From: Miriam Vieni [mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2017 3:43 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List (blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Subject: FW: The Anti-Empire Report #148
I'm trying to send this again. This newer email program says it didn't get
to where it was going.
From: Miriam Vieni [mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2017 3:36 PM
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
Subject: The Anti-Empire Report #148
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report #148
By William Blum - Published February 4th, 2017
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland
Since Yalta, we have a long list of times we've tried to engage positively
with Russia. We have a relatively short list of successes in that regard. -
General James Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense1
If anyone knows where to find this long list please send me a copy.
This delusion is repeated periodically by American military officials. A
year ago, following the release of Russia's new national security document,
naming as threats both the United States and the expansion of the NATO
alliance, a Pentagon spokesman declared: "They have no reason to consider us
a threat. We are not looking for conflict with Russia." 2
Meanwhile, in early January, the United States embarked upon its biggest
military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War - 3,500 American
soldiers landed, unloading three shiploads, with 2,500 tanks, trucks and
other combat vehicles. The troops were to be deployed in Poland, Romania,
Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and across the Baltics. Lt. Gen. Frederick
Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe, said, "Three years after the last
American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back."
The measures, General Hodges declared, were a "response to Russia's invasion
of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. This does not mean that
there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is
preparing for the possibility." (See previous paragraph.)
This January 2017 buildup, we are told, is in response to a Russian action
in Crimea of January 2014. The alert reader will have noticed that critics
of Russia in recent years, virtually without exception, condemn Moscow's
Crimean action and typically nothing else. Could that be because they have
nothing else to condemn about Russia's foreign policy? At the same time they
invariably fail to point out what preceded the Russian action - the
overthrow, with Washington's indispensable help, of the
democratically-elected, Moscow-friendly Ukrainian government, replacing it
with an anti-Russian, neo-fascist (literally) regime, complete with Nazi
salutes and swastika-like symbols.
Ukraine and Georgia, both of which border Russia, are all that's left to
complete the US/NATO encirclement. And when the US overthrew the government
of Ukraine, why shouldn't Russia have been alarmed as the circle was about
to close yet tighter? Even so, the Russian military appeared in Ukraine only
in Crimea, where the Russians already had a military base with the approval
of the Ukrainian government. No one could have blocked Moscow from taking
over all of Ukraine if they wanted to.
Yet, the United States is right. Russia is a threat. A threat to American
world dominance. And Americans can't shake their upbringing. Here's veteran
National Public Radio newscaster Cokie Roberts 3bemoaning Trump's stated
desire to develop friendly relations with Russia: "This country has had a
consistent policy for 70 years towards the Soviet Union and Russia, and
Trump is trying to undo that." Heavens! Nuclear war would be better than
that!
Fake news, fake issue
The entire emphasis has been on whether a particular news item is factually
correct or incorrect. However, that is not the main problem with mainstream
media. A news item can be factually correct and still be very biased and
misleading because of what's been left out, such as the relevant information
about the Russian "invasion" of Crimea mentioned above. But when it comes to
real fake newsit's difficult to top the CIA's record in Latin America as
revealed by Philip Agee, the leading whistleblower of all time.
Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin
America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974
revealed how it was a common Agency tactic to write editorials and phoney
news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no
indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the particular media. The
propaganda value of such a "news" item might be multiplied by being picked
up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a
CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories
made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing
North Americans.
The Great Wall of Mr. T
So much cheaper. So much easier. So much more humane. So much more popular.
. Just stop overthrowing or destabilizing governments south of the border.
And the United States certainly has a moral obligation to do this. So many
of the immigrants are escaping a situation in their homeland made hopeless
by American intervention and policy. The particularly severe increase in
Honduran migration to the US in recent years is a direct result of the June
28, 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president,
Manuel Zelaya, after he did things like raising the minimum wage, giving
subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education. The coup - like
so many others in Latin America - was led by a graduate of Washington's
infamous School of the Americas.
As per the standard Western Hemisphere script, the Honduran coup was
followed by the abusive policies of the new regime, loyally supported by the
United States. The State Department was virtually alone in the Western
Hemisphere in not unequivocally condemning the Honduran coup. Indeed, the
Obama administration refused to even call it a coup, which, under American
law, would tie Washington's hands as to the amount of support it could give
the coup government. This denial of reality continued to exist even though a
US embassy cable released by Wikileaks in 2010 declared: "There is no doubt
that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28
[2009] in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the
Executive Branch". Washington's support of the far-right Honduran government
has continued ever since.
In addition to Honduras, Washington overthrew progressive governments which
were sincerely committed to fighting poverty in Guatemala and Nicaragua;
while in El Salvador the US played a major role in suppressing a movement
striving to install such a government. And in Mexico, over the years the US
has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico's
police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own
people's aspirations, as in Chiapas in 1994, and this has added to the
influx of the oppressed to the United States, irony notwithstanding.
Moreover, Washington's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has
brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico,
ravaging campesino communities and driving many Mexican farmers off the land
when they couldn't compete with the giant from the north. The subsequent
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) brought the same joys to the
people of that area.
These "free trade" agreements - as they do all over the world - also
resulted in government enterprises being privatized, the regulation of
corporations being reduced, and cuts to the social budget. Add to this the
displacement of communities by foreign mining projects and the drastic
US-led militarization of the War on Drugs with accompanying violence and you
have the perfect storm of suffering followed by the attempt to escape from
suffering.
It's not that all these people prefer to live in the United States. They'd
much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their
native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by
American police and other right-wingers.
Mr. T., if one can read him correctly - not always an easy task - insists
that he's opposed to the hallmark of American foreign policy: regime change.
If he would keep his Yankee hands off political and social change in Mexico
and Central America and donate as compensation a good part of the billions
to be spent on his Great Wall to those societies, there could be a
remarkable reduction in the never-ending line of desperate people clawing
their way northward.
Murders: Putin and Clintons
Amongst the many repeated denunciations of Russian president Vladimir Putin
is that he can't be trusted because he spent many years in the Soviet secret
intelligence service, the KGB.
Well, consider that before he became the US president George HW Bush was the
head of the CIA.
Putin, we are also told, has his enemies murdered.
But consider the case of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old Democratic National
Committee staffer who was shot dead on a Washington, DC street last July.
On August 9, in an interview on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur,
Julian Assange seemed to suggest rather clearly that Seth Rich was the
source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC emails and was murdered for it.
Julian Assange: "Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us
material and often face very significant risks. A 27-year-old that works for
the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown
reasons, as he was walking down the street in Washington, D.C."
Reporter: "That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn't it?"
Julian Assange: "No. There's no finding. So . I'm suggesting that our
sources take risks." (See also Washington Post, January 19, 2017)
But . but . that was Russian hacking, wasn't it? Not a leak, right?
If you've been paying attention over the years, you know that many other
murders have been attributed to the Clintons, beginning in Arkansas. But
Bill and Hillary I'm sure are not guilty of all of them. (Google "murders
connected clintons.")
America's frightening shortage of weapons
President Trump signed an executive order Friday to launch what he called "a
'great rebuilding of the Armed Forces' that is expected to include new
ships, planes, weapons and the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal." 4
This is something regularly advocated by American military and civilian
leaders.
I ask them all the same question: Can you name a foreign war that the United
States has ever lost due to an insufficient number of ships, planes, tanks,
bombs, guns, or ammunition, or nuclear arsenal? Or because what they had was
outdated, against an enemy with more modern weapons?
That tired old subject
Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's pick for Attorney General, declared
two years ago: "Ultimately, freedom of speech is about ascertaining the
truth. And if you don't believe there's a truth, you don't believe in truth,
if you're an utter secularist, then how do we operate this government? How
can we form a democracy of the kind I think you and I believe in . I do
believe that we are a nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it's
all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not doing the public
service." 5
So . if one is an atheist or agnostic one is not inclined toward public
service. This of course is easily disproved by all the atheists and
agnostics who work for different levels of government and numerous
non-profit organizations involved in all manner of social, poverty, peace
and environmental projects.
Who is the more virtuous - the believer who goes to church and does good
deeds because he hopes to be rewarded by God or at least not be punished by
God, or the non-believer who lives a very moral life because it disturbs him
to act cruelly and it is in keeping with the kind of world he wants to help
create and live in? Remember, the God-awful (no pun intended) war in Iraq
was started by a man who goes through all the motions of a very religious
person.
Christopher Hitchens, in 2007, in response to conservative columnist Michael
Gerson's article, "What Atheists Can't Answer", wrote: "How insulting is the
latent suggestion of his position: the appalling insinuation that I would
not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial
dictatorship . simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically
'true', that at least it stands for morality. . Here is my challenge. Let
Gerson name one ethical statement made or one ethical action performed by a
believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever."
Gerson, it should be noted, was the chief speechwriter for the
aforementioned very religious person, George W. Bush, for five years,
including when Bush invaded Iraq.
Phil Ochs
I was turning the pages of the Washington Post'sSunday (January 29) feature
section, Outlook, not finding much of particular interest, when to my great
surprise I was suddenly hit with a long story about Phil Ochs. Who's Phil
Ochs? many of you may ask, for the folksinger died in 1976 at the age of 35.
The Post'smotivation in devoting so much space to a symbol of the American
anti-war left appears to be one more example of the paper's serious
displeasure with Donald Trump. The article is entitled "Phil Ochs is the
obscure '60s folk singer we need today".
My favorite song of his, among many others, is "I ain't marching anymore":
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying, I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all?
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning That I ain't
marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No, I ain't marchin' any more
-
Ironically, very ironically, Donald Trump may well be less of a war monger
than Barack Obama or Hillary Clint
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report #148
By William Blum - Published February 4th, 2017
Share
99
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland
Since Yalta, we have a long list of times we've tried to engage positively
with Russia. We have a relatively short list of successes in that regard. -
General James Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense1
If anyone knows where to find this long list please send me a copy.
This delusion is repeated periodically by American military officials. A
year ago, following the release of Russia's new national security document,
naming as threats both the United States and the expansion of the NATO
alliance, a Pentagon spokesman declared: "They have no reason to consider us
a threat. We are not looking for conflict with Russia." 2
Meanwhile, in early January, the United States embarked upon its biggest
military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War - 3,500 American
soldiers landed, unloading three shiploads, with 2,500 tanks, trucks and
other combat vehicles. The troops were to be deployed in Poland, Romania,
Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and across the Baltics. Lt. Gen. Frederick
Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe, said, "Three years after the last
American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back."
The measures, General Hodges declared, were a "response to Russia's invasion
of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. This does not mean that
there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is
preparing for the possibility." (See previous paragraph.)
This January 2017 buildup, we are told, is in response to a Russian action
in Crimea of January 2014. The alert reader will have noticed that critics
of Russia in recent years, virtually without exception, condemn Moscow's
Crimean action and typically nothing else. Could that be because they have
nothing else to condemn about Russia's foreign policy? At the same time they
invariably fail to point out what preceded the Russian action - the
overthrow, with Washington's indispensable help, of the
democratically-elected, Moscow-friendly Ukrainian government, replacing it
with an anti-Russian, neo-fascist (literally) regime, complete with Nazi
salutes and swastika-like symbols.
Ukraine and Georgia, both of which border Russia, are all that's left to
complete the US/NATO encirclement. And when the US overthrew the government
of Ukraine, why shouldn't Russia have been alarmed as the circle was about
to close yet tighter? Even so, the Russian military appeared in Ukraine only
in Crimea, where the Russians already had a military base with the approval
of the Ukrainian government. No one could have blocked Moscow from taking
over all of Ukraine if they wanted to.
Yet, the United States is right. Russia is a threat. A threat to American
world dominance. And Americans can't shake their upbringing. Here's veteran
National Public Radio newscaster Cokie Roberts 3bemoaning Trump's stated
desire to develop friendly relations with Russia: "This country has had a
consistent policy for 70 years towards the Soviet Union and Russia, and
Trump is trying to undo that." Heavens! Nuclear war would be better than
that!
Fake news, fake issue
The entire emphasis has been on whether a particular news item is factually
correct or incorrect. However, that is not the main problem with mainstream
media. A news item can be factually correct and still be very biased and
misleading because of what's been left out, such as the relevant information
about the Russian "invasion" of Crimea mentioned above. But when it comes to
real fake newsit's difficult to top the CIA's record in Latin America as
revealed by Philip Agee, the leading whistleblower of all time.
Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin
America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974
revealed how it was a common Agency tactic to write editorials and phoney
news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no
indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the particular media. The
propaganda value of such a "news" item might be multiplied by being picked
up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a
CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories
made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing
North Americans.
The Great Wall of Mr. T
So much cheaper. So much easier. So much more humane. So much more popular.
. Just stop overthrowing or destabilizing governments south of the border.
And the United States certainly has a moral obligation to do this. So many
of the immigrants are escaping a situation in their homeland made hopeless
by American intervention and policy. The particularly severe increase in
Honduran migration to the US in recent years is a direct result of the June
28, 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president,
Manuel Zelaya, after he did things like raising the minimum wage, giving
subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education. The coup - like
so many others in Latin America - was led by a graduate of Washington's
infamous School of the Americas.
As per the standard Western Hemisphere script, the Honduran coup was
followed by the abusive policies of the new regime, loyally supported by the
United States. The State Department was virtually alone in the Western
Hemisphere in not unequivocally condemning the Honduran coup. Indeed, the
Obama administration refused to even call it a coup, which, under American
law, would tie Washington's hands as to the amount of support it could give
the coup government. This denial of reality continued to exist even though a
US embassy cable released by Wikileaks in 2010 declared: "There is no doubt
that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28
[2009] in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the
Executive Branch". Washington's support of the far-right Honduran government
has continued ever since.
In addition to Honduras, Washington overthrew progressive governments which
were sincerely committed to fighting poverty in Guatemala and Nicaragua;
while in El Salvador the US played a major role in suppressing a movement
striving to install such a government. And in Mexico, over the years the US
has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico's
police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own
people's aspirations, as in Chiapas in 1994, and this has added to the
influx of the oppressed to the United States, irony notwithstanding.
Moreover, Washington's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has
brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico,
ravaging campesino communities and driving many Mexican farmers off the land
when they couldn't compete with the giant from the north. The subsequent
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) brought the same joys to the
people of that area.
These "free trade" agreements - as they do all over the world - also
resulted in government enterprises being privatized, the regulation of
corporations being reduced, and cuts to the social budget. Add to this the
displacement of communities by foreign mining projects and the drastic
US-led militarization of the War on Drugs with accompanying violence and you
have the perfect storm of suffering followed by the attempt to escape from
suffering.
It's not that all these people prefer to live in the United States. They'd
much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their
native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by
American police and other right-wingers.
Mr. T., if one can read him correctly - not always an easy task - insists
that he's opposed to the hallmark of American foreign policy: regime change.
If he would keep his Yankee hands off political and social change in Mexico
and Central America and donate as compensation a good part of the billions
to be spent on his Great Wall to those societies, there could be a
remarkable reduction in the never-ending line of desperate people clawing
their way northward.
Murders: Putin and Clintons
Amongst the many repeated denunciations of Russian president Vladimir Putin
is that he can't be trusted because he spent many years in the Soviet secret
intelligence service, the KGB.
Well, consider that before he became the US president George HW Bush was the
head of the CIA.
Putin, we are also told, has his enemies murdered.
But consider the case of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old Democratic National
Committee staffer who was shot dead on a Washington, DC street last July.
On August 9, in an interview on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur,
Julian Assange seemed to suggest rather clearly that Seth Rich was the
source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC emails and was murdered for it.
Julian Assange: "Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us
material and often face very significant risks. A 27-year-old that works for
the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown
reasons, as he was walking down the street in Washington, D.C."
Reporter: "That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn't it?"
Julian Assange: "No. There's no finding. So . I'm suggesting that our
sources take risks." (See also Washington Post, January 19, 2017)
But . but . that was Russian hacking, wasn't it? Not a leak, right?
If you've been paying attention over the years, you know that many other
murders have been attributed to the Clintons, beginning in Arkansas. But
Bill and Hillary I'm sure are not guilty of all of them. (Google "murders
connected clintons.")
America's frightening shortage of weapons
President Trump signed an executive order Friday to launch what he called "a
'great rebuilding of the Armed Forces' that is expected to include new
ships, planes, weapons and the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal." 4
This is something regularly advocated by American military and civilian
leaders.
I ask them all the same question: Can you name a foreign war that the United
States has ever lost due to an insufficient number of ships, planes, tanks,
bombs, guns, or ammunition, or nuclear arsenal? Or because what they had was
outdated, against an enemy with more modern weapons?
That tired old subject
Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's pick for Attorney General, declared
two years ago: "Ultimately, freedom of speech is about ascertaining the
truth. And if you don't believe there's a truth, you don't believe in truth,
if you're an utter secularist, then how do we operate this government? How
can we form a democracy of the kind I think you and I believe in . I do
believe that we are a nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it's
all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not doing the public
service." 5
So . if one is an atheist or agnostic one is not inclined toward public
service. This of course is easily disproved by all the atheists and
agnostics who work for different levels of government and numerous
non-profit organizations involved in all manner of social, poverty, peace
and environmental projects.
Who is the more virtuous - the believer who goes to church and does good
deeds because he hopes to be rewarded by God or at least not be punished by
God, or the non-believer who lives a very moral life because it disturbs him
to act cruelly and it is in keeping with the kind of world he wants to help
create and live in? Remember, the God-awful (no pun intended) war in Iraq
was started by a man who goes through all the motions of a very religious
person.
Christopher Hitchens, in 2007, in response to conservative columnist Michael
Gerson's article, "What Atheists Can't Answer", wrote: "How insulting is the
latent suggestion of his position: the appalling insinuation that I would
not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial
dictatorship . simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically
'true', that at least it stands for morality. . Here is my challenge. Let
Gerson name one ethical statement made or one ethical action performed by a
believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever."
Gerson, it should be noted, was the chief speechwriter for the
aforementioned very religious person, George W. Bush, for five years,
including when Bush invaded Iraq.
Phil Ochs
I was turning the pages of the Washington Post'sSunday (January 29) feature
section, Outlook, not finding much of particular interest, when to my great
surprise I was suddenly hit with a long story about Phil Ochs. Who's Phil
Ochs? many of you may ask, for the folksinger died in 1976 at the age of 35.
The Post'smotivation in devoting so much space to a symbol of the American
anti-war left appears to be one more example of the paper's serious
displeasure with Donald Trump. The article is entitled "Phil Ochs is the
obscure '60s folk singer we need today".
My favorite song of his, among many others, is "I ain't marching anymore":
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying, I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all?
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning That I ain't
marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No, I ain't marchin' any more
-
Ironically, very ironically, Donald Trump may well be less of a war monger
than Barack Obama or Hillary Clint