United States

#EDF5FA">The following article by Paul Craig Roberts, reprinted with the author's kind permission, has been previously published (23/7/18) on Russia Insider with the same title and on both The Unz Review (4/7/18) and the author's own web-site PaulCraigRoberts.org (4/7/18) as "Washington Moves Against Rafael Correa".

As President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (pictured above) was a Godsend for the Ecuadorian people, for Latin American independence and for WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. By serving justice and truth instead of Washington, Correa earned Washington's hatred and determination to destroy him.

Correa was succeeded as president by Lenin Moreno, who Correa mistakenly believed to be an ally, but who has every appearance of being a Washington asset. The first thing that Moreno did was to make a deal with Washington, block Correa from being able to again stand for the presidency and turn on Julian Assange. Moreno wants to revoke the asylum granted to Assange and has prevented Assange from continuing his journalistic activity from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In other words, Moreno has conspired with Washington and the UK to effectively imprison Assange in the embassy.

Now Moreno has taken another step that highlights his character as a blackguard. Correa, realizing that he and his family were in danger, moved to Belgium. An Ecuadorian court has now ordered the Belgians to detain Correa and extradite him to Ecuador on a fabricated kidnapping charge.

Correa thinks that Belgium will not comply with an absurd charge for which no evidence is presented and that the charge is intended to smear his name. If I were Correa, I would not be so sure. Look at the ease with which Washington was able to use its vassals—Sweden and the UK—to effectively nullify the political asylum that Ecuador gave Assange. Belgium is also Washington's vassal and will experience threats and bribes—whatever it takes—to deliver Correa into Moreno's hands, which is to say into Washington's hands. If I were Correa, I would get myself over to the Russian embassy and request asylum from Putin.

Here is a news report from RT: https://www.rt.com/news/431653-correa-ecuador-arrest-order/

Recently Donald Trump accused Germany of being dangerously dependent on fuel imported from Russia. The Russian foreign minister has responded to this sally by pointing out that Germany is still occupied militarily by the United States Army. As for importing fuel from Russia, Germany has done so for over 50 years, reliably, without interruption due to political differences. Trump wants to sell fracked fuel from the US to Germany and other parts of Europe. Inside is a video with the Russian foreign minister's comment.

This little-known documentary contains rare and compelling footage of Greek villages and Greek partisans during World War 2. It also interviews male and female partisans who survived a series of international betrayals. In 1940 Mussolini attacked Greece from its colony of Albania. The attack was repulsed and the Greeks conquered one third of Albania in their counter attacks. At the time, Greece was Britain's only ally against Nazi Germany in Europe. (France Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Luxumbourg had all been conquered.) Four years later, Britain savagely turned on the same heroic Greeks who had resisted the Italians and subsequently fought against their Nazi German-allied occupiers. It was only possible for the British to succeed because the communist ELAS-Partisans trusted the Greek Communist Party (KKE).

After they landed in October 1944, the British pretended to arrest former Greek collaborators and saved them from furious Greek crowds in Athens. The former collaborators were 'imprisoned' in a hotel overlooking the central Athens. During one of the protests by Athenians against the British, the 'arrested' former collaborators opened fire on the Athenian crowds, killing many.

This provoked a ferocious fightback against the British by the ELAS-Partisans. So fierce was their fight that the British were forced to get reinforcements from the Italian front and from Belgium, where they were fighting the German Ardennes offensive. However, the communist Greek KKE, under Stalin's orders, then agreed to completely disarm and return to their homes in the suburbs of Athens and elsewhere. This was under the pretext of recognising the British puppet forces as the legitimate national Greek army.

In the suburbs of Athens many former ELAS fighters became victims of gangs of former collaborators. Many ELAS fighters were imprisoned by the British and their puppets.

In 1946 those ELAS fighters who had fled to the mountains, and many more, who had escaped from Greece, restarted the civil war against the Greek dictatorship. From 1946-1948 the ELAS partisans (who had changed their name to the Democratic Army). With heroism and brilliant leadership, they outfought superior numbers of government forces, with many from the government forces defecting to the Democratic Army. However, the Greek Government started to overcome the Democratic Army, now with the aid of United States military 'advisors' and the CIA, and from the same source, the provision of war planes capable of dropping napalm, a fearsome new weapon of the time. The Democratic Army was further hamstrung by instructions from the KKE leadership to engage in conventional warfare rather than guerilla warfare, thus enabling the government to more effectively use its numerical and logistic superiority against the Democratic Army partisans. The fighting ended in 1949, when the last of the Democratic Army partisans fled across the border into Albania. From Albania, many were granted 'exile' in the Soviet Union.

"All military personnel, from low ranking GI’s to the top generals and admirals, have an obligation to disobey illegal orders. Orders to carry out acts of war against a sovereign nation that is not threatening the U.S. are illegal orders." Jerry Condon, Veterans for Peace. This leading veterans’ organization is warning that a U.S. attack on Syria could lead to a nuclear war. Russian military forces in Syria will undoubtedly be among the targets of U.S. missiles. Russia has said it will shoot down U.S. missiles, and attack the “platforms from which they are fired,” i.e. U.S. ships.

US Veterans call for military personnel to disobey illegal orders to make war on sovereign powers.

“Why the rush to war?” asked Gerry Condon, president of Veterans For Peace. “Why is the mass media cheerleading for war instead of asking hard questions? Why are Democratic and Republican politicians trying to out-do one another with calls for ever more massive attacks on Syria?

“There is no proof yet of a Syrian government gas attack, only a video made by a fundamentalist rebel group that wants more U.S. intervention. Even if the reports are true, a military response will only lead to more death and destruction, and dangerous escalations.

“We are talking about a direct confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers,” said Gerry Condon. “Why would the U.S. risk nuclear war over dubious chemical weapons claims?

“Veterans have longer memories than the press and the politicians,” said Condon. “We remember how we were lied into the Iraq War with false reports of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ U.S. wars throughout the Middle East have caused millions of deaths and destroyed entire societies. Our soldiers and their families have also paid an extremely high price.”

“Veterans, GI’s and their families will not accept another war based on lies,” said Gerry Condon. “We will be protesting in the streets, in the suites, at media outlets and at military bases.

All military personnel, from low ranking GI’s to the top generals and admirals, have an obligation to disobey illegal orders. Orders to carry out acts of war against a sovereign nation that is not threatening the U.S. are illegal orders.

“We swore an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” said Gerry Condon, president of Veterans For Peace. “Right now those enemies are those who would rush our country recklessly into another devastating war.”

After having returned back home to Berkeley last week, I assumed that I was finally finished with writing about Mexico City -- but apparently not.

One of the top images from there that still keeps popping into my brain, one that I apparently brought back home in my luggage, is a flashback to Mexico City's glorious main cathedral -- and that image still haunts me. From floor to ceiling, it seemed like the whole place was garishly covered with gold. Gold. Gold everywhere you looked. So now I feel compelled to write about that.

All that wealth in just one single church. Enough gold to keep me and all of my friends in riches for the rest of our lives.

But the wealth in just this one cathedral represents only a minuscule fraction of the fabulous tons and tons of gold that Spain extracted from Latin America a few centuries ago -- so much gold. Scrooge McDuck woulda gone nuts.

But what actually happened to all that gold? Did it make Spain rich? Sure, for a while. Spain used to be the richest nation on earth. But then wars were declared and squabbling began and this and that happened -- and then suddenly all that wealth was gone, just gone. https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Lost-Future-World-Stillwater/dp/1532803850/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Which reminds me of the vast wealth of another nation -- ours. America also used to be the richest nation on earth. Not any more. First Franklin Roosevelt died and the Dulles brothers and Richard Nixon schemed their evil schemes to steal what they could from the New Deal. https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276174

And what ever happened to all that gold in Fort Knox -- let alone all that gold in the Social Security slush fund. And then 9-11 happened, the most evil scheme of them all -- and eleven trillion dollars in "war" blood-money suddenly began disappearing down this or that rat hole too. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/16/donald-trump-v-the-spooks/

And now America, like Spain, is no longer the richest nation in the world. What the freak happened? This and that. http://www.mintpressnews.com/genocide-in-yemen-media-complicit-in-us-saudi-war-crimes/224106/

Mexico City still has its grand gold-encrusted cathedral to remind us tourists of what the power and glory of the old Spanish empire used to look like. But we Americans don't even have something like that left to remind us -- except perhaps the glaring monument of our gigantic national debt.

********
Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.

And while you're at it, please buy my books! http://straitwellbooks.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-top-best-seller-right-now-is-bring.html

Republished from Jane Stillwater's blog at http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-that-wealth.html

American boots on the ground. We hear this all too often throughout the world and now the war ravaged country of Yemen is the latest victim of US military troops. But why Yemen and why now and what are these troops trying to accomplish in a country that is facing a brutal war against it by Saudi Arabia, a war that Washington has given the green light to.

Above 23:30 minute video is from the PressTV YouTube Channel.

See also: Ansarullah Furious at US Military Build-up in Yemen (8/5/16) | FARS News Agency

Academy Award© - winning director Oliver Stone, who brought Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK to the big screen, tackles the most important and fascinating true story of the 21st century. Snowden, the politically-charged, pulse-pounding thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene. Woodley, reveals the incredible untold personal story of Edward Snowden, the polarizing figure who exposed shocking illegal surveillance activities by the NSA and became one of the most wanted men in the world. He is considered a hero by some, and a traitor by others. No matter which you believe, the epic story of why he did it, who he left behind, and how he pulled it off makes for one of the most compelling films of the year.

This article was previously published (24/8/15) on Russia Insider.

The Syrians who are being terrorised by the foreign-backed insurgents are genuine, and so is Russia with its joint counter-terrorism plan But the US and its Coalition against ISIS? What are their interests? Do they care for Syrians and their army at all? When George W Bush first declared the 'War on Terror' it seemed like just another of his 'mis-speaks' – surely he must have meant 'War on Terrorism'? But we didn't really bother because we knew it was neither, but just a label for wars of convenience on someone else's Terra.

A tough sell for the US to claim it's serious about fighting terrorism in Syria when it actually refuses to oppose Al Qaeda 1  (The footnote URL previously linked to the wrong page. Apologies - Ed)

As these wars of opportunism fought by the United States to expand its interests and control pass their fourteenth year however, their supposed target has now grown to fit Bush's description, as legions of stereo-typical 'terrorists' rampage across America's foreign battlefields.

Perhaps it should be no surprise to find that this morphosis in the enemy has been accompanied by a change in how it is portrayed by the prosecutors of the war on terror and their client media.

Just as they pretended to be fighting terrorism in all those years when they were fighting for control of Iraq's oil fields, now they are pretending to fight against 'violent extremism' and 'radicalisation' at home, while justifying their ongoing campaign abroad as 'self-defence' – the 'Islamist death-cult' must be prevented from spreading beyond the boundaries of the chosen battlefields, and coming home to bite its trainers. (That campaign of course is little altered, though now rapidly expanding in scale to threaten the whole region, including Russia)

But there's another reason for this 'rebranding of the enemy' to sell it to the Western public – the countries who have to actually fight and die at the hands of this terrorist enemy are calling it by its real name, so the West can no longer use it without admitting that they share a common foe.

This has come into sharp focus in recent weeks with the launching by Russia of a bold initiative – putting together a group of states to fight the terrorist groups in Syria. It is a bold initiative because two of those states have been the main supporters of the Syrian insurgency, and must be convinced that it is in their own interests to change direction, as well as to abandon their quest to overthrow the Syrian government.

But Russia's initiative is no gambit, as it begins with one unyielding condition – that President Assad is going nowhere until stability is restored, when new free elections can decide if he will remain Syrians' choice of president.

The Russian joint counter-terrorism plan has another feature which distinguishes it from all the plans past and current of the self-declared 'international community' to 'fight terror' or to 'degrade and destroy Da'esh' – it is what it says, and doesn't conceal some hidden agenda.

And as far as Russia and Syria are concerned, this means fighting ALL the armed groups who are terrorising the inhabitants of villages and cities in Syria, regardless of their affiliation or alleged justification for taking up arms against the Syrian Arab Army.

Apart from calling the US coalition's bluff - that it is only protecting Syria and the world from Da'esh, this plan obviously directly targets groups that the US is not targeting, like 'Syria's Al Qaeda' – Jabhat al Nusra, or actually supporting, like the mythical 'Free Syrian Army' or its new 'Division 30'.

As far as the Syrian army and the people they are defending are concerned such labels are irrelevant and offensive – they simply want to see the end of this foreign-backed insurgency with the death or disarming of all its fighters.

Recently we heard from a friend who has returned to his home in Aleppo, and who has particularly acute observations to make of how it feels to be under constant threat of attack from terrorists, as they daily fire their home made gas-cylinder missiles to kill and terrorise residents of the government-secured section of the city.

Aleppo has also been suffering from a water shortage, as the insurgent groups have control of the supply from the Euphrates and only allow it to reach the rest of Aleppo via the Queiq river, into which they have dumped dead bodies and sewage. He describes how he feels:

"Those capable of dumping bread and clean water into a contaminated river to prevent half the city from eating the bread or having clean drinking water are committing heinous crimes against humanity.

I am not sure if it is a "war crime" as such but they are the real "infidels" if there is any real meaning for this word that they bandy about so liberally.

They are not "freedom fighters" or "moderates" that NATO and their allies are supporting so vociferously. We are suffering from lack of water, we go thirsty while they are intentionally squandering it.

I watch, heavy hearted, as the elderly and children patiently wait in endless queues in the searing heat to fill their assorted containers. I see them having to lug these heavy containers through the narrow alleyways, struggling under the weight as the precious water splashes into the dust beneath their feet.

I feel nothing but rage when I see these thugs and criminals on the other side of the city pouring thousands of litres of clean, fresh water into the disease infested river under the noses of the thirsty Syrians they are claiming to liberate.

They are the terrorists, they are the monsters in this story and they are committing daily mass crimes against the citizens of Aleppo, but this is never mentioned by the western media.

This is Aleppo, the real Aleppo, not the western media fantasy, this is our sleeping, waking, perpetual nightmare of life under terrorist occupation."

So what does the 'Coalition against ISIS' have to say about these terrorists targeting Syrians and their soldiers? It says: 'do what you like but don't target us'. And as Australia stands ready to expand its air force deployment over the border from Iraq following a US request, the danger to Australian forces from pursuit at the International Criminal Court seems to be the main consideration. For our friend in Aleppo such insufferable conceit would make Australia's likely contribution to Syria's suffering indistinguishable from all the rest.

Al Nusra's home-made gas canister cannons

Footnote[s]

#fntSy1" id="fntSy1">1. #txttSy1">↑  The photo is of al-Nusra terrorists making a show of force in the Syrian town of Tell Abyad on 2 Jan 2014.

This article previously appeared on Russian Insider (4/7/15) and Global Research (11/7/15). See also: War without mercy in Yemen (8/7/15) and other articles about Yemen on PressTV and candobetter.

No "We are the children"
for the children of Yemen

80 percent of people in the Arab world's poorest country are in danger of starving to death under a US-backed and US-enabled blockade and bombing campaign.

Have the CNN, BBC, NBC, Fox, Sky, etc told you about that?

Obviously news that doesn't directly touch on Russia. However, obviously an enormously important one – this is the biggest humanitarian disaster in the world right now – but it's getting barely any attention because the US is contributing to it in a major way. (The Saudi campaign in Yemen wouldn't be possible without American diplomatic, intelligence and logistics backing.)

Another interesting (albeit in the light of 20 million lives in danger far less key) angle is that despite repeatedly causing such tragedies (260,000 people died in 2010-12 Somalia famine after a sustained US-Ethiopian military intervention there made an even greater mess of that country and up to a million who died in the 1990s due to sanctions on Iraq passed after the US destroyed chunks of the country's civilian infrastructure) the US still thinks it can take the moral high ground against Russia.

Preposterous! Even if Russia actually did everything the US accuses it of (and it doesn't) it would be far, far cleaner than the US, which is the world's premier killer today.

Twenty million people in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, are at risk of dying from hunger or thirst. That's 80 percent of the country's population, which according to UN agencies badly needs emergency supplies of food and water, along with fuel and medicine.

This almost unimaginable crisis sounds like something out of a disaster movie. But the cause isn't an earthquake or a tsunami.

The main reason for all this suffering is months of merciless bombardment and blockade led by the richest Arab countries – Saudi Arabia and its neighboring petro-princedoms – and backed by the United States. Washington's providing the attackers with technical assistance, intelligence, and top-shelf armaments.

The countries bombing Yemen are targeting a rebel group they claim is a proxy for Iran. The evidence for that is very thin.

In fact, the conflict in Yemen is rooted in internal disputes. Try to stay with me...

In 2011, a nationwide uprising akin to those in Tunisia and Egypt deposed the country's autocratic leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. There was no democratic election before his successor, the Saudi- and U.S.-backed Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, took over – he ran unopposed. And there was no relief from the terrible poverty, unemployment, and government corruption that brought about the popular revolt.

So a few months ago, a reformist movement and militia called the Houthis – which had launched a handful of rebellions against Saleh in the past – took advantage of widespread discontent to conquer the capital, Sanaa. Hadi fled into exile, and the Saudis started bombing shortly thereafter.

Since then, local militias in central and southern Yemen have fiercely resisted the Houthis and army units still loyal to Saleh, who is now allied with his former foes. Meanwhile, a local franchise of al-Qaeda is fighting everybody.

In short, it's terribly complicated, and the bombs aren't helping.

The Yemenis caught in this crossfire were already thirsty and hungry before the war – unlike their Saudi neighbors, they don't have a lucrative oil supply. Now, with Yemen's borders closed, its airports shut down, and Arab navies enforcing an embargo at sea, the situation is breathtaking in its desperation.

Saudi Arabia and its friends, including the United States, support Hadi. Yet they have no discernible plan for winning beyond reducing Yemen to rubble and besieging civilians in the hope of securing the Houthis' surrender.

The Obama administration probably doesn't believe the Saudis' nonsense about the Houthis and Iran, but it's shown no interest in stopping the war.

In fact, the United States has even announced a full suspension of aid to Yemen for a year, undercutting its occasional murmurs of humanitarian concern. By endorsing this Saudi-led shooting match, Washington may hope to calm the Saudis' nerves about the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, which Saudi Arabia opposes.

Is that what it's come to, soothing a bully's nerves just because it pumps a lot of oil?

Instead, the Obama administration should withdraw its support for the bombing, lift the blockade, and broker a power-sharing agreement between Yemen's competing factions. For the people of Yemen, it's beyond urgent.

Previously published (3/5/15) on PressTV

Sister Diana Momeka

The US State Department has been criticized for its move to deny a visa to an Iraqi Christian nun planning to reveal ISIL atrocities to Congress.

Sister Diana Momeka was part of an Iraqi delegation that was scheduled to testify before the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committee later this month.

Momeka has been a frank supporter for the Christians who have been killed and deported by the ISIL ₁  terrorist group.

Other members of the delegation received visas to the US to speak in Washington about the persecution of minorities of the region.

The US consulate in the Iraqi semi-autonomous region of Erbil, Kurdistan rejected her visitor visa application earlier this week.

According to the US State Department, the Christian nun was "not able to demonstrate that [her] intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa."

The nun was the only Christian in the group that was set to head to the US on an invitation from American NGOs.

The criticism came from Nina Shea of the conservative Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in an op-ed in National Review Online.

"She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an 'IDP' or Internally Displaced Person. 'That really hurt.' Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver," Nina Shea said in the op-ed.

ISIL destroyed Sister Diana's home forcing her and 50,000 others to flee back in August.

ISIL destroyed Sister Diana's home forcing her
and 50,000 others to flee back in August.

Shea explained that State Department officials concluded from the nun's application process and interview to obtain a visa that Sister Diana "could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the US seems determined to deny ISIS's (ISIL) Christian victims that status."

Sister Diana, who is from an Iraqi town of 50,000 mostly Christian residents, was forced to leave her home by ISIL in August.

Since then, she has received refugee status and has been an outspoken critic of ISIL and other terrorist groups creating mayhem in Iraq and elsewhere.

HDS/AGB

Footnote[s]

#fnSdm1" id="fnSdm1">1.#txtSdm1"> ↑  'ISIL' is generally considered to be synonymous with 'ISIL'. Elsewhere on this site, the term 'ISIS' is used.

See also: VoltaireNet | Western wars have killed four million Muslims since 1990 (11/4/15), Land Destroyer | Syria: America's Democratic Terrorists? (10/4/15), other related articles.

Those rightly outraged at the murder of Tori Johnson and the death of Katrina Dawson on 16 December at the end of the Martin Place siege and at the murder of 11 people on 7 January 2015 in Paris by terrorists (see #appendix1">embedded Syrian Girl video) should also contemplate the fact that, since March 2011, the people of Syria have suffered terrorism on a scale which is vastly greater than these two tragedies. Since March 2011, they have faced an invasion by hordes of foreign terrorists coming from almost every corner of the globe and not just the Arab world. These invaders have been paid for and supplied by the United States, its European allies and its allies amongst the Arab dictatorships including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So far, over 200,000 Syrians have been killed at the hands of these terrorists. As a consequence, the Syrian government has demanded of the United Nations act against the terrorists' sponsors.

The article below was previous published in SANA (12/4/15).

Damascus, SANA – Syria demanded deterrent measures by the United Nations against the terrorist organizations and the states backing and sponsoring them.

The Syrian demand was expressed in two identical letters which the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry addressed to Chairman of the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General on Sunday.

It was prompted by the bloody terrorist rocket attacks which hit Aleppo city yesterday, leaving heavy casualties of at least 19 civilians dead and scores of others wounded and causing massive material damage.

The new crime, the letters said, came as a response from the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan to the "important" outcomes that were reached at the latest Moscow inter-Syrian talks.

In their "clear message" delivered by their agents of the so-called "moderate opposition", those regimes have sought to foil any political solution that could be reached by the Syrians themselves without foreign interference, the letters added.

The Foreign Ministry dismissed the claim of those and other countries of them sending "non-lethal" weapons to the terrorists, stressing that a new type of destructive weapons seemed to have been used in Aleppo attack.

Several four-story buildings were completely demolished, falling on their inhabitants’ heads, according to the letters.

The Ministry blamed the continuation of terrorist acts on those countries which have not ceased providing direct support to the Takfiri terrorist organizations, including the notorious Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, in addition to the so-called "Free Army", "Islam Army", "Islamic Front", "Liwa al-Fateh", "Ahrar al-Sham Movement", "Al-Ansar Front", etc.

Striking out at this continued support, the Ministry said the terrorist organizations would not have been capable of launching such bloody attacks, was it not for those countries shielding these organizations against punishment and continuing to supply them with weapons and explosives.

It named France, Britain, Jordan and the US as accomplices in backing the terrorists.

The Ministry demanded a Security Council non-politicized action towards enforcing counterterrorism resolutions in deeds not only in words.

The Security Council, it said, is also called upon to cooperate and coordinate with the Syrian government, which "has been combating terrorism for years on behalf of the entire world people."

The Syria government, the Ministry said, stresses dodged determination to continue fighting terrorism in Syria and defend its people by virtue of its constitutional responsibilities.

Haifa Said

#appendix1" id="appendix1">Appendix 1: "The Charlie Hebdo Attacks Exposed" by the Syrian Girl

#related" id="related">Appendix 2: Other related articles

Land Destroyer | Syria: America's Democratic Terrorists? (10/4/15), VoltaireNet | Western wars have killed four million Muslims since 1990 (11/4/15), Global Research | Syria at the UN: US, Britain, France, Jordan Refuse to Name ISIL as “Separate Terror Group" (11/4/15), Global Research | Syria: "Al-Qaeda Linked Rebels" Are Al-Qaeda (13/4/15), Global Research | Israel moves to Cover-up its alliance with al-Qaeda in Syria (14/4/15), PressTV | Turkey, Saudis to form anti-Syria military alliance: Report (14/4/15).

Syrian Fee Press | Israeli [occupation] army admits aiding al-Qaeda in Syria (12/4/15) – Asa Winstanley. Whilst informative it dismisses some 'conspiracy theories' about the Syrian conflict:

Popular conspiracy theories have it that al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State” (also known as DAESH, ISIS or ISIL) are Israeli- and/or US-intelligence creations.

Ash continues:

While there’s no evidence for that, it’s certainly true that the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, and its consciously sectarian occupation regime of the country thereafter, created the conditions in which al-Qaeda in Iraq (later known as ISIS) was formed and thrived. Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn demonstrates this most convincingly in his essential new book The Rise of Islamic State, which I have previously lauded here.

From my recent viewing of some of the articles about the Syria conflict to which Asa seems to be referring, a conspiracy by the United States and its allies to set up ISIS as a bogus extremist 'anti-west' army to undermine popular domestic opposition to war seems to be a highly plausible explanation of the recent course of events. However, having read these words by Asa Winstanley, I will have to re-examine these articles more closely.

Another irritating feature of this article and so much other material which otherwise seems to be strongly opposed to the United States' planned aggression against Syria, is its insistence on labeling of the Syrian government a 'regime' :

Hizballah (my spelling is 'Hezbollah' - Ed) and Iran, allies of the Bashar al-Assad regime, are aiding the government in Syria and fighting on the ground alongside Syrian army troops against al-Qaeda, the “Islamic State” and other Sunni rebel groups.

Could Asa be truly unaware that on 4 June 20914, Syrians overwhelmingly endorsed President Bashar al-Assad in presidential elections, as attested to by four International observers at a United Nations Press conference. See Global Research | Syria's press conference the United Nations doesn't want you to see (20/6/15) with embedded 52:45min video, republished on Candobetter.

This article by Professor Tim Anderson was previously published on Global Research on 8 Mar 2015. See also: US war on ISIS is a Trojan Horse (7/3/15) and Washington's Al Qaeda Ally Now Leading ISIS in Libya (9/3/15) by Tony Cartalucci. Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a 'double game' with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences.

A central myth is that Washington now arms 'moderate Syrian rebels', to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the 'extremist rebels'. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from 'humanitarian intervention' to a renewal of Bush's 'war on terror'.

A distinct controversy is whether the al Qaeda styled groups (especially Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS) have been generated as a sort of organic reaction to the repeated US interventions, or whether they are actually paid agents of Washington.

Certainly, prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq. In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a 'New Middle East', a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of 'creative destruction' in the region.

According to Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, 'The Redirection', the US would make use of 'moderate Sunni states', not least the Saudis, to 'contain' the Shia gains in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These 'moderate Sunni' forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel. This brought the Saudis and Israel closer, as both fear Iran.

While there have been claims that the ISIS 'caliph' al-Baghdadi is a CIA or Mossad trained agent, these have not yet been well backed up. There are certainly grounds for suspicion, but independent evidence is important, in the context of a supposed US 'war' against ISIS . So what is the broader evidence on Washington's covert links with ISIS?

Not least are the admissions by senior US officials that key allies support the extremist group. In September 2014 General Martin Dempsey, head of the US military, told a Congressional hearing 'I know major Arab allies who fund [ ISIS ]'. Senator Lindsey Graham, of Armed Services Committee, responded with a justification, 'They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn't fight [Syrian President] Assad, they were trying to beat Assad'.

The next month, US Vice President Joe Biden went a step further, explaining that Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia 'were so determined to take down Assad ... they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad ... [including] al Nusra and al Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world ... [and then] this outfit called ISIL'. Biden's admissions sought to exempt the US from this operation, as though Washington were innocent of sustained operations carried out by its key allies. That is simply not credible.

Washington's relationship with the Saudis, as a divisive sectarian force in the region, in particular against Arab nationalism, goes back to the 1950s, when Winston Churchill introduced the Saudi King to President Eisenhower. At that time Washington wanted to set up the Saudi King as a rival to President Nasser of Egypt. More recently, British General Jonathan Shaw has acknowledged the contribution of Saudi Arabia's extremist ideology: 'This is a time bomb that, under the guise of education. Wahhabi Salafism is igniting under the world really. And it is funded by Saudi and Qatari money', Shaw said.

Other evidence undermines western attempts to maintain a distinction between the 'moderate rebels', now openly armed and trained by the US, and the extremist groups Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. While there has indeed been some rivalry (emphasised by the London-based, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned, Syrian Observatory of Human Rights), the absence of real ideological difference is best shown by the cooperation and mergers of groups.

As ISIS came from Iraq in 2013, its Syrian bases have generally remained in the far eastern part of Syria. However Jabhat al Nusra (the official al Qaeda branch in Syria, from which ISIS split) has collaborated with Syrian Islamist groups in western Syria for several years. The genocidal slogan of the Syrian Islamists, 'Christians to Beirut and Alawis to the Grave', reported many times in 2011 from the Farouk Brigade, sat well with the al Qaeda groups. Farouk (once the largest 'Free Syrian Army' group) indeed killed and ethnically cleansed many Christians and Alawis.

Long term cooperation between these 'moderate rebels' and the foreign-led Jabhat al-Nusra has been seen around Daraa in the south, in Homs-Idlib, along the Turkish border and in and around Aleppo. The words Jabhat al Nusra actually mean 'support front', that is, support for the Syrian Islamists. Back in December 2012, as Jabhat al Nusra was banned in various countries, 29 of these groups reciprocated the solidarity in their declaration: 'We are all Jabhat al-Nusra'.

After the collapse of the 'Free Syrian Army' groups, cooperation between al Nusra and the newer US and Saudi backed groups (Dawud, the Islamic Front, the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm) helped draw attention to Israel's support for al Nusra, around the occupied Golan Heights. Since 2013 there have been many reports of 'rebel' fighters, including those from al Nusra, being treated in Israeli hospitals. Prime Minister Netanyahu even publicised his visit to wounded 'rebels' in early 2014. That led to a public 'thank you' from a Turkey-based 'rebel' leader, Mohammed Badie (February 2014).

The UN peacekeeping force based in the occupied Golan has reported its observations of Israel's Defence Forces 'interacting with' al Nusra fighters at the border. At the same time, Israeli arms have been found with the extremist groups, in both Syria and Iraq. In November 2014 members of the Druze minority in the Golan protested against Israel's hospital support for al Nusra and ISIS fighters. This in turn led to questions by the Israeli media, as to whether ' Israel does, in fact, hospitalize members of al-Nusra and Daesh [ISIS]'. A military spokesman's reply was hardly a denial: 'In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.'

The artificial distinction between 'rebel' and 'extremist' groups is mocked by multiple reports of large scale defections and transfer of weapons. In July 2014 one thousand armed men in the Dawud Brigade defected to ISIS in Raqqa. In November defections to Jabhat al Nusra from the Syrian Revolutionary Front were reported. In December, Adib Al-Shishakli, representative at the Gulf Cooperation Council of the exile ' Syrian National Coalition', said 'opposition fighters' were 'increasingly joining' ISIS 'for financial reasons'. In that same month, 'rebels' in the Israel-backed Golan area were reported as defecting to ISIS, which had by this time began to establish a presence in Syria's far south. Then, in early 2015, three thousand 'moderate rebels' from the US-backed 'Harakat Hazzm' collapsed into Jabhat al Nusra, taking a large stock of US arms including anti-tank weapons with them.

ISIS already had US weapons by other means, in both Iraq and Syria , as reported in July, September and October 2014. At that time a 'non aggression pact' was reported in the southern area of Hajar al-Aswad between 'moderate rebels' and ISIS, as both recognised a common enemy in Syria: 'the Nussayri regime', a sectarian way of referring to supposedly apostate Muslims. Some reported ISIS had bought weapons from the 'rebels'.

In December 2014 there were western media reports of the US covert supply of heavy weapons to 'Syrian rebels' from Libya, and of Jabhat al-Nusra getting anti-tank weapons which had been supplied to Harakat Hazm. Video posted by al-Nusra showed these weapons being used to take over the Syrian military bases, Wadi Deif and Hamidiyeh, in Idlib province.

With 'major Arab allies' backing ISIS and substantial collaboration between US-armed 'moderate rebels' and ISIS, it is not such a logical stretch to suppose that the US and 'coalition' flights to ISIS areas (supposedly to 'degrade' the extremists) might have become covert supply lines. That is precisely what senior Iraqi sources began saying, in late 2014 and early 2015.

For example, as reported by both Iraqi and Iranian media, Iraqi MP Majid al-Ghraoui said in January that 'an American aircraft dropped a load of weapons and equipment to the ISIS group militants at the area of al-Dour in the province of Salahuddin'. Photos were published of ISIS retrieving the weapons. The US admitted the seizure but said this was a 'mistake'. In February Iraqi MP Hakem al-Zameli said the Iraqi army had shot down two British planes which were carrying weapons to ISIS in al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published of the wrecked planes. 'We have discovered weapons made in the US , European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL's control in Al-Baqdadi region', al-Zameli said.

The Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz saying that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province. Also in February an Iraqi militia called Al-Hashad Al-Shabi said they had shot down a US Army helicopter carrying weapons for the ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published. After that, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces were reported as having arrested 'four foreigners who were employed as military advisors to the ISIL fighters', three of whom were American and Israeli. So far the western media has avoided these stories altogether; they are very damaging to the broader western narrative.

In Libya, a key US collaborator in the overthrow of the Gaddafi government has announced himself the newly declared head of the 'Islamic State' in North Africa. Abdel Hakim Belhaj was held in US prisons for several years, then 'rendered' to Gaddafi's Libya, where he was wanted for terrorist acts. As former head of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then the Tripoli-based 'Libyan Dawn' group, Belhaj has been defended by Washington and praised by US Congressmen John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Some image softening of the al Qaeda groups is underway. Jabhat al-Nusra is reported to be considering cutting ties to al Qaeda, to help sponsor Qatar boost their funding. Washington's Foreign Affairs magazine even published a survey claiming that ISIS fighters were 'surprisingly supportive of democracy'. After all the well published massacres that lacks credibility.

The Syrian Army is gradually reclaiming Aleppo, despite the hostile supply lines from Turkey, and southern Syria, in face of support for the sectarian groups from Jordan and Israel. The border with Lebanon is largely under Syrian Army and Hezbollah control. In the east, the Syrian Army and its local allies control most of Hasaka and Deir e-Zour, with a final campaign against Raqqa yet to come. The NATO-GCC attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government has failed.

Yet violent destabilisation persists. Evidence of the covert relationship between Washington and ISIS is substantial and helps explain what Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad calls Washington's 'cosmetic war' on ISIS. The extremist group is a foothold Washington keeps in the region, weakening both Syria and Iraq . Their 'war' on ISIS is ineffective. Studies by Jane's Terrorism and Insurgent database show that ISIS attacks and killings in Iraq increased strongly after US air attacks began. The main on the ground fighting has been carried out by the Syrian Army and, more recently, the Iraqi armed forces with Iranian backing.

All this has been reported perversely in the western media. The same channels that celebrate the ISIS killing of Syrian soldiers also claim the Syrian Army is 'not fighting ISIS'. This alleged 'unwillingness' was part of the justification for US bombing inside Syria. While it is certainly the case that Syrian priorities have remained in the heavily populated west, local media reports make it clear that, since at least the beginning of 2014, the Syrian Arab Army has been the major force engaged with ISIS in Hasaka, Raqqa and Deir eZour. A March 2015 Reuters report does concede that the Syrian Army recently killed two ISIS commanders (including Deeb Hedjian al-Otaibi) along with 24 fighters, at Hamadi Omar.

Closer cooperation between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah is anathema to Israel, the Saudis and Washington, yet it is happening. This is not a sectarian divide but rather based on some clear mutual interests, not least putting an end to sectarian (takfiri) terrorism.

It was only logical that, in the Iraqi military's recent offensive on ISIS-held Tikrit, the Iranian military emerged as Iraq's main partner. Washington has been sidelined, causing consternation in the US media. General Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force is a leading player in the Tikrit operation. A decade after Washington's 'creative destruction' plans, designed to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq, an article in Foreign Policy magazine complains that Iran's influence is 'at its highest point in almost four centuries'.

—

Select references

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya (2006) Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a 'New Middle East'

Seymour Hersh (2007) The Redirection

Al Akhbar (2011) Syria: What Kind of Revolution?

The New Yorker (2013) Syrian Opposition Groups Stop Pretending

RT (2014) Anyone but US! Biden blames allies for ISIS rise

Iraqi News (2015) American aircraft dropped weapons to ISIS, says MP

Washington Post (2015) Syrian rebel group that got U.S. aid dissolves

David Kenner (2015) For God and Country, and Iran, Foreign Policy

Reuters (2015) Syrian air strike kills two Islamic State commanders/p>

Provoking war abroad raises spectre of staged attacks at home.

This article, by Tony Cartalucci, was published on the Land Destroyer Report (landdestroyer.blogspot) on 18 September 2014. Appendix added: End the Sanctions on Syria video by SyrianGirlPartisan.

#8DEEEE;font-size:80%;line-height:120%;">The Australian mainstream media anticipates staged terrorist attacks by supposed Islamist extremists: Terror raids: Attack feared within days, Tony Abbott says, Australia's PM confirms threat to Parliament House, Editorial: Timely police raids on accused terrorists prevent horror on our streets – The Courier-Mail, Live blog: Senior Australian in Islamic State 'ordered kidnappings and beheadings in Sydney and Brisbane'- ABC News, Beheading plot: Where the terrorism raids occurred - ABC News, Authorities thwart beheading plot in Australia's biggest ever counter-terrorism raids - ABC News, Security to conduct train toilet searches as terror threat raised - Brisbane Times, Lone wolves: Small cells of radicals are Australia's greatest terror threat, experts say, Homegrown terrorism Australia's main national security concern says Julie Bishop - ABC 7.30 Report (5/8/14).

September 18, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci, aka Land Destroyer) - The FBI has foiled yet another entirely fabricated terror threat of its own creation, with missing mechanisms in two firearms provided to a potential terrorist being the only thing that prevented this latest case of entrapment from going "live." A Rochester man, Mufid A. Elfgeeh, is accused by the FBI of attempting to provide material support to ISIS (undercover FBI agents), attempting to kill US soldiers, and possession of firearms and silencers (provided to him by the FBI). The FBI's own official press release stated (emphasis added):

According to court records, Elfgeeh attempted to provide material support to ISIS in the form of personnel, namely three individuals, two of whom were cooperating with the FBI. Elfgeeh attempted to assist all three individuals in traveling to Syria to join and fight on behalf of ISIS. Elfgeeh also plotted to shoot and kill members of the United States military who had returned from Iraq. As part of the plan to kill soldiers, Elfgeeh purchased two handguns equipped with firearm silencers and ammunition from a confidential source. The handguns were made inoperable by the FBI before the confidential source gave them to Elfgeeh.

What is perhaps more chilling are the details of Elfgeeh's plans to kill US soldiers. The FBI's press release stated (emphasis added):

Court documents also indicate that Elfgeeh first discussed the idea of shooting United States military members in December 2013 when he told CS-2 that he was thinking about getting a gun and ammunition, putting on a bulletproof vest, and "just go[ing] around and start shooting." In February 2014, Elfgeeh told CS-2 that he needed a handgun and silencer. Elfgeeh later gave CS-2 $1,050 in cash to purchase two handguns equipped with silencers and ammunition. On May 31, 2014, CS-2 delivered the two handguns equipped with silencers and ammunition to Elfgeeh. After Elfgeeh took possession of the items, he was arrested by members of the Rochester Joint Terrorism Task Force. Elfgeeh is currently being held in custody.

Elfgeeh's plans are also - coincidentally - verbatim, the dream scenario of Washington's warmongers currently attempting to sell a war that will straddle both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border, allow the US to provide terrorists operating in Syria with air support, and lead to punitive operations against the Syrian government for attacking US-backed terrorists with the final objective being long-sought after regime change in Damascus.

With serial beheadings failing to raise Western public support necessary for an expedient intervention in Syria, more insidious provocations appear to be in the works. Setting the stage, a CBS/Associated Press story titled, "Former Deputy CIA Director: ‘I Would Not Be Surprised' If ISIS Member Shows Up To US Mall Tomorrow With AK-47," would claim immediately after the initial James Foley execution video that:

"The short-term concern is the Americans that have gone to fight with ISIS and the west Europeans that have gone to fight with ISIS could be trained and directed by ISIS to come to the United States to conduct small-scale attacks," Morell stated. "If an ISIS member showed up at a mall in the United States tomorrow with an AK-47 and killed a number of Americans, I would not be surprised."

Morell warned that over the long-term the extremist group could be planning for a 9/11-style attack that killed thousands of Americans.

Elfgeeh's entrapment is only the beginning. Staged "terror raids" in Australia are also ratcheting up hysteria ahead of an actual event of mass murder carried out on Western soil. The BBC would report in their article, "Australia raids over 'Islamic State plot to behead'," that:

Police have carried out anti-terror raids in Sydney sparked by intelligence reports that Islamic extremists were planning random killings in Australia.

PM Tony Abbott said a senior Australian Islamic State militant had called for "demonstration killings", reportedly including a public beheading.

The raids, with at least 800 heavily-armed officers, led to 15 arrests.

Image: Australian security forces swept the city of Sydney arresting suspects of an alleged plot by ISIS to behead a random member of the public and then drape an ISIS flag upon their body in an attack that would only stand to serve Western ambitions to expand war on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border. The plot is cartoonish in nature, but Westerners should not underestimate what lengths special interests will go through to provoke war.

The cartoonish nature of the plot - beheading a random member of the public before draping an ISIS flag over their body - is meant to provoke maximum fear and anger first, then maximum support for Australia's continued involvement in Wall Street and London's hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East. Likewise, the Rochester arrest made by the FBI amid their own terror plot, serves only to incite fear across the public and irrational support for intervention in Syria that will, in fact, lead to further support of extremists as well as the destruction of the only institution in the region truly fighting terrorism - the Syrian Arab Army.

A Functioning Firing Pin Away From a Staged Mass Shooting

The FBI has a long list of foiled terror plots of its own creation. More disturbingly are the plots they conceived but "accidentally" allowed to go "live." One might recall the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. FBI agents, according to the New York Times, were indeed overseeing the bombers that detonated a device killing six and wounding many more at the World Trade Center.

In their article, "Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast," NYT reported:

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

Considering the 1993 bombing and the fact that the FBI literally oversaw the construction and deployment of a deadly bomb that killed 6, it is clear that the FBI can at any time through design or disastrous incompetence, turn one of their contrived entrapment cases into a live terror attack. One can only guess at how many similar FBI operations are currently taking place within the United States involving ISIS sympathizers - any one of which could be turned into a live terror attack provided the weapons handed over to potential terrorists are functioning, just as the bomb was in 1993 when it was driven into the lower levels of the World Trade Center.

Image: The FBI has an impressive portfolio of intentionally created, then foiled terror plots. Its methods include allowing suspects to handle both real and inoperable weapons and explosives. These methods allow the FBI to switch entrapment cases "live" at any moment simply by switching out duds and arrests with real explosives and successful attacks. Because the FBI uses "informants," when attacks go live, these confidential assets can be blamed, obfuscating the FBI's involvement

Everything from a mass shooting to a bombing, and even an Operation Northwoods-style false flag attack involving aircraft could be employed to provide Wall Street and London with the support it needs to accelerate its long-stalled agenda of regime change and reordering in both Syria and across the Iranian arc of influence. Readers may recall Operation Northwoods, reported on in an ABC News article titled, "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba," which bluntly stated:

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

That the FBI and Australian authorities are coordinating staged security operations in tandem on opposite ends of the globe to terrify their respective populations into line behind an impending war with Syria suggests a new "Operation Northwoods" of sorts is already being executed. Staged executions on cue by ISIS in the Middle East of US and British citizens at perfectly timed junctures of the West's attempt to sell intervention both at home and abroad also reek of staged mayhem for the sole purpose of provoking war. Could grander and ultimately more tragic mayhem be in store? As ABC News' article on Operation Northwoods suggests, there is no line Western special interests will hesitate to cross.

With the West attempting to claim ISIS now has a "global" reach, the US and its partners' attempts to obfuscate the very obvious state-sponsorship it is receiving will become exponentially more difficult. That the FBI is admittedly stringing along easily manipulated, malevolent patsies who at any time could be handed real weapons and sent on shooting sprees and/or bombings, Americans, Europeans, and Australians would be foolish to conclude that their real enemy resides somewhere in Syria and not right beside them at home, upon the very seats of Western power.

#EndSanctions">Appendix: End the Sanctions on Syria by SyrianGirlPartisan

The article below has been adapted from the PressTV article US to regret military action in Syria: IRGC chief (16/9/14). The Appendix, also from PressTV, is Obama threatens to oust Assad if US planes downed in Syrian airspace (16/9/14). To view the embedded videos, please visit those pages.

US to regret military action in Syria: IRGC chief

Tue Sep 16, 2014 10:7AM GMT

The chief of Iran's Islamic Revol­ution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the US and its allies will regret any military operation in Syria. 'The Islamic Republic of Iran's policy is to support Syria and this US action is from a bullying position and is condemned and if it does so it will regret it," Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Tuesday. The general was reacting to the US government's (claimed)1 decision to form an international coalition to fight the Takfiri ISIL terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Chief of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Moham­mad Ali Jafari

'The US is disappointed with any influential role to be played by the ISIL and similar groups and it is calling for this so-called coalition. We doubt if their serious objective is to annihilate the ISIL," Jafari said.

He noted that the US is declaring war on the ISIL while it continues to support other militant groups fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Jafari said the enemies are determined to topple the 'current ruling government in Syria."

The general said the US and the Israeli regime created this group in order to trigger war among Muslims in the Middle East regime and serve as an obstacle to resistance against the Zionist regime.

On Monday, France hosted a conference, dubbed the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, to discuss ways of tackling the ISIL terrorists in Iraq and Syria amid US efforts to form a so-called international coalition to battle the Takfiri group.

Despite the international community's emphasis on the importance of Iran's role in the regional developments, Tehran was not invited to the meeting in Paris mainly due to the US opposition.

The US has also announced that Iran will not be a part of its so-called coalition against the ISIL.

Iran has cast doubt over the sincerity of the coalition and reiterated that it had no interest in attending the Paris meeting.

Tehran has on several occasions voiced support for the Iraqi government since it began fighting against the ISIL in June. The ISIL terrorists are in control of some areas in Syria and have captured large swathes of land in neighboring Iraq.

The Takfiri terrorist groups have committed heinous crimes and threatened all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Izadi Kurds, during their advances.

#USbullying" id="USbullying">Obama threatens to oust Assad if US planes downed in Syrian airspace

Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:53AM GMT

PressTV interviewer and Jim W. Dean of Veterens Today

US President Barack Obama has threatened to wipe out Syria's air defense system and topple the Syrian government if President Bashar al-Assad ordered his forces to shoot American planes entering Syrian airspace.

He made the remarks during a meeting in the White House before his speech about Washington's strategy about the ISIL terrorist group, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

Obama ordered the US military on Wednesday to expand its bombing campaign against ISIL terrorists and launch airstrikes in Syria.

'If he [Assad] dared to do that, Mr. Obama said he would order American forces to wipe out Syria's air defense system, which he noted would be easier than striking ISIS (or ISIL) because its locations are better known," the newspaper said.

'He went on to say that such an action by Mr. Assad would lead to his overthrow, according to one account," the Times said.

The US president also noted that ISIL made a major strategic error by killing American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff 'because the anger it generated resulted in the American public's quickly backing military action."

During his televised speech on Wednesday, Obama said, "I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq."

"America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat," he said.

The Pentagon announced that the United States already has conducted more than 150 airstrikes against ISIL targets in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem has warned the US and its allies against attacking ISIL targets on Syrian soil.

"Syria is ready to cooperate and coordinate with regional and international efforts to combat terror in accordance with UN resolutions and respect of Syrian sovereignty," he said in Damascus last month.

"Everyone is welcome, including Britain and the United States, to take action against ISIS and Nusra with a prior full coordination with the Syrian government," Moallem added.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington will not coordinate its airstrikes on ISIL terrorists inside Syria.

'We're not going to coordinate it with Syria... It's not a cooperative effort. We are going to do what they haven't done, what they had plenty of opportunity to do, which is to take on ISIL and to degrade it and eliminate as a threat," Kerry said.

AGB/AGB

Footnote[s]

#fnUsBully1" id="fnUsBully1">1. #txtUsBully1">↑ The parenthesised "(claimed)" was added. A shortcoming with some PressTV articles, or with their English translations, is that where a claim, that conforms to the Western imperialist narrative of a conflict has been repeated often enough by the msm, it is often reported by PressTV as fact, even where credible dissident journalists have challenged that claim. An example is the claim that the United States and its allies are waging war in Iraq and threatening to do so in Syria to destroy ISIS. See Washington Menaces America with its ISIS Creation (11/9/14) by Tony Cartalucci and ISIL operating with help of foreign military power (17/9/14) by Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today.

See also: Someone's Already Fighting ISIS: The Syrian Arab Army (15/9/14) by Tony Cartalucci.

To better understand the seemingly perplexing recent developments in Iraq and Syria, please read 1 Washington Menaces America with Its ISIS Creation (11/9/14) by Tony Cartalucci (aka Land Destroyer), 2 The ISIL Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, “Made in America” (13/9/14) by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya—included interview embedded here as Appendix 3—and 3 Australian-Syrian organisation begs Obama to work with Syrian Government against ISIL (13/9/14), including embedded interview with the Syrian Girl, here on candobetter.

At 7.29PM on Saturday 13 September, the Melbourne Age newspaper published the story Julie Bishop condemns Syria over use of toxic weapons. A search of the Internet revealed, the OPCW media release of 10 Sep in which the claim was originally made. 10 September 2014 is only 2 days after Syria's cache of chemical weapons was destroyed under a United Nations monitored program (see Appendix 2). That media release failed to show where, on the OPCW site, the report, upon which it was supposedly based, was located. Other stories, based on that media release, include:

(OPCW): Chlorine probably used in Syria (10 Sep), OPCW claims evidence of toxic chemical use in Syria (10 Sep), OPCW: Chlorine gas used as weapon in Syria (Kuwait News Agency, 10 Sep), Syrian government continues 'horrific chemical attacks' (Channel 4, 10 Sep), Chemical watchdog confirms "likely" use of chlorine in Syria attacks (Deutsche Welle, 10 Sep), Chlorine gas used in Syria attacks, says OPCW (Panorama, 13 Sep), Weapons watchdog: Chlorine likely used in Syria (Blackburn News, 10 Sep), OPCW confirms 'systematic' chlorine attacks in Syria (The Daily Star, Lebanon, 10 Sep), Syria crisis: Chlorine gas used in attacks, says OPCW (BBC, 10 Sep),OPCW: Compelling evidence that toxic chlorine was used in Syria (Memo Middle East Monitor, 13 Sep).

The press release of 10 September 2014 by the Organisation for the prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), referred to above, is OPCW Fact Finding Mission: "Compelling Confirmation" That Chlorine Gas Used as Weapon in Syria. It commences:

The fact-finding mission (FFM) appointed by the OPCW Director-General to examine alleged uses of chlorine gas as a weapon in Syria has found information constituting "compelling confirmation" that a toxic chemical was used "systematically and repeatedly" as a weapon in villages in northern Syria earlier this year.

The report that allegedly substantiates the above and other allegations in the remaining 4 paragraphs of the press release (see #app1">Appendix 1, below) is nowhere to be found.

The sudden appearance of 'evidence' of the use of chemical weapons only days after the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (see #app2">Appendix 2) would seem most convenient for the Obama administration which has stated its intention to violate Syrian airspace to supposedly destroy the ISIS insurgency in Iraq and Syria.

Given that 88.7% of the 77.342% of eligible Syrian voters voted for President Bashar al-Assad in the certified elections of 4 June 2014 (see Syria's press conference the United Nations doesn't want you to see of 21 June 2014 for press conference by international observers who testified for the validity of the elections) what would President Assad have stood to gain by trying to kill Syrians whom he would have known had supported his government?

#app1" id="app1">Appendix 1: Media release of the OPCW of 10 September

OPCW Fact Finding Mission: "Compelling Confirmation" That Chlorine Gas Used as Weapon in Syria

Editorial comment: I could not find a copy of the report referred to in this media release anywhere on the page on which it was published or anywhere on the OPCW web-site.

The fact-finding mission (FFM) appointed by the OPCW Director-General to examine alleged uses of chlorine gas as a weapon in Syria has found information constituting "compelling confirmation" that a toxic chemical was used "systematically and repeatedly" as a weapon in villages in northern Syria earlier this year.

In its second report that includes key findings, the Mission states that "the descriptions, physical properties, behaviour of the gas, and signs and symptoms resulting from exposure, as well as the response of patients to the treatment, leads the FFM to conclude with a high degree of confidence that chlorine, either pure or in mixture, is the toxic chemical in question."

The report says chlorine was used in attacks on the villages of Talmanes, Al Tamanah and Kafr Zeta, all located in northern Syria. In May this year, the FFM had attempted to visit Kafr Zeta to gather on-site evidence in the aftermath of an alleged use there but was prevented from doing so when the convoy was attacked. The FFM then decided to carry out witness interviews in a safe location outside of Syria.

The FFM's report presents the key findings from dozens of interviews with victims, physicians, first responders and eyewitnesses to the attacks, together with a considerable amount of documentation such as video, medical records and other evidence collected since the publication of the FFM's first report in mid-June.

Following the establishment of the FFM in late April 2014, there was a marked reduction in reported chlorine attacks in the months of May, June and July. But there was a spate of new allegations in August. The Director-General has asked the FFM to continue its work.

#app2" id="app2">Appendix 2: Report from the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) of 8 September

Al-Moallem expresses appreciation to Kaag for success of OPCW-UN mission

Damascus, SANA – Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem met Head of the joint mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations Sigrid Kaag and the accompanying delegation.

The meeting came as part of Kaag's final visit to Syria since the joint mission, which deals with eliminating the chemical weapons in Syria, is winding up its work and will be concluded by the end of September.

Talks during the meeting touched upon the achievements made in terms of Syria implementing its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which Syria joined in September of 2013.

Minister al-Moallem expressed his deep appreciation and thanks to Kaag for the efforts she and her team put to have the mission of the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons accomplished.

For her part, Kaag said she was pleased with the achievements made and voiced her gratitude for the Syrian government's "constructive" and "fruitful" cooperation which led to those achievements.

She described the accomplishment of the mission as "unprecedented" achievement, which she said would not have succeeded without the Syrian authorities' cooperation with the joint OPCW-UN mission.

Kaag stressed that in light of this achievement, the Syrian state must be viewed as a member state in the CWC.

Haifa Said

#app3" id="app3">Appendix 3: Embedded video interview with Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The above embedded video is from Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's Global Research article The ISIL Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, "Made in America" (13/9/1)

Vitaly Churkin

Unlike the case with President Barack Obama and his paid liars including State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki (embedded press conference also included), Russia's political leaders, including President Vladimir Putin and Vitaly I. Churkin, the English-speaking Russian diplomat, who is, for the month of June 2014, serving as President of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, have no difficulty answering critical questions even from hostile journalists. Vladimir Putin easily handled such questions in his media conference of 4 March and in the embedded video, Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin, similarly dealt with questions about Ukraine.

SNOWDEN Vs GOVT: State Department's Jen Psaki Left Speechless When Grilled

Welfare payments, health care for the poor, and benefits for the elderly and disabled have been slashed. State workers have been downsized. School districts in need of cash have been reduced to borrowing through "capital appreciation bonds" bearing 300% interest. In one notorious case, the Santa Ana school district actually borrowed at 1,000% interest. And the governor acknowledges that California still faces a "wall of debt" amounting to $28 billion. Some analysts put it much higher than that.

At the end of the 20th century, California was ranked the sixth largest economy in the world. By 2012, it had slipped to number twelve. It is coming back up, in part because European countries are falling further into recession; but California's poverty rate remains the highest in the country. More than eight million Californians struggle to meet their daily needs, and one in four children lives in poverty. Income inequality is higher in the nation's most populous state than in almost any other.

California cannot solve its budget problems by slashing services that have already been cut to the bone or raising sales taxes that hurt the poor far more than the rich. We are fighting over a pie that remains too small. The pie itself needs to be expanded — and it can be.

How? By reclaiming that portion that is now siphoned off in interest and bank fees. When tallied up at every stage of production, interest has been calculated to claim one-third of everything we buy.

How can that money be recaptured? By owning the bank.

The approach was pioneered in North Dakota, the only state to escape the 2008 banking crisis. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, and no state debt at all. It is also the only state to own its own bank.

In the fall of 2011, a bill for a feasibility study for a state-owned bank passed both houses of the California legislature. The Public Banking Institute, which I founded and chair, was instrumental in helping to get the bill as far as it got. But it died when Jerry Brown vetoed it. His rationale was that we already have a banking committee, and that the matter could be explored in-house. Needless to say, however, we have heard no more about it since.

I am therefore running for California State Treasurer on a state bank platform, along with Laura Wells, who is running for Controller. We are throwing our bonnets in the ring for the opportunity to show the Governor or his successor that a state-owned bank can be our ticket to returning California to the abundance it once enjoyed.

I was a recipient of that abundance myself. I got my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, when tuition was free; and my law degree at UCLA Law School in the 1970s, when tuition was $700 a year. Today it is $13,000 and $45,000 annually, respectively, for in-state students. In the 1960s, the governor of California was Jerry Brown's father Pat Brown, a New Deal visionary who believed that investment in education, infrastructure and local business was an investment in the future. Our goal is to revive that optimistic vision in 2014.

We are running on the endorsement of the Green Party — along with Luis Rodriguez for governor and David Curtis for secretary of state — because Green Party candidates take no corporate money. Candidates who take corporate money — and that means nearly all conventional candidates — are beholden to large corporate interests and cannot properly represent the interests of the disenfranchised 99%.

The North Dakota Model: Banking that Supports Rather Than Exploits the Local Economy

California's revenues are currently parked in those very largest of corporations, Wall Street banks. These out-of-state banks use our giant asset pool for their own speculative purposes, and the funds are at risk of confiscation in the event of a "bail-in."

In North Dakota, by contrast, all of the state's revenues are deposited by law in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND). The BND is set up as a DBA of the state ("North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota"), which means all of the state's capital is technically the bank's capital. The bank uses its copious capital and deposit pool to generate credit for local purposes.

The BND is a major money-maker for the state, returning a sizable dividend annually to the treasury. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, it has reported a return on investment of between 17 percent and 26 percent. The BND also provides what is essentially interest-free credit for state projects, since the state owns the bank and gets the interest back. The BND partners with local banks rather than competing with them, strengthening their capital and deposit bases and allowing them to keep loans on their books rather than having to sell them off to investors. This practice allowed North Dakota to avoid the subprime crisis that destroyed the housing market in other states.

Consider the awesome potential for California, with its massive capital and deposit bases. California has over $200 billion stashed in a variety of funds identified in its 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), including $58 billion managed by the Treasurer in a Pooled Money Investment Account currently earning a meager 0.264% annually. It also has over $400 billion in its pension funds (CalPERS and CalSTRS).

California's population of 37 million is more than 50 times that of North Dakota._{#fn1" id="fn1txt">1} In 2010, the BND had about $4,500 in deposits and $4,200 in loans per capita. Multiplying 37 million by $4,200, a State Bank of California could, in theory, generate $155.4 billion in credit for the state; and this credit would effectively be interest-free free, since the state would own the bank.

What could California do with $155 billion in interest-free credit? One possibility would be to refinance its ominous "wall of debt" at 0%. A debt that is interest-free can be rolled over indefinitely without cost to the taxpayers.

Another possibility would be to fund public projects interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.

Take, for example, the San Francisco Bay Bridge earthquake retrofitting boondoggle, which was originally slated to cost about $6 billion. Interest and bank fees wound up adding another $6 billion to the overall cost to taxpayers. Funding through its own bank could have saved the state $6 billion or 50% on this project.

Then there is the state's bullet train fiasco, which has been beset with delays, cost overruns, and funding issues. As with the Bay Bridge, costs are projected to double as a result of compounding interest on long-term bonds, imposing huge hidden costs on the next generation of taxpayers. By funding the bullet train through a state-owned bank, its costs, too, could be reduced by 50%.

The Challenge of a "Jungle Primary"

As voters become increasingly disillusioned with big-corporate-money candidates, the third party option is gaining traction. According to a recent Gallup poll, in 2013 42% of Americans identified themselves as political independents, significantly outpacing Democrats at 31% and Republicans at 25%.

The growing threat posed by independent and third-party candidates may explain why it is getting harder and harder to run as one. In California we now have Proposition 14, the Top Two primary, sometimes called the "Louisiana primary" or "jungle primary." It might better be named the Incumbents' Benevolent Protection Act.

Proposition 14 requires statewide and congressional California candidates, regardless of party preference, to participate in a nonpartisan blanket primary, with only the top two candidates advancing to the general election. Incumbents and heavily-funded candidates have historically reaped the benefits of this arrangement. Third party candidates are liable to get knocked out in the first round in June, eliminating them from the November elections.

But the new system does have the advantage that anyone can vote for any candidate in the June primary; so if we can mobilize voters, we have a shot.

There is, however, another new hurdle imposed by Proposition 14. In place of the 150 signatures-in-lieu-of-filing-fee needed earlier, we now need 10,000 signatures — either that or $2,800. But we're hoping to turn that requirement, too, to advantage, by using it to build the people power and energy necessary to take the June 3, 2014 primary. If you would like to sign a petition or donate, click here.

There is another way to balance a state budget, one that leads to prosperity rather than austerity. California can stimulate its economy and the job market, restore low-cost higher education, build 21st-century infrastructure, preserve the environment, and relieve the state's debt burden, by establishing a bank that is owned by the people and returns its profits to the people.

Footnote[s]

#EDF5FA;">

Washington

California has 157 endangered or threatened species, looming water shortages, eight of the 10 most air-polluted cities in the country and 725 metric tons of trash ₁ washing up on its coast each year.

California also has 38 million people, up 10 percent in the last decade, including 10 million immigrants. They own 32 million registered vehicles and 14 million houses. By 2050, projections show 51 million people living in the state, more than twice as many as in 1980.

Thank you, Geoff from AussieBushTrek, for e-mailing this.

In the public arena, almost no one connects these plainly visible dots.

For various reasons, linking the world's rapid population growth to its deepening environmental crisis, including climate change, is politically taboo. In the United States, Europe and Japan, there has been public hand-wringing over falling birthrates and government policies to encourage child-bearing.

But those declining birthrates mask explosive growth elsewhere in the world.

In less than a lifetime, the world population has tripled, to 7.1 billion, and continues to climb by more than 1.5 million people a week.

A consensus statement issued in May by scientists at Stanford University and signed by more than 1,000 scientists warned that "Earth is reaching a tipping point."

An array of events under way - including what scientists have identified as the sixth mass extinction in the earth's 540 million-year history - suggest that human activity already exceeds earth's capacity.

Climate change is but one of many signs of environmental stress. "The big connector is how many people are on earth," said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley integrative biologist.

The world population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by mid-century. The addition will be greater than the global population of 1950.

The United States is expected to grow from 313 million people to 400 million. Economies have expanded many times faster, vastly increasing consumption of goods and services in rich and developing countries.

"The combination of climate change and 9 billion people to me is one that is just fraught with potential catastrophes," said John Harte, a UC Berkeley ecosystem scientist.

"The evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support system is overwhelming," said the report by the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere at Stanford. "By the time today's children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that the Earth's life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged."

California Gov. Jerry Brown had the report translated into Chinese and delivered it to Chinese President Xi Jinping in June.

A new epoch?

So complete is human domination of earth that scientists use the term "Anthropocene" to describe a new geological epoch.

The most obvious sign is climate change. People have altered the composition of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But other human impacts, widely discussed by scientists, seldom reach the political arena.

Residues from 100 million tons of synthetic chemical compounds produced each year are so pervasive that they commonly appear in polar bear tissues, whale blubber and the umbilical cords of babies.

Each year, humans appropriate up to 40 percent of the earth's biomass, the product of photosynthesis, earth's basic energy conversion necessary to all life.

Humans have converted more than 40 percent of the earth's land to cities or farms. Roads and structures fragment most of the rest.

Humans appropriate more than half the world's fresh water. Ancient aquifers in the world's bread baskets, including the Ogallala in the Great Plains, are being drained.

Only 2 percent of major U.S. rivers run unimpeded. California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been entirely re-engineered. The last time the Colorado River reached the Sea of Cortez was in 1998. The Nile, Indus and Ganges rivers have been reduced to a trickle.

Humans surpass nature as a source of nitrogen emissions, altering the planet's nitrogen cycle.

Footnote[s]

#fnSubj1" id="fnSubj1">1. #txtSubj1">↑ In truth, whilst the facts and statistics in the rest of the article are of great concern, 725 tonnes of waste being washed up onto the approximately 1,200 km coastline of California in 12 months seems far from excessive. Could this be a mistake or some sort of typographical error? - Ed

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, in an article republished from Global Research and his own web site, warns his readers, "Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny." However, he argues that Ron Paul's "small government" libertarian policies may not be able to solve America's environmental problems or help the poor and so could make it harder for Paul to win sufficient support. He offers some alternative policy suggestions. (Sub-headings and emphasis have been added by myself.)

In the Soviet Union common criminals were punished less harshly and received better treatment than political prisoners. A person who had committed a violent crime had more rights than someone who expressed criticism of the government and could be portrayed as having acted against the government. We now have the same situation in the US.

In a recent case the Supreme Court overturned the sentence of a drug dealer who was convicted on the basis of a warrantless 28-day search by having a GPS device affixed to his car. In other words, a common criminal still has privacy rights under the Constitution, but not US citizens who are suspected of vague and nebulous "terrorist support."

The only candidate commited to stopping war, preserving democracy

Both Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated disregard for the civil liberty protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. Among the visible candidates for president, only Ron Paul has respect for the Constitution. As it is now possible for the executive branch to take away the life and liberty of a US citizen without due process of law, the Constitution is for all practical purposes lost. Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny.

This is why I have written that Ron Paul is our last chance and encouraged his libertarian handlers to be flexible enough for the electorate to elect Ron Paul. I agree that Ron Paul, if elected president, would be hamstrung by the Establishment, but the other candidates offer no hope whatsoever.

What is at stake is not libertarianism, but the US Constitution. Unfortunately, not many libertarians see that. Neither do many progressives. If truth be known, Americans are too divided and in opposition to one another to be able to unite against tyranny.

Low income Americans need protection by government

In previous columns I explained how Ron Paul could appeal to low income Americans, to elderly Americans, and to those Americans concerned about illegal immigration. I suggested that Ron Paul endorse Ron Unz's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour as a way of turning the jobs taken by illegal immigrants into a more livable income for Americans. I suggested that Ron Paul should acknowledge that people who have paid a payroll tax all their working lives have private property rights to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

A number of libertarians replied, as I knew they would from my long years of association with them, with their standard dogmatism that the minimum wage causes unemployment and that Social Security and Medicare are government programs not private property. They were blind to Ron Unz's point that low wages cause unemployment among Americans who are unable to live on the wages, and, thus, cause an inflow of illegal immigrants who take the low wage jobs.

I don't need to repeat my suggestions as the columns are available on my web site. I will, however, point out that the fact that Medicare and Social Security are intergenerational transfers does not mean that they are not private property. Consider your homeowner's policy. If your neighbor's home burns down or a person's home in a distant location, the insurance company draws on the pool of funds created by policy holders' premiums in order to compensate the person who lost his home. The damaged homeowner is not simply compensated from his own paid-in premiums. If more homeowners are elderly than young, it is an intergenerational transfer when a young homeowner's home burns down.

Like Medicare, private health insurance is a transfer payment as premiums from the healthy support the care of the sick. Private medical insurance could also be an intergenerational transfer. Premium are adjusted for age, but generally speaking, the young are more healthy than the old.

For Ron Paul to further broaden his base, he also needs to add to my previous suggestions his endorsement of regulation to protect the environment and to protect private savers from fraud and irresponsible debt leverage by private financial institutions.

How private investment threatens our environment

Libertarians claim that the best way to protect the environment is to have it privately owned. If streams, oceans, and underground aquifers were privately owned, the owners could sue polluters such as the oil companies, the mining companies, agri-business, etc. Thus, private property would protect the environment. Whether this would work or not, we are a long way from such private ownership, and many private economic activities are destroying common environmental resources.

The list is endless. The World Wildlife Fund reports that Asia Pulp & Paper is destroying the last remaining Sumatran tigers by clear cutting the tigers' last remaining refuge in order to produce toilet paper marketed in the US under the Paseo and LIVI brand names. "Feel the Power! Buy our product and flush a tiger and a rain forest!"

The National Defense Resource Council reports that under an Obama regime and state of Utah plan, massive coal mining will be permitted adjacent to Bryce Canyon National Park. Three hundred heavy diesel trucks per day will travel down the scenic two-lane higway to supply China with dirty coal.

The Obama regime has granted Shell Oil tentative approval to begin drilling off the coast of the Arctic Refuge, the main on-shore birthing ground for polar bears.

Defenders of Wildlife reports that Shell Oil is pushing to open Bristol Bay to oil drilling, despite the danger to fisheries and wildlife and despite the fact that the long-term value of the renewable fisheries far exceeds the short-term value of nonrenewable fossil fuel extraction in the area.

In the Powder River Basin in Montana, coal companies are mobilizing to destroy the water resources and ranchers in the eastern part of the state.

All of these are current hot ticket items with progressives, environmentalists, and ranchers. Obama is vulnerable. He has put the tar sands pipeline on hold, but many believe he will approve the environmentally destructive project once he is re-elected.

Air, water, wildlife, and fish in the sea are not private property and have no protectors. They are being destroyed by the lack of regulation. Moreover, private property has not protected forests from being clearcut or soil from being depleted of its natural nutrients. The chemical farming with which agri-business has replaced natural farming has polluted America's aquifers, streams, lakes, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, which has extensive dead areas from chemical fertilizer run-off.

As Herman Daly and other environmental economists have made clear, the world is running out of sinks into which to dump its wastes. The external costs of unregulated activity are mounting. Once a threshold is crossed, the environment is ruined. The drive to maximize short-run profits is a great source of ruin. The external costs associated with maximizing short-run profits can exceed the value of the private output.

Could libertarian dogmatism deny the choice needed by US voters?

A candidate committed to saving the Constitution, environment, private savings, protecting the security of the elderly, opposing war, and boosting the incomes of the worst off, which has the added benefit of reducing illegal immigration, is a candidate without equal in the presidential election.

We will not have such a candidate, because libertarian sectarian dogmatism will prevent it. Libertarians will be pure to the end and take the Constitution and the rest of us down with them.

Go to youtube.com/watch?v=VMUZIVYuluc to find embedded YouTube Broadcast embedded above.

A search using the terms:

Republican Primaries

... confirms that Ron Paul's campaign to win the Republican Party preselection for US Presidential candidate has been blacked out by the international corporate news media.

No mention of Ron Paul is found until page 3. Stories currently listed on page 3 are as follows:

• Fed Up With Bias, Ron Paul Supporters Boycott Advertisers
  Fed up with a very overt strategic exclusion of Ron Paul during the coverage of the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary race, Ron Paul supporters are ...

• Ron Paul's Shot at Victory? Nolan Chart LLC
• http://hotair.com/archives/2011/12/14/ron-paul-im-not-sure-i-have-the-stamina-for-a-long-primary/
• Ron Paul first choice for SD GOP, says poll? Daily Republic
• Examiner.com - Northern Voices Online
• ...

In spite of much having been done by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that we should be rightly critical of, I still hold hope that there may be an outside chance that a person who has risen to the political top in her country, may have greatness and a streak of decency in her. Knowledge of past history, particularly that of the United States shows that a corrupt elite don't, on every occasion, succeed in corrupting those who rise to the top of their country's political system.

In spite of much having been done by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that we should be rightly critical of, I still hold hope that there may be an outside chance that Julia Gillard, who has risen to the political top in her country, may have greatness and a streak of decency in her.

What gives me this hope is the courage she showed in toppling her indescribably bad predecessor, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, instead of remaining meekly subordinate to him as nearly every other Labor politician in recent decades, would have done. What also gives me hope is knowledge of the history of the United States of America. In the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, people of indisputable greatness and good will, who showed that they were determined to challenge, rather than make compromises with, the corrupt vested interests in the USA, made it to the highest office in the land (or almost certainly would have if they had lived). These figures include, in the 20th century, Presidents John F Kennedy, his brother Robert, President Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. In the 19th century, they include President Lincoln, who waged the Civil War to abolish slavery and challenged the power of private banks, and in the 18th century, they include Presidents, Washington and Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers of the United States.

Of course, it is far more likely that anyone who makes it to the top of a political system in a society under the domination of a corrupt elite will either have been corrupt at the outset or will have been corrupted in the process.

The above examples show that there can be exceptions to that rule.

President John F Kennedy tried to end his country's military intervention in Vietnam (and would have, had he lived) and stopped the military industrial complex from invading Cuba and waging nuclear war. Domestically he stood up to the banks and the steel companies.

President Roosevelt stated in 1944 that he intended to introduce a second part the the US Declaration of Human Rights that would have guaranteed every American citizen the right to paid remuneration that would have met his/her needs for sustenance and shelter. If he had not died in 1945, America could not have become the extremely unjust society that it has since become, as shown in Michael Moore's film of 2009 "Capitalism: A Love Story".

Humanity's unacknowledged debt to Robert Bowman

Another, so far, largely unsung hero (and, astonishingly, unsung by even the supposedly anti-war and anti-racist 'left') is Vietnam War veteran Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman. He used his influence to stop Ronald Reagan from launching global nuclear war in the 1980's with his Pershing and Cruise missiles and Star Wars program. He made roughly 5,000 public speeches (I think that is the count) against Reagan's plans for war and in doing so, probably made the greatest individual contribution towards stopping him. For this reason alone the debt humanity owes Bob Bowman may even be greater than that owed to the late President Kennedy.

Robert Bowman has also told the world the truth about the US wars against Iraq in 1992 and 2003 and the supposed attack on the US by Islamist extremists on 11 September 2001.

In Kennedy's case, critics can point to actions of his which seem to have been unprincipled, as we can with Julia Gillard. A number of these actions can however be shown to have been necessary compromises to make possible the eventual achievement of far greater good. If, in spite of human fallibility and the corrupting influence of most other politicians and the political system, such wonderful people were able to use their positions of power to achieve the great good that they have, we should not completely exclude the possibility that decent people can also rise to the top in Australia.

(I apologise that I can't give examples from Australia that are as concrete. I don't know enough to be able to say if certain famous past Australian leaders were as great (considering their more limited context) and as well-intentioned as those in the USA mentioned above.)

Title of article was originally "All who rise to the top of politics aren't necessarily corrupted ".

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! The movement seems to have gone to some considered endeavour to explore the issues. I like the question toward the bottom of the site:

'What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?'

As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start?

One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates. Now before readers jump to questionning the morality of this, this is not to stop funding emergency life support needs, but to make non-life-support funding conditional on recipient self-change.

These are some dominant charities in this field.

* UNICEF

* World Vision
* Feed the Children

* Save the Children

* Food4Africa

While it would be callous to allow people to die from hunger and malnutrition, the charity donation system seems to only perpetuate welfare subsistence and not address overpopulation poverty in undeveloped countries. For time immemorial, the starving of Africa and India have been dumped on our television screens to make us feel guilty.

Why has the problem not been resolved since television was invented and before?
The starving message has become a cliché to the point that it has become a permanent human condition. This is unacceptable. The charity system needs overhaul.

Charities need to be held accountable for fixing the problem not perpetuating it.
Donations need to be channelled through independent organisations that require conditional offerings. Donations can end up anywhere and do, like in arms purchases. The charity donations must stop and be replaced with:

1. Physical shipments of emergency food, shelter and medical supplies

2. Conditional relief funding linked to population control measures - family planning and birth control measures should be advocated - female education, contraception, changing cultural traditions of excess children (more than 2), and UNHCR funded free and professional male vasectomies. Perhaps even a free dwelling could be offered to male heads of families that undertake vasectomy and have only two children. Think of this as an incentive in impoverished countries!

On issues of fundamental cultural change, financial carrots seem more effective and ethical than punitive sticks.

Until then those donating should boycott charities until donations are conditional on and accountable for birth control.

As for wealthy developed nations with high birth rates, they have the financial means to address their own population excesses. Any country over 3% annual growth rate is irresponsible and so a target priority.

According to Nation Master website, the top 20 highest ranked developed countries by population growth rate are:

We should refer to them as the G20 - 'The Greedy 20'.

Rank Country Growth Rate (2008)
1 Maldives: 5.566%
2 United Arab Emirates: 3.833%
69 Saudi Arabia: 1.954%
81 Malaysia: 1.742%
82 Israel: 1.713%
107 Bahrain: 1.337%
114 Australia: 1.221%
116 Luxembourg: 1.188%
124 Ireland: 1.133%
131 New Zealand: 0.971%
137 United States: 0.883%
139 Canada: 0.83%
140 South Africa: 0.828%
144 Iceland: 0.783%
151 Liechtenstein: 0.713%
153 Thailand: 0.64%
154 China: 0.629%
156 France: 0.574%
160 Hong Kong: 0.532%
165 Netherlands: 0.436%

These wealthy countries extravagantly impose a selfish disproportionate burden on the planet's capacity. They have wealth capacity and as global citizens and members of the UN, have an obligation to pay a Greedy Population Levy to fund underdeveloped countries in controlling their excess population growth. The wealthy with an excess problem need to be supporting the poor with am excess problem, because the poor do not have the means to do it themselves. Let's make it means tested and charge say 0.01% of each countries GDP.

As for those poor displaced peoples caused by civil unrest and arms conflict, why does not the UN with the support of developed nations impose a 10% levy on each item of weaponry sold globally, so that the revenue is channelled to allow the UNHCR manage humanitarian and peace-keeping operations for the civilians affected?

International arms sales is the world's largest and richest discretionary industry. It can easily afford such a levy.

A case in point is the plight of millions of Yemeni refugees having fled civil conflict and currently starving in al-Mazraq camp, Yemen:

'Millions of Yemenis starving as donors fail to meet pledges, says UN'

• £70m needed this year and next to feed poor and hungry
• Traditional donors, including Britain, have yet to offer aid

Climate Ark: Will virtually every remaining intact ecosystem be razed to access every last bit of oil before we transition to lower energy use, a low carbon economy and renewable energy?

The US federal government's response to this crisis must start with containing the spill and cleaning up the gulf, but it cannot stop there, the group said. It also needs to implement comprehensive climate and energy policies that address U.S. oil addiction.
Since 1991, oil production on U.S. land and in Alaska has dropped 40 percent, but it has nearly doubled in the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal statistics.

(Photo: Tuesday afternoon, May 11, shows that the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well continued to leak significant amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil slicks become most visible in photo-like satellite images when they appear in a swath of the image called the sunglint region—where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun is blurred by ocean waves into a washed-out strip of brightness. source Wikimedia commons)

New estimates are the Gulf Oil Spill is leaking at least 10 times the amount of oil as previous estimates of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons, or 795,000 litres) a day, meaning the ongoing spill already far exceeds the Exxon Valdez accident.
(In 1989, within six hours of the grounding, the Exxon Valdez spilled approximately 10.9 million gallons of its 53 million gallon cargo of Prudhoe Bay crude oil).

The gulf oil leaks could gush for years, further fouling the Gulf, Mexican and Atlantic Coasts. The spill threatens fragile ecosystems and is severely impacting the local economy, particularly fishing.  It is clear key safety features at tens of thousands of U.S. offshore rigs are barely regulated.

(Photo: May 4, 2010) Miles of floating barriers are put in place around Mobile Bay and other sites in the Gulf of Mexico to protect the coastline from a growing oil slick approaching the area from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Joe Kane/Released to Wikimedia commons)

BP has shown it lacks the necessary capacity to handle the spill, as capping the leak has taken too long, and the clean-up will be massive.  Given the extent of the ongoing spill, and the potential for the spill to spread more widely during the hurricane season, the federal government must immediately nationalize the spill response and take the lead in capping the leak and containing the spill. BP and the oil industry can still help and pay for the full response including whatever restoration is possible in the long-run. History often shows that adequate regulations are on the books, but that they are not always enforced. Making sure the government can do its job — not rewriting the rulebook — might be all that is needed.

Despite President Obama’s recent sharpening of populist rhetoric against oil companies, the U.S. government led by President Obama has until now failed to act aggressively. The full might of the U.S. government must be brought to bear to stop the leak, contain the spill, and clean coasts. If we bailed out the banks, car companies and others; clearly it is worth a billion or ten to hold onto a Gulf ecosystem that is as minimally ravaged as possible.

The Gulf Oil Spill is a clarion call to implement comprehensive climate and energy policies that address U.S. oil addiction.  It is estimated that that expanded offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions would provide less than a two-month supply of fuel. Instituting stronger fuel economy standards and support for expanding transportation choices would save many times this amount.

(Wikimedia commons)

The first step is to ensure offshore drilling does not accelerate. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida has introduced legislation to repeal Obama's executive order to expand offshore drilling. West Coast lawmakers announced a proposed ban on offshore drilling along their states' coastlines. Yet President Obama continues to promote offshore drilling, including within the climate bill. This must not stand. President Obama must be beseeched upon to change his policy in regard to offshore drilling.

But as the devastation from BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster widens, the two lawmakers agree on one thing: It is no reason to halt drilling in the Gulf of Mexico!   In Louisiana, the sector provides more than 300,000 jobs and handles about a quarter of the oil and natural gas consumed in the United States, according to industry estimates.    Local Republican and Democratic politicians say they try to balance the interests of the industry and of conservationists while being mindful of the central role the region plays in supplying oil and gas to the rest of the nation. (The same old arguments - jobs and economic benefits "balanced" against environmental concerns, but always the scales swing in favour of the mass markets, profits and power).

To expect there will never be accidents at oil rigs is to ask the impossible. Stopping oil drilling because of a mishap would be like banning all airline travel after a crash, some say. However, air crashes are mainly limited to human tragedies, not environmental with ongoing ecological and wildlife devastation!

Oil companies in America have tapped the easy oil and are now pushing the limits and increasing the risk by heading to the deep water of the gulf and the remote and unforgiving Arctic. The Arctic has a much more fragile ecology than the Gulf, and lack of infrastructure to deal with a similar spill. President Obama must be called upon to cancel Shell’s permission to drill in the Arctic.

Other officials also have changed their stance on drilling with Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist both saying offshore drilling is not worth the risk. We don’t need to drill our coasts, said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. We already have the technology available to run our cars on electricity that can be generated from clean energy like wind and solar power. You don’t hear about disasters like this at wind farms or solar plants.

This oil addiction is killing American and global ecology. Will virtually every remaining intact ecosystem be razed to access every last bit of oil before we transition to lower energy use, low carbon economy and renewable energy? What are we going to eat and drink when the oil industry has finished production and destroyed and diminished our ecosystems including forests, water and atmosphere? To a large extent both climate change and rainforest destruction are the story of oil. Ending this sad state of being is the most profound task of our age - compounded by global population blow-out!

An international wake-up call must be delivered to both the administration and Congress, to focus more effort upon reducing the demand for oil. The risks and costs of offshore oil exploration far outweigh their benefits, and the U.S. would be better off focusing upon promoting alternative energy sources. BP, and their contractors must be held accountable for every mistake that has led to this disaster, and bear the full costs of cleanup.

Let President Obama know oil drilling is not safe anywhere, anytime when properly accounting for its full life-cycle of production, transportation, sale, consumption and disposal. Further, demand a ban on offshore drilling, and that current catastrophe prone oil rigs are shut down. And finally, oil drilling projects must be stopped in Alaska and the world’s rainforests, and oil drilling permits revoked in ecologically sensitive areas.

TAKE ACTION NOW

According to a poll of 803 registered voters conducted by the National Resources Defense Council, seven in 10 Americans agree that the U.S. should fast-track clean energy legislation. 

While the fossil fuels industry has received upwards of $74 billion in subsidies in recent years, government aid to the solar industry amounts to about $1 billion during the same period.

It is estimated that a worst-case scenario cost of the spill to the Gulf of Mexico: $1.6 billion.  About one-quarter of that is due to lost fishing and tourism. But the bulk of the cost is in the stuff that's less easy to quantify: the general wetlands ecology. If half a million acres of wetlands are severely damaged, that drastically affects a fragile area that acts as a wastewater treatment plant for water flowing out of the Mississippi River — where 40 percent of America's water flows into. And every acre of wetland means one less foot of storm surge protection from a hurricane, he said.

Efforts to limit the environmental damage involve an untried deep-water technique, using a toxic dispersant that they believe may damage ocean life. But the new method has so far only succeeded in ratcheting up the growing controversy surrounding the spill.
Marine scientists have found oxygen levels have fallen dramatically in parts of the Gulf and that there are vast plumes of oil deep underwater.

Latest news:
Engineers successfully inserted a tube into the damaged riser pipe from which some of the oil is spewing, capturing some amounts of oil and gas before the tube was dislodged, the announcement said. The tube was inspected and reinserted, BP said.

While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters, the announcement said.

US Republican Congressman and past Presidential contender, Ron Paul opposes a bill to impose sanctions against Iran. In his speech, he describes how exactly the same bogus justifications were used for the imposition of sanctions against Iraq. Rather than satisfying the demands of the warmongers wielding power in the US at the time, they only paved the way for the subsequent illegal invasion.

This was first published on Information Clearing House on 22 Apr 2010. Please donate to ICH to help them continue their vital work.

An Act Of War

By Congressman Ron Paul

US Republican Congressman Ron Paul

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul - United States House of Representatives

Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act - April 22, 2010

April 23, 2010 "United States House of Representatives" -- Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

Editorial Comment

#AndWhatIf" id="AndWhatIf">And what if, contrary all to the known evidence, Iran was found to be pursuing a nuclear weapons program?

Although the claims that Iran may obtain nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future are every bit as bogus as claims made about Iraq prior to the invasion of 2003, this poses the question: What would be an appropriate response on the part of the US if, instead, evidence of a program to build nuclear weapons had been found?

Arguably, an outright invasion and obliteration of much of Iran costing, perhaps, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and at the risk of igniting a larger world-wide conflageration, most likely involving NATO, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, would remove from the world the nuclear threat posed by such an Iranian nuclear weapons program, but any reasonable person would consider such a cost and such risks completely unacceptable.

US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963).
His selfless courage and ultimate sacrifice spared the world
on at least three occasions from the unthinkable horror of
all-out nuclear war.

The fact remains that, as unsettling as the prospect of states such as Iran, or for that matter, India, Pakistan, France, and even Israel obtaining or already possessing nuclear weapons, is, the vastly greater threat of nuclear war posed to the world is by the US itself.

As James Douglass has shown in his monumental JFK and the Unspeakable - Why he died and why it matters, published by Orbis books in 2008 and 2009 on pages 28 to 29 and elsewhere, the US Joint Chiefs of staff were fully resolved, on at least three occasians in the early 1960's, to launch an all out nuclear strike against the USSR. It was only very good luck, combined with the extraordinary and unique courage of President Kennedy, which prevented that from occurring.

Also, according to retired CIA analyst, #McGovern">Ray McGovern in a videoed talk, embedded below, only a handful of principled senior military and intelligence professionals within the US, who refused tell Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George W Bush, the lies that they needed to hear, have prevented an invasion of Iran and possibly World War 3.

Clearly the greatest nuclear threat posed to humankind was and remains the US nuclear arsenal in the hands of the very military-industrial complex against which former President Eisenhower warned in his final address to the nation in 1961.

If President Kennedy had not been murdered by that military industrial complex on 22 November 1963, he would have been able to continue on his quest to rid the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons, the first step of which was his Government's ratification of the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty with the USSR in 1963.

Today, only the US has within its power to comprehensively remove the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanknd. To achive that would require another national leader as visionary and courageous as was President Kennedy was.

#democracy" id="democracy">Wouldn't a US invasion bring democracy to Iran?

The other implicit justification for an invasion of Iran is that it is necessary to re-establish democracy. In truth, the election victory that allowed the current Government to retain power is questionable, and it remains the heir of the astonishingly brutal regime of Ayatollah Khomeini which came to power after the overthrow of the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979. (The Shah, himself, was imposed as the result of a CIA-orchestrated coup against the popular elected Government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953.)

Nevertheless, to accept that western Governments, who routinely act contrary to the democratically expressed wishes of their consituents, as examples, against the bail-out of the Wall Street financial racketeers in September 2008, and against the fire sale of AU$15 billion of publicly owned assets in Queensland in 2009 and 2010, have any intention of bring democracy to Iran, would require an enormous degree of credulity.

Whatever 'democracy' may emerge from the ruins of a conquered Iran will, at the very best, be no better than the formal supposed democracies that exist in the US and Australia and, far more likely, akin to the dictatorship of Paul Bremer over Iraq of 2003-2005, which oversaw the ransacking of public wealth by crony US capitalists and the consequent impoverishment of Iraqis. (The Shock Doctrine, (2007) Naomi Klein, pp 325-422)

Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under US President Ronald Reagan and whose distinguished journalistic career, includes 15 years as an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been banned, so far, for six years from the US mainstream media. He has been banned becasue he questions the myths used to justify US domestic and international policy - that offshoring of jobs and high immigration will bring prosperity to the US and the official account of 9/11.

Originally published on Information Clearing House on 24 Mar 10.

by Paul Craig Roberts

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell

March 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded "anti-American," "anti-semite" or "conspiracy theorist."

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. "Free market economists" are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by "the New Economy," a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this "new economy" are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of "the New Economy."

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted "studies" that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the "studies."

The Council of Europe is investigating big pharma's role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which climate scientists, financed by Wall Street and corporations anxious to get their mitts on "cap and trade" and by a U.N. agency anxious to redistribute income from rich to poor countries, concocted a doomsday scenario_#main-fn1">1 in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby's testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a "threat," he wasn't impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don't carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO "performance bonuses," have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these "performance awards" by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about "the Muslim threat," Wall Street, U.S. corporations and "free market" shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government's claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect "terrorists," and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week's first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush's wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America's fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government's account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington's deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar's role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar's value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called "entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 percent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Editorial Comment: Whilst Paul Craig Roberts' despair expressed at the end of this article is understandable, we remain hopeful that it will be possible for the people of the US, Australia and the rest of will be able to see through the lies and act to stop them from pushig human civilization over the precipice.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ Paul Craig Roberts is correct to oppose the scam of emmissions "cap and trade", or what is known in Australia as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Nevertheless, to draw the conclusion that global warming is not a threat as many who oppose of the agenda of the world's rulers do, would be seriously mistaken.