis of anyone who thinks China’s behavior on the world stage is worse than or equally as bad as America’s.
❖
Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no bill of rights of any kind. Most people are unaware of this, including most Australians. What you’re seeing in Australia is simply what happens when you add a pandemic response on top of a nation with no foundational legal protection from government overreach. That’s why our Covid measures are so notoriously harsh relative to other western countries.
❖
Modern gods are corporations and banks, faceless inhuman entities whose agendas of growth and conquest supercede even the wishes of their own executives. Our gods are insatiable devourers controlled by no one. Our gods have no heads.
❖
At a time when our species is hurtling toward its own demise we ought to be coming together and working in unison to avert disaster, and it says so much about the power of propaganda that we are instead doing the exact opposite.
❖
All of humanity’s problems are ultimately due to a misperception of the way things are.
Propaganda causes us to misperceive reality in a way that benefits establishment power structures, so we don’t rise up and use the power of our numbers to put an end to the ecocidal, omnicidal status quo which oppresses and exploits us.
Advertising causes us to misperceive our own bodies and the source of real contentment, leading to the obsessive consumption habits necessary for turning the gears of capitalism.
Ego causes us to misperceive our own experience of consciousness and the information which enters our minds through the senses, leading to the suffering and dysfunction which ultimately underlies all abuses in our world.
What we need, then, is clear seeing, both outwardly and inwardly. An end to government secrecy and the mass-scale manipulations which distort our perception of reality. An end to restrictions on psychedelic tools which help people behold their inner processes with lucidity. A greatly elevated prioritization of self-honesty and self-reflection to help us see through the ego’s illusions.
We can’t move toward health until we can see where we’re going.
_______________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
* Een false falg operatie: de VS begaat een oorlogsmisdaad en schuift die in de schoenen van de heerser of de regering van een land waar men een VS vriendelijke regering dan wel junta wenst. Bijvoorbeeld -voorafgaand aan de oorlog tegen Noord-Vietnam (en landen in die regio), -in Chili (11 septeber 1973: de eerste 9/11), -Irak (‘massavernietigingswapens…’), Honduras, Libië, Syrië en ga nog maar een half uur door. In feite is dit ook gebeurd met Afghanistan, immers het is zeker dat de Twin Towers en gebouw 7 van dat World Trade Center werden ondermijnd met explosieven >> ofwel de VS heeft zelf gezorgd voor de organisatie en regie van deze aanslagen…… (en dat is nog maar 1 van de vele bewijzen dat de VS zelf achter de aanslagen zat….) De administratie van George W. Bush wilde al maanden voor 9/11 ingrijpen in Afghanistan en Irak…. Zie o.a.: ‘‘False flag terror’ bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken……….‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht) en zie voorts:
*** Als je je afvraagt waarom men niet in opstand komt, is dit inderdaad doordat men dagelijks wordt voorgelogen door politici en de reguliere media, zelfs als de aarde door bedrijven en lobby-politici naar de gallemiezen wordt geholpen zoals nu ten volle blijkt, terwijl dat toch ons aller thuis is…. Echter er is 1 zaak waarvoor men wel in opstand zal komen, ondanks alle leugens die men voorgeschoteld krijgt: neem de burgers hun auto af en gegarandeerd dat men in opstand zal komen!! (triest….)
20 jaar lang heeft de VS gelogen over de situatie in Afghanistan, aldus Glenn Greenwald, hoewel je wel blind moet zijn geweest om dat niet te hebben onderkend, althans als je geïnteresseerd was in wat er in dat land gebeurde…….
Keer op keer liet men weten dat men de situatie onder controle had en dat de Taliban geen macht meer was van ook maar enige betekenis…. Evenzo hard loog men dat de training van het Afghaanse leger en politie een zo geweldig succes was dat Afghanistan op eigen benen kon staan (onder de corrupte machthebbers en oorlogswinstmakers, in volgorde de presidenten: Hamid Karzai en Ashraf Ghani)…..
De berichtgeving over die successen werden voor een groot deel overgenomen door de reguliere westerse media in de VS en de andere NAVO-lidstaten die zich leenden voor deze illegale oorlog…….. Echter volgens Greenwald hebben een aantal journalisten de zittende regeringen het vuur aan de schenen gelegd, zoals ook een week of 6 geleden Joe Biden, die werd geconfronteerd met een uitspraak van een journalist dat de VS heeft gelogen over de kracht van het Afghaanse leger en politie, wat hij driedubbel ontkende (waarmee hij bedoelde dat het Afghaanse leger en politie wel opgewassen waren voor hun taken)…… Op 8 juli jl. zei Biden nog dat de Afghaanse regering en het leger zo sterk waren dat ze aanvallen van de Taliban met gemak konden afslaan……
Wat betreft Nederland* viel het me werkelijk mee dat de reguliere media in Nederland nogal wat kritiek hadden op het door Nederland opleiden van politieagenten in Kunduz, al is dat te danken aan het schandaal dat werd onthult na onderzoek toen bleek dat deze opleiding één grote maar peperdure mislukking was (ondanks dat is Nederland daarna nog doorgegaan met die opleiding [de opleiding tot de toekomstige religieuze politie van de Taliban….])…..
Greenwald gaat in zijn artikel uitgebreid in op hoe het volk in de VS werd opgelicht door de verschillende administraties, van George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump en Joe Biden (waar de laatste extra verantwoording draagt, daar hij als vicepresident fungeerde onder Obama….)….. Uitermate lullig te lezen dat zowel Greenwald als Edward Snowden bepaalde zaken geheim hebben gehouden, daar ze bang waren dat bepaalde zaken zouden kunnen leiden tot geweld van de Taliban….. (Je bent journalist of niet……)
Het meest schandalige van e.e.a. is wel dat men ‘niet heeft kunnen voorzien’ dat de Taliban na het opstappen van een groot deel van de westerse troepen, Afghanistan in zeer korte tijd onder controle zouden krijgen….. Het grote failliet van geheime diensten in binnen en buitenland. Voor Nederland moet de MIVD worden aangewezen als één van de hoofdverantwoordelijken die hadden moeten voorzien dat Nederland alles op alles moest zetten om personeel dat voor Nederland had gewerkt, al in vroeg stadium vervoerd hadden moeten worden naar Nederland….. Deze mensen worden door de Taliban gezien als collaborateurs en zijn daardoor ten dode opgeschreven…… De Duitse premier Merkel, waar Duitsland dezelfde grove fout maakte, durfde gisteren te zeggen dat Duitsland dit als andere landen niet had kunnen voorzien, een leugen van enorme proporties…… (bovendien jezelf vrijpleiten door te wijzen naar anderen, is zonder meer een bijzonder zwaktebod….)
Hare CDA leeghoofdigheid en minister van Defensie Bijleveld durfde o.a. te stellen dat ingrijpen van de VS en andere NAVO-lidstaten hebben voorkomen dat er nog meer aanslagen werden beraamd vanuit Afghanistan…… Ook Bijleveld lijdt blijkbaar aan een fikse geheugenstoornis (als aartsleugenaar VVD premier Rutte), immers sinds 2001 zijn er een fiks aantal aanslagen uitgevoerd in EU lidstaten, uiteraard zijn die aanslagen te danken aan westers optreden in Afghanistan, het Midden-Oosten en Libië……. Voorlopig is Bijleveld niet alleen mede verantwoordelijk voor gepleegde oorlogsmisdaden in Afghanistan, maar ook voor de dood van 25 Nederlandse militairen (om nog maar te zwijgen over de 500.000 vermoorde Afghanen in deze illegale oorlog….)
Men wist al lang dat de VS zich terug zou trekken uit Afghanistan en men had van meet af aan een plan moeten opstellen om collaborateurs, die Nederlandse troepen hebben geholpen, te vervoeren naar Nederland….. Schande dan ook dat Rutte 3 ministers Bijleveld, Kaag en staatssecretaris Broekers-Knol onlangs lieten weten dat Nederland alleen tolken en familie zou overbrengen naar Nederland en dat andere collaborateurs het zelf maar uit moeten zoeken…… ‘Leuk weetje’ voor de volgende collaborateurs die toekomstige illegale militaire avonturen van Nederland bij moeten staan…..
Nog schunniger was de opmerking van een paar weken geleden, waarmee men liet weten dat ondanks de opmars van de Taliban, Nederland nog steeds Afghanen terug zou kunnen sturen, waarvoor VVD hufter Broekers-Knol als hoofdverantwoordelijke moet worden aangewezen (dit in samenwerking met de Nederlandse ambassade in Kabul, die middels ambtsberichten van Buitenlandse Zaken de situatie als veilig beoordeelde……**)….. Gelukkig heeft de Nederlandse regering na druk van o.a. de VN en NGO’s besloten de komende eerste 6 maanden geen uitgeprocedeerde asielzoekers uit te zullen zetten naar Afghanistan….. (trouwens al een schande dat asielverzoeken van Afghaanse vluchtelingen werden afgewezen en dat voor een land dat 20 jaar lang in oorlog was en waar de bevolking dus allesbehalve veilig was en is, of dat nu kwam door de terreur van de Taliban of die van westerse troepen…….)
Hoorde vanmiddag nog een plork op WDR 5, die stelde dat de VS niet de Taliban had gesteund in de strijd tegen de Sovjet-Unie, maar dat dit de moehadjin was, echter naast een flink stel warlords, werden de Taliban wel degelijk voorzien van training en (ook zware) wapens….. In feite heeft de VS de Taliban grootgemaakt en door de illegale oorlog die de VS in 2001 tegen Afghanistan begon, is de Taliban nu aanmerkelijk veel machtiger dan in voornoemd jaar….. En dan durft de VS andere landen te beschuldigen van het destabiliseren van gebieden zoals Iran dat het Midden-Oosten zou destabiliseren…… ha! ha! ha! ha! (vergeet daarbij niet dat de VS met haar illegale oorlogen tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië meer dan 5 miljoen mensen heeft vermoord, met hulp van andere NAVO-lidstaten als Nederland….)
Using the same deceitful tactics they pioneered in Vietnam, U.S. political and military officials repeatedly misled the country about the prospects for success in Afghanistan.
The Taliban give an exclusive interview to Al Jazeera after taking control of the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021 (Al Jazeera/YouTube)
“The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”
For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.
Just five weeks ago, on July 8, President Biden stood in the East Room of the White House and insisted that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable because, while their willingness to do so might be in doubt, “the Afghangovernment and leadership . . . clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.” Biden then vehemently denied the accuracy of a reporter’s assertion that “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.” Biden snapped: “That is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.”
Biden continued his assurances by insisting that “the likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.” He went further: “the likelihood that there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” And then, in an exchange that will likely assume historic importance in terms of its sheer falsity from a presidential podium, Biden issued this decree:
Q. Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —
THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken.
The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.
When asked about the Taliban being stronger than ever after twenty years of U.S. warfare there, Biden claimed: “Relative to the training and capacity of the [Afghan National Security Forces} and the training of the federal police, they’re not even close in terms of their capacity.” On July 21 — just three weeks ago — Gen. Mark Milley, Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that “there’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenario,” yet insisted: “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.”
Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war. “Are we losing this war?,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, asked rhetorically in a news briefing from Afghanistan in 2008, answering it this way: “Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.” On September 4, 2013, then-Lt. Gen. Milley — now Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — complained that the media was not giving enough credit to the progress they had made in building up the Afghan national security forces: “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day,” Gen. Milley insisted.
None of this was true. It was always a lie, designed first to justify the U.S’s endless occupation of that country and, then, once the U.S. was poised to withdraw, to concoct a pleasing fairy tale about why the prior twenty years were not, at best, an utter waste. That these claims were false cannot be reasonably disputed as the world watches the Taliban take over all of Afghanistan as if the vaunted “Afghan national security forces” were china dolls using paper weapons. But how do we know that these statements made over the course of two decades were actual lies rather than just wildly wrong claims delivered with sincerity?
To begin with, we have seen these tactics from U.S. officials — lying to the American public about wars to justify both their initiation and continuation — over and over. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was begun with a complete fabrication disseminated by the intelligence community and endorsed by corporate media outlets: that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In 2011, President Obama, who ultimately ignored a Congressional voteagainst authorization of his involvement in the war in Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi, justified the NATO war by denying that regime change was the goal: “our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives . . . broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Even as Obama issued those false assurances, The New York Times reported that “the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.”
Just as they did for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. political and military leaders lied for years to the American public about the prospects for winning. On June 13, 1971, The New York Timespublished reports about thousands of pages of top secret documents from military planners that came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers.” Provided by former RAND official Daniel Ellsberg, who said he could not in good conscience allow official lies about the Vietnam War to continue, the documents revealed that U.S. officials in secret were far more pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the North Vietnamese than their boastful public statements suggested. In 2021, The New York Times recalled some of the lies that were demonstrated by that archive on the 50th Anniversary of its publication:
Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.
“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”
That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”
Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam. The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press.
The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate.
The pattern of lying was virtually identical throughout several administrations when it came to Afghanistan. In 2019, The Washington Post — obviously with a nod to the Pentagon Papers — published a report about secret documents it dubbed “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.” Under the headline “AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH,” The Post summarized its findings: “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.” They explained:
Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.
In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”
None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable.
As the Post explained, “the documents contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” Those documents dispel any doubt about whether these falsehoods were intentional:
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”
Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.
In light of all this, it is simply inconceivable that Biden’s false statements last month about the readiness of the Afghan military and police force were anything but intentional. That is particularly true given how heavily the U.S. had Afghanistan under every conceivable kind of electronic surveillance for more than a decade. A significant portion of the archive provided to me by Edward Snowden detailed the extensive surveillance the NSA had imposed on all of Afghanistan. In accordance with the guidelines he required, we never published most of those documents about U.S. surveillance in Afghanistan on the ground that it could endanger people without adding to the public interest, but some of the reporting gave a glimpse into just how comprehensively monitored the country was by U.S. security services.
In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.
There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.
In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.
Any residual doubt about the falsity of those two decades of optimistic claims has been obliterated by the easy and lightning-fast blitzkrieg whereby the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan as if the vaunted Afghan military did not even exist, as if it were August, 2001 all over again. It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.
** De Nederlandse ambassades in ‘conflictgebieden’ spelen keer op keer een smerige rol door ambtsberichten te doen uitgaan dat men vluchtelingen uit die gebieden kan terugsturen daar de situatie veilig zou zijn, terwijl ieder kind kan begrijpen dat een land waar oorlog wordt gevoerd, allesbehalve veilig is voor vluchtelingen…….. Schande!!!
‘Afghanistan, betaalde ‘survivaltochten’ voor legers‘ (1 mei 2013) De VS betaalde Karzai en warlords voor het mogen uitvoeren van taken door particuliere bedrijven uit de VS in Afghanistan, ook Nederland zou zich hieraan hebben beschuldigd…..
Alsof we terug zijn in de 90er jaren toen de VN troepen (lees: vooral NAVO troepen) uit voormalig Joegoslavië werden teruggetrokken en men onbeschoft stelde de tolken die voor o.a. het Nederlandse leger hadden gevochten niet op te kunnen nemen, terwijl ook de regering van PvdA oplichter Kok wist wat deze tolken en hun familie te wachten stond als ze werden opgepakt door voormalige vijanden: de dood……
Nu zijn de tolken en hun familie, die voor o.a. het Nederlandse leger hebben vertaald in Afghanistan de sjors, ondanks een eerdere oproep van de Kamer zitten deze tolken nog steeds in Afghanistan……. Eén en ander zou liggen aan allerlei regels die men moet volgen, ofwel Kafkaiaanse ellende waar wel eens heel snel tolken en hun familie het slachtoffer van kunnen worden, mensen die onze troepen ter zijde hebben gestaan en die in feite logischerwijs als collaborateurs worden gezien door de Taliban……
Het is overigens in Duitsland niet beter ook daar ellende over het in veiligheid stellen van de tolken die voor het Duitse leger hebben gewerkt……
Misschien nog wel schunniger is de houding van de VS, dat NB de illegale oorlog tegen Afghanistan begon, waar men weigert om ook maar één tolk direct asiel te bieden, nee de VS heeft 3 naburige landen omgekocht om deze tolken en hun familie onderdak te bieden, landen waar de VS ook militaire bases heeft of wil inrichten, daar deze dichtbij zowel de door de VS aangewezen ‘vijanden’ Rusland en Iran liggen, aldus BBC World Service radio, dat overigens niets zei over Iran en Rusland…… (het is juist andersom, deze 2 landen hebben ellende te duchten van de VS, zoals de VS al zoveel andere landen in diepe ellende heeft gestort, je kan rustig stellen dat de VS de vijand is van de mensheid die buiten de VS leeft, hoewel de VS overheid voor een flink deel van de eigen bevolking om het zacht te zeggen geen ‘vriend’ is….)
Vorige week vrijdag meldde BNR ‘s morgens dat de voor de VS gewerkt hebbende tolken en hun families niet naar in de buurt van Afghanistan liggende landen gaan maar naar Qatar en andere Golfstaten, waar ze een proces tot toelating tot de VS moeten afwachten, maar reken gerust dat daar niets van terecht komt……. (zo’n proces kan bovendien jarenlang duren)
De terugtrekking van NAVO troepen uit Afghanistan geeft Rusland extra hoofdpijn: het winnen aan macht in Afghanistan door één van haar vijanden, te weten ISIS dat de laatste jaren een voet aan de grond kreeg in Afghanistan. Rusland schoot Syrië te hulp in haar strijd tegen de door de VS, Saoedi-Arabië en Egypte via Irak ingevlogen terreurgroepen, groepen als ISIS die voor een flink deel werden overgebracht vanuit Libië, een ander land dat als Afghanistan door de NAVO o.l.v. de VS naar de verdommenis is geholpen…… Door de hulp van Rusland aan Syrië, waarna ISIS echt werd bestreden, wordt door deze terreurgroep dan ook als een vijand gezien en door het vertrek van de NAVO troepen zal deze terreurgroep nu aan de grens staan van Rusland….
Hier een artikel van Finian Cunningham dat eerder werd gepubliceerd op Sputnik News, ik nam het over van Information Clearing House (onder het artikel kan je klikken voor een ‘Dutch vertaling’ wat wel enkele tientallen seconden tijd in beslag neemt):
Uncle Sam Dumps Afghan Mess on Russia
By Finian Cunningham
July 05, 2021 “Information Clearing House” – – “Sputnik News ” Russia is right to be alarmed about the impending chaos in Afghanistan as the United States and NATO forces finally scurry away from the war-torn country.
After 20 years of waging a futile war in the Central Asian nation, costing over 241,000 lives and trillions of dollars, the US military is pulling out in haste.
Most of its remaining 3,000 troops have hurriedly vacated the country in recent days from the giant Bagram Airbase north of the capital, Kabul. There was hardly any media coverage of the momentous yet shameful exit, which evokes memories of the disgraceful Fall of Saigon when the last of US military and CIA operatives fled Vietnam in 1975 like rats off a sinking ship.
US President Joe Biden had earlier this year declared a September deadline for withdrawing forces. The retreat has happened already, leaving Afghanistan with an uncertain and dangerous future.
The American commander of US forces, General Scott Miller, last week warned that Afghanistan is now facing a surge in civil war as Taliban militants push Afghan troops backed by Washington into ever-decreasing urban areas of control.
The perplexing thing for Russia is that Afghanistan has become a growth area for the Daesh* terror group which seems to have taken advantage of the void left by the Americans and other NATO forces. Daesh shares a similar fundamentalist Islamic ideology with the Taliban and there is good reason to suspect a level of cooperation between the two. That suggests that Afghanistan will become an even bigger haven for terrorist networks despite Taliban assurances that it will not.
If the Taliban and Daesh over-run Afghanistan in the next months, which is likely given the weak nature of US-backed Afghan security forces, then Russia will have a radical caliphate on its southern flank. It was to prevent such a threat to its national security that Moscow decided to intervene in the Syrian war to help the Assad government defeat jihadists and thereby prevent similar militants migrating to its Caucasia regions.
The jihadist problem of Syria was created by the United States and NATO partners as a covert means for regime change against President Assad. The Russian military intervention put paid to that American subterfuge by crushing the array of Daesh-affiliated militants.
Now, ironically, the disorderly American defeat in Afghanistan is creating potential headaches for Russia.
Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s national security council, has been in discussions with Kabul to reportedly map out ways by which Moscow can help maintain regional stability. The discussions have been made all the more pressing by the rapid pullout by the Americans.
“The suppression of terrorism and drug crimes, as well as trade, economic and military-technical cooperation, were discussed in detail”, the Russian security council statement said.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has also expressed concern about the spread of Daesh in northern Afghanistan. Lavrov blamed the complacency by politicians in Kabul to engage in peace talks with the Taliban as being a factor in why Daesh is burgeoning amid the internal chaos.
Moscow’s experience of Afghanistan is not a happy one. When the Soviet Union intervened in 1979 to support a then allied government in Kabul against US-backed Mujahideen (a forerunner of the Taliban), that led to a disastrous 10-year war which gravely weakened the Soviet Union.
American imperial machinations in Afghanistan – supposedly in revenge for purported 9/11 terror attacks on the US in 2001 – have created an utter catastrophe. After two decades, Afghanistan lies in ruins and the Taliban are poised to once again be back in power. A recent study by Brown University estimates the cost of the war at $2.26 trillion. That cost will grow into the future amid healthcare payouts for veterans and financial interest. More than 71,000 Afghan civilians were killed. And for what? Afghanistan is American imperial hubris and state terrorism gone mad.
It is a bitter repercussion that the criminal destruction of Afghanistan by Washington is now bequeathing a national security problem for Russia and other neighbouring nations. It is tempting to suspect that the Americans are deliberately offloading their mess onto Russia and cynically enjoying the dilemma being foisted on Moscow.
* Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/”Islamic State”) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. –
CounterPunch kwam gisteren met een artikel over de demonisering van Ilhan Omar, lid van het VS Huis van Afgevaardigden. Ilhan Omar stelde dat alle misdaden tegen de menselijkheid gelijk moeten worden behandeld wat betreft verantwoordelijkheid en gerechtigheid. (het is daarvoor inderdaad de hoogste tijd, wat zeg ik: we zijn wat dat betreft al zwaar overtijd….*) Daarbij stelde ze dat we ondenkbare wreedheden hebben gezien die zijn gepleegd door de VS, Hamas, Israël, Afghanistan en de Taliban……
Dit schoot zowel een groot deel van de Democraten (de partij van Omar) als de Republikeinen in het verkeerde keelgat en er barstte een storm van verontwaardiging los over haar woorden. Heel smerig stelde men dat Omar de VS vergelijkt met Hamas….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Hamas mocht willen dat het zoveel terreur kon uitoefenen als de VS, dan was het snel afgelopen met de staat Israël!! Ofwel de verontwaardiging is niet alleen hypocriet, maar ook ongelofelijk dom, immers vanaf het moment dat de VS de atoombom onnodig losliet op respectievelijk Hiroshima en Nagasaki heeft deze terreurstaat meer dan 25 miljoen mensen vermoord: -in illegale oorlogen, -door het organiseren van opstanden in derde landen, -door het organiseren van staatsgrepen in landen die niet gehoorzaam aan de hand van de VS liepen, zoals Guatemala, Indonesië, Chili, Honduras, Oekraïne en ga nog maar even door, -het vermoorden van verdachten middels drones, waarbij meer dan 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens werd verdacht en -het opleggen van illegale sancties (illegaal: niet gesteund door de VN) aan ongehoorzame landen, die bijvoorbeeld in Venezuela aan 50.000 mensen het leven heeft gekost….. Vergeleken met het voorgaande is Hamas een padvindersclub……
‘Maar goed’, in de VS tilt men zwaar aan de uitlatingen van Omar, echter op volkomen valse gronden, immers Omar vergeleek met haar uitspraak de VS niet met Hamas, maar noemde landen en organisaties die zich schuldig maken aan misdaden tegen de menselijkheid (jammer trouwens dat Omar Saoedi-Arabië niet noemde, het land dat NB met hulp van de VS een genocide uitvoert op de sjiieten in Jemen….) Voorts moet je dan ook nog kijken naar waarom organisaties als de Taliban en Hamas geweld uitoefenen >> het is immers de taak van elke soevereine natie om zich te verzetten tegen bezetting van haar land tegen buitenlandse indringers en daar is wat betreft Afghanistan en Palestina wel degelijk sprake van….. Anders gezegd of beter gevraagd: was het verzet in Nederland tegen de nazi-Duitse bezetter tijdens WOII terreur of gelegitimeerd verzet?? Dit voorbeeld is des te belangrijker als het gaat om de zogenaamde Politionele Acties van Nederland in Indonesië (een ordinaire koloniale oorlog), uiteraard was Nederland voor de gewone Indonesiërs een bezetter en dan durft men nog steeds te spreken over door Indonesiërs gepleegde oorlogsmisdaden tegen Nederlandse militairen en burgers, terwijl deze mensen als Nederlanders tijdens WOII de bezetter hebben aangevallen……..
Hypocrisie? Zo oud als de mensheid, al maken de ‘moderne machthebbers’ er veel meer werk van!!
Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Paul Street, hij gaat dieper in op de smerige hypocritische storm die Ilhan Omar over zich heen heeft gekregen:
United States political culture is an Orwellian nightmare. Two plus two equals five in the propaganda spectacle that passes for “democratic” news and debate here.
Take the latest bipartisan establishment disciplining of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the U.S. House’s most courageous and eloquent member, for saying this: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
Omar dared, in the words of The New York Times, “to compare Israel and the United States to Hamas and the Taliban.”
But did she? Look at these two sentences: “There’s nothing quite as exciting for baseball fans as a no-hitter. We have this season seen no-hitters thrown by pitchers with the Chicago White Sox, the San Diego Padres, the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Cincinnati Reds.”
Does this statement compare the White Sox with the Red Sox, the Padres, the Tigers, the Yankees, the Orioles, and the Reds? No, it makes an assertion about baseball no-hitters and then includes six teams in a list of Major League Baseball franchises with a pitcher who threw a no-hitter this year. For all anyone knows from these 41 words, each one of these teams is wildly different from the others.
Thoughtcrime 1: Serious Comparison
But, okay, let’s compare. Since Omar’s critics charge comparison, let’s take comparison seriously. One reason not to make “false equivalencies” between the Taliban (or Hamas) and the United States is that the former has never been remotely in the latter’s ballpark when it comes to committing crimes against humanity. Between direct U.S. slaughter and the U.S. sponsorship, funding, and equipping of mass slaughter by its client regimes, prominently including the racist apartheid state of Israel (recipient of $146 billion in U.S. military and economic funding in FY 2020, helping make Israel what the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace calls “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. assistance since World War II”), Washington has murdered tens of millions of world citizens since August of 1945, when it criminally and unnecessarily atom-bombed two major Japanese cities. For an introduction to this criminal record, which is hiding in plain sight for those willing to look, Google up the following: “No Gun Ri,” “My Lai,” “many My Lais,” “Operation Tiger Force,” “Abu Ghraib,” “Nissour Square,” “Fallujah,” “Guantanamo,” “extraordinary rendition,” the “Highway of Death,” and “Bola Boluk.” Better yet, read my February 2018 Truthdig essay “The World Will Not Mourn the Decline of U.S. Hegemony” for a soul-numbing account of this unmatched record of mass-murderous terror inflicted both directly (as in Korea during the early 1950s, in Southeast Asia between 1962 and 1975, in Iraq in 1991 and 2003-2011/2017) and indirectly (as in Indonesia, Latin America, Palestine, Yemen and in countless nations and regions around the world).
Here are some selections from that essay…
It is difficult, sometimes, to wrap one’s mind around the extent of the savagery Uncle Sam has unleashed on the world during the last and the present century. In the early 1950s, for example, the Harry Truman administration responded to an early challenge to U.S. power in Northern Korea with a practically genocidal three-year bombing campaign that was described in soul-numbing terms by the Washington Post years ago:
“The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. ‘Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,’ Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later Secretary of State, said the United States bombed ‘everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.’ After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops … The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin.”
This ferocious bombardment, which killed 2 million or more civilians, began five years after Truman arch-criminally and unnecessarily ordered the atom-bombing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to warn the Soviet Union to stay out of Japan and Western Europe.
The savagery of U.S. foreign policy in the post-WWII era did not always require direct U.S. military intervention. Take Indonesia and Chile, for two examples from the “Golden Age” height of the “American Century.” In Indonesia, the U.S.-backed dictator Suharto killed millions of his subjects, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese, and alleged leftists. A senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s later described Suharto’s 1965-66 U.S.-assisted coup as “the model operation” for the U.S.-backed coup that eliminated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, seven years later. “The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders,” the officer wrote, “[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965.” As John Pilger noted 13 years ago, “the U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a ‘zap list’ of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. … The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called ‘the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia.’” According to the prolific and brilliant New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, “No single American action in the period after 1945,” wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, “was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia.”
Two years and three months after the U.S-sponsored 1973 Chilean coup, Suharto received a green light from the Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford White House to invade the small island nation of East Timor. With Washington’s approval and backing, Indonesia carried out genocidal massacres and mass rapes and killed at least 100,000 of the island’s residents.
“To Henry Kissinger,” the human rights attorney Stanley L. Cohen noted five years ago, “the world, particularly Indochina, was very much a small chess game. Civilians were mere pawns ripe for sacrifice through hi-tech weaponry, including biological and chemical warfare, to enforce his worldview at any cost. Millions lost their lives to his cerebral game board” (emphasis added).
Among the countless episodes of mass-murderous U.S. savagery in the oil-rich Middle East over the last generation, few can match the barbarous and sadistic cruelty of the “Highway of Death,” where the “global policeman’s” forces massacred tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait on Feb. 26 and 27, 1991. Journalist Joyce Chediac testified that:
“U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and thenpounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel,’ said one U.S. pilot. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun … for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. … ‘Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,’ said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. … U.S. pilots took whatever bombs happened to be close to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500-pound bombs. … U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions. … The victims were not offering resistance. … [I]t was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend.”
The victims’ crime was having been conscripted into an army controlled by a formerly U.S.-backed dictator perceived as a threat to U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil. President George H.W. Bush welcomed the so-called Persian Gulf War as an opportunity to demonstrate America’s unrivaled power and new freedom of action in the post-Cold War world, where the Soviet Union could no longer deter Washington. Bush heralded the “war” (really a one-sided imperial assault) as marking the end of the “Vietnam Syndrome,” the reigning political culture’s curious term for U.S. citizens’ reluctance to commit U.S. troops to murderous imperial mayhem. As Noam Chomsky observed in 1992, reflecting on U.S. efforts to maximize suffering in Vietnam by blocking economic and humanitarian assistance to the nation it had devastated: “No degree of cruelty is too great for Washington sadists.”
I could go on and on and on some more with terrible tales of unimaginable horror and mass death inflicted abroad by the U.S.-American war machine during my lifetime in Southeast Asia (the U.S. killed 3 to 5 million in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1962 and 1975), Iraq (the “world’s leading democracy” killed at least 1 million Iraqis in the last eight years of this century’s opening decade) and elsewhere.
Since Afghanistan’s Taliban is part of the Omar drama, it seems germane to mention a forgotten 2009 crime against Afghan humanity that then U.S. president Barack Obama tried to blame on the Taliban.
Within less than half a year of his inauguration, Obama’s depressingly long list of atrocities in the Muslim world would include the bombing of the Afghan village of Bola Boluk. Ninety-three of the dead villagers torn apart by U.S. explosives in Bola Boluk were children. “In a phone call played on a loudspeaker on Wednesday to outraged members of the Afghan Parliament,” the New York Times reported, “the governor of Farah Province … said that as many as 130 civilians had been killed.” According to one Afghan legislator and eyewitness, “the villagers bought two tractor-trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred. Everyone at the governor’s cried, watching that shocking scene.”
The Obama administration refused to issue an apology or to acknowledge the “global policeman’s” responsibility. It initially blamed the carnage on – get this – “Taliban grenades.” (See Carlotta Gall and Taimoor Shah, “Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War,” New York Times, May 6, 2009.)
(By telling and sickening contrast, Obama had just offered a full apology and fired a White House official because that official had scared New Yorkers with an ill-advised Air Force One photo-shoot flyover of Manhattan that reminded people of 9/11. The disparity was extraordinary: Frightening New Yorkers led to a full presidential apology and the discharge of a White House staffer. Killing more than 100 Afghan civilians did not require any apology but was falsely blamed on the Taliban.)
Reflecting on such atrocities the following December, an Afghan villager was moved to comment as follows: “Peace prize? He’s a killer. … Obama has only brought war to our country.” The man spoke from the village of Armal, where a crowd of 100 gathered around the bodies of 12 people, one family from a single home. The 12 were killed, witnesses reported, by U.S. Special Forces during a late-night raid.
(Obama was only warming up his “killer” powers. He would join with France and other NATO powers in the imperial decimation of Libya, helping kill more than 25,000 civilians and unleashing mass carnage in North Africa. The U.S.-led assault on Libya was a disaster for black Africans and sparked the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.)
The Taliban, which owes much of its origin to U.S. Cold War sponsorship of Islamo-terrorist forces on the former Soviet Union’s southern border, is a despicable terrorist outfit, God knows. There have long been fully credible reports of its vicious atrocities, including mass murder, torture, rape, and assassination. Still, it can’t hold a candle to Superpower (or even to Uncle Sam’s leading client state Israel[1]) when it comes to crippling and killing human beings.
Seat of world history’s most extensive empire, the U.S. has at least 800 military bases spread across more than 80 foreign countries and “troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories.” The U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the planet’s military spending and has more than 5,500 strategic nuclear weapons, enough to blow the world up 5 to 50 times over. Last year it increased its “defense” (military empire) spending, which was already three times higher than China’s, and nine times higher than Russia’s.
Comparing the Taliban and Hamas to such a massive military Empire is indeed truly absurd. Their crimes pale before those of world history’s most lethal Superpower. There’s no comparison.
Thoughtcrime 2: The U.S. is Not a Democracy
Now for a second U.S.-American thoughtcrime. As I suspect Rep. Omar knows very well (her political survival requires pretending not to), the United States is not a “democratic country.” It’s a capitalist plutocracy, a de facto bourgeois class dictatorship wherein majority progressive public policy opinion is close to irrelevant in comparison (there’s that word again) to the vastly superior power of concentrated wealth. If you are interested in how and why this is so, order and read my 2014 book They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy – a detailed analysis of how the U.S. ruling class rules (I argue that the commonly cited problem of plutocratic campaign finance is just one tip of a giant, democracy-freezing capitalist-imperialist iceberg) and why it matters. In the meantime, stop and think about all the programs and measures most U.S.-Americans support – Single Payer national health coverage as a human right, serious voter rights protections, serious progressive taxation, the restoration of union organizing rights, real gun control, a serious response to the climate catastrophe (which is merely the biggest issue of our or any time), and more (the list goes on) – that have zero chance of being implemented because of the corporate, financial, and imperial/military-industrial kill switch that is firmly attached to the U.S. system of supposedly democratic governance and mass consent-manufacture. U.S.-Americans don’t even directly elect the nation’s powerful chief executive (try explaining the preposterous undemocratic Electoral College system to someone from another country). The extremely powerful upper chamber of the U.S. Congress (the Senate) so vastly and absurdly overrepresents the nation’s most rural, white, and reactionary regions that it is now mathematically possible to put together a Trump-Republifascist Senate majority on the basis of states representing 17.6% of the nation’s population. (If liberal and diverse California had the same population-to-U.S. Senator ratio as super-white and right-wing Wyoming, it would have 136 U.S. Senators.) The Senate joins with the indirectly elected president to appoint absurdly powerful Supreme Court justices for life and now regularly cancels popular bills that manage to get past the badly gerrymandered lower chamber.
With all due respect, it is transparently false and even absurd to call the U.S. a “democratic country.” It would take an actual American revolution for it to become any such thing.
Note
1. “Beginning with its mass expulsion, rape and murder [of Arabs] at the onset of the [1948] Nakba (the Catastrophe),” Stanley L. Cohen wrote five years ago, “Israel has devoted itself to 68 [now 73] years of non-stop genocide coming up for air only periodically to retool or to change the nature of its weaponry of choice. What started out with the expulsion, at gunpoint, of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homeland set in motion a refugee stampede that has grown to more than seven million displaced and stateless people, providing the world more than a disturbing glimpse of what was to come decades later in Syria.” The weapons are largely provided and paid for by the United States. The is the nuclear-armed judeo-fascist settler and apartheid state opposed by Hamas, whose crimes pale before those of its enemy and that enemy’s sponsor, the United States.
* Neem ook het Internationaal Strafhof, belachelijk te zien dat daar vooral mensen worden bericht die niet lekker liggen in de politiek van de VS en andere westerse landen, terwijl de vreselijke oorlogsmisdaden van de VS en haar NAVO-lidstaten onbestraft blijven, ze worden zelfs amper onderzocht…….. We mogen al blij zijn dat dit hof een aantal van de vreselijke misdaden van Israël tegen het verdrukte Palestijnse volk onderzoekt, al vraag ik me af of dit ooit tot een zaak zal leiden……..
Voor meer berichten over Ilhan Omar, Indonesië, Afghanistan, de Taliban, Israël, Hamas, Irak, Libië, Chili, Hiroshima en/of Jemen, klik op het betreffende label direct onder dit bericht.
Noam Chomsky en Alica Walker hebben een artikel geschreven over het proces tegen Julian Assange, eerder gepubliceerd op Independent (vanwege mijn adblocker mag ik geen gebruik maken van dit platform……) en door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House.
In de kop stellen Chomski en Walker dat de VS regering, ofwel de Trump administratie Julian Assanges persoonlijkheid terecht stelt, echter als je het stuk leest zie je dat men weliswaar Assange probeert te besmeuren, maar dat in feite de echte journalistiek terecht staat, dit naast de klokkenluiders die hun ergernissen melden aan onderzoeksjournalisten als Assange….
Iemand te besmeuren is in dit geval voor de VS overheid het middel om een journalist als Assange of klokkenluiders als Chelsea Manning en Edward Snowden totaal ongeloofwaardig te maken voor het grote publiek…… Tevens is dit uiteraard het middel om de zaak waarvoor mensen als Assange en Manning terecht staan/stonden ofwel te bagatelliseren dan wel te stellen dat deze 2 de staatsveiligheid in gevaar hebben gebracht, dat laatste is een leugen van enorme proporties…..
Meer dan schunnig dat de reguliere westerse media zich massaal achter de leugens van de opvolgende VS administraties stelden, die van Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, ‘vredesduif’ Obama en nu die van de psychopathische fascist Trump…….Deze media deden dat zonder te onderzoeken of de leugens kloppen, die veelal van de CIA en de NSA kwamen, organisaties die bekend staan om hun leugens en verdraaiingen van feiten, zoals die over Irak, Afghanistan, Libië en Syrië…… Terwijl die media van de eerste 3 op zeker weten dat het leugens waren, door hen herhaalt en daarna nooit gerectificeerd, sterker nog men blijft de leugens gewoon herhalen, hoewel sinds de illegale invallen van de VS in Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië intussen meer dan 2,5 miljoen mensen zijn vermoord………
Nog veel erger is het dat diezelfde media hun collega, de meer dan eens gelauwerde onderzoeksjournalist* Assange, zo hebben laten vallen, ja zelfs voor verrader hebben uitgemaakt (ook door de reguliere Nederlandse media)……. Al moet ik zeggen dat ze daar wel reden toe hadden, immers als men Assange had verdedigd, had men toe moeten geven dat men volkomen fout zat met de steun voor de illegale oorlogen die de VS met hulp van NAVO-lidstaten als Nederland tegen voornoemde landen begon, terwijl alle bewijzen daarvoor op tafel lagen en liggen…….**
Mensen zien deze waanzinnig leuke video van een paar minuten
Lees het korte artikel van Chomski en Walker en zegt het voort: Julian Assange moet onmiddellijk worden vrijgelaten en de westerse media moeten eindelijk doen wat ze jaren geleden al hadden moeten doen: Assange steunen en daarmee de echte journalistiek verdedigen!! Als die media dit niet doen is het hek van de dam en zal echte journalistiek (ook het kleine beetje dat nog in die reguliere media is te vinden) de nek worden omgedraaid ‘voor het groter goed: een nieuwe orde ofwel een politiestaat als die door George Orwell beschreven in het boek 1984’ (onder het artikel kan je klikken voor een Nederlandse [Dutch] vertaling, dit neemt wel enkele tientallen seconden tijd in beslag)
How the US government put Julian Assange’s personality on trial
By Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker
September 11, 2020 “Information Clearing House” – On Monday Julian Assange was driven to the Old Bailey to continue his fight against extradition to the United States, where the Trump administration has launched the most dangerous attack on press freedom in at least a generation by indicting him for publishing US government documents. Amid coverage of the proceedings, Assange’s critics have inevitably commented on his appearance, rumours of his behaviour while isolated in the Ecuadorian embassy, and other salacious details.
These predictable distractions are emblematic of the sorry state of our political and cultural discourse. If Assange is extradited to face charges for practising journalism and exposing government misconduct, the consequences for press freedom and the public’s right to know will be catastrophic. Still, rather than seriously addressing the important principles at stake in Assange’s unprecedented indictment and the 175 years in prison he faces, many would rather focus on inconsequential personality profiles.
Assange is not on trial for skateboarding in the Ecuadorian embassy, for tweeting, for calling Hillary Clinton a war hawk, or for having an unkempt beard as he was dragged into detention by British police. Assange faces extradition to the United States because he published incontrovertible proof of war crimes and abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing the most powerful nation on Earth. Assange published hard evidence of “the ways in which the first world exploits the third”, according to whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the source of that evidence. Assange is on trial for his journalism, for his principles, not his personality.
You’ve probably heard the refrain from well-meaning pundits: “You don’t have to like him, but you should oppose threats to silence him.” But that refrain misses the point by reinforcing the manipulative tropes deployed against Assange.
When setting a gravely dangerous precedent, governments don’t typically persecute the most beloved individuals in the world. They target those who can be portrayed as subversive, unpatriotic – or simply weird. Then they actively distort public debate by emphasizing those traits.
These techniques are not new. After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to journalists to expose the US government’s lies about Vietnam, the Nixon administration’s “White House Plumbers” broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in search of material that could be used to discredit him. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was falsely portrayed as collaborating with the Chinese, then the Russians. Obsession with military intelligence analyst Manning’s mental health and gender identity was ubiquitous. By demonizing the messenger, governments seek to poison the message. Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy – a timeline
The prosecution will be all too happy when coverage of Assange’s extradition hearing devolves into irrelevant tangents and smears. It matters little that Assange’s beard was the result of his shaving kit having been confiscated, or that reports of Paul Manafort visiting him in the embassy were proven to be fabricated. By the time these petty claims are refuted, the damage will be done. At best, public debate over the real issues will be derailed; at worst, public opinion will be manipulated in favour of the establishment.
By drawing attention away from the principles of the case, the obsession with personality pushes out the significance of WikiLeaks’ revelations and the extent to which governments have concealed misconduct from their own citizens. It pushes out how Assange’s 2010 publications exposed 15,000 previously uncounted civilian casualties in Iraq, casualties that the US Army would have buried. It pushes out the fact that the United States is attempting to accomplish what repressive regimes can only dream of: deciding what journalists around the globe can and cannot write. It pushes out the fact that all whistleblowers and journalism itself, not just Assange, is on trial here.
This piece was written by Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker, co-chairs of AssangeDefense.org – “Source“
Click forSpanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. ==================================== *Wikipedia heeft de informatie verwijderd over de prijzen die Assange won met zijn onderzoeksjournalistiek…….. Schande!!!
** Nogmaals: terwijl alle bewijzen voorhanden zijn dat de VS de westerse wereld heeft voorgelogen om deze oorlogen te rechtvaardigen, sterker nog een aantal landen waaronder Nederland hebben meegeholpen met de fabricage van deze leugens voor één of meer van deze oorlogen, wat betreft Nederland betrof dit de illegale oorlog tegen Irak……)
Het was gisteren 52 jaar geleden dat VS militairen in het Vietnamese dorp Mỹ Lai een vreselijk bloedbad aanrichtten. Militairen? Je reinste terroristen, zoals je wellicht al wist of zo zal lezen (overigens is de VS de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde en dat is al zo vanaf het eind van WOII, het bloedbad van Mỹ Lai is daarvoor ‘maar één’ van het enorme aantal bewijzen….)
Brasscheck TV bracht gisteren 2 video’s over deze zaak, de eerste is het verhaal van onderzoeksjournalist Seymour Hersh, hoe hij de feiten achterhaalde en deze naar buiten bracht. Alsof er niets veranderd is in vergelijking met de huidige berichtgeving: de massamedia in de VS wilden dit nieuws in eerste instantie niet publiceren en wat er werd gepubliceerd was in tegenspraak met wat er echt was gebeurd in dat dorp…… (zo meer over de rol van de media)
De tweede video is een interview met helikoptercommandant Hugh Thompson Jr. Hij was degene die een eind maakte aan het bloedbad door zijn bemanning de opdracht te geven op VS militairen te schieten die bezig waren met moorden en verkrachten, de waarschuwing aan dit geteisem was voldoende om hen te stoppen en daar was hij de rest van z’n leven blij mee, immers als de opdracht was uitgevoerd, bestond de mogelijkheid dat hij een zware straf opgelegd zou hebben gekregen door de meer dan hypocriete krijgsraad van het VS leger……
Thompson vertelt o.a. dat militairen er trots op waren met hun bajonet 2 Vietnamezen tegelijk te hebben vermoord: zwangere vrouwen en de foetus die zij droegen……. De vrouwen die herhaaldelijk werden verkracht konden niet schreeuwen, daar het terroristische ploertentuig hun tong uit de mond had gesneden….. Men vermoordde zelfs mensen met de blote hand…..
De interviewer vroeg Thompson wat de oorzaak was dat deze militairen zo tekeer gingen. Thompson stelt o.a. dat de militairen gefrustreerd waren over verliezen aan manschappen, terwijl men de daders, de Vietcong, niet kon vinden. Verder verwijt hij de commandanten fout leiderschap en zelfs negatief leiderschap, waardoor de groepsdruk hoog opliep en militairen hebben deelgenomen aan dit bloedbad, die er anders ‘wellicht’ niet aan hadden deelgenomen…….
Wat betreft het voorgaande, de groepsdruk enz. wil ik nog wel een kanttekening maken, immers je zou daardoor kunnen denken dat dit een exces was als bij de illegale koloniale oorlog van Nederland tegen het Indonesische volk……. Echter zoals in Indonesië, was Mỹ Lai alles behalve een exces in de illegale oorlogsvoering van de VS tegen het Vietnamese volk (een illegale oorlog voeren is al één van de grootst bestaande oorlogsmisdaden, dit nog buiten de vreselijke oorlogsmisdaden die werden gepleegd in dorpen als Mỹ Lai…)
Zie de video’s en bedenk dat e.e.a. nog steeds gebeurt en dat veelal door VS militairen, dan wel hun collega’s van andere NAVO-lidstaten als Nederland, met één groot verschil: als je tegenwoordig een dergelijke zaak naar buiten brengt en het gaat om VS militairen, wordt je vervolgd door die vereniging van terreurstaten…… Neem de zaak tegen Julian Assange, waar de massamedia al weer de kant van oorlogsmisdadiger VS hebben gekozen en NB hun collega, de uitstekende onderzoeksjournalist Assange, afmaken als onverantwoord klokkenluider en dat op basis van vreselijke leugens als zou hij het leven van mensen in gevaar hebben gebracht…….
The backstory of the My Lai Massacre
Seymour Hersh recalls
How the story broke
On this day in 1968, the My Lai Massacre Took place.
The original official report which appeared on the front page of the New York Times said it was a combat engagement that left 120 Vietcong dead.
In reality over 500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in cold blood. 18 months later Seymour Hersh received an anonymous tip and the public finally learned the truth.
The mainstream news media had zero interest in his research. Only a small, independent publication was willing to cover the story.
A little know part of the story is that it was an America helicopter commander who after stumbling on the massacre stopped it by ordering his men to train their weapons on the troops who were committing the atrocities.
Lee Camp de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder gepubliceerd op Truthdig en door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House, stelt in zijn openingszin dat het niet de eerste keer is dat de VS regering en de massamedia het volk van de VS een oorlog in sleept, dan wel een staatsgreep organiseert die onherroepelijk desastreuze gevolgen zal hebben….. Die uitspraak gaat wel op voor het eufemisme van het jaar, immers de VS geschiedenis vanaf 1945 staat er bol van!*
Met een terugkijk op zijn leve ten tijde van de tweede illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Irak in 2003 en hoe hij toen de zaken bekeek, waar hij het gevoel kreeg dat de argumenten voor die oorlog niet klopten, ontleedt Camp 4 illegale oorlogen van de VS die op valse gronden werden gevoerd.
Camp begint met de Spaans-Amerikaanse oorlog, waar de reden voor een VS aanval het zinken was van oorlogsschip USS Maine in de haven van Havanna. Daarna haalt hij de Vietnam oorlog aan en het conflict in de Golf van Tonkin, waar VS oorlogsschepen ‘schoten op weersverschijnselen die ze op de radar zagen……’ Oorlogsmisdadiger Robert McNamara wist op grond van deze in feite false flag operatie**, president Johnson te bewegen de strijd tegen Noord-Vietnam te intensiveren tot een ‘totale oorlog……’ Later gaf McNamara toe dat het Golf van Tonkin incident nooit plaatsvond…… Let wel: deze oorlog kostte miljoenen het leven, deze slachtoffers werden niet alleen in Vietnam vermoord (3,8 miljoenmensen), maar ook in buurlanden Laos en Cambodja……
Vervolgens komt de oorlog tegen Irak aan bod, een illegale oorlog waarvan iedereen kan weten dat deze op basis van leugens werd aangegaan door de VS, een oorlog die intussen aan meer dan 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven heeft gekost (Camp noemt overigens een aantal van 1 miljoen Irakese slachtoffers, nogal een verschil met schattingen die in Irak werden gemaakt door deskundigen, al blijft een aantal van 1 miljoen doden, een verschrikking waar je je amper iets bij voor kan stellen….)
Camp komt als eerste (hij begint vanaf het vierde voorbeeld) met het bombarderen van Syrië. Jammer dat hij niet wijst op het feit dat de VS al in 2006 heeft besloten dat Assad weg moest, niet in de laatste plaats daar hij pijpleidingen over de grond van Syrië weigerde, gaspijpleidingen van de Golfstaten richting Zuid-Europa…… (waarmee 2 vliegen in 1 klap worden geveld, immers met dat gas zou Rusland een afzet probleem krijgen in Europa…..). De VS heeft de opstand in Syrië georganiseerd en geregisseerd, waar deze terreurentiteit gewapende figuren van buiten Syrië als provocateurs heeft ingezet tijdens die ‘opstand…’ Helaas voor de VS, maar deze keer mislukte de opzet……
Camp noemt veel meer feiten en zaken die de reguliere (massa-) media niet brengen. Het verhaal eindigt tenslotte bij Venezuela, waarover Camp o.a. vertelt dat oorlogsmisdadiger Bolton zonder blikken of blozen stelde dat de VS uit is op de enorme olievoorraad van Venezuela (de op 1 na grootste voorraad ter wereld, volgens Camp de grootste maar dat klopt m.i. niet). Deze bekentenis van Bolton werd niet eens gebracht door de massamedia, nee zij houden vol dat de arme Venezolanen geholpen moeten worden, daar het hen aan alles ontbreekt, ‘zelfs aan tandpasta…’ (zie daarvoor ook de video van Lee Camp, die onder het artikel is weergegeven, waar hij ook op de ‘honger’ in Venezuela ingaat)
Niet genoemd door Camp, maar de VN en het Rode Kruis hebben de VS terecht gewezen met haar poging humanitaire hulp te politiseren, daar deze organisaties al lang humanitaire hulp verstrekken in Venezuela, er zijn zelfs 20 keer meer humanitaire hulpgoederen in Venezuela (waaronder medicijnen) dan de VS heeft klaarstaan….. Humanitaire hulpgoederen die zoals gezegd wel medicijnen bevatten, in tegenstelling tot de humanitaire hulp uit de VS, terwijl de westerse massamedia en het grootste deel van de westerse politici in navolging van hun collega’s in de VS, dat keer op keer wel stellen……. Nota bene USAID, de organisatie die de VS zendingen gereed maakt, heeft zelf toegegeven dat zich geen medicijnen tussen die VS hulpgoederen bevinden….. Alweer een feit dat de westerse reguliere media niet hebben gemeld……
Lees het volgende artikel en zegt het ajb voort, tijd dat de massamedia ook in ons land eindelijk de waarheid brengen over Venezuela…..
We Are Being Lied Into War Again
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results
By Lee Camp
March 08, 2019 “Information Clearing House” – I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.
The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.
Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.
And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to be dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.
The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”
The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.
Number 4: The Spanish-American War
This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.
And as The New York Times noted, “[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”
I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”
Number 3: The Vietnam War
Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.
That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination. The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese. The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.
Number 2: The Iraq War
Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”
Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.
But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.
“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”
And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”
That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.
(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)
Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about warwith Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”
I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.
“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”
Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.
Number 1: The Bombing of Syria
President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.
So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.
Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.
His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”
The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.
For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.
On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.
The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America.
Ondanks Martin Luther King Day op 21 januari in de VS, een officiële vrije dag, is er verder maar weinig veranderd in de VS, sinds de moord op MLK (waar maar één dader voor aangewezen kan worden: de FBI). Wat betreft de discriminatie van de gekleurde bevolking geldt hetzelfde: er is over het geheel gezien weinig veranderd, ondanks de acties van Martin Luther King en de officiële MLK dag, plus 2 termijnen Obama, de eerste gekleurde president van de VS…… De VS regering en zelfs de FBI eert MLK wel schijnheilig, maar zou hem haten als hij nog leefde (zie ook het neerschieten van gekleurden door de VS politie, waarbij de meerderheid van de slachtoffers niet eens bewapend was en is, immers dit gaat bijna dagelijks door in de VS…).
King was niet alleen een mensenrechtenactivist, maar ook een groot leider in het verzet tegen de VS oorlog in Vietnam, daarmee verdubbelde hij de inzet van de VS overheid en de FBI hem tot zwijgen te brengen……..
De FBI begon overigens al met het onderzoeken en dwarsbomen van King in 1955, je kan dan ook niet anders concluderen dan dat King werd gezien als een staatsvijand in de ogen van FBI en de opvolgende regeringen destijds….. Vooral de corrupte psychopaat Hoover, hoofd van de FBI had het niet op met King en dat heeft hij meermaals laten weten…. In de ogen van Hoover was King een communist…..
De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel Matt Agorist, stelt volkomen terecht dat King ook heden ten dage als een gevaarlijke en invloedrijke staatsvijand zou zijn behandeld, dat zijn Facebook pagina al lang verwijderd zou zijn geweest (plus zijn Twitteraccount, Ap.) en hij te maken zou hebben met censuur en zeker zou zijn gedemoniseerd door de reguliere massamedia in de VS….
Lees het artikel van Agorist en geeft het door, veel te veel mensen in Nederland hebben de foute idee dat het allemaal wel goed zit in de VS wat betreft de behandeling van gekleurden….. Bovendien zijn er hele volksstammen die geloven dat de sociale media alleen maar kul en poezenfilmpjes laten zien, terwijl juist daar het echte nieuws is te vinden en waar de betekenis van dat nieuws wordt gebracht. Intussen lopen de reguliere massamedia braaf aan de leiband van hun rijke meesters, grote bedrijven en regeringen, waarbij men geen schroom heeft fake news en desinformatie te brengen, om zo het volk achter de machthebbers en rustig te houden…… Zelfs de illegale oorlogen van de VS (en haar terreurorganisatie NAVO) tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië worden door de media verdedigd als was het motief medemenselijkheid, waar het in werkelijkheid gaat om massamoorden en het veilig stellen van westerse belangen, zoals de olieproductie, waarbij alleen deze eeuw al meer dan 2,5 miljoen mensen om het leven werden gebracht……. Het volgende artikel komt van The Free Thought Porject en werd zoals gezegd geschreven door Matt Agorist (mijn excuus, bij plaatsing vergeten The Free Thought Project te noemen):
If Dr. King Was Alive Today, His Facebook Page Would Be Deleted, And He’d Be Censored
Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-peace and antiwar stance would have made him an enemy to today’s establishment and he would have been censored.
When most people think of the great man, born Michael King on January 15, 1929, they see an advocate for peace, who is celebrated by the US government — honored every year in January, on the third Monday.
However, what the government tells us and what this great man did are two separate stories and had Dr. King been alive today, he would have been an enemy to the establishment who would have made every move they could to silence him.
Dr. King’s position as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement began after his election as spokesman for the Montgomery Improvement Association in December of 1955. What also started in that December of 1955 was the FBI’s investigation into him.
Like all those who stand against government-sanctioned violence, Dr. King was an enemy of the state. The fact that he’s celebrated today by the same state that persecuted him is quite Orwellian.
According to a report out of Stanford University titled, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle, the FBI had it out for Dr. King as soon as he began making waves.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and engaged in covert operations against him throughout the 1960s. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was personally hostile toward King, believing that the civil rights leader was influenced by Communists. This animosity increased after April 1964, when King called the FBI ‘‘completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South’’ (King, 23 April 1964). Under the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) King was subjected to various kinds of FBI surveillance that produced alleged evidence of extramarital affairs, though no evidence of Communist influence.
With a state that owes its very existence to the monopoly it holds on the use of violence, anyone who is pro-peace is a potential threat. This was the case in the 20th century just as it is the case in the 21st century. The fact that Americans take off of work one day in January, does not negate the reality that this struggle continues.
In fact, the government is still very engaged in fighting the antiwar and pro-peace narrative King so eloquently espoused. And they have no qualms talking about this in the open.
After deleting the pages of hundreds of antiwar and pro-peace media and activist outlets in October, last week, Facebook made another giant move to silence. This time, they had no problem noting that they went after pages whose specific missions were “anti-corruption” or “protest” movements.
“Some of the Pages frequently posted about topics like anti-NATO sentiment, protest movements, and anti-corruption,” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher wrote in the blog post. “We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people.”
Make no mistake, because Dr. King broke through the divisive paradigm and bridged the gap between different cultures so well, he would undoubtedly been a target of these tech giant censors who aim to keep you divided. The Atlantic Council would have likely had a special committee devoted to solely silencing his “dangerous” talks of peace.
Like Dr. King, however, many activists of today are unafraid of speaking truth to power, even when faced with police action and censorship.
Like the activists of today, Dr. King’s activism was often met with brutal backlash from police. Just like the protesters of today, who peacefully march in solidarity to end police violence and war, the protesters of the 50s and 60s were met with violence from the police.
Attacks against non-violent protesters are nothing new. In the 60s, as the marches increased, so did the attacks against non-violent demonstrators.
“There may be some tear gas ahead. But I say to you today, that I’d rather die on the highways of Alabama, than make a butchery of my conscience,” said Dr. King in his famous speech just prior to the Selma-Montgomery march in which protesters were met with such violence from police that the day would be forever remembered as “Bloody Sunday.”
The first march took place on March 7, 1965, and it gained the nickname “Bloody Sunday” after its 600 marchers were attacked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge after leaving Selma; state troopers and county posse attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas.
Does this type of police reaction to protests sound familiar?
Dr. King was no stranger to police and being arrested, in fact, during his 12-year run as the leader of the civil rights movement, he was arrested 30 times.
Today, there is a good chance Dr. King would be referred to as a ‘thug’ by a large portion of society — and police — for his activism.
Dr. King, like many of the protesters of today, stood against state violence and war. Those who wage the wars and initiate the violence, delegating a single day in January to honor a man who stood against their very tactics, is defamatory to this struggle for peace, to say the least.
So, while you are out there today, enjoying the day off, remember that this struggle is far from over. There are countless individuals continuing to try to live in the way Dr. King advocated for and who face constant bombardment from the establishment for doing so.
As long as innocence is lost to those who claim to protect it, the conflict remains. As long as people of all races are harassed, kidnapped, locked in cages or killed over victimless crimes, our strife will persist.
Not until the corruptions ceases, not until all the troops are brought home, not until a person can do with their own body as they see fit, not until the brute force changes to compassion, will the perpetual struggle of Dr. King and all those before and after him, be complete.
“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook. =========================== Hier nog een korte video waarin het geweld tegen gekleurden wordt weergegeven:
