Robert Mueller lijdt aan dementie en maakt van Russiagate een nog belachelijker verhaal

Het verhoor door een comité van de Democraten in het Huis van Afgevaardigden van speciaal aanklager Robert Mueller n.a.v. diens rapportage over Russiagate, was een anticlimax voor de Democraten, Mueller gaf op veel vragen geen antwoord en hij gaf verder de indruk het eigen rapport niet of slecht te kennen…….

Over deze zaak hieronder twee artikelen, de eerste van Consortium News en de tweede van Zero Hedge, over dat tweede artikel het volgende:

Robert
Mueller hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet de schrijver van eigen rapport

Robert
Mueller die afgelopen week moest getuigen over ‘eigen’ rapport*,
leek voor een groot deel van de tijd wel dement, zo kon hij (als gezegd) veel vragen niet beantwoorden en niet zelden leek het erop dat hij z’n eigen
rapport niet eens kende…..

Niet zo
vreemd als je bedenkt dat het grootste deel van het team van
aanklagers dat Mueller ter zijde stond bestond uit donoren van
Hillary Clinton! (ha! ha! ha! ha!, de ware misdadiger was Clinton en met de Russiagate leugen kon ze haar eigen zeer kwalijke rol verhullen binnen de Democratische Partij, een misdadige rol van haar en haar campagneteam tijdens de voorverkiezingen t.b.v. de democratische presidentskandidaat in 2016……

Nogmaals
is duidelijk dat het team van Mueller en hijzelf geen flinter aan
bewijs hebben dat Rusland inderdaad de boel heeft gemanipuleerd…..
Je moest intussen ook wel een imbeciel zijn als je dat hele
achterlijke verhaal nog gelooft, zoals de reguliere westerse media en
het overgrote deel van de westerse politici deze nonsens keer op keer blijven herhalen als was het een feit, ondanks dat er geen bewijzen zijn die e.e.a. bevestigen….. Dit alles terwijl er meters aan bewijs zijn voor
bemoeienissen van de VS met verkiezingen in andere landen, dit nog
naast het op poten zetten van gewelddadige opstanden die met staatsgrepen moesten (en moeten) eindigen, zoals de VS al zo vaak heeft
gedaan, om nog maar te zwijgen over de illegale oorlogen die de VS keer op keer begint…….

Tyler
Durden is de schrijver van het tweede artikel hieronder dat eerder op
Zero Hedge verscheen (zie ook de link onder zijn artikel
*):

CAMPAIGN
2016
COMMENTARYINTELLIGENCELEGALMEDIAPOLITICSRUSSIARUSSIAGATE

WIKILEAKS

Democrats
Blowing on Embers With a Politicized Mueller

July
25, 2019

By Joe
Lauria
Special
to Consortium News

Former
Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before the
Democratic-controlled House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on
Wednesday was an exercise by the Democrats of trying to extract
statements that would keep Russiagate alive and an attempt by the
Republicans to finish off the story once and for all.


Appearing
to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, the
nearly 75-year old Mueller disappointed both parties and the public.
He declined to answer 198 questions, according to 
a
count
 by
NBC News. When he did answer he was often barely intelligible and
mostly stuck to what was in his final report, though he often had to
fumble through pages to find passages he could not recall, eating
into committee members’ five-minute time limit.


Mueller
especially refused to comment on the process of his investigation,
such as who he did or did not interview, what countries his
investigators visited and he even dodged discussing some relevant
points of law. It was an abdication of his responsibility to U.S.
taxpayers who footed his roughly $30-million, 22-month probe.


But
when it came to making political statements, the former FBI director
suddenly rediscovered his mental acuity. He went way beyond his
report to say, without prosecutorial evidence, that he agreed with
the assessment of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo that WikiLeaks is
a “non-state, hostile intelligence agency.”


Mueller
called “illegal” 
WikiLeak‘s
obtaining the Podesta and DNC emails, an act of journalism. In the
2016 election, the Espionage Act would not apply as the DNC and
Podesta emails were not classified. Nor has 
WikiLeaks been
accused by anyone of stealing the emails. And yet the foremost law
enforcement figure in the U.S. accused 
WikiLeaks of
breaking the law merely for publishing.


Though
Mueller’s report makes no mention of 
The
Guardian
’s
tale that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
visited 
WikiLeaks publisher
Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, when questioned on this,
Mueller refused to refute the story, for which there isn’t a scrap
of evidence. That was another purely political and not legal
intervention from the lawman.


Russia, Russia, Russia

Mueller:
Came to when he wanted to make a political point. (Flickr)

While
Mueller concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy between
Russia and the Trump campaign to throw the 2016 election, he has not
let up on the most politicized part of his message: that Russia
interfered “massively” in “our democracy” and is still doing
it. There was no waffling from Mueller when it came to this question.

He
bases this on his indictment of 12 GRU Russian intelligence against
who he alleges hacked the DNC emails and transmitted them
to 
WikiLeaks.
Mueller knows those agents will never be arrested and brought to a
courtroom to have his charges tested. In that sense the indictment
was less a legal than a 
political document.


Among
the inaccuracies about Russigaate that were  recycled at the
hearing is that the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) spent $1.25 million in the United States to influence the election.
That figure belonged to a unit that acted worldwide, not just in the
U.S., according to Mueller’s
 indictment.
In fact it only spent $100,000 on Facebook ads, half coming after the
election, and as even Mueller pointed out, some were anti-Trump.

Cambridge
Analytica
 had
5,000 data points on 240 million Americans, some of it bought from
Facebook, that gave an enormous advantage for targeted ads to the
Trump campaign. It 
paid at
least $5.9 million to the company co-founded by Trump’s campaign
strategist Steve Bannon. But we are supposed to believe that a
comparatively paltry number of social media messages from the
IRA
 threw the
election.

Mueller
implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and
the Russian government despite an
order from
a judge for him to stop making that connection. In focusing again on
Russia, no member of Congress from either party raised the content of
the leaked emails.


IRA
headquarters in St. Petersburg (Wikimedia Commons)


For
the Democrats especially, it is all about the source, who is
irrelevant, since no one disputes the accuracy of the emails that
exposed Hillary Clinton. (That the source of authentic documents is
irrelevant is demonstrated by 
The
Wall Street Journal
 and
other major media using anonymous drop boxes pioneered by 
WikiLeaks.)
Were a foreign power to spread disinformation about candidates in a
U.S. election (something the candidates do to each other all the
time) that would be sabotage. But the leaking and publication of the
Clinton emails was information valuable to American voters.

And WikiLeaks would
have published Trump emails, but it never received any,
 Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson 
told Consortium
New
‘s
webcast 
CN
Live!

No
Power to Exonerate

With
“collusion” off the table, the Democrats have been obsessed with
Trump allegedly obstructing an investigation that found no underlying
crime. That’s something like being arrested for resisting arrest
when you’ve committed no other infraction.


In
his morning testimony, Mueller amplified the misperception that the
only reason he didn’t charge Trump with obstruction is because of a
Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy that a sitting
president can’t be indicted.


But
then Mueller came back from a break in the  hearing to issue a
“correction.” It was not true that he had concluded there’d
been obstruction but was blocked by the OLC policy, he said. In fact
he never concluded that there had been obstruction at all. “We
didn’t make a decision about culpability,” Mueller said. “We
didn’t go down that road.”


Instead
of leaving it at that, Mueller said in his report and testimony that
Trump was not “exonerated” of an obstruction charge. That led to
blaring headlines Wednesday morning while the hearing was still going
on. “Trump was not exonerated by my report, Robert Mueller tells
Congress,” said the BBC. “Mueller Report Did Not Exonerate Trump,
Mueller Says,” blared the 
HuffPost.


But
in what may have been the most embarrassing moment for Mueller,
Republican Congressman Michael Turner (R-OH) pointed out that a
prosecutor does not have the power to exonerate anyone. A prosecutor
 prosecutes.

Rep.
Michael Turner

Mr.
Mueller, does the Attorney General have the power or authority to
exonerate?” Turner asked the witness. “What I’m putting up here
is the United States code. This is where the Attorney General gets
his power. And the constitution … .

Mr.
Mueller, nowhere in these [documents] … is there a process or
description on ‘exonerate.’ There’s no office of exoneration at
the Attorney General’s office. … Mr. Mueller, would you agree
with me that the Attorney General does not have the power to
exonerate?”

I’m
going to pass on that,” Mueller replied.

Why?”
Turner asked.

Because
it embroils us in a legal discussion, and I’m not prepared to do a
legal discussion in that arena,” Mueller said.

Pointing
to a CNN headline that had just appeared, “MUELLER: TRUMP WAS NOT
EXONERATED,” Turner said: “What you know is, that this can’t
say, ‘Mueller exonerated Trump,’ because you don’t have the
power or authority to exonerate Trump. You have no more power to
declare him exonerated than you have the power to declare him
Anderson Cooper.”

Turner
said: “The statement about exoneration is misleading, and it’s
meaningless. It colors this investigation— one word of out the
entire portion of your report. And it’s a meaningless word that has
no legal meaning, and it has colored your entire report.”

Who
is a Spy for Whom?

Mueller
also took a pass every time the Steele dossier was raised, which it
first was by Rep. David Nunes (R-CA):

Despite
acknowledging dossier allegations as being salacious and unverified,
former FBI Director James Comey briefed those allegations to
President Obama and President-elect Trump. Those briefings
conveniently leaked to the press, resulting in the publication of the
dossier and launching thousands of false press stories based on the
word of a foreign ex-spy, one who admitted he was desperate that
Trump lose the election and who was eventually fired as an FBI source
for leaking to the press.

 “And
the entire investigation was open based not on Five Eyes
intelligence, but on a tip from a foreign politician about a
conversation involving Joseph Mifsud. He’s a Maltese diplomat who’s
widely portrayed as a Russian agent, but seems to have for more
connections with Western governments, including our own FBI and our
own State Department, than with Russia.”

When
Nunes pointed out to Mueller that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort
business associate, whom Mueller’s report identifies as having ties
to Russian intelligence, was actually a U.S. State Department
asset,
Mueller refused to comment saying he was “loath” to get into it.

This
Schiff Has Sailed

The
chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (R-CA) used the
word “lies” 19 times in his opening statement, which contained at
least that many.

The
central one was this:

Your
investigation determined that the Trump campaign, including Donald
Trump himself, knew that a foreign power was intervening in our
election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy
and used it.

Disloyalty
to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a
presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a
foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun
it or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it and
made full use of it?”

Schiff
reluctantly admitted that no Trump conspiracy with Russia was
uncovered, but said the “crime” of disloyalty was even worse.

Disloyalty
to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a
core principle on which our nation was founded that we, the people
and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide who governs
us,” said Schiff.

It
was pure fantasy.

Mueller
should have taken a pass on that one too.

Joe
Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former
correspondent for 
The
Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe
Sunday
Times 
of
London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached
at 
joelauria@consortiumnews.com and
followed on Twitter
 @unjoe .

Tags: Adam
Schiff
 Joe
Lauria
 Robert
Mueller
 Russiagate

===============================

James
Clapper Suggests Mueller Was “Just A Figurehead” And Didn’t
Even Write His Own Report

by Tyler
Durden

Fri,
07/26/2019 – 09:30

Former
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday that
Robert 
Mueller
could just be a “figurehead” who may not have been involved
in writing “his” own report,
 according
to 
The
Gateway Pundit
.

The
comments came during a CNN interview
 discussing
why Robert Mueller didn’t seem to have “command” over the
report’s contents while testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday. 

Clapper
was heavily involved in the coup against President Donald Trump and
was an advocate for the Russia hoax theory earlier on.

Mueller’s
role was likely more of a “CEO”, he said. 
I
think his role as a special prosecutor was a lot more like a CEO
where he oversaw the operations but did not engage in interrogating
witnesses or actually writing the report.”


Elizabeth Harrington

@LizRNC

James Clapper, one of the originators of the Collusion Hoax, suggests Mueller was just a figurehead, who was not involved in writing his report

Then who did?

Anti-Trump zealots who went to Hillary’s Election wake, & represented the Clinton Foundation & Hillary’s hammer man

Embedded video

(Dit is een still van een video die ik niet kan overnemen en waar na het voorgaande niets nieuws wordt verteld dan het CEO verhaal in het begin van dit artikel op Zero Hedge, zie het origineel)

And
naturally, as the article asks, if Mueller 
didn’t write
the report, was it left to the anti-Trump zealots that filled his
team? The piece notes that nearly 
“every
single prosecutor on Mueller’s team was a Hillary/Obama donor.”

Lead
prosecutor Andrew Weissman was with Hillary Clinton on election night
and praised acting AG Sally Yates for not enforcing Trump’s travel
ban. Aaron Zebley, another Mueller team member, represented the IT
aide that smashed Clinton’s Blackberrys while under subpoena. 

Zebley
was next to Mueller on Wednesday to “advise” him on
questions and was clearly more well versed on the report than Mueller
himself was. 

Mueller’s
embarrassing testimony – during which he admitted 
he
wasn’t even familiar with Fusion GPS – 
is
being panned not only by conservatives, but also by Democrats, as
we 
reported yesterday. 

Conservative
columnist Byron York wrote yesterday:

“Mueller’s
performance raised questions that reached far beyond one appearance
before one committee.
 It
called into doubt the degree to which Mueller was in charge of the
entire special counsel investigation
.” 

Tag Politics

================================

*
Zie: ‘Michael Moore Joins Chorus Of Defeated Democrats Panning “Frail, Forgetful” Mueller Testimony

Zie ook:

WaPo waarschuwt voor Russische digitale controle over de hersenen van VS burgers

Federale rechter stelt ten overvloede dat DNC geen grond heeft voor zaak te tegen Trumps verkiezingsteam

Geheime diensten in westen geven toe dat spioneren via het G5 netwerk praktisch onmogelijk is……..

Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

1984 het boek van George Orwell: niet langer fictie…….

Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap‘ (zie daarin ook de links naar andere berichten over Assange)

De sterkste beïnvloeding van de VS presidentsverkiezingen wordt als volkomen ‘legaal’ en normaal gezien

Avaaz valt met fake news en desinformatie ‘fake news en desinformatie‘ aan……’ (zie in dat bericht ook de link naar een ander artikel met een smerige rol van Avaaz)

Rob Jetten (D66 fractievoorzitter) liegt een fikse slag in de rondte in EU verkiezingspraatje

EU verkiezingen: manipulatie ook door lobbyisme is misdadig, zelfs Bas Eickhout (GroenLinks) doet hieraan mee

‘Intel processors al 10 jaar zo lek als een mandje, Intel niet een bedrijf uit Rusland of China, maar uit….. de VS!

Facebook stelt klimaatsceptisch Daily Caller aan als ‘factchecker…’ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Russiagate: nog overtuigd van bestaan daarvan? Lees dit!

Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met ‘alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland 


Russiagate: VS en buitenlandse geheime diensten hebben de VS presidentsverkiezingen in 2016 gemanipuleerd


Obama gaf toe dat de DNC e-mails expres door de DNC werden gelekt naar Wikileaks….!!!!


WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen…….

‘Banden van Trump met Rusland’ gebaseerd op FBI operatie om VS ‘burger’ (CIA) in Iran vrij te krijgen……

Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met ‘alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland regelde’

Russiagate? Britaingate zal je bedoelen!

New York Times ‘bewijzen’ voor Russiagate vallen door de mand……

BNR ‘denkt’ als één van de vele mediaorganen nog steeds dat Russiagate werkelijk plaats vond

BBC topman waarschuwt dat de BBC haar geloofwaardigheid en reputatie kwijtraakt…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Geen rectificaties voor meer dan 2 jaar brengen van fake news over het kwaadaardig sprookje Russiagate

Bedrijf dat voor ‘Russische bots’ waarschuwde, heeft een leger met nep-Russische bots

Britse militaire geheime dienst bedient zich van moddergooien en andere manipulaties om Europese en VS politiek te manipuleren, zo blijkt uit gelekte documenten


Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax


BBC: Rusland ‘misbruikt humor’ om Russiagate te ontkrachten….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Uitgelekte telefoongesprekken tussen Trump en Putin bewijzen dat ‘Russiagaters gelijk hebben……’

Russiagate haat- en angstcampagne samenzweerders als FBI en Clinton moeten strafrechtelijk worden vervolgd

Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega’s voor zot uitgemaakt


WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren


En over het grote slachtoffer in het Russiagate verhaal, Julian Assange:

Belangrijk account voor de verdediging Julian Assange geblokkeerd door Twitter

Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter

Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap‘ (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren…..)

VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld

Media wakker geschrokken en ontwaken in Assange nachtmerrie

Julian Assange weer vervolgd wegens ‘verkrachting’, waarvoor het Zweedse OM eerder geen bewijs kon vinden……

Dag van Persvrijheid: Assange wordt zoveel mogelijk uitermate hypocriet gemeden door de pers

Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf……

Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis

Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten‘ (zie ook de iets oudere links in dat bericht)

Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten……..

WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum

De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar…..

Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video

Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige ‘journalisten’ van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media

WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum‘ 

Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!’

Trump vroeg Iran toestemming tot bombarderen onbelangrijke doelen, dit in actie: red mijn gezicht

Het is
Trump werkelijk geheel en al in de psychopathische vrouwonvriendelijke rotbol geslagen, de knurft zou Iran, nadat het een VS drone uit de
lucht haalde in eigen luchtruim, om een paar plekken te mogen bombarderen, plekken die van geen
belang zijn, aldus Elijah Magnier….. (Magnier is een echte Midden-Oosten deskundige en veteraan oorlogscorrespondent) Trump wilde dit om z’n gezicht te redden, zo stelt Magnier, een mening die de Britse ex-ambassadeur in Washington, Kim Darroch*, deelt.

Uiteraard
heeft Iran categorisch geweigerd aan dit verzoek te voldoen en heeft gesteld dat zelfs wanneer de VS een strand van Iran zou aanvallen dit als een
oorlogsdaad wordt gezien, waarop Iran terug zal slaan…….

Het
volgende artikel over het meer dan belachelijke voorstel van Trump werd eerder gepubliceerd op Moon of Alabama en werd door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House en werd
geschreven door Moon of Alabama:

“Pretty
Please” – Trump Asked Iran To Allow Him To Bomb It

By
Moon Of Alabama



July
08, 2019 “Information
Clearing House
” – On June 20 Iran shot down a U.S. spy
drone. U.S. President Trump decided not to retaliate. The White House
and the media claimed that Trump had ordered a strike on Iran but
pulled it back at the last minute. We said that this was
likely 
bullshit:

The
whole storyline of “a strike was ordered but Trump held back and
saved the day” might well be fake.

A strike in
retaliation for the downed drone may have never been on the table. An
alternative interpretation is that the U.S. sought agreement for a
symbolic ‘strike’ from Iran. It would hit some empty desert place to
allow Trump to save face. Iran would have disagreed with that plan.

The
British ambassador to the U.S., who’s briefings to
London 
leaked yesterday,
agrees with that take:

[Sir
Kim Darroch] questioned Trump’s recent claim that he aborted a
missile strike on Iran because it would have caused a predicted 150
casualties, saying it ‘doesn’t stand up’.

‘It’s
more likely that 
he
was never fully on board
 and
that he was worried about how this apparent reversal of his 2016
campaign promises would look come 2020′ – at the next Presidential
election.

Elijah
Magnier 
reported that
Trump had asked Iran to allow him to strike back, but was rebuffed:

According
to well-informed sources, Iran rejected a proposal by US intelligence
– made via a third party – that Trump be allowed to bomb one, two
or three clear objectives, to be chosen by Iran, so that both
countries could appear to come out as winners and Trump could save
face. Iran categorically rejected the offer and sent its reply: even
an attack against an empty sandy beach in Iran would trigger a
missile launch against US objectives in the Gulf.

An
Iranian general yesterday 
confirmed Magnier’s
take (also 
here):    

A senior Iranian general has revealed that Washington, through diplomatic channels, recently asked Tehran to allow it to conduct a small-scale operation in the Iranian airspace in order to save its face following the IRGC’s shoot-down of a US spy drone.

Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, the Head of Iran’s Civil Defence Organization, said Iran vehemently rejected the US request, saying that it will respond to any act of aggression.  

The
Islamic Republic of Iran responded that it views any operation as a
war and will give a crushing response to it. You may initiate a war
but this is Iran which will finish it,” he said Sunday.

The
idea that the U.S. would ask Iran to allow it to bomb some targets
without hitting back sounds crazy.

Dear
Mr. Rouhani,

could
you please name me three targets in your country that I am allowed to
bomb?

It
is urgent as I need to look tough on Iran.

Pretty
please!

Donald
Trump

But
this is the Trump White House and the only thing Trump really seems
to care for is his own rating.

Trump
wants a new nuclear deal with Iran. One with his signature, not
Obama’s, on it.

Trump’s
nuking of a deal while pressing for a new one shows that he has not
the slightest idea how Iran, or any other independent country, reacts
to such pressure. There will be no talks unless Trump rejoins the
deal and lifts the sanctions:

The
US sent over 60 diplomatic delegations to Iran as mediators to hold
talks with Iran but the leader of the Islamic Revolution rejected the
US calls for talks and Iran began to scale back its commitments under
the JCPOA.

The
Trump administration seems to have genuinely thought that Iran would
not react to its ever tightening sanctions by exceeding the technical
limits of the nuclear deal, which it 
now
does
.
Back in November Secretary of State Pompeo 
opinedthat
Iran would not do this:

Asked
what the administration would do if the Iranians restart their
nuclear program, Pompeo replied, “We’re confident that Iranians
will not make that decision.”

That
was of course nonsensical. Why was Iran expected to stick to a deal
it does not benefit from? Such 
wishful
thinking
 has
no base in reality:

A
U.S. official familiar with the issue told POLITICO on Sunday that
the Trump team hopes for three things: that Europe imposes some
sanctions on Iran to keep it from further violating the deal; that a
financial mechanism the Europeans have set up to help Iran obtain
non-sanctioned goods succeeds; and that recent U.S. military
maneuvers in the Middle East are enough to deter Iran from further
military escalation.

Fundamentally,
we want them to stay in the deal,” the U.S. official said, when
asked why the Trump administration wants the European financial
mechanism, known as INSTEX, to work. There’s no desire to engage in
an all-out war with Iran or see it build a nuclear weapon, the
official said.

Europe
is for now 
unlikely to
impose sanctions on Iran for a deal that Trump broke. If it does, the
whole JCPOA deal is off. INSTEX is a joke. It ‘allows’ Iran to barter
only something other than oil, and only against humanitarian goods
which are not under sanctions. It is worse than the 1990s oil for
food program that caused major economic destruction in Iraq. Iran
does not fear U.S. military might. U.S. military assets in the Middle
East do not deter. They are targets. Iran knows that Trump wants to
avoid a war.

The
little thought out U.S. policy gives Iran escalation dominance. It
can and will increase its nuclear activities, as it announced, every
60 days. Tankers and other interests of its enemies around the Gulf
will receive more damage. Trump will come under ever increasing
pressure. Iran’s actions, like the sabotage of some ships near
Fujairah, already show 
results:

[D]emand
for ship fuel at Fujairah, the United Arab Emirates coastal shipping
hub close to the Strait, has waned as some tankers stay away, traders
involved in the regional market said.

The
British ambassador 
expects
no change
 in
the confused White House policy on Iran:

One
memo, sent by Sir Kim on June 22, refers to ‘incoherent, chaotic’
US-Iran policy, adding: ‘Its unlikely that US policy on Iran is going
to become more coherent any time soon. This is a divided
Administration’.

But
the British policy on Iran is no better. On one side it is a
signatory of the nuclear deal with Iran and claims that it wants to
uphold it. On the other side it follows orders from the White House
and 
hijacks
a tanker
 that
carries Iranian oil which it claims is going to Syria. Britain has
absolutely 
no
legal basis
 to
do such. Even the former Swedish prime minister and rumored CIA asset
Carl Bildt finds that behavior too crude:

Carl
Bildt @carlbildt – 
9:24
PM – 7 Jul 2019

The
legalities of the UK seizure of a tanker heading for Syria with oil
from Iran intrigues me. One refers to EU sanctions against Syria, but
Iran is not a member of EU. And EU as a principle doesn’t impose
its sanctions on others. That’s what the US does.

Iran’s
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi 
called the
British act “robbery” and said that the ship was not
heading to Syria. Its real destination is 
said
to be
 “a
new southern European customer” for Iranian oil, probably Italy.
Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier-General Amir Hatami 
promised to
respond to the British act of piracy.

As
usual the response will be asymmetrical and will come at a time and
place of Iran’s choosing.

This
article was originally published by “
MOA

=========================================

* Deze Darroch heeft afgelopen week zijn ontslag ingediend bij de Britse regering, nadat hij Trump volkomen terecht o.a. incompetent, chaotisch en onzeker noemde, waarop Trump in een Twittertirade o.a. stelde dat Darroch niet langer welkom is in het Witte Huis.

Zie ook:

VS stuurt 500 militairen naar Saoedi-Arabië als inzet tegen ‘Iraanse agressie’

Israël maakt zich op voor oorlog tegen Iran

Groot-Brittannië saboteert de Iran deal en de belofte van de EU de VS sancties te compenseren: Iraanse olietanker werd op verzoek VS overvallen

De VS en niet Iran is een schurkenstaat

VS chanteert de wereld: geen olie import uit Iran, anders……..

Pompeo (VS minister BuZa): Iran is de grootste sponsor van terrorisme….. Goh, nooit geweten dat Iran subsidie geeft aan het Pentagon

VS verwijt Iran nucleaire chantage, chantage waar de VS zichzelf schuldig aan maakt

VS plant een bombardement op een Iraanse kerncentrale, verkennende VS drone neergeschoten

Kapitein Japans schip spreekt Trump administratie tegen over Iraanse kleefbom op zijn tanker

VS heeft stok ‘gevonden’ om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen

Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt

US Continues to Escalate Tensions, Raising Fear of Imminent War With Iran

US Might Send 10,000 More Troops to Middle East

VS dreigt Iran met militair geweld op beschuldiging van terreur die de VS zelf op grote schaal uitoefent

Yemen Be Damned, Pompeo Doubles Down on US Support for Saudi Arabia

Het verborgen motief achter de Israëlische agressie tegen Iran en Syrië

Iraanse protesten allesbehalve compleet spontaan (zoals VS ambassadeur bij de VN Haley durfde te stellen…)….

Protesten Iran opgezet door de VS en Israël

Iran, de protesten en wat de media je niet vertellen………

De VS gaf meer dan 1 miljoen dollar uit om protesten tegen Iraans bewind uit te buiten (en te organiseren)

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Rex Tillerson (VS BuZA) geeft toe dat de VS een staatsgreep wil uitvoeren in Iran…….. Het is nog ‘iets te rustig’ in dat gebied……..

VS liegt schaamteloos om het westen verder op te zetten tegen Iran……..

VS bewandelt dezelfde weg richting Iran, als die voor de illegale oorlog tegen Irak in 2003, aldus één van de verantwoordelijken voor die oorlog……..

Netanyahu vergelijkt Iran met nazi-Duitsland en stelt dat Iran een bedreiging is voor de wereldvrede….. ha! ha! ha! ha!

Washington uit op oorlog met Iran……

Oliemaatschappijen weigeren n.a.v. VS sancties de jet van Iraanse minister af te tanken

Israël bezig met voorbereiding op meerdere fronten oorlog…….. (met hulp van de VS

John Bolton heeft beloofd dat Iran voor 2019 onder een ander regime zal leven…….

Saoedi-Arabië dreigt Iran aan te vallen voor vanuit Jemen afgevuurde ‘raketten’ op Saoedische ‘doelen……….’

VS rechter gelast Iran miljarden te betalen aan de families van 911 slachtosoennieten zijnffers…..‘ (terwijl 9/11 niet werd uitgevoerd noch werd geregisseerd door Iran, waar ‘de daders’  ook nog eens soennieten zouden zijn en Iran hoofdzakelijk een sjiitisch land is)

Iran moet hangen en Iran-deal moet van tafel……. Israël speelt wolf in schaapskleren

VS ambtenaren: Israël zoekt steun VS voor oorlog tegen Iran…….

VS, de werelddictator: Iran-deal is van nul en generlei waarde (op basis van leugens en achterklap)…….

Iran houdt zich aan de nucleaire deal dit in tegenstelling tot de VS……..

Israël laat er geen twijfel over bestaan: met het uit de Iran-deal stappen van de VS is definitief de oorlog verklaard aan Iran………

Jeremy Corbyn, de Britse Labourleider zal en moet vallen: hij neemt het op voor het arme deel van de bevolking

Jeremy Corbyn, de Britse Labourleider zal en moet vallen: hij neemt het op voor het arme deel van de bevolking en dat ‘kunnen we uiteraard niet hebben in de huidige ijskoude, inhumane neoliberale maatschappij….’ Vandaar dat de politiek in samenwerking met de reguliere Britse (en ook buitenlandse) media Corbyn op alle mogelijke manieren belasteren en demoniseren met leugens en andere achterklap……

Jonathan
Cook schreef een uitgebreid en prima artikel over de krachten die
alles op alles zetten om Jeremy Corbyn, de Britse Labourleider, ten
val te brengen en te voorkomen dat hij de volgende landelijke
verkiezingen zal winnen…..

Cook
wijst op de politieke gang van zaken in Groot-Brittannië, al voordat
Trump in de VS aan het bewind kwam. Een groot deel van het volk zag en ziet volkomen terecht de politiek als vooropgezette lobby ten gunste van de bedrijven en de
welgestelden, zaken waaraan eerdere Labourleiders meededen en die zoals gezegd werden gesteund door de reguliere media…. Het neoliberalisme had
immers ‘het communisme’ overwonnen, ‘het communisme’ dat nooit
werkelijk heeft bestaan op onze aarde, althans voor zover bekend is (gezien de voorhanden zijnde en niet gemanipuleerde geschiedenis*).

De reguliere westerse media en politici zijn zelfs zover gegaan dat ze Corbyn durfden te beschuldigen van
antisemitisme, terwijl Corbyn in zijn partij o.a. wordt bijgestaan
door politici die Joods zijn, voorts was hij bevriend met Hajo Meijer, het intussen overleden bestuurslid van Een Ander
Joods Geluid….. En waarom die beschuldiging van antisemitisme? Omdat Corbyn regelmatig
volledig terecht het Israëlische terreurbeleid t.a.v. de Palestijnen
heeft bekritiseerd, zeker als Israël weer een zoveelste bloedbad aanrichtte
onder de Palestijnen…. De Palestijnen, als de Joden voor en tijdens
WOII, het vervolgde volk, niet in Duitsland maar in Israël, NB een illegaal gestichte
staat waar o.a. Joden naar toe vluchten om zaken te voorkomen, die Israël tegen de Palestijnen gebruikt…… 

Jeremy Hunt, een psychopathische mafketel van de Tories, durfde Corbyn af te schilderen als de nieuwe Hitler…… Te ernstig om over te lachen, daar er voldoende figuren zijn die een tweede Hitler met veel plezier om zouden leggen, zeker voordat deze politieke macht krijgt….. Ofwel Hunt heeft Corbyn een schietschijf omgehangen en dat met een bewering die kant nog wal raakt…..

Nogmaals: nooit heeft Corbyn anti-Joodse geluiden laten horen, het gaat uitsluitend om kritiek op de staat Israël, iets dat volkomen legitiem is en niets met antisemitisme te maken heeft…..

In de VS
heeft men een grote bek over de ‘door de Russen gemanipuleerde
presidentsverkiezingen van 2016’, waar geen flinter aan bewijs voor
werd geleverd, anders dan een aantal advertenties die qua kosten niet eens in
de schaduw kunnen staan van de bedragen waarmee die verkiezingen
worden gekocht……. Terwijl diezelfde VS in persoon van o.a. Pompeo
heeft gesteld dat Corbyn de volgende landelijke verkiezingen in GB
niet mag winnen….. De VS zou nu zelfs al actief in GB bezig zijn met het
demoniseren van Corbyn…… Zo geeft Pompeo toe (waarschijnlijk ongewild, het is bepaald geen intellect) dat de VS overal en nergens de
verkiezingen manipuleert, als men de idee heeft dat belangrijke figuren als politici op belangrijke posities niet in het belang van de VS en/of Israël zullen werken…..

Lees het
volgende artikel van Cook (eerder gepubliceerd op Common Dreams en overgenomen van Anti-Media) en zegt het voort, er moet een eind komen aan de smerige campagne tegen Corbyn, een campagne waar ook Nederlandse media aan meewerken…..

The
Plot to Keep Jeremy Corbyn Out of Power

July
5, 2019 at 9:24 am

Written
by 
Jonathan
Cook

As
the establishment’s need to keep him away from power has grown more
urgent and desperate so has the nature of the attacks

(CD Op-Ed) — In
the latest of the interminable media “furores” about Jeremy
Corbyn’s supposed unfitness to lead Britain’s Labour party –
let alone become prime minister – it is easy to forget where we
were shortly before he won the support of an overwhelming majority of
Labour members to head the party.

In
the preceding two years, it was hard to avoid on TV the figure of
Russell Brand, a comedian and minor film star who had reinvented
himself, after years of battling addiction, as a spiritual
guru-cum-political revolutionary.

Brand’s
fast-talking, plain-speaking criticism of the existing political
order, calling it discredited, unaccountable and unrepresentative,
was greeted with smirking condescension by the political and media
establishment. Nonetheless, in an era before Donald Trump had become
president of the United States, the British media were happy to
indulge Brand for a while, seemingly believing he or his ideas might
prove a ratings winner with younger audiences.

But
Brand started to look rather more impressive than anyone could have
imagined. He took on supposed media heavyweights like the
BBC’s 
Jeremy
Paxman
 and
Channel 4’s 
Jon
Snow
 and
charmed and shamed them into submission – both with his compassion
and his thoughtful radicalism. Even in the gladiatorial-style battle
of wits so beloved of modern TV, he made these titans of the
political interview look mediocre, shallow and out of touch. Videos
of these head-to-heads went viral, and Brand won hundreds of
thousands of new followers.

Then
he overstepped the mark.

Democracy
as charade

Instead
of simply criticising the political system, Brand argued that it was
in fact so rigged by the powerful, by corporate interests, that
western democracy had become a charade. Elections were 
pointless.
Our votes were simply a fig-leaf, concealing the fact that our
political leaders were there to represent not us but the interests of
globe-spanning corporations. Political and media elites had been
captured by unshored corporate money. Our voices had become
irrelevant.

Brand
didn’t just talk the talk. He started committing to direct action.
He 
shamed our
do-nothing politicians and corporate media – the devastating
Grenfell Tower fire had yet to happen – by helping to gain
attention for a group of poor tenants in London who were taking on
the might of a corporation that had become their landlord and wanted
to evict them to develop their homes for a much richer clientele.
Brand’s revolutionary words had turned into revolutionary action

But
just as Brand’s rejection of the old politics began to articulate a
wider mood, it was stopped in its tracks. After Corbyn was
unexpectedly elected Labour leader, offering for the first time in
living memory a politics that listened to people before money,
Brand’s style of rejectionism looked a little too cynical, or at
least premature.


Ideologically he was resolutely against the thrust of four decades of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism. (Photo: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Ideologically
he was resolutely against the thrust of four decades of a
turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism. (Photo: Anthony
Devlin/Getty Images)

While
Corbyn’s victory marked a sea-change, it is worth recalling,
however, that it occurred only because of a mistake. Or perhaps two.

The
Corbyn accident

First,
a handful of Labour MPs agreed to nominate Corbyn for the leadership
contest, scraping him past the threshold needed to get on the ballot
paper. Most backed him only because they wanted to give the
impression of an election that was fair and open. After his victory,
some loudly 
regretted having
assisted him. None had thought a representative of the tiny and
besieged left wing of the parliamentary party stood a chance of
winning – not after Tony Blair and his acolytes had spent more than
two decades remaking Labour, using their own version of entryism to
eradicate any vestiges of socialism in the party. These “New
Labour” MPs were there, just as Brand had noted, to represent the
interests of a corporate class, not ordinary people.

Corbyn
had very different ideas from most of his colleagues. Over the years
he had broken with the consensus of the dominant Blairite faction
time and again in parliamentary votes, consistently taking a minority
view that later proved to be on the 
right
side of history
.
He alone among the leadership contenders spoke unequivocally against
austerity, regarding it as a way to leech away more public money to
enrich the corporations and banks that had already pocketed vast sums
from the public coffers – so much so that by 2008 they had nearly
bankrupted the entire western economic system.

And
second, Corbyn won because of a recent change in the party’s
rulebook – one now much regretted by party managers. A new internal
balloting system gave more weight to the votes of ordinary members
than the parliamentary party. The members, unlike the party machine,
wanted Corbyn.

Corbyn’s
success didn’t really prove Brand wrong. Even the best designed
systems have flaws, especially when the maintenance of the system’s
image as benevolent is considered vitally important. It wasn’t that
Corbyn’s election had shown Britain’s political system was
representative and accountable. It was simply evidence that corporate
power had made itself vulnerable to a potential accident by
preferring to work out of sight, in the shadows, to maintain the
illusion of democracy. Corbyn was that accident.

Brainwashing
under freedom’

Corbyn’s
success also wasn’t evidence that the power structure he challenged
had weakened. The system was still in place and it still had a
chokehold on the political and media establishments that exist to
uphold its interests. Which is why it has been mobilising these
forces endlessly to damage Corbyn and avert the risk of a further,
even more disastrous “accident”, such as his becoming prime
minister.

Listing
the ways the state-corporate media have sought to undermine Corbyn
would sound preposterous to anyone not deeply immersed in these
media-constructed narratives. But almost all of us have been exposed
to this kind of “
brainwashing
under freedom

since birth.

The
initial attacks on Corbyn were for being poorly dressed, sexist,
unstatesmanlike, a national security threat, a Communist spy –
relentless, unsubstantiated smears the like of which no other party
leader had ever faced. But over time the allegations became even more
outrageously propagandistic as the campaign to undermine him not only
failed but backfired – not least, because Labour membership
rocketed under Corbyn to make the party the largest in Europe.

As
the establishment’s need to keep him away from power has grown more
urgent and desperate so has the nature of the attacks.

Redefining
anti-semitism

Corbyn
was extremely unusual in many ways as the leader of a western party
within sight of power. Personally he was self-effacing and lived
modestly. Ideologically he was resolutely against the thrust of four
decades of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism unleashed by
Thatcher and Reagan in the early 1980s; and he opposed foreign wars
for empire, fashionable “humanitarian interventions” whose real
goal was to attack other sovereign states either to control their
resources, usually oil, or line the pockets of the
military-industrial complex.

It
was difficult to attack Corbyn directly for these positions. There
was the danger that they might prove popular with voters. But Corbyn
was seen to have an Achilles’ heel. He was a life-long anti-racism
activist and well known for his support for the rights of the
long-suffering Palestinians. The political and media establishments
quickly learnt that they could recharacterise his support for the
Palestinians and criticism of Israel as anti-semitism. He was soon
being presented as a leader happy to preside over an
“institutionally” anti-semitic party.

Under
pressure of these attacks, Labour was forced to adopt a new and
highly controversial definition of anti-semitism – one 
rejected by
leading jurists and later 
repudiated by
the lawyer who devised it – that expressly conflates criticism of
Israel, and anti-Zionism, with Jew hatred.

One
by one Corbyn’s few ideological allies in the party – those
outside the Blairite consensus – have been picked off as
anti-semites. They have either fallen foul of this conflation or, as
with Labour MP Chris Williamson, they have been tarred and feathered
for trying to defend Labour’s record against the accusations of a
supposed endemic anti-semitism in its ranks.

The
bad faith of the anti-semitism smears were particularly clear in
relation to Williamson. The comment that plunged him into so much
trouble – now leading twice to his suspension – was videoed. In
it he can be heard calling anti-semitism a “scourge” that must be
confronted. But also, in line with all 
evidence,
Williamson denied that Labour had any particular anti-semitism
problem. In part he blamed the party for being too ready to concede
unwarranted ground to critics, further stoking the attacks and
smears. He noted that Labour had been “demonised as a racist,
bigoted party”, adding: “Our party’s response has been partly
responsible for that because in my opinion … we’ve backed off far
too much, we have given too much ground, we’ve been too
apologetic.”

The
Guardian has been typical in mischaracterising Williamson’s remarks
not once but each time it has covered developments in his case. Every
Guardian 
report has
stated, against the audible evidence, that Williamson said Labour was
“too apologetic about anti-semitism”. In short, the Guardian and
the rest of the media have insinuated that Williamson approves of
anti-semitism. But what he actually said was that Labour was “too
apologetic” when dealing with unfair or unreasonable allegations of
anti-semitism, that it had too willingly accepted the unfounded
premise of its critics that the party condoned racism.

Like
the Salem witch-hunts

The
McCarthyite nature of this process of misrepresentation and guilt by
association was underscored when Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), a group of
Jewish party members who have defended Corbyn against the
anti-semitism smears, voiced their support for Williamson. Jon
Lansman, a founder of the Momentum group originally close to Corbyn,
turned on the JVL 
calling them
“part of the problem and not part of the solution to antisemitism
in the Labour Party”. In an additional, ugly but increasingly
normalised remark, he added: “Neither the vast majority of
individual members of JVL nor the organisation itself can really be
said to be part of the Jewish community.”

In
this febrile atmosphere, Corbyn’s allies have been required to
confess that the party is institutionally anti-semitic, to distance
themselves from Corbyn and often to submit to anti-semitism training.
To do otherwise, to deny the accusation is, as in the Salem
witch-hunts, treated as proof of guilt.

The
anti-semitism claims have been regurgitated almost daily across the
narrow corporate media “spectrum”, even though they are
unsupported by any 
actual
evidence
of
an anti-semitism problem in Labour beyond a marginal one
representative of wider British society. The allegations have reached
such fever-pitch, stoked into a hysteria by the media, that the party
is now under 
investigation by
the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – the only party apart
from the neo-Nazi British National Party ever to face such an
investigation.

These
attacks have transformed the whole discursive landscape on Israel,
the Palestinians, Zionism and anti-semitism in ways unimaginable 20
years ago, when I first started reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Then the claim that anti-Zionism – opposition to Israel
as a state privileging Jews over non-Jews – was the same as
anti-semitism sounded patently ridiculous. It was an idea promoted
only by the most unhinged apologists for Israel.

Now,
however, we have leading liberal commentators such as the Guardian’s
Jonathan Freedland 
claiming not
only that Israel is integral to their Jewish identity but that they
speak for all other Jews in making such an identification. To
criticise Israel is to attack them as Jews, and by implication to
attack all Jews. And therefore any Jew dissenting from this
consensus, any Jew identifying as anti-Zionist, any Jew in Labour who
supports Corbyn – and there are many, even if they are largely
ignored – are denounced, in line wth Lansman, as the “wrong kind
of Jews”. It may be absurd logic, but such ideas are now so
commonplace as to be unremarkable.

In
fact, the weaponisation of anti-semitism against Corbyn has become so
normal that, even while I was writing this post, a new nadir was
reached. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary who hopes to defeat Boris
Johnson in the upcoming Tory leadership race, as good
as 
accused Corbyn
of being a new Hitler, a man who as prime minister might allow Jews
to be exterminated, just as occurred in the Nazi death camps.

Too
‘frail’ to be PM

Although
anti-semitism has become the favoured stick with which to beat
Corbyn, other forms of attack regularly surface. The latest are
comments by unnamed “senior civil servants” reported in the
Times 
alleging that
Corbyn is too physically frail and mentally ill-equipped to grasp the
details necessary to serve as prime minister. It barely matters
whether the comment was actually made by a senior official or simply
concocted by the Times. It is yet further evidence of the political
and media establishments’ anti-democratic efforts to discredit
Corbyn as a general election looms.

One
of the ironies is that media critics of Corbyn regularly accuse him
of failing to make any political capital from the shambolic disarray
of the ruling Conservative party, which is eating itself alive over
the terms of Brexit, Britain’s imminent departure from the European
Union. But it is the corporate media – which serves both as
society’s main forum of debate and as a supposed watchdog on power
– that is starkly failing to hold the Tories to account. While the
media obsess about Corbyn’s supposed mental deficiencies, they have
smoothed the path of Boris Johnson, a man who personifies the word
“buffoon” like no one else in political life, to become the new
leader of the Conservative party and therefore by default – and
without an election – the next prime minister.

An
indication of how the relentless character assassination of Corbyn is
being coordinated was hinted at early on, months after his election
as Labour leader in 2015. A British military general 
told
the Times
,
again anonymously, that there would be “direct action” – what
he also termed a “mutiny” – by the armed forces should Corbyn
ever get in sight of power. The generals, he said, regarded Corbyn as
a national security threat and would use any means, “fair or foul”,
to prevent him implementing his political programme.

Running
the gauntlet

But
this campaign of domestic attacks on Corbyn needs to be understood in
a still wider framework, which relates to Britain’s abiding
Transatlantic “special relationship”, one that in reality means
that the UK serves as Robin to the United States’ Batman, or as a
very junior partner to the global hegemon.

Last
month a private conversation concerning Corbyn between the US
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the heads of a handful of
rightwing American Jewish organisations was leaked. Contrary to the
refrain of the UK corporate media that Corbyn is so absurd a figure
that he could never win an election, the fear expressed on both sides
of that Washington conversation was that the Labour leader might soon
become Britain’s prime minister.

Framing
Corbyn yet again as an anti-semite, a US Jewish leader could be heard
asking Pompeo if he would be “willing to work with us to take on
actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the UK”.
Pompeo 
responded that
it was possible “Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get
elected” – a telling phrase that attracted remarkably little
attention, as did the story itself, given that it revealed one of the
most senior Trump administration officials explicitly talking about
meddling directly in the outcome of a UK election

Here
is the dictionary definition of “run the gauntlet”: to take part
in a form of corporal punishment in which the party judged guilty is
forced to run between two rows of soldiers, who strike out and attack
him.

So
Pompeo was suggesting that there already is a gauntlet – systematic
and organised blows and strikes against Corbyn – that he is being
made to run through. In fact, “running the gauntlet” precisely
describes the experience Corbyn has faced since he was elected Labour
leader – from the corporate media, from the dominant Blairite
faction of his own party, from rightwing, pro-Israel Jewish
organisations like the Board of Deputies, and from anonymous generals
and senior civil servants.

We
cheated, we stole’

Pompeo
continued: “You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those
things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too
risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”

So,
Washington’s view is that action must be taken before Corbyn
reaches a position of power. To avoid any danger he might become the
UK’s next prime minister, the US will do its “level best” to
“push back”. Assuming that this hasn’t suddenly become the US
administration’s priority, how much time does the US think it has
before Corbyn might win power? How close is a UK election?

As
everyone in Washington is only too keenly aware, a UK election has
been a distinct possiblity since the Conservatives set up a minority
goverment two years ago with the help of fickle, hardline Ulster
loyalists. Elections have been looming ever since, as the UK ruling
party has torn itself apart over Brexit, its MPs regularly defeating
their own leader, prime minister Theresa May, in parliamentary votes.

So
if Pompeo is saying, as he appears to be, that the US will do
whatever it can to make sure Corbyn doesn’t win an election well
before that election takes place, it means the US is already deeply
mired in anti-Corbyn activity. Pompeo is not only saying that the US
is ready to meddle in the UK’s election, which is bad enough; he is
hinting that it is already meddling in UK politics to make sure the
will of the British people does not bring to power the wrong leader.

Remember
that Pompeo, a former CIA director, once effectively America’s spy
chief, was unusually frank about what his agency got up to when he
was in charge. He 
observed:
“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s –
it was like – we had entire training courses.”

One
would have to be remarkably naive to think that Pompeo changed the
CIA’s culture during his short tenure. He simply became the
figurehead of the world’s most powerful spying outfit, one that had
spent decades developing the principles of US exceptionalism, that
had lied its way to recent wars in Iraq and Libya, as it had done
earlier in Vietnam and in justifying the nuclear bombing of
Hiroshima, and much more. Black ops and psyops were not invented by
Pompeo. They have long been a mainstay of US foreign policy.

An
eroding consensus

It
takes a determined refusal to join the dots not to see a clear
pattern here.

Brand
was right that the system is rigged, that our political and media
elites are captured, and that the power structure of our societies
will defend itself by all means possible, “fair or foul.” Corbyn
is far from alone in this treatment. The system is similarly rigged
to stop a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders – though not a
rich businessman like Donald Trump – winning the nomination for the
US presidential race. It is also rigged to silence real journalists
like Julian Assange who are trying to overturn the access journalism
prized by the corporate media – with its reliance on official
sources and insiders for stories – to divulge the secrets of the
national security states we live in.

There
is a conspiracy at work here, though it is not of the kind lampooned
by critics: a small cabal of the rich secretly pullng the strings of
our societies. The conspiracy operates at an institutional level, one
that has evolved over time to create structures and refine and
entrench values that keep power and wealth in the hands of the few.
In that sense we are all part of the conspiracy. It is a conspiracy
that embraces us every time we unquestioningly accept the
“consensual” narratives laid out for us by our education systems,
politicians and media. Our minds have been occupied with myths, fears
and narratives that turned us into the turkeys that keep voting for
Christmas.

That
system is not impregnable, however. The consensus so carefully
constructed over many decades is rapidly breaking down as the power
structure that underpins it is forced to grapple with real-world
problems it is entirely unsuited to resolve, such as the gradual
collapse of western economies premised on infinite growth and a
climate that is fighting back against our insatiable appetite for the
planet’s resources.

As
long as we colluded in the manufactured consensus of western
societies, the system operated without challenge or meaningful
dissent. A deeply ideological system destroying the planet was
treated as if it was natural, immutable, the summit of human
progress, the end of history. Those times are over. Accidents like
Corbyn will happen more frequently, as will extreme climate events
and economic crises. The power structures in place to prevent such
accidents will by necessity grow more ham-fisted, more belligerent,
less concealed to get their way. And we might finally understand that
a system designed to pacify us while a few grow rich at the expense
of our children’s future and our own does not have to continue.
That we can raise our voices and loudly say: “No!”

By Jonathan
Cook
 / Creative
Commons
 / Common
Dreams

====================================

* Je zou
de eerste christengemeenschappen kunnen zien als communistisch, daar
iedereen er gelijk was en men samen besliste over de dagelijkse gang
van zaken. Echter gegarandeerd dat die gemeenschappen in
werkelijkheid meer weg hadden van een sekte, daar de enige echte
autoriteit het godsgeloof was en twijfelen aan die autoriteit zou
tot onmiddellijke verstoting/uitstoting hebben geleid…..

Zie ook:

BBC heeft Corbyn afgemaakt als antisemiet, terwijl het zelf al jaren een racistische serie uitzendt…….

Verkiezingen Groot-Brittannië: de lastercampagne van de afhankelijke BBC en andere massamedia tegen Corbyn heeft gewonnen………

Verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië gemanipuleerd door de massamedia

Opperrabbijn Mirvis besmeurt Labour vlak voor verkiezingen, over het ongeoorloofd beïnvloeden van verkiezingen gesproken

Boris Johnson vs. Jeremy Corbyn en de massamedia

Niet Rusland maar Trump beïnvloedt nu al de verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië

Jackie Walker, een joods journalist, spreekt over de met beschuldigingen van antisemitisme gevoede heksenjacht op Labour en haarzelf

Gedreven politicus zet BBC presentator te kakken die Labour de schuld wilde geven van de armoede in GB

Honger in GB anno 2019: uitsterfbeleid voor werklozen en andere arme Britten >> velen krijgen geen voedselhulp

Britse kinderen lijden anno 2018 honger, vooral in de vakanties…….

Voor meer berichten over Corbyn, antisemitisme, Israël en of de Palestijnen, klik op de betreffende labels, direct onder dit bericht.

De VS en niet Iran is een schurkenstaat

De
VS rekent Iran tot de schurkenstaten, terwijl de VS de ene na de andere illegale oorlog start op basis van leugens of zelfs false flag operaties, neem de oorlogen van de VS tegen Noord-Vietnam, Panama, Servië (ook nog eens als opperbevelhebber van de NAVO), Afghanistan, Irak (NB 2 keer, waar de laatste in feite nog steeds niet is afgelopen), Libië en Syrië (waar de VS de terroristen invloog en bewapende, zelfs die van IS…)….. Illegale oorlogen deze eeuw door de VS begonnen, hebben intussen al meer dan 2,5 mensen het leven gekost!! (en dan zou Iran een terreurstaat zijn….)

Voorts voert de VS economische oorlogen tegen ‘ongehoorzame landen’, waarbij telkens weer de bevolking het slachtoffer is, zo heeft de economische oorlog tegen Venezuela naar schatting al 40.000 mensen het leven gekost…… (ofwel de zoveelste vorm van massamoord door de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS!) Dit nog buiten: 

  • geheime militaire moordacties o.l.v. de CIA.
  • het vermoorden van verdachten middels drones, waarbij meer dan 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens werd verdacht. (intussen al duizenden slachtoffers)
  • het opzetten van opstanden en staatsgrepen in landen waar de VS niets te zoeken heeft, zaken waarmee altijd mensenlevens zijn gemoeid….. 

Trump
stelt dat hij geen oorlog zoekt met Iran, maar dat dit land geen
kernwapen mag hebben. Het beest is de weg geheel en al kwijt want nu
stelt hij dat wanneer Iran afziet van een kernwapen, hij dat land zal
omarmen…….

Precies
dat, het niet nastreven van een kernwapen, wist men al in 2007 uit inlichten
van geheime diensten uit de VS, destijds werd vastgesteld dat Iran was
gestopt met het werken aan een kernwapen waarmee het in 2003 was
begonnen…..

Bovendien
tekende Iran de nucleaire deal met o.a. de VS en beloofde daarin
precies wat de VS eiste en ondanks strenge controles van de IAEA (Internationaal Atoomenergie Agentschap), waarvan de uitkomsten aangaven dat Iran zich aan de afspraken hield, werd dit verdrag door Trump naar de
prullenbak verwezen……

‘Mooie woorden van Trump, terwijl de VS nog steeds bezig is met militaire opbouw in
de buurt van Iran, niet alleen met troepen, maar ook met
gevechtsvliegtuigen en zelfs een vliegdekschip…….. 

Hoorde in het nieuws van 12.00 u. (CET) op BBC World Service dat Groot-Brittannië een olietanker aan de ketting heeft gelegd, daar het eindbestemming Syrië zou hebben >> alsof GB en de VS het recht hebben om schepen aan te houden met een eindbestemming die de afzonderlijke regeringen als onaanvaardbaar hebben bestempeld…… Het wachten is op eenzelfde actie tegen Iran, waar terreurstaat VS dan zal optreden als ‘politieagent’.

Lees
het volgende artikel van Derek Davison, gepubliceerd op JACOBIN en verbaas je over het belachelijke en schandalige VS terreurbeleid tegen
Iran, immers de VS sancties hebben velen in Iran al in diepe ellende
doen wegzakken…… Deze economische oorlogsvoering is niets anders dan
grootschalige terreur en is gebaseerd op leugens over wat Iran zou
doen en nastreven……

The
US, Not Iran, Is the Rogue State

By
Derek Davison

Donald
Trump speaks after signing an executive order imposing new sanctions
on Iran at the White House on June 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Mark
Wilson / Getty Images)

Trump
says he wants to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, yet he
wrecked an international agreement that was doing just that. Now
we’re edging closer to a war that the US says it doesn’t want but
is doing everything to cause.

When
he’s not 
threatening
Iran
 with
“obliteration,” Donald Trump has, of late, noted his preference
for negotiations over war. He’s reportedly 
asked his
advisers, including hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and
ultra-hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton, to “tone down”
their rhetoric on Iran. His Iran envoy, Brian Hooks, has 
told
Congress
 that
the goal of the administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions
campaign is negotiations, not conflict.

Trump
has gone so far as to 
say he’ll
be Iran’s “best friend” — with one caveat: the Iranians give
up any efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. “We’re not going to
have Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters last weekend.
“When they agree to that, they’re going to have a wealthy
country. They’re going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their
best friend. I hope that happens.”

So
let’s take Trump at his word. Maybe he is interested in cutting a
deal. Let’s further acknowledge that the administration might not
be comfortable relying on Iran’s word (Tehran has 
insisted that
it “will never pursue a nuclear weapon ”) or even on the
word of US intelligence (which in a 2007 report 
concluded that
Iran stopped what nuclear weapons work it was doing in 2003). What
kind of agreement would it then be looking to negotiate with Tehran?

To
be viable, the plan would need to be an international one that
involved not just the US and Iran, but China, Russia, and major
European states. All these states would have to jointly take action
to ensure that Iran fulfilled its obligations under the pact and that
it benefited from doing so. The deal would need to be comprehensive,
covering all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program; include a mechanism
for enforcing Iranian compliance; and provide Iran with relief from
the current array of US and international sanctions.

This
hypothetical deal would be a win-win for all parties: the US and
company would get their coveted denuclearization, and Iran would be
freed from the sanctions that have wreaked havoc on their economy.

There’s
just one problem: that kind of deal has already been crafted. It’s
called the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) — the
2015 accord that Iran agreed to with the United States, China,
France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The same accord that
Trump chose to scrap last year, which has now brought the US and Iran
to the brink of a military confrontation.

While
Trump spent the 2016 presidential campaign trashing the JCPOA
— 
calling
it
 “the
worst deal ever negotiated” and declaring his “number one
priority” would be to “dismantle” it — arms control experts
have supported it as an effective tool. More than eighty
non-proliferation specialists signed a 
joint
statement
 in
2017, before Trump abandoned the accord, saying that the JCPOA “has
proven to be an effective and verifiable arrangement that is a net
plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts” as well as
“an important success of multilateral diplomacy, the full
implementation of which is critical to international peace and
security.”

When
it was negotiated in 2015, the JCPOA’s premise was simple: in
return for accepting limitations on its nuclear power program and an
intense inspections regime to verify its compliance, Iran would get
relief from US and international sanctions. By obligating Iran to
redesign a heavy water reactor that could have generated significant
plutonium waste and establishing strict limits on Iran’s uranium
enrichment program, it closed off both of Iran’s potential pathways
to a nuclear weapon. Most critically, Iran agreed to an unprecedented
level of monitoring and inspections to verify its compliance.

That
work has been done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
has repeatedly affirmed Iran’s adherence to the deal.

This
is the agreement that Trump chose to violate last year. With his
reimposition of US sanctions — which apply not just to US entities
but all parties seeking to do business with Iran — it has become
impossible for Tehran to receive any benefits despite its fidelity to
the deal. Although the remaining signatories to the JCPOA have to
shield some Iranian commerce from US penalties, those efforts have
been very limited in scope and are, thanks to US dominance in the
global financial system, still ultimately vulnerable to sanctions.

It’s
little wonder that the Iranians have recently begun 
scaling
back
 their
own commitments to the nuclear deal and plan to continue scaling them
back. Amazingly, the Trump administration has warned Iran against
doing so — it “still expects Iran to abide by [the JCPOA’s]
terms,” according to NBC News. But the US withdrawal from the
JCPOA, combined with the Trump administration’s zealous application
of sanctions, has destroyed the pact. For all intents and purposes,
there is no JCPOA anymore, and the notion that Iran would continue to
adhere to a dead accord is, to say the least, unreasonable.

If
it appears that the Trump administration’s approach to Iran is
incoherent, that’s because it is. Trump says he wants to prevent
Iran from developing nuclear weapons, yet he wrecked an international
agreement that was doing just that. His advisers say they want to
force Iran to negotiate over an expanded deal that addresses the
original’s perceived shortcomings, but the best way to encourage
Iran to keep talking would have been to make sure that it received
all of its promised perks under the JCPOA.

Now
Iranian leaders 
call the
US offer to talk a “deception,” and even ostensible US allies
like France say they’ve 
seen “no
signal the US is interested in dialogue.” The administration claims
it wants to 
build a
“global coalition” to isolate and counter Iran, but its actions
have only isolated the US and shown that it, not Iran, is the rogue
state in this situation.

The
Trump administration has made sanctions an end unto themselves,
heaping more and more on Iran and offering Tehran no chance to
alleviate them that doesn’t involve some kind of capitulation.
After the most recent round of US sanctions — which targeted
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself — Iran 
suggested that
the “path to diplomacy” is now closed, and there’s no reason to
doubt they mean it.

The
one constant over the past forty years of Iran-US relations has been
Washington’s deep desire for regime change in Tehran. Seen in that
light, the administration’s refusal to create an off-ramp to
deescalate this entirely US-made crisis may be deliberate — part of
a plan to punish the Iranian people so severely that they eventually
rise up and topple their government on Washington’s behalf. But
there’s no indication that the effort is working, and in the
meantime millions of people are suffering for it while the Persian
Gulf region edges closer to a war that the US says it doesn’t want
but is doing everything to cause.

===============================================

Zie ook:

VS stuurt 500 militairen naar Saoedi-Arabië als inzet tegen ‘Iraanse agressie’

Israël maakt zich op voor oorlog tegen Iran

Groot-Brittannië saboteert de Iran deal en de belofte van de EU de VS sancties te compenseren: Iraanse olietanker werd op verzoek VS overvallen

VS chanteert de wereld: geen olie import uit Iran, anders……..

Pompeo (VS minister BuZa): Iran is de grootste sponsor van terrorisme….. Goh, nooit geweten dat Iran subsidie geeft aan het Pentagon

VS verwijt Iran nucleaire chantage, chantage waar de VS zichzelf schuldig aan maakt

VS plant een bombardement op een Iraanse kerncentrale, verkennende VS drone neergeschoten

Kapitein Japans schip spreekt Trump administratie tegen over Iraanse kleefbom op zijn tanker

VS heeft stok ‘gevonden’ om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen

Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt

US Continues to Escalate Tensions, Raising Fear of Imminent War With Iran

US Might Send 10,000 More Troops to Middle East

VS dreigt Iran met militair geweld op beschuldiging van terreur die de VS zelf op grote schaal uitoefent

Yemen Be Damned, Pompeo Doubles Down on US Support for Saudi Arabia

Het verborgen motief achter de Israëlische agressie tegen Iran en Syrië

Iraanse protesten allesbehalve compleet spontaan (zoals VS ambassadeur bij de VN Haley durfde te stellen…)….

Protesten Iran opgezet door de VS en Israël

Iran, de protesten en wat de media je niet vertellen………

De VS gaf meer dan 1 miljoen dollar uit om protesten tegen Iraans bewind uit te buiten (en te organiseren)

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Rex Tillerson (VS BuZA) geeft toe dat de VS een staatsgreep wil uitvoeren in Iran…….. Het is nog ‘iets te rustig’ in dat gebied……..

VS liegt schaamteloos om het westen verder op te zetten tegen Iran……..

VS bewandelt dezelfde weg richting Iran, als die voor de illegale oorlog tegen Irak in 2003, aldus één van de verantwoordelijken voor die oorlog……..

Netanyahu vergelijkt Iran met nazi-Duitsland en stelt dat Iran een bedreiging is voor de wereldvrede….. ha! ha! ha! ha!

Washington uit op oorlog met Iran……

Oliemaatschappijen weigeren n.a.v. VS sancties de jet van Iraanse minister af te tanken

Israël bezig met voorbereiding op meerdere fronten oorlog…….. (met hulp van de VS

John Bolton heeft beloofd dat Iran voor 2019 onder een ander regime zal leven…….

Saoedi-Arabië dreigt Iran aan te vallen voor vanuit Jemen afgevuurde ‘raketten’ op Saoedische ‘doelen……….’

VS rechter gelast Iran miljarden te betalen aan de families van 911 slachtoffers…..‘ (terwijl 9/11 niet werd uitgevoerd noch werd geregisseerd door Iran)

Iran moet hangen en Iran-deal moet van tafel……. Israël speelt wolf in schaapskleren

VS ambtenaren: Israël zoekt steun VS voor oorlog tegen Iran…….

VS, de werelddictator: Iran-deal is van nul en generlei waarde (op basis van leugens en achterklap)…….

Iran houdt zich aan de nucleaire deal dit in tegenstelling tot de VS……..

Israël laat er geen twijfel over bestaan: met het uit de Iran-deal stappen van de VS is definitief de oorlog verklaard aan Iran………

Robert Menendez (VS senator) eist onderzoek naar VS wapens in Libië

Robert (Bob) Menendez, senator voor New Jersey, eist een onderzoek naar het
gebruik van VS wapens door troepen die trouw zijn aan Khalifa Haftar,
een krijgsheer die de door het westen geparachuteerde regering niet
erkent, troepen die eerder Tripoli tevergeefs probeerden in te
nemen…..

De
wapens, 4 antitankraketten, zouden door de Verenigde Arabische
Emiraten (VAE) zijn geleverd, waar dit een overtreding van VS wetten
zou zijn, aldus Menendez in een brief aan de psychopathische
massamoordenaar Pompeo……

Menendez stelt dat e.e.a niet alleen tegen VS wetgeving ingaat, maar ook ingaat tegen het VN wapenembargo voor Libië….

Het
past hier niet te lachen, anders zou je je daadwerkelijk kapot lachen,
immers het is bekend dat de VS op grote schaal wapens heeft geleverd
aan de terreurgroepen in Libië die zogenaamd het bewind Khadaffi omver
hebben geworpen, terwijl dit één op één te danken was aan de NAVO
onder opperbevel van de VS

De
VS koopt zelfs wapens, die in Rusland of andere Oost-Europese landen zijn gemaakt, zoals Kalasjnikovs, dit middels bedrijven in Oost-Europa, die ook de
leveringen aan terreurgroepen voor hun rekening nemen, zodat de VS
haar handen in bloed denkt schoon te kunnen wassen…… Gelukkig komen de meeste van dit soort wapenleveranties uiteindelijk in de openbaarheid, lullig dan wel dat dit nooit daadwerkelijk tot ander gedrag leidt van de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS…….. 

Kortom
een vreemd bericht en een reactie die aangeeft dat de meeste senatoren geen idee hebben wat er werkelijk gebeurd onder VS vlag (of ze willen het simpelweg niet weten….), het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder
gepubliceerd door Middle East Monitor (MEMO) werd door mij
overgenomen van Anti-Media:

NJ
Senator Robert Menendez Demands Probe into US Weapons in Libya

July
2, 2019 at 2:17 pm

Written
by 
Middle
East Monitor

(MEMO– A
senior US senator demands an investigation over reports that
American-made 
weapons were
found at a base of forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, the East
Libyan-based military commander, as reported by 
Anadolu
Agency.
 

The
UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) said its forces
found the weapons at a base they captured from Haftar’s militia in
the strategic town of Gharyan, south of the capital Tripoli, last
week.

It
said the seized weapons included four Javelin anti-tank missiles
packed in wooden crates marked “armed forces of the United Arab
Emirates.”

In
a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senator Robert Menendez
of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee,
voiced deep concern over the reports and said if the Emirates
transferred the weapons, it would be a “serious violation” of US
law.

Such
a transfer would also almost certainly be a violation of the UN arms
embargo on Libya,” said Menendez’s letter.

National Accord Government troops clash military commander Khalifa Haftar's troops on course of the airport in Al Sawani region of Tripoli, Libya on 15 May 2019 [Amru Salahuddien/Anadolu Agency]

National
Accord Government troops clash military commander Khalifa Haftar’s
troops on course of the airport in Al Sawani region of Tripoli, Libya
on 15 May 2019 [Amru Salahuddien/Anadolu Agency]

I
understand that the State Department may have begun an investigation;
if not, I demand that a full investigation be done immediately,” he
added.

Haftar’s
forces have been unsuccessful in seeking to capture Tripoli from the
Government of National Accord in an offensive that began in April.

Libya
has remained beset by turmoil since 2011, when a bloody NATO-backed
uprising led to the ouster and death of long-serving President
Muammar Gaddafi after more than four decades in power.

Since
then, Libya’s stark political divisions have yielded two rival
seats of power, one in Tobruk led by Haftar and another in Tripoli,
and a host of heavily armed militia groups.

Creative
Commons
 / Middle
East Monitor
 / Report
a typo

==========================================

 Voor meer berichten over de VS oorlog tegen Libië, klik op het label met de naam van dat land, direct onder dit bericht.

Britse leger heeft kindsoldaten ingezet, onder andere in Irak……

Het Britse ministerie van defensie heeft 5 kindsoldaten ingezet in oorlogsgebied, 3 in Afghanistan en 2 in Irak……. GB heeft in 2000 het ‘Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child’ getekend en daarin staat o.a. vermeld dat er geen kinderen onder de 18 mogen worden ingezet in oorlogsgebied…….

Pompeo blokkeerde onlangs nog de  opname van Saoedi-Arabië op een lijst met landen die kindsoldaten inzetten, ondanks alle bewijzen daarvoor, zoals die in Jemen waar S-A met de hulp van de VS bezig is met een genocide tegen de sjiitische bewoners van dat land…. Ach ja Pompeo, een psychopathische oorlogsmisdadiger……

Beste bezoeker, weet niet wat jij ervan vindt, maar een kind is m.i. op 18 jarige leeftijd nog steeds een kind, het is een schande dat kinderen van 18 kunnen worden ingezet in oorlogsgebied….

Jongeren hebben voor de overgrote meerderheid de idee dat ze onsterfelijk zijn en dat kan leiden tot zeer zware ongelukken, hoe kan je dan deze kinderen inzetten in oorlogsgebied..??!!!

Het is dan ook niet alleen een centenkwestie, immers hoe jonger hoe goedkoper de kindsoldaat, maar ook een kwestie van wie er zo gek is om uitgezonden te willen worden naar oorlogsgebied (waar Nederland NB in veel gevallen de zoveelste illegale oorlog van de VS steunt)……

Iemand van 24 jaar kan pas echt overzien wat het betekent om uitgezonden te worden en te worden ingezet in oorlogsgebied….

Ronduit  schandalig dat in de ronselfilmpjes van Defensie zééééér interessant baantjes getoond worden met veel technologische hoogstandjes, het liefst met wat beelden uit exotische landen erbij, maar waar je nimmer oorlogsgebied ziet, laat staan dat je de gevolgen van oorlog voor de militairen ziet: -ex-kindsoldaten in rolstoelen, -ex-kindsoldaten die voor het leven geestelijk beschadigd zijn door hun oorlogservaringen of erger nog: -de begrafenis van een kindsoldaat…..

Je bent in het leger feitelijk een kindsoldaat tot je 24ste levensjaar!!! Landen die zich daar niet aan houden zouden vervolgd moeten worden…. Echter zoals je begrijpt zal dit pas mogelijk zijn als de hele boel wordt omgevormd met een wereldwijde revolutie en ook dat zal voorlopig jammer genoeg niet gebeuren…… (eerder nog zullen de fascisten in meer en meer landen groot worden…..)

Revealed: British Military Sent Child Soldiers to Iraq

July 1, 2019 at 12:01 pm

Written by Middle East Monitor

(MEMO— The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence has revealed through a freedom of information request that the British military sent five soldiers who were under the age of 18 into war zones over the past two decades.

In the blunder that breaks the UK’s commitment to a United Nations (UN) pledge, three 17 year olds were sent to Afghanistan and two more were deployed to Iraq between 2007 and 2010.

After the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to prevent the involvement of children in armed conflicts was signed by the UK in 2000 and ratified in 2003, under-18s were forbidden from being deployed to combat zones. The signed treaty was especially important after an incident in the 1970s in which two 17-year-old British soldiers in Belfast were lured away from their camp by women inviting them to a party and then killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Much of the cases of the British soldiers sent to the conflict zones in Iraq and Afghanistan were due to negligence and incompetence on the part of British army chiefs, with most of the soldiers being just months away from their 18th birthdays. One of the child soldiers was allegedly moved to a “rear location“ once his age was discovered, another was returned to the military base in Germany, and the fifth was sent back to the UK.

On Saturday, the MoD said: “Service personnel under 18 are not to deploy to any operations outside of UK, except where the operation does not involve personnel becoming engaged in, or exposed to, hostilities.”

The revelations by the British MoD come amid a rise in reports of the use of child soldiers by groups and states in Middle Eastern conflicts, including recent allegations that Saudi Arabia has been recruiting and deploying child soldiers in its military campaign in Yemen against the Houthis. Last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a US list of countries which recruit child soldiers, despite strong evidence presented by experts and rights groups to the contrary.

Creative Commons / Middle East Monitor / Report a typo

Trump tekent ‘executive order’ om GMO voedsel in de schappen te krijgen zonder waarschuwing op het label

Op 11
juni jl. heeft Trump een ‘executive order’ gelanceerd waarmee de
‘strenge regels’ t.a.v. gentech voedsel (zowel genetisch gemanipuleerde planten als dieren….) teniet moeten worden
gedaan…… ‘Strenge regels’ tussen aanhalingstekens, daar die
regels in de VS allesbehalve streng zijn…….

Trump
wil genetische manipulatie van planten en dieren o.a. om de
voedselveiligheid te verbeteren….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Voor ons
zal e.e.a. betekenen dat we straks met een vrijhandelsverdrag als
TTIP te maken krijgen, waarin de VS gewaarborgd wil hebben dat
gentech producten, hetzij plantaardig dan wel dierlijk, ook in de
schappen van onze supermarkten zullen worden aangeboden….. Waar
geheime rechtbanken (ISDS) zullen zorgen dat de bedrijven die
dergelijke producten aanbieden aan het langste eind trekken en
waarbij wij fiks zullen moeten inleveren op voedselveiligheid…… 

Voedselveiligheid een woord
dat met een groot aantal producten al geweld wordt aangedaan, neem
met gif platgespoten fruit en groente uit arme landen, waar
Nederlandse telers zich niet hoeven te houden aan ‘de strenge regels’ zoals die hier gelden, maar wel hun producten uit die landen mogen verkopen op de Nederlandse markt………

Trump heeft met deze order ook opdracht gegeven aan de ‘minister’ die over landbouw en veeteelt gaat, de bevolking te onderrichten over GMO voedsel en dat dit ‘volkomen veilig is voor consumptie…….’ 

Overigens opvallend ‘weinig aandacht’ in de reguliere media voor deze stap van het beest Trump, niet in de laatste plaats daar de plutocraten en investeerders die deze media in handen hebben, ‘niet zelden’ grote aandelenpakketten hebben in firma’s als Bayer-Monsanto…….

Overigens is ook de EU voor een fiks deel tegen het duidelijk etiketteren van GMO voedsel, maar ja, de EU is er dan ook in de eerste plaats voor bedrijven en welgestelden, waar de EU bevolking ergens achteraan hangt…. Ofwel: ook hier gaan de centen ver voor op de volksgezondheid…..

Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Derrick Broze en gepubliceerd op The Mind Unleashed:

Trump
Just Made It a Lot Easier for GMOs to Enter the Food Supply

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor Trump Just Made It a Lot Easier for GMOs to Enter the Food Supply

President
Trump issued an executive order aimed at “streamlining” GMO
regulations in the US.

DERRICK
BROZE

(TMU) —
On June 11, President Donald Trump quietly issued
an 
executive order to
“streamline” GMO regulations in the United States. The order,
titled 
Modernizing
the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology Products, 
is
the latest move by the Trump administration aimed at promoting the
use of genetically engineered or modified crops.

In
his executive order, Trump called on federal agencies to fix what he
called a “
regulatory
maze

related to the farming and selling of GMO products.

The
executive order states:

Biotechnology
can help the Nation meet its food production needs, raise the
productivity of the American farmer, improve crop and animal
characteristics, increase the nutritional value of crop and animal
products, and enhance food safety. In order to realize these
potential benefits, however, the United States must employ a
science-based regulatory system that evaluates products based on
human health and safety and potential benefits and risks to the
environment.
 Such
a system must both foster public confidence in biotechnology and
avoid undue regulatory burdens.

The
order goes on to instruct the Secretary of Agriculture and other
officials to 
develop
an action plan to facilitate engagement with consumers in order to
build public confidence in, 
and
acceptance of
,
the use of safe biotechnology in agriculture and the food
system”
 [emphasis
added].

The
executive order also lays out plans for the Trump administration to
work with other nations in developing GMO policies. Section 8 of the
order gives the Ag Secretary and Secretary of State 180 days to
develop an international communications and outreach strategy to
facilitate engagement abroad with policymakers, consumers, industry,
and other stakeholders.

Additionally,
the order calls on the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental
Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration to design a
website that contains and provides links to relevant United States
Government regulatory information.

Greg
Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public
Interest, 
told the Associated
Press
 that
the impact of the order depends on how the federal government
responds. “
There
needs to be an assurance of safety for those products
,”
Jaffe said.

The
topic of genetically engineered food has been controversial for
years. Scientists, health advocates, and concerned citizens have been
raising questions about the technology over the last decade,
including activists forming global marches against biotechnology
giant Monsanto between 2013 and 2016.

More
recently, criticism of GMOs has centered around labeling laws. To
understand the current battle for labeling genetically engineered
foods, one must look back to 2015. At that time, the controversial
Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act passed the House in June before
ultimately failing amid heavy opposition.

To
critics, the bill was known as the “DARK” (Deny Americans the
Right to Know) Act because the law was also aimed at nullifying GMO
labeling measures, such as a state labeling bill passed in Vermont.
Mike Pompeo, author of the bill, criticized mandatory labeling laws
as unnecessarily costly and insisted a federal standard was the
answer.

In
late February 2016, U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat
Roberts introduced another bill which attempted to create a federal
voluntary standard for labeling GE food. Roberts’ Senate Bill 2609,
or the Biotech Labeling Solutions Act, would have blocked mandatory
labeling efforts by states.

In
March 2016, the bill failed to reach the 60 votes needed during a
procedural vote, with 49 votes in favor and 48 votes against.
However, by July 2016 the labeling measure was added to the 
National
Sea Grant College Program Act as the National Bioengineered Food
Disclosure Standard
.
It was that measure which was ultimately signed into law by Obama,
placing the U.S. Department of Agriculture in charge of labeling
America’s genetically engineered food supply.

Under
the Trump administration, the battle for labeling has died down
largely due to a lack of reporting in the mainstream press and
misinformation which falsely tells Americans that labeling rights
have been won.

However,
in July 2018, 
an
analysis of proposed rule changes
 revealed
that thousands of genetically engineered foods may be exempt from
upcoming labeling requirements. In early May 2018, the Department of
Agriculture released a draft rule describing how the labeling law is
supposed to be implemented.

Between
May and July 3, the USDA received 14,008 public comments.

The comments indicate
that some of the public is concerned about the language used in the
rule. “
The
term bioengineered should not be used. It is both misleading and
confusing to consumers. GMO, GE or Genetic Engineering should be used
instead
,”
one commenter writes. “
Please
make all food items labeled correctly as GMO so consumers know
exactly what they are purchasing
,”
another said.

The
Environmental Working Group reports
 that
if companies want to label foods which are made with genetically
engineered ingredients, they must use the terms “bioengineered”
or “bioengineered food ingredient,” instead of the widely known
phrases “genetically modified” or “genetically engineered.”

Interestingly,
the International Food Information Council (IFIC) recently
conducted 
a
survey
 to
see how people respond to these different labels, including new
symbols being tested by the USDA. The IFIC found that in every
combination of label, the level of concern among consumers increased.
In the survey consumers were shown bottles of canola oil without any
label, with one of three symbols (plant, sun, or smile), with a
symbol plus “bioengineered” on the label, and a symbol with “may
be bioengineered” on the label.

As
the USDA works to establish a uniform national standard for labeling
foods that may be genetically engineered, critics continue to call
out the dangers of putting the federal government in charge of the
situation. Donald Trump’s recent executive order will only
exacerbate the 
already
confusing situation
.

Americans
who have concerns about the safety of GMOs will have to wrestle with
the fact that these products may not be labeled and—with the latest
executive order from Trump—will enter the food supply at an
increasing pace in the coming years.

By Derrick
Broze
 | Creative
Commons
 | TheMindUnleashed.com

===============================

Zie ook:

Trump geeft groen licht aan gentechvoedsel, nu nog toestemming van de EU………

VS ontwikkelt nieuw biowapen: genetisch gemanipuleerde insecten

Voor meer berichten over gentech, GMO, genetische manipulatie, klik op het betreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.

CBS nieuws analist betaald door wapenfabrikant dringt aan op oorlog tegen Iran

James
Winnefeld jr., een oud marine admiraal van de VS is ‘objectief
analist’ voor het CBS nieuws, hij zegt dat de VS zich ongeloofwaardig heeft gemaakt met de
beslissing van Trump om een aanval op Iran af te blazen….. Het neerhalen van een VS drone moet worden
gewroken, hoewel een volledige oorlog tegen Iran zijn voorkeur
geniet…….

Ter
vergelijking: de VS schoot op 3 juli 1988 het Iraanse
passagiersvliegtuig met vluchtnummer IR655 neer. Het vliegtuig werd getroffen door een raket die VS kruiser USS
Vincennes afschoot op het toestel, daarbij werden 290 mensen vermoord, 274
passagiers, waaronder 66 kinderen en 16 bemanningsleden….. De VS
heeft pas in 1996 haar excuus aangeboden en ondanks dat hier opzet in
het spel was, werd de VS voor deze ernstige terreurdaad niet veroordeeld door het
Internationaal Gerechtshof, dit vanwege de belofte van de VS de nabestaanden
te compenseren……… Het ging om een bedrag van in totaal 61,8 miljoen dollar, ik kan niet terugvinden of dat bedrag ooit daadwerkelijk werd uitgekeerd door de VS.

Winnefeld
werkt voor wapenfabrikant Raytheon, de op vier na grootste
wapenfabrikant van de VS en ‘misschien niet geheel toevallig’, een
fabrikant van drones en raketten (die onder straaljagers en drones
kunnen worden gehangen…..)……

Een
beter voorbeeld dat de reguliere media elke onafhankelijkheid hebben
verloren schiet me zo niet te binnen. Gezien alle propaganda door de
reguliere media gebracht voor en tijdens (en na) de illegale oorlogen
door de VS begonnen, kan je rustig stellen dat die media in de zak
zitten van het militair-industrieel complex….. Voor deze stelling
zijn bergen fake news en andere manieren van manipulatie door de
reguliere media voorhanden…..

Tot slot nog dit: de opmerking van Trump dat hij de aanval heeft afgeblazen daar er anders 150 mensen zouden omkomen, is uiteraard een dikke leugen, die doden interesseren Trump totaal niet. Het is dan ook meer dan duidelijk dat de VS drone boven Iraans grondgebied vloog toen deze werd neergehaald door Iran…….. Veronderstel dat de VS 150 mensen vermoordt bij bombardementen, waarna het bewijs openbaar wordt gemaakt dat de drone wel degelijk boven Iraans grondgebied vloog, dat zou om het voorzichtig te zeggen niet zo netjes staan…… Trump heeft sinds hij aan het bewind is al tienduizenden mensen laten vermoorden, voor 150 Iraniërs draait hij echt zijn hand niet om…… (zoals hij ook makkelijker liegt dan de waarheid zegt)

Zie de
video met Jimmy Dore, op een geweldige sarcastische (wat mij betreft
uiterst humoristisch) manier maakt hij gehakt van deze Winnefeld en de
manieren waarop de VS denkt de wereld te kunnen besodemieteren (dat
besodemieteren lukt jammer genoeg wel veel te vaak, zoals de [ook
recente] geschiedenis aantoont….)….. Zie
de hele video, je zal er geen spijt van
krijgen!

CBS
News Analyst Pushing for Military Strike on Iran is Being Paid by
Raytheon

June
23, 2019 at 1:28 pm

Written
by 
Tyler
Durden

(ZH— How
do you know the MSM is nothing more than the media wing of the
military-industrial-complex? A Raytheon board member
masquerading as an objective analyst is a good start.

On
Friday, 
CBS
News
 analyst
and retired Navy Admiral James Winnefeld Jr. 
slammed
President Trump 
for calling
off
 retaliatory
strikes on Iran over a downed US drone, while insisting
we 
must strike
Iran or else
 the
United States will “lose a lot of credibility
.

Trump called
off
 the
planned strikes Friday, tweeting that “we were cocked &
loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights,” only to
learn that 
150
people would die in the bombardments
.

According
to the 
New
York Times
, Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton and CIA
Director Gina Haspel were predictably hot-to-trot on military
action. Instead, Trump announced that “
major
additional sanctions

were coming Iran’s way and would be unveiled on Monday.

Donald J. Trump


@realDonaldTrump

Iran cannot have Nuclear Weapons! Under the terrible Obama plan, they would have been on their way to Nuclear in a short number of years, and existing verification is not acceptable. We are putting major additional Sanctions on Iran on Monday. I look forward to the day that…..

Donald J. Trump


@realDonaldTrump

….Sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous nation again – The sooner the better!


80.2K

8:56 PM – Jun 22, 2019

While
a MSM pundit slamming Trump is nothing new, Winnefeld 
happens
to be a board member
 of
military defense contractor 
Raytheon since
2017, raking in nearly $300,000 per year in total compensation
– something 
CBS
did not disclose
.

Perhaps
CBS could have 
instead featured
one of the 
76
retired US generals and diplomats 
who
warned against war with Iran 
in
a May 24 open letter?

Watch
Jimmy Dore break down what’s going on (original video of
report 
here).
While cued to play around 3 minutes in, the entire segment is worth a
watch.

By Tyler
Durden
 /
Republished with permission / 
Zero
Hedge
 / Report
a typo

=============================

Zie ook:

VS chanteert de wereld: geen olie import uit Iran, anders……..

Pompeo (VS minister BuZa): Iran is de grootste sponsor van terrorisme….. Goh, nooit geweten dat Iran subsidie geeft aan het Pentagon‘ (tevens het hele bericht)

VS verwijt Iran nucleaire chantage, chantage waar de VS zichzelf schuldig aan maakt

Kapitein Japans schip spreekt Trump administratie tegen over Iraanse kleefbom op zijn tanker

VS heeft stok ‘gevonden’ om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen

Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt

VS plant een bombardement op een Iraanse kerncentrale, verkennende VS drone neergeschoten‘ (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

VS heeft stok ‘gevonden’ om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen

Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt

US Continues to Escalate Tensions, Raising Fear of Imminent War With Iran

US Might Send 10,000 More Troops to Middle East

VS dreigt Iran met militair geweld op beschuldiging van terreur die de VS zelf op grote schaal uitoefent

Yemen Be Damned, Pompeo Doubles Down on US Support for Saudi Arabia

Het verborgen motief achter de Israëlische agressie tegen Iran en Syrië

Iraanse protesten allesbehalve compleet spontaan (zoals VS ambassadeur bij de VN Haley durfde te stellen…)….

Protesten Iran opgezet door de VS en Israël

Iran, de protesten en wat de media je niet vertellen………

De VS gaf meer dan 1 miljoen dollar uit om protesten tegen Iraans bewind uit te buiten (en te organiseren)

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Rex Tillerson (VS BuZA) geeft toe dat de VS een staatsgreep wil uitvoeren in Iran…….. Het is nog ‘iets te rustig’ in dat gebied……..

VS liegt schaamteloos om het westen verder op te zetten tegen Iran……..

VS bewandelt dezelfde weg richting Iran, als die voor de illegale oorlog tegen Irak in 2003, aldus één van de verantwoordelijken voor die oorlog……..

Netanyahu vergelijkt Iran met nazi-Duitsland en stelt dat Iran een bedreiging is voor de wereldvrede….. ha! ha! ha! ha!

Washington uit op oorlog met Iran……

Oliemaatschappijen weigeren n.a.v. VS sancties de jet van Iraanse minister af te tanken

Israël bezig met voorbereiding op meerdere fronten oorlog…….. (met hulp van de VS

John Bolton heeft beloofd dat Iran voor 2019 onder een ander regime zal leven…….

Saoedi-Arabië dreigt Iran aan te vallen voor vanuit Jemen afgevuurde ‘raketten’ op Saoedische ‘doelen……….’

VS rechter gelast Iran miljarden te betalen aan de families van 911 slachtoffers…..‘ (terwijl 9/11 niet werd uitgevoerd noch werd geregisseerd door Iran, een sjiitische staat, terwijl de ‘daders’ soennieten waren, die voor het grootste deel uit Saoedi-Arabië kwamen)

Iran moet hangen en Iran-deal moet van tafel……. Israël speelt wolf in schaapskleren

VS ambtenaren: Israël zoekt steun VS voor oorlog tegen Iran…….

VS, de werelddictator: Iran-deal is van nul en generlei waarde (op basis van leugens en achterklap)…….

Iran houdt zich aan de nucleaire deal dit in tegenstelling tot de VS……..

Israël laat er geen twijfel over bestaan: met het uit de Iran-deal stappen van de VS is definitief de oorlog verklaard aan Iran………

Spanningen met Iran: VS geschiedenis van false flag operaties en andere manipulaties die tot oorlog hebben geleid

Gisteren
op
The American Conservative een artikel van Robert W. Merry, waarin hij
schrijft over eerdere false flag operaties en andere manipulaties die
tot oorlog dan wel oorlogsdeelname van de VS hebben geleid.

Je had
al begrepen dat Merry dit artikel schreef n.a.v. de beschuldigingen
aan het adres van Iran over het aanvallen van olietankers en het
neerhalen van een VS drone.

Met 5
voorbeelden geeft Merry aan dat de VS in een aantal gevallen
onterecht in een oorlog verwikkelde raakte. Daarbij noemt Merry ook
WOII, echter het was bijna onmogelijk dat de VS uit deze oorlog kon
blijven, daar ook het beheersen van olievoorraden (in de grond) deel uitmaakte van
deze oorlog, echter de manier waarop e.e.a. gebeurde is welhaast ongelofelijk……

Lies
They Told Us: A Long History of Being Manipulated Into War

Before
we retaliate over drone and oil tanker attacks, take a look at all
the times we’ve been duped.

By ROBERT
W. MERRY
 • June
21, 2019

It
is the assessment of the U.S. government that Iran is responsible for
today’s attacks in the Gulf of Oman” Credit: @SecPompeo

Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo says there’s no question that Iran initiated
the recent attacks on those two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The
evidence, he says, is “indisputable” and “unmistakable.”
President Donald Trump weighs in with the same degree of certainty.
“Well, Iran did do it,” he told Fox News.

Maybe.
But our past is screaming at us: don’t buy it; you can’t trust
your leaders when war fever sets in and war prospects are on the
rise. Consider the history surrounding the run-ups to the Mexican
War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and the Iraq war. Lies,
misrepresentations, and manipulations abound in all those episodes.

As
for those tankers, where’s the evidence? True, the U.S. Central
Command trotted out a video that appears to show unidentified people
in a small boat removing something from the side of a tanker—an
unexploded mine, we are told by U.S. officials, who assert this
constitutes proof of Iran’s complicity. As Trump puts it, “And
you know they did it because you saw the boat.”

But
that’s pretty thin stuff. The Germans and Japanese made that clear
when they requested stronger evidence than that grainy video released
by the Pentagon.

Now
comes Politico with a piece saying the Trump
administration has been making the case “in public and private”
that no new congressional authorization would be necessary to go to
war with Iran. They could simply rely on the 2001 authorization
against Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on American soil.

Leave
aside for the moment the ominous threat this poses to the
constitutional precept that Congress is the repository of the
nation’s warmaking power. It also would preclude a congressional
debate on the matter, depriving the nation of an opportunity to
assess the facts before hostilities actually begin. The following
historical episodes reveal the importance of getting those facts
established before the country goes to war.

James
K. Polk and the Mexican War: 
Contrary to allegations that
have dogged the 11th president for nearly 180 years, it isn’t quite
true to say that he lied. But he did declare to the nation that
Mexico had “spilled American blood on the American soil.” The
problem is that it wasn’t, strictly speaking, American soil. That
territory had been under dispute between Mexico and Texas during the
time of Texas independence, and America inherited that dispute when
it acquired Texas through annexation in 1845. So it could be argued
that Polk was merely expressing his view that that disputed territory
actually belonged to the United States, just as Texas had always
insisted that it belonged to Texas.

But
such niceties of language shrouded the fact that, if there was no
other way for America to acquire what is now the Southwest and
California, then Polk wanted a war with Mexico. And he maneuvered
events with a clear intent to force the issue, much as Pompeo seems
to be doing now.

Polk
sent an army into the disputed territory and planted it directly
across the Rio Grande from the dusty little Mexican town of
Matamoros, where a large number of Mexican troops were stationed.
This was highly incendiary, and it inevitably led to a skirmish in
which 11 American soldiers were killed and another 50 or so captured.
Polk promptly sent a message to Congress saying the United States and
Mexico were in a state of war and calling for a congressional war
declaration.

South
Carolina’s Senator John C. Calhoun, among others, would have none
of it. This skirmish, he said, was a “mere local conflict, not
authorized by either government,” and it was “monstrous” to
blow it up into a doctrine that “every American is [now] an enemy
of every Mexican.” But American blood had been spilled, and the
country was riled. The final Senate vote was 40 to 2, with Calhoun
refusing to answer the roll call. The previous House vote was 173 to
14.

There
is plenty of documentary evidence, including Polk’s own diary, that
the president wanted that war and that, by maneuvering his troops in
such a way as to render bloodshed all but inevitable, he manipulated
public opinion. Indeed, even before the skirmish on the Rio Grande,
he was preparing to ask Congress for a war declaration.

Woodrow
Wilson and World War I: 
There can be no doubt that Wilson
was reelected president in 1916 (with just 49.2 percent of the vote)
on his stated resolve to keep America out of Europe’s Great War.
But it was all phony, as he’d always hankered to get America onto
the world stage. It wasn’t easy keeping the United States out of
the war through the election season, given delicate neutrality issues
forced upon the U.S. by both Britain and Germany. Britain imposed a
blockade designed to thwart all trade to Germany and the Central
Powers and to ”starve the whole population—men, women, and
children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission,” as
Britain’s pugnacious First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, brazenly
declared.

Wilson
initially sought to wend his way through this neutrality thicket,
rendered all the more difficult after Germany initiated submarine
attacks designed to stop munitions shipments to Britain and
counteract the blockade. But ultimately he favored the UK and took
actions he knew would draw America into the war. He not only observed
the British blockade but also allowed armed British merchant ships
entry to U.S. ports, which in turn fostered a flow of American
munitions to the Allied Powers. At the same time, Wilson declared
that Germany would be held to a “strict accountability” for any
American loss of life or property from German submarine attacks
designed to enforce the neutrality that Wilson was flouting. This
policy, he added, would apply even if affected Americans were
traveling or working on British or French ships. After all, he
declared, Americans had the “right” to travel on any vessels they
wanted, even in wartime.

Wilson’s
secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, warned the president that
he faced a stark choice: either adopt a more evenhanded approach or
accept the inevitability of war. Bryan ultimately resigned over the
issue, and he turned out to be right. A desperate Germany, suffering
horrendously under Churchill’s starvation policy, initiated
unrestricted submarine warfare against ships carrying goods to
Britain or France. Wilson promptly asked for a congressional
declaration of war—and got it.

Franklin
Roosevelt and World War II: 
When Europe was once again
thrust into a dark conflict after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland
in September 1939, FDR almost desperately wished to take America in.
But the country, still stung by the bitter fruits of Wilson’s
previous intervention, didn’t want to enter the fray. “I am
almost literally walking on eggs,” Roosevelt wrote to a foreign
official, explaining the precarious perch between his own powerful
conviction and the public’s aversion to war. “I am at the moment
saying nothing, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing.”

But
this wasn’t quite true. He was applying his stealth and wiles in
every way possible to help Britain and nudge his country to war. He
passed diplomatic secrets to friendly reporters to help the cause. He
initiated secret depth charge attacks on German submarines in the
North Atlantic. As Robert Shjogan writes in his book Hard
Bargain
, FDR almost certainly violated the prevailing Neutrality
Acts by making destroyers available to Britain—an action that in
another time and political climate could have been impeachable. And
he maneuvered Japan into a position of near desperation in an effort
to force a confrontation. That he knew what he was doing is evidenced
by the fact that he initiated planning for the removal of Japanese
Americans from the West Coast even before Pearl Harbor, as John
Toland reveals in his 1982 book Infamy. Shogan writes
that FDR didn’t hesitate “to twist the law, flout the
Constitution, hoodwink the public, and distort the political
process.”

Lyndon
Johnson and the Vietnam war:
 On August 2, 1964, North
Vietnamese PT boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin.
This could not have surprised those in the know inside the U.S.
government. The Maddox had been providing logistical and electronic
surveillance support to South Vietnamese forces engaged in raiding
parties on North Vietnamese soil. Two days later, when it seemed
another attack on the Maddox had ensued, President Johnson snapped
into action. He asked for a congressional resolution authorizing him
to counter such raids with military action as needed. This allowed
Johnson to prosecute what became America’s disastrous seven-year
Vietnam war.

But
that second attack on the Maddox never took place. It seems that rare
weather patterns distorted radar imaging and gave the impression of
multiple hostile ships when none had been in the vicinity.

When
this was ascertained by Navy Captain John Herrick, commander of the
Seventh Fleet destroyer division, he promptly sent a corrective
message to Washington: “Review of action makes many reported
contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects
on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports.
No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation
before any further action taken.”

But
action already had been taken, and Johnson administration officials
weren’t about to turn around and let the opportunity slip. So they
lied. Within days, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara traveled to Capitol Hill to assure lawmakers that the
August 4 “attacks” represented ”open aggression on the high
seas against the United States of America,” as Johnson put it.

In
response to expressions of skepticism by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse,
McNamara declared, “Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not
associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese actions, if
there were any…. The Maddox was operating in international waters,
was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over
the world at all times.” As Robert Mann writes in a footnote in A
Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam
, “That
statement was, as McNamara knew, false.”

Arkansas
Senator William Fulbright agreed to manage the Tonkin Gulf resolution
on the Senate floor largely because he had faith in Johnson’s
veracity. As Fulbright’s staff chief, Lee Williams, later said, “He
had no reason to believe that he was used as a dupe, if you will, and
that this was a ruse on behalf of Johnson to get the authority that
he needed to conduct a wider war.”

George
W. Bush and the Iraq war: 
Did Bush lie to the American
people about those weapons of mass destruction that the U.S.
government expected to find in Iraq? Probably not. More likely, Bush
and his people lied to themselves in their zealous efforts to fashion
justifications for overthrowing Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, and
to ensure Middle East peace, protect the U.S. homeland, and preserve
America’s regional influence. But officials have a grave
responsibility to ensure extensive fact finding and sober
deliberation in matters of war and peace. Presidents shouldn’t take
America to war based on an oops. This was reckless behavior for which
the Bush people, including Bush himself, have never been brought to
account.

And
it’s undeniable that the president and many of his top officials
were bent on going to war against Saddam irrespective of the factual
intricacies involved. There’s the rub. That invasion arguably
constitutes the greatest American strategic blunder in at least half
a century, perhaps in the entire postwar period. Those kinds of
decisions require serious due diligence. So if Bush and his people
didn’t know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
they should have. If not malfeasance, it was abject nonfeasance.

The
lesson: beware when our leaders manifest a passion for war. That’s
when it’s time to demand honesty, sobriety, and restraint—and
answers. The burden of proof rests with the war advocates. It doesn’t
mean we shouldn’t go to war, just that when we do, it should be
with our eyes open.

Robert
W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is
the author most recently of 
President
McKinley: Architect of the American Century
.

Related
articles:

Bret
Stephens, Warmonger

Is the White House Plotting an End-Run Around Congress Into Iran?

================================

Nog even het volgende: Merry noemt ook Pearl Harbor, waar intussen bekend is dat de VS op de hoogte was van de komende aanval, maar deze heeft laten gebeuren om zo mee te kunnen doen aan de oorlog in een fiks gebied van de Stille Oceaan.

Hier meer voorbeelden van VS terreur, gefundeerd op leugens, fake news en andere manipulaties:

VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘ Tot het jaar 2000, deze eeuw zijn er intussen meer dan 2,5 miljoen moorden aan toe te voegen, moorden begaan door de VS en de NAVO (waar deze terreurorganisatie onder opperbevel stond en staat van de VS…)….

VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen……….

List of wars involving the United States

CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi’s beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz………

Zie voorts:

Bernard Hammelburg rijp voor oorlogshitsclub Atlantic Council: Al Qaida opereert vanuit Iran

VS chanteert de wereld: geen olie import uit Iran, anders……..

‘False flag terror’ bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken……….

VS plant een bombardement op een Iraanse kerncentrale, verkennende VS drone neergeschoten‘ (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

VS heeft stok ‘gevonden’ om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen

Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt

Wat betreft 9/11 zie:

De rol van Israël en de VS in de 9/11 aanslagen op het WTC‘ (zie ook de links naar andere 9/11 artikelen in dat bericht)

Arcering in geel toegevoegd op 16 juli 2019.