11-03-2018, 02:04 PM
Why Russia’s New Strategic Capabilities Come as a Shock to the US Intelligence Community
By Philip Giraldi
Global Research, March 11, 2018
Strategic Culture Foundation 8 March 2018
Region: Russia and FSU, USA
Theme: Intelligence, Militarization and WMD
The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan “no more Pearl Harbors.”
In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there have been some major intelligence failures in the past seventy years, starting with the inability to anticipate the breakout of the Korean War and including the embrace of false intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But the most recent failure is perhaps more consequential than either Korea or Iraq.
On March 1st, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke before his country’s Federal Assembly plus a large group of both local and foreign journalists, outlining his plans for the economy and also dealing with other domestic issues should he be reelected later this month. The final third of the presentation was on national defense and, in its substance, was clearly directed at a global audience, particularly the United States.
He explained
“During all these years since the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty [in 2001] we have been working intensively on advanced equipment and arms, which allowed us to make a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons.”
He was referring to the RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, which has almost unlimited range and ultra-high speed, enabling it to employ trajectories including strikes coming over the South Pole that can defeat existing American Anti-Ballistic Defense systems. Russia has also produced and deployed a hypersonic glider weapon system Avangard.
But the real game changer is the Russian ability to negate America’s ability to project power through its navy. The already deployed air-launched Kinzhal anti-ship missile has a range of 2000 kilometers and a hyper-sonic speed that makes it nearly impossible to intercept. The development has made America’s thirteen aircraft carrier groups obsolete. President Putin made clear that Russia now has an overwhelming military advantage in cruise and ballistic missiles that are capable of penetrating U.S. defenses.
The new reality may or may not impel policymakers in Washington to approach Moscow and seek a new round of negotiations for arms control, but the real shock deriving from the Putin announcement is the failure of the intelligence community to anticipate the developments and advise their significance. Some of the new systems were hardly secret, with development of the Sarmat, for example, known to western governments for a number of years.
There will no doubt be a blame game in Washington over the inability to learn of Russia’s arms programs, but the questions that probably will not be asked relates to the intelligence agencies themselves and their capabilities, or lack thereof. It is no secret that organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have seen their basic missions change since 2001. An organization that used to pride itself on its ability to conduct classic espionage operations involving recruiting and running spies suddenly heard from policymakers that those skills were no longer in demand. Many officers who were made redundant or forced to retire were precisely those individuals who had cut their teeth on running operations directed against the old Soviet Union. They had the language and cultural skills necessary to collect information on Russia. With their departure, those capabilities also largely vanished.
Instead of spying, American intelligence agencies working mostly against what was broadly described as “terrorism,” used technology to locate potential targets and kill them. The CIA’s Clandestine Services, once the haven of its spies, became under President Barack Obama, a largely paramilitary operation focused on military solutions rather than espionage. This process was accelerated under Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, who worked assiduously to reduce the influence of the former spies within the Agency. Brennan reportedly had once wanted to become a spy but was kicked out of the training program as “unsuitable.”
So, has America learned that its intelligence agencies are doing all the wrong things and that the national defense strategy is unsustainable because the Russian-American relationship is now on a new footing? Possibly, but it is perhaps more likely that Washington will avoid asking the hard questions.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
The Pentagon’s “Ides of March”: Best Month to Go to War
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 01, 2018
Global Research 12 March 2013
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
First published on March 13, 2013, updated March 1, 2018.
Is it a coincidence?
In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.
With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15. The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.
For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked “the time to start new military campaigns.”
As in the heyday of the Roman Empire, the US Department of Defense has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.
Does the month of March –identified by the Romans as a “good time” to initiate new military undertakings–, have a bearing on contemporary military doctrine?
Throughout history, seasons including the transition from Winter to Spring have played a strategic role in the timing of military operations.
Do Pentagon military planners favor the month of March?
Do they also –in some mysterious fashion– “idolize” Mars, the Roman God of War?
March 23 (which coincides with the beginning of Spring) was the day “Romans celebrated the start of the military campaign and war fighting season.”
“Homage was paid to Mars the god of war with festivals and feasting. … For the Romans March 23 was a huge celebration known as Tubilustrium”.
Under these festivities which celebrated the Roman god of war, a large part of the month of March “was dedicated to military celebration and preparedness.”
Timeline of March Military Interventions (1965- 2017)
Recent history confirms that with the exception of Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO led military operations over a period of almost half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Vietnam War
The US Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam on March 8, 1965.
On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam marking the beginning of “America’s ground war”.
NATO’s War on Yugoslavia
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was launched on March 24, 1999.
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia code-named by the US Operation “Noble Anvil”. started on March 24, 1999 and lasted until June 10, 1999.
The Iraq War
The War on Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)
The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
(The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on 17th January. However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February – the US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March.“)
The Covert War on Syria
The US-NATO Covert War on Syria was initiated on March 15, 2011 with the incursion of Islamist mercenaries and death squads in the southern city of Daraa on the border with Jordan. The terrorists were involved in acts of arson as well as the killings of civilians. This incursion of terrorists was from the very outset supported covertly by the US, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
NATO’s “Humanitarian” R2P War on Libya
NATO commenced its bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011. The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1970), (adopted unanimously).
A subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted on 17 March 2011. It authorized the establishment of “a no-fly zone” over Libya, and the use “all necessary measures” “to protect the lives of civilians”.
Libya was bombed relentlessly by NATO warplanes starting on March 19, 2011 for a period of approximately seven months.
Yemen
On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the US launched air strikes against the Huthi armed group in Yemen.
**
March 2018
The US and its NATO allies, not to mention Israel, are on a war footing.
Several military scenarios in March 2018 are on the drawing board of the Pentagon including Lebanon, Syria (military escalation scenario), North Korea and Iran.
Russia is threatened and so is China.
We cannot speculate, however, regarding US-NATO war plans pertaining to the Ides of March 2018.
A vast media propaganda campaign has been launched to provide legitimacy to the US-led military adventure, upholding acts of war as humanitarian peace-making initiatives. In the course of the month of March, fake news has reached a new threshold: US mini nukes are heralded as peacemaking bombs.
Here is the latest New York Times (Feb 27) “authoritative” analysis of how North Korea is helping the Syrian government to wage a chemical war against the Syrian people. Nice and not fake, timely (Ides of March) and of course “carefully documented” by the Newspaper of Record.
Entering the Ring of War Propaganda
By Mark Taliano
Global Research, March 08, 2018
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Media Disinformation, Terrorism, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: SYRIA
Western populations are inundated with war propaganda, and all of the MSM is guilty. It serves to promote criminal warfare rather than peace.
Once we enter the ring of propaganda fabricated by western agencies of deception, we start to lose, since it is at that point that we become entwined in the convoluted narratives. Intelligence agencies are specialists at creating such fake narratives.[1]
Fundamental lies and omissions persist because we insist on using them as talking points despite the preponderance of evidence that negates them.
There are, for example, no “moderate terrorists”[2] in Syria. The term itself is an oxymoron and quite ridiculous. All of the terrorists in Syria are there precisely because the West and its allies are waging a supremely illegal war against the Syrian government. They are all proxies for the West.
The War on Terror is a fraud and the West is not waging war against ISIS either.[3] ISIS are monsters, but they are not Frankenstein monsters who have turned on their masters in Syria. They remain Western assets, sometimes expendable[4], but assets nonetheless. They served to deliver key strategic areas to the West and they still serve that function, as outlined in the 2012 DIA document.
The ring of propaganda includes Hollywood. The 2018 Oscars featured Bana al-Abed[5], falsely conflating her with feminism and freedom. Omitted from the spectacle is the fact that Bana’s father worked for both al Qaeda and ISIS[6], and that Western terrorist supporters and propagandists are exploiting her to create illegal war propaganda.
The White Helmets[7] fall into the same category. They are terrorist-auxiliaries, and they exploit children, and murder children, to create fake narratives centered around their heroic “humanitarian” deeds. The White Helmets are not a legitimate source of information for news.
Also omitted from MSM narratives is that terrorists in East Ghouta[8] murder civilians who try to escape occupied areas, just as terrorists murdered civilians trying to flee occupied Aleppo. Civilians continue to be used as human shields. Most do not stay in terrorist-occupied areas of their own volition.
The choice in Syria is not between two monsters. The Western terrorists are monsters, but the elected Syrian government is not a monster. All of the demonization campaigns against Assad have proven false. The Saydnaya torture evidence is fraudulent[9]. The Caesar “kills his own people”[10] photo evidence is fraudulent, and Assad does not gas his own people either.
The only monsters in the whole dirty war are the West and their allies. We are the ones committing the Supreme international crime, we are the ones fabricating the war narratives, and we the people are accomplices in our governments’ crimes when we fail to denounce them.
*
Notes
[1] Mark Taliano, “ ‘Stories within Stories’ ”: The CIA’s Strategies to Dupe the American Public.” Global Research. 24 July, 2016. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/stories-wi...ic/5537635) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[2] Mark Taliano, “U.S–Led NATO’s Tree Of Lies.” Global Research. 17 May, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-led-na...es/5590456) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[3] Makia Freeman, “ISIS Is a US-Israeli Creation. Top Ten ‘Indications’. Global Research, 7 March, 2018/The Freedom Articles, 5 April, 2016. “(https://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-is-a-...ns/5518627)
Accessed 7 March, 2017.
[4] Tim Anderson, “U.S. ATTEMPTED TO CREATE SUNNI-SHIA RIFT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: TIM ANDERSON.” Interview, Shiafollowers. 25 February, 2018. (https://shiafollowers.com/index.php/2018...-anderson/) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[5] “HOLLYWOOD CAUGHT EXPLOITING EIGHT YEAR OLD DAUGHTER OF TERRORIST AT OSCARS 2018 CEREMONY.”
clarityofsignal1. 6 March 2018. (https://www.bitchute.com/video/jTaAySeZSQfZ/) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[6] “Beeley: Bana Alabed’s dad worked for ISIS.” RT UK. 17 October, 2017.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4QDXpjo...ture=share) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[7] Vanessa Beeley, “WHITE HELMETS ‘Manufacturing Consent’ for War in Syria.” 6 March, 2018. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMdtfVCA...ture=share) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[8] “Militants shell & shoot at escapees from E. Ghouta, may use them as human shields – Syrian nun to RT.”
RT Question More. 5 Mar, 2018. (https://www.rt.com/news/420506-ghouta-re...ssion=true) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[9] Rick Sterling, “Amnesty International’s ‘Kangaroo Report’ on Human Rights in Syria.” Global Research. 12 February, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/amnesty-in...ia/5574195) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[10] Rick Sterling, “The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations.” Dissident Voice. 3 March, 2016. (https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/the-c...otiations/) Accessed 7 March, 2018
Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
“Fake News” and World War III. The Danger of Nuclear Annihilation
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 09, 2018
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: Nuclear War
We are at a dangerous crossroads in our history.
The dangers of a Third World War are routinely obfuscated by the media. A world of fantasy permeates the mainstream media which tacitly upholds the conduct of nuclear war as a peace-making endeavor.
World War III is terminal. Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium, not to mention Fukushima.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
The media, the intellectuals, the scientists and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads destroys humanity.
“Fake News” has become “Real News”.
And “Real News” by the independent online media is now tagged as Russian propaganda.
In turn, the independent media (including Global Research) is the object of censorship via the search engines and social media.
What we are dealing with is a War against the Truth. Objective reporting on the dangers of a Third World war is being suppressed. Why?
The future of humanity is at stake. The danger of nuclear annihilation is not front-page news.
The unfolding consensus among Pentagon war planners is that a Third World War is “Winnable”.
Nuclear War as an “Instrument of Peace”
Concepts are turned upside down. Political insanity prevails.
A diabolical discourse is unfolding. The so-called “more usable” tactical nuclear weapons (B61-11, B61-12) with an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb are heralded (by scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon) as “peace-making” bombs, “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”.
These are the weapons which are contemplated for use against North Korea (or Iran) in what is described by the Pentagon as “a bloody nose operation”, with limited civilian casualties. And the corporate media applauds.
Fake News: these nuclear bombs are WMD. The “Bloody Nose” (“safe for civilians”) Concept is “Fake News”
Lest we forget, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (see image below), 100,000 people died within the first seven seconds following the explosion. Needless to say, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. Insanity prevails. The institutions of government are criminalized and so is the media.
The Pentagon and NATO are beating the drums of war. What is at stake is a Worldwide media disinformation campaign in support of a Third World War, which almost inevitably would lead to nuclear annihilation.
In the words of Fidel Castro: “In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity”.
“The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. …
Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.
…
There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.
In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.
Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!” (Complete text and video recording, October 2010 Interview with Fidel Castro by Michel Chossudovsky)
When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.
When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor endorsed by the self proclaimed international community, pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. yet it should be noted that in the course of the last 15 years, the anti-war movement has largely become defunct, civil society organizations have been coopted.
How do we reverse the tide: a cohesive grassroots counter-propaganda campaign
The Road Ahead
There are no easy solutions. What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which seeks to disable patterns of authority and decision making pertaining to war. This is by no means an easy and straightforward undertaking.
This network would be established nationally and internationally at all levels in society, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate the antiwar organizational structure. Of crucial importance, this movement should extend into the Armed Forces as a means to breaking the legitimacy of war among service men and women.
The first task would be to disable war propaganda through an effective campaign against media disinformation. (including support of the online independent and alternative media).
The corporate media would be directly challenged, leading to boycotts of major news outlets, which are responsible for channelling disinformation into the news chain. This endeavor would require a parallel process at the grass roots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of the war and the global crisis, as well as effectively “spreading the word” through advanced networking, through alternative media outlets on the internet, etc. It would also require a broad based campaign against the search engines involved in media censorship on behalf of the Pentagon.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the structures of political authority, is no easy task. It would require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history. It would require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society and acting with a single voice. It would also require eventually unseating the war criminals, and indicting them for war crimes.
Abandon the Battlefield: Refuse to Fight
The military oath taken at the time of induction demands unbending support and allegiance to the US Constitution, while also demanding that US troops obey orders from their President and Commander in Chief:
“I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”
The President and Commander in Chief has blatantly violated all tenets of domestic and international law. So that making an oath to “obey orders from the President” is tantamount to violating rather than defending the US Constitution.
“The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.” (Lawrence Mosqueda, An Advisory to US Troops A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOS303A.html,
See also Michel Chossudovsky, “We the People Refuse to Fight”: Abandon the Battlefield! March 18, 2006 )
The Commander in Chief is a war criminal. According to Principle 6 of the Nuremberg Charter:
“The fact that a person [e.g. Coalition troops] acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Let us make that “moral choice” possible, to enlisted American, British, Canadian and US-NATO Coalition servicemen and women.
Disobey unlawful orders! Abandon the battlefield! … Refuse to fight in a war which blatantly violates international law and the US Constitution!
But this is not a choice which enlisted men and women can make individually.
It is a collective and societal choice, which requires an organizational structure.
Across the land in the US, Britain, Canada and in all coalition countries, the new anti-war movement must assist enlisted men and women to make that moral choice possible, to abandon the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Syria and Yemen.
This will not be an easy task. Committees at local levels must be set up across the United States, Canada, Britain, Italy, Japan and other countries, which have troops engaged in US led military operations.
We call upon veterans’ associations and local communities to support this process.
This movement needs to dismantle the disinformation campaign. It must effectively reverse the indoctrination of coalition troops, who are led to believe that they are fighting “a just war”: “a war against terrorists”, a war against the Russians, who are threatening the security of America.
The legitimacy of the US military authority must be broken.
What has to be achieved:
Reveal the criminal nature of this military project,
Break once and for all the lies and falsehoods which sustain the “political consensus” in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear war.
Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media
Break the legitimacy of the war-mongers in high office.
Dismantle the US sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors.
Bring Home the Troops
Repeal the illusion that the State is committed to protecting its citizens.
Expose the “fake crises” such as the global flu pandemic as a means to distract public opinion from the dangers of a global war.
Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT)
Expose how a profit driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates
Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war,
Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.
Call for the Dismantling of NATO
Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office
Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers
Close down all US military bases in the US and around the World
Develop an antiwar movement within the Armed Forces and establish bridges between the Armed Forces and the civilian antiwar movement
Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US led global military agenda.
Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
Confront Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US
Dismantle the homeland security state, call for the repeal of the PATRIOT legislation
Call for the removal of the military from civilian law enforcement. Call for the enforcement of the Posse Comitatus Act
Call for the demilitarization of outer space and the repeal of Star Wars
People across the land, nationally and internationally, must mobilize against this diabolical military agenda, the authority of the State and its officials must be forcefully challenged.
This war can be prevented if people forcefully confront their governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens on the implications of a nuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.
What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network which challenges the structures of power and authority, the nature of the economic system, the vast amounts of money used to fund the war, the shear size of the so-called defense industry.
Click book cover to order Michel Chossudovsky’s latest book directly from Global Research
What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war, a global people’s movement which criminalizes war.
What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called “Homeland Security agenda” which has already defined the contours of a police State.
The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.
It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.
We call upon people across the land, in North America, Western Europe, Israel, The Arab World, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of US-NATO led wars, against the corporate media which serves to camouflage the devastating impacts of modern warfare.
The military agenda supports a profit driven destructive global economic system which impoverishes large sectors of the world population.
This war is sheer madness.
The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.
It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.
It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.
It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.
It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.
Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.
This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
Let us reverse the tide.
Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
Break the American inquisition.
Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.
Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.
Bring home the troops.
Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.
The Illusion of War Without Casualties
America’s wars in the post-9/11 era have been characterized by relatively low U.S. casualties, but that does not mean that they are any less violent than previous wars, Nicolas J.S. Davies observes.
By Nicolas J. S. Davies
Global Research, March 11, 2018
Consortiumnews 9 March 2018
Theme: History, Media Disinformation, US NATO War Agenda
Featured image: Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in 2006. (U.S. government photo)
Last Sunday’s Oscar Awards were interrupted by an incongruous propaganda exercise featuring a Native American actor and Vietnam vet, featuring a montage of clips from Hollywood war movies.
The actor, Wes Studi, said that he “fought for freedom” in Vietnam. But anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of that war, including for instance the millions of viewers who watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam War documentary, knows that it was the Vietnamese who were fighting for freedom – while Studi and his comrades were fighting, killing and dying, often bravely and for misguided reasons, to deny the people of Vietnam that freedom.
Studi introduced the Hollywood movies he was showcasing, including “American Sniper,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” with the words,
“Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to these powerful films that shine a great spotlight on those who have fought for freedom around the world.”
To pretend to a worldwide TV audience in 2018 that the U.S. war machine is “fighting for freedom” in the countries it attacks or invades was an absurdity that could only add insult to injury for millions of survivors of U.S. coups, invasions, bombing campaigns and hostile military occupations all over the world.
Wes Studi’s role in this Orwellian presentation made it even more incongruous, as his own Cherokee people are themselves survivors of American ethnic cleansing and forced displacement on the Trail of Tears from North Carolina, where they had lived for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, to Oklahoma where Studi was born.
Unlike the delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention who broke out in chants of “no more war” at displays of militarism, the great and the good of Hollywood seemed nonplussed by this strange interlude. Few of them applauded it, but none protested either.
From Dunkirk to Iraq and Syria
Perhaps the aging white men who still run the “Academy” were driven to this exhibition of militarism by the fact that two of the films nominated for Oscars were war movies. But they were both films about the U.K. in the early years of the Second World War – stories of British people resisting German aggression, not of Americans committing it.
Like most cinematic paeans to the U.K.’s “finest hour,” both these films are rooted in Winston Churchill’s own account of the Second World War and his role in it. Churchill was roundly sent packing by British voters in 1945, before the war was even over, as British troops and their families instead voted for the “land fit for heroes” promised by the Labour Party, a land where the rich would share the sacrifices of the poor, in peace as in war, with a National Health Service and social justice for all.
Churchill reportedly consoled his cabinet at its final meeting, telling them,
“Never fear, gentlemen, history will be kind to us – for I shall write it.”
And so he did, cementing his own place in history and drowning out more critical accounts of the U.K.’s role in the war by serious historians like A.J.P. Taylor in the U.K. and D.F. Fleming in the U.S.
If the Military Industrial Complex and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are trying to connect these Churchillian epics with America’s current wars, they should be careful what they wish for. Many people around the world need little prompting to identify the German Stukas and Heinkels bombing Dunkirk and London with the U.S. and allied F-16s bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and the British troops huddled on the beach at Dunkirk with the destitute refugees stumbling ashore on Lesbos and Lampedusa.
Externalizing the Violence of War
In the past 16 years, the U.S. has invaded, occupied and dropped 200,000 bombs and missiles on seven countries, but it has lost only 6,939 American troops killed and 50,000 wounded in these wars. To put this in the context of U.S. military history, 58,000 U.S. troops were killed in Vietnam, 54,000 in Korea, 405,000 in the Second World War and 116,000 in the First World War.
But low U.S. casualties do not mean that our current wars are less violent than previous wars. Our post-2001 wars have probably killed between 2 and 5 million people. The use of massive aerial and artillery bombardment has reduced cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Sirte, Kobane, Mosul and Raqqa to rubble, and our wars have plunged entire societies into endless violence and chaos.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.” (Source: Consortiumnews)
But by bombing and firing from a distance with very powerful weapons, the U.S. has wreaked all this slaughter and destruction at an extraordinary low rate of U.S. casualties. The U.S.’s technological war-making has not reduced the violence and horror of war, but it has “externalized” it, at least temporarily.
But do these low casualty rates represent a kind of “new normal” that the U.S. can replicate whenever it attacks or invades other countries? Can it keep waging war around the world and remain so uniquely immune from the horrors it unleashes on others?
Or are the low U.S. casualty rates in these wars against relatively weak military forces and lightly armed resistance fighters giving Americans a false picture of war, one that is enthusiastically embellished by Hollywood and the corporate media?
Even when the U.S. was losing 900-1,000 troops killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan each year from 2004 to 2007, there was much more public debate and vocal opposition to war than there is now, but those were still historically very low casualty rates.
U.S. military leaders are more realistic than their civilian counterparts. General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Congress that the U.S. plan for war on North Korea is for a ground invasion of Korea, effectively a Second Korean War. The Pentagon must have an estimate of the number of U.S. troops who are likely to be killed and wounded under its plan, and Americans should insist that it makes that estimate public before U.S. leaders decide to launch such a war.
The other country that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia keep threatening to attack or invade is Iran. President Obama admitted from the outset that Iran was the ultimate strategic target of the CIA’s proxy war in Syria.
Israeli and Saudi leaders openly threaten war on Iran, but expect the U.S. to fight Iran on their behalf. American politicians play along with this dangerous game, which could get thousands of their constituents killed. This would flip the traditional U.S. doctrine of proxy war on its head, effectively turning the U.S. military into a proxy force fighting for the ill-defined interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Iran is nearly 4 times the size of Iraq, with more than double its population. It has a 500,000 strong military and its decades of independence and isolation from the West have forced it to develop its own weapons industry, supplemented by some advanced Russian and Chinese weapons.
In an article about the prospect of a U.S. war on Iran, U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen dismissed American politicians’ fears of Iran as “alarmism” and called his boss, Defense Secretary Mattis, “obsessed” with Iran. Sjursen believes that the “fiercely nationalistic” Iranians would mount a determined and effective resistance to foreign occupation, and concludes, “Make no mistake, U.S.military occupation of the Islamic Republic would make the occupation of Iraq, for once, actually look like the ‘cakewalk’ it was billed to be.”
Is This America’s “Phony War”?
Invading North Korea or Iran could make the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look in hindsight like the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland must have looked to German troops on the Eastern front a few years later. Only 18,000 German troops were killed in the invasion of Czechoslovakia and 16,000 in the invasion of Poland. But the larger war that they led to killed 7 million Germans and wounded 7 million more.
After the deprivations of the First World War reduced Germany to a state of near starvation and drove the German Navy to mutiny, Adolf Hitler was determined, like America’s leaders today, to maintain an illusion of peace and prosperity on the home front. The newly conquered people of the thousand-year Reich could suffer, but not Germans in the homeland.
Hitler succeeded in maintaining the standard of living in Germany at about its pre-war level for the first two years of the war, and even began cutting military spending in 1940 to boost the civilian economy. Germany only embraced a total war economy when its previously all-conquering forces hit a brick wall of resistance in the Soviet Union. Could Americans be living through a similar “phony war”, one miscalculation away from a similar shock at the brutal reality of the wars we have unleashed on the world?
How would the American public react if far greater numbers of Americans were killed in Korea or Iran – or Venezuela? Or even in Syria if the U.S. and its allies follow through on their plan to illegally occupy Syria east of the Euphrates?
And where are our political leaders and jingoistic media leading us with their ever-escalating anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda? How far will they take their nuclear brinksmanship? Would American politicians even know before it was too late if they crossed a point of no return in their dismantling of Cold War nuclear treaties and escalating tensions with Russia and China?
Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war was a response to the public reaction to what were in fact historically low U.S. casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Obama waged war on the quiet, not war on the cheap. Under cover of his dovish image, he successfully minimized the public reaction to his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, his proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, his global expansion of special operations and drone strikes and a massive bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Syria, after six years of U.S.-manufactured war. (Source: VENEZUELAPHOTO: PRENSA LATINA | INTERNET@GRANMA.CU \SANA)
How many Americans know that the bombing campaign Obama launched in Iraq and Syria in 2014 has been the heaviest U.S. bombing campaign anywhere in the world since Vietnam? Over 105,000 bombs and missiles, as well as indiscriminate U.S., French and Iraqi rockets and artillery, have blasted thousands of homes in Mosul, Raqqa, Fallujah, Ramadi and dozens of smaller towns and villages. As well as killing thousands of Islamic State fighters, they have probably killed at least 100,000 civilians, a systematic war crime that has passed almost without comment in the Western media.
“…And It Is Late”
How will the American public react if Trump launches new wars against North Korea or Iran, and the U.S. casualty rate returns to a more historically “normal” level – maybe 10,000 Americans killed each year, as during the peak years of the American War in Vietnam, or even 100,000 per year, as in U.S. combat in the Second World War? Or what if one of our many wars finally escalates into a nuclear war, with a higher U.S. casualty rate than any previous war in our history?
In his classic 1994 book, Century of War, the late Gabriel Kolko presciently explained,
“Those who argue that war and preparation for it is not necessary to capitalism’s existence or prosperity miss the point entirely: it simply has not functioned in any other way in the past and there is nothing in the present to warrant the assumption that the coming decades will be any different…”
Kolko concluded,
“But there are no easy solutions to the problems of irresponsible, deluded leaders and the classes they represent, or the hesitation of people to reverse the world’s folly before they are themselves subjected to its grievous consequences. So much remains to be done – and it is late.”
America’s deluded leaders know nothing of diplomacy beyond bullying and brinksmanship. As they brainwash themselves and the public with the illusion of war without casualties, they will keep killing, destroying and risking our future until we stop them – or until they stop us and everything else.
The critical question today is whether the American public can muster the political will to pull our country back from the brink of an even great
By Philip Giraldi
Global Research, March 11, 2018
Strategic Culture Foundation 8 March 2018
Region: Russia and FSU, USA
Theme: Intelligence, Militarization and WMD
The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan “no more Pearl Harbors.”
In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there have been some major intelligence failures in the past seventy years, starting with the inability to anticipate the breakout of the Korean War and including the embrace of false intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But the most recent failure is perhaps more consequential than either Korea or Iraq.
On March 1st, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke before his country’s Federal Assembly plus a large group of both local and foreign journalists, outlining his plans for the economy and also dealing with other domestic issues should he be reelected later this month. The final third of the presentation was on national defense and, in its substance, was clearly directed at a global audience, particularly the United States.
He explained
“During all these years since the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty [in 2001] we have been working intensively on advanced equipment and arms, which allowed us to make a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons.”
He was referring to the RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, which has almost unlimited range and ultra-high speed, enabling it to employ trajectories including strikes coming over the South Pole that can defeat existing American Anti-Ballistic Defense systems. Russia has also produced and deployed a hypersonic glider weapon system Avangard.
But the real game changer is the Russian ability to negate America’s ability to project power through its navy. The already deployed air-launched Kinzhal anti-ship missile has a range of 2000 kilometers and a hyper-sonic speed that makes it nearly impossible to intercept. The development has made America’s thirteen aircraft carrier groups obsolete. President Putin made clear that Russia now has an overwhelming military advantage in cruise and ballistic missiles that are capable of penetrating U.S. defenses.
The new reality may or may not impel policymakers in Washington to approach Moscow and seek a new round of negotiations for arms control, but the real shock deriving from the Putin announcement is the failure of the intelligence community to anticipate the developments and advise their significance. Some of the new systems were hardly secret, with development of the Sarmat, for example, known to western governments for a number of years.
There will no doubt be a blame game in Washington over the inability to learn of Russia’s arms programs, but the questions that probably will not be asked relates to the intelligence agencies themselves and their capabilities, or lack thereof. It is no secret that organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have seen their basic missions change since 2001. An organization that used to pride itself on its ability to conduct classic espionage operations involving recruiting and running spies suddenly heard from policymakers that those skills were no longer in demand. Many officers who were made redundant or forced to retire were precisely those individuals who had cut their teeth on running operations directed against the old Soviet Union. They had the language and cultural skills necessary to collect information on Russia. With their departure, those capabilities also largely vanished.
Instead of spying, American intelligence agencies working mostly against what was broadly described as “terrorism,” used technology to locate potential targets and kill them. The CIA’s Clandestine Services, once the haven of its spies, became under President Barack Obama, a largely paramilitary operation focused on military solutions rather than espionage. This process was accelerated under Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, who worked assiduously to reduce the influence of the former spies within the Agency. Brennan reportedly had once wanted to become a spy but was kicked out of the training program as “unsuitable.”
So, has America learned that its intelligence agencies are doing all the wrong things and that the national defense strategy is unsustainable because the Russian-American relationship is now on a new footing? Possibly, but it is perhaps more likely that Washington will avoid asking the hard questions.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
The Pentagon’s “Ides of March”: Best Month to Go to War
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 01, 2018
Global Research 12 March 2013
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
First published on March 13, 2013, updated March 1, 2018.
Is it a coincidence?
In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.
With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15. The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.
For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked “the time to start new military campaigns.”
As in the heyday of the Roman Empire, the US Department of Defense has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.
Does the month of March –identified by the Romans as a “good time” to initiate new military undertakings–, have a bearing on contemporary military doctrine?
Throughout history, seasons including the transition from Winter to Spring have played a strategic role in the timing of military operations.
Do Pentagon military planners favor the month of March?
Do they also –in some mysterious fashion– “idolize” Mars, the Roman God of War?
March 23 (which coincides with the beginning of Spring) was the day “Romans celebrated the start of the military campaign and war fighting season.”
“Homage was paid to Mars the god of war with festivals and feasting. … For the Romans March 23 was a huge celebration known as Tubilustrium”.
Under these festivities which celebrated the Roman god of war, a large part of the month of March “was dedicated to military celebration and preparedness.”
Timeline of March Military Interventions (1965- 2017)
Recent history confirms that with the exception of Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO led military operations over a period of almost half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Vietnam War
The US Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam on March 8, 1965.
On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam marking the beginning of “America’s ground war”.
NATO’s War on Yugoslavia
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was launched on March 24, 1999.
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia code-named by the US Operation “Noble Anvil”. started on March 24, 1999 and lasted until June 10, 1999.
The Iraq War
The War on Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)
The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
(The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on 17th January. However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February – the US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March.“)
The Covert War on Syria
The US-NATO Covert War on Syria was initiated on March 15, 2011 with the incursion of Islamist mercenaries and death squads in the southern city of Daraa on the border with Jordan. The terrorists were involved in acts of arson as well as the killings of civilians. This incursion of terrorists was from the very outset supported covertly by the US, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
NATO’s “Humanitarian” R2P War on Libya
NATO commenced its bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011. The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1970), (adopted unanimously).
A subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted on 17 March 2011. It authorized the establishment of “a no-fly zone” over Libya, and the use “all necessary measures” “to protect the lives of civilians”.
Libya was bombed relentlessly by NATO warplanes starting on March 19, 2011 for a period of approximately seven months.
Yemen
On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the US launched air strikes against the Huthi armed group in Yemen.
**
March 2018
The US and its NATO allies, not to mention Israel, are on a war footing.
Several military scenarios in March 2018 are on the drawing board of the Pentagon including Lebanon, Syria (military escalation scenario), North Korea and Iran.
Russia is threatened and so is China.
We cannot speculate, however, regarding US-NATO war plans pertaining to the Ides of March 2018.
A vast media propaganda campaign has been launched to provide legitimacy to the US-led military adventure, upholding acts of war as humanitarian peace-making initiatives. In the course of the month of March, fake news has reached a new threshold: US mini nukes are heralded as peacemaking bombs.
Here is the latest New York Times (Feb 27) “authoritative” analysis of how North Korea is helping the Syrian government to wage a chemical war against the Syrian people. Nice and not fake, timely (Ides of March) and of course “carefully documented” by the Newspaper of Record.
Entering the Ring of War Propaganda
By Mark Taliano
Global Research, March 08, 2018
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Media Disinformation, Terrorism, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: SYRIA
Western populations are inundated with war propaganda, and all of the MSM is guilty. It serves to promote criminal warfare rather than peace.
Once we enter the ring of propaganda fabricated by western agencies of deception, we start to lose, since it is at that point that we become entwined in the convoluted narratives. Intelligence agencies are specialists at creating such fake narratives.[1]
Fundamental lies and omissions persist because we insist on using them as talking points despite the preponderance of evidence that negates them.
There are, for example, no “moderate terrorists”[2] in Syria. The term itself is an oxymoron and quite ridiculous. All of the terrorists in Syria are there precisely because the West and its allies are waging a supremely illegal war against the Syrian government. They are all proxies for the West.
The War on Terror is a fraud and the West is not waging war against ISIS either.[3] ISIS are monsters, but they are not Frankenstein monsters who have turned on their masters in Syria. They remain Western assets, sometimes expendable[4], but assets nonetheless. They served to deliver key strategic areas to the West and they still serve that function, as outlined in the 2012 DIA document.
The ring of propaganda includes Hollywood. The 2018 Oscars featured Bana al-Abed[5], falsely conflating her with feminism and freedom. Omitted from the spectacle is the fact that Bana’s father worked for both al Qaeda and ISIS[6], and that Western terrorist supporters and propagandists are exploiting her to create illegal war propaganda.
The White Helmets[7] fall into the same category. They are terrorist-auxiliaries, and they exploit children, and murder children, to create fake narratives centered around their heroic “humanitarian” deeds. The White Helmets are not a legitimate source of information for news.
Also omitted from MSM narratives is that terrorists in East Ghouta[8] murder civilians who try to escape occupied areas, just as terrorists murdered civilians trying to flee occupied Aleppo. Civilians continue to be used as human shields. Most do not stay in terrorist-occupied areas of their own volition.
The choice in Syria is not between two monsters. The Western terrorists are monsters, but the elected Syrian government is not a monster. All of the demonization campaigns against Assad have proven false. The Saydnaya torture evidence is fraudulent[9]. The Caesar “kills his own people”[10] photo evidence is fraudulent, and Assad does not gas his own people either.
The only monsters in the whole dirty war are the West and their allies. We are the ones committing the Supreme international crime, we are the ones fabricating the war narratives, and we the people are accomplices in our governments’ crimes when we fail to denounce them.
*
Notes
[1] Mark Taliano, “ ‘Stories within Stories’ ”: The CIA’s Strategies to Dupe the American Public.” Global Research. 24 July, 2016. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/stories-wi...ic/5537635) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[2] Mark Taliano, “U.S–Led NATO’s Tree Of Lies.” Global Research. 17 May, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-led-na...es/5590456) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[3] Makia Freeman, “ISIS Is a US-Israeli Creation. Top Ten ‘Indications’. Global Research, 7 March, 2018/The Freedom Articles, 5 April, 2016. “(https://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-is-a-...ns/5518627)
Accessed 7 March, 2017.
[4] Tim Anderson, “U.S. ATTEMPTED TO CREATE SUNNI-SHIA RIFT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: TIM ANDERSON.” Interview, Shiafollowers. 25 February, 2018. (https://shiafollowers.com/index.php/2018...-anderson/) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[5] “HOLLYWOOD CAUGHT EXPLOITING EIGHT YEAR OLD DAUGHTER OF TERRORIST AT OSCARS 2018 CEREMONY.”
clarityofsignal1. 6 March 2018. (https://www.bitchute.com/video/jTaAySeZSQfZ/) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[6] “Beeley: Bana Alabed’s dad worked for ISIS.” RT UK. 17 October, 2017.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4QDXpjo...ture=share) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[7] Vanessa Beeley, “WHITE HELMETS ‘Manufacturing Consent’ for War in Syria.” 6 March, 2018. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMdtfVCA...ture=share) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[8] “Militants shell & shoot at escapees from E. Ghouta, may use them as human shields – Syrian nun to RT.”
RT Question More. 5 Mar, 2018. (https://www.rt.com/news/420506-ghouta-re...ssion=true) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[9] Rick Sterling, “Amnesty International’s ‘Kangaroo Report’ on Human Rights in Syria.” Global Research. 12 February, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/amnesty-in...ia/5574195) Accessed 7 March, 2018.
[10] Rick Sterling, “The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations.” Dissident Voice. 3 March, 2016. (https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/the-c...otiations/) Accessed 7 March, 2018
Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
“Fake News” and World War III. The Danger of Nuclear Annihilation
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 09, 2018
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: Nuclear War
We are at a dangerous crossroads in our history.
The dangers of a Third World War are routinely obfuscated by the media. A world of fantasy permeates the mainstream media which tacitly upholds the conduct of nuclear war as a peace-making endeavor.
World War III is terminal. Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium, not to mention Fukushima.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
The media, the intellectuals, the scientists and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads destroys humanity.
“Fake News” has become “Real News”.
And “Real News” by the independent online media is now tagged as Russian propaganda.
In turn, the independent media (including Global Research) is the object of censorship via the search engines and social media.
What we are dealing with is a War against the Truth. Objective reporting on the dangers of a Third World war is being suppressed. Why?
The future of humanity is at stake. The danger of nuclear annihilation is not front-page news.
The unfolding consensus among Pentagon war planners is that a Third World War is “Winnable”.
Nuclear War as an “Instrument of Peace”
Concepts are turned upside down. Political insanity prevails.
A diabolical discourse is unfolding. The so-called “more usable” tactical nuclear weapons (B61-11, B61-12) with an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb are heralded (by scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon) as “peace-making” bombs, “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”.
These are the weapons which are contemplated for use against North Korea (or Iran) in what is described by the Pentagon as “a bloody nose operation”, with limited civilian casualties. And the corporate media applauds.
Fake News: these nuclear bombs are WMD. The “Bloody Nose” (“safe for civilians”) Concept is “Fake News”
Lest we forget, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (see image below), 100,000 people died within the first seven seconds following the explosion. Needless to say, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. Insanity prevails. The institutions of government are criminalized and so is the media.
The Pentagon and NATO are beating the drums of war. What is at stake is a Worldwide media disinformation campaign in support of a Third World War, which almost inevitably would lead to nuclear annihilation.
In the words of Fidel Castro: “In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity”.
“The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. …
Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.
…
There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.
In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.
Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!” (Complete text and video recording, October 2010 Interview with Fidel Castro by Michel Chossudovsky)
When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.
When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor endorsed by the self proclaimed international community, pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. yet it should be noted that in the course of the last 15 years, the anti-war movement has largely become defunct, civil society organizations have been coopted.
How do we reverse the tide: a cohesive grassroots counter-propaganda campaign
The Road Ahead
There are no easy solutions. What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which seeks to disable patterns of authority and decision making pertaining to war. This is by no means an easy and straightforward undertaking.
This network would be established nationally and internationally at all levels in society, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate the antiwar organizational structure. Of crucial importance, this movement should extend into the Armed Forces as a means to breaking the legitimacy of war among service men and women.
The first task would be to disable war propaganda through an effective campaign against media disinformation. (including support of the online independent and alternative media).
The corporate media would be directly challenged, leading to boycotts of major news outlets, which are responsible for channelling disinformation into the news chain. This endeavor would require a parallel process at the grass roots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of the war and the global crisis, as well as effectively “spreading the word” through advanced networking, through alternative media outlets on the internet, etc. It would also require a broad based campaign against the search engines involved in media censorship on behalf of the Pentagon.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the structures of political authority, is no easy task. It would require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history. It would require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society and acting with a single voice. It would also require eventually unseating the war criminals, and indicting them for war crimes.
Abandon the Battlefield: Refuse to Fight
The military oath taken at the time of induction demands unbending support and allegiance to the US Constitution, while also demanding that US troops obey orders from their President and Commander in Chief:
“I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”
The President and Commander in Chief has blatantly violated all tenets of domestic and international law. So that making an oath to “obey orders from the President” is tantamount to violating rather than defending the US Constitution.
“The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.” (Lawrence Mosqueda, An Advisory to US Troops A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOS303A.html,
See also Michel Chossudovsky, “We the People Refuse to Fight”: Abandon the Battlefield! March 18, 2006 )
The Commander in Chief is a war criminal. According to Principle 6 of the Nuremberg Charter:
“The fact that a person [e.g. Coalition troops] acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Let us make that “moral choice” possible, to enlisted American, British, Canadian and US-NATO Coalition servicemen and women.
Disobey unlawful orders! Abandon the battlefield! … Refuse to fight in a war which blatantly violates international law and the US Constitution!
But this is not a choice which enlisted men and women can make individually.
It is a collective and societal choice, which requires an organizational structure.
Across the land in the US, Britain, Canada and in all coalition countries, the new anti-war movement must assist enlisted men and women to make that moral choice possible, to abandon the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Syria and Yemen.
This will not be an easy task. Committees at local levels must be set up across the United States, Canada, Britain, Italy, Japan and other countries, which have troops engaged in US led military operations.
We call upon veterans’ associations and local communities to support this process.
This movement needs to dismantle the disinformation campaign. It must effectively reverse the indoctrination of coalition troops, who are led to believe that they are fighting “a just war”: “a war against terrorists”, a war against the Russians, who are threatening the security of America.
The legitimacy of the US military authority must be broken.
What has to be achieved:
Reveal the criminal nature of this military project,
Break once and for all the lies and falsehoods which sustain the “political consensus” in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear war.
Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media
Break the legitimacy of the war-mongers in high office.
Dismantle the US sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors.
Bring Home the Troops
Repeal the illusion that the State is committed to protecting its citizens.
Expose the “fake crises” such as the global flu pandemic as a means to distract public opinion from the dangers of a global war.
Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT)
Expose how a profit driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates
Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war,
Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.
Call for the Dismantling of NATO
Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office
Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers
Close down all US military bases in the US and around the World
Develop an antiwar movement within the Armed Forces and establish bridges between the Armed Forces and the civilian antiwar movement
Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US led global military agenda.
Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
Confront Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US
Dismantle the homeland security state, call for the repeal of the PATRIOT legislation
Call for the removal of the military from civilian law enforcement. Call for the enforcement of the Posse Comitatus Act
Call for the demilitarization of outer space and the repeal of Star Wars
People across the land, nationally and internationally, must mobilize against this diabolical military agenda, the authority of the State and its officials must be forcefully challenged.
This war can be prevented if people forcefully confront their governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens on the implications of a nuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.
What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network which challenges the structures of power and authority, the nature of the economic system, the vast amounts of money used to fund the war, the shear size of the so-called defense industry.
Click book cover to order Michel Chossudovsky’s latest book directly from Global Research
What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war, a global people’s movement which criminalizes war.
What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called “Homeland Security agenda” which has already defined the contours of a police State.
The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.
It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.
We call upon people across the land, in North America, Western Europe, Israel, The Arab World, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of US-NATO led wars, against the corporate media which serves to camouflage the devastating impacts of modern warfare.
The military agenda supports a profit driven destructive global economic system which impoverishes large sectors of the world population.
This war is sheer madness.
The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.
It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.
It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.
It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.
It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.
Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.
This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
Let us reverse the tide.
Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
Break the American inquisition.
Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.
Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.
Bring home the troops.
Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.
The Illusion of War Without Casualties
America’s wars in the post-9/11 era have been characterized by relatively low U.S. casualties, but that does not mean that they are any less violent than previous wars, Nicolas J.S. Davies observes.
By Nicolas J. S. Davies
Global Research, March 11, 2018
Consortiumnews 9 March 2018
Theme: History, Media Disinformation, US NATO War Agenda
Featured image: Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in 2006. (U.S. government photo)
Last Sunday’s Oscar Awards were interrupted by an incongruous propaganda exercise featuring a Native American actor and Vietnam vet, featuring a montage of clips from Hollywood war movies.
The actor, Wes Studi, said that he “fought for freedom” in Vietnam. But anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of that war, including for instance the millions of viewers who watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam War documentary, knows that it was the Vietnamese who were fighting for freedom – while Studi and his comrades were fighting, killing and dying, often bravely and for misguided reasons, to deny the people of Vietnam that freedom.
Studi introduced the Hollywood movies he was showcasing, including “American Sniper,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” with the words,
“Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to these powerful films that shine a great spotlight on those who have fought for freedom around the world.”
To pretend to a worldwide TV audience in 2018 that the U.S. war machine is “fighting for freedom” in the countries it attacks or invades was an absurdity that could only add insult to injury for millions of survivors of U.S. coups, invasions, bombing campaigns and hostile military occupations all over the world.
Wes Studi’s role in this Orwellian presentation made it even more incongruous, as his own Cherokee people are themselves survivors of American ethnic cleansing and forced displacement on the Trail of Tears from North Carolina, where they had lived for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, to Oklahoma where Studi was born.
Unlike the delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention who broke out in chants of “no more war” at displays of militarism, the great and the good of Hollywood seemed nonplussed by this strange interlude. Few of them applauded it, but none protested either.
From Dunkirk to Iraq and Syria
Perhaps the aging white men who still run the “Academy” were driven to this exhibition of militarism by the fact that two of the films nominated for Oscars were war movies. But they were both films about the U.K. in the early years of the Second World War – stories of British people resisting German aggression, not of Americans committing it.
Like most cinematic paeans to the U.K.’s “finest hour,” both these films are rooted in Winston Churchill’s own account of the Second World War and his role in it. Churchill was roundly sent packing by British voters in 1945, before the war was even over, as British troops and their families instead voted for the “land fit for heroes” promised by the Labour Party, a land where the rich would share the sacrifices of the poor, in peace as in war, with a National Health Service and social justice for all.
Churchill reportedly consoled his cabinet at its final meeting, telling them,
“Never fear, gentlemen, history will be kind to us – for I shall write it.”
And so he did, cementing his own place in history and drowning out more critical accounts of the U.K.’s role in the war by serious historians like A.J.P. Taylor in the U.K. and D.F. Fleming in the U.S.
If the Military Industrial Complex and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are trying to connect these Churchillian epics with America’s current wars, they should be careful what they wish for. Many people around the world need little prompting to identify the German Stukas and Heinkels bombing Dunkirk and London with the U.S. and allied F-16s bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and the British troops huddled on the beach at Dunkirk with the destitute refugees stumbling ashore on Lesbos and Lampedusa.
Externalizing the Violence of War
In the past 16 years, the U.S. has invaded, occupied and dropped 200,000 bombs and missiles on seven countries, but it has lost only 6,939 American troops killed and 50,000 wounded in these wars. To put this in the context of U.S. military history, 58,000 U.S. troops were killed in Vietnam, 54,000 in Korea, 405,000 in the Second World War and 116,000 in the First World War.
But low U.S. casualties do not mean that our current wars are less violent than previous wars. Our post-2001 wars have probably killed between 2 and 5 million people. The use of massive aerial and artillery bombardment has reduced cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Sirte, Kobane, Mosul and Raqqa to rubble, and our wars have plunged entire societies into endless violence and chaos.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.” (Source: Consortiumnews)
But by bombing and firing from a distance with very powerful weapons, the U.S. has wreaked all this slaughter and destruction at an extraordinary low rate of U.S. casualties. The U.S.’s technological war-making has not reduced the violence and horror of war, but it has “externalized” it, at least temporarily.
But do these low casualty rates represent a kind of “new normal” that the U.S. can replicate whenever it attacks or invades other countries? Can it keep waging war around the world and remain so uniquely immune from the horrors it unleashes on others?
Or are the low U.S. casualty rates in these wars against relatively weak military forces and lightly armed resistance fighters giving Americans a false picture of war, one that is enthusiastically embellished by Hollywood and the corporate media?
Even when the U.S. was losing 900-1,000 troops killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan each year from 2004 to 2007, there was much more public debate and vocal opposition to war than there is now, but those were still historically very low casualty rates.
U.S. military leaders are more realistic than their civilian counterparts. General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Congress that the U.S. plan for war on North Korea is for a ground invasion of Korea, effectively a Second Korean War. The Pentagon must have an estimate of the number of U.S. troops who are likely to be killed and wounded under its plan, and Americans should insist that it makes that estimate public before U.S. leaders decide to launch such a war.
The other country that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia keep threatening to attack or invade is Iran. President Obama admitted from the outset that Iran was the ultimate strategic target of the CIA’s proxy war in Syria.
Israeli and Saudi leaders openly threaten war on Iran, but expect the U.S. to fight Iran on their behalf. American politicians play along with this dangerous game, which could get thousands of their constituents killed. This would flip the traditional U.S. doctrine of proxy war on its head, effectively turning the U.S. military into a proxy force fighting for the ill-defined interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Iran is nearly 4 times the size of Iraq, with more than double its population. It has a 500,000 strong military and its decades of independence and isolation from the West have forced it to develop its own weapons industry, supplemented by some advanced Russian and Chinese weapons.
In an article about the prospect of a U.S. war on Iran, U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen dismissed American politicians’ fears of Iran as “alarmism” and called his boss, Defense Secretary Mattis, “obsessed” with Iran. Sjursen believes that the “fiercely nationalistic” Iranians would mount a determined and effective resistance to foreign occupation, and concludes, “Make no mistake, U.S.military occupation of the Islamic Republic would make the occupation of Iraq, for once, actually look like the ‘cakewalk’ it was billed to be.”
Is This America’s “Phony War”?
Invading North Korea or Iran could make the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look in hindsight like the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland must have looked to German troops on the Eastern front a few years later. Only 18,000 German troops were killed in the invasion of Czechoslovakia and 16,000 in the invasion of Poland. But the larger war that they led to killed 7 million Germans and wounded 7 million more.
After the deprivations of the First World War reduced Germany to a state of near starvation and drove the German Navy to mutiny, Adolf Hitler was determined, like America’s leaders today, to maintain an illusion of peace and prosperity on the home front. The newly conquered people of the thousand-year Reich could suffer, but not Germans in the homeland.
Hitler succeeded in maintaining the standard of living in Germany at about its pre-war level for the first two years of the war, and even began cutting military spending in 1940 to boost the civilian economy. Germany only embraced a total war economy when its previously all-conquering forces hit a brick wall of resistance in the Soviet Union. Could Americans be living through a similar “phony war”, one miscalculation away from a similar shock at the brutal reality of the wars we have unleashed on the world?
How would the American public react if far greater numbers of Americans were killed in Korea or Iran – or Venezuela? Or even in Syria if the U.S. and its allies follow through on their plan to illegally occupy Syria east of the Euphrates?
And where are our political leaders and jingoistic media leading us with their ever-escalating anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda? How far will they take their nuclear brinksmanship? Would American politicians even know before it was too late if they crossed a point of no return in their dismantling of Cold War nuclear treaties and escalating tensions with Russia and China?
Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war was a response to the public reaction to what were in fact historically low U.S. casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Obama waged war on the quiet, not war on the cheap. Under cover of his dovish image, he successfully minimized the public reaction to his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, his proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, his global expansion of special operations and drone strikes and a massive bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Syria, after six years of U.S.-manufactured war. (Source: VENEZUELAPHOTO: PRENSA LATINA | INTERNET@GRANMA.CU \SANA)
How many Americans know that the bombing campaign Obama launched in Iraq and Syria in 2014 has been the heaviest U.S. bombing campaign anywhere in the world since Vietnam? Over 105,000 bombs and missiles, as well as indiscriminate U.S., French and Iraqi rockets and artillery, have blasted thousands of homes in Mosul, Raqqa, Fallujah, Ramadi and dozens of smaller towns and villages. As well as killing thousands of Islamic State fighters, they have probably killed at least 100,000 civilians, a systematic war crime that has passed almost without comment in the Western media.
“…And It Is Late”
How will the American public react if Trump launches new wars against North Korea or Iran, and the U.S. casualty rate returns to a more historically “normal” level – maybe 10,000 Americans killed each year, as during the peak years of the American War in Vietnam, or even 100,000 per year, as in U.S. combat in the Second World War? Or what if one of our many wars finally escalates into a nuclear war, with a higher U.S. casualty rate than any previous war in our history?
In his classic 1994 book, Century of War, the late Gabriel Kolko presciently explained,
“Those who argue that war and preparation for it is not necessary to capitalism’s existence or prosperity miss the point entirely: it simply has not functioned in any other way in the past and there is nothing in the present to warrant the assumption that the coming decades will be any different…”
Kolko concluded,
“But there are no easy solutions to the problems of irresponsible, deluded leaders and the classes they represent, or the hesitation of people to reverse the world’s folly before they are themselves subjected to its grievous consequences. So much remains to be done – and it is late.”
America’s deluded leaders know nothing of diplomacy beyond bullying and brinksmanship. As they brainwash themselves and the public with the illusion of war without casualties, they will keep killing, destroying and risking our future until we stop them – or until they stop us and everything else.
The critical question today is whether the American public can muster the political will to pull our country back from the brink of an even great