Another Foiled False Flag

Mathaba.net 

by Stephen Lendman

Wikipedia defines false or black flags as "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities." 

"The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is: flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations and can be used during peace-time."

Big lies substitute for truth. Stories are fabricated. Media scoundrelspromote them. At issue is heightening fear for planned policies. Pretexts are needed for militarism, imperial wars, and homeland repression. If and when people learn they were duped, it's too late to matter.

It's an American tradition. Incidents are strategically timed. Innocent victims suffer. So does everyone living under heightened national security state conditions.

Threats are manufactured. States of emergency are declared. Rule of law principles are discarded. Unchallenged dominance alone matters. Wars on humanity follow. Big lies facilitate them. False flags play their part.

Here we go again. This one's a sequel. Perhaps Hollywood blockbusters will follow, first the original plot, then the latest. More on the earlier one below. 

On May 7, AP headlined "US: CIA thwarts new al-Qaida underwear bomb plot," saying:

Agents foiled "an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a US-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned."

AP described an upgraded underwear bomb plot. Like the earlier one, it was "designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time" US officials called it "more refined."

On May 7, the FBI issued a brief statement, saying:

"As a result of close cooperation with our security and intelligence partners overseas, an improvised explosive device (IED) designed to carry out a terrorist attack has been seized abroad." 

"The FBI currently has possession of the IED and is conducting technical and forensics analysis on it. Initial exploitation indicates that the device is very similar to IEDs that have been used previously by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in attempted terrorist attacks, including against aircraft and for targeted assassinations." 

"The device never presented a threat to public safety, and the US government is working closely with international partners to address associated concerns with the device." 

"We refer you to the Department of Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration, regarding ongoing security measures to safeguard the American people and the traveling public."

The device contained no metal. It's not clear if body scanners could have detected it. Officials said an alleged Yemen-based bomber hadn't yet picked a target or bought plane tickets. CIA agents seized the device before he had a chance. The suspect wasn't identified.

AP learned of the plot earlier but agreed to White House and CIA requests to delay publishing because intelligence operations were ongoing.

On May 8, the White House and FBI confirmed AP's report. Deputy national security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Obama knew last month. "The disruption of the IED plot underscores the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," she said.

"While the president was assured that the device did not pose a threat to the public, he directed the department of homeland security and law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take whatever steps necessary to guard against this type of attack," she added.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman Matt Chandler said:

The latest plot "demonstrates our adversaries' interest in targeting the aviation sector." Protective "layers" are thus used. 

They "include threat and vulnerability analysis, pre-screening and screening of passengers using the best available technology, random searches at airports, federal air marshal coverage, and additional security measures both seen and unseen."

"It's not clear who built the bomb," AP reported. Authorities "suspect it was the work of master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri." A Saudi citizen, he's one of their most wanted. Earlier he was imprisoned and released.

He's reportedly in Yemen with his brother Abdullah. He's another Saudi most wanted. Washington claims they're both Al Qaeda connected. He's blamed for earlier bomb plots.

On March 24, 2011, the State Department included Ibrahim on its terrorist watch list. He's also on an Interpol Orange Notice one. It "warns police and other international organizations about potential threats from disguised weapons, parcel bombs, or other dangerous materials."

Washington considers Yemen strategically important. It's mostly for its location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia's southern border, the Red Sea, and Bab el- Mandeb strait. 

It's a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea. Around three million barrels of oil pass through it daily. The Gulf of Aden connects to the Indian Ocean. Since 2009, Obama waged drone war on the country. CIA and Special Forces operate on the ground. Death squads are deployed.

America's at war with Yemen without declaring it. Predator drones escalate killing. Media scoundrels say little. Yemen gets attention when foiled bomb plots are claimed. They're pretexts for stepped up measures there and at home. 

Washington's targets are global. US citizens share risks with foreign ones. Waging war on humanity leaves no one safe. Everyone everywhere is fair game. Any place could erupt in free-fire zone violence. Anyone can be accused of terrorism or conspiracy to commit it.

America's hegemonic ambitions threaten humanity. Too few at home understand. Public ignorance and indifference let Washington get away with murder. It's a global killing machine to remove all challenges.

The Earlier Underwear Bomber False Flag

It was fake like the sequel. In December 2009, US officials claimed Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen, got Al Qaeda training, and explosive PETN chemicals.

Supposedly he tried using them to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. In fact, he was a fall guy for a jointCIA/Mossad/India Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) false flag.

The same alliance staged coordinated 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded. They also were behind former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 2007 assassination. 

The same issue then remains US policy now. Destabilizing and balkanizing Pakistan is planned. It's also perhaps intended for Afghanistan and Libya. Iraq is already divided. Always it's for easier control and exploitation.

Abdulmutallab was a convenient patsy. He was used to facilitate America's war on Yemen. Britain denied him an entrance visa. His name was on a State Department terror watch list. 

Yet he wasn't on a No Fly List. He paid cash for a one-way ticket to Detroit, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped onboard by a "well-dressed Indian" gentleman (a RAW agent) to facilitate Washington's scheme to use him as a convenient dupe.

His PETN was virtually harmless. It was technically deficient, failed to go off properly, and had fire cracker strength. Following the incident, Washington's war on Yemen escalated and enhanced airport screening began. Full body scanners the ACLU calls "virtual strip search(es)" are used. [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]

False flags create opportunities to advance America's imperium. They also facilitate its war on dissent. In May 2011, three key Patriot Act powers were extended for another four years. Little debate assured swift passage. As a result:

(1) Unlimited roving wiretaps continue unchecked.

(2) Section 215 pertains to alleged suspects. It authorizes government access to "any tangible item." They included financial records and transactions, student and medical records, phone conversations, emails, other Internet use, and whatever else Washington claims essential.

(3) Alleged suspect organizations and individuals can be surveilled, whether or not evidence links them to terrorism or complicity to commit it. In other words, police state powers to monitor anyone for any reason or none at all remain unchecked.

Racial profiling and waging war on Islam got boosts. Abdulmutallab benefitted Washington at his own expense. Expect the underwear bomb sequel to provide more. 

Washington will take full advantage. Perhaps Obama has another war in mind.

A Final Comment

On May 8, The New York Times headlined "Rare Double Agent Disrupted Bombing Plot, US says." 

Most likely it's double-dealing official lies and misreporting. According to Times-speak, a Saudi intelligence agent "infiltrated (a) terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday."

Washington claims he provided an "innovative bomb" designed for "aviation attack." The Times reported the story without checking for reliability. If official sources say it, accounts follow true or false.

The agent is back in Saudi Arabia, The Times said. CIA agents were involved.

What's true or false isn't clear. What's certain is another false flag for reasons similar to previous ones. They repeat well-timed for strategic advantage. 

They're manufactured to look real. Media scoundrels headline them. Most people don't know they've been had. The scam repeats because it works. No wonder America gets away with murder and much more.

America's Lost War

Mathaba.net

America's Afghan war is lost and illegal. The Bush administration got no Security Council authorization or congressional declaration of war.

by Stephen Lendman

International law expert Francis Boyle said Congress passed a War Powers Resolution Authorization. Doing so gave Bush "blank check" power "to use military force against any individual, organization, or state" at his discretion.

International and constitutional law be damned. Waging war on Afghanistan "is clearly illegal. It constitutes armed aggression. It is creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan."

It's also a lost cause. Pentagon commanders know it. So does Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis. In an unclassified report and more detailed classified one, he explained ongoing disastrous conditions.

From his own firsthand observations and what others told him, he concluded that America's war failed. It can't be won. Official statements conceal hard truths. He witnessed "the absence of success on virtually every level."

Every area he observed firsthand "all over Afghanistan....the tactical situation was bad to abysmal."

Sunday, April 15 highlighted his assessment. The New York Times tried but failed to downplay Taliban success and US failure in an article headlined, "Afghan Forces Quell Attack; Few Civilians Are Killed."

In fact, Taliban forces rocked Afghanistan. Coordinated attacks struck strategic targets in Kabul and at least three other Eastern provincial cities. Jalalabad's airport was attacked. So were police stations and other government facilities.

Beginning what it called its "spring offensive," high profile targets included government buildings, the Parliament, presidential palace, and foreign embassies.

Calling the attacks "complex," The Times admitted they "immobilized much of Kabul" and other areas struck. "Life slowly returned to normal," it continued. A "remarkably small number of civilians" were killed.

Hamid Karzai blames a NATO "intelligence failure." At the same time, he praised Afghan security forces. Given their ineffectiveness, it's how knowing for what. 

According to US ambassador Ryan Crocker, the attacks showed how America's forces are still needed. His comment was revealing. America needs violence and instability to justify its presence. Peace and calm means staying isn't warranted. Expect none any time soon.

Interviewed on CNN, Crocker said Washington's embassy was on lockdown. Like The Times, he downplayed the attacks. He stopped short of admitting that Afghan security forces and America's can't contain Taliban determination to expel an unwanted occupier.

If Sunday didn't prove it, what will? Throughout the day, well-planned, coordinated attacks used rocket-propelled grenades, explosives, and other weapons effectively. 

Parliament and adjacent areas were struck. So were NATO headquarters, Karzai's presidential palace, and foreign embassies. Among them were Britain's, Germany's, Japan's and Russia's. 

The British ambassador's residence was struck. So were two hotels, including Kabul's Star Hotel. Fighters used rocket-propelled grenades, other rockets, hand grenades, other explosives, heavy machine guns, lighter weapons, and suicide vests.

Fighting raged for 18 hours. In ten and a half years of war, it was the most dramatic example of Taliban determination to prevail, and America's inability to stop them.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said attacks were preceded by two months of planning. Dozens of fighters were involved. "We are strong, and we can attack anywhere we want," he said. On Sunday, he proved it. The whole world saw what America's scoundrel media tried, but couldn't downplay.

Comparisons to Tet

April 15 is reminiscent of January 30, 1968. It was Tet Offensive day one. North Vietnam army regulars and NLF fighters launched nationwide attacks.

Three and a half years into the war, it turned the tide. It showed determined freedom fighters can prevail over the world's mightiest military, though they alone didn't do it, nor could they declare victory after weeks of bloody conflict. More on that below.

Carefully planned, Tet lasted two months. Fighting was fierce across South Vietnam. Strategic targets were struck, including the heart of Saigon, Hue, and around America's Khe Sanh base.

Vietnamese called years of struggle "The War against the Americans to save the nation." They never wanted war, their nation divided, or Washington as an enemy. Imperial arrogance had other plans from end of WW II. Liberation came only after 30 years of conflict. 

May 1954 Dien Bien Phu defeat ended French involvement. America's exit took another two decades.

On January 30, 1968, three and a half years after America's August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and NLF guerrillas stormed Banmethut, Kontum and Pleiku.

At the same time, they invaded 13 of the 16 provincial capitals throughout the Mekong Delta. US forces were caught off guard and stunned. America's Saigon embassy was penetrated. So was the presidential palace, a radio station, ARVN headquarters, and General Westmoreland's own Tan Son Nhut airbase compound.

America's Bien Hoa air base was assaulted. Over 20 aircraft were either destroyed or damaged. Surprise gave fighters an advantage. Saigon experienced chaos. 

Tactics varied from area to area. Most Saigon fighting ended in days. In Hue, it raged for weeks. It became one of Vietnam's longest and bloodiest battles.

After two months of conflict, Tet ended in defeat. Years later, Vietnamese won the war. Tet was decisive. It turned the tide. It showed US vulnerability from freedom fighter determination to prevail. They didn't succeed alone. American anti-war activism made the difference. So did Congress.

Vietnam Era Anti-War Activism Absent Today

In the 1960s and 70s, students, workers, middle class households, academics, and others rallied effectively against war. In 1968, their efforts peaked. With a 36% approval rating and 26% on Vietnam, Johnson became a lame duck. On March 31, he announced:

"I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

Despite his Great Society accomplishments, he was finished, a broken man. He became a shadow of his former self, a once bigger than life figure in Congress and as president. In January 1973 at age 64, he was dead.

Beginning in early 1965, anti-war activism gained momentum. Efforts included protest rallies and marches, university "teach-ins," other campus activities, and an April 17, 1965 Washington rally, drawing up to 25,000. A later one drew half a million.

Numerous events followed. Thousands participated. In October 1967, a two-day march on the Pentagon attracted national media attention. Activists advocated draft card burning. 

Today's military is all-volunteer. But no one forces young men and women to enlist. A Main Street Depression pressures them. Better to be unemployed than dead, maimed, or psychologically traumatized.

Perhaps a voice today like Martin Luther King's could persuade them and rally nationwide anti-war fervor. His spirit's badly needed. No one matches what counts most. Nor has a new millennium Daniel Ellsberg exposed today's lies like his Pentagon Papers revealed.

If they did, who'd publish them? Not The New York Times and Washington Post. What they did in 1971 wouldn't likely repeat now. 

Perhaps today's Internet can substitute effectively. Revealing vital truths and spreading them is crucial. It's step one to arousing public passion for peace. If sustained, anything is possible.

Congressional Authority to Wage or End Wars

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution authorizes only Congress to declare war. It also has power to end them. It controls funding. It can supply it or cut it off.
Article I, Section 7, Clause I says: 

"All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills."

Either House may originate an appropriations bill though the House claims sole authority.  Either House may amend bills, including revenue and appropriations ones.

Congressional appropriation power is key. Cutting off funds ended Vietnam fighting. Early critics like Senators Mike Mansfield, Frank Church, William Fulbright, Albert Gore Sr., and Stuart Symington spoke privately for the most part. They didn't act.

Congressional debate then changed things. Under Johnson, it began ineffectively. Under Nixon, it gained traction. By June 30, 1970, the Church/Cooper amendment stipulated no further spending for soldiers, combat assistance, advisors, or bombing operations in Cambodia. It was the first congressional budgetary act limiting war funding.

Others followed. In 1972, the Church/Case amendment ended funding for America's Southeast Asia military operations. Time for a face-saving withdrawal was permitted. House passage didn't follow Senate action. It slowed, but didn't defeat anti-war efforts.

In June 1973, Congress passed another Church/Case amendment. Beginning August 15, war funding ended. Nixon's veto was overridden. The War Powers Act followed. 

It gives presidents the power to act unilaterally for 60 days in response to a "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." It authorizes another 30 days to disengage, short of congressional assent to continue.

On April 30, 1975, America's Vietnam involvement entirely ended with a humiliating Saigon embassy rooftop pullout. With sustained anti-war fervor, replicating that in Kabul, Baghdad, and Libya can happen. 

Afghan, Iraqi, and Libyan Jamahiriya freedom fighters keep resisting. With effective US public support, Afghan fighting and occupation can end. Iraqi and Libyan liberation struggles can succeed. Syrians can be free from Western-generated violence. Iran can avoid it.

Anti-war activism ended America's Vietnam involvement. Why not in today's theaters of war and occupation! Popular resistance must reawaken. Sustained public pressure can prevail!

A Final Comment: Ending a Lost War

In his 1995 book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," former Defense Secretary McNamara wrote: "....we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

In 1965, he knew the war was lost and said so. He told Lyndon Johnson: "I don't believe they're ever going to quit. And I don't see....that we have any....plan for victory - militarily or diplomatically." 

He spoke privately as escalation increased dramatically. He knew the futility and lawlessness, but went along anyway. When it was too late to matter, he explained. Johnson also knew but continued a war he couldn't win. It cost him a second term and shortened his life.

After multiple post-9/11 wars, occupations, and others planned, public resistance can replicate what ended America's Vietnam involvement. It's high time that happened! 

Aroused people power can defeat America's imperial arrogance if it decides enough's enough and tries!

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago, can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net

Syria and Iran in Focus

by Stephen Lendman - Mathaba.net

America's longstanding agenda targets both countries. Israel wants regional rivals removed. Washington wants independent regimes replaced by pro-Western puppet ones.

All options are considered, including war. For months, saber rattling targeted Tehran. Multiple rounds of sanctions were imposed. Stiffer ones are considered. More on Iran below.

For 15 months, Syria's been wracked by Western-generated violence. No end of conflict appears likely. Constitutional reform and democratic elections don't matter. Neither does majority pro-Assad support.

Washington's comfortable dealing with democrats, despots, or anything in between so long as regimes serve its interests. Otherwise they're targeted for removal. International law is a non-starter. So are fundamental US statute laws and America's Constitution.

Since early last year, Western and regional nations armed, funded and trained insurgents. US, UK and perhaps other Special Forces actively aid them. So do CIA and MI6 operatives.

Al Qaeda elements actively participate. Washington uses them strategically as enemies and allies. At times, it's done simultaneously in different parts of the world. Scoundrel media reports don't explain. Regurgitating official lies are featured.

Last year, Russia accused Western nations of illicitly arming Syrian insurgents. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:

"Nobody is commenting on it and no one is admitting it, but the facts are impossible to contradict. Weapons are being smuggled intoSyria from Turkey and Iraq."

They're also supplied by other nations. So are mercenaries used to depose Assad.

On May 16, Syrian officials reported a truck seized with hidden weapons in al-Raqqa province. Numerous times other elicit caches were discovered. 

In late April, Lebanon's navy intercepted a Sierra-Leone registered ship carrying arms and munitions. Heavy ones bound for Syrian insurgents included machine guns, artillery shells, and rocket-propelled grenades.

Last February, Itar Tass reported a Russian secret services source saying "(h)uge batches of small arms and munitions for the Syrian Liberation Army's troops are supplied from Lebanon (by opposition March 14 alliance elements), Iraq and Turkey, but unofficially, not through (their) governments."

"The supply list includes submachine guns, machine guns, sniper rifles and antitank grenade launchers."

Lt. General Leonid Sazhin said "the scenario that has already been developed and administered by the United States and (its) NATO allies, mainly France, Britain and Turkey, as well as the monarchy regimes from the Cooperation for the Arab States of the Gulf, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is being implemented in Syria."

Qatar's actively involved. So are Jordan, Libya and Israel. Doing so is illegal. International law prohibits interfering in the internal affairs of other countries except in self-defense.  

On May 15, the Washington Post headlined "Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors' money, US coordination," saying:

Insurgents got "significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks." Coordinated by Washington, Gulf states (notably Saudi Arabia) finance them. Opposition elements, US, and foreign officials confirm what's ongoing.

Obama claims Washington's not supplying weapons and munitions directly. Be skeptical. He's a serial liar. Nothing he says is credible. Directly and/or indirectly, administration officials are very much involved. America orchestrated the insurgency from inception.

According to an unnamed State Department official:

"We are increasing our nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, and we continue to coordinate our efforts with friends and allies in the region and beyond in order to have the biggest impact on what we are collectively doing."

Washington maintains direct contact with insurgent leaders. "Many officials now consider an expanding military confrontation to be inevitable. Material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border."

Large supplies are flowing. One opposition figure said "(s)ome areas are loaded with weapons."

Washington officials met with Eastern Syrian Kurds. Talks included "opening a second front against Assad's forces that would compel him to move resources from the west."

When NATO meets in Chicago this weekend, discussions will include anti-Assad strategy.

Syrian "(o)pposition figures said they have been in direct contact with State Department officials to designate worthy rebel recipients of arms and pinpoint locations for stockpiles...."

Pentagon officials prepared military options. They include destroyingSyria's air defenses. In fact, if air strikes begin, all strategic sites will be targeted. Libya's model will be replicated. Mass deaths and destruction will follow. Increasingly it looks likely.

Target Iran

The RAND Corporation think tank has considerable influence on USpolicy. Operating like a shadow government, it supports militarism, imperial wars, and technocrat run world government.

Nonetheless, its new report warned against attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Titled "How to Defuse Iran's Nuclear Threat," it argued for "diplomacy and economic sanctions," not militarism.

"An Israeli or American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would make it more, not less, likely that the Iranian regime would decide to produce and deploy nuclear weapons. Such an attack would also make it more, not less, difficult to contain Iranian influence."

RAND notes Iran's regional "appeal" as an anti-American, anti-imperial, anti-Zionist "bastion." Attacking its nuclear and/or other sites would enhance its influence. It believes the hawkish Israeli approach:

"rests on a faulty assumption that a future, post-attack Middle East would indeed be free of a nuclear-armed Iran. In fact, a post-attack Middle East may result in the worst of both worlds: a nuclear-armedIran more determined than ever to challenge the Jewish state, and with far fewer regional and international impediments to doing so."

It recommends supporting current and former Israeli officials arguing against military strikes. It suggests bolstering US/Israeli "security cooperation and intelligence sharing." It believes pressuring Iran non-belligerently can weaken "its capacity to project power."

A future Iranian regime may view Israel differently, it says. Washingtonshould try convincing Iranian people that America "cares about Iranas a nation, not merely a problem to be solved."

"Iranian people offer the surest hope for a future Iran that is more amenable to US interests."

Attacking its facilities "would make  it more, not less, likely (to want) nuclear weapons."

Four RAND contributors produced the report, including:

(1) Former US Assistant Secretary of State James Dobbins. He directs RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center.

(2) Dalia Dassa Kaye, senior RAND political scientist and Pardee RAND graduate school faculty member.

(3) Alireza Nader, senior RAND international policy analyst focusing on Iranian politics and foreign policy.

(4) Frederic Wehrey, senior RAND policy analyst focusing on Persian Gulf security.

Whether their assessment and recommendations influence US and/or Israeli policies remains to be seen. 

What their report omitted is significant. 

Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, not belligerent. Nothing proves otherwise.

IAEA inspectors discovered no evidence suggesting weapons development and/or production. Neither did annual US intelligence assessments as recently as March 2012.

Discussion of Israel's nuclear arsenal was excluded. So was its willingness to use it if feel threatened. Israel's a global menace. Belligerence and violence reflect official policy. 

Palestine's been illegally occupied for 45 years. So has Syria's Golan. Lebanon was attacked in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006.Southern Lebanon was illegally occupied for 18 years. Israel still holds Ghajar bordering Golan and Sheba Farms. It's valued for its water resources.

For over 40 years, Israel lawlessly violated Lebanese territory. Daily overflights occur. Lebanon's justified in fearing more war. So is Gazaafter Cast Lead.

In 2007, Syria's alleged nuclear site was bombed. Evidence of an existing one was suspect and inconclusive. At the time, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said its experts analyzed satellite imagery. They concluded that the building struck was not a nuclear facility. 

Despite just cause, Damascus didn't retaliate. In 1981, Israeldestroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor. Neither did Baghdad.

Israel's involved in arming and destabilizing Assad's government. It's longstanding agenda calls for regional hegemony. Balkanization and belligerency are policies to achieve it.

Iran hasn't attacked another nation in over 200 years. It threatens none now, including Israel. Claims about wanting Israel wiped off the map are spurious. Calling it a sponsor of regional terrorism are false. 

Israel and America threaten world peace, not Iran or Syria. That should be issue one. RAND didn't mention it. Instead it discussed defusing a nonexistent Iranian nuclear threat. 

Urging diplomacy and sanctions, not belligerence, misses the point. Political solutions should always be policy. So should welcoming nonbelligerent states into the family of nations, ending repressive sanctions, and working for world peace.

Influential groups should support policies conforming to international law. They should oppose and denounce belligerent, lawless, destructive, or counterproductive ones. RAND and others like it fall short on all counts.

Obama Planning More and more War

by Stephen Lendman

Mathaba.net

America's favorite pastime isn't baseball. It's war, permanent imperial wars that won't end in our lifetime Dick Cheney said earlier.

America is addicted to war. One nation after another is ravaged and plundered. Unchallenged global dominance is sought. 

Who's next- Syria? Iran? Washington's long knives target both countries.

On June 29, AP headlined "US, Russia fail to reach agreement on Syria, jeopardizing Annan plan to end crisis," saying:

Before heading for Geneva, Hillary Clinton and Sergey Lavrov met in St. Petersburg. Differences between them weren't resolved.

Washington demands regime change. Moscow wants Syrians to decide who'll lead them. Lavrov said:

We "agreed to look for an agreement that will bring us closer based on a clear understanding of what’s written in the Annan plan that (all) sides in Syria need an incentive for a national dialogue."

"But it’s only up to the Syrians to make agreements on what the Syrian state will be like, who will hold (government) jobs and positions."

Putting a brave face on intractable differences, Lavrov hoped Geneva discussions would move closer to resolving Syria's conflict peacefully. "But I am not saying that we will agree on every dot."

Kofi Annan proposed unity government. Government and opposition members would be included. Elements seeking belligerent change would be excluded. 

Russia and other major powers expressed support. Washington insists Assad must go. He told Iran's IRIB channel 4:

"We, in Syria, do not accept any model that is not Syrian and national, regardless of whether it was imposed by superpowers or proposed by friendly countries." 

"No one knows how to resolve the problem in Syria as well as we do, as Syrians….so, any model that comes from abroad is unacceptable regardless of its content."

At the same time, he thanked Russia, China, and other countries for trying to resolve things peacefully to restore stability.

On June 30, America, Russia, China, Britain, France, Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar met in Geneva. Moscow wanted Iran there. Washington rejected Tehran's participation.

Reports late Saturday said world powers struck a transitional government deal. What part Assad would play remains unclear. 

Russia says Syrians must decide who'll lead them. The deal struck has no preconditions. 

Ahead of word from Geneva, insurgent leaders rejected transitional government with Assad in it. Earlier they spurned peace initiatives. They take orders from Washington. 

Expect little more now than earlier. America won't tolerate peaceful resolution. Regime change depends on violence and instability. What's next remains to be seen.

Iran is also targeted. On June 25, Aviation Week (AW) headlined "Raiding Iran Triggers Discussion of When and How," saying:

"Evidence is mounting that the U.S. defense community and the Obama administration view 2013 as the likely window for a bombing attack on Iran's nuclear and missile facilities."

"It could be earlier, timed to use the chaos of the Syrian government's fall to disguise such an attack, or later, if international negotiations with Iran stretch out without failing completely." 

"But there is evidence that Iran's intransigence over shutting down its uranium-enrichment program will not buy it much more time."

"The tools for conducting an attack are all operational."

Proponents in and outside America suggest Iran already conducted one or more nuclear tests in North Korea. Corroborating evidence didn't follow claims. They're baseless like other accusations about Tehran menacing the region.

Debate continues in Washington. To attack or not attack? If so, when? Electoral priorities dictate policy. Three unnamed retired senior war planners offered views. Comments were as follows:

"I think it would take an extraordinarily dumb move on the part of the Iranians to force U.S. kinetic interventions before the U.S. presidential election (by abandoning negotiations)."

"Israel has fewer reservations (about attacking) given the recent solidification of their government."

The most politically opportune time would be 2013 or 2014.

"The assessment I'm betting on is continued watching, but with U.S. forces close to action."

An attack "would employ a totally stealthy force of F-22s, B-2s and Jassms (joint air-to-surface standoff missiles) that are launched from F-15Es and (Block 40) F-16s."

Other advanced weapons and radar jamming devices would be used.

"We should give Iran advanced warning that we will damage and likely destroy its nuclear facilities. It is not an act of war against Iran, the Iranian people or Islam." 

"It is a pre-emptive attack solely against their nuclear facilities and the military targets protecting them. We will take extraordinary measures to protect against collateral damage."

The above comment doesn't square with reality. An attack means war. Launching one assures many deaths. Vast destruction will occur. Civilian infrastructure and military targets will be struck. War planners know what's involved. The pattern repeats from one conflict to the next.

At a February Israeli security conference, Lt. General (ret.) Dan Halutz (former IDF chief of staff) said Iran's nuclear program shouldn't be used as an excuse for Israel to attack unilaterally. 

"The military option should be last, and it should be led by others." He meant Washington, but Israel would be involved.

Another issue is Syria. It has surveillance and air defense capabilities. Damascus shares information with Tehran. Attacking Iran involves possible routes over Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Syrian radar would detect it. Ousting Assad denies Iran advance warning.

According to America's Israeli ambassador Daniel Shapiro, Washington is ready to act if diplomatic talks fail. The military option is "not just available, it's ready," he said. 

"The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it's ready. The international community has been notified."

According to US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:

"The fundamental premise is that neither the U.S. nor the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon."

"We will do everything we can to prevent them from developing a weapon. We have plans to be able to implement any contingency we have to in order to defend ourselves."

Cyberattack is another option. According to US Lt. General (ret.) David Deptula:

"It depends on what the objectives are. What we want to be able to do is to get our foes to act in accordance with our strategic objectives without ever knowing they have been acted upon. Operations in cyberspace allow that to happen."

It's well known that Iran poses no nuclear threat. Claiming otherwise is red herring cover for regime change. 

Its program is peaceful. It complies fully with NPT provisions. US intelligence and IAEA inspectors confirmed it. In contrast, Israel is nuclear armed and dangerous. It menaces the region and beyond. It passes under the radar unmentioned.

On June 21, Haaretz headlined "As nuclear talks fail, US experts urge Obama to weigh military option on Iran," saying:

Forty-four US senators wrote Obama. They want pressure, not more dialogue. They listed specific demands. They include shutting down Tehran's heavily protected Fordo facility, halting uranium enrichment above 5%, and shipping amounts above it offshore.

They urged options including military action if Iran doesn't comply.

The House Armed Services Committee heard testimonies on "Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge: Understanding the Military Option." According to former Senator Charles Robb:

"The dual approach of diplomacy and sanctions simply have not proved to be enough. We need the third track, and that is credible and visible preparations for a military option."

"We are not urging Israel to take unilateral military action against Iran nuclear facilities, but we need to make their capability to do so stronger so that Iran will take that threat more seriously."

"We are not advocating another war in this region," he claimed. His comments, of course, don't square with reality.

Washington and Israel plan joint military exercises this fall. They were scheduled earlier but postponed. Called "Austere Challenge 12," it's expected to be the largest scale operation between the two countries.

Last March, Senator Barbara Boxer (D. CA) introduced S. 2165: United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. On June 19, it was reported to committee. On June 29, it passed by voice vote.

HR 4133 is the companion House bill. On May 9, it passed overwhelmingly. John Dingell (D. MI) and Ron Paul (R. TX) cast the only "no" votes. 

Paul called the measure "another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation. This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines U.S. diplomatic efforts by making clear that the U.S. is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East."

"The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be U.S. policy to 'help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge' in the region."

"While I absolutely believe that Israel – and any other nation - should be free to determine for itself what is necessary for its national security, I do not believe that those decisions should be underwritten by U.S. taxpayers and backed up by the U.S. military."

Paul added that the bill won't help America, Israel, or the Middle East. It implicitly authorizes greater US regional intervention at a time wars ravage it. 

War with Syria and/or Iran will follow, he believes. According to Haaretz, Washington and Israel "continue preparations for striking Iran's nuclear facilities... A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu has decided to attack Iran before the US elections in November."

The US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act reaffirms America's "unwavering commitment to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish State." It's also to ensure its military strength.

House co-sponsor Eric Cantor (R. VA) said:

"This bill reaffirms Israel's right to defend itself against threats and puts Congress on the record about America's long-standing commitment to the US-Israel strategic relationship, a unique and special relationship founded on shared interests and shared democratic values."

"This bill recognizes the profound threats the U.S. and Israel face in the region and reiterates our commitment to standing side by side with Israel during this pivotal and dangerous period of transition and instability."

Following passage, AIPAC said: "This vote is a testament to the broad, bipartisan support of the American people for bolstering the ties between the US and our ally Israel."

"The United States benefits greatly through enhanced cooperation with Israel, and this bipartisan bill recommends new avenues for the US-Israel relationship to grow and strengthen in the fields of missile defense, homeland security, energy, intelligence, and cyber security."

Congress recently voted to increase military aid for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. Israel gets more annual aid than all other nations combined. Most goes for military purposes. 

Both countries are imperial partners. Together with Britain, France, other NATO allies and regional ones, they threaten humanity !!!

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Heading for Economic Collapse

Sane outlook at collapsing Capitalist economy

by Stephen Lendman - Mathaba.net

The late Bob Chapman predicted it years ago. So does Paul Craig Roberts. It could "destroy Western civilization," he believes.

Untenable political and financial decisions put US and European economies on a collision course with disaster. Bailouts and market manipulation delay the inevitable. 

A tipping point approaches. Only its timeframe is unknown.

Money power runs world economies. Wall Street and giant European banks run Western societies. 

"Financial deregulation converted the financial system into a gambling casino", says Roberts. Zero interest rates destroy household savings. Media scoundrels suppress ugly truths.

Western governments letting banking crooks scam the system for profits "is a system that is headed for catastrophic failure."

Bad news keeps getting worse. Public acknowledgement arrives late. Moody's June 21 downgrade of 15 major banks conceded what's been known for years. 

Giant Western banks are zombies. They're insolvent. Taxpayer funded bailouts alone keep them operating. Moody's warned last winter than downgrades were coming. So-called stress tests suppress more than they revealed.

Ellen Brown calls the "derivatives casino a last-ditch attempt to prop up a private pyramid scheme." It's slowly crumbling under its own weight.

JPMorgan Chase is considered America's most stable bank. Brown calls it bankrupt. Evidence, she says, shows it's acknowledged $2 billion loss perhaps exceeds $30 billion.

Roberts explained that America's five largest banks hold $226 trillion in derivative bets. For example, JPMorgan's total assets approach $2 trillion. Its derivatives holdings exceed $70 trillion. Its risk capital is about $136 billion.

Its "derivative bets are 516 times larger than the capital that covers the bets."

Goldman Sachs "takes the cake," says Roberts. Its $44 trillion in derivatives speculation "is covered by only $19 billion in risk capital."

In other words, its bets are "2,295 times larger than" cash on hand covering them.

Derivatives bets by America's five largest banks exceed US GDP over 15-fold. Corrupt politicians allowing it assure eventual economic collapse.

Banking executives are serial liars. After Moody's downgrades, Citigroup and Bank of America officials said its action failed to reflect "safeguards" in place for years.

Roberts destroyed their argument. So did Brown and other independent analysts.

Moody's and other rating agencies long ago lost credibility. They failed to acknowledge the sub prime crisis until headlines revealed it. 

They bogusly call toxic assets safe in return for large fees and big profits.

They're called lagging, not leading indicators. They're many days and dollars short. They're part of the dirty game that scams ordinary people.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy said Moody's "action is five years too late."

Stanford University Professor Anat Admati called its downgrades bad news at a time bank "balance sheets are very fragile."

Credit Agricole Securities analyst Mike Mayo said America doesn't have a coherent solution to its banking crisis. Will actions like Moody's make it safer, he asked? 

Saying the jury is still out, he doubts it. He also called Thursday's downgrades "unfortunate four years after (a) crisis" that's deepening, not improving.

Evidence shows troubled global banking conditions. Central bank liquidity injections alone prevent collapse. They're running their course. Each new round helps less than previous ones. Ahead they'll be ineffective at a price too great to bear.

They've bailed out banks at the expense of economic growth. Recovery is more distant than earlier. Speculators alone profited. Good times they alone enjoyed are ending.

Economic data show it. The closely watched Markit Eurozone purchasing managers composite index matched May's 46 read. It showed production contracting at the steepest level since June 2009.

Its flash measure dropped from 45.1 in May to 44.8 in June. It reflected a 37-month low. Markit's chief economist, Chris Williamson, said the flash reading "rounded off the weakest quarter for three years."

China's flash PMI fell to 48.1 in June. Manufacturing contracted for the eighth consecutive month. The Fed slashed 2012 and 2013 US growth. Growing numbers of companies are cutting revenue and profit estimates.

Germany's ZEW confidence index plunged to -16.9 from 10.8 in May. It's the largest monthly decline since the 1998 LTCM/Russian debt default crisis.

Moreover, its Ifo business confidence index hit a two-year low, and Italy's consumer confidence plunged to its lowest level since 1996.

US initial jobless claims are rising. On June 21, they reached a 2012 high.

Slowdown is gaining speed. Economic underpinnings look wobbly. In June alone, about 70% of economic reports showed weakness. 

The Fed's Operation Twist extension underwhelmed analysts. Officially it's called the Maturity Extension Program. It exchanges short-term debt for longer term holdings. In theory, it's to lower interest rates on 10-year Treasuries. In early June 22 trading, they stood at 1.63%, a near record low.

Housing remains in Depression. In the week ending June 15, mortgage purchase applications plunged 8.5%. Companies keep cutting planned capex expenditures. According to the latest Architectural Billings Index, commercial construction keeps contracting.

Down 22% from their highs, commodity prices entered bear market territory. Oil prices hit an 18-month low. It signals weak demand. Brent fell 8% in one week. It's down 30% from its earlier high.

US factory output reached an 11-month low. Eurozone business activity dropped for the fifth straight month. At a 48.5 read in June, Germany's PMI shows contraction. The Fed's June Philadelphia manufacturing index contracted sharply to -16.6 after dropping 5.8 points in May.

The Jolts (Job Opening/Labor Turnover) survey showed job openings plunged 325,000 in May. It was the steepest drop since Lehman's September 2008 collapse. Only twice before in the past decade did it decline that much. All major categories were affected.

New hires decreased for the second straight month. They're lowest since July 2011. Again all categories showed weakness. 

Layoffs keep increasing. Cuts rose in three of the past four months.

Data revisions are mostly negative. Peak levels were reached months ago. The full impact of how weak things are has yet to hit home. So-called recovery is illusion, not reality.

Europe's economic condition is grim. Bailing out Spain gets harder. Economist Jack Rasmus estimates its banks need at least $300 billion, not the publicly announced $78.75 billion. 

He added that hundreds of billions more are needed to rescue Spain's regional and central governments. At issue is who'll supply it. Sick economies can't solve their own problems. 

Eurozone ones look to Germany for help. It bears the greatest burden when it's economy is weakening. 

Italy's troubled economy combined with its 12-month 29% of GDP sovereign financing burden means it can't contribute much.

Europe's PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) combined with troubled France have a combined public debt of 200% of Germany's GDP. Its own debt to GDP ratio is 80%. 

Simple math says it can't backstop the Eurozone. Bailouts can't continue forever. Debt burdened economies head for collapse. Adding more hastens the timeframe. 

Troubled Eurozone economies are so weak that cross-border bank-to-bank lending dried up. ECB chairman Mario Draghi calls inter-bank lending "dysfunctional." It's "not working," he said. As it goes, so does business lending altogether.

Rasmus said these developments show deepening crisis conditions. He blames wrongheaded policy measures. 

Austerity when stimulus is needed hit hard. Government revenues are down. So is consumption. Business spending keeps falling. Debt keeps rising. A looming train wreck approaches.

Why should households and economies bear the burden of bailing out crooked banks? Why are too big to fail ones allowed to exist? Why do ordinary people put up with politicians scamming them for personal gain? Why do they elect new bums in place of old ones?

When conditions exceed threshold levels too painful to bear, maybe they'll react the way they should have years ago. 

A Final Comment:

On June 19, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) issued a "red alert." Global conditions are "negative, even catastrophic," it said.

The second half of 2012 may "mark a major inflection point of the global system crisis...."

Day of reckoning time approaches. Putting off "the inevitable comes at a high price...."

"The shock of the autumn of 2008 will seen like a small summer storm compared to what's" coming. The "world system" will be "shaken."

GEAB predicts a conversion of geopolitical and economic shocks. They include more Middle East wars, Afpak chaos, "Gulf countries swept away in the turmoil," America's economy in free fall, major bank insolvencies, and money printing madness ended because it no longer works.

Early summer perhaps is the calm before the storm. If GEAB is right, it won't be pleasant on arrival.

____________________________________________________

USA: Assassination Nation

Fifty Years of US Targeted Kill Lists: From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones

by Doug Noble

“A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the American way of war” – Andrew Bacevich

This spring the US drone killing program has come out of the closet. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the drone killing of an American citizen, while Obama’s counter terrorism czar John Brennan publicly explained and justified the target killing program. And a New York Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane chronicled Obama’s personal role in vetting a secret “Kill List.” 

This striking new transparency, the official acknowledgment for the first time of a broad-based US assassination and targeted killing program, has resulted from the unprecedented and controversial visibility of drone warfare. Drones now make news every day, and those of us who have been protesting their use for years have heightened their visibility in the public eye, forcing official acknowledgment and fostering worldwide scrutiny. This new scrutiny focuses not only on drone use but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the targeted killing itself – and the “kill lists” that make them possible. 

This new exposure has set off a firestorm of reaction around the globe. Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism told Democracy Now! “The kill list got really heavy coverage … newspapers have all expressed significant concern about the existence of the kill list, the idea of this level of executive power.” A Washington Post editorial noted that “No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.” Becker and Shane of the Times pronounced Obama’s role “without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war …” And former president Jimmy Carter insisted, in a recent editorial in The New York Times, “We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these (drone) attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.” 

Really ? 

In fact, US assassination and targeted killing, with presidential approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century. Ironically, all this drone killing now offers us a new opportunity: to pry open the Pandora’s box hiding long-held secrets of covert US assassination and targeted killing, and to expose them to the light of day. What we would find is that the only things new in the latest, more publicized revelations about kill lists and assassinations are the use of drones, the president’s hands-on approach in vetting targets, and the global scope of the drone killing. 

Those of us in the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, Code Pink and other groups protesting US drones for years have correctly focused on the use of drones as illegal, immoral and strategically counterproductive. We have abhorred the schizophrenic ease of remote killing, the uniquely frightening horror of a drone strike, and the unavoidable (even intentional) killing of countless civilian “terrorist suspects” in “signature strikes.” We have also warned of the proliferation of drones in countries around the globe and of their procurement by US police forces and border patrols, for surveillance and “non-lethal” targeting. 

But drones are not the only, or even the most important, concern. It’s the targeted killing itself, past and present. In this article I start to unravel what the latest demands for transparency should lead us to investigate fully: the fifty year history of US assassination and targeted killing that has resulted, quite directly, in the present moment. Those who are mortified by the latest revelations of Obama’s kill list have much to learn from a more comprehensive, historical perspective on US killing around the globe. Who knows: Perhaps someone in Congress might even be prodded to do what Senators Fulbright and Church did in years past: hold hearings on this continuing execration taking place in our name. Until then, what follows is an introduction to this ongoing horror story. 

Section 1 of this article briefly reviews the lethal history of the US Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the original source of subsequent US counter terrorist tactics and strategies. Section 2 revisits briefly the well-worn history of US kill lists and assassinations in Latin American countries, followed by the somewhat less-well-known history of US kill lists and assassinations in countries on other continents. Section 3 traces the direct legacy of Phoenix, even its explicit resurrection by the key architects of the US targeted killing programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a growing number of “countries we are not at war with.” 

One point of clarification and definition. It is well known that in recent history the US has orchestrated assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, on major world leaders. Examples include: Lumumba under Eisenhower, Castro and Diem under Kennedy, Gaddhafi under Reagan, Saddam Hussein under Bush, and Allende under Nixon. The term “assassination” is typically restricted to such killings of political leaders, and President Ford’s executive order banning assassination applies only to the assassination of foreign heads of state. The focus of this article is different. Here we discuss the US-generated kill lists used over the last half century, under direct presidential authority, for the targeted killing of thousands of civilians suspected of being or harboring terrorists/ insurgents, from Vietnam to Guatemala, from Indonesia to Iraq, right up to the present day. 

The Phoenix Program 

The US Phoenix Program was a secret, large scale counter terrorist effort in Vietnam. Developed in 1967 by the CIA, the Phoenix Program, called Phung Hoang by the Vietnamese, aimed a concerted effort to “neutralize” the Vietcong Infrastructure (VCI) consisting of South Vietnamese civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese or Viet Cong soldiers. The euphemism “neutralize” meant to kill or detain indefinitely. Then CIA Director William Colby, while insisting in 1971 Congressional hearings that “the Phoenix program is not a program of assassination,” nonetheless conceded that Phoenix operations killed over 20,000 people between 1967 and 1972. 

Phoenix targeted civilians, not soldiers. Operations were carried out by “hunter-killer teams” consisting both of US Green Berets and Navy Seals and by South Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), units of mercenaries set up for assassination and “counter terror.” A Newsweek article in January 1970 described Phoenix as “a highly secret and unconventional operation that counters VC terror with terror of its own.” Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post reported Phoenix being called “an instrument of mass political murder…sort of Vietnamese Murder Inc.,” designed to terrorize the civilian population into submission.” 

Until 1970 the computerized VCI blacklist was a unilateral American operation. After the devastating 1968 Tet offensive, South Vietnamese President Thieu declared: “The VCI must be eliminated… and will be defeated by the Phoenix program.” Phoenix became a ruthless “bounty hunting” program to eliminate the opposition. The US and South Vietnamese created a list of tens of thousands of suspects for assassination. These names were centralized and distributed to Phoenix coordinators. From 1965-68 U.S. and Saigon intelligence services maintained an active list of Viet Cong cadre marked for assassination. The program for 1969 called for “neutralizing” 1800 a month. 

The VCI blacklist became corrupted by officers inserting their personal enemies’ names to get even. Due process was nonexistent. Names supplied by anonymous informers showed up on blacklists. CIA Director Colby admitted in 1971 that the blacklists had been “inaccurate.” Few senior VCI leaders were caught in the Phoenix net. Instead its victims were typically innocent civilians. A Pentagon-contract study found that, between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. By 1973, Phoenix generated 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. Military operations such as My Lai used Phoenix intelligence; in fact, the My Lai massacre, hardly an isolated incident, was itself a Phoenix operation. 

Apologists have offered rationales for Phoenix that sound eerily similar to those used to defend current drone attacks. Phoenix was typically referred to as a “scalpel” replacing the “bludgeon” of search and destroy, aerial bombardment or artillery barrages. Alternatively, it was called a precision “rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders … and activists in VCI.” Military historian Dale Andrade explains, “Both SEALS and PRUs killed many VCI guerrillas – that was war. They also inevitably killed innocent civilians – that was regrettable…. but (Phoenix) operations were much more discerning than the massive affairs launched by conventional …forces. That fact was often lost in the rhetoric of assassination and murder …” 

Phoenix was created, organized, and funded by the CIA. Quotas were set by Americans. Informers were paid with US funds. The national system of identifying suspects, the elaboration of numerical goals and their use as measures of merit, was designed and funded by Americans. One former US Phoenix soldier conceded, “It was “heinous,” far worse than the things attributed to it.” 

Kill Lists from Phoenix to Latin America 

The US intelligence community formalized the lessons of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam by commissioning Project X, the Army’s top-secret program for transmitting Vietnam’s lessons to South America. By the mid-1970s, the Project X materials were going to armies all over the world. These were textbooks for global counterinsurgency and terror warfare. These included a murder manual, “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare,” which openly instructed in the assassination of public officials, and was distributed to the Nicaraguan Contras. Another manual, “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual,” was used widely in Honduran counterrorism efforts. 

Use of the Project X material was temporarily suspended by Congress and the Carter administration for probable human rights violations, but the program was restored by the Reagan administration in 1982. By the mid-1980s, according to one detailed history, “counterguerrilla operations in Colombia and Central America would thus bear an eerie but explicable resemblance to South Vietnam.” 

What follows is a brief sketch of the widespread application of US-promulgated Phoenix-derived reigns of terror, kill lists, and death squads throughout Latin America and beyond. Much of this is familiar territory to many activists and scholars, and is merely the tip of the iceberg, but it merits review as a backdrop for the current context of kill lists and targeted assassination. 

US KILL LISTS AND ASSASSINATION IN LATIN AMERICA 

The U.S. Army’s School of Americas (SOA), started in 1946, trained mass murderers and orchestrated coups in Peru, Panama, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. The SOA trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers implicated in widespread slaughter of civilian populations across Latin America. From 1966-1976 the SOA trained hundreds of Latin American officers in Phoenix-derived methods. Between 1989-1991 the SOA issued almost 700 copies of Project X handbooks to at least ten Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras. In 2001, SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), but peace activists know it as School of Assassins. 

The CIA trained assassination groups such as Halcones in Mexico, the Mano Blanca in Guatemala, and the Escuadron de la Muerte in Brazil. In South America, in 1970-79, Operation Condor, the code-name for collection, exchange and storage of intelligence, was established among intelligence services in South America to eradicate Marxist activities. Operation Condor promoted joint operations including assassination against targets in member countries. In Central America, the CIA-supported death toll under the Reagan presidency alone exceeded 150,000. The CIA set up Ansesal and other networks of terror in El Salvador, Guatemala (Ansegat) and pre-Sandinista Nicaragua (Ansenic). 

Honduran death squads were active through the 1980s, the most infamous of which was Battalion 3–16, which assassinated hundreds of people, including teachers, politicians, and union leaders. Battalion 316 received substantial CIA support and training, and at least 19 members graduated from the School of the Americas. 

In Colombia, about 20,000 people were killed since 1986 and much of U.S. aid for counternarcotics was diverted to what Amnesty International labeled “one of the worst killing fields.” The US State Department also supported the Colombian army in creating a database of subversives, terrorists and drug dealers. 

In Bolivia, Amnesty International reported that from 1966-68 between 3,000 and 8,000 people were killed by death squads. The CIA supplied names of U.S. and other foreign missionaries and progressive priests. 

In Ecuador, the CIA maintained what was called the lynx list, aka the subversive control watch list of the most important left-wing activists to arrest. In Uruguay. Every CIA station maintained a subversive control watch list of most important left wing activists. From 1970-72 the CIA helped set up the Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), which served as a cover for death squads, and also co-ordinated meetings between Brazilian and Uruguayan death squads. 

In Nicaragua, the US provided illegal funds to the Contras, and Marine intelligence helped maintain a list of civilians marked for assassination when Contra forces entered the country. 

In Chile, 1970-73, CIA-created unions organized CIA-financed strikes leading to Allende’s overthrow and subsequent suicide. By late 1971 the CIA was involved in the preparation of lists of nearly 20,000 middle-level leaders of people’s organizations, scheduled to be assassinated after the Pinochet coup. 

In Haiti, U.S. officials with CIA backgrounds in Phoenix-like program activities coordinated with the Ton-Ton Macoute, “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s private death squad, responsible for killing at least 3,000 people. 

For over thirty years the US military and the CIA helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador. From 1980-93, at least 63,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed, mostly by the government directly supported by the U.S. The CIA routinely supplied ANSESAL, the security forces, and the general staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of suspected dissidents and Salvadorans abroad who were later assassinated by death squads. US militray involvement in El Salvador allowed “the lessons learned in Vietnam to be put into practice … assisting an allied country in counterinsurgency operations.” 

In Guatemala, as early as 1954, the U.S. Ambassador, after the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the Arbenz government, gave to the new Armas government lists of radical opponents to be assassinated. Years later, throughout Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, Washington continuously to supported the Guatemalan military’s excesses against civilians, which killed 200,000 people. 

US Assassination Programs Exported to Other Countries 

In Indonesia, 1965-66, the US embassy and the CIA provided the Indonesian military with lists of the names of PKI militants, which were used by Suharto to crush the PKI regime. This resulted in “one of the worst episodes of mass murder of the twentieth century,” with estimates as high as one million deaths. 

In Thailand, in 1976, the new junta used CIA-trained forces to crush student demonstrators during coup; two right-wing terrorist squads suspected for assassinations tied directly to CIA operations. 

In Iran, the CIA launched a coup installing the shah in power and helped establish the lethal secret police unit SAVAK. The CIA and SAVAK then exchanged intelligence, including information and arrest lists on the communist Tudeh party. Years later, in 1983, the CIA gave the Khomeni government a list of USSR KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran, which the Khomeni regime used to execute 200 suspects and close down the communist Tudeh party. 

In the Philippines, in 1986, Reagan increased CIA involvement in Philippine counterinsurgency operations, carried out by more than 50 death squads. In 2001, before 9/11, the Bush administration sent a unit of SOF to the Philippines “to help train Philippine counter terrorist forces fighting against Muslim separatists” within groups like Abu Sayyaf. After 9/11 US-Filipino cooperation was stepped up and the ongoing separatist conflict was cast, to the benefit of both sides, as “the second front in the war on terror.” In Feb, 2012, a US drone strike targeting leaders of Abu Sayyaf and other separatist groups killed 15 people, the first use of killer drones in Southeast Asia. 

A “global Phoenix Program”: drone targets worldwide 

“A global Phoenix program would provide a useful start point for a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism” – David Kilcullen 

IRAQ 

Despite the US-perpetrated counter terrorist slaughter in Latin America and elsewhere in the 1970s-1990s, the US Special Forces debacle in Mogadishu in 1993, popularized in the film Black Hawk Down, severely impacted US willingness to use Special Forces in counter terrorist missions for the next decade. But then, after 9/11, things changed drastically. On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a secret Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to create paramilitary teams to hunt, capture, detain, or kill designated terrorists almost anywhere in the world. The pressure from the White House, in particular from Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense, and in the scramble, a search of the C.I.A.’s archives turned up – the Phoenix Program. 

In July 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent an order for a plan to make sure that special forces could be authorized to use lethal force ‘in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.’” Rumsfeld prompted Bush to authorize the military to “find and finish” terrorist targets. Here he was referring to “the F3EA targeting cycle” used in anti-infrastructure operations by Special Operations Forces. F3EA, an abbreviation of find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, utilizes comprehensive intelligence to “find a target amidst civilian clutter and fix his exact location . . . . enabling surgical finish operations … to catch a fleeting target.” 

Lt General William (Jerry) Boykin, Delta commander in Mogadishu, deputy undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence and a key planner of the Special Forces offensive in Iraq, announced, “We’re going after these people. Killing or capturing them … doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all the secrecy.” 

Back in 1963, the CIA had supplied lists of communists to the Baath party coup so that communists could be rounded up and eliminated. Now, forty years later, it was the Baathists’ turn to be rounded up by Special Forces and CIA and executed. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military notoriously developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein‘s government, mostly high-ranking Baath Party members. Less well-known was the secret targeted killing of thousands of Baathist civilians by US Special Forces. 

Seymour Hersh wrote in 2003 that “The Bush Administration authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. … Its highest priority (being) the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination. A former C.I.A. station chief described the strategy: “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis into submission.” The US even hired thousands of contract killers previously responsible for US-sponsored extra-judicial killings and death squad activity in Latin America. The operation—called “preëmptive manhunting” by one Pentagon adviser—had, according to Hersh, “the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program.” 

Global Phoenix 

In 2009, the Office of the Secretary of Defense sponsored a paper by the National Defense Research Institute entitled “The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency.” The paper notes, “The persistent insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have generated fresh interest among military officers, policymakers, and civilian analysts in the history of counterinsurgency. The Phoenix Program in Vietnam—the U.S. effort to improve intelligence coordination and operations aimed at identifying and dismantling the communist underground—is the subject of much renewed attention.” 

The paper continues, “As the United States and its allies shift their focus to Afghanistan and weigh counterinsurgency alternatives for that country, decision-makers would be wise to consider how Phoenix-style approaches might serve to pry open Taliban and Al-Qaeda black boxes.”

Two key architects of the current Phoenix-style global counterinsurgency efforts by the US are David Kilcullen and Michael Vickers. David Kilcullen has been counterinsurgency advisor to two former Middle East commanders, General Stanley McChrystal (formerly head of Special Operations) and General David Petraeus, now CIA Director. Michael G. Vickers, made famous in the book and film Charlie Wilson’s War about the CIA’s anti-Soviet Afghan campaign of the 1980s, is currently Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, wielding such vast authority over the US war on terror that, according to a Washington Post profile, Pentagon colleagues refer to as his “take-over-the-world-plan.” 

Kilcullen wrote in a much-quoted 2004 paper entitled “Countering Global Insurgency” that “Counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have reawakened official and analytical interest in the Phoenix Program.” He proposed that “a global Phoenix program would provide a useful start point for a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism,” one which would focus on “interdicting links between jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, isolating Islamists from local populations and disrupting inputs” from others. 

Vickers issued a Phoenix-style directive in December 2008 to “develop capabilities for extending U.S. reach into denied areas and uncertain environments by operating with and through indigenous foreign forces or by conducting low visibility operations.” “It’s not just the Middle East. It’s not just the developing world. It’s not just non-democratic countries – it’s a global problem. Threats can emanate from Denmark, the United Kingdom, you name it.” According to a Washington Post profile, “the most critical aspect of Vicker’s plan targeting al-Qaeda-affiliated networks around the world involves US Special Forces working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorism.” US military and Special Operations forces would “pay indigenous fighters and paramilitaries who work with them in gathering intelligence, hunting terrorists, fomenting guerrilla warfare or putting down an insurgency.” 

Pentagon colleagues have said of Vickers, “he tends to think like a gangster.” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell revealed that getting Bin Laden in Pakistan was Vicker’s “baby,” and “more than anyone else in the department, he drove the issue.” In 2011 New York Times Vickers summarizes his strategy: “You make a deal with the devil to defeat another devil.” “I just want to kill those guys.” Such is the megalomaniacal mission underlying the US global war on terror, its kill lists and worldwide program of targeted assassination. 

Killer Drones Revisited 

“Engaging in any assassination blurs the line between the good guys and the bad.” It is also “a proclamation of weakness and an admission of failure.” – John Jacob Nutter, The CIA’s Black Ops 

The purpose of this article is to reframe the current attention on killer drones and Obama’s “kill list” within an historical perspective. The goal here is not to discourage the escalating protest against killer drones or against Obama’s targeted assassination program around the globe. As stated at the outset, the unprecedented visibility of these nefarious activities and of the outraged public response to them is precisely what is needed at this time. This heightened awareness also affords a perfect opportunity to revisit the extraordinary history of US assassination and targeted killing that has led directly and explicitly to these activities. 

Focus on the drones alone will not be sufficient. For even the major counter terrorist mastermind David Kilcullen himself, an avid proponent of the global targeted killing program, has argued against the use of drones. In a 2009 New York Times editorial he argues that “The goal should be to isolate extremists from their communities; (they) must be defeated by indigenous forces…Drone strikes make this harder, not easier.” He adds, “The use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic – or, more accurately, a piece of technology – substituting for a strategy, (with minimal understanding) of the tribal dynamics of the local population. This creates public outrage and a desire for revenge.” 

Scholar Maria Ryan, in a 2011 article entitled “War in Countries We Are Not at War With,” writes: “In 2006 the Pentagon announced that it had sent small teams of Special Operations troops to US embassies to gather intelligence on terrorism in Africa, South East Asia and South America. There is, then, a covert side to the Global War on Terrorism that is not visible and not currently knowable in the absence of whistleblowers, leaks, or things gone wrong.” 

The heightened public attention paid to drone killing might very well, in time, lead to some welcome success in curtailing their use. But too narrow a focus on the US deployment of Predator and Reaper drones might also distract us from other forms of Phoenix-derived targeted killing still being perpetrated globally – and covertly – by our Assassination Nation.

Illegitimate Sanctions on Iran

Mathaba.net

by Stephen Lendman

Washington bears full responsibility for imposing illegitimate sanctions on Iran. Other countries are pressured to agree. Doing so harms their own interests.

Heavy-handed US bullying largely gets its way. Rule of law principles and norms are violated. At issue is advancing Washington's imperium.

America's 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) lets presidents claim unusual and/or extraordinary foreign threats, declare a national emergency, and regulate commerce accordingly.

Presidents have taken full advantage deceptively, unjustifiably, and illegally.

In November 1979, Washington seized $12 billion in Iranian government bank deposits, securities, gold, and other properties. They included $5.6 billion held by overseas branches of US banks.

A full trade embargo followed. In January 1981, it was lifted under provisions of the Algiers Accords. Most Iranian assets were unblocked. Nonetheless, Iranian Assets Control Regulations remained in effect.

For decades, Washington ruthlessly targeted Iran and its people. It continues relentlessly today. More on that below.

Ronald Reagan imposed Iranian sanctions. Fraudulent pretexts were used. They included claiming Tehran supports international terrorism and aggressively acts against Persian Gulf shipping.

Reagan's 1987 Executive Order (EO) 12613 embargoed Iranian goods and services.

In March 1995, Clinton's EO 12957 prohibited US involvement with Iranian oil development. His 1995 EO 12959 substantially tightened sanctions further. His 1997 EO 13059 prohibited virtually all trade and investments with Iran.

In 1996, the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) became law. In 2006, it was renamed the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

It prohibited US and foreign oil development investments. Violators face stiff penalties. They include denial of Export-Import Bank of the United States help, rejection of export licenses, and a ban on all or some violating company imports.

In 2008, banks and other US depository institutions were prohibited from processing transfers between Iranian and non-Iranian banks.

In 2010, America's Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISADA) became law. It extended sanctions imposed by the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act. It punishes companies doing business with Tehran's oil sector and went further.

Section 103 prohibited importing certain Iranian foodstuffs and carpets. Other provisions banned other Iranian product and service imports directly or through third countries

Exporting goods, technology, or services are prohibited, including from offshore locations. Some humanitarian related exceptions were made.

Overall, US individuals and companies located anywhere are prohibited from engaging in dealings of any kind. They include purchases, sales, transportation, swaps, financing, or brokering transactions related to goods or services of Iranian private or government origin.

On July 1, an EU oil import embargo took effect. It covers crude oil, petroleum and petrochemical products, oil related businesses, equipment and technology, selling Tehran's refined products, new investments, and dealing with its central bank.

Europe buys up to 20% of its oil from Iran. Ending it means greater strain on economically stressed countries. Higher prices exacerbate problems.

Washington granted India, Malaysia, South Korea, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Taiwan waivers. In March, other countries got 180-day exemptions. Currently, 20 nations have qualified waivers.

Japan increased its Iranian oil purchases. China relies on Iranian oil and buys it freely. So do other nations. On August 1, the House overwhelmingly (421 - 6) passed the Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act of 2012. The Senate passed it unanimously. Doing so mocks rule of law legitimacy.

New sanctions imposed include punishing financial institutions, insurers, and shippers involved in helping Iran sell oil. Previous loopholes were closed. An illegal embargo was tightened.

Prohibitions were enacted against companies involved in mining uranium with Iran; selling, leasing or providing oil tanker services; or offering insurance to the National Iranian Tanker Company.

Overall, the measure penalizes anyone involved with Iran's oil, petrochemical, or natural gas industries. Earlier sanctions imposed were hardened.

Ahead of the House vote, Obama ordered new sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors. By Executive Order he prohibited foreign financial institutions from doing business with Iran. Violators face stiff penalties.

Specifically, Iran's oil, petroleum products, and petrochemicals were targeted.

Separately, the Treasury Department sanctioned China's Bank of Kunlun and Iraq's Elaf Islamic Bank for providing financial services to Iranian banks.

Beijing reacted furiously. Relations between the two countries are strained. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Washington violated "norms of international relations." 

"The U.S. has invoked domestic law to impose sanctions on a Chinese financial institution, and this is a serious violation of international rules that harms Chinese interests."

Sanctions and International Law

The General Assembly's 1974 Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States says no nation may use or encourage use of economic, political or other measures to coerce another country to to subordinate its sovereign rights in any way. 

Under Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 54 of the Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions (1977):  

(1) Starving civilians during war is prohibited. 

(2) Attacking, destroying, removing, or compromising indispensable items is prohibited. They include foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, irrigation works, and other essential products, services, and facilities relating to them. 

UN General Assembly Resolution 44/215 (1989) prohibits political and economic coercion against developing countries. 

It specifically covers trade and financial restrictions, blockades, embargoes, and other economic sanctions. It calls them incompatible with UN Charter provisions. They adversely affect the ability of nations to function politically, economically and socially. They harm civilians most.

The International Conference on Nutrition, World Declaration on Nutrition, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization (1992) recognized the right to access nutritionally adequate and safe food as a fundamental right.

US Code defines international terrorism as follows:

A. "violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

B. appear to be intended -

i. to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

ii. to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

iii. to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

C. occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States...."

The US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984) shortens the definition to be "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature....through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."

Crimes against humanity breach fundamental international law. Civilian populations must be protected at all times.

Illegitimate sanctions harm human rights grievously. They violate international laws and norms. Targeting nonbelligerent countries ups the ante.

On July 31, Iranian lawmaker Seyyed Hossein Naqavi Hosseini denounced Western sanctions, saying:

"The sanctions in the area of health and similar fields are a violation of human rights, and can be legally pursued."

On July 29, Iranian Presidential Center for International Legal Affairs head Majid Jafarzadeh said Tehran will take legal action against America and European countries.

"The complaint will be registered and pursued soon, based on international regulations," he said.

Ron Paul calls Iranian sanctions an act of war. The New New England Journal of Medicine called them "a war against public health." 

They also violate World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions. WTO members may curb trade with other nations for security reasons. Doing so on dealings with third countries has no legal legitimacy.

Iran is nonbelligerent. It's lawful and non-threatening. Its nuclear program complies fully with Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty provisions.

Challenging Washington in the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism would likely succeed. 

Francis Boyle urges Iran to sue Washington, Britain and France at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if they refuse to negotiate directly and continue making belligerent threats.

Add Israel and make it a quartet. It menaces the region.

In early July, Boyle told Press TV if someone refuses "to talk to you, sue them, and then they have to talk to you."

If Washington won't engage in direct negotiations, "Iran should sue at the World Court, protect itself, and then by means of the World Court proceeding, force negotiations which Iran can do."

If crisis conditions escalate, Iran should also sue Britain and France, said Boyle. It should request an "emergency hearing," and use it to prevent war or other belligerent acts.

A restraining order could be gotten. It would prevent "any type of blockade to prevent the imposition of further economic sanctions and pursuit of additional ones".

Blockades are acts of war. Multiples rounds of sanctions targeting vital state functions have similar effects if pushed too far. Ones in place now violate fundamental human rights.

They're illegal. Iran should sue. Unlike the International Criminal Court, ICJ rulings are more measured and just. It called Israel's Apartheid Wall illegal.

It ruled for Nicaragua during Washington's Contra war. It condemned American terrorism against its people. It awarded Managua $17 billion. Reagan administration officials ignore it. They then blocked Security Council enforcement.

Nonetheless, a precedent was set. It was repeated against Israel. Iran stands a good chance of prevailing. Proceeding posthaste is wise.

Mad Dog Leaders Threaten Humanity

Mathaba.net

by Stephen Lendman

Israel is very much involved in Washington's war on Syria. At issue is destroying another independent state, murdering thousands, planning more wars, and threatening the entire region and beyond.

Iran is next in line. Sabre rattling combines with war by other means. It includes sanctions, subversion, instability, cyberwar, targeted assassinations, other disruptive actions, and relentless scoundrel media vilification and fear-mongering.

On August 3, Haaretz headlined "King Bibi in trouble." Poll numbers show a 60% disapproval rating. It's not for institutionalized militarism and belligerence. It's about new budget cuts hardening neo-liberal harshness.

Most Israelis are fed up with what harms their well-being. Their narrow definition omits likely blow-back from regional wars and more planned. Conflict rages cross border in Syria. If attacked, Hezbollah can respond in kind.

Key is whether Israel plans bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Doing so is lawless, madness, and self-destructive. Nonetheless, heated rhetoric suggests it's possible.

On August 2, Haaretz headlined "Ex-Mossad chief said what should be clear to everyone - Israel has never been so close to attacking Iran," saying:

According to Ephraim Halevy, "if I were an Iranian, I would be very worried about the Israeli talk about a possible attack, because Israel's threats sound serious and credible to me."

No longer publicly active, he may or may not know what's planned. Haaretz said he's not "another establishment stooge." Nor is he "gung-ho." 

He's wise enough not to reveal state secrets. Perhaps he commented because someone asked. Once a Mossad insider, always one. Iranian officials will parse his comments carefully. 

On August 1, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) headlined "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Warns Iran's Top Leaders: WAR IN WEEKS," saying:

Before Friday, July 27 prayers, he "summoned top Iranian military chiefs for what he called 'last war council.' "

DF claims he told them "we will be at war within weeks." Allegedly he ordered high alert readiness, fortifying Iran's nuclear facilities, and retaliatory responses.

Only high level insiders know Israeli intentions. Sabre rattling and inflammatory rhetoric went on for years. It's heard regularly now. So far, belligerence hasn't follow bluster. Whether things now are different remains to be seen.

On August 3, Haaretz headlined "As Netanyahu pushes Israel closer to war with Iran, Israelis cannot keep silent," saying:

"Why aren't ministers and defense officials standing up right now, when it is still possible, and saying: We will not be a party to this megalomaniacal vision, to this messianic-catastrophic worldview?"

As important is why militarism, belligerence, and denigration of Muslims define Israeli policies. Why is war institutionalized? 

Why does a nation treat one-fifth of its people like fifth column threats? Why are non-Jews persecuted? Why do decades of occupation repression continue?

Why do only elitist Jews matter at the expense of all others? Why does a tiny state threaten other regional nations? Why do world leaders permit it? How can any responsible official contemplate catastrophic war if launched?

Haaretz suggests "Netanyahu has a historical mindset (and) outlook under which....Israel is 'the eternal nation' and the United States" is just one among many.

In other words, "(w)e are everlasting, we are an eternal people, and they, despite all their strength and power, are merely temporary and ephemeral."

Megalomania and delusions of grandeur define this type thinking. Past leaders governing this way perished by the same sword they lived by. It always turned out that way. 

Tiny Israel is a dot in an ocean of justifiable resentment. One step too far may bite back harder than what Netanyahu and others around him imagine.

His governing style is autocratic, said Haaretz. He thinks he holds Israel's destiny in his hands. He may end up fiddling while it burns. His hermetic world-view rigidity may end up its undoing.

He'll take an entire nation and others over a cliff with him. Perhaps he'll end up like Caligula. Delusions of grandeur and tyrannical harshness got him assassinated. His own Praetorian Guard did him in.

Netanyahu heads Israel's most extremist ever government. It’s racist, repressive, elitist and fascist. Democracy is more hypocrisy than real. 

Hard-liners around him share his vision. Most Israelis want peace, not war. They have no say. Their fate hangs in his hands. It's their country, their security, and their future.

Don’t they understand the consequences of attacking Iran? Have they no sense that "bomb or be bombed" rhetoric is belligerent bombast? Don’t they know destructive policies sometimes follow?

Iran threatens no one. It's nuclear program is peaceful. Every Israeli and Western leader knows it. Saying otherwise hides dark side intentions. 

Why don't knowledgeable people speak out? Why don't opposition officials do it? Why don't they stand up for what's right? Why don't they stop this madness before it's too late?

Have they no sense of the stakes? Don't they care enough to try? Are loyalty and daily priorities more important than survival? Are millions of Israeli lives and others in the region unimportant? 

Why haven't Israelis protested publicly en masse? Why won't they act in their own behalf? 

Poet Hayyim Bialik (1873 - 1934) once wrote about "with heart's blood and marrow pay(ing) the price of the blaze." A century later he'd have had weapons of mass destruction in mind.

A Final Comment

IDF chief of staff General Benny Gantz believes Iran won't develop nuclear weapons. He's concerned about launching an attack. He called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranian leaders rational. They're not dangerous extremists bent on war.

Netanyahu is mirror opposite. He said governments make policies, not generals. Their job is taking orders and obeying. Other times they're asked for advice. Prime ministers and cabinet members can accept or reject it.

George Clemenceau once said "war is too important to be left to the generals." In Israel, some have more good sense than politicians. The same holds for America. Delusional leaders can't wait to shed more blood.

Gantz calls unilateral Israeli action ill-conceived. Other current and past IDF generals and intelligence officials share his view. Many in America feel the same way.

Instead of waging wars, preventing them should be prioritized. When leaders able to cause mass destruction behave like delusional mad dogs and pigs, stopping them matters most.

by Stephen Lendman - mathaba.net

Polls show most Israelis and Americans oppose war with Iran. Political leaders pay no attention nor ask why Iran, with or without nuclear weapons, would strike Israel or any other country?

Iran hasn't attacked another nation in over 200 years. It threatens none now. It's not developing or producing nuclear weapons. Washington, Israeli, and most other world leaders know it.

Iran's nuclear program is red herring cover. It's used as pretext to replace an independent state with a subservient pro-Western one. It's also about furthering Israeli regional dominance.

Waging full-scale war on Syria and/or Iran is madness. War with either country is all lose, no gain, and potential catastrophic consequences if things spin out of control. Warmongers push ahead with plans anyway.

Israel will be gravely affected if they're implement. Why else would most Israelis oppose war and Netanyahu for threatening it. Last spring, hundreds marched in Tel Aviv against it. They chanted anti-Netanyahu slogans and railed against AIPAC.

They never went away. Expect them back. They're joined by many others. On August 16, Haaretz headlined "Hundreds of Israelis petition IDF pilots: Refuse orders to bomb Iran, saying: Tel Aviv law professors Menachem Mautner and Chaim Gans joined them. Petition language calls attacking Iran a "highly mistaken gamble."

Besides fundamental legal issues, at best it will delay, not destroy, Iran's nuclear program. Doing so also exacts "an exorbitant price."

Petition language said "No." 

"Certainly, this is not a simple option. It involves profound professional and moral dilemmas, and carries the risk of losing a career which is important to you and also the possibility of being prosecuted." 

"Nevertheless, it is your duty to consider most carefully and seriously the possibility that by saying the little word 'No,' you will be rendering an important and vital service to the State of Israel and all who live here. This service would be infinitely more important than blind obedience to this particular order."

The petition also explained that bombing Iran's nuclear facilities involves irradiating large areas. Doing so harms civilians. "Israel as a country, as well as those carrying out the bombing might be charged with war crimes."

Professor Gans explained why he signed the petition, saying: "It is clear that the consequences of (war on Iran) would be destructive in every possible way."

Haaretz said Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and senior Israeli "health establishment" doctors wrote Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. They oppose war. They expressed fears of unavoidable catastrophic consequences.

They said "we will be the ones you will seek out to heal and put together what you have broken. We call on you: Don't break. First do no harm."

On August 16, Israeli Ynet News headlined "Flurry of petitions against strike on Iran," saying:

Resistance to war appears growing. Twenty IDF reserve officers wrote Netanyahu. They expressed concerns like others. Imminent dangers focus minds on what's not previously considered. 

Hopefully it's a good sign. It better be in dealing with sociopaths impersonating leaders. Netanyahu and Barak are two of the worst. No one's safe with them in charge.

On August 15, Richard Silverstein wrote about "Bibi's Secret War Plan." He published "an important leaked Israeli government document." A "trusted source" sent it. He's a "former Israeli government minister." He got it from an IDF officer.

He sent it because he and his source oppose war. He revealed it to expose Israeli leadership plans "to take Israel to war." His "mission" is to prevent it. He said no Israeli official denied the authenticity of what he revealed.

His source said he normally wouldn't leak this type document. "These are not normal times," he explained. "I'm afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious."

Silverstein calls them a "two-headed warrior." Monster would be more appropriate. Virtually no "senior (Israeli) military or intelligence officer wants this war." It's unlikely current officials wrote the leaked material.

"It feels more likely it came from….national security advisor Yaakov Amidror, a former general, settler true-believer, and Bibi confidant." Barak acolytes perhaps also were involved.

Material was prepared for Netanyahu's eight-member security cabinet. They stand "4-3" against war. Bibi's pitching recalcitrant ministers. He's manipulating them to go along. His argument is that Israel can wage "a pure technology war" with few Israeli casualties.

His "sleight of hand" omits a certain Iranian counterattack. Silverstein calls what Netanyahu and Barak have in mind a "product of the Israeli dream factory."

It manufactures threats and clean strategies to address them. It never produces what's promised. Mission accomplished may be catastrophic. This genie can't be rebottled if unleashed.

Silverstein translated from the original Hebrew. Key portions are as follows:

"The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders."  

"The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action."  

"The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal."  

"This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal."

"A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran. 300km ballistic missiles would be launched from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf."  

"The missiles would not be armed with unconventional warheads [WMD], but rather with high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets."

"The missiles will strike their targets—some exploding above ground like those striking the nuclear reactor at Arak–which is intended to produce plutonium and tritium—and the nearby heavy water production facility; the nuclear fuel production facilities at Isfahan and facilities for enriching uranium-hexaflouride. Others would explode under-ground, as at the Fordo facility."

"A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus. Intelligence gathered over years will be utilized to completely decapitate Iran’s professional and command ranks in these fields."

"After the first wave of attacks, which will be timed to the second, the “Blue and White” radar satellite, whose systems enable us to perform an evaluation of the level of damage done to the various targets, will pass over Iran."  

"Only after rapidly decrypting the satellite’s data, will the information be transferred directly to war planes making their way covertly toward Iran."  

"These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally.  This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible."  

"Those Israeli war planes which participate in the attack will damage a short-list of targets which require further assault."

"Among the targets approved for attack—Shihab 3 and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more."

Despite a detailed battle plan, USC Chemical Engineering Professor Muhammad Sahimi explained flaws. Current Iranian Revolutionary Guards head Mohammad Ali Jafari addressed what he called the over-centralization of command and control. 

He divided Iran into 31 districts. Each operates independently. To succeed, Israel would have to destroy or disable all. Doing so seems unlikely, especially before Tehran can respond defensively.

If Israel strikes, Netanyahu's waging the last war. Iranian generals learned from Saddam's mistakes. Even with "new tricks" up his sleeve, Netanyahu doesn't know his adversary, its defenses, its structure, and overall preparedness to hit back hard. Attacking Iran assures no winners.

A Final Comment

On August 15, The New York Times suggested a window of opportunity exists to avoid war. Uzi Dayan was quoted. He formerly served as IDF deputy chief of staff. He's Moshe Dayan's nephew. He said:

"This window is closing, but if the United States would be much clearer and stronger about the sanctions on one hand and about what can happen if Iran won’t make a U-turn - there is not a lot of time, but there is still time to make a difference."

On August 13, Dayan met with Netanyahu and Barak privately. They discussed current security issues. Iran was topic one. A media blitz awakened Israelis to the impending danger. They responded by opposing war.

Dayan thinks Netanyahu/Barak saber rattling has a purpose. It's pushing Obama to do more. It's about imposing more punishing sanctions than now in place. The only way is by creating a likely military option.

Both Israeli officials also want Washington leading an eventual attack. They're uncertain how successful Israel can be alone. America's might could make the difference. No matter that war with Iran assures no winners.

Dayan added that Netanyahu and Barak will choose war "only if they feel that there is no other way. They will do it only as the last, last thing, but then they will be pretty determined about it."

Once again, The Times suppressed what readers most need to know. It bears repeating. Iran has no nuclear weapons program. It threatens no one. Attacking nonbelligerent states violates fundamental international law. 

Nations doing so stand guilty of war crimes. If large numbers of civilians are harmed, add crimes against humanity. If numbers run into the millions or close to it, genocide charges are warranted. 

Responsible journalists would explain and condemn what they tacitly or overtly support. Failure makes them complicit in crimes too grave to ignore.

Cast Lead and Pillar of Cloud represent skirmishes. Syria`s one on a higher boil. Expect full-scale war ahead. It could happen any time or perhaps next year. 

by Stephen Lendman – mathaba.net

These conflicts portend more to come. Washington, Israel, and NATO plan them. Regional collaborators go along. One or more of them ahead may become targets. 

They'll know, or should, when they're excluded from future plans. As a well-known poker saying goes: If you've been in the game a while and don't know who the sucker is, it's you.

Israel wants to be a regional hegemon. Washington seeks global dominance. Achieving imperial aims requires eliminating rivals and potential ones.

Syria tops America's target list. Hezbollah's on it as well. At issue is isolating Iran, then replacing its government with a pro-Western puppet one.

Next year could be more violent than recent previous ones. Obama's a lame duck. He's got nothing to lose. After all the harm he caused, half the country still supports him.

He conned them into thinking he's doing the right thing. He was picked to stay in office for that reason. Expect four more violent years at home and abroad. The last four were grim. What's ahead looks worse.

Henry Kissinger will be 90 years old next May. Last November, he said:

"If you can't hear the drums of war you must be deaf." He explained further. More on that below.

On November 23, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) said Obama's pledge to deploy US troops to Sinai convinced Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal. 

Doing so sounds more like preventing peace than assuring it. Memorandum of understanding terms included:

"Opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents' free movements and targeting residents in border areas and procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire."

"Procedures of implementation," of course, lets Israel manipulate them any way it wishes. Nonetheless, Hamas and 1.7 million Gazans think border and movement restrictions will be eased.

Don't bet on it. Israeli pledges aren't worth the paper they're written on. Neither are America's. Together they assure Palestinian betrayal. 

US troops on Gaza's border adds an exclamation point. They're expected to start arriving next week. Siege will continue. Borders will stay closed. 

Preventing Hamas from rearming is planned. Also maintaining isolated suffocating conditions. Netanyahu wants maximum pain inflicted. 

Despite one-sided scoundrel media support and Israel's military might, he lost the battle of public opinion. David Hamas withstood Goliath Israel.

Fatah looked pathetic. Abbas is a spent force. Hamas leaders Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh look heroic. Palestinians may have more support now than ever. 

Terror bombing innocent civilians aroused enormous worldwide anti-Israeli sentiment. Netanyahu wants revenge.

If bombing and shelling can't defeat Hamas, perhaps he'll enforce harsher than ever conditions by keeping borders closed and destroying Gaza's tunnel economy entirely.

DF said Obama plans "to accelerate the construction of an elaborate US system of electronic security fences along the Suez Canal and northern Sinai." At issue is preventing Hamas from rearming.

If Gaza's tunnel economy is destroyed, vital essentials won't get in. They include Israeli-prohibited construction materials for rebuilding.

Egypt's Morsi apparently agreed to US and Israeli demands. Clearly it shows what side he's on. Permitting Gaza's siege to continue and preventing effective Hamas deterrence strength portends ill for isolated Gazans.

Expect Netanyahu to take full advantage. Expect Washington to partner in his crimes. Expect continued suffering for 1.7 million trapped Gazans.

US/NATO/Israeli planned wars inflict enormous harm on others in the region. Kissinger weighed in on what he sees coming. The fullness of time will tell if he's right or wrong. His comments in part said:

"The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel." 

"We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them."

"The coming war will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that's us folks." 

"This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state." 

"Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment."

Kissinger repeated what he said before about "controlling oil and you control nations. Control food and you control the people." 

He omitted controlling money that controls everything. Perhaps he knows but didn't say.

"We told the military that we would have to take over seven Middle Eastern countries for their resources, and they have nearly completed their job." 

The "last stepping stone (is) Iran which will really tip the balance. How long can China and Russia stand by and watch America clean up?" 

"The great Russian bear and Chinese sickle will be roused from their slumber and this is when Israel will have to fight with all its might and weapons to kill as many Arabs as it can." 

"Hopefully if all goes well, half the Middle East will be Israeli."

"Out of the ashes we shall build a new society, a new world order; there will only be one superpower left, and that one will be the global government that wins." 

"Don't forget, the United States, has the best weapons, we have stuff that no other nation has, and we will introduce those weapons to the world when the time is right."

Kissinger's worldview was always Dr. Strangelovian. His resume includes global wars, genocidal slaughter, mass destruction, replacing democrats with despots, and advocating involuntary eugenics as well as other ways of eliminating useless eaters.

How he's "dreamed" of a final solution "showdown." What he has in mind almost makes Hitler look saintly...

[by the way, Putin is his loyal vassal, taking his advices personally]

Hopefully Kissinger's vision proves false. His world isn't fit to live in. If conflict plays out as he believes, it may be destroyed in the process...

The War on Spirit

The mass media have been morphed into mechanisms for manufacturing consent hiding a very real war going on against the Peoples of Mankind

By Kyle McDermott – mathaba.net

The "war on terror" is a phrase often heard; there are, of course, other well-publicized "wars": the "war on poverty," the "war on drugs," the "war on 'organized crime,'" etc. Yet, ultimately, all these "wars" are distractions - indeed, the entire controlled-media apparatus is one ubiquitous, powerful weapon of mass distraction.

There is, however, one very real war that is today raging everywhere on this planet, a war the outcome of which will determine the fate of mankind and, indeed, of ALL life on Earth; it is a war that touches upon every aspect and dimension of what it means to be a human being, to be a living, sentient, conscious being, having a past, a present, and a future. The reader might not have heard of this war, or thought much about it if at all - and there is a reason for this: the mass media have been morphed into mechanisms for manufacturing consent - and the controlled-corporate media have a vested interest in not publicizing this particular war, because it is the War on Spirit.

The War on Spirit is an organized, elite-driven assault on the Peoples of mankind - their respective freedoms, environments, homelands, cultures, belief systems, dignity, and independence. Economistic mechanism-materialism is at war with organic vitalism-spiritualism: Mammon is at war with Beauty; every other struggle is a subset of this existential battle. The conflict rages and grows more severe and pronounced, even as ever more elite-engineered divide-and-conquer balkanization (i.e., "multiculturalism" and "diversity") is promoted by the international tyrants in the globo-plutocracy.

The War on Spirit has been with us for a very long time. Indeed, once the medium of exchange became fungible (e.g., in the form of money), it seems inevitable that economic materialism would embark on a quest to transform the world in its image: humans must become fungible; religions must become universal; everything must succumb to and be subsumed by Mammon - and anything standing in the way of commerce must be plowed under and remade in the image of a rootless, anomic, race-less, ahistorical consumer society.

Ancient conceptions of the sacred and mystical have indeed atrophied, and this process of atrophic decay has been a tragedy for ALL the Peoples of mankind: the conception that mankind are composed of tribes and races, within a harmonic, organic, holonic totality, seems to be infinitely preferable to post-modern ennui and soullessness. Abstract concepts can be deadly, particularly if they divorce consciousness from reality. Mankind need a new paradigm, a fresh, life-affirming perspective to perceive the cosmos - i.e., visible Creation. The old dogmas and blinders must crumble and give way: it is necessary to rethink the meaning of the sacred.

Once the medium of exchange became liberated from use-value, i.e., when the medium of exchange became fungible in the form of money, economic materialism declared war on spirituality, organic life-harmony, and the old values of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. The money-power of economic materialism would, slowly but surely, expand, grow, and consolidate itself. Gradually it would eat away at the organic orders, the aristocratic values, and the supernal systems of thought - the very consciousness - of Western man, as well as the respective consciousnesses of ALL the Peoples of mankind. Eventually, ideologies and paradigms such as Darwinism, Marxism, Freudianism, etc., were developed and promoted, and these new "isms," all these new paradigms and worldviews, all seemed somehow to always have as their as their target the conception of mankind as composed of organic, holonic Peoples and ethno-cultures.

The development of fungible, abstract, detached exchange-value (e.g., consider Aristotle's discussion of commodities, money, barter, usury, exchange-value, and use-value) helped to unleash the forces of economic materialism, and as we witness the course of history, we can see an ongoing world historical struggle taking place, and this titanic clash - which is not yet over - is being waged between Vitalism and Mechanism, between spiritualism and materialism, between particularism and universalism, between soil and profit, between blood and commerce - in short, between Beauty and Mammon.

Marxism fetishizes the economic dimension of this struggle and transforms it into the struggle: the struggle to end all struggles. Yet, Marxism is built on lies - lies about everything, from the nature of man to the meaning and purpose of human existence. In this struggle, Mammon-capitalism is allied with radical egalitarianism, i.e., it has institutionalized the lie of human fungibility - and to disagree with totalitarian human fungibility is to be a heretic.

Step by step, the international globo-plutocracy has moved to transform homogeneous, sovereign nation-states into globalized, neo-feudal, balkanized, standing-reserve cash cows, to better service the needs and hegemonic objectives of international finance.

Today, materialistic Mammon-capitalism is destroying our planet; indeed, the inner depravity and disharmony of Mammon-capitalism is manifesting itself in the ultimate System crisis: the end of growth, i.e., the point at which the pathologies of Mammon-capitalism, commodification and mass consumption, crash into the wall of reality.

Banks and the state

WHEN WE ENDORSE A SYSTEM 

WE DON'T UNDERSTAND,

WE GUARANTEE OUR OWN DOOM

THERE IS NO LONGER ANY REASON

TO CONSIDER OUR GOVERNMENT AS LAWFUL

By John Kaminski

http://therebel.org/news/kaminski

In the Soviet Union, it was the state that swallowed up all the property, as well as tens of millions of lives, in its insane drive for total power and control. In the United States today, it is the banks who are fulfilling that function, seizing property on the premise that they are the impartial arbiters of financial power, just as the Soviet government pretended it was a legitimate authority of benefit to its people. It is no coincidence that both endeavors — these twin nightmares of capitalism and communism — were frauds, mocking all known morality with their conscienceless mayhem and mass murder that they called both legal and necessary.

Karl Marx's dictum that religion was only the opiate of the masses spelled the final end of religious authority that kings and dictators long pretended was what motivated their efforts to organize societies into coherent and secure wholes. Looking back on all this noble history we can't help but wonder if moral codes and holy writs were not just deceptive justifications for the undisguised plunder we see at work today, the snake of profit consuming everything in its path and the pleasant world as we knew it disappearing into ruin right before our eyes.

All these things, of course, are dependent upon ordinary people not knowing what is really happening to them. Could an entire population really believe that sending most of their neighbors into icy concentration camps to be killed as happened in the Soviet Union really be a healthy national policy? Who could be made to believe such a thing? Only the ignorant. 

And in the same vein, who could believe that they should pay a small group of arrogant folks calling themselves the Federal Reserve for the right to spend their own money, resulting in ever rising prices and debts that can never be repaid? These same people who call themselves citizens of the greatest country that ever was, that's who. That is to say, Americans.

When we endorse a system we don't fully understand, we guarantee our own exploitation. We guarantee our own unfair doom. It is what we are facing now. And I think, in all times and places, it is what we have always been facing. 

A clever government imposes a scaffold of fraud on the minds of its citizens, and eventually, with time, lies, debt, and constant media lying we have been conditioned to rely upon, the scaffold becomes real, the noose tightens, and the people bleed. The Russian peasants were wired to the czar in naive devotion, so when that power was hijacked by Jewish bankers from New York, the peasants had no way to disconnect themselves from their reliance on that system, and many millions suffered a cold electrocution in those icy gulags. 

Today in America, the parallel is people losing their homes to the debt they were encouraged to accrue, and starving in the streets.

That's what the FEMA camps are for, they say. Connected to a poison government by an umbilical cord of cash, when the cord is severed, we perish.

Banks and the state. In each case, by not fully understanding the mechanics that drives our societies, we have authorized them — whether we know it or not — to murder us. It is happening today. It has always happened that way.

There is no longer any reason for Americans to acknowledge our government as lawful. Our young people are sent overseas to die for nothing in senseless wars that benefit only the rich international bankers and their weapons manufacturers who are joined with them at the hip. No benefit from any of these immoral wars has accrued to the American citizenry as a result of these immoral and unjust wars.

Criminal stooges are elevated to public offices through phony elections to implement what the bankers tell them to do. The food we are forced to eat is no longer checked to see if it's healthful, the medicines our doctors dispense to us are proven to cause new diseases, and the media, bankers and government are all connected in a malevolent cabal to rob the people of all they have worked for.

Furthermore, unrestrained immigration encouraged by overly generous benefits which are free to aliens but withheld from genuine citizens have exploded the budgets of every state, city and municipality in the country, and allowed the election as president of a person who is in all likelihood an alien himself.

The police seem to be following a policy to kill as many people as possible over trivial or contrived offenses, lawyers conspire with each other to fleece their own clients, and judges feel motivated to honor the contracts with privatized prison operators to keep their jails at maximum capacity.

President Clinton, many of whose bodyguards were killed to coverup his illegal and immoral activities, supervised NAFTA, the shipping of most American jobs overseas, and the gutting of America's industrial base. President Bush the second signed the Patriot Act destroying the Bill of Rights and criminalizing honest dissent over corrupt government policies. And President Obama signed an executive order authorizing him to detain or kill anyone he chooses without explaining why.

The United States no longer has a justice system capable of identifying criminal behavior by its own government, and at the same time authorizes the jailing of innocent people who have done nothing but object to unlawful laws that deprive them of their property and their freedom.

Due to the vomitous collusion of the government, the media, and the educational system, the United States of America has fallen into an inescapable trap in which  crimes against its own people cannot be redressed by ordinary procedures, owing to the utter corruption of the judiciary, the illegality of its laws, and the wool that has been pulled over everyone's eyes by the media and educational harlots, shaping a ruthless and criminal police state where a serviceable democracy used to exist.

Why does the government insist upon knowing every detail of our lives, when we know absolutely nothing about the secret history of the president of the country, or the corrupt dealings of the people holding elective office who get richer and richer while everyone else in the country gets poorer and poorer?

Why does the entire Congress bow down in slavish obedience to the leader of a foreign country merely because his operatives control the federal treasury through illegal and immoral means?

Why are all the top officials in Washington dual Israeli-American citizens?

Why are Jews allowed to own all the media, and then prohibit any discussion of Israeli atrocities, and the Jewish manipulation of the American mind?

When are all Americans going to realize that they have been robbed by clever Jewish pitchmen throughout the 20th century, and now that that robbery has been concluded, that their lives are being taken from them — by radiation, by chemtrails, by poison food and by murderous doctors — as we speak?

This sadistic security state that was ushered in by the false flag operation of 9/11/2001 set a trend that enabled the criminals in power to declare other countries enemy combatants even though there was no evidence — only manufactured false propaganda — to enable them to do so.

Worst of all, the very enemies America has supposed to have been fighting these past dozen years were created by the American intelligence establishment itself, by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Donald Rumsfeld, who turned the Mujaheddin of Afghanistan into Al-Qaeda, with substantial help from the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, all of whom are controlled by the international bankers who illegally take your money to fund them.

This observation was confirmed for all the world to see when alleged Al-Qaeda operatives turned up on the side of the American monsters while destabilizing Egypt and Yemen, and destroying Libya and Syria. Yet Americans somehow have been too debilitated to realize that the people our government still claims knocked down the Twin Towers on 9/11 are now working for the American government in ravaging those Middle Eastern countries who refuse to be bought off by the Jewish bankers.

The debilitation is real, and the American people are largely comatose, helpless against this kosher massacre.

As the birds and the bees are falling from the skies due to electronic smog, poisoned jet trails, and toxic fertilizer that is killing our forests, so the people of the world are being anesthetized to death by a cornucopia of poisons that diminish our ability to think and resist.

As with the 9/11 puzzle which defies solution, we don't need to know every technique that was used to create this worldwide terror paranoia that has been exploited to rob us of our freedom. We know who did it — it was the banks and the state, both undeniably run by Jews.

And it's the same with money. We don't need to know every method of capital use and creation to devise a new method of controlling our own currency without the criminal hijacking of our own wealth by a clever cabal of very sick and ruthless men.

We can invent any number of functional financial systems, but the key ingredient is the absence of the Jewish criminals who run it now, and are running the world into the ground.

Banks and the state are one and the same. 

Banks and the state are enemies of all living things. They must be destroyed, before they destroy all of us, our planet, and everything that lives.

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