‘De zoveelste bombastische reactie van Erdogan op de verhoging van de importtarieven op staal en aluminium uit Turkije’ en ‘de Turken zijn bevreesd voor de reactie van Trump, die er niet van houdt te worden geprovoceerd….’ Zo luidde het commentaar in het BBC World Service nieuws van 14.00 u. vanmiddag…..
Een en ander n.a.v. de importbeperkingen die Erdogan op elektronica uit de VS legt, waar m.n. de mobiele telefoons van Apple het moeten ontgelden, dit in reactie op de hiervoor genoemde importbeperkingen op Turks staal en aluminium…..
Erdogan kan wat mij betreft niet snel genoeg terechtstaan voor het meer dan lamme Internationaal Strafhof (ICC), maar een dergelijke manier van spreken is een gotspe, wie provoceerde wie in eerste instantie??? (en wie spreekt er meer bombastisch, Trump of Erdogan??)
Ach, hiermee maakt de BBC nogmaals duidelijk dat het niet alleen pal achter het voor het grote arme deel van GB desastreuze beleid van de regering May staat, maar er ook niet vies van is om de VS een veer in de smerige imperialistische reet te steken en dat zelfs doet door feiten weg te laten uit haar berichtgeving……
De BBC boogt er nog steeds op onafhankelijk te zijn, echter dat is een heel grote en smerige leugen, waar deze zendgemachtigde dagelijks wereldwijd miljoenen kijkers en luisteraars voorliegt dan wel de waarheid voor hen verdraait (zoals het voorbeeld hierboven)….
Het meest lullige is wel dat men bij de BBC de vuilbek vol heeft over ‘fake news’ (‘nepnieuws’), terwijl het zelf een groot leverancier is van dit ‘fake news’, neem de berichtgeving over de door de Britten gesteunde genocide in Jemen, of de illegale oorlogen van de VS tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië, Oekraïne en Syrië……. Uiteraard is de berichtgeving over de handelsoorlog tussen de VS en Turkije de opmaat voor nog veel meer ‘fake news…..’
Overigens zouden ook Trump en de duivels die hem omringen, terecht moeten staan voor het Internationaal Strafhof, alleen al vanwege de voortdurende massamoorden die de VS pleegt in illegale oorlogen, of vanwege de VS drone aanvallen waarbij verdachten standrechtelijk worden vermoord en meer dan 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens verdacht was (veelal vrouwen en kinderen…..)……
Seymour
Hersh, de gelauwerde journalist die wereldwijd bekend werd door zijn
verslag over het My Lai-bloedbad tijdens de Vietnam oorlog en de
manier waarop de VS destijds deze enorme oorlogsmisdaad, zelfs een
misdaad tegen de menselijkheid, in de doofpot probeerde te
stoppen…..
Hersh
ligt onder vuur vanwege de vragen en kritiek die hij heeft over het officiële verhaal aangaande de gevangenneming en moord op Osama bin
Laden. Het bewuste artikel van Hersh over deze zaak vind je als
vierde link in het begin van het artikel dat Tyler Durden schreef
over Hersh (de link vind je onder de volgende woorden ‘Osama bin
Laden death narrative’ >> lezen mensen!!)
Hersh
schreef een biografie waarin hij tien onthullingen doet, o.a. -het
plan van de VS om hegemonie van de VS in het Midden-Oosten te vestigen, -de eerste plannen
voor een VS invasie van Syrië, -de zogenaamde manipulatie van de VS
presidentsverkiezingen door de Russen (waar de NSA zelfs toegeeft niets te weten >> lees het artikel bij onthulling nummer vier) en -de ‘vergiftiging van de Skripals’.
Ondanks
dat veel zaken al bekend waren is dit artikel en de biografie die
Hersh schreef, ‘Reporter: A Memoire’ (klik op de eerste rode link met
die titel in het Anti-Media artikel* hieronder voor de gegevens over dat boek)
uiterst verhelderend (en wat mij betreft zijn een paar feiten zelfs
schokkend), bovendien hoe meer bevestigingen voor de enorme terreur die de VS her en
der uitoefende en uitoefent, hoe beter!
10
Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh’s New Autobiography
(ZHE) — Among
the more interesting revelations to surface as legendary
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh continues a book tour and
gives interviews discussing his newly published
autobiography, Reporter:
A Memoir,is
that he never set out to write it at all, but was actually deeply
engaged in writing a massive exposé of Dick Cheney — a
project he decided couldn’t
ultimately be published in the current climate of aggressive
persecution of whistleblowers which became especially intense
during the Obama years.
Hersh
has pointed out he worries his sources risk exposure while taking on
the Cheney book, which ultimately resulted in the famed reporter
opting to write an in-depth account of his storied career
instead — itself full
of previously hidden details connected with major historical
events and state secrets.
In
a recent wide-ranging interview with the
UK Independent, Hersh
is finally asked to discuss in-depth some of the controversial
investigative stories he’s written on Syria, Russia-US
intelligence sharing,
and the Osama
bin Laden death narrative, which
have gotten the Pulitzer Prize winner and five-time Polk Award
recipient essentially blacklisted from
his regular publication, TheNewYorker magazine,
for which he broke stories of monumental importance for decades.
Though
few would disagree that Hersh “has
single-handedly broken more stories of genuine world-historical
significance than any reporter alive (or dead, perhaps)”— as The
Nation put
it— the
man who exposed shocking cover-ups like the My Lai
Massacre, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the truth
behind the
downing of Korean Air Flight 007,
has lately been shunned and even attacked by the American mainstream
media especially over his controversial coverage of Syria and the bin
Laden raid in 2011.
The Post story begins
by acknowledging,“But
Sy Hersh now has a problem: He thinks 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
lied about the death of Osama bin Laden, and it seems nearly everyone
is mad at him for saying so”— before
proceeding to take a sledgehammer to Hersh’s findings while
painting him as some kind of conspiracy theorist (Hersh
published the bin Laden story for the London
Review of Books after
his usual New
Yorker rejected
it).
Seymour
Hersh broke the story of CIA’s illegal domestic operations with a
front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974.
However,
the mainstream pundits piling on against his reporting of late ignore
the clearly establish historical pattern when it comes to Hersh:
nearly all of the biggest stories of his career were
initially met with incredulity and severe push back from both
government officials and even his fellow journalists,
and yet he’s managed to emerge proven right and ultimately
vindicated time and again.
* *
*
Here
are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately
come out of both Sy Hersh’s new book, Reporter,
as well as interviews he’s
given since publication…
1)
On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to
remake the Middle East
(Note:
though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley
Clark in
his memoir and in a 2007 speech,
the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our
knowledge the
first time this highly classified memo has been quoted.
Hersh’s account appears to corroborate now retired Gen.
Clark’s assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining
plans to foster regime change in “7
countries in 5 years” was
being circulated among intelligence officials.)
From Reporter:
A Memoir pg.
306 — A
few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas
with a general who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I
was provided with a copy of a Republican neocon plan for American
dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but
one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I
was told that the document leaked to me initially had been obtained
by someone in the local CIA station. There
was reason to be rattled: The
document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to
begin “with the assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this…
is that the war will start making the U.S. the hegemon of the Middle
East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones,
as it were, the seriousness of American intent and
determination.” Victory
in Iraq would lead to an ultimatum to Damascus, the “defanging”
of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat’s Palestine Liberation
Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America’s enemies must
understand that “they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is
on its way, which implies their annihilation.” I and the foreign
general agreed that America’s neocons were a menace to
civilization.
* *
*
2)
On early regime change plans in Syria
From Reporter:
A Memoir pages 306-307 — Donald
Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to
permit America’s Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from
its territory, and the division, with its twenty-five thousand men
and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq until mid-April, when
the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that
Rumsfeld had asked the American military command in Stuttgart,
Germany, which had responsibility for monitoring Europe, including
Syria and Lebanon, to
begin drawing up an operational plan for an invasion of Syria.A
young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning
applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career.The
plan was seen by those I knew as especially bizarre because Bashar
Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to 9/11 by sharing
with the CIA hundreds of his country’s most sensitive intelligence
files on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the
planning for 9/11 was carried out… Rumsfeld eventually came to his
senses and back down, I was told…
3)
On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11
From Reporter:
A Memoir pages 305-306 — I
began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were
political outsiders in the Clinton years hadessentially
overthrown the government of the United States — with
ease.
It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The
intellectual leaders of that group — Dick
Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle — had not hidden
their ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but
depicted themselves in public with a great calmness and a
self-assurance that masked their radicalism.
I had spent many hours after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that,
luckily for me, helped me understand what was coming. (Perle and I
had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke
off relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker
linking him, a fervent supporter of Israel, to a
series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a
multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia.
Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue me and characterizing
me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue.
Meanwhile,
Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he
did all he could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a
great deal from the inside about his
primacy in the White House,
but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of
betraying my sources…
I
came to understand that Cheney’s goal was to run his most important
military and intelligence operations with as little congressional
knowledge, and interference, as possible. I was fascinating and
important to learn what I did about Cheney’s
constant accumulation of power and authority as vice president,
but it was impossible to even begin to verify the information without
running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a
good idea from whom I was getting the information.
4)
On Russian meddling in the US election
From
the recent Independent
interview based
on his autobiography — Hersh
has vociferously strong opinions on the subject and smells a rat. He
states that there is “a
great deal of animosity towards Russia. All of that stuff about
Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous.” He
has been researching the subject but is not ready to go public…
yet.
Hersh
quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have
high confidence, it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. He points out that the NSA only
has moderate confidence in Russian hacking. It is a point that has
been made before; there has been no national intelligence estimate in
which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. “When
the intel community wants to say something they say it… High
confidenceeffectively
means that they don’t know.”
5)
On the Novichok poisoning
From
the recent Independent
interview — Hersh
is also on the record as stating that the official version of
the Skripal
poisoning does
not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: “The
story of novichok poisoning has not held up very well. He
[Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence
services about Russian organised crime.” The
unfortunate turn of events with the contamination of other victims is
suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements
rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face
of the UK government’s position.
Hersh
modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or
not, he is scathing on Obama – “a
trimmer … articulate [but] … far from a radical … a middleman”.
During his Goldsmiths talk, he remarks that liberal critics
underestimate Trump at their peril.
He
ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his
sources in the wake
of 9/11.
He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One
of his CIA sources fires back: “Sy
you still don’t get it after all these years – the FBI catches
bank robbers, the CIA robs banks.” It
is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.
*
* *
6)
On the Bush-era ‘Redirection’ policy of arming Sunni radicals to
counter Shia Iran, which in a 2007 New
Yorker article Hersh
accurately predicted would
set off war in Syria
From
the Independent
interview: [Hersh]
tells me it is “amazing
how many times that story has been reprinted”.
I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize
the Shia sphere extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon
and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot boundaries for the 21st century.
He
goes on to say that Bush and Cheney “had it in for
Iran”, although he denies the idea that Iran was heavily
involved in Iraq: “They were providing intel, collecting intel
… The US did many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more
aggression than Iran”…
He
believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this
approach. I’m sure though that the military-industrial complex has
a longer memory…
I
press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one
authored by Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz in which they envisage
deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq.
Hersh ruefully states that: “The
day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing
that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far.”
From
the Independent
interview: We
end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another narrative
ripe for deconstruction by skeptics. Polling shows that a significant
proportion of the American public believes there is more to the
truth. These doubts have been reinforced by the declassification of
the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year
undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting
independently managed to pull off the attacks. The implication is
that they
may well have been state-sponsored with
the Saudis potentially involved.
Hersh
tells me: “I
don’t necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was
responsible for 9/11. We really don’t have an ending to the story.
I’ve known people in the [intelligence] community. We don’t know
anything empirical about who did what”.
He continues: “The
guy was living in a cave. He really didn’t know much English. He
was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for the US. We respond
by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later… How’s it
going guys?”
8)
On the media and the morality of the powerful
From
a recent The
Intercept interview and book
review—If
Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred
and seventy-four pages after the Chicago anecdote, he describes
his coverage of
a massive slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991
after a ceasefire had ended the Persian Gulf War. America’s
indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, “a reminder of the
Vietnam War’s MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it’s a murdered or
raped gook, there is no crime.” It was also, he adds, a reminder of
something else: “I had learned a domestic version of that rule
decades earlier” in Chicago.
“Reporter”
demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that
rule:
1.The
powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including
mass murder.
2.The
powerful lie constantly about their predations.
3.The
natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with
it.
* *
*
9)On
the time President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed his displeasure
to a reporter over a Vietnam piece by defecating on the ground
in front of him
From Reporter:
A Memoir pages
201-202 — Tom
[Wicker] got into the car and the two of them sped off down a dusty
dirt road. No words were spoken. After a moment or two, Johnson once
again slammed on the brakes, wheeling to a halt near a stand of
trees.
Leaving
the motor running, he climbed out, walked a few dozen feet toward the
trees, stopped,
pulled down his pants, and defecated, in full view. The President
wiped himself with leaves and grass, pulled up his pants, climbed
into the car, turned in around, and sped back to the press
gathering. Once
there, again the brakes were slammed on, and Tom was motioned out.
All of this was done without a word being spoken.
…”I
knew then,” Tom told me, “that the son of a bitch was never going
to end the war.”
10)
On Sy’s “most troublesome article” for which his own
family received death threats
From Reporter:
A Memoir pages
263-264 — The
most troublesome article I did, as someone not on the staff of the
newspaper, came in June 1986 and dealt with American signals
intelligence showing that General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the
dictator who ran Panama, had
authorized the assassination of a popular political opponent.
At the time, Noriega was actively involved in supplying the Reagan
administration with what was said to be intelligence on the spread of
communism in Central America. Noriega also permitted American
military and intelligence units to operate with impunity, in secret,
from bases in Panama, and the Americans, in return, looked
the other way while the general dealt openly in drugs and arms. The
story was published just as Noriega was giving a speech at Harvard
University and created embarrassment for him, and for Harvard, along
with a very disturbing telephone threat at home, directed not at me
but at my family.
In
een mooi artikel van Caitlin Johnstone gaat zijn in op de huidige
status quo, waarin de media gestuurd door hun steenrijke eigenaren
dan wel beursgenoteerde bedrijven, de belangen behartigen van
westerse regeringen* (al spreekt Johnstone over de VS, dit
verschijnsel zien we hier ook), het militair-industrieel complex,
oliemaatschappijen, financiële instellingen en geheime diensten…..
Dat
die status quo zo rot is als een mispel interesseert deze media niet, noch
dat de wereld naar de kloten gaat, of mensen moedwillig worden
geofferd voor belangen in de olie- en gasindustrie en dat in landen waar we niets, maar dan
ook helemaal niets te zoeken hebben……. Neem de illegale oorlog
tegen Irak, deze heeft intussen aan meer dan 1,5 miljoen mensen het
leven gekost….. We werden niet alleen voorgelogen over de reden
voor die aanval (niet bestaande massavernietigingswapens), maar ook
over het werkelijke doel: niet democratie brengen, maar westerse
belangen veilig stellen, met als gevolg een groot meer gevuld met
menselijk bloed en tranen………
Om nog maar te zwijgen over de enorme stromen vluchtelingen, op gang gebracht door de VS en haar westerse hielenlikkers van andere NAVO lidstaten, terwijl nu juist dat westen stelt niet een zo groot aantal vluchtelingen op te kunnen nemen (in een arm land als Libanon is 1 op de 5 inwoners vluchteling….. Op het hoogtepunt was dit 1 op de 4 inwoners, er zijn intussen al veel vluchtelingen teruggekeerd naar door het reguliere Syrische leger bevrijde gebieden. Het westen heeft amper wat gedaan voor de echte vluchtelingencrisis, die niet in het westen bestaat, maar in Libanon en ander vergelijkbare landen…..)
Met
de opkomst van de sociale media kregen de reguliere (massa-) media
concurrentie en werden hun leugens voor het eerst echt goed
doorgeprikt, iets wat deze media natuurlijk niet konden en kunnen
laten gebeuren. Vandaar de uitvinding van het woord ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws), NB
vooral door die reguliere media gebracht (neem de illegale oorlog tegen Irak), echter omgekeerd evenredig totaal onterecht door deze media
gebruikt om de sociale media van het brengen van ‘fake news’ te
beschuldigen……
Uiteraard
zijn er kul sites waar men van alles beweert, echter daar prikt de
grote meerderheid van de mens echt wel doorheen, nee het echte nieuws
moet tegen worden gehouden, daar hiermee de reguliere media, hun broodheren en overheden als
onbetrouwbaar te boek komen te staan (en gelukkig vinden velen dit
al).
Johnstone
stelt dat de reguliere media in feite altijd liegen, waar ze opmerkt
dat deze media uiteraard ook echt nieuws brengen (bijvoorbeeld een zwaar ongeluk kan je
niet verhullen, of een politicus die stelend door de mand
viel, zoals zoveel VVD’ers), echter een goede leugenaar is er één
die vooral ook de waarheid spreekt (en vooral als het in het straatje
van de machthebbers past), immers anders valt deze zo door de
mand…… Door deze manier van werken, stelt Johnstone liegen deze media
daarmee in feite altijd, ofwel ze zijn totaal onbetrouwbaar…….
Lees
het volgende artikel van Johnstone, geeft het ajb door en kom in
actie!!! (voor het te laat is, met alle vormen van toezicht die de overheid tegenwoordig voorhanden hebben, kan je straks nog geen scheet laten en de overheid weet het, ofwel een 1984
dat zelfs Orwell niet had voorzien…… (waar men ook nog eens bezig is met de ontwikkeling van kunstmatige insecten, uitgerust met camera’s…..) Intussen is onze internet geschiedenis en zijn onze computers/smartphone’s al toegankelijk voor de overheid……..
Als het zover komt, dus een totale controle van de burgers en daar twijfel ik niet aan, zal de roep van de machthebbers groot zijn om de democratie aan de kant te zetten, uiteraard met een beroep op de staatsveiligheid……. Vandaar ook dat we zo snel mogelijk uit de EU moeten stappen, immers de kans dat een zo grote vereniging van staten zal leiden tot één grote EU dictatuur is levensgroot, zeker als je ziet dat de fascistische partijen in de EU blijven groeien en in een paar EU landen zelfs al de grootste zijn….. Deze partijen zijn nu nog anti-EU, maar let op als ze straks de grootste fractie in het EU parlement zijn…..)
They
Work to Manufacture Consent Because They Need It. Don’t Give It to
Them.
(CJ Opinion) — Plutocrat-owned
news media outlets lie constantly. When I say this I don’t mean
that everything they say is false; many of the events reported by
mass media are for the most part factual. Whenever it’s convenient
for the loose alliance of western plutocrats, the political
establishment those plutocrats own and operate, and the secretive
government agencies with which they are allied, the plutocratic media
tell the truth to the extent that it advances plutocratic agendas.
But only telling the truth when it suits one’s agendas is the same
as lying constantly.
A
good liar doesn’t simply say the opposite of what’s true all the
time; nobody does that. A good liar tells the truth enough of the
time to gain a reputation as an honest and trustworthy source of
information, and then, when the truth poses an obstacle to their
agendas, they put the slightest spin possible on it to nullify that
obstacle. They tell half-truths, they omit key pieces of information,
and, with really important maneuvers like manufacturing consent for a
strategic military destabilization in the Middle East or new cold war
escalations against a nuclear superpower, they shift accountability
for factual reporting from themselves onto secretive military and
intelligence agencies. In this way they keep full control of the
narrative and still ensure that the public supports agendas which do
not serve the public interest.
This
is evidenced by the fact that the public has continued collaborating
with a system which kills the ecosystem we depend on for survival and
allows people to die of poverty while spending trillions of dollars
in needless wars overseas and an ever-expanding Orwellian
surveillance network. Everyone besides the most powerful and their
lackeys is aware on some level that the current system is not working
for them, and yet the overwhelming majority of people keep playing
into it by supporting mainstream parties that are fully owned and
operated by wealthy oligarchs, and then shrugging and sighing when
things keep getting worse.
This
is because their
consent has been successfully manufactured.
Due to the fact that the governed will always vastly outnumber their
government, any government necessarily depends upon the consent
of the governed.
The entire American populace could theoretically wake up tomorrow
morning and decide they want to literally eat everyone on Capitol
Hill, and there’s not actually anything anyone could do to stop
them. The only thing holding existing power structures in place is
the fact that the public consents to it, and, in a system which does
not serve the interests of the public, the only thing holding that
consent in place is the ability of those in power to manufacture it.
So
if there’s ever any doubt that international
network of ruling elites would
pour billions of dollars into controlling public narratives, remember
that their power (and potentially their very lives) fully depends on
their ability to manufacture the consent of the governed. Whoever
controls the narrative controls the world.
If they lose control of the narrative, they lose everything.
For
this reason it is absolutely essential that consent remains seamless
and unbroken throughout every step of the march toward greater and
greater oligarchic dominance. If they are unable to manufacture
consent for a new war or a new escalation in domestic surveillance or
what have you, then they don’t get to have it. This is why no
full-scale intervention has happened in Syria or Iran for example,
despite relentless mass media propaganda campaigns against the
governments of those nations. They work so hard to manufacture
consent because they absolutely require that consent, and they can’t
move forward with their agendas until they get it.
This
is not to suggest that an Iraq-style invasion of Syria or Iran would
likely cause a revolutionary war or anything like that; that would be
naive. If the US and its allies launched such an invasion the people
in those allied nations would be outraged, but they would not be
outraged enough to kill and die over it. What would happen, though,
is a total collapse in their ability to manufacture consent. And that
would be just as fatal to their rule as a full-scale violent
revolution.
The
invasion of Iraq had broad public support, but after it was
discovered to have been a catastrophic, immensely costly intervention
based on nothing but lies, it is now looked upon unfavorably. If they
tried to force another Iraq-style invasion through, the public would
not accept the narratives they were fed about it, and they would see
the MSM lie factory for what it is. This collapse of the public’s
trust in anything the talking heads on TV say would make everyone
impossible to propagandize, and thus impossible to rule over. The
people would begin telling their own stories about what’s going on,
in a way which better reflects reality and better serves themselves
instead of the alliance of sociopathic billionaires. If this
happened, the old power structures could be shrugged off like a heavy
coat on a warm day without anyone firing a shot, simply by the public
deciding to rewrite the rules in a way which benefits the public.
This
is absolutely essential to be aware of, because it means that we can
collectively prevent any agenda from being advanced as long as enough
of us refuse to consent to it. And all that needs to happen for that
consent to be withdrawn is the exposure of the lies that the mass
media is spinning to advance a given agenda.
We’ve
already seen this happen with Syria. There
was a stretch in April of this year where
the mass media machine was cranking out attack editorials on
alternative media voices who’d cast doubt upon the establishment
Syria narrative, because there was so much opposition to what we were
being told to believe about the Assad government that the alliance of
plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies were unable to
manufacture support for a large-scale invasion. All they got out of
their massive MSM propaganda blitz in April was a meaningless bombing
which accomplished essentially nothing, and now the Syrian government
is recapturing
its territory from
the violent jihadists who had seized it with western backing. Had the
“think of the children!” propaganda campaign succeeded in the
wake of the highly suspicious Douma incident, we would likely have
seen a very dangerous and costly western regime change intervention
in Syria by now.
We
can do this with literally anything. The people don’t need to
consent to another idiotic war. The people don’t need to consent to
a two-headed one-party system which pretends that domestic espionage
is acceptable or that wanting the US to stop facilitating the
slaughter of Yemeni civilians is some crazy, radical fringe position.
The people don’t need to consent to the persecution of Julian
Assange. The people don’t need to consent to the rule of the
oligarchs at all. By collectively withdrawing our consent for those
things in our own self-interest, we can make them unsustainable.
And
of course, our rulers are acutely aware of this possibility. This is
the reason for the current moral panic about “Russian bots”,
“Kremlin propaganda” and “fake news”. It’s the reason for
the smear campaign against WikiLeaks and the attempts to imprison
Julian Assange. It’s the reason for the tightening corporate
censorship we’re seeing with Google, Facebook and Twitter. Our
rulers are aware that any of their agendas can be thwarted simply by
their failing to manufacture consent for them, so any voices which
disrupt that consent-manufacturing machine are in the crosshairs for
attack and silencing.
But
they can’t be too ham fisted about their censorship attempts,
because the public would never consent to full-scale totalitarian
censorship out in the open. The illusion of freedom and democracy
would be shattered, trust in the propaganda machine would die, and
the oligarchs would completely lose control of the narrative. The
nice guy mask needs to remain firmly in place for any consent
manufacturing to take effect; as soon as they remove it they lose the
mechanism of manipulation and control that their entire system of
rule is built upon. This buys us some time. Not a lot of time, but
some.
So
the time to strike is now, while the iron is hot. Disrupt the
consent-manufacturing machine at every opportunity, because it’s
the only thing holding the bars of our cage in place. The new media
environment is still ripe for a grassroots campaign to expose the
lies of our rulers and shine light on the puppeteers of the kabuki
theater using facts, information and intelligent arguments.
So
let them have it with both barrels. Blog, tweet, make videos, make
memes, engage in debates; any day you can weaken the trust that even
one person has in any part of the deception machine is a gain in this
battle. Fight their lies with truth and their evil with good will.
When you are opposing a depraved power establishment which relies on
deceit to sustain its rule, you have truth and light on your side. So
fight with absolute certainty in yourself, and give them everything
you’ve got. This might be humanity’s last chance.
* Regeringen die voor het grootste deel lobbyisten van alle genoemde bedrijvigheid zijn, hoewel deze regeringen volksvertegenwoordigers zouden moeten zijn……
Professor
Stephen Cohen prikt in een interview dat Aaron Mate afnam, fijntjes door de
Putin – Trump hysterie heen, de hysterie die in de VS ontstond na het gesprek dat
Putin en Trump voerden in de Finse hoofdstad Helsinki. Men raakt er
in de VS weer niet over uitgesproken, al heeft dat alles met de reguliere, over het algemeen rechtse neoliberale pers in de VS te maken,
uiteraard aangevuld met de democratische en republikeinse politici
die openlijk lobbyen voor het militair-industrieel complex……….
Vanaf
het eind van de Sovjet-Unie tot de ontmoeting van Trump en Putin, zet
Cohen duidelijk uiteen hoe we zijn voorgelogen, bijvoorbeeld over ‘de
oorlog van Rusland tegen Georgië’, via Oekraïne, De Krim tot
Syrië…..
Voorts
moet ik Cohen gelijk geven als hij stelt dat we nu blij mogen zijn met
Trump als president, daar hij niet meegaat in de oorlogshitserij die
zoveel VS politici in hun greep houdt. Zoals op deze plek al eerder gesteld,
wat is erop tegen dat men met elkaar spreekt en probeert oorlog te
voorkomen??? Oké Trump is een beest, maar liever een beest dat niet aanvalt dan bijvoorbeeld Obama die 2 volledige termijnen in illegale oorlogsvoering was verwikkeld, zelfs 2 illegale oorlogen extra begon en veel meer bommen liet afwerpen dan Bush in 2 termijnen…….
Cohen stelt voorts terecht dat het onder eerdere
presidenten de normaalste zaak van de wereld was om te spreken met
de Russische collega’s, terwijl dat nu als verraad wordt
neergezet, alleen om Trump af te kunnen zetten en ongebreideld oorlog te kunnen voeren, zoals de VS gewend is te doen…….
Cohen gaat ook in op de beschuldiging dat Putin journalisten laat vermoorden, terwijl daar geen bewijs voor wordt geleverd, sterker nog: Cohen stelt dat deze moorden alles te maken hebben met de georganiseerde misdaad in Rusland……
Lezen mensen en geeft het door, de hoogste tijd dat we met z’n allen weer ons gezonde verstand gebruiken en ons niet langer laten voorliegen en gek laten maken door de reguliere media en het grootste deel van de politici in ons land!
Video:
Debunking the Putin Panic With Professor Stephen Cohen
(RN) — President
Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin and his failure to endorse
U.S. intelligence community claims about alleged Russian meddling
have been called “treasonous” and the cause of a “national
security crisis.” There
is a crisis, says Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, but one of our own making…
Part
1:
AARON
MATE: It’s
The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate.
The
White House is walking back another statement from President Trump
about Russia and U.S. intelligence. It began in Helsinki on Monday,
when at his press conference with Vladimir Putin, Trump did not
endorse the claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. After an
outcry that played out mostly on cable news, Trump appeared to
retract that view one day later. But then on Wednesday, Trump was
asked if he believes Russia is now targeting the U.S. ahead of the
midterms.
DONALD
TRUMP: [Thank]
you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
REPORTER: Is
Russia still targeting the U.S. [inaudible]. No, you don’t believe
that to be the case?
DONALD
TRUMP: Thank
you very much, everyone. We’re doing very well. We are doing very
well, and we’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has
ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough
as I have been on Russia. All you have to do is look at the numbers,
look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors.
Not there. Look, unfortunately, at what happened in Syria recently. I
think President Putin knows that better than anybody. Certainly a lot
better than the media.
AARON
MATE: The
White House later claimed that when Trump said ‘no,’ he meant no
to answering questions. But Trump’s contradiction of U.S.
intelligence claims has brought the Russiagate story, one that has
engulfed his presidency, to a fever pitch. Prominent U.S. figures
have called Trump’s comments in Helsinki treasonous, and compared
alleged Russian e-mail hacking and social media activity to 9/11 and
Pearl Harbor. Those who also question intelligence claims or
warmongering with Russia have been dubbed traitors, or Kremlin
agents.
Speaking
to MSNBC, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul
declared that with Trump’s comments, the U.S. is in the midst of a
national security crisis.
MICHAEL
MCFAUL: Republicans
need to step up. They need to speak out, not just the familiar
voices, because this is a national security crisis, and the president
of the United States flew all the way to Finland, met with Vladimir
Putin, and basically capitulated. It felt like appeasement.
AARON
MATE: Well,
joining me to address this so-called national security crisis is
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and
Princeton University. His books include “Failed Crusade: America
and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and
Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor
Cohen, welcome. I imagine that you might agree with the view that we
are in the midst of a national security crisis when it comes to
Russia, but for far different reasons than those expounded on by
Ambassador McFaul.
STEPHEN
COHEN: There is a national security crisis, and there is a
Russian threat. And we, we ourselves here in the United States, have
created both of them. This has been true for years, and now it’s
reached crisis proportion. Notice what’s going on. A mainstream TV
reporter shouts to President Trump, “Are the Russians still
targeting our elections?” This is in the category “Are you still
beating your wife?” There is no proof that the Russians have
targeted or attacked our elections. But it’s become axiomatic. What
kind of media is that, are the Russians still, still attacking our
elections.
And
what Michael McFaul, whom I’ve known for years, formerly Ambassador
McFaul, purportedly a scholar and sometimes a scholar said, it is
simply the kind of thing, to be as kind as I can, that I heard from
the John Birch Society about President Eisenhower when he went to
meet Khrushchev when I was a kid growing up in Kentucky. This is
fringe discourse that never came anywhere near the mainstream before,
at least after Joseph McCarthy, that the president went, committed
treason, and betrayed the country. Trump
may have not done the right thing at the summit, because agreements
were reached. Nobody discusses the agreements. But to stage a
kangaroo trial of the president of the United States in the
mainstream media, and have plenty of once-dignified people come on
and deliver the indictment, is without precedent in this country.
And it has created a national crisis in our relations with Russia. So
yes, there’s a national crisis.
AARON
MATE: Let
me play for you a clip from Trump’s news conference with Putin that
also drew outrage back in the U.S. When he was asked about the state
of U.S.-Russia relations, he said both sides had responsibility.
DONALD
TRUMP: Yes,
I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United
States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. We should
have had this dialogue a long time ago. A long time, frankly, before
I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame. I think that the
United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re
getting together, and we have a chance to do some great things.
Whether it’s nuclear proliferation, in terms of stopping, because
we have to do it. Ultimately that’s probably the most important
thing that we can be working on.
AARON
MATE: That’s
President Trump in Helsinki. Professor Cohen, I imagine that this
comment probably was part of the reason why there was so much
outrage, not Just of what Trump said about the claims of Russian
meddling in the election. Can you talk about the significance of what
he said here, and how it contradicts the, the entire consensus of the
bipartisan foreign policy establishment?
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
did not vote for President Trump. But for that I salute him, what he
just said. So far as I can remember, no wiser words or more important
words have been spoken by the American president about Russia and the
Soviet Union since Ronald Reagan did his great detente with Mikhail
Gorbachev in the late 1980s. What
Trump just did, and I don’t- we never know, Aaron, how aware he is
of the ramifications of what he says. But in this case, whether he
fully understood it or not, he just broke with, and the first time
any major political figure in the United States has broken with the
orthodoxy, ever since at least 2000. And
even going back to the ’90s. That all the conflicts we’ve had
with post-Soviet Russia, after communism went away in Russia, all
those conflicts, which I call a new and more dangerous Cold War, are
solely, completely, the fault of Putin or Putin’s Russia.That
nothing in American policy since Bill Clinton in the 1990s did
anything to contribute seriously to the very dangerous conflict,
confrontation we have with Russia today. It was all Russia’s fault.
What
that has meant, and you know this, Aaron, because you live in this
world as well,it
has meant no media or public dialogue about the merits of American
policy toward post-Soviet Russia from Clinton, certainly through
Obama. It
may be changing now under President Trump. Not sure. It means if we
don’t have a debate, we’re not permitted to ask, did we do
something wrong, or so unwise that it led to this even more dangerous
Cold War? And
if the debate leads to a conclusion that we did do something unwise,
and that we’re still doing it, then arises the pressure and the
imperative for any new policy toward Russia. None of that has been
permitted, because the orthodoxy, the dogma, the axiom, is Putin
alone has solely been responsible.
So
you know, you know as well as I do what is excluded. It doesn’t
matter that we moved NATO to Russia’s borders, that’s not
significant. Or that we bombed Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally.
Or that George Bush left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which was
the bedrock of Russian nuclear security and, I would argue, our own.
Or that we did regime change by military might in Iraq and Libya, and
many other things. Or that we provoked the Ukrainian crisis in 2004,
and supported the coup that overthrew a legitimate, elected,
constitutional president there. None of that matters. Oh, it was kind
of footnotes to the real narrative. And the narrative is, is that a
Russian leader Vladimir Putin in power was a horrible aggressor.
Killed everybody, somehow, with secret poisons or thieves in the
night who opposed him. And began this new cold or even worse war with
the United States.
No
historian of any merit will ever write the story that way. It’s
factually, analytically, simply untrue. Now Trump has said something
radically different. We got here in these dire circumstances because
both sides acted unwisely, and we should have had this discussion a
long time ago.
So for that, two cheers for President Trump. But whether he can
inspire the discussion that he may wish to, considering the fact that
he’s now being indicted as a criminal for having met Putin, is a
big question.
AARON
MATE: So
a few questions. You mentioned that some agreements were made, but
details on that have been vague. So do you have any sense of what
concretely came out of this summit? There was talk about cooperation
on nuclear weapons, possibly renewing the New START Treaty. We know
that Putin offered that to Trump when he first came into office, but
Trump rejected it. There was talk about cooperating in Syria. And,
well, yeah, if I can put that question to you first, and then I have
a follow-up about what might be motivating Trump here. But first,
what do you think concretely came out of this?
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well,
look, I know a lot, both as a historian, and I’ve actually
participated in some about the history of American-Russian,
previously Soviet, summits. Which, by the way, this is the 75th
anniversary of the very first one, when Franklin Roosevelt traveled
to Tehran to meet Stalin. And
every president, and this is important to emphasize, every president
since
Roosevelt
has met with the Kremlin leader. Some many times, or several times.
So there’s a long tradition. And therefore there are customs. And
one custom, this goes to your question, is that never, except maybe
very rarely, but almost never do we learn the full extent and nature
of what agreements were made. That
usually comes in a week or two or three later, because there’s
still the teams of both are hammering out the details.
So
that’s exactly what happened at this summit. There was no
conspiracy. No, you know, appeasement behind closed doors. The two
leaders announced in general terms what they agreed upon. Now,
the most important, and this is traditional, too, by meeting they
intended to revive the diplomatic process between the United States
and Russia which has been badly tattered by events including the
exclusion of diplomats, and sanctions, and the rest. So to get
active, vigorous diplomacy about many issues going. They
may not achieve that goal, because the American media and the
political mainstream is trying to stop that. Remember that anything
approaching diplomatic negotiations with Russia still less detente,
is now being criminalized in the United States. Criminalized. What
was once an honorable tradition, the pursuit of detente, is now a
capital crime, if we believe these charges against Trump.
So
they tried to revive that process, and we’ll see if it’s going to
be possible. I think at least behind the scenes it will be. Obviously
what you mentioned, both sides now have new, more elusive, more
lethal, faster, more precise nuclear weapons. We’ve been developing
them for a long time in conjunction with missile defense. We’ve
essentially been saying to Russia, you may have equality in nuclear
weapons with us, but we have missile defense. Therefore, we could use
missile defense to take out your retaliatory capacity. That is, we
could stage the first strike on you and you would not be able to
retaliate.
Now,
everybody who’s lived through the nuclear era knows that’s an
invitation to disaster. Because like it or not, we’ve lived with a
doctrine called MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, that one side dare
not attack the other with a nuclear weapon because it would be
destroyed as well. We were saying we now have this primacy. Putin,
then, on March 1 of this year, announced that they have developed
weapons that can elude missile defense. And it seems to be true. In
the air and at sea, their dodgy, darty, quick thing- but they could
avoid our missile defense. So where we are at now is on the cusp of a
new nuclear arms race involving more dangerous nuclear weapons. And
the current START, New START Treaty will expire, I think, in three or
four years. But its expiration date is less important that the
process of talking and negotiating and worrying officially about
these new weapons had ended.
So
essentially what Trump and Putin agreed is that process of concern
about new and more dangerous nuclear weapons must now resume
immediately. And if there’s anybody living in the United States who
think that that is a bad idea they need to reconsider their life,
because they may be looking into the darkness of death. So
that was excellent. Briefly.
What
I hope they did- they didn’t announce it, but I’m pretty sure
they did- that there had been very close calls between American and
Russian combat forces and their proxies in Syria. We’re doing a
proxy war, but there are plenty of native Russians and Americans in
Syria in a relatively small combat cell. And there have been
casualties. The Russians have said at the highest level the next time
a Russian is killed in Syria by an American-based weapon, we will
strike the American launcher. If Russia strikes our launching pads or
areas, whether on land or sea, which means Americans will be there
and are killed, call it war. Call it war.
So
we need to agree in Syria to do more than, what do they call it,
deconfliction, where we have all these warnings. It’s
still too much space for mishap. And what I hope it think Trump and
Putin did was to try to get a grip on this.
AARON
MATE: Stephen
F. Cohen, professor emeritus at at Princeton University and New York
University, thank you. And stay tuned for part two. I’m Aaron Mate
for The Real News.
*
* *
There
is much to criticize the Russian president for, says Professor
Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton and NYU, but
many US political and media claims about Putin are false – and
reckless…
Part
2:
AARON
MATE: It’s
The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate. This is part two with Stephen Cohen,
professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and
Princeton. In part one we talked about the uproar over the
Trump-Putin summit, and Trump’s comments about the U.S.
intelligence community and about cooperation with Russia. Now
in part two we’re going to get to some of the main talking points
that have been pervasive throughout corporate media, talking about
the stated reasons for why pundits and politicians say they are
opposed to Trump sitting down with Putin.
So
let me start with Jon Meacham. He is a historian. And speaking to
CNN, he worried that Trump, with his comments about NATO calling on
the alliance to pay more, and calling into question, he worried about
the possibility that Trump won’t come to the aid of Baltic states
in the event that Russia invades.
JON
MEACHAM: And
what worries me most is the known unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld might
put it, of what happens next. Let’s say Putin- just look at this
whole week of the last five, six days in total. What happens if Putin
launches military action against, say, the Baltics? What, what is it
that President Trump, what about his comments that NATO suggest thar
he would follow an invocation of Article 5 and actually project
American force in defense of the values that not only do we have an
intellectual and moral assent to, but a contractual one, a treaty
one. I think that’s the great question going forward.
AARON
MATE: OK.
So that’s Jon Meacham speaking to CNN. So, Professor Cohen, putting
aside what he said there about our intellectual values and strong
tradition, just on the issue of Trump, of Putin posing a potential
threat and possibly invading the Baltics, is that a realistic
possibility?
STEPHEN
COHEN: So,
I’m not sure what you’re asking me about. The folly of NATO
expansion? The fact that every president in my memory has asked the
Europeans to pay more? But can we be real? Can we be real? The only
country that’s attacked that region of Europe militarily since the
end of the Soviet Union was the United States of America. As I
recall, we bombed Serbia, a, I say this so people understand, a
traditional Christian country, under Bill Clinton, bombed Serbia for
about 80 days. There is no evidence that Russia has ever bombed a
European country.
You
tell me, Aaron. You must be a smart guy, because you got your own
television show. Why
would Putin want to launch a military attack and occupy the Baltics?
So he has to pay the pensions there? Which he’s having a hard time
already paying in Russia, and therefore has had to raise the pension
age, and thereby lost 10 percentage points of popularity in two
weeks? Why
in the world can we, can we simply become rational people. Why in the
world would Russia want to attack and occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia? The only reason I can think of is that many, many of my
friends love to take their summer vacations there. And maybe some
crazy person thinks that if we occupy it, vacations will be cheaper.
It’s crazy. It’s beyond crazy. It’s a kind-.
AARON
MATE: Professor
Cohen, if you were on CNN right now I imagine that the anchor would
say to you, well, okay, but one could say the same thing about
Georgia in 2008. Why did Russia attack Georgia then?
STEPHEN
COHEN: I’m not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The
European Commission, if you’re talking about the 2008 war, the
European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia,
which was backed by the United States, fighting with an
American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly
unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that
he began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin,
which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and
Obama’s best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry
Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country
would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border
through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what
essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.
So
that- Russia didn’t begin that war. And
it didn’t begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by
[continents], the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in [20]14
after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to
happen. And I think it happened within 36 hours. The
Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and
betrayed. They use this word, predatl’stvo, betrayal, about
American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when
it wasn’t just President George Bush, all the documents have been
published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the
leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union that
under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be
NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two inches to
the east.
Now
NATO is sitting on Russia’s borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So
Russians aren’t fools, and they’re good-hearted, but they become
resentful. They’re worried about being attacked by the United
States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily, we are
under attack by the United States. And
this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being
put out that Russia somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been
sleeping. I didn’t see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is
reckless, dangerous, warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has
a better case for saying they’ve been attacked by us since 1991. We
put our military alliance on the front door. Maybe it’s not an
attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.
AARON
MATE: OK.
And in a moment I want to speak to you more about Ukraine, because
we’ve heard Crimea invoked a lot in the criticism of Putin of late.
But first I want to actually to ask you about a domestic issue. This
one is it’s widely held that Putin is responsible for the killing
of journalists and opposition activists who oppose him. And on this
front I want to play for you a clip of Joe Cirincione. He is the head
of the Ploughshares Fund. And this is what he said this week in an
appearance on Democracy Now!.
JOE
CIRINCIONE: Both
of these men are dangerous. Both of these men oppress basic human
rights, basic freedoms. Both of them think the press are the enemy of
the people. Putin goes further. He kills journalists. He has them
assassinated on the streets of Moscow.
Donald
Trump does not go that far yet. But I think what Putin is doing is
using the president of the United States to project his rule, to
increase his power, to carry out his agenda in Syria, with Europe, et
cetera, and that Trump is acquiescing to that for reasons that are
not yet clear.
AARON
MATE: That’s
Joe Cirincione.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
know him well. It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that.
AARON
MATE: Well
Yes. There’s two issues here, Professor Cohen. One is the state of
the crackdown on press freedoms in Russia, which I’m sure you would
say is very much alive, and is a strong part of the Russian system.
But let’s first address this widely-held view that Putin is
responsible for killing journalists who are critical of him.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
know I’m supposed to follow your lead, but I think you’re
skipping over a major point. How
is it that Joe, who was once one of our most eminent and influential,
eloquent opponents of nuclear arms race, who was prepared to have the
president of the United States negotiate with every Soviet communist
leader, including those who had a lot of blood on their hands, now
decide that Putin kills everybody and he’s not a worthy partner?
What happened to Joe?
I’ll
tell you what happened to him. Trump. Trump has driven once-sensible
people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing about
internal Russian politics, and
he ought to follow my rule. When I don’t know something about
something, I say I don’t know. But what he just said is ludicrous.
And the sad part is-.
AARON
MATE: But
it’s widely held. If it’s ludicrous-. But widely held, yeah.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well,
the point is that once
distinguished and important spokespeople for rightful causes, like
ending a nuclear arms race, have been degraded, or degraded
themselves by saying things like he said to the point that they’re
of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms race.
And he’s not alone. Somebody called it Trump derangement
syndrome. I’m
not a psychiatrist, but it’s a widespread mania across our land.
And when good people succumb to it, we are all endangered.
AARON
MATE: But
many people would be surprised to hear that, because again, the
stories that we get, and there are human rights reports, and it’s
just sort of taken as a given fact that Putin is responsible for
killing journalists. So if that’s ludicrous, if you can explain why
you think that is.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well, I
got this big problem which seems to afflict very few people in public
life anymore. I live by facts. I’m
like my doctor, who told me not long ago I had to have minor surgery
for a problem I didn’t even know I had. And I said, I’m not going
to do it. Show me the facts. And he did. I had the minor
surgery. Journalists
no longer seem to care about facts. They repeat tabloid rumors. Putin
kills everybody.
All
I can tell you is this. I
have never seen any evidence whatsoever, and I’ve been- I knew some
of the people who were killed. Anna
Politkovskaya, the famous journalist for Novaya Gazeta was the first,
I think, who was- Putin was accused of killing. I knew her well. She
was right here, in this apartment. Look behind me, right here. She
was here with my wife, Katrina vanden Huevel. I wouldn’t say we
were close friends, but we were associates in Moscow, and we were
social friends. And
I mourn her assassination today. But I will tell you this, that
neither her editors at that newspaper, nor her family, her surviving
sons, think Putin had anything to do with the killing. No
evidence has ever been presented. Only media kangaroo courts that
Putin was involved in these high-profile assassinations, two of the
most famous being this guy Litvinenko by polonium in London, about
the time Anna was killed, and more recently Boris Netsov, whom, it’s
always said, was walking within view of the Kremlin when he was shot.
Well, you could see the Kremlin from miles away. I don’t know what
within the view- unless they think Putin was, you know, watching it
through binoculars. There is no evidence that Putin ever ordered the
killing of anybody outside his capacity as commander in chief. No
evidence.
Now,
did he? But we live, Aaron, and I hope the folks who watch us
remember this. Every professional person, every decent person lives
or malpractices based on verified facts. You go down the wrong way on
a one-way street, you might get killed. You take some medication
that’s not prescribed for you, you might die. You pursue foreign
policies based on fiction, you’re likely to get in war. And
all these journalists, from the New York Times to the Washington
Post, from MSNBC to CNN who churn out daily these allegations that
Putin kills people are disgracing themselves. I
will give you one fact. Wait. One fact, and you could look it up, as
Casey Stengel used to say. He was a baseball manager, in case you
don’t know.
There’s
an organization called the Committee to Protect American Journalists.
It’s kind of iconic. It does good things, it says unwise things. Go
on its website and look at the number of Russian journalists killed
since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union, under two leaders.
Boris Yeltsin, whom we dearly loved and still mourn, and Putin, whom
we hate.Last
time I looked, the numbers may have changed, more were killed under
Yeltsin than under Putin. Did Putin kill those in the 1990s?
So
you should ask me, why did they die, then? And
I can tell you the main reason. Corrupt business. Mafia-like business
in Russia. Just like happened in the United States during our
primitive accumulation days. Profit
seekers killed rivals. Killed them dead in the streets. Killed them
as demonstrations, as demonstrative acts. The only thing you could
say about Putin is that he might have created an atmosphere that
abets that sort of thing. To which I would say, maybe, but originally
it was created with the oligarchical class under Boris Yeltsin, who
remains for us the most beloved Russian leader in history. So that’s
the long and the short of it. Go look at the listing on the Committee
to Protect Journalists.
AARON
MATE: OK.
So, following up on that, to what extent- and this gets a bit into
history, which you’ve covered extensively in your writings. To what
extent are we here in the West responsible for the creation of that
Russian oligarchal class that you mentioned? But also, what is
Putin’s relationship to it now, today? Does he abet it? Is he
entrenched in it? We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the
richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement with the
very corruption of Russia you’re speaking about. So both our role
in creating that problem in Russia, but then also Putin’s role now
in terms of his relationship to it.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I’m
going to give you a quick, truncated, scholarly, historical
perspective on this. But this is what people should begin with when
they think about Vladimir Putin and his 18 years in power. Putin came
to power almost accidentally in 2000. He inherited a country whose
state had collapsed twice in the 20th century. You’ve got to think
about that. How
many states have collapsed that you know of once? But the Russian
state, Russian statehood, had collapsed once in 1917 during the
revolution, and again in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended. The
country was in ruination; 75 percent of the people were in poverty.
Putin
said- and this obsesses him. If you want to know what obsesses Putin,
it’s the word ‘sovereignty.’ Russia lost its sovereignty-
political, foreign policy, security, financial- in the 1990s. Putin
saw his mission, as I read him, and I try to read him as a
biographer. He says a lot, to regain Russia’s sovereignty, which
meant to make the country whole again at home, to rescue its people,
and to protect its defenses. That’s been his mission. Has it been
more than that? Maybe. But everything he’s done, as I see it, has
followed that concept of his role in history. And he’s done pretty
well.
Now,
I can give you all Putin’s minuses very easily. I would not care
for him to be my president. But let me tell you one other thing
that’s important. You evaluate nations within their own history,
not within ours. If
you asked me if Putin is a democrat, and I will answer you two ways.
He thinks he has. And compared to what? Compared to the leader of
Egypt? Yeah, he is a democrat. Compared to the rulers of our pals in
the Gulf states, he is a democrat. Compared to Bill Clinton? No, he’s
not a Democrat. I mean, Russia-. Countries are on their own
historical clock. And you have to judge Putin in terms of his
predecessors. So people think Putin is a horrible leader. Did you
prefer Brezhnev? Did you prefer Stalin? Did you prefer Andropov?
Compared to what? Please tell me, compared to what.
And
by the way, that’s how that’s how Russians-. You want to know why
he’s so popular in Russia? Because Russians judge him in the
context of their own what they call zhivaya istoriya, living history;
what we call autobiography. In
terms of their own lives, he looks pretty darn good. They complain
out him. We sit in the kitchen and they bitch about Putin all the
time. But they don’t want him to go away.
AARON
MATE: All
right. Well, on that front, we’re going to wrap this up there.
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York
University and Princeton. His books include “Failed Crusade:
America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates
and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.”
Professor Cohen, thank you.
STEPHEN
COHEN: You
forgot one book.
AARON
MATE: I
did not say I was reading your, your complete bibliography.
STEPHEN
COHEN: It’s
called-. It’s called “Confessions of a Holy Fool.”
AARON
MATE: Is
that true? Or are you making a joke.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Somewhere
in between. [Thank you, Aaron.]
AARON
MATE: Professor
Cohen, thank you. And thank you for joining us on The Real News.
Dankzij
de steun van Israël en de VS kan IS nog steeds terreur uitoefenen in
een paar delen van Syrië. Zo bracht ANTIWAR afgelopen woensdag een
artikel van Jason Ditz waar deze wijst op een IS aanval op de
zuidelijke Syrische stad Swaida , ook wel As-Suwayda genoemd (Engels:
Sweida ) en een paar dorpen in de buurt van die stad……..
Jammer
dat Ditz weer op de proppen komt met het Syrische Observatorium voor
Mensenrechten (SOHR), dit ‘observatorium’ wordt geleid en tot voor
kort bemand door een gewezen Syrische misdadiger, die gevangenisstraf
ontliep door te vluchten en zich als politiek vluchteling voor te
doen. Deze ploert heeft uitstekende contacten met de verschillende
terreurgroepen in Syrië en gaat dan ook voortdurend tekeer tegen
Assad, waar de leugens dat Assad zijn volk zou vergassen, vooral uit
zijn smerige koker komen……… Ook berichten van terreurorganisatie White Helmets (hulp in terreur voor terreurgroepen als Al Qaida) worden regelmatig geciteerd door SOHR, berichten die berusten op leugens…..
Terug
naar de aanval van IS: deze aanslagen waren en zijn alleen mogelijk
door de bescherming van dit geteisem door Israël en de VS……. De
VS, direct verantwoordelijk voor het ontstaan van IS en zelfs de
organisator van deze moordenaarsbende, vindt het prima dat IS de
reguliere Syrische troepen en hun steun uit o.a. Iran aanvalt…….. Het feit dat daarbij de burgers van steden en dorpen worden vermoord die achter hun democratisch gekozen
president zijn blijven staan, een kniesoor die daarover valt (hadden ze maar tegen hun regering moeten zijn, ‘ja toch..??’)…..
Hetzelfde
geldt in feite voor Israël, nauw betrokken bij de geboorte van IS en
hun steun en toeverlaat in de illegaal door Israël bezette
Golanhoogten…….. Op de Golanhoogten lapt Israël de gewonde strijders op, zo dat ze door kunnen gaan met hun terreur tegen de bevolking en de strijd tegen het reguliere Syrische leger…… Het is zelfs zo zot, dat Israël op aanvraag van
IS de Syrische troepen bestookt als deze een te groot gevaar vormen
voor IS stellingen…….
Hoorde
deze week dat er intussen al meer dan een half miljoen Syriërs zijn
omgekomen bij de oorlog in het land, een oorlog die het gevolg is van
VS bemoeienis….. Al in 2006 was men in de VS bezig met
voorbereidingen tot het organiseren van een opstand in Syrië, een
opstand die als in Oekraïne moest leiden tot een staatsgreep……
Daarvoor transporteerden o.a. de VS en Saoedi-Arabië een groot aantal
jihadstrijders uit Libië naar Syrië…….. Libië, een land dat ‘vakkundig’ door de VS en de
NAVO (in feite een terreurorganisatie onder leiding van de VS)naar god is geholpen……. Libië, eens het trotse rijkste land van Afrika,
waar het de burgers aan bijna niets ontbrak (studenten, mannelijk en
vrouwelijk, mochten zelfs op kosten van de staat in het buitenland
studeren, waar hen ook nog eens leefgeld en geld voor huisvesting
werd gegeven…..) Kom daar maar ‘s voor in Nederland…..*
Kortom
de VS, Israël en Saoedi-Arabië (hechte bondgenoten) zijn
verantwoordelijk voor de moord op meer dan een half miljoen
Syriërs….. Een half miljoen moorden, deels onder de verantwoording
van de VS die alleen deze eeuw, met 4 door haar begonnen illegale oorlogen, al ruim meer dan 2 miljoen moorden op
haar naam heeft staan…….
ISIS
Attacks Kill at Least 215 in Southern Syrian City
ISIS
forces attacked the Syrian city of Sweida on Wednesday, with large
numbers of gunmen and suicide attackers hitting multiple sites across
the city, causing massive casualties. This
is one of the biggest ISIS attacks in months.
The local health
authority put the toll at 215
killed. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they believed 180 people
were killed. A number of nearby villages were also reportedly
attacked by ISIS at the same time.
Sweida is a
Druze-majority city near the Jordan border, and is seen as a
pro-government city. This is almost certainly why ISIS chose to
target them, as opposed to other cities in the south, which up until
recently had been rebel controlled.
ISIS forces control
only a few towns in the south of Syria, along the frontier with the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syrian and Russian planes have been
bombing the ISIS-held territory intensively in recent days. More
airstrikes against ISIS-held towns were reported after this attack.
* Vanmorgen werd er bekend gemaakt, dat er (zoals te verwachten was) een fikse daling is van gehandicapte jongeren en jongeren uit kansarme gezinnen die gaan studeren, dit als gevolg van het smerige asociale leenstelsel….. Later meer daarover.
Eigenlijk
niets nieuws, maar hoe meer berichten over de smerige rol die het
fascistische apartheidsbewind Israël in Syrië, hoe beter.
In
het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Middle East Eye, het bericht dat
reguliere Syrische troepenin
twee door IS achtergelaten wapendepots, wapens van Israëlische makelij
hebben gevonden (en ik neem aan ook wapens die via Israël werden geleverd)…….
Jammer
dat de schrijver niet de aandacht vestigt op het feit dat Israël nog
steeds chemische wapens ontwikkeld, fabriceert, opslaat en zelfs
verkoopt…… Geen geheim, zo weigert Israël het verdrag tegen
chemische wapens te tekenen (evenals de militaire dictatuur in
Egypte).
Al
evenmin een geheim is het feit dat verschillende terreurgroepen* in
Syrië de beschikking hebben over gifgas, dus chemische wapens.
Ondanks alle hysterie als men weer met de leugen komt dat Assad zijn
volk heeft vergast (aantoonbare leugens), vindt men het in het westen de normaalste zaak van de wereld dat deze ‘rebellen’ de beschikking hebben over chemische wapens,
veelal chlorine, maar ook sarin dat in het verleden werd gebruikt door deze
‘lieve jongens’ (die het overigens niet in hun kop moeten halen terug
te keren naar Nederland, althans als ze van Nederlandse komaf zijn >>
zie de enorme hypocrisie gezien de woorden ‘gematigde rebellen…’)……
Het
is dan ook wel zeker dat deze terreurgroepen via via aan die
Israëlische chemische wapens zijn gekomen, dan wel deze direct van Israël hebben ontvangen…… Het is geen geheim dat Israël terroristen op de door haar illegaal bezette Golanhoogten heeft opgelapt zodat ze door konden gaan met hun terreur tegen het Syrische volk en de strijd tegen het Syrische leger. Israël voert desgevraagd zelfs bombardementen uit, mocht Syrië deze terreurgroepen te na komt….. En dan durft terreurstaat Israël te eisen dat er zich geen Iraanse militairen mogen ophouden in de buurt van de door haar (nogmaals) illegaal bezette Golanhoogten…….
Een
Israëlische generaal liet vorig jaar nog weten dat IS wat hem
betreft (en bepaald niet alleen deze figuur) gesteund dient te worden
in haar strijd tegen het bewind van Assad….** Syrië werd te
machtig en weigerde bovendien pijpleidingen van de Golfstaten naar
Europa over haar grondgebied. Vandaar dat de VS al in 2006 bezig was
met de voorbereidingen tot en het organiseren van een opstand die tot de
coup tegen het Assad bewind moest leiden……. Een staatsgreep die
bovendien het begin moest worden van een opsplitsing van het land,
een zogenaamde Balkanisering, zodat het land nooit weer een
bedreiging voor Israël zou vormen……
Syrian armed opposition groups make preparations ahead of their attack to Assad Regime forces from the opposition controlled Quneitra located at Israeli border, on 16 July, 2018 in Quneitra, Syria [Ammar Al Ali/Anadolu Agency]
Israeli-made
weapons have been found among a cache of arms belonging to the
terrorist group Daesh.
The
discovery was made by Syrian government troops in the south of Hama
province, during a large-scale military operation to clear the area
of mines, Sputnik reported citing Syrian sources.
The
depot, which was found in the town of Aqrab, contained Israeli-made
bombs and assault rifles, pistols, as well as other military hardware
including Kalashnikov machine guns, mortar shells and sniper rifles.
Syrian
Army engineering units are said to have found the depot while
clearing out Aqrab of booby traps, ammunition and weapons left by
Daesh.
A
similar discovery is reported to have been made last week, when
Syrian government forces found a huge cache of Western-made arms in
Daraa***. The depots were identified as the Syrian Army launched
an offensive in
Daraa.
Israel’s
support for the terrorist group has been closely tracked since the
beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. A report released last
year by an Israeli intelligence bureau suggested that in confronting
Iran, the interests of Daesh and Israel could converge, making them
temporary allies.
Last
year, a UN report confirmed that Israel gave aid to armed extremists
in Syria. It found that
there had been a significant increase in interaction between Israeli
soldiers and individuals from members of the Syrian opposition
forces.
The
friendship appears to be more than just the arming of rebel forces by
Israel. A member of the Israeli Knesset has even accused Tel-Aviv
of buying oil
from Daesh.
=============================
* Terreurgroepen die hier liefkozend ‘gematigde rebellen’ worden
genoemd, hoewel het gewetenloze psychopaten zijn, die moordend,
verkrachtend en martelend hun schrikbewind uitoefenen onder de
Syrische bevolking……..
In een interview afgelopen dinsdagavond
heeft Trump gewaarschuwd voor het feit dat de NAVO WOIII zou kunnen
beginnen……. ha! ha! ha! ha! Trump is wakker geworden, maar weet
niet hoe z’n ogen te openen, immers zoals hijzelf NB keer op keer
heeft laten weten met z’n kritiek op de te geringe bijdragen aan defensie uh oorlogsvoering van de andere lidstaten, is de VS de
feitelijke baas van de NAVO……
De VS is bezig of kan zelfs al klaar
zijn met het inrichten van bases voor het volplempen met tanks en
ander oorlogstuig in West- en Oost-Europa (ook in ons Limburg…), ofwel de VS is al lang bezig met de voorbereiding op een oorlog met Rusland, een oorlog die WOIII zal inluiden… Verder heeft de VS een ‘raketschild’
geplaatst in Roemenië en Polen, beiden NAVO lidstaten, een schild dat in
een oogwenk kan worden omgetoverd in raketbases met kernraketten,
uitgerust met meerdere kernkoppen…..* (het ‘schild’ was zogenaamd bedoeld om kernraketten uit Iran tegen te houden, terwijl het overduidelijk is dat de VS Rusland
zo dicht mogelijk op haar grondgebied wil kunnen aanvallen met
kernraketten, in de hoop dat Rusland de tijd ontbreekt om een
tegenaanval in te zetten…)…..
Trump heeft overigens wel gelijk met
zijn uitlating, voor hem lullig genoeg is juist de VS, als baas van de NAVO, verreweg het
grootste gevaar voor de wereldvrede, zoals deze vereniging van terreurstaten deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is begonnen (waarbij al fiks mer dan 2 miljoen burgers zijn vermoord….), een Derde
Wereldoorlog zal dan ook door de VS worden gestart, een oorlog waaraan de NAVO lidstaten zich niet zullen kunnen onttrekken…. Nogmaals: juist de VS en niet een kleine staat als Montenegro, vormt (al decennia) het grootste gevaar voor de wereld (Trump noemde Montenegro in
dit interview als voorbeeld, terwijl juist de VS de grote
promotor was voor het toetreden van Montenegro tot de NAVO…)…
Kortom als WOIII in al haar hevigheid zal uitbarsten is het op zeker dat de VS de knop daartoe heeft ingedrukt……
Trump
stelde dat een staat als Montenegro de NAVO statuten kan misbruiken (artikel 5,
simpel gezegd: een aanval op 1 NAVO staat is een aanval op alle NAVO
landen >> het 3 musketiers credo…) als
het een appeltje schilt met een naburig land…. Terwijl Turkije dit
al jaren doet, Nederland plaatste met ons belastinggeld zelfs Patriot
raketten in Turkije ter bescherming tegen ‘aanvallen uit Syrië’, terwijl ook destijds
Turkije keer op keer haar grenzen heeft overschreden om illegaal oorlog te
voeren in Syrië en Irak……. Ach ja, Trump is dan ook een imbeciele
psychopaat!
This
is of course true, and not just of Montenegro, but literally any of
NATO’s member nations.
While
Trump’s terming of Montenegrins as “very aggressive people”didn’t
sit well with many, the potential for one smaller NATO member nation
to provoke a war is not some new concern, but a frequent criticism of
the NATO model for decades.
NATO
officials were quick to criticize Trump, saying that NATO’s Article
5 provision for collective defense is “unconditional
and iron-clad.”
This only adds to concerns among NATO nations that Trump’s
commitment to the alliance is by their standards imperfect.
NATO
officials were already unhappy with Trump going into last week’s
summit, and more so coming out of it. The latest comments are a
reminder that the threat of World War 3 remains a serious concern for
the US president, and one not easily dispelled.
Montenegrin
officials were quick to fire back that they don’t intend to start
any wars. Again, this misses the serious concerns of the alliance’s
obligations, as NATO has no shortage of members liable to pick fights
and then come running to the alliance for “defense.”
It’s
not even just the current members of NATO. The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee has voted to express its support for “all”
nations to join NATO if they want to. This means effectively any
nation in the world with an axe to grind might join NATO with an eye
toward using the alliance as its backup.
Trump
is right in recognizing the dangers of NATO collective defense,
something previous presidents have been loathe to publicly discuss.
Yet in doing so he’s once again riled up angered foreign officials
who didn’t like him in the first place.
* Het is vrijwel zeker dat de raketten van dit schild al meteen zijn uitgerust met kernkoppen, zodat er al helemaal geen sprake meer is van een raketschild, zoals de westerse reguliere media en politiek, ook in ons land ons keer op keer voorliegen……..
Vanmorgen
op zo ongeveer alle landelijke nieuwszenders in West-Europa het
bericht dat de Britten via camerabeelden hebben besloten dat Russen
‘inderdaad’ de Skripals hebben vergiftigd met novitsjok…… Welke
beelden vraag je je af? Simpel, beelden van Russen die voor deze
‘aanslag met novitsjok’ GB waren binnengekomen en daarna het land weer
verlaten hebben…… ha! ha! ha! ha! Dagelijks komen er vele
tientallen Russen het land in, om van een paar dagen tot weken daarna
weer terug te reizen naar hun moederland…… Voor de Britse geheime
diensten en politie is dit het bewijs dat de Russen
verantwoordelijk zijn voor de vergiftiging met novitsjok……
Over
novitsjok gesproken: als de Skripals daadwerkelijk met dit chemische
wapen werden vergiftigd, hadden ze bij wijze van spreken al lang en
breed onder de groene zoden gelegen, novitsjok is dodelijk, zelfs tot
op vele tientallen meters van de plaats van vergiftiging!! (ofwel dan
waren er veel meer slachtoffers gevallen…) Men had Sergei Skripal zelfs al in de Russische gevangenis kunnen vermoorden……
Bovendien hebben de Russen herhaaldelijk gevraagd om een staal van het gif, zodat men dit zelf kan onderzoeken, verzoeken die telkens weer worden afgewezen door de kwaadaardige regering May……..
Zoals
zo vaak op deze plek betoogt: -de Russen hadden er totaal geen belang
bij de Skripals te vergiftigen, zeker niet in de aanloop van het WK voetbal in Rusland, -niet omdat de Russen al van alles wat
er mis gaat op deze planeet worden aangewezen als dader (en zoals gezegd: als
Rusland Sergei Skripal dood wilden hebben, was hij dat al lang en
breed geweest, zonder dat iemand de doodsoorzaak zou hebben kunnen
toeschrijven aan de Russen….)…. Bovendien zijn er genoeg dodelijke
stoffen, die niet uit de voormalige Sovjet-Unie komen (daarnaast hadden ook
andere voormalige Sovjet staten de formule voor novitsjok en
voldoende mogelijkheid dit gif te maken…..)
Gezien
dat laatste is het zeer goed mogelijk dat bijvoorbeeld Oekraine
Rusland in een kwaad daglicht wilde stellen, ofwel had een false flag
operatie kunnen uitvoeren in GB…. Met de toevoeging dat dit niet
met novitsjok is gebeurd, zoals eerder betoogd……
De
tweede vergiftiging met novitsjok zou best eens kunnen zijn
uitgevoerd met het echte spul….. Een vergiftiging waaraan een vrouw, die op geen enkele manier te verbinden is met Rusland, na een week
overleed…. Goed mogelijk dat deze vrouwe moest sterven puur en alleen om het publiek te overtuigen dat de Skripals
inderdaad met novitsjok werden ‘aangevallen…’
Zonder
enig commentaar op de vergiftiging met novitsjok, bijvoorbeeld met de
toevoeging dat de vergiftiging met novitsjok van de Skripals
feitelijk onmogelijk is en te wijzen op het totaal ontbreken van
bewijs voor deze leugen, berichtten de reguliere media vanmorgen dat
het bewijs voor de vergiftiging met novitsjok is geleverd…….
De
leugen dat de Skripals zijn vergiftigd met novitsjok is totaal
ongeloofwaardig en uitermate belachelijk!! Ofwel de reguliere
westerse media hebben zoals gewoonlijk een enorme berg fake news
(nepnieuws) gebracht en daarmee het zoveelste geval van (ongefundeerde) anti-Russische propaganda!!
Tot slot nog de volgende vraag: waarom mogen de Skripals geen contact hebben met de pers….??? Is men in GB bang dat met dergelijk contact het novitsjok verhaal en de beschuldiging aan het adres van Rusland al helemaal als belachelijk te boek komt te staan???
Het
volgende artikel van Philip Giraldi over de novitsjok vergiftiging
komt van Information Clearing House, overgenomen van Unz Review:
A
Tale of Two Poisonings
Shaping
a story to fit the agenda
By
Philip Giraldi
July
18, 2018 “Information
Clearing House” – Poisoning
enemies has a long history with Augustus Caesar’s wife Livia
allegedly a master of the art, as were the Borgias in Renaissance
Italy. Lately there has been a resurgence in allegations regarding
the use of poisons of various types by several governments. The
claims are particularly damaging both morally and legally as
international conventions regard the use of poisonous chemical
compounds as particularly heinous, condemning their use because they,
when employed in quantity, become “weapons of mass destruction,”
killing indiscriminately and horribly, making no distinction between
combatants and civilians. Their use is considered to be a “war
crime” and the government officials who ordered their deployment
are “war criminals,” subject to prosecution by the International
Criminal Court in The Hague.
There
are two important poisoning stories that have made the news recently.
Both are follow-ups to reporting that has appeared in the news over
the past few months and both are particularly interesting because
they tend to repudiate earlier coverage that had been largely
accepted by several governments as well as the media and the
chattering class of paid experts that appears on television.
The
first story relates to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence
agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March. There was quite
a bit that was odd about the Skripal case, which relied
from the start “…on
circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence.” And there was
inevitably a rush to judgment. British Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson blamed Russia less than forty-eight hours after the Skripals
were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury England, too soon for
any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning to have taken place.
British
Prime Minister Theresa May threw gasoline on the fire when she
addressed Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and
demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours,
declaring that the apparent poisoning was “very likely” caused by
a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name
novichok. The British media was soon on board with a vengeance,
spreading the government line that such a highly sensitive operation
would require the approval of President Vladimir Putin himself. The
expulsion of Russian diplomats soon followed with the United States
and other countries following suit.
Repeated
requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for
testing were rejected by the British government in spite of the fact
that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the
Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards. As the latest
British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on
the door handle of the Scripals’ residence, the timetable element
was also unconvincing. That meant that the two would have spent three
hours, including a stop at a pub and lunch, before succumbing on a
park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly.
The
head of Britain’s own chemical weapons facility Porton Down even
contradicted claims made
by May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and British Ambassador in
Moscow Laurie Bristow. The lab’s Chief Executive Gary Aitkenhead
testified that he did not know if the nerve agent was actually
produced in Russia, a not surprising observation as the chemical
formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and
there are an estimated twenty countries capable of producing it.
There are also presumed stocks of novichok remaining in independent
countries that once were part of the Soviet Union, to include
Russia’s enemy du
jour Ukraine,
while a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or
Mossad, is not unthinkable.
Nevertheless,
the politically weak May government, desperately seeking a formidable
foreign enemy to rally around against, insisted that Russia, almost
certainly acting under orders from Vladimir Putin himself, carried
out the killing of a former British double agent who had been
released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer
capable of doing any damage to Russia. Putin apparently did all that
in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be
the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that would be an
absolute top priority to have go smoothly.
Now
there has been an actual death in Amesbury near Salisbury that has
been attributed to novichok. On June 30th,
Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were admitted to hospital after
being found unconscious. Sturgess died eight days later. The May
government has not yet blamed it on Putin or even on a clumsy Russian
operative that might have inadvertently
left behind a
vial of poison or a used syringe, though Home Secretary Sajid Javid
came close to that when
he suggested that
Russia was using Britain as a “dumping ground for poisons.”
Police suggestions that the poisoned couple appear to have handled
novichok infused material of some kind before succumbing appears to
be contradicted by inability to find the actual source of the alleged
exposure.
British
government dancing around the issue notwithstanding, there have been
suggestions that the closest source of more novichok might well be
the U.K. government labs at nearby Porton Down, only seven miles from
Salisbury and Amesbury, which increases suspicion about the original
story promulgated by Downing Street. Would the British government
actually poison an expendable ex-Russian spy and his daughter to
divert attention from a domestic political problem at home? It’s
worth considering as the “blame it all on Putin narrative”
becomes even less credible.
The
second story comes from Syria, where there is also a Russian hand as
Moscow is aiding the government of Bashar al-Assad. The by now
notorious April 7, 2018 alleged chemical attack on the rebel-held
Syrian city of Douma was widely blamed by Western countries and the
mainstream media on Assad’s forces. This resulted in a decision by
U.S. President Donald Trump to order massive U.S.-led retaliatory
airstrikes against targets reportedly involved in chemical production
in and around Damascus.
Trump
blamed “animal
Assad” for “using
nerve agents” and
both the media and most European governments followed that line,
concluding that Damascus had ordered the chemical attacks a mere
moments after videos purporting to show scores of chemical attack
victims first surfaced from rebel sources, long before U.S.
intelligence could have made its own assessment. A 5-page White
House assessment released
on April 13th, just days after the alleged attack asserted
that sarin was used at Douma,
claiming that “A significant body of information points to the
regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some
additional information points to the regime also using the nerve
agent sarin.”
Independent
sources warned at the time that not
a single neutral observer was on the ground to
confirm that chemical agents launched by the Syrian government had,
in fact, been used, but were ignored. All of the sources reporting
the attack were either affiliated with the rebels who occupied the
area or were not physically present in Douma.
Now,
finally, three months later, there has been a credible independent
report on what was determined about the attack through chemical
analysis of traces recovered in Douma. A preliminary report published
last Friday by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) found no traces of any nerve agent like sarin at the
site. The OPCW reportstates
this clearly:
“No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products
were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples
taken from alleged casualties.”
This
means that the Trump Administration claimed to have details relating
to an event in a foreign country that it did not know and could not
actually confirm to be true. And it used that as a justification for
ordering an airstrike that killed people and destroyed targets in
Syria. Will the White House respond to the OPCW report and apologize,
possibly to include reparations for an unjustified attack on another
sovereign nation? Don’t hold your breath.
The
Salisbury and Douma attacks are illustrative of just what happens
when a government is prepared to dissimulate or even lie to go the
extra mile to make a case to justify preemptive action that otherwise
might be challenged. Theresa May is, unfortunately, still in power
and so is Donald Trump. In a better world an outraged public would
demand that they be thrown out of office and even possibly subjected
to the tender ministrations of the International Criminal Court in
The Hague. With power comes accountability, or at least that should
be the rule, but it is a dictum that has for some time been ignored.
Even given that, one might hope that the blunders will not be
repeated, but there is not even any assurance that either May or
Trump is much given to “lessons learned” or that a Mike Pence or
Boris Johnson would be any better. That is our tragedy.
Philip
M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the
National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation
that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address
is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is
inform@cnionline.org.
This
article was originally published by “Unz
Review“ –
Trump die zwaar onder druk ligt in de VS vanwege zijn gesprek met Putin, had gisteren het gore lef te zeggen dat hij zich versproken had toen hij stelde dat ook een ander de VS verkiezingen kan hebben gemanipuleerd……
Trump liet weten dat hij het woord ‘would’ had gebruikt waar het had moeten zijn: ‘wouldn’t….’ Ofwel hij vroeg zich eerder af waarom het de Russen zouden zijn, die de verkiezingen hadden gemanipuleerd, ‘waar hij bedoelde’: waarom zouden het de Russen niet geweest zijn, die de verkiezingen hebben gemanipuleerd…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Tja als je de dodelijke belangen van de democraten, republikeinen (die beiden vooral goed zijn in liegen), de doodsindustrie aangeduid als wapenindustrie (die samen met het Pentagon worden aangeduid als militair-industrieel complex in de VS) voor de voeten loopt, zijn de rapen gaar……
Bij
een luchtaanval van de VS in Syrië zijn naar schatting rond de 30 burgers
vermoord…… De aanval was gericht op 2 steden in de buurt van Abu
Kamal ten oosten van de Eufraat (rivier), in het grensgebied van Syrië en Irak.
In
mei kondigde de VS nog aan de aanvallen op IS groepen te verhogen,
echter wat het VS commando onder IS verstaat zijn allesbehalve IS
terroristen, maar Syrische burgers in voor de VS strategische gebieden….. Gebieden die ofwel in handen zijn van het reguliere Syrische leger, dan wel gebieden die in handen van dit leger dreigen te vallen en waar
de VS volkomen lak heeft aan burgerslachtoffers…… De VS erkent nog
ontkent verantwoordelijk te zijn voor de luchtaanvallen, maar stelt dat het mogelijk zou kunnen zijn (….)* Wat betreft de slachtoffers: hetzelfde geldt voor de slachtoffers, die zijn vermoord tijdens de aanvallen van de VS tegen het reguliere Syrische leger en/of aan haar gelieerde groepen……..
De VS kon e.e.a. niet duidelijker maken dan door de steden Al-Souseh en AL-Baghouz Fowqani aan te vallen, daar deze steden weigerden doorgang te verlenen aan door de VS gesteunde terreurgroepen…. Volgens de media waren er onder de slachtoffers IS strijders, echter dat ontkennen de bewoners van die steden in alle toonaarden……. Voorts bevatten de aan de VS gelieerde terreurgroepen steeds vaker oud-IS strijders……..
Tja, Syrië is nog altijd een soevereine staat met een democratisch gekozen president, ofwel Syrië heeft alle recht om haar, door illegale groepen en landen (zoals de VS) ingenomen gebieden te bevrijden. Waar de zogenaamde gematigde rebellen, moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen, die worden gesteund door het westen, hun vreselijke terreur uitoefenen op de Syrische bevolking en daarbij zelfs de sharia wetgeving gebruiken (of moet je spreken over misbruiken??)
Het
is intussen wel duidelijk dat de VS zich niet zal terugtrekken uit
Syrië en dat de wil van deze grootste terreurentiteit op aarde de daar strategische posities te behouden, tot nog
veel meer bloedvergieten zal leiden….. Dit door de VS dat één
op één verantwoordelijk is voor de opstand die tot het vele
bloedvergieten en de oorlog in Syrië hebben geleid….. (de eerste aanzetten van de VS tot het omverwerpen van het Assad bewind middels een opstand die tot een coup moesten leiden, dateren al van 2006…)
Tijd
dat het lamme orgaan, aangeduid met de naam Internationaal Strafhof
(ICC) eindelijk eens actie onderneemt tegen de grootste
terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS. Deze vereniging van terreurstaten is
vanaf 1945 tot nu verantwoordelijk voor meer dan 22 miljoen
moorden….**
Tijd
ook dat de rest van de wereld zich verenigt tegen de VS, aan het
ongebreideld bloedvergieten door deze terreurstaat moet eindelijk eens een eind komen!! (2 vliegen in 1 klap: zo hoeven mensen niet langer te vluchten naar de EU voor door de VS gestarte illegale oorlogen…..)
In het volgende artikel van Whitney Webb, eerder gepubliceerd op MintPress News, noemt ze het Syrisch Observatorium voor de Mensenrechten (SOHR), jammer daar dit SOHR een propagandaorgaan is voor een aantal terreurgroepen in Syrië en zeker niet zou mogen worden genoemd door journalisten die hun werk wel serieus nemen, dit in tegenstelling tot de journalisten van de reguliere (massa-) media, die zogenaamd onafhankelijk zijn…. De journalisten die hun werk wel serieus nemen zijn voor het overgrote deel te vinden op de sociale media, vandaar ook het gezeur in de politiek en in die reguliere media over ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws), daar die reguliere media steeds meer publiek verliezen…… De politiek bemoeit zich hiermee daar de reguliere media brave vertolkers en verdedigers zijn van de westerse agressie elders…….
US
Airstrike Kills 54 Civilians in Syria in Push to Control Syrian
Border
With
the U.S. now unable to prevent Syrian government control of the
Syria-Jordan border, Friday’s strikes are a sign that the U.S.
effort to oust the Syrian government from Abu Kamal is likely to only
grow stronger as its occupation of Syrian territory faces an
uncertain future.
(MPN) Around
midnight on Friday, U.S.-led coalition warplanes in Syria conducted
intensive airstrikes near Abu Kamal in the Deir ez-Zor province, with
estimates of civilian casualties ranging from 30 to 54. Syrian state
media agency SANA has
claimed that
at least 30 were killed and that most of the dead were women and
children. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR),
often cited by international and particularly Western media, has
asserted that
54 were killed.
According
to local reports, the U.S.-led coalition strikes targeted the
towns of al-Souseh and al-Baghouz Fowqani, east of the Euphrates
river in the countryside around Abu Kamal. The bombings resulted in
dozens of houses in the towns collapsing, resulting in numerous
civilian deaths, as whole families were crushed by the rubble while
they were sleeping.
The
U.S. coalition did not confirm or deny its role in the strike,
stating only that it “may have” been responsible. However, the
bombing comes after the coalition announced in
early May it would intensify airstrikes targeting Daesh (ISIS),
particularly in Eastern Syria along the Syria-Iraq border. Abu Kamal,
where last night’s strikes took place, is a strategic border town
on the Syria-Iraq border and is the only Syria-Iraq border crossing
currently controlled by Syrian government forces.
Western
media reports have
claimed that
Daesh militants were among the dead, but survivors of the attack
contest this claim, instead suggesting that they had been targeted
for their unwillingness to cooperate with local U.S.-backed militias.
Locals told SANA that
U.S. claims that the strikes were intended to target Daesh were false
and instead suggested that two towns had been targeted for refusing
the entry of the U.S.-backed opposition militias, particularly the
Qasad militia.
Reports in
Arabic media from earlier this year (English
translation)
have claimed to provide evidence that many former Daesh members have
joined the Qasad militia, both in the province of Deir Ez-Zor and
al-Hasakah. Such reports are consistent with U.S.
support for other militia groups,
such as the Deir Ez-Zor Military Council (DMC), that also include
significant numbers of former Daesh fighters who had surrendered to
the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the proxy force of the coalition,
over the course of the past year.
Losing
influence elsewhere in Syria, the U.S. sets sights on Abu
Kamal
The
strike comes at a delicate time for the U.S. coalition in Syria, as
its most important alliances, which enable its occupation of more
than 30 percent of
Syrian territory, threaten to dissolve while local resistance to the
presence of foreign troops continues to grow.
MintPress has
recently reported on these developments — regarding first the rise
of local resistance to
the U.S. presence from Arab and Kurdish tribes in U.S.-occupied
Syria, and then the
agreement between
the Syrian government and factions of the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG, the backbone of the U.S. proxy force, the SDF)
behind the back of the U.S. coalition. Both developments threaten to
make the U.S. occupation of Syrian territory not only ultimately
unsustainable but indeed short-lived.
The
U.S. has also lost influence elsewhere in Syria, particularly in
Syria’s south owing to the Syrian government’s recent, highly
successful campaign in the area. The offensive has seen the Syrian
government reclaim nearly all of the Syrian-Jordan border and
is likely
to result in
the U.S. abandoning its long-standing presence in al-Tanf, the
strategic area where the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet.
The
U.S. has
maintained a
military base at al-Tanf, where it has trained proxy fighters for the
past several years, and has occupied a 34-mile zone surrounding that
facility. Losing that location is a blow to U.S. influence in Syria
and would mean a consolidation of U.S. occupation forces in the
Eastern portion of Syria nominally controlled by the SDF.
For
that reason, the recent strikes on Abu Kamal are notable, as they
build on other recent coalition strikes in the area. Indeed, there is
no Daesh presence in Abu Kamal aside from the pockets of Daesh
that intermittently
attack the
Syrian government-held city from the area of Syria occupied by the
U.S.
In
addition, recent coalition bombings in and around Abu Kamal have
shown that these strikes have
nothing to do with
wiping out Daesh. For instance, another recent coalition strike in
the Abu Kamal area, which took place last month, did not target Daesh
at all but instead Syrian government forces and allied Iraqi
militias. Though the U.S. never publicly admitted responsibility for
the attack and an anonymous U.S. official had blamed the strike on
Israel, forensic evidence analyzed and collected by Iraqi
forces showed that
the U.S. was indeed responsible.
The
U.S. interest in Abu Kamal is aimed at wresting
the strategic outpost from
the control of the Syrian government, which would result in the
Syrian government losing its only road access to both Iraq and Iran.
Cutting off this supply line, particularly the connection between
Syria and Iran, has
long been acknowledged as
an important U.S. goal in its occupation of Northeastern Syria.
With
the U.S. now unable to prevent Syrian government control of the
Syria-Jordan border, Friday’s strikes are a sign that the U.S.
effort to oust the Syrian government from Abu Kamal is likely to only
grow stronger as its occupation of Syrian territory faces an
uncertain future. If the high death tolls from the recent strike are
any indication, the U.S. seems to have few qualms about killing
scores of civilians in pursuit of its geopolitical goals in Syria.
![Syrian armed opposition groups make preparations ahead of their attack to Assad Regime forces from the opposition controlled Quneitra located at Israeli border, on 16 July, 2018 in Quneitra, Syria [Ammar Al Ali/Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180716_2_31489878_35714053.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
